The front door opens, briefly framing J.C. in the houselight. He is barefoot, in jeans and a T-shirt that says Kiss Me Where It Stinks—Greenspark, Maine.
“Hey!” he shouts. “That’s my car! What are you doing? Are you crazy?”
Michaud turns slowly to face him, with the mirthless grin of a hungry shark.
J.C. wavers, jumps back and slams the door.
Pleased with the reaction, Michaud pops his eyebrows comically and addresses the car again. He bashes a deep dent in the hood and then applies the bat to the headlights.
“Nice stroke,” Sam murmurs. Conversationally, he tells Deanie, “My old man took a Cadillac apart with his bare hands once. I always wished I could have seen it.”
Deanie is rigid, fixed on what Michaud is doing. She doesn’t seem to hear Sam.
“What the hell,” Sam murmurs. “J.C. can always get a new car. Too bad the cops’ll be here before Dale gets around to him.”
Quietly he throws the truck into gear and backs into a neighbor’s driveway, turns around and heads back to 302. Almost immediately, the sounds of demolition are overwhelmed by another burst of police sirens. Sam picks a driveway in front of a darkened house where no one appears to be home, swings in and kills his own lights.
He tightens his hold on Deanie. “What do you mean, Chapin helped?”
“He was there. Getting loaded with Tony. When I walked in and he was there, I knew it was just to get Tony coked and make trouble for me. He wanted to make sure Tony suspected I had something going with you. Tony’d never be able to intimidate you. J.C. knew Tony would react by hurting me. He was right, wasn’t he?”
“The fucker,” he mutters.
“Tony was so loaded he was gonna make me take my clothes off right in front of J.C. and my mother, so he could see if I’d been fucking someone. Like I was a bitch in heat. I couldn’t stand him touching me again. I didn’t care if he killed me, I was sure you’d kill him then. He was gonna hurt me anyway sooner or later.”
The lights of the police cruiser wash over them, the pulse of the siren throbs without meaning, and they barely notice the police cruiser sweeping past.
Regardless of the dead lights, Sergeant Woods knows the truck too well to miss it, nor can he mistake the couple entwined within. He wonders why they have stopped short of Chapin’s, where Rick has told him they were headed. But there’s no time to find out what they are up to. The dispatcher has confirmed that Michaud is at the Chapins’ and it’s imperative to bring Dale’s rampage to a halt before somebody gets killed.
The dispatcher’s first call caught Woods on the western border of Greenspark, giving Sonny Lunt a hard time about the condition of the tires on his rig. It meant the youngest and least experienced man on Greenspark’s small force, Mickey Farrell, was first on the scene. Disconcerted to find Lonnie Woods’s boy on the scene, Mickey hadn’t known what to make of Rick telling him that Sam and Deanie, for some reason, had decided Michaud was headed to Chapin’s. With a little more sense of the kids Sergeant Woods was more inclined to assume Sam and Deanie knew something useful, a guess backed up by the dispatcher reporting a call from the Chapins.
“It’s the lawyer,” Sam tells Deanie at the sight of Freddy Cape’s BMW in the driveway. “He’s okay. He went to high school with my dad.”
She swipes at her eyes, smearing what’s left of her eyeliner and mascara, most of it previously transferred to tissues in a clumsy attempt at cleanup. Her tear-swollen eyes are a dead giveaway to the reception committee of Reuben, Pearl and Freddy, ensconced in the kitchen. When Reuben introduces Freddy with the explanation he is there to interview her about the emancipation order, Deanie acknowledges the lawyer with a nod and then bolts in the direction of the bathroom. Sam slumps into a chair at the kitchen table and gives them an abbreviated version of Dale Michaud’s assault on Pete Fosse.
“What set Dale off?” Reuben asks bluntly.
Sam shakes his head in a mute profession of ignorance.
Pearl’s concern is more immediate. “It shook up Deanie?”
Sam nods affirmatively, allowing them jump to the conclusion the violence, disturbing for anyone, was that much more upsetting to someone recovering from a beating herself.
Studying his son’s face, blanked to hide his emotions, Reuben concludes Sam is covering more than distress or concern for Deanie.
When Deanie emerges from the bathroom, the lawyer asks to speak to her alone. Sam twitches restlessly around his bedroom, shuffling through cassettes, fanning textbooks and notebooks in search of homework that needs doing. When he finds some, he can’t concentrate. He claps on his headphones and cranks the sound to a brain-jamming level.
At last, Deanie lets herself into the room. She skins out of her clothes and into her longjohns without speaking. He reaches across the bed toward her and pulls her up against him but before he can start anything, she nudges his headphones off one ear.
“The lawyer’s still here. He wants to see you before Sergeant Woods gets here.”
Reluctantly, Sam swings his legs off the bed. He tucks her in and crouches by the bed to kiss her. “Rick’s dad won’t get you out of bed to ask you questions.”
She looks frail, the skin under her eyes like a bruised petal. It’s going to be a rough night for her. He wishes he could stay with her, at least hold her until she drifts off.
Freddy is sucking up coffee at the kitchen table, which is islanded with papers from his bloated briefcase. Reuben pokes at the fire.
“Deanie’s in bed,” Sam says. “She’s wiped out. Anything Sergeant Woods wants to know, I can tell him.”
“I’d be happy to hang out a
