waves spreading in its wake, fought on across the surface, to shimmy at last up the star-flecked, moon-spangled sleeve of Volta’s magician robe.
Still naked, the silk comforter pulled snugly around her, Jenny stared into the Diamond. She hadn’t seen him actually enter it – in fact, she’d been drowsing when she’d realized he had left – but she knew that’s where he’d gone. She wasn’t sad she’d helped him on his way. No difference between dream lovers and real lovers like Longshot or the mangled love of Clyde. Love was what you made, then what you could make of it. Abandoned on her wedding night. Widowed at consummation. She looked into the centerless, sourceless light of the Diamond and decided she’d wait for Daniel till dawn. If he’d rather vanish than settle down with a crazy woman and an imaginary daughter – fine and farewell. The love they’d made was real even if he wasn’t. Any man who kissed her scar was always free to go. And so was she.
When the first sunlight touched the Diamond, Jenny slipped it carefully back in the possibles sack, slung the comforter around her, and walked back to the Porsche. She decided to believe Daniel’s information: Jim Bridger’s grave was in Saint Louis. Perfect. She could try Longshot’s sludge-reaming cure, continue on to Saint Lou, fall in love with the faithful, fascinating DJ she hoped was real, and then, if Daniel hadn’t showed up, get rid of the Diamond. After looking at it most of the night, Jenny decided she didn’t like the Diamond. Too perfect. Lifeless. As she opened the car door, Jenny felt a strong suspicion that the Diamond wasn’t real, another illusion, a mirror to hide behind.
When she opened the Porsche’s door she immediately sensed what her eyes confirmed: Mia was gone. ‘That rotten son of a bitch!’ Jenny said. ‘Fuck you and burn you and leave you alone in the Big Alone.’ Daniel had taken Mia with him, wherever the hell they’d gone.
Rage vented, Jenny considered two other possibilities: perhaps Mia had followed him freely; or maybe Mia had been his guide. Mia could have imagined him in her trance. Made him bring the Diamond. Get her mother lost in rapture and slip her mind for a different life.
She laughed. She wished them happiness and good fortune.
When Smiling Jack’s third straight-access call to Volta went unanswered, he caught a plane for the Coast. He could have asked a number of Alliance members closer to Laurel Creek to check on Volta, but he felt he should do it himself. Volta had never failed to return a straight-access call. If Volta was dead, Jack would know which secrets to protect.
As Smiling Jack stepped out of his rented Ford at Laurel Creek Hollow, he smelled amid the light fragrance of the blossoming apple and plums in the orchard the stench of rotting flesh drifting through the house’s open door. Jack tried to steady himself, clearing his mind so he could discern what had happened and what needed to be done.
Despite the sprayed splatters of blood on the porch, he checked the house first. He had tried to prepare himself but was still shocked to see Volta’s body face down in the gelatinous pool of blood, a whining swarm of flies clustered in the ragged cavity the bullet had blown in the back of his skull. He wanted to drag Volta from the coagulated mire of his blood to spare him the indignity of being seen like that. But Smiling Jack left him lying and methodically began to examine the room. The open wall-vault. The smashed mirror. The tape box next to the player. The heavy trail of blood leading out the door.
Jack wanted to hear the tape, but instead he followed the blood trail out to the porch, across the yard, then downhill toward the river. Smiling Jack would have bet his customized Kenworth against a sheet of one-ply toilet paper that he’d find Shamus Malloy dead within a quarter mile. He would have won by a hundred yards. Shamus’s body, the slashed wrist of his deformed hand clamped to his sliced neck as if the blood could pass between the wounds, was curled at the base on a majestic Douglas fir. Jack carried Shamus’s body up the hill, leaving it at the edge of the trees.
Jack listened to the tape three times before he erased it, then looked at Volta’s body. To Jack’s mind, once Volta had agreed to help her stop the theft, he had drawn his line in exactly the right place: He would honor her secret, but he wouldn’t die to protect treachery, no matter how lofty its cause. Volta had drawn his line precisely, honored his promise to the point of exposing himself, then honored himself at the threat of death by giving Shamus the truth. And died for it. There are no lines you can draw against an unbearable truth.
Smiling Jack carried Volta’s body to the kitchen and covered it with a sheet. Then he went down to the barn to make some calls.
He called Dolly Varden first. He wanted her there as quickly as possible to help with Volta’s remains. He made the other calls, then took a shovel from the tool rack and began digging a grave for Shamus.
Dolly, exhausted from the all-night haul from Portland, arrived at dawn. They cut off Volta’s blood-stiffened magician’s robe and had silently begun bathing him when Dolly said, ‘Holy shit. This for real?’
Jack didn’t see it. ‘What?’
‘This.’ She lifted Volta’s arm slightly, pointing to his wrist. ‘Unless old age is eating up my brain, it looks to me like a baby goldfish glued to his wrist here.’
Jack came around for a closer look. ‘Yeah – a baby goldfish. Don’t know about being glued, though. Its own slime or maybe some blood – that could make it stick.’
Dolly looked at Jack. ‘So, what do think? Scrape it off or leave it on.’
‘Leave it, I reckon. Volta always said, “Trust what’s there.”’
‘I’ll go for that,’ Dolly said.
When they had finished bathing Volta’s corpse, Smiling Jack slung him awkwardly over his shoulder. With Dolly leading the way, he carried him down to a shady alder flat along Laurel Creek, right above where it began its steep drop to the river. They left him face up in a clearing, arms folded on his chest, as Volta had requested years before.
Smiling Jack and Dolly continued on to the creek, stopping at a slow, deep pool. They stripped off their clothes and, with lung-cleansing whoops, plunged into the cold water.
THE SECOND NOTEBOOK OF JENNIFER RAINE MAY DAY
