Borderland (33 page)

CHAPTER 29

Cal
dropped the baseball he had been bouncing off the barn and stared at Nolan.
"What?"

"You
heard me."

"Yeah,
I heard you. I just can't believe you asked me something like that."

"Would
you mind answering the question?" Nolan was irritated by the boy's
amusement.

Cal
picked up the ball. "No, I don't believe in ghosts. I do believe in the
primal capacity of the reptilian brain to access certain levels of activity
beyond this plane of existence." He grinned. "Okay?"

"Reptilian
brain?" Nolan scoffed.

"Why
did you ask?"

"No
reason. Just your common dumbass curiosity."

"Do
you believe in ghosts?" Cal asked.

"Not
really," Nolan said, already regretting having mentioned the subject to the
little smartass. But he was bugged and his state of buggedness was getting
worse by the day. Something strange was going on with Myra. Not the regular,
oh, gee, kind of strange, but your serious cosmos-connected
what-does-it-all-mean kind of strange. After witnessing her night terrors for
the last week he couldn't help putting the details of her grisly dream together
with the names of those adopted in the Bible. It was all he could think about
lately. And it was weird thinking.

Somebody
kills the parents and takes the kid. Could that really happen? Did it? Myra was
having the exact same dream every night, and last night even Nolan had felt
something in her room. For a brief instant his flesh had goose pimpled and he
suddenly remembered the night of the fire and the way his window slammed shut.
How? And why would he be reminded of that again?

Reptilian
brain. Maybe there was something to that. Not necessarily the reptilian brain,
but the part that made Kreskin so goddamned amazing. Or the part that caused wild
poltergeist activity to occur in the homes of people with adolescent children
(puberty really was hell) or maybe the part that schizophrenics met the first
time they talked to themselves and someone answered back. There was a hell of a
lot of maybes out there.

But it
didn't explain what was going on here. Nolan liked a good, scary shiver as much
as the next person, but he wasn't into this oogahboogah shit. Myra wasn't
having much fun either.

"Hey,"
Cal said. "Are we going to play catch today or not?" Nolan looked up
and forced his attention back to the tangible world. "Did you get the
horses taken care of?"

"I
told you I did. Come on. Your hands are better now. I promise I won't bum any
holes through your glove."

"Hey,
don't get cocky, kid."

"I'll
leave that to you, Nolan Solo," Cal said.

Nolan
groaned. "Your lip is as bad as your mother's. You know that?"

"She
taught me everything I know. C'mom, put your glove on. Let's see some of those
shortstop moves."

"A
half hour," Nolan said. "Then I need to check out that pump. The
water pressure went to shit this morning in the middle of my shower."

"I'm
surprised you noticed with all the racket you make in there."

Nolan
snatched his glove from the ground and shoved his hand inside. "Put your
arm where your mouth is, hotshot."

"All
right," Cal said with a grin.

Twenty
minutes later Cal was begging for mercy. He held up a hand in surrender.
"Okay, okay. I'm sorry I mouthed off. No more bullets, all right? You
nearly broke my hand with that last one."

Nolan
shook his throwing arm. It felt pretty good. Nice and loose. Not too bad for an
old man.

Old in
baseball terms, anyway.

Cal took
his glove off and sauntered over. "Want me to look at the pump with
you?"

Nolan's
eyes narrowed. "And make a fool of me again? If you know what's wrong with
it, say so. If you know how to fix it, do so."

"Hey,
don't get your nerve ends excited. I was only asking. I don't know what's wrong
with it."

"Will
wonders never cease?" Nolan said in a dry voice. "Something he
doesn't know. I'll have to write this down so I can remember it. I'll look back
on this moment fondly, I can assure you."

"Now
who's being a smartass?" Cal said. He looked hurt.

"You
and your mom," Nolan said. "You can dish it out, but you can't take
it. Laugh Cal. People respect a man who can laugh at himself. Remember that
when I'm gone." He took off his own glove. "Now, if my hopes and
suspicions are correct, the pump only needs to be primed. Let's go see if I'm
right."

He was.
For once. Cal helped him haul the water and the boy's face grew longer with
each passing minute. Finally Nolan turned to him. "What is it? You're
driving me crazy with this hangdog look of yours."

Cal's
face filled with color. "It's not hangdog. I was just thinking about how
much I'm going to… when you're gone, you know. I'll really miss, well, just
doing things with you, you know? I'll miss you. A lot."

Nolan
experienced a sudden thickness in his respiratory area. He squatted and tried
to clear his throat. This was what he had been dreading, dammit.

"I'll
miss you, too," he said finally. "You're one great kid."

Cal sat
down by him "So where do you live in Kansas City? Maybe I can come and see
you sometime."

"At
the moment I don't live anywhere," Nolan told him. "My few material
possessions are locked up in a storage unit in Overland Park. It's a long
story, so don't ask the details."

"Then
how will I know where to find you?" Cal asked, his voice cracking
slightly.

Nolan
met the boy's anxious blue gaze and felt the thickness in his chest expand. Now
he knew how Shane felt.

"I
don't know, Cal," he said honestly. "Looks like neither of us knows
where we're going from here."

"Sure,"
Cal stared at the ground. "That's it, huh? You drive out of here and you
could give a shit whether you ever see me again, right?"

"Wrong."
Nolan gently cuffed him. "How can I tell you where I'll be when I don't
know that myself?"

Cal
lifted his head. "What about my mom? I know you'd like her away from here.
She's funny and a blast to be around most of the time. Here she's just too
worried about everything to be her normal self. You should see her in a dress
and makeup. Back in Houston these guys used to trip over their own feet when
they saw her walking down the—"

"Whoa,"
Nolan said. "What are you doing? Trying to sell your mother? You don't
have to. I like her, Cal. It took me a while, I'll admit, because I'm not used
to liking women who treat me like—" He stopped and grimaced. "But
then I've always been an asshole where women are concerned. Just ask Vic, he'll
tell you."

Cal blinked
at the bitterness in his voice. "She doesn't listen to Vic. And even if
she did, she once said she's probably fated to fall in love with assholes. She
even read this book about it."

"Thanks,"
Nolan said. "That makes me feel so much better."

"You
know what I mean," Cal said. "What makes Vic think you're so bad?
Have you dogged a lot of women?"

"Yeah,"
Nolan said frankly. "I have."

"Why?"
Cal asked.

Nolan
looked at the sky. "Some things are beyond even a genius's scope of
understanding. Especially one who's never even had a girlfriend."

"Try
me," Cal said in a tight voice.

Nolan
smiled at him. He loved the way the kid bristled when someone called him
genius. You'd never know it to look at him, not with his tousled blond hair and
dirty white T- shirt. He looked just like an average summer-loving kid.

"Well?"
Cal prompted.

"Okay.
Why did I dog all these women? Well, for one thing, I hate the stuff that gets
in their belly buttons when they wear jeans. It's the same stuff that gets in
the crack of their ass when they wear tight jeans with no underwear. What else?
Let's see. Oh yeah, I hate the way their hair smells after a visit to the hair
salon. Even worse is the stuff they use to remove pubic hair. Now that shit
stinks. They take this tube of cream, see, and they smear it--"

"Forget
it," Cal said in disgust. "I don't know why I bother talking to you.
You're so full of bull you'd crap for a day if you had an enema. Why can't you
be serious for once?"

Nolan
smacked a mosquito on his arm. It was bloated with his blood, a female. He
squinted toward the sun. "I don't know, kid. Maybe I should read your
mom's book."

Cal
leaned forward. "Let me ask you something. Do your parents figure into
this?"

"My
parents?" Nolan lifted his brows.

"The
way you talk about your folks made me start to wonder. You could do all these
things really well, but you were a bum because you didn't do the things they
thought you should. A deal like that could screw up anyone—emotionally, that
is."

Nolan
was staring at him. "And you think I'm screwed up—emotionally?"

Cal
looked away. "Maybe when it comes to loving someone, you are."

"Oh,
it's maybe now," Nolan said acidly. "A minute ago it was a book you'd
written. For all you know, Cal, I could've been in a homosexual panic these last
ten years. Maybe I dumped all those women because it was really a man I wanted.
Or maybe, just maybe, I honestly didn't love them and didn't want to waste any
more of their time. Have you thought of that possibility? Have you considered
that I may just possibly be a gentleman rather than a jerk? Half of those women
found someone else a month after I left, and half of that number are married
now. They didn't love me as much as they thought they did, now did they?"

When the
boy didn't answer, Nolan stood up and wiped his hands on his own dirty white
T-shirt. What he felt in the next few seconds he wouldn't be able to explain at
that moment or any other. The hairs on the back of his neck rose, his scalp
tingled. His gaze went to the house.

There.
Something was happening. Something was going on in there.

His hand
reached automatically for the pistol in his waistband. He swiftly turned to the
startled Cal. "Find the girls and hide in the barn. Keep them there. Don't
come out until I tell you to."

Before
Cal could speak, Nolan raced away toward the house, still not questioning the
impetus behind his actions. Once there he eased in the front door and heard
nothing but the sound of his own sweat falling in drops to the floor. The air
in the house was stifling. He paused, suddenly uncertain, and then he heard a
sound from upstairs. A whimper.

He
rushed the steps and came to a sandal-shrieking halt just outside Myra's
bedroom door. There were choking sounds coming from inside now.

And a
low grunt.

Nolan twisted
the knob. Locked. He backed up, kicked the door open, and found himself looking
at the large naked buttocks of Gil Schwarz. Myra lay spread-eagled on the bed,
her face scarlet, her body stripped nude and bound with her clothes. The gag on
her mouth was stained red with blood from her nose. Schwarz had one hand on
himself in preparation to enter her when he whirled to meet Nolan. The big
man's lips spread in a brilliant smile.

"Jinx
asked me to check up on his mares while he was gone. I'm just about to see to
this one. You can have her when I'm done."

Nolan's
eyes misted with rage. His pistol hand began to tremble. The old hatred rushed
through him, causing his entire body to quiver with fury.

"Human
beings, Chief? I don't think so. They kill, maim, and rape without blinking a
fucking eye! They don't care. There's nothing in them. They're empty inside!
How can you call them human beings?"

"Back
off, Wulf. When did the universe step down and ask you to take over, huh? Did I
miss that in the morning news? Hand over the badge and get yourself some help.
Seriously."

Only a
small firing of synapses in the memory sector of his brain, the long hours with
the police psychologist, kept him from emptying the clip into the man in front
of him.

I got
help, he thought as he ground his teeth together and waited for his vision to
clear. I want to kill him for you, Myra. I do. I want to spray his brains all
over the fucking wall. But I can't, because I did get help and because ex-cops
ask for trouble when they blow unarmed people away. Especially ex-cops with
records like mine.

He took
a deep breath and willed his hand to stop shaking. He glanced at Myra then
quickly forced his gaze away. Looking at her would screw him up all over again.

In a
tight, controlled voice, he told Schwarz to back away from the bed.

Schwarz
held on to himself. His silvery eyes narrowed. "What are you, a queerboy?
You got somethin' against a normal man havin' his fun?"