Christine (51 page)

“No,” I said, and that was almost the truth. “Not Arnie.”

“All right,” he said. “You want a hand up the stairs?”

“I can make it okay. You go to bed yourself, Dad.”

“Yeah. I'm going to. Happy New Year, Dennis—and if you want to tell me, I'm still here.”

“Nothing to tell,” I said.

Nothing I
could
tell.

“Somehow,” he said, “I doubt that.”

• • •

I went up and got into bed and left the light on and didn'
t sleep at all. It was the longest night of my life, and several times I thought of getting up and going in with my mom and dad, the way I had done when I was small. Once I actually caught myself getting out of bed and groping for my crutches. I lay back down again. I was afraid for all of them, yes, right. But that wasn't the worst. Not anymore.

I was afraid of losing my mind. That was the worst.

The sun was just poking over the horizon when I finally dropped off and dozed uneasily for three or four hours. And when I woke up, my mind had already begun trying to heal itself with unreality. My problem was that I could simply no longer afford to listen to that lulling song. The line was blurred for good.

46

George LeBay Again

On Friday the fifth of January I got a postcard from Richard McCandless, secretary of the Libertyville American Legion Post. Written on the back in smudgy pencil was George LeBay's home address in Paradise Falls, Ohio. I carried the card around in my hip pocket most of the day, taking it out occasionally and looking at it. I didn't want to call him; I didn't want to talk to him about his crazy brother Roland again; I didn't want this crazy business to go any further at all.

That evening my father and mother went out to the Monroeville Mall with Ellie, who wanted to spend some of her Christmas money on a new pair of downhill skis. Half an hour after they were gone, I picked up the telephone and propped McCandless's postcard up in front of me. A call to the operator placed Paradise Falls in area code 513—western Ohio. After a pause for thought I called 513 directory assistance and got LeBay's number. I jotted it on the card, paused for thought again—a longer pause, this time—and then picked up the phone a third time. I dialled half of LeBay's number and then hung up.
Fuck it,
I thought, full of nervous resentment I could not recall ever feeling before.
Enough is enough so fuck it, I'm not calling him. I'm done with it, I wash my hands of the whole crappy mess. Let him go to hell in his own handcar. Fuck it.

“Fuck it,” I whispered, and got out of there before my conscience could begin to bore into me again. I went upstairs, took a sponge bath, and then turned in. I was soundly asleep before Ellie and my folks came back in, and I slept long and well that night. A good thing, because it was a long time before I slept that well again. A very long time.

While I slept, someone—
something
—killed Rudolph Junkins of the Pennsylvania State Police. It was in the paper when I got up next morning,
DARNELL INVESTIGATOR MURDERED NEAR BLAIRSVILLE
, the headline shouted.

My father was upstairs taking a shower; Ellie and two of her friends out on the porch, giggling and cawing over a game of Monopoly; my mother working on one of her stories in the sewing room. I was at the table by myself, stunned and scared. It occurred to me that Leigh and her family were going to be back from California tomorrow, school would start again the day after, and unless Arnie (or LeBay) changed his mind, she would be actively pursued.

I slowly pushed away the eggs I had scrambled for myself. I no longer wanted them. Last night it had seemed possible to push away the whole ominous and inexplicable business of Christine as easily as I'd just pushed away my breakfast. Now I wondered how I could have been so naive.

Junkins was the man Arnie had mentioned New Year's Eve. I couldn't even kid myself that it hadn't been. The paper said he had been the man in charge of Pennsylvania's part of the Will Darnell investigation, and it hinted that some shadowy crime organization had been behind the murder. The Southern Mob, Arnie would have said. Or the crazy Colombians.

I thought differently.

Junkins's car had been driven off a lonely country road and battered to so much senseless wreckage

(That goddam Junkins is still after me full steam ahead, he better watch out or somebody might just junk
him. . . .
Just stay on my side, Dennis. You know what happens to shitters who don't. . . .)

with Junkins still inside it.

When Repperton and his friends were killed, Arnie had been in Philly with the chess club. When Darnell was killed, he was in Ligonier with his parents, visiting relatives. Cast-iron alibis. I thought he would have another for Junkins. Seven—seven deaths now, and they formed a deadly ring around Arnie Cunningham and Christine. The police could surely see that; not even a blind man could miss such an explicit chain of motivation. But the paper didn't say that anyone was “aiding the police in their inquiries,” as the British so delicately put it.

Of course, the police are not in the habit of just handing everything they know over to the newspapers. I knew that, but every instinct I had told me that the state cops weren't seriously investigating Arnie in connection with this latest murder by automobile.

He was in the clear.

What had Junkins seen behind him on that country road outside of Blairsville? A red and white car, I thought. Maybe empty, maybe driven by a corpse.

A goose ran squawking over my grave and my arms broke out in cold bumps.

Seven people dead.

It had to end. If for no other reason than because maybe killing gets to be a habit. If Michael and Regina wouldn't go along with Arnie's crazy California plans, either of them or both of them might be next. Suppose he walked up to Leigh in study hall period three next Tuesday and asked her to marry him and Leigh simply said no? What might she see idling at the curb when she got home that afternoon?

Jesus Christ, I was scared.

My mother poked in. “Dennis, you're not eating.”

I looked up. “I got reading the paper. Guess I'm not that hungry, Mom.”

“You have to eat right or you're not going to get well. Want me to make you oatmeal?”

My stomach churned at the thought, but I smiled as I shook my head. “No—but I'll eat a big lunch.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Denny, do you feel okay? You've looked so tired and peaked lately.”

“I'm fine, Mom.” I widened my smile to show her how fine I was, and then I thought of her getting out of her blue Reliant at the Monroeville Mall, and two rows back was a white-over-red car, idling. In my mind's eye I saw her walk in front of it, purse over her arm, saw Christine's transmission lever suddenly drop into
DRIVE
—

“Are you sure? It's not your leg bothering you, is it?”

“No.”

“Have you taken your vitamins?”

“Yes.”

“And your rosehips?”

I burst out laughing. She looked irritated for a moment, then smiled. “Ye're a sassbox, Dennis Guilder,” she said in her best Irish accent (which is pretty good, since her mom came from the auld sod), “and there's no kivver to ye.” She went back to the sewing room, and in a moment the irregular bursts of her typewriter began again.

I picked up the newspaper and looked at the photo of Junkins's twisted auto,
DEATH CAR
, the caption beneath read.

Try this,
I thought:
Junkins is interested in a lot more than finding out who sold illegal fireworks and cigarettes to Will Darnell. Junkins is a state detective, and state detectives work on more than one case at a time. He could have been trying to find out who killed Moochie Welch. Or he could have been—

I crutched over to the sewing room and knocked.

“Yes?”

“Sorry to bother you, Mom—”

“Don't be silly, Dennis.”

“Are you going downtown today?”

“I might be. Why?”

“I'd like to go to the library.”

• • •

By three o'clock that Saturday afternoon it had begun to snow again. I had a slight headache from staring into the microfilm reader, but I had what I wanted. My hunch had been on the money—not that it had been any great intuitive leap.

Junkins had been in charge of the hit-and-run that had killed Moochie Welch, all right . . . and he had also been in charge of investigating what had happened to Repperton, Trelawney, and Bobby Stanton. He'd have to be one dumb cop not to read Arnie's name between the lines of what was happening.

I leaned back in the chair, snapped off the reader, and closed my eyes. I tried to make myself be Junkins for a minute. He suspects Arnie of being involved with the murders. Not doing them, but involved somehow. Does he suspect Christine? Maybe he does. On the TV detective shows, they're always great at identifying guns, typewriters used to write ransom notes, and cars involved in hit-and-runs. Flakes and scrapes of paint, maybe . ..

Then the Darnell bust looms up. For Junkins, that's nothing but great. The garage will be closed and everything in it impounded. Maybe Junkins suspects . . .

What?

I worked harder at imagining. I'm a cop. I believe in legitimate answers, sane answers, routine answers. So what do I suspect? After a moment, it came.

An accomplice, of course. I suspect an accomplice. It
has
to be an accomplice. Nobody in his right mind would suspect that the car was doing it herself. So.. . ?

So after the garage is closed, Junkins brings in the best technicians and lab men he can lay his hands on. They go over Christine from stem to stern, looking for evidence of what has happened. Reasoning as Junkins would reason—trying to, anyway—I think that there has to be some evidence. Hitting a human body is not like hitting a feather pillow. Hitting the crash barrier out at Squantic Hills is not like hitting a feather pillow, either.

So what do they find, these experts in vehicular homicide?

Nothing.

They find no dents, no touch-up repainting, no bloodstains. They find no embedded brown paint-flakes from the Squantic Hills road barrier that was broken off. In short, Junkins finds absolutely no evidence that Christine was used in either crime. Now jump ahead to Darnell's murder. Does Junkins hustle over to the garage the next day to check on Christine? I would, if it was me. The side of a house isn't a feather pillow either, and a car that has just crashed through one must have sustained major damage, damage that simply couldn't have been repaired overnight. And when he gets there, what does he find?

Only Christine, without so much as a ding in her fender.

That led to another deduction, one that explained why Junkins had never put a stakeout on the car. I hadn't been able to understand that, because he must have suspected that Christine was involved. But in the end, logic had ruled him—and perhaps it had killed him, as well. Junkins hadn't put a stakeout on her because Christine's alibi, while mute, was every bit as iron-clad as those of her owner. If he had inspected Christine immediately following the murder of Will Darnell, Junkins must have concluded that the car could not have been involved, no matter how persuasive the evidence to the contrary seemed.

Not a scratch on her. And why not? It was just that Junkins hadn't had all the facts. I thought about the odometer that ran backward, and Arnie saying,
Just a glitch.
I thought of the nest of cracks in the windshield that had seemed to grow smaller and draw inward—as if they were running backward too. I thought of the haphazard replacement of parts that seemed totally without rhyme or reason. Last of all, I thought of my nightmare ride home on Sunday night—old cars that looked new clumped up at the curb outside houses where parties were going on, the Strand Theater intact again in all of its yellow brick solidity, the half-built development that had been completed and occupied by Libertyville suburbanites twenty years ago.

Just a glitch.

I thought that not knowing about that glitch was what had
really
killed Rudolph Junkins.

Because, look: if you own a car long enough, things wear out no matter how well you take care of it, and they usually go randomly. A car comes off the assembly line like a newborn baby, and just like a newborn, it starts rolling down an Indian gauntlet of years. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune crack a battery here, bust a tie-rod there, freeze a bearing somewhere else. The carburetor float sticks, a tire blows, there's an electrical short, the upholstery starts getting ratty.

It's like a movie. And if you could run the film backward—

“Will there be anything else, sir?” the Records Clerk asked from behind me, and I nearly screamed.

• • •

Mom was waiting for me in the main lobby, and she chattered most of the way home about her writing and her new class, which was disco dancing. I nodded and replied in most of the right places. And I thought that if Junkins
had
brought in his technicians, his high-powered auto specialists from Harrisburg, they had probably overlooked an elephant while looking for a needle. I couldn't blame them, either. Cars just don't run backward, like a movie in reverse. And there are no such things as ghosts or revenants or demons preserved in Quaker State motor-oil.

Believe in one, believe in all,
I thought, and shuddered.

“Want to turn up the heater, Denny?” Mom asked brightly.

“Would you, Mom?”

I thought of Leigh, who was due back tomorrow. Leigh with her lovely face (enhanced by those slanting, almost cruel cheekbones), her young and sweetly luscious figure that had not yet been marred by the forces of time or gravity; like that long-ago Plymouth that had rolled out of Detroit on a carrier in 1957, she was, in a sense, still under warranty. Then I thought of LeBay, who was dead and yet undead, and I thought of his lust (but was it lust? or just a need to spoil things?). I thought of Arnie saying with calm assurance that they were going to be married. And then, with a helpless clarity, I saw their wedding night. I saw her looking up into the darkness of some motel room and seeing a rotting, grinning corpse poised over her. I heard her screams as Christine, a Christine still festooned with crepe streamers and soaped-on
JUST MARRIED
signs, waited faithfully outside the closed and locked door. Christine—or the terrible female force that animated her—would know Leigh wouldn't last long . . . and she, Christine, would be around when Leigh was gone.

I closed my eyes to block the images out, but that only intensified them.

It had begun with Leigh wanting Arnie and had progressed logically enough to Arnie wanting her back. But it hadn't stopped there, had it? Because now LeBay had Arnie . . . and
he
wanted Leigh.

But he wasn't going to have her. Not if I could help it.

That night I called George LeBay.

• • •

“Yes, Mr. Guilder,” he said. He sounded older, tireder. “I remember you very well. I talked your ear off in front of my unit in what I believe may have been the most depressing motel in the universe. What can I do for you?
” He sounded as though he hoped I wouldn't require too much.