Day One (27 page)

A heavy weight seemed to press down on her chest, rain struck her face like needles. She tried to lift a hand, to flex a leg. Nothing. A cold shudder passed through her. Somewhere over her shoulder she heard the sound of rushing water, and a dense grassy aroma overwhelmed the smell of mud in her nose. She’d reached the creek.

Then she saw a flash of light, different from the splintered radiance inside her eyeballs. The Suburban. They’d gotten free of the ditch and reached the creek. The Suburban would come no further. A broken path followed the stream, twisted among boulders and hummocks of grass and sedge. A fisherman’s path, slow going on foot, risky for horses. Impossible for the truck. She still had time, but they’d be here soon. Too soon, maybe. She had to get to her feet, had to find the bridge.

A voice called out, harsh, close enough now that she understood broken words and phrases.
“—ing bitch ... soaked through—”
She tried to breathe again, tried to move. Her muscles refused to respond. She blinked against the stinging rain, then closed her eyes. An image of Stuart’s blind, staring face flashed in her mind, the scissors gleaming.

Lick it off—

“No!”

She twisted onto her side, teeth clenched against the pain in her ribs, and reached out, grasped a loop of tree root, maybe the fallen branch from one of the red alders that grew at creek’s edge. She pulled herself onto her hands and knees. Lifted her head, looked out across the stream. The water rolled by, silver and shouting beneath the clouds. The flood moved so fast she couldn’t see the rain striking the surface, just the swift, bucking foam. Behind her, the voice shouted again. She dragged her feet beneath her, tested her weight. Shaky, uncertain. But she found her footing. Her legs held.

“—can’t be too far—”

She ran.

She couldn’t feel her feet. Her only thought was to reach the bridge, to get across and find the road. Find safety. Yet even as she stumbled down the path, lungs burning and legs heavy as stones, she knew that hope was remote. Across the bridge she’d find the same wet darkness, the houses that might offer sanctuary scattered and distant. Maybe she’d reach help, or maybe Hiram would find her.

Lightning flashed ahead, the sharp flare silhouetting the looming railroad bridge. Close now. Stuart often came down to the bridge to cast for trout in the deep eddies the spring flow gouged under the piers. At other times, she would ride her horse along the railroad tracks and stop at the bridge to rest and watch the water flow underneath. She liked to sit at the end of one of the deck timbers, chin resting on her arms folded across the lower rail, feet dangling in the open air. A safe place, a comfortable place. Now, as she pushed up through the tall grass on the shore, the long support beams below the deck seemed too flimsy, too widely spaced, the steel trusses brittle and forbidding. But more dangerous still were the voices behind her.

“—think I hear—”

“—keep moving ... see the bridge—”

She climbed the railroad embankment, dimly aware as the sharp gravel of the footing cut into her numb feet. She was glad for the darkness and rain, which would hide her bloody tracks, which might enable her to get across the creek unrevealed. But when she stepped onto the deck her foot slid and she caught herself. The rain pooled on the creosote-treated wood to produce a surface as slick as ice. She grasped the metal rail and took another step. She could see her feet, pale against the dark wood. The deck timbers, oversized railroad ties, were spaced too close together for a full step, too far apart to allow her to move at more than a slow, mincing pace. As
she eased forward, the gravel embankment dropped away and she found herself over the creek itself. She kept both hands on the rail. Her feet throbbed against the wood, step by step.

“Don’t be stupid there, girl. This is no night to be playing on this damn bridge.”

She froze and looked back. He stood at the end of the bridge, a long, heavy flashlight in his hand. His man waited in shadow behind him on the gravel embankment. Hiram turned and handed off the flashlight, then stepped onto the bridge, moved toward her with slow, careful steps, hand on the rail.

“I know you’re scared, Lizzie, but I want you to come back with me. Everything’s gonna be all right.”

“I’m not stupid.” She took another step, then another.

“I don’t know what you think’s going on here, girl.” He matched her, step for step, his free hand reaching toward her, palm up. “I just want to get you safe off this bridge and out of this weather. Then we can sort things out.”

“I’ve done all my sorting.”

She heard him laugh, a guttural chuckle with no humor in it, little louder than the sound of the rushing creek below. “That I guess you did.”

“He deserved it! I don’t care what you think, he deserved it.”

“Let’s not talk about this here.”

Step. “I’m not sorry.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

She wouldn’t go back with him. Whatever happened to her, it wouldn’t be at Hiram Spaneker’s hands. She turned, hopped across two ties and slipped, caught herself on the railing. Her feet hung between the ties. Below, the water churned and leapt between the two bridge piers. She wrapped her arms around the rail and lifted first one foot, then the other, back onto timber.

“Lizzie, stop being crazy. Come on, let’s go deal with this.”

She couldn’t see his eyes, but she didn’t need to see his eyes to guess the thoughts behind them. She shook her head, took another step. The railing pressed into her damaged ribs.

“Nothing’s so bad it can’t be fixed.”

A dead Spaneker can’t be fixed.
She felt behind her, grasped the railing with both hands. There was no running now. The bridge was too slick, the gaps between the timbers just enough to snap her leg if she made a single misstep. But Hiram faced the same problem. If she could get across, she might lose herself in the fields across the county road. She turned her back on Hiram and managed a couple of lunging steps.

And stopped.

A new face appeared out of the darkness, a figure crossing from the far side of the creek. Tall and broad, dressed in dark clothes, flashlight spraying back and forth across the bridge. The only clear detail she could make out was the John Deere cap. She sagged against the rail. Hiram had made a call, gotten someone else out there after all. The far side of the bridge might be crawling with his men. No sanctuary, nowhere to hide. She turned back to see Hiram within a dozen paces, hand still extended.

“Come on, damn it! I ain’t jacking off here.”

“I won’t go back with you.”

He grimaced, close enough to reveal the tobacco stains on his teeth when the beam of the flashlight from behind splashed across his face. “Keep that damned thing out of my eyes, you stupid son of a bitch.”

Ellie looked back. The John Deere cap was closing in. As it drew nearer, the features below the bill resolved, shadowed eyes and grinning mouth. He took another step, and another, and then she knew who it was. Quentin Quinn, Stuart’s once upon a time nemesis, a boy with nothing but contempt for the Spanekers, now a Spaneker man.

She threw her leg over the rail, let her body trail it over.

“Holy Christ!” She couldn’t tell if it was Hiram or Quentin who’d shouted. She didn’t care. She wasn’t going back with them. She’d rather die than face whatever Hiram had planned for her, give herself up to the water below, slide into the dark emptiness of the racing creek. The water would be cold and swift. She wouldn’t feel it, just sink into the deep, rolling flow and lose herself. Safer than any county road farmhouse. No need for scissors ever again.

“Stop this, Lizzie.”

She allowed her legs to drop, hung from the wet steel rail by her hands. The rain battered her. Her strength seemed to drain from her hands with the rain into the stream below.

“Get me some rope or something.” She knew Hiram wouldn’t want to let her go, wouldn’t want to lose his chance to make her pay for what she did to his son. “We can work this out, you goddamn idiot.”

She smiled. She no longer felt any fear. Hiram Spaneker’s face appeared over the edge of the bridge, his eyes screwed up and dark. He reached out. “Take my hand, you stupid bitch. Just take it.”

She turned her head. She wanted to see the creek below her, wanted to watch it rise up to her as she fell. But she could only hear the water, a great rushing sound as soft as down. Somewhere far off to the west she saw the last glimmer of sunset, and above her the brown egg that was Hiram’s head.

“Take my hand, goddammit!”

She let go.

November 19 — 8:30 am

M
yra’s car was a beat-to-fuck Eldorado built before Big Ed grew his first pube. The interior reeked of cigarettes. The radio was AM/FM-only, with twist knobs for Christ’s sake. Myra carped about his driving, but Ed had no intention of sitting in the passenger seat while a keyed-up tweaker navigated Portland streets. Even if she managed to keep the car between the lines, any cop worth his salt would pull her over at a glance. He didn’t need that shit.

“How long have you known that guy?”

“What guy?” Myra smoked as he drove, burning a quarter of her cigarette with each frantic drag. Big Ed opened his window, but that did little to clear the air.

“The insect.”

“He doesn’t like being called an insect.”

“But he is okay with being called the Flea.”

“That’s different.”

“I am wondering why Hiram was so quick to trust him.”

“He’s cool. Don’t sweat it.” She smirked through smoke. “Robot man.”

The Caddy wanted to pull left; he decided to stop talking and put both hands on the wheel. He took the most direct route he knew back to the girl’s place, retracing his path east on Burnside, then 60th south alongside the park. He intended to drive right into the neighborhood. They had no time to dick around. Big Ed didn’t know kids, but he figured if it was old enough to talk, it was old enough to know what its house looked like. Neighbors might recognize the little bastard, or at least realize a piss dribbler that age had no business roaming the streets alone. Fact was, the kid could end up back home again any minute.

Right before the big park reservoir, traffic came to a dead halt. Big Ed saw a helicopter hovering low enough to make out the NewsChannel 8 logo. He tried skirting the jam by turning down some nameless side street, hit another backup within a couple of blocks. But he was close now. His fingers drummed the steering wheel as the cars crept forward, enough to allow him to turn onto the Bronstein’s narrow street. He made it a couple more blocks and managed to get across Hawthorne before everything stopped for good. Ahead, a crowd had gathered. Dressed in everything from winter parkas to bathrobes, they stood indiscriminately in the street, on the sidewalks, on lawns below the chopper.

Big Ed killed the engine. Myra sat up and tossed her butt out the window. “Christ, there’s cops everywhere.”

Shit.
He only mouthed the word, larynx still in his pouch. He palmed the keys and got out.

“Where the hell you going?”

Last thing he needed was a load of freak-out from Myra, but as he absorbed the scene before him he realized he could use her help. He leaned against the hood of the car and pressed the larynx to his throat. “We have to learn what is going on.”

She popped open her door and stuck her head up, one foot on pavement, one inside the car. “Are you fucking crazy? No way we get the brat away from all those cops.”

He closed his eyes and breathed. “They do not have him.”

“What are you talking about? Of course they got him.”

“No.” He moved away from the car. “They do not.”

She slammed her door and slinked after him. Alarm twisted her bony, acned face. He’d seen his share of tweaker paranoia, and he had no patience for it right now.

“I need you to pull your shit together.”

“My shit is fine. You’re the idiot about to walk into a jail cell.”

“Myra—”

“How could they not have him?” She waved wildly down the street. “Cops are fucking everywhere—”

“If they had him, the street would be quiet.”

She opened her mouth, but the retort died on her lips. She surveyed the street before them, the traffic, the gathered onlookers, the patrol cars. Slowly, understanding seeped into the desiccated meatloaf she used for a brain. “Oh.”

“Yes. Oh.”

“So where is he?”

“I do not know yet.”

“What fucking good does that do us—”

“Myra, calm the fuck down.”

“I’m fine.”

“Good. Now I need you to go find out what is going on.”

Now she shrank away from him. “I ain’t going up there.” Her hands slapped an arrhythmic beat against her thighs.

“It has to be you. You can blend in.” Of that, he was uncertain, but he knew he would stand out like spotlight in a mine shaft. “I cannot.” People always noticed the man who talked with a machine.

“I ain’t talking to no police.”

Big Ed massaged the bridge of his nose, larynx tucked in his palm. He wondered where Hiram was, if George the Flea was taking care of him or robbing him blind and leaving his body in a Dumpster.
“Of course you will not speak to the police.” Even a probie would recognize a raging meth addict. “Just join the crowd up there. There will be talk, and lots of rumors. I need you to listen.”