Hang Wire (19 page)

Instead, she nodded at the man’s car. “You might want to get your shiny automobile to cover. Looks like there’s a storm coming.”

She closed the door.

Joel sat in his car and turned the coin between his fingers. The coin was cold, and as he flipped it Joel could feel it move – not a pull, or a tug, or anything quite so strong, and he knew that if he let it go it would merely fall to the mat between his feet. But as he turned the coin he felt it had a tendency – an
inclination
– to lean away from him, toward the farmhouse. As he turned it, the coin caught the light and seemed to glow gold in the low sun.

“I follow the light,” said Joel, “and the light it shines on thee.”

Then the dust storm arrived and darkness descended, and just for a second the inside of the car was lit in gold and white by the coin turning in Joel’s fingers.

Black Sunday, they would call it later. The dust storm crossed the southern United States like a tidal wave, lifting three hundred million tons of dirt from the Great Plains and depositing it on cities, towns, villages, farms, houses, people, animals. The town of Spearman was directly in its path, and little would be left afterward.

And perhaps the dust cloud, an apocalyptic fury two hundred feet high and two hundred miles wide, perhaps it pushed down on the farmstead with a force that wasn’t quite natural, like there was something in the world that didn’t want anything found afterward, especially not by the man sitting inside the red automobile, the dust and sand piling high against its closed windows.

Especially not by the man inside with the gold coin turning, turning, turning in his fingers, as cold as a thing out of space, as bright as a comet in the morning sky.

The sky was clear the next morning, blue and cold. Joel pushed at the car door once, twice; as it opened, finally, light brown dirt, the color of sand, the color of the sun at daybreak, leaked into the car, pouring in around his ankles, filling the well beneath the wheel. Joel pushed the door open to its full extent, and then lifted his boots and planted them firmly in the loose dirt piled high outside.

The landscape had changed, just like that. The road leading to the farm had been dirt itself but it was a road, with scrabbly and desiccated trees dotted along its length. There had been more trees in front of the house, which, while rundown and tired, still showed its proud workmanship across two broad floors.

The man and his car now stood in the middle of a desert, dirt in high dunes, the morning breeze scuffing dust from their summits like it was the middle of the Sahara.

Where the farmhouse had once stood was now a pile of rubble, twisted and broken, abused as though a tornado had hit it. It was half buried in the dirt. Within days, maybe hours, little of the house would remain above the surface. The Dust Bowl would claim another victim, and nobody would notice. Connie and Lawrence would not be seen again.

Joel slipped the coin into his pocket. Immediately his fingers hurt. He turned and looked to the west. His future lay in that direction, he knew, but he also knew there was much to be done and that he wouldn’t be free of the light, not yet. The light was helping as best it could, but his road was long.

He walked around to the back of the car, pushed the dirt off the spare wheel attached to the rear in one sweep of his forearm, and opened the compartment. The trunk was large and empty save for a battered suitcase in brown leather and a long wooden pole.

Joel grabbed the end of the pole and pulled the shovel out from where it lay diagonally across the trunk.

“I follow the light,” he said to no one at all, “and the light it shines on thee.”

Shovel over one shoulder, Joel walked toward the ruins of the farmhouse, the coin cold in his pocket and pulling, pulling, pulling toward what lay buried within.

— XVII —

SHARON MEADOW, SAN FRANCISCO

Curtain up. Showtime. The circus was filling up. Ticket sales were brisk. Stonefire had lit their bonfire, and Sharon Meadow was filled with laughter, screams of delight, and all the sounds of the fair.

Nadine tore herself from the doorway of the Winnebago. Showtime, and Jack was still missing. He often disappeared. He never said where he went or what he did, but then again Nadine never asked. They were in a great location in Golden Gate Park (she still couldn’t quite believe they’d scored the permit), and she assumed Jack just liked to take himself off for a wander, clear his head from the controlled chaos of The Magical Zanaar’s Traveling Caravan of Arts and Sciences.

But this time, he was taking it to the very limit. The gates opened at seven. The show in the Big Top started at eight sharp with a crack of the ringmaster’s whip. The stands would be packed. Already people were milling around, lining up at the four entrances of the main tent, waiting to be ushered inside for an evening of old fashioned circus entertainment.

“Fuck,” she said. She left the Winnebago just as David the Harlequin came jogging over.

“There’s a problem,” he said. He pointed back over his shoulder at the Big Top.

“Tell me about it. Where the fuck is Jack?”

“Jack’s gone too?”

Nadine pursed her lips. “What do you mean?”

“You’d better come with me.”

David led her through the backstage area behind the Big Top. It sounded busy out front. Full house.

Inside the main arena, the lighting crew was fussing over settings, spotting the floor and walls of the tent in alternating colors as they made checks to the programmed sequence. At the back of the tent the AV guy messed with the mixing desk. In the center of the ring, Jan and John were having an argument. As Nadine approached, David at her side, the couple stopped. John pulled the spandex hood off his head and ran his hand through his hair.

“What the hell is going on? Where’s Jack’s wonder boy?”

Nadine felt her stomach turn. “Highwire hasn’t shown up?”

“Nope. His trailer is empty. Nobody has seen him. This whole mystery man shtick is such bullshit. It’s nearly show time and we can’t even call him.”

“Fuck,” said Nadine. She stamped her foot, turned around, and scanned the arena like she was expecting Jack – and now Highwire – to be lurking in the shadows. She turned to David. “Can you take over as ringmaster tonight?”

David’s eyes widened.

“You know how the show goes. Do your own thing as the Harlequin. All you have to do is introduce the acts.”

“Well, OK–”

“Jack’s not here either?” asked Jan. She and her husband exchanged a look.

“Ah, no,” said Nadine. “Look, can you guys do your old act? The one without Highwire.”

John smiled. “It’ll be a fucking pleasure, believe me.”

“John, please,” said Jan. John sighed, hands on hips.

“But what about the opener? The ringmaster’s intro piece.”

The show’s opening was a display by Sara and Kara. They ran through the stalls, dancing with streaming ribbons, before doing a short routine in the middle of the arena. At the climax, as the music swelled and trumpets blared, the Magical Zanaar appeared in a puff of pyrotechnics. The crowd loved it. Except…

“We can still do that with David,” said Nadine. She turned to the Harlequin, and he nodded.

“Not with Sara and Kara you can’t,” said John. He seemed a little too satisfied to be breaking yet another piece of bad news.

“What the fuck?” Nadine said, hands in the air. “Who else is missing?”

“The show will go on, my dear.”

Nadine, David, Jan and John turned as Jack walked in. He was dressed in the ringmaster’s outfit, sequined red coat, sequined blue top hat glittering.

“Where the hell have you been?”

Jack smiled, and bowed with a flourish.

“OK. Fine. Whatever,” she said. They could talk about it later. They were already late letting people in. “Sara and Kara are AWOL, so we’ll need a new opening.” She turned to David. “Clowns, fire-eaters, jumping around. Can you guys do that?”

David nodded. “I’m on it,” he said, before leaving the tent at a jog.

Nadine turned back to Jack. His eyes seemed glazed, his smile fixed. What the hell had gotten into him?

“Jack, come on,” she said. Jack blinked, bowed.

“The show must go on,” he said, and he stalked off to the shadows, from where he would make his entrance.

Nadine shook her head. She looked at Jan and John, but they just shrugged.

It was going to be a strange night.

— XVIII —

The bedside clock read a quarter after three. The big red digits were supposed to fade at night but in the pitch dark they bored into Alison’s eyes like a searchlight.

She raised her head to get a better focus on the clock. She’d been dreaming, of animals sleeping and of San Francisco being hit by another colossal earthquake. That was something at the backs of all the city residents’ minds, she supposed, but something you just dealt with as you got on with day-to-day living. But as she looked at the clock and rubbed her forehead, she couldn’t help but feel like the building was going to begin shaking at any moment.

She shuffled around under the quilt, and turned over.

She was alone in the bed. Ted was gone, the quilt folded back on his side and the bottom sheet still rumpled with his impression.

Alison instinctively reached over and ran a hand over the sheets. They were cold. He hadn’t just gotten up to go to the bathroom or get a glass of water. His side of the bed had been unoccupied for a while.

“Ted?”

Eyes adjusting to the dark, tinted a dull red by the bedside clock, Alison saw the door of the bedroom was ajar. Beyond, the rest of the apartment was a little brighter with the light of the city coming in from the big windows.

The apartment was silent. Alison swung her legs over the edge of the bed.

“Ted?”

Nothing. Alison’s eyes were wide. In the semi-darkness it felt like her hearing was amplified a hundred times, the air itself making a rushing sound that seemed to reach a peak before she realized it was the sound of her own circulation in her ears.

She didn’t want to turn the light on. She had no idea why – perhaps part of her wished Ted really had just gone to the bathroom and was going to slip quietly back into the room.

She shook her head. Ridiculous. She reached for the bedside light and turned it on.

In the main room Alison flicked on the lights – four switches, all at once – and squinted as she cast an eye around the apartment. The open plan lounge-diner-kitchen was empty.

“Ted?”

She knew he wasn’t there, but gave it one more shot. He wasn’t in the bathroom. Nothing looked amiss or out of place. Her bag was still on the table. The laptop was closed, as was the front door.

Where was Ted? Was his head injury – the seemingly innocuous bump at the restaurant something far more serious, a hematoma or swelling on the brain – making him, what, sleep walk? Had it caused amnesia? Or, what about those fugue states, like some forms of epilepsy could cause, where a person was walking and talking but unaware of what was going on and unable to remember it all later?

Or maybe he was fine, and had just gone for a walk around the block, get some air. She knew his sleeping patterns were a mess.

She darted back into the bedroom, gathered up her clothes. He couldn’t have been gone long; she would have noticed earlier, surely. Maybe he wasn’t far. Maybe she could find him.

— XIX —

There is a wind up on the rooftop. Stiff, coming off the water and weaving through the streets of San Francisco, bringing with it the first fingers of fog, and other things as well. Highwire breathes it in, dissects the scents: the smell of the sea, of the sleeping seals down on Pier 39, of mossy rocks around the edge of Alcatraz. As the air is pushed through the city it collects more notes: an echo of a thousand restaurants serving cuisines from a hundred different countries, rotting garbage in a dumpster in an alley, the unmistakable tang of stale alcohol and stomach fluids from the doors of those bars and clubs still open at this hour. The cheaper the cover, the stronger the smell.

San Francisco is a big city, a living organism. Even at the dead hours of early morning, when its rhythms are at their lowest ebb, there is power moving, flowing. And not just in the buzz of a power line or the hum of a streetlight. Energy is all around, in the air, transforming, moving.

But there’s something else too. Something sharp, alive. Electric. Highwire can taste vinegar, rotting lemons. A tingle on the back of the throat. The slightest pressure against the eardrums, like there is machinery nearby,
beneath
, something tunneling, something stirring.

Something moving. Alive, electric. Something not part of the city, older than it.

Something different.
Wrong
.

This is not the killer, Highwire doesn’t think so. There are two evils in San Francisco. One stalks the night and strings his victims up with steel cable. The other sleeps below. Whether the two are connected, Highwire cannot say, but, yes, he suspects. Two evils, feeding each other.

The killer is still at work. He must be found. Highwire turns, closes his eyes, trusts his senses. He is here for one reason, and one reason only.

To stop him.

He takes a breath and stands tall, ready to run, ready to jump, and –

“Highwire!”

He drops to his knees, turns on the ground. There is a man in front of him who wasn’t there a second ago. Highwire didn’t hear him arrive, which is impossible as the man is huge, wearing elaborate armor, big, articulated metal plates over a puffy, quilted robe that flares out at the sides, giving him a triangular shape. The outfit looks more decorative than functional, and when the man moves the plates clack together like a sack of tin cans.