Infamous (49 page)

The plane began to taxi, and he knew it was time. He pushed send and sent the simple text message
—now
—to his mother’s phone.

I went into the jet’s cabin to sit with Alison, and to see what she saw out the airplane’s little windows.

“Oh,” she said as she spotted Rose’s brightly colored car race into the airfield parking lot.

She pushed the button that connected her to the pilot’s cabin and said, “Please, can we wait? Just a minute? I really want to—”

“No can do,” the pilot’s voice came back, cutting her off. “We’ve been cleared for take off. Make sure your seat belt is fastened, ma’am.”

Alison started to cry, with big noisy sobs that she never would’ve allowed herself to make if she knew I was listening. “I’m so sorry,” she said, as she leaned over to look out the window, where Rose and Tom had climbed out of that car, following A.J., whose cowboy hat seemed almost white in the bright afternoon sunshine. They both held on to him when he looked as if he wanted to run after the plane, and Alison craned her neck to watch him through her tears for as long as she possibly could.

What she and the pilots and the attendant didn’t see, of course, was that A.J. wasn’t A.J. beneath that hat, but instead was his cousin Joe—a good man and the spitting image of his great-grandfather, my beloved eldest son Jim.

I went straight down, through the cabin floor, and into the luggage holding area and told A.J. about Alison’s tears, hoping it would make him feel better.

But I think it only made him feel worse.

Alison cried until she was too tired to cry anymore.

And then she blew her nose and picked up the plane’s phone, and dialed A.J.’s cell.

She was beeped right to his voicemail.

“Hey,” she said, leaving a message. “It’s me. I’m a coward, and I’m on a plane heading for Jubilation, and I am so sorry that I didn’t kick and scream and insist that they wait until I talked to you. I wanted to just … let you know that even though it looks like I’ve run away, I’m still on your side. I know you’re kind of new at using your cell phone, but maybe Bev or Rose can help you send that picture of Brian to my cell as soon as you’ve got it. I won’t be able to see it until I land, because I can’t use my cell on the plane, but as soon as I’m on the ground, I’ll check for it.” She paused. “I guess that’s all. I know you’re probably worried about me, but I’m going to go to the police as soon as we get to Arizona, and tell them about Brian and Wayne and Jamie’s suspicions. It’ll help if I have that picture, so … If you want to call me back, I’ll be here. If not, I … don’t blame you. I … hope to talk to you soon.”

She hung up, because she’d started to cry again, which was ridiculous, because she just wasn’t a weeper. But now she couldn’t seem to stop.

She forced her tears away through sheer will as she found the bag that held Melody’s diaries and opened the first volume.

The first entry was dated from 1895.

Careful of the antique binding—the book’s cover was a faded red velvet, and the pages were edged in a still-shiny gold—Alison began to read.

Alison turned the page. At eighteen years old, Melody’s sweet innocence came through in her neatly penned words.

She was a child—and she was about to face a real-life nightmare that wouldn’t end for three long years.

The next few entries were similar to the first, full of girlish gushings and dreams. Silas, Melody discovered with some shock, had never learned to read. She imagined herself teaching him, in the evenings, before the fire. She imagined his gratitude and admiration and heartfelt devotion.

He drank too much, she admitted, as men who lived a hard life were prone to do. She would help him limit the intake of his alcohol, and keep him entertained with her vast library of books. Once he could read, they would read them together.

Theirs would be a lovely life, exciting by day and quiet and peaceful by night.

Her entry for Melody and Silas’s wedding day, however, was a bit less confident.

Melody’s entries grew more sparse through the end of 1895 and on into 1896, as she and her husband traveled across the country, going from town to town. There were only seven entries for the entire year of 1897. It was then that Alison realized that Melody never wrote out anyone’s names. Instead, she used only their initials. She wrote about Aunt E. and S., although Alison wasn’t sure if Melody was using S. for Silas or for Satan.

Still, all they’d need was a signature match, because the dates and locations lined up with Quinn’s account of his travels.

Hope arrived for Melody at the end of 1897, in the form of a visit home to Dodge City.

Melody, having long reached the end of her rope, intended to go to her dear Aunt E. and ask for asylum from her abusive spouse.

But it was soon clear, upon arrival in Dodge, that help was not to come. Aunt E., her only living relative, had passed away in an outbreak of influenza three months earlier.

And Melody fell into a deep despair.

Her life was a repeated pattern of death threats, rapes, and beatings when she was at home with Quinn. Out in public, he paraded her on his arm like a trophy, always courteous and kind. She was, ironically, the envy of all women, wherever they traveled.

Alison read of her plan to escape from Quinn in New Mexico, read of its failure and the harsh violence that followed.

She read of Melody’s arrival in Jubilation, read of her initial meetings with Jamie—J., she called him, or “my gambler.” She read Melody’s account of the shoot-out at the Red Rock
Saloon, read of the welcoming ball. She read about Melody’s loveless proposition to Jamie, and her subsequent discovery that hope did exist, even in her world. She read of their escape, of Melody’s fears and doubts. She read of the long, painful road to trust, down which Jamie patiently guided her, and of the promise Melody made to him to never again let herself be helpless and afraid. She read of the rape in San Francisco, and of the child that resulted.

She read of the beginning of a town called Heaven, and of the love and laughter and pain that was shared there.

From 1905 on, the diary entries were limited mostly to those days that Melody and Jamie’s children were born—and their life was far from sorrow free. There were a number of miscarriages and babies who didn’t live past their first few weeks between Skyler and the twins. But now and again, Melody would take the time to recount a funny or sweet story or even just make notes about simple, ordinary events in their everyday lives.

And then her record was of graduations from school, of marriages and grandchildren, of holidays and celebrations.

But then came the final entry.

Alison was crying again when I went up into the cabin to check on her.

She was reading Mel’s diaries, and I read with her for a while, looking over her shoulder. I have to confess, if I could’ve cried, I would’ve been weeping at that last entry, too.

As she closed the book and carefully put it back into its plastic, the aircraft hit a patch of turbulence, and the plane bounced. I had to do a bit of dance to keep from bumping into her.

I may, in fact, have skimmed her, because she looked around as if suddenly aware that I might be there.

She held out her hand, and was probably on the verge of saying my name, when the airplane’s phone rang.

She picked it up. “Hello?”

But then, looking around again, she put the thing on speaker, which was damned considerate. I’d heard too many one-sided phone conversations in the past few weeks. It was nice to be able to hear both ends.

“Thank God,” came the voice of her redheaded friend Hugh from the slightly distorted speaker. “You’re on the plane, you’re in the air.”

“Henry threatened to sue me,” she told him, sounding none too happy.

“I know,” Hugh said. “That was my idea. I know how freaked out you get when it comes to money.”

“Well, fuck you,” Alison said, her language proving how upset and angry she was.

“You’re welcome,” Hugh said, as if she’d used the word
thank
instead of the f-bomb. “I’m going to assume you haven’t heard the latest in the A.J. Gallagher as America’s Most Wanted episode. The man who sold him that submachine gun? Dead.”

“What?” Alison said it in unison with me.

“Yup,” Hugh confirmed. “He was bludgeoned to death, which I find a little ironic for a man who sold AK-47s as collector’s items. He’s a local guy and the Heaven sheriff’s department found him in his kitchen with his head bashed in. Coroner says he was killed sometime between two and four a.m. The police think it’s closer to two because that was when his security system was shut down. As in shut down
because gun-collector guy knew whoever it was who was pounding on his back door in the middle of the night—A.J. Gallagher—because he’d bought an MP5 submachine gun from him a few weeks earlier.”

“A.J. was with me all night,” Alison said. “I happen to know that at two
A.M.
we were … otherwise engaged.”