Low Red Moon (24 page)

“Sadie, you need to calm down now, okay? You’re just going to make yourself sicker.”

“She kept calling me Little Red Cap,” and now Sadie’s almost hysterical, and there’s no point trying to wipe away all the tears, the clear liquid running from her nose. “Do you know what that means? You told me parts of Soda’s body were missing, didn’t you, and there were bite marks?”

And Deacon reaches for the call button above the bed, pushes it, and Sadie’s still hanging on to his hand, hanging on like she’s too afraid to ever let him go again. The last thing keeping her from slipping off the edge of the world, and “Sadie,” he says, “I’ve called the nurse,” and he smells oranges and rotting fish.

“Little Red Cap,” Sadie sobs desperately, squeezing his hand now so hard that it’s starting to hurt. “It
is
a moon, Deacon, a red moon like an eye—”

“I’ve called the nurse,” he says again, and a flash then, blinding light that isn’t light pouring out around him, light that’s somehow the opposite of light, swallowing him in searing, brilliant jaws. And now he’s the one holding on, as the flash scalds away the world, and he’s watching Sadie on the windowsill, and the blonde woman where the curtain of plastic beads used to be.

She smiles for him, for Sadie, and
That’s where the light’s coming from,
he thinks, the light that isn’t light, black hole ejecta, and the woman takes a step towards him.

“O, what land is the Land of Dreams?” she asks, smiling. “Father, O Father! What do we here, in this land of unbelief and fear?”

On the countertop, the microwave throws orange-white sparks and buzzes like there’s a swarm of red wasps locked up inside its guts.

“The Land of Dreams is better far,” the woman says and sniffs the gas-fouled air. “You have my key, Deacon Silvey,” she growls, “but I’ll take it from you soon.” And then the wasps explode from the microwave and set the air on fire with their poison barbs.

“Mr. Silvey!” the nurse says, shaking him so hard the world opens up wide and sucks him back into the hospital room. The black light gone, and now there’s only the irreconcilable mix of sun and fluorescence, and the nurse shakes him again.

“Deacon?” Sadie whispers, afraid, still crying, her blue eyes the antithesis of the blonde woman’s sickly golden stare. “Can you hear me?”

“I’m here,” he says, and the nurse is helping him into the pea-green chair.

“Do you need me to call a doctor?” she asks, and “No,” he tells her, his last bit of strength to muster enough insistence that she’ll believe him. “I’ll be fine. Just give me a minute or two to catch my breath, and I’ll be fine.”

“Are you an epileptic?” the nurse asks.

“No, I just got a little dizzy, that’s all,” and Deacon shuts his eyes and waits for the pain to begin.

He finds Chance sitting in the lobby downstairs; rows of Naugahyde chairs the color of Thanksgiving cranberry sauce, furniture that hasn’t been fashionable since the early 1970s, low tables scattered with piles of old magazines—
Reader’s Digest
and
Prevention
,
Woman’s Day
and
Southern Living
—and Chance is pretending to read from a
National Geographic
with a frog on the cover. His head is already so bad that throwing up is beginning to seem like a good idea, and frantic purple fireflies have started to flit before his eyes. Past the information desk, and the low murmur of people around him seems distant and unreal, the loved ones of the dying and the sick, plate glass and potted plants, too much sunlight for the fireflies’ liking, and Deacon moves along in his migraine bubble, apart from them all.

“Are you done?” she asks him, not bothering to look up from her magazine.

Deacon sits down beside her, slumps into the cranberry chair, rests his head against the back. “I’d give my left nut for a shot of Jack,” he says.

“That’s not funny,” and she tosses the
National Geographic
back onto the table with the rest.

“That’s why you don’t see me laughing.”

“Your head?” she asks, and he frowns and shuts his eyes for an answer.

“She could have been killed,” Deacon says. “I almost
got
her killed.”

“She’ll be fine.”

“Will she? That arm will probably never be right again. Just because she went to the goddamn library for me. And then I had the gall to fucking laugh at her when she tried—”

“Why does your head hurt, Deke? What happened after I left?”

“It’s nothing,” he says, but puts one hand over his closed eyes to keep out the light slipping through his lids, stabbing rusty needles at his pupils.

“So what’d she try to tell you yesterday that made you laugh at her?”

“Nothing, Chance. Nothing at all.”

“Why don’t you just tell me to fuck off and get it over with?”

Deacon opens his right eye and squints at her, shading his face with his hand. The last thing he needs or wants right now, a fight with her, but the headache is growing a will of its own, and it isn’t half so reluctant.

“Don’t you think for a moment it hasn’t crossed my mind,” he says, and then the quick and subtle changes on her face to tell him that he’s hit home, bull’s-eye, bingo, and already Deacon’s wishing he could take it back.

“The way you were looking at her up there, the way you fussed over her—I’m not blind, Deacon.”

“Jesus, Chance, someone tried to
kill
her last night.”

“Did you ever sleep with her?”

Deacon covers his eyes. “I am
not
going to have this conversation,” he says.

“Were you in love with her?”

“I’m going to pretend that’s just the hormones talking.”

She grabs his hand and pulls it away from his face, letting in the sunlight again, the rusty, stabbing needles, and her eyes are bright and wet. Her anger like a mask, so thick, so solid, impenetrable contempt, and he thinks for a moment she’s going to hit him.

“Don’t you do that, Deacon. Don’t you fucking do that to me.”

“Do
what?
”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about. Don’t you dare start condescending to me like that.”

He pries her fingers loose from his wrist and sits up, looking her in the eyes now, her furious green eyes like living emeralds, and glances at the two receptionists watching them warily from the information desk.

“Tell you what, babe,” he whispers, speaking low now so maybe no one else will hear, so maybe the women will decide to mind their own damned business and not call security. “We’ll make a trade. I’ll tell you the truth about Sadie Jasper if you tell me how many times you and that sour old dyke Alice Sprinkle got it on. Sound fair enough to you?”

She watches him a minute, not a word, just her hot green eyes and the tremble at the downturned corners of her mouth, Chance’s voiceless rage building up and up until the air around them seems to crackle and hum, and finally Deacon looks away.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean that.”

“There are two policemen outside,” she replies calmly, calm to mock her anger and the pain in Deacon’s skull. “Detective Downs wants you along when he goes to that address you gave him.”

“What the hell for?”

“Ask him. I’m going home.”

“You know I didn’t mean that, Chance. My head hurts and—”

“Forget it,” she says and gets clumsily to her feet before he can turn and help her up. “Whenever this is done, I’ll be waiting for you,” and she leaves him then, and the receptionists go back to their computer screens and clipboards.

Past downtown and into the maze of back streets and warehouse ruins on the decaying north edge of the city, Deacon riding up front with Downs in an unmarked car. There are two black-and-whites close behind them, no sirens or flashing lights, but it’s still a long way from inconspicuous, and Deacon wonders if that makes any difference. The sky has turned from blue to gray, the ash and charcoal cloud wall of an advancing cold front sliding like a velvet curtain across the world.
There’ll be rain before dark,
he thinks around the jagged shards of his headache, staring up past the buildings at the clouds while the detective asks questions Deacon doesn’t want to answer.

“Since I was a kid,” he replies. “When I was eight, I found my mother’s car keys.”

“No shit? If you don’t mind my saying so, that’s not a very auspicious beginning for someone with your rep.”

“We all gotta walk before we can run,” Deacon says, reciting his lines like someone in the movies. Better that way, canned dialogue to match whatever lies and misdirection Scarborough Pentecost has laid out for the cops.

“What’d your folks think about their kid being, you know, psychic?”

“As little as possible.”

They turn up a narrow, unpaved alley, and a thick cloud of red-brown dust almost obscures his view of the two cars behind them.

“You really don’t like talking about it, do you?” Downs asks, and Deacon rolls up his window because the dust is getting in.

“Nothing slips by you, does it?” he says.

“Look, man, I’m just trying to make a little polite conversation. Ain’t no cause for you to go gettin’ nasty on me.”

The car bumps through potholes and over an old set of trolley tracks, half buried by gravel and dirt and weeds. Deacon covers his eyes, wishing the clouds were heavier, wishing the sky were as black as pitch and then maybe the pain would back off an inch or so.

“I think there’s an extra pair of sunglasses in the glove compartment there,” Downs says, but when Deacon looks he can’t find them. Nothing but piles of receipts, a box of .38 Smith & Wesson cartridges, and a rolled-up copy of
Hustler
.

“Deke, what’s waiting for us at the end of this alley?” the detective asks him, and Deacon shrugs his shoulders and closes the unhelpful glove compartment.

“If I knew that, I’d have told you. It might not be anything at all. I’ve been wrong before.”

“Well, right or wrong, we’re here,” and Deacon looks up as the car comes to a stop beside a concrete loading platform crowded with rusting green barrels and the battered remains of a drill press. “X marks the spot,” Downs says and points at the huge red swastika spray painted on the wall of the building.

“Do these things really stop bullets?” Deacon asks and pokes doubtfully at the heavy Kevlar vest that Downs made him put on over his shirt before they left the precinct.

“That depends whether or not some asshole decides to shoot you in the head.”

“Thanks for the peace of mind.”

“You just stay real close behind me, Mr. Silvey, and odds are you’ll be right as rain,” and then Downs checks his service revolver and opens the car door, letting in the dust. Deacon coughs and opens his own door, wondering if there’s a word for the taste in his mouth, the metallic-flavored residue of pain and adrenaline, dread and uncertainty.
Chance might know,
he thinks, and steps out into the day.

There’s a fleeting moment of light before the abandoned warehouse swallows them all. No electricity in the building, just the bright flashlights of the policemen, restless white beams to bob and sway and divide the darkness; Deacon does as he’s told and stays between the detective and a tall street cop named Ledbetter. It’s cold inside, musty, mildew-soured air, air that hasn’t seen the sun in years, and he’s trying not to shiver.

“This place is fucking huge,” one of the cops whispers, not Ledbetter, someone else. “What the fuck are we looking for, anyway?”

“What’s that over there?” Downs asks, and the cop aims his light at a wooden door hanging loose on its hinges. Another swastika, and this time there’s something else scrawled beneath it—the familiar red circle and straight black line. The detective touches the swastika and then looks at his fingertips, as if checking to see that the paint is dry.

“I’d say
this
is what we’re looking for, wouldn’t you, Deke?”

Deacon doesn’t answer, steps to one side as Downs tries the knob. It isn’t locked, but the sagging door drags loudly on the cement floor when he pushes it open.

“Oh hell,” the detective mutters. “Holy fucking Moses,” talking more than half to himself now, the voice of a man who’s seen his share of bad shit, but maybe this is the worst yet. Maybe this is the worst by far, and he takes a deep breath and crosses the threshold into the room behind the door.

“Simpson, you get on the radio and get an ambulance out here. You tell forensics to get their fat asses over here fucking yesterday.”

Ledbetter steps into the room after Downs, and Deacon follows them, more afraid of being left behind than of what’s inside, disoriented and his heart beating much too fast; this room even darker than the hallway, and he blinks and follows the flashlight beams as they play back and forth across something pale hanging from the ceiling. The sudden, cloying stink of shit and blood, and Deacon covers his nose and mouth.

“Is he dead?” Officer Ledbetter asks.