[Oxrun Station] The Bloodwind (17 page)

Pat at one point talking so rapidly Abbey had to reach
 
across the table and touch her wrist to slow her down;
 
Abbey at one point so-irritated about the car that one
 
hand flicked a chunk of icing off the cake and splattered
 
it against the wall.

It would have been funny, if Pat hadn't kept thinking
 
about someone in her home.

And when they were done and there was nothing 
more to say, she helped wash the dishes, dry them,
 followed Abbey back to the couch where they sat at either end, staring at the far wall, at the door, at the floor.

Finally, she slapped at a leg and rose, motioning for
 
Abbey to keep her seat. "It's silly," she said, pulling 
on her coat. "It's obvious I'm not going to the police,
 right? In case it turns out to be one of my so-called 
friends trying to pull a gag on me. So I'd better check
 
with them first, before I make a fool of myself. That, I
 think, is the best idea."

Abbey looked doubtful. 
Maybe it was one of your
 
students. That boy you told me about, Oliver?
 
She 
grinned. 
Maybe he's a conservationist, and is trying to
 
free the animals.

"Oh, sure," she said as she opened the door. "Honey,
 
Oliver, for all his talent, thinks of no one but himself."
 
She hesitated. "Are you going to be all right? Alone, I
 
mean, after what I told you."

Abbey stood, her hands buried in the robe's deep
 
pockets. Her attitude was sufficient to tell Pat she'd
 
accidentally stepped on a raw nerve, that she'd probably been fussed over all her life as if her deafness were the
 
same as having her bedridden. It was understandable, 
and for Pat, after all this time, it was inexcusable, and
 
she left with a fleeting apologetic smile, stood staring at
 
the door a moment before turning and leaving.

Standing on the porch.
 
Listening as St. Mary's down on High Street broke the early-evening cold with a peal
 
of quiet bells. She had no idea what the service might
 
be, but just the sound of the summons made her feel at
 
once lonesome and comforted. It was a curious sensa
tion, one she wasn't at all sure she understood. But it
 
made her grip her upper arms and 
rub
 them through the
 
coat as she climbed down to the walk, made her pause
 
at the break in the hedge. Pause because she realized that what she was doing was all backward. In spite of 
her monologue upstairs, and to Abbey, it was without
 
question necessary to contact the police. To go off like some fictional detective and track down the culprit her
self was ridiculous. 
So what it if was a gag?
 It was one
 
she certainly didn't appreciate, not now, not ever. And
 the more she thought about it the more annoyed she 
grew, especially when she recalled facing the Muske
teers at Harriet's house, intending to dress them down
 
for fetching Oliver's glove and finding herself distracted
 
instead over a stupid telephone call to New York.

Planned.
 
It had all been planned to divert her attention.

"How could you?" she muttered, glaring in the di
rection of Harriet's house. "God damn, how could you?"

It would serve them right to get involved with Abe
 
Stockton, a man definitely not renowned for enjoying a
 
case where the police were called in for nothing more than a spiteful gag. It would serve them right. And it
 
would make more sense. And after a glance to the 
nightsky
, she knew it made more sense, too, to examine
 
the quarry in daylight, not now. If she'd been spooked before, she would turn her hair white with a visit by
 moonlight.

Besides, she thought as she turned around, she didn't
 
see how the illusion could work at night. The first time, when she thought about it objectively, she hadn't seen a
 
thing. There'd only been a sudden wind, and a 
feeling,
 
nothing more, that something was after her. And it may, in fact, have had no connection at all with what 
had happened in the hills. That night she'd been drink
ing; today she'd only been fighting with Greg. And, she
 
admitted sourly, it hadn't really been a fight. More like
 a sudden dousing with jealous acid.

Dumb, she told herself; sometimes, woman, you can
 
be awfully damned dumb.

She pulled at the door, stepped back a pace and 
pulled again. It was locked. Somehow, in leaving, she
 
had yanked it too hard and the bolt had snapped to. She
 looked to her left, knowing it would be useless to rap on Abbey's bay window; the girl wouldn't be able to hear her. And there were no other lights in 
Linc's
 
apartment; he was probably out with his cronies, chew
ing over the mistakes of whatever war he'd fought in, either military or marital. 
That left the little-used back entrance, what had once been for the original owners a 
way to get upstairs without traipsing through the 
parlour
 
or the kitchen.

Down the steps again, huddling against 
herself
 as the
 
cold clawed its way down her neck and up her sleeves,
 
cracking along the sidewalk to the driveway. It seemed
 
long. The house next door was dark, the streetlamp
 
spreading the hedge into a shadow that spilled at her 
feet. Behind the garage, beyond the houses facing the
 next street, a hazed bluish glow that made everything on this side 
seem
 faced with black.

I don't want to go down there, she thought suddenly.
 
I don't want to do down there.

A snort of derision.
 
She'd wavered often enough 
lately, too often, and what was wrong with using a
 driveway she'd known for thirteen years? There were no dogs to bite her, no rapists lurking in the yard, no 
beasts rising from the black hole of the quarry, glimpses
 of red, bellowing fury
—

"Stop it!"

She moved forward, deliberately bringing her heels
 
hard down on the blacktop, listening to the quick echo off the house as the garage grew. 
Widened.
 The four
 
narrow windows across its building-wide door catching
 
in brittle ebony shards of branches topped with frozen snow, nursing slowly the ghostly reflection of her face,
 
then her shoulders, as she approached it, saw herself and ducked to one side.

Silly.
 
It was silly.

And as she did every time she came into the yard 
from this direction, she glanced at the near window,
 
walked a half-dozen paces further on before she stopped.
 
Touched a finger to her jaw and looked over her shoul
der. What she had seen
—what she had thought she'd seen was a glint of 
metal.
 Not a tool hanging on the 
back wall. 
Something closer.
 
Something part of some
thing larger.
 
Like an automobile. But that was wrong.
 
Linc
 didn't own one, and Kelly's was at the mechan
ic's, and Kelly herself had the station wagon God knew
 where. But she did see it. She was positive she'd seen it, and she walked back to the door and cupped her 
hands around her eyes to peer in and check.

And she was right. There was a car in there.

It was hers.

A MINUTE passed; perhaps more. Pat wasn't sure.
All she knew was the cold drilling into her forehead pressed against the small pane. When it began to ache
she stirred, stepped back and looked helplessly around
her. A laugh bubbled at her lips until she swallowed; a
curtain husked closed over her mind until she drove it away with an impatient swipe of her arm. This was no
time to retreat, she told herself, though there were
plenty of reasons why she would want to, why her
equilibrium was disturbed and she staggered back a step.

Her car.
Sitting in the garage all the time Abbey was
feeding her dinner and worrying about Kelly.

Unless, of course, the girl had known about it all along.

She reached out and gripped the door's handle, strained
a moment before flinging it up and back, wincing as it
collided with the rear buffer and shot forward a few
inches.

The car sat alone, and when she reached out a hand to touch the hood, the metal was cold. Slowly, she moved around to the driver's side and stared in. The keys were not in the ignition, the window had been
rolled down, and as far as she could tell in the dark no
one was lying in back. It was empty. No sign of Kelly,
no indication it had been driven in the last few hours.
But she would not reach in, could not touch it again.
Glints of highlight from the streetlamp winked at her;
the grille glowed when she moved outside; the headlamps
and reflectors tricked her for a moment into making her
think they were on.

She spun around and raced back to the porch, had her hand on the knob before she remembered it was locked.
And gasped when the door swung inward, the hinges
creaking, her shadow snapping across the foyer to the foot of the stairs.
She blinked several times and shook her head in disbelief, grabbed the knob and pulled the
door to, opened it, closed it, then jumped inside and
stared at it, bewildered. It could have been the frame. It
might have been warped and she hadn't shoved it hard
enough.

It was possible.

She didn't believe it.

Instead of worrying it, however, she pounded on
Abbey's door with the side of her fist.
Once.
Before it
swung inward.

Her first impulse was to turn and run outside, her
second to take the stairs two at a time, lock her door
behind her and call the police. Neither satisfied her. She
called out for Abbey, stretched out a leg and toed the
door around to the wall.

The room was empty. The single lamp was still burning, but as she cautiously made her way in she
could see nothing in the corners, no one on any of the
chairs, no other light in the apartment save for one in the kitchen. She checked
there
immediately, checked
the bath and the two bedrooms and returned to the door,
where she buried a hand in her hair and tugged in frustration. It wasn't fair. She didn't know how to
react, because there was literally nothing to react to
—an
empty apartment, no clue to a struggle . . . she didn't
know if Abbey had left immediately Pat had gone out
side, or if the girl had been dragged out, or if Kelly had
been hiding in one of the rooms because she'd done
something horrid and was afraid of discovery.

There was nothing to guide her, not even a hint.

"Abbey!"

The name sounded hollow in the deserted apartment.
From one of the back rooms a clock ticked loudly.

"Abbey?
Abbey,
it's
Pat!"

The chrome and the glass were as cold as the air
swirling about her ankles, lifeless, a display in a store window rather than a place where people actually lived.
She thought it again: lifeless. Nothing lived in here, and
if she hadn't known the contrary she could easily have
believed nothing ever had.

"Abbey!"

She backed into the foyer, confused now, jamming
her hands in and out of her coat pocket, turning first to Goldsmith's door, then toward the porch, then back to
Abbey's and the light that seemed so brittle under the
white round globe. Again she called, but she no longer
liked the sound of her voice, how it was beginning to
climb the register to panic, how it retreated from the
large rooms like something small and frightened.

Her gaze wrenched toward the staircase. The wise thing would be to go up there and call the police.
Up
there.
Familiar Territory, until she remembered that some
one had been there, too.

With an anguished cry, then, she bolted from the house, grabbed the hedge to keep her from swerving
into the street, and ran down to Chancellor Avenue.
Turned left.
Ran again.
Paying no attention to a car
passing in the opposite direction, passing and slowing;
to the handful of pedestrians apparently headed for the
Inn, who parted quickly when they saw she wasn't
about to slow down or try to go around them; to the dog that jumped from a driveway and snapped at her heels,
barking, yowling, chasing her for a block before skidding to a halt at the curb and chasing her with its voice;
to another car filled with teenagers who leaned out the
window and whistled, made suggestions; to St. Mary's
and the bells and the peace they tried to promise.

Running until she reached the police station. Slipping
on the top step and cracking her knee against the wall.
She whimpered and grabbed for it, rubbed it, and pushed
in. Stumbling now as a stinging wave rippled up to her
thighs. Falling against the railing and holding on with
both hands
, closing her eyes against the pain and will
ing someone to appear.

She knew it was less than half a minute, but it
seemed like an hour alone there in the high-ceilinged
room, hearing odd noises from the cell block, a kettle
shrilling, a man singing drunkenly, a radio tuned to a
news station rehashing the Super Bowl at virtually full
volume.

A shout opened her mouth, but it died the moment
one of the back doors opened and Wes Martin stepped
out. He was running a brush through his short hair,
spinning a toothpick in his mouth, and he was almost at
the desk before he noticed Pat waiting. His grin
blossomed, held, wavered when he saw her sway. She tried to wave him off, to tell him she was all right and
don't bother, but he was at the railing and holding her
arms before the words came out, guiding her through
the gate to a large club chair alongside the desk. Mo
tioning her to be silent, then, he poured her a glass of water and ordered her with a jerk of his chin to drink it.

She did, gratefully, as she sagged in the chair and
allowed her eyes to close. The water was tepid, taste
less, but she didn't care; her lungs were so cold, her face feeling as if it could be peeled like fruit, she
wouldn't have cared at all if the water had been boiling
and scalded her tongue. And when she opened her eyes
again Wes had a pad to hand and a pen, watching her
patiently. The dimples in his cheeks were gone; there
was only his full face, full lips,
the
solemn stare of his
hazel eyes.
A touch of angry red at his right temple, as
if he'd been scratching there.

"You okay now?"

She nodded.

"You talk. I'll ask questions later."

She didn't know where to begin, how to phrase it so
she wouldn't sound like a stereotypical woman scatter
brained from hysteria. The room ebbed, swelled, as she
looked around to buy herself time, but when she saw
the white globes hanging from their chains overhead she
swallowed hard and cleared her throat.

"All right," Wes said, laying down the pen and
swiveling around to face her. He stared for a moment,
though she knew he wasn't seeing her,
then
rose with a
slap of his hand to the desk. "Be back in a minute."

It was less than that, but enough time for Pat to
wonder if she'd been right in holding back. Her imme
diate worry was Kelly and Abbey, yet she sensed that
all she'd suffered over
the
past two weeks was some
how connected, up to and including the episode at the quarry. But she hadn't been able to bring herself to talk
about it, or about the first occurrence, or about her
conviction that for the longest time she was being
watched. Mentioning any of that, she'd known before
she spoke, would instantly dilute credence of what she
had told him. And as it was, it was rather nebulous;
someone had broken into her apartment (without really
breaking in) and had stolen two pieces of worthless
statuary; Kelly had borrowed her car overnight, Pat had
found it in the garage, Abbey apparently knew nothing
about it, and now the both of them were gone. Missing?
She didn't know. But it was awfully damned strange,
didn't he think?

Wes returned just as she thought she would have to
either burst into insane laughter and break down into
tears, if only because either reaction made just as little
sense as anything she'd said, much less done, today.

"I've sent a car round to check," he told her as he
took his seat and crossed his legs. "With all that snow, there's bound to be prints somewhere. You did say you
hadn't actually gone into the backyard, right?"

"Yes," she said.

A silence.
She shifted in the chair. Wes picked up the
pen and drummed on the blotter.

"You said you were going to ask me questions."

He nodded. "Yeah, I said that. But I would bet I already know most of the answers. For
instance,"
and
he looked up to the ceiling, "your friends didn't fight
much, no more than ordinary roommates. As far as you
know they weren't rivals for the same man. The three
of you got along just fine
—which is obvious, otherwise
you wouldn't have been so free with your car. You
have no idea what man Kelly Hanson was staying with,
and as far as you know Abbey Wagner wasn't seeing anyone here in town." He lowered his gaze and grinned
at her. "Am I right, or am I right?"

"You're ..." She laughed, immediately covered her mouth with a hand, realized she was still wearing her gloves and pulled them off, stuffed them in her pockets. "It sounds so ... so silly, Wes."

"Not so silly, Pat. Just a little less fearsome than you
may think."

But you weren't there, she thought. You didn't see
how terrible Abbey looked, and you didn't feel the
emptiness in their apartment after she'd left. You weren't
there, and you didn't see what I saw out
—

"Pat." Wes leaned closer, resting his forearms on
his knee. "Pat, the thing you're not telling me, are you
sure it has nothing to do with tonight?''

Startled, she looked away and stared at the glazed double doors, half expecting them to swing abruptly
inward and admit Abbey and Kelly in the custody of a patrolman.
All of them laughing over what was a stupid
misunderstanding.

"Coffee," Wes said then. He stood.
"Black, cream,
what?"

"Black," she said without thinking, nodded to him
distractedly and didn't hear him leave.
Didn't hear him
return until he pressed the cup into her hand.
She
sipped, and shuddered at its strength and its underlying
bitterness.

Wes craned around to look at the clock on the wall
behind him.
Nine-fifteen.
He was about to speak when
a patrolman poked his head into the room and beck
oned. With a mumbled sentence Pat didn't understand
he left, was back in less than a minute, drumming on
the blotter, frowning and rubbing a palm over his face.

"Well?"

"All the doors were open, just like you said.
Nobody
there.
Nobody in back, no footprints except near the
garage, and we'll assume for the moment they were
yours."

She scowled and leaned back. "The street
—"