[Oxrun Station] The Bloodwind (18 page)

"A quick tour around the block for a couple of
blocks in either direction.
She wasn't there, or she was
hiding, or she was picked up, or someone took her."

"As simple as that," she said, bitterly impatient without knowing why.

"Yes," he told her, Drumming.

"Wes, please," she said then, pointing to the pen.

"Oh. Sorry." Again he swiveled around to face her.
"Pat, you said you checked the car?"

"I looked in. I didn't see anyone. It was dark. I didn't turn on the light or anything." She frowned. "Why?"

"You said the driver's side window was rolled down."

"Yes."

"It wasn't, Pat. It had been smashed in. There were
pieces of glass all over the floor under the steering wheel, a few on the seat. As far as we can tell, someone tried to get in that way. Probably did."

The questions came rapidly, and softly, but she had
no answers to satisfy him. She didn't know where Kelly had been the night before, didn't know the name of the
man, and certainly hadn't known the car had been
returned. The only thing she could tell him with any
degree of certainty was that the pieces of marble or
stone found on the floorboards had probably been from
either her purse or her coat.

"From my workshop," she explained. "I'm always picking things up and sticking them into my pockets or
my purse. Then I dig around and they fall out. I'm like
a walking gravel pit sometimes."

"Okay," he said.
"All right.
Let's go back to that
first time, when you came back from New York and
found"
—he leaned over his pad, flipped back a page and scanned it—"Oliver
Fallchurch's
glove missing.
You saw him later and he had both gloves in his pocket.
And he didn't tell you how he'd gotten it back."

"No, but
..."
She stopped at the expression on his
face, put a hand to her eyes and wished she were in
bed, that it was two weeks ago and she was starting all over again, waiting for Dean Constable to announce the
decision. Or had it only been a week?
A couple of
days?
My god, she thought, how long can a Sunday be?

"Pat."

She looked up quickly, aware of his gaze, aware of the heat that finally forced her to unbutton he coat. "Pat, does this
Fallchurch
kid live on campus?" She nodded. Then: "Wait! You're not going to
—" "I have to talk to him, Pat, you know that. If he got
in your apartment once to get his glove, he might have
done it again. You must understand I have to check it out."

"Well
..."
She watched as he dialed for an outside
line, turned away when he began to speak, to the front
doors that shimmered when a
windgust
slammed against
them. The singing in the cell block began again, was
cut off abruptly; the radio was turned off; somewhere in
the building a radiator hissed and she could think of
nothing more than dry snow blown across a field, whis
pering over dead grass as if summoning spirits that lay beneath. She hugged herself.
Poor Abbey.
Poor Kelly.
One, the other, the both of them involved in something
she wasn't allowed to know, something that ... it
occurred to her suddenly that perhaps Kelly had lost the
keys, that whoever had found them (stolen them?) was
the one who'd broken into her apartment. Kelly might
have smashed the window to get into the car, and her
friend, whoever he was, might have known how to
hot-wire the ignition. Embarrassment, then, would have
prevented the girls from telling her the truth, at least until the window had been replaced.

And the more she thought about it the more likely it
seemed, until she turned to Wes to tell him, jumped
when the doors burst open and Greg rushed in, coat flapping, muffler streaming behind him like a speed
boat's wake. She looked at Wes, who covered the receiver and smiled sheepishly at her; to Greg, who stood anxiously at the railing.

Finally, it broke. She could no longer hold it, no
longer had the strength. She jumped down off the desk's
platform and into Greg's arms, the two of them bab
bling apologies and not hearing each other, kissing once
lightly, again hard, leaning back still embracing and watching their eyes.

Greg nodded toward Wes Martin. "He, uh, called me."

"He has a big mouth."

"You have to stay much longer?"

"I don't know. He's checking Oliver now."

Greg's face darkened. "If he's the one who's been
—"

A finger to his lips, and he grinned.

"Pat?"

She turned, though she kept a hand linked with Greg's.

"I can't get to him now. I'll try Harriet Trotter, and I'll have a man recheck the house. The car . . ."

"Oh my god," she said. "Don't tell me."

His laugh was rueful. "Stockton has his procedures,
Pat. I'll have to bring it over here for checking." He
would have continued, but she interrupted with the
scenario she'd developed. When she was done, he was clearly skeptical. "But stranger things have happened
around here, so I won't dismiss it now. But Pat . . .
look, I don't want you worrying, okay? I mean, there's
no sign of ..." He paused, and she knew, and nod
ded. "I'll let you know when you can pick up the car.
And I'll let you know the minute I know something
myself."

"You're going to a lot of trouble," Greg said, not
unkindly.

Wes grinned. "It's Sunday night, Professor Billings.
It beats counting the cracks in the walls."

There was little more to say. A patrolman came into
the room with Pat's statement typed and ready to be signed, and once the formality had been taken care of
she left with Greg, sat in the VW while he cursed at the
recalcitrant engine, then put out a hand to stop him before he pulled away from the curb,

"What?"

She licked at her lips nervously, unsure if she had made the right decision. "You . . . how adventurous are you?"

"Not at all," he said glumly. "But if it'll get me out of your dog house, I'll do just about anything."

"Even go back to the quarry?"

"What?" He looked at her sharply.
"Now?
In the middle of the night?
For god's sake, why?"

She took a deep breath and held it, exhaled as slowly
as she could while her mind raced for a reason not to tell him. And when it failed she pointed up the street.

"Drive," she said. "I'll tell you on the way."

"YOU don't believe me."

The car was stopped at the bottom of the incline that
led to the quarry pit. The moon was out, flanked by a
carpeting of stars, yet the light that touched the trees,
the snow, seemed less an outside source than something
that worked from within, something that defined and
etched and turned everything grey.
All the
scene needed
now, she thought, was a wedge of geese crossing the
moon's face, their cries like souls searching for a graveyard.

She wasn't sorry she'd finally gotten it all off her
chest, and she no longer feared what Greg would think
about her. But she did wish she knew what he was
trying to decide about the story she'd told him. Through
out the drive he'd only looked over to her a couple of
times, and she had not been able to fathom his expres
sion, distorted as it had been by the dashboard's own
glow. And once he had grunted.
Nothing more.
Now he
was staring at the incline, his hands roaming the steer
ing wheel compulsively, as if he were hunting the best spot to strangle it. His hair was still tangled, a forelock
dropping down over one eye until, with a muttered
curse,
he swiped it back onto a semblance of place.

"Well?"

The trail from the break into the open to the crest of
the incline was virtually clear, the only snow left caught
in rutted gaps. As if a benevolent, selective wind had
wanted to make their trip easier.

"Come on, Greg."
Patiently.
Not pleading.

He shook his head slowly and dropped his hands into
his lap. "I wish to hell I knew," he said. Then he leaned back and stretched his neck.

She had expected something like this
—not outright disbelief, but rather an inclination to allow her an op
portunity of proof. He would want her to show him, so she could in her own mind understand it was her own
mind that had provided the beast that stalked her in the
whirlwind. That would be what his plan was, rapidly
formed and now working at a way to phrase itself without sounding insulting.

"Do you have a flashlight?"

He reached across her and pulled down the glove
compartment. She took the flash from him and thumbed
it on, off, on again, and took hold of the door handle.

"Pat."

"I am not now, nor was I ever, in the throes of a nervous breakdown, Greg."

His eyes wrinkled near to closing and she knew with
a pang she'd struck home.
And why not?
Hadn't that
been her first and continuing belief, coupled with the drinking and Lauren's memory? Wasn't it perfectly reasonable? Of course it was. And it was perfectly unrea
sonable that, knowing how reasonable it was, she should
feel such a ragged surge of anger.

She stepped outside and pulled her collar close around
her throat. She waited.
Listening.
Feeling nothing of
the pressure, of the wind, of the sounds that had pre
ceded the creature's first appearance.
They were alone,
atop a hill outside
Oxrun
Station, and the snow had
turned to levels of grey and depressions of black. The
driver's door slammed, snow crunched; she did not look
at him when he came to her side. Instead, she aimed the
spear of white light toward the row of sheds. And it was
easy to locate the one crushed by what had been hidden
in the
bloodwind
—a spreading mound of rubble tangled
with ice and snow, planks poking through the surface
and lying scattered about, wind-tossed, it seemed, or
vandalized by children.

A moment of telepathy: "You're thinking," she said
in a monotone, "that the weight of the snow did it. The walls buckled and it all came down while I was hiding
behind it." She handed him the flashlight and nudged
him with a soft fist. "Go ahead. Walk over there, Greg,
and tell me it just fell down."

He did.

Without apology, without a look, he plowed through
the snow to the ruined shed, the beam flicking here,
there, once shooting at the bank of trees beyond before
turning. He walked slowly, bending over, once reach-
in
g
down and pushing aside a section of wall. He sk
irted the main debris until he was standing where she ha
d crouched, glancing once toward the quarry, bend-
in
g
again as though he were attempting to put himself in her position. It was all very methodical, and all very maddening, and the fact of the moonlight bleaching him of all colors but grey did nothing to assuage the unease that gripped her. Yet there were no doubts, no second
thoughts; from the moment she'd caught sight of the shed in the car's headlamps she knew. It was as simple as that: she knew.
When he returned he said nothing. After giving her
the flashlight he jammed his hands into his pockets and
began walking the incline.
Slowly.
Not turning around,
not waiting for her to follow. She watched him and
shuddered, trying not to yield to the impression that at
any minute he was going to scream, and scream loudly.
And when he beckoned she moved, just as slowly.

When she reached the top he slipped a hand around
her arm and pulled her close.

"I'm trying very hard," he said quietly, and she was
startled to hear a catch in his voice.

They started down toward the edge at his gentle
urging, and it wasn't until they'd reached the midway
point that she realized her stone chair was gone.
Or
most of it.
What remained was a flat section ridged with
jagged edges, as if someone had taken a sledgehammer
to it and lopped it in half with a single, superhuman blow.

Below she could see the snow glowing, a beautiful
jewel-encrusted frame around a gaping black hole. It
wasn't ice; it was water.

"There are all kinds of explanations for this," he
said then, dropping into a crouch, his hands dangling between his thighs. "A section of the wall gives way,
someone throws a rock and it strikes a fault line in the
ice, the ice itself is weaker than it looks and sinks under
its own weight. The shed was old. Your throne could
easily have been cracked by a dozen winters, water
trapped inside and expanding to split it apart.
A dozen
explanations."
He picked up a stone and hefted it, tossed it up and caught it, brought it close to his eyes
and stared at it. Then he shook his head and threw the
stone away.
Viciously.

"Is that what you think?" she asked him when he
took her arm again and led her back toward the car.

"No," he said. "All of it is possible, but all of it
happening in the space of a couple of hours violates the
sanctity of my orderly mind."

She hesitated and stared at him, stumbled forward to
match his pace again when he looked down at her and
grinned.

"Bullshit, huh?"

"Yes," she said; and the word stretched out, hissing
as she sagged slightly against him. She smiled, wishing
she were a little shorter so she could rest her cheek
against his arm or his shoulder. Instead, she pressed her
forehead briefly against his hair. Relief, then, and a bewildered fear
—she wasn't crazy, and what in God's
name was going on?

They did not speak for quite a while, not until the
automobile had broken out of the trees and was heading
back for the village.

"Pat, you understand that I have only your word for
that
thing
you say was in that
torando
, or whatever the
hell it was."

"But you said
—"

"I said
—I should have made myself
more clear
. I
believe something weird happened to you out there, no
question about it. And I believe something unusual—
you should excuse such a miserable word at a time like
this—something unusual is going on. But I'm not one of the peasants firing up his torch, Pat. I mean, I've
been to college and I've seen the world and Great Jesus
Christ, I don't think I can just leap into an acceptance
of some kind of creature you can't even describe. Not
yet.
Good god, not yet."

"I take it you'll want to see it for yourself."

He shrugged. "Pat, please. Understand me, too, okay?"

She did; that was the problem.

"But let's forget about that for a minute," he said,
slowing to avoid a patch of ice at the Williamston Pike
intersection.

"Easy for you to say."

He grinned. "You sound better."

"I don't feel any better, thank you."

"The thing is, Pat, I also don't believe all of this is
happening randomly, either. And neither do you."

His gaze made her nervous, his words solidifying part of that fear.

"I don't think you should go home.
Not tonight,
anyway."

Her eyes closed slowly, her hand groped for his. "Yes. I was hoping you'd say that."

They were in bed, a loose embrace less sexual than warming. Heads close together on the pillow, ankles
entwined. There were two blankets and a sheet, and still
she was cold.

In the dark their voices were disembodied, floating.

"You thought it was me, didn't you."

"Yes.
For a moment."

"Don't lie, Pat. It was for more than a moment.
After all, let's examine the evidence, shall we?" Bitter
ness, resignation, and a struggle not to tumble into the safety of insanity
—she recognized the tone, it had been
hers for days and no wonder people had reacted oddly
to her. She squeezed his hand reassuringly, but it was a
long second before he returned the gesture and cleared
his throat.

"We were examining the evidence."

"Sure."

She felt his hand slice through the air.

"First, we have a colleague
—that's me—who finds
himself hiding in a college—of no small repute, mind—
working under, as it were, another colleague who has achieved everything he's dreamt of over the past dozen years. Modest fame, more than just competent skills, a
marshaling of a talent he could never hope to have."
And sensing an interruption he poked at her hip. "Shut
up. This isn't a feeling-sorry-for-Gregory session; this is a facing-the-facts admission . . . and one I should
have done years ago. I'm a damned good teacher, Pat,
but as an artist I'm not in your league."

She said nothing; there was little she could say at the
death of a dream.

"So we have jealousy," he continued. "Professional,
sexual, and probably something else so deep only a shrink could mine it and have it make sense. Murder
has been committed for less compelling motives."

"But I don't think it's you."

"No. Neither do
I
."

They smiled together, and she snuggled closer.

"Then there's Ford Danvers. Jealousy again, border
ing on outright hatred because you're a woman and you've successfully invaded his kingdom, divided it,
and left him with all those dingbats who think they're
actors."

"He's good, Greg."

"Yeah.
The little shit."

She laughed behind a cupped hand.

"But I don't think he's the one, either. Why? Not
because he doesn't have the guts, because he probably does. And not because he doesn't think he has cause,
because he probably thinks he does. But because Ford
would never have smashed up his own car that way,
just to get you into trouble with the cops. That car was
his kid, always has been. He's an in-fighter, not a Viking. Poison is more his specialty."

A silence that lasted so long she thought he'd fallen
asleep.

"Then there's always Ben.
And Harriet.
And Oliver."

"No," she protested automatically.
Weakly.