Second Chance (36 page)

"I've got to call the others. Got to warn them, tell them to be careful."

"Will they believe you?"

"I don't know. But I have to tell them."

Woody called Curly first. He prefaced his remarks with the warning that what he was about to say would sound crazy, but he believed it to be true, at least true enough to warrant caution for the next few days. Curly, surprisingly enough, seemed to believe him. The double tragedies of Judy and
Sharla
dulled his usual satiric edge, and he promised to keep an eye out for strangers.

"You know, Woody," he added, "if this is really true—about Keith and this Pan guy, and I think it could damn well be—maybe we ought to do something. Like a letter or call to the FBI? Anonymous, you know?"

"I've thought about it, but I don't think it would do much good. He's changed his identity so many times over the years, how would they ever find him? He's probably changed his appearance too. And they might be able to trace the call or the letter back to us, and then we'd be the ones in deep shit, not him."

Curly reluctantly agreed, and Woody made his next call.

Dale
Collini
answered the phone at the apartment he shared with Eddie Phelps, who was at a wedding rehearsal, and had not yet heard about
Sharla
. Dale had, on the news, and seemed numb with grief. He was speechless for a long time when Woody told him about Judy McDonald's violent breakdown, but then typically asked if Woody thought there was anything he, Dale, could do to help.

There was one thing, Woody said, and that was to watch out for himself. Then he told Dale about Keith, and how he thought their old friend had come into this second life, and how he might have somehow done something to
Sharla
and Judy.

Dale was quiet again, then admitted that it could be possible. He promised to be careful, and added, "It wouldn't surprise me at all, Woody. Maybe it wasn't meant to be like this. Maybe . . . mistakes were made that night."

He said little more after that, except to give his love to Tracy and the children, and promise that he and Eddie would keep their eyes open.

Alan Franklin, however, was neither as accepting nor believing. He had arrived home late to find Diane at a Friends of the Library meeting, so had not heard about
Sharla
. But when the initial shock had passed, along with his surprise on finding out about the incident in Judy's gallery, the cynic returned.

"Woody, listen, I'm really sorry about
Sharla
. I mean, I grieve, and I feel awful about what Judy did. But let's face it, these were
not
stable women, pal."

"Alan, I know it seems hard to believe, but—"

"Hear me out. Judy was a workaholic just begging for a breakdown. Hell, she was even in school. It was incredible that we ever got her to come to a party—all the time painting in the fucking studio. And
Sharla
? Angry lady, pal. She never got her shit together, never got married, lived alone and probably kept brooding about this racial shit . . ."

"
Sharla
wasn't like that, not at all."

"Look, we want to believe our friend wasn't a nut, but normal people don't do the kind of thing she did."

"It wasn't her, Alan. And it wasn't Judy either."

"Oh, you're saying that Keith came back like a ghost or something and
possessed
them,
made
them do it? Maybe we
oughta
get an
exorcist
, Woody."

"Keith's alive, I swear to God, and he had
something
to do with what the girls did—maybe some sort of weird revenge, who knows how his mind works? He's proved he's crazy."

"
Wrongo
.
Pan's
crazy. Yeah, yeah, I know he wasn't in that first . . . life or track or plane of existence or whatever the fuck you call it, but that doesn't mean he's Keith Aarons. Maybe it's just plain inexplicable, how things happened, pal. Hey, metaphysics aren't my game. Look, Dan Russell's offering a tobacco subsidy amendment on the floor tomorrow, and I'm writing his speech for him, so I don't have any more time for paranoid fantasies, okay?

"Now—you heard anything about
Sharla's
funeral? I mean, do we send flowers or contributions or what?"

Chapter 31

Keith Aarons looked down at the lights of Washington, D.C., smiled, and wrote, as the plane landed.

~*~

September 16, 1993
:

This is all working out so well. Bob Hastings didn't exaggerate the potency of the drug at all. An injection, a pause of ten minutes, then words whispered into the ear, instructions given, a trigger action planted, and bingo, no more will.

Or rather a will given over to older, buried thoughts and intents. So that someone who remembers those things, remembers youthful dreams and ideals and rages, can resurrect them, bring them forth like some shrouded revenant from a quarter century before, can guide them and drive them to violent ends. It isn't perfect.
Sharla
harmed no one before she was shot, but she never had it in her to kill. Nor had Judy. I'm sure that wounding the man was unintentional. The drug operates the way that pseudo-science, hypnosis, supposedly does. You can't get someone to do what they wouldn't do under any circumstances.

So I wasn't able to get
Sharla
and Judy to kill. They were too nice for that, too moral.

But niceness and morality were never Alan Franklin's strong suits.

~*~

"Are there any further amendments to H.R. 236, The Agriculture Advancement and Agrarian Reform Act of 1993?"

The Chairman of the Agricultural Committee, serving as the Floor Manager, turned to the Speaker. "Mr. Speaker," he said, "all amendments that I'm aware of have been disposed of, except for that of the gentleman from South Carolina
 
. . ." He looked at a staffer behind him, and began to ask if he had seen Dan Russell that morning, when a voice came from the gallery.

"The gentleman from South Carolina has been disposed of too!"

At the first word, the doorkeepers and Capitol Hill police were on their way toward the man who had spoken, but they could not reach him before he tossed an object over the balcony. Congressmen ran from among the seats where it landed, but there was no explosion, and in another moment the man was restrained.

The Capitol Hill policeman who ran to the spot on the House floor found a yellowed human hand, crudely severed and glistening at the wrist.

~*~

September 17, 1993
:

I feel no grief for Alan. His radicalism in college was more a vent for his rage than anything else. He was one of the most angry people I have ever known, yet was always the first to accuse other people of unreasoning anger.

I feel sorry for Judy, however. Her bewilderment must be overwhelming. I'm sure she must feel that she has gone insane. I liked her, yet I did this to her, and that knowledge is nothing I cannot endure.

Then there is—was—
Sharla
. What I did to her was cruel, unforgivable. Yet I feel little remorse. It's really very easy to bear. Sometimes I think I may be beyond remorse. I suppose I'll have to be. I loved her, yet I caused her a painful and violent death, made her last hours a nightmare she couldn't begin to understand.

I'm not sorry. It was something I had to do to protect myself and my plan.

What irony. In attempting to save humanity, I've lost my own humanity, which in turn enables me to
destroy
humanity.

But one more now. All I have time for, but it will be enough. Woody. The brightest of them, the one who found me out. This may be the hardest of all, but I have no doubt in my ability to do it. The only thing I doubt is Woody's ability. But from time to time, every man gets mad at his wife. Every father gets angry with his children.

Chapter 32

It was after midnight, and Woody Robinson was leagues and eons away from sleep. Both he and Tracy had heard the news about Alan, first from the TV and then from Curly, though what Curly said added nothing to their knowledge.

The facts were that Alan Franklin had gone into Congressman Daniel Russell's office for his 9:15 appointment, and had come out fifteen minutes later. When the secretary buzzed Russell to remind him that he was due on the House floor, there was no reply. She glanced into the office, saw no one, and assumed that Russell must have left through his private entrance. It was not until after the incident in the House Chamber that Russell's body was found behind his desk. His throat had been cut, and his right hand hacked off with a small Swiss Army Knife that lay open next to the body. Alan Franklin's fingerprints were all over the handle.

After killing the congressman, Alan had apparently hidden the hand inside his shirt. Naturally, it did not register on the metal detectors, and the guards, used to seeing Alan in the gallery, did not notice the extra inch of girth around his already substantial middle. Alan was being held in a federal maximum security facility north of the city, and, according to the news, had disavowed any knowledge of what he had done.

Tracy had become physically ill after hearing the story, and spent much of the evening lying down and getting up only to vomit. She finally took two sleeping pills, and was now asleep in their room. The children were sleeping too, but Woody was still awake, thinking. He had gotten a small .22 caliber revolver down from the back of a closet where it had sat for fifteen years, and had loaded it with bullets whose brass casings were still surprisingly shiny. His father had bought him the weapon when he moved to California, and had told him that he probably couldn't kill anybody with it, but it would make a lot of noise and could do a little damage.

Woody doubted that a lot of noise would do much to discourage Keith Aarons if Woody was next on his list.

What the hell had he done to Judy and
Sharla
and Alan? A drug of some kind? Hypnosis? Brainwashing? It was possible, wasn't it? They had done that kind of stuff back in the fifties, for God's sake. What, in Korea? Or had that been just a movie he had seen, about a POW programmed to kill a political candidate? Wasn't Frank Sinatra in it? He wasn't sure.

But this was the nineties, and even if that kind of thing was only science fiction back then, odds were it was reality now.

Woody held the gun in his left hand, and went through the house once more checking the doors. They were all locked, as were the windows. He went down to his studio, turned on a dim lamp, closed the soundproof door, and sat in the dead silence.

Orpheus, Tracy had called him, first in delight, and later with a sense of horror. Leading demons from hell. But he didn't feel like Orpheus. Now he felt like nothing less than Doctor Frankenstein himself, having created a monster out of selfishness and pride.

He sighed, looked at the gun in his hand, and thought, for the first time in many years, about suicide, about lifting up the gun and putting a bullet into his brain, ending all the doubt and the fear.

No. That was stupid. Even if the little .22 bullets could have penetrated the bone or the soft palate of his mouth, he could do no such thing to his children or to Tracy. Along with ending fear, death also ended joy and love and hope.

Hope was always there, Woody thought. He had based his life on hope, on the hope of some day being with Tracy again, and what he had hoped for so many years had come true. He would continue to hope. No matter what else happened, he would not let hope die.

After a few minutes, the dead, flat silence made him uncomfortable, and he put Joe Henderson's Lush Life on the CD player. He listened to two tracks, but was unable to get into the music as he usually did, so he turned it off, opened the door, and walked up the stairs.

At the top something took him, held him, buried him.

~*~

Coming to the light was like coming out of a grave. He could almost feel dirt running off his nose, crawling over his cheeks, as he was finally able to breathe again, breathe the sharp tang of ocean air.

He was sitting on the white sofa in the living room, looking out onto the sea through the open glass doors. He wondered what was wrong. He had closed those doors. Closed and locked them. Why would he open them again?

He became aware of something in his right hand, and he thought that it might be the gun he had been carrying. But when he looked, he found it was a knife instead, a long, thick, sharp knife that Tracy used to carve meat in the kitchen. But why did he have it?

Then he looked up again at the moon shining on the sea, and he knew. The voice told him.

You see the knife. You see the moon.

"Yes," he whispered.

Go to the bedroom now. To the woman.

"Tracy."

To the woman. She does not belong here. She never should have lived. It was a mistake. The only way to correct it is to make it so that she does not live. Neither
her
nor the other two. Go now and kill them, all three. It is the only way to make things right again.

"The only way," Woody repeated. Then to his horror he stood, turned from the twin moons in sky and sea, and walked across the room, down the hall, up the stairs, into the bedroom where Tracy