Shadow Season (23 page)

Finn doesn’t respond. Roz is now under investigation by the hospital mucky-mucks and is about to get shitcanned and probably arrested. Finn wants to say something encouraging or at least sympathetic, but he’s
had a slow burn going since he saw some fresh bruises under Roz’s makeup.

He says, “Don’t touch her again.”

“She’s my girl.”

“Cut her loose.”

The charming grin eases across Ray’s face. “You like her.”

“No. I just don’t want to see any harm come to her. Any more than’s already been dumped in her lap.”

“Nothing was dumped on her, she volunteered. She masterminded, truth be known. Me, I’m just a gimp who couldn’t stop a train that she started down the tracks.”

Ray acts like he really believes it. He’s talking with his hands, sorta bouncing in the bed like an excited little kid. The stump wags around.

Finn says, “Just let her go.”

“Because she’s an innocent and it’s your job to pro—”

“Enough of that. You ran your own game. I’ve done all I can for you.”

Instead of arguing, Ray just nods his head in a yeah yeah yeah kind of way. The stump is aimed at Finn. It’s not the same as having somebody point an accusing finger at you, but it’s pretty damn close.

“There’s still a way out for me,” Ray says.

Finn knows there is. Ray’s talking about laying waste to Carlyle. With Carlyle dead, things fall back into place the way they used to be. The DA won’t go on the warpath anymore, and the force will be too embarrassed to hang one of their own if there’s not some mobster big
fish on hand to take the brunt of the headlines. Ray will still take a rap, but he’ll only get a nickel jolt, tops.

“You want me to pop the head of the local syndicate?” Finn asks.

“As soon as my prosthetic comes in, we’ll go together. How about that?”

Finn looks deep into Ray’s eyes. He’s trying to see if Ray is thinking about the final scenes of
The Wild Bunch
and
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
. It’s easy to want to be dead when you’re being left out to dry by everybody you ever trusted. The idea is even more appealing if you don’t have to go alone.

But that’s not what’s in Ray’s eyes. Finn sees something else entirely, but can’t figure out what it is.

He checks his watch. He’s meeting Roz at the diner in ten minutes.

For some reason, it seems important to Finn that he manages to save Roz. If he can find a way for her to get out from under, if she can redeem herself, maybe it proves that Finn is able to put the brakes on Ray’s action. Maybe it proves that Finn is a righteous cop.

He knows he’s a good one. He knows he’s a clean one. But he’s not sure he’s a righteous one.

When he gets to the diner, she’s already eating a salad and drinking a beer.

“You’ve got troubles on your mind,” she says between bites. “What’s he done to you this time?”

Finn ventures a lie, never the smartest move. “Nothing.”

“Don’t give me that. You’re the worst liar I ever met. How in the hell could you be an effective cop when you don’t have a poker face?”

“Simple. I rarely lie.”

Roz tsks. “No wonder he runs roughshod over you.”

“Nobody runs roughshod over me.”

“Everybody runs over you. Even me.”

He sits and she moves in on him too fast. She’s climbed halfway across the table to get into his face.

“I’ve only known him for a few weeks and I know him better than you,” she says.

“Nobody knows Ray.”

“That’s exactly what I mean. Don’t you see, Finn?”

“See what?”

“You’re the
only
one who doesn’t know him. Everyone else, they’re on to him, they’ve always been on to him.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Forget it.”

He likes staring at her. She’s attractive enough, brunette with a short boyish haircut feathered across her forehead. Her smile is knowing and slightly coy, very much like Ray’s. Those eyes, even when she’s stoned, are large and expressive. She seems to use a lot of balm to make her lips glossy. In a lot of ways he thinks she’d be perfect for Ray. If only Ray wasn’t such an asshole and about to take a fall. If only Ray didn’t make her run drugs and smack her around so much.

“Is there time enough to make it right for you?” he asks.

“Probably not. I more or less confessed to the hospital and claimed drug addiction. It’ll give me enough time to figure out my next move and maybe they’ll leave me with my RN status, if I really do join a rehabilitation program. The narco cops have been putting pressure on
me but compared to what they usually deal with, Ray says they’ll probably give me a pass.”

“Do you do the shit?”

“No.”

“What are you on?”

“Nothing.”

And she says he’s a bad liar. “What are you on, Roz?”

“Sometimes I take downers.”

“And?”

“Uppers. And Oxycontin. Vicodin.”

Under the table, Roz puts her hand on his leg and her fingers slide toward his inner thigh. She brushes his groin and Finn shifts away, his face expressionless.

“Knock it off.”

“I’m done with him. But he won’t let me go.”

“He’s going to be sent up.”

“Not forever, and not for a while.”

“He’ll cut you loose.”

“How do you know?”

“I told him to.”

“You don’t tell him anything, Finn.”

“Shut up, Roz.”

“Rose. I want you to call me Rose.”

He tries it out. “All right, Rose.”

“Don’t you see what’s happening? What he’s doing?”

Finn stares at her. He can tell she’s a jealous and totally irresponsible woman. Jealous of him, jealous of Ray, always feeling like the raw deals she gets are somebody else’s fault. She puts her hands on him because she’s territorial. In some strange way, she thinks she owns Finn because he’s trying to help. The hook is in.

She leans in and kisses him with a mouthful of beer, which she allows to run down her face and throat.

He doesn’t return the kiss. When she draws away, he looks down at his wet shirt and says, “God damn it.”

She gives a throaty chuckle. “Sorry.” She studies him. “You have such beautiful eyes.”

“Come on, let’s go.”

“I’m serious.”

When they get back to the hospital, Roz walks in like she expects someone to fly out of a dark corner and snap the cuffs on her. She leaves him without a word. He’s got no idea where she’s going.

It’s late but he decides to check in on Ray again.

Finn steps into Ray’s room in time to see one of Carlyle’s men, dressed like an intern but wearing cowboy boots, trying to smother Ray with a pillow.

All these people, they think it’s easy suffocating someone with a pillow. They don’t think the person will resist like a fucking wildcat. The guy’s already got a bloody nose because Ray’s managed to clock him a couple of times in the face. The leg is kicking. The stump is waving around.

Finn draws his piece and says, “Heya, enough of that, all right?”

Carlyle’s boy quits trying to smother Ray. He turns and looks at Finn standing in the open doorway like he’s going to try to run right through him. He’s crazed with fear. He seems faintly familiar.

Carlyle’s crew is stretched so thin that they’re using all kinds of third-raters now. The mook throws the pillow on the floor and Ray wags his stump some more,
going “You rotten prick, Donald! All the times I let you slip on those vice raps!”

He’s not even out of breath, that’s how good a job the mook did with the pillow.

The guy rushes Finn and Finn cracks him across the nose with the barrel of the gun, knocks him back into some machinery that beeps angrily. One of Dani’s flower vases smashes. The mook picks up a jagged piece of pottery and holds it out in front of him like a knife.

Finn says, “Hey now—”

Donald rushes forward, slashing wildly with the shard of vase. Finn pops him once in the leg, hoping just to put him down, but hits an artery. Arterial spray starts painting the ceiling. Finn shouts for help and tries to get a tourniquet on the mook, but it’s already way too late.

In ninety seconds a couple of doctors show up, but the guy’s already mostly bled out. Finn’s covered in red. Ray is grinning.

DANIELLE HAS HIM BY THE HAND
and his hand is freezing. His blood has stopped running. Finn staggers beside her, half-carried by her, barely more than deadweight. The long, ice-encrusted hair of his dead wife whips into his face.

He rouses in her arms. “D … d … ani?”

“You’re a strong one. You’re gonna be all right.”

The voice. He can’t see Danielle. Instead he’s struggling to walk beside that Tennessee Apple Cider or was it fucking Blueberry Parade Queen. It doesn’t matter. Or maybe it does. Blue-eyed with a spatter of freckles across her cheeks, a darker beauty mark at the corner of her eye. He recognizes her. Or does he?

His mind whirls and goes, Wha’?

He stumbles and falls in the snow. The banks are so high now that it’s not much of a forward flop. He’s surrounded by cushioning. She grunts and goes, “None’a that. You gotta get up. We’re almost there.” She tugs at him and he thinks he might be moving. “You aren’t afraid of a little snow, are you? There’s plenty worse to fear.”

Harley Moon.

He’s amazed that this hundred-pound teenage girl is
practically carrying him. He tries to ease his weight off her but nearly drops again.

Moon, he thinks. Like on the tombstones.

He stumbles and this time hits something solid. At first he thinks a tree. He can’t quite prop himself up with his numb arms and he collapses against it, one cheek on its icy surface. It’s flat. It’s smooth. A wall. Brick? No. He hears Harley grunting, fighting something, putting in effort. Beneath the wind there’s maybe a creaking. He can’t be sure. He doesn’t give a shit.

She grabs him by the shoulders and tries to turn him aside. Then she shoves him and he goes barreling forward. He hits the ground hard.

Not the ground, a floor. He’s out of the blizzard. She closes a door behind them and comes forward to slap the snow off him.

Her gloved hands are tiny but strong. She pounds the hell out of him, trying to get his blood pumping again. Hypothermia. Jesus, he feels like he’s crystalized and is delicate as glass. She takes off her gloves and rubs her hands together to warm them, then places them on his frozen chest. There’s barely any feeling at all. He wants her warmth. He thinks of Roz. He thinks of Vi. He thinks of Dani and he groans in sorrow and anger. She was with him out there. His girl forgave him.

Sleep tries to drag him off.

Harley admonishes him like a child. “No. None’a that. You stay awake now.”

He tries, but the black currents that are always pulling at him are dragging him down once more.

“Stay right there, blind man. Don’t you crawl around none. You listenin’?”

She puts a blanket over him. No, it’s a coat. She helps him to put his useless arms through the sleeves. It’s too small for him, but he manages to wrap himself inside it. The hell is going on? He was almost dead.

He wanted to be dead. But he’s got something to do. He can’t remember what it is.

On the floor he shudders violently. Harley strips his clothes off him, holds him, massages his head, strokes his face, the rest of his body, especially his fingers and toes. He hears metal ringing around him in time with his fierce tremors.

He figures it out. They’re in one of the sheds outside the west door of the Main House, at the back of St. Val’s.

His brain’s starting to warm up. He thinks, Vi is dead. I killed that fucker Pudge. He thinks, I have to get into the school. Rack is on the move. Christ knows what he’s doing. Duchess, Murph, and Judith are strong, they’ll fight. But that knife. The things that prick does with his knife.

Why didn’t Harley get me into the school? She’s afraid of her own brother. Does she know Pudge is dead? Does she know I killed Pudge?

He tries to speak but he’s shaking too badly. The noises coming from him, like an engine that won’t turn over.

She reaches down and puts her hands to his chest again and rubs over his heart. She massages him until the pins and needles of feeling start to stab the shit out of him. It hurts like hell and Finn tightens up into a fetal position, moaning. Harley doesn’t loosen her hold. She kneads him even harder.

“I tried to help, but you called down the wrath.”

He wants to tell her to stop goddamn saying that, but he can’t form words yet.

“Not them girls’ fault though. Not even the ones I hate, the ones who make fun of us in the holler. I told you to pay it fast. I told you. But you didn’t listen.”

He owes, he realizes. He owes plenty. He’s going to pay back, oh yes.

“They saw my ears twitching and now I’m out here with the dead too.”

Finn spasms at that. He manages to turn his head. He pulls his trick and stares. He’s looking directly into Harley Moon’s eyes.

He tries to speak, but nothing but a hissing stammer escapes. He tries again.

Out here with the dead
.

He reaches in one direction. He reaches in another. “Don’t do that, blind man. I told you. Just settle yourself.”

He crawls and she fights to hold him in place. She’s a strong little girl. He huffs and growls, disgusted with his own animal noises.