Shine Your Light on Me (11 page)

• • •

When the crazy men behind the house broke the window over the kitchen sink, and then the sliding door, Janice LeDoux was on the edge of pulling the trigger and blowing Mitch’s chest apart. Despite this certainty, he hadn’t felt much fear, only a strong sense of loss as he imagined his daughter always mute, the child raised by Aria and Mickey and Elroy and Pine, and Jessica wasn’t their burden, she was his, and he was supposed to protect her.

Janice swung the shotgun toward the sliding door and the wind was cold and the wind-beaten faces seemed to float above the threshold, disembodied as they leaned in, their noses hot on the scent of a desire for miracles none of them had ever guessed lived inside them.

She pulled the trigger and the faces exploded in a wash of red cream and the bodies fell back almost gently into the waiting darkness behind them. The roar of the shotgun had deafened him for a moment. Janice hit a lever and the shotgun broke open and she thumbed the spent shell with efficiency, was in the motion of placing a new shell in the chamber when the horde began piling in, maybe inspired by the sudden quiet from inside the house. She managed to reload and fire at the first wave—three men, two injured and writhing on the kitchen tile, and the third man, faster, or just luckier, jerking the gun, trying to rip it from her hands until she kicked him between the legs like a mule.

He dropped, face flushed, and mouth a perfect circle, issuing a cry of pain and anger that curled the hair on the back of Mitch’s neck.

Others were spilling in from outside, slipping in the blood of the fallen. Mitch pulled the pistol he’d used to coerce Jack into bringing them here. He heard the pastor in another room, his voice inflamed and alien through a bullhorn. Four men were on their feet in the kitchen, all of them saying, “Where is he?” as two went after Janice and two trapped Mitch close to the refrigerator, their hands outstretched, their eyes so hopeful and heated.

He swung the pistol and broke the closest man’s nose. The second one clawed at his eyes but Mitch jerked his head back, rocked his skull on a cupboard, felt the fingers tear his shirt, fingernails graze his breastbone hard enough to draw blood.

He lashed out blindly, smelling the sour funk of the man’s breath—and the room was well-lit, yet it felt as if he was fighting in a tunnel. His fist connected with something hard and the man made a choking sound, and Mitch pulled his other arm from off his face and the room grew bright, too stark. He kicked the man hard in the knee, heard the kneecap snap, saw Janice was no longer in the room, nor her pursuers, but the pastor’s magnified voice was close to the kitchen door. The man with the broken nose sat near a cabinet, trying to stem the blood flow, all the fight gone out of him.

Mitch cried out, “Jessica! Honey?” His voice did not carry above the din throughout the house. Yet he cried again, impotently, for a second, remembering how Jack had cried for his wife, for his son, for Aria, then mad with laughter, then broken again, in the woods.

He stepped over the man with the busted knee and fled for the dining room, a dozen horrible scenarios playing out in his head. In one, he’d find her in the living room, laid on the couch with a pillow obscuring her face, her murderers standing by motionless and waiting for some sign from God...

In another, he would find her body in the cold, cold snow, body prone, on her back, legs and arms spread as if she was making snow angels, but her skin would be a pale blue, and Mitch knew he’d see her mother’s ghost there, kneeling in the white world beside her, fingers stroking the still, peaceful face of their daughter...

Then Pastor Clement was there in the kitchen doorway, his back to Mitch, and Mitch could hear Jack say something in a plain, matter-of-fact way, and Mitch moved up beside the man of God, shoved him slightly out of the way, thinking that if there was a hell at all, they’d found it, it’d crossed over this night into the realm of the living.

Jack pointed the shotgun at him as he came up alongside Clement. But Mitch’s eyes went from the black muzzle to Janice LeDoux dead on the floor. He thought, as he looked back at Jack: You poor sonofabitch...

Jack turned the shotgun on Clement and frowned and pulled the trigger, only for it to fall on an empty chamber. The pastor chuckled, and he said something, turning slightly toward Mitch, his eyes suddenly spooked. And Mitch blamed this man, knew if his daughter was dead, it was his own fault for coming here, and it was Clement’s fault for riling the whole town and leading them here. They would destroy Jack’s son, too, if they hadn’t already.

Mitch placed the pistol under Clement’s chin and pulled the trigger. Unlike the empty shotgun Jack held, the pistol was loaded, and as the gun bucked in his hand and a spray of blood and brain and bone splattered the door casing, the strange look on Clement’s face muted. He dropped straight to the floor, appearing for an instant to become boneless.

Mitch’s ears rang, and his voice sounded muffled as he called out, “Jessica? Aiden?”

He was determined to shoot anyone who stepped in his path. Jack watched him, unmoving and silent. When he spoke there was a helplessness in his voice: “Somebody must have already grabbed them.”

Mitch’s heart pounded. He pulled his dead cell phone and then shoved it back into his pocket. “You have a land line?”

Jack nodded. “You calling Pine?”

“He’ll find them and he’ll keep them safe until we can get there.”

“Not tonight, he won’t. Listen to them out there.”

It seemed those who had entered and searched the house had fled since they’d found what they’d come for. Mitch didn’t want to listen to their hoots and howls. He said, “Where’s the phone?”

“In the kitchen. Aiden was just talking on it earlier to Emmy, remember?”

Mitch shrugged, embarrassed, but it had been a long night, and the sooner he could bring it to a close, with his daughter and Aiden safe, the better.

Then a man who ran the small old grocery store came into the dining room, taking a mile a minute, saying, “We found tracks in the snow leading away from the house. Looks like they’re headed toward Cranberry Lane, if we hurry—”

He realized then that neither Mitch nor Jack was Pastor Clement. Then he looked at the bodies on the floor for a long moment. When he looked back up, Mitch raised the pistol and shot him in the chest. He didn’t die instantly, but lay there suffering, and that was fine with Mitch. He left Jack with the dying man, hoping he got some satisfaction out of watching his throes, and hurried to the kitchen. The room looked like a tornado had hit it. He walked over to the two men he’d injured and shot both of them in the head, not offering them a chance to beg or apologize for their actions. He found the phone, but shattered glass had severed the wire and someone had trampled the receiver, smashing it into shards of plastic.

Mitch went through the dead men’s pockets until he found a cell phone and he dialed Pine’s number. It only rang once before Pine answered. “Who’s this now?”

Mitch told him what had happened at LeDoux’s bar, then the house. It was hard to keep the fear out of his voice, the tears from his eyes. Pine sucked on his teeth for a second and then said, “They were headed toward Cranberry Lane? I’ll find them, don’t sweat it. Keep that phone on you. I was made for situations like this.”

Mitch hung up and thought: God speed...

• • •

Aria braved the slippery roads, her nerves frazzled, her eyesight hazed. She wished she’d asked Elroy to drive, to come with her to present the tableau of Pine’s crimes to their father, but the boy, as much as she liked him, was weak. Elroy would have offered little in the way of help, would have been little more than voyeur, and worse, a hindrance to Mickey’s true feelings about Pine’s collection.

He had always been different around his sons, using the weight of silence, and the hard, unforgiving set of his expression to direct them toward the route he wished them to take. The boys had been trained from youth to read his moods, and were adept at interpreting his silences. It was not so for Aria. She found Mickey’s lack of communication sometimes stifling, preferring instead how he treated her to how he treated them. He spoke outright in private, amongst just the two of them, yet she had never seen him show any sign of weakness even then; something she’d witnessed and tired of quickly with prior suitors. Men who had seemed strong, independent, and driven, once bitten by lust or love, or some combination, were like young boys returning to the state of co-dependence they’d had with their mothers; their every action and word a call to be held, coddled, and praised by a mother figure. Jack had been the only man like Mickey she’d ever met. She’d not expected that, although as a child, eight years his junior, she had seen Jack’s maturity and forthrightness many times. Like Mickey, he had a penchant for power. He could have done so much more than what he had with his lot. And looking at the fathers, she looked at their sons, so different, softer—other than Pine, whom she thought simply sick and cruel—than their patriarchs.

It was shortly after midnight when she found the driveway hidden by falling snow and masked by the deep night. The mail box was nondescript and black, the flag up, capped by snow. She turned the Lexus slowly and listened to the tires working for traction on the cracking ice. The horse fence ran parallel to the road. Thirty feet down the driveway, bordered by burdened pine trees, she came to the gate. She punched in the code and looked at the shoe box sitting so inconspicuously on the passenger seat. She pulled her foot off the brake as the gate swung open and she eased down the entrance, unable to guess precisely how Mickey would handle that news that one of his sons was so monstrous to her he seemed inhuman.

She parked on the concrete slab in front of the garage. The house was blue with white trim, and two acres from the road, five acres wide, and twenty acres deep. A building about the size of a two car garage, sat behind the house. It was a place where Mickey and the boys sometimes got together. And beyond it was a white pole barn, shining in the night, the three horses bedded down inside whinnying as they listened to the tic of her car, the snow crunching under her feet as she got out. She stood near the front door for a minute, the box tucked under her left arm. Most of the lights were out in the house, which wasn’t surprising, since Mickey was an early riser, usually asleep the moment his head hit the pillow at ten p.m., and waking just as easily at five. She had only woken him a few times, in rare emergencies, and his attitude had always been as disheveled and obtrusive as his appearance. She feared, at least a little, waking him now. She thought it might be best to wait until morning. But the morning was a long way off and the world she’d known had already changed so much in the last few hours, and she was terrified if it kept its pace, it would no longer be recognizable by dawn.

She let herself in and took off her shoes and coat and walked quietly, despite how leaden her feet felt, into the living room. At first she thought Mickey had left a light on for her, since the one by his chair glowed, but then she saw him there, leaned back into the shadows, holding a newspaper. He didn’t acknowledge her even after she cleared her throat. She sat on the couch and placed the shoe box on the coffee table. Mickey slowly looked up. He was in his mid-fifties, appeared fit for his age, his black hair having turned steel gray in the last three years since she’d walked into his life and he refused to let her go.

She lifted the lid of the box. Any other man would have asked her: What do you have there? But Mickey, although always curious, was also patient. He folded the paper and sat it on the end table and looked at the fire blazing in the hearth. He said in a gravely yet soft voice, “The phone has been ringing off the hook until a half hour ago.” He looked at her, raised his eyebrows. “You were at Jack’s bar with Mitch when it happened?”

She nodded, unable to read him, uncertain why he looked so worried. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve never expected to.”

“I’ve heard them out there, driving like hell down the roads, hooting and hollering and blaring their horns and shouting things that make no sense. I was worried about you and the boys. Where are they? I tried calling Mitch but he hasn’t answered.”

“I left him a couple of messages,” she said. “Last I knew he went to Jack’s house.”

“He took Jessica there?”

“Yes.”

She leaned back and rubbed her face, exhaustion setting in now that she was in a familiar, warm place, and had settled into the couch. She was also afraid to present the box to him. He grunted and straightened up in his chair. His hands were strong and tan. He was slightly vain about them. He rubbed them together and said, “Where are Elroy and Pine?”

“I think Elroy was heading over to Jack’s house. I have no idea where Pine is or what he’s up to.”

He’d presented her an opening to discuss the young man, yet her insides felt like jelly, her tongue dry, her cheeks too warm. She excused herself to get something to drink and asked him if he needed anything.

“I don’t like them out there at a time like this,” he said.

She went into the kitchen and pulled a glass from the cupboard. She didn’t enjoy drinking, or how it affected her body or brain. Unlike many, she did not wish to numb her feelings, and usually she didn’t need to take the edge off because for the most part her life was good and she had been content. But this was a night for drinking, surely, if any night. She could get obliterated, praise Mickey to distract him from the fears he had of his sons out in the storm, amidst all the chaos, and, in the morning, with the sun causing the snow to glisten she hoped they would find the night before only a dream and of little consequence.

If only. She laughed at her own stupid hopes and slammed two shots of vodka back to back. She poured a third shot, thought about Pine and the star birthmarks on his neck. Where was he now? What type of mischief could he get into while off his leash, with so many people running riot in town and the forests and back roads?

She wandered back into the living room. Mickey was on the couch, pilfering the shoebox. He didn’t look up until his eyes had catalogued every detail of every item, and she knew better than to interrupt him. His expressions were hard to read and follow. At times he seemed befuddled, at others, the flicker of a smile played on his face. When he’d finished, he placed everything back in the box, held it on his lap, and said, “What do you intend to do with this?”