The Dark Door (9 page)

Most of the mess had been cleared away, windows boarded up; here and there glass shards gleamed in the golden afternoon sunlight where it streamed in between the buildings. The wind whistled maniacally, and the sign swung up and down with a whooshing, creaking noise. There was nothing else to be gained here, Byron decided, and now looked for Polly. He realized almost absently that he had been noticing Mike for the past several minutes. Mike had stopped snapping pictures, had stopped moving at all, in fact, and was facing away, toward the hotel. Byron had assumed that Mike was waiting for the right light, for a shadow to move or something, in order to get a shot of the hotel. Then Mike dropped his camera. Still he did not move. Polly walked through one of the rays of sunlight, into the
next shadow. Slowly, almost ponderously, Mike
turned and started to walk toward her. She was concentrating on her feet, avoiding the broken glass. Byron felt his throat go dry when suddenly Mike lunged for Polly.

Byron vaulted the rail of the boardwalk and raced toward them. Polly screamed and tried to run, but Mike caught her and dragged her off the boardwalk, onto the street. She rolled away and struggled to get up, he knocked her down, and this time went for her throat. Byron reached them and grabbed Mike’s arm, tried to pull him off. Mike swept him away effortlessly. Byron’s hand closed on the heavy camera. He raised it, swung as hard as he could, and hit Mike in the temple. Mike grunted and pitched forward on top of Polly. She was sobbing hysterically.

Byron heaved at Mike’s inert body and finally rolled him off Polly and pulled her clear, helped her to her feet. Then he looked at Mike and his stomach churned. Mike’s eyes were wide open, unseeing, the stench of death on him.

“Oh, my God!” Byron said, and then again, and found he could not stop saying it. He was half dragging Polly away, toward the station platform, toward the Land Rover, and she was sobbing and choking, and he was repeating, “Oh, my God!” over and over. She staggered and he held her, then got her moving again, but she looked back and screamed piercingly, and crumpled at his side. He turned to see Mike on his feet, his eyes wide open and blind, coming toward them. He felt frozen, paralyzed. Mike took another step, halting and slow. Byron tugged at Polly; he stooped, keeping his gaze on Mike, who was advancing slowly but steadily. Byron lifted Polly by one arm and slung her over his shoulder and began to back up toward the platform, unable to take his eyes off Mike. He backed up the three steps to the boardwalk, crossed to the other side, and only then turned and ran to the Land Rover.

Mike had left the keys on the dashboard. He fumbled with them until he found the right one and turned on the ignition. Mike stopped then, on the boardwalk, twenty feet away; he turned around and started to walk in the opposite direction. Byron killed the engine trying to start it, and saw with horror that Mike had turned his way again. He got the engine going and backed up with a roar, turned, squealing the tires, and raced back over the leveled ground to the road. When he looked one more time, Mike was walking toward the hotel.

Chapter 9

When they got
back to the house Polly was
conscious.

She was shaking and weeping, but able to sit up and, Byron hoped, able to hear him with comprehension.

“We have to call the sheriff,” he repeated. “Mike went berserk and attacked you. I hit him and we got out of there, left him behind. Do you understand?”

She nodded.

The sun had gone behind the mountains and now the shadows filled the countryside: inky pools, black pits, unfathomable chasms. The wind had let up marginally, and although it was very cold, Byron knew that neither his nor Polly’s shivering was due to the temperature. At the house he brought the Land Rover to a jerking stop and got out, helped her out, walked with his arm around her shoulder to the door.

Byron was vastly relieved when he saw Char
lie and Constance. He told them briefly what had happened and asked Beatrice to call the sheriff. Polly was too shocked to speak yet. Constance took her to the bathroom to examine her injuries, wash the dirt from her face. She was certain the young woman was totally unaware of her.

By the time Sheriff Logan Maschi arrived, Byron had cleaned himself up a bit, and no longer was visibly shaking, but he was pale and had the staring eyes of someone still in shock. Polly was in worse shape, ghastly pale, trembling.

“Holy Christ!” Maschi muttered when Byron finished telling the story. He had condensed it, said no more than that Mike had gone crazy and attacked Polly. Maschi was a heavy man in his sixties, tanned like old mahogany. He wore cowboy clothes: hat, boots, and all, even a silver buckle on his belt.

Charlie watched as the sheriff asked questions, made notes, and got up to leave. Charlie walked out to the porch with him.

“The man on the balcony the other day, did you know him?”

“Yep.”

“I take it there was no reason for him to break like that, no medical problems, financial, whatever?”

“Trevor Jackson was the most decentest man I’ve known,” the sheriff said heavily. “Hell, one of the guys he shot dead was his own brother-in-law! And now this.” He drew a deep breath. “I just wish to God old man Lorrimer had kept his money in the casinos over in Vegas. Nothing but trouble since he got that goddamn wild hair up his ass about rebuilding that ghost town. Ghost town! Hah! Tell you this, that town might never get finished. That’s for sure. Ain’t nobody wanting to go back in, and now this.”

“You won’t do any searching tonight, will you?”

“Hell no! No point to it. You been out there? Guy with a head injury, falls in a hole, who’s to know? Especially by night. We’ll look for him tomorrow.”

Charlie went back inside; chilled to the bone, he thought gloomily. And the house was not a hell of a lot warmer than out on the porch. He rejoined the others in the den and rubbed his hands together hard.

“Okay,” he said. “Several questions. What do you do for heat in this place? What do you do about food? And what happened out there today? First the heat.”

Beatrice was staring at him as if he had suggested an orgy. He lifted an eyebrow. “Heat,” he said again.

“Sorry. There’s a thermostat in the living room. It was so warm early, I didn’t think of it.” She left.

Charlie turned to Byron. “Food?”

Byron looked blank.

“There’s nothing like dinner stuff in the fridge,” Charlie said patiently. “I looked. You must have planned on something to eat for dinner. What?”

Byron moistened his lips. “We hoped to get someone to come in and cook, but no luck so far. We’ve been eating at the restaurant next to the motel. Jodie’s. We have breakfast and lunch materials.”

“Jodie’s,” Charlie repeated in satisfaction. He went to the phone, found the telephone book, and riffled through it. Then he dialed, waited a few seconds, and said, “I want to order five steaks, rare to medium rare, baked potatoes, salads for five, all the works. When will it be ready?” He listened, then said, “Of course, to go. When can I pick it up?” He listened again. “Look, you cook, I deliver. When?” He examined the ceiling while he waited, then said, “Gotcha. The name’s Leidl.” He spelled it. “Okay.” He hung up. “Forty-five minutes. Now the last question.”

Beatrice had returned. She went to the makeshift bar and poured a drink, then sat down next to Polly on the sofa. Polly was huddled under a blanket, staring at Charlie with wide eyes, very frightened. She shook her head when he glanced at her. He turned to Byron. “What really happened out there?”

This time Byron told it the way he remembered, all of it. Charlie listened intently, and noticed at the same time with interest that the drink Beatrice had poured was really for Polly. She put it in the girl’s hands and even helped her get it to her lips. She’d do, he decided.

“You see why I couldn’t tell the sheriff?” Byron said helplessly. “Who’s going to believe us? And, in fact, I don’t believe it myself any longer. I must have just injured him.”

“Maybe,” Charlie said. He looked at Polly.
“You were supposed to be sketching the layout,
weren’t you? How far down the street did you get? Did you see anything strange, feel anything, hear anything?”

What little color had returned to her face drained away again. Beatrice glared at Charlie. He made his voice harder, flatter. “Polly, I asked you a question.”

She drank a little, then said, “I got a headache. I remember that. I was drawing and I felt dizzy for a second or two, and then I had a headache. That’s when I decided I had enough in the notebook. That’s when I started back. That’s when Mike…”

“How far had you gone?”

“Past the saloon, not all the way to the end, a few doors from the end maybe.”

“And you dropped your sketch pad there, didn’t you?”

She looked around guiltily.

“That’s all right, but I want you to sketch the place for me now, before you forget the details. Okay? Will you do that?”

She took another sip of her drink and got up, as if relieved that she could do something. Byron nodded, and Constance felt almost smug about Charlie’s handling of the girl. Exactly right, and he had no training whatsoever.

Charlie glanced at Beatrice. “Is there someplace where she can draw and not be disturbed by our voices?”

“Of course. Come on, Polly. Let’s go to the kitchen table.” They left.

Charlie poured a drink for Constance and another for himself, and sat down near Byron. “Now, fill me in on what the hell’s been going on at Old West. Okay? And here at Grayling. I take it that it’s involved too.”

Byron pulled a notebook from his coat pocket. He remembered and dismissed the memory of how he had dominated the conversation when he had had dinner with Charlie and Constance at Orick, how he had thought then that Charlie was too phlegmatic to be interesting.

“I have a timetable here,” he said. “Incomplete, of course, but an indication. The first incident was nearly five weeks ago. Nellie Alvarez had a breakdown and ran out on the desert and vanished. They found her body a week later. That’s when I think it all started.”

Charlie took the notebook and started to glance through it. Constance asked, “Did you feel anything out there? See anything?”

“No, nothing for me. Polly didn’t mention her dizziness before, or the headache, but of course the wind was pretty fierce. That could account for it.”

Without looking up from the notebook Charlie asked, “Were all these people at Old West before they went bonkers?”

Byron gave Constance a look of reflexive protest. She rolled her eyes and shrugged.

“I don’t know,” Byron said.

“Find out, will you?” Charlie said absently, turning a page.

“You tell me something,” Byron said then. “What are you investigating? Fire? Or something else? You thought the trouble at Orick was connected with the hotel there, didn’t you? And now another old hotel. What’s going on? And why aren’t you using your own name?”

Charlie had introduced Constance to the sheriff as Dr. Leidl, and himself as her husband without adding another name. He shrugged and stood up. “Wish to hell I knew. Time to go collect dinner. Point us in the direction of the restaurant, okay?”

The town was small enough to crisscross on foot several times in under half an hour, but the wind was cold enough to make them glad they weren’t walking. All the businesses were closed now, Main Street bleak looking. They went up the two blocks, turned left, and before them the street became state highway again; the black desert, empty and barren, seemed ready to invade the town. Jodie’s was a welcoming oasis of flashing neon signs and a crowd of parked cars. Next to it a motel sign said No Vacancy. The motel was far back from the street, its parking lot also filled.

Charlie drove through both parking lots slowly, scanning the cars, satisfying himself that no late model black Malibu was among them. Then he stopped near the entrance to the restaurant. “I’m going to bribe the desk clerk while you hunt and gather food. Division of labor, all that.” He grinned at her fleetingly and ambled away.

Constance had to wait ten minutes for the order to be completed, and during the delay she talked to the woman behind the cash register. That woman turned out to be Jodie, Lorraine Jodrell, middle-aged, gray-haired, with shrewd dark eyes; she was on a first name basis with her customers.

“We got wind of the tourist attraction three years ago,” she said confidentially. “This place,” she indicated the restaurant with a sweeping gesture, “was a pigpen. Beer and hamburgers, that was what it offered, and loud country rock. We borrowed money from Homer’s father and bought it, and turned it into a good restaurant. Figured workers deserved decent food, and then, of course, the tourists, when they began to come. Took over a year to get it the way we wanted it.” She looked past Constance with troubled eyes. The restaurant was attractive, with many lush green plants in ocher colored clay pots, a relief from the harsh landscape beyond the windows. “Food’s good too,” Jodie said.

Constance listened to her, asked a question now and again, and watched the clientele. The restaurant business was good, if quiet. It appeared that every table was filled; the booths that lined the walls were packed. Most of the customers were in Western clothes, local people, with only half a dozen obvious tourists among them. The tourists stood out by the way they were dressed—designer jeans, silk shirts, cashmere sweaters, glossy boots—and the way they stared at the local people. Occasionally someone got up from a table full of people talking in low voices to go join a different table where they were talking in low voices. Many of the tables had only men, and altogether the men outnumbered women two to one. The prevailing emotion was fear, Constance realized. These people were desperately afraid.

“… be wiped out, of course. Poor Homer, poor old Dad.”

“You shouldn’t think that,” Constance protested. “This will all blow over, the way things do.”

“Not this thing. Four, five men vanished, and today rumor has it another one disappeared. People going crazy, doing crazy things. And then the shooting. No one’s going back over there. Wait and see. Oh, they’ll try to bring in a lot of outsiders to finish up, but when things start to happen to them, they’ll take off, too. Wait and see.”

“Have you been out there?”

“Once, early on. Took the lay of the land, you see. We send out a lunch truck, hot soup, sandwiches, stuff like that. We have a boy who drives out, sells lunches, and comes back. I went out to see if he could get in and out again. Not sending him anymore. That’s over with.”

They chatted a few more minutes and then the food arrived, packed in a large cardboard carton, and Constance left. It wasn’t as if she had learned anything factual, she told Charlie as they drove back to the house. But she had a feeling now for what the people here were going through. They were scared to death.

“They attribute it to everything from an old Indian curse to radiation leaks from the nuclear tests in Nevada. From faulty government nerve gas storage to the work of the devil.”

He nodded. “They don’t single out the old hotel, far’s I could learn. In fact, they’re saying they might even go finish the new one, maybe. But it’s the old town reconstruction thing as a whole that scares them. Talk’s about bad vibes, being blasted with rays from invisible machines, maybe even in orbit somewhere.” He sounded morose. Then he said, “You know what time it really is? After ten!”

Constance realized that he sounded so low because he was hungry. They had not eaten since breakfast and that seemed days ago. Something had been served on the airplane that had looked vaguely like fish, but neither of them had tried it. Now good food smells were filling the rented car, and she felt stomach pangs. She patted Charlie’s leg, offering sympathy; he covered her hand with his, accepting it.

That night, after they had eaten the excellent steaks and enough accompaniments to feed three additional people, Byron practically forced Polly to take a sleeping pill and go to bed. She acceded only when Beatrice promised to sleep in her room that night, and added that she was a very light sleeper.

“She’s afraid Mike will come for her,” Beatrice said flatly after the younger woman had gone to sleep. “I think she crosses the line from therapist to patient starting tomorrow.”

She looked at Byron levelly but did not add the rest of the statement that hung in the air. He did not refute or acknowledge the implication that perhaps tomorrow he also would change roles.

“Let’s see what tomorrow brings,” Charlie said in the lengthening silence. “And tonight I’ll level with you both about my own investigation. Afterward you tell me if you want to opt out, or to cooperate. Okay?”

He summarized the incidences of fires that had spread out over a period of six years and ranged from coast to coast. “In each case where we’ve been able to dig out details, the events are the same generally. People start going mad, terrible things happen, then the hotels burn and it all stops. That was the pattern at Orick, and so far it’s the same here.”

Byron looked blank. “That’s all you have?”

“That’s it,” Charlie said almost cheerfully. “The way I see it, you two, and anyone else you bring in as part of your team, have the perfect chance to ask questions that the police won’t be bothering with. They wouldn’t know what to do with answers anyway. First, we need to know just who was in that hotel, or even near it at any given time. Some went mad and some didn’t. Why? The people from town here who went crazy over the last few weeks, what was their connection? Who vanished? The story is that four or five men have disappeared, but what does that mean? It’s one thing if a settled family man doesn’t show up again, and something else if a transient moves on. Presumably the sheriffs men, or state troopers, or
someone
searched the entire reconstructed town for the
men who vanished the day of the shooting. Why
weren’t any of
them
affected? You see what I mean? You can ask questions of that sort and get answers that no one else is in a position to get. I sure as hell couldn’t.”