The Devil's Right Hand (20 page)

They began more gently this time, the need
for quiet holding them to soft caresses and whispers at first. But
as they moved together, they gained urgency until she stuffed the
corner of a pillow into her mouth and bit down hard to stifle her
cries. He buried his face in her shoulder to muffle his own sounds
of pleasure as he joined her in climax. Afterwards, they lay
entwined as their breathing returned to normal. After a few
moments, she raised her head and kissed him on the ear. He rolled
over on his back and drew her to him. In moments they were both
asleep.

He awoke a few hours later. Marie was in his
arms, her head cradled against his chest. He watched her sleep for
a few moments, marveling out how good it felt to simply hold her.
She stirred slightly, then opened her eyes and looked at him.

Her eyes had no iris or pupil, just dark red
embers that quickly brightened to bright yellow, then white-hot
flames. Her skin began charring and peeling away from the bone
beneath, revealing a core of raging fire where her face had been.
The blackened remnants of a skull grinned sardonically up at him,
framed by cooked gobbets of flesh still clinging to the bone.
Keller screamed and shoved the apparition away from him. She fell
to the floor, then, impossibly, stood up, reaching out to him with
fingers burned down to the bone. Her mouth opened and a long
hissing shriek came out like steam escaping from a locomotive. A
reeking cloud of smoke blew into his face, the stinking breath of a
crematorium. He screamed again and struck out blindly at her.

He was screaming, she was screaming, but it
was Ben’s cries that pulled him from the pit of the dream. Keller
realized that he was on top of Marie, straddling her body, his
hands around her throat. She was clawing at his wrists, her nails
leaving bloody scratches as she tried to break his grip. Ben was
pounding on the locked door and wailing in terrified
incomprehension. Keller leaped up off the bed. He backed away from
her so quickly that he slammed hard into the wall. She rolled off
onto the floor, gasping for breath. Ben’s cries were rising to the
point of hysteria. Marie stood up and grabbed her robe. “Get in the
bathroom until I can get him calmed down,” she hissed at Keller.
“He can’t see you here.” Keller obeyed numbly, his mind still
reeling with shock.

He retreated to the bathroom until he heard
her close the bedroom door behind her. He could hear her voice in
the hallway, the words muffled by the door but the tone reassuring.
The boy had stopped wailing, but he was demanding to know what was
happening in a loud tearful voice. After a moment, Keller heard the
door of the boy’s bedroom close and the voices were cut off.

Keller exited the bathroom and quickly
gathered up his clothes. He dressed himself and stumbled to the
door. As he passed by the doorway to the boy’s bedroom, he could
hear the soft sounds of Marie singing a lullaby. He paused for a
moment to listen. He rested his head against the door and reached
up to touch it lightly with the fingers of one hand. Then he
straightened up and walked down the hallway to the front door.

Once outside, he paused a moment to take a
deep breath of the soggy air. He realized he was trembling. He sat
down on the front stoop to gather himself. He ran his hands over
his face as if trying to scrape something away.

He heard the front door open behind him. He
knew it was Marie, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at her. He
was afraid of what he might see in her eyes: disgust, fear, or
worst of all, pity. He felt her sit on the step above him. There
was a brief pause, then she leaned against him from behind. Her
arms went around his chest and hugged him tightly.

“
It’s okay,” she whispered. “It was
just a nightmare.”

Keller shook his head angrily. “I tried to--I
mean I could have--and I scared the kid. I’m sorry.”

Another pressure of her arms around him.
“He’s already asleep again,” she said. “It’ll be fine.” Keller said
nothing, made no response to her embrace. After a moment, she
released him and straightened up. “Come on back to bed,” she said.
“It’s late.”

“
No,” he said. “You’re right. I can’t
stay the night. It’s not right with the kid--with Ben
there.”

“
Yeah,” she said. Her voice was puzzled
and hurt. “Okay. I wasn’t talking about the whole night,
but--okay.” He didn’t hear her move away. There was another long
pause. Finally, she said, “I can’t help you if you won’t talk to
me, Jack.” He didn’t respond. He heard the door close. He turned
around as if to say something but stopped as he heard the solid
snick of the deadbolt. It was a loud as the slam of a cell door. He
stood up and walked down the driveway to his car. When he got
there, he picked up the cell phone and looked at it. He dialed a
number he hadn’t dialed in years, but it was a number he knew as
well as his own.

After a few rings, a deep voice, furred with
sleep, answered. “H’lo?”

“
It’s Jack Keller,” Keller
said.

“
Jack?” the voice said. “Jesus Christ,
man, it’ s three-thirty in the goddamn morning.”

“
I know,” Keller said. “I’m sorry to
wake you up. I need to talk to you again.”

“
Then call my office and make a goddamn
appointment--okay, sorry. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“
The dreams are back. And they’re
worse.”

“
How bad?” the voice said
gently.

Keller took a deep breath. “I almost hurt
somebody.”

The voice sharpened. “Did you actually hurt
anybody? Is anybody in any danger right now?”

Keller looked at the closed door and shook
his head. “No,” he said. “I’m gone.”

“
How about you?” the voice said. “You
feel like hurting yourself?”

Keller thought about that. “No,” he said
finally. “So I guess it can wait.”

“
But not long,” the voice said. “Call
my office first thing. I’ll be in by 8:30. Someone else can take my
group therapy session.”

“
Thanks, Major,” Keller said. “I owe
you one.”

“
All you owe me, Sergeant,” the voice
said, “is to let me finish the job this time.”

“
Okay,” Keller said.

“
Get some sleep, troop,” the voice
said. “And no dreams. That’s an order.”

 
Keller smiled slightly at that.
“Yes, sir,” he said.

Raymond had finally broken down and taken one
of the pain pills, since Delmer was driving. Delmer wasn’t good for
much; Raymond sometimes wondered if the kid was a retard. But he
sure could drive, and Raymond had employed him in that capacity for
several years at the request of Billy Ray, Delmer’s cousin, who was
leaning over the back of the front seat, talking to Raymond.

“
Buddy,” he said. “That don’t look
good. We better get you to that doctor and get you stitched back
up.”

Raymond shook his head. “A doctor’ll call the
cops,” he said. “It’ll quit in a little while.” Billy Ray shook his
head.

“
He ain’t bleedin all over my seats, is
he?” Delmer asked.

“
Shut up, Delmer,” Billy Ray said. He
turned back to Raymond. “We got a call from our friends down south.
They was worried when I told them you was in the
hospital.”

“
You tell ‘em I was under
arrest?”

“
Yeah, but I told ‘em it didn’t have
anything to do with the business. I told ‘em it was
personal.”

“
Shit,” Raymond said. The last thing he
needed was the Colombians getting nervous about him. Paco Suarez
was fully capable of having Raymond killed just to make sure he
didn’t say anything incriminating while under sedation. It was the
kind of paranoia that had kept Suarez alive and out of jail through
twenty years of drug wars and government task forces aimed at him.
It made dealing with Suarez a tricky proposition, however,
especially since all communications were filtered through several
layers of equally paranoid and trigger-happy
lieutenants.

Billy Ray went on. “They was asking when we
would be able to move some more product for ‘em.”

“
Right away,” Raymond said
automatically. “Who’d you talk to?”

Billy Ray’s eyes flickered towards Delmer,
but the younger man was intent on the road. “Geronimo,” he
whispered.

An idea began to form in Raymond’s mind.
Geronimo was their nickname for one of Suarez’ chief muscle boys.
His real name was Guillermo, but Raymond had misheard it as
Geronimo at their first meeting, and he thought the crazy Colombian
had actually liked it. He apparently thought it was some sort of
Native American honorary title, and Raymond had never bothered to
set him straight. Geronimo had access to firepower and people who
weren’t afraid to use it. That was exactly the kind of people
Raymond needed right then.

“
Good,” Raymond said. “Pull over at
this phone booth. Geronimo’s just the boy I want to talk
to.”

DeWayne was out of rocks, out of money, and
running out of patience with Debbie’s whining. “Stay in the car,”
he ordered. He got out and slammed the door. “I’ll be back in a
little bit.”

“
I ain’t gonna stay in no car,” the
girl said. “I ain’t a dog. I’m comin’ in with you.”

“
Damn it.” DeWayne said. His nerves
were jangling like a multiline phone with all lines ringing. His
eyeballs felt sandy and irritated by the morning sun. He felt as if
he hadn’t slept in a month. His skin felt scoured and raw. If he
concentrated he imagined he could identify each and every nerve
ending, and they were all screaming. “There ain’t nothin’ for you
to do in there,” he said. “I’m just goin’ in to visit my
cousin.”

“
What, I’m not good enough to meet your
family?” Debbie said in that whiny voice that bored into Dwayne’s
ear like a dentists drill set on high. For one brief moment, he
contemplated pulling his pistol out and shooting her right there.
The number of other people in the hospital parking lot saved her.
Instead, he stood up and slammed the door on her, turned around and
walked towards the glassed in entrance. He ignored her squawks of
muffled outrage.

The woman behind the reception desk was a
fortyish blonde with an ample bosom barely contained by her blue
and white uniform. She eyed DeWayne suspiciously as he came in.
“May I help you?” she said.

“
I’m here to visit Crystal Lee
Puryear,” he said with as much confidence as he could
muster.

“
Are you a family member?” the woman
said as she turned to her computer. Her fingers began clicking
busily on the keys.

“
Yeah,” DeWayne said, “I’m her
brother.”

The woman’s fingers stopped for a brief
second. She kept her eyes straight ahead and her voice neutral.
“And your name is...?” she asked.

The too-casual tone in her voice made a chill
of paranoia run down DeWayne’s spine. “Uhhhh--” he said. “Leonard,”
he blurted out.

The woman turned and looked at him. “Well,
the computer says you were here yesterday. Don’t you remember the
room?”

The shiver down his backbone shot back up and
set alarm bells clanging in his head. “Ahhh--yeah,” he said. “I
ahhh--I forgot the number.”

“
Your sister has been released to a--to
another facility,” he woman said, still eyeing DeWayne up and down.
”She didn’t tell you?”

Dewayne smacked himself on the head with the
palm of his hand. “Boy,” he laughed nervously, “I’d fergit my head
if it weren’t screwed on. Where’d she go again?”

The woman stiffened and reached for the
phone. “I’m not allowed to give out that information,” she snapped.
“Wait here, and I’ll call somebody.”

“
No, no,” DeWayne said, “That’s okay,
don’t bother. I remember now.” He turned and bolted out the glass
doors, pursued by the woman’s shout.

DeWayne slowed to a brisk walk as he headed
for the parking lot. Someone had been to see Crystal, pretending to
be him. Or Leonard. He could only think of one person who would do
something like that.

“
Keller,” he muttered under his breath.
The guy was always there, following him. He needed to do something
about Keller. He walked to the place where he had left the parked
car.

It was gone.

“
You fucking
bitch
!” DeWayne screamed. An elderly couple
walking slowly by looked up in horror. DeWayne didn’t care. He ran
at the nearest car, kicking the rear bumper in a frenzy. He slammed
his fists down on the trunk lid, screaming in rage, then kicked the
bumper again. The old couple scurried faster to get away from the
madman. DeWayne nearly pulled the gun and shot them, but then he
heard the beeping of a car horn. He turned. Debbie was sitting in
her car, fifty feet away. She had moved to the end of the row and
had been watching him. He could see her laughing.

DeWayne snarled deep in his throat and ran
towards the car. He yanked the gun out of his waistband and pulled
the slide back to chamber a round. She started the car, but didn’t
pull away. She was still laughing. When he got to the door, he saw
that the windows were rolled up and the doors locked. He stood
beside the driver’s side window and pointed the gun. “Open the
goddamn door!” he screamed.

“
I coulda left you!” she shouted, still
laughing, but with an edge of hysteria, so that it sounded more
like crying. “But I didn’t! Now you see! Now you see!”

“
See what!?” he yelled. “Goddamn it,
you crazy bitch, open the door!” He looked up and saw a pair of
uniformed men standing in the doorway. Hospital security.
Rent-a-cops, but still trouble.