The Homecoming (25 page)

Boonie had another Beck’s in front of him. But now all he was doing was staring down into it. When he started to talk it was a curveball.

“Nick, did I ever tell you what Charlie Danziger told me a while back?”

“No. What’d he say?”

Boonie looked around the boardwalk. The place was filling up with the happy hour crowd, bright, sparkly people in all things Hilfiger and Armani. In the forested hills that led up to the base of Tallulah’s Wall the warm lights of The Chase neighborhood showed through the trees. Across the river on the eastern banks traffic was booming up and down Long Reach Boulevard. On the Armory Bridge one of those navy blue and gold streetcars of the Peachtree Line was rumbling over the river, shiny and glittering in the sun.

In spite of the disordered state of his own mind, it seemed to Boonie that on this sunlit afternoon Niceville was doing quite nicely, thank you. Boonie came back to them, speaking in a low voice, a voice for the table.

“Charlie. You know he was still a staff sergeant with State when Kate’s mother died in that rollover on the interstate. What, maybe six, seven years ago?”

“Seven.”

“So Charlie was one of the First Responders to the scene. Kate’s mother … what was her name?”

“Lenore.”

“Yeah. Charlie said Lenore was still alive. He could see he wasn’t
going to be able to get her out without killing her, so he just sort of got inside the wreck with her and held on to her while he was waiting for Fire and Rain to get there. Lot of blood. Lady was in pain. Nothing Charlie could do but hold on and … you know … try to be soothing. Comforting.”

“Charlie’s a good man,” said Nick. “The State IAD guys screwed him. I mean,
really
screwed him.”

A silence, while the two cops at the table thought about how Internal Affairs cops lived with themselves. Lemon, who had been a marine, knew something about getting screwed by vindictive MPs, but he didn’t say so.

After a moment, Boonie went on.

“Anyway, so Kate’s mom was going into shock, in and out of consciousness. Charlie’s just holding on to her, trying to get her to stay with him, not slip away. But she’s going. He could tell. She opens her eyes and looks at Charlie and she says, ‘She uses the mirrors.’ ”

Nick had heard this from Kate, the night of the … the night of the mirror. But he let Boonie tell it. It seemed to be helping him.

“ ‘She uses the mirrors.’ She said it a couple of times, like she knew she wasn’t going to make it and she wanted Charlie to remember it. A couple of minutes later, just as Fire and Rain gets there, she slips away, Charlie still holding on to her. Charlie said he’d never forget it, that look in her eyes. Like you said, Nick, a good man.”

There was a long silence.

Boonie seemed to shake himself, like a dog coming out of the water.

“So let’s review,” he said. “And this time, you two don’t interrupt me.”

He sat forward, spreading his hands out on the tablecloth. Inhaled, and then exhaled.

“Okay. This Glynis Ruelle lives in the mirror you’ve got in your upstairs closet. I know, I know, it’s a gate or a portal or whatever, but that’s what it comes down to. This mirror has been around a really long time. Far back as Ireland in the 1790s. We think Glynis died in the thirties, but since the archives got burned in 1935 we can’t be sure. Somehow or other, inside the mirror world, Glynis can make things happen in the outside world.
She uses the mirrors
. She has a way of knowing what was making people disappear—Delia Cotton, Kate’s dad, this Gray Haggard guy whose shrapnel bits you found on the dining room floor of Delia Cotton’s house—and so she recruits Merle Zane to help her somehow. She keeps him in a midway state between life and death so he can do … something … up in Sallytown. Something that involves a guy
named Abel Teague, Rainey’s distant relative, who had done a girl wrong, a girl named Clara Mercer, Glynis Ruelle’s younger sister. How’m I doing?”

“Very well,” said Lemon. “Except there’s also the fact that Abel Teague used extremely slimy methods to get Glynis Ruelle’s husband and his brother sent off to the war, and when Ethan came back—maimed—Abel Teague arranged for a gun-hand—a Haggard, by the way—to call him out and kill him on Christmas Eve in 1921.”

Nick said nothing. He was looking down into his glass and remembering.

Boonie took a drink, went on.

“Thank you. That too. So she has every reason to hate this Teague guy. And Merle Zane pulls it off—whatever it was we don’t know—based on what you tell me, probably a gunfight—and during it he gets himself shot dead for the
second
time—hence the dirt on the back of his shirt—yes I said
hence
—and he suddenly zaps back to being the dead guy with his back up against a pine tree two miles into the Belfair Range.”

He paused, took a drink. They all did.

“The next thing that happens is that something like a black swirly thing shows up at your door—you and Kate—Kate thinks it’s her missing dad—she opens the door—there’s this black cloud there—and then the mirror lights up, Glynis Ruelle steps out of the mirror and onto your living room rug and she says something like ‘Clara, stop, Abel Teague is dead’—I guess because Merle managed to kill him in that gunfight—maybe we oughta send somebody up to Sallytown to see if Abel Teague’s corpse is lying around in a ditch somewhere—anyway Clara stops—the black thing goes away—you and Kate get blinded by this green light—it ends—Clara and Glynis are gone—the lights are back on—Kate turns the mirror facedown on the rug. Have I got that about right?”

“You do,” said Lemon, aware of Nick’s silence.

“And you saw this yourself?” he asked Lemon.

“No. But we were in phone contact during part of it. I was over at Sylvia Teague’s house, going through her computer—”

“Going through Ancestry files. So only Nick and Kate saw this part, the swirly thing at the door?”

“That’s right,” said Nick, coming back.

Boonie was quiet for a while.

“Okay, no offense, Nick, but … have you thought about this being a stress thing? From the war?”

Nick tried not to rise up at that, because he had considered the possibility.

“It occurred to me. But what about Kate? And none of that would change the thing that happened to Rainey Teague. Everybody saw that. No, believe me, I’ve tried. We’re stuck with this damn thing.”

“Strange things do happen in the world,” said Lemon. Boonie—who was warming to him—smiled and said, “Tell me one thing compares to this.”

“The entire world. What it’s really made of. I read a book, about particle physics. Quantum mechanics, that kind of thing? What we’re looking at, right here—you, me, Nick, the river going by—it’s all just an energy field. I know, I know—but it’s true—”

“There was a guy in my unit,” said Nick, “had this saying written on his helmet:
God made the universe out of nothing, and if you look real close, you can tell
.”

Lemon nodded.

“That’s exactly what I mean. So if all this is just a field of energy, maybe there are places where that energy field can get … bent. Warped.”

“You mean like with magnets and iron filings?” Boonie asked.

“Yeah. Like that. Or gravity. Things are only heavy because the earth is actually pulling on … everything. Including you and me. But we can’t see it, can we? Maybe there’s something like that in Niceville.”

Boonie snorted.

“What? Like Crater Sink?”

Lemon was going to say
Yes, exactly like Crater Sink
, but they saw a big black SUV come rolling into the parking lot, Kate at the wheel.

“She’s here,” said Boonie.

“She is,” said Lemon. “So, what do you think?”

Boonie watched as Kate climbed down out of the truck and stopped for a moment beside it to search the crowds in the Pavilion.

“I think,” said Boonie, as Kate made eye contact with him and started walking towards them, “I think I believe you. God help me. And I have no fucking idea what to do about it.”

“I don’t think there’s anything anybody can do about this. Except avoid it. Maybe there’s a rational explanation for all of it. Maybe not. Maybe Lemon is right and there’s a force that’s … twisting things … bending reality … in Niceville. I’ll tell you where I come down. You know what the patrol guys say.
FIDO
.”

“Fuck it. Drive on,” said Boonie.

“That’s it exactly. I say fuck it. Whatever it is, we can’t touch it or do a damn thing about it. So fuck it. Drive on.”

“What about Merle Zane?”

They all rose as Kate walked up the stairs onto the terrace. Nick smiled at her, but he was speaking to them.

“Put him in the ground, Boonie. Put him in the ground under a heavy stone and walk away.”

Kate wasn’t smiling.

She stood and looked slowly around at the three of them, finally coming back to Nick. She coldly assessed his state of health for a few seconds.

Nick waited for it.

Boonie and Lemon braced themselves.

Kate let out a long sigh.

“Nick, you’re an asshole.”

“He is,” said Boonie. “I tried to stop him.”

She fixed him with a glare.

“And you, Boonie, are a lying hound.”

“That he is,” said Nick.

Lemon said, “Hey, I’m an innocent bystander.”

She shook her head, sighed heavily.

“I could really use a drink.”

A general ripple of relief and the resumption of normal breathing. Since her drink was Chianti and there was a carafe of it on the table, all that was needed was another glass, which Lemon got up to fetch. Kate took a chair across from Nick, at Boonie’s right hand. Boonie opened his mouth to start up an apology, but she lifted her hand.

“No apologies needed, Boonie. I never expected him to stay in the hospital anyway. He hates hospitals. He says people die in them.”

“They do. You look beat, babe,” said Nick.

“I am beat. I am beat up and beat down. I’ve been getting schooled in real-world parenting. Apparently I’m a gullible fool.”

Nick glanced at Boonie, and then back to her.

“Rainey?”

“Yes. Rainey. And Axel. They’ve been skipping classes. Leaving early. As far as I can tell, since the first week of the term. I think they’ve gotten into Beth’s e-mail service too, because they’re probably sending phony e-mails to cover themselves—”

“They’re faking e-mails?” said Nick. “They’re too young to hack into—”

“Don’t kid yourself,” said Boonie.

“He’s right,” said Kate. “Those boys are on Axel’s iPad all the time. They know more about the Internet than Mark Zuckerberg. And they’re both lying to us about Coleman and Owen and Jay. It turns out they haven’t been following them home, or picking on them. No Crypt Boy and Cop Killer’s Kid. I mean, there’s the usual conflict, but that’s what boys are like. Rainey and Axel have been handing us—Beth and you and me—a line of pure bullshit.”

“Like most kids,” Boonie said.

He had raised two girls all by himself, one now happily married and the other happily in the Navy, and getting them there had nearly killed him.

Kate sighed again, smiled up at Lemon as he came back with a glass, filled it, and handed it to her.

“Thank you, Lemon. I’ve been telling these guys about Rainey and Axel. They’ve been skipping classes. Faking notes and e-mails. Playing hooky.”

“And going where?” Lemon asked.

She looked up the river toward Patton’s Hard.

“I think they’re spending a lot of time up there,” she said, nodding toward the place. “Under the willows.”

“If they’ve been playing hooky,” said Nick, “then we’d have gotten a call from Alice.”

Kate took a sip, held the glass in front of her, and frowned at her reflection.

“That’s another thing that’s bothering me. Alice Bayer doesn’t seem to be anywhere around. I talked to her temp, a horrible person named Gert Bloomsberry, who was thrilled to tell me that Alice hasn’t been at the school in over two weeks. According to Gert, Alice probably went off to see a friend—”

That got Nick’s attention.

“Alice wouldn’t bail on her job for
any
reason. Not that woman. She put up with Delia Cotton for ten years. Never missed a day.”

Kate agreed, and said so with real heat.

“One of the teachers went up to her house. The car was gone and there was a note on her door. It said she’d gone to Sallytown and she’d be
back soon. The priest knocked, but there was no one home. They’ve been calling, but all they get is her answering machine.”

“I don’t like that,” said Boonie.

“Neither do I,” said Nick.

“Then you won’t like this either,” said Kate, reaching into her briefcase and bringing out the note she had taken from Gert Bloomsberry. She laid it on the table so everyone could see it.

Nick picked it up, read it, set it down.

“You see my problem,” said Kate, a comment for the table. “Since most of us believe that Sylvia is dead—where did this note come from?”

Lemon leaned forward, picked up the note.

“I think I know,” he said, which got the full attention of everyone else.

“When we were still trying to figure out what was going on, Nick and Kate asked me to run through Sylvia’s computer to see if there was anything on it that would help. I went over—”

“How’d you get in?” Boonie asked. “There’s a security lock on the door.”

Nick and Kate looked at him.

Boonie shrugged.

“I had a drink with Mavis Crossfire. The Teague house on Cemetery Hill is on her beat. Now that nobody lives there, she makes it a point to see it’s okay.”

“And the house is fine,” said Lemon, with an edge. “I have the code. I go there from time to time, just to take care of the yard. If she sees my truck in the driveway, Mavis will come in for a beer. The thing is, this note—Sylvia has a file box of them, on the shelf in her office. At least she did last time I was there.”

Boonie didn’t get it.

“But why would she keep old notes?”

Kate knew why.

“That paper is expensive. Sylvia had money, but she was frugal about things like this. And she was meticulous about her handwriting, as you can see. If she made a mistake, she’d start over, but she’d keep the old note in case she wanted to use the other side for something.”