The Reckoning (36 page)

“After a long time the storm died and the sisters were alone in a new place, but it was not yet finished being made and the ocean was too wild and they could not live near it. But there was calm water in caves beneath the surface of the land. It was dark but it was quiet and they got used to it. They had their mirrors to see each other when they were apart and to travel from place to place, and the light from the mirrors kept the dark away.

“One morning the lighter sister discovered that the world above their home had changed and there were living things moving on the surface, and she became interested in the lives of these creatures.

“The sisters disagreed about the creatures and they had a falling-out and the sister who was interested in the surface world and the lives of those creatures spent more and more time with them. The other sister was left alone, and she learned to hate the things her sister was caring for.

“So the day came when they had a terrible fight, and the other sister left her, alone in the dark, and went to live in another part of the world.”

She stopped and waited.

The woman was as still as death, and around her an aura, a halo of dark light was spreading out in a fan. The pressure in the room was immense and suffocating and she loomed over Kate like Tallulah's Wall, but Kate held her ground.

“There is more,” the woman said finally.

“Yes,” said Kate, “she took something with her.”

The woman's shape was changing. The dark light was swirling around her, spreading out into the room, dimming the candles, pulling the shadows in from the dark corners of the room, down from the rafters, up from the floors, and a high-pitched buzzing whine drilled into their hearing.

“She took the mirrors,” said the woman in a spidery buzzing voice that seemed to come from everywhere, “and she left me alone in the dark, alone in the deep, left me to go and care for her pets. As if I were nothing.”

Crater Sink cracked around the rim and the railing gave away and the three of them went into the pool. The railing and the stones that held it dropped away from them and down into the deeps. Lemon could not move his arms to tread water and he slipped down deeper into the pool, sinking, looking up and seeing the two women above him on the shimmery silver surface, treading water, legs kicking, getting smaller and smaller as he dropped down into Crater Sink, and the music got fainter and fainter. He knew he was going to die down here and he remembered what people said about Crater Sink.
Things go into Crater Sink, but nothing ever comes back out.

The woman stopped, half turned and looked away, seeing something that only she could see. Then she came back to Kate. The Shoshone healing chant was everywhere around them now, the drums almost drowning out the sound of her voice, but they could still make out what she said.

“They are in my house.”

And she was gone in a hissing rush, and the dark went with her. They were alone in Teague's rooms on the top floor of Candleford House, with the lamplight streaming in from the stained-glass windows. The silence pressed in on them, making their ears ring. Teague was the first to react.

He stepped in close, put the muzzle of the shotgun up against Rainey's temple. “She'll be back. If you folks want to see another morning, best to run now.”

Charlie Danziger leveled the BAR and blew Teague's left arm off at the shoulder. Teague went down, writhing, screaming, the shotgun clattering away. Rainey backed into the wall and Kate went to him, took him by the arm, looked at Nick.

“Teague's right. She'll come back.”

“Get him out,” said Nick. “Reed, go with her.”

Lemon felt hands on him, grasping, pulling. He looked up and the women were there, rising up with him. He looked down and saw a shape flying up out of the deep, a woman, her red hair streaming behind her, rising up in a swelling halo of blue light. He kicked and struggled, his lungs bursting, his vision going. The surface was only a little way off, a rippling silvery wall, and beyond it the yellow glimmer of the perimeter lights.

Doris and Helga dragged him upward, their hands tight around his chest. Around them the blue light got brighter and more intense and now they could all hear the high-pitched hissing whine that came out of the limestone wall.

They broke through the surface, kicked for the edge of the pool. Lemon looked back down and saw the woman in the water, less than ten feet down, floating there in the light, hair streaming, her silky robe spreading around her like a blue dahlia, motionless, perfectly still, staring up at them.

Kate and Reed were gone with Rainey. They could hear them going down the stairs, the sound fading away, and then it was just the three of them, Charlie Danziger and Nick Kavanaugh, in the attic rooms, standing over Abel Teague, who was staring up at them, blood flecking his gray skin, holding the shattered stump of his left arm, his shark eyes on them. He licked his lips, spat out blood.

“I told you I can't be killed.”

Danziger looked at Nick. “Seems to be true,” said Danziger. “Should have bled out by now.”

“Yeah,” said Nick, “what's the deal?”

“Glynis said that
she
, that other bitch, she keeps him around, like a pet. Can't kill him.”

Nick gave the matter some thought, watching Abel Teague struggle into a sitting position and back himself up against a wall, clutching his bloody stump, glaring at them. Still not dying.

“Waddya think?” said Danziger. “We could just cut him up in little tiny bits and leave him here for the rats.”

Nick considered that, worked it through.

“No,” said Nick, “She might know how to stitch him back. I have a better idea.”

The woman floated there, looking up at the three intruders. A male, injured, maimed, of no utility at all. But the other two, she could see them clearly against the shining silver surface of the pool, two females. One made of the dark and one made of the light.

She hovered there, between the upper world and the lower one, looking at the two women, feeling a terrible pain growing inside her, anguish and grief and loss. She floated there, looking up at the two women—the
sisters
—and she did not know what to do. Doris and Helga pushed Lemon up onto the rim, and then they slipped back into the pool and drifted there, looking down at the woman in the water, surrounded by the blue light.

“Are we going to die?” said Helga.

“Definitely,” said Doris, looking into the woman's eyes, seeing the green spark inside them, the red hair like flame around her, “but not yet.”

They drove Teague down the stairs, along the galleries, and down more stairs, Teague stumbling and staggering ahead of them, Danziger prodding him with the muzzle of the BAR as they went down and down. They reached the main floor and walked Teague out into the center of the space.

“What now, boys?” said Teague, weaving, breathing hard. Danziger looked at Nick.

“The basement,” said Nick.

Teague looked at the two of them, a terrible understanding coming into him.

“No,” he said.

Danziger worked it through. “The furnace?”

“Yes,” said Nick. “The furnace.”

After that, Teague fought them, and he was a strong man, large and determined. It took the two of them to force him through the cellar door and down a long flight of stone steps into the basement of Candleford House.

It was a low cavelike space, stone and concrete and wooden beams supported by pillars of river rock and concrete. The cellar was dank and reeking of rats and vermin and running water. There was a storm drain in the middle of it, covered by a steel grate, and they could hear the sound of water rushing and gurgling far down a stone shaft.

“Candleford House's connection to water,” said Nick, but Danziger didn't ask what he meant.

At the other end of the basement, up against a wall, lit only by the glow coming in through a slit window, stood a gigantic iron furnace with a massive barred grate. The furnace was cold and slick with mold and rust and the iron grate stood wide open. Behind the grate was a black hole.

“There,” said Nick, giving Teague a violent shove that sent him stumbling over the dirt floor. Teague fought them all the way over to it, and when they got him there he was trembling.

“It won't fire up,” he said, his voice vibrating, his eyes wide, his face full of fear.

“We're not going to fire it up,” said Nick.

“Then what?” said Teague, looking back and forth between the two men.

“You used this as a crematorium, didn't you?”

“No. It was a furnace. Nothing more.”

“Reed met a woman in Gracie,” said Nick, talking to Danziger. “Her name was Beryl Eaton. She was a kind of archivist. She knew all about Candleford House, what this man and his people did there. They used this furnace to burn the dead.”

“A lie,” said Teague. “It was…sanitary.”

“Were they always dead?” asked Nick.

“What do you mean?” said Teague, but his eyes flicked away and they knew he was lying.

“You son of a bitch,” said Danziger.

“You burned them alive sometimes, didn't you? Did you bring down a chair, and sit and watch as they went into the fire?”

“No,” said Teague, backing away from the furnace, away from that awful black hole behind the grating. “They were always dead. I swear it.”

“On what?” said Nick. He pushed the grate open wider. It groaned and moaned against the hinges. Nick lifted the heavy bar that locked it in place.

“Get in.”

Teague shook his head, backed away, tripped and fell into the dirt. “No, I…I won't. I can't.”

Danziger jerked him to his feet, shoved him up against the side of the furnace, held him there.

“He won't die in there,” said Danziger. “We can lock him in, but she'll find a way to free him.”

“They're all in there,” said Nick to Teague, and Teague flinched away from his words. “Everybody you burned alive, every soul you and your people tortured to death, they're all in there. And they're waiting for you, Teague. They've been waiting for a long time. Put him in, Charlie.”

And they did. They slammed the locking bar down and Danziger found a rock to hammer it with until the bar bent down into a hook. It would take a cutting torch to burn through that. The last they saw of Teague was his face pressed up against the grating, trying to force his flesh through the bars.

Reed was standing by the side of his cruiser, the engine running, Rainey and Kate inside. Reed cocked an ear and listened. It was Teague, screaming. Faint, but he could still be heard.

“Jeez. What'd you do with him?”

Nick told him.

“Lovely. But Charlie's got a point. Sooner or later she'll find a way to free him.”

“Doesn't matter,” said Nick. “What she wants is his
mind
. In a little while, he won't have one.”

Nick looked up and down the street. It was long after midnight. “Charlie, you want a lift somewhere?”

Danziger set the BAR down at his hip, reached into his range jacket, pulled out a cigarette, lit it up, pulled in a long breath, grinned at them, his head wreathed in a cloud of cigarette smoke that glowed in the downlight from the streetlamps.

“No, but thanks. I'm good right here. I'm pretty sure there'll be a bus coming along soon.”

And there was.

By the time Coker had reached the street he had phoned Twyla's cell phone over and over again and on each call it had chimed seven times and then gone to her voice mail. So now he was half crazy and he was running to the Lincoln wondering what the hell to do—call this Chi-Chi Pentangeli guy, call Tony Torinetti himself, call the Florida State Patrol and get them down to his—

“Coker, stop it right there.”

He skidded to a halt and had his SIG up and he was less than six feet away from Mavis Crossfire, standing in the dark beside his black Lincoln Town Car. She had her service piece out and it was zeroed on his forehead. Mavis wasn't a great shot, but she was good enough to drill him a new eye from that distance and they both knew it.

“Mavis,” said Coker, his chest clamping up, breathing through his teeth, trying to fight down the panic. “Mavis, I can't do this right now.”

“Boonie should have figured that you'd show up here,” she said, not getting his tone yet. “He's got all his crew up in Niceville staking out Charlie Danziger's ranch.”

“Danziger's? Why?”

“They think you hid the money there.”

“Jeez, Mavis, you saw Charlie's Mondex card.”

“I know. Boonie thinks you had some reserve funds stowed away in cash, and now you need it, which is why you're back in town.”

“I don't need any goddamn cash,” said Coker. “I came back to—”

“Settle with the Italians. Because they killed Charlie. I know. That's why I'm here. I know how your mind works. You get them all settled?”

“Yes. But now I've got a complication—”

“You usually do. Tell me about it in a minute. I gotta know, why'd you do that thing up at Bean Me Joe?”

In spite of everything, Coker had to laugh. “I told you, Mavis, you'd never believe it.”

“It was the tits on that barista, right?”

“How'd you figure that?”

“Am I right?”

“Put your piece down and I'll tell you.”

“You first.”

“Mavis, I'm not gonna shoot you.”

She thought it over.

“Probably not.”

She lowered her gun, and Coker did too. The air went a little slack. The rain was coming down now.

“It was her breasts. Right?”

“Free-range bazongas, Mavis. It was my civic duty to save those amazing free-range bazongas.”

“For posterity?”

“Yeah. They were a national treasure. How'd you know it was me.”

“You made an impression on the barista. When the guys put it out on the net, I knew it was you. So I came down here and waited.”

Coker put the gun back in his coat. “I can't get arrested right now, Mavis.”

“When's a good time?” she said, with a big Coker-like grin. “Does Tuesday work for you?”

“I gotta be three hundred and fifty-nine miles down the road by sunrise, Mavis. It's a matter of life and death.”

“It always is with you. What's happening?”

Coker told her.

“Jesus, Coker. How do you get into these situations? Call the local cops. They'll get right in there.”

Coker shook his head.

“I just had a talk with a guy named Julie Spahn. He says they're waiting for me, that nothing's gonna happen until I show up. They want to do the whole family.
The table is set,
Spahn told me.”

“You believe him?”

“Mavis, I have to. I gotta believe him. Otherwise, I'm just gonna eat my gun right here.”

“Four dead cops,” said Mavis. “I can't forget that. Nobody can.”

“How many live hipsters up at Bean Me Joe?”

“It doesn't work like that. It's karma. It's your karma that Twyla and Bluebell are paying for.”

“Yeah. It probably is. And how I feel right now is karma too. I'm getting more fucking karma than I can handle. Mavis, truly, I gotta leave right now, got to leave right this second.”

She looked at him for a while.

“How far did you say?”

“Three hundred and fifty-nine miles.”

“Crow flies or interstate?”

“Interstate.”

She looked at her watch.

“Sunrise is in five hours. You're never gonna cover that distance in five hours.”

“I will at a hundred and twenty miles an hour.”

“You'll have every patrol cop and county sheriff in the southern states on your ass. You'll have choppers buzzing around you like bumblebees.”

“Nothing else I can do. I don't have a chopper and there's no private jet around I can hire.”

“You need a cop car. Lights and sirens.”

“Don't have that either.”

Mavis looked at Coker for a time. Coker felt her look and it stung. He wasn't used to caring and he didn't like it one bit. Finally she spoke.

“I do.”

Delores Maranzano was sitting in her master bedroom in a cobalt-blue nightgown made mostly of curved air and sinful intentions and having a glass of white wine when Mavis Crossfire appeared in her doorway. She jumped so high her wineglass hit the ceiling and then bounced across the room. She sat up in the bed, clutching the sheets around her free-range bazongas.

“Settle down, Delores,” said Mavis, who was dog bone tired. “I'm not here to arrest you.”

“Sergeant Crossfire, isn't it?” said Delores, whose mood was greatly improved by the news that she wasn't about to get shoved into a squad car.

Besides, she had always kind of
liked
Mavis Crossfire, who was actually very pretty in that big dangerous Nordic Valkyrie kind of way.

“Then why
are
you here?”

“Well, it might have something to do with the naked old buzzard who took a tumble from your bathroom window a little while back.”

Delores said, “Oh dear,” and made big eyes and let the sheets drop away from her breasts just enough to raise the room temperature a few degrees. Mavis watched her do it and sighed to herself.

“Where's your damned dog?” she asked.

“Frankie Twice? He's in the bathroom. He has a bed in there. He's had a trying night.”

“So have I,” said Mavis, stepping into the room. She was carrying a large plastic cage with a large nonplastic cat inside it.

“Whose cat is that?” asked Delores, sitting up and leaning forward, giving Mavis a panoramic view of her bona fides. Delores had very fine bona fides.

“Her name is Mildred Pierce. She was in my squad car. I've got to call a cab.”

“What happened to your squad car?”

“I loaned it to a friend. Can I put her in the bathroom with your dog?”

“Well, that might upset Frankie Twice.”

“He'll have to cope,” said Mavis, walking across the room. She still had her ankle wrapped, but she was managing pretty well. She opened the door and set the cat carrier down inside it and closed the door.

Delores did not like that. “She can't get
out
of that cage, can she?”

“If she can, we'll sure as hell hear about it,” said Mavis, turning to look at the huge flat-screen that took up most of Delores Maranzano's bedroom wall. “What are you watching?”

“
Pride and Prejudice
,” said Delores.

“The one with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle?”

“Yes. It's my favorite.”

Mavis took off her uniform jacket, laid it across one of Delores's bedroom chairs.

“Mine too,” she said, and sat down in the chair.

Delores studied her for a while, making a little frowny face, because she always did that when she had to think something through. “You look pretty tired, Sergeant Crossfire.”

“I am,” said Mavis. “I am very damn tired.”

“Are you still on duty?”

Mavis looked at her watch. “No. Technically my shift ended at midnight.”

“Then perhaps you would like a drink?”

“I would,” said Mavis, and Delores got out of bed and walked across the room to get another glass. There were few women in this part of the state who could cross a room like Delores Maranzano. She came back to Mavis and leaned way down and over to hand her a crystal flute full to the brim with ice-cold white wine. Mavis took the glass and the Magical Maranzano Boobs of Doom and the obvious hint.

“It's pinot grigio,” said Delores, standing in front of Mavis, looking down at her.

“Then may I propose a toast?” said Mavis.

“Certainly,” said Delores. “To whom?”

“To Charlie Danziger. He loved this stuff.”

“To Charlie Danziger,” said Delores. “He died, didn't he, Sergeant Crossfire? A while back?”

“Yes he did. Charlie Danziger was a good friend of mine, Delores. A very good friend.”

Delores felt a little shiver of fear slither up her spine. She couldn't read the woman at all.

“How did he die, Sergeant Crossfire?”

“He got shot. Saving my life.”

“How
awful
,” said Delores, putting a hand to her throat and dropping to her knees in front of Mavis, her nightgown slipping partly off her shoulders. A tableau of sympathy, with fabulous breasts. “How awful. Do you have any idea who did it?”

“Yes, I do. They used to work for your husband.”

“Oh, no. Not that awful shooting in the hills?”

“Yes. That awful shooting in the hills.”

“I had
no idea
. My nephew, Manolo, was behind that. A bad person, he was. Full of rage. And he was crazy with grief about Frankie. If only I had known, Sergeant Crossfire. I might have stopped it, and you would still have your friend, Mr. Danziger.”

“Yes,” said Mavis. “If only you had known.”

Delores sighed, put a sympathetic hand on Mavis's left knee, let it rest there. “I do feel your loss,” she said.

“Well, all dead but one,” said Mavis.

Delores leaned in closer. “I know what you're going through. I too have lost a loved one. My own dear Frankie. I feel his absence every night, right here, deep in my bosom.” She put her left hand over her right breast and sighed a weary sigh. Plus there was lip tremble.

“And…are the police still hunting for that last…person, Sergeant Crossfire?”

“No,” said Mavis. “That's all taken care of.”

Delores seemed to find that reassuring. “Closure,” she said. “It's so important. In these last few weeks, since poor Frankie passed away, I have learned so much about closure and the grieving process,” Delores said in a breathy whisper, sliding her hand up Mavis's thigh. “And there is great comfort to be found in sharing grief. Grief is a lonely burden, but sharing it with another person so heals a troubled heart, Sergeant Crossfire, don't you think?”

“I couldn't agree more,” said Mavis. “I'm always ready to share some grief. Matter of fact, I'm kind of known for it.”

Delores gave Mavis her very best up-from-under. “And do you think you might…share your grief…with
me
?”

Mavis smiled, reached out, and held her cheek. “Oh yes,” she said. “And call me Mavis.”