The Servants of Twilight (29 page)
“Joey!”
Nothing.
“Joey!”
Nothing.
The smoke stung her eyes. It was hard to see.
“Joooeeeeey!”
Then she spotted him. He was lying at the back of the property, near the gate to the alley, facedown on the rain-soaked grass, motionless. Chewbacca was standing over him, nuzzling his neck, trying to get a response out of him, but the boy wouldn’t respond, couldn’t, just lay there, still, so very still.
36
She knelt and
nudged the dog out of the way.
nudged the dog out of the way.
She put her hands on Joey’s shoulders.
For a moment she was afraid to turn him over, afraid that his face had been smashed in or his eyes punctured by flying debris.
Sobbing, coughing as another tide of smoke lapped out from the burning ruins behind them, she finally rolled him gently onto his back. His face was unmarked. There were smears of dirt but no cuts or visible fractures, and the rain was swiftly washing even the dirt away. She could see no blood. Thank God.
His eyelids fluttered. Opened. His eyes were unfocused.
He had merely been knocked unconscious.
The relief that surged through her was so powerful that it made her feel buoyant, as if she were floating inches off the ground.
She held him, and when his eyes finally cleared, she checked him for concussion by holding up three fingers in front of his face and asking him how many he saw.
He blinked and looked confused.
“How many fingers, honey?” she repeated.
He wheezed a few times, getting smoke out of his lungs, then said, “Three. Three fingers.”
“Now how many?”
“Two.”
Having freed himself from the thorn-studded rose bushes, Max Steck joined them.
To Joey, Christine said, “Do you know who I am?”
He seemed puzzled, not because he had trouble finding the answer but because he couldn’t figure out why she was asking the question. “You’re Mom,” he said.
“And what’s your name?”
“Don’t you know my name?”
“I want to see if you know it,” she said.
“Well, sure, I know it,” he said. “Joey. Joseph. Joseph Anthony Scavello.”
No concussion.
Relieved, she hugged him tight.
Sandy Breckenstein crouched beside them, coughing smoke out of his lungs. His forehead was cut above his left eye, and blood sheathed one side of his face, but he wasn’t seriously hurt.
“Can the boy be moved?” Breckenstein asked.
“He’s fine,” Max Steck said.
“Then let’s get out of here. They may come nosing around to see if the explosives took care of us.”
Max unlatched the gate, pushed it open.
Chewbacca dashed through, into the alleyway, and the rest of them followed.
It was a narrow alley, with the backyards of houses on both sides of it, as well as a garage here and there, and lots of garbage cans awaiting pickup. There were no gutters or drains, and water streamed down the width of the one-lane passage, rushing toward storm culverts at the bottom of the hill.
As the four of them sloshed into the middle of the shallow stream, trying to decide which way to go, another gate opened two doors up the hill, and a tall man in a hooded yellow rain slicker came out of another yard. Even in the rain and the gloom, Christine could see that he was carrying a gun.
Max brought up his revolver, gripping it in both hands, and shouted, “Drop it!”
But the stranger opened fire.
Max fired, too, three shots in quick succession, and he was a much better marksman than his enemy. The would-be assassin was hit in the leg and fell even as the sound of the shots roared up the hillside. He rolled, splashing through the rivulet, his yellow rain slicker flapping like the wings of an enormous and brightly colored bird. He collided with two garbage cans, knocked them over, half-disappeared under a spreading mound of refuse. The gun flew out of his hand, spun along the macadam.
They didn’t even wait to see if the man was dead or alive. There might be other Twilighters nearby.
“Let’s get out of this neighborhood,” Max said urgently. “Get to a phone, call this in, get a backup team out here.”
With Sandy and Chewbacca leading the way and Max bringing up the rear, they ran down the hill, slipping and sliding a bit on the slick macadam but avoiding a fall.
Christine looked back a couple of times.
The wounded man had not gotten up from the garbage in which he’d landed.
No one was pursuing them.
Yet.
They turned right at the first corner, raced along a flat street that ran across the side of the hill, past a startled mailman who jumped out of their way. A ferocious wind sprang up, as if giving chase. As they fled, the wind-shaken trees tossed and shuddered around them, and the brittle branches of palms clattered noisily, and an empty soda can tumbled along at their heels.
After two blocks, they left the flat street and turned into another steeply sloped avenue. Overhanging trees formed a tunnel across the roadway and added to the gloom of the sunless day, so that it almost seemed like evening rather than morning.
Breath burned in Christine’s throat. Her eyes still stung from the smoke they had left behind them, and her heart was beating so hard and fast that her chest ached. She didn’t know how much farther she could go at this pace. Not far.
She was surprised that Joey’s little legs could pump this fast. The rest of them weren’t keeping back much on account of the boy; he could hold his own.
A car was coming up the hill, headlights stabbing out before it, cutting through the thinning mist and the deep shadows cast by the huge trees.
Christine was suddenly sure that Grace Spivey’s people were behind those lights. She grabbed Joey by one shoulder, turned him in another direction.
Sandy shouted at her to stay with him, and Max shouted something she couldn’t make out, and Chewbacca began barking loudly, but she ignored them.
Didn’t they see death coming?
She heard the car’s engine growing louder behind her. It sounded feral, hungry.
Joey stumbled on a canted section of sidewalk, went down, skidding into someone’s front yard.
She threw herself on him to protect him from the gunfire she expected to hear at any second.
The car drew even with them. The sound of its laboring engine filled the world.
She cried out,
“No!”
“No!”
But the car went by without stopping. It hadn’t been Grace Spivey’s people, after all.
Christine felt foolish as Max Steck helped her to her feet. The entire world wasn’t after them. It only seemed that way.
37
In downtown Laguna
Beach, in an Arco Service Station they took shelter from the storm and from Grace Spivey’s disciples. After Sandy Breckenstein showed the manager his PI license and explained enough of the situation to gain cooperation, they were allowed to bring Chewbacca into the service bay, as long as they tied him securely to a tool rack. Sandy didn’t want to let the dog outside, not only because it would get wet—it was already soaked and shivering—but because there was a possibility, however insignificant, that Spivey’s people might be cruising around town, looking for them, and might spot the dog.
Beach, in an Arco Service Station they took shelter from the storm and from Grace Spivey’s disciples. After Sandy Breckenstein showed the manager his PI license and explained enough of the situation to gain cooperation, they were allowed to bring Chewbacca into the service bay, as long as they tied him securely to a tool rack. Sandy didn’t want to let the dog outside, not only because it would get wet—it was already soaked and shivering—but because there was a possibility, however insignificant, that Spivey’s people might be cruising around town, looking for them, and might spot the dog.
While Max stayed with Christine and Joey at the rear of the service bays, away from doors and windows, Sandy used the pay phone in the small, glassed-in sales room. He called Klemet-Harrison. Charlie wasn’t in the office. Sandy spoke with Sherry Ordway, the receptionist, and explained enough of their situation to make her understand the seriousness of it, but he wouldn’t tell her where they were or at what number they could be reached. He doubted that Sherry was the informant who was reporting to the Church of the Twilight, but he could not be absolutely sure where her loyalties might lie.
He said, “Find Charlie. I’ll only talk to him.”
“But how’s he going to know where to reach you?” Sherry asked.
“I’ll call back in fifteen minutes.”
“If I can’t get hold of him in fifteen minutes—”
“I’ll call back every fifteen minutes until you do,” he said, and hung up.
He returned to the humid service bays, which smelled of oil and grease and gasoline. A three-year-old Toyota was up on one of the two hydraulic racks, and a fox-faced man in gray coveralls was replacing the muffler. Sandy told Max and Christine that it was going to take a while to reach Charlie Harrison.
The pump jockey, a young blond guy, was mounting new tires on a set of custom chrome wheels, and Joey was watching, fascinated by the specialized power tools, obviously bubbling over with questions but trying not to bother the man with more than a few of them. The poor kid was soaked to the skin, muddy, bedraggled, yet he wasn’t complaining or whining as most children would have been doing in these circumstances. He was a damned good kid, and he seemed able to find a positive side to any situation; in this case, getting to watch tires being mounted appeared to be sufficient compensation for the ordeal he had just been through.
Seven months ago, Sandy’s wife, Maryann, had given birth to a boy. Troy Franklin Breckenstein. Sandy hoped his son would turn out to be as well-behaved as Joey Scavello.
Then he thought: If I’m going to wish for anything, maybe I’d better wish that I live long enough to see Troy grow up, whether or not he’s well-behaved.
When fifteen minutes had passed, Sandy returned to the sales room out front, went to the phone by the candy machine, and called Sherry Ordway at HQ. She had beeped Charlie on his telepage, but he hadn’t yet called in.
The rain bounced off the macadam in front of the station, and the street began to disappear under a deep puddle, and the pump jockey finished another tire, and Sandy was jumpier than ever when he called the office a third time.
Sherry said, “Charlie’s at the police lab with Henry Rankin, trying to find out if forensics discovered anything about those bodies at the Scavello house that would help him tie them to Grace Spivey.”
“That sounds like a long shot.”
“I guess it’s the best he has,” Sherry said.
That was more bad news.
She gave him the number where Charlie could be reached, and he jotted it down in a small notebook he carried.
He dialed the forensics lab, asked for Charlie, and had him on the line right away. He told him about the attack on Miriam Rankin’s house, laying it out in more detail than he’d given Sherry Ordway.
Charlie had heard the worst of it from Sherry, but he still sounded shocked and dismayed by how quickly Spivey had located the Scavellos.
“They’re both all right?” he asked.
“Dirty and wet, but unhurt,” Sandy assured him.
“So we’ve got a turncoat among us,” Charlie said.
“Looks that way. Unless you were followed when you left their house last night.”
“I’m sure we weren’t. But maybe the car we used had a bug on it.”
“Could be.”
“But probably not,” Charlie said. “I hate to admit it, but we’ve probably got a mole in our operation. Where are you calling from?”
Instead of telling him, Sandy said, “Is Henry Rankin with you?”
“Yeah. Right here. Why? You want to talk to him?”
“No. I just want to know if he can hear this.”
“Not your side of it.”
“If I tell you where we are, it’s got to stay with you. Only you,” Sandy said. He quickly added: “It’s not that I have reason to suspect Henry of being Spivey’s plant. I don’t. I trust Henry more than most. The point is, I don’t really trust
anyone
but you. You, me—and Max, because if it was Max, he’d already have snuffed the kid.”
anyone
but you. You, me—and Max, because if it was Max, he’d already have snuffed the kid.”
“If we do have a bad apple,” Charlie said, “it’s most likely a secretary or bookkeeper or something like that.”
“I know,” Sandy said. “But I’ve got a responsibility to the woman and the kid. And my own life’s on the line here, too, as long as I’m with them.”
“Tell me where you are,” Charlie said. “I’ll keep it to myself, and I’ll come alone.”
Sandy told him.
“This weather . . . better give me forty-five minutes,” Charlie said.
“We’re not going anywhere,” Sandy said.
He hung up and went out to the garage to be with the others.
When the rains had first come, yesterday evening, there had been a brief period of lightning, but none in the past twelve hours. Most California storms were much quieter than those in other parts of the country. Lightning was not a common accompaniment of the rains here, and wildly violent electrical storms were rare. But now, with its hills grown dangerously soggy and with the threat of mudslides at hand, with its streets awash, with its coastline hammered by wind-whipped waves almost twice as high as usual, Laguna Beach was suddenly assaulted by fierce bolts of lightning as well. With a crash of accompanying thunder that shook the walls of the building, a cataclysmic bolt stabbed to earth somewhere nearby, and the gray day was briefly, flickeringly bright. With strobelike effect, the light pulsed through the open doors of the garage and through the dirty high-set windows, bringing a moment of frenzied life to the shadows, which twisted and danced for a second or two. Another bolt quickly followed with an even harder clap of thunder, and loose windows rattled in their frames, and then a third bolt smashed down, and the wet macadam in front of the station glistened and flashed with scintillant reflections of nature’s bright anger.
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