The Third Hill North of Town (24 page)

Edgar didn’t care for the phrase “funny farm,” but he’d decided it was wiser not to scold Mary for using it. He faced the Hunters once more and shook his head, relieved to have a question he could answer without prevaricating.

“Julianna has no memory of her life in Bangor.” He wanted something to soothe his nerves but his fingers hovered indecisively between the cigarettes in his shirt pocket and the candy in his suit coat. “That’s why I think it’s far more likely they’re on their way back to where she grew up. She thinks her home is still there.”

Orville Horvath’s high, reedy voice called out in the night, telling his subordinates to pack up for the night, but the Hunters and Edgar had barely heard him.

“And where exactly is that?” Mary’s lips barely moved.

“A little town in northern Missouri called Pawnee,” Edgar had answered.

The wind stirred restlessly, as if something were troubling its sleep. The few remaining coals in the ruins of the dairy farmhouse had flared up, and the firemen and officers on the lawn behind them began moving across the trampled and scorched grass. Inexplicably, the hair on the back of Edgar’s neck stood up as he watched the men drift toward the Hunters and himself like ghosts in a graveyard. The officers’ flashlights began snapping off in the darkness as they passed by without speaking on the way to their cars; two or three went out at the same time, but the others flickered off within seconds, too, leaving only the moonlight and the stars to see by.

Sam, too, appeared to be unnerved by the spectral scene, but if Mary felt a similar unease, she didn’t show it.

“Why didn’t Gabriel say something to us about this?” She’d paused, her dark eyes studying Edgar with disturbing shrewdness. “And why aren’t the two of you already on your way to Pawnee, if that’s where you think you can find Julianna?”

Edgar was growing more ashamed of himself by the second; his fear of inviting a lawsuit by admitting what he suspected about Julianna now seemed both self-serving and cowardly.

“I haven’t told him yet,” Edgar mumbled, sweating through the back of his suit coat as he’d glanced over at the Cadillac. He could see Gabriel’s dark form sitting behind the steering wheel, huge and motionless. “I didn’t want to say anything until I was more certain.”

Mary Hunter had reached an opinion by then about the type of person Edgar Reilly was. She was far from impressed, yet she was nonetheless thankful he had chosen to speak up at last—and that he’d approached her and Sam before telling Gabriel Dapper. If Gabriel had found out earlier, he’d likely already be halfway to Missouri by now, and she and Sam would’ve had no chance to run interference for Elijah.

She’d searched the darkness again to make sure no one could hear them. She could see the outlines of tiny Orville Horvath and the massive rottweiler still standing by the doorway of the barn, but all the other men had already left or were in their vehicles and pulling away down the driveway.

“Very well,” she’d said at last, turning back to Edgar. “I’m assuming you didn’t say anything to the fire marshal for . . . similar reasons?”

Edgar nodded, looking sheepish. “Should I tell him now, do you think?”

Mary pursed her lips. “My son got shot at by the last policeman he saw, Dr. Reilly,” she said. “There’s blood in your car, and for all we know Elijah may have been badly hurt. As far I’m concerned, the police don’t need to know a God-blessed thing.”

Her voice was soft, but there was something in it that had made Edgar’s tongue cleave to the roof of his mouth. Unable to reply, he’d nodded ardently, just to make certain she knew where he stood.

The three of them had walked over to the Cadillac and broken the news to Gabriel. Gabriel rolled down his window as they approached, and Mary told him everything Edgar had just related to Sam and herself. Gabriel listened in silence until she was finished—his large, unblinking eyes intent on her face but also occasionally flicking over to an increasingly uncomfortable Edgar.

“Jesus Christ, Doc,” Gabriel had murmured when Mary was done. “Don’t you think this was probably something you should have mentioned?”

Edgar’s hand drifted into his pants pocket and fingered a butterscotch toffee he’d been saving for an emergency. “I’m sorry, Gabriel. I didn’t want to say anything because it was only speculation—and still is, by the way—but I was very wrong not to share what I was thinking with you.”

Gabriel stared hard at the older man. “But you honest-to-God think my mother
knows
what she’s doing?”

“No, no, I wouldn’t go quite that far,” Edgar said quickly. “I’m just saying that Julianna’s psyche is very complicated, and she’s under a great deal of strain.” He glanced over at the smoking ruins and swallowed before continuing. “But we do know she already committed arson once, before she was committed to the hospital.”

“That was completely different,” Gabriel protested. “That was a garage, and no one got hurt. And Mom didn’t have any idea what she’d done.” He paused for a minute, stewing, then returned his attention to Mary as something else occurred to him. “Even if Dr. Reilly is right”—his face made it clear how much he doubted this—“it still doesn’t explain what your son is doing with her. Why would he be
helping
Mom, after attacking her? What’s in it for him? Why take her someplace he doesn’t know anything about, halfway across the damn country? What about the other guy that’s with them, for Chrissake?”

Mary had sighed wearily. “I don’t have any answers, Gabriel,” she said, “but what I
do
know is that we’re not doing any good just standing around here, twiddling our thumbs.” She put her hands on Gabriel’s door and leaned down to look directly in his face. “So here’s the deal. We’re going to Missouri, and I think you should come with us.” Gabriel began to interrupt but she talked over him. “I know you don’t believe your mother has had any say in what’s happened to her, but what if Dr. Reilly is right, and you’re wrong? What if she’s headed
exactly
where she wants to go?”

“It’s just a guess,” Edgar had demurred anxiously.

Gabriel made a sour face. “What if I’m
not
wrong, and we end up a thousand miles away from where we need to be?” His thick fingers had drummed restlessly on the steering wheel as anger resurfaced in him, making him want to lash out at the self-possessed woman leaning on his car. “What if your kid and his buddy have dumped my mother’s body in a river someplace, and are now headed to Key West, or the Grand Canyon, or wherever the hell else they feel like slaughtering people?”

Mary had remained unruffled. “Then we can drive to Key West or the Grand Canyon
after
we check out Missouri.” She paused. “Or do you have a better idea? If you do, I’ll listen.”

Gabriel’s scowl had deepened. “It’s a wild-goose chase, Mary.” He saw the lines of fatigue etched around her eyes and spoke less harshly. “I’m sorry, but that’s all it is. If you think that’s what you should do, though, then who’s stopping you? Go find Pawnee, Missouri, or whatever the hell it’s called, and good luck to you. But if it’s all the same to you, I’m going to stick around here until I hear something that makes more sense.”

Mary had leaned in closer to the Cadillac. “I’d be happy to part company with you, Gabriel,” she said bluntly. “You think my son is a killer, and that makes you dangerous. But if your mother—and I’m saying
if,
Gabriel, so please don’t throw another hissy fit—
if
your mother is somehow forcing Elijah to stay with her, then we may need you to deal with her. She doesn’t know Sam and me from Adam, and if we can’t get through to her, there’s no telling what we might have to do to save Elijah. The last thing on earth I want is to see your mother harmed, but what choice will we have if she won’t let our son go? What will she make us do? Don’t you think you should be there to help her through this?”

Mary’s eyes were unblinking, and her quiet voice was hypnotic. Suddenly unsure of himself, Gabriel looked past Mary’s shoulder at the blackened ruins of the house, his fingers still drumming (in seven-beat patterns) on the steering wheel. Mary had impulsively reached through the window and put her hand on his wrist. Her fingers were as small as a child’s, but they were warm and strong as they gripped him.

“Please come with us, Gabriel,” she’d murmured. “Your mother needs you, and so do we.”

 

Edgar’s original intention had been to drive his own car, but Mary and Sam had known without asking that the police would not release the Edsel to its rightful owner during an ongoing investigation. Since Gabriel was still visibly annoyed with him, Edgar thus found himself in the Hunters’ pickup an hour and a half later, missing the comfort and power of the Edsel and obsessing over Mary’s apparent disdain for him and his M&M’s.

Edgar now looked over his shoulder, squinting through the rear window of the cab at the headlights of the Cadillac tailing them.

“Gabriel is still there,” he murmured unnecessarily.

Sam nodded to acknowledge Edgar’s observation, his eyes flicking to the rearview mirror and then back to the road. Mary just kept staring straight ahead, though, as if she hadn’t heard.

Edgar sulked, feeling snubbed.

Would it kill her to eat just ONE fucking M
&
M?!!
he fumed, resting his arms on his belly as he stared out the window.

Chapter 9

S
al Cavetti gazed through the windshield of the Volkswagen Beetle parked alongside the gas pump at his father’s service station and composed, on the spot, a free verse poem:

“A naked-breasted, narcoleptic Negro and a weary, willowy white boy a-snooze in bucket seats.” Sal paused, putting both hands on the Beetle’s hood and leaning as close to the windshield as he could get. “In back, a fey-faced female slumbers like a dehydrated daffodil,” he continued, “waiting for the sunlight’s wet kiss to re-blossom her maternal milky momhood into wakefulness.”

Sal was the sole employee at the only gas station in Wainwright, Indiana. He was twenty-nine years old, had a ponytail and a luxurious red beard, and often referred to himself, without a trace of irony, as “the Allen Ginsberg of eastern Indiana.”

It was 8:47 a.m. on Sunday, and Sal had breakfasted that morning on three walnut brownies, each laced with a substantial amount of marijuana. Marijuana was a reliable muse for Sal, but he could already tell this Sunday morning in June was going to be particularly productive.

“White-black-white, like a Wonder Bread Chocolate sandwich,” he intoned. “A sweet snack for the eyes, boy-girl-boy in a stubby lime-green car. The glue-bond of spirit-love lies between their somnolent, sun-dappled souls like invisible mayonnaise.”

Jon Tate opened his eyes and saw a hairy, beer-bellied giant of a man in jeans and a dirty white T-shirt looming over the Beetle, staring in at them and apparently talking to himself. The man’s face was close enough for Jon to get a good look at a small forest of hair sprouting from his large nostrils.

Jon recoiled. “Jesus Christ!” he yelped, flailing his arms and legs.

His seat was reclined back a few inches and he scrambled to find the knob to bring it to its normal position again. Elijah stirred in the passenger seat and Julianna raised her head and blinked in the hot sunlight.

They had pulled into Wainwright at a little after 5:00 a.m. that morning, running on the fumes of their reserve tank. After noting the business hours sign on the service station door, they’d decided to wait until it opened at nine, assuming they would find no other filling station open before then within range of their remaining fuel. The entire downtown area of Wainwright was less than two blocks long, with no city hall, sheriff’s office, or streetlights in evidence, so it seemed unlikely they’d draw attention to themselves. After Jon turned off the engine, all three of them had promptly passed out and slept through the sunrise, with the windows on both doors cracked wide for air.

“Wake up, you guys!” Jon demanded, finally getting his seat upright. “We’ve got trouble!”

He had his hand on the ignition key, ready to make a run for it, but even though the red-bearded stranger in front of the car was still leaning on the hood and gazing in at them with an unsettling intensity, Jon hesitated.

Why is he grinning like that?
he wondered, unnerved.

Elijah came fully awake in an instant and also jumped in fright. Sal’s head was less than a foot away from the windshield by this point, and his smile reminded Elijah of the wolf character in the picture book of
The Three Little Pigs
his mother used to read to him when he was a child.

“What the hell
?
” he hissed, frantically seeking his own seat knob. “What’s wrong with him?”

Julianna sat forward. “I think it’s Larry Badder,” she said, frowning uncertainly at their scruffy observer. “But Larry’s beard is black, isn’t it?”

Sal continued beaming in at them all, admiring the contrasting colors and contours of their alarmed faces, framed perfectly by the windshield. “A trinity of touring tellurians watches me,” he extemporized, “as if I, and not they, were a portrait hung in the museum of man.” This image so delighted him he began to chuckle with pride at his powers of invention. “Who is the painter? Who is the painting?”

Sal Cavetti had grown up in Wainwright, but had left home to attend college in Indianapolis as a philosophy major. Midway through his freshman year, though, he’d happily stumbled upon his true calling as a poet (at the very same party where he was introduced to his herbal muse) and dropped out of school to work for his father at the family gas station. He found the work much to his liking; pumping gas and performing oil changes left his mind free to wrestle with the universal nature of man, and he thought himself the luckiest person in the world—if still sadly undervalued as a poet. His father, especially, seemed incapable of acknowledging Sal’s gifts, but Sal took no offense when Benito Cavetti referred to his son’s poetry as “the most God-awful crap I’ve ever heard.” Sal knew the hallmark of poetic genius was to be unappreciated, and he also knew that his father and the rest of the world would one day sing his praises.

“Good morning,” he said, raising his voice so the three strangers in the Beetle could hear him. A crow sitting on the fender of his dad’s tow truck across the parking lot caught his eye, and he took a few seconds to delight in its sleek black feathers before remembering what else he’d intended to say. “You folks need gas?”

Jon and Elijah glanced at each other as the man straightened again and removed a key chain from his pants pocket. As he shuffled over to unlock the padlock on the fuel pump, both boys slowly relaxed.

“I guess he works here,” Jon breathed to Elijah. “For a minute there I thought we were in deep shit.” He unrolled his window all the way and stuck his head out. “Can you fill it up, please?”

Sal nodded, looking forward to inhaling the gas fumes. “I’ll check your oil, too.”

Julianna brightened. “Yes, that’s Larry,” she said. “I’d recognize that voice anywhere.”

Jon opened his door and stepped out onto the asphalt parking lot. He groaned as he stretched, turning from one side to the other to crack his spine.

“Do you have a bathroom?” he asked.

Sal glanced over at him affably. “Yep. I’ll have to open up the station first, though. It’s inside.” He stared at the padlock in his hand, then at the gas pump, and lastly at the front door of the station. “An earth-child ambles through an orchard of possibility,” he rhapsodized, “plucking choices like immaculate apples from serpent-bejeweled trees.”

“What?” Jon asked, his face going blank.

Elijah opened his door, as well, and turned to face Julianna. “Could you hand me my shoes, please?” He indicated the space behind the backseat, hoping his sneakers and socks had dried enough by now that he could wear them.

Julianna began to do as he asked but then halted and made a face. “Oh, you! You know full well you didn’t bring any shoes with you today, Ben Taylor. Stop teasing me.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Elijah muttered.

“I’m a poet,” Sal explained patiently to Jon by the gas pump. “I’m the Allen Ginsberg of eastern Indiana.”

Jon blinked. “Oh.” He chewed on his tongue to keep from laughing.

Julianna’s expression soured in the Volkswagen. “Ginsberg is entirely overrated,” she whispered to Elijah. “Anybody who says differently should have his head examined.”

Elijah froze. He’d been preparing to step from the car and let Julianna out so he could crawl into the back and retrieve his shoes, but he’d forgotten what he was doing the moment she spoke. He stared at her over his shoulder.

Julianna’s young girl persona had withdrawn again, ousted by the older and far more mature woman Elijah now assumed was the “real” Julianna. Not only was her voice lower and more decisive, but her face had grown sterner, and her back had straightened, too, adding a striking elegance to her posture. For the first time since Elijah had known her, she looked at ease in the formal green dress, as if she wore such things all the time.

It’s like she’s got a short circuit,
he thought, torn between apprehension and pity.
A wire gets jiggled or something and she’s normal again, but only for a second.

He couldn’t imagine what she must be thinking during these flashes of sanity. Maybe some small part of her knew all along what was happening, and now and then it broke free, only to be trapped again by a waiting hand, and stuffed back into the cage of her madness. If there were only a way to keep her out of that cage for even a few minutes . . .

His pulse quickened.

If Julianna would just stay like she was now long enough to make a phone call, she could tell the cops what had been going on! They wouldn’t believe Elijah or Jon, but they’d believe her!

“Why don’t you like Ginsberg, Julianna?” he asked urgently, his fingers clenching the door frame. He couldn’t have cared less about the poetry of Allen Ginsberg, but the newly awakened hope in his breast warned him not to change the subject until he was sure Julianna could focus on something more useful.

She toyed with a seatbelt latch and peered through the open door at the red and white gas pump. “It’s not that I don’t like him. I do.” She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose, as if her head hurt. “But so many other poets out there are just as good as he is, and I feel he gets an unfair amount of publicity.”

“Who do you like, then?” Elijah prodded, suddenly desperate to not allow her mind to slip away again.

She opened her eyes and met his gaze. There was an enormous, active intelligence in her expression; she seemed to be reading his mind and his heart at the same time. Elijah was certain she knew who he was, at last, and was going to tell him something that would make it possible for him to go home again, putting an end to all the sorrow and terror of the past twenty-four hours; he was barely able to contain his excitement.

She started to answer, but a wide yawn erased whatever she’d intended to say. She covered her mouth and shook her head, waiting for the yawn to run its course.

“I don’t know about you, Ben,” she said at last, smiling warmly, “but I could eat a horse.”

Elijah almost bit through his lower lip to keep from screaming.

Meanwhile, Sal was still juggling his options at the gas pump. “Should I fill your car first, or let you into the restroom?” he asked Jon, feeling as if a little spur in the flanks from a nonliterary layman might be helpful. “Either way works for me.”

Jon told him to fill the tank first and Sal nodded agreeably, removing the hose from the pump and making his way around to the front of the Beetle. He was moving in what seemed to be slow motion and Jon started to feel exposed again as a station wagon with two adults and three children, all staring at him, passed by on the highway.

“Don’t worry about checking the oil,” he said. “We’re kind of in a hurry.”

“Haste makes waste, daddy-o,” Sal answered.

Elijah got out of the car and turned around to let Julianna out, too. The pavement was already hot under his feet as he moved away from the door to allow her to rise beside him.

“I wish we still had Daddy’s car instead of Jon’s,” she murmured, wincing as she stretched stiff muscles.

Elijah slid into the backseat to get his sneakers. They hadn’t dried yet but he put them on anyway, figuring he could take them off again after he’d used the restroom. He was tying the laces when Jon opened the driver’s door and leaned in.

“Hand me my stuff, will you?” Jon indicated the plastic bag with his books and the stolen money on the floor behind the passenger seat. He lowered his voice and grinned. “Did you hear the gas guy say he thinks he’s Allen Ginsberg?”

Elijah grinned back and passed the older boy his things. “Maybe we should get his autograph,” he whispered.

Jon snorted. “Yeah, I’ll be sure to do that.” He shook his head, untying the bag handles. “Jesus, people are weird.”

“What books are those?” Elijah had noticed the paperbacks when Jon had paid for gas at the last station, but he’d been too intent on the wad of cash at the time to get a good look at any of Jon’s other possessions.

Jon removed his three treasures from the bag and lovingly fingered their spines. “
Walden, The Fellowship of the Ring,
and
Moby Dick.
I had to leave almost everything else in my apartment, but I couldn’t stand to be without these guys.” He put them back in the plastic, feeling oddly vulnerable. “Do you like to read?”

Elijah blushed a little, thinking about what he’d been reading lately and how much trouble his preoccupation with unpleasant news had gotten him into at home.

“Yeah,” he said. “Mostly magazines and newspapers, though.” He glanced involuntarily over at the window of the station, trying to see inside. “Do you think maybe they sell U.S. News and World Report here?”

His blush deepened as Jon raised his eyebrows. Before either of them could say anything else they became aware that the attendant and Julianna were talking by the pump as the bearded man returned the gas nozzle to its slot.

“My name is Sal, not Larry,” he was saying. “Sal, as in Salvatore. But my pen name is Salvation. Salvation Onassis Cavetti.”

Julianna made an exasperated noise. “Don’t you start pulling my leg, too, Larry Badder. Did Ben put you up to this?”

Jon sighed. “We better get out there before she says something she shouldn’t,” he muttered. He dug around in the plastic bag and took out his toothbrush and razor. “Can you keep an eye on her when it’s my turn in the john?”

Elijah nodded. “Sure.” He looked over at the station again. He felt stupid for asking about a magazine; what he really wanted was a toothbrush of his own and some deodorant.

And a shirt, too,
he thought belatedly. He was surprised at himself for almost forgetting to add this item to his wish list. Before the tragic events of the previous evening his partial nudity would have been foremost on his mind, but it hadn’t even occurred to him to worry about it for quite a while. He tilted his head to sniff at an armpit and winced at the sour odor.

Jon smiled sympathetically. “Yeah, I’m getting pretty ripe, too,” he said. “I doubt they sell much of anything here, but if they’ve got any BO juice I’ll get us some.” He paused. “We can see if they have magazines, too, I guess, while we’re at it.”