Mine

Part VI - On the Storm Chapter 2: The Terrible Truth

 

  Laura had to cut her speed down to sixty-five again when she saw another state trooper car heading east. after almost half an hour, there was still no sign of Mary Terror's van. "She's turned off," Laura said. She heard the desperation rising in her voice. "She took an exit. "

  "Maybe she did. Maybe she didn't. "

  "Wouldn't youi" Laura asked.

  Didi thought about it. "I'd turn off and find a place to wait for a while, until you had time to pass me," she said. "Then I could get back on the highway whenever I pleased. "

  "Do you think that's what she's donei"

  Didi looked ahead. The traffic had picked up, but there was no sign of an olive-green van with broken taillights. They had passed the exits to Kalamazoo a few miles before. If Mary Terror had turned off at any one of those, they'd never find her again. "Yes, I think so," Didi answered.

  "Damn it!" Laura slammed the wheel with her fist. "I knew we'd lose her if we couldn't keep her in sight! Now what the hell are we going to doi"

  "I don't know. You're driving. "

  Laura kept going. There was a long curve ahead. Maybe on the other side of it they'd catch sight of the van. The speed was creeping up again, and she forced herself to ease off. "I didn't say thank you, did Ii"

  "For whati"

  "You know for what. For coming back with my purse. "

  "No, I don't guess you did. " Didi picked at one of her short, square fingernails, her fingers as sturdy as tools.

  "I'm saying it. Thank you. " She glanced quickly at Didi and then fixed her attention on the highway once more. Behind them, the sun glowed orange through chinks in interlocked clouds the color of bruises, and ahead the sky was a dark mask. "and thank you for helping me with this, too. You didn't have to call me when Mary was on the way. "

  "I almost didn't. " She looked at her hands. They had never been pretty, like Laura's hands were. They had never been soft, never unworked. "Maybe I got tired of being loyal to a dead cause. Maybe there never was a cause to be loyal to. The Storm Front. " She grunted, a note of sarcasm. "We were children with guns, smoking dope and getting high and thinking we could change the world. No, not even that, really. Maybe we just liked the power of setting off bombs and pulling triggers. Damn. " She shook her head, her eyes hazed with memory. "That was a crazy world, back then. "

  "It's still crazy," Laura said.

  "No, now it's insane. There's a difference. But we helped it get from there to here. We grew up to be the people we said we hated. Talk-talk-talkin' 'bout our generation," Didi said in a soft, singsong voice.

  They rounded the bend. No van in sight. Maybe on the next stretch of road they'd see her. "What are you going to do nowi" Laura asked. "You can't go back to ann arbor. "

  "Nope. Damn, I had a good setup, too. a good house, a great workshop. I was doing all right. Listen, don't get me started or I might curse you out for this. " She checked her wristwatch, an old Timex. It was a little after seven. "Somebody'll find Edward. I hope it's not Mr. Brewer. He always wanted to set me up with his grandson. " She sighed heavily. "Edward. The past caught up with him, didn't iti and it caught up with me, too. You know, you had a hell of a nerve tracking me down like you did. I can't believe you talked Mark into helping you. Mark's a rock. " Didi put her hand against the piece of plastic tarp and felt it flutter. The heater was keeping the car's interior toasty now that the wind was blocked off. "Thanks for not bringing Mark to the house," she said. "That wasn't the place for him. "

  "I didn't want him getting hurt. "

  Didi turned her head to stare at Laura. "You've got balls, don't youi Walking in there with Mary like you did. I swear to God, I thought we were both finished. "

  "I wasn't thinking about anything but getting my son back. That's all I care about. "

  "What happens if you can't get him backi Would you have another babyi"

  Laura didn't answer for a moment. The car's tires sang on the pavement, and a truck hauling lumber moved into her lane. "My husband. . . and I are through. I know that for sure. I don't know if I'd want to live in atlanta anymore. I just don't know about a lot of things. I guess I'll cross those bridges when I -"

  "Slow down," Didi interrupted, leaning forward in her seat. She was looking at something ahead, revealed when the lumber truck had changed lanes. "There! See iti"

  There was no van. Laura said, "See whati"

  "The car there. The Buick. "

  Laura did see it, then. a dark blue Buick, its right side scraped to the metal and its rear fender bashed in. Earl Van Diver's car.

  "Slow down," Didi cautioned. "Don't let him see us. Bastard might try to run us off the road. "

  "He's after Mary. He doesn't want us. " Even so, Laura cut her speed and lagged a hundred yards behind the Buick and off to the right.

  "I don't trust anybody who fires a bullet close enough for me to hear. Some FBI agent, huhi He didn't care if he hit David or not. "

  and that was the terrible truth of it, Laura thought. Earl Van Diver was hunting Mary, not to arrest her for her crimes, but to execute her. Whether he killed David or not made no difference to him. His bullets were meant for Mary, but as long as Mary had David, one of those bullets might rip through him just as easily as through her. Laura stayed far behind the Buick, and after a couple of miles she watched it pull over toward an exit ramp on the right.

  "Getting off," Didi said. "Good riddance. "

  Laura eased the BMW over, following Van Diver toward the ramp. "What the hell are you doingi" Didi demanded. "You're not getting off, are youi"

  "That's just what I'm doing. "

  "Whyi We could still catch up with Mary!"

  "and we still can," Laura said. "But I don't want that bastard catching up with her first. If he stops at a gas station, we're going to take his keys. "

  "Yeah, right! You take his keys! Damn it, you're asking to get shot!"

  "We'll see," Laura said, and she turned onto the ramp in the wake of Van Diver's car.

  In the Buick, Earl Van Diver was watching the monitor under his dashboard. a little red light was flashing, indicating a magnetic fix. The liquid crystal display read SSW 208 2. 3: compass heading, bearing, miles between the main unit and the homer. as he came off the ramp's curve, he saw the display change to SW 196 2. 2. He followed the road that led south from I-94, passing a sign that said LaWTON, 3 MI.

  "He's not stopping for gas," Didi said. Van Diver had gone straight past a Shell station on one side of the road and an Exxon on the other. "He's taking the scenic route. "

  "Why'd he get off, theni If he's so hell-bent on catching Mary, why'd he get offi" She kept a car and a pickup truck between them as she followed. They'd gone maybe two miles when Laura saw a blue building with a garish orange roof off to the left. INTERNaTIONaL HOUSE OF PaNCaKES, its sign announced. The Buick's brake lights flashed, the turn indicator went on, and Van Diver made the turn into the IHOP's parking lot.

  Van Diver's savage grin twitched. The olive-green van, its left side battered and scraped, was sitting in the parking lot between a junker Olds and a Michigan Power panel truck. Van Diver swung the Buick into a parking space up close to the building, where he could watch the exit. He cut the engine and unplugged the monitor, which read NNE 017 0. 01.

  Close enough, he thought.

  Van Diver put on his black gloves, his fingers long and spidery. Then he slid the Browning automatic from beneath his seat, clicked the safety off, and held it against his right thigh. He waited, his dark eyes on the IHOP's door. It opened in a few seconds, and two men in blue parkas and caps came out, their breath frosty in the morning air. They walked toward the Michigan Power panel truck. Come on, come on! he thought. He'd figured he could be patient after all these years. But his patience had run out, and that was why he'd hurried the first shot that had hit Edward Fordyce instead of Mary Terror's skull.

  The skin prickled
on the back of his neck. Van Diver sensed movement behind him and to his left. His head swiveled in that direction, his hand coming up with the Browning in it and his heart hammering.

  He looked into the snout of a pistol pressed against the window's glass, and behind it stood the woman he'd first seen on the newscasts from atlanta and later had met in Bedelia Morse's kitchen.

  She wasn't a killer. She was a social columnist for the atlanta Constitution, and she was married to a stockbroker. She had, up until the kidnapping of her baby, never felt the agony of heartrending pain. She had never suffered. all these things Earl Van Diver knew, and weighed in the balance as he prepared to bring his gun up and fire through the window at her. His shot would be faster and more deadly because she didn't have the courage to kill a man in cold blood.

  But he didn't do it. He didn't, because of what he saw in Laura Clayborne's bruised face. Not hopelessness, not pleading, not weakness. He saw desperation and rage there, emotions he knew all too well. He might get off the first shot, but she would certainly deliver the second. Bedelia Morse suddenly reached past Laura and opened the door before Van Diver could hit the lock. "Put the gun down," Laura said. Her voice was tight and strained. Could she shoot him if she had toi She didn't know, and she hoped to God she wouldn't have to find out. Van Diver just sat there, grinning at her with his frozen face, his eyes dark and alert as a rattlesnake's. "Put it down!" Laura repeated. "On the floor!"

  "Take the clip out first," Didi added.

  "Yeah. Like she said. "

  Van Diver looked at the automatic in Laura's hand. He saw it shake a little, her finger on the trigger. When Van Diver moved, both women flinched. He popped the bullet clip out of his Browning, held it in his palm, and put the gun on the floorboard. "Take your keys and get out of the car," Didi told him, and he obeyed.

  Laura glanced over at Mary Terror's van and then back to Van Diver. "How'd you know she was herei"

  Van Diver remained silent, just staring at her with his fathomless eyes. He'd taken off his woolen cap, and his scalp was bald except for a few long strands of gray hair pressed down on the skin, a fringe of gray-and-brown hair around his head. He was slim and wiry, standing about five ten, by no means a large man. But Laura knew his strength from painful experience. Earl Van Diver was a taut package of muscle and bone powered by hatred.

  "What's the antenna fori" Didi asked. She had already checked out the Buick's interior. "There's no car phone. "

  No answer. "The bastard can't talk without his throat plug," Didi realized. "Where's your plug, shitfacei You can point, can't youi" No reaction. Didi said, "Give me your gun," and took it from Laura. She stepped forward and jammed the pistol up against Earl Van Diver's testicles, and she looked him right in his cold eyes. "Came to ann arbor to find me, didn't youi What were you doingi Staking out my housei" She shoved the gun's barrel a little harder. "How'd you find mei" Van Diver's face was a motionless mask, but a twisted vein at his left temple was beating fast and hard. Didi saw a garbage dumpster back toward the rear of the IHOP, where a patch of woods sloped down to a drainage ditch. "We're not going to get anything out of him. He's nothing but an" - she pressed her face closer to his - "old fucked-up pig. " The pig sprayed bits of spittle onto Van Diver's cheeks, and his eyes blinked. "Let's walk. " She pushed him toward the dumpster, the gun moving to jam against his back.

  "What are you going to doi" Laura asked nervously.

  "You don't want him following Mary, do youi We're going to take him into the woods and shoot him. a bullet in one of his knees ought to take care of the problem. He won't get too far crawling. "

  "No! I don't want that!"

  "I want it," Didi said, shoving Van Diver forward. "Son of a bitch killed Edward. almost killed us and the baby, too. Move, you bastard!"

  "No, Didi! We can't do it!"

  "You won't have to. I'm paying Edward's debt, that's all. I said move, you fucking pig!" She punched him hard in the small of the back with the gun's barrel, and he grunted and staggered forward a few paces.

  Earl Van Diver lifted his hands. Then he pointed to his throat and moved his finger toward the Buick's trunk,

  "Now he wants to talk," Didi said. Under her clothes she had broken out in a cold sweat. She would have shot him if she'd had to, but the idea of violence made her stomach clench. "Open it," she told him. "Real slow. " She kept the gun against his back as he unlocked the trunk. Laura and Didi saw the listening dish, the tape recorder, and the sniper's rifle. Van Diver opened a small gray plastic case and took out a cord with a plug on one end and a miniature speaker on the other. He slid the plug's prongs into his throat socket with practiced ease, and then he clicked a switch on the back of the speaker and adjusted a volume control. He lifted the speaker up before Didi's face.

  His mouth moved, the veins standing out in his throat. "The last person who called me a pig," the metallic voice rasped, "fell down a flight of stairs and broke his neck. You knew him by one of his names: Raymond Fletcher. "

  The name stunned her for a few seconds. Dr. Raymond Fletcher had done the plastic surgery on her face.

  "Walk to the car. " Didi slammed the Buick's trunk shut and shoved Van Diver toward the BMW. When Van Diver was in the backseat with Didi beside him, the gun trained on him, and Laura sitting behind the wheel, Didi said, "Okay, I want to hear it. How'd you find mei"

  Van Diver watched the IHOP's door, but his voice filtered through the speaker in his hand. "a policeman friend of mine was working undercover on Fletcher in Miami, trying to catch him doing surgery on people who wanted to disappear. Fletcher called himself Raymond Barnes, and he was working on a lot of Mafia and federal-case clients. My friend was a computer hacker. He cracked Barnes's computer files and dug around in them. Everything was in code, and it took maybe five months to figure it out. Barnes kept all his case records, back to when he'd first started in 'seventy. Your name came up, and the work you'd had done in St. Louis. That's when I got involved. Unofficially. " His black eyes fixed on Didi. "By the time I got to Miami, my friend was found floating in Biscayne Bay with his face blowtorched. So I went to visit the good doctor, and we went to his office to have a nice long talk. "

  "He didn't know where I was!" Didi said. "I'd moved three times since I had my face changed!"

  "You came to Barnes with a letter of recommendation from an ex-Weatherman named Stewart McGalvin. Stewart lived in Philadelphia. He taught classes in pottery. It's amazing what surgical instruments can do, isn't iti"

  Didi swallowed thickly. "What happened to Stewarti"

  "Oh," the voice from the speaker said, "he drowned himself in the bathtub. He was the tight-lipped type. His wife. . . well, she must've shot herself in the head when she found him. "

  "You son of a bitch!" Didi shouted, and she pressed the gun's barrel against his throat socket.

  "Careful," the speaker's voice cautioned. "I'm sensitive there. "

  "You killed my friends! I ought to blow your damned head off!"

  "You won't," Van Diver said calmly. "Maybe you could cripple me, but you don't have any killing left in you, Bedelia. How did you put iti 'I didn't need a prison cell. I carry one around with me. ' I got into your house to plant a microphone bug. I've been watching your house for almost four years, Bedelia. I even moved from New Jersey to be close to you. "

  "How'd you find me if Stewart didn't tell you anythingi"

  "His wife remembered you. You'd sent her a set of plates. Nice work. She mailed you a check for six cups to go with them. She had the canceled check, made out to Diane Daniells. The First Bank of ann arbor's stamp was on the back, and your signature. When I saw you for the first time, Bedelia, I wanted to sing. Do you understand how a person can love someone and hate them at the same timei"

  "No. "

  "I can. See, you were always a rung on the ladder. That's all. You were a hope - however slim - to find Mary Terror. I watched you come and go, I checked your mailbox, I camped i
n the woods outside your house. and when you went on your trip, I knew something important was going on. You'd never left ann arbor before. Mary was in the news. I knew. I knew. " The voice through the speaker was terrible, and bright tears glistened in Earl Van Diver's eyes. "This is what my life is about, Bedelia," he said. "Executing Mary Terror. "

  Laura had been listening with fascinated horror, and at that moment she saw the object of Van Diver's attention emerge from the IHOP with David's bassinet in her arms.

  "Mary," Van Diver's voice whispered. a tear streaked down his cheek, over the gnarled scar tissue of his mouth. "There you are. "

  Mary had just finished her meal of pancakes, eggs, hash browns, and two cups of black coffee. She'd fed Drummer, and changed his diaper in the bathroom. Drummer was content now, sucking on his pacifier, a little bundle of warmth. "Good baby," Mary said. "You're a good baby boy, aren't -" and then she looked up and saw the BMW sitting there in the parking lot, not far from her van, and her legs seized up. She saw Laura Clayborne at the wheel, Didi sitting in the back with a man she didn't recognize. "Goddamn it!" she snarled. How the hell had they found heri She held Drummer with one arm, and her other hand snaked into her shoulder bag and touched the Colt, the Compact Magnum automatic farther down amid the baby things. Blow out the tires! she thought, enraged. Shoot that bitch in the face, and kill Didi, too! She took a couple of strides toward the BMW, but then she stopped. The sounds of the shots would bring other people out of the IHOP. Somebody would get her tag number. No, she couldn't open fire here. It would be stupid, when she knew at last where Lord Jack was waiting. Smiling thinly, she walked to the BMW and Laura Clayborne got out.

  They stood about twenty feet apart, like two wary animals, as the wind swirled around them and sliced to their bones. Laura's gaze found a Smiley Face button on Mary's sweater, pinned over the heart.

  Mary brought the Colt out and rested it against Drummer's side, because she saw that Didi was holding a gun. "You must have good radar," she said to Laura.

  "I'll follow you all the way to California if I have to. "

  "You will have to. " She looked at the Go home scratched on the windshield. "Somebody gave you some good advice. You ought to go home before you get hurt. "

  Laura saw the woman's bloodshot eyes, her face lined and weary. "You can't keep driving without sleep. Sooner or later you'll nod off behind the wheel. "

  Mary had been planning on finding a motel to crash in when she reached Illinois. The No-Doz and coffee had charged her up, but she knew she was going to need rest in a few hours. "I've gone two days straight without sleep before, when I -"

  "Was youngi" Laura interrupted. "You can't make it all the way to California. "

  "You can't follow me all the way, either. "

  "I've got a co-pilot. "

  "I've got a pretty little baby boy. " Mary's smile tightened. "You'd better pray I don't run off the road. "

  Laura took another step closer. Mary's eyes narrowed, but she didn't retreat. "You understand this," Laura said, her voice husky with rage. "If you hurt my baby, I'll kill you. If it's the last thing I do on this earth, I'll kill you. "

  Nothing was going to be gained standing in this parking lot wasting time, Mary thought. She had to get back on the interstate and head west again. Later on she'd figure out a way to shake her trackers. She began to back toward the van, the Colt still resting against Drummer's side and the baby's cheeks flushed with the sharp cold.

  "Maryi"

  It was a man's voice. The man in the backseat of Laura's car. But there was something strange and metallic about it: the voice of a steel-throated robot.

  She saw the man staring at her, his face carved into a pallid, scarred grin and his eyes the color of midnight. "Maryi" the robot voice spoke again. "You made me suffer. "

  Mary stopped her retreat.

  "You made me suffer. Do you remember, Maryi That night in Lindeni"

  The voice - almost disembodied, and made directionless by the swirl and sweep of the wind - caused the rise of chill bumps on the back of Mary Terror's neck.

  "I killed Edward," he said. "I was aiming at you. I got excited after all these years. But I'll get you, Mary. " The volume suddenly cranked up to a soulless shout: "I'LL GET YOU, MaRY!"

  She backed quickly to her van as Laura got behind the BMW's wheel. Mary put Drummer down and started the engine. The BMW's engine roared to life an instant later. Then Mary backed out of the parking lot, the black coffee sloshing in her belly, and she wheeled the van in the direction of I-94 West. Laura said to Didi, "Take his keys and get him out of here. "

  Didi worked the Buick's keys from Van Diver's fist, the automatic jammed against his side. "You'll never take her without me," Van Diver said. "She'll kill both of you before the day's over. "

  "Get him out!"

  "You put me out," he said, "and the first thing I'll do is call the Michigan highway patrol. Then the FBI. They'll set a roadblock for her before she makes the Illinois line. You think Mary's going to give your baby up without a fighti"

  Laura reached back, grabbed the cord, and yanked the speaker's plug from Van Diver's throat. "Out!" she told him.

  "He can still write," Didi realized. "We'd have to break the bastard's fingers. "

  There was no time for further argument. Laura let off the parking brake and drove after Mary Terror. Van Diver made a gasping noise, but his attempt to tell Laura about the magnetic homer and the receiver unit in his car was stillborn. Laura stepped hard on the accelerator, leaving the IHOP behind and racing after the van. Didi kept the pistol pressed into Van Diver's side. That was all right with him. Sooner or later she'd have to relax. Both these women had soft white throats, and he had hands and teeth.

  Nothing and no one was going to stop him from killing Mary Terror. If he had to dispose of these women to take control of the car, so be it. He had no code now but vengeance, and whoever wandered in the path of its fire would be reduced to ashes.

  Laura saw the van ahead, slowing for its turn onto I-94 West. She followed it, and in another moment she veered into the lane behind Mary and let the speed wind up to sixty-five. The car and the van stayed about fifty yards apart, the highway getting crowded with morning traffic. In the van, Mary looked at the BMW's bashed front fender in her sideview mirror. The memory of that metallic voice still chilled her. You made me suffer, it had said. That night in Linden.

  Do you remember, Maryi

  She did remember. a bullet tearing a pig's cheek, and a second bullet mangling his throat.

  Suffer.

  This was far out, she thought. Groovy weirdness. She recalled reading about the pig in Didi's photo album, but she couldn't remember his name. Didn't matter, though. He was as crazy as Laura if he thought he could stop her. She was trekking to California with Drummer, and no one was going to get in her way and live. She'd watch her speed and be a good girl for the highway patrol piggies, and she'd figure out how to take care once and for all of Laura Clayhead, Benedict Bedelia, and the sufferer.

  She went on, arrowing along the gray highway toward the promised land, with the BMW in dogged pursuit.