Mary took the soiled diaper into the kitchen, searching for a garbage can, and there she found Didi staring out a window toward the road. “What’re you looking at?”
Didi kept herself from jumping by sheer willpower. “Nothing,” she said. “I’m waiting for the coffee.” She’d seen a car go slowly past and out of sight.
“Forget the coffee. I want to know about Jack.” Mary stood beside Didi and glanced out the window. Nothing but dark. Still, Didi was nervous. It was in her voice, and Didi wasn’t making eye contact. Mary’s radar went up. “Show me,” she said.
Didi left the coffee to brew, and she got the photo album from the bedroom. When she returned to the front room, Mary was sitting in a chair with the baby in her arms and Edward was still stretched out on the couch. The shoulder bag was beside Mary, the compact Magnum on top of the mélange of formula, Pampers, Handi Wipes, and baby toys. “Here it is.” Didi showed the article and picture to Mary, and Edward struggled up from the couch to take a look.
“Right there.” Didi touched the image of the man’s face.
Mary studied the picture. “That’s not Jack,” Edward decided after a minute or two. “That guy’s nose is too big.”
“People’s noses get larger as they age,” Didi told him.
Edward looked again. He shook his head, partly disappointed and partly relieved that he didn’t have to travel any farther with Mary Terror. “No. It’s not Jack.”
Didi turned the plastic-covered pages backward. Like a time machine, the dates on the articles regressed. She stopped at a photograph of a young, arrogantly smiling Jack Gardiner, resplendent in hippie robes and with long blond hair cascading around his shoulders. The article’s headline said Storm Front Leader Tops FBI Wanted List and the date was July 7, 1972. “Then,” Didi said, and she paged forward to the Sierra Club story, “and now. Can’t you see the resemblance?”
Edward flipped ahead to the newer picture, then back to the old one again. Mary simply sat holding the baby, her eyes dark and unfathomable. “Okay, so he looks a little like Jack,” Edward said. “Maybe. It’s hard to tell.” He looked closer. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Hold Drummer.” Mary offered him to Edward, and Edward took the baby with a trace of a scowl. Then Mary held the photo album and began to turn back and forth between the two photographs. She stopped at an article on another page. “Shit,” she said softly. “The son of a bitch lived.”
“What?” Didi peered over her shoulder.
“The son-of-a-bitch pig I shot outside the house that night.” Mary tapped the plastic sheet over the newspaper story, which had the headline FBI Agent Survives Attack. There was a picture of a man on a stretcher, an oxygen mask to his face, being loaded into an ambulance. “Remember him, Edward?”
Edward looked. “Oh, yeah. I thought you’d wasted him.”
“So did I. A throat shot usually does it.”
Didi felt frost in her veins. “A…throat shot?”
“Right. I hit him twice. Once in the face, once in the throat. I would’ve blown his fucking brains out, but I didn’t have another bullet. Edward, it says his name was Earl Van Diver. Thirty-four years old, from Bridgewater, New Jersey. A wife and a daughter.” She laughed quietly, a terrible laugh. “Get this: his daughter’s name is Mary.”
Didi was reading the story, too. She’d forgotten about clipping this from the Philadelphia newspaper several days after the shootout in Linden. She had saved everything she could find about the Storm Front: her own book of memories, like a roadchart through Hades. Earl Van Diver. Off the critical list, the story said. Severe facial and larynx damage.
Oh my God, Didi thought.
“I remember him,” Mary said. “I bet he remembers me, too.” She turned ahead to the Sierra Club newsletter’s article and picture. She’d thought this would be easy, that she would recognize Jack at once, but this photo showed only a portion of a blond man’s face. She read the men’s names in the story: Dean Walker, Nick Hudley, Keith Cavanaugh. None of those held any significance for her, no magic weavings. Her heart had become leaden. Drummer started to give a mewling cry, and the sound made her head ache. “I can’t tell,” she said.
Didi took the album from her. Where were Laura and Mark? They should’ve been here by now! Her stomach was a solid knot of tension. “Come see what I’ve made,” she offered. “Then tell me what you think.”
In the workshop, with the overhead bulbs on, Mary circled the clay head that still sat on the pottery wheel. Didi laid the photo album down beside it, opened to the picture. The baby’s crying had gotten louder, and Edward was doing his best to shush him. Mary stopped, staring at the face of Lord Jack.
“I made it from the picture,” Didi said. A nervous quaver had crept into her voice again. “It looks like Jack. Older, I know. But I think it’s him.”
The lead had cracked and fallen away from Mary’s heart. It had become a bird, flying toward the sun. It was Jack. Older, yes. But still handsome, still regal. She lifted the plastic sheet up from the photo album and took out the article and picture. Could it be? After all these years? Could it really be that Lord Jack was in Freestone, California, and this photographer had caught a slice of his face? She wanted to believe it in the most desperate way.
The baby’s crying was strident, a demand for attention. Edward rocked him, but he wouldn’t stop. Didi’s nerves were about to shred. “Give him to me,” she said, and Edward did. She rocked him, too, as Mary kept looking from the picture to the clay face again. The baby, bundled up in a downy white blanket, was warm in her arms, and she smelled the aromas of formula and pink baby flesh. “Shhhh,” she said. “Shhhh.” His blue eyes blinked up at her. “That’s a good boy. David’s a good ba—”
It was gone. Could not be recaptured. Gone through the air, and into Mary Terror’s ears.
Though the workshop was chilly, Didi felt pinpricks of sweat rise on the back of her neck. Mary circled the clay head once more as she folded the newsletter’s article into a little square. She put it into a pocket of her brown corduroys. When she looked up at Didi again, Mary was smiling thinly but her eyes were as dangerous as gun barrels. “My baby’s name is Drummer. You knew that. Why did you call him David?”
There was nothing to be said. Mary came toward her with a smile like a razor. “Didi? Give Drummer back to me, please.”
Standing outside the workshop’s door, Laura heard Mary Terror step on a shard of clay that cracked beneath her shoe. Her heartbeat was thunderous, her face tight with fear. In her right hand was the Charter Arms automatic, its safety off. It was now or never, she thought. God help me. She stepped into the corridor of light that spilled from the doorway, and she aimed the gun at the hulking woman who had stolen her child. “No,” she heard herself rasp in a stranger’s voice.
Mary saw her. It took maybe four seconds for the face to register. Mary’s mind worked like a rat caught in a closing trap. She had left her shoulder bag and the Magnum in the house. Her Colt was up under the driver’s seat in the van. But she still had two weapons.
Mary reached out with one arm, hooked Bedelia Morse’s throat, and jerked her around between herself and Laura’s pistol. Then she clamped her other hand firmly over the baby’s mouth and nose, cutting off his air. The baby began struggling to breathe.
“Finger off the trigger,” Mary commanded. “Point the gun down.”
6
Light Hurts
LAURA DIDN’T. HER HAND trembled, and so did the gun. David’s face was blotching with red, his hands clawing at the air.
“He’ll smother in a few seconds. Then I’ll come at you, and you don’t know shit about killing anybody.”
Rage thrashed within Laura. The woman’s big hand was clenched tight over David’s nostrils and mouth. Laura could see his eyes, wide with panic. Didi couldn’t move, her own throat squeezed by Mary’s other arm. Edward said, “Wait a minute. Wait,” but who he was babbling to wasn’t clear.
“Finger off the trigger,?
?? Mary repeated, her voice eerily calm. “Point the gun down.”
Laura had no choice. She obeyed.
“Take the gun, Edward.” He hesitated. “Edward!” Mary’s voice snapped out like a whip. “Take the gun!”
He walked forward, grasped the automatic, and it was gone from Laura’s hand. Their eyes met. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know—”
“Shut up, Edward.” Mary removed her hand from the baby’s face. His mouth gasped, and then a shriek welled up out of it that almost destroyed the last of Laura’s sanity. “Bring the gun to me,” Mary said.
“Listen. We don’t have to—”
“BRING IT TO ME!”
“Okay, okay!” He delivered the pistol to Mary’s hand, and she placed the barrel against Didi’s red-haired skull and took the child away from her with one arm. The shrieking went on as Mary backed away from Didi and turned the gun on Laura. “Who’s with you?”
She almost said the police. No, no; Mary would kill David for sure. “No one.”
“Liar! Are the pigs out there?”
“Would I be in here if they were?” Laura wasn’t afraid anymore. Her fear had steamed away. There was no time to be scared, her mind occupied with trying to think of a way to get David.
Mary said, “Stand against the wall. Didi, you with her. Move, you bitch!”
Didi took her place beside Laura, her face downcast and tears on her cheeks. She was waiting for the execution bullet. Laura would not look away from Mary Terror. She stared at the woman, fixing the hard-jawed, brutal face forever in her mind.
“Edward, go to the house and get my bag and the bassinet. Take them to the van. We’re clearing out.” Edward did as he was told. The child continued to cry, but Mary’s attention was riveted to the two women. “Damn you to hell,” she said to Didi. “You betrayed me.”
“Mary…please listen.” Her voice was husky from the pressure of Mary’s arm on her windpipe. “Let the baby go. He doesn’t belong to—”
“He’s mine! Mine and Jack’s!” Splotches of red surfaced on Mary’s cheeks, her eyes aflame. “I trusted you! You were my sister!”
“I’m not who I used to be. I want to help you, Mary. Please leave David here.”
“HIS NAME IS DRUMMER!” Mary shouted. The gun remained steady, aimed somewhere between Laura and Didi.
“His name is David,” Laura said. “David Clayborne. No matter what you call him, you know what his real name is.”
Mary suddenly grinned. It was a savage grin, and she stalked across the workshop and stopped with the automatic almost touching the tip of Laura’s nose. It took everything Laura had not to reach for David, but she kept her arms at her sides and her gaze locked with Mary’s. “Brave,” Mary said. “Brave piece of shit. I’m going to flush you. Flush you right down the dark hole. Think you’ll like that?”
“I think…you’re nothing but a lie. You’ve got a baby who’s not yours. You’re looking for a man who’s forgotten about you.” Laura saw Mary’s hatred flare, like napalm bomb blasts. She kept going, deeper into the fire. “You don’t stand for anything, and you don’t believe in anything. And the worst lie is the one you tell yourself, that when you take David to Jack Gardiner, you’ll be young again.”
Mary could not stand Jack’s name coming from this woman’s mouth. In a blur of motion, she hit Laura across the face with the automatic’s barrel. There was a crunching noise and Laura fell to her knees, her head throbbing with pain. Blood pattered to the floor from her nostrils, her nose almost broken. A blue-edged welt had appeared across her cheek. Laura made no sound, dark motes spinning before her eyes.
“Get her up,” Mary told Didi. “We’ve got business to finish.”
Mary herded them out of the workshop, Laura staggering and Didi holding her up. Edward was waiting at the van. She gave him the automatic and then took her Colt from under the driver’s seat. “Walk into the woods,” Mary said, cradling Drummer with one arm. “Away from the road. Go.”
“Maybe you could just lock them up somewhere,” Edward said as they walked. “You know? Lock them up and leave them.”
Mary didn’t answer. They walked on, through the oak and pine woods, leaves and sticks cracking underfoot. “You don’t have to kill them,” Edward tried again, his breath white in the frosty air. “Mary, do you hear me?”
She did, but did not answer. When they’d gotten about a hundred yards from the cottage, Mary said, “Stop.” Her eyes were used to the dark now. She ripped Laura’s purse off her shoulder, planning on searching it for cash and taking the credit cards. “Face me,” she told the two women, and she stepped back a few paces.
“Please…don’t do it,” Didi begged.
Click. Mary had pulled the Colt’s hammer back. The baby was silent, little plumes of white leaving his nostrils.
“Mary, don’t,” Edward said, standing beside her. “Don’t, okay?”
“Any last words?” Mary asked.
Laura spoke, the side of her face swelling up. “Rot in hell.”
“Good enough.” Mary aimed the pistol at Laura’s head, her finger on the trigger. Two squeezes, and there would be two less mindfuckers in the world.
She started to pull the trigger.
There was a shot: a quick pop! that echoed through the woods.
Edward staggered into her, hit her arm, and the Colt went off with a harsher crack, the bullet going into the trees over Laura’s head. Something warm and wet had sprayed into Mary’s face, all over her shoulder, and onto the baby. The white blanket was mottled with dark clots. She looked at Edward, and could tell that a sizable piece of his head was gone, steam swirling into the air from his oozing brains.
“Oh,” Edward’s mouth gasped, his face a blood mask. “Light hurts.”
Another shot came. She saw the flare of fire off to her right in the woods. The bullet thunked into a treetrunk behind Mary and stung her scalp with pinebark. Edward was clinging to her arm. “Mama? Mama?” A sob left his dripping lips. “Eddie be good boy.”
Mary shoved him aside. As she did, a third bullet exited Edward’s chest in a hot spray, and she felt the slug pull at her sweater as it passed close to her back. Edward went down, gurgling like an overflowing drain. She dropped Laura’s purse and squeezed off two shots toward the gun’s flare, the Colt’s noise making Drummer start screaming again. High-powered rifle, she thought. A pig gun. One sniper, at least. She turned away from Laura and Didi, and began racing back to the cottage with the baby trapped in her arm and Edward Fordyce’s blood and brains on her face.
The rifle spoke again, clipping a branch less than six inches above Mary’s head. She fired another shot, saw sparks fly as the bullet ricocheted off a rock. Then she was running for her life, slipping in the leaves and trailing the infant’s scream behind her.
Someone shooting, Laura thought. Shooting at Mary Terror. David in her grasp. David in the path of the bullets. She, too, had seen the muzzle flash, saw it again as another bullet searched for Mary. Her gun. In Edward’s hand. Laura took three strides forward and fell upon the twitching body, and she grasped the automatic and tore it free from Edward’s fingers.
Then she stood up, aimed into the darkness where the sniper was, and pulled the trigger. The gun almost jumped out of her hand, its report cracking her eardrums. She kept shooting, a second bullet and a third, ripping the fabric of night. The other gun was silent. Over the buzz of pistol noise, Laura heard the roar of Mary Terror’s van starting. “She’s getting away!” Didi shouted. Car keys! Laura thought. She grasped her purse from the ground, and she began running toward the house.
Mary Terror threw the van into reverse and backed down the driveway, Drummer wailing in his bassinet on the floorboard. She saw it in her sideview mirror: a BMW parked on the road, blocking the driveway. She pressed her foot to the accelerator, and the van’s rear end slammed against the BMW’s passenger door, crumpling it in with a crash of metal and glass. The BMW trembled and groaned, but would not give way. Sweat was
on her face, the taste of Edward’s blood on her lips. She fought the gearshift into first, roared back up the driveway to try to knock the car aside again. The headlights caught Laura coming, gun in hand, followed by Bedelia Morse. No time to waste. Mary gritted her teeth, put the van into reverse again, and wheeled it off the driveway, knocking down thin pines and smashing one of Didi’s abstract sculptures to rubble. The van scraped past the BMW’s front fender, and Mary twisted the wheel to straighten the van out, hit the accelerator once more, and the van shot forward with a scream of rubber. She sped away, heading west.
Laura reached her car, saw the van’s taillights in the distance—both the red lenses broken—before the vehicle took a curve and disappeared. She heard Didi breathing hard behind her, and she turned around and aimed the pistol into Didi’s face. “Get in the car.”
“What?”
“Get in the car!” She tried to open the rear door on the passenger side but the hinges were jammed. Laura grabbed Didi’s arm and shoved her around to the other side, where she opened the driver’s door. Didi balked, tried to fight free, but Laura put the gun’s barrel up under Didi’s jaw and all her resistance faded. When Didi was in, Laura slid under the wheel, fished her keys from her blood-spattered purse, and started the engine. Something rattled and skreeked under the hood, but the gauges showed no warning lights. Laura mashed down on the accelerator, and the battered car laid strips of rubber to match the van’s.
The window on Didi’s side was broken out, freezing wind shrieking into the car as the speedometer’s needle passed sixty. Laura took the curve at sixty-five, skidding over into the left-hand lane. No taillights ahead, but another sharp curve lay in wait. Laura’s foot didn’t move toward the brake. She battled the car around the curve, went off onto the shoulder and almost into the woods before she got the car back up onto the road again. Laura glanced at the speedometer: the needle was moving past seventy. Didi was jammed back into her seat, her red hair flying in the wind, her face strained with terror in the dashboard’s green glow.