"How close, Scott? How close was it in Bremen?"
"Close," he says simply, and it makes her cold. If she had lost him in Germany, she would have lost him for good. Mein gott. "But that was a breeze compared to this. This was a hurricane."
There are other things she wants to ask him, but mostly she only wants to hold him and believe him when he says that maybe things will be okay. The way you want to believe the doctor, she supposes, when he says the cancer is in remission and may never come back.
"And you're okay." She needs to hear him say it one more time. Needs to.
"Yes. Good to go, as the saying is."
"And . . . it?" She doesn't need to be more specific. Scott knows what she's talking about.
"It's had my scent for a long time, and it knows the shape of my thoughts. After all these years, we're practically old friends. It could probably take me if it wanted to, but it would be an effort, and that fella's pretty lazy. Also . . . something watches out for me. Something on the bright side of the equation. There is a bright side, you know. You must know, because you're a part of it."
"Once you told me you could call it, if you wanted to." She says this very low.
"Yes."
"And sometimes you want to. Don't you?"
He doesn't deny it, and outside the wind howls a long cold note along the eaves. Yet here under the blankets in front of the kitchen stove, it's warm. It's warm with him.
"Stay with me, Scott," she says.
"I will," he tells her. "I will as long as
16
"I will as long as I can," Lisey said.
She realized several things at the same time. One was that she had returned to her bedroom and her bed. Another was that the bed would have to be changed, because she had come back soaking wet, and her damp feet were coated with beach sand from another world. A third was that she was shivering even though the room wasn't particularly cold. A fourth was that she no longer had the silver spade; she had left it behind. The last was that if the seated shape had indeed been her husband, she had almost certainly seen him for the last time; her husband was now one of the shrouded things, an unburied corpse.
Lying on her wet bed in her soaking shorts, Lisey burst into tears. She had a great deal to do now, and had come back with most of the steps clear in her mind--she thought that might also have been part of her prize at the end of Scott's last bool hunt--but first she needed to finish grieving for her husband. She put an arm over her eyes and lay so for the next five minutes, sobbing until her eyes were swollen nearly shut and her throat ached. She had never thought she would want him so much or miss him so badly. It was a shock. Yet at the same time, and although there was also still some pain in her damaged breast, Lisey thought she had never felt so well, so glad to be alive, or so ready to kick ass and take down names.
As the saying was.
XII. Lisey at Greenlawn (The Hollyhocks)
1
She glanced at the clock on the nightstand as she peeled off her soaked shorts and smiled, not because there was anything intrinsically funny about ten minutes to twelve on a morning in June, but because one of Scrooge's lines from A Christmas Carol had occurred to her: "The spirits have done it all in one night." It seemed to Lisey that something had accomplished a great deal in her own life in a very short period of time, most of it in the last few hours.
But you have to remember that I've been living in the past, and that takes up a surprising amount of a person's time, she thought . . . and after a moment's consideration let out a great, larruping laugh that probably would have sounded insane to anyone listening down the hall.
That's okay, keep laughin, babyluv, ain't nobody here but us chickadees, she thought, going into the bathroom. That big, loose laugh started to come out of her again, then stopped suddenly when it occurred to her that Dooley might be here. He could be holed up in the root cellar or one of this big house's many closets; he might be sweating it out this late morning in the attic, right over her head. She didn't know much about him and would be the first to admit it, but the idea that he had gone to ground here in the house fit what she did know. He'd already proved he was a bold sonofabitch.
Don't worry about him now. Worry about Darla and Canty.
Good idea. Lisey could get to Greenlawn ahead of her older sisters, that wouldn't be much of a horse-race, but she couldn't afford to dawdle, either. Keep your string a-drawing, she thought.
But she couldn't deny herself a moment in front of the full-length mirror on the back of the bedroom door, standing with her hands at her sides, looking levelly and without prejudice at her slender, unremarkable, middle-aged body--and at her face, which Scott had once described as that of a fox in summer. It was a little puffy, nothing more. She looked like she'd slept exceptionally hard (maybe after a drink or three too many), and her lips still turned out a little, giving them a strangely sensual quality that made her feel both uneasy and a tiny bit gleeful. She hesitated, not sure what to do about that, and then found a tube of Revlon Hothouse Pink at the back of her lipstick drawer. She touched some on and nodded, a little doubtfully. If people were going to look at her lips--and she thought they might--she'd do better giving them something to look at than trying to cover up what couldn't be hidden.
The breast Dooley had operated on with such lunatic absorption was marked with an ugly scarlet ditch that circled up from beneath her armpit before petering out above her ribcage. It looked like a fairly bad cut that might have happened two or three weeks ago and was now healing well. The two shallower wounds looked like no more than the sort of red marks that resulted from wearing too-tight elastic garments. Or perhaps--if you had a lively imagination--rope burns. The difference between this and the horror she had observed upon regaining consciousness was amazing.
"All the Landons are fast healers, you sonofabitch," Lisey said, and stepped into the shower.
2
A quick rinse was all she had time for, and her breast was still sore enough to make her decide against a bra. She put on a pair of carpenter's pants and a loose tee-shirt. She slipped a vest over the latter to keep anyone from staring at her nipples, assuming guys bothered scoping out the nipples of fifty-year-old women, that was. According to Scott, they did. She remembered his telling her, once upon a happier time, that straight men stared at pretty much anyone of a female persuasion between the ages of roughly fourteen and eighty-four; he claimed it was a simple hardwired circuit between eye and cock, that the brain had nothing to do with it.
It was noon. She went downstairs, glanced into the living room, and saw the remaining pack of cigarettes sitting on the coffee table. She had no craving for cigarettes now. She got a fresh jar of Skippy out of the pantry instead (steeling herself for Jim Dooley lurking in the corner or behind the pantry door) and the strawberry jam out of the fridge. She made herself a PB&J on white and took two delicious, gummy bites before calling Professor Woodbody. The Castle County Sheriff's Department had taken "Zack McCool"'s threatening letter, but Lisey's memory for numbers had always been good, and this one was a cinch: Pittsburgh area code at one end, eighty-one and eighty-eight at the other. She was as willing to talk to the Queen of the Incunks as the King. An answering machine, however, would be inconvenient. She could leave her message, but would have no way of being sure it would reach the right ear in time to do any good.
She need not have worried. Woodbody himself answered, and he did not sound kingly. He sounded chastened and cautious. "Yes? Hello?"
"Hello, Professor Woodbody. This is Lisa Landon."
"I don't want to talk to you. I've spoken to my lawyer and he says I don't have to--"
"Chill," she said, and eyed her sandwich with longing. It wouldn't do to talk with her mouth full. On the upside, she thought this conversation was going to be brief. "I'm not going to make any trouble for you. No trouble with the cops, no trouble with lawyers, nothing like that. If you do me one teensy favor."
"What favor?" Woodbody sounded suspicious. Lisey couldn't
blame him for that.
"There's an off-chance your friend Jim Dooley may call you today--"
"That guy's no friend of mine!" Woodbody bleated.
Right, Lisey thought. And you're well on your way to persuading yourself he never was.
"Okay, drinking buddy. Passing acquaintance. Whatever. If he calls, just tell him I've changed my mind, would you do that? Say I've regained my senses. Tell him I'll see him this evening, at eight, in my husband's study."
"You sound like someone preparing to get herself into a great deal of trouble, Mrs. Landon."
"Hey, you'd know, wouldn't you?" The sandwich was looking better and better. Lisey's stomach rumbled. "Professor, he probably won't call you. In which case, you're golden. If he does call, give him my message and you're also golden. But if he calls and you don't give him my message--just 'She's changed her mind, she wants to see you tonight in Scott's study at eight'--and I find out . . . then, sir, oy, such a mess I'm making for you."
"You can't. My lawyer says--"
"Don't listen to what he says. Be smart and listen to what I'm saying. My husband left me twenty million dollars. With that kind of money, if I decide to ass-fuck you, you'll spend the next three years shitting blood from a crouch. Got it?"
Lisey hung up before he could say anything else, tore a bite from her sandwich, got the lime Kool-Aid from the fridge, thought about a glass, then drank directly from the pitcher instead.
Yum!
3
If Dooley phoned during the next few hours, she wouldn't be around to take his call. Luckily, Lisey knew which phone he'd ring in on. She went out to her unfinished office in the barn, across from the shrouded corpse of the Bremen bed. She sat in the plain kitchen-style chair (a nice new desk-chair was one of the things she'd never gotten around to ordering), pushed the RECORD MESSAGE button on the answering machine, and spoke without thinking too much. She hadn't come back from Boo'ya Moon with a plan so much as with a clear set of steps to follow and the belief that, if she did her part, Jim Dooley would be forced to do his. I'll whistle and you'll come to me, my lad, she thought.
"Zack--Mr. Dooley--this is Lisey. If you're hearing this, I'm visiting my sister, who's in the hospital, up in Auburn. I spoke to the Prof, and I'm so grateful this is going to work out. I'll be in my husband's study tonight at eight, or you can call me here at seven and arrange something else, if you're worried about the police. There may be a Sheriff's Deputy parked out front, maybe even in the bushes across the road, so be careful. I'll listen for messages."
She was afraid that might be too much for the outgoing-message tape to handle, but it wasn't. And what would Jim Dooley make of it, if he called this number and heard it? Given his current level of craziness, Lisey couldn't begin to predict. Would he break radio silence and call the Professor in Pittsburgh? He might. Whether or not the Professor would actually pass on her message if Dooley did was also impossible to predict, and maybe it didn't matter. She didn't much care if Dooley thought she was actually ready to deal or just jacking him around. She only wanted him nervous and curious, the way she imagined a fish felt when it was looking up at a lure skipping along the surface of a lake.
She didn't dare leave a note on her door--it was all too likely Deputy Boeckman or Deputy Alston would read it long before Dooley had a chance to--and that was probably taking things a step too far, anyway. For the time being, she had done all she could.
And do you really expect him to show up at eight o'clock tonight, Lisey? To just come waltzing up the stairs to Scott's office, full of trust and belief?
She didn't expect him to come waltzing, and she didn't expect him to be full of anything but the lunacy she had already experienced, but she did expect him to come. He would be as careful as any feral thing, casting about for a trap or a setup, possibly sneaking in from the woods as early as mid-afternoon, but Lisey believed he would know in his heart that this wasn't some trick that she'd worked out with the Sheriff's Department or the State Police. He'd know from the eagerness to please he heard in her voice, and because after what he'd done to her, he had every reason to expect her to be one cowed cow. She played the message back twice and nodded. Yeah. On the surface she sounded like a woman who was merely eager to finish some troublesome piece of business, but she thought Dooley would hear the fright and pain just beneath. Because he expected to hear them, and because he was crazy.
Lisey thought there was something else at work here, as well. She had gotten her drink. She had gotten her bool, and it had made her strong in some primal way. It might not last long, but that didn't matter, because a little of that strength--a little of that primal weirdness--was now on the answering machine tape. She thought that if Dooley called, he would hear and respond to it.
4
Her cell phone was still in the BMW and now fully charged. She thought of going back to the little office in the barn and re-doing the message on the answering machine, adding the mobile number, then realized she didn't know it. I so rarely call myself, darling, she thought, and unloosed the big, larruping laugh again.
She drove slowly out to the end of the driveway, hoping that Deputy Alston would be there. He was, looking bigger than ever and rather primal himself. Lisey got out of her car and gave him a little salute. He did not call for backup or run screaming from the sight of her face; he merely grinned and tipped the salute right back at her.
It had certainly crossed Lisey's mind to spin a tale if she found a deputy on duty, something about "Zack McCool" calling her up and telling her he'd decided to get his li'l ole self back to his li'l ole holler in West Virginny and forget all about the writer's widder-woman; jest too many Yankee po-lice around. She'd do it without the Deliverance accent, of course, and she thought she could be fairly convincing, especially in her current state of baptismal grace, but in the end she had decided against it. Such a story might end up putting acting Sheriff Clusterfuck and his deputies even more on their guard--they might think Jim Dooley was trying to lull them to sleep. No, much better to leave matters as they were. Dooley had found his way to her once; he could probably do it again. If they caught him, her problems would be solved . . . although in truth, seeing Jim Dooley caught was no longer her solution of choice.
In any case, she didn't like the idea of lying to either Alston or Boeckman any more than she had to. They were cops, they were doing their best to protect her, and on top of that they were a couple of likeable lummoxes.
"How's it going, Mrs. Landon?"
"Fine. I just stopped to tell you I'm going up to Auburn. My sister's in the hospital up there."
"I'm very sorry to hear that. CMG or Kingdom?"
"Greenlawn."
She wasn't sure he'd know it, but from the little wince that tightened his face, she guessed that he did. "Well, that's too bad . . . but at least it's a pretty day for a drive. You just want to get back before late afternoon. Radio says there's gonna be big thunderstorms, especially here in the western."
Lisey looked around and smiled, first at the day, which was indeed summery-gorgeous (at least so far), and then at Deputy Alston. "I'll do my best. Thanks for the heads-up."
"Not a problem. Say, the side of your nose looks kinda swelled. Did something bite you?"
"Mosquitoes do that to me sometimes," Lisey said. "There's one beside my lip, too. Can you see it?"
Alston peered at her mouth, which Dooley had beaten back and forth with his open hand not long ago. "Nope," he said. "Can't say that I do."
"Good, the Benadryl must be working. As long as it doesn't make me sleepy."
"If it does, pull over, okay? Do yourself a favor."
"Yes, Dad," Lisey said, and Alston laughed. He also blushed a little.
"By the way, Mrs. Landon--"
"Lisey."
"Yes, ma'am. Lisey. Andy called. He'd like you to drop by the Sheriff's Office when it's convenient and make an official report on this business. You know, something you can sign for the record. Would you do that?"
"Y
es. I'll try to stop in on my way back from Auburn."
"Well, I'll tell you a little secret, Mrs. Lan--Lisey. Both our secretaries are apt to clear out early on days when it comes on to hard rain. They live out Motton way, and those roads flood if you look at em crosseyed. Need new culverts."
Lisey shrugged. "We'll see," she said. She made a show of looking at her watch. "Whoa, look at the time! I really have to run. Help yourself to the toilet if you have to go, Deputy Alston, there's--"
"Joe. If you're Lisey, I'm Joe."
She gave him a thumbs-up. "Okay, Joe. There's a key to the back door under the porch step. If you feel around a little, I think you'll find it."
"Ayuh, I'm a trained investigator," he said with a straight face.
Lisey burst out laughing and held up her hand. Deputy Joe Alston, now grinning himself, high-fived her there in the sunshine near the mailbox where she'd found the dead Galloway barncat.
5
Driving to Auburn, she mused for a little while on how Deputy Joe Alston had looked at her as they stood talking at the end of the driveway. It had been a little while since she'd attracted a honey, you look so good stare from a man, but she'd gotten one today, slightly swollen nose and all. Amazing. Amazing.
"The Get-Beat-Up-By-Jim-Dooley Beauty Treatment," she said, and laughed. "I could hawk it on high-channel cable TV."
And her mouth had the most wonderfully sweet taste. If she ever wanted another cigarette, she would be surprised. Maybe she could hawk that on high-channel cable, too.
6
By the time Lisey got to Greenlawn, it was twenty minutes past one. She didn't expect to see Darla's car, but still let out a sigh of relief when she had made sure it wasn't one of the dozen or so scattered around the visitors' parking lot. She liked the idea of Darla and Canty well south of here, well away from the dangerous craziness of Jim Dooley. She remembered helping Mr. Silver grade potatoes when she was a little girl (well, twelve or thirteen--not so little at that) and how he'd always cautioned her to wear pants and keep her sleeves rolled up when she was around the potato grader in the back shed. You get caught in that baby, she'll undress ya, he'd said, and she had taken the warning to heart because she'd understood old Max Silver hadn't been talking about what his hulk of a potato-grader would do to her clothes but what it would do to her. Amanda was a part of this, had been since the day she'd shown up as Lisey was halfheartedly beginning the job of cleaning out Scott's study. Lisey accepted that. Darla and Canty, however, would be an unnecessary complication. If God was good, He would keep them at the Snow Squall, eating Lazy Lobster and drinking white wine spritzers, for a long time. Like until midnight.