Beautiful Dead

  In my mirror I saw the other guy run to join him. The dogs were still barking and Sable was retreating into the house.

  I got out of Forest Lake and drove back to Ellerton, breaking every traffic regulation in the book.

  I was still shaking when I reached home and found that Laura and Jim were out at work. I had the house to myself and plenty of time to regret what I’d just done. I took deep breaths, paced from room to room, tried to tell myself that Kyle hadn’t recognized me after all.

  “Darina?” Logan said, stepping onto the porch and peering in through the open kitchen window.

  I jumped. “Don’t creep up on me like that!” I yelled.

  “I didn’t creep—I knocked on the door. You didn’t answer.”

  “Maybe I chose not to,” I pointed out. “What do you want, Logan?”

  “I came to apologize. I know it looked like I was laughing at you, but I wasn’t.”

  “When? What are you talking about?”

  “Earlier, with Hannah. I worked it through afterward. It wasn’t what you thought.”

  “So you know what I’m thinking again?” I sighed, but inside I was glad for once for Logan’s visit. “Come in, tell me about it.”

  He stooped as he came through the door, suddenly seeming taller than I’d realized and too big for our wooden kitchen chairs. “Maybe Hannah—she might want it to be the way you saw it, her and me, you know—but it’s so not true.”

  “Did what you just said actually make sense?” I queried. “Or is this some kind of riddle?”

  “Hannah and I are not an item,” he announced after he’d drawn a deep breath. “She asked me to go to the movies tonight but I turned her down.”

  “And you needed to tell me?” I arched an eyebrow. “Listen, Logan, feel free to go to the movies with Hannah any time you like.”

  He frowned, leaned back on the flimsy chair, looked up at the ceiling. “I hate what’s happened between us lately,” he told me. “When did we get into these games?”

  It was my turn to take a breath. The way he looked at me, with hurt in his eyes, got through to me. “When I fell in love with Phoenix?” I suggested. “I’m serious. Ever since then, things went wrong for you.”

  Slowly Logan let the front chair legs touch the ground. He nodded. “You’re right; it’s true.”

  “I can’t help you. It happened. I loved—love Phoenix more than the world. You have to let me go.” I leaned across the table and touched his hand. “Let me go, Logan, and we can be friends again.”

  He nodded just as Laura came home from work, then seized the opportunity to leave.

  “Logan looked sad,” Laura remarked. She wore the jaded, worn-out expression she always had after a day selling cutrate clothes in the mall.

  “We’re all sad,” I told her, and that was enough to shut her up.

  Next morning, early, Jim picked up a phone call on his way out of the house. “Darina!” he yelled up the stairs. “It’s that old guy with the flowers—Peter Hall.”

  I ran down two at a time to grab the phone. “Peter, this is me. How’s Jenna doing?”

  “Jenna’s good. It’s Raven I’m calling about.”

  “What happened to him? Where is he?”

  “That’s the problem. I just arrived at the house and you wouldn’t believe the atmosphere. Frank was here, and Allyson too. They told me they got a call from Raven’s school. The kid’s gone missing.”

  “When?” I gasped.

  “Early this morning. Possibly even late last night. Allyson’s still on the phone, grilling them about when he was last seen. Frank already set off for the school in his car.”

  “That’s bad,” I groaned.

  “Very bad.” Peter sounded cut up, his breathing was all wrong. “I needed to talk. You’re the only person I can tell.”

  “So you need me to look out for Raven if he heads back to Ellerton?” It was hard to imagine that the kid would be able to make it alone, but I promised Peter anyway. “What about you—what will you do? OK, don’t answer that. Stay where you are. I’ll come right over—we’ll talk.”

  Peter Hall met me at the Taylors’ gate and quickly took me into a small building at the side of the main house. “We don’t need to let anyone know you’re here,” he explained.

  “Any news?” I asked, taking in the orderly array of gardening tools, plant pots, and fertilizers. There were magazines stacked neatly on a shelf and a corner of the room with a sink, a kettle, and coffee mugs.

  Peter shook his head and tried hard to keep his voice steady as he spoke. “They decided he took off late last night—Frank just reached the school and called home. Allyson is speaking with the police department in Shepherd County.”

  “Will she go and join Frank?”

  “I doubt it. She’s the type to leave the authorities to do their work while she continues on with her routine. Allyson knows Frank can deal with things at the school.”

  “That’s so not the point. How come she isn’t going crazy like any other mother?”

  “Allyson isn’t any other mother,” he reminded me. “Besides, this isn’t the first time Raven has done this. The other times it worked out—either the school or the cops found him within a couple of hours and brought him back.”

  “But this time you’re not so sure?”

  There was a pause. “He never took off in the middle of the night before. Since Arizona passed, the stuff he’s doing gets weirder.”

  “He misses her,” I said quietly. “Maybe he doesn’t understand that she won’t come back.”

  Peter had his back to me and was staring out of the window, watching the main house. He stiffened as he saw the door open and Allyson Taylor walk out. “Stay out of sight,” he warned.

  I ducked back into a dark corner, hearing the sound of a car engine start up and the smooth swish of tires down the drive.

  “She’s heading for the TV station,” Peter reported. “It’s OK, you can relax.”

  “So did Raven run away before—when Arizona was around?” I wanted to know.

  “A hundred times. Arizona and her parents fought over it all the time. She said it was obvious he wasn’t happy at the school, they should bring him home. Frank and Allyson wouldn’t listen.”

  “And whose side were you on?” I asked.

  He spread his hands, palms up. “I’m no expert on autism. Not like Arizona—she read all the books, looked up every site on the Internet. She even joined an organization dedi-cated to beating the condition through alternative treatments. She was sure she could help make Raven better. And the boy related to her and only her—his face would light up every time he saw her.”

  I sighed. “Yeah, that sounds like Arizona. She wouldn’t sit back and do nothing.”

  Peter badly needed to off-load, so he spoke over me. “She hated the medication they give him at the school. She’d read a theory that every kid with autism needs a shadow—someone to be a bridge between him and the outside world, to be at their side twenty-four/seven to help them make sense of things.”

  “Don’t we all?” It sounded flip, but I meant it. “Anyway, like I said—Arizona never did things by halves.”

  “She would have done that for him—been his shadow,” he said, choking up. “She would have given her life to help him.”

  Peter paused, but I was falling apart now and didn’t find any words to fill the gap.

  “Like, on the day she died,” he went on. “It was a Thursday. Allyson and Frank were busy with work commitments, Raven was in school. Then the principal called home to tell Arizona he’d run away again.”

  “What did she do?”

  “She went crazy, accusing her father, saying he should take Raven out of the school permanently even if Allyson disagreed.”

  “And where did Raven go?” I wanted to know.

  “He went looking for his sister, I guess. She ended up in the bottom of Hartmann Lake, so he never found her.”

  Poor kid—it must have been brutal. “Ariz
ona took her car for repair.” It was an unguarded moment and I spoke my next thought out loud. Any second Hunter’s wings would be beating down a storm.

  “Actually, yes.” Peter Hall stared at me with red-rimmed eyes. “How did you know that?”

  “Someone told me—I don’t remember. Where did they eventually find Raven?”

  “In town, wandering in the mall when the stores were closing.”

  “And no one knew where he’d been all day?”

  Peter took a deep breath. “By that time, news was coming through about a body in Hartmann. We were too swallowed up by subsequent events to wonder where Raven had been hiding out.”

  “I hear you,” I agreed. My mind was in overdrive—since Raven had gone looking for Arizona that awful day, was there any chance he’d found her? And if he had, did it make an impact on what had happened? There were new questions and no one around to answer them—not Raven, for sure. Maybe Arizona though. I needed to get out to Foxton fast. “I have to leave,” I told Peter. “I skipped class to come here.”

  “OK, you go,” he told me. “But look out for Raven, will you? And don’t tell anyone. I’m in trouble if Frank and Allyson find out I talked out of turn.”

  “Sure. And you’ll call me if—when they find him?” I hurriedly gave him my cell number. “Try not to worry, Peter. Raven always turns up—you said so yourself.”

  “Maybe not this time,” he sighed. “This time it feels different.”

  “How, different?”

  “Weird, as in spooky. It’s like there’s someone else, something else involved. I keep thinking of those rumors that are going around town, about ghosts or spirits walking the ridge out at Foxton. I’m not a guy who freaks out easily, don’t get me wrong. But this time, just maybe—”

  “Don’t. You’re giving me the creeps.” I faked a shudder as I left the gardener’s workshop and hurried down the drive. I was thinking: Arizona wouldn’t…even she wouldn’t use her powers to spirit her beloved kid brother out of his school…

  I was driving over the limit again and I’d reached the cross out at Turkey Shoot when Phoenix and Arizona materialized right beside me inside the car. They appeared in their fuzzyedged halos of light, shimmering into their solid shapes as shock made me swing out toward the central reservation.

  “Pull over,” Phoenix said, no greetings, no loving smile. “We were at Westra, at Arizona’s house. We heard everything Peter told you.”

  I turned the wheel and crunched onto the dirt-covered hard shoulder, raising dust and insects into the still, warm air.

  From the backseat, Arizona answered the biggest of my panicky, unspoken questions. “I had nothing to do with this, Darina. Raven made his own decision to take off, just like always.”

  “You didn’t take him out of school?” I asked, turning in my seat to see the new, real Arizona—no more Miss Cool, but instead a crazy-eyed girl with hair flopping over her face whose kid brother was missing.

  “Why would I?” she demanded.

  “Because you hate the place, you wanted your parents to take him away.”

  She stared at me, reading deep into my thoughts. “That was back then,” she said quietly. “When he had me to come home to.”

  “I get it,” I nodded. “Sorry.”

  “Come on, Darina,” Phoenix cut in. “We’re going to join the search for Raven. You’ll be our link to the far side, like always.”

  “Where do we start?” Again I turned to Arizona, this time for guidance. “Where does he go when he runs away?”

  Phoenix answered for her. “He usually doesn’t get far, so we’re going to start on the school premises. There’ll be cops—we have to take care.”

  “Which way?”

  “Back toward town.” Arizona spoke with a hint of robot—too calm, too distant—to mask her panic. “Turn west before we get there, along Peak Road.”

  I spun the car around, thinking through the directions and ending up with a chill running down my spine. “That road leads to Hartmann.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So?”

  “So it also leads to the Lindsey Institute, fifteen minutes down the road at the foot of Amos Peak. On a good day Raven can see the lake from his bedroom window.”

  Neither Arizona nor Phoenix said a word. I drove my two Beautiful Dead passengers down to Hartmann Lake, feeling the restless tension build. Phoenix sat beside me, his dark hair lifting in the wind, staring ahead and hyper-aware, as if every tree or rock we passed held information about the missing kid. In the backseat, Arizona sank down as we passed Hartmann, unable to look at the place where she’d drowned.

  “You remember—Raven pulled this same stunt the day ‘it’ happened?” I queried, trying to focus on the road, though the glittering water and the horror of what had taken place there distracted me. “Peter thinks Raven came looking for you.”

  “I hear you.” Arizona’s noncommittal reply was almost too quiet to notice.

  “He didn’t find you?” I checked her expression in my rearview mirror.

  She closed her eyes, her lips barely moved. “After I was through shouting at my dad, I went to Mike’s Motors. Raven wouldn’t know to look for me there. As far as I can recall, we didn’t hook up.”

  I glanced at Phoenix to check that this time Arizona was telling me the truth. He gave a slight nod. “Tell me something, Mister Back-from-the-Dead—how come everything turns into a blur around the ‘event’?” It had been the same with Jonas—when he came back to the far side, courtesy of his overlord, the all-powerful Hunter, his memory of the actual crash was wiped. “You and Summer—you don’t remember either.”

  “Not the details,” he admitted. “Hunter says it’s the trauma of the occasion that does it—it kind of scrambles your brain. You have a tiny amount of recall—maybe a smell or a color around what happened—but the thing itself is wiped. That’s why we’re here, to bring it back, set it straight, and get free.”

  “Until then we’re trapped.” Arizona’s tone was bitter. “Here in this nowhere place—dead but not at peace, here but not here, not able to trust anyone or to take a moment’s rest. You have no idea, Darina, what that feels like.”

  The wind hit the windshield then caught us in a swirling gust. I blinked hard. Keep the car on the road! I told myself. Straight ahead was Amos Peak, blue-gray in the distance, already snowcapped in late October.

  “You’re right—I have no idea,” I agreed. “But like you, Arizona, the deeper I get into this, the less I trust people, I can tell you that for sure.”

  Raven’s school, a low-rise development of log cabin units built around a small man-made lake, was called the Lindsey Institute after the guy who founded it in the 1960s. When we reached there, at about noon, instead of a place crawling with cops we found a single sheriff’s car by the main door of a big, ranch-style building, with Frank Taylor’s red Mitsubishi parked alongside.

  “They’re sure putting everything they’ve got into this search,” Arizona said bitterly. I’d parked outside the gates from where we could look down on the premises.

  “Hey, at least it makes it easier for Darina to snoop around,” Phoenix reminded her. “I guess the log cabins are where the kids sleep, but what about the main building?”

  “That’s where they have lessons, therapy, visits from family.” It was getting harder for Arizona to speak as the painful memories flowed. “Everything looks low-tech and friendly, but this place is a prison camp, believe me.”

  “So where do I start?” I got out of the car and looked for a back entrance I could reach on foot, spotting a narrow path across some scrub ground. “What happens if I bump into someone—what’s my excuse?”

  “You’re smart, Darina, you decide,” she said sharply, then sighed. “Sorry, forget I said that. The staff here don’t look like medics. They dress in jeans and sneakers, even the principal, Rebecca Davis. She’s slim built with curly blond hair, but don’t let appearances fool you. If you run into her, watch out.”

>   “She’ll be with Frank and the sheriff,” Phoenix suggested. “Skirt around the back of the main building to start with. If someone asks, say you’re a tourist. You lost your way coming away from Hartmann.”

  “Raven usually stays close to the school when he does this,” Arizona explained. “He knows he needs to leave, but he doesn’t have any idea where he wants to go, so he walks up into the pine trees or goes to sit by the lake. Or maybe he’ll wander along the creek and get as far as the Pooles’ place a mile downstream. That’s the farthest he ever got.”

  “Arizona and I will try the creek,” Phoenix said. “Darina, you search closer to the buildings.”

  I tried to muster a smile. “I’d put my money on you two any time, given that you hear every leaf fall.” I set off down the hill not too worried but anxious to stay out of Frank Taylor and Rebecca Davis’s way. I’d covered half the distance when the front door opened and a blond woman walked out with a guy in uniform—the local sheriff. I dropped back behind a convenient rock, waiting for them to finish their conversation. While I was there, I studied a parking lot at the back of the building where the staff most likely left their cars and deliveries were made. I watched a kitchen guy exit the building and throw a bag in the trash container. Then he stood, arms folded, staring up at the sky.

  Go back inside! I willed him. I’m stymied with you standing there.

  Eventually the kitchen worker left off gazing and went back to work. I edged down the hill until I was a hundred yards from the parking lot, then I had another scare as the sheriff got into his patrol car and set off up the road, only to stop halfway up the hill and step out. I crouched down behind another rock, holding my breath and waiting again.

  The sheriff spoke into his two-way radio, leaning against the side of his car, taking his time. “Wes, do you copy? Yeah, it’s the usual kid—Raven Taylor.” His voice was faint but I could just make it out. “Staff reported him missing at breakfast this morning. Over.” There was a pause while he listened, then he spoke again. “The father is here. Rebecca has staff out searching the grounds. So far, they didn’t find him. Over.”