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  Padding along like a trouper, the Dude follows: proof of the existence of Dave Ribault.

  Bay Street is the worst. The history of his life in this town in three blocks. For God’s sake, he expects to marry Merrill in Trinity Chapel over there, he just hasn’t figured out how or when or, shit, whether— which, OK, leaves him feeling guilty because their unfinished business sits heavy on his heart. The Marlin Boat Club, where they would have the wedding dinner because Merrill loves it there. They’d have a cake from Tansey’s and Kara and Ray standing up for them. Champagne from the Bottle Shop and music by the Empty Pockets, yes. He dodges into an alley because he can’t think about that anymore.

  All the island’s lights have gone out. Even the street lamps are dark, but there is a police presence: emergency lights at the roadblock, one state trooper patrolling, one cop pacing back and forth across Bay Street. Police cars and the TV truck stand empty.

  Whatever happened here yesterday was huge and, Davy thinks, the removal of a population this size can be— must be traced back to a solid, physical cause. Somebody or something found a way to scoop up every living human on Kraven island and— what?

  Transport them.

  Whatever the machinery, it yanked his life out from under him like a rug. They’re all out there somewhere, Davy’s sure: Merrill and Ned and their monolithic father— everyone who belongs here, same as they ever were.

  Wherever they are.

  While he personally is on autopilot, slouching along side streets and back alleys with no idea what he’s looking for or how to find out what he needs to know. He comes back into himself on Poulnot Street with a start. He’s almost home. If he lets himself into Merrill’s house and does all the usual things, he thinks— how long has it been since he ate?— if he can just sit down in her kitchen long enough to refuel; if he can crash on their bed and snap into fetal position and sleep, in a few hours the sun will come up like it always does, Merrill will be there and this will end.

  If only.

  This is no bad dream. The disappearance was too complete, with many moving parts that clicked into place on cue. It had to be produced, he thinks. Like a show. If he’s right, in a couple of hours he’ll wake up to banked studio lights, a camera crew because, hey dude, you’re on TV. Smile for the audience and you and your girlfriend here …

  Shadows breed paranoia. That handsome, shady bastard I caught hitting on Merrill, I saw them. He saw, but he doesn’t know what he saw. What if she’s in on it?

  You bet he’s getting weird. Right, he tells himself without conviction, yesterday never happened, this whole exercise is just that: highly competent reality TV, with a leering, smarmy game-show host just waiting to spring the truth on him while a cast of Kraven islanders cheers as he and Merrill— what?

  Rush into each other’s arms with joyful cries or recriminations. He is too wild and confused and, OK, guilty, to guess which.

  Passing the neighbors’ empty houses is terrible. For him right now, they reek of missed chances, disorder and recent sorrow. Loneliness, he thinks. Sad. Places look as if every last one of them was caught unawares, removed helter-skelter, half-dressed and unprepared.

  For the confused fool left alone in this tight little world, the universal absence is terrible: close and personal, he thinks in a wash of guilt. Like it’s something he did. He and the dog go along to the house where he and Merrill live. Lived.

  He shakes himself awake. Fuck I’m tired. How long have I been standing here?

  Standing on that porch in, OK, a weakened condition, Davy groans as the trouble he’s tried so hard to outrun comes back around and smacks him in the face: the fight. Before any of this came down, he and Merrill had a fight. They tangled in her kitchen after midnight, bitter words he’s too fried to recall. When she came back to bed much later, shivering and distraught, Davy rolled away from her, faking a snore because he was too miserable and conflicted to think it through and say the right thing. Too stupid to figure out what the right thing is. Instead he crept out while she was sleeping, to keep this assaholic appointment with Rawson Steele in downtown Charlton.

  He let her sleep and now she’s gone. They’re all gone.

  Look, when he got home after that long, totally crap Wednesday, he spotted his woman and Rawson Steele with their heads together under the yellow porch light like lovers colluding. They jumped apart as he burned gravel turning into the drive. Steele was gone before he could reach the porch— what was he, guilty? Guilty of what? Davy’s ashamed of the things he said to Merrill after he rushed her inside and slammed the door.

  “I love you,” she said, running her hands along his shoulders. She’d explained, but he was too mad to remember what she told him, except, “Oh, lover, he can’t help it.”

  Then she whispered as though the bastard was still within earshot, “It’s weird, but he’s just another poor, sad Northerner, down here looking for his roots.”

  He forgets what he said back, but he’ll never forget Merrill’s face when she cried:

  “Really, it’s not what you think!”

  He should have apologized. No. He should have asked her what about it was weird, but he was too pissed off to ask and Merrill was too hurt and angry to explain. They ate takeout so they could talk about what to order. They found busy-work to keep from having to talk. For the same reason, they watched bad TV. They went to bed and slept not much and after midnight they collided in the kitchen and had the fight.

  “Davy,” she said when they finished, and she was shouting, “if you’re that fucking paranoid, you can either marry me or move out,” and that’s the last thing she said to him.

  He sucks in his breath. Lets it out. “OK, Dude.”

  The dog follows him in.

  Inside, he gropes around for candles and the box of long matches Merrill keeps on the hearth. It should be OK, the cops, armed forces, whatever are still all over at the lake, but he pulls the shades before he strikes the first match, in case. Her house is just the way he left it at dawn it seems like forever ago. God, is this really the same day?

  Either Merrill went voluntarily or something took her so fast that she didn’t have time to grab her phone or leave anything behind— a note, the bracelet he gave her, so he would know. Her cell is still on the dresser, but like the house phones and the phones in the other empty houses he’ll try before he gives up on them entirely, it’s dead. No signal, and no matter what he does, he can’t find out whether the damn thing even recorded the dozen missed calls he made to her.

  The silence is killing him. He tells the dog, “Dude, I bet you’re hungry.” He answers for the dog. “You bet I am.” He does what he can for the grateful setter: he pours a box of Merrill’s cornflakes into the biggest bowl he can find and sets it down for the dog. The dude slurps it up, tipping the bowl. Merrill’s treasured raku is a dog dish now. If she knew she’s rip my ears off. But Merrill doesn’t know. He says, because Merrill isn’t here to say the obvious, “There are a lot of things you don’t know.”

  Don’t whine!

  He repeats, setting the words down like stones, “A lot of things.”

  Something about the darkness and silence, about the absolute Merrill-lessness of the house, of this kitchen, where they collided last night and left everything between them hanging. His lovely woman was waiting, and he totally missed the moment. Apparently, so did she: he finds her yukata on the floor by the rumpled bed. Abandoned slides. Naturally he mashes his face into her pillow. Yes, she was here. Yes she isn’t, may never be. Either he sleeps or he doesn’t. He couldn’t tell you which. Davy hurls himself on the bed, thinking to crash just long enough to recharge, but he doesn’t sleep. To his humiliation he plows through the bedding and presses Merrill’s pillows to his face, rooting for that alien scent: Steele’s shampoo, his shaving lotion, his living flesh, because his first instinct is to pin this on Rawson Steele.

  Irrational? Probably. At this point Davy’s a runaway train, whirring along the track so fast that the next t
urn could derail him, but he won’t slow down and he can’t stop. The trouble with Merrill began the day Steele showed up, along with everything that’s happened on Kraven since the slick intruder entered City Hall. Unless, Davy thinks. Unless it started before he came. Either the calculating bastard paid off everybody on Kraven island to disappear, he thinks, or he engineered this mass abduction to cover the fact that whatever it cost him, whatever it took to bring it off, he was going to have Merrill Lanieuville Poulnot, and he would do anything to cover the theft.

  Yes, he is crazy with it.

  No. Not crazy. Fact truth. Either Steele has stolen Davy’s lover or he seduced her, that’s for sure, and after hours of searching and wondering, he’s too wrecked to know which would be worse.

  Unless!

  Fury drives him to his feet.

  Standing in the middle of her bedroom in the damp early-morning air, shivering in Ray Powell’s borrowed clothes, Davy is struck by the unless.

  Terror keeps him there.

  Unless Steele is … A shudder rips through him. Part of something bigger.

  Where was he while I was stirring up chiggers at the Overlook, like redbugs would make an operator like Steele forget us and move on? What was he doing while I lay in wait for him out there on the breakwater, thinking I could manage and control the scene? What the fuck does he want?

  Shit! Steele wants Merrill, whom he stupidly blew off in the middle of a major, decisive encounter that might have settled, that might have … oh God, if he’d only said … If he’d only done …

  What? Whatever he has done or failed to do. A black hole opens in front of Davy, yawning, with Steele like a magnet at the bottom of the pit. Charming, sinister, calculating, so smooth and friendly, Rawson Steele is calling from the abyss: come on down.

  What the fuck was he doing here?

  Fuck, what am I doing here?

  He grabs his LCD flash from the dresser. “Dude?” But the dog sprawls, rolling over onto Merrill’s side of the bed, filling her space. It’s so fucking depressing that he douses the flash and leaves the room, wandering in his mind.

  Next he finds himself standing in the darkened kitchen with something nasty in his mouth, chewing without any idea how old this thing is or long it’s been. He’s reluctant to turn on his Maglite and see what he just ate. God, was he really gnawing on the half-eaten clam roll he threw in the fridge after the fight? So, what? Did the power go out the minute he rolled out of bed and left the house? He stumbles back to Merrill’s bed, shoving the dog off Merrill’s side, and crashes into sleep.

  Stupid of him, dozing like he has forever, sleepwalking through the hours on the dumb premise that he’s alone in the night. He thought the neighborhood was perfectly safe— shit, wasn’t everybody down at the lake? No. Although the rows of houses were empty when he and the Dude came into this one, he’s no longer alone. He can hear them coming down Poulnot Street: good old boys stomping along shouting in the dark. Police from Charlton and Poynter’s island may be down at the lake, but cops and supernumeraries from wherever fanned out while he sat like a stalled cursor, going duh-duh-duh. There are slack-jawed bubbas from wherever-the-fuck out there, stomping from house to house, kicking in doors, inspecting sheds and trashing houses in search of interlopers, bent on securing the crime scene.

  If this is a crime scene.

  The sky outside is turning pale. In an hour or so it will be light.

  Davy snaps to. Where the bedroom was dark a minute ago, reflected dome lights and headlights play on the ceiling. While he was staring into the void, the official presence entered Poulnot Street. Shit! He rolls out of bed and lands in a crouch. They’re next door, and they aren’t exactly sneaking up. He can hear them crunching through the Clarsons’ hedges and flower beds, trying to sound big.

  Flashlights show in all the next-door windows, flickering from room to room in the deserted house. Guys he went to school with are out there rooting in the bushes with nightsticks, rifle barrels, whatever they had when they took up arms, stomping onto the porch baying like hounds to prove they’re in charge. Armed thugs are working their way down Poulnot Street, and Merrill’s house is next.

  Still in a crouch, he gentles the dog back onto the bed and rolls him over. “Dude,” he murmurs, scratching the soft belly, “you have to stay back, or they’ll get you. You be good,” he says and then adds, without conviction, “And I’ll be back.”

  14

  Ned

  Argh!

  It’s after midnight and dark as fuck in here; my room is sealed— airless, like a coffin sealed to keep death from getting out, but something got in. I can hear it breathing.

  Trapped in this fucking desert city and locked down for the night, I am not alone. My hole in the wall behind the dumbwaiter is way too tight for anybody but me, so, who? Like, how? Father’s on guard 24/7, but even with the house secured and the Great Poulnot crouched in the front room like the troll under a drawbridge, holy crap, something got into my room!

  What. What?

  I rise up and burp words at it. “What?”

  “Shut up.”

  All the lights here go on all at once, and, fuck! Rawson Steele is in my room, not-quite whistling. “How did you get in?”

  He talks with his mouth clamped tight, so only you can hear. “I said. Shut. The fuck. Up.”

  I can’t help it, I go, “Boy, am I glad to see you!”

  He doesn’t look all that glad to see me. “My fucking phone.”

  “Like I’ve got it?” Yes I am pissed off at him.

  “Asshole, keep it down.”

  “What do you think, I stole it?”

  “Don’t yell! The old man will…”

  Why do I not tell him Father won’t whatever because he can’t? Because I don’t know what Father can and can’t do, I only know what he’s done, that keeps me locked up tight and crazy. That’s the whole thing about Father. Even when you think you know what he’s doing, you never really know. I whisper, “What do you want?”

  “My fucking phone.”

  “Why? It’s not like anything is working.”

  “We’re getting it back. In case.”

  “We?” Cool. He thinks this is a we situation. Like we’re friends. I go, “What’s the point? It’s not like you can get a signal in this place.”

  “It’s urgent.” The angles in his face are sharper than I thought. Like, he could be one of the Koro Ishi in Gaijin Samurai, maybe Takeda, who I always thought was the strongest player on my team— smart, probably a lot older than us. Unless— oh shit, what if he’s the power behind the Dread Kobyashi, our enemy from the first level all the way to the top? Like, should I trust this guy and fall in line or sneak up behind him and nail him or what? I am back in the game and I come at him all Hydra Destroyer, beady-eyed and snarling through my teeth. “What makes you think you can even get a call?”

  He tosses a stinking bundle at me. Yesterday’s scrubs. “Dress.”

  “Wait. Who’s calling who?”

  “Now.” His glare strips the Hydra Destroyer off me like flaking paint.

  And like plain old ordinary Ned Poulnot, dumb baby following orders because Father says, I put them on, but I’m all, “OK, how are you gonna take a call or make one or even text anybody in this dead bone place?” I can’t stop jabbering. “Even the pagers died.”

  His eyes rake me raw. “Don’t ask.”

  So I don’t. I just stand there wishing Father would come— what am I thinking? Wait. I don’t wish Father would come, I wish Father would … I don’t know what I wish. I wish Rawson Steele wasn’t so much bigger than me, I wish he wasn’t so ripped and tough and driven, and I wish he’d …

  I wish I didn’t feel so short and stupid and useless standing here in paper shoes and yesterday’s dirty scrubs.

  Then he truly scares the crap out of me. It’s the cold, dead lead in his voice. That death-row stare. Like he really is the player that runs Kobyashi in the game and this is a new level that I don’t know abou
t. He waves me out of the room. “Move!”

  “Gaijin Samurai,” I say anyway. He’s either my friend or my enemy and I kind of need to know.

  He doesn’t blink. “Are you coming or not?”

  “Are you with me or against me?” I toss it out there, to make sure he’s only pretending we aren’t in the game. “Like, at Chinyatsu Yo?”

  Something makes me look again: Takeda? Did the player behind Takeda step out of the game to help me escape? I ask, to make sure. “Do you care?”

  “Not really.” That grin. It’s something about the grin.

  “So, what. Are we in this thing together?”

  Then he really grins.

  It’s Takeda! It has to be. I go, “So, we’re in this together?”

  Shit, we can change whatever’s going down in this weird white place, him and me, fighting back to back no matter what.

  He doesn’t rightly say. He just says, “OK then. Let’s go.”

  Truth? I would follow him anywhere, but I want him to think I’m too sharp to move just because he says so. “Where to?”

  “Where do you think, stupid? Your sister’s house.”

  “She took your phone?”

  “That guy Powell did. I saw him hand it off to her on their way out to the rim.”

  “The rim?” He might as well be talking about another planet.

  “Take these.” He throws another bundle at me. Wow, a black hoodie so I can streak around and vanish into the night like Rawson Steele. Black sweats, where does he get these things? “It’s cold out, and farther than you think.”

  I slide into my disguise and follow him out into the hall. He doesn’t need to tell me to be quiet, we are, oh my God, we’re heading for the front door, with Father planted at the table like a stone idol of himself, propping up that big head with his fists. He’s been stuck in that position, rooted in one place for so long that his elbows have turned black. The beard is so white that you can see the skin showing through, and his chin is all black and blue, like all the blood in him sank to the bottom and my father is morphing into a gigantic bruise. It spooks the crap out of me and I accidentally bump the corner of his table just when I’m trying so hard to sneak. “Shit!” Oh, shit.