A wasteland of strangers (22 page)

"Can I talk to you, Mrs. Banner?" Mrs. Banner, not Lori like in the cafe. "It's really important."

"Well. .."

"Really important."

"If it's about the fight last night—"

"Fight? What fight?"

"Your dad didn't tell you about it?"

"No. He had a fight with somebody? Who?"

"John Faith." Saying his name brought back the down feeling I'd had when I first heard about him and Storm Carey. It was so hard to believe they were both dead. "At the Northlake, around ten-thirty."

"Oh, God. Was it about John giving me a ride home?"

"Yeah. Your dad accused him of trying to molest you and then took a sock at him. Knocked him down."

"What'djohndo?"

"Nothing. Walked away."

She had an odd look on her face. "He never said a word. Not one word."

"Well, if that's not why you're here ..."

"Can we talk in private? Just the two of us?"

"There's nobody home but me." Earle had gone out about ten. He hadn't said where and I didn't care anyway. I touched my mouth where he'd hit me yesterday; the upper lip was still sore, but the swelling was gone. One of my teeth was loose, too. He'd been all sorry and lovey-dovey last night, but that was because he wanted to get laid. I wouldn't let him. I'd had about all I was going to take of his abuse and I'd told him so. He said he'd never hit me again, swore up and down. Well, he'd better keep his promise this time. It's his last chance.

Trisha came in and we sat in the living room and the first thing she said was, "Isn't it awful, what happened to Mrs. Carey?"

"Worst thing in Pomo since I've lived here."

"You think he did it? John Faith?"

"Everybody says he did."

"But do you think so?"

I'd worried that around most of the morning. Sure, he'd looked capable of killing somebody, with his size and that craggy, scarred face and his silver eyes. But I kept remembering the deep-down gentleness in those eyes, and the little-boy-lost sadness in him, and what he'd said about the world being a better place if people quit hurting other people and left each other alone. His last words to me, too, after the trouble with Brian Marx, "See? Not in this lifetime." He could've taken Brian apart real easy, but he hadn't done anything except stand his ground. He may've looked violent, but inside, where it counts, he wasn't. Just the opposite of Earle. And we were supposed to believe he went out right afterward and beat Storm Carey's head in?

"No," I said.

"You mean that?"

"You bet I mean it."

"I don't think he did it either. I know he didn't."

"How could you know it?"

"I just do. He wouldn't hurt anybody unless they hurt him first. He's not what people say he is."

"No, not at all."

"I'd help him in a minute if I could," she said.

"Help him how?"

"You know, stay out of jail. Get away."

"Well, nobody can help him now."

"They could if he wasn't dead."

"You don't think he drowned in the lake?"

"Maybe not." She wet her lips. She looked intense, her blue eyes bright and shiny. "What if he's still alive? What if he's hurt and hiding somewhere?"

"Trisha, what're you trying to say?"

"Would you help him if you could? If you were the only person who could do what had to be done?"

A peculiar fluttery sensation had started under my breastbone. And all of a sudden my mouth was dry. I said, "How badly hurt?"

"Bad enough. Say, a couple of bullet wounds."

"In a vital spot?"

"No. Like under the shoulder."

"Bullet still inside?"

"Uh-uh. A couple of wounds."

"Entrance and exit. That's better, cleaner. Still, wounds like that can infect pretty easily."

"Yeah. He'd need antibiotics and other stuff, right? And somebody who'd had medical training to get it for him and then fix him up."

"Where is he, Trisha?"

"How should I know? At the bottom of the lake, maybe. We're just talking here."

"We're not just talking. You know where he is, don't you?"

"What if I do?"

"Is it someplace where he's safe?"

"Safe enough. You think I should tell the cops?"

"I didn't say that."

"They'd just put him in jail, maybe the gas chamber. For something he didn't do."

"I know."

"Should I just let him die?"

"No."

"So what would you do? If you knew for sure he was alive and wounded and where he was hiding."

"He asked you to talk to me, didn't he? Last night... I mentioned my nurse's training and he remembered."

"You didn't answer my question, Mrs. Banner."

"Lori," I said. Then I said, "I'd help him."

"No shit? Even though it'd be breaking the law?"

"Aiding and abetting a fugitive, it's called."

"Whatever. You wouldn't call the cops?"

"No, I wouldn't call the cops. I won't call them."

"Swear to God?"

"Swear to God. Where is he? How'd you find him?"

"I won't tell you that. Not yet."

"But you'd take me to him."

"If you had the stuff he needs."

"I can get it. All except a tetanus shot—there's no way I can manage that."

"Where'll you have to go?"

"Rexall Pharmacy."

"They won't get suspicious or anything?"

"No." I was breathing hard. Scared and hyped up both, the same as she was. Jeez-us!

"He'll have to have some food," Trisha said. "And clothes. All he's got to wear now are a couple of blankets."

"That's no problem. Plenty of food here. And Earle, my husband, is nearly the same size. Money, though ... I don't have much."

"He doesn't need money. He's got his wallet."

"What about transportation? Do you have a car?"

"No. We'll have to go in yours."

"That's no problem. But I meant a way for him to travel when he's well enough . .. Oh, God, worry about that later. First things first. And we'd better hurry." Before I had time to think too much about what I was getting myself into. Before I could change my mind. And before Earle decided to come home. "Kitchen's through the doorway over there. You gather up some food—there're paper bags under the sink. I'll get the clothes."

We were both on our feet, and for about five seconds we stood with our eyes locked. Thinking the same thing, probably. When she'd arrived, less than twenty minutes ago, we'd been more or less strangers, a generation apart and barely civil to each other whenever we met. Now,

thanks to John Faith, a kind of serious bonding thing had happened. Well, that was the sort he was, and I guess I knew it the first time I laid eyes on him in the Northlake. You were either for him or against him, no matter what he said or did. All the way, either way.

George Petrie

I AM BEING followed.

By a dark-green van, one of the small, newer ones with the slanted front end. I can't tell if the driver is the gray-haired man from the Truckee motel or somebody else; can't even be sure of how many people are inside. The van's windshield is tinted and splinters of sunlight off glass and metal make it even more difficult to see.

I first spotted the van outside Sparks, when I pulled back onto the highway after buying a pair of canvas suitcases to keep the money in. It stayed behind me when I took the Highway 50 cutoff, and it's been there ever since through Fallon and across the open desert past Sand Mountain. Every time I speed up or slow down or pass another car, it does the same.

It has to be the gray-haired man. No one from Pomo could've tracked me; no other stranger could possibly know about the garbage bags or suspect what's in them. I don't remember a dark-green van in the motel parking lot, but it could've been parked behind one of the units. Must've followed me all the way from Truckee. Too much traffic for me to pick it out until the flow thinned coming through Reno.

I don't know what to do.

Keep on going to Ely as planned? Another two hundred miles of empty desert and barren mountains, sun glare and heat shimmers off the highway, even at this time of year, that have my eyes burning, my head aching? No. Couldn't take the tension. And some of the country ahead is even more desolate. He could overtake me without much effort; this old Buick can't outrun a van like that. Force me off the road when there's no one around. He's bound to have a weapon, and there's nothing I can use to defend myself. Easy for him to kill me, bury my body where no one would ever find it—

Road sign. Junction with State Highway 361 six miles ahead.

There'll be a rest stop; usually is at a desert crossroads. Service station, convenience store, maybe a restaurant. People. If I pull in there he'll follow me and then ... what? Confront him? He wouldn't dare try anything with people around. But confronting him won't accomplish anything. Let me get a good look at him, that's all. He'd deny following me. Brazen it out. Then sit back in his van and wait for me to drive out onto the highway again.

Three miles to the junction. And he's even closer behind me now, crowding up, the sun like fire on that tinted windshield.

Christ Jesus, what am I going to do!

Earle Banner

SATURDAY'S MY DAY off, but I went down to the shop anyway since I didn't have nothing else to do. Stan was there and we shot the bull for a while, mostly about what a piece Storm Carey was and how that bugger Faith got off too easy, sucking lake water. "Should've had his nuts put in a vise," Stan said, and I said, "Yeah, that's for sure," but I was thinking, Yeah, it's too bad about Storm, she was a sweet lay, some of the best I ever had, but that didn't change the fact she was a bitch and she'd been asking for what Faith give her for a long time. Same as Lori kept asking for it. Bet she didn't think Faith got off too easy. Bet she was sorry he was dead meat, even if she hadn't been letting him boink her and he'd had to go after Storm instead.

After a while a couple of the other guys showed up, and then somebody said why didn't we go over to Pandora's and get us a few cold ones? So we did that. Regulation pool table in Pandora's, better balanced than most you find in bars, and we started playing eight ball, loser buys a round. Before you knew it it was past noon and I'd had seven or eight Buds and was about half in the bag. Feeling good, yeah, and horny, too. Beer always does that to me, fires up the blood, puts lead in the old pencil. The guys wanted to shoot another game, but I said no, I was gonna go home and eat my old lady for lunch. They all laughed, and I walked out and headed for my Ford.

And who did I see across the street, leaving the Rexall Pharmacy with a big sack in her hot little hands? Yeah. Lori. My sweet, lying wife, supposed to be home, says to me this morning she was just gonna putter around the house all day.

She wasn't alone, neither. Had a passenger, somebody waiting for

her in that little Jap car of hers. I couldn't see who it was, wrong angle and the windshield being dirty, but I figured it must be some lousy son of a bitch she'd picked up somewhere and I was about ready to charge over there and drag both their asses out into the street. But then she was inside and putting the car in gear and coming my way, so I ducked down behind a parked car. When I looked up again as they were passing I seen her passenger was a woman. No, not even that—a teenage kid. Brian Marx's kid, Trisha.

What the hell?

I ran around the corner to the Ford and made a fast U-turn and swung out onto Main. The Jap car was stopped at the light two blocks north. She could've been on her way to do more shopping, or going to Brian's house to drop the kid off, or going home—only she wasn't, none of those things. She stayed right on Main, and once she was clear of the business district she goosed it up to forty-five. Usually she don't drive no more than the speed limit, scared to death of getting a ticket. Heading for the Northlake Cutoff, on her way to someplace she had no business being, by God, her and that tight-assed little Trisha Marx.

Wherever she was going, she was gonna have company she didn't expect. Yeah, and if she was looking to let some other guy eat her for lunch, she'd be one sorry babe. I didn't feel horny no more. I felt mean as a snake with a gopher's balls stuck in its throat.

Trisha Marx

I DIDN'T TELL Lori where we were going until we were almost there. It wasn't a trust thing; I'd been pretty sure back there at her homestead and she hadn't done or said anything to make me change my mind: She wouldn't give John away to the cops. I guess what it was was that John and I had this secret together, a really special secret, the kind you'd be reluctant to let your best friend in on, and now I had to share it with somebody who was practically a stranger. You want to keep a secret like that all to yourself as long as you can, sort of savor it, because when you finally do share it it's never quite so special anymore.

When I finally told Lori it was Nucooee Point Lodge she said, "How'd he get all the way over here?"

"I took him."

"You took him? How?"

So I had to tell her about that, too. And afterward I felt kind of let down, not nearly so torqued as before. Right. Share a secret and it's never quite the same.

"A good thing you know how to drive a boat," she said. "If it'd been me, I don't think I could've done it."

That picked me up again, a little. "I didn't have any trouble."

"Must've been scary, though. All the way across the lake in a borrowed boat."

"No," I lied. "I wasn't scared a bit."

The turn for the lodge was just ahead. Once, the driveway was wide enough for a semi, but grass and oleanders had grown in on both sides and choked it down to one narrow lane. There was a chain across it, and a No Trespassing sign, but you could squeeze around the chain through high grass on the south side; that's how the bunch of us got in the three times we'd been over to party. I pointed out the way to Lori and we bounced over behind a screen of trees, onto what used to be a packed-dirt parking lot. The earth was all chewed up now, and tangled with blackberry bushes, and you had to go slow. But once you were at the back end, there was no way anybody could see in from the road.

We unloaded the food and clothes and medical stuff, took them around to the service door. As soon as we were inside I called out to John, so he'd know right away who was coming. When we got to the lobby he was sitting up on the couch, the blankets pulled around him to his chin.