A wasteland of strangers (27 page)

I could've had another full house tonight if it hadn't been for the weather and the couldn't-care-less media. Just three cabins occupied on a Saturday night, and none by a newshound. Still a few of them around, but they were all over in the town proper—and they'd be gone, too, soon enough, if John Faith's body didn't turn up pretty quick. Well, good riddance. Liars, users, full of phony promises that got a man all stirred up and hopeful and then left him high and dry, with his expectations hanging out limp as a flasher's cock.

I rolled out of bed and put on my robe and went to the kitchen to find something to eat. Nothing much in the refrigerator appealed to me. Finally I dragged out a couple of powdered-sugar doughnuts I'd bought at Miller's, poured a glass of milk to wash them down with. Comfort food. That was what Dottie used to call milk and doughnuts. Cake and chocolate eclairs and butter toffee and hot fudge sundaes and every other calorie-rich thing you could think of, too. All that comfort food was what blew her up to two hundred and eighty-seven pounds, what killed her quick that hot July night ten years ago. Quick and comfortable.

Dottie. Wasn't often anymore that I thought about her, much less missed her, but tonight I wished she were sitting there across the table, helping me eat the powdered-sugar doughnuts. I'm not the kind of man who gets lonely; I like being by myself, doing for myself, not having to answer to anybody else. But sometimes, when I'm down like this, I crave other company besides my own. And I get mad as hell at Dottie for dying hog-fat the way she did, leaving me to run the Lakeside all by myself, put up with ten years' worth of hassles and frustrations and limp expectations and then for a reward be forced to sell out and go live with an ungrateful, man-crazy daughter and her rotten teenage kids for the rest of my life. She'd gone easy, easy and comfortable; she hadn't suffered. I was the one who'd suffered, who'd keep right on suffering. And when my time came I'd go hard, sure as God makes little green apples. Hard and uncomfortable.

I wedged half a doughnut into my mouth and the crumbs and sugar spilled down inside my pajama top and that made me so mad I smashed the plate against the wall and the glass of milk after it. Let fat-assed Maria clean up the mess tomorrow. Let it lie there until it rotted, for all I cared.

Those bastards. TV newswoman saying my interview was one of her best, promising it'd be shown today, and not even a whisper of my name much less the interview on the noon or seven o'clock or eleven o'clock news programs. Plenty of other Pomo residents and businesses getting attention, but not Harry Richmond and the Lakeside Resort. Chronicle reporter swearing he'd use my name and give the resort a plug in his story, and did he? Hell, no. Not a word. They wouldn't show the interview or mention me tomorrow or any other day, either. Not the way my luck was running.

All I'd asked for was one lousy little break, a few seconds in the spotlight, some free publicity. A small businessman fighting to survive, a hardworking, taxpaying citizen, is entitled to that much, isn't he? Why should others get some good out of what's happened in Pomo and not me?

It's not fair. It's just not fair!

Audrey Sixkiller

"DON'T BE AFRAID." John Faith had found the Ruger automatic and was tucking it into the waistband of his trousers. "Munoz won't be back and I won't hurt you."

"I'm not afraid."

He flicked the flash beam over my face. "No, you're not, are you? Of me or of him. He didn't do anything to you before he brought you here?"

"Rape me? No."

"Choked you, though . . . those marks on your throat. You breathe okay?"

"Yes. I'll be all right."

"Where'd he take you from?"

"My garage. Hiding inside when I came home." Some of the shock was wearing off; I felt relief now, a loosening of the tension in my body which created a tingling weakness in the joints. "My hands," I said. "They're numb."

"Roll over on your side so I can get at the tape."

When I'd done that he knelt and set the flashlight down. I could feel his fingers at my back, on my upper arms, but I was numb below the elbows.

He asked, "Why'd he bring you here?"

So no one could hear my screams. "I'm not sure where we are."

"Nucooee Point Lodge."

"Yes. Of course."

"He must've been here before. Seemed to know his way around."

"So do you," I said.

"Be glad I'm alive and I picked this place to hole up in."

"I am. If you hadn't been here . . ."

"Don't think about it."

"I can't think about anything else."

"Yeah. I wanted to jump him sooner, but I had to make sure I took him by surprise. I'm hurting and I wouldn't have done you or me any good if I'd lost the fight. But I'd feel better if he was lying on the floor right now with a broken head."

I said nothing.

"Bad choice of words," he said. "You probably won't believe it, but I didn't kill Storm Carey."

"All right."

"Gospel truth. Okay, your hands are free."

"I can't feel them."

"Here, I'll help you." He lifted one arm, laid it across my hip.

Turned me by the shoulders, gently, and propped me against the couch's side rest, then lifted the other arm onto my lap. Both hands felt like blobs of dead flesh. He took them in his big fingers and began to massage them. "Tell me when they start to tingle."

It took three or four minutes.

He kept it up for another minute or so after I told him, then let go and got slowly to his feet. Light from the flash caught his face and upper body; red smears stained the bandage on his chest.

"You're bleeding."

"Wounds tore open again during the fight."

"Bullet wounds?"

"Oh yeah. Good old Chief Novak. His aim was a little off."

"You broke his nose."

"Did I? Good."

"He believes you're guilty. Really believes it."

"Sure he does." John Faith switched off the other torch, sat wearily at the far end of the couch; the beam from his flash lay at an oblique angle between us. "Pomo's a hell of a deceptive place," he said then.

"Deceptive?"

"Looks nice and peaceful, but underneath it's a snake pit. I've been in wide-open boomtowns that weren't as hostile."

"It isn't that bad."

"Wasn't until I got here, you mean."

I didn't answer, and he misunderstood my silence.

"Yeah. Right," he said. "What the hell, you might as well blame me for what Munoz tried to do to you."

"I don't blame you. You're not one of his kind."

"What kind is that?"

"The ones who hate and fear women, who use sex as a weapon."

"That the only reason he went after you? Or was it something personal?"

"Well, I was responsible for him being expelled from school two years ago. Another teacher and I caught him using cocaine in an empty classroom. The other teacher wanted to let him off with a warning. I thought it was too serious for that."

"Two years is a long time to nurse a grudge."

"Not for a boy who suddenly decides he's a man."

"There was an attempted rape the other night," John Faith said.

"Novak questioned me about it. Guy wearing a ski mask, he said. Was that Munoz after you?"

"Yes. He tried to break into my house."

"Maybe you're not his first victim. Maybe he's the one . . ." He let the rest of the sentence trail off.

"The one who killed Storm Carey. Is that what you were going to say?"

He nodded. "Didn't look like she'd been raped, though. Was she?"

"No."

"But she could've fought him and he killed her before he had a chance to do anything else. He's the kind who'd panic in a situation like that. And then run in a hurry, like he did tonight."

"He'll keep on running," I said. "He must know we saw his face."

"He knows it, all right."

"Then we have to notify the authorities right away. Before he can get too far—"

"I let you go and you notify them, and then I give myself up. That's what you mean."

"It's the only way."

"For me to get off the hook? Uh-uh. If there was any proof Munoz killed the Carey woman, then, yeah, I'd take the chance. But there isn't any proof. Novak and the rest aren't looking any further than me."

"They can make him confess when they catch him—"

"If they catch him. If he's guilty. No guarantees any way you look at it. Besides, the law's already got me for assaulting a police officer and unlawful flight, among other things. I'd still go to prison."

"Extenuating circumstances. The charges would be dropped—"

"Would they? I doubt it. How're your hands?"

". . . My hands?"

"Feeling back in them yet?"

"Yes." Pins and needles now. "My ankles . . ."

"We'll leave them taped. Don't try to take it off."

"You're not letting me go?"

"Not tonight. Neither of us is going anywhere tonight."

"But Mateo Munoz ..."

"Never mind him for now." John Faith stood again, grimacing. "I have to change these bandages. You stay put."

He walked away, his light picking out another abandoned couch at

an angle across from the one I was on. Candles in tin holders sat on a pair of folding chairs at either end; he struck a match and lit one candle, then the other. He brought the second over and set it on the chair near me, positioning the chair so I would be visible in the flickering glow.

Several items were piled on the other couch: blankets, clothing, food, medical supplies. I watched him sit among them, wedge his torch between two cushions so its beam was fixed on his chest, and then peel off the bloody bandage and apply some sort of ointment to the wound. Now and then he glanced up to make sure I hadn't moved. When he was done taping a fresh bandage in place he repeated the process, with greater difficulty, with another wound in back, under his arm.

Sweat oiled his bare skin when he'd finished. He shut off the flashlight, I suppose to conserve its batteries; took a long drink of bottled water. For a time he sat limply, resting. Then he stood again, brought the bottle to me.

"Thirsty?"

I nodded.

"Use your hands all right now?"

"Yes."

He let me have the water. And another, smaller bottle: aspirin for my sore throat and the pulsing ache in my temples. Swallowing the water was painful enough; getting four aspirin down, one at a time, hurt even more. The skin was so tender around my Adam's apple it felt as if a layer of it had been scraped away.

When I could speak again I asked him, "How did you get here, John Faith?"

"Half the name's enough. Take your choice."

"How, John? All the way to Nucooee Point?"

"Same way I managed not to drown last night. Strong survival skills."

"You couldn't have made it here by yourself. Someone helped you. Brought you over in a boat."

"Wrong. I brought myself."

"Trisha Marx. In my boat."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"The food and medical supplies—she got those for you, too."

"You think so? Is this Trisha a doctor or a nurse?"

"Of course not."

"You saw the bandages I had on before. Much more professional than the ones I put on myself, right?"

"Are you saying someone else besides Trisha helped you?"

"Someone else, period. Doctor, man you don't know."

"I don't believe that," I said. "There isn't a doctor in Pomo County who would give aid and comfort to a fugitive."

"Don't be too sure about that."

"Trisha can get in a lot of trouble, you must know that."

"Not if you don't start throwing her name around. Tell the cops about Munoz, tell them about me, tell them I had help if you want to, but don't mention Trisha Marx's name. Give the kid a break."

"How do you know she's a kid unless—"

"I met her last night, on the Bluffs. Gave her a ride home before I went out to Storm Carey's place. Her old man knows about it, among others." He paused. "You going to keep her out of it?"

"Yes. But you have to let me go."

"I will. Just not yet."

"When?"

"In the morning. Before noon, when I leave."

"Hours from now. We just sit here until then?"

"Sit, talk, sleep—whatever. You'll be comfortable enough."

"Is Trisha coming for you? With a car?"

"No. That's enough about her. My ride out of here has nothing to do with Trisha Marx, I swear that to you. All right?"

I believed him. He was too vehement, too fiercely protective of her. He'd let Trisha help him once, at considerable risk to both of them, because he'd had no other choice. But it hadn't set well with him. The second person ... I didn't understand that, or have a clue as to who it might be. Not a doctor; that part I didn't believe.

He said, "You won't see who it is. And you won't see me leave."

'Tape my hands again? Blindfold me?"

"Tape your hands, but in front where you can get at them with your teeth. It'll take a while for you to get loose and flag down a car on the highway. By the time you make it to a phone I'll be long gone."

"Gone where? A man wanted for murder .. . there's no place that's safe."

"I know it. But it's better than rotting in jail." He laughed, a humorless bark. "Me and Richard Kimble."

"You'll never have a minute's peace. Have you thought about that?" "I've thought about it." "And it doesn't bother you?" "More of the same, that's all. I'm used to it." "Used to what?"

"Running," John Faith said. "I been doing it, one form or another, most of my life."

Anthony Munoz

FINGERS ON YOUR window in the middle of the night, man, it can't be nothing good. Rap, rap, rap, and I was off the bed and rubbing my eyes. But I couldn't see nothing at the window, just rain patterns on the glass and the black night beyond. I got hold of my aluminum Little League bat and drifted over there slow in the dark.

Rap, rap, rap. Then he must've seen my shape, because the fingers quit and he called out, "About time, Anthony. Open up, for Chrissake. Lemme in."

Mateo. What the hell, man?

I flipped the catch and hauled the window up. Rain and cold blew in. I backed off as Mateo climbed over the sill, laid the bat on the card table I use for a desk, and then flicked on the lamp there.