Abandon (11 page)

That’s what happened to Jerrod. Are these guys spec ops?

In the darkness several feet ahead, someone exhaled.

The floor creaked.

Liquid fear, pulled the trigger, muzzle flash burning her eyes, ears ringing, and in that light splinter, she saw the rotted interior of the ghost house and two men garbed in night camouflage and face masks, suppressor-fitted machine pistols slung over their shoulders.

They stood by the bay window, one of them kneeling, hit.

As she thumbed back the hammer, she heard the hiss of compressed air. Barbed electrodes clung to her parka. Then she lay twitching and screaming on the floor.

An untrodden lacquer of powder lay between the buildings, and on the hillside, she could see the cabins—stoves and hearths aglow, smoke trickling out of chimneys. Here came the first passerby of the day, a petite blonde plodding through the snow.
That pretty piano player.
Molly had grown accustomed to staring down into the saloon, watching the young woman play. Sometimes, late at night, with the street gone quiet, she could even hear the music from the hotel suite.

Footsteps approached from behind; strong hands settling on her shoulders. She finished peeling one of the oranges from the basket Ezekiel and Gloria Curtice had left at her door the night before, offered him a wedge, her suite redolent of citrus.

“I was thinking, Jack. Could we take a trip to San Francisco in the spring? I’m so tired of all this dreadful snow.”

“That’s a lovely idea.”

She squeezed his hand. Jack gazed down at her, eyes luminous with adoration, said, “Remember the first time I saw you? I was walking down the street on a San Francisco evening, when I passed this spectacular creature. I doffed my hat, smiled.”

“Did she smile back?”

“Oh no. This was a lady, by every account. She simply nodded, and I thought, I have to know who that woman is.”

“So what did you do?”

“Followed her to a ball.”

“And then?”

“We danced. We danced all night.”

“Do you remember what she wore?”

“An evening gown the color of roses. You were the most exquisite thing I’d ever seen. You still are.”

“I’m so happy, Jack.” Molly rose from the divan and stepped around to her husband. Even after all this time, he seemed utterly unchanged from the man she’d married in 1883—short blond hair, boxy jaw, ice blue eyes, even that same spruce tailcoat he’d worn the night of their first encounter. “Let me show you what I want for Christmas,” she said, reaching back to untie her filthy corset, letting it fall to her feet. She pulled her chemise over her head, tossed it at the wardrobe, and climbed into bed. “Jaaaaack.” She whispered his name like a prayer, fingers already fast at work in that swampy heat between her thighs.

Ezekiel and Stephen packed down an area of snow so they could sit without sinking. Then the preacher dipped an Indian earthenware vessel he’d brought into the spring, offered the first sip to Gloria.

“No thank you. I’m afraid it’ll chill me down even more.”

“Zeke?”

“Naw, Preach, you go ahead.”

They sat in the cold and awesome silence. Ezekiel pulled off his fleece-lined gloves, took out a hip-flask tin of Prince Albert tobacco, set to work loading his pipe.

Ahead, the terrain flattened into a high basin, with a lake in the middle that in the summer turned a luminescent green, as though the lakebed were made of solid emerald, with the sun underneath it. Even then, no one could stand the water for more than a minute, leading the residents of Abandon to bestow it with the most extreme temperature designation in their arsenal—“
fucking
cold.”

Gloria tucked in the blond curls that had escaped from her sealskin cap, shivering despite having bundled herself in two petticoats, two pairs of
stockings, one of Ezekiel’s heavy woolen jackets, and an enormous pommel slicker.

“Mind if I ask you something, Stephen?”

“Gloria, you can ask me anything anytime.”

Ezekiel blew smoke rings, watched the snowflakes cut them down.

“If I tell you this, can it stay between us? ’Cause nobody else in Abandon knows what I’m about to say.”

“What do you think you’re doin, Glori?” Ezekiel said.

“Trying to ask the preacher something.”

“Don’t go botherin him with—”

“Zeke,” said Stephen, “let her say what’s on her mind. I’m here to help if I can.”

“Glori, wish you’d let it lie,” Ezekiel said, but she ignored him.

“There’s no easy way to say it, Stephen. I used to be a whore.”

“Aw hell,” Ezekiel said.

“And Zeke used to be a outlaw. Killed a few men in his time. We each did enough sinning for ten. We changed. Not perfect by any means, but we’re decent folk now, or try to be at least.”

“I believe that,” Stephen said as he brushed the snow off his visored felt hat.

“Reason I’m telling you this is ’cause I wanna know about God’s punishment.”

“What about it in particular?”

“Something happened a year ago—”

“Ain’t gonna listen to this,” Ezekiel said, and he struggled to his feet and webbed a ways up the trail, where he stood with his back to them, smoking his pipe, watching the basin fill with snow.

“Go on, Gloria,” Stephen said.

“Last January, we were living up in Silver Plume. Had a son, name a Gus. Him and Zeke went out together one morning. They were waiting to cross the street, and somehow, Gus’s little hand slipped out a Zeke’s. Our boy walked in front of a hansom. . . .” Stephen reached over, touched Gloria’s arm. She wiped her eyes. “The horse stepped on Gus and one a them big wheels . . . rolled over his neck. Weren’t nobody’s fault. Not the driver’s. Not Zeke’s.”

“Not yours.”

“Gus died right there in the street.”

“I’m so sorry, Gloria.”

“Now I want you to tell me something, Stephen.”

“I’ll certainly try.”

“I just told you how Zeke and I used to be a wicked pair a souls. There’s this little voice been whispering to me ever since he died, saying that God
took Gus from us as punishment for all the bad things we done. That ain’t true, is it? He ain’t that kind a God?”

The preacher’s calm brown eyes seemed to darken. He looked away, and when he spoke again, his voice took on a harder, bitter aspect.

“You’re asking me if we worship a vengeful God?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think I’m the person to answer that for you.”

“Why not?”

“What if I were to say that that voice in your head is right? That it’s entirely possible He took your son from you?”

“If that’s the truth, I hate myself and Zeke for what we were. And I hate God for what He is.”

“Then perhaps we shouldn’t continue this conversation, Gloria. I’ll not be responsible for turning someone from their faith.” Stephen used his walking stick to boost himself onto his feet. “I’m sorry I can’t be of more comfort to you.”

“But just last week you preached about God’s unconditional love.”

Stephen reached down, extended a gloved hand to Gloria, helped her stand. “It’s what people need to hear. They want a version of God as benevolent father, ready to protect, eager to provide, but to hold no accounting. I don’t believe in that God anymore.”

“But you did last Sunday, so something changed your mind?”

“Not something, Gloria. God Himself.” And there were sparks in the preacher’s gentle eyes—deep loss and rage at that loss—as he turned away and trudged up the trail.

A mansion materialized in the distance, ensconced on the edge of the lake. “Ever time I see it,” Ezekiel said, “I can’t get past what a load a burro’s milk that thing is.”

“It does look misplaced in these environs,” Stephen said.

Packer had named his estate Emerald House—four symmetrical wings of opulence that met in a central block, crowned by a cupola. The top floors had been cedar-shingled, the ground level constructed of stone. Numerous brick chimneys soared from the gabled roof.

“Well, that’s strange,” Ezekiel said. “Ya’ll see even a whisper a smoke rising from a one a them chimneys? Why you reckon he’d let his fires go out in a storm?”

There were drifts to the second-floor windows, and a snow tunnel with fifteen-foot walls had been shoveled to the portico of unbarked Douglas fir trunks.

They arrived at a pair of oak doors and Stephen rapped the knocker three times. They untied their webs, waited. Stephen banged the knocker again.

Gloria glanced up at the long overhanging eaves, said, “You don’t think he forgot?”

The preacher speculated. “Perhaps he stayed in town last night, not wanting to chance getting trapped in a slide on the way home.”

“Well, we just hoofed it through a blizzard, and I’m gonna by God walk in there, find out if we’re gettin breakfast for our trouble.”

Ezekiel grabbed one of the large iron handles, tried the door. It opened.

“Think we should walk in unannounced, Zeke?” Gloria said.

“Yeah, I do.” He stepped through.

Gloria sighed, followed him in with Stephen, and closed the door.

Every kerosene lamp had burned down save for one at the far end of the first floor, in the kitchen—just a wink of fire from where they stood. Soft gray light slanted through the tall windows that framed the foyer.

“Hello?” Ezekiel shouted. “Anybody on the premises?”

His voice resounded through Emerald House.

They made their way through the foyer and up a cascading stairway, beneath rafters of fir timbers. At the confluence of the four wings, a staircase switchbacked up the heart of the mansion. Between the stairs, a rectangle of weak light fell upon the marble floor, having passed through a skylight fifty feet above.

“Cold in here,” Stephen said. “Hasn’t been a fire in awhile. And shouldn’t there be some servants? If I’m not mistaken, Bart keeps a staff of four or five ladies through the winter.”

He walked to the north wing, peered through French doors into a great room furnished with a chaise longue, sofas, parlor chairs.

The opposite wing encompassed a dining room on a par with a feudal banqueting hall. Ezekiel looked in but glimpsed only the chairs and the long, broad table, naked of tablecloth, silverware, china.

“Our breakfasting prospects ain’t appearing promising. Let’s check Bart’s room. You remember where it is, Preach?”

“I believe it’s in the east wing of the next floor. Overlooks the tarn.”

“What do you bet he bent a elbow in the saloon all night, came home roostered?” Ezekiel said. “Hell, might have to wake him.”

They took the steps up to the second floor, calling out hellos as they started toward Bart’s wing, not a single lamp in operation to illuminate Packer’s extravagance.

Ezekiel suddenly stopped. “Might want to step back there, Glori.”

She looked down at the hardwood floor, saw that her arctics stood in a gooey puddle of blood. She leaped back toward her husband, brought her hand to her mouth to stifle the scream.

“Well, that’s an empty saddle,” he said. “Look. More.” Faint tracks of blood led back to the staircase, up the next flight.

“Bring your revolver?” Stephen asked.

“ ’Fraid not. Didn’t think I’d be needin it of a Christmas morn. Tell you what. I’m gonna go see what in hell’s goin on here.”