Cage of Night (16 page)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I was just leaving my room when Josh appeared in the doorway.

"We need to talk," he said.

He came in and closed the door and went over and sat on the edge of the bed.

"Somebody saw you," he said.

"Somebody saw me what?"

"Drive away from the Swenson house last night."

"How the hell would you know that?"

"You forget. The Chief's son is on the team."

"Oh."

I leaned against the door. I felt exhausted now. I wanted to crawl into bed and sleep forever. Not even the prospect of Cindy seemed so dazzling.

"They said it was an old brown car."

"There are a lot of old brown cars."

"Not that many."

"Who saw me?"

"Guy Everback. The farmer who lives out near there."

"He say it was me?"

"No, he just said it was an old brown car." He sighed, shook his head. "So you were out there?"

"Yes. But I didn't kill her. She was dead when I got there."

"What the hell were you doing out there?"

"Checking on somebody."

"Checking on somebody? What the hell does that mean?" He got up, started pacing. "This is the kind of thing they execute you for in this state."

"I didn't kill her."

"There was sure a hell of a lot of blood on your clothes last night."

"I know."

"That's all you've got to say? 'I know.'"

"I'm going to take care of it."

"What'd you do with the clothes?"

"Buried them."

"Where?"

"Out by the garage. Under the garbage cans."

"A dog could dig that up."

"Not in winter."

He looked sad now. "You know what this kind of thing would do to Mom and Dad?"

"What 'kind of thing'? I didn't do anything."

"You admit you were out there."

"All right."

"And somebody saw a car like yours pulling away."

"So?"

"And you had bloody clothes on when you came home."

"All right."

"And then you buried them underneath the garbage cans. How do you think all this is going to sound to the Chief?"

I walked over to the window. Looked out. All the roof tops looked familiar, snug and snow-mantled in the night. I'd seen them from this perspective for so many years. Once again, I had the desire to be a boy, and to face nothing more serious than a boy ever faced.

"It's only a matter of time until the Chief starts rounding up everybody in town who has a car like yours."

"By then, I'll have figured it out."

"Figured what out?" Josh said.

"How to turn the real killer over."

He looked startled. "You really know who the killer is?"

"Yes."

"And you haven't told the Chief?"

"Not yet."

"Why?"

"Because—there's somebody I have to help first."

"The only person you should worry about is yourself. This is first-degree murder we're talking here."

"I know. I just need a day or two."

"In a day or two, you could be in jail."

"I'll have to take that chance."

"You're taking too many chances, Spence."

He came over and put his hand on my shoulder. Big brother. Except he was little brother. "I want to help you, Spence. I can talk to the Chief before you do, if that'd help."

"Maybe later. Not now."

"This thing is only going to get worse, Spence."

"I have to go now."

"Maybe I'll go to the Chief myself."

"No!"

I spun around and grabbed him by the front of his shirt. It was kind of funny, me holding him like this. He was so much taller than me.

"No, Josh," I said. "Please. I need a few days, and I need to do this my way. There's somebody innocent involved. I need to help—"

I stopped myself. I'd been about to say "her."

"You need help, Spence. Maybe a psychologist or somebody like that. You could be the prime suspect, man, and you don't even seem to care."

"There's something I have to do first, Josh. You'll just have to trust me."

And with that, I left my room.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Something was wrong.

I stood next to the door on the driver's side of my car and saw that it was open by half an inch or so.

Getting it to close took a certain trick, one I'd mastered a long time ago, one I used every time I left the car.

But now the door was open. Somebody had been in here. I did a quick search of the front and back seats but couldn't find anything missing.

All I could think of was what Josh had said about the Chief being told of a car that looked like mine.

Had the Chief decided to check mine out himself?

I'd parked, as I usually did, alongside the garage. Josh always parked at the curb out front, and Dad, to baby the family Buick, always took the garage.

I had some trouble getting the car started. I prayed to the god of old and obstinate motors and he finally came through for me. The engine kicked over.

I was two blocks from my house when I saw Garrett in his police car.

There'd been a fender bender at a stoplight.

Garrett stood by one of the cars, his foot up on the bumper, writing things down in his book. He was wearing his new cowskin western boots.

His Magnum rode his Sam Browne with imposing and impressive majesty. This was what gave Garrett his superiority to all other merely mortal citizens—not his badge, not his officer's oath, but his weapon. And his legal right to use it when he saw fit.

He seemed to sense me.

He glanced up just as I slowly entered the intersection. Our eyes met, held.

Only because I started to fishtail a little bit did I look away.

I gripped the wheel and steered the car through the intersection.

Did he know that I was going to see Cindy tonight? Did he know that Cindy had turned to me when she was in the worst trouble of her life?

Heady feelings. That a girl so beautiful would choose me as her confidante.

Garrett no longer scared me.

Soon enough, he'd be in prison for the murder he'd committed last night, and Cindy would be free to see me again.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

My mom and dad went to Franklin back in the days when school officials around here still tried to ban Elvis records from being played at dances.

Mom always talks about how girls wore saddle-shoes and petticoats and ponytails. Dad always talks about how boys wore black leather jackets and engineering boots and rode around in hot rods.

To be honest, it's kind of hard to imagine either one of my parents as "cool" kids. I keep trying to imagine them as "cool" kids but I can never quite finish painting the picture. And the photos they've shown me from time to time make them look as nerdy as I was in high school. Maybe that's the difference. I always knew I was a nerd. Maybe Mom and Dad were blissfully ignorant. Or maybe the entire class was nerdy and so Mom and Dad fit in just fine.

In the moonlight, Franklin school stood dark and solemn and gutted, the char black and char gray of the fire that destroyed it still clinging to the two brick walls left standing.

Against the snow, the building had a kind of ugly beauty.

I parked my car a block away and took the alley so that nobody would see me pull up.

I crunched across the snow leading to the school. Overhead, above the clouds, I heard a jet roar across the prairie sky, leaving a plume of glowing white exhaust that angled across the full moon.

A collie came around the corner of the building, sniffing the ground for buried treasure. When he saw me, he swung away, heading across the open field behind the school.

No sign of Cindy.

I walked around the entire building, then carefully picked my way through the tumbledown inside. As children, we'd always been warned against playing in here. A small boy had fallen into a shallow hole soon after the fire, and had had his arm amputated as a result.

Cindy must have fallen down a hole. Still no sign of her.

I stood in the windless night staring at the brick building, trying to imagine the sounds of early Elvis records pouring from the open windows on a soft spring afternoon. And somewhere inside would be my parents, dancing in their petticoats and duck's-ass haircut.

"I'm sorry I'm late."

When I turned, I saw her walking toward me from the alley. She'd taken the same route I had.

She wore a red parka and jeans. The parka hood framed her face and made her more beautiful than ever.

I couldn't help it. At that moment I didn't care about anything except being with her.

I walked over to her.

Neither of us said anything, just slid our arms around each other and came together in a kiss. "We'd better hide," she said, after a time.

Inside the burned out building, we found a niche of clean brick where we could sit down next to each other. It was cold there but I didn't care.

She said, "I told him."

"About what?"

"About us. Tonight. Meeting."

"What?" I looked at her as I would at a small child who'd just admitted doing something horrible. "Why would you do that?"

"He made me."

"God, Cindy."

"He stopped over at the house. Right after dinner. I didn't expect him. He got me alone in my room and—and he knew that I was holding something back from him."

"So you told him about us?"

"Don't you understand, Spence, I didn't have any choice? He'd already figured it out for himself anyway. He's a very jealous guy—he's still jealous of David and David's dead. So you can imagine how he is about you."

I was angry enough to forget romance momentarily. I said, "You were with him when he killed Mae Swenson the other night."

She slipped her parka hood off. In the moonlight through the broken school window, I could see the fine lines of her face and the nervous beauty of her eyes.

"I tried to tell you before, Spence. But you wouldn't listen."

"Tell me what?"

"About the well."

"Dammit, Cindy, that's just a game you invented. There's nothing down that well."

She looked shocked, then hurt, then angry. "You think you know so much. You admit you heard something the night we were out there."

"The power of suggestion, Cindy. That's all it was."

"Well, David heard something. And so did Garrett."

"The same thing. Suggestion."

I couldn't stand the way she glared at me now, hating me.

I took her hand. At first, she tried to tug it away but finally she let its slender, tender warmth rest in my hand.

"Cindy, I talked to a shrink the other day."

"About what?'

"About the well."

"Oh. I'm sure he said I was crazy. Especially since I've already been in the hospital and everything."

"That isn't what he said at all."

We were silent for a time.

She said, "What did he say?"

"He called it Shared Psychotic Disorder."

"What does that mean?"

"Just that when one person imagines something and he shares it with somebody else, then that person imagines the same thing. And then they both begin believing it's true, even when it's not."

"I hate shrinks."

"He's a pretty nice guy."

"When I was in the mental hospital, one of them was always feeling me up."

"You should've reported him."

"They would've said I was crazy is all, and imagining things. Like this Psychotic Disorder you're talking about."

As gently as I could, I said, "That's what's happening with the well, Cindy. You imagine things, but you imagine it so vividly that you get other people imagining things too."

"David did what the thing in the well told him to do. He killed that clerk at the convenience store."

I sighed, said nothing.

"And Garrett did just what the alien told him to do, too. He killed Mrs. Swenson."

"You didn't have anything to do with killing either one of them."

"It wouldn't have happened if I hadn't brought them to the well," she said.

"If tke alien makes people kill, then why haven't you killed anybody?"

"That isn't what he wants me to do."

I see.

Angry: "Don't fucking talk to me like that! That's how everybody talked to me when I got out of the mental hospital. 'Now, now dear, don't get yourself excited."'

Her voice was loud and harsh on the prairie night.

The collie heard her and swung back for another look. He stood at where the entrance of the school had been and watched us for a long minute or two.

"I'm sorry."

"All right. Apology accepted."

Then: "All it wants me to do is bring boys to the well. That's my only part in it."

"But you went along with Garrett to Swenson's."

"He made me. He said he'd kill me if I didn't."

"You took me to the well. I didn't kill anybody."

"I think it has to do with innocence."

"I'm not exactly innocent."

"But you don't hate—you're not angry."

"And David and Garrett—"

"Rage. Most of the time, anyway. I think the alien can use that. It makes it easier for it to take control of them."

This was all insane but I had to be very careful not to let her think that that was what I was thinking.

"Did you see Garrett kill the woman?"

"Yes."

"So you could testify against him in court?'

"Yes." Pause. "But I'm just as guilty as he is, don't you see that? He wouldn't have done it if I hadn't brought him to the well."

I took her shoulder and turned her face full to mine.

"I want you to understand one thing, Cindy. These murders have got you so upset that you're blaming yourself. You didn't have anything to do with them."

"So you don't believe that there's an alien in that well?"

"I'm saying the alien doesn't matter."

"Then what matters?'

"That Myles and Garrett each chose to kill somebody."

"But they wouldn't have without me."

"Did you
tell
David to shoot the clerk?"

"Well, no."

"Did you tell Garrett to stab Mae Swenson?"

"No."

"Then you're not guilty of
anything
, Cindy."

Long pause. "You don't believe me about the well."

"I guess I haven't made my mind up yet."

"It's down there."

"Say I believe you. For the sake of argument. It's not going to make any difference in a court of law, is it?"

She looked confused.

"David killed the clerk and Garrett killed Mae Swenson, right?"

"Right."

"Well, that's all the court is going to care about."

"But I should testify about the well."

"You know how people talked to you when you got out of the mental hospital?"

"Real patronizing and all?"

"Exactly. Well, if you sat in the witness stand and tried to tell the court about the well, that's how people would treat you again."

"You think they'd send me back to the mental hospital?"

"Possibly."

"I'd rather die than go back to that hospital. That doctor really did feel me up all the time. And one time I woke up after he gave me a lot of drugs and my vagina was really sore. I think he raped me."

"That's why you don't want to tell anybody else about the well—and you sure as hell wouldn't want to tell the court. You see?"

"I don't want to go back to the mental hospital."

"Then let me handle it."

She stared at me. "What're you going to do?"

"I'm not sure yet. But don't tell anybody about the well. Or that you were out at Swenson's that night."

It was going to work out. I would ask the Chief to investigate Garrett, and then, after the trial was over and Garrett found guilty, Cindy and I would be free to be together.

"Cindy, I love you," I said.

"I love you, too, Spence."

When we were kissing there in the burned-out shell of the building, the winter night wondrously golden in the moonlight, a distant freight train lonely on the darkness, I felt exhilarated about what lay ahead for me.

Cindy lay ahead for me.

Cindy my girlfriend, Cindy my wife.