Crossroads Shadowland (11 page)

Frank and the Sister
watched from the car as her driver escorted Charlie
and Brent to the doorstep. Amid a blur of hugs,
the door closed, the driver
returned and
then drove toward Hotel Provincial.

"When does your flight
leave, Frank?" the Sister asked from the front
seat.

"In two days unless I call and change
that."

She glanced over her
shoulder. "I want to hear from you tomorrow
afternoon."

"Why don't you come to the hotel around two
PM? I promised to meet with the parents in the outdoor
courtyard."

The driver pulled up to the
front door of the hotel. "I'll be there, two PM
sharp."

Frank entered the hallway
leading to his room with waves of nostalgia
and loneliness crashing down on him. The last thing he wanted
right now was
to walk into that room where
memories of Rand would crush him.

He checked his watch. God,
three in the morning. He'd have to wait at
least five hours before he called him. And say what? "Rand,
I'm a jerk, a
complete, total asshole and
I fucked up. Again."

At which time Rand would
say. . . he didn't know. He had absolutely no
idea how the one person he loved more than life would
respond. Panic-
induced fear churned his
stomach. What if he said, 'I've had my fill, I moved
out.'

Frank closed his eyes and
shut his mind off. He needed sleep, time to mend the debilitating
pain clenching his heart. Perhaps while he slept, the
solution to making his world sane again would
come to him.

Or at least the strength he needed to beg
Rand to forgive him.

* * * * *

The air loomed eerily still
when he entered. Someone had been in the
room again. His heart leapt. The bed was empty but the
bathroom door was
closed. "Rand," he
called out rushing toward it. Rapping lightly, his pulse
thrumming, he said softly, "I'm sorry. Open the
door, please."

Silence met him. He turned
the handle and pushed the door open with
the toe of his shoe. Empty like his heart. "Son of a bitch,"
he said to the white
ceiling and turned
toward the bed.

He wouldn't undress, could
think of nothing but laying his head on the pillow to seek the
blessed land of forgetfulness. Plopping on to the bed, shoes and
all, he rolled onto his side and looked toward the vacant bathroom
again.
Only a lame-hearted fool would
believe Rand would be waiting for him after
the callous words he'd spoken.

A flash of dark against the
cream-colored wall next to the bathroom
door caught his eye. He bolted upright and realized his gut
instinct upon
entering the room had been
spot on. Someone had been in the room and left their sick calling
card behind.

Calling card? Words glared back at him.
Uncannily familiar.

His legs heavy with dread,
he willed them over the side of the mattress
and came to his feet, walking toward the writing at a snail's
pace. Numbers, a
name and an address—20046
Industrial Park.

Spinning around, he
half-expected to see Valmont lurking in the room.
There could be no doubt; the neat, exaggerated
script belonged to the Civil War ghost. His body poised between the
door and the writing, he glanced
toward
the bathroom again. A message from Doucet, but what the hell did
it
mean?

Sister Francoise's last
words ran like a litany through his exhausted
brain. "Valmont is at peace now, he's found eternal
rest."

"Apparently not," Frank
said to her imagined presence. He raised his
arms in the air. "This better be damn important, Valmont. I'm
tired, ill-
tempered and damn well sick of
cemeteries and fucking taxis."

He wrote the address on a
scrap of paper, checked the ammo in his
Glock and headed for the front door of the hotel. Flagging
down a cab
moments later, he fell into the
back seat and rattled off the address to the
driver.

"There's nothing there, Mister, especially
this time of night."

"What and where is there?"

"Two blocks of empty
warehouse buildings long past their prime."
Frank shook his head. "Cemeteries?"

"Pardon?"

"Are there any cemeteries in the
vicinity?"

The cabbie shook his head.
"Like I said, abandoned buildings
surrounded by overgrown fields. That's it." The seconds
ticked by. "So what's
the
verdict?"

"Ah, shit. I won't get any
sleep unless I check it out for myself."
The taxi pulled from the curb. "It's your dime."

A surge of nostalgia
smacked him in the face. The last time a cabbie from
The Big Easy said that to him, he'd just paid the
man two hundred dollars to
take a long
hike. And then...oh, God, he shouldn't go there. He should force
the
visions of Rand calling out his name
from his mind.

Fifteen minutes later the
taxi pulled into a desolate section of town
reminiscent of an apocalyptic wasteland. What in hell was he
doing here at
this hour of the
morning?

"You said 20046? Well,
you're looking at it." The man picked up his
clipboard from the seat. "I assume you want me to
wait?"

Frank opened the back door,
stepped into the night and said over his
shoulder, "Yeah, give me five minutes, will ya?"

"Hey man, think you're
gonna need this." He handed him a flashlight.
"Right, good thinking."

Frank pushed the button on
the flashlight and swept over the back side
of the building with a flood of light. A cat screeched and
dove for a nearby
bush when he pushed the
decrepit door open and entered.

First, he scanned the
corners with the light. The hair at the back of his
neck stood at attention as he advanced and
checked beneath the scattered
pallets and
empty mattresses. Puzzled by the absence of one solid clue as
to
why he'd be prowling around like a
fucking cat burglar in a deserted building,
he shook his head.

The faint moan, no louder
than his own breathing, trickled in and
stopped him in his tracks. Somebody was in pain, injured or
sick. Frantic to
find the source, he
flashed the light across the empty space in sections right
to
left, up and down. Clinging to an
upright pillar, the man's body found his
beacon seconds later.

"Oh, Christ. Hang on, Mister, I'm
coming."

Frank sprinted back to the
entrance and hollered. "Hey, call an
ambulance. Got a half-dead body in here." When the cabbie
gave him a wave,
he turned and picked his
way back to the center of the structure, searching for
the pillar again with the flashlight. He looked
toward the ceiling. "Why me?
Can't you
pick on someone else for awhile?" Shining the light on the
man's
face, he added, "I'm here now,
buddy. An ambulance is on the—."

His heart stopped. "Oh, God, no, please no.
Rand?"

Frank's taxi followed the
screaming ambulance to the hospital. Sister
Francoise stood near the entrance of the emergency room,
cross in hand.

"What happened?" Tears
filled the eyes that no longer looked clear blue
and wintry, but reminded Frank of an unrepentant
arctic wind.

"Beaten within an inch of
his life, but alive enough to whisper a name."
She put her hand up. "Don't repeat it. The Lord will be most
displeased
with me if I curse
it."

"Valmont led me to him."

For the first time since he'd met her, the
Sister looked bewildered.

"I'll explain later."

Chapter Eight

Doctors and nurses merged
in a blur of frenetic motion. Carts rolled and
IV stands clattered down the halls until the entire cubicle
hummed with
frenzied action to save Rand's
life. Frank paced and the Sister prayed as the
tense minutes passed on the wall clock in the tiny waiting
room.

Finally a man appeared
under the archway, his face somber. "I'll need to
speak with his next of kin."

The words severed Frank at
the knees. "His mother and sister are in
flight as we speak."

"Broken jaw, three broken
ribs, countless stitches, and a dislocated
shoulder. Going to need surgery to wire that jaw
shut."

"He isn't going to die?"

With a rush of air through
his lips the man glanced from Sister
Francoise to him. "He's stabilized now, but another ten
minutes in that
abandoned building..." He
shook his head. "Would have lost him."

Frank clicked the talk
button on his cell phone on the first ring. "Emily, thank God. They
need your permission to take Rand into surgery." He handed
the phone to the doctor. "Rand's
mother."

The man ran through a
series of quick questions for Emily and then
passed the phone back to Frank. "We're going into the OR now.
Expect him out
in several hours. We've got
an orthodontic surgeon scrubbing. He'll wire the
jaw, and we'll fix the shoulder and ribs, and sew
up his face."

Frank didn't remember
thanking the man after he walked away. He
could think of only two things right now.

Martin and justice, his kind of justice.

* * * * *

From behind a wide
streetlamp post, Frank waited in the employee
parking lot of the Provincial Hotel with his shoulder bag. An
hour before
daylight, Martin pulled his
rat-trap of a car into an empty space and cut the
engine.

Before the skunk had a
chance to exit, Frank yanked open the passenger
door, pointed the Glock at his face and said one word.
"Drive."

"It wasn't me, Mr. McGuire,
I swear. Ringo had a snub-nose, forced me to
drive the car. That's all I did."

"Ringo? That scum-bag I saw
you talking to the other day in the
hallway?"

Martin's eyelids went into
an overdrive of rapid blinks. "That's him, and
I swear I had no idea he hated fagg...gays."

"Drive to his house."

"Then what?" he asked, his voice
shaking.

"Then you and I are going
to walk up to his door and ask him to join us
for a little ride."

"I begged him to stop; told him he'd kill
Rand if he kept punching him."

"So you did do more than
drive? You stood by and watched, did
nothing?"

The Adam's apple in his
scrawny neck bobbed up and down when he
swallowed hard. "Is-is he dead?"

Frank wanted him to squirm,
wanted him to suffer like Rand had.
"Where's this asshole live?"

"Down the block. We're almost there."

"Once he answers the door,
tell him you need to talk to him in private—
in the car."

Martin pulled up to the
curb in front of the house and nodded. With
darkness at his back and Martin in front of him, Frank
escorted the quaking- kneed man to the stoop and stood off to the
side.

Long minutes later, Ringo
opened the front door while scratching his
head. "What the fuck, man. It's five in the
morning."

"Something's come up. We
need to talk in private." Martin shagged his
head toward the car.

"This better be important."

The second Ringo cleared
the last step, Frank pushed the gun into his
back and fell in behind him. "Oh, trust me, fat boy, it's
important."

Frank climbed into the back seat with Ringo
and Martin in front. "Drive downtown, Bourbon Street."

The men exchanged nervous glances.

Several long blocks later,
Frank pointed to a deserted side street. "This'll
do, pull in here."

Ringo turned a tearful eye
to the back seat. "Please, man, I got a baby,
don't kill me. It was all Martin's idea. I never done
anything like that in my life.
If you let
us go, I swear on my mother's grave—"

"Save it."

Ringo banged his head
against the dashboard. "My little boy, he's only a
year old. He'll never know his daddy."

"Lucky kid," Frank said.
"Besides, think how happy your mom will be to
see the nice young man she raised again."

"Oh, God," Martin wailed. "We're too young
to die."