Liberty or Death (29 page)

It wouldn't be the first time I'd slept in a car. With its wide bench seat, it was almost as comfortable as the bed upstairs, and it was cooler down here. There was an actual breeze coming in the windows. My watch said I was supposed to be going to work in about three hours. I didn't see how.

When I heard the crunch of footsteps on gravel, I was reminded of other nights' nocturnal visitors. This alley was the rural Maine equivalent of Grand Central Station. People coming and going at all hours. Bad people. Without sitting up, I teased the gun out of my bag and stuffed it beneath the seat along with the list of names matching the license numbers I'd copied down in the church parking lot, which Roland had kindly left in the car for me. I was thankful for Dom's little storage compartment. I didn't dare be caught with either of those. Dora's fear of her dangerous husband might explain away the gun—doubtful now that the Reverend Hannon thought I was a cop—but there would be no explaining the list.

A shadow appeared in the driver's window, with a comment from the darkness. "You're out late." A rough, harsh voice. Unfamiliar. Not the unchristian Reverend. "Where'd you go tonight?"

"Yeah. Where did you go?" The second voice I knew. Roy Belcher, my faithful nemesis.

I formulated an answer, but between my brain and my body, there was a loose connection. When I tried to speak, no words came and when I tried to sit up, nothing happened. I just lay there, too exhausted to care. Let them go pick on someone else for a change.

"Hey!" the stranger barked, his voice exploding. "Hey, girlie. I asked you a question. Where'd you go tonight?" Another time, another me, I would have told them both where to get off. Tonight I was too tired for anger. I had nothing left with which to feel resentment. I would have answered out of fear—I knew how awful these people could be—but I'd reached that stage of exhaustion where even thinking seemed too hard.

The door opened, bathing me in a sudden rude shower of light. I closed my eyes and put an arm over my face. "Go away. Leave me alone. I'm sick," I said.

"You been drinking?" the voice demanded as the speaker leaned in for a closer look. I smelled sweat and Old Woodsman's Fly Dope and some kind of oil. Gun oil, maybe? His volume was excruciatingly loud in the confines of a car. I cringed against the seat.

"Hey, you know I think she is sick," Roy Belcher said. "Really. She doesn't look good. I mean, she usually looks a lot better than this."

Knowing that for most of these people, their default mode was irrational bullying, I made an effort to be coherent and interactive. Hard because, between my pathetic physical state and the Valium, capturing thoughts was like trying to scoop up egg whites. One sentence. A monumental effort. "Who's that with you, Roy?" I asked. My voice was little and light as air.

"What?" he demanded, and then he seemed to get it. Maybe the words traveled more slowly because they were weightless. "Hey, Jimmy," he said, "meet your mother's new girl." There was a rustling in the darkness. "Dora, why don't you take that arm off your face and sit up, so you can meet Jimmy properly." People around here were so crazy. Matching totally uncivilized behavior with the most civilized conventions.

Not that my response mattered. Before I could move, Jimmy grabbed my arm and hauled me up, dragging me across the seat and out of the car. He was a massive man with long black hair, a full mustache, and a bushy black beard, sort of a halo for the dark side. I was sure I'd never seen him before so someone else must have been using his truck. I hadn't seen him at the church last night, either, but he could have been there. I hadn't had a view of the whole room.

"Dora, this is Jimmy." Roy spoke from behind the giant. I couldn't see him at all. There was so much deference in his voice, he might as well as have said, "This is God."

Jimmy McGrath didn't bother with civilities. He didn't offer to shake hands or mutter an acknowledgment. He held me there against the car, his huge hands like twin vises on my shoulders, and glared down at me. Illuminated by the light from the car, his face was scary. Scarred, pockmarked with the craters of bad acne, with narrowed, glittering eyes. Mean eyes. Evidently, personal hygiene wasn't high on his list. His skin and hair had a greasy sheen and when I looked down at the pinioning fingers, the nails were black. "Seein' as you're not feelin' well, I'll give you one more chance. Where'd you go tonight?"

I rested my head against the car, blinking in a desperate effort to keep my eyes open. The full trauma of the evening was finally catching up with me. I think I'm invincible. It always surprises me when my body lets me down. But it was letting me down now. If he released me, I'd probably fall down. That would surprise them. Normally, having someone bully me and push me around gets my dander up and makes me more determined to resist. Tonight I had no dander. I could only stare at him.

"Where I go is none of your business." I didn't plan it, the words just popped out. Stupid answer to give these people. They thought everyone's business was their business. I was incapable of thinking of another. His fingers dug deeper.

"Now, Dora," Roy said, "people don't talk to Jimmy that way." He sounded like a prissy schoolmarm, the Smarmy suck-up.

Jimmy was a ridiculously inappropriate name for this big thug. Jimmy was a cute little boy's name. This creature ought to be called Beowulf or Gargantua. Grendel's dam. Except that was Theresa. This was Grendel. "His mother doesn't own me. I just work for her." I was thinking placating thoughts. I didn't mean to say it; like the last wrong thing, it had just popped out.

"This isn't about that," Jimmy said. "It's about whether people are with us or against us." He wanted to hit me. I could see it in his eyes.

"I'm neutral," I said. "I just do my job and try to mind my own business."

"Ain't no place around here for neutrality."

"Give her a break, Jimmy," Roy urged. "She's not from around here."

Jimmy grunted and shook me, the force of it sending my pain level to code red. I hung there, breathless with shock, limp and boneless as a rag doll in his hands. "It's pretty strange, you ask me, the way she showed up just about the time the trouble started." He shook me again and I gritted my teeth and tried not to scream. I thought I might simply fall apart. Burst open and spill all over the ground. That would surprise him. "Where?" He yelled it right into my face, his bushy countenance so close I could almost feel his whiskers. I felt hot flecks of spit.

It seemed like someone else was answering, but it was my voice that said, "I went to hell." A small sentence, sorrowful and confused, that summed it all up. His hands released me and I sagged against the car, sliding down until I was sitting on the gravel, a Raggedy Ann doll, held up only by my stuffing. The ground through my thin pants felt cool and damp and stones dug into me. "Excuse me." I looked sadly at the distance from where I sat to the stairs I had to climb. "I've got to go to bed. I have to be at work in three hours."

Jimmy McGrath loomed over me, shaking his massive head. "You aren't going anywhere until you answer my question."

I looked up at him. I didn't know whether he'd taken Andre or not but I knew he was an evil man. I'm not a believer in auras but he had one so black it darkened an already black night. I wondered whether he was the child his mother had referred to as a "useless sack of shit." He raised one fist menacingly. In the odd illumination from the car light, it looked like a lumpy white softball thinly covered with coarse dark hair. "Where the hell did you go?"

I should have been cowering in fear—I didn't doubt that Jimmy McGrath was dangerous—but I felt strangely indifferent. Too tired to care about what was happening here. Nothing he could do could match what fate had already done. I put my arm down on the dirt and slid slowly sideways until my head rested on it. I closed my eyes and pulled my knees up toward my chest. It eased the pain a little. "I was at the hospital."

"Hospital?" He sounded surprised. "What for?"

"Hospital business."

A black-booted foot lifted from the ground beside my head and nudged my chin. "I didn't come here to play twenty questions, lady. What hospital business?"

I didn't want to answer but I didn't want to get stomped and I knew he'd do it. I've lived too long among the bad guys to be naive about human behavior. "I was pregnant. Now I'm not."

His fist thudded against the car, thunderously loud in the quiet night. "Abortion. All these bitches..." he said. "Goddamn uppity women won't carry a man's child these days, they can't wait to rip it out."

Shut up,
I thought.
Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.
All that came out was a faint little whispered, "No."

He waited, but that was all I said. I was acting crazy but couldn't seem to stop myself. What did I have to protect, anyway? I can get crazy sometimes, but tonight I wasn't me. I was like some wounded animal, too hurt to defend itself any longer, only biding its time, waiting for a chance to crawl away and either heal or die in peace. Scary as he was, Jimmy McGrath was just an obstacle in my path.

He grabbed my arm and hauled me up. I sagged in his grip. "You don't want me to hurt you, honey. Believe me, you don't..."

He was right. I didn't want him to hurt me. I didn't want anyone to hurt me. I'd already been hurt enough. Enough for a lifetime. It was a crappy choice—preserve my small remnants of privacy or share my sorrow with this violent bully. But I believed he would hurt me. This man would dispense pain with no more compunction than he'd have swatting a mosquito. I jerked my arm out of his grip and crossed my hands protectively across myself. There was no baby to protect anymore, but I felt incredibly fragile, as if any blow might shatter me.

My legs were unreliable. I leaned against the car for support, feeling myself sliding, very slowly, down the slippery paint. Tried to brace my legs against the slide. "I was pregnant," I said, hating him for making me say it. The word "was" reverberated through me, echoes of "was pregnant, was pregnant" sending out shock waves of pain. "I started to bleed. It didn't stop. I got scared. I went to the hospital. They couldn't save it. I lost the baby. End of story. Okay?"

A small surge of anger. "Is that all right with you, Mr. McGrath? Is it all right with you that I've just had the worst night of my life? Is it really necessary for me to stand around here discussing the most intimate details of my personal life with a complete stranger? Is that how you do things here in Merchantville? Corner people on their doorsteps when they're sad and sick and cross-examine them about it?"

I swallowed. "I came here to be safe. I came here to get away from being hurt and scared and threatened all the time. I came here to put my life back together... to find a place where I could live and work and have my baby. It's no better, Mr. McGrath. Just different people hounding me and threatening me. Just different bad things happening."

"Fuck." He turned on his heel. Was he leaving? Maybe I could make it upstairs if I crawled. Then he turned back. "If I call the hospital, they'll confirm that you were there?"

He must think I was a hell of an actress if he believed I was faking this. If he called the hospital, he might learn I was there. He might also hear that I was there with a bunch of state cops. I tried to sound indifferent. "I don't know what they'll do. Hospitals are weird sometimes. But where do you suppose I got these?" I plucked at the green shirt and pants. Fished in my bag and pulled out the prescriptions. "And these?" Waved my sheets of aftercare instructions in his face. "And these?"

From the shadows, Roy said, "Jeez, Dora. Are you okay?"

Fat lot of help he was. Worrying about whether I was okay when his good buddy Jimmy was shaking me like a rattle and threatening to kick me, punch me, or stomp me. He couldn't really be this simple, could he? These guys were too mean and impatient to keep a moron as a sidekick. So there was more—or, on a humanity scale, less—to Roy than met the eye. "Farthest thing from it," I said. "They wanted to keep me overnight—the hospital—but I said I had to get back here. Had to go to work. So please, can I go now? Get a little rest?"

"Hold on."

Such a fine choice of words. I was barely holding on and the way I felt tonight, it didn't seem like something I could do at will or on command. Right now I either had to sit down or fall down. I edged my way to the open car door and lowered myself slowly onto the seat, my whole body trembling with exhaustion.

"I think you're a cop. Sent here to spy on us. Another one of those useless new female cops, like the one shot one of my boys the other night. Goddamned uppity lesbo bitches with no notion of husband and family, no idea of a woman's proper place. Go out and take jobs that otherwise a man could have, let him hold his head up, support his family. God never meant it to be this way. He made the man the head and the woman to be the helper. It says so in the Bible."

This guy McGrath sure was a deep thinker, wasn't he? He hated the cops, they represented the government that needed to be destroyed because its actions were unconstitutional, and yet he was complaining that they let women be cops because it was taking jobs away from the men who really deserved them. And didn't his mother run her own business? But I was just as crazy. Even when I was collapsed in a helpless heap, I was still a knee-jerk feminist. There were things I might have said, but they'd only get me in trouble. Worse trouble. Clearly this was already trouble.

"I think you go out at night to meet other cops and give them your reports... I think that cop who got shot was coming back from meeting you. I think that's where you went tonight."

"You're crazy," I said, my guts dancing like frenzied snakes.

"Am I?" he said. "Ma would never think of it. She's way too trusting. But look who sent you here. Rosie. And what does her husband do? He's a fuckin' cop. Let's see who you really are." He grabbed my bag, pulled out my wallet, held it low so he could use the light from the car door, and went through it, grunting in disappointment as it revealed that I was indeed Dora McKusick. Dom had done it well, and just in time, too. I had my license. I had my credit card. I had my gas card. And I had my library card. All scattered on the ground at my feet. Too far away to retrieve. Jimmy McGrath slammed a fist against the car again. It seemed to be his way of punctuating his words. Poor rustmobile. But better it than me.