Ruin Falls (25 page)

Where had they gone? Somewhere near Wedeskyull? That seemed likely since there was so much space here, and also because Paul was the de facto leader. But could it be Junction Bridge; was that why Paul had suggested a vacation there? Or someplace Liz had never even considered, pegged to where one of the PEW people might have some land? She scrolled backward, but it wasn’t clear from the posts where anybody lived.

Liz stared at the yawning maw of the computer screen, its cursor
one winking eye. Her actions too would have to take place in the real world. She could call Tim and ask if his inquiries about Crane’s had amounted to anything, although she knew in a place deeper than reason—the mothering place—that the company was false.

Jill’s voice:
You’re just going to see if someone else has done the work for you?

Liz needed to call her best friend. Apologize for how she’d treated Andy, and figure out a way to ask Jill if she knew what her son had been doing in Ally’s room.

Talking to an ex-con sounded easier.

It was time to locate Paul’s football coach.

Liz found the coach’s full name, although the search didn’t yield an address, since until recently the man had resided behind bars. Christopher Allgood had done a portion of his sentence at Sing Sing, then served out the rest at Wedeskyull’s maximum-security facility.

A human-interest article in an online Wedeskyull weekly described the recently released inmate’s desire to “find peace in a quiet mountain setting,” which narrowed things down some. There was only one mountain people could live on in Wedeskyull, in either a handful of spread-out vacation homes or a colony of condos. The other mountains were too steep for anything besides sport, even if environmental regulations hadn’t prohibited building on them.

Liz drove to the small grocery that serviced the skiers and climbers and asked the clerk if he knew a new resident named Christopher Allgood.

“I don’t know that name,” the clerk said, his face revealing the lie. Distaste, too: ex-convicts probably didn’t do much to drive tourism. “But the Palmer place just got itself a year-long rental. Nick Palmer was real happy about that.”

The clerk told Liz the address.

Back outside, she stood for a moment, staring at the mountain. Devoid of snow, the peak had the look of a shorn poodle. Next to the slopes stood tiny trees, closely clustered as quills. Liz wondered what was contained up there that couldn’t be detected from this vantage point.

She got back into her car and reversed out of the lot.

Flares lit in her belly as she drove. At the end of a sparsely populated road, Liz turned into a steep driveway and got out, making sure to set her emergency brake. The house was an imitation chalet: brown wood, cutouts along the gabled roof. There were no late summer flowers, asters or hyssop, nor much of a lawn. This had been somebody’s winter getaway, plain and serviceable. Liz climbed three steps to an unfurnished deck and knocked on the front door.

The man who opened it bore no resemblance to anyone who had ever been involved in football. Prison must have shrunk Allgood. He was small and slight, though he might’ve appeared taller if he hadn’t been so stooped. His hair was cropped short, and he wore stiff new jeans and an equally rigid shirt.

The sunlight seemed to stun him. He blinked without saying hello.

“Mr. Allgood?”

“Yes?” The man looked over his shoulder. “Today isn’t the tenth, is it?” His gaze darted inside. “It’s the ninth.” He twisted back around. “I don’t have an appointment today.”

“No,” Liz began. “We don’t have an appointment. I just wanted to see if we could talk for a few minutes.”

“Are you a reporter?”

“No,” Liz said again. Although she seemed to be getting asked that a lot.

The man straightened then, and Liz caught a glimpse of what might have enabled him, decades ago, to lead a bunch of unruly, barely formed men to victory.

“Who are you then?”

Liz told him her name.

“Daniels?” Allgood echoed.

Liz waited a second or two for the necessary calculation, then said, “Paul is my husband.”

There was a longer pause this time.

The man turned and Liz realized that she was being allowed in.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

T
he house had a great room on the first floor, with the bedrooms cantilevered on a loft above. As Liz entered, a medley of sounds hit her: the TV and radio playing, steady ticking from a clock on a wood-paneled wall, water plinking into a metal sink.

Allgood seemed impervious to the noise. He sat down in a battered seat.

After a moment, Liz dropped herself on a pilled seat. An awkward stalemate arose between them. It was hard to muster words amongst the clamor of reality-show screeches and synthesized music.

Liz raised her voice. “Would you mind if I turned that down?”

Allgood looked up. “What?”

“The television.” Liz spoke louder. “The radio! Can I turn them down?”

“Oh.” Allgood looked around, as if unsure where both items might be. He rose slowly and took a few steps until, with some fumbling of knobs, there was blessed silence.

Liz spoke again. “Paul was on your team?”

Allgood nodded, taking a seat in the same beat-up chair. “One game and I knew that boy was destined for great things.”

“Paul was a great football player?” Liz asked, disbelieving.

Allgood shook his head, looking out into the room. “Nah. He was a mediocre quarterback. Not enough power in the throwing arm, so-so
accuracy. And he couldn’t read his blindside for shit. But he knew the playbook by heart, managed the clock like Joe Montana, and everyone could see how he commanded a team. No matter what play Paul was calling, his men always wanted to follow.”

Liz couldn’t make out all the references, but that sounded more like it. She sat in the grimy chair as the coach seemed to reflect, cast back somewhere in time. Finally, she worked up the courage to bring the conversation around in a different direction. “And Michael Brady? Was he a great player?”

The question delivered an electric shock; Allgood’s body jerked in the chair. “I should’ve kept them from driving. I was there that night at the bar. They would’ve listened to me.”

Liz wondered if they would have. Paul didn’t listen to anybody besides himself, and Allgood didn’t seem the type to command unparalleled attention. But perhaps her husband had been different back then. Perhaps the coach was, too.

She recalled a detail that hadn’t added up. “Paul was driving Michael’s car.”

The coach’s eyes shuttered. “I asked him to,” he said, hardly above a whisper.

Liz wasn’t surprised by the content of the disclosure, although the fact that Allgood had made it was unexpected. Marjorie had said the coach felt responsible, and this explained why.

He went on, talking more to himself than to her. “Brady hurt his ankle at practice that afternoon. I didn’t want him having to use the clutch.” A pause. “My boys always hung out at Darts the night before a big game.”

Liz knew the place; it was still a haven for underage drinking.

Allgood focused his gaze on some distant spot in the room. “Paul hadn’t been drinking hard. I didn’t realize one or two beers would affect him.”

It was a tragic domino row of events, a succession of carelessness and bad decisions, any one of which might’ve been preventable. But taken all together, they resulted in an endless fall.

Liz leaned forward. “Mr. Allgood, I didn’t come here to resurrect old pain.”

He met her eyes for the first time, and though his gaze was rheumy, it gave a hint of former steel. “No? Why did you come then?”

Good question. Liz looked toward the galley kitchen.

“Some water …” she croaked.

Allgood didn’t respond to the request.

Liz got up and found a glass in one of the cupboards. She filled it from the tap, drinking thirstily.

When she returned, Allgood was standing. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his jeans, shuffling back and forth across the space in front of his chair.

“My husband—” Liz drank again, draining the glass.

Allgood didn’t appear to be listening. He was shifting from one foot to the other while staring at the clock.

“Mr. Allgood, Paul’s taken our children. Kidnapped them. I think he has this idea that he’s going to build a better world for them. But he didn’t tell me—involve me even—and now they’re gone and I can’t—”

Allgood paused in his pacing. The look on his face made the water in her stomach slosh, a slow, seasick roll.

“No,” he said. His eyes darted again to the clock. “No.” He crossed the room bit by bit, stopping by a slit of sliding door.

The coach let out a bolt of laughter that made Liz flinch.

“I have to take a leak, Mrs. Daniels. I’ve had to relieve myself for the past half hour. But I haven’t gone, and do you know why?”

Liz scrambled to come up with the answer he seemed to be demanding.

Allgood’s gaze pinned hers. “See, I had a cellmate once and he didn’t like the close proximity of prison life. He came up with a plan—a timetable, I guess you’d call it—for our shared usage.”

Liz frowned, and Allgood barked another terrible, wheezy laugh.

“Now you’re getting it, huh?” Croupy laughter again. “I learned to piss on somebody else’s schedule. Eat that way, too. That’s what my life has been like for the past twenty years—”

The minute hand on the clock sprang forward.

Allgood shoved his way into the bathroom. When he’d finished, he reemerged, speaking as if they’d never been interrupted.

“I can’t have a normal conversation,” he said. “Certainly not with a lady. If you say you’re thirsty, I don’t know what to do till it hits me ten minutes later. I’ve lost all that.”

“I’m sorry,” Liz began.

“But I deserve it,” Allgood said. “I killed him.”

The words struck the room bluntly.

“You thought it was the right thing to do,” Liz replied. Why had she come here? What good was it going to do to rehash the long-ago event that had destroyed two lives, three, more if you included what Liz and Reid and Ally were experiencing now? The torrent of destruction seemed uncountable, unending. “I understand. Marjorie Brackman in Paul’s department told me the condition Michael was in.”

“You understand nothing,” Allgood replied, each word a separate charge.

Liz recoiled.

The coach looked over his shoulder. “It’s too damn quiet in here.” He walked at his hesitant pace to the TV and radio, flicking both on. Music soared and outraged cries burst forth. “Another thing I’ll never get back. Peace and quiet. Peace and quiet aren’t peaceful to me anymore. They’re scary as hell. It only got quiet when someone was just about to kill somebody.”

His words called to mind her images of prison, its stale breath and closed-in spaces.

“This visit is over, Mrs. Daniels.”

Liz didn’t respond.

“No manners, remember? Another of the things I lost? So you can bet I’ll ignore the social niceties. Get out of my house.”

Liz turned around to face him, speaking deliberately. “What don’t I understand?”

He answered in kind, stony and low. “I asked you to go. Now I’m telling you.” When Liz didn’t respond, he went on, his control draining. “Get out of my house!”

Liz tried to speak over the shrill rise of his voice. “Mr. Allgood—”

“It’s my house! Mine! Get out!”

Each harsh cry struck her, like the caw of a bird. “Mr. Allgood,
please! My children are missing. If there’s something I’m not understanding that could help—”

Something in the coach’s face sheared off, like a glacier calving. He swiveled, a pirouetting reminder of the football player he must once have been himself, and even from behind, Liz could tell that he was crying.

“I did what I thought was right. I gave all I could for that boy.” His shoulders shook, vibrating up and down like a jackhammer. “And I served the time. It’s enough already. Enough!”

The coach’s tears—combined with regret in his voice for the young life he’d snuffed out—accomplished what all his anger and bitterness couldn’t do.

They forced Liz to leave.

THE BIRTH

M
adeline knew she was in labor as soon as she woke up. In hindsight, she’d been experiencing contractions all night, waking to wriggle around on her side, even more unable to get comfortable than usual, faintly sickened by the water her mother brought in when she checked her at four-thirty in the morning.

At dawn Madeline threw up.

But she didn’t say anything to her mother.

It wasn’t that she thought she could keep this from her; she just wanted a little breathing room first.

There wasn’t room for any breath.

Sweat poured down her back as if she were taking a shower. Madeline tried to climb back into bed, but she didn’t make it.

She pitched forward, holding on to the side of the mattress as if it were a life raft.

Her mother appeared in the doorway, a tall and looming form.

“Oh, my gracious,” she said. “It’s time, isn’t it?”

Cara was dressed for the day, makeup on—just enough to smooth out the worn edges, never to adorn—and hair combed.

“It’s time,” Cara said again. The alien tremor in her voice, striking enough that Madeline had heard it through the surf pounding in her ears, was gone. “We’ll stay home for as long as possible. No reason to let those nurses have at you.”

A pain took hold of Madeline’s whole body and wrenched it. She sucked in a breath, then hurled herself onto the bed.

Her mother strode over. “I would’ve helped you.” She drew the sheet up, frowning when Madeline kicked it back, emitting a guttural grunt.

“Nuh …” Madeline tried again. “N-nothing on me—”

Cara cut her off with a knife blade of words. “There’s no cause to speak like that.” She pulled the sheet up again, tucking it around Madeline’s body.

“Nuh!” Madeline sounded like an animal. “N-no sheet!” She tried to curl, tried to straighten, anything to take away this pain, and a slimy gush of water spewed out, as if her body were unleashing a storm.

Cara mopped it up briskly, raising Madeline’s bottom and sliding a towel underneath.