The Bookman's Wake (38 page)

T
hese things happened in less time than it takes to tell
it.

I felt his presence. I knew he was there, and then he
was there.

The windshield smashed and shards burst in on us. I
heard a clawing sound, someone tearing at the door on the
driver’s side. I brought up the light and saw a
flash of steel, and I killed the light and fell across
Trish as two slugs came ripping through the door
glass.

The back glass blew out, crumbling into hundreds of
little nuggets. I reached behind me and slammed down the
lock—just in time, as he grabbed the handle and
yanked it hard, rocking the car with his power. Something
heavy came down on the roof: the car took a rapid-fire
pounding as if some giant had begun battering it with a
log. He was kicking at the door with his boots, as if he
could smash it in and tear us apart with raw power. I
heard the side window break: another kick and it came
completely out of its frame, and I knew in seconds
he’d have his hand inside grabbing for the lock. I
couldn’t find my gun—in the scramble on the
seat it had fallen somewhere and I didn’t have time
to fish for it. What I did was instinct: I grabbed the
gearshift, jerked it down, and hit the accelerator with
my fist. The car bumped down the slope, driverless and
blind, clattered off the road, hit a deep hole, and threw
us together with a punishing jolt. Trish took the brunt
of my weight: her breath went out like a blown tire, and
the car careened again and she took another vicious hit.
I thought we were going over, but no—there was a
tottering sensation and a heavy thud as the wheels came
down. I heard the sound of bushes tearing at us: we were
plunging through the underbrush, spinning crazily on a
quickening downward course. I was going after the brake
when the crack-up came—a thud, a crunch, and a
shattering stop, flinging me against the floor with Trish
on top. I felt a tingle in my legs, and in that moment my
great fear was that I had broken my back.

I kicked open the door and slipped out on a carpet of
wet grass. I lay there breathing hard, listening for
approaching footsteps. I heard Trish move inside the car,
a few feet away. “Where are you?” she said
thickly, and I shushed her and pulled myself close. I
reached back into the car, felt along the seat and down
to the floor. I felt her leg, her thigh, her breast, her
arm…and under the arm, my gun.

“Hold tight,” I whispered.
“Don’t move.”

I pulled myself around to the end of the car, facing
what I thought was the upslope. Now, you son of a bitch,
I muttered. Come now.

Now that I can bite back.

But of course he didn’t come, he was too cunning
for that. I sat in the rain and waited, guessing he could
be anywhere. He could be ten feet away and I’d
never know it till too late. This worked two
ways—he couldn’t see in the dark any better
than me, I could hope, and in any exchange of gunfire my
odds would have to be pretty good. I had been in
gunfights and left two thugs in cold storage: all
he’d done was kill people.

I felt better now. The gun was warm in my hand, like
the willing flesh of an old girlfriend. Sweetheart, I
thought, papa loves you. I looked back where I knew the
open door was: wanted to say something that would cheer
her up but didn’t dare. I didn’t know where
he’d gone: couldn’t risk even a slight bit of
noise that might stand out in the steady drip of the
forest. He’d have to assume I was now armed.
He’d have missed his chance to overpower us and now
he would know—if he knew anything about
me—that I’d had time to get out my piece. If
not, it was a big mark for our side. Maybe he’d
even come after us in that same reckless, frenzied way.
Come ahead, Fagan, I thought—come and get it. I
willed him to come and I waited in the grass like a
scorpion. But he wasn’t there.

I felt a great sense of calm now. He had tried and
missed—tough luck for him. He had taken his shot
but I was still here, huddled in the cop mode with my gun
in my hand. I heard something move behind me. Trish was
out of the car, coming on her hands and knees. I shushed
her again, took her in my arm, and pulled her down
against me. I told her it was all right now, it was going
to be fine. I was goddamned invincible and I wanted her
to know it, to help quiet the desperate fear I thought
must be eating her alive. Then she whispered, “What
do you want me to do?” in a voice so wonderfully
calm it pushed me up another notch, past the cop mode to
a place I’d never been.

It wasn’t just me anymore, protecting some
helpless woman. She was my partner again and I drew on
her strength.

“Janeway.”

“I’m thinking.”

“Well, knock it off.”

I made a little laughing sound through my nose and
hugged her tight.

Don’t get too cocky, I was thinking: don’t
try to be Doc Savage or Conan the Barbarian. You
don’t need to be now, she’s here with
you.

Gotta plan, I thought. Gotta be more than strong,
gotta be smart.

Draw him out. Use the environment, whatever the hell
it is out there. Bloom where you’re planted, in the
country of the blind.

See him first and you’ve got him. Draw him to
the place where he thinks you are, then be somewhere
else.

H. G. Wells had it right when he lifted that proverb.
In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is
king
.

Light might do it.

Noise might.

I put my mouth against her ear and said,
“I’m going back to the car. Keep
alert.”

I crawled to the door and up to the front seat. Static
poured out of the radio, through the open door, and
blended into the rain. I wasn’t sure yet what I was
doing: the first bit of business was to find out what was
possible. I needed to see. I took off my jacket to make a
shield against the light, then I reached over and turned
the light switch back so the dash would light up. A voice
came through the radio—“Desk to car
six”—and I jumped back against the seat,
startled. But the voice broke up and disappeared in the
static. I opened the glove compartment. There
wasn’t much inside—a few papers, the
registration, an ownership manual, a screwdriver, some
road maps, and a roll of electrical tape. What could I
make of that?

The radio said “six” and faded, and I had
an idea. I leaned out and hissed. Irish crawled over and
I told her what I was going to do. The static on the
radio was now a jumble of voices, low enough that it
couldn’t be heard much beyond the open door, but
the noise was constant. It wouldn’t matter, I
thought: he wouldn’t hear it. I tore one of the
road maps apart, wadded up a quarter section, added some
spit, and made it into a gummy mass, a spitball about
half the size of my fist. It would fit well enough into
the slight recesses of the steering wheel spokes where
the horn buttons were. I picked up the electrical tape
and leaned out into the rain. “Here we go,” I
said.

I blew the horn. Twice…three times.

“Scream,” I said, and she screamed my name
at the black sky.

I mashed the wadded paper into the horn button and the
steady wail began. I whipped the tape tight around it,
three, four, five times, and left it dangling. The horn
blared away: it would drive a sane man crazy and a crazy
man wild. He’d have to come now, I thought:
he’d have to.

I took her hand and we moved away from the car.

Carefully…one step at a time.

Eight steps…ten…

Underbrush rose up around us.

“Get down here,” I said. “Lie flat
under those bushes and don’t move.”

She dropped to the ground and was gone. I stood still
and waited.

I tried to remember what little I had seen of the
terrain. The car had tilted right as it clattered down
the slope. We had gone a hundred yards, I guessed, which
would put the cabin somewhere to the left and above
us.

The horn filled the night with its brassy music. I
felt as if I were standing on top of it, it was that
loud.

Off in the distance a light flashed. It flicked on and
off twice. I said, “Uh-huh,” and waited. He
was gambling, hoping he could find his way without
tipping his hand. You lose, I thought. His flashlight
came on again, swung in a quick semicircle, dropped
briefly down the slope, and off again. I now knew that
the road was about fifteen feet above me, that the ground
was steeper than I’d thought, and he was forty to
sixty yards away, moving along to my right. He
wouldn’t dare use the light again, I thought, but
almost at once he gave it another tiny flick, as if
he’d seen something he couldn’t quite believe
the first time. Yes, he had caught a piece of the car in
that swing past it: he saw it now, and if he raised the
beam by a few degrees, he’d see me too, standing by
the trees waiting. If he moved the light at all,
I’d go for him right from here. Knock him down and
he’s done for…give him a flesh wound, a
broken arm, a ventilated liver. On the firing range
I’d been a killer— shooting from the hip, in
a stance, close up or distant, it didn’t matter. I
could empty a gun in three seconds and fill the red with
holes. It’s an instinct some cops have and
sometimes it saves your life.

I should’ve taken him then, but the light was
gone now and it didn’t come back. Minutes passed
and I battled my impatience. Think of the hundred and one
stakeouts in a long career: waiting in a blowing snow for
fifteen hours and not being bothered by it. I had learned
how to wait: I’d learned the virtue of
patience—and had unlearned it all in minutes. I saw
the bookman’s face pass before me in the dark.

Rigby.

Who else fit the Grayson pattern all up and down the
line?

Who did Grayson count on? Who would be this destroyed
by a misspelled word? Who would take that failure so
personally and torture himself and take up the sword
against those who’d tarnish Grayson’s
memory?

Who had the skills and the single-mindedness to spend
the rest of his days trying to finish Grayson’s
book?

He had the greatest hands, Moon had said. He had the
finest eye.

Rigby.

That’s what happens when you make gods out of
men, I thought.

And now he was here. I felt my hand tremble slightly,
uncharacteristically. Chalk it up to the dark: I still
couldn’t see him and I strained against the night,
trying not to make that big fatal mistake. We were a few
feet apart, microorganisms, deadly enemies who would kill
each other if we happened to bump while floating through
the soupy ether that made up our world.

There wasn’t a sound. The blaring horn had
ceased to exist. It can happen that way when it’s
constant, no matter how loud it gets.

I was betting my life on a shot in the dark.

Be right with your own god, I thought, and I opened
fire.

In the half-second before the gun went off I had a
flash of crushing doubt. Too late, I wanted to call it
back. Instead I pumped off another one, took his return
fire, and the slope erupted in a god-awful battle in the
dark. I went down—didn’t remember falling,
didn’t know if I’d been shot or had slipped
on the wet slope. Something hard had hit my head. I
rolled over on my back, only then realizing that my gun
was gone and he was still on his feet. There was light
now, bobbing above me. I saw his shoes, heard the snap of
the gun as the pin fell on an empty chamber, saw the log
he’d hit me with clutched in his other hand. He
dropped the gun and got up the knife. I tried to roll to
my feet but couldn’t quite make it. Got to one knee
and fell over, like a woozy fighter down for a nine
count. He loomed over me, then something came out of the
dark and hit him.

Trish.

It wasn’t much of a fight. The light dropped in
the grass and they struggled above it. He knifed her hard
in the belly. She grabbed herself, spun away, and,
incredibly, spun around and came at him again. He knifed
her in the side and this time she went down.

She had bought me a long count, fifteen seconds.

I was up on one knee with the gun in my hand, and I
blew his heart out.

I
carried her to the car and put her down on the seat.

Don’t die, I thought. Please don’t
die.

I worked her clothes off…

Gently.

Everything was blood-soaked. The frontal wound was the
scary one. The knife had gone in to the hilt, just at the
hairline above her crotch. Her navel was a pool of blood,
like an eight-ounce can of tomato paste. The cut was raw
and ugly. I dabbed at it and tried to push the blood
back, but it welled up again like a pot flowing over. I
covered it with my hand. The last thing I worried about,
now, was infection.

Blood oozed between my fingers and kept coming. She
was going to die, right here on this car seat, and there
wasn’t a thing on earth I could do to save her.

There wasn’t anything to be done. Even if I
could get the hole plugged, she’d be hemorrhaging
inside. I was watching her die.

She smiled. Her face had a peaceful, dreamy look.

“Tam-pons,” she said. “Almost
that…time of month.”

Tampons. Jesus Christ, tampons.

I got them out of her bag. The package looked small in
my hand. It was what it was.

I tore the electrical tape off the steering wheel.
There wasn’t enough left to go around her. But I
had my belt, my shirt…

I ripped off the shirt and rigged her up the best I
could. I cut a hole in my belt so it would fit her tight,
and I pulled the shirt up between her legs, tying it to
the belt front and back. It would be like a crude
chastity belt and would work about as well as that
ancient device ever had.

I shoved the tampons in and it took the whole package
to stop the flow in the front. The wound on the side had
sliced through her flesh, but the entire layer was still
hanging there. I laid it back and drew the shirt tighter
so it would hold.

A work of art.

A waste of time and we both knew it.

Then I got on the radio. I called nonstop for two
hours and had no idea if I was getting through.

I held her hand and told her to be brave. These were
just words. Who the hell was I to tell her about
bravery?

She slipped into a deep sleep. I was losing her.

Dawn was breaking as the helicopter came over the
trees.