End Time (31 page)

Cheryl intrigued him too. “So what's your deal, Miss?” She didn't answer immediately, so he shrugged. “Never mind; tell me later.”

For a long minute the three adults sat in the booth without speaking, as if they'd come to some mutual understanding. Obviously they'd have a better chance of finding the Chen girl if they pooled their resources. Finally Billy looked at the untouched dish of cottage cheese and canned peach halves; the curds had leached a rime of thin whitish whey across the plate.

“Hey, Gunga Din. You gonna eat that?”

*   *   *

Inspector Frederick couldn't stand the little rat sitting next to him in the passenger's seat. Having her in the car was like seeing a young version of that old palm reader's face; everything about her just grated like sand on a lollipop. The way she twirled a lock of hair around her finger, the way she stared out at the passing scene, never talking. Making him ask her,
Do you have to go potty? Are you hungry?
The way she hummed along to the radio; right now Roger Miller's “King of the Road” blatted out the speakers, the words all twisted, as if speaking directly to him:

So many hos for rent

Cute tail for any gent

No muss, no fuss, no mess

I ain't got no deep regrets

God—that cheesy song grated like nails on a chalkboard:

Ah, but … two hours of strokin' poon

Buys an eight-by-six jailhouse room

Gimme Sweet Jane with greasy jeans

King of the Hos.

Yep, that's me, he thought. Inspector Frederick, King of the Hos—dragging around the little tart because she could see things too. So he bugged her, demanding,
This way? Or should we go there?
Twisting the little chubby face from the passenger window with his narrow fingers, he growled harsher now, “Which way?”

And she just stared at him with those big baby browns. If she did it again he'd turn that angel face away for one last time. Stick her head in a plastic bag, lift her tushie in the air, and hump the lil' squirmer till the writhing stopped and it all went limp—

Whoa! He hit the brakes. Coming around a curve through a narrow arroyo a long white limousine blocked the road, right across both lanes. Inspector Frederick knuckled the wheel as his Crown Victoria screeched to a halt. “What the f—”

But his lips died cold when the limo door opened. The long gaunt man stepped onto the roadway. Stared for twenty seconds or so at the Crown Victoria, then crooked his finger.
Come on
.
Get out. Don't make me wait.
The pale blue eyes of Mr. P. dragged him from the car. The two men stood in the middle of the empty highway. At last Mr. Piper said, “Y'know, Felix … we hired you because you came highly recommended. But you have turned out to be an absolute crap-magnet.”

Inspector Frederick took a deep, calming breath. Christ, wasn't the guy supposed to be on a plane to LA? Well, Salt Lake had airports too. “This is not the time, P.” He felt some bile rising up his throat. “I'm inches away from your precious Rinky-dink. And right now you're blocking the road.”

Mr. Piper paused for a moment, then examined his manicured fingernails. “Actually, the firm has come to a decision. We're taking you off the case. So I'm politely asking you to follow my lead here, and when we reach the next local constabulary—park in front and turn yourself in. I'll take the Little Match Girl now.”

This made a snort of laughter come out. “Get real. I've got as much on you as you do on me. Wire taps, e-mails—the whole punchbowl including the turd. You don't turn me in; I turn
you
in. I'm a
badge.
”

The sedan door unlatched, and Little Maria got out of the Crown Victoria. She stood quietly on the roadway as though she'd seen the bad cop's dirty end and steeled herself to whatever came next. The tiniest scrap of forethought came to her. There was a boy sitting in that limo—a young man, really.

A young lad bad as bad could get. Heart black as pitch, cold as ice.

But there was something else—something unexpected. Little Maria could see a tiny spark inside the young man—a faint ember burning beside his cold heart. A tiny white spark of hope or goodness or just a granule of sugar left over from the First Sweet Thought at the beginning of time. And that tiny ember showed through the limousine, right through the cushy seats, the molded metal, gleaming like a star in the darkness.

As she stood in the roadway, Little Maria closed the sedan door like a door latch to the past, closing it on Inspector Frederick. A few feet away the limo door stood open, along with her future, and a spark of hope in the dark.

Mr. Piper sighed and looked wearily up and down the canyon. From beside a scrap of dried brush, three mangy coyotes came into view. They padded back and forth on the rim of some red dirt beside the road, then stared at the cars. “Okay, in a minute,” Mr. P. told the mangy animals.

A profound sadness came over his narrow pale face. Tut-tutting like the town librarian. Telling the bad cop in a hushed voice:

“We don't need no stinking badges.”

*   *   *

Around dusk a wandering caravan of bikers rolled down the same road, empty now except for the abandoned Crown Victoria sedan, stopped dead over burnt rubber skid marks. Four outriders leading a red 4X4 and a large stainless-steel Custom-Fab cargo trailer emblazoned with an Iron Cross over the words
in gothic script. The Four Horsemen, in no rush to be anywhere, cruised easy, the thrumming of their exhaust throbbing back at them in the canyon, so they didn't have to brake hard. They gracefully slid around the abandoned vehicle in a troop and pulled over. An empty car, like a lost wallet, was something worth picking apart, pawing through just for the hell of it. In any case a good spot to take a leak and let the girls squat in the brush and shoot anything that moved just for the hell of it.

Not much in the Crown Victoria: a couple of soggy burger boxes with the little bits of wilted lettuce, a half-eaten bag of cheddar cheese popcorn, a few plastic soda bottles. The keys in the ignition; they popped the trunk. Zippo. Disappointed at the slim pickings, the men wandered off the road like dogs searching for a whiz spot. That's when one of them found the body.

Once a man, mangled and torn like a strip of rice paper—a hundred and sixty pounds reduced to a mound of bones and gristle in pants and a torn shirt. Three coyotes looked up from their work, bared their teeth, and didn't back off.

Now the master race was gonna show the scrawny mutts who was boss in the desert: two shots from a pistol did the trick. One coyote lay dead; another limped off into the dark, yelping. The third vanished.

“Hey, I found a Rolex.” The Horseman in biker boots and leather squatted near the body. He splashed some water from a bottle and cleaned the watch, then put it on his wrist.

“It's probably fake,” came another voice from out of the dusk.

“So what? It's ticking.”

Off in the brush the last of the coyotes watched the men and their hussies get ready to ride again. One of the brassy babes complained, “Why the hell couldn't we have stopped at the Arby's back in Fort Duchesne?” She pronounced it Fort
Douche.

And the gruff reply:

“Why the hell don't you learn to piss standing up?”

 

16

The Ant Colony

Eleanor recognized almost everyone at the Connecticut Valley Hospital, staff and patients alike, and could call many by name. If her progress continued, there'd be only a few more weeks of observation to go. Then she might get to go back home with Guy and Lauren by the end of August. Her therapist had allowed her a Wi-Fi laptop; even with strong parental controls it showed how much they trusted her. But sometimes the recovery felt like three steps forward and two steps back. This evening, especially.

At dinner in the common hall, another patient in the facility gave Eleanor a bit of a fright. A middle-aged lady much like herself, Eleanor had nicknamed her friend Mrs. Miniver, as her first name was Kay and she looked a little like Greer Garson in the movie of the same name. They often ate together.

Mrs. Miniver had been committed after chasing her husband around with a kitchen knife, tying her children up in bed, and setting the house on fire. All the while shouting about how “Goobers” were taking over their bodies. They used to be Raisinets, but now they were Goobers. Happily, the fire never caught, the kids were unharmed—unhappily, Kay found herself in the Connecticut Valley loony bin. Until the “incident” by all accounts she'd lived an ordinary, unremarkable life.

Tonight at dinner, Kay Miniver leaned over a pink plastic bowl of tapioca and whispered, “Have you seen them? Do they come to your room too?”

“Who, Kay? Who comes?”

Kay fell silent, took a long while over a spoon of pudding, and looked suspiciously around the dining room. Nope, nobody listening, just the regular collection of droolers, head-bangers, and mumblers.…

“The light people,” she answered in almost a whisper. “They've come every night for a week to my room. Right outside the window. But they don't want me. I think they're looking for you.” Kay finished her tapioca and stared sorrowfully at the empty pudding cup. “I think it's because we look a little alike and we sit together and we're the same age and we're friends.”

“Oh.” Eleanor thought for a moment. “No, nobody's come to my window. Not that I noticed. And yes, I'm glad we're friends.”

Kay gave a final nod and sucked her spoon. Then put it in the cup. “Maybe they just wanted me to let you know they were coming, so you wouldn't be surprised.”

Eleanor offered Kay the remains of her own tapioca.

“Maybe.”

Eleanor didn't like when Kay talked crazy. It reminded her of her own babbling moments, which she was trying to control with all her might. Bhakti had called during the day and that was nice; he was still looking for Lila Chen, but Eleanor had nothing new for him. She'd dried up like an empty gourd. She chalked her lack of insight up to getting normal; maybe the medication. Bhakti promised he'd come east as soon as he found the child, and Eleanor tried to make him not worry about anything else saying, “I'm glad. Find her, Bhakti. Find her for Janet. And me.”

The best thing about their conversation was when Bhakti asked, “Are you still walking?” And she could answer, “You bet.”

But the reassuring glow of Bhakti's voice diminished after dinner, disappearing entirely by the time she returned to her room. Eleanor turned on the TV and powered up her laptop, but neither distracted her this evening.

The long blue shadows of midsummer stretched across the lawn outside her window. Two large black-winged woodpeckers jumped to a nearby tree and hopped around the trunk looking for a good spot to drill for bugs. Eleanor could see their silhouettes, the slash of white across their faces, the sharp red crown poking this way and that:
peck-peck-peck
.

Eleanor turned away from the window and stared at the TV. She tried to ignore the walls. She wasn't doing very well with that; the dancing men were at it again.

This time not only were they marching around the painted border of her cheerful loony bin room, but dancing with the ants too. The nasty red ants. The stick-figure men held their spiky legs and led them along as though doing a minuet. One step forward, two steps back. Turn and curtsy. Turn and bow.

The television wasn't behaving either. The images were clouded with static, breaking apart then re-forming.

From a local news station out of Ohio, a reporter stood in a local field in the midst of tall weeds, speaking into his microphone under a deep cloudy sky. The green hills around him were torn by mudslides. Over his shoulder you could clearly see some kind of abandoned factory in the background: long brick buildings, smokestacks, broken windows. Then rain came streaming down.