Nameless Night (12 page)

He rubbed his eyes and looked around the car. Other than the seating area, the car was filled nearly to the roof line. His legs were little more than a dull ache. He tried to stretch but didn’t have the room. He poked around with his hand, found the lever, and tried to put the seat back. Felt like he was crushing something. He stopped.

“We’re gonna have to pull in for gas real soon here,” she said, tapping the dashboard with a multicolored fingernail. “We’ll get out and rearrange things. See if maybe we can’t get you a little more legroom.”

He nodded his appreciation.

“You know. Everything happened so fast, I never asked you where you were headed.”

He thought it over. “I’m headed wherever you’re headed,” he said finally.

She cast him a questioning glance. “You drive?” she asked.

“A car?” he asked.

She burst out laughing and then, just as quickly, choked herself off. “I don’t mean to be impolite,” she said, waving a hand his way, “. . . but I’m telling you, man, you truly are a stranger in a strange land.”

Blood began to rise in his face. “How so?”

She checked to see if he was kidding. “You serious?” she said. He assured her he was.

“Well, let’s see . . .” She brought a fingernail to her chin. “You’ve got no idea what your name is . . . no clue as to where you’re going. You never been out in the desert before. You don’t know if—” “I can drive” was out of his mouth before he thought about it.

“You got a valid license?”

“Why?”

“’Cause it’s a long way, and I’d like a little help with the driving if I can get it.”

“What’s a long way?”

“Alabama.”

“What’s in Alabama?”

“I told you . . . my family.”

He began to pat himself down. Nearly as he could tell, his pants contained nothing other than the roll of money in his right pants pocket. Then he got around to feeling up the jacket and discovered a lump on the left. He slipped his hand inside and pulled out a battered brown wallet. She was watching the road now. “’Cause if you don’t have a license and we get stopped for something . . . I mean like that’s the end of the trip right there. They’ll sure as shootin’ take you and the car and leave me sittin’ there on the highway somewhere.”

He used his thumbs to pry open the center section of the wallet. No money, just a folded-up piece of white paper, which he extracted. She was still talking. “’Cause I’d rather do the driving myself than have that shit come down. That’s the last thing I need. I’m thinking this is . . .”

The paper was stiff, the creases folded tight and flattened, as if it had been a long time since anyone had opened whatever it was. He handled it gently.

“. . . a pivotal period in my life. You know where a person . . . you know, puts childhood behind and . . .”

It was a birth certificate. Polk County, Arkansas, thirty-seven years ago next month. Randall Michael James, son of Harold P. James and Elvira Ann Scott. And then it came to him. Randall. It was Randall’s wallet.

“. . . you know, kind of strike out anew and . . .”

Poor guy must have stuffed it in the jacket as Paul was heading for the back stairs.

“. . . gotta mend a few fences back home before I can . . .”

The remainder of the wallet contained a tattered Department of Social Welfare ID card, a Queen Anne County Library card, and a Hollywood Video rental card, all in Randall’s name.

“. . . that is assuming they can be mended.” She heaved a sigh.

“I’ve been gone a long time.” She looked over at him. Sadness filled her eyes. “Been years since I talked to my family.” She sighed again.

“We parted on real bad terms.” Her eyes rolled in her head. “About as bad as terms can get.”

He sat back in the seat. The horizon was flat. A dirty sun was rising. “So . . .” he began. “What is it you’re looking for? What’s back home that’s not someplace else?”

“Home,” she said. “You know what they say about home.”

“No place like it” was out of his mouth before he thought about it. He searched for something else to say but came up empty. He covered his eyes with his hands. He could feel something or maybe someone inside of him, someone who knew there was no place like home, but who always stayed in the shadows, someone who— Her voice hit him like a slap in the face. “So . . . what am I gonna call you?”

His head swirled. “Randy,” he said after a moment. “Call me Randy.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure,” he replied.

“Okay, man, then it’s Randy you are.”

He allowed himself a wry smile. “It’s that easy, is it?”

She snapped her fingers. “Just like that.”

The sun was a hazy halo on the horizon. Infrequent trees and low-growing thorns dotted the barren ground here and there. A blue-and-white sign announced an impending rest area. A minute passed before the mercury vapor lights became visible.

“So how come you left home on such bad terms?”

“’Cause I was young and stupid.”

He watched as she went back over it in her mind. He wondered how accurate the movies of memory were, wondered if the pictures became increasingly self-serving with the passage of time, as the stories themselves became more and more embedded in the fabric of our being, to the point where the line between fact and fantasy disappeared altogether, and it was the telling that mattered rather than the facts.

The rest area flashed by. She was somewhere else.

“I was weird,” she said after a minute. “Every little town’s got one, and I was it.”

The sound of her own voice seemed to encourage her. “I just didn’t want what the rest of them wanted.” She threw a quick glance his way. “You’re supposed to grow up, marry somebody else from the county, and start popping out fat little babies.” She heard her voice getting brittle and took a couple of breaths. “Not that there’s anything wrong with any of that, mind you.” She waved a hand in the air. “It just wasn’t for me.”

“What was for you?”

“Anything but that,” she snapped.

“And your family didn’t approve?”

She laughed. “Wasn’t a single solitary thing about me they approved of,” she said. “They hated the way I looked, the way I dressed . . . they hated my friends.” She waved a hand again. “You name it, they hated it.”

“So you left?”

“Might’ve been better if I had. Problem was, I finally gave in. I just couldn’t stand being the outcast anymore,” she said. “I was gonna marry Danny Leery. I cut my hair . . . cut off my nails . . . Mama ordered me a dress from a catalog. I was really gonna do it. Don’t ask me why.” She shook her head in disbelief. “I just wanted to be loved, I guess. All I knew was Airhart, Alabama, and my family,” she said. “I spent my whole adolescence telling myself and anybody who’d listen how much I didn’t give a shit and then it turned out that I did.” She read the question in his eyes. “The closer the big day came, the crazier I got. Then somethin’ in me just snapped,” she said. “Thursday before the Saturday wedding, I finally lost it. Danny and me already bought furniture, moved the stuff into a house on his daddy’s farm. Relatives from all over Alabama were fixin’ to pack and head for the wedding.”

“And?”

“And I walked into town that Thursday morning and I got on the first bus that showed up at the Trailways station.”

“No kidding.”

“I got on that bus and never looked back.” She said it like it had long been rehearsed. “Later that day I called home . . . you know, so’s they wouldn’t think anything bad’d come to me. My papa answered.”

“Yeah.”

“He hung up on me.” She swallowed hard. “Said I wasn’t his daughter anymore.”

A faded billboard announced big harvey’s truck stop, yum! yum! a mere thirty-nine miles distant. A pair of eighteen-wheelers roared by in the opposite lane, shaking the little car with the power of their passing.

“What about you?” she said, without taking her eyes from the road.

“What about me?”

“I showed you mine.” She smiled. “. . . so to speak, anyway. It’s your turn. Guy don’t know his own name gotta have a heck of a story.”

“It’s not much of a story.”

“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that.”

He told her everything he could remember.

16

Kirsten Kane set the phone receiver down and leaned back in her chair. She pursed her lips, closed her eyes, and began to rock. After a few minutes, she sat forward and pushed herself to her feet. She was halfway to the door when her phone began to ring. She ignored the call and stepped out into the hall. The offices hummed with the muted buzz of low voices, of keyboards clipping away and messages being sent and received. At the end of the hall, his door was closed, usually a sign he was in a meeting. She kept walking anyway. Gene Connor, his private secretary, smiled as Kirsten approached. She set her phone back into the cradle and folded her hands on the desk in front of her. She was fifty-seven and had been Bruce Gill’s right hand since he was a fledgling lawyer. Divorced and comfortable that way, she had twin sons, Aaron and Harlan, who were in their final year of Princeton Law.

“He with somebody?” Kirsten asked.

Gene shook her Margaret Thatcher hair. “He’s alone,” she said.

“Desperately trying to get someone on the phone.”

Kirsten was slightly taken aback by the unsolicited information. Gene Connor took the “private” part of private secretary quite seriously and generally provided little or no information above and beyond what was absolutely necessary. One courthouse wag suggested it was easier to get through to Jimmy Hoffa than to Bruce Gill.

“Really.”

“You,” she said with a bemused grin.

Kirsten returned the smile. “I take it I can go in.”

She made a sweeping movement with her hand. “By all means,” she said.

Her phone rang. She picked it up. “Office of the district attorney.”

She gestured Kirsten onward with her eyes. “I’m afraid Mr. Gill’s in a meeting right now. Would you like to leave a message or can I connect you to his voice mail? Yes. Yes. Thank you very much.”

The door read bruce w. gill. Underneath: district attorney. Underneath that: queen anne county painted in gold. By the time Kirsten pulled the door open, Gene had fielded and disposed of yet another caller.

“Just the woman I wanted to see,” he said as Kirsten crossed the carpet and sat down in the green leather chair.

“Gene says you were trying to reach me.”

“You’re not answering calls these days?”

“I was on my way here.”

“Apparently great minds do think alike.”

“Guess who just called me.”

He leaned out over his desk. He smiled his real smile, not the photo-op special, but the grin that escaped when he was actually amused. “Pray tell,” he said.

“The U.S. attorney’s office.”

“Really?”

“Seems they have an opening in the Bay Area that would be just perfect for me.”

He pushed out a low whistle. “Expensive place to live.”

“They’d be tripling my present pittance,” she said.

“There’s a great breakfast joint down by Washington Square.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“Quite an honor.”

“I’d have to start the first of next week.”

He spread his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I can’t imagine what it would be like around here without you . . . but I sure as hell won’t stand in your way.” He got to his feet and offered a congratulatory hand. She stayed seated. “Something about it doesn’t feel right,” she said.

He gave her a wolfish grin and eased himself back into his chair.

“Which brings us to the reason I was looking for you a few minutes ago.”

“Which was?”

The grin got wider. “Guess who called me.”

She checked him for irony and came up empty. “You’re kidding.”

He shook his big head. “The Democratic National Party.”

“Really.”

“Seems all of a sudden they want me to be more of a player. They didn’t come right out and say it, but they danced around a promise that the president might see his way clear to campaign for me next election year. Might even find a place for me in the AG’s office.”

“Wow,” she said.

“They need me in Washington for the next few weeks”—he made an expansive gesture—“. . . to talk about my future with the party.”

“Just like that?”

“Out of the wild blue yonder.”

“These are the same people who are always trying to get you to tone it down.”

“The same folks.”

“The same folks who’ve been all over us like white on rice about our unwillingness to cooperate with government thug squads.”

“The very same.”

“What’s wrong with this picture?”

“I’m thinking somebody wants the two of us diverted for a while.”

“Diverted from what?” Kirsten asked.

“Gotta be that affair with the”—he snapped his fingers—“. . . the house thing . . .”

“Harmony House.”

“Yep.”

“What do we do?”

He thought it over. “I’m thinking we sit tight and wait to see what happens next.”

“Always a good plan,” she said.

“Always.”

“SEE.” HELEN POINTED at the computer. The expression on her face said, “I told you so.” Ken pushed his glasses to the end of his nose and leaned in closer to the screen.

“I don’t see any difference,” he said.

“The column on the right.”

“Dates.”

“Birth dates.”

Ken sat back in the chair. “Oh” was all he said.

“Don’t you get it?”

“I see how it’s going to help, if that’s what you mean. What I don’t get is what it is you think we’re accomplishing by all of this.”

“Maybe we can help him.”

“Help him what?” Ken asked.

“Find himself.”

“Find Paul?”

“There is no Paul.” She waved an impatient hand. “That’s the whole point.”

“And you think we’re going to be able to help him by finding this Howard guy.”

“Find the right Wesley Allen Howard and you’ll find Paul.”

“I thought there was no Paul?” he said. Before she could answer, he said, “It’s not like you were going to be able to keep him around here much longer. One way or another, he was about to go. Either he was going to set out on this quest of his on his own, or somebody was going to find out he didn’t belong in this place and the state was going to send him packing.” He showed his palms to the ceiling.