6
Snakebite Andi parked in the truckers’ lot of a turnpike rest area near Westfield, New York. Nut went into the service plaza to get juice for Barry, who was now running a fever and had a painfully sore throat. While they waited for him to come back, Crow put through a call to Rose. She answered on the first ring. He filled her in as quickly as he could, then waited.
“What’s that I hear in the background?” she asked.
Crow sighed and rubbed one hand up a stubbled cheek. “That’s Jimmy Numbers. He’s crying.”
“Tell him to shut up. Tell him there’s no crying in baseball.”
Crow conveyed this, omitting Rose’s peculiar sense of humor. Jimmy, at the moment wiping Barry’s face with a damp cloth, managed to muffle his loud and (Crow had to admit it) annoying sobs.
“That’s better,” Rose said.
“What do you want us to do?”
“Give me a second, I’m trying to think.”
Crow found the idea of Rose having to try to think almost as disturbing as the red spots that had now broken out all over Barry’s face and body, but he did as he was told, holding the iPhone to his ear but saying nothing. He was sweating. Fever, or just hot in here? Crow scanned his arms for red blemishes and saw none. Yet.
“Are you on schedule?” Rose asked.
“So far, yes. A little ahead, even.”
There was a brisk double rap at the door. Andi looked out, then opened it.
“Crow? Still there?”
“Yes. Nut just came back with some juice for Barry. He’s got a bad sore throat.”
“Try this,” Walnut said to Barry, unscrewing the cap. “It’s apple. Still cold from the cooler. It’ll soothe your gullet something grand.”
Barry got up on his elbows and gulped when Nut tipped the small glass bottle to his lips. Crow found it hard to look at. He’d seen baby lambs drink from nursing bottles in that same weak, I-can’t-do-it-myself way.
“Can he talk, Crow? If he can, give him the phone.”
Crow elbowed Jimmy aside and sat down beside Barry. “Rose. She wants to talk to you.”
He attempted to hold the phone next to Barry’s ear, but the Chink took it from him. Either the juice or the aspirin Nut had made him swallow seemed to have given him some strength.
“Rose,” he croaked. “Sorry about this, darlin.” He listened, nodding. “I know. I get that. I . . .” He listened some more. “No, not yet, but . . . yeah. I can. I will. Yeah. I love you, too. Here he is.” He handed the phone to Crow, then collapsed back onto the stacked pillows, his temporary burst of strength exhausted.
“I’m here,” Crow said.
“Has he started cycling yet?”
Crow glanced at Barry. “No.”
“Thank God for small favors. He says he can still locate her. I hope he’s right. If he can’t, you’ll have to find her yourselves. We have to have that girl.”
Crow knew she wanted the kid—maybe Julianne, maybe Emma, probably Abra—for her own reasons, and for him that was enough, but there was more at stake. Maybe the True’s continued survival. In a whispered consultation at the back of the Winnebago, Nut had told Crow that the girl had probably never had the measles, but her steam might still serve to protect them, because of the inoculations she would have been given as a baby. It wasn’t a sure bet, but a hell of a lot better than no bet at all.
“Crow? Talk to me, honey.”
“We’ll find her.” He shot the True’s computer maven a look. “Jimmy’s got it narrowed down to three possibles, all in a one-block radius. We’ve got pictures.”
“That’s excellent.” She paused, and when she spoke again her voice was lower, warmer, and perhaps the slightest bit shaky. Crow hated the idea of Rose being afraid, but he thought she was. Not for herself, but for the True Knot it was her duty to protect. “You know I’d never send you on with Barry sick if I didn’t think it was absolutely vital.”
“Yeah.”
“Get her, knock her the fuck out, bring her back. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“If the rest of you get sick, if you feel you have to charter a jet and fly her back—”
“We’ll do that, too.” But Crow dreaded the prospect. Any of them not sick when they got on the plane would be when they got off—equilibrium shot, hearing screwed blue for a month or more, palsy, vomiting. And of course flying left a paper trail. Not good for passengers escorting a drugged and kidnapped little girl. Still: needs must when the devil drives.
“Time you got back on the road,” Rose said. “You take care of my Barry, big man. The rest of them, too.”
“Is everyone okay at your end?”
“Sure,” Rose said, and hung up before he could ask her anything else. That was okay. Sometimes you didn’t need telepathy to tell when someone was lying. Even the rubes knew that.
He tossed the phone on the table and clapped his hands briskly. “Okay, let’s gas and go. Next stop, Sturbridge, Massachusetts. Nut, you stick with Barry. I’ll drive the next six hours, then you’re up, Jimmy.”
“I want to go home,” Jimmy Numbers said morosely. He was about to say more, but a hot hand grabbed his wrist before he could.
“We got no choice about this,” Barry said. His eyes were glittering with fever, but they were sane and aware. In that moment, Crow was very proud of him. “No choice at all, Computer Boy, so man up. True comes first. Always.”
Crow sat down behind the wheel and turned the key. “Jimmy,” he said. “Sit with me a minute. Want to have a little gab.”
Jimmy Numbers sat down in the passenger seat.
“These three girls, how old are they? Do you know?”
“That and a lot of other stuff. I hacked their school records when I got the pictures. In for a penny, in for a pound, right? Deane and Cross are fourteen. The Stone girl is a year younger. She skipped a grade in elementary school.”
“I find that suggestive of steam,” Crow said.
“Yeah.”
“And they all live in the same neighborhood.”
“Right.”
“I find that suggestive of chumminess.”
Jimmy’s eyes were still swollen with tears, but he laughed. “Yeah. Girls, y’know. All three of them probably wear the same lipstick and moan over the same bands. What’s your point?”
“No point,” Crow said. “Just information. Information is power, or so they say.”
Two minutes later, Steamhead Steve’s ’Bago was merging back onto Interstate 90. When the speedometer was pegged at sixty-five, Crow put on the cruise control and let it ride.
7
Dan outlined what he had in mind, then waited for Dave Stone to respond. For a long time he only sat beside Abra with his head lowered and his hands clasped between his knees.
“Daddy?” Abra asked. “Please say something.”
Dave looked up and said, “Who wants a beer?”
Dan and John exchanged a brief bemused glance and declined.
“Well, I do. What I really want is a double shot of Jack, but I’m willing to stipulate with no input from you gentlemen that sippin whiskey might not be such a good idea tonight.”
“I’ll get it, Dad.”
Abra bounced into the kitchen. They heard the snap of the flip-top and the hiss of the carbonation—sounds that brought back memories for Dan, many of them treacherously happy. She returned with a can of Coors and a pilsner glass.
“Can I pour it?”
“Knock yourself out.”
Dan and John watched with silent fascination as Abra tilted the glass and slid the beer down the side to minimize the foam, operating with the casual expertise of a good bartender. She handed the glass to her father and set the can on a coaster beside him. Dave took a deep swallow, sighed, closed his eyes, then opened them again.
“That’s good,” he said.
I bet it is, Dan thought, and saw Abra watching him. Her face, usually so open, was inscrutable, and for the moment he could not read the thoughts behind it.
Dave said, “What you’re proposing is crazy, but it has its attractions. Chief among them would be a chance to see these . . . creatures . . . with my own eyes. I think I need to, because—in spite of everything you’ve told me—I find it impossible to believe in them. Even with the glove, and the body you say you found.”
Abra opened her mouth to speak. Her father stayed her with a raised hand.
“I believe that you believe,” he went on. “All three of you. And I believe that some group of dangerously deranged individuals might—I say might—be after my daughter. I’d certainly go along with your idea, Mr. Torrance, if it didn’t mean bringing Abra. I won’t use my kid as bait.”
“You wouldn’t have to,” Dan said. He was remembering how Abra’s presence in the loading dock area behind the ethanol plant had turned him into a kind of human cadaver dog, and the way his vision had sharpened when Abra opened her eyes inside his head. He had even cried her tears, although a DNA test might not have shown it.
“What do you mean?”
“Your daughter doesn’t have to be with us to be with us. She’s unique that way. Abra, do you have a friend you could visit tomorrow after school? Maybe even stay with overnight?”
“Sure, Emma Deane.” He could see by the excited sparkle in her eyes that she already understood what he had in mind.
“Bad idea,” Dave said. “I won’t leave her unguarded.”
“Abra was being guarded all the time we were in Iowa,” John said.
Abra’s eyebrows shot up and her mouth dropped open a little. Dan was glad to see this. He was sure she could have picked his brain any old time she wanted to, but she had done as he asked.
Dan took out his cell and speed-dialed. “Billy? Why don’t you come on in here and join the party.”
Three minutes later, Billy Freeman stepped into the Stone house. He was wearing jeans, a red flannel shirt with tails hanging almost to his knees, and a Teenytown Railroad cap, which he doffed before shaking hands with Dave and Abra.
“You helped him with his stomach,” Abra said, turning to Dan. “I remember that.”
“You’ve been picking my brains after all,” Dan said.
She flushed. “Not on purpose. Never. Sometimes it just happens.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“All respect to you, Mr. Freeman,” Dave said, “but you’re a little old for bodyguard duty, and this is my daughter we’re talking about.”
Billy raised his shirttails and revealed an automatic pistol in a battered black holster. “One-nine-one-one Colt,” he said. “Full auto. World War II vintage. This is old, too, but it’ll do the job.”
“Abra?” John asked. “Do you think bullets can kill these things, or is it only childhood diseases?”
Abra was looking at the gun. “Oh yes,” she said. “Bullets would work. They’re not ghostie people. They’re as real as we are.”
John looked at Dan and said, “I don’t suppose you have a gun?”
Dan shook his head and looked at Billy. “I’ve got a deer rifle I could loan you,” Billy said.
“That . . . might not be good enough,” Dan said.
Billy considered. “Okay, I know a guy down in Madison. He buys and sells bigger stuff. Some of it much bigger.”
“Oh Jesus,” Dave said. “This just gets worse.” But he didn’t say anything else.
Dan said, “Billy, could we reserve the train tomorrow, if we wanted to have a sunset picnic at Cloud Gap?”
“Sure. People do it all the time, ’specially after Labor Day, when the rates go down.”
Abra smiled. It was one Dan had seen before. It was her angry smile. He wondered if the True Knot might have had second thoughts if they knew their target had a smile like that in her repertoire.
“Good,” she said. “Good.”
“Abra?” Dave looked bewildered and a little frightened. “What?”
Abra ignored him for the moment. It was Dan she spoke to. “They deserve it for what they did to the baseball boy.” She wiped at her mouth with her cupped hand, as if to erase that smile, but when she pulled the hand away the smile was still there, her thinned lips showing the tips of her teeth. She clenched the hand into a fist.
“They deserve it.”