CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CROW
1
Get with me, Daddy, Barry the Chink had said. Lean close.
This was just after Snake had started the first of the porn DVDs. Crow got with Barry, even held his hand while the dying man struggled through his next cycle. And when he came back . . .
Listen to me. She’s been watching, all right. Only when that porno started up . . .
Explaining to someone who couldn’t do the locator thing was hard, especially when the one doing the talking was mortally ill, but Crow got the gist of it. The fucksome frolickers by the pool had shocked the girl, just as Rose had hoped they might, but they had done more than make her quit spying and pull back. For a moment or two, Barry’s sense of her location seemed to double. She was still on the midget train with her dad, riding to the place where they were going to have their picnic, but her shock had produced a ghost image that made no sense. In this she was in a bathroom, taking a leak.
“Maybe you were seeing a memory,” Crow said. “Could that be?”
“Yeah,” Barry said. “Rubes think all kinds of crazy shit. Most likely it’s nothing. But for a minute it was like she was twins, you know?”
Crow didn’t, exactly, but he nodded.
“Only if that’s not it, she might be running some kind of game. Gimme the map.”
Jimmy Numbers had all of New Hampshire on his laptop. Crow held it up in front of Barry.
“Here’s where she is,” Barry said, tapping the screen. “On her way to this Cloud Glen place with her dad.”
“Gap,” Crow said. “Cloud Gap.”
“Whatever the fuck.” Barry moved his finger northeast. “And this is where the ghost-blip came from.”
Crow took the laptop and looked through the bead of no doubt infected sweat Barry had left on the screen. “Anniston? That’s her hometown, Bar. She’s probably left psychic traces of herself all over it. Like dead skin.”
“Sure. Memories. Daydreams. All kinds of crazy shit. What I said.”
“And it’s gone now.”
“Yeah, but . . .” Barry grasped Crow’s wrist. “If she’s as strong as Rose says, it’s just possible that she really is gaming us. Throwing her voice, like.”
“Have you ever run across a steamhead that could do that?”
“No, but there’s a first time for everything. I’m almost positive she’s with her father, but you’re the one who has to decide if almost positive is good enough for . . .”
That was when Barry began cycling again, and all meaningful communication ceased. Crow was left with a difficult decision. It was his mission, and he was confident he could handle it, but it was Rose’s plan and—more important—Rose’s obsession. If he screwed up, there would be hell to pay.
Crow glanced at his watch. Three p.m. here in New Hampshire, one o’clock in Sidewinder. At the Bluebell Campground, lunch would just be finishing up, and Rose would be available. That decided him. He made the call. He almost expected her to laugh and call him an old woman, but she didn’t.
“You know we can’t entirely trust Barry anymore,” she said, “but I trust you. What’s your gut feeling?”
His gut felt nothing one way or the other; that was why he had made the call. He told her so, and waited.
“I leave it with you,” she said. “Just don’t screw up.”
Thanks for nothing, Rosie darlin. He thought this . . . then hoped she hadn’t caught it.
He sat with the closed cell phone still in his hand, swaying from side to side with the motion of the RV, inhaling the smell of Barry’s sickness, wondering how long it would be before the first spots started showing up on his own arms and legs and chest. At last he went forward and put his hand on Jimmy’s shoulder.
“When you get to Anniston, stop.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m getting off.”
2
Crow Daddy watched them pull away from the Gas ’n Go on Anniston’s lower Main Street, resisting an urge to send a short-range thought (all the ESP of which he was capable) to Snake before they got out of range: Come back and pick me up, this is a mistake.
Only what if it wasn’t?
When they were gone, he looked briefly and longingly at the sad little line of used cars for sale at the car wash adjacent to the gas station. No matter what transpired in Anniston, he was going to need transpo out of town. He had more than enough cash in his wallet to buy something that would carry him to their agreed-on rendezvous point near Albany on I-87; the problem was time. It would take at least half an hour to transact a car deal, and that might be too long. Until he was sure this was a false alarm, he would just have to improvise and rely on his powers of persuasion. They had never let him down yet.
Crow did take time enough to step into the Gas ’n Go, where he bought a Red Sox hat. When in Bosox country, dress as the Bosox fans do. He debated adding a pair of sunglasses and decided against them. Thanks to TV, a fit middle-aged man in sunglasses always looked like a hit man to a certain part of the population. The hat would have to do.
He walked up Main Street to the library where Abra and Dan had once held a council of war. He had to go no farther than the lobby to find what he was looking for. There, under the heading of TAKE A LOOK AT OUR TOWN, was a map of Anniston with every street and lane carefully marked. He refreshed himself on the location of the girl’s street.
“Great game last night, wasn’t it?” a man asked. He was carrying an armload of books.
For a moment Crow had no idea what he was talking about, then remembered his new hat. “It sure was,” he agreed, still looking at the map.
He gave the Sox fan time to depart before leaving the lobby. The hat was fine, but he had no desire to discuss baseball. He thought it was a stupid game.
3
Richland Court was a short street of pleasant New England saltboxes and Cape Cods ending in a circular turnaround. Crow had grabbed a free newspaper called The Anniston Shopper on his walk from the library and now stood at the corner, leaning against a handy oak tree and pretending to study it. The oak shielded him from the street, and maybe that was a good thing, because there was a red truck with a guy sitting behind the wheel parked about halfway down. The truck was an oldie, with some hand-tools and what looked like a Rototiller in the bed, so the guy could be a groundskeeper—this was the kind of street where people could afford them—but if so, why was he just sitting there?
Babysitting, maybe?
Crow was suddenly glad he had taken Barry seriously enough to jump ship. The question was, what to do now? He could call Rose, but their last conversation hadn’t netted anything he couldn’t have gotten from a Magic 8 Ball.
He was still standing half-hidden behind the fine old oak and debating his next move when the providence that favored the True Knot above rubes stepped in. A door partway down the street opened, and two girls came out. Crow’s eyes were every bit as sharp as those of his namesake bird, and he ID’d them at once as two of the three girls in Billy’s computer pix. The one in the brown skirt was Emma Deane. The one in the black pants was Abra Stone.
He glanced back at the truck. The driver, also an oldie, had been slouched behind the wheel. Now he was sitting up. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. On the alert. So she had been gaming them. Crow still didn’t know for sure which of the two was the steamhead, but one thing he was sure of: the men in the Winnebago were on a wild goosechase.
Crow took out his cell but only held it in his hand for a moment, watching the girl in the black pants go down the walk to the street. The girl in the skirt watched her for a second, then went back inside. The girl in the pants—Abra—crossed Richland Court, and as she did, the man in the truck raised his hands in a what gives gesture. She responded with a thumbs-up: Don’t worry, everything’s okay. Crow felt a surge of triumph as hot as a knock of whiskey. Question answered. Abra Stone was the steamhead. No question about it. She was being guarded, and the guard was an old geezer with a perfectly good pickup truck. Crow felt confident it would take him and a certain young passenger as far as Albany.
He hit Snake on the speed dial, and wasn’t surprised or uneasy when he got a CALL FAILED message. Cloud Gap was a local beauty spot, and God forbid there should be any cell phone towers to clutter up the tourists’ snapshots. But that was okay. If he couldn’t take care of an old man and a young girl, it was time to turn in his badge. He considered his phone for a moment, then turned it off. For the next twenty minutes or so, there was no one he wanted to talk to, and that included Rose.
His mission, his responsibility.
He had four loaded syringes, two in the left pocket of his light jacket, two in the right. Putting his best Henry Rothman smile on his face—the one he wore when reserving campground space or four-walling motels for the True—Crow stepped from behind the tree and strolled down the street. In his left hand he still held his folded copy of The Anniston Shopper. His right hand was in his jacket pocket, easing the plastic cap off one of the needles.