She falls silent, but she’s breathing. Oh God, please let her keep breathing.
Pete takes the key to the Birch Street Rec’s front door from his father’s real estate properties board.
‘You’ll be okay, Mom. The ambulance will come. Some friends will come, too.’
He starts for the door, then an idea strikes him and he turns back. ‘Mom?’
‘Whaa …’
‘Does Dad still smoke?’
Without opening her eyes, she says, ‘He thinks … I don’t … know.’
Quickly – he has to be gone before Hodges gets here and tries to stop him from doing what he has to do – Pete begins to search the drawers of his father’s desk.
Just in case, he thinks.
Just in case.
48
The back gate is ajar. Pete doesn’t notice. He pelts down the path. As he nears the stream, he passes a scrap of filmy yellow cloth hanging from a branch jutting out into the path. He reaches the stream and turns to look, almost without realizing it, at the spot where the trunk is buried. The trunk that caused all this horror.
When he reaches the stepping-stones at the bottom of the bank, Pete suddenly stops. His eyes widen. His legs go rubbery and loose. He sits down hard, staring at the foaming, shallow water that he has crossed so many times, often with his little sister babbling away about whatever interested her at the time. Mrs Beasley. SpongeBob. Her friend Ellen. Her favorite lunchbox.
Her favorite clothes.
The filmy yellow blouse with the billowing sleeves, for instance. Mom tells her she shouldn’t wear it so often, because it has to be dry-cleaned. Was Teens wearing it this morning when she left for school? That seems like a century ago, but he thinks …
He thinks she was.
I’m taking her to a safe place, Red Lips had said. A place where we can meet, once you have the notebooks.
Can it be?
Of course it can. If Red Lips grew up in Pete’s house, he would have spent time at the Rec. All the kids in the neighborhood spent time there, until it closed. And he must have known about the path, because the trunk was buried less than twenty paces from where it crossed the stream.
But he doesn’t know about the notebooks, Pete thinks. Not yet.
Unless he found out since the last call, that is. If so, he will have taken them already. He’ll be gone. That would be okay if he’s left Tina alive. And why wouldn’t he? What reason would he have to kill her once he has what he wants?
For revenge, Pete thinks coldly. To get back at me. I’m the thief who took the notebooks, I hit him with a bottle and got away at the bookstore, and I deserve to be punished.
He gets up and staggers as a wave of lightheadedness rushes through him. When it passes, he crosses the creek. On the other side, he begins to run again.
49
The front door of 23 Sycamore is standing open. Hodges is out of the Mercedes before Jerome has brought it fully to a stop. He runs inside, one hand in his pocket, gripping the Happy Slapper. He hears tinkly music he knows well from hours spent playing computer solitaire.
He follows the sound and finds a woman sitting – sprawling – beside a desk in an alcove that has been set up as an office. One side of her face is swollen and drenched in blood. She looks at him, trying to focus.
‘Pete,’ she says, and then, ‘He took Tina.’
Hodges kneels and carefully parts the woman’s hair. What he sees is bad, but nowhere near as bad as it could be; this woman has won the only lottery that really matters. The bullet put a groove six inches long in her scalp, has actually exposed her skull in one place, but a scalp wound isn’t going to kill her. She’s lost a lot of blood, though, and is suffering from both shock and concussion. This is no time to question her, but he has to. Morris Bellamy is laying down a trail of violence, and Hodges is still at the wrong end of it.
‘Holly. Call an ambulance.’
‘Pete … already did,’ Linda says, and as if her weak voice has conjured it, they hear a siren. It’s still distant but approaching fast. ‘Before … he left.’
‘Mrs Saubers, did Pete take Tina? Is that what you’re saying?’
‘No. He. The man.’
‘Did he have red lips, Mrs Saubers?’ Holly asks. ‘Did the man who took Tina have red lips?’
‘Irish … lips,’ she says. ‘But not … a redhead. White. He was old. Am I going to die?’
‘No,’ Hodges says. ‘Help is on the way. But you have to help us. Do you know where Peter went?’
‘Out … back. Through the gate. Saw him.’
Jerome looks out the window and sees the gate standing ajar. ‘What’s back there?’
‘A path,’ she says wearily. ‘The kids used it … to go to the Rec. Before it closed. He took … I think he took the key.’
‘Pete did?’