The White Road

7


T HAT NIGHT RACHEL watched me, unspeaking, while I undressed.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?” she asked at last.

I lay down beside her and felt her move in close to me, her belly touching my upper thigh. I placed my hand upon her and tried to sense the life inside.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Great. Only puked a little this morning.” She grinned and poked me. “But then I came in and kissed ya!”

“Lovely. It’s a testament to your personal hygiene that I didn’t notice it being any more unpleasant than usual.”

Rachel pinched me hard at the waist, then raised her hand so that she could run it through my hair. “Well? You still haven’t answered my question.”

“He said that he wanted me—us, I guess, since you’ll be called too—to withdraw from the case and refuse to testify. In return, he promised to let us be.”

“Do you believe him?”

“No, and even if I did, it wouldn’t change anything. Stan Ornstead has doubts about my suitability as a witness, but I think he’s just edgy and those doubts really don’t extend to you anyway. We’ll be testifying whether we want to or not, but I got the feeling that Faulkner didn’t really care about our testimony and that he was pretty certain of making bail after the review. I don’t understand why he called me to him except to taunt me. Maybe he’s so bored in prison that he thought I’d provide some amusement.”

“And did you?”

“A little, but he’s kind of easily amused. There were other things too: his cell is freezing, Rachel. It’s almost as if his body is drawing all the warmth from its surroundings. And he baited one of the guards about a relationship with a young girl.”

“Gossip?”

“No. The guard reacted like he’d been struck in the face. I don’t think he’d shared that information with anybody. According to Faulkner, the girl is underage, and the guard confirmed as much to me later.”

“What are you going to do?”

“About the girl? I asked Stan Ornstead to set something in motion. That’s all I can do.”

“So what’s your conclusion about Faulkner? That he’s psychic?”

“No, not psychic. I don’t think there’s a word for what Faulkner is. Before I left him, he spit at me. Actually, he spit into my mouth.”

I felt her stiffen.

“Yeah, that’s kind of how I feel about it too. There isn’t enough mouthwash in the world to take that one away.”

“Why would he do that?”

“He told me it would help me to see better.”

“See what better?”

This was delicate ground. I almost told her then: about the black car, about the things on the prison walls, about the visions of lost children that I’d had in the past, about Susan and Jennifer visiting me from some place beyond. I so badly wanted to tell her, but I could not, and I did not understand why this should be. She sensed some of it, I thought, but chose not to ask. And if she had asked, how could I have explained it to her? I was still unsure myself about the nature of the gift that I had. I did not like to think that something in me drew these lost souls to me. It was easier, sometimes, to try to believe that it was a psychological disturbance, not a psychic one. I was tempted too to call Elliot Norton and tell him that his troubles were his own, that I wanted no part of them, but I had made a promise to him. And as long as Faulkner remained behind bars, awaiting a decision on his bail, I believed that Rachel would be safe. Faulkner, I felt certain, would do nothing that might endanger the possibility of his release. The black car was another matter. It was neither a dream, nor a reality. It was as if, for a brief moment, something that resided in a blind spot of my vision had drifted into sight, that a slight alteration of perception had permitted me to see that which usually existed unseen. And, for reasons that I did not fully understand, I believed that the car, real or imagined, did not represent a direct threat. Its purpose was more indistinct, its symbolism more ambiguous. Still, the thought that the Scarborough PD would be watching the house provided an added consolation, even if I thought it unlikely that police officers would be reporting sightings of a battered black Coupe de Ville.

There was also the matter of Roger Bowen. No good could come of a confrontation with him, but I was curious to see him, maybe to dig around a little and see what I could come up with. Most of all I felt a convergence of events, of which Elliot Norton’s case was a distinct yet linked part. I’m not a great believer in coincidence. I have found in the past that what passes for coincidence is usually life’s way of telling you that you’re not paying enough attention.

“He thinks the dead talk to him,” I said at last. “He thinks that there are deformed angels hovering above Thomaston prison. That’s what he wanted me to see.”

“And did you see them?”

I looked at her. She wasn’t smiling.