Bad Things (7 page)

edge did not make her feel better, and her faith didn’t make her feel

anything except afraid.

Faith/afraid: funny how similar the two words are. When we

make ourselves believe things, how often is it just an attempt to hold

back the fear?

She refocused on the screen, checking the sites with RSS feeds

that automatically alerted her to additions, edits, new blog entries.

Nothing. So she went for a trawl through some of her other book-

marks instead. Sites on mythology, folklore, local ephemera, anoma-

lies. Still nothing.

Which made perfect sense. Her emotions didn’t betoken a distur-

bance in the ether. She was not the micro- to the world’s macrocosm,

one half of a pathetic fallacy (God, high school English again!). It

was personal. Each time she went looking and found nothing new, it

diminished the comfort she’d once found there. What had previously

made her feel that she was not alone now increasingly confi rmed that

she was. So what next? When you know something’s wrong, but not

how or why, what exactly can you do?

Not panic. That’s all.

32 Michael Marshall

Sometime later she was roused by a knocking sound.

She blinked, realized the sound was someone knocking on the

front door. Of course. She hauled herself up from the chair and

trudged out of the kitchen. She was disquieted to realize that she’d

spent at least some of the time in thoughts she believed had left her:

the idea of killing herself.

She opened the front door to see Rona smiling at her, looking

teenage and wholesome as all get-out.

“Mommmeeeee!” a voice shrieked from below, and she squatted

down to let Tyler give her a hug. He gave good hugs. She straight-

ened up with her son in her arms, and smiled broadly at his occa-

sional sitter.

“Thanks, honey,” she said as the four-year-old in her grasp wrig-

gled for the door catch. Locks and light switches were catnip to this

kid. Pockets of the world on which he could exert an infl uence, Carol

supposed, fi rst steps in controlling the chaos. She hoped he never

learned how they could turn on you.

“Oh, he’s a peach,” Rona said.

Her cheer was unassailable. Tyler’s mother knew that, on occasion,

her son was perfectly capable of not being a peach, but you’d never

know it from Rona’s reports. “So, Friday morning next, right?”

“Yep,” Carol said, her attention caught by the lock her son was

manhandling.

Thinking:
I’ll be seeing you later
.

“You . . . okay, Mrs. Ransom?”

Carol looked around to see her neighbor’s daughter looking at

her curiously. “I’m great,” she said, with a big fake smile, and shut

the door.

While she fixed him a small holding snack in the kitchen she submit-

ted her son to a forensic interrogation as to how he had spent his day.

B A D T H I N G S 33

You needed to extract this information quickly. What had happened

at kindergarten seemed to become unreal or uninteresting within a

couple of hours, as if events were ephemeral, and the past lost its

charge like a battery. Carol envied this a great deal.

It appeared that he had “done things” and that it had been

“fi ne.”

They sat on the sofa together with a children’s book—one perk

of working at the library was an inexhaustible supply of these—and

within fi fteen minutes Carol felt herself relaxing. They could do that

to you, sometimes, children. They were so much themselves that if

you let yourself be pulled fully into their orbit, you could forget your

own world for a time.

Then the phone rang. They looked up at it together. Their phone

rang very seldom.

“Someone’s calling,” Tyler said.

“I know, sweetie.” She got up and went over to the table, picked

up the handset. “Yes?”

“Hello, my dear.”

It was a woman’s voice.

Carol knew immediately who it was. It was a moment before she

could say anything in reply, and it came out as a brittle whisper.

“How did you get this number?”

“A little bird told me. Time to come home,” the woman said. “We

can help.”

Carol put down the phone.

“Who was that?” her son asked.

“Nobody, honey.”

“Can nobody talk, then?”

“Yes,” she said. “Sometimes.”

She asked him to count up the number of cows on the page of the

book in front of him, and managed to walk to the bathroom and close

the door before she threw up.

34 Michael Marshall

That night she checked the bolt thirty-two times when she went

to bed, though she knew it was too late. Nobody was already inside

the gates, and that’s what panic
actually
was, she realized. It was the noise of the world whispering in your ear, when your life was ruled by

something that wasn’t there.

It was the sound of nobody talking, all the time.

C H A P T E R 5

It was a busy night in the restaurant. I didn’t give Ted a heads-up

that we wouldn’t be seeing his pizza guy, as he’d have wondered

where I’d got my information, but waited until he came asking for

me to fi ll in—and acted like it was business as usual. I alternated

between the oven, the fl oor, and the bar as we went through two

half-full sets of covers. Unusually good for that time of year, and

you could see Ted relax a little as he realized it was all going to

help cover part of the day’s costs and appease the dark gods of cash

fl ow.

I was the last member of staff to leave the restaurant, and on

hand when Ted gave the outside door a fi nal looking over before

locking it for the night. He grunted approvingly.

“Nice job,” he said. “I should really give you something for all

that work.”

“You already do,” I said.

He looked at me for a moment. “Want a lift?”

“I’m good,” I said. “Looking forward to the walk.”

“You’re a weird guy,” he said. When he got to his truck he

looked back. “Thanks, John.”

“All part of the ser vice.”

36 Michael Marshall

He shook his head and got in the pickup, a man looking for-

ward to a beer on his home turf and putting his feet up in front of

late-night television with no idea that—for reasons of which he was

entirely ignorant—his world stood a little more fragile tonight. But I

guess none of us ever do know that, until after the fact.

I waited until he’d driven away, then got a chair down from the stacks.

I’d told myself I’d wait half an hour, forty minutes tops, but it was only

twenty before I heard a vehicle turn into the access road.

I felt my heart sink as Becki’s car came into the lot, but got up and

walked over. If I didn’t want to be here now, I shouldn’t have said the

things I had earlier. This happens because of that, and words are ac-

tions, too. A lesson that mankind in general—and me in particular—

seems to fi nd hard to get through their heads.

Kyle was in the passenger seat. He looked up, then away, and

didn’t say anything. His hands lay on his thighs, the fi ngers of both

drumming constantly.

“Hey, Captain Stupid,” I said. “Having a good day?”

“I’ve been there already,” Becki said.

“So what does he have for me?”

She turned and stared at her boyfriend. He spoke quietly. “Rick.

And maybe Doug.”

“Who would be?”

“Assholes,” Becki said bitterly. “They’re on the beach sometimes.

They were at the party last night.”

I turned back to Kyle. “So how’d they come to know where you

were keeping your stash?”

“They just
know,
okay? I—”

“Kyle, listen to me. I can tell you’ve got the message. But I need to

know whether these guys found out because they’re smart and know

how to play people like you, or if it’s one of those things that just hap-

pens and they decided to make something of it on their way home.

B A D T H I N G S 37

I’m assuming it’s the latter, because of the amateur-night break-in,

but I’d like to be sure.”

“I told them,” he said. “I just kind of said it.”

Becki rolled her eyes and muttered something under her breath.

“Good. You know where these people live?”

“Yeah.”

I opened the car door. “So let’s go.”

“What’s this to you, anyhow?” Kyle asked. “This is
my
problem.

Becki already told me that.”

“Where’d you get the coke from?”

“Just some guys in Portland.”

“And ten thousand is not huge in the scale of these things. But

they’re still going to want their money. There are no acceptable losses

to these people, Kyle. Losses make them look bad, and looking bad

is something they will not countenance. If they can’t get what they’re

owed from you, then they’ll branch out, with you as the fl y in the center of the web. That means Becki next. She doesn’t have what they

want. So that means they’ll move on to her dad, and his place of busi-

ness.”

He blinked.

“No man is an island,” I said. “You get now what you’ve done?”

I knew I was pushing him, and that his pride was already hurt, but

either this had to serve as an object lesson or it would be even worse

next time.

“Yeah,” he said, very quietly.

“Excellent,” I said, getting in the car. “So let’s go see if we can’t

get things straightened out.”

The house was on the northwest of Seaside, the town that lay be-

tween Marion Beach and Astoria. It took forty minutes to get there. I

got Kyle to call ahead, acting like everything was cool—and arrang-

ing to meet the two guys the next day. This went smoothly, establish-

ing they were home and further strengthening my impression that

we weren’t dealing with master criminals. Also, assuming they were

38 Michael Marshall

the people who staged the break-in, that they were assholes who were

prepared to lie to a guy’s face and snigger about it afterward. If there’s

anything I hate, it’s that.

I asked Becki to park fi fty yards down the street. I got out and

opened the trunk, looked around until I found something I could use.

“Okay,” I said. “Kyle, you’re coming with me.”

Becki started in quickly. “What about—”

“Trust me,” I said. “Comes to a fi ght, I’d bet on you any day. It’s

just in case we feel like leaving quickly. That happens, I believe you’re

the best person to be ready behind the wheel, don’t you?”

She subsided. Kyle got out of the car and looked at me dubiously.

“So . . . what now?”

“Come with me. And do what I say.”

We walked up the side of the street opposite the house. There

were enough lights on to imply people were home, but nothing to

suggest a windfall-driven debauch in full swing.

“Stay here,” I said.

I crossed and went around the house, quietly, to see what I could

glimpse through the windows. Not much. Music coming from some-

where, still not party-loud. A room that looked like someone had up-

ended a junk store into it and then taken back anything worth more

than fi ve dollars. The living room, with two ratty couches at right an-

gles to a battered television playing MTV. Another room with a single

mattress on a fl oor strewn with dirty clothes and empty soda cans.

Around the back, the kitchen, lit by hanging bulbs fi ghting ciga-

rette smoke. Two young guys hanging at a table: emo playing off an

iPod with extension speakers, a few wine bottles, big bags of Doritos

and an ashtray full of white powder on the side. Heaven on earth,

slacker-style. And on the side counter, a battered industrial-style

juicer.

I walked backward from the house until Kyle could see me, and

mimed him ringing the house bell. He hesitated but then started

across the street.

B A D T H I N G S 39

I went to the back door and waited until I heard the bell go. The

two guys inside looked at each other, and then one of them got up and

left the room. The other slipped the ashtray full of drugs into one of

the Doritos bags.

I gently turned the handle on the back door. It was locked. You

build some, you break some. I raised my foot and kicked it in.

The guy at the table was nowhere near his feet before I got in

range. I grabbed him by the hair and shoved him down onto his chair,

let him see the tire iron I was holding in the other hand.

“You Rick or Doug?”

“Who the hell—”

“Nope,” I said, and rapped him on the kneecap with the iron. He

yelped. “That’s not how this is going to play. Want to try again?”

“Rick,” he said.

“Better. Where are the drugs, Rick?”

“What the
fuck
?”

A new voice. I glanced up to see Kyle and the other guy—Doug, I

assumed—standing in the doorway. Doug’s pupils were pinned even

worse than his friend’s, and he was looking at me as if I was a com-

mercial for a cancer charity in an evening that had otherwise featured

very mellow programming.

“Here’s the thing,” I said, to Doug. It had been his idea to visit the

Pelican in the middle of the night. You can always tell the difference

between the big dogs and the little dogs, even when the bigger ones

are still damned small. “I’m the person who supplied your friend Kyle