Dark Debts (38 page)

The odor returned. It wasn't as fierce as before, and the air wasn't as heavy.

Maybe it's getting weaker. Maybe this whole thing will die if I just leave it alone.

The phone rang again. He picked it up, expecting to hear Bob's voice.

“Saint Bernadette's.”

“
Salsipuedes
.
”
The demon's voice. He knew it now.

The familiar cackle, loud and long.

“If you have something to say to me, just say it!” The cackle faded out. The phone line popped and hissed, a sound that resembled static but wasn't.

“Michael . . .” the demon's voice whispered. Somehow hearing the vile thing use his name made it worse.

“What do you
want
?” Michael demanded.

“
Salsipuedes
,” it said, then cackled again. The line went dead.

Michael put the receiver down and sat. The smell remained, and he knew he was not alone.

Salsipuedes.
It sounded like Spanish, but Michael didn't recognize the word.

Maybe it's not a word, Padre.

The voice again, but now it was in his head.

Michael fumed. This was all bad enough without having to play games. But demons loved games. Bob had told him that.

It's not a word? Then why is he saying it?

I didn't say it's not a word. I said maybe it's not
a
word.

Not
a
word. More than one word?

“Salsipuedes,”
Michael said, out loud.
“Salsi puedes.”
Then he got it.

Sal si puedes.

Get out if you can.

The cackle filled the room again; rose, fell, and finally receded, its echo trailing it. Michael felt no relief in its retreat.

R
anda found a pay phone right outside Tillie's Good Food Coffee Shop, affixed to the wall of the neighboring establishment, which billed itself as
STEPHEN'S QUALITY GROCERY
. Evidently there was some bad food in town that the local food merchants felt the need to distance themselves from. She dialed Delta's reservations number and booked the next flight to LA. It left in two hours. She could make it if she left now.

She bought a Coke from the vending machine outside Stephen's. It was lukewarm, but she didn't care. She was buying it mainly to hear the angry sound of the bottle sliding down the chute. She'd turned toward her car, thinking how glad she'd be to see Barton in her rearview mirror, when she saw Jack.

He was standing by her car, waiting for her. The cold anger from a few minutes ago was gone, as was the glazed look. He'd shaved and changed into a clean work shirt and painter's pants. He looked like the version of himself she'd fallen in love with, which made his presence all the more cloying.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi?” Seriously?

“You're in my way,” Randa answered.

“I don't blame you for being angry.”

“Well, that's very magnanimous of you. Move.” She said it like she meant it, since she knew her façade was likely to crack at any moment.

“It's good to see you,” he said.

What the hell are you talking about?

“Well, it's not good to see you and I have a plane to catch.”

“I thought you'd gone back a couple of days ago.”

“You thought, or you hoped?”

“Both.”

She hadn't seen that one coming. “Excuse me?”

“Randa, I was just trying to protect you,” he said.

“From what?”

He stepped closer to her and spoke quietly. “Look, let's face it. Whatever it is, it's in my blood. Everyone in my family goes insane, and the men go criminally insane. If
Cam
wasn't immune to it, I'm sure as hell not gonna be.”

“Fine,” Randa said. “So you stay here and rob liquor stores and I'll go back to LA. What's the problem?”

“I don't think you're hearing me,” he said.

“I hear you. I also heard the part about you pretending to like me so you could get laid.” She said it loud enough to be overheard. She could embarrass him if nothing else.

“What?” He sounded surprised.

“You heard me.”

“Half the town heard you, but I don't know what you're talking about.”

“I'm talking about ‘Is that your big accomplishment?' ” She did the best job she could of imitating him. “And ‘Randa, go home. You're all out of brothers.' ”

“I said that?”

“Half an hour ago, Jack. At your apartment. What the hell is your problem?”

“You came to my place? Today?”

“Jack, if you're going to blame amnesia for the ass you made of yourself, you should go all the way back. Tell me you don't remember the Ritz-Carlton, either.”

“I remember that,” he said. “But that's the last time I saw you, until now.”

“Well, was that your evil twin I ran into at your apartment?”

“I didn't . . . you weren't . . . I was alone, and then I came to Tillie's to eat, and until I saw you on the phone, I thought you were in LA.”

She looked at him. The confusion in his eyes was real.

“Jack—”

He cursed under his breath and rubbed his forehead.

“You really don't remember?”

He shook his head.

“How can that be?” she asked.

He mumbled something she couldn't understand, although she caught the last word.

“What about Tallen?”

Jack shook his head. “Go,” he said. “You'll miss your plane.”

He seemed to be totally disoriented.

“No. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I came here to help you. I'm not going home with you like this.”

He looked at her; she could see his focus returning. “You came here to see your family,” he said.

“No. That was a lie. And don't ask me to explain, because I don't understand what's happening to me any more than you understand what's happening to you.”

That seemed to register. At least he couldn't find an immediate way to argue with it.

“Things have been happening that you haven't told me about, haven't they?” She didn't know how she knew that, but she would have bet family heirlooms on it.

He nodded. She took his arm. “Okay. Let's go sit down.” He didn't offer any resistance as she led him into Tillie's.

They were greeted by the usual stares and whispers from the Tillie's regulars as they settled into the booth. Jack had regained his stoic mask and ordered a couple of Cokes as they sat.

“Will you please tell me what has been going on?”

“What I told you before. I've been having nightmares, I've been hearing voices and seeing things—”

“And now you're blacking out,” Randa said.

“I don't know. Maybe it's schizophrenia . . .”

“I doubt it.”

“Why?”

“You're way too old to be showing first signs of schizophrenia.”

He smiled. “Oh really, Doctor?”

“Schizophrenia doesn't explain my conversation with your dead uncle.”

“I told you, he's obviously not really dead. Or that wasn't him you talked to. You aren't going to start with the demon crap, are you?”

“Why are you so touchy about it?”

“Because there's no such thing as demons. That was just my mother's way of shirking responsibility.”

“Oh? Does that mean
you're
responsible for what's happening to you?”

He started to answer, but was cut off by the appearance of the waitress and the Cokes. She plunked them down and was gone, along with Jack's inclination to speak, apparently. He sat in a mute funk.

“Jack, Cam knew what was happening to him,” Randa said, trying another approach. “At the end, I mean. He had some weird reason for calling me the night he died, because we hadn't spoken to each other in a year. He could have called a lot of other people. But he said he had to talk to someone, and I was the only person he knew who might believe what he had to say. And then he said, ‘I'm in trouble that I didn't even know existed.' ”

“And then what? The demon took him over and he jumped out the window?”

“Doesn't it make sense?”

“No. Schizophrenia makes sense.”

Randa fumed. “Jack, there are colleges with parapsychology departments. Duke has one. There are educated people who believe in this stuff enough to specialize in it.”

“I can see why Cam thought you would believe it.”

Randa noticed that Jack was watching a woman at the takeout counter. The woman, who looked like someone who had lived forty-some years the hard way, smiled and waved at him. He smiled and waved back.

“Friend of yours?” Randa asked, trying not to sound catty.

“Yes. I actually have a friend.” He smiled at Randa. “You almost sound jealous.”

“I almost am.”

The woman at the counter picked up her takeout bag and started to leave. She mouthed something to Jack that Randa couldn't understand. He immediately looked pained. He nodded to the woman.

“Crap. I told her I'd come fix her gutters when it stopped raining and I forgot all about it.”

“I'm sure she'll live,” Randa said. Jack smiled at her, warmly.

“I like this,” he said. “I haven't had anyone jealous over me in a long time.”

“Well, good,” Randa said, smiling. “Bask in it.”

For a moment, Randa could almost imagine that they were a normal couple, doing the normal beginning-of-the-relationship dance. She felt comforted by the mundane thoughts of ex-girlfriends and leaky gutters. It was all so concrete and familiar. How could demons be lurking in a world where gutters needed mending?

She saw Jack's expression change again, his wall going back up. She followed his gaze and saw a man walking toward them. The man was about Jack's age, dressed in a plaid shirt and jeans. Staring intently at Jack.

Jack spoke before the other man had a chance. “Whatever it is, I don't want to hear it.”

“Oh, I know. You've made that very clear.”

“Apparently not clear enough,” Jack said.

“May I sit?”

Randa slid over to give him room just as Jack said no. The man sat anyway.

“Look,” the man said in a low voice, “before, I was trying to be friendly. Now we really have to talk.” The man looked at Randa. “I'm Michael Kinney,” he said.

“Randa Phillips,” she said, shaking the hand he offered. His handshake was as firm as the look in his dark blue eyes.

“
Father
Kinney,” Jack said pointedly. Now Randa heard a note of jealousy, and it amazed her. Almost as much as it amazed her that the guy sitting next to her was a priest. She was about to comment on the latter, but Father Kinney had already returned his attention to Jack.

“We should probably go somewhere private,” he said. “This isn't something you'd want eavesdroppers to hear.”

“There's nothing anybody can say about me that hasn't already been said.”

The priest nodded, resigned to the fact. “Suit yourself,” he said. He took a breath, then: “I know something that you don't know. About your family.”

Jack stood up. “Now I
know
I don't want to hear it,” he said. He looked at Randa.

“I'm going over to fix Cathy's gutters. I'll be back by dinner. You can wait at my place.”

“Okay,” she said, but he was gone before it was out of her mouth. She suddenly felt very self-conscious about sitting on the same side of the booth as the plain-clothed priest, but he stood before she had time to worry about it.

“Something about his family?” Randa prompted.

“Tell him that it's my family, too,” he said. Before Randa could even take that in, he mumbled a perfunctory “Nice meeting you,” and he was gone.

Randa felt the weight of every eye in the place. She watched through the window as the priest and Jack walked off in opposite directions. He had said “Michael Kinney.” Was he really another Landry? And if he was, what would it mean? Could he help Jack with whatever was happening?

She kept her seat for a few more minutes, trying to understand why such a brief encounter had left her with such a huge sense of foreboding. It was like the low rumble at the beginning of an earthquake. A useless warning of something that is coming, but cannot be escaped.

T
o hell with it, Michael thought. If the jackass didn't want help, so be it. He'd come home to a zillion phone messages, committee meetings, not to mention the ever-present plague of plumbing disasters. And while he'd been gone, apparently half the parish had suffered some major life crisis that needed immediate attention.

He made it through his eleven o'clock appointment only minimally distracted. A couple who wanted to get married on Valentine's Day, and were incensed to be told the church was booked. They'd already had their invitations printed. Michael tried to point out that since they had printed the invitations and booked the reception before checking on the availability of the church, maybe the three of them needed to discuss the order of their priorities. The couple wasn't interested in discussing anything except alternate places where Michael could perform the ceremony. They'd thought about a neighboring parish, but the priest there was old, and the bride thought Michael would look better in the pictures. Michael suggested they find another parish and ended the meeting.

After the couple, he returned phone calls, made appointments, and heard confessions for an hour and a half. It was all he could do to be fully present, as he doled out the Our Fathers and Hail Marys, and all-important absolution (
do I still believe in it?
), but he managed.

Back in his room, he played it all in his head one more time. He knew he couldn't forget about Jack; Jack's problems were attached to his. And given Jack's family history, there were potential innocent victims to consider. And then there was the fact that, for all intents and purposes, it was Vincent's deathbed request.