Elsinore Canyon (21 page)

Dana and Garth would soon be talking. He had a few minutes to situate himself. Garth was waiting in his private room. Polly could listen from the walk-in closet. It was a sort of back hallway that ran along all three rooms; the master bedroom and the two private rooms on each side. Yes. Polly could get into the closet through the master bedroom, and station himself within listening distance of Garth’s room. He could even move in the closet from room to room if he had to. He had done this sort of thing before, and no one, apparently, had ever found him out. On that last occasion, however, he wished he’d had some sort of recording device.

As he moved quickly to his office to fetch a camera, another idea struck him. Claudia’s computer. He’d been wanting to get at it. It might be in her office, unguarded. In his own office, he took a disk out of a locked drawer. It would take about seven minutes to install and configure, but he had to take the chance. Time was precious right now, but so was opportunity.

In his masculine, well-appointed room, Mr. Hamlet dipped his fingertips into a bowl of ice water with a eucalyptus-oil floater, and pressed them to his temples. Little circles. He’d been waiting for Dana for nearly an hour and his headache had continually worsened. Phone her? She’d ignore it. Go looking for her? He wanted her to be able to find him—and he had told Polly to inform her he would be in his room. She was probably huddling with one of her friends—Phil, Rosie, Gale, Horst—giving him, her father, last priority, but he could live with that. For her, he would wait all night. Claudia evidently didn’t need him enough to come get him, although he was ready to take care of her, too. She had been surrounded by helpful attendants when she sent him away. “I don’t need you right now,” she insisted. She pried his fingers from her waist and looked into his eyes. “I need you to talk to
her.”

A noise drew his attention to the connecting door to the master bedroom. Another door slammed, a female voice? Furniture slamming. He went to the door and opened it.

The physical sensation of all the blood leaving his body made him feel weightless. Dana was bent over his nightstand, the fingers of one hand sprawled and her shoulders hooked in a way he had never seen, ghastly, and yet in that girlish dress of hers with her light, flowing hair—the drawer was open—holding his .357 in her other hand. He kept it loaded—with .38 ammo, but that would do the job at close range. “Dana.”

Her face was white. Eyes empty like giant sunflowers, turned straight on him. “Don’t worry. It’s not for you.”

He wove towards her. An endless expanse stretched between them, carpet and bed, soft trapezoids of clashing colors, the viscous warmth of the room a wave that rippled across his body as he pushed his legs forward. “Dana, just put it down.” She was shaking her head slowly, ominously, and pulling the handle against her stomach as if to keep it from his reaching hands. “You don’t have to do that. I won’t take it away from you.” The room pressed in on him, and a river of tears squeezed from the base of his neck and poured out his nose and eyes. Warm fluid, pain in his head. Had she shot him? “Put it down, baby!”

Dana took a step backwards and let out a crazy chuckle. “Are you listening to me now?”

What was she saying, what did she mean? He tried to keep his eyes off the black and grey thing clutched at her waist, those precious little arms cradling its deadly cylinders. He talked through a paper-dry mouth. “Of course I’m listening! When would I not listen to you?”

“Since Mom died. Stay there—or I’ll use it on one of us.”

He wobbled, but didn’t stop. “Dana, if you need to shoot me, go ahead. Hit—hit my arm, or something. I’d rather be tortured to death than have you hang for my murder.”

She growled. “I told you, it’s not for you. Why do you think you’re the center of everything?”

He was three steps away from her, just three steps, but each step dragged him farther away. Halfway there, another step, then halfway there again, never there, his steps an infinite number of divisions of the distance to his little Dana. “I know I’ve made mistakes, baby. I’m sorry. I’ll listen to whatever you have to say now. I’m all yours. Whatever you want.” He was two steps away from her.

Dana imploded. He leapt on her. Her body was hot and soaked in tears. The poor thing! His hand meshed with hers, his fingers closed over the barrel of the gun, and her damp fingers surrendered it. He tossed it behind her onto the bed and crushed her against him while she sobbed on his shoulder. It had been so long. They clung to each other for three full minutes while he said her name over and over softly in her ear. “It’s all right, baby. I’m here. I’ve got you.” She shook and heaved against his chest. “You’re mine, baby.”

She stilled her sobs suddenly and pulled in her elbows. Her eyes were anguished and angry. “Bullshit.”

“Not this.”

“Why did you do it, Dad?”

“Do you mean…?”

She mocked him. “Do I mean? Do I mean?”

“Dana, I’m listening to you.”

“Oh, having to spell it out—it’s just like when it happened.” She forced herself out of his arms and ran back to the nightstand, where she had dropped her mother’s picture. “This is what you did!” she cried. “My! Mother!” She held the picture out as she walked towards him. “Look at her smile. Look at her eyes. I miss them! I’m only seventeen, Dad! What did you think I was, what did you think our life was, the world’s dumbest sitcom? Leaving me alone after she died like that?”

He shook his head as he looked at the picture. “She was beautiful, Dana.”

“She was the most beautiful thing on earth! You knew that! You saw it! You saw how everyone who met her fell at her feet—they wanted to make her the star of whatever they did. Seeing her for the first time wasn’t meeting her—it was
discovering
her. I heard someone say that once.”

“I said it.” He looked at the picture, lost. “She was impossibly rare. It wasn’t just her beauty—she was so deep and quick, and she knew so much. Dana, when you talk to other people, the conversation dies after Hello, you’re going ‘What’s next, what’s next?’ With her, so many things were next.”

“Dad, it’s not just her that’s gone. It’s the family. She could have done anything she wanted, anything she chose, and she chose us. Me, and you! And what are we now?” She sank onto the bed.

He sank next to her. “She was exquisite,” he whispered.

“Exquisite. Like one of your Patek Philippes. I wonder if her ashes are exquisite. How about memorable? Was she memorable, Dad, was she dear? Was she a thing to treasure, at least for more than six weeks after her body was burned?”

“Dana—”

“Why did you have to replace her? You killed our family.”

“I didn’t replace her!”

“Oh, here it comes, something lame and philosophical. ‘She was
truuuly
irreplaceable.’ You got married again. To that fake—”

“Dana, your aunt and I—”

“Do you hear how that
sounds?
My aunt and you? Aren’t some things off limits? Aren’t there some things you deny yourself no matter what? At least the timing?”

No, he thought. “Not always. Not this.” He couldn’t help it. He loved being married to Claudia. He rubbed his forehead. “I can’t explain it now.”

Dana pulled his hand away and searched his eyes sadly. “Dad, why couldn’t you be a grownup? Out of the two of us?”

He looked away from her in silence.

“Dad, what’s in your conscience at this moment?” She leaned into him. “Dad.” The eye she caught was not his, but a tiny red one, blinking, near a closet door. “What the hell,” she whispered.

Her father looked up. “What’s wrong?”

“A spy-cam, in
here?”

“There’s no spy-cam.” He frowned, and rose slowly.

Dana leaned backward on the bed, and slid her hand out, quickly, smoothly, to the pistol. “I’ve been wanting to do this.” She held it out in front of her, both hands, pulled the hammer the way she’d seen in movies, and shot at the red light. BANG.

HO-LEE. So that was what was meant by a “kick.” Damn, she felt like she’d been shot herself. The noise! And the burning smell, she hadn’t expected that. She had actually shot a gun. “Whoa!” she laughed.

Her father hit his knees and flung himself on her. She was all flailing legs at the edge of the bed. “Dana!”

The noise of the gun had been so loud she felt like she was yelling, but she wasn’t. She smiled madly. “I wonder what this’ll look like when it’s played back. Next shot, an oncoming bullet!” She aimed at the red light again and pulled the hammer back. Hey, where was the red li— BANG. God, that noise. She missed. The bullet pierced a picture of her father that hung on the closet door—right through the eye, she couldn’t have made a better shot if she’d been aiming for it. She wanted to shoot some more.

She felt her father’s arm curl around her legs—lord, he was strong! It was like when she was five years old and she couldn’t get away from him. She was laughing her ass off as he gathered her legs tight in his elbow, swung her flat against the bed and slid his other hand up her waist and ribs, along her outstretched arms.

“Take three!” she shouted. BANG. Her father’s picture again. BANG. What? BANG. The closet. She laughed uncontrollably.

Her father grabbed her hands, and the gun flipped away from her.

“Hey, I hit it!” she yelled as something popped out of the closet. Her father loosened his grip on her as he grabbed the gun, and she burst away. A camera had, in fact, bounced onto the floor. Dana scampered to it and squatted down to pick it up—and Polly toppled out of the closet and onto her. Blood was gushing from the base of his neck.

“AAAAA!”
Dana pushed him off and stumbled backwards.

Her father caught her as she fell back. He stared over Dana’s head at the impossible thing on the floor. Dear God, it wasn’t a dummy. He steadied Dana, then dropped beside the unwieldy form—huge, it seemed, in its helpless, immobile state, a thing drained of will and owned by gravity, as hard to budge as a sack of gravel. Except. Not immobile—alive.
Alive.
Polly was burbling and moaning, trying to twist side to si—

Dana’s father zig-zagged back around the oversized room. The land line, the land line, all the way on the other side of the room, his cell phone was even farther away. He grabbed the big plastic toy. Where were the buttons he could usually punch without looking? Nine. One. One. Someone calm and inquisitive snapping into his ear on the other end, his answers coming in shouts and stammers while Polly lay smothering in his own groans. Dana was at the wall hitting the intercom. “Oscar!”

Her father slammed the phone down. “Where’s Claudia?”

“She’s in her room. Asleep.”

“What did you see, Dana?”

“Just a camera! Dad, I didn’t know—”

“What did you tell Oscar just now?”

“Just to come.”

“Where was he?”

“The kitchen.”

“Perfect.” The phone started jingling softly. Dana’s father sprinted around the bed, skidded onto his knees, and grabbed the camera, which was
still recording.
How much of the scene had it gotten? Some spy, staring through his camera at an oncoming bullet. “Dumbass,” he muttered. “Miserable fuck.” He sprinted to the western wall where a pair of big glass doors led out to a balcony, swung them open, and—the thing was functioning, loaded with digital evidence. No time to wipe it or smash it up. He hurled it with all his might over the cliff. It would hit the rocks and he would climb down maybe in a few weeks or months, after the surveillance had ended, do a grid, find the thing, and atomize it. Back through the glass doors, SLAM, over to Dana. He took her shaking shoulders in his hands. “Listen,” he said firmly. “We’ll say I did this. We’re going to.” The phone quit ringing. Polly burbled again.

“You?”

“Listen. I was waiting for you in here alone, fiddling with my gun, and I shot my own picture. I was mad at myself, for failing you. You don’t know any of that, it’s what I’m going to tell them. You heard the noise and came in here from Claudia’s room and you didn’t see a thing except me, standing over Polly, with my gun lying on the floor next to the bed.” The gun. Dana’s fingerprints all over it. First the camera, now—where had it gone? He scanned the bed with his eyes, hit the floor, near the bed, under the bed, under Polly, got back up and passed his palms over the bedspread under the pillows—got it!—and rubbed it like Aladdin’s lamp between his oily hands. He gripped the handle firmly as if he’d been shooting and held it tight for a second, then lowered it to the floor. “Here, I’m putting it on the floor here, just the way you saw it. The barrel is pointing under the bed, see? The barrel is pointing under the bed and the handle is pointing down towards the foot. You saw me, you saw the gun, and you intercommed for Oscar. And
do not
mention a camera.” The phone rang again.

“But what if they—oh God. No.
Please, no!”
She clawed her cheeks and gaped at the glass doors. The ghost was staring in at her. Its arms were held straight out, crucifixion-like.

Her father seized her shoulders again. “Jesus, what, baby?”

She stammered. “You don’t see it? Look, at the balcony!”

He whipped his head at the balcony, then back to Dana. “There’s nothing there.” The phone stopped ringing again.