Liberty or Death (30 page)

"Okay..." He tossed my wallet and my purse on the ground, scattering things everywhere. "Explain this to me. A truck was following you tonight. If you were really on your way to the hospital, if it was some big-deal emergency, why did you try to get away?"

We were playing twenty questions, but it was always his turn. I searched through the hollow shells of my mind and spirit for a plausible answer. I was so far out of gas I was running on fumes, and given his suspicions, what I said was important. "You ever been chased by two crazies in a pickup truck?" He grunted. I knew what he was thinking. People didn't chase Jimmy McGrath. He chased them.

"Mr. McGrath, I told you. I've got a husband who's sworn to kill me. Someone appears on my tail, following me close like that, and when I slow down where he could pass, he doesn't, what am I going to think? I thought it was him. I was running for my life."

"See, Jimmy. I told you..." Roy began.

He punched my car again. "Looks like you've got an answer for everything, honey, doesn't it? Well, we'll see." He waved his hand at my scattered belongings. "Roy, pick up this shit and help her up the stairs, will you?" A gentleman to the last, the malevolent Jimmy McGrath turned and disappeared into the darkness.

I was done in before my encounter with Jimmy McGrath. Afterward, I felt like I'd been put through a shredder. My knight in shining armor, Roy Belcher, scooped all the stuff, along with a generous helping of gravel, back into my purse, pulled me carefully to my feet, perhaps as afraid as I was that I'd break, and as much carried as escorted me to my door and up the stairs. He stood there awkwardly. "You want me to come in?" he asked. "You really ought to have someone with you. You look... excuse me for saying this... but you look like hell."

I'd been to hell. Was it so surprising that I should have brought some of it back with me? "A chat with your friend Jimmy will do that," I said, choking back hysterical tears. "I'll be okay. The doctor said I was supposed to take it easy. I just need some rest." I was afraid he was going to insist on staying, but Jimmy was waiting. He left.

I stumbled across the room, dropped my bag on the floor, and collapsed on the bed. The pain was bad but I couldn't get up again to take some pills. If I could have run, I would have run, but my body had given up. I lay in the dark, shivering with the aftermath of shock and the grim remnants of fear, not exactly crying, but with tears running down my face until the pillow was wet. My brain wasn't working well enough to figure anything out but I was certain that Jimmy McGrath was at the core of things. I just wasn't sure I was brave enough to find out what that meant.

 

 

 

Chapter 20

 

When my alarm went off at six, I could barely lift my arm to turn it off. It was sheer willpower that got me off the bed and into the bathroom, but then, I have more willpower than a roomful of probate lawyers. The woman in the mirror was a distant relative. Me in ten years. A gaunt-looking person with a grayish pallor and bruised-looking eyes. She had the beaten-down, defeated look and lost, waif-like quality of someone too often disappointed by life. Someone who needed to be rescued. I felt sorry for her. Would have rescued her if I could. I washed her face and brushed her teeth and crammed her hair into a barrette, too tired to bother to comb it for her. Then I dressed her, fed her some medicine for the unrelenting pain, and dragged her down the stairs.

I entered the kitchen with a very simple agenda: serve breakfast, quit job, pack, leave town. Theresa was rushing around like a dervish, her face tight and pinched. When she paused nearby, I opened my mouth to deliver my news, but before I could speak, she gathered up a handful of plates, snapped, "You're late," and headed into the dining room.

Mechanically, I tied on my apron and checked my pockets for my pad and a pencil. Crossed the kitchen to check the bins, stumbling twice over feet too heavy to move. Everything was full. Clyde glanced up from his cooking to ask what I wanted to eat. "I'm not hungry," I said. I didn't think I had the strength to chew and anyway, I wasn't interested. I went into the dining room to get away from his curious gaze, knowing that soon he'd be too busy to bother with me. Today I was the disembodied waitress, running on borrowed energy, and without a brain. I expected at any moment to simply fall over and lie there, unable to get up, like a turtle tipped on its back.

The dining room was full of staring eyes. By the time the breakfast rush was over, more than a dozen people had asked me what was wrong, and I had given a dozen versions of an unconvincing "nothing." People seemed to find my answer unsatisfying. About the only person who didn't ask was Theresa, which kind of surprised me, given how observant she was. But we were both so busy there wasn't time to notice much. Kalyn was off and Cathy hadn't shown up.

The four fishermen came in, sat in my section, and were eager as the rest of the crowd to pump me for information until Bump Peters, my geriatric hero, told them all to shut up and leave me alone. Roy Belcher came in. He wasn't in my section, but he stared at me until he must have memorized every grim wrinkle on my face. His excess of tender concern took the form of the words, "You're looking better today," hollered across the crowded room. Better than what, I wondered? The Reverend Stuart Hannon came in and sat with Belcher. They watched me and talked in low voices but neither one spoke to me. Joe Parker came in with his buddies, and they sat down across from Roy and Hannon.

It was a regular old-home week for militia members. It made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I couldn't help thinking they were discussing Jimmy McGrath's theory that I was an undercover cop. It wasn't paranoid of me to think they were there as a warning. All I managed to pick up was a general restlessness that Jed Harding still hadn't been released and a desire to take some more dramatic action and to take it soon. I still wondered why Jed Harding's release was so important to them. Was it, as his mother had suggested, that Jed might have been involved in what had happened to his wife? Ex-wife. Was I just being foolishly naive because I liked him? Maybe, knowing these guys, it was just a power thing. If they couldn't get him out, they lost face. But that didn't explain why Harding wanted to stay in, did it?

The most discouraging thing, out of all the discouraging things, was my deepened understanding of how evil and violent these men really were. I'd read it. Jack had warned me. But I'd had to see for myself. Kozak reinvents the wheel. And now that I had seen, I wanted to run home and cower there. This morning, in the cold, or rather, hot, light of day, coming back here at all seemed insanely foolish. But I'd been too stubborn to run. Even now, with my mind made up and despite the block of fear that filled my body, I was torn. I knew, instinctively, that I was close.

Okay. What was close? That I'd stirred up a lot of stuff, gotten some names. Gotten them looking at me too closely. What was that? And even if I was close, what was the likelihood that could I possibly get close enough in time? What if their dramatic something involved Andre? It was some comfort—but only a small some—that he'd been alive two days ago. Two days to this bunch, with their collective impulse disorder, was nothing. At any time, they could decide to kill him in a fit of rage, or just start chopping off bits of him and sending them to Augusta. That last thought sent me dashing into the bathroom. I emerged greener than ever and went on serving breakfast, even though the sight and smell of food was sickening.

It scared me that there were so many strangers in the place who didn't look like summer people. For every table with families in shorts and T-shirts with restless kids babbling about fishing, swimming, and boat rides, there was one with MOM caps or Randy Weaver T-shirts and suspicious eyes. I wondered if the tourists noticed and if it made them nervous, too. Maybe these militia guys were invisible to the uninitiated.

I might as well have stayed in bed where I belonged. I picked up no clues, theories, or interesting pieces of gossip. Spying took attention and I needed all mine just to stay upright and keep my feet moving. Kalyn wasn't there, so I couldn't try to find out Mindy's whereabouts. Last night, despite my dazed state, I had described how to find the site of Paulette's murder to Jack, and told him about Kalyn, but I'd begged him not to do anything yet. Cops swarming all over the place right after Kalyn took me there would be a dead giveaway. For all I knew, he'd disregarded my request and the whole town was swarming with cops. Or might be at any moment. It was, after all, a murder, and a crime scene. I didn't even know if they could sit on their hands.

I wished Kalyn were here. Even if I didn't get a chance to ask her my questions, her helpful vitality would have been a nice antidote to Theresa's pinched coldness. About ten-thirty, after four hours without a break, I came into the kitchen carrying a heavy tray, tripped on a perfectly smooth floor, and broke a plate. Clyde took the tray away from me, set it down, and steered me into a chair. "You must rest," he announced. "And you must eat."

It sounded foreign, but it was just Clyde. I tried to argue, my ritual protest. "I'm not..." And we were still too busy for me to stop now.

"You must eat," he repeated, firmly. "You're not well, anyone can see that. I will fix whatever you like." Cathy still hadn't shown up, and every time the back door opened or closed, he looked at it hopefully. Stupid girl. If she wanted him, all she had to do was give up her dumb game-playing and open her arms. What she was doing was cruel.

I wondered what he knew. He was one of them, after all, but I didn't know how much they communicated, how fast news traveled, or where he stood in the hierarchy. I was counting the minutes until I could tell Theresa I was out of here. Besides, right now, kindness threatened my self-control. I had thought I needed to stay here and tough things out until I got something useful, but now every synapse in my body wanted to run for safety. I wanted to put my head down on my arms and bawl. I felt like such a phenomenal failure on all fronts. I didn't want to be waited on. I wanted to be shot.

"Don't be nice to me, Clyde," I said. "You'll only make me feel worse."

It was a good time to leave. In my current state, I was useless to Jack Leonard and equally useless to Theresa. There was no longer any need to knit baby blankets, but at least I could set up my new office and begin to sort things out there. Start staffing up. Stave off hysteria and despair by keeping busy. There was always plenty of work. I'd done it before and it was comfortingly mindless. I need both—comfort and mindlessness. Being here was like being tied to a stake and forced to watch a Neo-Nazi parade. The bad energy in the dining room worried me. I was afraid they were about to do something stupid. Something I couldn't do anything about.

Clyde shook his head. "I can see with my own two eyes, Dora. You couldn't feel worse. I will fix you..." He considered. "French toast. You like French toast? It's easy to eat."

"French toast would be great." I struggled for enthusiasm to repay his kindness, but my affect was flat. "I thought Cathy was working today."

"I thought she'd be here by now." He shrugged. "She's got to leave mid-afternoon. Theresa called Kalyn, but she didn't get any answer. So it all falls on you."

The thought that Kalyn wasn't answering gave me a chill. Had something I'd done—talking with her, going to that trailer—put her in danger? I was getting enough chills lately that I might be suffering from malaria. Emotional malaria. Today I was ready to believe that anything that went wrong in the world was my fault.

Natty and the other boy had arrived and were working on the food for lunch. Theresa was rushing about like an automaton, glaring at me from time to time. Cathy finally came in, tied on an apron, and began to work. She moved slowly, casual. Indifferent. I sat in the midst of it, knowing I should get up and help, and lacking the will. Feeling strangely removed, as though I wasn't really in the room, not a part of this scene anymore.

A week ago, Suzanne had been helping me into my gown and pinning on my veil, cursing as she hooked each tiny hook.

A week ago, I'd been a happy bride, watching through the window as my guests arrived, about to marry the man I loved and pregnant with his child. Now the man I loved had vanished and I'd lost the child. I was hopeless. A colossal failure at everything. I couldn't do traditional womanly things and I couldn't do newfangled tough woman things. The fact that Kalyn wasn't answering was just one more thing to worry about. I sighed and, like a dog circling to flatten the grass before lying down, I circled through the gray fog in my soul, made a space, and settled into the midst of it, wrapped in despair.

Theresa cruised past my chair, sighed loudly, and went into the storeroom, banging the door meaningfully behind her. I started to get up but Clyde put a hand on my shoulder and said, "She and Cathy can manage. Stay." He set a steaming plate before me. "Eat."

Mechanically, I picked up my fork and did as instructed. I was just chewing my third bite when Theresa come over, pulled out another chair, scraping the legs loudly across the floor, and sat down with another sigh. "If you're going to work here," she said, "you've got to be willing to work. This is not some cream-puff job. I've got a business to run, not a charity. You've got to come to work on time, and when you're working, you've got to hustle... something you can't do if you're out until all hours of the night."