Lisey’s Story (55 page)

“Zack—Mr. Dooley—this is Lisey. If you're hearing this, I'm visiting my sister, who's in the hospital, up in Auburn. I spoke to the Prof, and I'm
so
grateful this is going to work out. I'll be in my husband's study tonight at eight, or you can call me here at seven and arrange something else, if you're worried about the police. There may be a Sheriff's Deputy parked out front, maybe even in the bushes across the road, so be careful. I'll listen for messages.”

She was afraid that might be too much for the outgoing-message tape to handle, but it wasn't. And what would Jim Dooley make of it, if he called this number and heard it? Given his current level of craziness, Lisey couldn't begin to predict. Would he break radio silence and call the Professor in Pittsburgh? He might. Whether or not the Professor would actually pass on her message if Dooley did was also impossible to predict, and maybe it didn't matter. She didn't much care if Dooley thought she was actually ready to deal or just jacking him around. She only wanted him nervous and curious, the way she imagined a fish felt when it was looking up at a lure skipping along the surface of a lake.

She didn't dare leave a note on her door—it was all too likely Deputy Boeckman or Deputy Alston would read it long before Dooley had a chance to—and that was probably taking things a step too far, anyway. For the time being, she had done all she could.

And do you really expect him to show up at eight o'clock tonight, Lisey? To just come waltzing up the stairs to Scott's office, full of trust and belief?

She didn't expect him to come waltzing, and she didn't expect him to be full of anything but the lunacy she had already experienced, but she
did
expect him to come. He would be as careful as any feral thing, casting about for a trap or a setup, possibly sneaking in from the woods as early as mid-afternoon, but Lisey believed he would know in his heart that this wasn't some trick that she'd worked out with the Sheriff's Department or the State Police. He'd know from the eagerness to please he heard in her voice, and because after what he'd done to her, he had every reason to expect her to be one cowed cow. She played the message
back twice and nodded. Yeah. On the surface she sounded like a woman who was merely eager to finish some troublesome piece of business, but she thought Dooley would hear the fright and pain just beneath. Because he expected to hear them, and because he was crazy.

Lisey thought there was something else at work here, as well. She had gotten her drink. She had gotten her
bool
, and it had made her strong in some primal way. It might not last long, but that didn't matter, because a little of that strength—a little of that primal weirdness—was now on the answering machine tape. She thought that if Dooley called, he would hear and respond to it.

Her cell phone was still in the BMW and now fully charged. She thought of going back to the little office in the barn and re-doing the message on the answering machine, adding the mobile number, then realized she didn't know it.
I so rarely call myself, darling
, she thought, and unloosed the big, larruping laugh again.

She drove slowly out to the end of the driveway, hoping that Deputy Alston would be there. He was, looking bigger than ever and rather primal himself. Lisey got out of her car and gave him a little salute. He did not call for backup or run screaming from the sight of her face; he merely grinned and tipped the salute right back at her.

It had certainly crossed Lisey's mind to spin a tale if she found a deputy on duty, something about “Zack McCool” calling her up and telling her he'd decided to get his li'l ole self back to his li'l ole holler in West Virginny and forget all about the writer's widder-woman; jest too many Yankee
po
-lice around. She'd do it without the
Deliverance
accent, of course, and she thought she could be fairly convincing, especially in her current state of baptismal grace, but in the end she had decided against it. Such a story might end up putting acting Sheriff Clusterfuck and his deputies even more on their guard—they might think Jim Dooley was trying to lull them to sleep. No, much better to leave matters as they were. Dooley had found his way to her once; he could probably do
it again. If they caught him, her problems would be solved . . . although in truth, seeing Jim Dooley caught was no longer her solution of choice.

In any case, she didn't like the idea of lying to either Alston or Boeckman any more than she had to. They were cops, they were doing their best to protect her, and on top of that they were a couple of likeable lummoxes.

“How's it going, Mrs. Landon?”

“Fine. I just stopped to tell you I'm going up to Auburn. My sister's in the hospital up there.”

“I'm very sorry to hear that. CMG or Kingdom?”

“Greenlawn.”

She wasn't sure he'd know it, but from the little wince that tightened his face, she guessed that he did. “Well, that's too bad . . . but at least it's a pretty day for a drive. You just want to get back before late afternoon. Radio says there's gonna be big thunderstorms, especially here in the western.”

Lisey looked around and smiled, first at the day, which was indeed summery-gorgeous (at least so far), and then at Deputy Alston. “I'll do my best. Thanks for the heads-up.”

“Not a problem. Say, the side of your nose looks kinda swelled. Did something bite you?”

“Mosquitoes do that to me sometimes,” Lisey said. “There's one beside my lip, too. Can you see it?”

Alston peered at her mouth, which Dooley had beaten back and forth with his open hand not long ago. “Nope,” he said. “Can't say that I do.”

“Good, the Benadryl must be working. As long as it doesn't make me sleepy.”

“If it does, pull over, okay? Do yourself a favor.”

“Yes, Dad,” Lisey said, and Alston laughed. He also blushed a little.

“By the way, Mrs. Landon—”

“Lisey.”

“Yes, ma'am. Lisey. Andy called. He'd like you to drop by the Sheriff's Office when it's convenient and make an official report on this business.
You know, something you can sign for the record. Would you do that?”

“Yes. I'll try to stop in on my way back from Auburn.”

“Well, I'll tell you a little secret, Mrs. Lan—Lisey. Both our secretaries are apt to clear out early on days when it comes on to hard rain. They live out Motton way, and those roads flood if you look at em crosseyed. Need new culverts.”

Lisey shrugged. “We'll see,” she said. She made a show of looking at her watch. “Whoa, look at the time! I really have to run. Help yourself to the toilet if you have to go, Deputy Alston, there's—”

“Joe. If you're Lisey, I'm Joe.”

She gave him a thumbs-up. “Okay, Joe. There's a key to the back door under the porch step. If you feel around a little, I think you'll find it.”

“Ayuh, I'm a trained investigator,” he said with a straight face.

Lisey burst out laughing and held up her hand. Deputy Joe Alston, now grinning himself, high-fived her there in the sunshine near the mailbox where she'd found the dead Galloway barncat.

Driving to Auburn, she mused for a little while on how Deputy Joe Alston had looked at her as they stood talking at the end of the driveway. It had been a little while since she'd attracted a
honey, you look so good
stare from a man, but she'd gotten one today, slightly swollen nose and all. Amazing.
Amazing
.

“The Get-Beat-Up-By-Jim-Dooley Beauty Treatment,” she said, and laughed. “I could hawk it on high-channel cable TV.”

And her mouth had the most wonderfully sweet taste. If she ever wanted another cigarette, she would be surprised. Maybe she could hawk
that
on high-channel cable, too.

By the time Lisey got to Greenlawn, it was twenty minutes past one. She didn't expect to see Darla's car, but still let out a sigh of relief when she had made sure it wasn't one of the dozen or so scattered around the visitors' parking lot. She liked the idea of Darla and Canty well south of here, well away from the dangerous craziness of Jim Dooley. She remembered helping Mr. Silver grade potatoes when she was a little girl (well, twelve or thirteen—not so little at that) and how he'd always cautioned her to wear pants and keep her sleeves rolled up when she was around the potato grader in the back shed.
You get caught in that baby, she'll undress ya
, he'd said, and she had taken the warning to heart because she'd understood old Max Silver hadn't been talking about what his hulk of a potato-grader would do to her
clothes
but what it would do to
her
. Amanda was a part of this, had been since the day she'd shown up as Lisey was halfheartedly beginning the job of cleaning out Scott's study. Lisey accepted that. Darla and Canty, however, would be an unnecessary complication. If God was good, He would keep them at the Snow Squall, eating Lazy Lobster and drinking white wine spritzers, for a
long
time. Like until midnight.

Before she got out of her car, Lisey touched her left breast lightly with her right hand, wincing in advance at the bright lance of pain she expected. All she felt was a faint throb.
Amazing
, she thought.
It's like touching a week-old bruise. Any time you get to doubting the reality of Boo'ya Moon, Lisey, just remember what he did to your breast, not even five hours ago, and what it feels like now
.

She got out of the car, locked it with the SmartKey, then paused for a moment to look around, trying to fix the spot in her mind. She had no clear reason for doing this; nothing she could have put her finger on, even if she'd wanted to. It was just more of that step-by-step thing, almost like baking bread for the first time from a cookbook recipe, and that was fine by her.

Freshly tarred and lined, the Greenlawn visitors' parking lot reminded her strongly of the parking lot where her husband had fallen eighteen
years ago, and she heard the ghostly voice of Assistant Professor Roger Dashmiel, aka the southern-fried chickenshit, saying
We'll proceed on across yondah parkin lot to Nelson Hall—which is mercifully air-conditioned
. No Nelson Hall here; Nelson Hall was in the Land of Ago, as was the man who had gone there to dig a spadeful of earth and inaugurate construction of the Shipman Library.

What she saw looming over the neatly trimmed hedges wasn't an English Department building but the smooth brick and bright glass of a twenty-first-century madhouse, the sort of clean, well-lighted place where her husband might well have finished up if something, some spore the doctors in Bowling Green had eventually elected to call pneumonia (no one wanted to put
Unknown causes
on the death certificate of a man whose demise would be reported on the front page of the
New York Times
), had not finished him first.

On this side of the hedge was an oak tree; Lisey had parked so that the BMW would be in its shade, although—yes—she could see clouds massing in the west, so maybe Deputy Joe Alston was right about those afternoon thunderstorms. The tree would make a perfectly lovely marker if it had been the only one, but it wasn't. There was a whole row of them along the hedge, to Lisey they all looked the same . . . and what the smuck did it matter, anyway?

She started for the path to the main building, but something inside—a voice that didn't seem like any of the variations of her own mental voice—nagged her back, insisting that she look at her car and its place in the parking lot again. She wondered if something wanted her to move the BMW to a different spot. If so, it wasn't making its wants known very clearly. Lisey settled for a walk-around instead, as her father had told her you should always do before setting out on a long trip. Only then you were looking for uneven tire-wear, a bust' taillight, a sagging muffler, things of that sort. Now she didn't know
what
she was looking for.

Maybe I'm just putting off seeing her. Maybe that's all it is
.

But it wasn't. It was more. And it was important.

She observed her license plate—5761RD, with that stupid loon—and a
very
faded bumper-sticker, a joke gift from Jodi. It read
JESUS
LOVES ME, THIS I KNOW, THAT IS WHY I DON'T DRIVE SLOW
. Nothing else.

Not good enough
, that voice nagged, and then she spied something interesting in the far corner of the parking lot, almost beneath the hedge. An empty green bottle. A beer bottle, she was almost sure. Either the maintenance crew had missed it or hadn't gotten to it yet. Lisey hurried over and picked it up, getting a certain sour agricultural whiff from the neck of the thing. On the label, slightly faded, was a snarling canine. According to the label, this bottle had once held Nordic Wolf Premium Beer. Lisey brought the bottle back to her car and set it on the pavement directly beneath the loon on her license plate.

Cream-colored BMW, not good enough.

Cream-colored BMW sitting in the shadow of an oak tree, still not good enough.

Cream-colored BMW sitting in the shadow of an oak tree with an empty Nordic Wolf beer bottle under Maine Loon license plate 5761RD and slightly to the left of the joke bumper-sticker . . . good enough.

Just barely.

And why?

Lisey didn't give a sweet smuck.

She hurried for the main building.

There was no trouble getting in to see Amanda, even though afternoon visiting hours did not officially commence until two, which was still half an hour away. Thanks to Dr. Hugh Alberness—and Scott, of course—Lisey was something of a star at Greenlawn. Ten minutes after giving her name at the main desk (dwarfed by a gigantic New Age-y mural of children with linked hands staring raptly up into the night sky), Lisey was sitting with her sister on the little patio outside Amanda's room, sipping lackluster punch from a Dixie cup and watching a game of croquet on the rolling back lawn for which the place had no doubt been named. Somewhere out of sight, a power-mower blatted monotonously. The
duty-nurse had asked Amanda if she wouldn't also like a cup of “bug-juice,” and took Amanda's silence for consent. It now sat untouched beside her on the table while Amanda, dressed in a mint-green pajama set and with a matching ribbon in her freshly washed hair, looked blankly off into the distance—not at the croquet players, Lisey thought, but through them. Her hands were clasped in her lap, but Lisey could see the ugly cut that looped around the left one, and the gleam of fresh salve. Lisey had tried three different conversation-openers and Amanda had uttered not so much as a single word in response. Which, according to the nurse, was par for the course. Amanda was currently incommunicado, not taking messages, out to lunch, on vacation, visiting the asteroid belt. All her life she had been troublesome, but this was a new high, even for her.