One Door Away From Heaven (3 page)

Noah raised his eyebrows. “What? You mean…you want me to give this bag of money to the cops and press charges against the congressman?”

This time, the pacifist didn’t smile. “Guess I should have said do the
smart
thing.”

“Just clarifying,” Noah assured him.

“You could clarify yourself right into a casket.”

With the coils of his soul exposed for all to see, the bagman, sans bag, swaggered toward the front of the tavern.

On their barstools and chairs, the cowboys turned, and with their glares they herded him toward the door. If they had been genuine riders of the purple sage instead of computer-networking specialists or real-estate salesmen, one of them might have whupped his ass just as a matter of principle.

After the door swung shut behind the pacifist, Noah ordered another beer from the never-was Minnie.

When she returned with a dew-beaded bottle of Dos Equis, the waitress said, “Was that guy a stoolie or something?”

“Something.”

“And you’re a cop.”

“Used to be. Is it that obvious?”

“Yeah. And you’re wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Plainclothes cops like Hawaiian shirts, ’cause you can hide a gun under them.”

“Well,” he lied, “I’m not hiding anything under this one except a yellowed undershirt I should’ve thrown away five years ago.”

“My dad liked Hawaiian shirts.”

“Your dad’s a cop?”

“Till they killed him.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“I’m Francene, named after the ZZ Top song.”

“Why do a lot of cops from back then like ZZ Top?” he wondered.

“Maybe it was an antidote to all that crap the Eagles sang.”

He smiled. “I think you’ve got something there, Francene.”

“My shift’s over at eleven.”

“You’re a temptation,” he admitted. “But I’m married.”

Glancing at his hands, seeing no rings, she said, “Married to what?”

“Now that’s a hard question.”

“Maybe not so hard if you’re honest with yourself.”

Noah had been so taken with her body and her beauty that until now he hadn’t seen the kindness in her eyes.

“Could be self-pity,” he said, naming his bride.

“Not you,” she disagreed, as though she knew him well. “Anger’s more like it.”

“What’s the name of this bar—Firewater and Philosophy?”

“After you listen to country music all day, every day, you start seeing everyone as a three-minute story.”

Sincerely, he said, “Damn, you would have been a funny Minnie.”

“You’re probably just like my dad. You have this kind of pride. Honor, he called it. But these days, honor is for suckers, and that makes you angry.”

He stared up at her, searching for a reply and finding none. In addition to her kindness, he had become aware of a melancholy in her that he couldn’t bear to see. “That guy over there’s signaling for a waitress.”

She continued to hold Noah’s gaze as she said, “Well, if you ever get divorced, you know where I work.”

He watched her walk away. Then between long swallows, he studied his beer as though it meant something.

Later, when he had only an empty bottle to study, Noah left Francene a tip larger than the total of his two-beer check.

Outside, an upwash of urban glow overlaid a yellow stain on the blackness of the lower sky. High above, unsullied, hung a polished-silver moon. In the deep pure black above the lunar curve, a few stars looked clean, so far from Earth.

He walked eastward, through the warm gusts of wind stirred by traffic, alert for any indication that he was under surveillance. No one followed him, not even at a distance.

Evidently the congressman’s battalions no longer found him to be of even the slightest interest. His apparent cowardice and the alacrity with which he had betrayed his client confirmed for them that he was, by the current definition, a good citizen.

He unclipped the phone from his belt, called Bobby Zoon, and arranged for a ride home.

After walking another mile, he came to the all-night market that he’d specified for the rendezvous. Bobby’s Honda was parked next to a collection bin for Salvation Army thrift shops.

When Noah got into the front passenger’s seat, Bobby—twenty, skinny, with a scraggly chin beard and the slightly vacant look of a long-term Ecstasy user—was behind the steering wheel, picking his nose.

Noah grimaced. “You’re disgusting.”

“What?” Bobby asked, genuinely surprised by the insult, even though his index finger was still wedged in his right nostril.

“At least I didn’t catch you playing with yourself. Let’s get out of here.”

“That was cool back there,” Bobby said as he started the engine. “Absolutely arctic.”

“Cool? You idiot, I liked that car.”

“Your Chevy? It was a piece of crap.”

“Yeah, but it was
my
piece of crap.”

“Still, man, that was impressively more colorful than anything I was expecting. We got more than we needed.”

“Yeah,” Noah acknowledged without enthusiasm.

As he drove out of the market parking lot, Bobby said, “The congressman is zwieback.”

“He’s what?”

“Toast done twice.”

“Where do you get this stuff?”

“What stuff?” Bobby asked.

“This zwieback crap.”

“I’m always working on a screenplay in my head. In film school, they teach you everything’s material, and
this
sure is.”

“Hell is spending eternity as the hero in a Bobby Zoon flick.”

With an earnestness that could be achieved only by a boy-man with a wispy goatee and the conviction that movies are life, Bobby said, “You’re not the hero.
My
part’s the male lead. You’re in the Sandra Bullock role.”

Chapter 4

DOWN THROUGH THE HIGH FOREST to lower terrain, from night-kissed ridges into night-smothered valleys, out of the trees into a broad planted field, the motherless boy hurries. He follows the crop rows to a rail fence.

He is amazed to be alive. He doesn’t dare to hope that he has lost his pursuers. They are out there, still searching, cunning and indefatigable.

The fence, old and in need of repair, clatters as he climbs across it. When he drops to the lane beyond, he crouches motionless until he is sure that the noise has drawn no one’s attention.

Previously scattered clouds, as woolly as sheep, have been herded together around the shepherd moon.

In this darker night, several structures loom, all humble and yet mysterious. A barn, a stable, outbuildings. With haste, he passes among them.

The lowing of cows and the soft whickering of horses aren’t responses to his intrusion. These sounds are as natural a part of the night as the musky smell of animals and the not altogether unpleasant scent of straw-riddled manure.

Beyond the hard-packed barnyard earth lies a recently mown lawn. A concrete birdbath. Beds of roses. An abandoned bicycle on its side. A grape arbor is entwined with vines, clothed with leaves, hung with fruit.

Through the tunnel of the arbor, and then across more grass, he approaches the farmhouse. At the back porch, brick steps lead up to a weathered plank floor. He creaks and scrapes to the door, which opens for him.

He hesitates on the threshold, troubled by both the risk that he’s taking and the crime he’s intending to commit. His mother has raised him with strong values; but if he’s to survive this night, he will have to steal.

Furthermore, he is reluctant to put these people—whoever they may be—at risk. If the killers track him to this place while he’s still inside, they won’t spare anyone. They have no mercy, and they dare not leave witnesses.

Yet if he doesn’t seek help here, he’ll have to visit the next farmhouse, or the one after the next. He is exhausted, afraid, still lost, and in need of a plan. He’s got to stop running long enough to think.

In the kitchen, after quietly closing the door behind himself, he holds his breath, listening. The house is silent. Evidently, his small noises haven’t awakened anyone.

Cupboard to cupboard, drawer to drawer, he searches until he discovers candles and matches, which he considers but discards. At last, a flashlight.

He needs several items, and a quick but cautious tour of the lower floor convinces him that he will have to go upstairs to find those necessities.

At the foot of the steps, he’s paralyzed by dread. Perhaps the killers are already here. Upstairs. Waiting in the dark, waiting for him to find them.
Surprise.

Ridiculous. They aren’t the type to play games. They’re vicious and efficient. If they were here now, he’d already be dead.

He feels small, weak, alone, doomed. He feels foolish, too, for continuing to hesitate even when reason tells him that he has nothing to fear other than getting caught by the people who live here.

Finally, he starts up toward the second floor. The stairs softly protest. As he ascends, he stays close to the wall, where the treads are less noisy.

At the top is a short hallway. Four doors.

The first door opens on a bathroom. The second leads to a bedroom; hooding the flashlight to dim and more tightly focus the beam, he enters.

A man and a woman lie in the bed, sleeping soundly. They snore in counterpoint: he an oboe with a split reed; she a whistling flute.

On a dresser, in a small decorative tray: coins and a man’s wallet. In the wallet, the boy finds one ten-dollar bill, two fives, four ones.

These are not rich people, and he feels guilty about taking their money. One day, if he lives long enough, he will return to this house and repay his debt.

He wants the coins, too, but he doesn’t touch them. In his nervousness, he’s likely to jingle or drop them, rousing the farmer and his wife.

The man grumbles, turns on his side…but doesn’t wake.

Retreating quickly and silently from the bedroom, the boy sees movement in the hall, a pair of shining eyes, a flash of teeth in the hooded beam of light. He almost cries out in alarm.

A dog. Black and white. Shaggy.

He has a way with dogs, and this one is no exception. It nuzzles him and then, panting happily, leads him along the hallway to another door that stands ajar.

Perhaps the dog came from this room. Now it glances back at its new friend, grins, wags its tail, and slips across the threshold as fluidly as a supernatural familiar ready to assist with some magical enterprise.

Affixed to the door is a stainless-steel plaque with laser-cut letters:
STARSHIP COMMAND CENTER, CAPTAIN CURTIS HAMMOND
.

Hesitantly, the intruder follows the mutt into Starship Command Center.

This is a boy’s room, papered with large monster-movie posters. Display shelves are cluttered with collections of science-fiction action figures and models of ornate but improbable spaceships. In one corner a life-size plastic model of a human skeleton hangs from a metal stand, grinning as if death is great fun.

Perhaps signifying the beginning of a shift in the obsessions of the resident, a single poster of Britney Spears also adorns one wall. With her deep cleavage, bared belly, and aggressive sparkling smile, she’s powerfully intriguing—but also nearly as scary as any of the snarling, carnivorous antagonists of the horror films.

The young intruder looks away from the pop star, confused by his feelings, surprised that he possesses the capacity for any emotions other than fear and grief, considering the ordeal he has so recently endured.

Under the Britney Spears poster, in a tangle of sheets, sprawled facedown in bed, his head turned to one side, lies Curtis Hammond, commander of this vessel, who sleeps on, unaware that the sanctity of his starship bridge has been violated. He might be eleven or even twelve, but he’s somewhat small for his age, about the size of the night visitor who stands over him.

Curtis Hammond is a source of bitter envy, not because he has found peace in sleep, but because he is not orphaned, is not alone. For a moment, the young intruder’s envy curdles into a hatred so thick and poisonous that he feels compelled to lash out, to hammer the dreaming boy and diminish this intolerable pain by sharing it.

Although trembling with the pressure of his misplaced rage, he doesn’t vent it, but leaves Curtis untouched. The hatred subsides as quickly as it flourished, and the grief that was briefly drowned by this fierce animosity now reappears like a gray winter beach from beneath an ebbing tide.

On the nightstand, in front of a clock radio, lie several coins and a used Band-Aid with a blot of dried blood on the gauze pad. This isn’t much blood, but the intruder has recently seen so much violence that he shudders. He does not touch the coins.

Accompanied by dog snuffles and a flurry of fur, the motherless boy moves stealthily to the closet. The door is ajar. He opens it wider. With the flashlight beam, he shops for clothes.

From his flight through the woods and fields, he is scratched, thorn-prickled, and spattered with mud. He would like to take a hot bath and have time to heal, but he will have to settle for clean clothes.

The dog watches, head cocked, looking every bit as puzzled as it ought to be.

Throughout the theft of shirt, jeans, socks, and shoes, Curtis Hammond sleeps as soundly as though a spell has been cast upon him. Were he a genuine starship captain, his crew might fall prey to brain-eating aliens or his vessel might spiral into the gravitational vortex of a black hole while he dreamed of Britney Spears.

Not a brain-eating alien but feeling as though he himself is in the thrall of black-hole gravity, the intruder returns quietly to the open bedroom door, the dog remaining by his side.

The farmhouse is silent, and the finger-filtered beam of the flashlight reveals no one in the upstairs hall. Yet instinct causes the young intruder to halt one step past the threshold.

Something isn’t right, the silence
too
deep. Perhaps Curtis’s parents have awakened.

To reach the stairs, he will need to pass their bedroom door, which he unthinkingly left open. If the farmer and his wife have been roused from sleep, they will probably remember that their door was closed when they retired for the night.

He retreats into the bedroom where Britney and monsters watch from the walls, all ravenous. Switches off the flashlight. Holds his breath.

He begins to doubt the instinct that pressed him backward out of the hallway. Then he realizes that the dog’s swishing tail, which had been softly lashing his legs, has suddenly gone still. The animal has also stopped panting.

Dim gray rectangles float in the dark: curtained windows. He crosses the room toward them, struggling to recall the placement of furniture, hoping to avoid raising a clatter.

After he puts down the extinguished flashlight, as he pulls the curtains aside, plastic rings scrape and click softly along a brass rod, as though the hanging skeleton, animated by sorcery, is flexing its bony fingers in the gloom.

Curtis Hammond mutters, wrestles briefly with his sheets, but doesn’t wake.

A thumb-turn lock frees the window. Gingerly, the intruder raises the lower sash. He slips out of the house, onto the front-porch roof, and glances back.

The dog looms at the open window, forepaws on the sill, as if it will abandon its master in favor of this new friend and a night of adventure.

“Stay,” whispers the motherless boy.

In a crouch, he crosses the roof to the brink. When he looks back again, the mutt whines beseechingly but doesn’t follow.

The boy is athletic, agile. The leap from the porch roof is a challenge easily met. He lands on the lawn with bent knees, drops, rolls through cold dew, through the sweet crisp scent of grass that bursts from the crushed blades under him, and scrambles at once to his feet.

A dirt lane, flanked by fenced meadows and oiled to control dust, leads to a public road about two hundred yards to the west. Hurrying, he has covered less than half that distance when he hears the dog bark far behind him.

Lights blaze, blink, and blaze again behind the windows of the Hammond place, a strobing chaos, as though the farmhouse has become a carnival funhouse awhirl with bright flickering spooks.

With the lights come screams, soul-searing even at a distance, not just shouts of alarm, but shrieks of terror, wails of anguish. The most piercing squeals seem less like human sounds than like the panicked cries of pigs catching sight of the abattoir master’s gleaming blade, although these also are surely human, the wretched plaints of the tortured Hammonds in their last moments on this earth.

The killers had been even closer on his trail than he’d feared. What he sensed, stepping into that upstairs hallway, hadn’t been the farmer and wife, awakened and suspicious. These are the same hunters who brutally murdered his family, come down through the mountains to the back door of the Hammond house.

Racing away into the night, trying to outrun the screams and the guilt that they drill into him, the boy gasps for breath, and the cool air is rough in his raw throat. His heart like a horse’s hooves kicks, kicks against the stable of his ribs.

The prisoner moon escapes the dungeon clouds, and the oiled lane under the boy’s swift feet glistens with the reflected glow.

By the time he nears the public road, he can no longer hear the terrible cries, only his explosive breathing. Turning, he sees lights steady in every window of the house, and he knows that the killers are searching for him in attic, closets, cellar.

More black than white, its coat a perfect camouflage against the moon-dappled oil, the dog sprints out of the night. It takes refuge at the boy’s side, pressing against his legs as it looks back toward the Hammond place.

The dog’s flanks shudder, striking sympathetic shivers in the boy. Punctuating its panting are pitiful whimpers of fear, but the boy dares not surrender to his desire to sit in the lane beside the dog and cry in chorus with it.

Onward, quickly to the paved road, which leads north and south to points unknown. Either direction will most likely bring him to the same hard death.

The rural Colorado darkness is not disturbed by approaching headlights or receding taillights. When he holds his breath, he hears only stillness and the panting dog, not the growl of an approaching engine.

He tries to shoo away the dog, but it will not be shooed. It has cast its fortune with his.

Reluctant to be responsible even for this animal, but resigned to—and even somewhat grateful for—its companionship, he turns left, south, because a hill lies to the north. He doesn’t think he has the stamina to take that long incline at a run.

On his right, a meadow bank grows, then looms, as the two-lane blacktop descends, while on his left, tall sentinel pines rise at the verge of the road, saluting the moon with their higher branches. The
slap-slap-slap
of his sneakers echoes between the bank and the trees,
slap-slap-slap,
a spoor of sound that sooner or later will draw his pursuers.

Once more he glances back, but only once, because he sees the pulse of flames in the east, throbbing in the dark, and he knows that the Hammond place has been set ablaze. Reduced to blackened bones and ashes, the bodies of the dead will offer fewer clues to the true identity of the killers.

A curve in the road and more trees screen him from sight of the fire, and when he entirely rounds the bend, he sees a truck stopped on the shoulder of the highway. Headlights doused in favor of the parking lights, this vehicle stands with engine idling, grumbling softly like some hulking beast that has been ridden hard and is half asleep on its feet.

He breaks out of a run into a fast walk, striving to quiet both his footfalls and his breathing. Taking its cue from him, the dog slows to a trot, then lowers its head and
slinks
forward at his side, more like a cat than like a canine.

The cargo bed of the truck has a canvas roof and walls. It’s open at the back except for a low tailgate.