Reilly 09 - Presumption of Death (2 page)

What if this guy didn’t try to run after they shot him?

Birds fluttered invisibly into darkness. Gusts of heat blew down the mountain. A hell was starting up there.

Wish looked up. Harsh white haze blotted out the stars. A brushing sound, then thuds-somewhere up there branches dropped in erratic drumbeats. The primitive sounds moved through him, pinging like poison darts, making his body shake and his mind fall to pieces.

“He’s coming,” Danny whispered. “I can smell him.”

“Danny, we got to go.”

“You want to bail on me? Now, when I need you? I should have expected it. C’mon, don’t panic on me, man.”

“I’m going, Danny.”

“Do what you want,” Danny said. “Go. But”-a note of desperation entered his voice-“please don’t go yet. A coupla minutes, okay? That’s all we need. Okay?”

Wish said nothing.

“The guy is going to come down. It’s a matter of seconds! I need this!” Danny said. “We both do!”

A wavering glow advanced down the mountain toward them.

“Three minutes,” Wish said.

Two deer burst out of the bush, making Wish’s heart stop, and pounded past them along the trail. “It’s moving fast,” Wish said. There were people down below. “Danny.”

“What?”

“We could climb down to the street and catch him at his car, if it’s really down there. Shoot him there.”

“One hundred thousand dollars,” Danny said. “One hundred thousand buckaroos. Remember why we’re here. Worth some risk, right? This way, we can’t miss.” He reached into his shirt pocket and popped a handful of barbecued sunflower seeds into his mouth. Danny ate when he was nervous: jelly beans, candy, seeds. “No more hitting up the family for five bucks to go to town. No more sleeping on the couch.”

“Danny-feel that heat! Take a look up there. It’s like-a wave of fire coming down. It’s almost on top of us.” Wish tried to compress his dread into reasonable-sounding words.

“Now, you listen, Wishywashy. You stay here until I say go. You owe me this-”

Old business at a time like this. Just like Danny to resort to emotional blackmail or anything else that might work to get what he wanted. “We have to warn those people below.”

“Keep down,” Danny ordered, voice urgent. Lifting his head slowly above the slab of rock he froze, nose pointing, eyes big.

His own eyes burning and straining, Wish straightened and peered up the trail. How could Danny see anything through that dust and smoke?

By now the fire had moved close enough for them to feel the whomps as it jumped from tree to tree, setting each one off. Leaves flared red like blue match tops side by side in a box. Branches cracked. Trees tottered and collapsed. Hot wind roared.

Wish had never been so frightened. Shaking behind Danny, he wished to God he had stayed home when Danny came by with this crazy idea, he wished he had listened to his mother, he wished he had stayed back in Tahoe, where it was safe.

A line of trees exploded. Against the light of their dying, Wish thought he saw a figure standing on the curve of the trail. Was that someone watching the fire?

“Hey!” Danny pointed. “See that over there?”

“You see somebody?” Wish asked.

“There he is! That’s him!”

“Where?” Wish asked, untangling his camera. “Point. I can’t see anything.”

“There!”

Wish flipped a button, turning his camera on. He raised it. Dust and flying cinders blew into his eyes. He wasted a second wiping the lens. Putting an eye to the lens he saw nothing but liquid fire coming his way. Blinded by the intensity of the blaze, he pressed the telephoto button, aimed, and shot toward the burning trees. He shot as many times in as many directions as he could.

Out of memory to shoot any more photos, he popped out the memory card and pushed it into his pocket and reloaded, circling the site again. “He’s gone, Danny. Oh, man. I’m sorry. I can’t see. I don’t…”

But Danny was up, stomping around in the rocks, black eyes burning as orange as the flames. Smoke billowed white clouds across the clearing. He coughed. “Big surprise! You missed him!”

Wish swung into a wide arc, snapping pictures, flashing ugly hard white futilely into the hellish glow of the woods on fire.

“See him? See him now? No, of course not! Because you missed him! All right, we’ll catch up with him.”

Wish grabbed for Danny’s arm. “This is the end, Danny,” he said. “It’s over!”

“The end?” Danny stood still as a totem, wrathful, sweating, his eyes narrow against the smoke.

“We’ll catch him some other time. We’ll die if we don’t get out of here!” Wish pulled at him. Danny didn’t budge. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”

“But it’s not done yet. It’s not over yet. We’ll catch up with him. He’s stupid, he saw us and he’s hiding somewhere.”

“I’m going, and you’re going with me!”

Orange flames flowed like lava above them, toward them, inexorable. They would both burn if they didn’t leave instantly, and finally even Danny seemed to realize that. They took off through the woods, away from treetops that blazed and blew like palms in a tropical sunset.

Wish, running behind Danny, peeled off his jacket and T-shirt, and wrapped them around his waist. At some point he noticed he’d dropped the camera.

When he straightened up, Danny was gone, and what was worse, what was so much worse, was that he was surrounded by a ring of flame higher than the highest tree. “Danny!” he yelled, choking on smoke. Had he run off to catch the guy on his own? The woods, the wind, the inferno, swallowed his words. The hillside roared its death cries. How had the fire moved so fast?

Now, the trail forgotten, he ran blindly downward. He scraped past branches, stumbling over fallen trees, screaming and chittering like the jackrabbits and deer and chipmunks, running with them, unable to see through the smoke and past the dense band of heat, a million candles blazing all around him. The sky was on fire. He ran toward… what? The road? Death?

He fell. Down in the dirt, still ahead of the roaring wind and fire, he tried to think. He called again, gasping for air. He stood up on the strong legs that had hiked so many Sierra trails with Danny, and found them wobbly. Should he crawl, stay low? He didn’t know. He felt too clumsy to run and too panicky to think.

When his head came up, he heard a shout. And there he was, Danny, climbing up through the trees, wheezing, calling to him, reaching out his big knobby hand.

“You-where did you-!”

“Take it easy,” said Danny. “Follow me.” He pulled Wish forward.

Wish held back.

“Calm down. Follow me.”

“There’s fire over there, actual flames, see that? And this smoke. I can barely see you. I can’t breathe!”

“Trust me, Willis. I’ve got a plan.” For a moment the smoke cleared and Wish saw Danny at his most crazed. Holding arms with singed hair over their foreheads against the burning tree limbs, they moved back out onto the trail. No need for the flashlight anymore-Wish had dropped it in the rocks anyway. They rushed downward, sliding, sweating, panting, reckless, hell-bent toward the road.

“Don’t stop,” Danny commanded when Wish slowed.

“Just one second-can’t breathe-”

“Run or it’ll catch us. We’re almost back to the road-”

“I don’t see-any-freaking-road-” Each word a seared, heaving breath-

Death flew low over their heads in a ragged blazing cloak, setting fires wherever it touched down. They ducked. “Another hundred feet,” Danny said. “Follow me.” And Danny walked through trees, wiggling his fingers. “We got it made now, ol’ buddy, ol’ pal. Follow Danny, now.” Danny moved on ahead, a tall half-lit figure.

Wish took one stumbling step toward him.

And saw several things. Danny, disappearing into the white soup. A wall of fire rearing up like a tsunami in front, bigger than Wish, ready to take him down.

And then two blackened hands reaching out from behind the tree trunk right next to him, holding up a big sharp rock with white stipples and granite lines. He saw the fingers raise it up. He saw the rock crash down toward him.

Wish lurched to one side. He howled, but the noise he made got lost in the belligerent, ripping, tearing fire. Losing his balance, he toppled to the ground.

PART ONE

And I chiefly use my charm

On creatures that do people harm.

1

N INA REILLY WIPED HER GOGGLES AND watched Paul swim. He stroked smoothly, kicking underwater, moving up and down the lane without stopping, like a pacing porpoise. He wore his yellow snorkel and goggles, and she could hear his lungs laboring when he came close.

Enjoying the pattern of the water on the ceiling of the condo-association pool, she returned to backstroking in another lane. Pull hard back with the arms, keep the legs stiff, and windmill that water. The two of them were going nowhere, but it felt like lovemaking, the cool slap of the water he churned up, the water rippling back to him, a water bed without the plastic.

She touched the wall. He turned at the far end. As he swam down the lane she had the strangest feeling about him, as if the pale watery creature before her solidified before her eyes. Hanging on to the rough concrete wall of the pool, she thought, he might swim toward me with that silly yellow snorkel for the rest of my life. How many years do I have left? Forty years, if I get lucky? She was in her mid-thirties, Paul was over forty. How long did they have? A lifetime? A summer?

Well, that’s what I came down here to find out, she said to herself.

He hit the wall and came up grinning, goggles fogged up. “Done?” he said. Then, “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“Your face says different.”

“I’m trying to see the future.”

“What do you see?” He pulled himself over until his face was inches from hers, his hazel eyes reddened by the chlorine, the lashes beaded, the water making rivulets along his nose, red lines across his forehead and cheeks from the goggles.

“You.”

“That is the correct answer. As your reward, I will sing you a song I just made up.” He pulled himself onto the edge of the pool and, legs dangling, sang in a gravelly voice:

I am the creature from the lagoon

You’re a blond coed starin’ at the moon

I’ll rise up drippin’, a scary sight

Baby, are you ready, it’s love-monster night-

“Like it?”

She hung in the water, her eyes at his ankle level. Tilting her head back and holding the wall with both hands, she let her gaze move boldly up his body, the strong pale thighs, the tight stomach with a little hangover of flesh at the waist, the sensitive nipples and broad shoulders. She said, “Are you going to wear your snorkel when you rise up?”

“I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“It won’t take much.” A look passed between them, and Nina reached over and squeezed his big toe.

“Let’s wrap up in our towels and get back home,” Paul said.

She mantled up onto the side of the pool, rested her knee on the concrete, stood, and adjusted her swimsuit bottom. Paul brought her the striped blue towel and they walked outside, down the path beside the bougainvillaea, below the neighbors’ balconies. In the misty late afternoon they saw lights come on as people came home from work. A line of birds sat quietly in the branches of the oaks, paired off mostly, looking around. Peter Jennings pronounced the news in fatherly fashion from somebody’s living room.

Paul hadn’t even locked the door to his condo. Inside, in the hall with the bokhara rug that led to the living room, he said, “How was it? The future?”

“Blurry.”

He said seriously, “You know, this could go on forever or a day. Either one is okay.”

“No, a day wouldn’t be okay.”

“You going to make me a declaration, Nina? Finally?” He folded his arms so the biceps bulged, Mr. Clean in a baggy wet pair of red trunks in his narrow hallway, and waited for her to tell him she was ready to link up her short time on earth with his. The conversations lately had been skidding into turns like these. Paul needed something from her, a formal statement, a closing of the box lid.

She couldn’t do that for him, unfortunately. “You can have the first shower,” she said, offering what she could.

“You are being oblique.”

“You can even use my loofah.”

“That’s fine. We’ll just continue to drift on the seas of uncertainty. Until the sun becomes a supernova and the seas all dry up.”

Nina said, “I’ll definitely say something before then. Just go get dressed. I’ll watch the sun go down on the balcony.”

“And get the fish marinating,” Paul reminded her.

“Sure.”

But he hesitated. He could see that she had a problem and he wanted to fix it. “The rash bothering you?”

“Yes. Go on, now.”

“I told you, you can go in and get a shot,” Paul said, still trying to fix the wrong problem. “You wouldn’t feel so irritable.”

They had been quiet at dinner. Now they held each other in Paul’s platform bed, under the red-and-yellow Hudson Bay blanket.

A seashell night-light in the bathroom glowed dimly. Under the covers, her nightgown was pushed up to her waist. Her ankles, rear end, and forearms itched like fury. Damn right she was irritable.

She had a grand case of poison oak, predator of the Central California hills, because, oblivious to it, she had gone hiking behind the condo last week. She had no one to blame but herself, which irritated her even more.

And all of this specific irritation had wrapped itself around a general core of irritation within her. Although Paul did not intend it, circumstance had made of her the girlfriend who lives out of the suitcase in the corner. She had no home anymore, only his home, his street, his doors, his walls. She floated in his pool.

Living together was a revelation. Paul kept guns all over the house and a locked gun case in the car trunk; she hated that. His study was full of high-tech equipment she couldn’t identify. He was physically exhausting; he worked out religiously at his gym, ran, played tennis, went rock-climbing, even played darts at his favorite bar. He cooked and loved to drive and he listened to jazz until late into the night. He had way too much vigor for her; he made her feel like a slug.