The Summer We Lost Alice (34 page)

With the subject talked to death—and Flo snoring on the sofa—they
decided eventually to call it a night. Things would look different in the morning.

* * *

Despite the late hour of the night before, they all woke early and convened around the coffee pot. No decaf this time. They all needed a jump start.

"When I look at it one step at a time, it makes sense," Cat said. "But it's like eating chocolates. You start with one, then another, and everything seems fine. Then before you know it, you've eaten the whole box and you've got a bellyache."

"I believe it," Flo said. "Every word. Miss Lilian's the kindest woman in these parts. All the care she gives those old people—I hope when I get to that age, there's somebody as loving as Miss Lilian to take care of me."

"Mom, she'll be as old as you. She'll be in the next bed."

"I said 'like.' Anyway, I believe her."

"Me, too," Heather said. "I'm just going on feeling, but so far my feelings have been pretty darned accurate."

"The more I think on it, the wonkier it gets," Ethan said. "For one thing—"

"Ethan, shut up," Heather said.

It was as if she'd slapped him across the face.

"Pardon me?" he said.

"I mean it. I'm sick of equivocation and skepticism and logic! Ethan, I love you, but at this point, you need to either get on board or get out."

"She's right, dear. It's time to poop or get off the pot."

"Mother!"

"Well, it is."

Ethan took in Heather's narrow-eyed stare and saw once again the spirit of his dead cousin in her eyes. He felt Alice's fierce will asserting itself over his own. Here he was, once more following Alice down the rabbit hole.

He held up his hands in surrender.

"I'm in," he said. "What do we do next?"

All eyes turned to Boo. He was fixated on something in the crack between the kitchen counter and the range. Cat identified it as, possibly, a crumb of bacon.

"It's déjà vu all over again," Ethan said. "We have to follow Boo to his hiding place."

"Assuming he cooperates," Cat said.

"We have the leash from the shelter."

"Maybe we double-team him. Use the leash and a length of rope in case he gets loose."

"We'll go right after church," Flo said.

Conversation skidded to a halt.

"It's Sunday," Cat said. "I forgot. It's Sunday."

"Yes. And if any family ever needed the help of the Lord, it's this one. Get the children up and dressed."

"Uhm, Aunt Flo—" Ethan began.

"Yes, yes, I know. I don't expect you to come. You can sit around the house in your underwear and watch TV if you want. Heather?"

"I'll go," she said.

"I'll stay here and
keep an eye on the dog," Ethan said.

Flo patted him on the shoulder as she headed for the door.

"You do that, dear," she said.

* * *

Ethan got dressed as soon as the others left the house. He was channel-hopping his way past the Sunday televangelists when the doorbell rang. He went to the front door to find Sammy standing there in uniform. Sammy asked if he could please see Cat. Ethan told him that she was at church. He looked so crestfallen at this news that Ethan found himself inviting him in.

"Maybe
... maybe it's good that we have a talk," Sammy said, "before ... this goes any farther."

It didn't take Sammy long to open up.

"I had a talk with my dad last night," he said. "A long one. I kept tryin' to cut it short because, you know, of his health. He's gettin' stronger. Might even get out of the hospital next week if last night didn't tire him too much. But I couldn't stop him talkin'. He said he had to confess.

"It's a crazy story. I thought maybe it was the medicine that was, you know,
givin' him delusions, maybe. But he seemed so clear-headed—I don't know. Anyway, it's hard to know where to start."

"Maybe start with how he molested
Perla Ingram."

Sammy stiffened as if ten thousand volts had just shot through his chair.

"How did— What makes you think—"

"Then go into the part where he went to Mrs. Nichols at the nursing home to get an exorcism, and how the evil in his soul was released
and killed Perla, Martin Dale, and my cousin Alice. Then the evil was trapped in the Tiki statue and buried by Boo, whom he shot, and now maybe the evil's got loose somehow and killed Willy Proost and the girl at the motel. That about sum it up? Oh, and Boo's been reincarnated in this mutt over here."

Ethan savored Sammy's poleaxed look for a minute.

"Miss Lilian stopped by the house last night, about the same time your father was confessing to you. They made this decision together. It was time to come clean."

"She was at the hospital when I went to see Dad. She looked real grim, and so did he. I remember
, she kind of squeezed his hand. Then she bent down and kissed him. I didn't know there was nothin' between 'em. She started to leave, but she stopped in the doorway and made a fist, like, tellin' him to be strong. He nodded, and she left.

"I thought she was
sayin' be strong with the heart attack and all, but now I think it was the story. She was tellin' him to tell me what happened, the whole thing, no matter how much it hurt or ... what the consequences were."

"Then she came over here and told us everything," Ethan said.

"You think it could be true? I mean, it sounds so ... I don't know what."

"Let's say, I'm suspending my disbelief."

"Does Cat believe it? And Flo?"

"Flo's in with both feet,
so's Heather. Cat and I have some reservations but at this point we're willing to go the next step."

"
Which is—"

"See if this dog won't lead us to Boo's old hiding place. See if the
Tiki's been dug up, or—I don't know what. It's all we have to go on."

"If the killer's somehow involved with this whole crazy
mess, that could be a dangerous move. Think I'd better be the one to go."

"It's my dog."

"It's Flo's dog."

"Same difference."

"I'll get a warrant."

"And put down on paper that you want to subpoena a ghost dog to help you find a witch?"

Sammy held up a hand. "Never mind. How about we both go?"

"When?"

"Now, before the women get back from church. I got a leash in back of the vehicle."

"We'll use two, one for each of us."

"And two collars."

"Good thinking."

The two men stood. Ethan extended a hand. Sammy took it.

"We must be six kinds of crazy," Sammy said.

"Yeah. At least."

* * *

They stood in the front yard with Boo on two leashes between them. Ethan waved a tennis ball in front of Boo's nose, then tossed it a few feet away. Boo lunged, nearly pulling both men off their feet. He snatched the ball in his mouth and then took off running, feet kicking up brown grass as he dragged Ethan and Sammy behind him.

As he raced along behind Boo, Ethan strove to remember the route he and Alice and Boo had taken twenty-five years earlier. He realized too late that they should have started from the backyard, not the front, if the goal was to retrace their original path. If the new Boo took the same path as the old
Boo, that would reinforce the idea that it was the same dog, reborn.

Quickly, though, the path became familiar as they headed toward White Deer Lake. Boo hit the road where Cat and Sammy had parked that night, where they had fixed Alice and Ethan and Boo in the spotlight glow of Sammy's headlights, where for one ephemeral moment they had held within their grasp the ability to make the whole, dreadful experience never happen.

Ethan wondered if Sammy recognized the spot. He looked over to see Sammy's grim, unshaven face. Sammy had been up all night, apparently, wrestling with his own inner demons. Did a memory of that night in some way impel him to Cat's this morning to share his father's confession?

"We have to get them home," he could have said. Or, "Don't you kids know there's a killer on the loose?"

But he'd said nothing. As a result, a girl had died.

Ethan hoped for some sign on Sammy's face to reveal his thoughts.
All he saw was weariness and resignation. Sammy was in over his head and he knew it. He was being pulled along by events just as Boo was pulling them along now.

So, they had something in common, he realized. Everything they thought they knew had been proven
wrong, and a world very different from the one they'd imagined was demanding great things of them. Following Boo was not a great thing, but whatever followed might be, if it led them to the evil.

They skirted the lake and soon they were running through the graveyard by the nursing home. Was Miss
Lilian there? Would she see them from an upstairs window as they flew past in Boo's wake?

They reached the woods where Alice vanished and ran through them. They were far smaller than Ethan
remembered, hardly woods at all, as White Deer Lake was hardly a lake. Only a child could get lost in these woods.

Then they were through and the hills beckoned. The hills defied the notion of a state characterized by stark, flat plains. They were
punctuated with streams and ponds and wind breaks and, in the right places, rock formations from the age of the dinosaurs and before, when all of Kansas lay under a Devonian sea. Prairie grasses ran rampant, catalpa bloomed along stream beds, and cottonwoods sprang up wherever their roots found water. Walnut and oak trees, too, and cedar and elm. Sycamore trees and hackberry bushes, shrubs and sedges of all descriptions. The hills were full of hiding places.

Boo ran past them all
. He broke onto rolling mounds of groomed grass, browning now but still manicured, following the compass deep within his doggy brain. Sammy pulled him to a halt.

"What's the matter?" Ethan said. He was glad for the pause. His side ached and he could hardly breathe.

"This can't be right," Sammy said. "This is Myer's golf course. It wasn't even here twenty-five years ago."

Ethan saw he was right. This was wild land in the old Boo's time. It had been smoothed and groomed since then. Boo's hiding place could have been excavated, the
Tiki statue unearthed.

"How long?"
Ethan gasped between breaths. His lungs ached.

"Few years," Sammy said, also laboring for breath.

"Doesn't make sense. The statue would have been dug up long ago. Why would kids only start disappearing now?"

"Other than the obvious—that the whole story's a bunch of malarkey?"

"Other than that."

Boo made a mighty effort and they were off again, stumbling and staggering, their lungs crying for a halt to the madness.

Boo ran another two hundred yards to the course's sand trap. He began to dig with the fury of a prospector who'd caught sight of a ninety-pound nugget. Sand flew like snow from a blower. The men turned away, covering their eyes.

Something hard hit Ethan in the back.

He turned to look at the thing, expecting to see a golf ball or the head of a broken club. Instead, he saw Barbie. He picked her up. Someone had drawn X's over her eyes. He put the doll in his pocket.

"How
old's this sand trap?" Ethan said.

"It's new. I remember Myer
talkin' about how much it was costin' to bring misery to a few golfers. Had to bring the sand in from Texas. It's special."

"Who dug it?"

"Have to ask Myer."

Ethan nodded.

With the tennis ball buried, Boo sat down, panting heavily. Someone yelled "Fore!" Sammy’s and Ethan's eyes leaped skyward, scanning for incoming.

* * *

"Sure, I'll give you his info. Fellow out of Stuebe City," Myer said. "Independent contractor. Bad teeth. Worked cheap, smelled of beer. Didn't talk much. Nothing he said or did seemed out of the ordinary, but then, we didn't exchange life stories. I paid him to dig a hole and he dug it. Drainage system and everything else was a different contractor."

Myer dug a business card out of a drawer
. He handed it to Sammy.

"Patrick 'Digger' Walsh," Sammy read. "Sounds devoted to his craft."

"He didn't seem to be a deep thinker. My take is, he scrounged up enough money for a backhoe and probably hasn't had an idle day since. People always need holes."

"Do you know of any objects Digger found when he dug that hole?" Ethan asked.

Myer shook his head. "If he did, he kept it to himself."

"Did you tell him he could keep whatever he found?"

"Subject didn't come up."

"What happened to the dirt?"