Second Nature Part 15

Roy narrowed his eyes and nodded. His stomach was a mess and his head was pounding.

"n.o.body will think anything if you want to get out of here," George said. "Considering him and Robin and all."

Roy was about to say something, but now he looked at George.

"He asked me to call her, " George said. "At the moment, we can't keep him, not yet, and that means she'll probably come get him.

Go on," George advised. Roy's skin was ashy and there were dark circles under his eyes. "Take a break." By the time Robin came down to the station, Roy was sitting on a stool at the bar at Harper's and the group of men out on the green had grown to more than two dozen.

Robin went right up to the desk where Woody Preston was filling out his report.

"What's going on out there?" she asked him.

"I guess they think we've got a killer in here," Woody said. "And now you're going to take him home with you, after what happened to JennyAltero?"

Twice Robin had gone over to see Mich.e.l.le, and both times Mich.e.l.le had refused to see her.

"Don't ever come here again," Lydia had finally told her.

When George phoned he'd informed Robin that Stephen had been brought in for questioning, now she understood why. She understood why Lydia had slammed the door while Robin was still standing out on the porch, just about to ask if she could bring dinner over for them in a wicker basket.

"Do you have some proof?" she asked Woody now. "Or are you just going on your own stupidity?"

She waited on the bench in the hallway until George brought Stephen out.

"I'll take you home," Robin said.

Stephen nodded but he didn't look at her, not even when she took George aside.

"You know it wasn't Stephen," Robin said.

"Are you sure?" George said.

"Yes, I'm sure," Robin said. "Was this Roy's idea? Is that it?"

"Look, we know all about him. I had a long talk with the director at Kelvin, so we know his history. He lived like an animal, Robin. Face it."

Robin tilted her chin up, her lips were tight and dry. "Am I supposed to give you bail or something?"

"He was just here for questioning," George said. "But it's not the end of it."

"Can I go, or am I being charged with something, too?"

"Robin," George said sadly. "You know you can go."

Robin headed for the exit. "We can leave," she told Stephen. He followed her, then put a hand on her arm to stop her. He nodded toward the green, where the men were ',4"' still gathered.

"f.u.c.k them," Robin said as she pushed open the door.

No one said a word as they walked to the truck, there were no shouts or catcalls, although one rock was thrown as Robin made the turn onto Cemetery Road. She drove as though there were no ice, and when the tires skidded, nearly off the road, she didn't seem to notice. She'd decided it would be better to take Stephen to her house, because of that crowd on the green, and as soon as they were in the kitchen, she doubled-locked the back door.

"Did you have dinner?" she asked Stephen.

Stephen came up behind her and put his arms around her.

"Hamburgers?" she said, and then she started to cry. "It's nothing,"

she insisted, but she let him kiss her, softly, the way he did when she was upset, before she moved away. "Let me have that awful coat," she told him, and at that they were both able to smile.Stephen took off the coat and handed it to her.

"They didn't even give you time to put on a shirt?" Robin said.

"I didn't think of it," Stephen said.

"Those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," Robin said.

She went to the closet in the living room, and as she reached for a hanger the black coat fell from her hands. When she bent to retrieve it, she felt something sharp in the pocket. She reached in and found the carpenter's knife. Stephen was making coffee in the kitchen, his back was toward her as she approached him.

"What is this?" Robin said.

Stephen turned to her and blinked. "I found it up in the attic," he said. "A long time ago."

"Have you used it?" Robin asked.

Her voice sounded very sharp and strange. Stephen knew that when people sounded like that it was best not to speak to them directly. He shook his head. No.

"Not once?" Robin said. "Not ever?"

She had come up close to him. He could almost feel her.

"Tell me the truth," she said. Her face was white and drawn, it didn't even look like her. "Not ever?"

She was whispering now, in a funny way, as if she might hit him or run away. There was no clear answer, not one he was certain would please her.

"I kept it just in case," Stephen said. "That's all."

Robin quickly went to the cabinet beneath the sink and took out a spade.

A box of detergent had toppled and a stream of soap powder fell onto the floor, but Robin paid no attention.

"Robin," Stephen said, but she didn't seem to hear him. Instead she went outside, not bothering with a coat. Stephen grabbed one of Connor's old sweatshirts left on a hook by the door and pulled it on, then followed her. She was out behind the pear tree, down on her hands and knees.

"They could have found this," Robin said. She attacked the ice with her spade until she could dig up some frozen earth. "Well, they're not going to find it now."

Her hair kept falling over her face, so that it was difficult for Stephen to see her.

"There," Robin said, satisfied, when the hole was big enough. She placed the carpenter's knife in the hole, then began covering it up until Stephen stopped her. He had knelt down beside her, but she hadn't even noticed until he touched her. "What?" she said.

Her voice was still sharp and she was out of breath.

"You don't have to do this," Stephen said."Oh, really?" Robin said. There was frozen dirt caked under her nails and streaks of black earth were on her face. "What do you imagine Roy and his friends would think if they found this knife on you?"

"What do yo think?" Stephen said.

Robin pulled her arm away and stood up. She looked at him for a long time, her breath turned to smoke in the air.

"I'm going to bed," she said.

She started toward the back door, but Stephen stayed crouching beneath the pear tree. The night was so clear he could almost believe those were the same stars he'd always seen, far away from here, in a place where it was impossible to hear a man or a woman cry.

"Are you coming?" Robin asked.

All she wanted at that moment was to be alone, and Stephen knew it.

"Not yet," he said.

After she'd gone inside, Stephen went to the rear of the yard, away from the branches of the pear tree, to have a better look at the sky.

He knew from a book he'd taken from Old d.i.c.k's shelf that stars died, but he found this hard to believe. Make a wish, that's what his mother had said to him once. Close your eyes.

Matthew Dixon, who was home for Christmas vacation and wouldn't have to return for the spring semester until the end of January, had come outside. He was supposed to drag the garbage cans out to the curb, but instead he'd been watching Stephen. Now he zipped up his parka and came to his side of the redwood fence. Stephen heard him approach, but he kept on looking at the stars.

"I hear they're really after you," Matthew said. "I knew you weren't like other people. I could tell right away."

Don't tell your wish, Stephen's mother had said. Or it won't come true.

"Wolves," Matthew said now. "I think it's fantastic. Of course they're going to go after you. It makes perfect sense to a small mind."

Matthew leaned his elbows on the fence, he was chewing peppermint gum and the scent was sweet every time he breathed out.

"You're going to have to get out of here," Matthew said. "I mean, you can't sit around and think they're going to treat you fairly, because they won't."

Stephen thought this over.

"You see my point," Matthew said. "You've got to outwit them.

You've got to go back."

"I don't know where it is," Stephen said.

"I could find out for you," Matthew told him.

"No," Stephen said. "I've looked in the atlas. The maps don't mean anything. I knew my way because of the way things were.""Rocks? Mountains? Landmarks like that?" Matthew was grinning.

"Topography. I can get that."

Stephen looked over at him.

"I'm serious." This was just the sort of thing Matthew found exciting.

"You give me the information, and I'll tap into the USGS and do the graphics. It's simple."

From where he stood, Stephen could see Robin's bedroom window.

"So should I?" Matthew said.

"Why would you?" Stephen said.

"Because I know how it feels," Matthew Dixon told him, "when they all hate you."

, The night was filled with so many stars it would have seemed impossible for the streets to be dark, but the road to Poorman's Point was filled with shadows. That was where Roy had headed after he was done drinking at Harper's. He'd gone directly to the old estate, every tree that had been planted here had been chosen by his father, yet Roy couldn't have given the correct name for more than half a dozen varieties. He regretted that now, it would have been so easy, if only he'd paid some attention.

He parked on the gra.s.s in front of the entrance to the driveway.

Through the trees he could see the dark carriage house, the windows had all been left open, even though no one was home. He turned off the car headlights and settled back in his seat, he was wishing he'd thought to stop at the 7-Eleven for a six-pack of beer, when he saw the men from the green making their way along the black, looping road.

There were more than a dozen of them, and although it was difficult to distinguish one man from another in their down jackets and parkas, Roy recognized Jeff Carson and Fred Lester from the diner and several others. Either they didn't see his parked car or they were so outraged and bold they just didn't care. Roy grabbed the steering wheel and sat up straight. They were much too silent for such a large group, and when they turned into the driveway the gravel made absolutely no noise beneath the weight of their boots.

Roy realized that he was sweating, his shirt was drenched and his hands were too wet to keep hold of the steering wheel. He sat there and didn't even think to try to stop them as they threw bucket after bucket of red paint on the carriage house, on the stucco walls and the mailbox and the arbor where the wisteria had always grown. One of the men, perhaps it was Jeff Carson, dipped his hands into the paint and drew a five-pointed star on the door, as if a sign like that could ever ward offtrue evil. By the time the men had finished, Roy had stopped sweating, and his skin had turned clammy. He had a siren under his front seat, and he could have radioed in to the station, but instead he just watched, exactly as he had the previous night when Jenny Altero was murdered, when he'd followed Stephen all the way back here from Robin's and parked in this same place, watching through the open window as the Wolf Man read a book with a leather binding, and not turning for home until at last those few birds that could tolerate winter on this island began to sing.IT MAY BE true that marjoram sprinkled onto the earth helps the dead sleep in peace, but it does nothing at all for the living. The living can pick wild garlic and place pots of clover on their windowsills and still not be able to rest. They can cut down a larch and huddle around it on a cold winter night as it burns and smokes for hours, down at the Point, where the fire ignites the black sky, yet continue to be afraid of the dark.

For the next three days, as soon as the sun went down, the main street of town became deserted, all at once, as though a curfew had been set.

There were no customers at Fred's Diner, and Harper's began closing at six because even the regulars had taken to staying home and drinking gin or beer in front of their own TVs. Boys stopped playing hockey long before dusk, even when their mothers hadn't yet called them home.

Dogs went unwalked, and scratched at front doors. Every single cat had a bell around its neck, and even the toms had to wait until morning before going out on the prowl.

The only ones who ventured out after dark were the men who had formed the patrol, and they always went out in groups no smaller than five or six, unless one of them had a gun. Sometimes people were already in bed when they heard the patrol round their corners. The sound of those men, whose only mission was to protect their neighbors, should have been comforting, but it wasn't. Flashlights made shaky white circles on the lawns and the front porches, garbage cans were rattled and turned upside down as the men searched for anything suspicious, though at this time of year, on nights such as these, almost everything was suspect.

Whenever Stuart heard the patrol inspecting Kay's street, he went down to the kitchen for tea and Alka-Seltzer, and then he could never get back to sleep. As soon as the board of Kelvin Medical Center was informed by the police that their patient had never been transferred, Stuart was asked to resign. There was no proof to tie Robin to Stephen's escape, and no evidence that Stuart had been an accomplice, but the board had already tried Stuart and found him guilty of gross negligence. He dutifully composed his letter of resignation and mailed it to the medical center, in return no criminal charges would be filed against him. A request had already been placed to return Stephen to Kelvin, where he would be reevaluated and most probably sent upstate to the locked ward that had been his original destination. The hospital would wait until the criminal investigation on the island was completed, and this time they would send not only three attendants but two armed guards as well, just to make certain there wouldn't be any trouble.

Stuart had never suffered from insomnia before, and now he understood why his patients who did often felt persecuted, as though sleep had somehow singled them out and denied them their rightful rest. Kay begged him not to go back to the shack, at least not for a while, and he'd thought she was overreacting, until he went to his usual AA meeting and discovered that no one would sit on the same side of the room with him. No one would wait on him in the hardware store or the bait shop.

Sofia Peters, down at the library, indexed an entire tray of the card catalogue before finally checking out his books, and then she wouldn't look at him, not even a glance.

Robin was having an even worse time of it. Some people actually spat on the floor when she walked into the market. She'd left without buying anything, and when she phoned and asked Max Schaeffer, who'd known her since she was ten, if she could have her groceries delivered, he told her that the delivery boy would refuse to come to her house and that he himself wouldn't walk up her front steps for all the money in the world.

The Doctor had come over and sadly informed her that five of her clientshad phoned to hire him, and spring was still almost three months away.

He'd turned them down, of course, but that didn't mean they would be coming back to Robin.

"This is all Roy's fault," the Doctor said as he drank the tea Robin served him, made from the peppermint that grew in her yard, since she'd used up her last tea bag and had intended to buy more at the market.

"If he hadn't screwed up, you wouldn't have divorced him, and this wolf fellow would never have come here."

After the Doctor left, Robin found five hundred dollars under his teacup. She knew he could ill afford the loan, and she would have run after him and forced him to take it back if she hadn't been so totally broke. She and Stephen had taken to eating Minute Rice flavored with coriander, and winter potatoes from the vegetable bin. At night, when they slept in Robin's bed, they didn't touch each other. In the morning, when the wind howled down the chimney, they sat drinking the last of the coffee at the kitchen table, but they didn't dare talk.

Suspicion grows that way, between the sheets, in the teacups, with every word that isn't spoken. One day, while Robin was at the sink washing out soup bowls, Stephen came up behind her, and she jumped.

She tried to blame it on too much caffeine and the awful sound of the wind, but Stephen knew that wasn't what had frightened her.