The Good House Part 32

"Yes, Angie. Thank you," Liza breathed behind her.

Liza's nose and upper lip were bright red, her eyes gla.s.sy and anxiously wide. She was standing against the wall opposite Art, her arms wrapped around herself. Her baggy clothes were mismatched, an afterthought, and her hair looked as if she'd just finished a long hike in the rain.

"Oh, sweetie. I didn't expect to find you here today," Angela whispered, hugging Liza. Her friend leaned hard, shuddering. Angela heard her sob softly, immobile in her arms.

"I can't help it," Liza said, a whimper. "I love this sonofab.i.t.c.h, Angie."

Angela hugged her more tightly, swaying with her, feeling the pain flowing from Liza's fevered skin. Liza had given her this same hug after Corey, she realized. The uncanniness of the mirrored moment made Angela screw her eyes shut from the memory, fighting off the temptation to sag to the floor. Liza needed her today. This was Liza's time to sag.

But maybe Liza was stronger than she'd been. When it had been her turn, Angela had not been here for Tariq. She'd lost her mind when she'd seen that gun. She could have survived Corey's death without The Harbor, finding shelter in Tariq's shared grief, but the gun had been there when it had no business being there, and she had blamed Tariq because he'd been the closest one to blame. She hadn't wanted to ask herself the uglier questions Liza must be asking herself now.

Like Myles, she hadn't allowed herself to see it.

"W-we don't have long, Angie," Art said, with an almost inaudible stammer in a voice that was otherwise measured, nearly unchanged except that it sounded so weary. "I've got to talk while I still can. We're on the clock." He sounded so much like himself, she forgot everything for a moment. Like Rob had said, it felt like old friends jawing. But as soon as she saw his eyes again, she remembered why she would never want to be the person living behind that abyss.

Holding Liza's hand, Angela walked to the white plastic chair in front of Art's table. All of the chairs looked like picnic chairs, probably so they couldn't be used as weapons. This room was claustrophobic, with no windows, not even a window in the door so the others could see inside. Their only link to Rob was an intercom on the wall beside the door, where Liza had been standing when they'd walked in. Angela sat, and Myles stood behind her, his hands gripping her shoulders. Liza sat in the empty chair beside Art, covering his folded hands with hers. When her nose began to run in a thin stream, she wiped her nose on her shirtsleeve, not letting go of him.

"Angie, b-break out one of those cigarettes?" Art said, sounding like he hated to trouble her.

"Sure." Angela had forgotten about the carton. She opened it and dug out a pack. "I don't know if he sent matches...."

"I brought a lighter," Liza said, searching in her pocket.

"I've been jonesing since last night. First thing I asked for was a cigarette," Art said, and Angela noticed how much Art's hands were shaking, his fingers hugging each other for support. "h.e.l.l of a thing, I'll tell you, because I don't smoke. Only that one time...Liza, remember that?"

"Yeah, in Tacoma. We smoked a pack at the Pink Floyd concert." Liza smiled faintly, wrapped in the recollection. "We were what, Art? Nineteen? Smoking cigarettes because we couldn't find any gra.s.s. We coughed 'til we had tears in our eyes."

Art didn't seem to have heard her; he was focused solely on Angela's fingers as she tore the plastic from one of the packs. "The guard gave me a couple smokes last night, but they weren't Marlboros. Theyhave to be Marlboros," Art said, shaking his head to emphasize the point, as if he couldn't understand how anyone could think otherwise. "Rob's a G.o.dsend. If not for him, I don't know w-what I'd..." Art paused, thinking better of whatever he'd wanted to say. Angela saw a shadow emerge in his face, something that wanted to steal him back to his pain. While Art clamped a trembling cigarette between his lips, Liza lit it for him, and Art held it with both of his hands, drawing in the smoke. He closed his eyes, and Angela waited for him to exhale. It was a long wait.

Too long.

As casually as she could, Angela pulled against Myles's protective grip so she could learn forward, closer to Art. To try to smell him. Finally, a cloud of smoke billowed from Art's mouth, the last in the shape of a perfectO. But he smelled fine. The rankness was gone.

"Look at that-I can blow smoke-rings now. Did you see that, Liza?" Art said.

"I saw it." With the wide-eyed look of a child seeing a falling star, Liza stared up at the dissipating smoke as it elongated and fractured. Art watched it with her, equally transfixed.

"This is just one more thing, Angie, the cigarettes," Art said, once the smoke ring was gone. "I feel like I'm dying without them, but that's just a teeny thing, really. I wish I knew what to do about mystomach." He blinked painfully, and took another long drag on his cigarette. "Jesus G.o.d, it hurts."

"I know," Angela said.My stomach's not right today, man. The memory of Corey's voice locked Angela's elbows against her chair's armrests. Her precious baby had been in trouble, showing all the signs, and she hadn't known. She hadn't seen them. She hadn't been able to help.

Art went on. "Well, what the f.u.c.k? If I stop trying to remember, I think the pain goes away. If I talk, I feel like I've got a spike stuck through my gut. Some choice, huh? Eenie meenie miney moe." An unspoiled part of Art was trying to make a joke and failing, the way Art so often did.

Liza squeezed his knuckles, sniffling again. "Tell her what you told me, Art."

"I want this c.o.c.ksucker dead," Art said, his mirth gone in an impossible instant. His voice rustled in his throat like dry brush. "You follow, Angie? I want this devil c.u.n.t sent back to h.e.l.l. This is the only way I can hurt it back." His voice shot up an octave on the last three words, but he swallowed several times, composing himself. "I saw it. I had towatch . Itwanted to make me watch. So this is my fight, and it's all I've got, Angie. Hating this thing is all that's left of Art Brunell."

Art seemed spent, momentarily. He hung his head, wiping strands of his thinning hair across his scalp. Most of his hair was pushed to one side, uneven. She saw perspiration gleaming on his crown. Miraculously, though, although his jowls trembled, he did not sob. Liza, beside him, had closed her eyes, her face so stricken it looked as if it were sinking from her bones.

"This was a very bad idea," Myles said gently, in Angela's ear. "We should go."

It was tempting to see this visit through Myles's eyes, casting Art as a psychopath in the full throes of a mental collapse. That was how she wished she could see it, too. Angela had hoped something would shatter her fledgling belief in curses and invisible predators, because she liked the world better without them. Myles's conviction that Tariq or some vandal had thrown leaves in Gramma Marie's house and poured blood on her cellar floor was comforting, one she'd hoped might redeem itself one day. But she couldn't see Art's face and hold on to her illusions.

He was ready to give her a report on where he'd been. What had taken him.

"What does it want, Art?" she said.

Art's eyes looked saddened, if it were possible. "You, Angie."

To Angela, it almost seemed that she heard Art's words before he spoke, an effect exactly like hearing him say it twice. Her limbs shivered, so much that Myles must have felt her tremor where his hands held on to her. "Then why did it do that to you? Why did-"

"To hurt you. For sport. To punish anyone who tries to help you see it's there. All of the above. It's not real picky about the reasons."

Myles sighed impatiently, shifting behind Angela's chair. Silence fell on the room while Art took in more smoke. He was midway through his first cigarette already, gobbling it with his long draws he held in his lungs too long, but never coughing. His cheeks hollowed as he inhaled.

"Your friend Naomi," Art said finally, hoa.r.s.e.

"What about Naomi?" Angela hadn't been prepared to hear Naomi's name from Art's lips. It sounded like a desecration.

"We got her," Art said, nodding to make sure she knew he had spoken the word deliberately. He breathed out again, fanning smoke across the table."We. He. It. It's all the same, or it was. I dreamed the whole thing yesterday, before it let me go. In the dream,I was the one it sent to her.I was the one who stuffed her in the trunk of a junk car on a farm in south Vancouver, and let me tell you, she's as dead as they come. Her brain hemorrhaged when she got hit with the gun, and a dry-cleaning bag stopped her breathing. A bag from the hotel. I used to know exactly where she is, I think, but I don't anymore. I tried to hang on to it, but it's gone now. I'm sorry, munchkin."

Oddly, he didn't sound sorry. There was a shading of playfulness to Art's words that chilled Angela, beyond the horrible information he conveyed. Almost as if part of him enjoyed telling her.

"Angie, don't listen to this," Myles said, alarmed and angry. He slipped his hand beneath her armpit, trying to lift her to her feet.

"Myles,hush," Angela snapped, pulling herself free. If she didn't press on now, she might lose herself to the grief she'd aborted when she heard Art say the wordsShe's as dead as they come . "What else? Who's next?"

"Tariq," Art said.

"What about Tariq?"

"It ate Tariq. Ate him slow. It was harder for it to get Tariq, him being so far away, but it's strong, like I said. It used the bus he left-the bus was on its grounds-and it got to him that way. Objects we've had a long time, they carry parts of us...." He shook his head, exasperated. "All the whys aren't important. Tariq is gone now. That's what you need to know. He killed Naomi."

"Is Tariq coming here?" she said.

"He's already here."

Angela's legs tensed, cramping. "Where?" she said.

"It wouldn't let me see that. But you'll find him. He'll come to you." Art's eyelids were fluttering again, harder now, as if they were trying to fly from his face.

"What happened to Corey?" Angela said.

"Corey woke it up," Art said, sighing. The fluttering stopped.

"How?"

Art's face wrenched in pain, and he paused, shifting in his seat. "Marie put it to sleep, but Corey found something he wasn't supposed to. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, as they say. Corey learned enough to get in trouble. Marie expected you to bury the c.o.c.ksucker for good, but something happened and she couldn't find you. Something about the ring. It was out of place."

Angela blinked as tears flooded her eyes. She couldn't speak.

Art went on. "You didn't have the ring, and something was blocking your dreams. End of story. When she tried to talk to you, the dreams strayed. They went to Corey. He was more open. Closer to his spirit self."

Angela nodded, nearly blind in her tears. She fought to speak. "How do I fight it?"

Art half-chuckled. "Fight it? Good luck. The ring protects you, but it isn't everything. The ring only makes it work harder. It won't keep you alive, I'm sorry to say." He still sounded too indifferent. Maybe from where Art had been, it was all the same one way or the other. One death here, one death there. His son was gone, so nothing else mattered quite as much.

"What do I have to do?" she said.

Art pulled on the cigarette again, wretched eyes honing on her. "When it comes for you, kill it. You'll know it by the smell. You didn't always, but Marie's helping you with that. She's helping you when she can. You'll probably have to kill the body, and once you've done that, you have to kill thething . It's not of flesh. It's stronger now than it's ever been. And it hides. I don't think it wants me anymore. Too much trouble. But it can walk without a body to carry it. And you can't run from it, not once it's got a bug up its a.s.s for you. Like Naomi couldn't run. The safest place for you is on your property. Just like Marie. You wait, and you kill it."

"Art,how?" Angela said, rising to her feet. "How do I kill it?"

"The body'll die like any body does. That's the easy part. The rest, Marie will show you.As long as you keep the ring. But she's not as strong as she wanted to be, or this little situation we have here wouldn't have gone so far bad. This wasn't supposed to happen like this. Butc'est la vie."

The ring again. Yes, Angela had always known she was supposed to keep Gramma Marie's ring. When she had discovered Gramma Marie's ring was gone-when she'd walked into her bedroom and seen the broken gla.s.s and the mess on the floor,knowing it would be gone because it was the only thing worth taking-Angela had stopped believing she could have anything in the world. In that light, everything afterward had made sense. Tariq going to Oakland. Corey running after him. Corey dying. She wasn't supposed to have a G.o.dd.a.m.ned thing.

"You may not win, Angie," Art said.

"But I might?"

"Might."

It was a small word, not the least comforting. But it was all she had.

"Art...what is it?" she said, because she had to know.

Art's breathing seized, and he doubled over, clutching his stomach. Liza let out a cry, leaning over him while she rubbed his back with soothing strokes. Art raised his eyes to Angela's, his upper torso shaking as if he were carrying a refrigerator on his back. Already, his eyes were beginning to look like a stranger's again, like the man who'd told her the day before yesterday that he'd worked up a mighty appet.i.te taking Glenn fishing.

"A spirit," Art said. "In your woods. Some of them...arewonderful" -he blinked as if he saw celestial lights, his eyes alone illuminated in a sunken face that was suddenly pale, sickly-"but they live alongside...the other ones. This one was too wild, banished. The Chinook buried it because it liked...death. It brought disease. They wouldn't speak its name. But Marie...Marie..."

Art nearly spat Gramma Marie's name, as if it left a bad taste in his mouth, then he shook his head. He couldn't finish. He slumped in his chair, trying to catch his breath. "I don't remember. I d-don't remember, Angie. It doesn't want me to.s.h.i.t , it hurts. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Liza...Jesus, honey, I'm so sorry."

As Art spoke, smoke drifted from his lips in an unfailing stream. This time, it didn't smell like cigarette smoke to Angela; it smelled like charred flesh. Art's chin fell to his chest and he closed his eyes. Even when she could hardly tell if he was breathing, the smoke still appeared from his mouth, clouding his face, showing no sign of abating.

The smoke kept coming long after what little was left of Art's cigarette fell to the floor.

"What's the tag number on that van?" Rob said, scratching notes on his blank report.

"It's a vanity plate.T-A-R-I-Q-1."

Rob nodded, taking that down. "Gotcha. I remember noticing that once."

Rob was very curious about Tariq, suddenly. And Angela had heard him make a call to have Art transferred to a high-security mental health ward in Cowlitz County. Art's case had just changed.

The photograph on Rob's desk had been there the summer of 2001, Rob and Melanie in rain gear from a long-ago camping trip, probably when they'd been in their mid-twenties. As she always did, Angela wondered again why Rob and Melanie had never had children. Angela had never seen Rob smile the way he was smiling in that picture, which was the only personal item on his desk. Rob's military training had followed him here, because his books and papers were in neat stacks, and a cup of freshly sharpened pencils at arm's reach.

The two deputies and the dispatcher were the only other people in the sheriff's office, and they stood listening beside a nearby file cabinet, somber. Myles sat at one of the empty desks behind them, on his cell phone. Myles had finally reached Naomi's a.s.sistant, and Angela tried to overhear what he was saying to her, but his voice was too low. Myles had asked Angela for Naomi's numbers so he could settle the question of her friend's whereabouts and put her at ease, but Angela knew he was only confirming Naomi's disappearance. No one was answering Naomi's cell phone.

Still, her grief hadn't broken free. She wasn't still fighting for hope, not anymore, but some kind of shock had set in, she decided. Something that needed to happen to her now.

"Has Tariq shown hostile behavior since your divorce?" Rob said.

"No. I've barely spoken to him, Rob. It's not Tariq."

Rob gave her a look that was part pity, part aggravation, a trick of his eyebrows.

"Naomi's a.s.sistant is back in L.A.," Myles said, snapping his folding cell phone shut. "She's calling Naomi at the spa in Victoria, then she'll get right back to us."

"Naomi isn't at the spa," Angela said. "Art's already told us that."

Rob tapped his pencil eraser against his desktop in an impatient staccato, glancing at Myles. The voices had been too low for Angela to hear the exchange between Myles and Rob after they left the jail, but she'd seen Myles giving the sheriff the kind of earful a man like Rob Graybold rarely stood still for. Rob's face had turned bright red, whether from anger or embarra.s.sment. Angela guessed Rob was recalling the same moment now, kicking himself for putting two crazy people in a conference room together.

"Sorry again about this morning, Angie," Rob told her. "Liza talked me into it, against my better judgment. She's got a way of doing that. Always has. Art's been all but catatonic since he was arrested, then last night he came out of it sounding so...normal,or so I thought. Liza said he wanted to see you. I must have been out of my mind to call you like that."

"Don't apologize, Rob. I was supposed to go there."

He wanted to believe her, but his eyes told her he didn't. No matter. He would soon.

The room was silent for a long time, longer than six adults usually managed to keep silent without creating reasons to talk. There was chatter on the police scanner, but the deputies ignored it. Angela heard the hum of the vending machine where Myles had bought her a m.u.f.fin for breakfast, although she hadn't touched it. She wasn't hungry. The idea of taking even a bite had made her feel sick to her stomach, and feeling sick to her stomach had scared the s.h.i.t out of her until ten minutes later, when she was sure the feeling was gone.

Angela forgot what they were waiting for, until Myles's phone rang.

Myles picked up, anxious. When his expression flagged, Angela knew. Suzanne Ross, somewhere down in Los Angeles, was freaking out. Myles thanked Suzanne, apologized, and a.s.sured her everything was fine, in a voice that sounded unsure himself. Slowly, he hung up.

"Well?" Rob prompted.

Myles didn't speak at first, his expression lost. The impossibilities were running through his mind, looking for a plausible place to rest. He was two steps behind her, but he was catching up.

"She never checked into the spa," Angela said, since Myles wouldn't say the words.

"No. She didn't," Myles said. "After Suzanne called the spa, she talked to the film director, a Vincent somebody?" Myles shook his head, still perplexed. "A very tall black man returned herdog yesterday, that dog she lost here. He lied about being her brother, and n.o.body's seen her since. She left a note saying she'd gone to the spa."

If Angela had been capable of grief today, she would have grieved for Tariq, too.

"Holy f.u.c.kin' baloney," the younger deputy muttered. His face was chalky."Art knew."

"Darlene...," Rob began, turning toward the curly-haired dispatcher.

"On it, Rob." The dispatcher pirouetted toward her desk. "I'll get Vancouver P.D."

Through the window across the office, which overlooked two drab barges, Angela saw rain spearing the river. Her watch told her it was nine in the morning, but under the thick cloud cover, the muddy sky held barely enough light for dawn. Distantly, just within her hearing, she heard a low grouse of thunder. It was only the third or fourth time Angela had heard thunder in Sacajawea, and she wondered if anyone else had noticed it.

The thunder might be something they would all remark on when they talked about this day later, Angela thought. If any of them survived to tell.

Reclamation.

And I'm standing at the crossroad, Believe I'm sinkin' down.