A Face at the Window (35 page)

Like the hole in the sidewalk, Jake
thought grimly of the gap in the stone bridge, readying herself to leap.
No bigger than that.
But
as she tensed for it Campbell saw his peril at last and began plowing forward at her, trying to get off before the whole thing collapsed.

Straight at her, like some out-of-control engine, a big one, and no way would she be able to catch him safely. He was nearly twice her size, while the stone surface he charged across was too narrow, the gap he approached already too wide. If his weight wasn't perfectly centered when he hit her—and how could it be?—he would send all three of them hurtling off the…

But then without warning a memory popped into her head: Sam on a ladder, scrambling up the rungs with the confident agility of a monkey in the jungle.

"See, Ma?" he was telling her, fresh from an AA meeting and still artificially cheery from it. "Don't do it deliberately. In fact, don't think at all. Just let your own momentum carry you."

Give up, in other words. As he had. Let go and
believe…

Campbell leapt the gap, his hands still clamped furiously to his small attacker's wriggling body. Jake let him come, praying that Sam was right, that Campbell's forward-toppling weight on the fast-diminishing width of the Knife Edge would carry them…

The part of the stone bridge that lay behind her was plenty wide enough, despite the chunks still dropping out of it; if it were on solid ground, she told herself, she wouldn't even be worrying about it.
Don't think.…
She put one foot back fast as Campbell half fell toward her, then caught him by the shoulders and embraced him, smelled hair oil and cigars.

Lee was close enough to grab now, too, clamped between his neck and Jake's arms. But the little girl still gripping his ear between her teeth could be carried sideways or backward just as easily as forward, and if his weight shifted—but she mustn't let
that happen, even though it felt as if she were dancing with a huge, half-trained circus bear.…

Dancing on a high wire. Still moving back as fast as she dared, she felt loose stones under her feet and beneath them the larger rocks cracking and sliding dangerously. She let Campbell's bulk go on falling toward her, and kept retreating from him.

Please, let this work.…
Each time she stepped back she knew utterly in her heart that it would be into thin air, until her foot struck hard stone again and it wasn't. Again, blindly, each step an act of faith until her searching boot heel struck a clump of weeds and stuck there.

Backpedaling in the soft earth, she fell rump-first onto the grassy bluff and scrabbled wildly for a better handhold. Fingers gripping scrubby dry grass stalks, she hauled Ozzie Campbell and his small, still-biting tormentor toward safety, inch by inch-Seeming to understand that she was trying to help him, he swung his leg up. But as he did so, the biggest chunk of stone so far broke abruptly from beneath him and he slid away, small stones streaming and rattling and his feet dangling in air while his body wormed helplessly and his eyes implored her.

If it hadn't been for Lee, she might simply have put a foot in his face and pushed. Instead, with what felt like her last bit of strength, she seized his collar and hauled yet again, her hurt shoulder exploding in pain and her breath coming in harsh gulps, reddish-black dots blooming in her vision as she dragged him back up the last few agonizing inches.

And with him, the little girl…As if knowing it, too, Lee smiled widely, blood streaking her teeth. But as Jake let go of him and he climbed up over the edge on his own, Campbell managed to get his breath back as well.

"Why, you little…"
He's got a bad temper,
Sandy O’Neill's warning echoed in Jake's head. But before she could do anything to stop him he'd seized Lee again, raising her with both hands and flinging her away into the tall grass.

The lighthouse, Jake
thought.
That miniature wooden…

Lee's eyes widened startledly as she sailed in a high arc, her arms spread wide and her blond hair shining in the dawn light. She hit the low-angled side of the squat wooden structure with a hideous thump, bounced off, and landed out of sight, yards away in a goldenrod thicket.

Blood still streaming from his ear, Campbell knelt, gasping. And grinning, because he'd heard that sick thump, too, and the deathly silence afterward. And he was loving it.

He looked up at her. "Our deal still stands, Jacobia. This makes no difference. Any kid," he finished coldly, "will do."

Staring at him, she thought of the high-powered rifle he'd had—if she betrayed him, how easy it would be for him to get another, use it to target some child on a street somewhere, or in a schoolyard, with no thought for anything but himself and how she would feel when she learned about it—and believed him completely.

Plans upon plans…
The bottom line was, he'd won and there was nothing she or anyone else could do about it. As long as he lived—frozenly, she realized she couldn't even tell anyone.

He got to his feet while she sat in stunned horror, hoping against hope for the sound of Lee's outraged wail. But it didn't come. Nearby, a finch chirped. Patrolling gulls still soared serenely, and the air still smelled sweetly of cold salt water, rank weeds, and sun-drenched grass.

He began walking. Any minute, Anthony would show up with the stolen car and they'd be off the island, getting away…

She struggled to her feet. Striding unsteadily after him, she
heard Wade in her head, calling out to Sam from the sidelines of the only high school football game Sam had ever played in:
Hit him low. Hit him low, take him down…

Hurling herself at Campbell's knees, she felt him fall and heard the breath get knocked out of him with a grunt. Groaning, he rolled over to try fighting her but she was already straddling him, battering him with her fists.

"You killed her," she wept. Her knuckles split; she barely noticed. The pain in her arm was stunning; she ignored that, too. "You killed her, you—"

Monster.
You didn't have to be strong to kill a person with your hands, or even particularly evil. You just had to hit him hard enough, often enough.
Again—

"Jake." The voice came from somewhere behind her as Campbell went limp. His cheekbone shattered under her fist; then his nose fractured, the cartilage slipping sideways mushily A tooth stuck in her knuckle; she flung it away, hit him again.

Again. Hands gripped her shoulders, dragging her backward as she remembered the gun that Campbell must still have; sobbing, she scrabbled furiously at him, meaning to find it and aim it and—

"Jake
." She fell back, weeping. Bob Arnold loomed over her, one hand on his own service weapon. But in his other arm he held a little blond girl with a reddening bump on her forehead. She was squirming to get down, and after another moment he let her.

"Hi, Aunty Jake," Lee said, toddling forward. She touched her bruised forehead briefly, then sat down and coughed.

"Hey, baby," Jake managed through her tears. "How are you?"

Alive…
"She's okay, I think," said Bob. "Took a little head-bonk, but my kids do that all the time."

He looked down at Campbell's sprawled form. "Who's he? That is, other than someone I think I'll take into custody, pronto?"

She told him, and was about to go on. But then Lee coughed once more, harder this time, and an odd look came into her eyes. "Come here, sweetie," said Jake. "What's the matter?"

Lee's lips moved testingly on something. "I hope she didn't break a tooth, too," said Jake, reluctantly readying a finger for the still-perilous task of investigating the child's mouth.

But that turned out not to be necessary. "Yuck," said Lee, spitting the offending thing into Jake's hand: the earring that Campbell had worn, and with it a chunk of earlobe.

Jake brushed the bloody bit of flesh away, cringing, and looked down at Lee. "Why, you little devil," she said, unable to keep the congratulatory tone from her voice.

But Lee didn't hear, relaxed in Jake's arms. She'd had a long day and night, but all the excitement was over now, so…

Now she was fast asleep.

Jesus. I killed Marky,
Anthony thought in astonishment.

The van drove like a loaf of bread, and Route 9 headed south toward Bangor and I–95 was the worst possible place for it. The two-lane highway widened occasionally so the rampaging eighteen-wheelers could charge onward without flattening too many of the passenger vehicles skittering nervously in between.

The cars were mostly of two kinds: perfectly maintained, practically antique small sedans with little old ladies gripping the steering wheels in undisguised terror, and junkers driven by wild men whose maniacal speed made Anthony's own lead foot seem more like Styrofoam.

I shot him. I shot him in the head.

Every so often it hit him again that he'd done it, and for a while the world went unreal, like the tires weren't even touching the road, just floating along. And the view, all the mountainous scenery and trees and so on, went two-dimensional as if it were being projected on a screen.

A thin screen, and any minute he might punch through it. He didn't even want to think about what might be on the other side. Marky, maybe, grinning and gibbering at him. Mad as hell.

Anthony jumped, jerked back to alertness by the blare of a horn coming up on him from behind. Blood slimed the front of his shirt; the other driver, holding up a furious middle finger as he went by, stared suddenly at the sight of it. Without realizing it, Anthony had been halfway across the yellow line.

Jesus,
he thought again, although he doubted that particular entity was going to have very much useful to say, any time in the near future.
Going down,
most likely, was all he would say to Anthony when he did meet him.

Like some cosmic elevator operator, he thought, telling you your destination.
Going down; next stop will be the furnace room. Pitchforks, hot coals, asbestos underwear.…

Get a grip,
he scolded himself. But he couldn't shake the memory of the way the gun had felt in his hand, the crazy heat of it and the way it had jumped when he'd pulled the trigger.

The way Marky had jumped when the bullet hit his head and all the signals in there suddenly went haywire…

Some sick stuff,
Anthony thought, trying to talk sense into himself.
Ugly, no freakin’ doubt.
It was nothing to do with him, though, what the human body did when it was—
Jesus!

A big brown moving shape loomed suddenly in the windshield. Wrenching the steering wheel desperately to the right, he hit the brakes with both feet so as not to plow into it, then hung on as the van ker-whanged out of control, tires shrieking, horn
blares around him clashing into a hellish, last-thing-you're-ever-gonna-hear falsetto while the van hit the shoulder and rolled. He got one upside-down glimpse of the big buck deer he'd just managed to avoid hitting, those antlers and the way it looked back wild-eyed at him as it bounded the rest of the way across the road.

Then it was all metal crunching and glass exploding, the van slamming a tree, bouncing off. It rolled in the other direction, Anthony feeling the seat belt ratchet tight like a prizefighter's punch in his left shoulder, while something very unpleasant that he would worry about later went on with his right.

The steering wheel came loose, smacking him in the chest before dropping into his lap while he waited for it all to stop.

Which it didn't, at first. It went on for freakin’
forever.
But eventually the tumbling and crashing and exploding got done with and he hung stunned there, upside down in the seat belt, staring dazedly at the blood puddling on the ceiling.

Wisps of smoke rose from beneath the crumpled hood. A bright tongue of flame licked up through them as if wondering what fresh air might taste like. What
Anthony
might taste like…

"Help! Help, somebody—"

A hand reached in, popped the seat belt. He dropped, limp as an empty sack, into the blood.

"Okay, buddy." A guy with a sandy mustache and a black cap stenciled in orange script peered in. The guy's professional way of doing this alerted Anthony at once.

"Hang on, I'm a cop, there's an ambulance coming, we'll get you some—"

Help, the cop had been about to say. But then a bell seemed to go off in his head as he made some coplike mental connection.

The stolen van, maybe, or Anthony's description; the dweeb might've gotten a better look than he'd thought. The cop
reached in, grabbed Anthony's hair, and pulled. The sudden torque on his neck sent pain rocketing through him; he screamed hoarsely.

"You son of a bitch, where are they?" the cop snarled. "You tell me, you murdering bastard, or I'll leave you here to roast."

Anthony tried speaking but couldn't. The cop pulled harder. "You hear that?" he demanded, angling his head at the van's hood.

Anthony did. It was the crackling sound of fire devouring the engine compartment, thick, black, oily smoke spiraling up out of it with a stink like a burning trash barrel.

The passenger compartment would burn next. Already it was getting warmer…Anthony opened his mouth, tasting his own blood.

"What?" the cop snarled. "Say it again, punk. What?"

Punk. As if Marky were still here. A crackle of flames drew nearer…
going down!

They sounded like Marky, too. If Anthony told the cop what he wanted to know, they would find Marky's body in the cave and hook Anthony into it, for sure. But now the smoke thickened fast, choking him and making his eyes run.

"—the cliffs," he wept, but from the look on the cop's face he realized he hadn't said it aloud. He tried again but with no better success: "They're at a place called—"

Flames exploded into the passenger compartment.