Angels of Destruction (26 page)

“You expect me to have an appetite after you lay this on me?”

She glanced around the room to see if anyone was listening and leaned across the table to bring her face closer. “There's no reason to raise your voice. What will everyone think?”

He shouted at her. “I don't give a shit what everyone thinks!”

The patrons hushed at his outburst, and two burly men at the counter pivoted on their stools to face them, threatening to move farther at the next sound.

“Wiley, baby, it's all right. We'll get through this.”

“How can you be sure you're pregnant?”

“I've missed two periods. I didn't notice because of how sick I was back in Tennessee. It must have happened before we left home.”

“Missed? I thought you were on the pill.”

“They're in my dresser back home—”

“God, Erica, how could you be so stupid?”

The mint green waitress reappeared and announced her presence by clearing her throat. “Everything okay over here, kids?”

Without a word, Wiley sidled out of the booth and brushed past her, sailing off toward the men's room, and Erica buried her face in her hands. Through the darkness, she heard the waitress's voice, and as she unknitted her fingers, she saw the woman seated where Wiley had been. “Are you all right, Pudding?”

Erica reached for her juice glass and drained it in one long swallow. The buzz in the diner dissipated, and the crowd melted into the periphery. They were alone.

“He bothering you, child? Because I'll have Mitchell come round give him a talking-to.”

She shook her head. “We were having a spat. Everything's going to be fine.”

“You say so, Pood, but girl, you look a mess. Who did that to your hair? Your pinkie finger stuck in the plug socket?”

Her hand flew to her butchered scalp, working the runaway locks back into place. “I did it. Does it really look all that bad?” She laughed nervously.

A toothy grin flashed at her. “Naw, I just said so to make you smile. Sure you're okay? That boy didn't hurt you, did he?”

“No ma'am, like I said, nothing but a lovers’ quarrel. He loves me.” Doubt colored the tone of her words, and she recognized at once the woman doubted her as well. “We are going to be married in Las Vegas and have a baby together.”

“But you're just a baby yourself. None of my business, but don't seem to me he'll treat you any better after than he's treating you before. A man will show you his hand early on, if you're alive to it.”

“I don't believe you.”

“Ain't a matter of faith, Puddin’. They's belief and they's facts. This ain't the first time he shown his spots to you, is it? Best never put him in a cage in the first place. Just let him go.”

“I have faith in him.”

The waitress rose from the table and touched Erica's bare shoulder and the winged tattoo. “Ain't nothing too far gone you can't get back at your age.”

“Thanks for your concern, but it's my life.”

“Sure is, no one else's. Good luck to you and your baby. And when the color starts showing, just let your hair grow back the way it was.” She tore a slip from her pad and laid the bill between their plates. “Y'all pay on the way out.”

30

A
light snow was falling as Agent Linnet arrived, covered in white. From the pocket of his overcoat, the pink edge of an envelope was puckered with moisture. Valentine, she supposed, but for whom? He stomped his shoes clean on the doormat, and when Margaret invited him in, he sent powdery showers to the floor as he wrestled free of his coat. Paul lurked in the archway to the living room, and Linnet cheered up when he saw him, extending his right hand like an old friend, and ushered him toward the sofa and chairs, and three cups laid out upon the table. Margaret hung up his coat and tucked his hat upon the shelf.

Don't be afraid, she told herself. This can't be good news at this hour and in person. Good news they tell you over the phone. Bad news shows up in person. Whatever you do, keep it together. No tears.

Linnet rose when she entered the room with the coffee, bowing slightly at the waist, and waited for her to take a seat before lowering himself to the easy chair. The February wetness soaked through to his suit, snowdrops sparkled in his hair, and he smelled faintly of sour wool. “I was just telling your husband, Mrs. Quinn, that we may have made a break in the case, but I want to tell you both right off that we have not been able to locate your daughter. Though we do have news about the boy, and good reason to suspect that she is somewhere in northern California.”

A notion, a notion, you picked the wrong ocean.

He reached into his suit and took out a small manila envelope, opened it, and spilled out the postcard onto the coffee table. Margaret recognized at once this last word from Erica, the cryptic message from Memphis.

“It all started here, for we were otherwise lost as stray lambs. We may have tracked them sooner had we been notified when you first received it. A couple of days can make a big difference, so I want you to promise if you hear from her again, you get in touch right away.”

Paul stole a look at Margaret. They had agonized and argued for three days when the postcard first arrived. She had wanted to keep it as tangible proof of her daughter's existence, while he had insisted it be turned over to the authorities as evidence. Without telling her, Paul simply took it one day to the Pittsburgh FBI offices. Margaret slipped it in her pocket while the investigator blathered on.

“When we learned she was in Memphis, we had our first clue. Our field offices sent out a bulletin to local law enforcement, but I suspected, and was proven out, that Wiley and Erica were no longer holed up there.” He patted the breast pocket of his jacket, and realizing the object of his search was not there, he stood with a sheepish grin and excused himself to fetch his coat.

“What do you think he has to tell us?” she whispered to Paul.

“I'm no mind reader. News about Wiley Rinnick.”

With the flat-footed walk of the forgetful and embarrassed, he returned to the living room and stretched a map of the United States across the table, doubling it over to the southern portion. “I put a pin here in Memphis,” he said. “And drew a series of concentric circles, figuring that they either came from, or had to be heading to, one of these spots, but we had no idea of which direction. My first guess was New Orleans. Look how Memphis is sort of on the way between here and there, and you could disappear into the bayou, and no one would never find you. I always wanted to go to New Orleans. But turns out we heard from state and local police a couple of other places.”

Margaret and Paul studied the map. A yellow line began in Nashville and ran along Route 40 to Amarillo, Texas, and then a dotted red line curved northwest to San Francisco.

“It's like a jigsaw. We had one piece—the postcard—but where are the others? Our first real lead was from a fast-food joint outside of Nashville that was robbed a couple of days after Rinnick and your daughter left town. The assistant manager worked with the police on getting a good sketch, and the state police thought to send it our way. Could've been Wiley, long hair and all. But it was just the boy by himself, no mention of a female accomplice. Though the night manager remembered the robber insisted on two milkshakes, one for a girlfriend somewhere. And the Tennessee police had another unsolved mystery with a Pinto—we think that's Dennis Rinnick's car—that had been abandoned in a high school parking lot till the end of October. They switched license plates, and the girl whose car was stolen mentioned a boy and a girl who invited her to come along with them to California. But we didn't make the connection right away.”

Where in God's name is Erica now?

“So we had two crimes they might have committed, but the timing is all wrong. A real pickle. If they're on the way to California, what kept them so long in Tennessee?”

The telephone rang.

“That's probably Shirley Rinnick calling now. Best not take it.”

A dozen more rings, plaintive, then resigned, and the caller gave up.

“Maybe they got lost somewhere. A question I'll have to ask her if we find her. Our real break came later. Seems there was another robbery in Oklahoma, though we didn't make the connection at first. Man runs a general store in a flyspeck town, and these two kids come in one afternoon, and he starts jotting down a description, just before they rob him. Shot him twice, first by the boy in the shoulder, then he takes a load of buckshot in the face. Thank God, they didn't kill him. From his hospital bed, he told the tale to the Okie police, gave them a good description. The field office down there tracks them west, straight as an arrow, to Abilene, Texas. They hold up the Yellow Rose Cantina, and one of the waitresses there remembers talking to a young woman—though the description doesn't match your daughter—and her boyfriend who made a getaway in a red car with Tennessee license plates. Witness at a motel says they are runaways, though he can't be considered entirely reliable. The local sheriff finds a drawing one of the kids made in the waxed tabletop.” From his pocket, he pulled an index card with a crude approximation of the AOD logo with the rampant wings. “You seen this before?”

“In the boy's room,” Paul said. “Stenciled on the closet door.”

“AOD—Angels of Destruction. The Bureau has been playing catchup since then, and we knew their destination. To meet up with a dissident counterculture revolutionary cell in San Francisco, essentially the brainchild of a petty criminal named John Wesley Cromartie, aka the Crow. Of course our offices out there have been keeping an eye on the Angels for over two years now. If we count Wiley Rinnick and your daughter. Now, we don't know if she went willingly or was kidnapped, but there were at least seven of these Angels—”

“Willingly,” Paul said, “but she didn't know what she was doing. She's just a child.”

“—before the accident. I'm sorry to have to tell you.” He paused and waited for them to settle themselves. “We believe that this Cromar-tie and Rinnick were constructing some sort of explosive device—”

A hand clips a wire to the wrong post, and in that instant the light expands and diminishes all at once. The destroyer of worlds becomes clear. A thousand suns burst open. The flash penetrates his consciousness as the bomb rends them asunder and time roils and fastens to the certain knowledge of the glorious mistake.

“If there's any consolation, they died instantly, as sudden as a sneeze. Mrs. Rinnick took the news as well as could be expected.” Beside her, Paul melted away into the sofa as Linnet ticked on like an alarm clock. “The other Angels have flown away, so to speak, maybe left the country or gone underground, we don't know. But we will keep looking, if she can be found.”

After the rush of air, after the thought of flash and the fire, after the interrupted cry, after the last breath and beat, silence expanded to fill the void, and what had once perched in Margaret's soul took wing.

31

R
acing away in true fear, she kept looking over her shoulder, expecting at any moment a phalanx of police cars to roar over the receding horizon, sirens blazing. He had come back into the Yellow Rose like a madman, the guns natural in his hands, a look of pure anger on his face, the shaved head beet red, demanding that they all get down on the floor. As usual, not enough cash in the register to justify the risk, and he put an angry hole in the ceiling with a shotgun blast. Pulled by the vortex of his emotion, she followed to the car, deaf to his laughter and exhilarated yell. By the time they escaped the Texas scrubland and were welcomed to the Land of Enchantment, she allowed herself a deep breath. Little traffic passed in either direction, and he drove possessed into the deserted landscape, the sagebrush and chaparral floating on a sea of orange dirt, the mesas to the west mutable shadows underneath the broad sky crowded with clouds as big and graceful as ocean liners. She could feel Wiley's angry energy in the way he steered the car, and he said virtually nothing until Tucumcari, with its curio shops and old motels lining Route
66,
and they stopped for a late lunch.

“I have to get to a doctor's,” she told him over enchiladas. “Take the pregnancy test, find out for sure.”

“One step ahead of you, baby. That's why I got us some more cash. Next big city, we'll stop and kill the rabbit. We'll find you a clinic where they can check you out.”

“Albuquerque is ahead,” she said, studying the map. “Three hours.”

They stopped for the night near Old Town, settling into a bed-and-breakfast, an enclosed group of rustic casitas facing a patio garden, fading to winter. Along the paths rows of luminarias glowed, and a string of red pepper Christmas lights had been woven through the slats of the central gazebo. Against the chilly night, they huddled together on a bench, staring at the small fires surrounding them.

“This is how I imagined it,” she said. “Somewhere romantic and new and different, with you.”

“An old-fashioned girl.”

“You make it sound so uncool, but I just want to be with you. Get married, like we said.”

“Is that why you joined the revolution?”

“I ran away with you, because you believe. But you've changed, somehow. The gun has become more than a gun. I'm a little scared, but I still believe in you—”

“And the Angels?”

She nodded against his shoulder and gripped his hand.

Wiley squeezed back. “No place for a baby.” His face a mask of confusion, he rose to pace the courtyard, and then disappeared behind an adobe wall, leaving her alone for nearly an hour.

The lights flickered, their hypnotic dance carrying her back to the fires at the Gavins’ cabin, then to childhood winters in Pennsylvania and the feeling of warmth and solace she felt so long ago. A breeze whipped through the courtyard, contorting a mad windchime and rattling the stalk of chiles drying on the lintel. He returned and sat next to her, a question on his lips.

“First let's see if there actually is a baby,” she finally said.

As they readied for bed, she sensed a change come over him, the heavy fall of his boots on the floor, the callused hand against her face as he kissed her softly goodnight. Into the blue china teacup on the night table, she poured her prayers. Forgiveness, salvation. Late in her dreams, she thought of Una Gavin's plight of faith and doubt, in believing her grandmother's desire while knowing it could not be so. Her parents would not be coming back. Skeptical of her own fragile hope. Wiley tossed and grumbled, and once, before she fell asleep, Erica felt his open eyes watching her, waiting, a barely audible sigh when he realized that she stared at the timbered ceiling. She did not stir when he crept out of bed, and did not cry out when he bumped the table and crushed the doll's cup under his booted foot. Later, only later, did she realize that she had ever fallen asleep. In the dead hour before dawn, she was awakened by a woman crossing the courtyard singing,
“… porque no puedo llorar. “
By morning, winter had arrived, a frosty draft sifting through the adobe walls and pressing against the windowpanes. Erica burrowed beneath the blankets, aware at sunrise that Wiley had abandoned her hours before, yet she was unwilling to leave the bed and find pinned to the door the envelope stuffed with stolen cash and the note that explained
goodbye.