Last Light (38 page)
“I don’t know,” Mark said. “He owns a chain of bookstores across the south. I guess he was going to stop at each one.”
“Do you have a list of the stores?” Kay asked. “A map of where they’re located?”
“No. I try to stay out of my dad’s business.”
Martha’s eyes were filling with rage. Doug wondered if they were tears of anger or compassion. “My ex-husband is not the most scrupulous man in business. I’ve never wanted Mark to be that involved with him.”
“You must know something that could help us,” Doug said. “Do you have a key to his house?”
Mark’s eyes widened. “Yes, I do. I’ll go in and see what I can find. Surely he has a map in his office or a listing of his stores.”
Finally, some hope. “Yes,” Doug said. “Please, hurry.”
Mark got the key and pulled on his shirt and shoes, then led them back to his father’s house. He unlocked the door, and they followed him in.
The décor of the house would have been comical if Doug hadn’t been so worried. It looked like something one of those crazy TV decorators had put together. Vic had left an empty beer can on the table and a wadded napkin next to it. Beside it was a notepad with what looked like a packing list.
“His office is upstairs,” Mark said. “Come on, you can help me look.”
All the doors on the second floor were closed. That was odd. If Vic lived alone, why would he need the doors closed, especially when the heat was so intense? Wouldn’t he want to keep the upstairs windows open and the air circulating?
Mark went to the second door down the hall and pushed it open. Doug and Kay followed him inside.
Kay gasped. The office was decorated with lewd photos, and on the floor around his desk were several boxes filled with pictures and porno magazines.
“I’m gonna be sick.” Kay backed out of the room.
Doug took in the images around him. His pulse hammered in his temples, making his head throb. What kind of man was Deni with? “What business did you say your dad was in?”
Mark hesitated. “Bookstores.”
“What
kind
of bookstores?”
Mark glanced at the boxes. “I don’t really know, but . . . I have a good idea.”
Doug felt the blood rushing from his head.
Hold on
, he told himself.
Think!
Mark pulled out the drawers on his father’s desk and looked through them, but he didn’t find what he was looking for. “I’ll look in his bedroom. I think he has a file cabinet in there.”
He went back out in the hall, and Doug stepped out of the office. Kay was sitting on the floor, her head in the circle of her arms. He started down the hall to follow Mark, but as they passed another closed door, he paused. Opening it, he looked inside.
And then he saw it. Boxes and boxes of food. Cereal and canned goods and soups and bottles of juice . . .
“Where did he get all this?”
Mark came back and looked inside. “I don’t know. We’ve been running out down at my house, and he knew it. He didn’t tell me he had this.”
He went to open the drapes so he could see better. The light spilled in.
Doug started going through the boxes, and saw some bags with a survivalist imprint on the front. He’d considered that brand of dried food when he tried to prepare for the year 2000 and the crisis they had expected.
“Mark, was your dad a survivalist?”
“Not that I know of.”
Doug didn’t know anyone who was . . . except for the Whitsons. Hadn’t Ralph admitted it at one of the meetings?
“I’ve been stockpiling this stuff since Y2K.”
A chill ran through him, and his mind raced. What was in those other rooms? He pushed past Mark, out into the hall, and opened the next door down.
The room was full—three flat-panel TVs, a Bose stereo system, five car stereos . . . Mark looked as shocked as Doug to see the stuff. “He didn’t have all this before.”
Kay got up and pushed between them, and Doug saw the look of terror darken her face. “Doug . . . is he the one?”
His throat closed up, and he couldn’t catch his breath. His hands trembled as he went to a small black velvet box sitting on a table. He lifted its lid.
Twenty or thirty loose diamonds lay on the velvet.
The blood seemed to flush from his head, and he felt as if he stared through a fog.
He heard Kay’s choked gasp behind him. Covering her face, she cried, “Randall Abernathy sold diamonds! Vic killed them!”
Mark swung around, stricken. “No way! Not my dad. That’s not where he got them.”
Kay started to crumble, and Doug felt a numbness crawl over his body, weakening his arms, his fingers . . . blurring his thoughts.
“My dad probably bought them. He’s always buying things. Thinking of new enterprises. He just . . . got these somewhere . . .”
“I want to get out of here.” Kay couldn’t catch her breath.
Doug pulled her into his arms and held her as he stared at Mark. The young man was going from box to box, declaring his father’s innocence. But his voice was growing weaker.
As he did so, Doug watched him slowly wilt from a state of confidence to trembling realization. When he got to the Bose DVD player, he fell to his knees. “Aw . . . no!”
“What?” Doug watched him pull out a box that was behind the system. It was full of DVDs. Mark’s fingers were clumsy as he grabbed some out. The Telletubbies, the Wiggles,
Stuart Little
. On the back of one was a child’s crude handwriting: “Propity of Michael Whitson.”
The Whitsons’ six-year-old son!
Kay let out an anguished moan, and Doug tried to keep her from falling. But he wasn’t sure he could stay upright, either.
Vic Green was a cold-blooded killer.
And Deni’s life was in his hands.
The highway was a wasteland of stalled, stripped cars with shattered windshields, the doors left open by hurried bandits. The useless vehicles stood in the way, slowing Vic’s wagon, and Deni had the urge to get out and walk ahead, closing the car doors as she went.
The heat was oppressive, beating down on the sweating horses and dehydrating her. Every couple of hours they stopped so Vic could let the horses drink. They were moving much more slowly than she’d hoped, and the jostling ride, even in the captain’s chairs, was miserably uncomfortable. The sun was setting behind them, and soon it would be dark. Deni had no idea where they would sleep.
Vic had been drinking beer—one after another—as they rode. He passed the time singing the songs from
Les Miserables
, in a voice that wasn’t half bad. When he’d covered every song, he moved on to
Fiddler on the Roof.
Just as well, since it kept them from having to make conversation—and she didn’t have to pretend she was listening.
Finally, he quit singing. “What’s the matter, darlin’? You’ve been awfully quiet.”
“Just the stress. Plus I’m a little frustrated that we’re moving so slowly. If I’d ridden my bike I’d have covered three or four times more ground.”
“But then I couldn’t have carried all this stuff. Had to be a covered wagon.”
Deni looked back over her shoulder. There were so many boxes piled in there that she didn’t know why the whole thing hadn’t collapsed. “What all do you have back there, anyway?”
“Products, I told you.”
“Like books? Anything I could read?”
He hesitated a moment. “I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so . . . what? That they’re books or that they’re anything I can read?”
“They’re books, but nothing you’d like. Best if you stay out of those boxes. I don’t want the books to look used when I stock them.”
She might have known. Why hadn’t she brought her own reading material?
“Few more miles,” he said, “and we’ll stop and take a rest.”
“Again? Why? We’re never gonna get there at this rate!”
He looked disappointed in her. “The horses have to be watered, you know. Road’s hard on their joints.”
Deni couldn’t believe this. She could make the 750 miles from Birmingham to D.C. in thirteen hours by car. Of course, they were moving slower—maybe twenty miles an hour instead of seventy. That meant it would take . . . what? Thirty-plus hours to get there?
Except she wasn’t sure they were going twenty. They might be going ten . . . or even less.
“How much sleep do horses need?”
“They need nights, just like you and me.”
She groaned. “So I guess we can’t expect them to travel all night?”
He bellowed out a laugh. “No, darlin’, we’re not traveling all night.”
Deni didn’t like the idea of stopping to sleep. She had no idea what the arrangements would be. Would they sleep on the ground? What about rodents, bugs, snakes?
Maybe she’d just recline the captain’s chair and curl up on that. She should have brought warmer clothes for the night’s drop in temperature, but she supposed she could cover up with her sleeping bag.
Her biggest mistake, though, was not bringing enough sterilized water. Instead, she’d brought Beth’s flat iron and hair dryer, since hers were still in the car at the airport. She’d also brought her lighted makeup mirror, so that if the power miraculously returned, she could find an outlet and fix her hair and face. And she’d brought her credit card, which might be her salvation if she was able to find an ATM machine or an open bank.
But from the looks of things, civilization was just as dead here as it was at home. It looked like Hank was right.
She wanted more than anything to guzzle a gallon of water, but she had to conserve the bottle she had. She wondered how she’d replace it when she ran out. She’d need to sterilize any she got before she could drink it, but how in the world would she do that? Vic might have water in the wagon, but if he did, he was keeping it for himself.
She should have thought things through, but she hadn’t bothered with details.
Earlier, she had managed to convince Vic to travel on Highway 78, which ran parallel to I-20, in case her father came after them. She knew her dad would look for them on I-20 first. When they stopped and watered the horses for the umpteenth time that day, she got out and tried to get her blood circulating. Every muscle in her body vibrated, and she dreaded getting back into the wagon. How had people traveled like this in the old days—without the plush chairs and the rubber tires? Maybe it was easier when you didn’t have anything else to compare it to.
When darkness began to fall and they came upon a brook, Vic pulled over for the night. He led the horses down to the water, and Deni drank her fill of it as well, feeling life seeping back into her body. Vic started a fire and set cans of kidney beans over it, then opened a couple of cans of Spam. Deni devoured the food.
Next, Vic opened a bottle of Scotch. “You okay, hon? Or are you thinking you got more than you bargained for?”
“It’s worth it, as long as I get to Craig.”
“Traveling this way is not for wimps,” he said. “That’s for sure.”
She turned and looked back at the horses where they were tethered and grazing. “I was just thinking . . . you wouldn’t let me take one of the horses and ride the rest of the way on my own, would you?”
He laughed. “No offense, but you don’t look that stupid.”
She groaned. “I just want to go faster. I didn’t think this would take so long.”
He took a long drink. “I need all four horses to pull the wagon. Here, drink some of this. You’re wound too tight.”
She pushed the bottle away. “I don’t need booze. I need faster transportation.”
“Well, I’m all you’ve got.”
She sighed. “How many miles do you think we covered today?”
“About eighty, give or take.”
She got up and walked to the dark road, peering east. This was absurd. “It’s about 670 more miles to Washington. At this rate, it’ll take eight or nine days to get there.”
Vic laughed as if she was the best entertainment around. That laughter was really starting to get on her nerves. “Most days we’ll get more traveling in, but we got a late start today. I told you I’ll be stopping along the way, taking care of business. You might as well relax and be patient.”