Possession (12 page)

It didn't matter now how hard she ran, and the road

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beneath her pounding feet felt resilient and supportive. The cramps in her belly eased, her muscles stretched, and she ran, leaving it all behind her.

The morning was hers, still cool but with edges of heat. Down in town, her mother would be going through her familiar morning rituals, preparing for the faculty meeting before the school year. She still taught, and she was still a model no daughter could ever hope to emulate. Elizabeth would drop by the farm after her meeting, carrying a basketful of produce, grown in her own garden, tended with gloved hands that never showed a bit of soil. Without seeming to, she would check out Joanne's housekeeping, frown at Joanne's wasted garden, and evince just the slightest disapproval because Danny slept the day away, no matter that he worked all night.

She ran harder. Slap. Slap. Remember not to flail your arms. Keep them tight against your chest. Breathe deeply. Smell the pine sap. Smell the river.

The road ahead veered away from the river bank and climbed upward through the fallow pasture-land. The muscles in her calves ached and her breath seemed to draw only from the top half of her lungs, but she couldn't slow down or rest, not at this spot. She knew the desiccated shell of the ruined barn was just to her left, and she tried not to look at it. She knew though, knew the very moment she passed it. Maybe no one else even noticed it anymore, the dead fingers of silvery-black wood poking up through so many years' growth of rye grass, the agonized spears of twisted metal, all of it covered over with a funeral blanket of field daisies and Queen Anne's lace. It was a more fitting memorial to Doss than the flat bronze plaque on the firehouse wall.

What made her run this route morning and night? Penance maybe—or defiance?

Danny wanted her to run in town where she'd be safe, and she was damned sick of being safe. This was the last place she'd ever seen her father alive, and while this forlorn field filled her with a wave of melancholy and dread, she felt compelled to pass it twice a day; it was her commitment to Doss.

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Her running wasn't working this morning; the anxiety that she usually managed to keep just behind her crept up and paced her stride for stride. She ran faster, and it pulled at her shirttail and whispered in her ear, its voiceless message sending little balloons of fear through her veins to her gut.

/ am not afraid. I am not afraid. 7... am . . . not. . . afraid.

She raked her mind for song lyrics and couldn't remember any. Did anyone else feel this way? Was anyone else as afraid as she was, and afraid of nothing? If she could put a name to it, then she wouldn't fear it, but it was transparent, unidentifiable, impossible to ward off.

Her heart jolted in her breast at the sound from behind the grass-clogged barn skeleton, a sound she couldn't identify. Not a rabbit's panicked leap for cover, or a garter snake sliding through dry wheat. Nor a grouse flushed at the sound of her thudding feet. It was more of a whistling sigh, as if someone terribly old had called out to her from behind the pile of charred timbers.

She stopped and felt the tiny shivers ripple across her exposed neck and arms, aware that something alive was watching her.

But there was no definable presence, only the tentative wind whipping the tall grass around the jagged boards and beyond the flattened barn a stand of poplars half asleep in the early morning.

She fled, pumping her legs so violently that she was thrown off stride and tripped, catching herself awkwardly just before nearly falling headlong on the gravel road.

A dusty pickup raced from behind her, throwing up a rush of pebbles that stung her legs, and the driver leaned out his window and catcalled,

"Keep 'em bouncing, Jugs!" and then fishtailed around the curve ahead.

She didn't recognize the truck, couldn't make out who the driver was, the back of his head obscured now by two rifles mounted on the gunrack behind him.

Her fear distilled to blank rage and she stood in the

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middle of the road aaid raised her middle finger at the spot where the truck had been.

"Fuck off!" Her voice echoed like a siren in the morning air. "Just fuck off you crummy bastard!"

Now that he had finally found her, it seemed as if it had happened perfectly. Duane was convinced that this time he had found the right woman. His relief that the search was over was profound enough to merit a small celebration. He had allowed himself the steak dinner—and not one of the cheap minute steaks that emerged leathery and sawdust-tasting from the microwave at the Trail's End Tavern, but a sixteen-ounce T-bone with mushrooms and onion rings at the Red Chieftain Hotel, with three martinis beforehand and Grand Marnier after.

The liquor had plunged him into a stuporous sleep despite the lumpy mattress, and he was filled with sweet dreams of the running woman, her exquisite face turning again and again to his, full of adoration and no guile, hardening his penis as he slept. The almost-forgotten sensation of oneness flowed through him. He murmured and smiled in his bed, tracing her breasts with his fingers, thrusting himself against her.

And then something woke him, a grinding of brakes from a truck outside, a drunken shout from the Trail's End maybe, and he snapped fully alert, his nerve pathways crackling with electric buzzes. The image of the running woman vanished, and he felt a jolt of apprehension he could not identify. He watched the shadow patterns on the stained wall and tried to isolate the cause of his anxiety.

And did.

The other women. They had seemed perfect too at first. Not as perfect as she was. No, they hadn't come close, and

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he'd realized too late that they'd been put in his path only to delay him. Most of them would be bones now, their wicked flesh melted into the earth and water where he'd hidden them. But even dead they mocked him and tried to make him doubt his selection. Sluts. They were jealous of his joy, their stupid ghosts trying to make him remember them.

He would not remember them clearly; he would only recall where they lay rotting, and remember that because he had to be aware of places where he must not return—on the off-chance that someone might have found them. Their faces were gone from his memory and gone in reality because he had been careful to obliterate them. They were no longer women, only crosses on a map. Warning signs.

He concentrated on the map in his head and fixed on the crosses.

El Paso. The one who'd gotten into his car as he headed down from Amarillo. She'd pretended to be sweet and good, and then she'd exposed her tattooed breasts in the pale moonlight that washed the Franklin Mountains, as if she were proud that other men had marked her and disfigured her. She was under the rocks in the mountains now, shut off from both the moon and the sun forever.

Niagara Falls. The American side. The college girl who thought she was a goddamned shrink, who told him he had a ... a what? . . . yeah. An Oedipus Complex. The bitch went off the edge of Goat Island, screaming and tearing at him while the rapids swallowed her voice.

Someplace in Iowa. Council Bluffs. He couldn't remember anything more than they'd been on a train heading for Chicago, and then she wasn't on the train any longer and he was alone and happy she was gone.

Where else? He couldn't think of where because they were all alike. Wait. Yeah. L.A. So many broads got snuffed in L.A. they hardly kept count there. He remembered tearing up ice plants along a canyon road to get to the ground where he could dig a hole to plant her. And the sticky purple flowers bleeding all over his hands.

He didn't want to go through the rest, but he forced himself through the roll call. There were six. No, seven. El

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Paso, Niagara Falls, Council Bluffs, L.A., and . . . Klamath Falls in Oregon right off the 1-5 freeway. Cut Bank, and waiting a long, long time to get a hitch that took him out of Montana. And one more . . . Where? He blanked on the seventh one; it was so long ago, before he was even nineteen. It was winter that time. Frozen ground and the wind pushing at him. Someplace in the north.

He lit a cigarette and.went back through the litany, and it spilled into his consciousness easily, as if he was reciting a poem by rote. Bemidji! Paul Bunyan country. She was under the ice of a lake, floating with her hair like seaweed and her eyes staring up through the blue-white crypt, even though she couldn't see anymore.

He had never read their names in the paper. It was probable the cops still didn't know where they were, but even if they did, they sure wouldn't connect him with any of it. He knew the value of moving on, and never going back.

Now, it was O.K. She was here, waiting for him. She'd be pleased when he told her about getting rid of the others, the false ones. He'd found her, and all he needed was a plan. In an hour, he had it, a solid matrix where each component fell into place like tumblers in an intricate combination lock. Euphoria seized him. He had never experienced such a sense of Tightness. He knew how he would find her again and show himself to her.

But there was no rush. There was no tearing hurry for anything. He forced himself to go through the daily routine of the wine pickup at the Safeway, the rebottling in the moldy bathroom of his room—not because he needed the money that badly, but because he was superstitious enough not to break the patterns that had brought him to her. When it was done, he felt free to look for a bowling alley. The bowling alley was a good omen: every hick town in America had a bowling alley with a blue neon bowling pin instead of a glowing cross. St. Brunswick, the Divine. Come unto me all ye with bad backs, beer bellies, and empty 85

minds. He stood on Main Street and saw the beacon calling to him above the buildings.

It was open for business. He stepped inside and walked unerringly past the counter and the smell of fresh donuts and stale hamburger grease, the sound of lumbering balls and crashing pins familiar music to his ears. There it was: the trophy case. The glass was smudged and dead flies lay parched and still on its faded velvet floor. And, of course, the framed photographs were there, recording championships wrested over a long time in Natchitat, row upon row of grinning, vacuous faces.

He almost gasped out loud when he found her, saw her small wonderful image gazing directly at him. A flower shining among the ordinary. She knelt on one side of the massive trophy, one arm extended across it and touching the shoulder of a fat, red-headed woman with a foolish smile on her face. The others were grouped behind her, all of them wearing the same T-shirt she'd worn last night. His hand trembled as he traced the printing beneath the photo.

Natchitat County Sheriff's Office Wives' Bowling League

And in smaller printing, the names. "Front row, left: Joanne Lindstrom."

She had given him the sign; there was no question about that, even if she hadn't realized it. She could have worn anything else when she ran past him, but she had chosen the shirt that would tell him where to find her.

He fumbled in his shirt pocket and pulled out the small spiral pad and his gold Cross pen. For the first time he wrote her name, printing the letters carefully. Her name.

He forced his eyes away from hers and scanned the rest of the group shots, carefully now. He knew he would find the other picture because it would not have been this simple to find her unless he was meant to find the next information he needed. The men's picture was bigger and on the shelf above. Two rows of cops. He could spot cops if they were walking down Main Street naked; he could smell them.

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guy] with

They carried themselves as if they had a poker up their asses. Self-important pricks. And they went to seed and fat quicker than other men, full of the free meals and courtesy liquor.

He played a game with himself. There were nine of them in the photograph, all dressed in dark trousers and white shirts with red embroidery snaking across the right shirt pocket, broadcasting their names. He would pick the husband without checking the surnames spelled out below.

Not the old one with his bald head painstakingly covered with long hair combed across and plastered in an attempt to make it look like it grew there. Not the two fat, moon-faced ones who looked like Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Not the really young ones.

Duane leaned closer, shading his eyes with one hand to cut the glare from the bare overhead bulb, smiling a little to himself because the winnowing out process was so rudimentary. It sure wasn't the little guy in front, so short he'd never have made it in a big city department. There were two big men on each side of the dwarf, clowning for the camera with their flattened palms resting atop the head of the midget. Cocky sons of bitches.

It couldn't be the taller man with the gap-toothed grin and deep wrinkles around his eyes. He was too old. Had to go fifty—maybe more—and she could do better than that.

The other one. Yeahhh—it had to be him. Not a bad looking guy, but a stereotyped, dull kind of handsome. Brown hair cut cop-short. The regular facial features softened as they fell away to the chin that was threatening to duplicate itself in fat. He guessed there were twelve to fifteen overweight pounds padding the athlete's body, broad shoulders, thick neck, and the big thighs of a linebacker. The guy didn't look really out of shape, but on the verge. He was sucking in his gut, self-consciously, an ex-jock surely who was packing in the calories as if he was still turning out.

His eyes followed the flourish of the embroidered name on the guy's breastpocket. "Donny—no, Danny." Shit, the guy looked at least thirty, and he was still walking around with a kid's name on his chest.

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He would enjoy eliminating the cop.

He glanced around to see if he had attracted attention, and was satisfied that he had not. The woman behind the counter looked hung over or bored as she made ineffective swipes at the Formica with a stained towel. The manager was smoking a cigarette and staring out of the window, as if something on the street beyond fascinated him.

Leisurely, Duane copied the deputies' names into his notebook, adding cursory descriptions to remind himself which was which. The date on the men's picture was "Fall, 1979" so there was a good chance they were all still employed by the Natchitat County Sheriffs Office. When he had filled two of the blue-lined pages, he walked over to the pay phone booth just inside the front door and turned to the front page of the thin directory.