Reign (48 page)

"Whoever did this," he said loudly, "is a motherfucker!" He paused, then went on, louder than before. "Whoever did this . . .” He thought for a moment. “. . . is a son of a
bitch
!"

He looked out over the empty seats, waiting for an answer, a challenge, a voice, but none came.

"Now you know," he said, softer but with no less venom. "You know what you are. Now you
goddam
well know."

He turned, took his cat out of the theatre, and began to wait for Curt, who would come for the luggage.

~ * ~

That afternoon, Curt and Steinberg went back to New York, Abe
Kipp
buried Cristina in a wooded area outside of Kirkland, and Dennis Hamilton, after having lunch with Evan and spending the early afternoon by his bedside, did some banking.

He went back and had dinner with his son, and they watched the news and
Jeopardy!
together, answering questions along with the contestants. Dennis was impressed with the large amount of information the boy had picked up, despite the lack of a college education. When the show was over, Dennis knew the time had come to talk to Evan about what would happen next, but could not bring himself to begin. He was relieved by a doctor who came in, examined Evan, and told them that he would be permitted to leave tomorrow.

When the boy opened his eyes the next morning, Dennis was sitting there next to him. "Good morning," Dennis said.

"Hi."

"Feeling okay?" Evan nodded. "No dreams?"

"None I can remember."

"How's the breathing?"

Evan took in a draught of air, expelled it. "Good."

"Ready to go?" Evan nodded again. "I have something for you then." Dennis reached into his coat pocket and took out a thick envelope. "There's five hundred dollars in cash here. And a checkbook. I opened an account in your name. There will be three thousand dollars a month put in it, which gives you a decent annual income until you decide where you want to go, what you want to do." Evan began to speak, but Dennis held up a hand. "Please, let me finish. Let me say what I need to say, and then you can talk. You can yell if you want to." He looked down at the dull orange carpet of the hospital room floor. "I tried to run your life, Evan, and I'm sorry, I really am. What I'm sorry for the most is that I never got to know you well enough to know what your life should — could — have been, to learn what you wanted out of it, and not what I wanted for you."

Dennis sighed, and rubbed his temple with his fingertips. "This isn't a payoff. This isn't given out of guilt, but out of love. I want to help you be what you want to be, do what you want to do, what's right for you."

Evan was silent for a moment. Then he spoke. "You said that you wanted to take me to New York with you."

"I was wrong. I was being selfish again. I want you to go where you want. You talked about California . . .” He trailed off.

"Do you want me to go there?"

"It doesn't matter what I want. It's what you want." When he looked up, Evan was staring at him hard.

"Someone's after you, aren't they?" Dennis didn't, couldn't answer. "What you said . . . I remember now, when I woke up. You asked me if I saw someone like you. Someone who
looks
like you? Is that it? Is that what all this is about?"

"I . . . don't know, I —"

The boy's speech was fragmented, as though he was trying to assemble sentences of great semantic complexity. "When I saw you — did you — when you were up — on the catwalk — was that you?"

"Slow down, slow down. When?"

"Weeks ago. I had . . . gotten mad at you. About Ann. You grabbed me on the catwalk . . ."

"I didn't."

". . . almost threw me over . . ."

"Evan, I
didn't
. I would never do that."

"But you
did
."

"Have I ever done anything to you like that before? Did I ever even spank you?”

“But my God, my God, Dad. Who
was
it?"

Dennis took a deep breath. "It's going to be hard to believe. But it's the truth. It's the Emperor."

Dennis told Evan everything he knew, everything except what the Emperor said about Sid being Evan's father. "He's done everything. Everyone who died, he was responsible for. He killed them all."

Evan's eyes were dull, as if the truth was too impossible to accept with a clear mind. "That can't be. He can't have done everything you said. Disappear? Make me see . . . what I saw?"

"I've seen him vanish. So has Ann."

"Hypnosis then. Maybe he hypnotized me too, made me see those things and then made me forget that I ever saw him."

"No hypnosis. He has powers, Evan. Terrible powers. He's been sucking my life away." He looked sharply at his son, as if to impress the truth upon his mind by what little ferocity he could muster. "I made him. I gave him life. And I think the only way to destroy him is the same way I created him. That's why I'm going to play the Emperor again, one final time. To beat him at his own game, get back what's mine, kill him for killing the others."

"How? I don't see how."

"By being a better emperor than he is. By being so
real
that he has no choice but to consider himself make-believe." He nodded, trying to convince himself that it was all true. "And then he'll die. Then the bastard will die." Dennis sat, exhausted from the emotion he had expended.

Evan said something then, but so softly that Dennis could barely hear him. He looked at him curiously, and the boy repeated it. This time Dennis heard. "I'm coming with you."

"Coming with me? Where?"

"To New York. To wherever you'll do the show, wherever you'll be the Emperor. I've been wrong too, about a lot of things. I'm coming with you. Maybe I can help."

"There's . . .” Dennis cleared his throat. "We'll be coming back here. Back to the theatre to do the show. That's where he . . . it is."

"That's all right. I don't know if I can go into the theatre, but I'll do what I can. I want to help. Whether this thing is human or . . . or what you say it is, I want to help catch it."

"
Destroy
it," Dennis corrected, and Evan, looking, his father thought, like the Marine he had been, nodded.

"Destroy it," Evan said.

~ * ~

Early that afternoon, Ann Deems finished packing to go to New York with Dennis. He had called just before noon, and told her that he and Evan would pick her up in his car around three, and that they should arrive in the city that evening.

Ann had just closed the latches of the last suitcase when she turned and saw Terri in the bedroom doorway. "How is he?" she said.

"Who?" They had barely exchanged two words in as many days, and her response was more insecure than curt.

"
Evan
," Terri asked with studied patience.

"He's fine. Dennis says he's fine now."

Terri nodded. "I'm glad."

Ann looked at her daughter strangely. "I thought you and he were . . . on the outs."

"I don't have to be in love with someone to be glad they're all right, do I?”

“No. No, I'm sorry." Ann lifted the suitcase and set it on the floor.

"
Marvella
called me last night," Terri said. "She wants me to come to New York and help her costume
Empire
."

"She's going to do it then."

"Yes. She told me that it's all she has left now. At first she thought she'd give it all up, go somewhere else, the west coast maybe. But then she said she realized that . . .” Terri paused, spoke more softly. “. . . that Dennis's little entourage is all the family she has left." Terri shook her head and gave a little snort of embarrassed laughter. "She says she thinks something's wrong, that something or somebody is after Dennis, after all of us maybe. She thinks that whoever it was killed Whitney. And she says she won't be scared off."

"What about you?" Ann said. "Are you scared?"

Terri looked at her mother levelly. "Shitless," she said. "But I want a career."

~ * ~

I want something else too
, she thought.
Evan
. She had nearly died herself when she heard about his attack, and had to restrain herself from jumping in her car and driving to Kirkland to see if he was all right.

He had stuck with her, no matter how she tried to drive him out of her head. After the night they had spent together, she had kept him at arm's length, refusing to go out with him again, going out of her way to avoid him, being unresponsive when he spoke to her, leading him and apparently her mother to think that they were indeed "on the outs."

She had told herself that the only reason she had slept with him in the first place was to annoy her mother and make her relationship with Dennis all the more complex. But there had been more to it than that. Evan was not at all what she had expected. Instead of being a celebrity brat, he had been kind and sweet and thoughtful. In bed he had been more interested in her feelings than his own, and though she had tried to tough it out, to pretend that all she wanted to do was fuck, by the time she went to sleep she knew that they had been making love. She was embarrassed when they woke up and he had his arm around her. She was not used to being cuddled, being held, and although she liked it, that was not what she was there for. She had disengaged herself and dressed before he was even awake. She had refused his offer of breakfast, and had left with barely another word.

But she did not leave so easily. His behavior toward her stayed with her, his initial shyness, then his tenderness. Still, she tried to get him out of her thoughts, her memory, telling herself that her concern for his well-being derived only from compassion. But she knew better. She had never before known love, and now that it had come to her, she feared it even as she desired it.

She hoped he would go to New York. She had almost lost him on the haunted stage of the Venetian Theatre, and she did not want to lose him again.

“. . . are you going up?"

Her mother's words intruded upon her thoughts. "I'm sorry?"

"When are you going? To New York?"

"I don't know. Sometime next week, I guess. After the funeral.
Marvella
says I can stay at her place. It's just a few blocks away from the costume shop.”

“Do you . . . would you want to go up with us?"

"Us?"

"Dennis and Evan and me. They won't be here until three. You'd have time to pack."

Terri shook her head, remembering Dennis in the costume room. "No. Not with Dennis."

"Terri," her mother said, taking her hand. Terri looked down at her hand and her mother's in surprise. They had not touched for a long time. "I'm going to tell you something. And when I do, I just want you to remember that I've never lied to you before."

Ann told her then, an extraordinary story about a double of Dennis Hamilton, an imposter who had been responsible for the deaths, a man who Ann had seen with her own eyes while Dennis was in the same room. "If you were seduced," Ann closed, "that was the man who did it. Not Dennis." She let go of Terri's hand. "Do you believe me?"

Slowly she nodded. "If for no other reason than that no one would tell that involved and crazy a lie." She sat down on the bed. "You know, when I talked to him the next day . . . he didn't seem to know a thing about it. I thought he was just acting, but maybe he
wasn't
."

"No. He wasn't. He was terribly upset about it."

"But why didn't he tell someone? Why didn't he tell the police right away?"

"He didn't know at first. The police know now. They're treating it like a celebrity stalker case. And they're right. Someone's trying to destroy Dennis. By harming the people around him."

"Then Sid . . . and Donna?"

Ann nodded. "This . . . person killed Donna. Even though the evidence points to Sid."

It was too much to fathom. "My God. My God."

"Come with us," Ann said, a hand on Terri's shoulder. "I don't want you to be alone. You can stay with me at Dennis's suite until after Monday."

She felt unmoored, drifting on a sea of confusion and unreality, but her mother's hand was solid and real. "All right," she said. "All right. I'll go with you."

~ * ~

Dennis and Evan drove into the
Deems's
drive just after three o'clock in the spacious Lincoln they had rented for the trip, and were surprised to find both Ann and Terri waiting with their luggage. Terri smiled stiffly at both men, as if afraid the expression might crack her face. While Evan helped her take her luggage to the car, Dennis looked questioningly at Ann.

"I told her," she said.

"About the Emperor?"

"Just about a double. She knows it wasn't you who . . . that night."

He nodded. "Evan knows too. But he knows everything. He's coming along," he said with parental pride. "To help."

"That's good," Ann said. "Things are getting better."

Still, they spoke little in the car. Ann sat up front with Dennis, and Terri and Evan were on either side of the wide back seat. Mostly they discussed
A Private Empire
. "It'll be a race," Dennis said, "to get it ready in time. You and
Marvella
will have quite a job on your hands, Terri. The
Empire
costumes were disbanded after the last show, so you'll be starting from scratch. Except for my costumes."