Saint (24 page)

“Maybe.”

The road descended, took a sharp turn, and fed into a valley. One moment they were watching trees rush by; the next they were looking down at a town.

Carl wasn't sure if it was Paradise at first. Then they passed a sign that said it was.
Welcome to Paradise, Colorado, Population 450.

He began to sweat.

“This is it,” Kelly said. “Do you recognize anything?”

A large building with a five-foot sign that read “Paradise Community Center” loomed ahead on the right. Beyond it, a grocery store with gas pumps out front. Houses on the left, running up to a tall church with a pointed steeple.

“Can you pull over?”

“Here?”

“Yes, pull over.”

He didn't recognize anything, but his heart was hammering and he thought that might be a good sign.

Kelly pulled the pickup truck onto a dusty shoulder a hundred feet from the community center. “Do you recognize it?”

Carl stared ahead, searching his memory. This building had once been something else. A burned-down pile of rubble. Or a theater. Or maybe his mind was just making things up.

“Carl?”

“I . . . I don't know.” He climbed out and faced the town. Something had happened here, he could sense it if not remember it. His body was reacting even if his mind wasn't. Kelly joined him, exchanging looks between him and the town.

“Why can't I remember?” he asked.

“Agotha's no amateur. Only the strongest minds can endure her methods. She told me she'd never seen a mind as strong as yours. She was determined to either break you or kill you.”

She looked up at the cliffs to their right. “She broke you,” she said softly. “She tore your identity down until it was nothing, and then she rebuilt it, many times over. Your mind is still strong, stronger than before, but now its walls are built around the wrong identity.”

“Then it'll have to be broken again,” Carl said.

She didn't answer.

“I don't know if I want to be broken again.”

“I understand. But if you reclaim your true identity, you'll have fewer scars. You have a strong mind, Carl. A very, very strong mind.”

Carl started forward along the road's dusty shoulder. Kelly followed. He spread his hands, palms facedown by his sides. A slight breeze passed through his fingers. He could smell the dust rising from his feet. The hot afternoon sun cut through the cool mountain air. He felt as if he was walking into a dream on legs of soggy cardboard and a body cut from paper.

The street was deserted. A bench . . .

Carl stopped and stared at the empty bench on a boardwalk in front of a rustic building called Smither's Barbecue.

“What is it?”

“Does that bench look familiar to you?”

She stopped beside him. “I've never been here—why would it?”

His breathing thickened. For a moment he thought he might start to shake and sweat like he had in the hotel room. A tingle lit through his fingertips.

He stepped out onto pavement and angled for the middle of the road. He wasn't sure why he wanted to walk down this road—maybe it gave him a better view—but he picked up his pace and crossed to the yellow dotted lines that split the blacktop in two.

The tingle spread from his fingertips into his bones. He pushed his feet over the dashes, striding with purpose. But in his mind it was all happening in slow motion. He was staring at the bench and marching into a mesmerizing dream without the slightest idea of where it would take him.

But he'd been here before.

“Carl?”

He veered to his right and angled for the bench. He fought an urge to run up to the bench and tear it from the ground.

His breathing came hard, pulling at air that refused to fill his lungs.

Something was wrong with the bench. He hated this bench. This bench was—

“Carl!”

He stopped.

“What's wrong?”

It was just a wooden bench. Sitting on the boardwalk, ten feet away now. He looked up at the restaurant behind the bench. Smither's Barbecue. Beside it the grocery store with the gas pumps. All Right Convenience. The large building behind and to his right. Paradise Community Center.

Carl slowly turned and studied the rest of the town. A dozen small businesses on the right side of the street. A hair salon, a flower shop, an automotive shop . . . others. Houses.

Houses were on the opposite side. A large lawn ran up to the church.

“I don't think I've ever been here,” he said.

“Why were you running for the bench?”

“I don't know. Why was I shaking in the hotel room? Why did I believe that you were my wife? Why did I climb into a crate full of hornets? Why did I put myself in an electric chair to die?”

Kelly shifted her eyes. He'd hurt her feelings.

“I'm not complaining,” he said. “I just don't know anything any-more. I used to know who I was. Now I don't. I wish we'd never gone to New York.”

“Johnny?” A voice was calling his name.

Kelly's eyes darted over his shoulder. He turned and faced a medium-built man with dark hair who stood in the restaurant's open doorway. The man's eyes widened with a smile.

“Johnny Drake. Well I'll be . . .” He twisted his head and yelled through the door. “Paula, get yourself out here and see who's come back.”

The man marched down the steps and across the boardwalk and was nearly upon him before it occurred to Carl that showing his ignorance would raise unwanted questions. He smiled.

“Give me a hug, boy!” The man took Carl's hand and wrapped his arm around his back, pulling him close. “Good to see you, Johnny.” The man slapped his back.

Carl didn't know what to say.

“And who's your friend?”

“This is Kelly.”

The man extended his hand. “Hello, Kelly. I'm Steve. Welcome to Paradise. Pun intended, always intended, although I can guarantee we don't always live up to the name.”

A woman in a blue dress ran down the steps toward him. “Johnny? Johnny Drake, my goodness! We heard you were missing!”

Carl assumed she was the woman Steve called Paula. Their excitement in seeing him was infectious. He felt his face flush with an odd mixture of embarrassment and comfort.

They liked him.

Paula gave him a hug and kissed his cheek. “Are you okay?”

She smelled like a flower—a familiar and warming scent. He must find out what perfume she was wearing.

“Johnny?”

“Yes?”

“Are . . . Are you okay?”

“Yes. I'm fine. Just a little . . .”

“He's on pain medication,” Kelly said, offering her hand. “Nothing serious. I'm Kelly.”

“Hello, Kelly. You're . . .” Paula glanced between them. “You're not . . .”

“No, no.” Kelly laughed. “Just good friends.”

“Well, I must say, Johnny, you know how to pick beautiful friends.”

“Thank you,” Kelly said.

Steve patted him on the back again. “Well then, come in and have a drink. On the house, of course. It's not every day we get a hero coming home.”

“Actually . . .” Kelly caught Carl's eyes.

“Actually, I would like to go home,” Carl said.

“Of course you would,” Paula said. “Does Sally know you're here?”

“Sally? No. Has she moved?”

“From town? Goodness, no. She really doesn't know? She's going to faint! You go on. Don't let us keep you. How long will you be in town?”

“Just a day,” Kelly said.

“Only a day? Then promise me you'll stop by and fill us in. The others'll be thrilled to see you. Does anyone else know?”

“No.”

“Most of them are at the fair in Delta, but they'll be back by night. We'll do something. Right, Steve? We could have a barbecue.”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay.”

“Perfect. I haven't seen Sally today, but that doesn't mean much. We don't see her much these days. She's kept to herself lately. She might have gone to Delta, but she might be home. You go on, don't mind us.”

“Okay.”

Steve and Paula, presumably the proprietors of Smither's Barbecue, stared at Carl, clearly expecting him to go home.

“What perfume are you wearing?” Carl asked.

Paula seemed slightly taken aback, but she smiled. “You like it?”

“Yes.”

“It's called Lavender Lace. Sally gave it to me for my birthday.”

It was his mother's perfume!

“Can you tell me which house she lives in?”

Steve and Paula looked at each other, clearly baffled.

“You don't remember?” Steve asked. “You sure you're okay?”

“I'm sorry, it's just this . . . I get bad headaches . . . I'm trying out a new pain medication, and it's making me . . .” He searched for the word.

“Loopy,” Kelly said.

“Loopy,” Carl said.

“Well, loopy or not, it's good to have you home, Chaplain.” Steve pointed down the street. “Third house on the right. The white one.” Carl turned and started to walk.

Kelly thanked Steve and Paula—
Something I should have done
myself,
Carl thought—and caught up to him.

“Hold on, Carl. Please.”

“What is it?”

She grabbed his arm and pulled him back. “Just stop for a second. I realize this is important to you, but we have to be careful. You can't be so obvious. We'll be followed here. Kalman will stop at nothing to squeeze these people for information if he suspects that you've told them anything that could implicate him. We were here—that's all. Nothing more.”

“Obvious? Why am I obvious?”

“For starters, you
are
acting loopy. This is nothing like the calculating killer you were trained to be.
I
don't even know who you are anymore. I'm just asking you to be careful.”

“I was a chaplain,” Carl said. “Did I have faith?”

Kelly studied his eyes for a few moments. Her features softened, and she offered a consoling smile, touching his cheek with her thumb. “I'm sure you did. I'm sorry. Just try to be . . . normal.”

“I'm not normal—Agotha saw to that. I want to be normal. You know that's all I want. But I don't even know if my true self
is
normal.” He glanced back down the street and saw that Steve and Paula were at the door of their restaurant, watching them. Kelly had a point—Kalman could cause them some trouble.

“I can be normal for them, as normal as I can bring myself to be. But with my mother . . .”

With his mother he didn't know what. He probably wouldn't even recognize her.

Kelly took his hand in hers and turned him back toward his mother's house.

“Come on,” she said. “Your mother is waiting.”

ENGLISHMAN WALKED the B concourse in Denver International Airport, wondering what it would be like to be the thin rail of a man who hurried just ahead of him. The man was late for a flight, judging by his periodic watch-check. Was he going home to his wife and children?

Was he flying to Boston for a meeting with powerful bankers the next morning?

Was he eager to catch a plane that would deliver him to his mistress in Dallas?

Was he going to die of leukemia in twenty years or get hit by a car in two days, or did he already have a terminal disease and not know it?

Why did this man even want to live? Didn't he know that it would all end soon enough anyway? Didn't he know that a billion people with two legs and two arms, full of vim and vigor just like him, had lived and died and were now just memories in a few people's minds? Assuming they were lucky—most didn't even survive as memories. They were simply gone.

The simple, terrible tragedy of life's story was that it all ended on the last page. It didn't matter what clichés or wonderful descriptions or clever words people used to tell their stories; the greatest certainty any person had was that it would be over in about four hundred pages or eighty years, depending on how you looked at it.
Hallelujah,
amen, you are dismissed
.

Of course, there were those who believed in the afterlife. Englishman hated those people. Not because he thought that they were right, but because he knew that if by some small chance they were right, he would not be joining them in their new journey of bliss.

Englishman lost interest in the skinny man and entered the moving sidewalk, letting his eyes rove over the concourse.

Hundreds of people hurried to and fro or sat at the gates waiting for their planes. Tall ones, short ones, skinny ones, lots of fat ones, blond ones, brown ones, black ones, young ones, old ones. Meat, thousands and thousands of meat packages. And every one of them thought they were that one package that actually mattered.

Englishman could easily kill any one of them at this very moment and walk away to tell how their particular story ended.

This meant he actually had
control
over their stories. He could write the last chapter of their lives. The end.
Hallelujah, amen, you
are dismissed
.

He could actually end a few dozen stories right now, at this moment, before the authorities managed to stop him.

Not catch him, mind you. Stop him.

Englishman wasn't proud of his ability to control others by writing their final chapter. He was simply fascinated by it. The killing itself had long ago become rather tedious, but the power he possessed to end them made his mind buzz.

He crossed his arms, spread his legs, cocked his head all the way back, and closed his eyes.

No doubt dozens of people were staring at him at this moment, wondering why in the world the famous actor named Jude Law was passing through the Denver airport without an armed guard, drawing so much attention to himself by striking such a presumptuous pose.

Small minds.

Paradise, Colorado, was a five-hour drive from the airport. Six counting the slight detour to collect the weapons stashed at the safe house they'd prepared in Grand Junction. If his intel had informed him that the lovebirds had caught on to his very good plan, he would have flown to Grand Junction and driven from there. But the pair was clueless, so he had plenty of time. And Englishman preferred to drive. It offered more flexibility and was safer.