Southampton Spectacular (35 page)

Devon shook her head as she walked away. “You’re perfect right there,” she said over her shoulder. “We need to be prepared to handle that woman when she arrives. You cover the kids, and we’ll make sure she stays away from James. She’ll probably just sit quietly.” Devon smiled humorlessly at Nina. “Maybe that’ll give Barnes a little more time to work on her. Nothing like a little hospital waiting room romance, right?”

Nina followed Devon to the admitting station. “He looked weird to me,” she said.

“Barnes?”

Nina nodded.

Devon looked unconcerned. “He’s pissed about James. It’s his best friend. You said it yourself.”

“I guess.”

Nina looked back at the exit and then glanced at her watch. As if Barnes had promised to arrive by a certain time, and was now unforgivably overdue. She looked at the exit again. Willing the doors to open. But no, still no Barnes.

She told herself that he would be there in five minutes. Ten, at the most.

But it was another hour before he arrived.

When Barnes finally did reach the hospital, it was not under his own power.

Pauline wasn’t going to talk to him. Barnes could see it as soon as he sat down in the little red car, could see the way she was twisted just enough in her seat to show him a piece of her back. She was clutching her daypack in her lap and looking out the front windshield with a fixed, stony expression.

Which was fine. Barnes wasn’t planning on a lot of chitchat.

The old car started easily and loudly. Barnes knew very little about the actual mechanisms in motors, but he wondered what would make an engine this noisy. The windows were vibrating and the rpm needle was jumpy, and he was barely touching the accelerator. He waited thirty seconds to see if the noise level would go down as the engine warmed up, but no. Nina was pulling out of the driveway in the Honda with the kids now, and Barnes gave himself one more second to glance at the gearshift, in case reverse might be located somewhere strange in the transmission pattern.

But everything was as expected, and he shifted into first and pulled out, following the Honda.

He stayed behind Nina for the first half-mile, letting himself get a feel for the Condor’s engine. It was as strong as it sounded, and every time he shifted gears the car gave a little lurch. Pauline glanced over at him once, to let him know that she was conscious of his imperfect driving skills. But he didn’t pay any attention. He worked his way through the gears once more, letting the Honda pull away. When he was satisfied he knew what he was doing, he made a quick right-hand turn.

Pauline looked at him questioningly, and Barnes gave her a dismissive shake of his head. “They’re going the long way,” he shouted over the din of the engine. “Plus, she has to go slow with the kids in the car.”

He was aware even as he was talking that his explanations made no sense, but he didn’t care. What was she going to do, jump out of the car? Pauline seemed to come to the same conclusion, because she sat back in her seat with a shrug like a weary parent enduring a child’s lies. She didn’t care how they got there.

They looped right and then right again, and Barnes began to get the feel of the car. They had come full-circle now, and they sped past the Dunn driveway on their left. In another minute they were passing the Beach Club, and now they were coming to the intersection at Dune Road and First Neck Lane. Barnes slowed to an almost-stop, and then he made a quick left.

They were heading down Dune Road. Away from town.

Pauline shot another glance at him, and this time Barnes looked back at her with an expression he hoped would pass for eager excitement. He pointed ahead of them and nodded, as if they were on their way to see something exciting. Something they had agreed upon beforehand. Pauline frowned and shook her head at him. “What the hell are you doing?” she yelled over the engine noise, but Barnes just kept smiling. “This will only take a second,” he yelled back, still pointing ahead. “It’s great, you’ll see.”

“No, you jackass,” she shouted. “To the
hospital
.” As if she were using a word that less-intelligent people often confused with something else. “The
hospital
, where the
kids
are going.”

He nodded in a way he hoped was reassuring. Stalling her. As quickly as he could, he shifted up through the gears again, and now they were passing through 40 mph, and now 50, and now they were traveling on the main Dune Road straightaway. For the first time, Barnes was able to make it all the way to fifth gear, and the Volkswagen’s engine finally began to quiet down. As if its only complaint all this time had simply been that they were moving too slowly. That what the Condor needed, what it really
craved
, was some clean, straightaway speed. They were still accelerating, and the car began to actually hum. As though it were singing to them. Pauline’s mouth twitched at the edges, whether out of anger or nerves it would have been difficult to say.

She turned to him again. “Turn this car around
now
,” she yelled, in a voice that was only a few decibels short of screaming. “I don’t know where you think we’re going, but I’m not coming along. I’ll get Jerry to beat the
snot
out of you.”

This time Barnes didn’t even bother looking at her.

They flashed by Cooper’s Beach on the left and Cooper’s Neck Lane on the right, and Barnes had a momentary vision of the night before. Of that very morning, actually. Only six or seven hours ago, when he and James had been sitting in the Navigator together up on the Cooper’s Beach lookout. Just the two of them this time, because they had dropped off all the girls already, first Devon and Nina and then Florin, and now they could sit and look at the ocean in the night together, and Barnes could wait patiently, to see if James would talk about what had happened. About why he had bruises on his face and arms. Or about anything else.

It might have been the alcohol, or the late hour, or maybe it was simply that James had already told the truth once, to Devon, a few days ago out on Court 1. Now, having said it all once, he was not so afraid of it. Of telling it. So he told Barnes as well. Barnes listened, and nodded, and assured his friend it was going to be okay. That he loved him and that none of these things mattered. And that James wouldn’t have to worry anymore about Pauline, because they would figure out a way to get rid of her.

But clearly James had not been comforted by this, because he had tried to kill himself less than an hour later.

Barnes wondered when his friend had made the decision. Right then, as they sat in the car together? Earlier? Or had it been a spur-of-the-moment thing? A decision he had made only after he had dropped Barnes off, when he had gone driving away?

It wasn’t important. James had survived, and that was good enough. And even though Barnes appreciated Devon’s efforts, he had decided that her whole “get Pauline to cheat on Mr. Dunn” plan was not nearly good enough.

Not
sure
enough.

The way Barnes saw it, he had one good chance to help his friend. To
save
his friend. So he would use that chance for all it was worth. He would follow through on the promise he had made to him that morning, just a few hours ago.

He would get rid of Pauline.

He looked at the speedometer now, saw that they were passing through 60, and still his foot was only halfway down on the accelerator. Pauline seemed to have given up shouting at him. The anger on her face was giving way to a distinct look of fear. One of her hands reached reflexively for the broken seatbelt, which was hanging uselessly from the slot beside the door. Barnes heard, or thought he heard, the sound of a siren over the rising hum of the Condor’s engine, and he saw Pauline twist around in her seat.

“Cop was camped out at the corner of Cooper’s,” she yelled. “Show’s over.” There was a clear note of relief in her voice, but Barnes only smiled. He looked over at her once, slowly, and then he looked back at the road in front of him. He thought of James sitting next to him in the Navigator, thought of him talking about unbelievable, unspeakable things. Thought of him talking about Pauline.

Then Barnes leaned back, lowered his head, and pressed the accelerator all the way down to the floor.

If Mr. Dunn had been there to see, he would have been proud.

The Condor leapt forward, all 308 horses straining at the bit, and Barnes and Pauline were pressed back into their seats as though they were sitting in a rocket. Barnes focused on keeping the wheel steady, and he could hear the siren fading quickly into the distance.

Then, a few seconds later, he heard it coming up again.

Good cop car
, he thought.

“Stop, you dick!” Pauline shouted. “They’re going to throw you in jail!”

Barnes cocked his head to the side.

Maybe. Or maybe they’re going to save me right after. We’ll see.

He pressed his foot down even harder onto the floor, as if urging the little car to give him just a few more foot-pounds of torque. The Volkswagen’s frame, which had been designed neither for Autobahn speeds nor for Space-Shuttle-like acceleration, was beginning to vibrate with a heavy, teeth-rattling resonance. The engine noise had returned, but it sounded different now. Instead of a chattering or a rattling, this was a rising wail. A scream of protest.

Or maybe that’s Pauline
, Barnes thought.

She
was
screaming now, screaming at him as she realized all at once that this was not simply unpleasant, not simply scary, that she was in
trouble
here. She screamed first at him and then at the front windshield and then behind her, at the police car, as though urging it to catch them, catch them somehow and get them to
stop
. Now she was looking around the car frantically, searching for something that could make her safe. Make this car slow down. She looked again at the limply hanging passenger-side seatbelt, but just as quickly looked away.

The first big turn was approaching.

Pauline looked desperately at Barnes’s hands, and at the wheel, and appeared briefly to consider grabbing hold. But this, too, she seemed to dismiss as suicide. Then, finally, she looked down. Remembered the emergency break.

Barnes had been waiting for this, and his fist shot out like a spring-loaded punching glove. He did not try to grab her arm. He just hit her, hard. In the mouth. She pitched backward from the impact, and her head struck the side window with a crack. She winced at the pain in her mouth and the back of her head, and then  she glared at Barnes with quickly renewed fear and hatred. As if to say that this insane car ride was bad enough, but
hitting
her was really inexcusable. She jabbed a finger at him angrily like a furious football coach berating a lazy player, and then she lunged toward him with hands outstretched. Apparently she had decided that enough was enough, and that she would worry about her own safety later. Because now was the time to show this teenaged punk that nobody was allowed to hit her.

Nobody.

Her hands closed around his neck.

She cut off his airway, but Barnes only smiled. With the veins in his face already beginning to distend and turn blue, he pointed out the front window. As though patiently redirecting her attention to the matter at hand.

You’ve got bigger problems, sister.

They had come to the first big bend in the road. And the speedometer now had them at better than 95 mph.

“The
turn
!” Pauline screamed at him.

Barnes smiled and nodded stiffly. As if Pauline were an especially thick-headed pupil, one who was finally coming to grips with the thrust of a simple lesson. She let go of his neck, and he inhaled quickly.

They had less than a second now.

At the very last moment, something occurred to Barnes. He turned to Pauline and spoke to her with a little gasp. His words were quiet, out of breath, and lost in her screaming, but Barnes didn’t mind. He down-shifted all the way into third, jammed the accelerator back down to the floor, and wrenched the wheel hard to the left.

And the Condor flew.

Everyone except Tracy Dunn was now out in the waiting room together. Florin, Nina, Devon, and Cynthia Hall were with Frankie and Ned, and Peter Hall had managed to get Jerry Dunn into a far corner on his own. The two of them were sitting next to each other, leaning over with their heads bent low. Talking quietly and nodding. Like old friends.