Touchy and Feely (Sissy Sawyer Mysteries) (22 page)

‘I said you should have gone to the emergency room.’

Robert turned his hand this way and that. ‘I couldn’t, could I? They would have wanted to know who I was.’

‘Sure. You have your anonymity but now you’re doomed to be a cripple.’

‘What are you talking about, cripple? I’ve lost the tips of my fingers, that’s all.’

Feely looked down at him, and smiled.

‘Something funny?’ said Robert.

‘No . . . I was thinking how one seminal event can change the way you look at your destiny, overnight.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Last night . . . the three of us together.’

‘Well, I guess you could accurately say that was a seminal event.’

‘But didn’t it make you feel different?’

Robert frowned at him. ‘I got to take some more painkillers. This is
throbbing
, you know?’

‘I’ll get you some, OK?’

Feely found his pants on the floor and went to the bathroom. He took a long pee, admiring himself in the mirror in the bathroom cabinet. He was sure that he looked different, slightly more handsome. He turned his face sideways, and lifted one eyebrow.

He returned to the bedroom with a glass of water and a foil strip of Tylenol tablets. From downstairs, he could smell coffee, and hear Serenity singing along to REM. ‘
Only to
wake up . . . only to wake up
 . . .’

‘Take your time,’ Robert grumbled.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Feely, sitting on the side of the bed. ‘Here.’

Robert shook five tablets into the palm of his hand and clapped them into his mouth. ‘God, this hurts. As if God hasn’t punished me enough.’

‘Serenity’s making coffee.’

‘Good. My mouth feels like the inside of a vacuum-cleaner bag.’

‘Last night . . . that was amazing, wasn’t it? It was . . .
revelatory
.’

Robert stared at him.

Feely said, ‘I can’t believe that we’ve become so close . . . I mean, when you picked me up on Route Six, you were a total stranger, right, and the snow was so thick that you might not even have seen me. But you
did
see me, and you stopped. And last night . . . the three of us . . . it was revelatory.’

‘If you say so,’ said Robert, cautiously.

‘Yes,’ said Feely, and without warning kissed him on the cheek.

Robert immediately dragged up the corner of the quilt and wiped his face. But he could see by the beatific smile on Feely’s face that he wasn’t making a pass at him. Feely looked shiny-eyed and truly inspired.

‘
Coffee!
’ called Serenity, from the foot of the stairs.

‘OK, sweetheart!’ Robert shouted back. ‘Just give us a minute!’

Feely stood up, but Robert said, ‘Wait up for a second, Feely. There’s something I want to talk to you about . . . something I need you to do.’

Feely hesitated, and then sat down again. ‘Sure,’ he said.

Robert cleared his throat. ‘You remember we were talking yesterday about making your mark. Doing something cataclysmic.’

‘Sure I do.
Ho-o-o-oly shit!
’

‘That’s right. Well, the thing is, I’ve started doing something cataclysmic already.’

‘Yeah?’

‘I’ve already started making my mark . . . showing those bastards that I’m not quite as crushable as they thought I was. Because they thought I was
crushed
, you know, when they took my kids away from me, and my house, and my job, and everything that made me the man I was. They thought, that’s Robert Touche ground down for good.’

‘That’s right,’ said Feely. ‘But you’re going to show them, aren’t you? You’re going to manifest your resilience.’

‘Like I said, Feely, I started already! The day before yesterday.’

Feely blinked at him. There was something in the tone of Robert’s voice that was starting to unsettle him, like somebody trying to laugh when they’ve had their legs torn off.

‘That guy who was shot, at the gas station, down near Branchville.’

‘Yeah?’

‘That woman who was shot, at that yellow house, here in Canaan.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Feely.

‘It was me,’ said Robert. ‘I shot them. Me.’

‘You shot them?
You
shot them?’ Feely was totally bewildered.

‘That’s right. I shot them.’

‘But—’ Feely looked desperately around the room, as if there was an explanation pinned to the wall somewhere. ‘
Why?
’

‘I just told you why. I had to do something cataclysmic—something to show those bastards that I wasn’t crushed. And I had to make them understand that their happiness can be smashed apart just as easily as mine was. It’s no good them feeling smug, and safe, and superior. Fate can come and whack them just like it came and whacked me. Right out of the ether.
Whack
, for no apparent reason.’

‘That’s, ah—Robert, that’s horrendous.’

‘Of course it’s horrendous! That’s the whole freaking point! Don’t you think it was horrendous, what happened to me? They didn’t even have the humanity to put me out of my misery!’

‘I don’t know. You actually
shot
those people? I find that really, really hard to assimilate.’

‘You’d better assimilate it, because I’m going to go on shooting people, one person per day, for every day they’re making me suffer.’

‘Really?’

Robert nodded.

Feely looked down at his fingers, silently counting. ‘Seven people a week, Robert. That could add up to be an awful lot of people.’

‘It could and it couldn’t. It depends how long it takes them to recognize what they did to me, and show some genuine remorse.’

‘I don’t know, Robert, this is a shock.’

‘It
is
a shock. It’s supposed to be a shock. That’s the holy shit factor.’

Feely looked at Robert. That round, tired face, and that gnomon nose. It was hard to imagine him deliberately shooting an innocent person. But he knew that even the gentlest person could be driven to extreme measures. Robert’s happiness had been bulldozed, all around him, for making one misjudgment, and who had allowed that to happen? The same people who had allowed Bruno to beat his mother, and Jesus to die of an overdose, and Feely’s brother and sister to spend the rest of their life in squalor.

Robert was right. Society couldn’t tear a man’s life to little pieces, not as comprehensively as that—and not expect him not to retaliate.

‘So . . . you’re going to shoot one person every day?’

‘More than that. I’m going to shoot one
happy
person every day.’

‘Man.’

Robert shifted on the mattress, and gritted his teeth because of the pain in his fingers. ‘You don’t approve? You don’t think I’m right to seek revenge?’

‘No, no. I think you have an overflow of justification. What they did to you: your wife, and her lawyers, nobody should do that to nobody. I mean they treated you like ordure. I was treated like ordure, so I can understand how you feel.’

‘So you’re not going to call the cops on me?’

Feely shook his head. For a split second, he thought about the three of them in bed last night, all joined together. ‘What do you take me for? I never called the cops on nobody all of my natural existence.’

‘So if I ask you to do something for me . . . you won’t turn it down without at least thinking about it first?’

‘Sure. Of course not.’

Robert held up his bandaged hand. ‘I can’t hold a rifle properly, until this heals. I was wondering if you could do it for me.’

‘A rifle? Me? I don’t know one end of a rifle from the other.’

‘It’s child’s play. You hold it, you squint down the telescopic sight, you see your target in the crosshairs, and you squeeze the trigger.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘Of course you can. My grandmother could do it.’

‘Then OK, maybe you should ask your grandmother.’

‘I would, but unfortunately she’s suffering from cremation. And besides, I’m asking
you
to do it. It’s not like I’m asking you to kill anybody. I’m the one doing the killing. You’re just holding the rifle for me.’

Feely felt a chilly ripple of dread; but exhilaration, too. Last night he had discovered the wonders of complicated sex. Today, he could find out what it was like to kill somebody. He had never expected his destiny to take him so far, and so fast.

‘
Coffee!
’ Serenity screamed. ‘
If you don’t want it, I’ll pour it down the sink!
’

‘We’re coming,’ said Robert, so softly that only Feely could hear him. ‘Don’t worry, Serenity, we’re coming.’

 

S
issy called Sam on the telephone a few minutes after 7:00 am.

‘Sam? Sissy.’

‘Morning, Sissy! Hope you slept good. I know I did. Three pages of Clive Cussler and I’m in dreamland.’

Sissy took out a cigarette, one-handed, and lit it. ‘Sam, I read the cards again last night.’

‘Oh, yes? I hope they told you that we’re due for another blizzard.’

Sissy coughed. ‘Something worse than that, Sam. Those three people—they’re going to kill somebody else, and I think they’re going to do it today. I have to go talk to the state police.’

‘Phone them. Or send them an email.’

‘I need to talk to them in person, Sam. They won’t believe me, otherwise.’

‘I’m sorry, Sissy. It’s snowing, and I’m seventy-one years old.’

‘But we might prevent an innocent person from being killed!’

‘I don’t think so, Sissy. I know you believe in what your cards have to say to you, but I don’t.’

‘Sam, the cards have given me a very clear and specific warning. Somebody in a vehicle is going to be killed, and the vehicle is going to carry on going, even though they’re dead.’

‘I’m sorry, Sissy. I really am.’

Sissy blew out smoke. ‘No, you’re not. You’re all out of moxie, that’s your trouble.’

‘Sissy, don’t you think that I feel useless, too?’

‘What? What the hell are you talking about?’

When he spoke, Sissy could hear Sam’s false teeth clicking. ‘We’re lonely, Sissy, you and me. Both of us lost the person we loved more than anybody else. Our children have all growed up, and we don’t like to impose on them too much. So we sit alone, believing that we’re no good to nobody.’

‘
Sam
—I am not doing this because I feel sorry for myself, or because I feel redundant. I am doing this because I know that somebody is going to die. You can’t deny that I heard voices yesterday! You can’t deny that I was irresistibly drawn to go to Canaan, whether I wanted to go or not!’

‘I never heard voices, Sissy; and the only place I felt irresistibly drawn to go was stone-nowhere.’

‘Sam—’

‘Sorry, Sissy. I’m staying inside today, close to the fire, and so should you.’

‘You eunuch!’ she snapped, but Sam had already put the phone down. She took a fierce drag at her cigarette and muttered, ‘You
eunuch
.’ But she knew that she didn’t really mean it. If the situation had been reversed, and Sam had asked
her
to drive all the way to Canaan, in the snow, because of something that he felt in his water, she wouldn’t have wanted to go, either.

She went into the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. She felt hungry but she didn’t really know what she felt like eating. A big fresh-cream cake, with a shortbread base, and heaps of strawberries on it, and strawberry syrup—that was what she really felt like. But all she had in the fridge was a slice of blueberry cheesecake that was three days past its sell-by date.

She was still waiting for the kettle to boil when there was a quick rap at the kitchen door. It opened almost immediately and Trevor came in, his shoulders and his balaclava sprinkled with very dry, granular snow.

‘Trevor! I wasn’t expecting to see you! Especially
this
early!’

Trevor shut the door. He took off his hat and his gloves and briskly chafed his hands together. ‘I wasn’t expecting to come here.’

‘Look,’ said Sissy, ‘I’m so sorry that I didn’t call you about going away to Florida, but I was so busy . . . I had to go up to Canaan to see about that poor woman who got shot.’

‘I know,’ said Trevor.

He took off his windbreaker and went through to the hall to hang it up. Sissy followed him to the doorway and said, ‘What do you mean, you
know
? How do you know?’

‘It’s not very easy to explain.’

‘All right.’ Pause. ‘But why don’t you try me?’

Trevor cleared his throat. ‘Last night I couldn’t get to sleep.’

‘You should try verbena. Verbena’s very good for insomnia.’

‘Momma, this wasn’t insomnia. This was like—’ Trevor hesitated, trying to find the exact word for it. ‘This was like sleepwalking, only I wasn’t asleep.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I don’t, either. I don’t understand it at all. But I couldn’t stop feeling this tremendous urge to get out of bed and get into my car and drive north.’

Sissy stared at him. She very much hoped that he wasn’t telling her what she thought he was telling her. ‘You’ve been working too hard, that’s all. You wait till you get to Florida, you’ll feel much better after a few days’ rest.’

Trevor shook his head. ‘What did you tell me? You said you could feel it in your bones. Well, that’s exactly the way that I felt it. I felt I had to go to Canaan, to save more people from getting killed. And it wasn’t like I had any choice in the matter. I was physically being
pulled
.’

‘Really?’

‘I kept tossing and turning and telling myself that it was ridiculous. I tried a sleeping pill, but that only made me hallucinate, on top of being awake. Jean woke up and asked me what was wrong, so in the end I told her.’