Touchy and Feely (Sissy Sawyer Mysteries) (27 page)

They reached the entrance to the Big Bear Supermart and Robert turned into it. The parking lot surrounded the supermarket building on three sides, its bays radiating like the spokes of a wheel. They drove slowly up and down the salt-gritted asphalt, looking for a free space, their windshield wipers flapping wildly from side to side.

‘What if we can’t find anyplace to park?’ said Feely. He was beginning to feel panicky now. Maybe this was how the conspiracy worked. Maybe they made you feel dazzled, as if you had discovered the answer to everything that had ever gone wrong in your life, but all the time you were walking blindly into a trap. He twisted around in his seat and he could see that the red and blue police lights were flashing right across the highway, and that they were stopping everybody—cars, SUVs, and trucks.

‘Here we go,’ said Robert.

A huge Toyota full of fat, pale-faced people backed out of a space in front of them. Robert waited while the driver wrestled to straighten his vehicle up.

‘Look at them,’ he said, taking another swig from his bottle. ‘The lardasses shall inherit the earth.’

He pulled into the space and switched off the Chevrolet’s engine. ‘OK, Feely. Now we get into the trunk and we stay there until the heat’s off. You don’t need another leak, do you?’

‘I can hold it.’

‘Very good. Very professional.’

They opened the rear doors and pulled down the back seats. Then they climbed into the trunk space, hunching up their knees so that Robert could pull the seats back up behind them. He switched on a small green plastic flashlight, and shone it into Feely’s face.

‘Pretty cozy in here, huh?’

‘Yeah,’ said Feely, although he was feeling claustrophobic already.

‘We have water, we have Gatorade, we have chocolate chip cookies. We can hold out for as long as we need to.’

‘What if they search every car?’

‘Relax. How are they going to do that? Six hundred cars and everybody coming and going like ants. And it won’t occur to them that we pulled in here, will it? They’ll be thinking that we wanted to put the maximum distance between us and Mad Falls, won’t they? They’re transparent. I can see the way their minds work. Everything’s transparent.’

By the time Steve reached the roadblock, the traffic was backing up three or four miles, and he had to drive in the middle of the road with his lights flashing and occasional yips of his siren.

‘Do you still feel them?’ Steve asked Sissy, who was sitting in the front passenger seat next to him.

‘Oh, yes,’ Sissy told him. ‘They’re very, very close.’

Doreen, in the back, said, ‘Who needs bloodhounds?’

Sissy turned around and smiled at her. ‘I really don’t blame you for being skeptical, my dear. I find it very difficult to believe it myself. But it’s far too strong a feeling for me to ignore. It’s like wanting a cigarette, to the nth power.’

‘I don’t smoke,’ said Doreen.

‘You eat chocolate, don’t you?’

Doreen didn’t answer that. Instead, she leaned forward to Steve and said, ‘What if they’re not here?’

‘Then we’ll have to look someplace else, won’t we?’

‘I’m glad I don’t have to explain this to Lieutenant-colonel Lynch.’

They reached the roadblock and Steve pulled the Tahoe into the side of the road. A trooper with a heavy gray mustache came forward and peered inside. ‘Morning, folks. Nice day for a manhunt.’

‘How’s it going, Trooper?’

‘Not much so far. Couple of kids with no insurance. A woman with a coat on and nothing else.’

Sissy looked across the highway toward the huge brown bear. The pull was even stronger now. It made her heart beat slower, and much more heavily, so that she could hear her blood throbbing through her inner ears,
squelch-squelch-squelch
, like two people walking in the snow.

‘Detective Wintergreen, they’re here.’

Steve said, ‘
Here?
’

‘That’s right. Somewhere in that supermarket.’

The trooper looked at Steve and raised one eyebrow. Steve said, ‘I’m just going to take a look. I may need some backup, OK?’

‘You’re going to look
here
?’

‘That’s right. I’ll give you a squawk if I need you.’

‘You’re the boss.’

They drove into the parking lot. Sissy hadn’t felt like this since she took a ride on the centrifuge at the Danbury Fair, when she was fifteen years old. She could hardly breathe, and she felt as if she were pinned in her seat.

‘Are you OK, Ms Sawyer?’ Steve asked her.

Sissy nodded. ‘They’re here, I’m sure of it. Somewhere in this parking lot. Left, go left at the end here.’

Feely said, ‘What time is it?’

Robert switched on his flashlight and checked his watch. ‘Twelve noon, in a couple of minutes.’

‘I just wanted to tell you how gratified I am that you picked me up. I mean, everything we’ve done together.’

Robert turned himself over, with a grunt. ‘Well . . . I can’t say it hasn’t been instructive.’

‘Are you going to go on shooting people?’

‘I don’t know, Feely. Sometimes things change, even when you’re not expecting them to, and all of a sudden the things you used to believe in don’t matter any more.’

‘Robert?’

There was a very long silence. Robert switched the flashlight on again, and then off, and then—when Feely still hadn’t said anything—he switched it back on.

‘What is it, Feely?’

‘I don’t know how to say this without you misunderstanding me.’

‘Well, why don’t you say it anyhow? There isn’t much room for misunderstanding, is there, not in here?’

‘What I wanted to say was, I love you, man.’

Robert stared at him, puckering his mouth up and moving it around the way people do when they’re seriously thinking about something. Then he said, ‘I love you too, Feely. You
zurramato
.’

Sissy whipped up her right hand.

‘
Stop!
’ she said.

Steve abruptly stopped, and the SUV that was following too close behind almost rear-ended them.

Sissy squeezed her eyes tight shut.

‘What is it?’ said Doreen, impatiently.

‘They’re very close. I felt something—I felt—’

She slowly turned her head and looked at Steve in bewilderment. ‘Good God,’ she told him. ‘I felt
love
.’

They drove at a snail’s pace along Row 20G. Sissy kept her window wide open, even though the snow was blowing in her face.

‘They’re very close now. They’re very, very close.’

Their headlights illuminated a dirty, dark-bronze Chevrolet Caprice Classic, late eighties model. Sissy touched the back of Steve’s hand, and nodded at it.

‘You’re sure?’

‘I can feel love through a cinderblock wall, Detective.’

‘OK, then. Let’s take a look.’

Steve drove past the Chevrolet and parked the Tahoe fifty yards further down. He said to Sissy, ‘Stay right here, please, Ms Sawyer. Doreen and me will go check this out.’

Steve and Doreen took out their flashlights and unholstered their guns and walked back to the Chevrolet. Sissy could see their flashlight beams criss-crossing as they looked inside.

‘Someone’s looking in the car,’ Feely whispered.

‘Sssh,’ said Robert, in the darkness. But Feely felt him picking up the rifle, and then he heard him operate the bolt. Very slowly, very carefully, Robert chambered another round.

Steve stepped back from the Chevrolet. ‘Connecticut license plate. Let’s run it through traffic and see what we come up with.’

It was then that Doreen touched his sleeve, and pointed to the rear of the car, next to the offside tail-light. There were two circular holes drilled in it, one above the another, and vapor was blowing out of them. Doreen blew vapor from her own mouth, and pointed back at the car so that Steve would get the point.
Breath
.
They’re hiding in the
trunk.

Steve pulled back the slide of his automatic and stepped right up to the side of the car. Then he slammed his hand on top of the trunk and shouted, ‘State police! Come on out of there with your hands where we can see them!’

Immediately, there was a sharp crack, and Doreen was flung up into the air and over the hood of a Malibu parked opposite. Steve fired into the side of the Chevrolet’s trunk, four rapid shots, and then he ducked down and crab-scuttled over to Doreen. She was lying on her side with her cheek in the snow, and there was blood running out of her mouth.

‘Stomach,’ she whispered.

Steve unhooked his r/t and said, ‘Officer down! Big Bear parking lot, Row G! I need an ambulance and I need backup! Now!’

He kept his gun pointed at the Chevrolet, while at the same time cradling Doreen’s head with his hand. ‘You’re going to be all right, OK? Just stay awake, and keep talking.’

Doreen nodded. ‘You don’t get rid of me that easy.’ Then she coughed, and more blood poured out onto the snow. ‘Tell that psychic . . . tell her she’s really psychic.’

‘Robert?’ said Feely. The trunk was filled with the stench of cordite and gasoline, and his eyes were watering. ‘Robert, can you hear me?’

He shook Robert’s shoulder but Robert was heavy and floppy and unresponsive. ‘Robert! Come on, man, I don’t know what to do!’

He shook him and he shook him but still Robert didn’t answer. Feely lay there, coughing, lit only by the pencil-shafts of light that came from the bullet-holes, and the holes that Robert had drilled for his sniper rifle.

What would Captain Lingo do? Captain Lingo could talk his way out of anything. Captain Lingo would climb out of the car with his hands up and say, ‘You’ve saved my life, officers, and I thank you. I was being forcibly abducted by this homicidal maniac and only your instantaneous responses spared me from a grisly demise.’

He had used the phrase ‘grisly demise’ in his comic strip, but he had never had the chance to say it in real life.

‘Grisly demise,’ he whispered. Then he pushed against the rear seats with his feet.

At that instant, the Chevrolet’s gas tank blew up. The two-ton car was thrown up into the air, blazing, and a huge orange fireball rolled up into the snow. It dropped down again, with a thunderous crash, and it lay there burning while police officers and shoppers gathered around and watched it.

Steve, shielding his face with his upraised hand, said, ‘
Holy shit
.’

Steve stayed with Doreen until the paramedics arrived. Then he walked back to the Tahoe where Sissy was sitting, her hands clasped together as if she were praying.

‘How is she?’ Sissy asked him.

‘Pretty badly hurt, but the paramedics think she’s going to survive.’

‘I’m so sorry, Detective. I really am.’

‘No, no. If it was anybody’s fault, it was mine. They had a weapon rigged up in the back of the car, so that they could shoot without opening the trunk. I should have been more careful.’

He took off his hat and wiped the snow away from his eyebrows with the back of his hand. ‘I’ll organize someone to take you home. Maybe I can call on you tomorrow, so that I can work out what we’re going to say about this.’

‘I’d rather you said nothing at all—at least as far as I’m concerned.’

‘Well, we’ll see,’ said Steve. He looked at her for a while with the orange light from the burning Chevrolet dancing on the side of his face. Then he said, ‘You felt
love
?’

Sissy nodded. ‘People can hide hatred, you know, quite easily; and they can hide contempt. But it doesn’t matter how hard they try, they can never hide love.’

 

T
he next morning, the snow stopped. Sissy went into the yard and stood listening to the silence. Mr Boots came out, too, and stood unusually close to her, his tongue hanging out, panting.

‘What are we going to do, Mr Boots?’ she asked him.

She was still standing there when she heard a vehicle outside, and then Steve appeared, wearing sunglasses with yellow lenses.

‘How are you doing, Ms Sawyer?’

‘Oh, I’m fine, Detective, thank you. How’s your partner?’

‘She’s in pretty bad shape, I’m afraid. But she had surgery last night, and they’re confident that she’s going to pull through.’

‘I never caught her name, poor woman.’

‘Doreen. Doreen Rycerska. She always had a sharp tongue on her, but she’s a good detective.’

‘I’ll send her some flowers. Would you like a cup of tea? I have some cherry cake, too. I didn’t bake it myself. I can’t bake cakes to save my life.’

They went inside, while Mr Boots stayed in the yard to roll around in the snow.

Steve saw the DeVane cards on Sissy’s coffee table and picked them up. ‘That was some reading you gave me.’

Sissy was setting out the tea-tray. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘They’re unnervingly accurate, those cards. Sometimes I wonder if I ought to throw them away.’

‘What you said about my son—’

‘You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.’

‘All I was going to say was, it was true. He was arrested for sexual assault, and when I talked to him about it, he said that he wanted to be found guilty, to get his revenge on me. Well—as you can imagine—that hurt.’

Sissy poured boiling water into the teapot and stirred it. Then she brought in the tray and set it down on the coffee table, next to the cards.

Steve said, ‘Late last night, the girl he was supposed to have assaulted withdrew her complaint. Apparently she was terrified of what her parents were going to say, finding Alan creeping out of their house with no pants on.’

‘Kids,’ said Sissy.

‘Yes,’ said Steve. ‘They let you down, they lie to you, they look you in the face and tell you that they hate you, but what can you do?’