The Mercedes shuddered to a stop, its diesel engine quiet except for a few idle pings. Amy glanced through the driver’s side window and saw the yellow divider line running under her door, bisecting the big German car.
Unbelievable. She had almost lost it. If traffic had been heavy, if this had happened at any time other than four o’clock in the morning, she might very well have been hit from both sides while the car spun.
Unbelievable. Amy peered into the night but saw no sign of the man. She didn’t think she had hit him. NO. She hadn’t hit him; she was sure. Jesus. She wasn’t sure of anything. Beneath the heavy wig, Amy’s scalp was itchy with sweat. “Just relax,” she whispered. “Get it together.” She keyed the engine and it started right up, and that was a relief. She backed to the side of the road. Tires crunched over gravel.
The emergency brake made a comfortable ratcheting sound as she secured it. She put the car in neutral and pulled a Kleenex from the walnut box between the bucket seats. She was still shaking. A single tear had spilled from her right eye. She forced her trembling hand to her face and daubed at the tear, removing it without smearing her eye shadow. Her left eye was still brimming; she opened it wide, pressed the tissue against the white flesh of her eye, and the tear beaded into the paper.
“Okay,” Amy whispered. “Better.” She tugged at the heavy sweater, trying to get some air beneath it. The damn thing was too hot. She ended up flipping on the air conditioner. Soon the cool breeze worked through the wool. The engine idled comfortably. All was quiet on the gravel shoulder. The Mercedes’ headlights bathed the road, illuminating the wild skid marks left by the car.
Two angry question marks tattooed in burnt rubber.
There was no sign of the man. Amy hoped she hadn’t hit him. She couldn’t imagine actually killing anyone.
She hit the brights and the spectrum of light widened. Pine trees appeared to her right, overhanging the gravel shoulder, rimming the old drive-in theater. To her left, on the other side of the road, was a steep slope of dull brown earth, thick clumps of grass hanging at the crest, and above the grass the cool gleam of a chain-link fence.
The cemetery.
April was up there somewhere, buried in that dull brown soil, calling to her like the dead woman who lost her golden arm in that well-remembered ghost story.
No…it was only the wind. Shaking, Amy released the emergency brake. The Mercedes rolled forward, but Amy’s eyes were locked on the sloping wall of dirt, searching every inch of it as if she might see the end of April’s coffin jutting from the earth.
A dead pine shivered to her right, but Amy didn’t see it. The branches closed behind the man. He approached the car. The man from the road. His palms were bloody and his face was scratched because he had dived into the trees. He made greeting with a wet, red wave, squinting into the bright headlights.
“Help,” was the single word that spilled from his lips.
Amy saw him at the last moment. Gasping, she hit the brakes and brought the car to an instant stop.
A few more inches and she would have hit him.
“Help,” the man said again. His bleeding fingers closed over the hood ornament, as if he couldn’t understand what the big car could do to him.
Amy’s fear evaporated. She knew this guy. She shifted into neutral, set the brake, got out of the car. “Marvis?” she said. “Is that you?”
Marvis smiled as he came forward. He was soaked from head to foot, as if he’d been running through the sprinklers. Then Amy heard the sound of sprinklers tick-tick-ticking from the cemetery across the road, and she knew that was exactly what Marvis Hanks had been doing. He stepped past the headlights and for the first time saw more than her silhouette. His face became like nothing Amy had ever seen. A sound came from him that could only be described as a wail and he wobbled in a surprisingly comical way before diving back into the pine trees.
There was a short moment of silence. Then the wail resumed, and dead branches popped and cracked as Marvis Hanks hurried along the fence of the old drive-in.
Amy found herself laughing.
She slipped behind the wheel of the Mercedes and drove on.
God, it was fun being a ghost.
God, it was fun being April Destino.
4:33 A.M.
For a guy who’d blown his life savings burying a dead whore, Doug Douglas was doing better than Amy had expected. His neighborhood was solidly middle class. New cars were parked in most of the driveways; well-maintained yards with clipped grass and pruned bushes fronted split-level houses that aspired to a Spanish look but actually resembled something that a Taco Bell architect might create.
Amy double-checked the address and parked her Mercedes in the driveway. The muffled slam of the car door was like a thunderclap on the quiet street. She stood by the car for a moment, staring at the dark windows of the house, listening to the even sound of her own breathing. She was going to be okay. She was going to give Doug Douglas a lesson about the power of will and the value of a good memory, and she was going to get Doug’s film, and she was going to be okay.
She checked the address a third time. She checked the pistol and tucked it under the waistband of April’s cheerleading skirt. She tore the key from the map.
She was going to put this behind her.
The pistol was cold against her stomach.
She imagined warmth. The gentle hand of Ethan Russell resting on her belly. The passion they would share. All the wonderful places they would visit once her divorce came through. The smell of him, and the taste of him, and the pure magic of his lips. She would put this business behind her, tonight, because what lay ahead was pure perfection.
Tonight it would end. No matter the cost. No matter the risk.
Doug Douglas waited in the shadows.
Amy was here. He heard the front door open and close. He heard Amy’s footfalls on the staircase.
April hadn’t wanted this to happen. Not this way. She had wanted something different. But Doug wanted something, too. And he needed what he wanted just as badly as April needed her revenge.
April never understood that. No one understood. People always told him what to do. First his parents, then his baseball coaches, then Amy, then a string of lousy bosses, and finally April. Nobody cared what he wanted. Everyone pushed him, prodded him, made him submit.
Submit. He hated that word. He wouldn’t hear it tonight. Tonight, everything would go his way. He was calling the shots.
Calling the shots. Funny, thinking that, with a gun in his hand.
Amy glanced at the note scrawled on the bottom of the map. It directed her to a room under the main part of the house, a room that adjoined the garage.
Some people might call such a room a basement.
Amy Peyton wasn’t going to let a simple word frighten her. She wasn’t April Destino. She wasn’t weak. Doug Douglas was the one who was weak. Amy was here to remind him of that. She was here to remind him of Todd Gould’s party, and Todd Gould’s basement, and the things that had happened there on a cold night in the winter of 1976. She was here to put Doug in touch with the hard-bodied eighteen-year-old he had once been.