“We could’ve been killed tonight,” Donald said, and it was then that I realized we’d been speaking in hushed tones.
“But we weren’t,” I answered.
“We could have been.”
“Yeah, but we weren’t.”
Donald ran a hand through his hair, eyes trained on the beach below. “The bodies will keep turning up, and once they’ve reached the end of the road Bernard created, all of this will end. They’ll either never know who the killer was, or they’ll somehow discover it was Bernard. Regardless, he’s dead and gone, and there’ll be nothing anyone can do. After the news stories have been reported, the television shows have aired and the books have been written, this whole horrible business will end. It’ll just fade away quietly until it’s reduced to some vaguely heinous memory, a scar Potter’s Cove will always have to endure, but little else. It’ll be a Remember When bit, that’s all. And in the end, none of it will have meant a goddamn thing. It’s a storm, Alan, and I plan to sit and wait it out.” He turned to me, his face half concealed in darkness, half illuminated by the moon and alternating swaths of police lights. “And once it passes, I’ll get on with this semblance of a fucking life I have. It’s not much—God knows—but it’s all I’ve got. I’m out.”
I killed the beer. “I’m sorry about tonight, I never should’ve—”
“I’m out.”
“Donald, you heard what that woman said tonight, you saw—you saw her hands.”
Rick moved a few feet ahead of us toward the edge of the bluff and sunk down onto the seat of his pants, the beers balanced in his lap.
“Yes,” Donald told me, “I heard what she said and I saw her hands.”
“And you still want to just walk away?”
“You’re flipping over rocks, Alan. Don’t be upset with me if I don’t want to roll around with the bugs slithering in the mud beneath them.” He nervously wiped a bead of sweat from his temple. “I’ve never been in a brawl in my life, and here I am pushing forty and suddenly I’m in some used tampon of a bar trying to avoid being killed by lowlife thugs who may or may not have known some prostitute Bernard was seeing. I’m listening to a woman either possessed or insane babbling about evil spirits and darkness and grave soil, her skin splitting and bleeding right in front of me like some cheap parlor trick only it’s real—it’s real because I saw it and felt it. But it’s still madness, Alan, and it’s only going to get worse. I want nothing more to do with any of it.”
I tossed the empty can aside, in Rick’s direction, and squared off with Donald. “Sticking your head in the sand and hiding isn’t the answer.”
“Call it whatever you’d like. I’m out.”
“Donald, I—”
“I’m sorry, Alan. I’m out.”
I was hoping Rick might back me up but he was watching the beach or the water or the night sky and clearly had no intention of getting involved.
Donald let a hand rest on my shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. “I need a cigarette and a drink. Beer’s not going to come anywhere near touching what I require this evening. I’ll be inside, you guys are welcome to join me.”
I watched him turn and walk back along the path toward his cottage. The darkness and trees swallowed him within seconds.
“He’s right, man,” Rick said from behind me.
I moved over toward him and crouched down. He had opened another beer and was nearly finished with it. “You out too?” I asked.
“It’s a miracle one of those assholes wasn’t packed, Alan.” He glanced at me and smiled, somewhat helplessly. His eyes were red and glassy. “I get into scuffles all the time, shit, it’s my fucking job, happens at the club on a regular basis. But it’s different there. It’s my turf, I’m in control, I know the situation, the score, and in most cases, the players. It’s a controlled setting. But in a place like tonight it’s different. You never know what you’re walking into.”
I knelt into the sand, felt it shift and sink under my weight, then sat back on my heels. The faint sounds of a police radio echoed up along the dunes before escaping across the slow steady waves of the Atlantic. “You saved our asses back there.”
Rick shrugged. “You’re gonna go look for that chick, aren’t you.”
“Yes.”
“You’re playing around with people who aren’t like us, man. These people don’t live in the same world we do. Shit, they’re just barely on the same planet. You go fucking around with that kind of crowd and all the shit they’re into and sooner or later you’re gonna find yourself in a situation. It’ll either get you killed or you’ll end up killing somebody else, and either way, Alan, you fucking lose.” He chugged some beer, belched. “I can’t be in situations like that, man, you understand? What if I’d killed that guy tonight? Oh, sorry, your honor, my dead friend and the motherfucking spirit world made me do it in self-defense. I can bring that fucking whale into court in a wheelbarrow and she can do her bleeding fingers trick. Yeah, that’ll work.”
“This shit’s not funny, man.”
“You see me laughing?” Rick shook his head to emphasize the point. “I’m not ever going back to prison. Not for anything. Not for anybody. What if somebody had gotten killed tonight?”
“Rick, what if whatever’s out there wants us dead anyway?”
A cooler breeze rustled the tall dune grass as if in answer, but it was chased by a swell of heat and continued on through the trees behind us, making the respite from humidity short-lived.
“Then we’re probably gonna die,” he said. “Look, I’ll always be here if you need me—you know that—but I can’t keep chasing—”
“You saw what happened in that backroom tonight.”
He turned to me quickly, like he planned to snap at me, but instead looked away and drank his beer. After a while he said, “Let the dead lie, Alan.” Rick opened another beer, held it out for me. “Let the Devil have his Hell, and let Bernard and the rest of them rot there. Go find Toni and get her back. Whatever’s real or whatever isn’t, that’s the only world—the only life that matters.”
I began to respond but thought better of it. I took the beer he was offering and replaced it with my hand. We shook for what seemed forever. When he finally let go he looked out at the water and quietly continued drinking. I wanted to tell him there wasn’t enough beer in the world to make all this go away, but stayed quiet and gazed down on the scene of the crime instead.
Somewhere down there was that darkness beneath the dirt Mama had spoken of. Darkness you didn’t come back from because you had to be dead to be there.
And not only was I on my way there, I knew now I’d be going alone.
CHAPTER 24
The prospect of returning to an empty apartment was less than thrilling, but I did it anyway. I checked the answering machine, hopeful to find something from Toni, but there were no messages. The refrigerator was nearly empty and the cupboards weren’t doing much better, so I called downstairs and caught the pizza parlor just before they closed. One of the kids who worked there ran me up a couple of plain slices and a Coke. I ate out on the steps and let the sounds of Saturday night in downtown Potter’s Cove distract me for a while. The apartment was beyond hot, and everywhere I looked I saw Toni. The place still smelled of her, of her cologne and gels and powders and lotions, and even though she had taken quite a few things with her traces remained, traces of us.