Kate switched her truck off, and it stopped. Just stopped. No coughs, no bangs, no running-on and shuddering and rattling like a terminal TB patient. Maybe she'd get used to trusting her transportation after another month or so. She set the handbrake and that worked, too.
She stared out at Lew's house. Her house now, sole heir of all the worldly goods and debts of one "Lew" Lewis, deceased. He'd updated his will after their divorce, sober and before witnesses, just to make sure nobody thought he'd made a mistake or forgotten in his alcoholic haze. Some people still looked at her funny about that. Friendly divorces were rare enough in this day and age. But she'd left him because of the booze, not because they didn't get along.
The house was a typical 1970s Farm Home Loan ranch, twenty years of deferred maintenance, she was fixing it up before putting it on the market. Damn sure she didn't need three roofs to sleep under in rotation, or two tax bills in the same day's mail.
And it bored her. Cookie-cutter house, thousands just like it, no personality. Not like Alice's house. Seemed like that place was nothing but personality, hundreds of years of grafting and pruning like a living thing, but all of it sound and strong and true. Integrity. Not necessarily legal, mind you — the Haskell House seemed to think that the laws of God and man were options.
Not that Kate was squeaky clean. She'd dispensed "law" with her fists on more than one occasion. Some punks and slimeballs heard that clearer, no matter what the ACLU might say, and a kid who fucked up once would get over a few bruises a lot faster than he'd clear a juvie record. And she'd made a habit of ignoring some things that Augusta or Washington considered major sins. Not her problems.
But she drew the line at things like arson and premeditated murder. History said the House didn't. History said Alice didn't. Both of them were completely feral under their civilized veneer. Kate didn't know anything she could prove, and she'd rather keep it that way. What she didn't know, she couldn't say in court.
And that was part of her contract with the Town of Stonefort, print so fine you couldn't actually read it. The selectmen didn't want to know, either. They trusted the Haskell Witch to pick and choose the laws that she'd obey.
So Kate had hidden in the cellar and puzzled over wires that offended the House's sense of balance. Or something. And the House had told her exactly what, popped breaker and smoke and all. It wanted a circuit re-routed, a job that called for Kate's big Milwaukee drill and holes bored through a few feet of seasoned red oak timber. No wonder the previous electrician hadn't run the wires that way.
Kate stubbed out her cigarette, climbed down, stretched, and glanced around the yard. She could skip mowing the lawn this week, dry weather up 'till today. Another of the old apple trees had dropped its leaves way early, on its last legs. She'd cut it up for firewood. The thunderstorm hadn't blown off any more of the ragged shingles that were her next job — original roof, thirty years into a twenty year warranty.
She slipped her key into the deadbolt lock and turned. Too easy. The door was unlocked already. She froze.
Long habit, reinforced by conscious effort — she always locked houses where she worked, no matter how careless she might be about the door of her own home. Caretaker jobs, renovations, whatever — if she left a client's house unlocked, her name could be shit within five minutes. Maybe less. Just one case of stolen antiques or vandalism on a summer cottage . . .
She'd locked that door, damn sure. Kate backed away.
She walked out to the truck and pulled her gun from the glove compartment. It gave her the creeps again, that Nazi automatic Grandfather brought back from Germany, the gun that had put 9mm holes in both her and Alice. But she was used to it, shot better with it than the .44 Mag she'd bought for putting down injured moose out on the highway.
Snap in the magazine, load a shell in the chamber, check the safety. Spare magazine in her hip pocket. Intruder search. She hadn't done that since the academy, not much need for it in Stonefort. Maybe she ought to call for backup.
Yeah, sure, Rowley. Bring in the SWAT team because you forgot to lock up. The boys will still be laughing five years from now.
And she hadn't had time to work on the place since last week. If there'd been a break-in, the burglar would be long gone. Nobody pillages in late afternoon.
She scouted, front and side and back and other side, slipping from bush to apple tree to rusty Sears lawn-mower shed, feeling like some damn fool playing paintball but giving any perp plenty of time to run out the front door while she checked the back. No broken windows. Shade pulled down in the big bedroom, and she'd left all of them up. No tire tracks in the driveway.
Then she was back at the front door, muzzle of the old Browning pointed at the clouds, left hand on the knob. At least she knew the layout — she'd lived in the damned house for seven years. Or was it eight? And Lew never moved the furniture.
Through the door, crouched, her front sight searched the living room. Nothing. Into the hall, tight against cold wallboard, bedroom, bathroom, bedroom, master bed. Closets. Nothing. She'd stripped the beds and hauled the mattresses and bedding to the dump — no place to hide under them.
Hall again. Living room, check behind the sofa, check under, all clear. That left the kitchen-dining, then the basement. Kate slid along the wall and then swung out, two-handed grip, pistol searching through the doorway. It found a large body sitting at the kitchen table, back to the door. Dumb. Maybe deaf, as well.
"FREEZE! Hands behind your head!"
Instead, the fool turned in the chair and smiled. "Hi, Mom."
Kate staggered back, free hand searching behind her, finding a floor lamp that crashed to the carpet and popped and scattered glass, finding the wall again, sliding around Lew's chair, finding the door frame and free air and light drizzle cold on her face and arms. She kept backing away from the house, butt finding the truck fender, gun ready but eyes not seeing. Inside the truck. Doors locked. Eyes closed, heart thumping and skipping, sweat running down her back and slick under her armpits.
Jackie.
Jackie with puckered shiny purple scars straight out of a horror movie, forehead and right side of her head, hair shaved into a Mohawk.
Jackie.
Tears and moans and shakes and might-have-beens.
Finally Kate blinked and sat up. Rain poured down outside the truck, dark gray blinking bright with lightning between the clouds, automatic counting one-thousand-one, one-thousand-two, thunder rumbling after ten seconds, two miles away. Her hand shook, the Browning still trapped between cold fingers, unfired. Safety off, dammit. She clicked the lever back where it belonged, popped the magazine, and cleared the chamber, locking the action open. Autopilot actions, firearms safety taking over for a blank brain.
Her teeth chattered.
The sky flashed again, she counted, thunder rumbled, three miles this time. The storm was moving on, not moving in. Kate twitched and found the dashboard clock, ticking antique, working again after thirty years of silence. Charlie paid attention to details.
She'd lost nearly half an hour.
The spare magazine was trying to poke a hole in her butt. She heaved herself up, hauled the damned thing out of her hip pocket, and dumped it on the seat next to the rest of the arsenal. Which she didn't need.
Open the truck door, step down, lean against the doorpost in the rain until her head cleared and the lawn stayed level. Shut the door, hear the chunk of the latch working right instead of having to lift up on it to click. Details.
She had to face this. Had to. Duty. Straight ahead, the only path she knew.
Jackie had known she was outside, seen her, heard her open the door. Waited. She should still be inside. Still waiting. Kate pulled her brain together and forced her feet back toward the front door. The still-open front door. Cold rain stung her face and soaked her shirt, spreading the ice of her chilled sweat.
Up the front steps. "Jackie?"
Silence. Kate stopped just inside, dripping on the small dirty boot rug that Caroline had told her was Navajo hand-woven, undyed wool in white and gray and black. Howinhell had that ended up in a Maine Goodwill thrift shop?
Focus. Her brain still spun. "Jackie? It's Mom."
Silence. Kate walked across the living room, wet boot-prints on threadbare carpet as old as the house. The kitchen waited, empty, chairs shoved under the table exactly as she'd left them last week.
Living room, hall, bedroom, bathroom, bedroom, master bedroom — all empty. Back in the kitchen, Kate stared at the basement door, opened it, reached in to flip on the lights, stared down. "Jackie?" Her voice bounced around the concrete into silence.
She hobbled down the steps, hip complaining. They'd never finished off the basement, so it was open space you could scan from corner to corner, furnace and oil tanks and a line of jackposts down the center, with her workbench along the back wall. Her tools lay on the concrete floor exactly as she'd left them, big Milwaukee drill and bit set lying on top of the coil of her heavy-duty extension cord. And Jackie wasn't there.
Kate hoisted herself back up to the kitchen, limping even more with despair. The room was still empty. She pulled out a chair, same chair Jackie had used, vinyl warm under Kate's hand, and sat. She rested her face in her hands. Wet face, from the rain or something else.
Those scars. Wounds like that, high-velocity slugs from an assault rifle, they'd probably kill. Not guaranteed, bullets and skulls and brains did funny things. But Kate had heard an AK-47 before, fired one out on the training range. That same sound had met Jackie on the far side of Tom Pratt's burning carriage house.
A ghost, that was what she'd seen, a ghost totally inside her own head. Just like around town, just like out at the stone circle. Wishful thinking from deep in a mother's brain, taking what she knew had happened and putting the best possible twist on it. Bringing back a Jackie who was still alive and functioning. A Jackie who smiled when she saw her mother.
You ain't seen hide nor hair of that Jackie in at least five years. Proof it was a delusion. Don't mention it to Alice — she'll have you on a shrink's couch within five minutes.
Kate shoved her face off the table and then her aching bulk out of the chair. And then she gimped her way down the stairs and grabbed the drill she'd come for, and hauled it and the extension cord and bit set out through the fading drizzling twilight to her truck. Then, hands free, she went back and locked and double-checked the door. As always.
Kate Rowley in a nutshell — lower your head and bull straight forward. It's the only path you know. Not smart enough to go around.
A white Ford Explorer splashed past in the rain, Kate's eye clocked it at five above the limit, no problem. Except, she knew damn near every car and truck within fifty miles of Stonefort. That was a stranger, and the tourists had all left with Labor Day. And Tupash had driven that kind of truck. Fucking mind-control bastard with his illusions and cocaine cowboy thugs, kidnapped the Morgan girls. She'd never understood that part, stuff that Alice knew and Kate didn't need to know, didn't want to know. All Kate knew was that she'd fired her .44 Mag Colt at him twice, and missed. He wasn't where she was aiming.
Tupash was dead. Cremated. She'd seen him die, twice over. Alice had been able to hit him in spite of the illusions. Kate dismissed him and the Explorer and climbed into her own truck, shivering now. Get the heater going. Even that worked better, clean core and new hoses.
Jackie would remember where to find the key.