Night was coming down. Darkness after sunset took hold more swiftly in these weeks following the autumnal equinox. It was not safe to take his eyes from the twisty road, yet Will was certain he had spotted his stalker. A hundred yards back and closing. Will accelerated, but the police cruiser kept on until it was right behind. No siren, but the blue lights flashed once. Will waited for a straightaway, then pulled onto the shoulder.
Jimmy looked more agitated than angry as he came up to the window.
“What did I do this time?” Will asked, keeping his voice even.
“Nothing,” Jimmy replied. “We have to talk.”
“Look, she’s been my friend since before—”
“It’s not about Sam,” the cop said impatiently.
“No? What’s it about?”
“Stuff that’s been going on,” said Jimmy evasively.
“If this is your idea of talking...”
“Not here. Out in the middle of the road.”
“Where then?” Will asked. “The station? If you wanted to talk, why didn’t you come by the house?”
“I did,” Jimmy claimed. “A couple of times. You weren’t there.”
“I’m there every night. You’re telling me you can find me on these godforsaken roads but not in my mother’s house? What the hell kind of cop are you?”
“You’re pushing it, Conner.”
“No, you’re pushing it. This is harassment, and I’m not taking it.” He put his hand on the key in the ignition. Then dropped it. “I’m sorry about Brendan. I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know,” Jimmy echoed. “He was your friend, right?”
“We were friendly. Didn’t keep in touch. I’m sorry about the stuff with your sister too. I guess it’s a bad time for you.”
Jimmy’s mouth was working with no words issuing forth. The way it had that night a week ago.
“Fuck you,” Jimmy rasped. “This ain’t about me.”
“Okay,” Will replied. “So if we’re clear that there was no cause for the stop...”
Jimmy slammed his hands on the car door and leaned in. Instinctively falling back on intimidation. Will could smell his sour breath.
“Every time you come here, bad shit happens,” Jimmy declared. “You think nobody has noticed? Well, I have. And I’m not the only one.”
Will gave him a long look, but Jimmy didn’t budge. Like he was some TV cop, awaiting an admission of guilt. Will started the engine. Then he hit the button that rolled the window up. Jimmy only pulled his fingers out at the last moment. Fury on his face. Looking like he would shatter the glass with his forehead. Will gave him several moments to try, then put the car in gear and pulled away.
The thing to do now was turn off somewhere quickly, or get home as fast as he could. Will did neither. He drove slowly, waiting for the cruiser to appear in his rearview mirror once more. When it did, he felt his facial muscles pull. It took a few moments to identify the action as a smile. There was no mirth in him. It was someone else’s smile. It disturbed him, yet his mind was elsewhere. Working on the next step.
Right turn onto Orchard Road. The cruiser followed. Will bent toward the freshly cleaned windshield, peering through the gathering gloom. Old Forest Lane was unmarked, so he had to be alert. There, that break in the tightly packed trees. He turned hard onto the narrow road, small branches brushing the car. Jimmy missed the turn and Will slowed to see if he would back up and pursue. It was a bad road, no longer in use. Both vehicles would take a beating, but the patrol car did not belong to Jimmy.
Nevertheless, here came the cruiser again, swinging onto Old Forest Lane, headlights casting a ghostly glow over the interior of Will’s car. Will’s hands on the wheel looked strange to him. Too large. He sped up. Broken tarmac gave way to rutted dirt, and the car began to rattle and buck. An invisible pothole bounced him off the seat, banging his head on the roof. The impact made him vaguely dizzy, but also felt good somehow. The clarity of pain. It was not that late, but the woods were very dark. After shaping a turn, Will stopped abruptly and killed the engine. The police car was not visible yet, and he opened the door and got out. The ground smelled damp and mulchy. A familiar and pleasant scent. Will had spent a lot of time here when he was young. Fifty yards farther was the clearing where high school kids used to make bonfires and have parties. Maybe they still did. Across the road was swamp. Difficult to negotiate by day, impossible by night. Behind him, through some narrow trees, a rocky shelf rose almost straight up. There were paths, or you could just haul yourself, hand-over-hand. Will had done it many times, but not for years.
He heard the cruiser’s engine, saw the lights shaping the turn. Jimmy would not be able to get around his car. And driving in reverse all the way to Orchard Road would be a challenge. Will felt that nasty smile on his face again, felt an anxious flutter of mischief in his stomach. In his whole body. He stepped off the road into the trees.
Headlights lit up his mother’s car, the driver’s door hanging open. He could hear Jimmy’s curses through the police car’s windows. The cruiser stopped, engine idling, lights still on. Jimmy sprang out and went to the other vehicle. Searching around inside. As if Will might be hiding behind the seats? Or maybe looking for evidence. Drugs, paraphernalia, something to justify a bust. Had he left the keys in the ignition? No, here they were in his pocket.
“Conner,” Jimmy called, facing the trees where Will stood. Thirty feet away. “Where are you?”
Will turned and reached for the stony slope, scraping at dead leaves and moss before he got a solid grip. The incline was shallow enough to push himself up without much difficulty. But he made a lot of noise, and could hear Jimmy ducking through the trees.
“What are you doing?” Jimmy said, as Will rose away from him. “Get down here. You’re being an idiot.”
Anger was giving way to something else in Jimmy’s voice. Caution, uncertainty. Just the same, a moment later Will could hear the cop scrambling up the stony slope behind him. Two men playing at boys. Or maybe it was the other way around. When he got to a broad ledge about thirty feet up, Will felt the adrenaline surge abandoning him. He sat down suddenly on the spongy soil. Drew his legs up and put his forehead against his knees. There was a pressure in his head. A flickering spasm in his eyelid and a picture forming there. Bright light and dry heat. A desert landscape and another rock face. Climbing, struggling to reach the top, where a dusky-faced man smiled down at him. That’s right, brother, just a few more feet. Then we rest, and speak to the sky.
“Will,” Jimmy said, near at hand. Will looked up to see the compact shadow of the cop rising over the rim of the ledge. Jimmy was silhouetted against twilight sky. Seated in shadows, Will must have been invisible.
“I’m here.”
Jimmy took a few wary steps in his direction and crouched. Still not able to see him clearly.
“What the hell are you up to? Driving out here.”
“Someone was chasing me,” Will replied.
“Come on, man.”
“Just reliving my youth. The old Boy Scout camp is up this hill. Another hundred feet, maybe.”
“Yeah,” Jimmy agreed. “I was never a Scout.”
“Me neither. You ever come out here?”
“In high school. To drink.”
“Never walked in the woods? There are lots of trails.”
“Brendan did that,” Jimmy said irritably. “With you.”
“I thought you were with us once or twice.”
“Kevin, maybe. Look, what are we doing here?”
“I didn’t ask you to follow me.”
“You kind of did,” Jimmy countered. “Acting like that. And now you got me boxed in.”
“What bad shit happens when I’m around?” Will demanded.
“You want to talk about this here?” Jimmy dug at the moss with his finger, looking like a little boy. A little boy with a pistol hanging off his belt. “I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just saying...”
“Say it.”
“People have been dying.”
“Every day. Is it against the law now?”
“A bunch of things have gone down in the last six, seven years. Starting with Doc Chester getting shot by Eddie Price.”
“Hunting accident,” Will replied automatically. In fact, there had been some suspicion about the shooting, despite the long friendship between the men. Rumors that the charming Doc and Sally Price had gotten a little too friendly.
“Maybe,” Jimmy said. “Then Nancy Chester gets hit by a car walking home from the diner. Concussion, broken hip. Nobody saw anything. No one came forward. Louise Brown keels over in her garden. Heart attack. Fifty-three and fit as a horse.”
“It happens.”
“Sure it does. Then Marty Branford dies of a gas leak. It happens, right?”
“It did,” Will said, annoyance creeping into his voice.
“And every time it happened, every one of those events, you were here.”
“How do you even know that?” It was the wrong thing to say. Defensive. For all Will knew, he had been around for all those events. The point was that it meant nothing.
“There were twelve people in your mother’s prayer group.”
“Spirit circle,” Will corrected. Prayer group! But was that so far off? “There was no fixed number. People came and went.”
“There were twelve the night Johnny Payson died,” Jimmy persisted.
“You have witnesses, I guess.”
“My mother was there,” the cop said. “She told me.”
Here it was. Will thought of the Duffys as new blood. Working class Boston Irish, nothing to do with old family nonsense. He forgot Jenny Duffy had been Jenny Branford. He was surprised to learn she was there that night; she seemed only a casual member of the circle. But it explained Jimmy’s obsession.
“Twelve people,” Jimmy said again. “Most of them young. Seven have died since, some violently. A couple others had bad accidents.”
There had been talk of a curse. Back then. Those first ten years or so after the incident, when three people died and others suffered tragedies. Like Molly Jordan, whose only daughter Christine was killed in an accident. Driving her mother’s car to pick up her boyfriend, Will Conner. The talk went away after a while. If it had been stirred up again the last seven years, Will had not heard about it.
“What does this have to do with me?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Jimmy confessed after a pause. “It’s just, like, these coincidences.”
“Your mother died of lung cancer, right?”
“She was getting better,” Jimmy mumbled. “Everyone said she was getting better, and then something went wrong.”
Relapse. It happens, Will wanted to say again, but thought better of it.
“Jimmy. I was fourteen when she died. I was nine when Doug Payson threw himself out that window.”
“I know.”
“Just what is it you think I have to do with this stuff?”
“I don’t know,” Jimmy snarled, standing quickly and running a hand through his hair. “I’m not saying you did anything.”
“And you’re not saying I didn’t.”
“Maybe it’s something connected to you. Some person or some, some...thing. I mean every one of these times, the last seven years.”
A thought formed suddenly: had he gotten this idea from Sam? Will hated thinking it, but it made sense. It didn’t sound like something Jimmy would dream up on his own. More like something he would seize upon to justify his antipathy for Will.
“And here we are again,” Jimmy said.
Here we are again. Will’s tired mind tried to dodge the meaning of that phrase, but the words caught and held him. In a moment he was on his feet, rage surging in his muscles. He rushed at the other man.
“What are you saying?”
Jimmy gave ground and put his open hands out, stop signs.
“Hang on now.”
“You miserable shit, what are you saying?” He growled more than spoke, in a voice that did not sound like his. “Do you think I pushed my own mother down the stairs?”
Will swung at his face, just catching the nose as Jimmy ducked away. The next moment the cop’s open hand struck him on the side of the head, unbalancing him. His ear rang, his whole head rang and Will squeezed his eyes shut. Breathed deeply. It did not calm him, but worked like a bellows, adding oxygen to his rage. He was sweating anger out of his pores. When he opened his eyes, the cop appeared diminished somehow.
“Just calm down,” Jimmy said, his voice shaking.
Will went at him again, seizing him by the shoulders, squeezing his fingers into muscle and sinew. Jimmy grabbed his forearms and tried to break free, but Will’s grip was iron. Their faces were less than a foot apart, the cop’s screwed up tightly. His eyes found Will’s, and sprang open wide. His mouth let out a little moaning sound, and then his whole body became frantic with the effort of escape.
Startled, Will released him. Jimmy stumbled back quickly and was gone. Will saw one arm flailing and then no more. A moment later there was a thud on the rock face below, then a softer one in the dead leaves at the base of the ridge. Will stepped forward cautiously and looked down. He could hear movement down there, but could see nothing.
“Jimmy?”
He turned himself around and started down. His mind was blank, which was useful. An empty mind aided concentration. It was dangerous work trying this in the dark, especially with all his muscles quivering. He slipped several times, once banging his ribs hard against the rocky face. He heard a groan, and then a slow thrashing around in the leaves as he reached the bottom of the incline.
“Jimmy,” he said more forcefully to the shadows.
A hunched figure went crashing through the saplings, bouncing off small trees until it reached the road. Will could see Jimmy clearly then in the patrol car’s headlights. Turned sideways to him, bent over, with one arm hanging uselessly and the other pointed back at Will.
“You stay away from me.”
Will couldn’t think how to answer. He barely remembered what had happened, did not know who caused it. Jimmy was hurt and needed help, but moving toward him was not going to help things. After fighting with the handle a moment, Jimmy got the door open and jumped into the cruiser, slamming the door behind him. Will wandered into the road, alongside his mother’s car and in the full glare of the lights.
The cop leaned forward, squinting. As if trying to make out who or what this being was. Then he jammed the cruiser into Reverse and began to back down the narrow road. Will was certain he would careen into the marsh, but Jimmy shaped the turn expertly and disappeared. His headlights and the rumble of the engine slowly faded. The darkness that followed was profound. A large bird of prey swept out of a nearby tree and vanished in shadow. It only then occurred to Will that Jimmy had never reached for his gun.
He could not remember later how he left the woods. Not driving in Reverse to Orchard Road, he was sure of that. So he must have gone forward instead, all the way out to Seaview. God knew what that muddy track had done to the car’s suspension. He drove aimlessly for a while. At one point he pulled up in front of the police station. Looking for what? The whirl of activity that would accompany the manhunt to find him? Will Conner: Cape Ann’s Most Wanted. It was quiet. They knew where to find him. He drove home.
Quiet there too. His mother had made a vegetable stew with Moroccan spices. He ate some straight from the pot, standing in front of the stove. It was good, but he had little appetite. He opened a beer and went into the living room, where the Boston-Oakland game flickered on the muted television. His mother was asleep on the sofa. He checked her breathing before settling down to watch the game. Will was dead asleep long before the Red Sox pulled out a victory in the bottom of the eleventh inning.