The lightning danced along the sky and sizzled among the trees, reverberated with butt-clenching snaps and crackles, and strobed briefly through the limbs and leaves.
Lights burning late morning in houses along the way blew out and went dark as I passed. Transformers on poles sputtered and hissed, and pole lights winked away.
My new wipers beat at the rain and my headlights were only slightly brighter than two fireflies in a sack. The water was flowing over the road, and the wind rocked my car like dice in a Yahtzee cup.
Low on gas and high on energy, by noon I damn near floated into New Long Lincoln. The streets were ankle-deep in water and even old Jefferson Davis’s statue looked like it would have liked an umbrella, because it was only a shape coated in dark rain.
There were cars parked at the curb all along Mrs. Chandler’s street, so I had to park down away from the house and run along the sidewalk and up onto the porch. I brought my ax handles this time. The door was locked. I used my key to get in. Soaked as I was, the air in there was uncomfortably cool.
I called out to Mrs. Chandler. I felt the floorboards shake gently, and a moment later she appeared in the kitchen doorway. She looked weaker and even more frail than when I had seen her last.
“You shouldn’t have come back.”
“Believe me, I know it.”
“Wait a moment.”
She went away and came back with a towel. I dried off. She said, “Come in the kitchen and have a bite to eat.”
I gave her the towel and went in there. She said, “Look in the refrigerator. Fix it yourself. I don’t have an appetite or the strength to do much.”
“Sure.”
Mrs. Chandler draped the towel over the back of a chair and sat in another. I found some sandwich meat that I couldn’t identify but that looked fresh, got a slice of cheese, the bread, and mayonnaise, and made a simple sandwich. There was brewed coffee that was a little old and tasted as if it were angry. I ate and sipped slowly. Bad as the coffee was, I enjoyed it.
“I’m not feeling so well, Danny.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Me too. Listen here. I hate you came back, and I’m glad you came back at the same time. I been sitting here all morning thinking about what I haven’t done.”
“You tried with the book.”
“That was like peeing in the ocean and saying every little bit helps.”
“I have an idea or two,” I said, and I told her about the files at the club and what I expected was in them.
“That could be the ticket,” she said. “Listen, I have to go lie down. I felt fine enough yesterday, but today…maybe it’s the rain. Today I feel like shit in a wheelchair.”
“That would be Kate Conroy.”
That made her laugh a little. “Guess it would. And you know what saddens me? That bitch will probably outlive me.”
* * *
It was late afternoon, and sundown might as well have already happened, though normally during the summer months, it would go down late.
I decided to pack all my stuff. No matter how things turned out, even if I got hold of the files at the club, after tonight I was done being in New Long Lincoln.
I thought about the locks on the file cabinets. We had to get past that. I could jimmy a lock if I had enough time and the right tools, but I thought perhaps a crowbar or the sharp end of a tire tool, though less graceful, could do the work faster.
I put the empty suitcase on the bed, and the lights went out. Okay. That made sense. I had seen them dying all along the road on my trip, but something clicked in the back of my mind, and it was simply that I hadn’t seen a flash of lightning or heard a crack of thunder.
Okay. Don’t have to. Lights can go out without you hearing a damn thing. It was still rainy and dark outside and maybe something blew down somewhere along the street. Power lines. A transformer.
I heard something that didn’t sound quite right. It was a clicking that sounded like the front door being carefully opened, but the front door was locked, and only Mrs. Chandler and I had keys.
Was she up and about?
Maybe.
Was she thinking about a walk in the rain during a near pitch-black afternoon?
I peered between the curtains. There were a few lights across the street in front of the bank. I put my face close to the glass and looked in both directions. There was a stagger of lights, fuzzy through the heavy rain. Okay. No transformers blown.
Someone had thrown the switch in the house fuse box.
I eased to the door and put my ear to it. I thought I heard the front door close and there was air pressure at my door as the one in the hallway was pulled to.
I locked my bedroom door, listened some more.
Was someone on the stairs? I thought I could hear footsteps.
Could it be Mrs. Chandler?
I had heard her come up the stairs many times, and this didn’t sound right. It sounded heavy. I moved across the room in the dark and grabbed a chair and put it under the doorknob.
I heard that bad stair near the top squeal, then there was a pause.
Enough time for me to imagine all manner of things went by, then another squeak as weight was shifted off the step.
Okay. Not my imagination, and not Mrs. Chandler, unless she had gained fifty pounds and walked like an elephant.
I picked up one of the ax handles from the corner of the room. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, thick and firm as the teeth in a comb. I rested the ax handle on my shoulder and envisioned swinging for the fence.
I pulled the curtains wide to get more light on the subject from outside. I could hear the doorknob gently turning. The lock held.
All right, Danny. Keep your cool. Stay steady. No one is in the room yet. The door is locked. There’s a chair—
The chair scraped backward slightly and the door bumped hard against the lock. I slid over and quietly pushed the chair back into place. The doorknob was definitely turning, and then it went still. I felt clammy and weak in the knees. I started to yell out some kind of threat, like “I have a gun,” but restrained myself. Best for them to think the door was locked and I had gone.
No. They were bound to have seen my car out there. So, no good. But wait—I hadn’t parked out front. That was something.
They probably had a gun. There could be more than one. They came through that door, especially if they had guns, I didn’t want them seeing me right away—
And then at the bottom of the door, I saw a bit of light appear and crawl along the floor outside.
Mrs. Chandler could have a flashlight. She would need one. But if so, why was she at the top of the stairs and why hadn’t she knocked or said a word?
Nope. Still wasn’t her, no matter how hard I tried to make it be.
More prowling around outside the door. Another turn of the knob, less subtle this time. The chair rocked back a bit. I put my leg against it.
Trembling, I stood with my ax handle at the ready. Then I heard a kind of bark, more than a scream, at the bottom of the stairs. It certainly wasn’t a happy sound, and then there was movement outside my door, but it was moving away. I heard the stairs squeak again, and now there was nothing quiet about what was going on out there. My intruder was going down the stairs with all the stealth of a rhinoceros trying out a few dance steps.
I waited. Listened.
My door vibrated when the door downstairs was opened. There was another cry and I recognized that voice.
Mrs. Chandler.
It took all the courage I could muster, along with a lot of foolhardiness, which in the end might be the same thing, for me to move the chair and set it aside.
With the ax handle held over my shoulder, I used the other hand to snap open the lock.
I pushed the door open and no one shot me.
I slipped onto the landing and looked down the stairs. The front door was wide open and rain was blowing up onto the porch and into the hallway, almost to where the stairs began.
Lightning did a little jig through the downstairs window.
I took a deep breath and crept down the stairs. My foot hit that squeaky spot. I froze.
Nothing.
I went down and looked in the living room. No one there either. I went through to the closet in the hall. I opened the closet and took down the box with the pistol.
In the kitchen, I put the box on the table, laid the ax handle beside it. I loaded the pistol, all six shells. My hands shook while I did it. I had to really concentrate to get those shells in the chambers.
I left the ax handle and, carrying the pistol, went to the closet again. I placed the pistol on a shelf, got the single-shot shotgun out, the one Mrs. Chandler had used to frighten Jefferson Davis and Coolie Parker with.
I managed all of this in the dark, but the dark downstairs wasn’t as bleak as upstairs, as lights from across the street were stronger and more direct. They poured in through the living-room window. Their glow spread to the closet door and there was light coming through the kitchen window as well. It wasn’t a light to do watch repair by, but it was okay.
I scrounged around in the closet and found a flashlight, but it didn’t have batteries. I looked for shotgun shells and came across an open box. I felt around in the box with the tips of my fingers. Three shells.
I broke open the shotgun and slipped one into it, put the other two in my pants pocket. I might actually hit something with a shotgun, but shooting someone wasn’t high on my list of priorities. Or hadn’t been, but as I stood there in that little hallway in front of the closet, I mentally moved blowing someone’s head off to a higher position on my priority list.
I was scared, but I was mad too.
I went into the living room and to the door across from the couch. The door was cracked open. I moved it with my foot, crouched with the shotgun at the ready. I was looking into an empty room.
To be sure Mrs. Chandler wasn’t hiding under the bed or in the closet, I gave the room a once-over. This was made easier as she had a flashlight sitting on her end table, along with all manner of bottles of pills. I took the flashlight.
Mrs. Chandler, despite all her bravery, might wish now she had never showed me a thing so she could have died in her own home or in some hospital somewhere pumped full of morphine instead of being placed in a chair with a garrote around her neck, the city council watching as a happy Jack Jr., smiling like a ghoul, slowly tightened it.