We took cushions off the couches and used Buck’s pocketknife to cut the covers off them, and we stuffed those full of the files and videos, made ourselves two bags apiece. We couldn’t take all of the files and recordings, but we could take enough for evidence. We carried them carefully to the cellar, which was no easy job. We ended up taking a chance and leaving the shotgun in the file room while we did it to make sure we could manage it all. The flashlight, the tire tool in my belt, our pistols under our shirts, and the bags were controllable. The shotgun was just too much.
We carried them into the tunnel and set them just inside. I decided to close the door, and Buck helped me do it. I then had an idea. I went across to the doors with the big rings and pulled one open and went in and got one of the wheelbarrows.
As I pushed it back through the doorway, Buck holding the door for me, I heard a soft grind. The sound was of the garage door at the far end sliding up. I could hear the purr of a finely tuned motor and see the glow of headlights. Buck left the door open a crack. We peered into the garage. There were headlights, and more behind those.
I could see the rain coming down out there, and it was as if it were being dumped from buckets, and the sound of it echoed inside the garage. The cars, wipers thrashing, glided inside.
It appeared there was some sort of gathering tonight after all.
I eased the door shut. We could hear car doors slamming and voices inside the garage. It sounded festive out there.
“What now?” Buck said. “Do we take the files and run?”
“Might be the smart thing, but I’m wondering if they are still having a, shall we say, assembly?”
“You mean, do they plan to have…what would you call it?”
“A sacrifice. Believe me, I know how that sounds. But if that’s the case, we need to stop it.”
“Depends on how many and who we have to stop.”
“You had your chance to bail. Still can.”
Buck huffed, then sighed, then grinned at me and said, “Ah, hell, let’s go see. Just realized I left my pocketknife in the file room. I want that back.”
* * *
I pushed the wheelbarrow into the tunnel and we put the makeshift bags of files into it. Then we quietly worked our way back to the area above the room with the triangular table in it, cut the flashlight, and sat on the floor next to the tall windows. I eased back a section of the heavy blue curtain that covered one of the windows.
Buck found a spot and did the same. The door opened and an oblong slash of yellow light filled the doorway. The light was marred by the slender shape of a man in the center of it.
The man came into the room and turned on the light. He was the tall cop who I knew now to be Coolie Parker, one of the clowns who’d attacked me twice with his partner, Jefferson Davis. He was in uniform, bareheaded, a holstered gun resting on his hip. The light he turned on was soft and blue, and it filled the room like a velvet dream.
Coolie’s movements under the blue light caused him to appear to be awkwardly swimming in deep water. He made his way onto the dais and to the cabinet behind the tall chair. He took out Creosote Johnny and for a long moment stood contemplating its appearance. Perhaps he was admiring it; perhaps he was wishing on it like a falling star.
He carried the figure to the front of the stage and placed it there as gently as a mother with child. He stepped off the dais, walked to the triangular table, stood at its pointed tip, turned, and examined the dark totem in that sweet, soft light.
It must have satisfied him, because he walked briskly to the open door and its gap of light, went through it with a glance around the room, a lift of his head toward us as we leaned out of the way, then closed the door.
“What do we do if they bring in someone?” I said. “For the business. You know.”
“We stop it. That was your idea, remember?”
“Yeah, it was a good thought, but now I’m wondering. Coolie has a gun, maybe the others from the cars do too?”
“We have guns.”
“I’m a terrible shot.”
“I’m not that terrible,” Buck said. “And what the hell else can we do? If we go for help, it’ll all be over. And what help? In town, who do we know for sure that’s not on their side? Who would help us? Who would believe us, anyway? Hell, I’ve seen the files, and even I don’t believe it.”
Buck had a point, of course, and he’d answered my question the way I had already answered it for myself. I hoped that when they finally came through that door and into the blue light, it would be with boxes of pizzas or that cheese tray I had imagined. Maybe there would be a dance party beneath the spinning disco ball, though the main three wouldn’t be doing a lot of dancing. Judea Parker didn’t even have the strength to nod to the music.
We sat there on the floor in a bit of the blue light that came through the cracks in the curtains. We sat there with no real plan and no real idea of what the hell was up; we waited to see and know. Time skulked by like it was on a respirator. One minute was an hour, two was a century. What were they doing out there?
Then I felt the air change, dust moving about. There was a creak of wood, and I smelled something strong and sweet, realized what was happening too late.
They came into the nearly dark room the way we had come in. Came in with a burst of anger and muscle.
I went for my pistol, but I might as well have been reaching for a star. I was tackled by someone.
Buck jumped up and pushed his back against the wall. He struck out at a tall shape that I figured was Coolie. Coolie went down, supported himself on his hands and knees, shook his head to clear the moss.
Then a big pear-shaped man in a cowboy hat banged Buck’s head against the wall by shoving a palm under his chin. A hypodermic needle flashed and poked into Buck’s neck.
Buck grunted, let out his breath, and slid down the wall to the floor, not moving. The big man tossed the hypodermic needle aside.
Then all of them were on me. I was so smothered by bodies I couldn’t see who was who, but my nose was buried in a dark suit coat, and I knew who it was by the sickly-sweet smell that had entered the room ahead of him. Brut cologne, over-applied and worn by Jack Jr. His scent was so thick, I could have swung a hammock on it.
Someone had hold of my legs. I twisted my head free of Jack Jr.’s coat, and in the faint blue glow slipping through the curtains, I saw it was Coolie.
Then the big man in the cowboy hat pulled something from his shirt pocket. Another hypodermic needle. He popped the cap over the needle, bent down, and tried to poke it into me as I squirmed. I recognized who it was now. It was as Mrs. Chandler had said: Chief Dudley.
“Sorry, son,” he said. “You’re too goddamn nosy.”
One of his cowboy boots stepped on the side of my leg and sent a bolt of fire up it.
The needle jabbed through my short shirtsleeve and into my right arm. I tried to avoid it. I jerked my arm enough that the needle popped loose and the liquid from it squirted onto my flesh like a hot ejaculation.
Then the needle went in again in a different spot. It was like being poked with a railroad spike. As Chief Dudley squeezed the plunger on the hypodermic, my head immediately felt as if it were being blown up with an air pump like a party balloon.
I struggled, and then I didn’t. I found a hole in the universe and was working my way inside of it. I was no longer a balloon. I was a cosmic worm in search of nirvana, and nirvana was calm and still and soft and velvet blue.