Charles Grant - Night Songs

The stoop was bordered with a black wrought-iron railing, and he used it to pull himself up to the door. The draperies were drawn, the shades pulled down, and he looked again at the wagon before he rang the bell. The wind prevented him from hearing anything, and he pushed the lighted button again, just in case. Then he rechecked the neighborhood, whistling soundlessly, jerking his head now and then to shove the hair from his eyes. He rang the bell a third time. He looked to his right, down to the far end of the street and the woodland abutting, saw the fog crawling first from the trees and onto the tarmac, then boiling out and over the houses as if a fan had been turned on. He rang the bell a fourth time and looked away from the fog.

The shrubs scratched at the house. A torn page of newsprint scuttled around the corner of the house and caught against the wagon's front tire, fluttering, fighting, until it broke free and pinwheeled toward the gutter.

He knocked, loudly, insistently.

The fog settled and thinned, and touched the backs of his hands like the brush of a damp fern.

"Damn it, Bob, c'mon," he muttered. He stood back and looked up at all the windows he could seeshades down, panes blank, not a sign of life or anything else.

He took one step down, changed his mind and returned to the door. His hand folded around the knob, and the door opened before he could turn it. He snatched the hand back and rubbed it against his jeans, his head forward to look into the carpeted foyer.

"Hey, Bob?"

No answer.

He stepped up, and in.

"Hey, Bob, it's Colin!"

After only a slight hesitation he closed the door behind him and unzipped his jacket. The house was warm, and close, as if it had been closed for a year. He cocked his head and listened, looked to the dining room on the right, the living room on the left, at the flight of stairs directly ahead. He'd been here several times before, knew the floorplan well, but something about the silence made him feel like a stranger.

"Silly; you're acting silly," he said as loudly as he dared, and hurried into the living room-dark Spanish oak, dark thick carpet, dark prints of game birds in dark frames on the white walls. A stack of newspapers in an armchair, a console television under the front window, bookshelves mostly empty. He headed for the telephone on the end table by the couch, snorting when he realized he was walking on tiptoe.

"The thief in the afternoon," he intoned dryly as he picked up the receiver, turning as he did to scan the room he was in again.

The dial tone was unnervingly loud, and he winced as he leaned over to punch Garve's number. He had three done when he saw the movement at the window.

"Bob?"

Stupid, he can't hear you.

He put the receiver back and walked to the television, put his hands on the polished top and leaned close to the pane. The fog had thickened in several patches on the street, hiding the house directly across the way. Through it he could see someone moving up the street as he had. He stared for a moment, then hurried to the door and flung it open.

The wind had died.

"Bob! Hey, Bob!"

He moved to the top step and took hold of the railing, one hand pushing his jacket back as it hooked into his hip pocket. A spiderweb of mist tangled over his face and he brushed at it impatiently, wishing Cameron would get a move on so he could make the call and get back to town.

"Bob, come-"

The fog puffed like woodsmoke and peeled away, and his hand suddenly tried to pull the railing from its mooring.

Theo Vincent staggered to a halt in the middle of the road, pivoting slowly until he saw Colin at the house. His suit jacket was missing, his white silk shirt shredded to the waist, and the legs of his pegged trousers were ragged and torn and stained with wet grass. Colin saw the pink-rimmed bone that used to be the man's left knee, saw the way the man's shoes were dark and gleaming.

"Vincent? My God," he said, thinking suddenly of Tess, "what the hell happened to you?"

Vincent only shuddered, his bald scalp glittering as the fog settled over him, curled up and settled again. A piece of his shirttail beckoned in the wind.

It had to have been a car accident, he thought as he started down the steps; Vincent driving, maybe, and veering off the road and somehow hitting Tess. It was a reasonable answer, one that provided solutions to even more questions. It was trauma, fear; something had sent her away from the scene, into the woods, to the cliffs where she had tried to get help and had only succeeded in dying. Vincent seemed less badly injured, though it had to be the anesthesia of shock that kept him walking on that leg.

Just as Colin reached the last step, the injured man moved to the lip of the drive and shuddered again, the tattered flaps of his shirt pulling away from his chest at the insistence of the wind. Then he looked up and blinked slowly, wiped a hand wearily over his eyes and down to touch gingerly at the wounds on his breast.

"Bastard," he said.

Colin stopped in mid-stride.

A groan rose curiously high-pitched, and Vincent glared at Colin. "You goddamned bastard."

"Now wait a minute," Colin said, his temper ready to flare before he reminded himself sternly that the man was seriously hurt and needed a doctor.

"Bastard," Vincent said a third time, his voice cracking to a sigh. "Couldn't fight like a man, huh?"

He frowned his confusion and started forward again. "Look, Vincent, I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about. Now let me help you inside, and we'll call-"

The man's hands came up and doubled into fists. He swayed, shifted his weight, and a run of fresh blood began pooling at his foot. "Couldn't fight on your own, could you, bastard? Sent your little army out, right? Couldn't do it on your own." He raised his head, aimed his chin at Colin's chest. "Whose idea was it to get me, huh? Yours? Cameron's?"

"Get you?" he asked stupidly. "Get you? Are you saying you think… my God, you can't mean that." He vacillated between concern and righteous anger, wanting to strike him, wanting to hold him until the blood stopped flowing.

"I'll kill you," Vincent said, spitting blood at the grass.

"Somebody's already had a pretty good start on you," he said coldly. "Why don't you do us both a favor and let me get you inside so I can call the doctor."

Another groan, and one arm lowered slowly. "Jesus, Ross, it hurts."

And before Colin could reach him, he toppled. His knees remained locked, his hands stayed at his side, and his forehead struck the sidewalk with a soft, watery thud. Colin was at his side in a half dozen long strides, kneeling, rolling the man over while whispering his name. Vincent's eyes were open, his face laced with blades of grass. Blood stained his teeth, and a bubble of red shimmered in one nostril. "Vincent?"

The man blinked, snorted the blood from his nose, and took a long minute focusing.

"Vincent, where was the accident? Was Lombard with you? Is he hurt?"

"No accident, bastard," and he tried to lift a hand to grab for Colin's throat.

It was unpleasantly easy to brush the arm aside, and worse when a tear slid from the corner of the man's eye.

"I didn't send anyone after you," Colin said gently. "Now you have to tell me if your buddy was with you."

"Kid," Vincent said, the deep voice so soft Colin had to lean close to understand, and could smell the bittersweet phlegm that stained the man's breath. He tried to sit up; Colin easily forced him down. "Kid."

"A kid was with you? What kid?"

"You know."

His own hand fisted, and he took a deep breath. "Vincent, this is bullshit. I didn't send anyone after you, okay? You're only making it worse for yourself. You've got to lie still or something else will go wrong. And, Jesus, will you please tell me if Lombard was in the car too?"

"Kid."

Colin lost his patience. "Goddamn it, what kid are you talking about?"

Vincent sighed through a drooling of pink saliva. "You know him, bastard. The kid with the freckles."

His eyes widened. "What? Frankie Adams?"

"The kid, you bastard. Oh, Jesus, it hurts."

Colin stripped off his jacket, and bunched it into a pillow he eased under the man's head. He leaned back and was about to ask him what he meant by accusing

Frankie Adams, when he realized that Vincent's open eyes weren't seeing a thing. "Oh… hell."

The ocean raised a cannonade high above the jetties.

He touched two fingers to the side of the man's neck, rocked back on his heels and looked over his shoulder. He knew he should have been shocked, or at least moved to some sort of decisive action, but he could only crouch there and watch the fog, half-expecting Lombard to come stumbling up the street after his friend. Then he realized that if Tess Mayfair and Vincent had survived the accident this long, Lombard might have too. He launched himself out of the crouch then and raced for the steps, banged through the door and grabbed the receiver.

He stared at the buttons, at the cradle, and stiffened as a surge of winter cold replaced all his blood. His teeth began to chatter. His hands began to tremble, first slowly, then violently, and he dropped onto the couch and closed his eyes until the delayed reaction had passed. The dial tone burred loudly. The molded plastic was ice in his palm. He shook his head once and hard, then tried to punch Tabor's number.

It took him four times before he finally got it right.

The line was busy, and he stared at the window while he counted to fifteen.

The telephone rang and Peg grabbed for it, juggled the receiver clumsily, laughed softly and self-consciously when she heart Matt giggling from his place by the door. She listened, then, and sighed with a martyred lift of her eyebrows. No, she told Hattie Mills, Chief Tabor wasn't here, but she really didn't think Reverend Otter was trying to kill her poor dog. She nodded. She grabbed the coiled cord in her right hand and squeezed it as tightly as she could. She nodded. She suggested that Hattie bring the dog inside the library where it wouldn't bother the minister, and regretted the mistake when she spent the next five minutes taking the brunt of a brusque lecture on civil liberties and the causes of the American, the French, and a dozen other revolutions whose purposes were to permit her to keep her aging dog where she damn well pleased. That in turn led to a survey of precedents for such actions leading all the way back to Saturn's revolt against the Titans. Peg agreed several times, making faces at Matt, and when she finally hung up she looked at the clock, then at her son who was closing the door against the wind.

The telephone rang, and Annalee answered it without much enthusiasm, her voice slipping automatically into a professionally concerned tone, nodding once, doodling a scaffold and hangman on a prescription pad, finally interrupting with a polite clearing of her throat to tell Rose Adams that she really didn't think Doctor Montgomery had the time to search for her son, but if she really felt it was affecting her health she should bundle herself up and walk on over. That tactical error cost her another few minutes listening to a lecture on the inalienable rights of a patient who was half crippled at best and couldn't see why the good doctor couldn't make house calls to a place less than three blocks away, for crying out loud. When she finally hung up she glanced at her watch, looked toward the empty examination room, dutifully logged the call, and closed her eyes to daydream about the coming night and the plans she had for Garve.