She looks down.
On the dashboard she sees a diagonal blip the size of a fingernail clipping which, along with that chiming sound, is indicating that one of the doors is ajar, specifically the passenger door behind her on the right.
Opening her door, she steps out, walks back to pull the other door open the rest of the way with the intention of slamming it shut. That's when she sees it.
Jeff Tatum's body is missing.
The leather upholstery in the backseat is still looped and spat on with his blood-otherwise the fact that there isn't another corpse back here might never have struck her as noteworthy-but the body itself is definitely not present.
She peers behind the seat, into the storage space where Marilyn's body still rests next to the thing wrapped in garbage bags, with Sean Flaherty's case of booze crammed between them like some kind of sick joke. She doesn't know why she checks back there, it's not like the kid was in any shape to climb over a seat. And he isn't there either. He's gone.
Turning around slowly, Sue looks back at the parking lot, deserted now except for one or two cars parked off in the distance. Snow keeps falling, covering them up. It is so silent that she thinks she can hear the far-off buzz of the light behind the building. There are no traffic noises, no other sounds at all except for her breathing. Her eyes shift reluctantly forward.
There are marks in the snow, leading away from the passenger side of the Expedition. Long, scraping tracks with red streaks down their centers. The marks shuffle away from her in sequence, creeping upward from the vehicle in the general direction of the embankment dividing the parking lot from the main road. Sue's eyes trace them. Midway up the embankment she sees the heap of rags that can only be the kid's body.
She walks over to it.
Tatum's corpse is sprawled on its belly, his buttocks humped in the air, the back of his skull torn open so she can see the cavern where his brains lived until the man standing on her roof blew the kid's eyeballs through them. One arm sticks out while the other is folded beneath him.
If somebody dragged the body out of her car, why would they just leave it here? And if somebodydidn't drag it out…?
From here Sue can see that there's something tucked under the body, a sheet of paper. If it's what she thinks it is, she needs it back.
Squatting down, she reaches out for the triangular edge, tugging the corner of it out from beneath the weight of his chest-and just as she thought, it is the map, the one with the route outlined on it, the one that saysPUNISHED. Whoever dragged the kid's body out here brought the map along too, maybe as a message, maybe as something else. It doesn't matter. All Sue knows is that she needs that map to get her daughter back, and she's certainly not going to leave it out here in the snow just because somebody left a dead body on top of it.
She starts to pull it the rest of the way out.
The corpse rolls over, its arms shooting out for her. Too startled to shout, Sue lets out a gasp and falls hard on her side on the embankment next to the body. The map lands in the snow next to her. She's not so much frozen as paralyzed, all her muscles disconnected from her nerves. The kid jumps on top of her, the raw, black-red holes of his eye sockets facing her straight on. There's something shimmering deep inside the sockets. They don't quite look like eyes. Sue doesn't knowwhat they are.
"Please," she says.
The sound of her voice is all he needs. He lunges for her. She feels only the faintest pressure as his fingers dig into her neck, but she sees him and hears him, smells him even, with exaggerated clarity. His face is the color of yogurt that's been left out of the refrigerator too long. What's left of his jaw goes up and down and makes a dislocated clicking noise and she can see his tongue flickering around inside his mouth. Their faces are so close that Sue smells cordite floating from the ruined crockery of his skull along with the sourness of scorched tissue. He pushes the words up out of himself, snatching the map back, wrinkling it, and shoving it in her face.
"Don't go…"
His breath steams faintly in the night air, less so than her own, his voice sounding like a cartoon version of the voice that's been talking to her on the cell phone.
"Any farther…"
A rotten sound pushed through moist ground beef.
"Up the road."
Paralysis shatters. Sue plants her foot on his chest and propels him back into the snow, the kid's legs tangling and bringing him down in a sliding heap. Sue rolls, rights herself, and grabs the map, backing away, putting as much distance as she can between herself and him, expecting him to jump up again and charge her.
But he just lands on his back. The initial burst of aggression seems to have cost all his energy, and his mostly empty eye sockets appear to have rendered him largely blind. Still on the retreat, Sue jams the map back in her pocket and watches him trying to roll over, reminded of when Veda was learning to turn herself on her side, no coordination and very little strength. One hand jerks and collapses across his face so he's talking into the crook of his arm. He's still trying to say something but she can't understand any of it now-it's drunk talk, random babble giving way to a ragged kind of sobbing, then spasmodic breathing, and finally silence. He twitches his right foot and falls totally flat and unmoving.
Stumbling back from the corpse Sue feels her way to the Expedition. She doesn't take her eyes off the kid's body, even for one second. This is only partly a matter of not letting her guard down. She realizes that she's hoping that if she looks at it long enough then she'll believe it.Pragmatists like yourself believe what they see.
At the moment her rather permissive ability to believe feels like a snake trying to swallow a pig. No matter how detached she is from the events of this night, no matter how far the elastic of her incredulity may stretch-and tonight it has stretched pretty fucking far-she cannot make herself believe that she just saw the kid's dead body sit up and attack her.
But it did.This is Phillip's voice in her head now, calm and steady.And those scars on your body are gone. You're not waking up from this one, Sue. You need to accept that.
Maybe, she thinks, maybe not. Phillip isn't exactly the go-to guy when it comes to acceptance.
She wedges herself back into the Expedition, still watching the body. It hasn't budged. Inside she hears the putter of paper rolling out of her fax machine. The cell phone is ringing too. She answers it.
"You found Tatum," the voice says. "Now you understand a little better."
"Yes." Telling him what he wants to hear. "A little."
"Good. Because it's important you understand your role in it."
"My role?"
"You're not just a chauffeur tonight, Susan."
She waits, her mind flashing to Gray Haven and the poem that Jeff Tatum recited and the statues of Isaac Hamilton. "What really happened in these towns?"
"You'll see when you're ready." The voice wants to change the subject. "Your fax machine went off. Who faxed you?"
"How'd you-" Sue starts to ask, but realizes he probably heard it in the background. She doubts he'll explain himself anyway.
She glances at the rolled sheets of paper tumbling over the passenger seat. It's the corrected bank agreement for tomorrow's meeting about Sean's pub space. Without looking at it too closely she guesses that Brad has gone through and anticipated her questions, marking the places where he needs her signature. Burning the midnight oil, making sure she's got a hard copy waiting in her car for the morning meeting, and none of it could matter less to her right now.
"It's a contract for a meeting," she says. "My office manager wants me to fax him back."
"You know the rules, Susan. No outgoing calls, including faxes."
"If I don't reply he'll suspect something."
"It's two in the morning, Susan. I doubt that."
She gathers the papers up in her fist. Even if she were going to try and fax Brad some distress signal, what would she write?Veda kidnapped by a person in a gray van? She doesn't even know the license number. And while she's not convinced that following the orders will get her daughter back, she's certain that disobeying them will get Veda killed. It's like faith but the opposite, a kind of sacred terror.
"Ashford," the voice says. "Forty-one miles. It's a long drive. Better get started."
She puts the Expedition into drive. Backing up, her headlights catch the patch of snow where the kid's body still lies, faceup. Even from here she can tell he's dead, something in the angle of his head.
Sue pulls the map out of her pocket. She settles it on her lap again and pulls out of the parking lot.
One last glance into her rearview as she pulls away.
The kid's body is gone.