Nerve Damage (32 page)

No sign of the tarpaulin-covered platform:
Delia
stood in her alcove,
scaffolding on one side. The roof was open now and daylight flooded in. That strange dusty light gave
Delia
a sepia effect Roy didn't like. He entered the alcove, saw that she was looking out on a pond with a wide-spreading tree on the far shore. One of those buzzards was perched on an upper branch.

Footsteps sounded on the marble floor. Roy turned. Calvin Truesdale came into the alcove, a camera in his hand. He saw Roy, missed a step, staggered.

“Changed my mind,” Roy said. “You can't have her.” His own calmness surprised him.

“Roy?” Truesdale's mouth opened, closed, opened again. “I don't quite understand.” His face hardened, composure quickly returning. “Didn't I see your obituary?” Roy said nothing; he could feel the rapid workings of Truesdale's mind. “Is this another case of not being able to believe what's in the papers?” he said. “Or—oh my goodness—you wouldn't be party to some sort of conspiracy, would you, Roy?” He glanced around. Fear on his face? Yes, if only for a second. That was nice.

“It's over,” Roy said. A distant hum came through the open roof. “The Hobbes Institute, whatever you're doing now—everything's coming out.”

“Supposing I knew what you were talking about—” Truesdale began, but Roy interrupted.

“You don't think Tom talked? Or Westie?” Truesdale's head came forward, an aggressive, reptilian thrust. “Or Delia?” Roy said.

Truesdale licked his lips. “Delia?”

“She wrote me a letter.” Roy took it out of his pocket. “It's all here—the way you kept her prisoner, Operation Pineapple, the president.”

Truesdale's eyes went to the letter. He laid the camera on a footstool. Roy backed up a step, bumped against the scaffold.

“Where did you get that?” Truesdale said.

Loose ends: they began tying themselves together in Roy's mind. “You've been wondering about that drawing on the wall for years, haven't you? Then, when Lenore started poking around in Ethan Valley,
she found out about the mountain hut and you thought you'd matched things up.”

“Where did you get it?” Truesdale said.

“You'll find out in court,” Roy said. A remark the demon didn't seem to care for: claws twitched around Roy's heart.

“Court?” said Truesdale.

“There'll be trials,” Roy said. “Lots of them.”

Truesdale took another step. Backed against the scaffold, Roy had nowhere to go. “Things don't always work that way,” Truesdale said. “We have enemies. I'm talking about our nation. Our nation has mortal enemies. They don't follow civilized rules. Think of the ammunition you'd be handing them, the damage to our institutions, to the presidency itself. Do you see the problem?”

But at that moment Roy felt on top of things, actually problem-free. “She was never going to walk out of that bunkhouse, was she?” he said. “You meant to kill her from the start.”

“Certainly not,” said Truesdale. “She was much too valuable.”

“And I don't want to hear that she was the boss,” Roy said.

“Everyone sees the world in a way that makes him look good—don't you know that?” Truesdale said. “Call her a midlevel manager if that makes you happier.” The humming sound, louder now, divided into separate drones. Roy glanced up through the open roof, saw empty sky. When he looked back down, Truesdale had a gun in his hand. “I'll have that letter now.”

“You're not touching it,” Roy said.

A knuckle on Truesdale's trigger finger went yellow. Then came a blast from the muzzle. Roy felt a blow to his arm—but his left arm, not too useful these days anyway, and there was no pain. The only bad part was the fact that he'd had the letter in his left hand. It slipped free and glided across the alcove. They both went for it, but Truesdale got there first, a race not even close. He scooped it up with a surprisingly quick movement, and then the gun was leveled again at Roy.

“You made me do this,” Truesdale said, as if Roy was already in the past.

The remark enraged him; the sight of the letter in Truesdale's leathery hand enraged him more. Roy was up on the balls of his feet, rocking forward, when a roar came from above, a roaring
whap-whap-whap
. They both gazed up: helicopters, lots of them. Helicopters would be the death of him, but not these: all of these helicopters bore the markings of news organizations.

Truesdale's mouth opened. Roy charged at him, not much of a charge, more of an uncontrolled stumble. Truesdale saw him coming, but too late. Roy fell against Truesdale's legs. They both went down. Truesdale's head struck the edge of one of those rads on the lower part of
Delia,
making a sound like splitting wood, audible even over all the noise from above. He didn't move after that.

The letter lay on the floor. Roy picked it up. He rose, dusted himself off, walked toward the double doors. A helicopter swept in low, a cameraman leaning out, focused on Roy. Roy gave him a smile and a little wave.

Yes, feeling problem-free.
Nothing to forgive, baby.
An idea for a brand-new piece came to him—something less massive than what he'd been doing, more along the lines of—

But at that point, the demon had had enough. It gave Roy's heart a special squeeze, to make clear the order of things, once and for all. Next, Roy was on his back, the smell of flowers all around. Was it snowing?

Faces gazed down at him: Turk, Freddy. And high above, all those helicopters.
Whap-whap-whap
. Victory—yes, a double triumph.

“Where's Adele?” he said.

“Right here,” she said. She knelt beside him, stroked his forehead. Her hand, not quite steady, felt good just the same. “Help is on the way.”

“Good news,” said Roy. Had to be optimistic with your kid: Wasn't that basic? As for the work still undone, did it matter now? He'd rearranged the scraps of his own life, found coherence. The igloo closed in around him, those icy bricks going up awful fast, the speed superhuman. In the end there was this daughter of his, an unexpected bonus, even a blessing.

P
ETER
A
BRAHAMS
is the author of sixteen crime novels, including
End of Story, Oblivion
and the Edgar Award–nominated
Lights Out,
as well as the Echo Falls mystery series for young adults, the first of which,
Down the Rabbit Hole,
was also nominated for an Edgar Award and won the Agatha. He lives on Cape Cod.

www.peterabrahams.com

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