The Lighthouse: A Novel of Terror (9 page)

There were two stripes still on the table, his last two balls. He gave Adam twenty cents—five for each of the stripes, ten for the eight ball—and went to the bar and called to Barney Nevers for two more Henry’s. Two stools down from where he stood, Seth Bonner was nursing a highball; old Seth must have come in while they were playing the last game.

“Hey, Seth,” he said, “how’s it going?”

“Hell of a question to ask a man just lost his job.”

“Tough about that,” Hod said sympathetically.

“People from California,” Bonner said. “Goddamn college professor. Mr. Jan Ryerson, he says the first time he come around. What kind of name is that for a man? Jan?”

“Man can’t help the name he’s given.”

“Comes all the way up here, takes my job away from me, and for what? Write some damn book. Bookwriter with a name like that, he’s probly queer.”

“Not with a wife like he’s got. She’s a looker, Seth.”

“Don’t mean nothing,” Bonner said. “Lots of ’em go both ways, down there in California. Besides, he probly married her for her money. Her father’s some big mucky-muck politician. That’s how they got hold of the lighthouse.”

Hod shook his head, paid Barney for the two Henry’s, and carried them back to the pool table. Queer—that was a laugh. What did Bonner know about queers? Or anything else, for that matter? He was half cracked, and living alone out at the lighthouse the past three years had only widened the crack. Maybe it was a good thing those people had come up from California. Now Seth had a decent place to live and his sister Emma to take care of him, whether he liked it or not.

Another thing, too. Hod remembered the way that big blond Ryerson had kicked Red the other day, and how he hadn’t backed down from Mitch afterward. Never mind that he was a college professor; he had guts. Probably tough when push came to shove—that quiet type could fool you. Mitch must have sensed the same thing, because he hadn’t tried to push it with Ryerson, hadn’t said much about the incident afterward. Queer? Not that one. No way.

Adam was still hopping around, right foot, left foot, cradling his cue stick across his body like it was that Springfield 30.06 he kept in his van. “Losers rack,” he said, and Hod said, “Yeah, yeah,” and fished the balls out of the return slot and racked them for Adam’s break.

That was when Mitch came in.

Hod knew right away something was wrong. It was the way Mitch moved, hard and angry, and the way he was banging his fisted hands against his thighs. One long look at his face, when he got close enough, and Hod could tell that whatever it was, it was bad. Real bad.

And it was. “Red’s dead,” Mitch said.

“Dead? Christ, Mitch, what—?”

“Run down in the road not far from my place. An hour ago.”

“Chasing cars again?”

“No. Wasn’t any accident.”

Adam said, “It wasn’t? What was it?”

“Murder, that’s what it was. Son of a bitch ran him down deliberate.”

Hod said, “Jesus, who did?”

“That bastard from California, the one out at the lighthouse. Ryerson.”

“How do you know? You see it happen?”

“Enough of it. I was just coming out of the house, getting ready to come over here.” Mitch slammed his hands against his thighs in a hard, steady rhythm. “Red screamed,” he said. “When Ryerson hit him . . . he screamed. You ever hear a dog scream?”

“No,” Hod said. His throat felt tight.

“Just like a woman. Knocked him into them bushes alongside the road, screaming all the way. Big car like that . . . he never had a chance.”

“That new Ford wagon?”

“That’s the one,” Mitch said. “No other like that around here. It was Ryerson, all right.”

“He didn’t stop?” Adam asked.

“Didn’t even slow down. I told you, he done it on purpose. Saw Red out running the way he liked to do, swerved over, and picked him off like a jackrabbit. Poor old dog was dead when I got to him, head all bashed in. Poor old dog. He never hurt nobody in his whole life.”

Hod said, “But why? Why would Ryerson do a thing like that?”

“Red nipping at him last week; words we had over it. He seen in his headlights it was the same dog and let him have it.”

“That’s no damn reason . . . ”

“Not for you and me, it sin’t.”

Mitch hadn’t been trying to keep his voice down; everybody else in the Sea Breeze had heard him too. Seth Bonner got off his stool and came over halfway and said, “Plain dirt meanness, that’s what it was. Looked at me once like he wanted to kill me, too. Crazy California queer. We don’t want his kind around here!”

He was getting himself worked up, but Mitch wasn’t paying any attention to him. Nobody was except Barney Nevers. Barney said, “Pipe down, Seth, will you?”

“Don’t have to do what you tell me,” Bonner said.

“You want me to ring up Emma?”

Old Seth said, “Wouldn’t do that,” but he went back to his stool and sat down.

Adam said, “What’d you do, Mitch? Go after him?”

“No. Too late for that.”

“What, then?”

“Took Red up to the house and called the sheriff.”

“What’d he say?” Hod asked.

“Said there wasn’t much he could do. Said I didn’t see the whole thing, said it was dark and easy to make a mistake about intent. Said Ryerson could claim he didn’t know he hit Red and that was why he didn’t stop, and you couldn’t prove otherwise.” Mitch whacked his thighs again and his next words came out bitter. “Said it just ain’t much of a crime to hit-and-run a dog.”

“You could swear out a complaint anyway,” Barney Nevers said from behind the plank. “Malicious mischief or something.”

“Sheriff said that too.”

“You going to do it?” Hod asked.

“No. No damn point in it. Law ain’t worth a shit when it comes to this kind of thing.” Mitch sat heavily against one corner of the pool table. “Hod,” he said, “get me a drink, will you? Double shot of sour mash.”

“Sure. Sure thing, Mitch.”

Hod went to the bar, paid Barney Nevers for a double Jack Daniel’s—cost him his last dollar but the hell with that—and brought it back. Mitch drank it off neat. Then he made the shot glass disappear inside his big fist; squeezed on it, real tight, like he was trying to break it. His face had a funny dark look, a look Hod had never seen before.

“That son of a bitch,” Mitch said. His voice was funny and dark like this face. “He ain’t going to get away with murdering Red.”

Adam was cradling his cue stick again, rifle-like. He asked, “What’re you gonna do, Mitch?”

“I don’t know yet,” Mitch said. “But I’ll do something, you mark me plain on that. Ryerson just ain’t going to get away with it.”

Lang’s Gallery and Gifts housed one of the worst collections of pseudo-art Alix had ever seen.

The space itself was pleasant: a large rectangular room with white walls and polished wood floors. Natural light poured in through a huge central skylight. But the cool simplicity of the place was spoiled by the objects offered for sale.

To the left of the front door was a three-foot-high raised platform, also painted white, displaying a group of driftwood birds. Each was composed of a single piece of wood, perched on spindly coathanger legs. Beady eyes, which were actually bits of broken glass, stared blankly. The beaks were made of bluish-black mussel shells; the wings of seagull feathers, several of which made the birds look as if they were molting. Alix shook her head and turned to the right, where a similar platform held a collection of items made from shells. Some of these weren’t bad: simple, gracefully formed nautiluses and conches—undoubtedly ordered from a supplier rather than plucked from the hazardous local beaches—mounted on plain wooden bases. Others, however, were standard tourist fare: coasters and trays with shells laminated under plastic; abalone-shell ashtrays; oven-proof dishes made from what a clam had once called home. A larger, taller central platform directly under the skylight held other grotesqueries: driftwood lamps with hideous pleated shades; ceramic sea lions and brass whales; redwood burl clocks. Above all this, suspended from hooks around the edges of the skylight, were garishly glazed pottery windchimes. The breeze that had followed Alix inside caught them, making them clank and jangle.

The place was deserted. But after a few seconds, a slender, wiry woman with long dark hair pulled back in a severe knot appeared in an open doorway behind the sales desk. “Be with you shortly,” she called.

“Don’t hurry. I just want to browse.”

Alix moved to the wall at the left as the woman disappeared again and examined the paintings there. They were of different types: standard seascapes, poorly done, almost of a paint-by-the-numbers quality; cutesy depictions of birds, seals, and sea lions that imparted almost human qualities to the creatures; photographs of the neon-light school, sentimental iridescent scenes of lovers wandering the shoreline. But interspersed among these were occasionally startling canvases, abstract oils that were close to being good—good enough to make her stop in front of one and then another.

True primary colors. Crisp lines. Hard-edged forms. Slick, sophisticated Cubism, reminiscent of the work of American abstractionists of the twenties. Too slick, though. And there was something else wrong with them too. . . .

She moved on to a third canvas, a study in red, yellow, and blue, with occasional stiff intrusions of black and white. Something disturbing about this one, too. But what? On the surface, sterility. Too strict an adherence to color and form. Didn’t express anything. But underneath . . . yes, strong emotion tightly reined. It made her wonder what the work would be like if he—she?—really let go.

Alix leaned forward to read the small signature at the bottom of the canvas: C.
Lang.
Lang’s Gallery and Gifts. Most likely the work of the owner. She wondered if the dark-haired woman who was working in back—she could hear vague sounds coming through the open doorway—was C. Lang, or merely an employee. It would be interesting to find out—to perhaps talk shop with someone who had at least a measure of talent.

She owed herself some pleasure this morning, which was the reason she’d stopped here in the first place. She’d been on her way into Hilliard with a load of dirty laundry when she’d spotted the gallery and decided to stop in and put off her chores a little longer. Not that anything she experienced today would be truly pleasurable; she was tired and had one of those scratchy headaches that come from a restless night. Jan had not returned until almost midnight, long after she had crawled into the four-poster; and when he’d come in he had tiptoed around, obviously thinking her asleep and trying not to wake her. If she could have asked him why he’d lied to her, perhaps found out that he’d simply overlooked the half-full tobacco pouch, then she might have rested better. But somehow she had preferred uncertainty to the prospect of a long middle-of-the-night confrontation. And now she was paying for it with a headache.

Ignoring the pain, she stepped back and studied the canvas from a different angle. No, it wasn’t really good, but she had to admire the artist’s raw talent. She herself had that talent, a compulsion to translate her perceptions and thoughts into lines, shapes, and colors. Once, when she’d first moved to New York after graduating from Stanford, she’d thought she might become a serious painter. But there had been a semi-famous painter (married) under whom she had studied (in more ways than one). He had claimed to understand and appreciate her talent, but what she had taken for professional ardor had in reality been simple middle-aged desperation and need for sexual reassurance. When their affair had ended (back to wife, reassured), she had emerged wiser and a touch cynical. She had set aside her dreams of serious work, studied and learned the craft of a commercial artist. She was good at it, too, she’d always known that, even if it had taken her a long time to become established.

The years they’d spent on the East Coast had been lean ones professionally. Jobs were few, commissions for free-lancers even scarcer. But once they’d returned to California, her career had taken an upward turn. Over the years she’d done whimsical watercolors and bold sketches for children’s books; botanically accurate pastels of regional plants and trees for a series of textbooks; pen-and-ink drawings for a special edition of a Jack London novel; illustrations for trade magazines and house organs. Once she’d even illustrated a crochet book—endless diagrams of wool being manipulated with a hook, until she could have crocheted an afghan in her sleep. And next there would be the partnership in the design firm, and the new challenges that would bring. But first there were the drawings for Jan’s book—a challenge also, if not a particularly difficult one. What appealed to her about the project was the chance for the two of them to work together, bringing one of Jan’s dreams to fruition. They’d never had anything they could work together on before. . . .

Alix turned as the dark-haired woman reappeared and came around the sales desk. She was about forty, handsome in a strong-featured way, and the lines of her face spoke more of worldly experience than of age. In spite of her wiry appearance, she had large breasts and gracefully curved hips that were evident even though she wore a loose brown tunic top. Alix noted her full figure with a certain envy; she’d always wished she’d been better endowed.