کتاب 09-01

BOOK NINE

ENGINE 1

In the minutes after midnight—as March became April—the fire engine rushed along Little Harbor Road, following it all the way to where it ended at Sagamore Avenue. Nick gestured for Allie to turn right. They had gone less than a mile before Nick began to signal for her to stop.

Allie turned into the entrance of South Street Cemetery, a graveyard as old as the colonies and half a mile wide. She stopped in front of the black gates, which were held shut by a length of heavy chain and padlock. Nick opened the passenger door and leapt out of Harper’s lap.

Nick gripped the chain in one hand and bowed his head. Liquid metal hissed and dripped between his fingers into the dirt. The chain fell apart in two sections and he pushed the gate open, his hand still smoking. Allie drove through and then waited. Nick reached back through the bars, wound the two halves of the chain into a loose knot, and gripped it firmly. There was more smoke and his eyes were as red as coals and when he let go he had welded the links together again.

South Street Cemetery was a kind of city, in which most of the residences were located underground. Nick guided them along its streets and alleys, its winding suburbs and open pastures. They continued until they had reached the dirt road that ran along the back of the cemetery. A second, more modest sort of graveyard awaited in the wet grass and underbrush: a dozen cars in various states of collapse, filthy, burnt out, sitting on their rims. Several were half submerged in weeds, islands of rust in a shallow sea of poison sumac.

To one side of this final resting place for unmourned cars was a squat and ugly cement building with a tin roof. Cobwebbed windows peeked out from under the eaves. At one end of the building was a pair of corrugated aluminum garage doors. The center of operations for the grounds crew, Harper surmised . . . back in the days when South Street Cemetery still had a grounds crew. The knee-high grass growing right up to the front steps suggested it had been a while since anyone had punched his card for work.

Out beyond the wrecks was a wide sandy pit, some kind of debris piled into it, hidden under overlapping brown plastic tarps. Allie parked the truck between the hole and a Pontiac Firebird that had cooked down to the frame. She hunted around under the steering wheel, found a couple of bare wires twisted together, and pulled them apart, with a buzzing snap of electricity. The fire engine chugged, thudded, and died.

They sat in the stillness. Through the oaks at the rear of the park, Harper could see a flat bay, a pebbly strand, and some darkened buildings on the far side of the water. Come to South Street Cemetery. Beachside views available. Quiet neighbors.

“This is only good until the sun comes up. Then this truck will be visible from the air,” Renée said.

Harper looked at the garage doors of the building for the grounds crew and wondered if there was enough room in there for an antique fire truck. Nick let himself out of her lap again, throwing open the door. He hopped into blowing mist.

“I don’t think this is far enough from Camp Wyndham, either,” Renée went on. Her voice had a dull, disinterested quality. She sat on Harper’s left, holding Gilbert in her arms. He was between her legs, his head lolling against her shoulder, and her arms were around his waist. “There’s a path in the woods. It’s only fifteen minutes from here to the archery range. I walked here once or twice myself last summer.”

“But it’s almost four miles by the road,” Allie said. “And they’d expect us to keep driving. No. I think this might do if we can get the truck under—what’s he up to?” Unbuckling and letting herself out.

Nick had clambered into the sandy pit. He pulled back one flap of a tarp to reveal a midden heap of shriveled flowers, blackened wreaths, and mildewed teddy bears. Even grief, it seemed, had an expiration date. Allie caught up to him, found another corner of the tarp, and helped him drag it toward the fire truck. They would only need a couple of them to hide the engine completely.

Harper got down, put her hands in the small of her back, and stretched, popping her spine. She ached as if she were recovering from flu, every muscle sore, every joint achy.

She looked back into the truck at Renée. “We’re going to cover the truck and go inside.” When Renée didn’t reply, Harper added, “I think you should get out now.”

Renée lifted her shoulders in a weary sigh. “All right. Will Allie help me carry Gil inside?”

Allie and Nick had by then dragged the tarp to the side of the truck. Allie stiffened and darted an uneasy look at Harper. Harper nodded to her, just slightly.

“Of course I will, Ms. Gilmonton,” Allie said, in a tone of insouciance that didn’t jibe with her pale look of dismay.

Easing the heavy corpse of Gilbert Cline out of the fire truck was a clumsy bit of business. Renée held him under the armpits and heaved and gasped, nudging him toward the passenger door a few inches at a time. Allie got him by the ankles and they began to shift him out, but Renée bumped her head and lost her grip, and the top half of his body dropped all of a sudden. His head bonged against the step up into the cab. Renée made a shrill yelp of horror and almost fell out after him.

“Oh no!” she said. “Oh no, oh no, oh, Gil, I’m so weak. I’m so useless.”

“Hush now,” Harper said, moving past Renée and bending to get Gil under the arms herself.

“You can’t,” Renée said. “Don’t, Harper. You’re nine months pregnant.”

“It’s no trouble at all,” Harper said, although when she straightened up, her ankles blazed and her back twinged.

They walked Gilbert through high weeds, wet grass shushing against his back. His head lolled. He wore a stoic, almost patient look, his clear, quite blue eyes seeming to watch Harper the whole time.

They had to put the dead man down when they reached the corner of the garage, so Harper could rest and Allie could look for a way in. The door was locked and there was no key under the mat or beneath either of the ceramic flowerpots on the front step (pots full of dirt and a flourishing crop of decorative weeds). But Nick didn’t mean to enter through the door. He made his way along the side of the building, peering up under the eaves. At last he stopped and gestured to one of the windows. It was a good five feet over his head, so high up under the eaves it was hard to imagine it let in any daylight. The window was a long, narrow slot, and a triangular piece of glass was missing from one smashed pane. No man could put his hand through the gap, but a child’s arm just might fit.

Nick needed Allie to hunch down, so he could climb onto her shoulders. Even when she rose to her full height, he could barely reach the glass. He had to stretch to get a hand in through the window and turn the lock. He pushed it open, grabbed the sill, hoisted himself up, and disappeared headfirst into the darkness.

There must’ve been something just inside the window to climb down on—some shelving perhaps—because Harper didn’t hear him drop. He was gone without a sound.

“I wonder who helped him get in there last time,” Harper said, and when Allie gave her a questioning look, she nodded at the high window. “He’s obviously done this before, but he’s too short to reach the window on his own.”

Allie frowned.

The front door popped open and Nick stuck his head out and waved for them to come along, come in, his house was their house.