“Could be,” I said. “Yeah, one of ‘em.”
“The one who shot you?”
I thought about it, though I really didn’t want to. I was only conscious for a few seconds after the bullet struck, it all happened lightning fast — but in those seconds I knew for a fact that I was about to die. I saw the guy’s face all right, a stoic expression to put Harold Lloyd to shame, but the moment he fired his gun all I was concerned with was the tiny projectile ending my life right then and there. It’s a mind-fuck, dying like that and coming back when you never expected to.
“I think so,” I told Shea. The shooter was the stocky one, all right. And neither of the other guys had salt-and-pepper hair. David. Such an innocuous name for a cold-blooded murderer.
Shea made some notes on his little pad and said, “Okay. All right. Thank you, Graham. I’m sorry to bust your chops at a time like this.”
He then stood and turned to face Jake.
“As for you, Mr. Maitland — no more Junior Detective bullshit, you hear me? I appreciate your willingness to help your buddy and I’m sure he does, too, but there’s a reason for police departments.”
At that moment Jake’s normally smug face sank into a deep, sorrowful frown. I’d never seen him like that and it startled me a little. The detective slapped him lightly on the arm and started for the door. Jake followed him out, and in the hallway muttered something I couldn’t clearly hear, though I was certain I heard my ex-wife’s name. He returned to the room after that, and I kept my one seeing eye on him as he rounded my bed.
“The hell was that about?” I slurred.
The nurse straightened up and told Jake he was going to have to let me get some rest.
“Just a minute,” Jake pleaded. “Please.”
She sighed and left us alone for the moment. Jake sat down on the side of my bed and put his hand on my knee.
And he caught me up.
Sleep was temperamental that night, and when it did come, it was fraught with nightmares. Nightmares about this David bastard, about being shot over and over. Nightmares about a girl I never met named Louise, who didn’t fare as well as me. And nightmares about Helen, appearing in my hospital room in the night, telling me she’d never see me again in the same words I once said to her, but with a terribly different meaning — and consequence. At one point my heart rate spiked and a crew of technicians rushed into the room to check on me. For my trouble I was given a sedative and a juice box. Apple. My least favorite of the fruit juice family.
When I was alone again, I remained awake for a long while. Footsteps and muted voices filled the hall outside my shut door. I stared at the soft white glow of the curtained window and thought about everything Jake told me, about four dead women and almost a million dollars and an old woman with a direct, living connection to Grace Baron’s movie.
As for the movie, or what was left of it, Jake said the police intended to impound the reels we found for evidence. I wished I could watch them again, watch more closely for anything I might have missed. And I was seriously nervous about how a bunch of unskilled people were going to handle the nitrate stock, which I’d never had the opportunity to digitize, much less restore. Moreover, it nagged at my brain — you know, the one a bullet passed through? — that Florence Sommer’s father had most, but not all, of the film’s reels. It seemed to me the rest had to be somewhere. And if the late Mr. Sommer was less careful with how he stored some than others, perhaps the ones still missing would offer some insight into what this horror show was really all about.
If only I had the slightest clue as to where they might be.
28
Grace slept with no dreams at all.
When in the morning the telephone jangled, she came awake with a start and grumbled, “Damn it, Saul.” Her skull felt too small for its contents and the sunlight spilling through the slats of the blinds stung her eyes.
She ignored the telephone as she always did, but as the hard hooch-induced sleep melted agonizingly away, she recalled that Saul was in the hospital still. Reaching for the watch on the nightstand she checked the time and saw that she was terribly late for the day’s work.
Then the sunlight disappeared all at once and darkness was restored to the bungalow. She blinked and wondered had she misread the time? Or had her watch stopped? She’d thought it read two o’clock.
The telephone fell silent and the horn of an automobile sounded outside. Grace sat up and squinted at the window when the glaring white light reappeared, forcing her to squeeze her eyes shut and look away. It hadn’t been sunlight at all. It was the headlamps of the automobile with the blaring horn.
It was two o’clock in the morning.
She pulled the sheet up to her chin and waited, listening to her own breath.
The engine rumbled, and the headlights swept the bungalow before vanishing altogether. The automobile sputtered away, its chugging noise diminishing to silence.
Grace sat still for half an hour, her knees pressed against her breasts. And she stayed awake until her driver arrived to take her to work.
29
My second day post-resurrection Jake returned to visit me. He told me he was heading back to Boston first thing in the morning. I didn’t blame him, and I told him as much.
“I never invited you out here in the first place,” I said, only half-joking.
“I’m not sure if I’m glad I came or not,” he said. He’d been uncharacteristically sad and introspective since my return to the land of the living. I couldn’t blame him for that either, considering what had happened. We had both watched helplessly as women were murdered before our eyes. Well, me more helpless than him — Jake and Barbara took the bastard down. All I did was catch a bullet with my head.
After a slow moment of quiet, I said, “Do you really think Helen’s gone?”
The truth was I hadn’t given the question anywhere near as much consideration as I should have. I pinned it on my injury, on the trauma of my experience. I didn’t need to think about it, so I didn’t. But that didn’t push it out of my mind. For all the anger and near-hatred I felt for my ex-wife, the thought that she might really be dead tore me up inside. Nothing could take away the years we spent together, for better or for worse, despite it being mostly for the worst. Even if I didn’t know exactly how I was supposed to feel about something like that, what I felt was deep sorrow.
“I don’t know,” Jake said, staring at the floor. “Coming from that old psycho, who can tell?”
“Jack Parson’s daughter-in-law,” I said, thinking aloud.
“At least something finally ties it all together. This shitshow and that goddamn movie, I mean.”
I tried to relax, despite the pain in my head and the pit in my stomach. It didn’t take. I made a fist with my left hand and squeezed it tight. My right just twitched.
I said, “I need to get out of here.”
“You got shot, Graham.”
“This isn’t over.”
“For you it is. You’re safe here. There’s a cop right outside the door. It’s a miracle you’re even alive, not to mention not drooling all over the place and crapping your pants. You’re the luckiest son of a bitch ever got shot in the head, and now you’re acting like you’re sorry you didn’t get killed.”
“Maybe I am,” I moped.
Jake’s face darkened and his jaw twitched.
“Fuck you,” he said. “Fuck you, Graham. I saw a girl die because of this. You saw Mrs. Sommer get her throat cut. A shitload of people are already fucking dead but you — you made it. I made it, too. Neither of us should ever have come out here in the first place and by all rights we should both be dead but we aren’t. So fuck you. I’m going home, and as soon as they let you leave—let you leave, you selfish prick — so are you.”