Billy never meant to stay so long. It’s Alice’s doing. She tells him that he needs to finish his story. Her words are one thing. The quiet tone of conviction in which they are spoken is another, and more convincing. It’s too late to turn back now, she says, and after some consideration, Billy decides she’s right.
There’s no electricity in the little log cabin where he wrote about the Funhouse and what happened there, so he lugs in a battery-powered space heater that warms the place up enough so he can write. If he leaves his jacket on, at least. Someone has hung up that picture of the hedge animals again, and Billy could swear that the lions are closer now, their eyes redder. The hedge bull is between them instead of behind them.
It was that way before, Billy insists. It must have been, because pictures don’t change.
This is true, in a rational world it must be true, but he still doesn’t like the picture. He takes it down (again) and turns it face to the wall (again). He opens his story document and scrolls down to where he left off. At first the work is slow and he keeps glancing into the far corner, as if expecting that picture to be magically hanging there again. It’s not, and after half an hour or so it’s only the words on the screen he’s looking at. The door of memory opens and he goes through. For most of October he spends his days on the far side of that door, even trudging up to the cabin in a pair of boots borrowed from Bucky on the day of the big snowstorm.
He writes about the rest of his tour in the desert, and how he decided – almost literally at the last moment – not to re-up. He writes about the culture shock of returning to America, where nobody worried about snipers and IEDs and nobody jerked and put his hands to his head if a car backfired. It was like the war in Iraq didn’t exist and the things his friends died for didn’t matter. He writes about that first job, assassinating the Jersey guy who liked to beat up women. He writes about how he met Bucky and he writes about all the jobs that followed. He doesn’t make himself sound better than he was and writes it all too fast to come out clean, but it mostly does anyway. It comes out like the water running downhill through the woods when the snow melts.
He’s vaguely aware that Bucky and Alice have formed a firm bond. He thinks that for Alice it’s like finding a fine replacement for the father she lost early. For Bucky it’s like she’s the daughter he never had at all. Billy doesn’t detect the slightest sexual vibe between them, and he’s not surprised. He’s never seen Bucky with a woman, and while – granted – he never saw Bucky face to face that often, the man rarely talked about women when they were together. Billy thinks Bucky Hanson might be gay, his two marriages notwithstanding. All he knows, all he cares about, is that Alice is happy.
But Alice’s happiness isn’t his priority during that October. The story is, and the story is now a book. No doubt about it. That no one will ever see it (except maybe for Alice Maxwell) doesn’t faze Billy in the slightest. It’s the doing that’s important, she was right about that.
A week or so before Halloween, on a day of brilliant sunshine and strong upcountry winds, Billy writes about how he and Alice (he has changed her name to Katherine) arrived at Bucky’s cabin (name changed to Hal) and how Bucky held out his arms – Hey, Cookie! – and she ran into them. It’s as good a place to stop as any, he thinks.
He saves his copy to a thumb drive, closes up his laptop, goes to turn off the space heater, and stops. The picture of the hedge animals is back on the wall in that far corner of the cabin, and the hedge lions are closer still. He’d swear to it. That night, over dinner, he asks Bucky if he put it back up. Bucky says he didn’t.
Billy looks at Alice, who says, ‘I don’t even know what you’re talking about.’
Billy asks where the picture came from. Bucky shrugs. ‘No idea, but I think those hedge animals used to be in front of the old Overlook. The hotel that burned. I’m pretty sure the picture was in the cabin when I bought this place. I don’t go up there much when I’m here. I call it the summerhouse, but it always seems cold, even in summer.’
Billy has noticed the same thing, although he chalked it up to the late season. Still, he has done amazing work there, almost a hundred pages. Creepy picture and all. Maybe a chilly story needs a chilly writing room, he thinks. It’s as good an explanation as any, since the whole process is a mystery to him, anyway.
Alice has made peach cobbler for dessert. As she brings it to the table, she says, ‘Are you finished, Billy?’
He opens his mouth to say he is, then changes his mind. ‘Almost. I have a few loose ends to tie up.’
2
The next day is cold, but when Billy gets to the log cabin he doesn’t turn on the space heater and he doesn’t take the picture down, either. He has decided that Bucky’s so-called summerhouse is haunted. He’s never believed in such things before, but he does now. It’s not the picture, or not just the picture. It’s been a haunted year.
He sits down in the room’s only chair and thinks. He doesn’t want to use Alice in what’s ahead – the end of his business – but in this cold room with its strange atmosphere, he sees that he must. He sees something else, as well. She will want to, because Roger Klerke is not only a bad man, he’s almost certainly the worst one Billy has ever been hired to take out. The fact that this time he’s hired himself is beside the point.
I keep thinking about that horrible man with a child, Alice said. He deserves to die.
She didn’t want Tripp Donovan dead, and she might not have wanted Klerke dead either if he’d stuck to girls who were seventeen or sixteen, maybe even fifteen. She would have wanted him to pay a price, yes, but not the ultimate one. Only Klerke didn’t stick to those. Klerke had wanted to see what it was like.
Billy sits with his hands on his knees and growing numb at the fingertips, his breath frosting the air with each exhale. He thinks of a girl not much older than Shanice Ackerman brought to that little house in Tijuana. He thinks of her holding a stuffed animal for comfort, probably a teddy bear instead of a pink flamingo. He thinks of her hearing heavy footsteps coming down the hall. He doesn’t want to think about those things, but he does. Maybe he needs to. And maybe this haunted room with its haunted picture on the wall helps him do it.
He takes out his wallet and finds the slip of paper he wrote Giorgio’s phone number on. He makes the call knowing the chances of actually reaching the man are small. He may be in the gym of his fat farm prison, or in the pool, or dead of a heart attack. But Giorgio answers on the second ring.
‘Hello?’
‘Hello, Mr New York Agent. It’s Dave Lockridge. Guess what? I finished my book.’
‘Billy, Jesus Christ! You might not believe this but I’m glad you’re alive.’
Damned if he doesn’t sound younger, Billy thinks. And stronger, too.
‘I’m also glad I’m alive,’ Billy says.
‘I didn’t want to screw you over that way. You have to believe that. But I—’
‘You had to make a choice and you made it,’ Billy says. ‘Did I like being fucked over by someone I trusted? Do I now? No. But I told Nick it was water under the bridge and I meant it. Only you owe me something and I’m hoping you’re man enough to pay up. I need some information.’
There’s a brief pause. Then, ‘My phone’s secure. How about yours?’
‘It’s okay.’
‘I’ll trust you on that. We’re talking about Klerke, right?’
‘Yes. Do you know where he is?’
‘He doesn’t come to Vegas anymore, so it’ll be either Los Angeles or New York. I could find out. He’s not hard to keep track of.’