A sound from behind.
Kevin whirled around. Red Bear was standing behind him, a pitchfork aimed at Kevin’s back.
“Oh, Christ,” Kevin said. “You scared the shit out of me. I thought I heard someone in the stash and I came to—”
Red Bear smiled.
“Where did you get the key, Kevin?”
“The key? Oh, these are Leon’s keys. I went over to wake him up and found them still in his door. He must’ve gone to bed drunk or something. I couldn’t wake him up.”
“No, I said good night to him and he was quite sober.”
Kevin shrugged. “Well, anyways. Dope’s all present and accounted for.”
“I could push this pitchfork right through your throat. Watch you drown in your own blood.”
“Uh, you don’t want to do that.”
“No, I do want to do that, Kevin. Very much. But I’m going to control myself.”
“Okay, cool,” Kevin said. “Maybe I should just move out, huh?”
“The reason I’m going to control myself is that it is time for another sacrifice.”
“Oh, no. I don’t think we need to go into that, man. I’ll just leave now, okay?”
“You are going to be that sacrifice, Kevin. Then I will be sure that you are working for us, not against us. You will be firmly on our side. Just like Wombat Guthrie.”
Kevin made a run for it. Red Bear lunged at him with the pitchfork, and Kevin felt a searing pain in his side. He kept running for the door, though. Got outside. And was just about to leap off the stoop when something crashed onto the back of his skull, and then his mouth was full of sand and everything went black as if the world had blown a fuse.
39
THE CRISIS CENTRE WAS BETTER than the hospital, Terri decided. For one thing, it was a house—a grand old house—the people who had lived here long ago must have been wealthy. A railway tycoon, maybe; the place occupied a big corner lot on a street called Station, and Detective Cardinal had driven past a charred, boarded-up terminal on the way here. That tycoon must’ve had ten kids, to judge by all the rooms, and Terri felt a pang for the Victorian wife who no doubt had worked as the tycoon’s slave for her entire life before dying in childbirth bearing number eleven.
The guy who ran the place, Ned Fellowes, wasn’t that bad either—a former priest, one of the other inmates had informed her, but nothing pious about him, nothing holier-than-thou. He was just a bony, fortyish man with thinning, sandy hair and a pleasant smile. He had signed her in with a minimum of fuss, entering her information on a computer surrounded by tipsy stacks of psychology journals.
The Crisis Centre, he had told her, was originally intended solely for the protection of battered wives, but they took in people for other reasons, too, if they had room. Certainly, a bullet in the head seemed to qualify.
“We’re not a jail, and we’re not a hospital,” he had told her in his jaunty we-can-all-get-through-this-together voice. “We assume that all of our guests are adults and able to look after themselves. We have very few rules, but we expect them to be followed.”
Terri’s room was surprisingly large for an institutional place. A double bed with a scarlet coverlet proved to have an acceptable mattress, and the overstuffed armchair by the window was almost comfortable. An ancient rug, just this side of threadbare, covered the floor. The bathroom, located at the far end of the hall, was shared but clean.
A couple of her fellow “guests” seemed like decent people, though Terri didn’t for one minute consider that she had anything in common with them. One bore a cast on her arm, another had blackened eyes. Terri didn’t tell them about her bullet wound, and people in this place knew better than to ask about injuries.
So, all right, yes, it was better than the hospital. She wasn’t confined to a bed or the sunroom. There was a real kitchen instead of a candy machine. But in the end, it still felt like being under house arrest.
She was not supposed to go out, according to Detective Cardinal, and Ned Fellowes absolutely concurred.
“We’re not a jail,” he repeated. “And we’re not your parents. But clearly, until whoever did this to you is behind bars, you’re in serious danger and you should not be out on the streets.”
She spent almost an entire day in her room. She had tried the communal lounge for a while, but people wanted to talk too much—where are you from? what do you do?—and she didn’t feel like answering them. She tried to concentrate on a paperback some previous guest in crisis had left behind, but it couldn’t quiet her mind. Finally, she threw the book across the room. She got up and put on the hoodie, checking herself in the mirror. Just the thing.
Once out on the streets, she felt much better. The night air still tasted of spring: scents of new flowers, wet soil. A strong breeze was blowing and she had to hold the drawstrings of her hood.
She found Main Street easily enough. There wasn’t much traffic, but there were a lot of cars in front of a place called the Capitol Centre—a concert of some sort. After a couple of wrong turns, she found the bar Kevin had taken her to, the Goat in Boots. It was his unofficial hangout, he had said, when he wanted to get away from Red Bear and the others. Smoke assailed her nostrils the moment she entered, and she coughed. It was a typical English-style pub, and didn’t look remotely dangerous. Terri pushed her hood back and went up to the bar.
The bartender was a young blond woman, very pretty. “I’m looking for a guy named Kevin Tait,” Terri said. “He’s my brother, actually. Long dark hair, about six feet tall, always with a notebook? Comes in here quite often.”
“I think I know who you mean,” the bartender said. “Kevin, yeah. I never knew his last name. Haven’t seen him today, though. Haven’t seen him for a while, in fact.”
“Can you ask the other bartender?”
“Hey, Dora! You seen Kevin lately? Skinny guy with the long hair, always carries a notebook?”
The other bartender looked up from the draught tap and shook her head.
“He’s staying at this old wreck of a camp. Bunch of old cabins by a lake. I don’t suppose you happen to know where that would be?” Terri said. “It’s kind of urgent.”
“Haven’t a clue.”
“Do you see anybody here who might know him? I’m from out of town. I don’t know who his friends are here.”
“Friends. I don’t know about friends …”
The bartender narrowed her gaze against the smoke. “There’s a guy I’ve seen him talking to a few times. But I don’t know if they’re actual friends.” She pointed to a small, bearded man at the far end of the bar. He wore wire-rim spectacles and clutched a paperback in his fist as if squeezing the juice out of it.
“Thanks.”
Terri moved to the other end of the bar.
“You always read in pubs?” she said to the guy.
He looked up from his book.
“Sometimes,” he said. “It beats small talk. Or staring at the TV screen. The only reason I come to this bar is it’s the only one that keeps the sound turned off.”
“You’re a friend of Kevin Tait’s, right?”
“Yeah. Well, I mean, I know him. I only see him when he comes in here. Which isn’t too often, lately. We talk about poetry.”
Thank God, Terri said to herself. Not a dope associate.
“Well, here’s the thing,” she said. “I’m Kevin’s sister. My name’s Terri.”
“I’m Roger.” He stuck out a damp hand to shake. “Kevin mentioned you to me.”
“He did?”
“Yeah. We were talking about Yeats. You know W.B. Yeats?”
“I’m not sure.”
“He has this great poem. Heaven has put away the stroke of her doom,/ So great her portion in that peace you make/ By merely walking in a room. Do you know it?”