He willed together as much courage as he could find and started running.
“STOP IT!! STOP HURTING HER!! STOP IT!” he shouted at the top of his lungs until his throat burned raw.
He ran as hard as his legs would go, and he hurled himself at Shadow Man like a small missile, fists swinging, feet kicking.
It was the second’s distraction Anne needed.
Crane turned to intercept Tommy’s attack, and she sprang to her feet, turned, and swung with all her might.
The tire iron connected with the side of his head and Anne imagined she felt bone give way beneath its force. Crane staggered sideways, his knees folding under him, his hands grabbing hold of the side of his face.
“TOMMY, RUN!” Anne shouted. “RUN!!! GET IN THE CAR! GET IN THE CAR!”
Tire iron still clutched in one fist, she grabbed at the boy, catching him by the back of his jacket, pulling him around.
“RUN!! RUN!!”
He caught hold of her free hand, and she ran for all she was worth, dragging him with her.
“GET IN THE CAR! GET IN THE CAR!”
Tommy jumped in through the open driver’s-side door and landed on the passenger’s seat.
Anne was right behind him, pulling the door closed after her. She could see Crane in her peripheral vision, lurching toward them, one arm outstretched, the other hand clamped to his face.
The seat was back too far, set for a man. She could hardly reach the pedals, had to hold tight to the steering wheel to keep from falling back.
“HURRY!!!” Tommy squealed, bouncing like a ball in his seat. “IT’S COMING!!”
Peter Crane flung himself against the passenger’s door, his left eye hanging out of the shattered socket as he let go of his face to try to pull the handle.
Anne threw the car in gear and hit the gas. The Jaguar’s tires spun on the damp grass and the car fishtailed away from Crane, leaving him falling.
They flew toward the closed front gate, then crashed through the gate, and then they were on the road and skidding sideways as Anne wrestled the wheel.
She drove as if Crane was flying behind them, a demon from hell bent on snatching them back into the darkness. She didn’t know exactly where they were. She pointed the car toward the glow of light that had to be town and didn’t slow down and didn’t look back.
92
Neither of them spoke as Anne drove. She glanced over at Tommy several times, wondering when the enormity of what he had gone through would hit him. Was it now? Was he seeing his father in his mind’s eye, or the monster he had saved her from? Would he ever have to realize what his father might have done to him? Would his mind ever be able to make sense of any of it?
How could it? Why would it? He was a little boy who loved his dad like he was a god. What would be the point of him understanding it now or ever?
Anne didn’t think about how she would handle it. She thought only about getting to the sheriff’s office on the last little drop of adrenaline trickling through her veins. She was beginning to feel her physical injuries in a serious way. All other injury would have to wait its turn.
She pulled the car into the parking lot—not up to the doors of the building. Once they went inside, everything would change. She wanted this one moment alone with Tommy.
She got out of the car and went around to the other side to take Tommy’s hand—the same way she had the day he and the other kids had found the body, and she had taken him home to face his mother.
She knelt down and looked at his face, his eyes, trying to read him, feeling that in the snap of a moment his soul had aged a thousand years. Her heart ached for him and for herself as if God had taken it from her chest and wrung it out like a sponge.
“You are so precious,” she whispered, tears filling every part of her. “And this is going to be so hard. I wish I could change it for you, Tommy.”
“I’ll be all right,” he said, as if to reassure her.
Anne nodded, knowing that he wouldn’t be. He wouldn’t be all right. And there was nothing she could do about it.
She touched his cheek like touching an angel. “You’re my hero, you know,” she said, tears falling.
Anne gathered him to her and held him tight, and he held her back. Then they both dried their eyes, and she held his hand, and they went up the sidewalk together.
And when they walked through the doors, everything changed.
People swarmed them, meaning well, wanting explanations, needing statements, demanding answers. With everybody added to the crowd, Anne watched Tommy drift away from her. His mother emerged from somewhere and flung herself at him, hysterical and grasping.
His eyes met Anne’s for just a fleeting second, and she knew exactly what he was feeling—like he had been dropped into space as the safety net was pulled out from under him. He had no one. And no one had him.
Anne turned to Vince. Taking the gold necklace from the pocket of her torn, dirty pants, she pressed it into his hand, then pressed herself into his arms and turned herself over to him. As he held her tight and told her everything would be all right, she just pressed her ear to his chest and listened to his heart beat. For those few moments, everything else was just noise.
Closing her eyes, she slipped away from consciousness. The last thing she remembered in her mind’s eye: Tommy standing alone in a little red boat, his hand to his heart as he drifted out of view until all that remained was the faintest memory of his sad little smile.
93
Anne came to to the sound of hushed voices in the hall outside her hospital room.
“. . . broken ribs . . . collapsed lung . . .”
“... oh my God . . . we’re lucky she’s not d-e-a-d ...”
“I can spell.”
Her voice was rusty and dry and didn’t carry very far, but it carried far enough.
“Hey, look who’s back,” Vince said with a soft smile as he came to her bedside.
“Oh, Anne Marie!” Franny exclaimed with a pained expression. “You look like a raccoon!”
Anne raised the head of the bed with the remote control, catching a glimpse of herself in the small mirror on the wall. Two black eyes. A fat lip. Stitches in her chin. Raccoons would have been offended by the comparison.
“Hey,” Vince objected. “You should see the other guy. They had to airlift him to LA. Our girl got a couple of good licks in. She knocked his eye out with a tire iron!” he said proudly.
Franny was horrified. “Oh my God!”
“Gave him a skull fracture, broke his nose . . .”
“Who are you?” Franny asked her, as if perhaps she had been possessed by some much-tougher entity than the one he thought he knew.
“I’m alive,” she said simply.
“Oh, sweetheart,” he said, melting. “I don’t even know what to say.”
“I’ll be sure to mark this day on my calendar,” Anne said dryly.
“I want to hug you, but I’m afraid you’ll hurt me. I was going to say that the other way around, but you beat a man’s head in with a tire iron, so . . .”
Anne tried to smile. She hurt everywhere. Her ribs hurt, her head hurt, her lungs hurt. She felt like she’d been run over by a truck.
“My dentist,” Franny said as it dawned on him. “A serial killer put his hands in my mouth!”
Anne looked at Vince. “Has he confessed?”
He shook his head. “He got a lawyer. We can’t touch him.”
“But he did this to Anne,” Franny said with his trademark outrage. “I don’t care if he hires F. Lee Bill-Me-Out-the-Ass. He won’t get off for this!”
“No,” Vince said. “He’s a slam dunk for this, and he knows it. I think he’ll try to cut a deal.”