ANNALEE: Then I want you to promise me with all your soul that you’ll never tell anyone who made it. Never. Even if you have to die.
VOLTA: Annalee, I can admire what you’re trying to do, even if it’s too late for safety; I admire your love for him that you would risk yourself to preserve its possibility; but it’s nonetheless a betrayal of his trust, a necessity that might have been forestalled if you’d called when he first returned. I’ll honor your secret as completely as I can, but I will not die for it.
ANNALEE: Fine, yes, as far as you can. But stop me from planting that bomb.
VOLTA: I assume it’s diversionary. Livermore? Plutonium?
ANNALEE: Just stop me. And if anything happens, take care of Daniel.
VOLTA: I’ll try, Annalee. That’s all I can do.
ANNALEE: Do it.
The tape clicked off.
Volta, face to the wall, couldn’t see Shamus’s reaction, so he said what he felt: ‘I’m sorry you had to hear it, Shamus. I know it’s painful.’
‘Painful?’ Shamus laughed wildly. ‘That fake? That cruel, cowardly, chickenshit fake? Who was it, one of the legendary AMO mimics? Maybe even this Jean Bluer I’ve been hearing about? Fuck, you can hear the splices! It isn’t even close to her voice. I remember her voice. I remember her laughter and skin! Proof? Bullshit! Truth? Here, Volta, turn around here, I’ll show you the fucking truth.’
Volta turned to face Shamus. When he saw the gun in Shamus’s scarred hand, Volta knew he was about to die.
Shamus wailed, ‘You want the truth, huh, the whole truth and nothing but, and not any of your bullshit lies?’ He grabbed the mirror leaning against the wall and thrust it toward Volta, holding it up for him to see his face. ‘There! That’s your truth. Look at it! Look! Look at yourself! Look at what you are!’
Volta met himself on the surface of the mirror. He looked into his own eyes. No escape. He lifted his head and met Shamus’s gaze. ‘I know who I am,’ Volta said.
The bullet hit Volta above the left eye, the impact snapping his head back as it blew away the back of his skull. He staggered for an instant, took a stumbling step forward, swayed as he gathered his last living breath, and then, just as Shamus lifted the mirror to shield himself, Volta drove his fist through it, shattering the glass. A splintered shard sliced the carotid artery an inch below Shamus’s left ear, and another nearly severed his scarred hand at the wrist.
Volta wanted to stay on his feet, to walk outside and watch the moon and stars as he died, but Shamus – howling, blinded by glass slivers – shoved him backward. Volta collapsed against the table, sending the goldfish bowl smashing to the floor.
Shamus, his spurting wrist pressed against his shirt, his other hand clamped against his neck, staggered along the wall until he found the door, fumbled the knob open with his blood-slick hand, and lurched outside.
Volta lay dead face down alongside the table, his arms stretched out slightly above his head, the spreading pool of blood just touching his fingertips.
Spilled free of its shattered bowl, the tiny goldfish flopped on the oak floor, trying to fling itself back into the lake, the spherical river. A last wild leap carried it to the edge of the pooling blood. The goldfish thrashed itself upright, then, its back shining above the shallow pool, half squirmed, half swam through Volta’s blood, splashed up the shallows like a golden salmon battling upriver to spawning grounds, its movement mirrored in the sinuous waves spreading in its wake, fought on across the surface, to shimmy at last up the star-flecked, moon-spangled sleeve of Volta’s magician robe.
Still naked, the silk comforter pulled snugly around her, Jenny stared into the Diamond. She hadn’t seen him actually enter it – in fact, she’d been drowsing when she’d realized he had left – but she knew that’s where he’d gone. She wasn’t sad she’d helped him on his way. No difference between dream lovers and real lovers like Longshot or the mangled love of Clyde. Love was what you made, then what you could make of it. Abandoned on her wedding night. Widowed at consummation. She looked into the centerless, sourceless light of the Diamond and decided she’d wait for Daniel till dawn. If he’d rather vanish than settle down with a crazy woman and an imaginary daughter – fine and farewell. The love they’d made was real even if he wasn’t. Any man who kissed her scar was always free to go. And so was she.
When the first sunlight touched the Diamond, Jenny slipped it carefully back in the possibles sack, slung the comforter around her, and walked back to the Porsche. She decided to believe Daniel’s information: Jim Bridger’s grave was in Saint Louis. Perfect. She could try Longshot’s sludge-reaming cure, continue on to Saint Lou, fall in love with the faithful, fascinating DJ she hoped was real, and then, if Daniel hadn’t showed up, get rid of the Diamond. After looking at it most of the night, Jenny decided she didn’t like the Diamond. Too perfect. Lifeless. As she opened the car door, Jenny felt a strong suspicion that the Diamond wasn’t real, another illusion, a mirror to hide behind.
When she opened the Porsche’s door she immediately sensed what her eyes confirmed: Mia was gone. ‘That rotten son of a bitch!’ Jenny said. ‘Fuck you and burn you and leave you alone in the Big Alone.’ Daniel had taken Mia with him, wherever the hell they’d gone.
Rage vented, Jenny considered two other possibilities: perhaps Mia had followed him freely; or maybe Mia had been his guide. Mia could have imagined him in her trance. Made him bring the Diamond. Get her mother lost in rapture and slip her mind for a different life. Her own imaginary daughter running off with her dream lover!
She laughed. She wished them happiness and good fortune.
When Smiling Jack’s third straight-access call to Volta went unanswered, he caught a plane for the Coast. He could have asked a number of Alliance members closer to Laurel Creek to check on Volta, but he felt he should do it himself. Volta had never failed to return a straight-access call. If Volta was dead, Jack would know which secrets to protect.
As Smiling Jack stepped out of his rented Ford at Laurel Creek Hollow, he smelled amid the light fragrance of the blossoming apple and plums in the orchard the stench of rotting flesh drifting through the house’s open door. Jack tried to steady himself, clearing his mind so he could discern what had happened and what needed to be done.
Despite the sprayed splatters of blood on the porch, he checked the house first. He had tried to prepare himself but was still shocked to see Volta’s body face down in the gelatinous pool of blood, a whining swarm of flies clustered in the ragged cavity the bullet had blown in the back of his skull. He wanted to drag Volta from the coagulated mire of his blood to spare him the indignity of being seen like that. But Smiling Jack left him lying and methodically began to examine the room. The open wall-vault. The smashed mirror. The tape box next to the player. The heavy trail of blood leading out the door.
Jack wanted to hear the tape, but instead he followed the blood trail out to the porch, across the yard, then downhill toward the river. Smiling Jack would have bet his customized Kenworth against a sheet of one-ply toilet paper that he’d find Shamus Malloy dead within a quarter mile. He would have won by a hundred yards. Shamus’s body, the slashed wrist of his deformed hand clamped to his sliced neck as if the blood could pass between the wounds, was curled at the base on a majestic Douglas fir. Jack carried Shamus’s body up the hill, leaving it at the edge of the trees.