When he was small, Mickey must have suffered the same misery as Daniel Joseph and countless other children. Now she knew the real reason why he had knocked out Elliot Joseph's teeth.
She hesitated for a moment. She didn't know whether she felt anger or pity. Then she said, "What about the rest of them?"
"Run off into the woods, bare-ass naked," said the Indian boy in the plaid shirt, with a grin.
"What are you going to do? God, George, you'vekilledthem! Aren't you going to call the police?"
"These peoplearethe police. And the judiciary too. What do you seriously think is going to happen here?"
"I don't know. I really don't know. But I think I'd like to go home now, if I can."
George laid his arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze. "You sure opened a can of worms here, Holly. But all that's going to happen is that somebody's going to put the lid back on, real tight."
They left the house and went down the steps. George's Grand Cherokee was waiting for them there, and George helped Holly into the front passenger seat. She turned and looked back, and as she did so a lurid flash of lightning lit up the peak of Mount Hood, as if it were a stage set for a melodramatic play.
Superstition
George came to see her two days later. Marcella had pot-roasted a chicken with red vinegar and they opened a bottle of Barolo.
"So what did the police say?" asked Holly, tearing off a piece of bread to mop up the juice on her plate.
"They said that I was clearly acting in self-defense and that no charges are going to be pressed."
"They said that straight-faced?"
"Yup."
"They said it was self-defense despite the fact that you shot a judge and three other men in the judge's own home, and they were all naked, and none of them were armed?"
"To be fair, somebody fired off one shot at us first. I guess it was probably Mickey. Anyhow, you know what my father always used to say? The law is only a point of view."
"Have you heard any more about the rest of them?"
"Still running around the Mount Hood Recreation Area in their birthday suits, living off nuts and berries, I imagine."
"What's 'birthday suits'?" asked Daisy.
"Naked," said George. "But then some people havenoshame at all."
Holly said, "I still can't work out how you found me how you saved me."
George smoothed back his hair. "This is really tasty, this chicken. Your Marcella ought to give me the recipe."
"Go on, George. Tell me."
"I'm a little embarrassed, because this makes me sound so superstitious. But I wouldn't have found out what had happened to you if I hadn't believed in Raven."
"When you saybelieved,you meanreallybelieved?"
"I believed in that curse that Elliot Joseph cast on you too. After he did that, I made a special point of checking up on you, even following you sometimes, just to make sure that Raven wasn't close behind you."
"You really thought that Raven would come to get me?"
"In a way, he did, didn't he? He brought you plenty of bad luck. But those times I was following you, I began to notice that other people were watching you, too, and other people were checking up on your movements. That lawyer that asked me about you, I caught him talking to his friends about you later, and the way they were talking I began to think that something very strange was being set up. I didn't tell you because I didn't really have any evidence, and you were jumpy enough anyway, thinking that every black shadow you saw was Raven coming closer."
"Raven tapped at my bedroom window," said Daisy.
"Well, if he did, he was only trying to warn you. Raven only brings misery to those who are cursed, not their children."
"So what happened on Friday evening?" asked Holly.
"I was having a drink with John Singing Rock and his brother Henry after work, in the Pioneer Bar. We'd had a pretty hard day and I needed to relax. But who should I see on the other side of the bar but this young lawyer guy, and he was talking to two of his friends. He was really excited, really up. He said that Mickey Kavanagh was going to collect you from your home and drive you to Phantom Woman Falls, and that they were all going to"-he glanced at Daisy-"well, they were all going to make whoopee."
"What's whoopee?" Daisy wanted to know.
"It's fun, like having a party."
"So what's a whoopee cushion?"
"That's fun too. It's a cushion that makes a farty noise when you sit on it."
"Can you buy me one?"
"Believe me, pumpkin, from what Marcella tells me, you don't need one."
She turned back to George. "Youfollowedus? Me and Mickey?"
George nodded. "It wasn't easy, in that storm, believe me. When we got there, we looked in the window, saw what was going on, and Henry went down to the basement and killed the generator."
"You saved my life, George. You know what they would have done to me, don't you?"
"I don't think it takes too much imagination."
She leaned across and kissed his cheek. "Thank God you're deaf as well otherwise you never would have known what those guys in the Pioneer Bar were saying."
After Daisy had been tucked into bed, they spent the rest of the evening talking by candlelight. Holly told George how Mickey had tricked her into going to Phantom Woman Falls by pretending that she was going to do a deal with Merlin Krauss.
"Didn't you see it on the news?" said George. "The highway patrol arrested Krauss just outside Klamath Falls. Yesterday morning, I think-for speeding. They say they're close to arresting the guy who was supposed to dispose of the body too. It looks like you're going to have your day of glory in court after all."
They also discussed the Joseph case. Little Daniel was improving, although he would never regain the sight of his left eye, and his speech was slurred. George had heard nothing about the Heilshorn case except that Anthony Heilshorn had mysteriously managed to break both of his legs on his second day at the North County Correctional Facility.
A Present from Ned
George had just opened another bottle of wine when the red light over the doorbell flashed. "Somebody's calling late," he said. "Do you want me to get it?"
"No, that's all right. Just pour out the wine. It's probably Marcella, forgotten something. She'll forget her head one day."
She went downstairs and opened the front door. A man in a brown coat was standing outside with a large bunch of yellow roses.
"Holly Summers?" he asked.
"That's me."
"Present from Ned," the man said. He lifted the bunch of roses and shot her in the face at point-blank range, in an explosive shower of yellow petals.