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Facing the woods in back of her house, Josie lifted the phone again and dialed the number of the police station. The line was clear.
Five years he’d been gone, and she hadn’t missed him, not after the first year, anyway, and then only because she wanted him there for Mellie, for Mellie to have a father’s hand to cling to as she took her first step. Josie couldn’t help the sliver of resentment over the intrusion of those old memories into her chaotic thoughts today. One more thing that made no sense, she thought as she waited for someone to pick up the receiver at the other end.
Something moved in the woods.
Holding the phone, Josie leaned forward, straining. Only a wisp of cloud passing over the sun.
No one there.
Ryder Hayes. That was why she was remembering Bart. Two very different men, but in those few moments with Ryder, she had been edgily aware of him. Uncomfortable, but caught in the spell of that disturbing, heated awareness, she’d been at a pitch of awareness she’d never experienced.
She bent down to pick up a white dust ball.
The voice rasped in her ear. “Stoner here. Whaddaya want?”
“Josie Conrad here, Detective,” she mocked. “And what I want is to see you. Today, please.”
Listening to the faint drone that translated into words, into meaning, she waited. “I know, but—It’s about my neighbor, Ryder Hayes. Please,” she said, her voice rising and sinking in the late-afternoon quiet. She twined the cord in large loops around her elbow and hand as she listened. “All right. If you can’t, you can’t. Tomorrow afternoon will have to do.” Carefully she placed the dumbbell-shaped receiver back on its hooks.
Tomorrow.
But there was another night to endure.
Just before supper, the phone rang.
Again the click and then staticky squawks.
“Hello?” Josie said irritably, thinking she heard someone say her name. “Hello? I can’t hear you. Can you speak louder, please. We have a bad connection.”
The static grew louder, hurting her ears until she dropped the phone. She’d been getting a lot of interference on her phone line lately.
Maybe she needed a new phone.
When the long summer twilight ended, plunging the earth into dark, she lit the candles and opened a can of tuna, breaking it up into chunks with her fork as she chopped up celery and stirred in yogurt. Sitting down at her empty kitchen table, she made herself eat, but she turned on the television.
Under the intensity of the surge-dimming studio lights, the weatherman wore rolled-up sleeves, a gleam of sweat and an apologetic smile as he slogged manfully through the news that one more hundred-degree day had made it into the record books.
“Sorry, folks, looks like there’s no rain in the forecast for this week. We’ve had reports of brush fires in some outlying areas, so keep an eye open for smoke, hear now?” he admonished as he concluded and turned to the anchor.
“Joel, thanks for that report!” The brunette with the stiffly sprayed hair beamed at him. The tiny line of perspiration along her upper lip caught the light as she spoke. “But at least it will be another record day for the beaches, right?”
Joel nodded as the camera closed in on his sweating face.
“It’s been an interesting weather year, hasn’t it? The January freeze and now this drought?” The anchor’s expression was professionally concerned, her eyes drifting to an offscreen TelePrompTer.
“None of our computer projections suggested this kind of summer, that’s for sure, Janet.” Joel patted his shining face. “And, no, we don’t have an explanation for it. Not yet. Maybe it’s a sign that the world is ending.” His laugh was too hearty. “No, but really, folks, we think it’s probably related to the volcano eruption or to those huge gamma ray explosions reported by the NASA observatory and—”
“Fascinating, Joel! I know our listeners will stay tuned for more background.” The anchorwoman’s chuckle was feeble. Joel had had too much airtime. Her voice dropped to a really, really serious register as she interrupted, “On to local news, Joel. Young Eric Ames is still missing. The search has been expanded to Manatee and Sarasota Counties—”
Josie got up and silenced the perky voice with a flick of her wrist.
Later, she lit the candles lined up along the screened-in porch one by one, a ceremony of remembrance and sorrow, their light a token in all the darkness.
Once, sometime after midnight, an animal shrieked, caught by unseen talons. For an unsettling instant, she had the fancy that she could hear the frantic beating of that distant small heart, feel its fear pumping through her veins.
Standing and pacing on her porch, back and forth, back and forth through the night, she watched the candles and their flickering reflections in the panes of the open windows, until the last candle sputtered out, leaving her alone in darkness.
In the teasing cruelty of the cool that came shortly before dawn, she had the dream again.
Even dreaming, she knew she slept, knew she wandered in some limbo of the soul.
And in her dream she heard the ringing of the phone and knew if she answered it she would hear Mellie’s voice.
“Mommy!” Ahead of her, Mellie danced from one foot to the other. “Hurryhurryhurry! You’ll be too late, Mommy!” Her short, sturdy legs were covered with bits of moss and leaves. Behind her and to her right, a tall shape hovered, its edges blurred and unrecognizable at first. Twisting on her bed, Josie moaned. This time, she recognized the form.
Ryder Hayes, stalking through her dreams, his face turned away from her, only his lean shape betraying him.
“Mommy!” Impatiently, Mellie waved Josie to her. The bangle bracelet, nothing but imitation gold, glittered with her movement. “Now, Mommy. Now!” She stamped one yellow-sneakered foot on the ground and turned to run.
The shape drifted with Mellie, tracking her.
Hayes? Or someone else?
Her blood quickening, Josie twisted in her sleep.
“Mellie, wait!” she called out. From the corner of her eye, Josie saw the shadowy figure stalking beside her now, moving with the easy fluidity with which Ryder Hayes had disappeared into the woods, and she wanted to turn and look, really look, see if its eyes were the haunted dark of Ryder Hayes’s, so that, waking, she would know.
But Mellie was vanishing ahead of her and Josie couldn’t take time to linger. She couldn’t lose sight of her daughter. If she did—“Wait for me, sweetie!” she called. Changing, swelling to an enormous shadow, the form brushed against her, closed her in its darkness as she screamed, “Mellie!”
She knew she screamed. Her throat was raw with the effort. But the words never came out. Strangled in her throat, they woke her every time. “Wait,” she whispered now, the early-morning sunlight a pallid yellow that hinted of the heat to come.
The phone was still ringing.
With a shaking hand, Josie reached for it.
She expected static.
“Mrs. Conrad?” Low, the voice slid over her skin like the tickle of a feather.
She thought he hesitated momentarily over her name. “Yes, Mr. Hayes?”
“You shouldn’t go to the police.”
“What?” she whispered, stricken.
“Don’t go to the police with your story about what you think you saw in my house. You’ll look foolish if you do. Your daughter’s not here. As far as I know, I’ve never seen her.”
Josie couldn’t speak.
“Nor are those dogs my pets. Don’t make a fool of yourself, Mrs. Conrad. Take my advice.”
The click as he hung up sounded like a threat.
Leaning her head on her hands, Josie sat at the edge of her bed.
He’d known she was going to the police.
He’d told her she would make a fool of herself if she did.
She pulled on clean shorts and a long T-shirt that she clipped into a wad on one side. Purple, orange and red, the ring made the shape of an exotic flower when she pulled the fabric through it. A gift, too, from Mellie.
Josie didn’t like feeling threatened by Ryder Hayes.
Would Stoner have called Hayes? Would Stoner have had any reason to warn Ryder Hayes? Complications. Puzzles within a puzzle, but she hadn’t changed her mind about talking with Stoner.
As she poured a glass of milk and snagged the piece of toast that popped up, she heard the heavy thump of the weekend paper landing at her front step. Carrying the milk in one hand, she walked barefoot over the wood floor to the front door. She would read the comics, the sports pages, the editorial.
She couldn’t read the front-page headlines anymore.
Opening the inside front door, she reached for the latch on the screen door.
Even without his implied threat, Ryder Hayes made her uneasy in ways she couldn’t identify.
He had been in her dream, an unsettling darkness moving through the mist toward her. He’d become the haunting shape in her dream. The figure was always there, just out of sight, and each time she had the dream, she was left frustrated, feeling that if she could only once remember to turn and look straight at that shadowy shape, she would know—
She flicked the latch up as she glanced down at her stoop.
Through the glare of sunlight coming through the mesh of the screen, she saw the rattlesnake coiled on top of the thick mat made by the folded-over newspaper.
Stretching toward her and following the movement of her arm behind the screen, its head was flat and triangular. The ropy body was thicker than her arm, its diamond shapes iridescent in the sun. Underneath those gleaming coils, showing in patches, the headline caught and held her gaze. Her eyes fixed on the words and she read them in a blink as the snake’s body thrust forward: ‘Angel Bay Child Remains Missing.’
With both hands, Josie slammed the wooden door. Glass shattered on the floor, and milk splashed up her legs.
The force of the snake’s strike thudded against the screen, his fangs breaking through it, catching on it, scraping the inside door. Trapped high off the ground in the mesh of the screen, his heavy body thrashed against screen and wooden door.
Covering her mouth with a shaking hand, Josie stretched out a leg and dragged a chair to her, bracing it under the doorknob. Shuddering, she snapped the lock and retreated to her kitchen, gagging as the rattlesnake battered at her door, its thrashing smacks shaking the doorframe.
She sank into an aluminum-and-plastic chair at the table. The door shuddered with the heaviness of the snake’s body smashing into it. She couldn’t think what to do.
A plan. She needed a plan. She couldn’t deal with that reptilian body only a cheap wooden door away. She couldn’t cope with it. Not now. Not with her dream waking her with its sense of evil pervading her world, not with Ryder Hayes’s phone call.
No, she couldn’t face that enormous creature thumping with intent against her house.
On the other side of her front door, the snake’s body made a hissing sound as screen and wood slid against one another with the heavy flailing.
Pulling her feet up beneath her, Josie locked her arms around her knees. “Enough, oh, please, enough,” she moaned, rocking back and forth, the clunking sound of aluminum against her floor riding under the agitated whacks of the snake’s body. “I can’t do this. I can’t.” She gagged, dry mouthed, nausea growing with each bump and whack against the door.
But of course she could, and so she stayed curled into herself for long moments, gathering her strength, preparing one more time to do what she had to do. Reaching deep into herself she disciplined herself to ignore the nausea and weakness dissolving her bones.
Finally, unlocking her arms, she stood up and went to get her knee-high boots, thick leather gloves and hoe.
If she’d had a gun, she would have used it.
But she didn’t. She had the sharpened hoe, and, tears streaming down her face, she used it finally, after long minutes of walking from side to side, nerving herself to approach the thrashing snake, not recognizing herself in the woman who, screaming and cursing, slashed and sliced at the reptile until the huge body lay in pieces, separated from the head hooked into the screen.
Tasting bile, Josie got a bucket and scooped up the remains of the snake. She had to use the hoe to knock the head off, ripping the mesh as she gouged at it. Gagging again, she looped the hoe edge under the curved fangs and lifted the head into the bucket. Sliding the metal end of the hoe under the metal handle of the bucket, she carried it to the steel garbage can at the back of her lot. Metal hoe clicked against bucket handle, clicked with each shaking step she took.
She left the bucket beside the garbage can. She’d done as much as she was able to for the moment. She slipped the hoe free, and the bucket tilted, wobbled. Nausea rolled up as she saw the bloodied heap mixed with chunks of newsprint.
She ran. Dropping the hoe, she ran for her garden, but she didn’t make it. Three feet away, she doubled over, retching, the harsh sounds tearing through her until she was spent and empty.
But she stayed upright.
Later she would remember that she wasn’t driven to her knees.
She coped.
Reminding herself of that truth over and over, she summoned the strength to retrieve her abandoned hoe, to hook up the hose to the outside spigot and waste precious water flooding down the concrete stoop and screen door until no trace of the snake’s presence remained except the gaping mesh flaps hanging like pennants from the edge of the screen door.
She felt as if the snake had exuded evil, its poisonous molecules oozing from it to her, lodging in her clothes, her hair. If she could have, she would have stripped naked and bathed outside.
Instead, methodically, systematically, squandering water with a vengeance, she sprayed herself with the hose first and then went inside, cleaned up and changed into a cotton dress. Keeping out the clip that had been Mellie’s present, she first washed it and then threw her shorts and shirt into a garbage bag.
Her hands never stopped shaking.
Bart would have been surprised.
Shuddering, she knotted the bag with one vicious twist and dropped it into the trash. She wasn’t overreacting one little bit, she told herself firmly and marched out her front door.
A tiny clink as the toe of her shoe nudged a small cylinder wedged into the crack between two of the walkway bricks.
The red-pepper capsule.
Stooping, she picked it up. Drops of water glistened against its shiny surface. The force of the water from the hose had forced it into the space where two bricks hadn’t quite met.
It must have been on her stoop. Under her newspaper. With the rattlesnake on top? She recalled distinctly the clattering sound the cylinder had made as it rolled off the edge of Hayes’s porch.
Driving into Angel Bay over the bridge that crossed Angel River, she could see the roof of Ryder Hayes’s house to the north.
At the Hayes property, the river swung in before taking a wide curve out toward the gulf and the bridge from the mainland to the offshore islands.
Devil’s Island was visible from the Hayes property, then Santa Ana and finally Madre Mia, which, over the years, had become Madder Me for Angel Bay natives.
He had come to her house this morning, and she hadn’t heard him.
She’d heard the newspaper delivery boy.
But not Ryder Hayes.
