Bad Things (47 page)

“Two steps,” said another voice, “and I’ll blow his mother’s head

off.”

Cory Robertson was stationed past the other side of the promon-

tory, standing in shadow and braced against a tree. He had a hunting

rifl e trained straight at Carol. I’d used a gun like it in the past, and

knew it could stop a deer from over half a mile. At this range it would

punch a hole in a car door.

B A D T H I N G S 347

I turned, looking for Bill. I thought he’d been right behind me in

the trees, but now he was nowhere to be seen. So I kept my head turn-

ing smoothly in an arc, as if all I’d been doing was scoping out the

terrain, establishing the degree to which I’d become surrounded.

“Anybody else I should know about?” I asked.

“Just us,” Brooke said. “But Cory’s an excellent shot.”

“I believe you,” I said. “I’ve seen the picture gallery.”

I knew, however, that I’d just seen the shadow of at least one more

person amid the trees, staying close. A fairly hefty someone. “Bet

Deputy Greene isn’t too shabby, either.”

“Bravo. Well, yes, I did lie just a little. A few friends have been

kind enough to assist us. I’m not going to tell you how many, though,

or where they are.”

“Okay, then,” I said, slowly raising my hands. “In which case I’m

not going anywhere. You win.”

“Drop the gun.”

I dropped it.

“Get Tyler,”
Carol shouted at me, her voice cracked. “She’s
going
to kill him
.”

I turned to face the jetty. “What’s this about, Brooke? Why have

you got my son?”

“He isn’t yours.”

“That’s not what his birth certifi cate said.”

“You want a prize for having screwed your own wife for a change?

You wouldn’t even have that boy if it weren’t for me.”

“Quickening, 2004.”

“Very good.”

“I didn’t know anything about that until twenty minutes ago. I

don’t understand it now, either.”

“Of course you don’t. Darling Carol already
had
a child but that’s

just not enough for some people, is it? She was
so
worried that number two was being a little sloooow in arriving, and so she came visiting her

old friend Brooke. She didn’t tell
you
about this, naturally. It’s astound-348 Michael Marshall

ing how much of life is invisible, don’t you fi nd? That’s not the only

favor Carol’s asked down the years, either, or the only lie she’s told.”

“We all lie, Brooke. Big deal. Tell me—how much does it cost?

For someone who wants a boy to fall in love with her, or another child?

What do you take from people like that? Is it just money? What else

do you demand for pretending you can do these things?”

“I don’t claim to be able to do anything. But I know someone who

can.”

“Right, yes, a witch. And why would a witch need a broker for her

ser vices? What does she gain from that?”

“Do you know who she is?”

“I don’t even believe there is one.”

Brooke grinned, cold and knowing. “Precisely. A few hundred

years ago that could save your life.”

“And in return you take a cut of the money?”

“And keep the dog on its lead. People with that kind of power

tend to be unstable. They need a steadying hand. A patron. Someone

with an overview.”

“Just sounds like bullshit to me, Brooke.”

“Luckily I don’t give a damn whether you believe in it or not.”

What was Bill doing? Where was he? Would a few extra seconds help
?

I turned to Carol. “Did you tell Tyler about this? Is this why he

said to me I wasn’t really his father?”

Carol just glared at me with open hatred, as if I was something

that had come into her life from underneath the bed in the middle of

the night, a thing that had brought only badness into her life.

“Oh, Cory,” Brooke said lightly, as you might alert someone to

the fact you’re ready for another cocktail. There was a beat, and then

a rifl e shot.

I heard Bill cry out, and knew then that whatever happened next,

it was very likely to be going Brooke Robertson’s way.

A moment later this became even more clear, when people started

coming toward us out of the trees.

B A D T H I N G S 349

Bill had evidently frozen deep in the forest when he saw what hap-

pened to me, and tried cutting across the back, to get around the

other side of Cory. But something—moonlight, the bulk of his pass-

ing against the snow—had given him away.

Cory shot him in the upper right side of the chest, out of mercy

or more likely from swinging the rifl e around too fast. Either way, it

was enough. You could smell the blood from where I stood, unless

that was merely a different note in the odor coming in waves off the

lake. Bill was knocked fl at on his back, just inside the trees. He was

moving as if trying to stand up in the wrong direction, and his gun

had fallen some distance away.

Meanwhile, shadows kept coming toward me.

Initially I’d assumed it was just Cory’s buddies, the guys I’d seen

in his photograph. It quickly became clear there were more people

than that. At fi rst just ten or so of them, then more, and still they

kept coming.

Deputy Greene was the fi rst. Then I saw the man who ran the

coffee truck in the bank parking lot, and the woman who ran the hair

salon on Kelly Street. I saw the guy who owned a market where I’d

bought cigarettes a couple times in the last few days, and people I’d

seen sitting reading the paper in the Write Sisters, and talking to-

gether in the Mountain View, or passing me on the street.

I saw Courtney.

And I saw Marie, the woman who ran my motel.

Most stopped only as far from the trees as was needed to accom-

modate those still coming up from behind. But Marie came farther,

halfway to where I stood. Her eyes were closed and her lips were

moving constantly.

Then fi nally she opened her eyes.

The trees suddenly shook up in their highest branches, as another

cold and vicious wind came down out of the mountains, or perhaps

from deeper in the trees. This wind whipped Marie’s hair up around

her face in a cloud, as she turned her head to look at me. She looked

350 Michael Marshall

very, very different here. She seemed both younger and very old,

dreadful with power, as if the movement in her hands could provoke

movement in objects she was not in contact with.

She also looked, bathed in a moonlight that found harsher planes

buried in her face, a little like someone I knew.

I realized that none of the other people were looking my way, or

even seemed aware that I was here. They all seemed to be gazing at

the lake, or perhaps at the other side of it, and none was dressed for

the weather. One of the nearest to me was the hair-salon woman.

Her face was blank, cloudy, like Courtney’s had been every time I’d

seen her. Almost as if she didn’t even have a real face, or I was seeing

beyond it to an emptiness within, to the truth that there was nothing

inside anyone that could be depended upon.

“You fi rst,” Brooke said to Carol.

“Fuck you,”
Carol said.

I turned as Brooke took a step backward, bringing her even closer

to the end of the jetty. She moved her arms so that the child wrig-

gling in her grasp was hanging fully out over the lake.

“This water here is always very cold,” she said. “How good a

swimmer is your little boy?”

Carol looked at me, helpless now. The anger was gone from her

eyes and I saw only the girl I’d met long ago, someone who’d con-

vinced me to come live in these mountains because she loved them

and they had always been her home—perhaps not realizing that it was

also a case of never being able to get away.

I didn’t know what to tell her. Death hung in the air with nothing

left to do but fall. If we didn’t do what Brooke said, then she was going

to go through with what she intended anyhow. So far as I could tell,

half of Black Ridge was here to see this, or to witness it. To avoid this

moment we needed to have started three or four years back, or longer,

perhaps on the days we were born. We needed not to have met each

other, to be different people, to have always been dead and never tried

to be alive. All we could do now was slow it down.

B A D T H I N G S 351

“Do what she says,” I said.

Carol didn’t move. I started walking.

“No,” Brooke said, her voice cracking just a little. “Carol fi rst.”

Carol still wouldn’t budge. Perhaps she thought she could create

an impasse by refusing to move. Maybe she, too, was playing for time.

I didn’t think either was going to work. There was only one way I

could see out of this.

“Carol, listen to me.”

“Why would I listen to you?” Carol said. “Why should I believe

you care about him?”

“Because he’s my son,” I said. “You and I are done. But he and I

can never be. Unless there’s something else you haven’t told me.”

“No. Screwing other people was
your
department. Don’t worry.

He’s your son.”

“And yours. So go to him. You want him alone out there, what-

ever’s going to happen next?”

Carol hesitated, and then abruptly started toward the jetty.

Climbed up the three steps, and began to walk out over the water.

I glanced over at Cory. He was holding his position. Evidently

whatever Brooke planned had to happen out over the lake, but I didn’t

know whether it needed the three of us to be there together at the

same time, or if her brother was just going to shoot Carol on her way

to the end.

He had the rifl e in place, but didn’t look like he was sighting on

her with immediate intent. And why would they have waited to do

all this, and planned it this way, unless they needed all three of us at

once?

I heard Carol’s feet on the jetty. A few more steps. Then Cory

abruptly turned and fi red.

Carol fl inched, but the shot had been for Bill, who’d been trying

to get to his gun. This time he was hit high up in the left thigh.

Cory swiveled back to sight on Carol once again.

The whole forest seemed to exhale.

352 Michael Marshall

The warmth I’d felt earlier was suddenly gone, and it was utterly

cold. Bill was making the kind of noises men fi nd in their throats

when all they want is for an angel to come and take them away.

Everybody else stood still, hair and clothes fl apping in a growing

wind. Only Marie looked truly real, her and the indistinct shape that

now stood by her side.

Carol was halfway along the jetty now. Something seemed to be

rising out of the surface of the lake beneath her, like a faint haze. Her

back was straight and she was staring directly at the woman at the

other end, meeting her eyes coldly, and I was proud of her for this.

It felt like there was a point, minutes or seconds from now, be-

yond which all was pitch-black, and as though this darkness had al-

ways been present in my life, and that everything I had ever done or

dreamed had been a lie. As if my father had never cared for me, nor

my mother, nor Scott, nor anyone else on this earth. So what did it

matter what happened next?

Carol was nearly at the end of the jetty now. Brooke would want

me to follow, after which she would presumably leave us there for

Cory to fi nish this thing off, to drop three bodies, the remainder of a

family, into Murdo Pond.

But then, for just a moment, Brooke’s view of me was obscured by

Carol’s back—as I hoped it might be.

I heard a voice whisper from just behind me, a voice I hadn’t heard

in a long time.

“Run, Daddy,” he said.
“Run
.
”

C H A P T E R 4 6

I kicked off with everything I had. As I reached the steps and leaped

straight up them, I heard a rifl e shot. I dodged left as I hit the jetty,

but I knew it was going to come down to how good a marksman

Cory really was, and how much of a risk he was prepared to take,

given that his sister stood beyond me.

Carol heard or felt me coming, turned, tried to move out of the

way, stumbled, and fell back.

There was the fl at crack of another shot. This missed by a foot

and took a chunk out of the left handrail. I went back right, gather-

ing speed now that I was on a level surface.

Brooke saw me coming, and tightened her grip on Tyler. Cory

fi red again, too hurried, missed once more.

Everything you ever do is a risk.

I threw myself straight at Brooke.

I hit her hard and fast and smashed her straight back into the rail

at the end of the jetty. It broke and then we were falling, Tyler

between us, my face so close to Brooke’s that we could have kissed.

354 Michael Marshall

I punched out at her as hard as I could, and we hit the water hard,

heads fi rst.

It was like being kicked in the heart and temples at the same time,

so cold that my whole body went into shocked spasm, throwing me

backward from Brooke.

I glimpsed Tyler’s hand in front of my face, and grabbed at it,

pulling him toward me, jerking his head closer to mine. His eyes were