Charles Grant - Night Songs

Another groan, and one arm lowered slowly. "Jesus, Ross, it hurts."

And before Colin could reach him, he toppled. His knees remained locked, his hands stayed at his side, and his forehead struck the sidewalk with a soft, watery thud. Colin was at his side in a half dozen long strides, kneeling, rolling the man over while whispering his name. Vincent's eyes were open, his face laced with blades of grass. Blood stained his teeth, and a bubble of red shimmered in one nostril. "Vincent?"

The man blinked, snorted the blood from his nose, and took a long minute focusing.

"Vincent, where was the accident? Was Lombard with you? Is he hurt?"

"No accident, bastard," and he tried to lift a hand to grab for Colin's throat.

It was unpleasantly easy to brush the arm aside, and worse when a tear slid from the corner of the man's eye.

"I didn't send anyone after you," Colin said gently. "Now you have to tell me if your buddy was with you."

"Kid," Vincent said, the deep voice so soft Colin had to lean close to understand, and could smell the bittersweet phlegm that stained the man's breath. He tried to sit up; Colin easily forced him down. "Kid."

"A kid was with you? What kid?"

"You know."

His own hand fisted, and he took a deep breath. "Vincent, this is bullshit. I didn't send anyone after you, okay? You're only making it worse for yourself. You've got to lie still or something else will go wrong. And, Jesus, will you please tell me if Lombard was in the car too?"

"Kid."

Colin lost his patience. "Goddamn it, what kid are you talking about?"

Vincent sighed through a drooling of pink saliva. "You know him, bastard. The kid with the freckles."

His eyes widened. "What? Frankie Adams?"

"The kid, you bastard. Oh, Jesus, it hurts."

Colin stripped off his jacket, and bunched it into a pillow he eased under the man's head. He leaned back and was about to ask him what he meant by accusing

Frankie Adams, when he realized that Vincent's open eyes weren't seeing a thing. "Oh… hell."

The ocean raised a cannonade high above the jetties.

He touched two fingers to the side of the man's neck, rocked back on his heels and looked over his shoulder. He knew he should have been shocked, or at least moved to some sort of decisive action, but he could only crouch there and watch the fog, half-expecting Lombard to come stumbling up the street after his friend. Then he realized that if Tess Mayfair and Vincent had survived the accident this long, Lombard might have too. He launched himself out of the crouch then and raced for the steps, banged through the door and grabbed the receiver.

He stared at the buttons, at the cradle, and stiffened as a surge of winter cold replaced all his blood. His teeth began to chatter. His hands began to tremble, first slowly, then violently, and he dropped onto the couch and closed his eyes until the delayed reaction had passed. The dial tone burred loudly. The molded plastic was ice in his palm. He shook his head once and hard, then tried to punch Tabor's number.

It took him four times before he finally got it right.

The line was busy, and he stared at the window while he counted to fifteen.

The telephone rang and Peg grabbed for it, juggled the receiver clumsily, laughed softly and self-consciously when she heart Matt giggling from his place by the door. She listened, then, and sighed with a martyred lift of her eyebrows. No, she told Hattie Mills, Chief Tabor wasn't here, but she really didn't think Reverend Otter was trying to kill her poor dog. She nodded. She grabbed the coiled cord in her right hand and squeezed it as tightly as she could. She nodded. She suggested that Hattie bring the dog inside the library where it wouldn't bother the minister, and regretted the mistake when she spent the next five minutes taking the brunt of a brusque lecture on civil liberties and the causes of the American, the French, and a dozen other revolutions whose purposes were to permit her to keep her aging dog where she damn well pleased. That in turn led to a survey of precedents for such actions leading all the way back to Saturn's revolt against the Titans. Peg agreed several times, making faces at Matt, and when she finally hung up she looked at the clock, then at her son who was closing the door against the wind.

The telephone rang, and Annalee answered it without much enthusiasm, her voice slipping automatically into a professionally concerned tone, nodding once, doodling a scaffold and hangman on a prescription pad, finally interrupting with a polite clearing of her throat to tell Rose Adams that she really didn't think Doctor Montgomery had the time to search for her son, but if she really felt it was affecting her health she should bundle herself up and walk on over. That tactical error cost her another few minutes listening to a lecture on the inalienable rights of a patient who was half crippled at best and couldn't see why the good doctor couldn't make house calls to a place less than three blocks away, for crying out loud. When she finally hung up she glanced at her watch, looked toward the empty examination room, dutifully logged the call, and closed her eyes to daydream about the coming night and the plans she had for Garve.

The phone rang in the restaurant, and nobody answered.

The phone rang in Cameron's living room, but it only rang twice. By the time Colin reached it from his place at the front door, there was no one on the line. He shook the receiver and threw it at the cradle, mouthed a half dozen curses when it bounced off to the floor. He was tempted to leave it there and teach it a lesson, but instead picked it up and slammed it back into place. When it didn't ring again, he wished he were home so he could find something to throw.

He had tried three more times to raise the chiefs office, the line infuriatingly engaged at each attempt. Unable to stop thinking about Lombard lying alone out there on the road, injured, perhaps fatally, he decided to wait until he could find out more about the accident. And what Frankie had to do with Theo Vincent's death.

He also couldn't shake the feeling that he had missed something important at Gran's shack. He didn't know why the idea had struck him, but once taken hold he couldn't pry it loose. For a moment he was convinced that bundle was indeed Gran's shroud and weight, that Lilla in her grief had retrieved her grandfather from the grave.

That, however, would have to wait until later.

He glared at the telephone, daring it to ring again, then strode to the door and had his hand on the knob when the pounding began.

A pounding so hard the knob jumped from his hand.

"My God, there's a dead body out there!" Montgomery said as he pushed past Colin and rushed into the living room. "Right on the goddamned driveway." He snatched up the receiver and dialed, turned and took off his glasses. "Hello, Colin, what are you doing out here?"

Colin could only lift a hand and follow meekly, not wanting to admit that the diminutive physician had nearly scared him to death.

"Hell of a thing," Montgomery said with a sigh, one foot tapping impatiently as he waited for the connection. "Looks like he was run over by a truck. Did you see him?"

"I-"

"Lousy, I tell you. The island's gone lousy with corpses. The next time-hello?" He frowned. "Do I have the right number? I wanted Chief Tabor's office. Oh, hello, Peg. You working parttime for the Indian now?"

Colin hovered by the coffee table, forcing himself not to grab the receiver from the man's hand.

"Well, look, dear, I want to talk with Garve." He scowled. "Now that's a hell of a thing. I just left there, for crying out loud. Well, listen, when he gets in have him call me. I'm at Cameron's place, with Colin." He laughed suddenly, sharply. "No, he's all right. There's been an accident, though. Some-no, Colin's just fine, he wasn't involved. You have Garve call me immediately, though, okay? Or that fool Nichols should he decide to go to work. Fine," and he hung up before Colin could tell him to hold on, to let him speak to Peg.

"Hell of a thing." He wandered to the Regency sideboard in the dining room, opened the lower panel and pulled out a bottle of Black Label. He held it up for Colin's approval, found glasses and poured them each a tall drink. Then he returned, sat on the sofa and pulled at his mustache.

"Wait a minute," Colin said, gesturing toward the door. "Are you going to leave him out there?"

"He's dead, m'boy. And I really don't fancy having him in here with us."

Colin stared. "Hugh, for crying out loud-"

"You saw him, I expect," the doctor said after downing half his liquor.

Colin explained briefly, and Montgomery shook his head again.

A fisted wind rattled the window frames, and the glasses on the sideboard shuddered.

"Beautiful," Hugh muttered. "Just beautiful. You tell Bob?"

"He must still be at the restaurant. I've been trying to get a line out of here for twenty minutes."

"Oh? I didn't have any trouble. You know what killed him?"

Colin hesitated, examining his glass. "He said something about Frankie Adams."

"Bullshit."

"I know, I know." He looked to the window and rubbed his hands on his trousers. "Listen, we should at least cover him up or something."

"Suit yourself, Col, but I'm not moving."

He vacillated between yelling and strangling the doctor, then marched into the foyer and up the stairs. On the second-floor landing he found a linen closet, grabbed a dark brown sheet from a tall rainbow pile, and hurried down again. At the door he glanced at Montgomery, who only raised his glass in a silent, almost mocking toast.

The wind was still intermittent, but stronger. The fog was gone, as far as he could tell, the temperature slowly dropping as the sky boiled with grays, blacks, slashes of ugly white. After a quick look at the other houses, he trotted to Vincent's body and lay the sheet over it, secured it at the four corners with rocks he pushed over from the garden. Then he scanned the road, the houses again; he saw nothing, heard nothing, and the scene bothered him so much he virtually ran back into the house.

Montgomery was refilling his glass. "You say this man told you it was Frankie Adams?"

"That's what he said," Colin repeated as he picked up his glass and dropped into an armchair near the door. "And as long as you're here, I ought to tell you about Tess, too." The doctor squinted one eye, and Colin recounted the aborted picnic, and the reason for his being in Cameron's house in the first place. After he finished, he emptied his glass and moved to the sideboard to pour himself another. The scotch warmed him falsely, but he didn't care; Dutch courage was something he thought he needed just now.

"Hysteria, I guess," Montgomery said, after a silence filled only by the increased howling of the wind.

"Whose?"

"Yours. Peg's. If Tess was as bad as you say she was-"

"Goddamn it, Hugh, I saw her! Matt practically went into shock, for God's sake."

"She couldn't have walked all that way from the boarding house. Even trauma wouldn't permit that, believe me. Damn," he added softly. "Tess was a bitch, but she doesn't deserve an end like that. Y'know, I wouldn't put it past Garve to try and pull her up on his own. The idiot." He sighed, took off the glasses and polished them on his sleeve. "Hell of a thing."

Colin heard the baseboard pipes begin to pop and clank as the furnace turned on, and a shattered cloud of leaves twisted past the window. "Hugh," he said, struggling for restraint, "it's bad about Tess, but I saw what I saw. Good lord, even Vincent-"