The Summer Man Read online

  Bob smiled back. “Sorry,” he said.

  “That’s OK,” she said. “I’m not usually so jumpy.”

  Bob tilted his head toward the park and the gathered cops. “Understandable, considering. I heard there’s been a murder.”

  Nora nodded. “A local girl. Right on the main trail.”

  Bob lowered his voice, leaning in slightly. His breath was warm and inoffensive. “You saw it?”

  “On or off the record?” she asked, smiling again.

  Bob grinned. He was handsome, in a paternal sort of way—silver hair, warm eyes, good crow’s feet—though a little too old for her to seriously flirt with. Besides which, she and Curt weren’t that bored with each other. Not yet, anyway.

  “Absolutely on,” he said. “But if I quote you, you don’t have to be Nora Dickerson. You could be ‘a female jogger,’ if you’d rather. Or just ‘local citizen.’”

  Nora kept smiling but hesitated, anyway. No one had told her not to speak with the press, but it seemed obvious, what with the victim’s family notification and all. Did they already know? Surely by now.

  Nora nodded. “Yes, I saw her. I—I found her, I guess. I called the police, anyway.”

  Bob’s expression turned solemn. “That must have been scary. Were you out jogging?”

  “Yes. And yes, it was,” she said. “I was just a couple miles in, too. I hit the trail, probably around six thirty, and I was just past this dip in the path, maybe two hundred meters in, and there she was.”

  She grimaced. “Just lying there in this little runoff next to one of the trees, faceup, one hand practically right out on the path. Her eyes were open, but it was obvious that she was dead, that she wasn’t seeing anything, you know…”

  Was she babbling? She stopped talking. Bob nodded. She had the impression that he was listening very carefully.

  “I heard it was bad,” he said. His tone was gentle.

  “It was definitely unpleasant,” she said. “There was…there was a lot of damage.”

  “Did you recognize her?”

  “No, but one of the deputies said that it was Lisa. Lisa Meyer, I think. Definitely Lisa something.”

  Bob opened his mouth to say something, then closed it, gazing over her shoulder. Nora turned, saw that there was a flurry of motion among the assembled police. Several of them, the police chief included, were hurrying to their cars. Vincent shouted a few orders to those remaining behind before climbing into his 4x4. His face was decidedly flushed. The state cars turned on their flashing lights, and all of them—three cars but at least seven people, in all—sped away from the park, barely slowing at the cross street as they took off toward downtown, east, up and over the hill.

  “What’s going on?” Nora asked, not really expecting an answer.

  “My guess, they’ve found another body,” Bob said mildly, but when she turned to look at him, she saw that his expression wasn’t mild at all. He looked grim, which was very much how Nora was feeling as she considered the idea.

  Perhaps she’d been too hasty to reject the whole gun thing, after all.

  Although she woke up and got dressed immediately—she always did when Peter was over—Amanda ate breakfast, four cold Pop Tarts and instant coffee with assloads of sugar, in bed, and was reading when her mother tapped on her door. Pink Floyd played quietly on her ancient stereo. She liked Dark Side in the morning. Mellow.

  “’Manda, your friend Devon is here.”

  Amanda ignored the vague sarcasm, frowning at the clock on her nightstand as she stood up, book still in hand. It wasn’t noon yet. “Yeah, OK.”

  Devon had mentioned that he would be coming by, but not until later, like three. Peter had usually cleared out by then—he worked part-time at the docks, some kind of boat maintenance thing, also did some construction work when it was available—and Devon tried to avoid him as much as possible. Well, and Amanda’s mother, too; she used to be nicer to him, but since hooking up with Peter, she’d picked up some of his general bigotry. In Peter’s book, fags were for bashing, or at least making fun of. He was a total shithead.

  Amanda turned off the music and stepped out of her room, closing the door behind her. She scooped up her high-tops on the way to the apartment’s front door; Devon would be waiting outside. Peter and her mother were sitting on the couch, watching TV, Peter in jeans and a ratty Motorhead T-shirt, her mother still in her bathrobe. There were a number of beer cans on the coffee table by their feet, though most were undoubtedly empties from the night before. Grace Young wouldn’t really get going till later.

  “Where’re you going?” her mother asked, barely glancing away from the television, although there was a commercial on. She lit a cigarette, flicking her cheap lighter with chippedpolish nails.

  “I don’t know. Down to the Klatch, probably.” Amanda tied her shoes leaning against the front door, wishing she had more time to get ready. She hadn’t been wearing makeup lately, and her hair was short enough that she didn’t really need to fuck with it, but she should’ve brushed her teeth. She didn’t want Devon to have to wait too long, though, and there was no way he’d come inside.

  “Have you seen my bag? The flowered one?”

  Peter snorted loudly. “Maybe your boyfriend has it. Bet he looks pretty with a flowered bag.”

  Her mother didn’t laugh, but she did smile. Disgusting.

  “Hilarious,” Amanda muttered. She wanted to say about ten other things, to both of them, but didn’t. Devon was waiting, and picking a fight with the motherfucker and motherfuckee would only prolong her stay. Peter snorted again but didn’t say anything else.

  “When’ll you be home?” her mother asked. “’Cause I wanted you to go to the store later; we’re out of some stuff. Bread. And chips.”

  “I’ll call,” Amanda said. Her bag was crumpled under her coat, propped against the stereo shelf. She grabbed both and opened the door, saw Devon standing next to Peter’s pickup, smoking. When he saw her, saw her watching, he tapped his ashes on the rusting hood in a dramatic overhand gesture. Amanda smiled.

  “When?” Her mother’s voice, hoarse from years of chain-smoking, was rising in volume and pitch. Not a good sign. “When are you going to call? You say that, but then you never do, and I don’t know where you are half the time, so when?”

  “By four, OK?” Amanda started to step out.

  “Hey!”

  Amanda gritted her teeth, turned back to look at her. At them.

  Her mother’s worn but still pretty face was caught in a shaft of sunlight from the open door, the light making her squint. Smoke swirled through the light, a warm rush of air spinning in from outside. “Be careful, baby.”

  For a half second, Amanda felt the nearly perpetual knot in her stomach spasm tighter, a random burst of sadness and anger and guilt, along with too many other feelings to sort through. Her mother was barely a parent most days and drank too much when she wasn’t at work to be even halfway reasonable. Amanda had mostly accepted it; it wasn’t like she had a choice. She’d be out in a few months, anyway, away from her mom and whatever new dickwad she dragged home every year or two. It was that rare moment when Grace expressed concern—sober concern, anyway—that still got to her, that made her feel really deep-down shitty.

  “Yeah, don’t you two go picking up any sailors,” Peter added.

  Grace mock-slapped his shoulder, turning away from the door. “Peter!”

  Nice. Amanda slid out before anything else could be said. Peter sucked. He wasn’t as bad as last year’s model; Ted had been a total dirtbag—he’d been “in between jobs” for the entire six months he’d been around, and dumb as a stick, besides—but Peter was a bigot and, she suspected, a total letch. He’d never actively hit on her, but the few times they’d been alone together, even for like five minutes, he always tried to strike up conversations about her love life. She wasn’t an idiot. It was sick.

  “What, you didn’t feel like coming in, hanging out with Peter?” she asked, hopping off the
front step.

  Devon dropped his smoke and ground it out with his toe. He didn’t answer but looked searchingly into her face. His hair, usually so carefully and subtly spiked, looked kind of flat. Like he hadn’t checked the mirror before he’d left home.

  He still wasn’t talking, either.

  “What?” she asked. “What’s up?”

  “I tried to call like an hour ago,” he said. “Peter answered, so I hung up.”

  “OK,” she said. No news there. “So, what’s going on?”

  Devon continued to stare at her. It was starting to get weird.

  “What the fuck, Devon?” she snapped.

  “That thing at Pam’s, that—that dream or whatever.”

  Amanda nodded but didn’t say anything, her heart thud-thudding in her ears. Time seemed to slow. She already knew what he was going to tell her, from the confusion and appraisal in his expression. She’d had a vision, and she knew it had been real; of course it had come true.

  “Cops found Lisa this morning, in Kehoe Park,” he said. He nodded vaguely behind the complex; Amanda turned to look, in spite of the fact that there was nothing to see. Amanda and her mother lived seven blocks from the park’s west entrance, three over and four away; from where she stood, she could only see a few waving, crooked treetops over the apartment’s rooftop.

  “And then they found Ed Billings at his house, dead,” he continued. “And his wife. Darva, her name was Darva. He killed her, then killed himself.”

  Amanda turned back, stared. “You’re shitting me,” she said, her voice far away, except she knew he wasn’t. It was just something to say.

  Devon shook his head. “I don’t know who found Lisa, but Tiny Tina found the Billingses. She went over to have coffee or something with Darva, and there they were. She ran out screaming, made a big scene.”

  “How’d you hear?” she asked, though she didn’t really care. Again, it was just something to say, to make the conversation happen. She felt numb and kind of stupid.

  “Carrie called to tell Sid. I guess Carrie’s mother gave Tiny some water or something while they waited for the cops to show. And while they were waiting, one of her friends called to tell her about Lisa.”

  Sid was Devon’s uncle and legal guardian, Carrie Watson his girlfriend. Carrie and her mother lived near the Billingses, as did Tiny Tina Yeltsin, the ancient town librarian. Tina was actually fairly average in size, but Amanda and Devon had privately dubbed her “Tiny,” based on her very small and wrinkled mouth, which looked remarkably like an anus when she pursed it at loud library guests, and anyone with “teen” in their age. It was one of their billion private jokes.

  Amanda glanced back at the apartment and thought about what a huge drag it would be if Peter decided to leave early.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she said. “Get some coffee.”

  They started walking, Devon being uncharacteristically silent as they headed downtown. Fine by her. Usually he wouldn’t shut up, and she still felt numb, unable to process. They’d talked it out at the party on Saturday night, like, two hours of chain-smoking in Pam’s backyard, and Devon had insisted that she have a drink, and she’d had, like, four, and they’d both decided she’d fallen asleep, after all. She’d spent most of yesterday working to enforce the decision in her stupid, hungover brain, and had managed to make herself believe it by last night.

  Wasted time, she thought.

  From the apartment they walked the flat and meandering blacktop of Fessenden until they hit Bayside, passing a trailer park and a couple of more complexes on the way. They slogged up the hill, both of them slowing as the incline steepened. Bayside Drive, Isley’s northernmost street, ran from the back of town—the down slope away from the bay, where most of the less-than-well-to-do folks parked their families—all the way to Main, and though it was a welltraveled road, it was still woodsy near the top of the hill. The shoulderless road was flanked by wide stands of evergreens, their tops twisted or broken; Isley suffered more than its fair share of windstorms. The sun was almost directly overhead, bright but not too hot; the sweep off the bay usually kept the temperature fairly moderate during the summer, at least on the upslope.

  Just after the crest of the hill, two blocks after they’d started down, they reached Devlin Street. Devlin ran from Bayside along the eastern boundary of Kehoe Park, eventually becoming Eleanor, a small, dead-end bit of street at the park’s southeast corner, where the middle school used to be. People occasionally parked there at night to make out or fuck; it was a dark spot.

  As they crossed Devlin, Amanda slowed and glanced down, saw a scattered handful of people at its curve several blocks away, where the trees began and Devlin turned into Eleanor. She could also see a county cop car parked there, pulled off to one side, and what looked like a news van, probably from the local station affiliate in Port Angeles.

  “Do you want to—did you want to go down there?” Devon asked.

  “Fuck, no,” Amanda said. “Why? Do you?”

  “No,” he said. “I just thought—I mean, you saw it, right?” He sounded excited, but a little wavery, too, his voice taut and high. “You said you saw Mr. B kill Lisa Meyer. You told me he was—that he was eating her face. You saw it.”

  Amanda suddenly felt almost violently ill, her mouth flooding with watery spit. She dropped her bag and turned toward the ditch that ran alongside Bayside’s north side. There were more trees after the ditch and no houses past them, just a high, rusty fence that blocked a steeply angled drop to the water, two hundred feet below. She only made it to the bottom of the ditch—which, thank God, was muddy but not full of water—before she threw up her meager breakfast in a single, throat-wrenching glurt. She spit several times, leaning over the brownish puddle of chewed-up food, then stood up, looking back at Devon. He held her bag clutched to his stomach, his expression almost ridiculously concerned.

  “I’m OK,” she said, not really sure if she was. Her voice sounded thick and hollow. She spat a few more times, then climbed back up to the pavement, her high-tops squishing in the soft dirt. “Tell me I’ve got breath mints in there.”

  Devon rummaged through her bag and came up with a tin of Altoids. Thank God for small fucking favors. She chewed several as they crossed to the south side of the street, walked to where the sidewalk began, and sat on the curb. Both of them lit up, the smoke rasping down Amanda’s grated throat, the mints making it taste like menthol. The entire puking experience finally made the world real again; she’d started to think, coming out of whatever lockdown she’d been in for the last fifteen minutes. She thought over the plots of at least a half dozen B movies that dealt with her very situation, trying to avoid the scariest ones.

  “So what do you think?” Devon asked finally. He didn’t clarify; he didn’t need to.

  She exhaled heavily. “I don’t know. I mean, I had, like, a vision, right? Saw the future?”

  Devon nodded.

  “If I’d said something…”

  “Don’t even,” Devon said. “You didn’t make it happen.”

  “But if I’d done something to change things, she wouldn’t have died.” She thought about Mr. B and added, “None of them would have.”

  “Right, and if you had a time machine, you could go back and try to fix everything, but then something would happen that would make you see that it was fate, and you never could have stopped it anyway,” Devon said. “That’s an old Twilight Zone, I think. You feeling bad now does exactly shit. You know that, right?”

  She sighed. “Yeah, I guess. But I still feel bad.”

  “Fair enough,” he said, “though you’re totally wrong. But guilt aside, don’t you think—I mean, do you think you’re psychic or something? Did you have, like, some traumatic event lately, or an injury…?”

  She looked at him, her best you’re-shitting-me face. “Yeah. You remember last week, when I got hit on the head with that big rock?”

  “Fuck off,” he said. “I’m just wondering if maybe something
triggered it. There’s always a trigger, right?”

  She nodded, conceding the point. Presuming her experience was following movie logic, anyway.

  “OK, so has anything like this ever happened before?” he asked. “I mean, obviously not like this, but some other ESP thing?”

  Amanda didn’t dismiss it right off, though she would have before Pam’s party. She started to tell him no, then remembered something her mother had said a few times.

  “I guess—when I was little, I used to say things about how people were feeling,” she said, deciding it sounded dumb even as it came out. “Never mind, that’s stupid.”

  “No, what do you mean? Seriously?”

  He looked serious, and she felt a rush of real affection for him. They’d been fast friends since eighth grade, when he’d come to Port Isley to live with his uncle after his parents had split and his mother had had some kind of nervous breakdown. He actually had a few friends—girls, mostly, since the hickdicks were too homophobic to be caught hanging out with him, although there were a handful of California-transplant faux punks who didn’t care…Devon was witty and likeable; he did pretty well in spite of his rather obvious orientation—but he was pretty much the only person she talked to at all. About anything real, anyway.

  They were both due to graduate in a year, but he’d turn eighteen in October, and they had plans to run away to Seattle together as soon as they could, away from tiny, snooty Port Isley. Between them, they just needed to earn enough to put down first and last on a place, get real jobs and GEDs, get out of this shithole of a town…

  Maybe I could take up reading palms or something, she thought. It wasn’t funny.

  “My mother said that when I was just learning how to talk, I’d tell her things about her friends,” she said. “Like ask why someone was sad, or say that someone was angry. She said that she’d always find out later that I was right.”

  Devon dragged off his smoke, exhaling as he spoke. “Well, that sounds psychic to me. Or, whatsa…empathic, anyway.”