Midnight Crossroad

35

They filed into Gas N Go, one after another, the electronic chime on the door sounding steadily, all of them but Lemuel, who vanished into the dark. Shawn was behind the cash register, clearing it out. Creek was cleaning the women’s bathroom and had the door propped open to dispel the fumes of the cleaner. Connor was mopping muddy footprints from the floor.

“Hey, guys,” said Shawn, giving every appearance of genuine surprise. “What’s up?”

Creek stood, peeled off the rubber gloves she’d been wearing, and stepped outside the bathroom, looking at them doubtfully.

Connor propped the mop against the wall and grinned at them, happy to be interrupted. “Is it time to put up the Halloween stuff, Fiji? Doing it at night would be awesome! Want me to go get the Reeds?”

“No,” said Fiji.

“Then what’s up?” He looked from face to face, but there was an awareness, just below his smile, that something more important than seasonal decorations was up for discussion.

“The sheriff just came to tell us that Aubrey died from being hit by a truck,” Fiji said. Though her voice was neutral, every word felt like a stone thrown at the Lovells.

“Oh, I hope they’re not going to arrest Bobo?” Shawn said. He looked genuinely upset.

“No,” Fiji said curtly. She took a deep breath. “So here’s what I think happened. I think the truck chased Aubrey down and hit her on purpose. I think whoever drove the truck loaded up her body and dumped it over the bluff by the Roca Fría. Or maybe the truck pursued her across the open ground to the river and knocked her over the edge.”

“Not in front of the kids,” Shawn said with what seemed like genuine indignation.

“The kids,” Fiji said.

“What?” Shawn demanded. He’d gotten up, come down from the platform on which the counter was built. He faced Fiji directly. “You mean . . . what?” But there was a terrible awareness in the way he stood, as if he were bracing himself to take a blow.

“I’m saying that she disappeared the day the kids took Creek’s puppy to the pet cemetery.”

“So?”

“How’d they get the dog’s body there?”

“They . . .” Shawn’s face froze. Manfred could see the man’s throat move as he swallowed. “They drove it over there,” Shawn said quietly. “I couldn’t leave the store, so Connor drove the old truck with the dog in the back wrapped up in plastic.”

“And then?”

“Creek came back by herself. She said she’d been for a walk, because she was so sad. It was only a stray, but it was a nice dog. We’d never had one.”

“And why hadn’t you had one?” Fiji asked.

“Because . . .” Shawn said hoarsely, and then could not finish the sentence.

“Because of Connor,” Creek said.

She threw her brother’s name out like a stone into a pond, and the ripples spread and spread. Connor himself still stood by the mop, and he was still smiling, but it was like his face had frozen in that position and he didn’t know how to change it.

“Because he’s killed things in the past,” Fiji said with certainty. “And you knew he would in the future. That’s why you’re here, why you don’t want anyone to take pictures of you and your kids, why you try to limit their exposure to the world. But you had to let Connor go to school in Davy. You couldn’t homeschool him, not and work full-time here at the gas station.”

“He promised,” Shawn said. The man’s shoulders slumped. “He promised. We took him to therapy. We . . .” He looked at his son. “Connor?”

Creek’s mouth was partly open, and her eyes shone with unshed tears. She was so young, but Manfred didn’t think any life experience could have prepared her for this moment. She’d been facing the cluster of Midnighters, but now she turned to her right to face her brother. “You killed my dog?” she said. It sounded almost conversational.

Connor’s smile became genuine. This smile was the worst thing of all. It was broad and white and delighted, with no hint of shame or remorse or feeling.

“Well, I gotta say, you caught me fair and square,” the boy said. “Creek, sorry . . . but it had been so long.” His expression morphed into a strange mixture of rueful regret—he’d been caught misbehaving—and an honest appeal for understanding. “It was only a stray. You can get another one, right?”

“You promised,” Creek said, in an eerie echo of her father. She looked ten years older.

“Well . . . yeah, I know I did. But the urge comes on me, and I gotta do something. It was better killing the dog than a person, right?” He said that, but Fiji could tell he didn’t feel it. He was making an effort to seem like a boy with genuine human responses.

“But you killed a person, too,” Bobo said, and there was only silence.

Until Connor bolted for the back door. But that was where Lemuel had stationed himself.

There was no breaking Lemuel’s grip.

In the end, Connor enjoyed telling them about Aubrey.

The streets had been empty, as they so often were. He’d even seen Fiji drive off toward Davy, though she’d seemed preoccupied and hadn’t appeared to notice him.

“I didn’t,” she said quietly. “I don’t know what I was thinking of, but I didn’t notice him at all. Just so used to seeing the old truck.”

“But you said you saw Aubrey that day.” Bobo looked at her quizzically. “The sheriff told me.”

“I thought I was lying. But apparently, I did see her, after all.”

Connor grew impatient at Fiji’s interruption. “So I pulled up beside her and asked her if she wanted to go for a ride. She laughed, said she was tempted since it was a cute guy like me asking. She said she was going to hike to the river and back, so she could surprise Bobo when he came home. She was going to tie a scarf on a tree out there to prove she’d done it.”

Bobo’s head fell on his chest and his face twisted. He was squeezing back tears, and it was painful to watch.

Joe and Chuy slipped through the door and stood to either side of it, like sentinels. No one remarked on their coming or explained to them what was happening. The tingling of the electronic chime sounded weirdly commonplace in the pervading tension.

“What happened then?” Fiji asked Connor.

“So, she always flirted with me. Like that ‘ordinarily I’d love to take a ride with a cute guy like you,’” Connor said, his voice high in imitation of the dead woman. “Bobo, I want you to know that I just wasn’t interested in her that way.” Bobo did not acknowledge his words, but Connor went on, “I’m not one of these guys who kills women for sex.” His voice was laden with contempt. “But it was like she wanted my attention, she had to feel like I was interested in her,” Connor said. “I didn’t get it. But she said, ‘Don’t you dare follow me, now!’ in this chirpy voice, and she switched her butt as she walked, like she was saying, ‘Yes, follow me,’ so I drove after her in the truck.”

Aubrey’s pathological need to be admired had met up with another pathological need.

“She started out across the bare land to the river, and I bumped along behind her. She looked back once and laughed, and then I got a little mad, so I speeded up. She started running.” And Connor smiled again. “Then she wasn’t laughing.”

He stopped. He smiled. He said nothing.

“And you hit her with the truck?” Shawn said, as if he were still holding out some hope that there had been a huge mistake.

“She made a bigger thump than the dog, that’s for sure! She actually went up in the air.”

Fiji could not stand that Bobo was hearing this. But he would not leave, and she would not ask him to.

“And she came down on the slope down to the river,” Connor said, in a matter-of-fact way. “I went down there to check.”

“Because you wanted to see what had happened?” Fiji said, having to struggle to get the words out of her throat.

“Yeah, well . . . yeah. Because that’s the moment, you know, the great moment. She wasn’t quite dead.”

“Did you kill her?” Fiji said. Tears were streaming down the witch’s face.

“We keep an old poker in the truck for dealing with snakes,” he said. “Not the same one I used on Mrs. Ames,” he added in a careful aside.

No one spoke.

“Her chest bones were all cracked. I poked a hole in one of the cracks,” he added, by way of explanation. He seemed lost in his reminiscence of the big moment. “But it did look like she’d been shot.”

“So you got the gun Bobo had used for target shooting,” Fiji said.

“Well, he’d left it in his truck, and the truck wasn’t locked,” Connor said. “But that was days later.”

Creek squatted down as if her knees could not hold her any longer.

“I washed the truck,” the boy said. “That same day.”

“Who did he kill before? This Mrs. Ames?” Fiji asked Shawn. But Shawn did not answer. He’d looked at the Gorgon’s face; it was his son’s.

But Creek answered. “Three-plus years ago he killed our next-door neighbor,” she said. “My mom had just died. Connor was really not talking to anyone, and we were pretty worried about him. While Dad and I were in the backyard raking leaves, Mrs. Ames came over with yet another casserole. Connor had got it in his head that she wanted to marry Dad and replace Mom. So he hit her with the fireplace poker. She must have had a thin skull.”

Fiji thought, I knew it. Thin skull. Connor had a bad history with fireplace pokers.

“And you covered it up.” Bobo was angry; not as angry as he would be later on, probably.

“No, we called the police!” Creek said, and she was a little angry, too. “Since he was a minor, they never tried him. The court psych evaluation said he was mentally disturbed, and his mother had just died, so they put him in a home for kids like him. He got therapy,” she added defensively. “I mean, we tried.”

“But then when he got out, he killed a cat,” Shawn said, finally finding his voice. He might have been a million years old. “We found it. We knew he’d done it. So we had to move. We thought if we moved to a really quiet place, if we limited his exposure to other people . . . if we were careful to stay out of the news, all of us . . . then none of the past publicity would catch up with him, no one would know about his juvenile record, and he’d have a chance to straighten out.”

“Are you happy with how that worked out?” Creek said to her father. “All that we did, coming to live here, no friends, no family, no money, we did all that for Connor, and this is what it’s come to. I almost got to college and got away, but no, the paperwork went missing.” Her hands were clenched in fists.

“I got the paperwork out of the mailbox and ripped it up,” Connor said.

“What?” She looked at him blankly, as if his words made no sense.

And his father was looking at him the same way. “Connor . . . why? Why didn’t you want your sister to go to college?”

“I’d be lonely, and you’d make me do every damn thing around here,” Connor said. “Wouldn’t you?” And he actually sounded accusatory.

There fell a stunned silence. Until Connor began shifting around, looking bored and antsy. Lemuel had let go of him, but he moved a little closer as Connor fidgeted.

“What will we do?” Shawn asked, as if to himself, his voice despairing. Fiji did not know if she wanted to slap him or comfort him. He looked around at the small crowd in the store, meeting their eyes in turn. “What will you do?”

Fiji could not think of what to say.

“He should die,” Olivia said.

None of the others offered an opinion.

“But I’m me,” the boy said. He gave a shrug, smiled. “I’m just a boy.”

“There are plenty of boys,” Lemuel said. “As you said about your sister’s puppy.”

“Uncle Lem,” Creek said. It wasn’t clear what she was pleading with him to do. Maybe she didn’t know herself.

“Don’t kill him,” Shawn begged. “We’ve gone through so much with him.”

“But what has that gotten you?” Olivia said. “No gratitude, no obedience, no change in his behavior. Just your own lives ruined. And wherever you run, it’ll be the same.”

“He’s got the taste for it now,” Fiji said, almost inaudibly.

Connor didn’t plead for his life or offer any rebuttal. He waited, with a calm face, for whatever would happen next. He could not conceive of the world going on without him, Fiji could tell.

“What is your judgment, Bobo?” Olivia asked. “Creek lost her dog, but you lost your lover.”

“I wish he could understand,” Bobo said. “I wish he could be cured. But if he were, how could he live with himself?” He stared at the boy and seemed more puzzled than furious. “I don’t think Connor will ever understand. He’ll keep killing people as long as he’s alive. I know Shawn and Creek will be better off without him.”

“But he’s my son,” Shawn said. “He’s my son. I can’t bear to lose him.”

“Do you deny that he’ll kill again?” Olivia said, oh-so-reasonably.

“No.” Creek sounded sure.

“Do you think any help you can get him will stop him? Cure him?” Fiji asked.

“No,” Creek said again.

“You’re condemning more people to death if you let him live,” Olivia said flatly.

“Being a parent isn’t about being logical,” Joe Strong said. Those were the first words he’d spoken since he and Chuy had entered. “Shawn, what Olivia says is true. He will kill again. He’ll leave a trail of death behind him.” Joe didn’t sound as though he were making a judgment, but reporting the future.

“But I can’t consent to you killing my son,” Shawn said, his voice shaking. “What do you expect me to say? ‘Put him down, like a dog’?”

“Funny you should put it that way,” Lemuel said, and quicker than the eye could follow he stepped forward and snapped Connor’s neck.