Periphery, page 12
Eight
When they got back to the station, Andrew grabbed an inventory sheet and clipboard from the office.
“I’m going to do a quick storeroom check,” he told Gary. “I poked my head in there earlier and noticed we were running low on a lot of things.”
“Already? We just did a check Monday.”
“You know how crazy it’s been.” Andrew began scanning items as an excuse to keep his eyes on the invoice, afraid his partner would read some falsehood in his expression. “That was the last cervical collar, for instance. And we’re low on cotton swabs, inflatable leg splints, alcohol rubs, couple of other things.”
Gary snorted. “Knock yourself out.”
“Would you be up for a warehouse run later?”
“Long as you’re not planning on bringing back a dozen oxygen canisters. I have no desire to drag those fuckers around on a day like today.”
“We’ll leave those for C shift.”
In the storeroom, Andrew was relieved to discover the station really was running low on a number of items. He had been prepared to clandestinely trash supplies to make the warehouse run necessary. Now, at least, that deception was unnecessary. His relief, however, was short-lived.
As he surveyed the shelves his mind kept pin-balling between recent incidents, each one flashing and clanging before sending his thoughts off in a new direction. Max’s warning: was it legitimate? Was there something about to go down at the station, and did it have something to do with him? The message that had been scrawled across his locker, for instance. Maybe the guilty party had been identified. But he’d told Gary to keep quiet. He wouldn’t have blabbed. Something else then. Nothing he could do anything about, whatever it was. Waste of time dwelling on it.
The bilantu were becoming more aggressive. Could Tanner’s “mutant grasshoppers” have been anything other than one of their breeds? How much time did they have left before the shit hit the fan?
And the voices that morning? During Captain Hamilton’s briefing. Had the vetro been talking to someone specifically? Andrew thought they might have been. A collaborator. But who would willingly cooperate with such monstrous wills? And if he could hear their thoughts, was it possible…
Andrew’s pen hovered over the sheet. Slowly, the tip sagged until it touched the paper. If he could hear their thoughts, could they hear his? Was he even now broadcasting his plan to them, providing all they needed to stop him? The walls and ceiling of the storeroom appeared to bow incrementally inward, the overhead lamps dim slightly as a spotlight beam of awareness swept across him. Searching. Turning their attention this way and that. Seeking his consciousness.
No. Andrew shook his head. The temporary alignment that had allowed them to broadcast earlier had slipped out of phase. He didn’t know how he knew this, but he did. The vetro were currently unable to see into this world. Or receive anything from it. Like a child cowering under the sheets, he was spooking himself with ghost stories. He inhaled through his nose and exhaled out his mouth. Keep it together, Andy. You’re only at the beginning of this.
A brisk rap on the storeroom’s open door nearly launched him into the air.
“Damn, you’re jumpy.” Terrance Jackson stood in the threshold, watching him with mild bemusement. Terrance, a six-year vet, had recently transferred to Tampa Fire Rescue from the Hillsborough County system. Andy considered him a neutral presence at the station, a rare colleague who had yet to form any strong opinions about the infamous Andrew Tate. Or so he wanted to believe.
“Sorry, man. You caught me in a daze.”
“Inventory duty can do that.” His eyes flitted across the shelves and returned to Andrew. “Nothing but boring shit in here.”
Andrew tilted his head in puzzlement, a faint but deep note of misgiving thrumming beneath his sternum. Nothing but boring shit? What did that mean?
“So, what’s up?”
“You’ve got a visitor. She’s waiting in the lobby.”
His immediate thought was that Grace had dropped by, maybe to offer an olive branch. Maybe to serve him divorce papers.
“Tall woman? Early thirties? Shoulder-length blonde hair?”
Terrance shook his head. “Younger. Curley dark hair. And I should warn you, she’s upset. Obviously been crying. Hamilton said you can use his office to talk if you want. I don’t think he likes having an upset lady in the front lobby. Makes him nervous.”
“Makes me nervous, too. And she didn’t give you a name?”
“Cathy maybe? Kelly? Sorry man. I’m no good with that shit.”
Following Terrance down the hall, Andrew mentally rifled through the women he knew, trying to place the name. When they turned the corner into the small lobby, Terrance presented the visitor with an outstretched arm before retreating back into the common room.
Andrew stared for a moment, fighting a momentary, powerful urge to follow Terrance and flee into the innermost reaches of the station. He recognized her instantly, her swollen, tear-streaked face exactly as he remembered it from the hot intersection.
“They got him,” Katie Fife choked out. She closed the gap between them in three quick steps. “They killed Bobby.” She stifled a moan with the back of her fist. “Those bastards killed my brother.”
Hamilton’s office was dark save for the light filtering through the pulled blinds. Still, it was too bright to cloak the naked anguish crumpling the woman sitting at the other end of the couch. She appeared to be retreating into herself, disappearing beneath the folds of her clothing.
Andrew wanted to pull her to him as he would if Anna came to him in this condition, Anna or Grace, wrap his arms around her shaking shoulders and let her head sink to his chest. But such intimacy was impossible, and so he sat two cushion-lengths away, leaning forward every so often to pass her a tissue and bob his head in pantomimed sympathy.
“He couldn’t stop looking,” Katie said. “That’s why they attacked. When I would drop by the house, I would catch him staring and staring. I tried to warn him. I remembered what the homeless guy said, you know? About them marking you if they knew you could see them. But Bobby didn’t understand. I couldn’t make him understand.” She blew her nose and tossed the tissue in the wastebasket Andrew had placed next to her. “Autism fucking sucks.”
“I’m sorry.” Andrew winced at what sounded to his ears like the hollow clang of artificiality in his words, but Katie simply nodded and plucked a fresh tissue from the offered box.
“I didn’t know who else to talk to. I thought you might be going through the same: seeing these things, like I have, since that day.” She looked him in the eye for the first time. “You are seeing them, aren’t you? You weren’t lying when you told him you saw that thing next to the trash bin.”
“I wasn’t lying.” He shifted closer, drawn by her close-eyed sigh of relief. “My daughter and I. We were at the park.” He cleared his throat to mask the hitch in his voice. “There seemed to be creatures everywhere. We were lucky to make it out alive.”
“I feel like I’m stuck in a nightmare I can’t wake up from. Everything’s so unreal.” Katie tilted her head. “No, that’s not right. Everything’s too real, like someone’s pulled back a curtain and now I see all the awful things that have always been around me.
"My mother’s in St. Joseph’s, under observation and pumped full of sedatives. She found him. Bobby. Ran out to the porch when she heard him screaming. I don’t want to think about what she saw.
"My dad’s taken a leave of absence from work to be with her at the hospital. He told me all she could say until they knocked her out was ‘horrible’ over and over.”
“Katie…”
“Why is this happening?” she demanded. “What in the name of god is going on? I can’t talk to anyone, not my friends, definitely not my parents. Either they’ll think I’m suffering post-traumatic stress from what they keep calling ‘the incident,’ or worse, they’ll believe me. Because if they believe me I’ll be putting them in danger, won’t I?”
His father’s constant warnings: be cautious, be diligent. But don’t look at them directly. Don’t give yourself away.
“My father spent the last twenty years trying to find a balance between ignorance and information. Telling me just enough to keep me safe. I didn’t realize that until just a few days ago.”
“Guess he didn’t find the right balance, huh?”
“Guess not.”
They said nothing for several long moments, and as the silence turned uncomfortable Andrew struggled to find a way to conclude their meeting without seeming impatient or dismissive. His eyes flitted to the clock on the wall. Only eight minutes had elapsed. When he turned back to Katie, he realized she had seen his glance and understood its meaning. Her face became a mask of composure, her postured stiffening to an attitude of formal detachment.
“Well, I’m sure you need to get back to work.” Katie wiped her nose a final time and stood. “Thank you for listening. Sorry for taking up so much of your time. I won’t bother you again.”
“It was no bother.”
She extended her hand and he shook it, reminded suddenly of the way Katie had reached out to grab the water bottle on their first meeting, the desperation in her eyes, the water gushing from the open top as her fingers clamped around the plastic.
“Hold on.” He fished out his wallet and flipped through it on the way to Hamilton’s desk. He found what he was looking for, copied the name and number to a fresh sheet and handed it to Katie. “There’s someone else you can talk to, a friend of my dad’s. He knows a lot more about what’s going on than I do. He’s the one who made sure my daughter and I made it out of the park.”
Katie held the sheet up to the window to read the name. “William Phipps?”
“You don’t have to worry about what you say to him.” Andrew slipped the original scrap of paper back into his wallet. “You won’t put him in danger.”
“Why not?”
Andrew opened the office door and followed her out into the hall. “He’s already lost everything that matters.”
Little Billy was torn. His gut told him he had hung around too long, circled the block one too many times to remain unnoticed. Someone even now might be calling the cops to report a suspicious character casing the neighborhood. After nearly twenty years on the street, he knew the routine. It didn’t matter how well-groomed he appeared. Fresh hair cut, clean clothes, new shoes. People didn’t like strange men prowling their sidewalks, especially sidewalks like this, bordered by manicured lawns fronting Mediterranean-style mini-mansions and sprawling bungalows, shaded by century-old live oaks, the utility lines hidden away beneath the streets.
His sister had obviously done well for herself.
He should be content with what he’d already seen: the tasteful and tidy house, the immaculate yard, the detached garage with the basketball hoop mounted above the door, the carriage house (or was it a cottage house?) tucked neatly behind. Surely the lives lived here were happy ones. Secure. Content. He could walk away now and convince himself that putting as much distance between himself and his family had been the right choice.
His brother, Oscar, was the marketing v.p. for a Silicon Valley software startup, at least according to the company’s website. Maybe someday he would make his way out to California to lurk in the pleasant, shaded corners of a neighborhood a lot like this one, waiting to catch a glimpse of the man his brother had become.
Little Billy checked his watch. He had no idea what his sister's daily routine was, but if Mirabelle picked her children up from school and drove straight home, it was reasonable to estimate a return sometime between three fifteen and 3:40, give or take ten minutes. It was now quarter to four and the driveway was still empty.
What was he hoping to accomplish here? What could he learn from spying on her as she shuffled her sons from car to front door that he hadn’t learned from her Facebook page? He should be researching ways to obtain explosives, since he had only the slimmest hope Andrew would be able to get any. But every time he tried to turn his thoughts to the task, they swerved again and again to the house number he had jotted down shortly after his return to Tampa. From the beginning, the Palma Ceia address felt equal parts invitation and invasion.
What if he simply knocked on her door? Would she recognize him, throw open her arms in welcome? Throw a punch for dragging the family through hell and then disappearing? Or would she peer through a blind, see a strange man on her stoop and pretend no one was home?
Waiting for the city bus, he thought he had the guts to find out which it would be. Upon making his way into her neighborhood, however, he realized the most he could manage was a distant, voyeuristic peek at her life. He tried to convince himself he couldn’t risk putting his sister and nephews in jeopardy. If the vetro had directed the bilantu to target Andrew as a way to strike at John, why not target Mirabelle and the boys to strike at him?
Possible, he supposed. But the truth was, he simply couldn’t stomach the thought of facing her hurt and her anger. They hadn’t spoken in eighteen years, not since the day the judge had dismissed all charges against him.
Like his brother and parents, Mirabelle had stood by him throughout the ordeal, endured the looks and whispers, the anonymous phone calls and notes slipped through the slats of her locker door. Her brother was a murderer, a psycho killer. He had chopped up his fiancée and her family with an ax, cannibalized the male bodies, done worse things to the women. They’d found him covered in their blood. He was a sick, sick bastard and he would burn for his sins.
She’d been so fragile that autumn, balanced between defiance and despair. Her pale, weary face always managed a feeble smile when he caught her eye, but she couldn’t keep from flinching if he got too close. Of all his family, Mirabelle had suffered the most. She had none of Oscar’s defensive anger or his parents’ righteous indignation. She was a thirteen-year-old girl who still had posters of New Kids on the Block and horses on her wall.
Yet she had endured. And when the judge dismissed all charges, agreeing with the grand jury there was not enough evidence against him to proceed to trial, she had embraced him in the court hallway, kissed his cheek, told him she had always known things would turn out okay because she had said a rosary every night for his acquittal.
And how had he repaid her? The same way he had repaid all of them, by slipping out of the house after dinner and disappearing from their lives. Professor Tate might have been content hiding out on the far side of town, but Little Billy knew the true extent of what the bilantu were capable of. Across town wasn’t far enough. If he wanted to prevent more deaths, if he wanted to keep Mirabelle and Oscar and his parents safe, he needed to put as much distance between himself and them as possible.
Distance. That was what he had chanted as he began his long walk north. Distance, distance, more distance. And when the chanting finally faded, he was somewhere in Tennessee, so far across The Great Divide, he couldn’t remember what, precisely, that border represented.
Little Billy decided to circle his sister’s neighborhood once more, despite his misgivings. It was the knapsack that gave him the most concern. It branded him a transient, but he had been reluctant to leave it behind in Andrew’s motel room. He felt vulnerable without it. The olive-green pack contained nearly everything he owned, and yet it was only half-full. A couple of change of clothes, a few personal hygiene items, some over-the-counter medication. A water bottle. Notebooks and pens. A battered paperback potboiler he was reading in miserly snippets. The most expensive thing he owned was his cell phone, and he kept that in his shirt pocket, next to his heart.
Little Billy still felt an odd mixture of pride and shame knowing he could inventory all his possessions in less than ten seconds. At first, this lack of belongings had left him feeling rootless and adrift. He’d met through-hikers on the Appalachian Trail laboring under enormous backpacks, their possessions towering over them and bulging from bright nylon compartments. What did they consider vital that he was missing? A hell of a lot, apparently.
Later, as memories of life before The Divide began to fade, the lightness of his knapsack became a blessing. He was unburdened, free to go wherever he wanted. Self-contained. What had Andrew said? Like a turtle, everything he needed on his back.
Little Billy turned the corner.
Only once in eighteen years had there been anything more in his life than the knapsack and his regular calls to John Tate: a half-starved terrier-mutt who had adopted him one bitter winter day as he huddled in an Atlanta alley under a bakery’s exhaust fan, the warm air filled with the aroma of baking bread. The pooch approached with its tail between its legs and its belly scraping the ground. But it didn’t dart away when Little Billy stamped his foot, driven, perhaps, into the same delirious yearning as he by the maddeningly wonderful smell. Soon they were sharing a box of saltines, and when the dog followed him out of the alley, he didn’t have the heart to chase it away.
For a while Little Billy resisted naming it, figuring the mutt would slink off sooner or later. But as the days turned into weeks, it became clear it had no intention of leaving his side. When he realized the dog was beginning to respond to “Hey, boy” as it would a name, Little Billy had finally given in, modifying “hey, boy” into “Highboy,” thus formalizing their relationship. For the next year-and-a-half, they crisscrossed the Southeast together, roaming as far west as Memphis, as far north as Ashville.
Then one morning, Little Billy woke to the sounds of a struggle, Highboy and a type of bilantu he’d never seen before, locked in battle. By the time he found a branch large enough to beat the thing off, it was too late. The creature had expelled some sort of sack (a stomach?) from an orifice along its flank and the only part of his dog still visible was a twitching rear paw that disappeared inside as he ran up.
An instant later the creature appeared to turn itself inside out once again and vanished below ground amid a shower of loose dirt and fallen leaves. He had knelt at the spot for a long time, waiting, watching the small puddle of blood soak into the soil. And then he had broken camp and push on.
