"Bad Karma" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weir Theresa)

Chapter Two

With a firm grip on Premonition’s harness, Cleo Tyler adjusted her dark glasses and grabbed the train’s metal handrail.

“Careful,” the conductor said, his strong fingers grasping her by the elbow. “There are three steps down.”

Her feet made contact with cement.

“There you go.”

Three days. It had taken three unholy days to get from Portland, Oregon, to Clear Lake, Missouri. Heat blasted her from all sides-from the murky sun above, from the cement below her feet, from the train behind.

“Station’s straight ahead.” The conductor still gripped her arm, obviously reluctant to turn her loose.

“I’ll be fine,” she said, flashing him a movie-star smile.

He released her. She heard his voice, muffled now because he turned to help the next passenger. “Watch your step. Watch your step.”

My God. It’s so hot. Was it always like this? she wondered. Couldn’t be. This had to be something abnormal.

Maybe she should have listened to Adrian. No, the reason she’d come to Missouri was because she’d decided Portland was too close to Seattle, too close to her brother. He’d rescued her from herself, probably saved her life, but that didn’t mean he owned her. He couldn’t seem to understand that she was okay now.

“Where are you going?” he’d asked when she’d called to tell him she was leaving. “Do you know anybody there?”

“No. That’s why I want to go. And it’s money. It’s a job.”

“Prostitution’s a job, but you’re not doing that.” There was a long silence. “Are you?”

She should have been mad. Instead she laughed. “Not yet.”

“Shit, Cleo.”

“I’m kidding. I’m not that desperate.”

“Cleo, look. Why don’t you come to Seattle? We’ll talk about this. Maybe I can get a loan so you can go back to school.”

“ Adrian, no.” He had a wife, two little kids, a second mortgage on his house, and a recording studio that was barely staying afloat. “Really, I’m okay.”

“I worry about you falling in with the wrong people.”

“Brother dear, I am the wrong people. You should know that by now. I’m the person our mother always warned us about.”

He laughed.

“I’ll call you when I get there.”

“You’d better.”

“Love you.”

“Me too.”

Adrian. He was the only person she could be herself around, but even with Adrian she knew she could only reveal so much. It would scare him and worry him if he knew everything about her.

Premonition tugged at his harness, reminding Cleo of more immediate concerns. The yellow Lab put his nose to the ground and made a beeline for the train station, hiking his leg on the corner of the building.

It wasn’t easy traveling with a dog, especially a big dog. You could put a caged cat in the baggage compartment; it would most likely be miserable and hysterical, but better off than traveling in the open. Dogs were different. Dogs were social. Whereas cats might love cramped, confined, dark places, dogs hated them. A place like that could really screw up a dog’s psyche.

That was why, in these situations, she put Premonition in his guide-dog harness and pretended she was blind.

She didn’t like the idea of exploiting a handicap and she hated the deception, but for the sake of Premonition, she was able to justify the ruse. It was simply part of the scramble called life. At the animal shelter where she’d gotten Premonition, she was told that he’d been so mistreated by his previous owner, he’d never be able to adapt to a new life, but that had made Cleo all the more determined to have him. And except for a fear of confined places, he was now a well-adjusted dog.

Done with his business, Premonition pulled her to a grassy area where he could get off the baking cement sidewalk and rest his paws in the cool grass. Behind her, the train chugged away from the station, taking with it the noise and steam, but not much of the heat.

Looking through dark glasses, Cleo saw but pretended not to see two men moving toward her, both about six feet tall, one with dark hair, the other light.

“Daniel Sinclair’s an Aries,” the police chief had warned Cleo over the phone. “With more of the sign’s undesirable traits than desirable ones.”

Aries. A fire sign. The most energetic of the fire signs. Aries used that energy to bring about change. So what undesirable traits did Daniel Sinclair harbor? Was he intolerant, a poor judge of character, impulsive, or all of the above? But then there were the positive traits. Aries individuals were the risk takers, daring and aggressive.

Neither man looked like a cop, she decided. And they both looked rather…well, unusual. The dark-haired man was extremely tidy, the light-haired man sloppy in an almost equally obsessive way. The tidy one was dressed in a striped polo shirt tucked neatly into creased jeans. On his feet were Velcro sneakers. She didn’t know anyone over four years old who wore Velcro.

As they closed the distance, she could see that the Velcro man’s face was shiny, as if someone had held him down and given him a good scrubbing. In the back of her mind she thought, There’s something a little slanted here.

While the Velcro man was soft around the edges, his friend was rough. He wore khaki-colored cargo pants, leather sandals, no socks, and a camp shirt that had probably been black at one time, but was now a soft gray. Rounding off the slacker look was a need to shave. A shock of hair that was genetically brown, but had been bleached and streaked by the sun, fell over direct eyes. Bold, Aries eyes. Eyes that held irritation. At her? Or the heat? Both?

She’d expected someone older. She didn’t know why. Maybe because to her a police officer was an authority figure, and authority figures were supposed to be older.

“You Cleo Tyler?” the sloppy one asked in an authoritative way that immediately set Cleo on edge, that immediately had her wanting to respond with something childish, like What’s it to you? Instead, she said, “Yes.”

“I’m Daniel Sinclair.”

She read him so easily. A skeptic. She didn’t mind skeptics. In fact, she was one. She’d spent the last several years trying to prove to herself that psychic phenomena didn’t exist.

She could see that Daniel Sinclair had come prepared to dislike her, but the sight of a blind person had sent him into a tailspin. Now he felt guilty for disliking someone who was handicapped, but he still thought she was out to take the town of Egypt, Missouri, for a ride.

Which could be the case. But it wasn’t her fault that they’d come begging for help. It wasn’t as though she was in the business. She’d been working in a coffee shop, for God’s sake. Lately she’d toyed with the idea of going back to school, but when the Egypt police chief called for the third time, Cleo found herself considering their request. Her life had fallen into a rut. And when she was told she’d get paid whether she found the master key or not, well, it was an offer she couldn’t refuse.

The man in front of her was looking at her as if he knew her inside and out. What arrogance. He knew nothing about her. And, at that moment, she decided she didn’t want to know anything about him. Let him wallow in his smug narrow-mindedness.

“You don’t look like a policeman,” she stated, implying that people weren’t always what they seemed. Her comment also let him in on her harmless deception.

At first his expression was one of surprise. That was instantly replaced by one of self-satisfaction. He’d expected deception from her. “You’re not blind.”

“What about you?” she asked, sending the conversation volleying back. “Are you who you pretend to be? I’m sensing a man out of his element.”

“Don’t use that mind-reading crap on me. I’m in my element. I couldn’t be more in my element.”

“How do you define element?” she asked, suddenly realizing just how tired she was, wishing she hadn’t started this word game.

“I’m the small-town cop who can do whatever he wants.”

His eyes were an intense Paul Newman blue, so dark they looked artificial. Contacts? No, he wasn’t the type. He wouldn’t bother with clear contacts, let alone tinted ones. “You mean you run the town?” she asked.

“If I ran the town, you wouldn’t be here.”

“Now why doesn’t that surprise me?”

“Did you ever think you might be tempting fate by pretending to be blind?”

Maybe he wasn’t such a skeptic after all.

“Are you saying you believe in fate but not in psychic ability?” she asked.

“That’s a good one.”

The other man, apparently growing restless and fearing he’d never become part of the conversation, jumped in, unintentionally defusing what was fast becoming a hostile situation. “I’m Beau.”

“My brother,” Daniel added as explanation.

Beau eagerly extended a hand, his arm straight, his posture perfect. His hand was soft but warm, his grip firm.

“Hi, Beau.” There, in front of some godforsaken train station in the middle of some godforsaken state, she’d found a good heart. And good hearts were rare. “What sign are you?” she asked.

“What?”

“Zodiac sign.”

He didn’t understand. For a moment she regretted having asked. But then she forged ahead, hoping to repair the damage. “Pisces. I’ll bet you’re a Pisces.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, finally getting it. “I am.”

She introduced him to Premonition. It was love at first sight. Beau began to play with the dog, running a few steps away then waiting for animal to catch up. She’d never seen Premonition take to someone in such a way.

“Is it always so hot here?” Cleo asked Daniel, still unable to fully grasp the smothering heat.

“No, sometimes it’s even hotter. This yours?” Daniel asked, indicating the only bag around.

“Yes.”

He picked it up, groaning in surprise at the weight. “Guess those pyramids and crystal balls weigh a lot.”

“Actually, it’s the portal to my time machine.”

His sun-bleached eyebrows lifted and he actually smiled. “No shit.”

Enough words had fallen from his tongue for her to detect a soft burr. “What kind of accent is that?” she asked, trying for small talk as they walked in the direction of the parking area. “Not Missouri.” She didn’t care, she told herself. She hadn’t a shred of curiosity about the man.

“LA, maybe.”

“That’s not LA I ’m hearing.”

Daniel shifted her bag to his other hand. He figured she must have been picking up on the slight accent left over from his Scotland days. He’d been so hot to see the world that he’d worked his butt off to save enough money to spend his junior year of high school in Scotland. He’d always planned to go back, but then he fell in love and his life had been a downward spiral ever since. He’d never completely lost the accent, though.

“I spent some time in Scotland. The accent’s easy to pick up, hard to get rid of.” He had to give her credit. Most people didn’t notice it.

She took off her dark glasses, as if trying to see him more clearly. “It’s a long way from Scotland to Missouri.”

Green eyes were surrounded by a mass of tumbling red curls, and a sleepiness gave her face a softness he didn’t trust. Her white top was sleeveless, with a row of tiny buttons. Below her knee-length skirt were leather sandals and a rose tattoo. She was by far the most exotic thing Egypt had ever seen.

“We can’t always choose the roads we take,” he said.

Her gaze went from Daniel to Beau and then back.

Daniel knew what she was doing-milking him for information so that later she could amaze people by saying things like, “I see bagpipes…I see a kilt.” And everybody would be so impressed with her extrasensory powers. Everybody but him, that is. He should just feed her back a bunch of bullshit.

Daniel had expected Beau to like Cleo, because Beau liked everybody. But the dog was a surprise. Daniel didn’t know Beau liked animals so much. They’d had a dog when they were kids, but then most kids had dogs. It didn’t necessarily mean they were crazy about them.

Beau lowered the tailgate of the truck, and Daniel heaved Cleo’s suitcase in, sliding it across the bed. Beau scrambled in after the suitcase.

“Sure you want to ride back there?” Daniel asked. “You don’t have to.”

Beau plopped down with his back to the cab’s sliding window, then patted one leg. The dog jumped gracefully into the truck, collapsing on Beau’s lap.

Daniel slammed the tailgate shut. “Okay, but when you get tired of it, let me know.”

People usually reacted to Beau in one of two ways. The most common was embarrassment. They would look at him, then look away, deciding to ignore Beau and talk in an intense way to Daniel, fast and desperate, with a kind of pleading in their eyes. And then there were the people who treated Beau like a baby. That irritated Daniel almost as much as the people who ignored him. Because Beau wasn’t a baby. He had more on the ball than a lot of people. Hell, he had more on the ball than Daniel. Beau was happy and kind-and what people didn’t get was that Beau was perceptive, a lot more perceptive than most.

Cleo had treated him as an equal. She’d taken his hand. She’d looked him in the eye, never shying away. In that moment, Daniel had decided he might have to cut her a little slack. But then he had to remind himself that he hadn’t picked her up to sweet-talk her.

“I know all about you,” he announced as he eased behind the wheel. She snapped her seatbelt into place and looked up at him with those big, sleepy eyes of hers.

“But then I guess you would already know that, because you can read my mind, right?”

“It doesn’t take a mind reader to pick up on hostility. Why don’t you just say what you’ve been wanting to say for the last five minutes?”

He started the truck, gave Beau and the dog a final check, then pulled away from the curb, heading in the direction of Egypt. “I know how you took credit for finding that kidnapped child in California when it was really the police who did the work.”

She gave him a strange, self-satisfied smile, as if he’d said exactly what she’d wanted to hear.

“Guess you pretty much have me figured out. But what you’re forgetting is that people need to believe in something. They need to believe that magic stones keep them safe and that cards tell the future. That they have control. Because the alternative, that life is random and nobody is in control, is just not acceptable.”

“So are you saying you consider yourself an opportunist rather than a con artist?”

“You could say that.” She crossed her arms over her chest, scooted down in the seat, and closed her eyes.

End of conversation.

Ten minutes later, she was asleep, breathing through her mouth-or maybe she was just a damn good actress.

Something hit the windshield, drawing Daniel’s attention back to the road. Rain.

It came on fast. By the time Daniel pulled over and stopped, rain was pouring down, creating a deafening roar inside the cab of the truck.

With the rapid cognizance of someone who’d spent a lot of time watching her back, his passenger awoke. She looked around, quickly grasping the situation.

Before Daniel could jump from the truck, she threw open her door. “Come on!” she shouted. At the same time, Beau and the dog scrambled out of the back. Cleo scooted over. They jumped in, with Beau slamming the door behind them.

The dog shook, spraying water against the inside of the windshield. “Premonition. Sit. Sit.” With both arms around him, Cleo forced him into temporary submission.

Smashed against the passenger door, Beau giggled.

Daniel squeezed his arm past the dog and flipped the defrost to full blast. While waiting for the fogged-up window to clear, he tried to wipe some of the water from the inside of the glass.

“Here.”

Cleo fished in a bag that looked like a small version of a backpack and handed him a tissue. He took it, swiped at the window, then tossed the wet, mangled mess to the floor. He flicked on the wipers then reached for the gearshift, finding a knee instead. Her leg was wedged against the lever.

He jerked his hand away. “You wanna shift?” he asked.

“Sure. Ready?” She put it into first gear.

He let out the clutch, checked for traffic, then pulled back onto the two-lane road.

The truck’s engine hummed higher; he put in the clutch. It took her a moment, but she found second gear. By that time, they’d lost some momentum. The engine lugged, then gradually smoothed out as the truck gained speed.

They finally made it to third, and Daniel pressed the gas pedal until they were cruising at a good clip over the wet pavement.

Daniel noticed that her bare, wet arm was stuck to his. And her hair, her long, curly hair, was stuck to him too. It had been wild when she’d stepped off the train, but now it was corkscrewing around her face. Tendrils reached out and grabbed him.

“What are you looking at?” she asked.

“Your hair. It’s doing weird shit.”

She managed to pull some strands from his arm.

“I have all the C. S. Lewis books,” Beau announced out of nowhere.

“Oh? I love his books,” Cleo said. “Especially The Chronicles of Narnia.”

“I’m waiting for a new one,” Beau said. “I’ve been waiting for a long time. I’ll bet the next one is going to be really good too.”

Daniel elbowed her, hoping she wouldn’t tell Beau that Lewis wouldn’t be coming up with any new masterpieces. He shot her a look of warning that said, Beau doesn’t take death well.

“You might have a long wait,” was all she said.

“I can’t read very good,” Beau told her. “But Daniel can. He can read like crazy. He’s always reading stuff. Like the paper. And cereal boxes. Sometimes at breakfast I’ll ask him, ‘Daniel, what’s that word?’ And he knows it. He always knows. Even if he doesn’t know it, he can say it. That’s because of phonics. They tried to teach me phonics, but I just couldn’t get it. That’s when Daniel said that some people were made for reading and some for listening. So he’s the reader and I’m the listener.”

“And the talker,” Daniel said. “Don’t forget that.”

Beau laughed, getting the joke. “And the talker.”

All three laughed until Premonition decided to shake again. Then they all three screamed.

An hour after leaving Clear Lake, they arrived at their destination.

Egypt, Missouri, didn’t live up to its exotic name. It looked like a million other cookie-cutter towns that stretched from sea to shining sea. It was pure Middle America, with tree-lined streets and two-story bungalows built at a time when wood was thought to be an inexhaustible resource. Driving into Egypt was a little like rolling back the clock several years. It was a place where Cleo could imagine women gave Tupperware parties and sold Avon door to door.

She’d always thought of Missouri as hilly, but Egypt was flat. The town fathers had taken advantage of the lack of contour and laid out the community in a grid, with everything of importance, such as the four-story courthouse made of stone that had darkened over the years, smack dab in the center of the square.

Along with the old-fashioned feel, there was a strange, carnivalesque atmosphere-a consequence of the campaign signs, complete with publicity photos that were everywhere. Clusters of them stood in yards; nearly every storefront window boasted at least one. Most of them seemed to be promoting the same handsome, smiling man.

Re-elect Mayor Burton Campbell. Burton Campbell for mayor.

“Important guy,” Cleo commented.

“He’s running unopposed,” Daniel said. “The prick just likes having his name plastered all over town. Will you?” he asked, indicating the gearshift.

It was more of a command than a request, but she obliged just to keep the peace.

“I call him Burt the Flirt. He’s also the only dentist in town, so if you have a cavity you want filled, I’m sure he’ll oblige.”

What an ass Daniel Sinclair is. “If I need a cavity filled, I’ll wait till I get out of here.”

She peered through the streaked windshield down the empty, glistening street. “Doesn’t look like there’s a lot for a policeman to do in this town.”

“I keep busy.”

“Yeah?” she asked, not believing him.

“Getting cats out of trees. Parking meter violations. Breaking up the occasional keg party. Stuff like that.”

“Sounds exciting.”

Beside her, Beau coincidentally let out a huge yawn.

“Better than zipping up body bags,” Daniel said.

She’d have to agree.

The place where she was staying turned out to be a motel on the edge of town. From the outside, it looked like everything a traveler would dread. She’d stayed in some dives in her life, but even before seeing the room, she guessed the place would have to rank near the bottom. It was called The Palms, but it might as well have been called the Hyatt Regency for all the reflection the name bore to the actual place. The Palms was just past the outskirts of Egypt, the owners apparently expecting the town to expand and eventually catch up with the twelve-room eyesore. It had been new once, Cleo had to remind herself. And probably nice once, something even harder to believe.

By the time Sinclair pulled up in front of the lobby, the rain had slowed to a drizzle. Beau and Premonition bailed out, and Cleo went inside to register. The guy behind the counter had slicked-back black hair, a goatee, a lot of turquoise-and-silver jewelry, and an attitude.

She signed the guest book, got the key, and stepped outside to find that Daniel had already unloaded her suitcase and was waiting on the cracked, weed-infested sidewalk.

Cleo dangled the key with the plastic number that was almost worn off. “Six.”

Daniel Sinclair carried the suitcase to the door and put it down. “Beau and I were just talking,” he said in an unenthusiastic voice. “How would you like to eat supper with us? We could pick you up later.”

Why was he asking when it was so obvious he didn’t want her to come? Then she looked at Beau, who stood smiling and nodding, Premonition leaning heavily against his leg. There was the answer to her question.

“I don’t know.” Cleo unlocked the door and swung it open. The stench of ancient body odor hit her in the face. She swallowed and stared into the darkness, then turned back to the two men.

Daniel was silently begging her to say no. Beau was silently begging her to say yes.

She smiled. “I’d love to. Oh, and Beau, would you mind taking Premonition with you for a few hours? He could use a little exercise.”

“All right!” Beau shouted. He dropped to his knees and put his hand up so Premonition could give him a high five. Premonition, who had already known how to shake when Cleo got him from the pound, lifted one paw. Beau laughed in delight.

“Yeah. We’re a team. We’re a team.” Beau jumped to his feet and ran for the truck, the dog close behind.

Cleo looked up to see Daniel glaring at her. “You can’t mind-read worth shit,” he said.

“Oh,” she said, smiling, “but I can.”

The motel room was like something from a Quentin Tarantino movie. Twenty dollars a night, it was the kind of place where prostitutes rendezvoused and alcoholics slept off their latest indulgence. Worse than that, everything was orange-the curtains that sagged from ceiling to floor, the threadbare chenille bedspread, the shag carpet with a trail worn from the door to the bed and from the bed to the bathroom. Cleo hated orange.

Why not a nice avocado green? Anything but orange.

Missing hooks caused the curtains to droop in an out-of-sync way. Things weren’t any better in the bathroom. The floor was made of tiny, one-inch tiles, with grout that had accumulated years of scum. The shower seemed to have been an afterthought-one of those square fiberglass jobs with a trampoline floor and metal trim that could give you a good case of tetanus if you weren’t careful.

She discovered that the toilet flushed only if you held down the lever. Actually, she was surprised to find that it flushed at all. There was a hole in the wall where the paper holder used to be. Now, a half-used roll perched precariously on the back of the tank. Beside the toilet was a plunger. A sign of things to come?

On the rust-stained sink was a drinking glass. It had the same opaque, water-stained quality as the shower curtain. She made a mental note to pick up some disposable cups.

In the mirror, under the weird glow of the flickering fluorescent light, she looked like a corpse. Her face was pasty and mottled. There were deep lavender circles under her eyes. Her lips looked gray, almost blue.

Cleo pulled at the tiny chain, turning off the light, then left the bathroom to lie fully clothed on top of the bedspread. She wasn’t yet brave enough to pull down the covers. Exhausted, she soon fell asleep and dreamed a dream she hadn’t had in years…

She was back in college, dressed for Halloween, wearing a bright orange pumpkin outfit that was made of some cheap polyester fabric she’d picked up at a discount store. It was stuffed with newspaper that crinkled when she walked. She would have preferred to use batting for filler, but she was a college student and didn’t have that kind of money to spare. The fabric for the pumpkin had been enough of an expense.

In the dream, Jordan was still alive, even though she knew he was dead. He kissed her, saying he’d always wanted to make out with a pumpkin. She hadn’t told him yet, but she was pregnant.

Jordan was a pumpkin too, although he was so tall his pumpkin wasn’t round, but long and narrow. He laughed his bright laugh and said he was more like a squash.

And then the scene changed, the way things did in dreams. Suddenly they were at the theater, watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show, tossing dried toast, laughing.

Then came the bad part of the dream, when they were crammed into Jordan ’s little car, rain pouring down, Halloween lights from a townhouse casting strobe-like patterns on their faces.

The car skidded, then, just as quickly, hit something and came to a bone-shattering halt. Instantaneously, Cleo found herself outside the car. Rain beat down, but she couldn’t feel it.

Don’t look.

But she had to. She couldn’t keep from looking. That was what the dream was all about. Looking. Seeing something she didn’t want to see.

Why, it’s okay.

She let out her breath. What had she been so afraid of? It was only a pumpkin. Only a smashed pumpkin.

She stepped closer and suddenly she saw that it wasn’t a pumpkin at all, but Jordan.

Close your eyes, she told herself.

She closed her eyes, but she could see through her eyelids.

Turn away. All you have to do is turn away.

But she couldn’t move.

Cleo came awake with a sense of anxiety and relief-relief that the dream was over, anxiety because the dark mood of it lingered in her mind. She lay there staring at the ceiling for a few minutes, then her gaze tracked around the room, finally falling on the offensive curtains.

She jumped from the bed and pulled down the orange monstrosities. She wadded them into a ball then stuffed them under the bed. Next she pulled the spread free, wadded it up, and put it under the bed, along with the curtains.

There.

Better.

Daniel Sinclair would be picking her up soon. She held out her shaking hands. Her hair and clothes were soaked with sweat. She’d thought all of this was behind her. She’d been well for two years. Four, if she counted the years she was in therapy. So why now?

On wobbly legs, she crossed to the air conditioner and turned it to high. Then she dropped to her knees and opened her suitcase, flipped back the top, and retrieved a zip-seal bag. She pulled out a brown prescription bottle, quickly unscrewing the cap and dumping the contents into her palm. Vitamin C tablets. A couple of aspirin. That was all.

She checked the refill date on the bottle. The prescription had expired a year ago. She plopped down on the bed, grabbed the phone, and put in a call to her shrink’s office.

“I’m sorry,” the receptionist said in a soothing voice. “Dr. Porter is practicing in Texas now. Would you like to make an appointment with one of the other doctors?”

“I have a prescription I need to get refilled.”

“One of the other doctors would be glad to see you.”

“No, you don’t understand.” Panic was rising. “I’m in Missouri.”

“Then you’ll have to see somebody there. I’m sorry.”

Cleo hung up, wondering what she was going to do. She grabbed the skinny, tattered phone book, found Daniel Sinclair’s number, and dialed. She would tell him she couldn’t come. Tell him she had a headache.

Beau answered. And said Daniel was on the way to pick her up.