Dance for the Dead jw-2 Read online

  "Hello, Timmy," she whispered. "Can't sleep?"

  "I'm tired, but it's still light, and I keep thinking about them. Mona and Dennis."

  "I thought you might want to go to their funeral."

  "I did want to, but they said I couldn't."

  "So we'll have our own."

  The shadows of the trees at the edge of the vast cemetery were already merging into the dusk, but the sky to the west had a reddish glow. Jane had sent two big displays of white roses in case she and Timmy arrived after dark, but the flowers weren't necessary. It was still light enough to find the two fresh graves on the hillside.

  The bodies of Dennis and Mona would be shipped to London and Washington for burial, but Jane had searched the funeral notices in the newspaper and found a pair of brothers who had been killed in a car accident and had been buried today. As they walked up the hill Timmy said, "What are we going to do?"

  Jane shrugged. "We can only do what we know. The kind of funeral I know best is the kind my family did for my father, my mother, and my grandparents."

  They stopped at the head of the graves. Jane said, "One thing we always did was to have close friends or relatives say something to them."

  "How?"

  "Just talk to them."

  Timmy looked down at the two mounds of dirt for a moment, then said, "I don't know what to say."

  "Then I'll go first," Jane said. "Dennis and Mona? We're here to say goodbye to you, and to tell you that there are people who know and understand who you were and what you did. We saw it. You spent your lives protecting and caring for people who needed help: little children, and people who were going to court and didn't have anybody to speak for them. You died fighting enemies you knew were bigger and stronger, trying to give us time. We're here because we want you to see that we're okay. You won." She nudged Timmy. "Ready to say something?"

  Timmy said, "Mona, I'll... I'll miss you. It's lonely here. I didn't know you weren't coming back. I would have said something..." His voice trailed off.

  "What would you have said?" asked Jane.

  "I... guess... 'I love you.'"

  "That's good."

  "And I would have thanked her. But I can't now. It's too late."

  "You just did," said Jane. "Those are the two things that had to be said."

  Jane knelt on the grass and used her hands to dig a hole in the soft mound of earth over the first grave. Then she reached into her purse.

  "What are you doing now?"

  "Well, the Old People believed that after somebody died, he had to make a long trip to a place where he would be happy all the time. They figured it took a long time to get there, so they tried to give him presents that would make the trip easier. Weapons, food, that kind of thing."

  She held up a new Mont Blanc fountain pen and said, "This is like the one Dennis carried in his briefcase, but the police have that. We'll let it stand for the weapon." She pulled out a credit card and put it beside the pen. "This is the way people travel now."

  At the other grave she dug a second hole and placed a credit card and four granola bars in the bottom.

  "What's that?" asked Timmy.

  "Mona wasn't the sort of person who thought much of weapons. She loved to feed people, so she would like this better." Jane stood and brushed the dirt off her hands. "Now cover them up."

  As Timmy worked to pack the dirt over the little holes, Jane went to the car and brought back the birdcage.

  "What's in there?"

  She took the blouse off the cage and the scrub jays glared around them suspiciously, the white streaks above their shining black eyes looking like raised eyebrows.

  "Birds!" said Timmy.

  "The Old People did this, so maybe it works." She spoke to the birds. "Mr. and Mrs. Bird, we have the souls here of two very brave and noble people. They had a lot of reasons why they must have wanted to run away from danger, because they loved each other very much, just like you do. But they did the hard thing instead. I want you to carry them up to Hawenneyugeh. Will you do it?"

  The birds jumped back and forth on the perches calling "Check-check-check," uneasy about the low level of the sun.

  Jane said, "Mona, it's time to go. Have a short trip. You did your work well. You were a wonderful woman." She grasped the female scrub jay gently, holding her on her back and stroking her breast feathers as she stood over the grave, then tossed her into the sky. She fluttered about and then flew fifty feet to light on a limb of a magnolia tree.

  Jane reached into the cage again and caught the male. "Dennis," she said, "you were a great fighter. Now I wish you peace. Mona is waiting."

  The scrub jay flew up and joined the female on the branch of the magnolia. They looked down at Jane and Timmy for a few seconds as though they wanted to be sure there was no plan afoot to molest them further, then flew off to the west toward either the setting sun or the college campus.

  "Goodbye," said Timmy. He waved as the birds flew, and kept waving long after they were invisible.

  "Ready to go now?"

  "I guess so."

  They walked back to the car in silence, got inside, and coasted down the hill and out of the cemetery.

  "Do you think they heard us?" asked Timmy.

  "There's no way to know," said Jane. "The Old People will tell you that they do. What I think is that it doesn't really matter. Funerals aren't for the dead."

  "They're not?"

  "They're for us, the ones who have to go on."

  "You did all this for me, didn't you?"

  "For you and for me." She drove on for a few seconds, then admitted, "But mostly for you. For somebody your age you've seen a lot of heartache. Some of it you don't remember already, but you'll remember this. I wanted to be sure you remember it right."

  "What should I remember?"

  "That you got to live when there were still heroes. Real heroes that feel scared and bleed, and that's the part that gets left out of the books. That's a privilege. Nobody has to read you a story. You saw it."

  "I wish they hadn't done it," said Timmy.

  "Me too."

  Timmy started to cry. At first it was just a welling of tears, but Jane knew the rest of the tears that he had been too exhausted to cry were behind them. She drove to the freeway and kept going beyond Pasadena into bare and unfamiliar hills. After half an hour Timmy stopped crying, and Jane drove until he spoke again. "What's going to happen? They're all gone."

  "You don't have to worry about that, because some very smart people are spending all their time taking care of it. Judge Kramer said the court would study your story, learn all they can about you, and appoint somebody to take care of you."

  "Will it be you?"

  "No," she said. "It will be a family. Somebody like the people you're staying with now. Are they nice?"

  "Yes," he said.

  Jane let out a breath before she realized she had been holding it. "Well, I've got to get you back there so you can get some sleep."

  "Will I see you?"

  "Probably not for a long time."

  She drove back to Pasadena and parked behind the street where the policeman and his family lived. She climbed to the top of the fence, lifted Timmy and lowered him to the lawn. She could see that the other two children were still watching television downstairs. She led him to the tree, hoisted him to her back, and climbed. When they walked to the open window, Timmy was seized with a panic. "I don't want you to leave."

  "I have to, Timmy," she said.

  "But what am I going to do? I mean after you're gone."

  Jane hesitated, then accepted the fact that she had to try. "Go to school. Make friends. Play games. Try to grow up strong and decent and healthy. That's plenty to do for now." She helped him in the window and sat on his bed while he put on his pajamas.

  "But what happens after that? What will I be then?"

  "I think that's why it takes so much time to grow up. You don't really make a decision; you just find out when the time comes."

&
nbsp; "What would you do?"

  Jane shook her head and smiled sadly. "I'm not a good one to ask."

  "Who is?"

  Jane had an urge to tell him everything she knew, because this would be the last time. No words came into her mind that were of any use, but she had to push him in the right direction. "Well, when I was in college I knew a boy who was in a position sort of like yours. He didn't know what to do, but he knew that if he wasn't careful, he would be lazy and wasteful and selfish."

  "What did he decide?"

  "He decided to become a doctor. It was the hardest thing he could think of to be, so he knew that would force him to study. And when he had done enough studying, he would know how to do something worthwhile. At the time I thought he was being very sensible. I still can't find anything wrong with the idea."

  "Is he a doctor now?"

  "As it happens, he is, but that isn't the point. The real reward was that he got to be the kind of person he wanted to be. It doesn't matter whether he ended up a doctor or something else. He had decided to try. That made him special."

  There were noises. She heard the first complaints from little voices downstairs. The children were being sent to bed.

  "I've got to go now or I'll get caught," she said. She leaned down and kissed his cheek. "Sleep well, Timmy. Remember that people have loved you before and others will love you again, because you're worth it."

  As she slipped out the window she heard a whisper. "Jane?"

  "Yes?" She stopped and leaned on the sill.

  "Thanks for the bear. I knew it was from you."

  "I thought you would."

  "Are you one of the people? The ones who love me?"

  "Of course I am."

  "Will you marry me?"

  "Sure."

  She drifted across the garage roof like a shadow, and seemed to Timmy to fly down the tree without moving a leaf. He watched the back fence, but even in the light of the moon he didn't see her go over it. After listening for a few minutes, he fell asleep.

  3

  Jane returned the car to the airport rental lot and caught the shuttle bus to the terminal. As she stepped off, she smiled perfunctorily at the efficient skycap offering to check her luggage through to her destination and shook her head. She didn't have luggage and she didn't have a destination. She had made a stop at a Salvation Army office on the way to the airport and disposed of the clothes that had remained in her suitcase that weren't torn or bloodstained, and then had donated the suitcase too. She had known that she would never wear any of the clothes again because they would have reminded her of all that had happened.

  She had spent her three days in the county jail ruminating on failure, and her nights remembering the faces of dead people. She should have been quick-witted enough to save Mona and Dennis. There had to be some better way to stop a court case. If nothing else had come to mind, she should have called in a bomb threat to make the police evacuate the courthouse, then arrived during the confusion and attached Timmy and Mona to a squad of policemen. She had not thought clearly because she was so busy trying to get Timmy to the building on time; she had not seen the ambush because she was too busy dragging her clients into it.

  In the nighttime, after a day of reliving her failure in her mind, gripped by the shock over and over again as each of her mistakes was repeated, old ghosts crept into her cell. The one she knew best was Harry the gambler. She had hidden him, then made the mistake of believing that the man who had been his friend would not also be his killer. Harry had visited her so often over the years that he had almost become part of her.

  One of the ghosts was a man she had never met. She kept remembering the newspaper picture of John Doe. The police artists had needed to touch it up so much that it was more a reconstruction than a photograph. A cop had found him three years ago sprawled among the rocks below River Road. He had five thousand dollars in cash sewn into his suit, a pair of eyeglasses with clear glass lenses, a brand-new hairpiece that didn't match his own hair, and three bullet holes in his head. Jane had watched the newspapers for months, but the police had never learned who he had been or why he was running. Maybe he had not been trying to reach her; perhaps he was just heading for the Canadian border. But his death within a few miles of her house still haunted her.

  On the third day in jail, one of the ghosts came to life. The guards had let Jane out into the exercise yard with the other prisoners and she had seen Ellery Robinson. Years ago Jane had taken Ellery Robinson's sister Clarice out of the world to escape a boyfriend who was working his way up to killing her. Jane could remember Ellery's eyes when she had tried to talk her into disappearing with her sister. Ellery had said, "No, thank you. He's got nothing to do with me." For the next few years Jane had often thought about those clear, innocent eyes. Ellery had waited a couple of days while Jane got Clarice far away, then killed the boyfriend. Later Jane had made quiet inquiries for Clarice and learned that Ellery's life sentence meant she would serve four to six years.

  After the six years, Jane had kept the memory quiet by imagining Ellery Robinson out of the state prison and living a tolerable life. But here she was, back in county jail. In that moment ten or twelve years ago when Jane had not thought of the right argument, not said the right words, not read the look in those eyes, Ellery Robinson's life had slipped away. Jane looked at her once across the vast, hot blacktop yard, but if Ellery Robinson recognized her, no hint of it reached her face. After that, Jane had not gone out to the yard again. Instead she had sat on her bunk and thought about Timothy Phillips.

  As she stepped into the airport terminal she had a sudden, hollow feeling in her stomach. She still had not freed herself of the urge to take Timmy with her. She had recognized the madness of the idea as soon as she had formulated it. The whole purpose of this trip had been to bring Timmy under the protection of the authorities. They weren't going to let him disappear again easily. Even if she succeeded in getting him away, it might be exactly the wrong thing to do. It might make her feel as though she had not abandoned him, but Timmy would lose all that money, and with it, the protection. Maybe in ten years he would hate her for it - if he lived ten years. Jane had not even been good enough to keep Mona and Dennis alive. No, Timmy was better off where he was, with the cops and judges and social workers. She was tired, beaten. It was time to go home, stop interfering, and give the world a vacation from Jane Whitefield.

  She walked to the counter and bought a ticket for New York City because it was the right direction and there were so many flights that she didn't expect to have to wait long to get moving again. She used a credit card that said Margaret Cerillo. As the man at the counter finished clicking the keys of the computer and waited for the machine to print out the ticket, she noticed his eyes come up, rest on Jane's face for an instant, and then move away too fast. Jane explained, "I had a little car accident yesterday. Some idiot took a wide left turn on La Cienega and plowed right into me." The last time she had looked, the makeup had covered her injuries well enough, but with the heat and the hurry, the scrapes and bruises must be showing through.

  "It must have been... painful," said the man.

  "Pretty bad," said Jane. She took the ticket and credit card and walked up the escalator and through the row of metal detectors. She kept going along the concourse until she found an airport shop that had a big display of cosmetics. She selected an opaque foundation that matched her skin tone and some powder and eye shadow. When she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror at the top of a revolving display, she reached below it and picked out a pair of sunglasses with brown-tinted lenses. Then she took her purchases with her into the ladies' room. Her face was still hot and tender from the punches she had taken, and her right hand was aching from the hard blows she had given the men in the hallway, but a little discomfort was better than being noticed.

  She looked under the stalls and found she was alone. She was glad, because she wouldn't have to pretend that what she was doing was easy. She leaned close to the mir
ror and dabbed on the foundation painfully. The resuit looked tolerable, but it stung for a few seconds. She stopped until the pain subsided a little, and had just begun to work on her eyes when she heard the door open and a pair of high heels cross the floor behind her. She had a pretty vivid black eye from the big guy with the yellow tie who had piled in at the end. It was hard to cover it and make both eyes look the same with a hand that hurt.

  "Can I help you with that?"

  Jane didn't turn around, just moved her head a little to verify what she guessed about the woman behind her in the mirror. She wasn't surprised that the woman was attractive. Makeup was a personal issue - not quite a secret, but almost - and you had to be pretty spectacular to have the nerve to tell somebody you could do her makeup better than she could. This one was tall - almost as tall as Jane - and almost as thin, but her face had that blushing china-figurine skin that women like her somehow kept into their forties. They were always blond, or became blond, like this one. Every last one of them had switched to tennis after their cheerleading coaches had put them out to pasture, but they must have played it at night, because their skin looked as though it had never seen sunlight.

  Jane said. "No, thanks. I can handle the painting. It's the repairs that are hard."

  "You don't remember me, do you?" There was tension in the voice.

  "No," said Jane. "If I should, then you must be good at this. Maybe I should let you do my makeup after all."

  The woman whispered, "I was in the county jail when you were."

  Jane turned to look at the woman more closely, this time with a sense that she ought to be watching her hands, not her face. "Well, congratulations on getting out."

  Jane waited for her to leave, but the woman just smiled nervously and waited too. "Thanks."

  Jane decided that she could do the finishing touches in another ladies' room or even on the plane. "Well, I've got a plane to catch."