The Fall of Never(60)

“Is something wrong?”

“No,” he said. Then: “Yes. Christ, I don’t know.”

“Marie?”

“No, Marie’s fine. It’s me. That discussion we had…”

Bruce Chalmers sounded irritated. “You should have let me prescribe you some Zetran.”

“I think I just need to ask you a question, then I’ll be all right.”

“You’re starting to scare me here, Carlos.”

“I’ll be okay.”

The obstetrician sighed. “What is it?”

“The baby,” Carlos said. “I need to know the sex of the baby.”

“You and Marie agreed not to—”

“Marie still doesn’t want to know,” he said. “I do.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. For a brief moment, Mendes thought Bruce Chalmers had hung up on him. Then, with deep resignation, Chalmers’s voice again: “It’s a boy, Carlos. You’re going to have a son.”

Before Mendes’s eyes, the world abruptly went gray and grainy, as if he were no longer on the same dimensional plane as the rest of his surroundings. Objects right in front of him looked impossibly far away. The soft light over the kitchen sink suddenly seemed overly bright, nearly blinding. Even the sound of the sleet patting against the windows behind him sounded like someone dropping uncooked rice into a tin can.

Chalmers’s voice, equally distant: “Carlos? Carlos? What the hell is going on with you, man?”

“I’m here,” he said, forcing himself back into reality. He closed his eyes, no longer willing to look at the cruel world around him. “Just letting it all sink in. I’m going to be a father. I’m going to have a son.”

“Yeah,” Chalmers said, still a bit concerned. “Get that throwing arm in good shape, huh?”

“Right,” Mendes said, no longer hearing the other man’s words.

“Carlos—”

“Goodnight, Bruce.”

He hung up the phone and managed to catch himself in one of the kitchen chairs. He opened his eyes: looked at his hands, looked at the tabletop, looked at the two black windows frozen with sleet.

It’s a boy.

You’re going to have a son.

For the first time in his adult life, Doctor Carlos Mendes was terrified.





Chapter Fifteen


Felix Raintree’s sedan was discovered on North Town Road one day after the detective went missing, several hours after a heavy snowstorm swept through the valley. The car was uncovered by Sheriff Alan Bannercon of Caliban County—a young, southern officer who’d worked most his life in the backwater of Astroville, Kentucky before relocating to New York. Though none of his deputies appeared to have a problem with him, he knew there were some personnel, particularly from the District Attorney’s office, who did. Felix Raintree was one of them.

Bannercon found the car with its driver’s side door half open, the interior light off, the battery already dead. The entire vehicle was covered in snow; yet, there were no footprints in the fresh snow outside the car. Which was a bad sign. The absence of footprints meant Raintree’s vehicle had been abandoned some time ago.

This ain’t good.

Alan Bannercon thought of the missing hunters. It was not a passing consideration; rather, it hit him as if he’d seen a blaring neon sign, loud and clear, and it bothered him to make the connection so quickly. Associating Raintree with those hunters was like dooming the detective from the start. Three hunters mysteriously vanished last month…and now Alan Bannercon sat in his cruiser, staring at Raintree’s abandoned vehicle, with no impressions left behind in the snow. The car must have been there for hours, Bannercon understood, could have been there since last night.

He got out of his cruiser and carefully stepped around Raintree’s car, his eyes sweeping the ground for any sign of the missing detective, any footprint, a popped button from his shirt, a single loose thread. Peering inside the vehicle, he saw that the keys were still in the ignition, though the car had been turned off. Not a positive sign, those keys being there. He reached in and tried the headlights, found them to be dead (they were, in fact, already turned on), and backed away from the car. Looking over his shoulder, he cast a glance into the deepening woods behind him. Clumps of wet snow had already gathered in the branches of the fir trees, and the ground was sufficiently covered as well. Again, no footprints.

No shit, Bannercon thought. There are no footprints because he stepped away from his car before the snow ever started falling.

“Raintree!” His voice seemed to shake the trees. “Felix Raintree! Hello!”

Stepped away, he thought.

And what if Raintree didn’t step away at all? What if he’d been taken away?

But no, that was ridiculous. In Spires, everyone practically knew everyone else. Who would attack Felix Raintree? What in God’s name would be the reason? And would an attacker bother to shut off the car’s engine? No, it just didn’t make any sense. There had to be some other explanation for this, for Raintree leaving his car like this…

Of course, there was no explanation for the disappearance of those three hunters last month, either.

Cold, Bannercon hustled back to his cruiser and radioed the dispatcher.