The Night Parade(6)

Shoving aside articles of clothing, he located the gun and both boxes of ammunition. As he had done back in Burt Langstrom’s bedroom, he lifted it out of the bag almost too gingerly, turning it over with abundant care in both hands. It was a Glock, though he did not know the model. There was a single magazine in the hilt, and it took him only a few seconds to release it by pressing a lever on the side of the weapon. Aside from the trigger, it was the only other lever, and he marveled at the terrible and dangerous simplicity of the instrument. In the movies, it seemed like someone was always cocking back hammers or switching levers. A child could use this.

I’m an idiot, he thought. What am I doing with this thing?

He had hoped to find some instructions for loading the gun on the boxes of ammo, but that was not the case. He opened one of the boxes and pried out the little plastic tray. Each bullet was housed in its own circular well, bottom-up. They gleamed in the fluorescent lights above the bathroom mirror.

The back of the gun’s magazine had little numbered holes running in two columns, so he was able to discern that the mag held just thirteen rounds. There was a spring-loaded mechanism at the top of the mag, which gave under the weight of his thumb when he pushed on it. One by one, he loaded thirteen rounds into the magazine, the spring becoming more resistant with each round, until he had capped it off. Then he slammed it back into the hilt of the gun and heard it click into place.

The one move he had seen countless times on television that did prove useful was charging the weapon—pulling back the slide in order to chamber a round. It clanked solidly, and all of a sudden he could feel nothing but the weight of the thing in his hand. It was heavier with the bullets in it. When he glanced up at his reflection in the steamy mirror, he hardly recognized himself. Yet that had very little to do with the gun; he’d stopped recognizing himself weeks ago, when this whole thing had started to get ugly.

He tucked the loaded gun back inside his duffel bag, then checked his cell phone. He’d kept it powered off during the drive, mostly to conserve the battery because he had forgotten to bring his charger—another stupid oversight—but also because he’d once heard that people could be tracked to a specific location by GPS just by pinging their cell phone. He didn’t know whether this was true or not, but he thought it was better to be safe than sorry.

The phone powered up, searched for a signal, then chimed repeatedly to let him know he had unread text messages. He checked the log and saw there were five missed calls with an equal number of voice mails. There were twice as many text messages, too, each one sent from the same person, the most recent sent only an hour earlier. They were from Sanjay Kapoor. And although a white-hot rage rose up through him as he looked at Kapoor’s name, he couldn’t bring himself to delete the messages. Instead, he clicked on the most recent and read it.



Please reconsider your actions, David.

You hold the key that could save us all.





His eyes burned. Without giving the message another thought, he deleted it, then powered down his phone.

He stripped out of his clothes. They were sour with perspiration and fell to the floor in a stiff and smelly heap. When he climbed beneath the spray of hot water, he tried hard to erase the past several hours from his mind—the past several days, several weeks, several months—but they haunted him. He couldn’t scald those images away.





4


He showered for a good fifteen minutes. When he was done, he toweled off, pulled on a fresh pair of underwear, sweatpants, and an old Pearl Jam T-shirt. Unlike Ellie, he happened to have his own clothes with him, already packed. He had anticipated a longer stay at the hospital.

Back in the room, Ellie was already curled up on the bedspread, asleep. My God, she looks so old. He felt a pang of sadness in his chest. Looking at her reminded him of Kathy, and that hurt, too. It had all happened so quickly, his grief was still confused with disbelief, with anger, with helplessness. He had to keep reminding himself that it wasn’t a nightmare and that it had all actually happened—was still happening. When he closed his eyes, it was Kathy’s face that materialized through the darkness; only his urgency to keep moving was enough to bump her from his thoughts for small periods of time, allowing him to function. Well, his urgency . . . and what had happened earlier that night in the car, that unsettling and inexplicable thing that Ellie had done to him when they first set out on the road . . .

Ellie had one arm draped around the shoe box. David considered attempting to remove it, to set it on the nightstand, but in the end he decided to let it be. What was the harm?

Despite the squealing bedsprings, Ellie didn’t stir when he eased down on the other side of the bed. Thank God for small miracles. He dreaded any discussion with her about the truth of what had happened. But she was a smart kid. A September baby—their Miracle Baby—they had petitioned to have her advance a grade early on, and it was a decision they never regretted. Sometimes, he knew, the kid was too smart.

She knows I’ve been lying to her, he realized now, the notion striking him like a terrible epiphany. Jesus, she’s just been humoring me, hasn’t she? Yes, of course she has. I don’t give her enough credit. She gives me too much.

He turned off the bedside lamp, then reclined on his back, listening to the soft sounds of his daughter’s respiration. As tired and defeated as he was, he thought he would have crashed the second his head hit the pillow, but that was not the case. He stared at the black ceiling, at the border of cold sodium light framing the closed drapes over the window. He counted the seconds between each flash of the smoke alarm’s cyclopean eye.