Page 23 of Joyland

"Once I let myself think of you as Linda Gray's killer--and it wasn't easy, Lane, not after the way you took me in and showed me the ropes--I could see past the hat and sunglasses and face-hair. I could see you. You weren't working here--"

"I was running a forklift in a warehouse in Florence." He wrinkled his nose. "Rube work. I hated it."

"You were working in Florence, you met Linda Gray in Florence, but you knew all about Joyland over here in NC, didn't you? I don't know if you're carny-from-carny, but you've never been able to stay away from the shows. And when you suggested a little road trip, she went along with it."

"I was her secret boyfriend. I told her I had to be. Because I was older." He smiled. "She bought it. They all do. You'd be surprised how much the young ones will buy."

You sick fuck, I thought. You sick, sick fuck.

"You brought her to Heaven's Bay, you stayed at a motel, and then you killed her here at Joyland even though you must have known about the Hollywood Girls running around with their cameras. Bold as brass. That was part of the kick, wasn't it? Sure it was. You did it on a ride full of conies--"

"Rubes," he said. The hardest gust yet shook the Spin, but he seemed not to feel it. Of course, he was on the inside of the wheel where things were a little calmer. "Call em what they are. They're just rubes, all of them. They see nothing. It's like their eyes are connected to their assholes instead of their brains. Everything goes right through."

"You get off on the risk, don't you? That's why you came back and hired on."

"Not even a month later." His smile widened. "All this time I've been right under their noses. And you know what? I've been...you know, good...ever since that night in the funhouse. All the bad stuff was behind me. I could have gone on being good. I like it here. I was building a life. I had my gadget, and I was going to patent it."

"Oh, I think sooner or later you would have done it again." We were back at the top. The wind and rain pelted us. I was shivering. My clothes were soaked; Lane's cheeks were dark with hair-dye. It ran down his skin in tendrils. His mind is like that, I thought. On the inside, where he never smiles.

"No. I was cured. I have to do you, Jonesy, but only because you stuck your nose in where it doesn't belong. It's too bad, because I liked you. I really did."

I thought he was telling the truth, which made what was happening even more horrible.

We were going back down. The world below was windy and rain-soaked. There had been no car with its headlights out, only a blowing piece of canvas that for a moment looked like that to my yearning mind. The cavalry wasn't coming. Thinking it was would only get me killed. I had to do this myself, and the only chance I had was to make him mad. Really mad.

"You get off on risk, but you don't get off on rape, do you? If you did, you would have taken them to some isolated place. I think what your secret girlfriends have between their legs scares you limp. What do you do later? Lie in bed and jack off thinking about how brave you are, killing defenseless girls?"

"Shut up."

"You can fascinate them, but you can't fuck them." The wind shouted; the car rocked. I was going to die and at that moment I didn't give shit one. I didn't know how angry I was making him, but I was angry enough for both of us. "What happened to make you this way? Did your mother put a clothespin on your peepee when you went weewee in the corner? Did Uncle Stan make you give him a blowjob? Or was it--"

"Shut up!" He rose into a crouch, gripping the safety bar in one hand and pointing the gun at me with the other. A stroke of lightning lit him up: staring eyes, lank hair, working mouth. And the gun. "Shut your dirty mou--"

"DEVIN, DUCK!"

I didn't think about it, I just did it. There was a whip-crack report, an almost liquid sound in the blowing night. The bullet must have gone right past me, but I didn't hear it or feel it, the way characters do in books. The car we were in swept past the loading point and I saw Annie Ross standing on the ramp with a rifle in her hands. The van was behind her. Her hair was blowing around her bone-white face.

We started up again. I looked at Lane. He was frozen in his crouch, his mouth ajar. Black dye ran down his cheeks. His eyes were rolled up so only the bottom half of the irises showed. Most of his nose was gone. One nostril hung down by his upper lip, but the rest of it was just a red ruin surrounding a black hole the size of a dime.

He sat down on the seat, hard. Several of his front teeth rattled out of his mouth when he did. I plucked the gun from his hand and tossed it over the side. What I was feeling right then was...nothing. Except in some very deep part of me, where I had begun to realize this might not be my night to die, after all.

"Oh," he said. Then he said "Ah." Then he slumped forward, chin on chest. He looked like a man considering his options, and very carefully.

There was more lightning as the car reached the top. It illuminated my seatmate in a stutter of blue fire. The wind blew and the Spin moaned in protest. We were coming down again.

From below, almost lost in the storm: "Dev, how do I stop it?"

I first thought of telling her to look for the remote control gadget, but in the storm she could hunt for half an hour and still not find it. Even if she did, it might be broken or lying shorted out in a puddle. Besides, there was a better way.

"Go to the motor!" I shouted. "Look for the red button! RED BUTTON, ANNIE! It's the emergency stop!"

I swept past her, registering the same jeans and sweater she'd worn earlier, both now soaked and plastered to her. No jacket, no hat. She had come in a hurry, and I knew who had sent her. How much simpler it would have been if Mike had focused on Lane at the start. But Rozzie never had, even though she'd known him for years, and I was to find out later that Mike never focused on Lane Hardy at all.

I was going back up again. Beside me, Lane's soaking hair was dripping black rain into his lap. "Wait until I come back down!"

"What?"

I didn't bother trying again; the wind would have drowned it out. I could only hope she wouldn't hammer on the red button while I was at the top of the ride. As the car rose into the worst of the storm the lightning flashed again, and this time there was an accompanying crack of thunder. As if it had roused him--perhaps it had--Lane lifted his head and looked at me. Tried to look at me; his eyes had come back level in their sockets, but were now pointing in opposite directions. That terrible image has never left my mind, and still comes to me at the oddest times: going through turnpike tollbooths, drinking a cup of coffee in the morning with the CNN anchors baying bad news, getting up to piss at three AM, which some poet or other has rightly dubbed the Hour of the Wolf.

He opened his mouth and blood poured out. He made a grinding insectile sound, like a cicada burrowing into a tree. A spasm shook him. His feet tap-danced briefly on the steel floor of the car. They stilled, and his head dropped forward again.

Be dead, I thought. Please be dead this time.

As the Spin started down again, a bolt of lightning struck the Thunderball; I saw the tracks light up briefly. I thought, That could have been me. The hardest gust of wind yet struck the car. I held on for dear life. Lane flopped like a big doll.

I looked down at Annie--her white face staring up, her eyes squinted against the rain. She was inside the rail, standing next to the motor. So far, so good. I put my hands around my mouth. "The red button!"

"I see it!"

"Wait until I tell you!"

The ground was coming up. I grabbed the bar. When the late (at least I hoped he was) Lane Hardy was at the control stick, the Spin always came to an easy halt, the cars up top swaying gently. I had no idea what an emergency stop would be like, but I was going to find out.

"Now, Annie! Push it now!"

It was a good thing I was holding on. My car stopped dead about ten feet from the unloading point and still five feet above the ground. The car tilted. Lane was thrown forward, his head and torso flopping over the bar. Without thinking, I grabbed his shirt and pulled him back. One of his hands flopped

into my lap and I flung it away with a grunt of disgust.

The bar wouldn't unlock, so I had to wriggle out from beneath it.

"Be careful, Dev!" Annie was standing beside the car, holding up her hands, as if to catch me. She had propped the rifle she'd used to end Hardy's life against the motor housing.

"Step back," I said, and threw one leg over the side of the car. More lightning flashed. The wind howled and the Spin howled back. I got hold of a strut and swung out. My hands slipped on the wet metal and I dropped. I went to my knees. A moment later she was pulling me to my feet.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes."

I wasn't, though. The world was swimming, and I was on the edge of a faint. I lowered my head, gripped my legs just above the knees, and began taking deep breaths. For a moment it could have gone either way, but then things began to solidify. I stood up again, careful not to move too fast.

It was hard to tell with the rain bucketing down, but I was pretty sure she was crying. "I had to do it. He was going to kill you. Wasn't he? Please, Dev, say he was going to kill you. Mike said he was, and--"

"You can quit worrying about that, believe me. And I wouldn't have been his first. He's killed four women." I thought of Erin's speculation about the years when there had been no bodies--none discovered, at least. "Maybe more. Probably more. We have to call the police. There's a phone in--"

I started to point toward Mysterio's Mirror Mansion, but she grabbed my arm. "No. You can't. Not yet."

"Annie--"

She thrust her face close to mine, almost kissing distance, but kissing was the last thing on her mind. "How did I get here? Am I supposed to tell the police that a ghost showed up in my son's room in the middle of the night and told him you'd die on the Ferris wheel if I didn't come? Mike can't be a part of this, and if you tell me I'm being an overprotective mom, I'll...I'll kill you myself."

"No," I said. "I won't tell you that."

"So how did I get here?"

At first I didn't know. You have to remember that I was still scared myself. Only scared doesn't cover it. Scared isn't even in the ballpark. I was in shock. Instead of Mysterio's, I led her to her van and helped her sit behind the wheel. Then I went around and got in on the passenger side. By then I had an idea. It had the virtue of simplicity, and I thought it would fly. I shut the door and took my wallet out of my hip pocket. I almost dropped it on the floor when I opened it; I was shaking like crazy. Inside there were plenty of things to write on, but I had nothing to write with.

"Please tell me you have a pen or a pencil, Annie."

"Maybe in the glove compartment. You'll have to call the police, Dev. I have to get back to Mike. If they arrest me for leaving the scene or something...or for murder..."

"Nobody's going to arrest you, Annie. You saved my life." I was pawing through the glove compartment as I talked. There was an owner's manual, piles of gasoline credit card receipts, Rolaids, a bag of M&Ms, even a Jehovah's Witnesses pamphlet asking if I knew where I was going to spend the afterlife, but no pen or pencil.

"You can't wait...in a situation like that...that's what I was always told..." Her words came in chunks because her teeth were chattering. "Just aim...and squeeze before you can...you know...second-guess yourself...it was supposed to go between his eyes, but...the wind...I guess the wind..."

She shot out a hand and gripped my shoulder hard enough to hurt. Her eyes were huge.

"Did I hit you, too, Dev? There's a gash in your forehead and blood on your shirt!"

"You didn't hit me. He pistol-whipped me a little, that's all. Annie, there's nothing in here to write w--"

But there was: a ballpoint at the very back of the glove compartment. Printed on the barrel, faded but still legible, was LET'S GO KROGERING! I won't say that pen saved Annie and Mike Ross serious police trouble, but I know it saved them a lot of questions about what had brought Annie to Joyland on such a dark and stormy night.

I passed her the pen and a business card from my wallet, blank side up. Earlier, sitting in my car and terribly afraid that my failure to buy a new battery was going to get Annie and Mike killed, I'd thought I could go back into the house and call her...only I didn't have her number. Now I told her to write it down. "And below the number, write Call if plans change."

While she did, I started the van's engine and turned the heater on full blast. She returned the card. I tucked it into my wallet, shoved the wallet back into my pocket, and tossed the pen into the glove compartment. I took her in my arms and kissed her cold cheek. Her trembling didn't stop, but it eased.

"You saved my life," I said. "Now let's make sure nothing happens to you or Mike because you did. Listen very carefully."

She listened.

Six days later, Indian summer came back to Heaven's Bay for a brief final fling. It was perfect weather for a noon meal at the end of the Ross boardwalk, only we couldn't go there. Newsmen and photographers had it staked out. They could do that because, unlike the two acres surrounding the big green Victorian, the beach was public property. The story of how Annie had taken out Lane Hardy (known then and forever after as The Carny Killer) with one shot had gone nationwide.

Not that the stories were bad. Quite the opposite. The Wilmington paper had led with DAUGHTER OF EVANGELIST BUDDY ROSS BAGS CARNY KILLER. The New York Post was more succinct: HERO MOM! It helped that there were file photos from Annie's salad days where she looked not just gorgeous but smoking hot. Inside View, the most popular of the supermarket tabloids back then, put out an extra edition. They had unearthed a photo of Annie at seventeen, taken after a shooting competition at Camp Perry. Clad in tight jeans, an NRA tee-shirt, and cowboy boots, she was standing with an antique Purdey shotgun broken over one arm and holding up a blue ribbon in her free hand. Next to the smiling girl was a mug-shot of Lane Hardy at twenty-one, after an arrest in San Diego--under his real name, which was Leonard Hopgood--for indecent exposure. The two pix made a terrific contrast. The headline: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.

Being a minor hero myself, I got some mention in the North Carolina papers, but in the tabloids I was hardly mentioned. Not sexy enough, I guess.

Mike thought having a HERO MOM was cool. Annie loathed the whole circus and couldn't wait for the press to move on to the next big thing. She'd gotten all the newspaper coverage she wanted in the days when she had been the holy man's wild child, famous for dancing on the bars in various Greenwich Village dives. So she gave no interviews, and we had our farewell picnic in the kitchen. There were actually five of us, because Milo was under the table, hoping for scraps, and Jesus--on the face of Mike's kite--was propped in the extra chair.

Their bags were in the hall. When the meal was done, I would drive them to Wilmington International. A private jet, laid on by Buddy Ross Ministries, Inc., would fly them back to Chicago and out of my life. The Heaven's Bay police department (not to mention the North Carolina State Police and maybe even the FBI) would undoubtedly have more questions for her, and she'd probably be back at some point to testify before a grand jury, but she'd be fine. She was the HERO MOM, and thanks to that promotional pen from Kroger's in the back of the van's glove compartment, there would never be a photo of Mike in the Post below a headline reading PSYCHIC SAVIOR!

Our story was simple, and Mike played no part in it. I had gotten interested in the murder of Linda Gray because of the legend that her ghost haunted the Joyland funhouse. I had enlisted the help of my research-minded friend and summer co-worker, Erin Cook. The photographs of Linda Gray and her killer had reminded me of someone, but it wasn't until after Mike's day at Joyland that the penny dropped. Before I could call the police, Lane Hardy had called me, threatening to kill Annie and Mike if I didn't come to Joyland on the double. So much truth, and only one little lie: I had Annie's phone number so I could call her if plans for Mike's visit to the park changed. (I produced the card for the lead detective, who barely glanced at it.) I said I called Annie from Mrs. Shoplaw's before leaving for Joyland, telling her

to lock her doors, call the cops, and stay put. She did lock the doors, but didn't stay put. Nor did she call the police. She was terrified that if Hardy saw blue flashing lights, he'd kill me. So she'd taken one of the guns from the safe and followed Lane with her headlights off, hoping to surprise him. Which she did. Thus, HERO MOM.

"How's your father taking all this, Dev?" Annie asked.

"Aside from saying he'd come to Chicago and wash your cars for life, if you wanted?" She laughed, but my father had actually said that. "He's fine. I'm heading back to New Hampshire next month. We'll have Thanksgiving together. Fred asked me to stay on until then, help him get the park buttoned up, and I agreed. I can still use the money."

"For school?"

"Yeah. I guess I'll go back for the spring semester. Dad's sending me an application."

"Good. That's where you need to be, not painting rides and replacing lightbulbs in an amusement park."

"You'll really come to see us in Chicago, right?" Mike asked. "Before I get too sick?"

Annie stirred uneasily, but said nothing.

"I have to," I said, and pointed to the kite. "How else am I going to return that? You said it was just a loan."

"Maybe you'll get to meet my grandpa. Other than being crazy about Jesus, he's pretty cool." He gave his mother a sideways glance. "I think so, anyway. He's got this great electric train set in his basement."

I said, "Your grandfather may not want to see me, Mike. I almost got your mother in a whole peck of trouble."

"He'll know you didn't mean to. It wasn't your fault that you worked with that guy." Mike's face grew troubled. He put down his sandwich, picked up a napkin, and coughed into it. "Mr. Hardy seemed really nice. He took us on the rides."

A lot of girls thought he was really nice, too, I thought. "You never had a...a vibe about him?"

Mike shook his head and coughed some more. "No. I liked him. And I thought he liked me."

I thought of Lane on the Carolina Spin, calling Mike a crippled brat.

Annie put a hand on Mike's wand of a neck and said, "Some people hide their real faces, hon. Sometimes you can tell when they're wearing masks, but not always. Even people with powerful intuitions can get fooled."

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