David Morrell - The Shimmer

Cured? he thought. Wouldn’t that be nice?

They ate while they walked three blocks to the hospital. There Tori again paused nervously on the hot steps outside the entrance.

“Another day closer to the start of the rest of your life,” Page tried to reassure her.

She took a breath and forced herself to go in.

Upstairs, in the brightly lit hallway, the sharp odor of disinfectant seemed stronger as they walked toward Costigan’s room.

The chief ’s familiar raspy voice came from it, telling someone, “God help us if the next riot spreads to town. How many people were injured?”

“Twenty-three,” a different voice answered. “Twelve got gashed pretty bad on the barbed-wire fence.”

“And the others?”

“Six were almost trampled to death. The rest were hurt in fights.”

Page was uncomfortable eavesdropping. He motioned for Tori to follow him as he stepped into the doorway.

Their footsteps made a man turn in their direction. He was in his fifties, stocky, with a sunburned complexion. His sport coat had a Western cut and a zigzag design over the left and right breast. He wore a large belt buckle and held a cowboy hat.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Page said. “We just wanted to see how Chief Costigan was doing.”

“A lot better, thanks.” Propped up in bed, Costigan looked less gray. His mustache now had some contrast with his skin, and the heart and blood-pressure monitors were gone. The IV tube had been removed from his arm, although the thick bandage remained around his skull. “They say they’ll let me go home tomorrow as long as I remember not to bang my head against anything. This is Hank Wagner. He runs the drugstore in town. More to the point, he’s also our mayor, which, at the moment, he wishes he wasn’t.”

Page shook hands with Wagner.

“Dan Page. This is my wife, Tori.”

“The chief told me about you. You’re the couple who saved those people on the bus Thursday night. You’re the woman who…” Seeing her discomfort, the mayor said, “Well, we’re grateful for what you did. Without your help, the situation could have been even worse.”

He looked at his watch. “You’ll have to excuse me. I need to get to an emergency town council meeting.”

They watched him leave and then redirected their attention toward Costigan.

“Do you really feel better?” Tori asked.

“The headache’s not as bad. And I don’t have damned needles sticking into me. The doctor finally took me off a diet of broth and Jell-O.” Costigan pointed toward Page’s bruised mouth. “Looks like you’re one of the people who got hurt last night.”

“Things were a little crazy. Can I ask you a question?”

“You can ask.” Costigan’s voice hung in the air, suggesting, But I might not answer.

“The man who killed your father…”

For a moment, Costigan’s pained eyes focused on the past. “What about him?”

“You said he’d come to Rostov only a couple of months earlier.”

“He’d lost his job in Fort Worth when the factory he worked for moved to Mexico. He couldn’t find anything else. One of his relatives lived here and managed to get him a job at the stock pens.”

“You also said he was a drinker, that he got in arguments in bars. His wife buttoned her collars and wore long sleeves even on hot days-to hide her bruises.”

“That’s right.”

“In your place, given what happened to your father, I’d have looked into every aspect of the case. I’d have gone to Fort Worth and talked to people who knew the husband when the family lived there. Did you find out if his behavior changed after he came to Rostov?”

Costigan considered him for a moment. “Yeah, you’re a good police officer.”

“Well, you know as well as I do, it’s all about asking the right questions.”

Costigan nodded. “I did some digging. The husband’s behavior definitely got worse after he came here. He’d always had a short tem- per, especially when he drank, but here it became more extreme.

People who knew him in Fort Worth figured he got bitter about being forced to leave the big city and live in the middle of nowhere.”

“Did you buy that theory?”

“I had a different one.”

“And that’s the real reason you wanted me to keep my gun in my suitcase when I went to the observation area to find out what Tori was doing there, isn’t that correct?”

“Correct.”

“What am I missing?” Tori asked.

Costigan looked at her. “People either like it here right away, or else they hate it. You saw that on Thursday night. Some got out of their cars and were open to seeing the lights, while others couldn’t wait to get back on the road. A few were actually angry because they couldn’t see what others claimed to see. It’s like the way magnets can repel each other as much as attract.”

“Did the man who shot your father ever go out there to look at the lights?” Page asked.

“He tried several times. He finally decided that the people who told him about the lights were trying to make a fool of him.”

“And you were worried that if I didn’t see the lights, I’d get angry- as angry as the man who shot your father.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You wouldn’t have understood what I was talking about. How could I possibly have explained it? I told you on the phone-you needed to see for yourself.”

“Or not see,” Page added.

Costigan made a gesture of futility. “There’s no way to predict who’ll see the lights and who won’t, or how they’ll react. Even those who don’t see the lights…” The chief rubbed his bandaged forehead. “Do you suppose it’s possible to feel the lights without actually seeing them?”

“Yesterday you told us they were only a mirage caused by a temperature inversion,” Tori reminded him.

“That I did.”

“But now you seem to think they’re a lot more.”

“A temperature inversion. Sure. That’s the rational explanation. But one thing I’ve learned in more than twenty years as a police officer is that human beings aren’t rational.”

Harriett Ward’s antiques store was crammed with browsers. After the glare of the afternoon sun, Page found the interior shadows soothing. He noted that a man had taken down one of the antique rifles Page had seen on the wall the evening before. The man worked the vintage firearm’s lever and aimed the gun toward the ceiling.

“Just like the rifle James Stewart used in that Western,” he told his female companion. “Winchester ’73. Hard to imagine this was made just after the Civil War. What are they charging for it? Twenty-eight hundred dollars? My God, that’s a steal!”

“But I don’t think we can afford it,” the woman said. “Gas and food cost so much. Next week Bobby’s nursery school bill is due, and-”

“Hey, you don’t see bargains like this every day. We’ll put it on one of our credit cards.”

Page looked toward the opposite side of the store and saw an older woman with short white hair and a leather vest: Harriett Ward. As he and Tori went over, she was talking to a couple about a wooden cabinet that had large iron handles on the doors.

“I found it in a village in Mexico. It’s made of mesquite, which is about as hard as wood can get and not be like these metal handles.”

She noticed Page and Tori and nodded. Five minutes later, she made her way over to them.

“I’ve never had so many people in the store at one time,” she said.

“Well, at least there’s an upside to what’s been happening,” Tori said.

“Everybody wants a twenty percent discount and free shipping. Someone tried to buy the antique light fixtures and got upset when I said I needed them. Someone else got upset when I told her I didn’t have a public restroom. She made a fuss when I wouldn’t let her into my apartment so she could use my private bathroom. I’m glad for the business, but I’d forgotten how difficult people can be.”