American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,80

if he is suffering from a tremendous migraine. Mona notices sweat beginning to shine on his forehead. “I am sorry, Miss Bright. But I am not permitted to say much more than what I have. It would be indecent for me to say more upon this matter.”

He gives her a pained look, and Mona begins to wonder if discussing this subject is physically hurting him, like every word he says wounds him in some hidden manner. Just telling her that he can’t tell her appears to be making him sick.

“Can you tell me about Benjamin’s mirror trick?” she asks. “Is that what did this to me?”

Parson looks relieved to have changed the subject. “Ah. Well. I doubt it,” he says. “The mirror trick was precisely that—a trick, or a small and largely meaningless show.”

“But it changed something in me.”

“It did not change anything, I believe. It simply made you aware of something that was already there.”

“And what is it that’s there?”

“You have spent several weeks here. Long enough to know that this place is not normal, by your standards. But do you ever feel, Miss Bright, a sense of kinship with this town? A sense of familiarity, like you have walked these streets before? Or, rather, have you felt throughout your life a quiet type of pain, a nostalgia for a place to which you’ve never been? I think I see such a thing in you. Am I wrong?”

Mona feels a warmth in her palm, and realizes she is trembling and has spilled coffee on her hand. She places the coffee cup on the card table. “Yes.”

“Yes. I feared it was that way when you first came. We do not have new arrivals in Wink, Miss Bright. Unless, that is, they are supposed to be here. And how you came to this place is extraordinarily troubling to me.”

“Why?”

Parson opens his mouth to answer, but then the motel is absolutely blasted by wind. Tree branches and whirling leaves strike the sides of the building, and the windows flex and quiver in their frames. There is another burst of static on the radio, long and loud, and it might be Mona’s imagination but it almost sounds like there is a voice trying to speak through all the white noise.

Parson looks around, stands up, and murmurs, “Oh, dear.”

“What is it?”

He walks outside, and as soon as he is beyond the doors his clothing balloons up and whips about from the gales. “Oh, dear, dear. They are quite upset.”

“Who?” asks Mona. “What’s going on?”

He looks up, appearing to consult the stars and the moon, and he cocks his head and listens. “There’s been another murder.”

“A what?”

She stands and joins him at the door, but he quickly says, “Do not come outside, Miss Bright. It is very dangerous out here right now.”

“What the hell are you talking about? What was that about a murder?”

“Someone else has been killed,” he says. He holds up a hand, asking for silence, and listens more. “It is Mr. Macey.”

“Macey? The old man from the store? You’re saying he’s been killed?”

“Yes,” says Parson.

“How do you know?”

He looks around as if he can read something in the quivering pines or hear it in the wind. “I know.” He gives a deeply disappointed sigh. “I am coming back inside.”

Mona stands aside as he comes back in to sit at the card table. He looks quite shaken. “This will not be good,” he says. “Not at all. Another death…”

“Who was the first?” asks Mona, but she already knows the answer. “Mr. Weringer? It was him, wasn’t it? The guy whose funeral I interrupted?”

Parson nods.

“But I was told it wasn’t foul play.”

“You should know by now that what people say in Wink is often not very truthful,” Parson says.

She laughs bitterly. “No shit. So what’s going to happen now?”

Parson stares into his game of checkers, looking from bead to bead. Finally he raises his head and studies Mona, and she doesn’t care at all for the look in his eye. “You seem like someone used to death. Am I wrong?”

“I don’t know what the hell you mean by that.”

He picks up one of the beads and turns it over and over in his palm. “I mean, you have seen violent death before, and dealt with it.”

“I was a cop for a little while, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I suppose it is.” He smiles. It is not a pleasant sight, for his face seems unused to the expression. “Miss Bright, I am going to help