Shallow Graves

25

"You all right?" Keith asked. Pellam nodded, gasping at the pain. And Keith continued into the house, following Meg.

Pellam made sure that Billy was dead then staggered inside.

He found them in the living room, Keith's arm around Meg, standing over Tom, the sheriff. He was dead.

Meg looked toward the front door, at Pellam, with eyes wide in terror.

Keith was on his knees, hugging Sam. Who glanced at Pellam but said nothing. He was crying. "Did they hurt you?" Keith asked.

The boy shook his head.

Meg, crying too, gasped. "He was going to… He took him in there…" She nodded toward the living room. "But then they heard the horn and he went outside to see who it was."

"Oh, honey…"

Keith stood and Meg lowered her head to Keith's shoulder.

"What happened?" Keith muttered

"Honey, your phone, in the car. We've got to call the police."

"My phone?"

"In the car. They cut the line here. The phone doesn't work."

"I left it at the factory," he said. He seemed numb, unable to say any more than a few words at a time.

"Then drive to the Burkes, use theirs!"

"What happened? I don't…" He looked around the house. "I don't understand."

"It was so terrible…"

"Why was Tom here?" Keith asked.

Meg glanced at Sam and whispered something to her husband. He frowned. She nodded. "Then one of them shot Tom. They got in somehow. I don't know why. I have no idea why."

Keith said nothing for a moment, just stared at the sheriff's body. He glanced at Sam. "I'm going to take you up to bed. Your mother and I have to talk."

"Keith…" Meg started after him. But Pellam, wincing at the pain in his shoulder, stepped forward, touched her arm. "Meg, wait."

Father and son disappeared up the stairs.

She turned. "You're hurt…"

"Sit down."

Meg hesitated.

"I have to talk to you. I have to tell you why I came back tonight…"

She was staring at Tom. "Keith has to call. He has to go to the Burkes."

"Meg… Listen to me. Tonight I went to see your friend."

She stiffened and her attention on the body in her living room vanished. "My friend?" she asked.

"Ambler."

She considered this, then asked, "How did you know he was my friend?"

"We had a talk." Pellam paused, looking at the stairs. But Keith was still with Sam. He added, "He likes you. He likes you a lot."

She wasn't sure what to do with this information. She found an afghan, placed it over the sheriff's head and chest. Pellam wanted to put his arm around her but he would probably have fainted; any motion was pure pain in his shoulder.

"Why did you go to see him?" Meg asked.

"I thought he might've been the one who had Marty killed."

"What?"

Pellam shook his head. "He didn't. But he did plant the drugs and he had me beat up."

"Wex wouldn't do…" But her voice faded and she obviously concluded that, yeah, he could very easily do that.

"The reason he did it was that he was afraid I was going to take you away with me."

"He did?"

She looked troubled but he wondered if he wasn't seeing a little pride in her face too. There probably isn't a woman in the world who isn't thrilled by a man who goes to those kind of lengths to keep her for himself.

"We decided it was probably the twins who were behind the shooting. I went to their junkyard. That shack of theirs. I found the gun they killed Marty with. Some other things too. I found-"

Footsteps nearby. Keith walked slowly down the stairs. He caught Pellam's eyes and paused. Then continued. "Sam's okay. I gave him something. He's sleeping."

Meg ignored him. Said to Pellam, "Why are you telling me this?"

But Keith preempted her. He'd overheard Pellam and he asked, "What else did you find in the shack?"

Pellam said to Meg, "I found some of that stuff, the drugs Sam got."

"So they're the ones?" she blurted. "They're the ones behind it… But why would they come here? Because Sam was a witness?"

"They weren't after Sam."

Keith had stopped walking. He sat down. Pellam said to him, "They had five or six thousand vials there. All packaged and ready to go… So, Keith, tell me: Were they distributing? Or were they skimming from you?"

Keith's eyes swam around the room. "Both, apparently."

Meg stared at her husband. "What do you mean?"

"Your partners came here to kill you," Pellam said. "And your family."

"Partners?" Meg gasped.

Pellam said to Keith, "Would they have enough information to make the drugs themselves? Could they do it without your factory?"

Keith didn't say anything.

Both, apparently.

Keith looked at the wall beyond which two of his employees lay. "I paid them enough."

"There's never enough."

"How'd you find out?"

Pellam said, "In one of the bags in their shack were notes from you. Some of your letterhead. Some cash." He nodded. "I came here to tell Meg."

She turned to Pellam. Wanted to say something, it seemed, but couldn't.

Keith said, "They were just punks but they had contacts in New York, New Jersey, Brooklyn. I needed them."

Pellam asked, "What is it exactly? The drug."

Keith explained. "It's an oral synthetic narcotic."

To her husband Meg whispered, "No. This isn't happening."

Keith took a breath and Pellam could see he was running through the inventory of lies he might choose from. A boy in front of a broken window. He looked at both Pellam and Meg and said, "It's not what you think."

"No, no, no…" She shook her head.

"Meg, it's just a product. I-"

"Product!" Meg said. "This shit is poison and you call it a product?"

"You don't understand, Meg," he snapped. "It's not like that."

"What is it like, then?"

"It's a fantastic discovery! It took me two years to perfect it."

"Discovery?"

Pellam said wryly, "State of the art. Normally, heroin you have to shoot up to get the best rush. This stuff, all you do is chew it."

Keith said, "What I developed was a new vasodilator. It's brilliant. The narcotic goes into the blood cells under the tongue in milliseconds."

Pellam continued. "A new Yuppie drug of choice. No need to shoot up. No needles. No AIDS risk…"

Keith said, "I was going to license it. I mean I am going to license it for legitimate medical purposes. We just needed a little more capital… We were going to distribute samples to medical research companies-you don't need FDA approval for that. But Dale started selling underground to get some cash flow. By the time I found out we were in too deep."

"Liar."

"No, Meg, really-"

She stepped toward him. "Tell me how my poor baby got in too deep! You and Dale had cash from day one. You bought out your contract… Oh, you had somebody bankrolling you and knew exactly who you were going to sell this shit to from the day you opened your factory."

"Stop it!"

"Tell me how someone put a gun to your head and forced you to-" She stopped speaking, frowned. "Wait." More horror in her eyes. "And what happened to him, to Dale?"

"He…" Keith looked away.

"They killed him. Those twins… Why? Was he getting too greedy?"

"It all got out of hand," Keith said furiously. "It wasn't my fault."

She was continuing, "And those other men, the ones from New York… And the boy who overdosed last year… And Ned! This morning. They killed him too! And Tom thought Sam had done it! Oh, Jesus Christ."

"And Marty," Pellam said.

It took Keith a moment to realize who Marty was. He said,

"That was an accident. I swear to God. Bobby and Billy were trying to scare the two of you out of here. That's all. We didn't want strangers in town. We couldn't risk any publicity."

Pellam said, "Accident? You killed your partner and who knows who else-and you expect me to believe that you just wanted to scare Marty?"

Meg, incredulous. Shaking her head slowly, her pony tail lolling. "And you almost killed our son?"

"I told them-" Nodding in the direction of the front yard. "- never to sell to anybody around here. But they didn't listen to me. It wasn't my fault. I-"

"Not your fault? You made it and now you're selling it. How do you mean it's not your fault? Explain that to me, Keith."

Keith couldn't hold her eyes any longer and looked down.

She simply shook her head. Her rage was too great.

Pellam could see that he'd fallen into a particular persona-one that must have suckered Meg all along: Keith the boy with the thick hair, the round face. Imploring, needing love. The pudgy boy.

"We have nothing to talk about. Nothing at all."

"Please, let me explain."

She turned to look at him as he slouched in the doorway, pressing against the jamb with his shoulder as if he needed the house itself to hold him upright.

Meg said, "You've lied to me all along."

"I didn't want to tell you. For your own protection."

Meg said bitterly, "How did you figure that?"

"If anything were to happen I didn't want you to be involved."

She laughed in astonishment. "How wouldn't I be involved? My husband's making drugs! How wouldn't Sam and I be sucked right into the middle of it? I mean, look what happened the other day with Sam. He could've died."

"That won't happen again."

She was crying now. "Oh, God, Keith… You sound like you're not going to stop. Tom's dead! There're two bodies in my front yard. It's over with. We're calling the police."

"No, Meg. What I've come up with, it's magic." His eyes gleamed. "Nobody's ever made anything like this before. Nobody else can."

She spat out, "You sound proud of it."

He shouted, "I am proud! You really don't know who I am. You've never made the least effort to see me. I'm not the same as everybody else. My mind doesn't walk, it runs. I was born that way. I'm not like you. Or him." He glanced at Pellam. "Or anybody."

"But we loved each other," Meg cried.

"What does that have to do with anything? Don't sound so self-righteous. I did it for you. And for Sam. Why do you think? You were always harping about a nice house, having money, your fucking jewelry! How was I supposed to do that on a chemist's salary?" He pointed to her ring. "You think I could afford that if I was still at Sandberg?"

"Are you seriously trying to blame me? You should blame whatever's in you that makes you think you've got a different set of rules than everybody else. And, what? We're just supposed to forget everything that's happened? Well, I'm not forgetting. Sam and I are leaving."

"You're going with him?" Keith glanced at Pellam. His voice was filled with disbelief.

"I'm just leaving. That's the only explanation I owe you. Sam and I, we're both leaving."

"You can't just desert me."

"Desert you?" Meg laughed.

The tension in the room was like energy itself.

"I'm not going to let that happen!" Keith's voice jarred in the room, a sound to match the glare of light. "You're my wife. You're staying with me. In six months, I'll have the patent and I'll stop selling on the street. We'll get a license from Pfizer or Merck. We'll tell the state police the twins tried to break in and rape you. Tom was here about Sam and they killed him. We can say-"

"No more." Her eyes closed and her head moved back and forth slowly. "No more." She stood up. "We're not staying here tonight."

"Meg, no." He wasn't a boy any longer. He was mean, dark, brooding.

Their words swirled around Pellam. As they talked, husband and wife, he heard what they said and he observed their expressions but it was from a distance.

Here you come, with your van and your camera, studying the town, talking to people, getting to know everyone… Getting to know some of them very well. You don't understand the power you've got.

But no, he thought, I have no power. Nothing he could say or do could teach them about happiness and lift them out of the ruts they'd fallen into. He made movies. He helped people escape from their lives, sure, but only for two hours and only in that one special place: a darkened movie theater. "I'm leaving now."

Keith focused on Pellam, said to him, "You mention this to anyone, I guess you can figure out what'll happen to them." He nodded toward Meg.

"What are you saying, Keith?" she asked.

Pellam said, "He's saying that if I go to the police, even if he beats the murder charges, there'll be a RICO case against him. The U.S. attorney'll close up the factory and take the house and your savings."

Keith nodded. "That'll be on your conscience."

Pellam laughed, said nothing. He looked at Meg. "You want a ride someplace? Family or friends nearby?"

Keith said, "She's not coming with you."

"That's not your decision."

Meg said to Pellam, "Let me get Sam."

Keith said, "Meg, you're my wife! You-"

"Stop it!" she screamed. Keith the boy, Keith the man stopped speaking. "You don't own me. I'm leaving!"

Pellam sensed it then. In an intuitive flash, he knew.

A combination of things told him-the peripheral sight of Keith reaching for his waistband, his gasping breath, the click of spring metal.

The sound of a gun cocking-Bobby's, of course, which Pellam had forgotten about, left lying under the twin's body on the front porch. Keith had retrieved it on his way inside the house.

The click that was almost hidden by a rising shout, a single word.

One word-his own name-filling the night, as Keith shoved the gun toward him and wailed in primitive rage, "Pellam!"

"No, Keith!" Meg cried.

Pellam's left hand shot forward in a futile, automatic gesture to ward off the scalding bullet.

A ringing explosion. The muzzle blast struck him in the face and hand.

Meg screamed, "John!"

They froze, like children playing the game of statue. Three of them.

There was an endless moment of silence, the sweet piquancy of smoke filling the room.

The gun fell from Keith's hand to the floor and with a wail of anguish he dropped to his knees.

Pellam, waiting for the pain, the blackness, the crawl of blood, stood completely still.

Nothing. He was unhurt.

The man had missed. From fifteen feet away Keith had missed.

He whispered to Meg, "It's all right, I'm okay."

She was shaking her head. "What'm I going to do about this?"

"What?" Pellam asked.

Meg didn't answer. Her head was lowered in concentration, frowning as she studied the diamonds on her finger. "Look at this ring. Look at it. What a mess."

Meg held up her hand, covered with the blood that spread from the front of her blouse. "Can you help me? I'll never get it clean." Her smile faded. Her eyes fluttered closed. "Can you help me," she whispered as she spiraled slowly to the floor. "Can you?"