The Last Family

18

Rainey was taking Halcion at night because if he didn’t, he dreamed dark, haunting dreams. He dreamed of his family, and each time he dreamed of them, he woke up screaming, drenched in sweat. He had decided it was far better to close his eyes as he lay down on the bed and then open them to a new day than go through such hell. It was bad enough to live with it through the days.

And then there was Paul Masterson. He slept just fine for someone who had brought the man from hell down on them. Rainey knew that Martin was crazy, but Martin would be fixated on other enemies had Paul not put him away. Could it be that the injuries Martin’s gunners had given Paul might be sufficient to allow him relief from further vengeance? A worthless left hand, one eye, a permanent limp? Not hardly.

Paul should have killed Martin, Rainey thought, or at least gone along with letting the DEA do it. But Paul had refused for reasons of his own. Perhaps he simply hadn’t had the courage. It was cowardly to let the law handle it-put Martin in jail. As if a jail might hold the man! Fuck! When Rainey allowed his mind to run this trail, it became dark, and he was truly haunted, enraged that Paul was alive while his own family wasn’t. He would trade Paul’s troubles for his own in a heartbeat, he decided. Even given the pains Paul had suffered, he was the luckiest man alive. Such tormenting thoughts made Rainey have to fight to keep from seeing Paul and Martin in the same light.

He thought a great deal about the message he had received the night after Doris and George’s funeral. He had been staying in a motel room because he’d had no intention of sleeping in an empty house. Two of his agents had insisted on guarding his room. That night he had let the agency’s real doctor give him a shot, but sleep was slow in coming. Before he’d dozed off, the Episcopal minister who had performed the funeral service had talked the agents into allowing him into the room, and he’d tried to talk to Rainey about God’s plan. Rainey had known the minister meant well, but he had exploded. “Fuckin’ get out before I kill you!” he’d railed at the frightened man in the collar. “No God who lets a madman slaughter my wife and children is worth talking about! Get out!” Then he had grabbed up the minister and thrown him into the hallway, where he’d hit the opposite wall and landed on all fours. The two agents standing there outside the door had been shocked beyond words, seemingly frozen in midthought like department-store mannequins. The minister had cowered, covering his face with the sleeve of his coat.

“No more visitors,” he had said matter-of-factly. Inside he’d been boiling, but at the height of his rage he would, as often as not, calm outwardly even as the temperature inside him soared. Had he been armed, he might well have emptied the gun into the preacher.

The minister had not returned, nor had the guards tried to gain entrance. Rainey had taken the Bible, which the preacher had dropped onto the bed, and hurled it against the wall. “Give me back my family, God. Or leave me alone!” he had yelled. Then, remembering how much religion, and that poor minister, had meant to Doris, he had cried himself to sleep.

Later, after sleep had enveloped him, he had distinctly heard Doris calling, and he had awakened from the first sleep since the night before George and Doris had died. Doris had been standing beside the motel room’s bed in her gown, and she’d been crying luminous tears.

“Rainey. I can’t find them,” she had said. “Where are our babies?”

Rainey had felt a great conflict of emotions. Fear was not among them. He had held out his arms and Doris had slipped into them, and the great void of emptiness had been lifted from his heart and he had wept tears of joy. He had felt her moist face against his chest, and he had tried to console her by rubbing her hair. “It’ll be all right, baby,” he’d said through the free-flowing tears. “You’ll see, we’ll find them. We’ll get them back.”

She had cried. “There’s nothing out there, Rainey. Nothing but voices in the dark. Rainey, I’m so afraid and it’s so cold.”

“We just have to keep looking. Want me to come with you?”

“Rainey. The voices say that none of us can be together until the circle is closed.”

“Until what? I don’t understand.”

“The book will tell you,” she’d said. “Please, I need my babies.”

Then she was gone, and his arms had closed around nothing. She had been there, he had smelled her perfume, her breath had been warm against his chest. He was wide-awake and had not imagined it. It had been as real as anything he had ever experienced.

He had turned on the light, and the Bible had been opened on the floor. He had slid from the bed and crawled to the book. He’d touched it, and it had been hot as a coal. He’d withdrawn his hand and then touched it again. Pages had turned slowly and then stopped at a place where the minister had drawn a box about a series of lines. Numbers 35:18–19. Rainey’s blood had frozen as he’d read.

“… the murderer shall be put to death. The avenger of blood, when he meets the murderer of his own, shall put him to death.”

It was God’s judgment. There was no forgiveness for Rainey, nor would his family’s souls be joined, until Martin was dead.

And while Rainey had studied the Bible, he’d had another verse stick in his mind. It had dealt with Paul’s allowing a man like Martin to live with a hate burning inside him. A hate that would have to come back a thousand times stronger and blacker when it fermented.

Exodus 22:6.

“When fire breaks out and catches in thorns so that the stacked grain or the standing grain or the neighboring field is consumed, he who kindled the original fire must pay for the damage.”