Violent Dreams
Five
Normally, Race just skimmed the articles and then concentrated on the sports section. But the headline was still fabulous, an update on the previous day's story, and this time the article went into some detail about the crime itself.
Race read, spellbound, not sure why the story captivated him so much.
Thomas Lerror was arrested six years ago, along with his brother, Christopher Lerror, and several others. They were initially charged with kidnapping two children, and the charges were later raised to murder when one body was discovered buried in Lerror's basement.
Parts of the case still remain a mystery. The two children, Nicola and Anthony Verdi, were ages 12 and 9 at the time of their disappearance. Only Nicola's body was found; Lerror and the others involved deny having killed Anthony, yet he was nowhere to be found the night of their arrests, and has not been seen or heard from since his kidnapping. At the time of his trial, Christopher Lerror stated that the last time any of them had seen Anthony was the night before their arrest. He assumes that Anthony had somehow escaped and contacted the police about the criminals' whereabouts, yet the police deny ever having been contacted by Anthony Verdi.
Nicola's body was discovered the day after the criminals' arrests, already largely decomposed. Experts found that he had been shot twice, once in the shoulder and once in the head. At the time of his trial, Lerror pleaded innocent to the accusations, but testimony from other gang members proved him guilty. Others were charged with aiding in the murder.
Mr. and Mrs. Verdi have declined to comment on Lerror's escape directly. Mrs. Verdi has only said that not a day goes by that she doesn't grieve for her two lost sons.
Racetrack's hand was shaking by the time he finished reading, so he folded the paper again, set it down, and lay his palms flat against the cobblestone beneath him. It would look too strange for him to start shuffling his cards while he'd normally be reading headlines and heading off to sell, and so he just waited, and hoped that no one noticed his slight trembling.
"You read this?" Jack asked, shaking his head in amazement.
"Yeah," Blink said, stepping up behind him. "What do you think happened, Jack?"
"How should I know?" Jack answered. "Prob'ly just what the guy said. The kid ran away an' called the cops."
"But how'd he get away?"
"Do I look like I was there or somethin'?" Jack snapped. "What do you think, Race?"
Race shrugged a little. "What, do I look like I was there?" he asked back. "Prob'ly they killed the other kid an' didn' want to get charged with a double-murder."
"They did anyway, though."
"But by the time they knew they was guilty, it was too late to change their story."
"Oh... That makes sense, I guess," Blink agreed. "Poor kids. At least we all got away from guys like that..."
"Yeah." Race slung his papers up onto his shoulder, nodded a quick goodbye and struck out for Sheepshead. Hitching a lift on the back of a trolley without being noticed and without dropping his papers took a lot of talent, but he'd had years of practice and could almost doze off the whole way to Sheepshead, or would have if he was able to doze.
Nothing remarkable happened for most of the day, and the skies stayed clear of storm clouds, for which he was grateful. He sold almost all of his papers, got lunch, played a few games of solitaire under the bleachers, and headed out to watch the afternoon's race and try and sell of his last few papers. He climbed up into the stands and began to call out headlines--most of them almost accurate, for a change--and was nearly done when he glanced over and saw someone who caught his eye.
Racetrack didn't know who it was, but the man had short-cut brown hair and was wearing patched, second-hand clothes. But something about him gnawed on the edge of Race's mind; he couldn't remember ever having seen him before, but the shape of his face and his posture all seemed achingly familiar--and unpleasant. Race suppressed a shudder and was about to turn around and find another section of the stands to sell in when the main raised a hand and called for a paper.
Race swallowed hard. His hand was beginning to shake and he had the urge to turn and run, but he was afraid someone would see him run away. And besides, he knew he was being ridiculous; no matter what his subconscious told him, he knew full well that there was no reason why the man should recognize him if he didn't know who the man was. And if there was a reason for the man to recognize him but a chance that he hadn't yet, turning and fleeing would just make the man realize who he was.
So, carefully keeping up his poker face up and trying not to look like he was about to bolt, Race tossed the man his paper. A brown-gloved hand reached out, snatched it from the air, and then pitched a penny back at the newsboy. Race caught it and pocketed it, then began to pick his way back down the bleachers, no longer trying to sell his papers, concerned only that he get out of sight and get his thoughts sorted out.
He had no idea who the man was, aside from a familiar figure--but he was a familiar figure wearing brown gloves, and that alone made Racetrack want to hide. He dashed back under the bleachers and all but collapsed on to his knees, splitting the cards between his hands before he had finished sitting down, shuffling the moment he was able to... But he was barely able to keep his hands steady enough, and he fumbled the deck, dropped the cards in the mud.
The images started to flood into his mind as he gathered the cards off the ground. A hand, clad in brown gloves, five cards clutched in it.
No, it wasn't cards in his hand. Race blinked, and the cards were a gun. Fingers wrapped in leather, clutching a gun.
Why was he seeing this? He was awake. These were his nightmares; he was awake, it was impossible. But there it was in his mind, clear as day, the hand and the gun.
One of the races must have ended because people started cheering and stomping in the bleachers. The stomping became thunder to his ears. No, that wasn't right either. The thunder became the quick snapping of a snare drum; crack crack, and then silence.
No, it wasn't a snare, it obviously couldn't be. The brown gloves, the gun. It was gunshot. He'd shot it, twice.
Race closed his eyes. Crack. A body, a child's, collapsed backwards into the corner. Blood poured down his shirt. Eyes caught the dim light and went wide, scared, in pain. Crack. His head jerked back, a hole in the skull. Blood exploded against the wall, blood and something else, probably brain. It bathed the wall.
He tore his eyes open, tried to banish the images from his mind. They wouldn't go. He didn't see it now, exactly, but it was there, beneath the surface; if he dared to shut his eyes, even to blink, he saw it. He saw some poor kid get killed.
He dropped the cards, shaking too hard to hold on and shuffle, and retched. His stomach emptied itself of everything in it, and continued to retch, but even that was a reminder. He could remember now, he'd thrown up; the taste and the feel was exactly the same and he was suddenly back there, back in a cellar, seeing a murder and being unable to stop it, lying there helpless, scared for his life, terrified for his brother--
His brother.
The thought struck Race, cutting through his terror and parting it like halves of an apple falling away from a knife. He had a brother. Or rather, he'd had a brother. His brother was dead, he'd been killed.
"My fault," Race whispered to himself, his voice hoarse and scratchy as though he'd been crying, though not a tear had escaped. He didn't know why, exactly, but he knew it with a dead certainty; whatever had taken place was his fault. And he probably could have figured out how and what had happened--he forced himself to pick up the deck of cards again--but didn't dare. He knew too much already, he knew things he'd made himself forget, he'd seen too much.
He broke the cards between two hands, and stared down at them. Concentrated. Tapped the two halves against each other to straighten the pile. Good. Thumbs next to each other, forefingers bending the cards, and then let them go. The sound of the shuffle helped. He took a deep breath and did it again. And again.
The images wouldn't go away, but his resolve to ignore them strengthened. He stared down through the dim light at the cards in his hand; forced that to be what he saw, forced the shuffle to be what he felt, focused on the present, and wondered how long it would be before he felt safe enough to venture outside.