Joyland

always insisted on using to keep score. I wrote: Mrs. S. If you’re reading this, something has happened to me. I know who killed Linda Gray. Others, too.
    I wrote his name in capital letters.
    Then I ran for the door.

    My Ford’s starter spun and sputtered and did not catch. Then it began to slow. All summer I’d been telling myself I had to get a new battery, and all summer I’d found other things to spend my money on.
    My father’s voice: You’re flooding it, Devin.
    I took my foot off the gas and sat there in the dark. Time seemed to be racing, racing. Part of me wanted to run back inside and call the police. I couldn’t call Annie because I didn’t have her fucking phone number, and given her famous father, it would be unlisted. Did he know that? Probably not, but he had the luck of the devil. As brazen as he was, the murdering son of a bitch should have been caught three or four times already, but hadn’t been. Because he had the luck of the devil.
    She’ll hear him breaking in and she’ll shoot him.
    Only the guns were in the safe, she’d said so. Even if she got one, she’d probably find the bastard holding his straight-razor to Mike’s throat when she confronted him.
    I turned the key again, and with my foot off the accelerator and the carb full of gas, my Ford started up at once. I backed down the driveway and turned toward Joyland. The circular red neon of the Spin and the blue neon swoops of the Thunderball stood out against low, fast-running clouds. Those two rides were always lit on stormy nights, partly as a beacon for ships at sea, partly to warn away any low-flying small aircraft bound for the Parish County Airport.
    Beach Row was deserted. Sheets of sand blew across it with every gust of wind, some of those gusts strong enough to shake my car. Dunelets were already starting to build up on the macadam. In my headlights, they looked like skeleton fingers.
    When I passed the shopping center, I saw a single figure standing in the middle of the parking lot next to one of the Joyland maintenance trucks. He raised a hand to me as I went past and gave a single solemn wave.
    The big Victorian on the beach side came next. There was a light on in the kitchen. I thought it was the fluorescent over the sink. I remembered Annie coming into the room with her sweater in her hand. Her tanned stomach. The bra almost the same color as her jeans. Would you like to go upstairs with me, Devin?
    Lights bloomed in my rearview mirror and pulled up close. He was using his brights and I couldn’t see the vehicle behind them, but I didn’t have to. I knew it was the maintenance truck, just as I knew he had been lying when he said he wasn’t going to kill me. The note I’d left for Mrs. Shoplaw would still be there in the morning. She would read it, and the name I had written there. The question was how long it would take her to believe it. He was such a charmer, him with his rhyming patter, winning smile, and cocked derby lid. Why, all the women loved Lane Hardy.

The gates were open, as promised. I drove through them and tried to park in front of the now-shuttered Shootin’ Gallery. He gave his horn a brief blip and flashed his lights: Drive on. When I got to the Spin, he flashed his lights again. I turned off my Ford, very aware that I might never start it again. The hoister’s red neon cast a blood-colored light over the dashboard, the seats, my own skin.
    The truck’s headlights went out. I heard the door open and shut. And I heard the wind blowing through the Spin’s struts—tonight that sound was a harpy’s screech. There was a steady, almost syncopated rattling sound, as well. The wheel was shaking on its tree-thick axle.
    The Gray girl’s killer—and DeeDee Mowbray’s, and Claudine Sharp’s, and Darlene Stamnacher’s—walked to my car and tapped on the window with the barrel of a pistol. With his other hand he made a beckoning gesture. I opened the door and got out.
    “You said you weren’t going to kill me.” It sounded as weak as my legs felt.
    Lane smiled his charming smile. “Well . . . we’ll see which way the flow’s gonna go. Won’t we?”
    Tonight his derby was cocked to the left and pulled down tight so it wouldn’t fly off. His hair, let loose from its workday ponytail, blew around his neck. The wind gusted and the Spin gave an unhappy screech. The red glow of the neon flickered across his face as it shook.
    “Don’t worry about the hoister,” he said. “If it was