Time Lapse

by Rex Bolt

  This wasn’t a good sign.

  Dani excused herself and went back in her lounge chair and opened up a James Patterson book she’d picked up at the airport. The Australian man was in the pool swimming laps. Dani thought he looked proficient in the water, as though he’d been on a swim team growing up.

  Chuck breast-stroked around for a while without putting his face in, and headed back to the room.

  A few minutes later the Aussie got out and casually said to Dani that he’d detected a bit of tension there. Dani said there had been, but it was no big deal, her boyfriend was simply frustrated that he’d tweaked something during his workout.

  The Aussie said he could well sympathize with that. He also said, should she need any help, to let him know. He gave her a wink and picked up his stuff and left.

  Dani was pretty sure the man didn’t mean anything suggestive, rather that he sensed potential trouble brewing and like a good gentleman offered his assistance.

  She read for a half hour, felt her shoulders starting to burn, and went back to the room.

  This time it happened fast, as soon as she’d closed the door, and it wasn’t just the grab and spin-around that he’d pulled on her at the fridge back home in the apartment, this time he backhanded her across the mouth.

  Dani should have believed it, but she reacted in shock, like she couldn’t. She stood there and dabbed her mouth with her towel. It hadn’t really hurt of course, but that was beside the point.

  Chuck said, “You forget what I tell you, don’t you girl? . . . So as soon as you get out of Pokey, you coming on to some prick. Right in my face . . . That how it works?”

  Dani said that wasn’t how it worked, but her voice was small.

  Chuck looked at her like she was a primitive life form. After a minute he went in the shower. Dani tried to gather her thoughts, tried to make sense of the pattern that kept repeating itself, as though it was on automatic pilot.

  Chuck came out of the shower and Dani went straight in. She hated to be in there right now, his presence all over, but she could at least lock the door.

  Her small piece of privacy didn’t last long. As she adjusted the temperature and was getting ready to step in, Chuck started rattling the door. Moderately at first, then violently. Over the sound of the water she heard him yelling that they need to talk, that everything would be okay.

  She shut off the shower for a moment. Chuck said through the door, more calmly now, “Baby, let me in . . . That guy leering at your body out there, that wasn’t his fault, and it wasn’t yours neither . . . I can fully understand it . . . Just let me have a look at you in there, is all I’m asking.”

  Dani said this wasn’t the right time and started the water again. A minute later Chuck was screaming, and apparently attempting to bash in the door or crank it off its hinges.

  She took a twenty minute shower, keeping her eye through the frosted glass on the door. When the thumping and rattling finally stopped she got out of the shower but stayed in the bathroom with the door locked until she was convinced Chuck had left the room, which she was pretty sure he had after hearing one final profanity-laced scream and then the outside door to the room slamming like a hand grenade going off.

  She tentatively poked her head out and he was gone.

  Now the thing to do was gather her things just as quickly as possible, and get to the airport and hope there was a simple way home today.

  There was another resort maybe a quarter mile down the road, and that seemed like a wiser choice to find an Uber or shuttle or whatever, and Dani slung her big bag over her shoulder and half-walked, half-jogged it down there. She was wearing flip flops and the whole thing felt awkward.

  One of the bellmen asked her how her day was going and opened the door for her, and without thinking too hard Dani went inside and gravitated toward the pool area and once again stretched out in a lounge chair. The setup was slightly different, the pool was smaller but there was a dedicated diving pool as well, and someone was doing flips off a high board. There was a putting green beyond the pools, and a group of Spanish-speaking tourists were engaged in a friendly but clearly competitive form of golf.

  Dani figured what was the rush, it’s nice here, might as well check a few things before running to the airport just yet.

  There was one flight still available today from Palm Springs to Salt Lake, but with the Expedia situation and few other factors it was going to cost her a whopping 600 dollars extra to switch from Sunday to today.

  By comparison, there was one in the morning where they could work it for no additional charge. Dani didn’t try to understand the logistics of it all, but as much as she wanted to be several hundred miles away from Chuck, she couldn’t go broke in the process. So she she booked the morning flight.

  Now she had to find a cheap place for tonight, where no one might accidently discover her, and she wandered out front and asked that bellman for a recommendation. He said he’d never stayed there, but the Thunderbird, two more resorts down, was pretty modest and he’d heard it was decent. Dani thanked him, spent another hour by the pool, knowing she was overdoing it with the sun but not worrying about it, and made her way down to the Thunderbird.

  She got an $89 room, which she supposed in late November was a deal. They had a little complimentary happy hour thing in the lounge, finger-food appetizers and a guy singing Hawaiian songs with a synthesizer backup. She spoke for a while with a family on vacation from Lincoln, Nebraska, and when they were gone it was almost 8, a good thing because she could go to bed soon and wake up and this nightmare would be over. For now.

  There’d be the issue back in Pocatello of changing the locks on the apartment of course, but that was a day or two away. She’d noticed the Thunderbird had two hot tubs, one up front by the pool, meaning also closer the road, and one by itself, tucked back into a courtyard situation in the middle of a section of little cabanas.

  A relaxing soak sounded just perfect, and it would hopefully help her sleep, never a given after being assaulted by a maniac. Dani got organized and walked back to that secluded tub, and she put a toe in to test it, and it was just right and she eased into it until the water came up to her chin.

  There was no one around and she felt safe back here. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back on the edge and thought back to better times. There was a summer, she was 10 or 11, when she went with her friend Gretchen’s family to a cabin they had on Lake Michigan. She and Gretchen had a game they played where they each announced they were never having boyfriends, and they’d break into big laughter.

  You could almost fall asleep here if you weren’t careful. You had the crisp, night desert air, and if you opened your eyes a crack you had the stars, millions of them coming alive up there as it got fully dark.

  The tap on the head was with the fingertips, playful. “Don’t let me break up your thoughts,” Chuck said. “I was just passing through.”

  Dani was horrified, stunned, disbelieving, all rolled into one. Her eyes were on Chuck’s hands, which dangled at his sides as he squatted on the cement deck in line with her head.

  He said, “I’m a pretty good detective, eh?” He was grinning, like a wide-eyed kid without a care in the world.

  “I forgot my trunks,” he said. “I left them back in our place . . . which I fully expect you to be returning to after . . . But for the time being, my shorts’ll work fine . . . be a little wet walking back, but you can ring ‘em out for me good when we get there.”

  Chuck took off his shirt and shoes and emptied his pockets and got into the hot tub with Dani.

  “Feels day-um sweet in here, you know it?” he said. “And something else, I saw that old boy again who you was making the eyes at . . . He spoke funny, kind of polished, like he was from New Zealand or some place . . . I see why you were so into him.”

  Dani had her mind set not to speak, but now she was curious and couldn’t help it. “You spoke to that man?” she said, very softly.

  “I did. He aske
d where you were, said you were supposed to meet him for a drink, but you hadn’t shown up.”

  “Liar,” Dani said.

  Chuck laughed. “For real? You mean me, or your new friend.”

  Dani closed her eyes and prayed Chuck would disappear, but he was here to stay. Even if she outlasted him in the hot tub, what then? He’d sit on the edge, eyeballing her, dipping his feet in and out, nothing but time on his hands, nothing on the agenda. Except maybe beating her to death if he could.

  It was his final comment that set her off, which she thought about over and over afterwards, that you were dealing with a psychopath, why couldn’t you just block it out?

  What Chuck said was, “I’m guessing your mama was a sorry sight, letting your daddy have his way with her . . . and producing y’all . . . Wouldn’t you agree?”

  Dani reached down, found the back of Chuck’s shorts, grabbed a hold of the waist band and pulled down.

  Chuck was amused for a second, thinking she was playing with him, maybe even coming on to him by grabbing him back there, and then his expression changed to confusion and then terror as his head started to go toward the surface.

  The hot tub was large, it could seat about 10 people, and in the center, where you put your feet, it was pretty deep compared to most.

  Dani reached her handful of Chuck’s waistband to the bottom, which almost submerged him but didn’t quite do the job. His lips and goatee were still exposed. He started to yell out and that wouldn’t be good at all, so Dani quickly pulled him all the way under by the arm, and then simply pinned him to the bottom with her right knee.

  He squirmed for a while and tried to claw her, and at one point she thought he might have bitten her, but whatever.

  It was all over soon enough. She kept him pinned longer than necessary, but a momentary calm had come over her and her first thoughts were not of the consequences, but of how she was a little disappointed with Chuck’s mediocre fighting spirit. After all the tough guy behavior, he had succumbed quite meekly.

  Then she woke up to what she was now in the middle of. She hoisted Chuck out of the tub and laid him on the concrete and screamed loudly for someone to help. A couple of the cabana doors opened and Dani began chest compressions on Chuck. Not the full-strength ones like she’d used when she’d broken the heart-attack victim’s ribs at the motor vehicle office that time in Pocatello, but mild ones that looked good enough. People were scurrying around now, and someone yelled to her that they’d called 911.

  It did occur to Dani, what would happen if the CPR actually worked, and the piece of garbage came back alive?

  She was pretty confident though, that he’d spent enough time at the bottom of the hot tub for that not to be a concern, but just for the heck of it, she made sure her hands weren’t applying any pressure at all as she continued going through the motions.

  The ambulance guys tried shocking Chuck three times and it didn’t work, and they rushed him away, as the police were arriving. One officer questioned her first, a young kid basically, and she told him she was relaxed and not paying a lot of attention and then all of a sudden her boyfriend was limp in the water.

  The kid took notes and Dani expected an older guy to show up and take over, but this time it was a woman, on the hefty side, wearing a plain-clothes pantsuit with a badge around her neck. She introduced herself as Sharon.

  Sharon didn’t pretend to be friendly and spoke in clipped bursts, with impressively clean diction. She said, “So you’re residing here.”

  “I am,” Dani said. “We had an argument, at the fancier resort. I needed to clear my head.”

  “And what was the nature of it, the disagreement?” Sharon said.

  “Chuck was frustrated that he couldn’t complete his workout earlier. He was unpleasant from that point on . . . I guess it works both ways, I’m sure I was no angel either.”

  “Now why is that?’

  “Just that, after a few days of knowing someone more intimately than I had before, I realized we weren’t a good match . . . I was mad at myself for going away with him.”,

  “And no doubt mad at him by extension.”

  “Probably.”

  “What affected the completion of the workout?”

  “Well, he said he felt a little funny, that he was having slight heart palpitations,” Dani said. “I didn’t think anything of it, and he didn’t seem concerned about it, just irritated.”

  Sharon seemed satisfied with this, though of course it may have been an act. “My girlfriend runs,” she said, “and she’s had episodes like that . . . could have been hotter conditions than he’s used to, different altitude, too much coffee maybe.”

  “Maybe,” Dani said. “But your girlfriend didn’t die, right?”

  “Oh no, she’s alive and well,” Sharon said. “Your man may have had a deeper issue though . . . The one thing, you don’t appear particularly upset.” Looking at her very directly now.

  “I’m not,” Dani said. “Maybe it’ll hit me later.”

  Sharon worked it around. “All right ma’am, that should wrap it, for now . . . When are you returning to Idaho?”

  “We were set for Sunday. I moved my flight up to tomorrow, when it was clear things weren’t working out.”

  “Do me a favor, if you would,” Sharon said. “Put it back to Sunday, in case we have any further questions for you tomorrow. If you need assistance with the airlines, let us know and we’ll handle that.” She gave a Dani a card, and said goodbye.

  Dani went back to the room and changed. The lounge was still open and she felt like something sweet, so she sat at the bar and ordered a Grasshopper. She assumed the police would be interested in the eventual autopsy, and what might or might not show up. It was hard to see them truly suspecting her though, at all of 125 pounds drowning a six-foot-tall, athletic and muscular guy in a cramped hot tub like it was no big deal.

  She considered what the policewoman had told her, to change the flight back to what it was and hang around a little longer. She liked it fine here, especially the new hotel, but it didn’t seem worth it to go through all that.

  Plus it would be nice to salvage a little bit of the weekend back home, before she had to go to work again on Monday.

  Chapter 8

  Pike let it go for the day, but went to bed at 9 this time to make sure he’d get to school early enough Wednesday when no one was around.

  He took the liberty of stealing a hundred bucks from his dad. Not permanently stealing it, more borrowing it in case he screwed up again and got there early and needed a motel. He almost wished now that he’d toughed it out yesterday and stayed there somehow, since at least he’d arrived in the ballpark of what you needed. 48 hours might be as close as he was going to get, and what if he couldn’t even come close to that in a repeat performance?

  At any rate, his dad had a wooden box in his sock drawer where he kept loose cash, and Pike helped himself to what he needed, figuring his dad had enough on his own mind to probably not notice. Pike also stopped at Rite-Aid and picked up a cheap dog leash, since you never knew how you might need to work it.

  This time he got up with the alarm and drove back to school, the same side street, same hoodie, hopefully a slightly better outcome. The one thing he’d improved upon overnight, just possibly, was he remembered something else from that actual day . . . Before he’d gotten on the highway heading to Mitch’s, he stopped for gas at the Chevron Station on Roblar Road out by the fair grounds. He’d gassed it up and was checking the oil when this yellow thing goes peeling by.

  Pike recognized it right away as a ‘32 Deuce Coupe. The reason was he’d seen the old movie ‘American Graffiti’ over the summer, with Cathy actually, and it was all about high school kids cruising around in fixed-up cars back in the early ‘60’s. Naturally there was a showdown scene, an illegal drag race at sunrise on a country road between the ‘32 Coupe guy and Harrison Ford, who was driving a ‘55 Chevy.

  The point being, the movie got a hook into him a
nd ever since he’d had his eyes open for classic cars. This one roaring past the gas station was a little duller than the one in the movie, not quite as bright yellow, but it was definitely the same model. Pike never saw it around town again, and figured maybe the guy was from out of the area and on his way to a car show or whatever, but either way, that car was something to focus on now in Julio and Roy’s closet, because it was hopefully one more piece that could help mentally pinpoint this shit.

  And . . . almost like it was scripted from a movie, this time Pike made it right where he wanted to be (or close enough) and, son of a gun, he got the day right. He actually ended not in front of Aubrey’s house or the center of the football field, but in the little convenience snack bar market at the gas station.

  And sure enough, not to mention miraculously, when he got his bearings and looked out the window of the convenience store, the Deuce Coupe went roaring by.

  Different direction, Pike noticed, the opposite way, heading south toward the Mixson dairy, instead of north toward the park on 20th like it was before.

  But everything still had the right feel to it, and Pike right away confirmed the time and date inside the store and it was on the money.

  He tried to wrap his mind around the car going the other way.

  Maybe he was remembering the direction wrong, from that day. More likely, the thing of it was, when you messed with this stuff, there were tweaks. It wasn’t worth it torturing yourself trying to know why.

  Something else too: The time part being on the money was exactly right in terms of when he stopped at the gas station on the way to Mitch’s that day.

  Which was around 9:40 in the morning. He’d gotten off the phone with Mitch a little after 9 when he’d made his decision to drive to Manhattan Beach, and was gassing it up a half hour later.

  The clock in the convenience store said 9:43 right now.

  But . . . when he’d gone to Utah by accident, as well undertaking the letter H business and yesterday’s screw up--in all three of those, he’d arrived at the same exact time he’d left (though Utah had the one-hour time zone change, but same difference).