Joyride

by Jack Ketchum

  They thought so, anyway.

  TUESDAY

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The man’s hands were blue and white, the fingers like fat gray sausages floating bobbing in the shallow water, and Billy Whitsin could see the leg lying along the smooth, pebbly bank twisted under him, the foot turned straight up into the air at an angle that was impossible unless you were a rag doll or made of pipe cleaners like the stickmen little kids made in school or something, and somehow his head was wrong. Shaped wrong.

  It was hard to see the head. It was lying in a pool of muddy water and there were crayfish after it, seven or eight crayfish—smooth brown armored backs glinting in the early morning sun. Billy had never seen so many in one place at one time. Big guys.

  It was pretty amazing.

  One thing he could see was that there were no eyes. In one of the places where an eye ought to be a long thin stringy almost transparent thing waved in the water like a strand of mucus.

  Billy was a pretty good observer. Plus he was a very good citizen. He hadn’t made Eagle Scout for nothing. Even though his mother kept expressing the concern that they were turning him into a little Nazi. He wasn’t some little Nazi. He just respected order. His dad knew that. His dad was supportive. His dad had given him this two-pronged frog spear he had here and a .22 rifle for his thirteenth birthday. He was a good observer and a good citizen and he knew enough to look closely so he could describe what he was seeing to the police but not to touch a thing, because they’d want to see it exactly as he’d found it.

  He crouched down close to the man.

  The stink didn’t bother him. He had smelled dead things before and they all smelled the same.

  Unless you had a skunk.

  The man’s blue nylon backpack was off one shoulder dangling into slightly faster-running water but the chest strap had wound itself around his neck, the pack wasn’t going anywhere. He had on muddy white Reeboks, dark blue or possibly black slacks, a dark blue jacket and a checked blue-and-white shirt that was straining at the buttons because the man was so bloated. He could see a pasty slit of belly flesh. The man’s fly was open, the zipper three-quarters down.

  He wondered if there were crayfish in there too. Or up his pants legs.

  He wouldn’t be surprised.

  It was too bad he couldn’t really see the face so he could describe the man’s features to the authorities because he knew they’d want to know that, but short of lifting the head up out of the muddy water there was nothing he could do about it.

  He knew he was not supposed to touch the head or any other part of him so he didn’t. Period.

  The man was white, Caucasian, and his hair was dark. That much he could tell them.

  That, and that he had no eyes.

  He carefully noted his exact location—the big rock downstream in the middle, the grouping of tall pines to the left and the thin leaning birches to the right. The water ran narrow here, and fast.

  He put down the frog spear and took out his compass. The man’s sausage-case right-hand index finger pointed due east across the stream. If he walked west for about a mile he’d come out to River Road. It was the fastest, most efficient way.

  He dug his scout knife out of his pocket, picked up his frog-spear and started blazing trees.

  He had done it dozens of times.

  Nothing to it.

  Halfway through the woods he found himself humming the theme from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Marchstep. Pacing himself. Humming the tune in short staccato bursts. He also found himself smiling. He hadn’t thought about that dumb show or that song in a long time.

  Not since he was a kid.

  He cut deep into the flesh of a white birch tree and moved on.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Wayne dreamed of carnage.

  In his dream he had crested a hill and looked down over a bare scorched plain. Fires still burned in the distance. Everywhere he looked across the vast open space he saw looting, death and dying.

  An army of the dead come back to take the living.

  He saw men hacked to pieces with axes, stabbed with knives, executed by hanging, crucifixion, beheading. Trapped in nets and drowned in a filthy churning lake. Nailed through their skulls to blasted trees.

  The army of the dead was huge, outnumbering the living by a thousand to one, driving them in panic like herd animals. The living trampled one another underfoot. Resistance was useless, escape impossible. A dying rich man waved feebly toward the walking corpse that was pillaging his life’s fortune. The dead were everywhere. Hacking at throats with old rusty knives, hauling bodies, stacking them like cordwood in huge piles. He watched a squalling infant in the arms of its long-dead mother being eaten by a skeletal starving dog.

  And woke.

  The sheets were gray and damp.

  Outside the window, the sun was high.

  The dream lingered fresh and vivid in his mind. He held it there, galvanized, took it to the bathroom with him, savored it in the shower and on the pot and brushing his teeth.

  Today, he thought.

  No fucking around.

  The dead lay siege to a tall tower filled with wailing women, calling for help, arms flailing. They hadn’t a prayer.

  Below them all the dogs were starving.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Rule sat hunched at his desk. For the moment the station was quiet. Hamsun was in his office and Covitski was on the phone two desks down and Warner and Tobias were booking some kid across the room. Apart from them he was alone. There was a house on fire over on Sky Hill Road and most of the uniforms were assisting with traffic and crowd control.

  He had Marty on the line. Not his machine for a change.

  “You’re calling from the station?”

  “Yeah.”

  “God, Joe. I feel honored.”

  “Don’t.”

  It was true enough, though. Normally he’d have used a pay phone or else called after work from home.

  Marty was a secret. And Rule needed to keep him one. The only time that most cops saw a shrink was when they’d shot somebody or somebody’d shot a partner. Then it was mandated by the department. And even in that case you went grudgingly and got the hell out as soon as possible. So his colleagues would not understand. It was unthinkable to most of them that a guy could feel the need to talk to somebody at seventy an hour. And talk mostly about a woman no less.

  He couldn’t blame them.

  Naturally there were times when he talked about the job too.

  And they wouldn’t have understood that either.

  The department was a closed shop. What happened stayed here. You were not supposed to go around hiring scab labor.

  “How’s Thursday?”

  “Thursday I’ve got a three o’clock and a six thirty.”

  “Say three.”

  “And you’ll call me if anything changes.”

  “Marty, I always call you. You always say that and I always call you. Get the hell off my case.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Marty, don’t mess with me.”

  He glanced around.

  “You know what?” he said. “I dreamed about her. It doesn’t happen much.”

  “Last night?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t remember a whole lot.”

  “What do you remember?”

  “She was lying in bed. She was asleep. I didn’t want to wake her. I tiptoed away.”

  “Tiptoed? You?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Like a—”

  “That’s right, Marty. Like a thief in the night.”

  Rule was glad he was finding this amusing.

  “Hard to picture.”

  “I managed.”

  “You’re not a thief, though. Are you.”

  “Depends on point of view.”

  “I suppose. So maybe you’re not over her.”

  “Why?”

  “The guilt. Sound
s like guilt in the dream. You tiptoeing around like that. You put it behind you, you put it away, and the guilt generally disappears.”

  “It does?”

  “Generally.”

  “Thursday at three, Marty.”

  “Call me if anything comes up.”

  He had a call on line two.

  “Rule.”

  It was Hamsun. Guy’s in a cubicle not twenty feet away—Rule could see him through the glass—but rather than move his fat eight-months-to-retirement butt off his chair he phones me.

  “Whatever you’re doing, drop it. I want you to head out to River Road, junction of Maple, a little beyond that. Looks like we found your boy.”

  “What boy?”

  Hamsun sighed. Like Rule’s the village idiot. Like he should simply intuit this.

  Like he’s not working five different cases simultaneously.

  “Howard Gardner. Turns out he’s a floater. Kid found him faceup about a mile through the woods out there.”

  “It’s not my case, George. I did Covitski a favor.”

  “So keep on doing it. You and the wife are pals. Right?”

  He sighed. “East or west?”

  “Huh?”

  “East or west through the woods? East runs down through the Notch.”

  “Uh…I dunno. East maybe. I’m not sure. Find out when you get there, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  He scratched Marty—3:00 on his desk calendar for Thursday, stuffed a notepad into his jacket pocket and went out to the car.

  He wondered if Marty was right. He wondered if he had really given up on Ann or if he only thought he’d given up.

  He wondered who was going to break the good news to Carole Gardner.

  Or if she and Edwards knew already. Howard. A floater. Who’d have thought it. He guessed that anything was possible.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Ed Mason was a very nice man, Carole decided, with what appeared to be an only slightly unrealistic head for business from the look of his books. And he seemed open to suggestion. So there was room for her to teach him better work habits. If investing in his ten-room bed-and-breakfast was not going to make her rich exactly it looked like it would at least prove to be a pleasant and moderately profitable association.

  Her BMW took the hill as effortlessly as usual. Old Mr. Hennaker was out in front of his white, black-shuttered house watering the lawn. He saw the car and waved to her and she waved back.

  Everything normal here.

  See?

  I haven’t killed anybody at all yet today. How about that?

  She could feel the stirrings of a headache.

  Seeing Mason and doing business had been good for her. She had toured the dining room and bar with him, both rooms furnished with quality American country primitive antiques. The same was true of the sitting room with its big stone fireplace and the foyer. Then upstairs to the rooms. The rooms were a little too Laura Ashley for her tastes but there was a simplicity about them and a charm.

  They talked about the renovation project and expansion of the restaurant and bar. As it stood, room rentals and his bar and restaurant business were bringing in about equal amounts of money. He could double his food and bar trade with no trouble at all. He had cornered one of the best chefs in Barstow. They were turning people away every night.

  She’d gone over his books and her own involvement was definitely feasible.

  It did her good to put her mind to something.

  She’d forgotten about Howard for a while. Normal life had actually proved pleasant and exciting.

  And now she was coming home again. There was the urge to turn right around. And go…where?

  She saw the red Volvo parked four doors down in front of the Nichols house. It struck her as a little unusual because the Nichols’s car, a gorgeous new cobalt blue Infiniti J30, was not in the driveway.

  Guests, she thought.

  She pulled into the drive and cut the motor.

  “Ms. Gardner?”

  He came out of nowhere.

  The man was walking toward the car, taking his time, strolling down the driveway.

  Where had he been? And where had he come from?

  The hedges?

  Looking for the gas meter?

  The meter was in the house. They were all inside up here.

  He carried a clipboard. He had a pencil in his hand and he was smiling. He was slim and neatly dressed in light brown baggy slacks, a cotton shirt and dark suede loafers.

  “Yes?”

  He extended his hand. “Wayne Lock, Ms. Gardner.” She shook it. The hand was wet and clammy. The man consulted his clipboard.

  “This won’t take but a minute. I’ve just got a few questions for you…”

  “Excuse me. You’re with whom?”

  The man smiled and looked around. As if she’d just made some sort of joke. He tucked the pencil behind his ear.

  “I’m with myself, Ms. Gardner,” he said. “That’s obvious, right? I’m all by myself here.”

  He reached around into his back pocket.

  And suddenly there was a gun there.

  A small black automatic in his hand. No cylinder like the Magnum had. She could smell it now, oil and metal.

  Pointed at her beneath the clipboard.

  It was the smell that jolted her into flat reality. Without the smell she would not have believed it possible. Just a toy gun on a bright sunny day.

  “I’m alone,” he said. “Just like you.”

  The smile winked off and on again. Like he couldn’t decide whether he needed it there or not.

  “Please. What do you…?”

  Just like that. She was already begging.

  Please.

  “What do I want? Like I said, I’ve got questions for you.” His eyes skittered left and right. “Listen, I think we ought to go inside. That’s a good idea, don’t you think? Come on, let’s the two of us go inside.”

  Where was Lee!

  Why was she alone here?

  How could she go inside with him!

  “I don’t…”

  “I’m not asking, Ms. Gardner. I’m saying I think we ought to go inside. You understand me, right?”

  The man’s face was blank, unreadable.

  He held the gun steady.

  Her keys were in her hand, damp with sweat so that now she could smell them too. Metal again. Digging into the palm of her hand. She’d forgotten all about them.

  She turned toward the door, turned her back to him. She didn’t want to do that because she kept seeing the gun behind her but she knew she had no choice. The key wouldn’t fit in the keyhole. Could she possibly have the wrong key here? No, of course not. The key slid in. She pushed the door open and looked at him.

  “Ladies first,” he said.

  And she couldn’t really seem to bring herself to do that. The man was asking too much. She couldn’t seem to step across the door jamb as though he were just anybody and she was just taking him on inside, an invited guest.

  “I have no intention of harming you, if that’s what you’re afraid of. I mean, I’m not some rapist pervert or something. I want to be friends. Talk a little. Go on. Honest, I don’t bite.”

  “You…you have a gun.”

  He laughed. “That’s because you don’t know me yet. And I don’t think you’re exactly the type of person who lets complete strangers into her house every day. Am I right? So this way you’ll talk to me. We can get rid of the gun once you know me a little better. Go ahead.”

  She wasn’t comforted.

  “Go ahead.”

  She went in. He followed and quietly closed the door behind him. He locked it.

  Then he looked around.

  “Beautiful,” he said. “Your home is very lovely. You’re a very lucky person, Carole.”

  He motioned toward the living room.

  “Let’s sit down, okay? And then I want you to do something for me, all right?”

  She took the chair near the fir
eplace and he took the couch, his gun resting along the armrest, still pointed more or less in her direction. He set the clipboard down and let the pencil roll across the heavy glass tabletop. He seemed at ease, very much in control.

  He was in control.

  He was male. He had a gun.

  The world was filled with them.

  She thought about the Magnum in the drawer upstairs. The drawer was a million miles away. The drawer was on another planet, really.

  “What,” she said. Her voice sounded husky, strange to her. “You want me to do what?”

  He crossed his legs. At home here.

  “I’d like you to call Mr. Edwards at work. Tell him that something’s come up and you need him home right away.”

  “How do you know about…Mr. Edwards?”

  “Never mind how I know. Or who I know or what I know. The point is just to call him.”

  “He can’t just pick up and leave.”

  He smiled. “Of course he can. And he will—you know he will. You also know why he will. Please, Carole. No games. No silliness. No make-believe. It’s okay to call you Carole, isn’t it? And Mr. Edwards is Lee. Carole and Lee. And you can call me Wayne.”

  “What do you want with…Mr. Edwards?”

  He frowned.

  “You’re asking an awful lot of questions, Carole. You know what this is?” He pointed the gun. “It’s a snub-nose Smith and Wesson .38. Got any guns in the house?”

  “No.”

  He smiled. “Sure you do. A house this big, this pretty? Look at all you’ve got worth stealing. Probably upstairs, right? We’ll have a look around later.

  “But now I want you to call Lee for me. It’s okay if you sound a little upset. You do sound upset, you know that? He’ll just get here faster that way. Upset’s fine. Where’s the phone?”

  She glanced toward the table next to the sofa.

  “Okay, good. Call him.”

  She stood. The room swam. Her legs felt like cardboard. She had to sit down again. She needed to use the bathroom, suddenly she needed it badly. And there was every possibility that she was going to throw up then and there.

  “Take it easy,” he said. “I know this is stressful for you. Take a breath. Take a good, deep breath. Good. There. Now another one. Good, there you go. Excellent. Now try again.”