Joyride

by Jack Ketchum

He wasn’t.

  They walked to the door and knocked. The house was dark inside, the blinds pulled. He knocked again. Nothing. The driveway had been empty when they came in. No Volvo.

  Somewhere a dog was barking.

  The search warrant wouldn’t arrive for another couple of hours yet. For the moment they were stuck here.

  “What do you want to do?” said Covitski.

  “Let’s go talk to the neighbors, see if one of them spoke to him today, maybe saw him drive on out of here. Maybe knew where he was going.”

  The house with the dog was easy to find—it was right next door past some hedges, and the dog was still yapping. Its owner was a six-foot unshaven sixty-year-old hulk of a man with a belly pouring over his dirty brown slacks and straining the thin white T-shirt. He stood on his ragged wooden porch plucking at his red suspenders.

  The dog was on a leash by his side, and it was pacing passionately.

  Rule was glad of the leash. The dog looked to be half mastiff and half rhino and didn’t seem too thrilled to have them there.

  “You want Lock?” the man said.

  “That’s right,” Rule said. He opened his wallet and showed the man his badge.

  He didn’t even glance at it. His face broke open into a big wet grin.

  It was not a pretty thing to see.

  “It’s Wayne Lock you’re looking for?” he said.

  “Yes, sir. That’s correct.”

  His smile got even broader. He laughed and shook his head and plucked at the suspenders.

  “Son,” he said, “in that case ol’ Happy here and I are gonna have to invite you in.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Lock was raging.

  Lee’d seen it from the moment he pushed her through the door, then stomped over and ripped the tape off his face. He spit out the cotton pads.

  She was sitting on the bed now, rigid, her hands gripped tight together and staring at Wayne while he paced back and forth from door to sink, slamming at the sink with his fist, turning and kicking the chest of drawers, turning again toward Lee. Gazing wildly back at her reflected image in the mirror, but never at her directly, only through the mirror. And apart from ripping off the tape, never seeming to notice Lee down there at all.

  He could smell the sour stink of the man.

  Something unraveling.

  “I ask you one thing, Carole! One fucking little thing. One miserable little favor, but no. Oh no!

  “What? Are you too moral for me, Carole? To help me out here? Are you better than me?

  “You think you are better than me?

  “I don’t know what in the hell to do with you. I don’t know what to do! I have given you a lot of fucking slack, Carole, you know? A lot of fucking slack. Because I liked you. Because I wanted to help you. But I’m telling you, you are on the top of my shit list now, baby! You are at the fucking pinnacle!

  “You bitch!”

  Lee watched the words slam into her like body blows. There wasn’t much he could think to do to deflect them. But then he saw Wayne turn walking toward her finally looking at her directly with his hand going to his back pocket where the gun was and he knew he had to try.

  “Wayne.”

  Softly. Go easy now.

  “Wayne. What’s the problem. Maybe I can help here.”

  He whirled. Walked over and kicked the pipes just below his hands.

  “Your bitch! Your bitch is the fucking problem!”

  “Whatever it is, Wayne, we can deal with it.”

  “Oh really? Deal with this!”

  He saw the kick coming and had time to move his head but not enough time. He smelled dirt and shoe leather and felt the sharp crack at the back of his neck that sent his forehead smashing against the pipe. Looked up and saw Wayne’s face, the grim thin set to the mouth, lips pulled down and back almost comically thin and wide, a parody of somebody’s little-boy pout except that the eyes were furious and crazy and the foot was coming up again.

  He threw himself to the side.

  The foot thudded against the sink.

  “You fucker!”

  Then Carole was up off the bed shouting leave him alone and coming toward them—no, going for the Magnum on the dresser!—just as the foot was drawing back again and Wayne saw her in the mirror, righted himself, turned, took one step toward her and she walked right into the blow, right into his fist. It took her low in the stomach. It doubled her over and sank her to her knees.

  And someone was pounding on the wall.

  “Hey! You! Enough in there for chrissake!”

  He looked up and Lee thought of some animal abruptly smelling smoke, some distant brushfire. Wayne stood frozen. Poised, silent, scenting the wind and crouched to run. The mad eyes suddenly cunning. Instantly deciding. Snatching the gun off the dresser.

  “Not a sound!” he hissed. “You, move away. Back on the bed. I swear I’ll use this. I don’t care, you understand me? I don’t care.”

  Carole clutched at her belly and hauled herself up.

  He shoved the gun into Lee’s face, reached in his pocket and took out a key and held it out to him.

  “Here. Just the left wrist. And don’t you fuck with me.”

  Lee took the key and fumbled it into the keyhole. The cuff snapped open, dangling.

  He massaged the red chafing. His skin was torn, raw, burning.

  “Untie yourself.”

  He worked at the knots. Feet first and then across the legs, the blood pouring into them, making them throb, making him aware of his pulse inside them.

  “Okay. Up.”

  He stood. His knees were shaky, his right leg still half-asleep for being bound up behind him for so long. He had to urinate and the mere fact that he did unmanned him. So that was what he’d come to. Wayne was literally scaring the piss out of him now.

  Christ!

  “You too.”

  She stood up.

  “Okay, now out the door,” he said. “We’re checking out.”

  He pushed the gun hard into Lee’s back and he grunted, the sound forced out of him. The sound was to make sure that Carole knew the gun was there. He pulled open the door. He turned off the light behind them and took the suitcase off the bed and they stepped outside into the warm night air.

  They crossed the dimly lit concrete landing. He walked them down the stairs.

  The Volvo stood facing them.

  “Around back,” he said.

  They walked to the rear of the car. Lee scanned the windows of the motel, scanned the doors. The doors were all shut, the windows curtained. No faces peered out. The lot was quiet.

  Wayne set the suitcase down and opened the trunk.

  “Get in,” he said to Lee, “you first.”

  “Wayne…Jesus Christ, Wayne…people…die in these things!”

  He heard the quiver in his voice. He hated the fact that it was there but he couldn’t do a damn thing about it and he felt the urge to piss again. He tasted bile in his mouth.

  He thought, That was what fear tasted like. Bile.

  Wayne was smiling.

  “Look closely, Lee. I’ve already taken care of that.”

  There were two small holes punched into the lid of the trunk just above the logo.

  “God knows I love this car,” said Wayne. “It was really very unpleasant for me having to make them. But you had to think this through and prepare for all contingencies, and I used the drill so they’re neat enough, don’t you think? I mean they hardly show. I’ll have to do something eventually about rust, though.

  “Actually I expected to be putting somebody else in here. But now I guess it’s you.”

  He lifted the gun.

  “So you do it or you fucking die, Lee. Personally I don’t give a shit either way.”

  He climbed in, shifted his weight toward the back, curling his legs over the jack beneath him to make room for her and waited for her to climb in. It felt like they were being buried alive in some communal grave, just the two of them. In a gr
ave that smelled of grease and metal and gasoline, and then suddenly the scent of her, the woman smell. Almost its echo, barely perceptible. The scent of flowers.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Susan pulled up across from Wayne’s house and saw the car in front and thought, Okay, now who is this?

  She’d called the bar three times over the course of two hours and he still wasn’t there. Mikey, the floor manager, made it clear to her that a fourth call wouldn’t be necessary. That if he came in now, he could just go the hell back home again.

  She’d called his house half a dozen times and there wasn’t any answer.

  She was worried.

  Wayne was responsible. Punctual. She’d tried to tell Mikey that—that if something weren’t really wrong with him, he’d at least have called in—but Mikey couldn’t have cared less. Said he was a piece-of-shit bartender anyway, which wasn’t fair, and that he’d already filled his spot with a part-timer who was looking to go full-time and that was that. Told her to call the cops if she was so damn worried.

  She hadn’t called the police—she wasn’t family, after all. Or married to him or anything.

  But she had decided to drive over.

  And now here was this strange car in front and…

  …two strange men walking toward her from the Roberts house next door.

  She rolled up the driver’s side window.

  The taller of the two men bent down and looked at her through the window and smiled. She wasn’t reassured.

  Not until he opened his wallet and showed her the badge inside.

  And then she was reassured and scared at the same time.

  She rolled down the window.

  “Y…yes?”

  The man was still smiling.

  “I’m Lieutenant Rule and this is Lieutenant Covitski. May I ask for some ID, please?”

  She got her wallet out of her purse and handed him her driver’s license. The man angled it up so he could read it in the moonlight—the streetlight was out again, just like hers was going—and then handed it back to her.

  “Do you know the gentleman living at this address? Wayne Lock? Are you a friend of his, Miss Olsen?”

  She felt herself blushing. She looked away.

  “I…I guess you could say I used to be his girlfriend.”

  “Not anymore?”

  “We had a kind of fight.”

  “A fight?”

  “A disagreement.”

  “Have you seen him at all today?”

  She shook her head. “Not since Saturday.”

  “Talk to him?”

  “No.”

  “Not since Saturday?”

  “No.”

  He looked at her. Studied her. For some reason the way he was looking at her made her feel guilty. She hadn’t done anything.

  “Why are you here, then?” he said.

  His voice wasn’t unkind, she thought. Just curious.

  “I was worried about him. He works tonight. He’s a bartender over at the Black Locust Tavern. And he hasn’t shown up or called in and that’s not like Wayne.”

  “I see. So you drove over.”

  “Yes.”

  “Any idea where he might be?”

  “God, I don’t know.”

  She thought that there really wasn’t any place in particular. And any place was possible. She really did want to help the man. She wanted to ask him what was wrong and why they were looking for Wayne but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do that. She didn’t know why but she couldn’t.

  And then it was like he read her mind.

  “We’re going to want to talk with you about a few things, Susan. All right? And I’m sure you have questions too. But right now I want you to think. It’s very, very important. Can you come up with any place he might go? If he were in trouble or had some sort of problem maybe?”

  “Problem?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She thought about it. There just wasn’t anywhere.

  If he had a problem he’d have come to her, wouldn’t he? Even after…what had happened.

  “I know it’s late,” said the man, “but might he have gone to see his mother?”

  “His mother?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you mean? His mother’s dead.”

  And for a moment the man just looked at her. She thought that his eyes were very nice, very pretty for a policeman’s eyes and sort of sad looking. Sort of lonely.

  “According to his neighbor over there,” the man said quietly, “Wayne’s mother is a quarter of a mile away, at Sweetwood Retirement Home over on Barstow Road. He said she’s been there for about three years now. I guess Wayne didn’t tell you. Sorry.”

  And she realized, then, why the eyes were sad. And just who it was he was sad for.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The nurse was not pleased at all.

  She was a redhead in her early thirties and unmarried—no ring—and Rule would have liked to have made her much happier, but that was not going to happen. He regretted this as he watched her long, lovely legs move ahead of them down the oak paneled hall past the sunny, painted landscapes on the walls and the hard institutional chairs placed just outside the rooms.

  He regretted it deeply.

  Dorothy Lock’s room was the last one over on the right, she said. From here you could see into what the nurse had told him was the library. To Rule it looked more like a midpriced hotel lobby than a library, with more oak paneling, more bright vistas on the walls, plush imitation-leather easy chairs and sofas and only a smattering of books on the shelves. Mostly paperbacks.

  At this hour, of course, the library was empty.

  The nurse had made it very clear that lights-out was ten o’clock sharp.

  And here it was past eleven thirty.

  She opened the door and turned on the overhead lights. The room was wallpapered, a pretty, light floral print design. There was an easy chair, an inexpensive dresser with a mirror, a writing desk with a spindle chair, an overhead TV mounted on the wall facing the bed, one small window with a screen, a rotary-dial wall phone, a bathroom and a single closet.

  The dresser and desktop were bare.

  No books. No pictures. No perfume bottles.

  Nothing.

  Rule could get no sense of habitation. Whatever the woman owned, whatever possessions might indicate her personality or identity were somewhere tucked away.

  She was facing the window, a tiny huddled body covered by a sheet.

  The nurse walked over and touched her lightly on the shoulder, then drew back instantly. As though touching a hot stove or something charged with current.

  “Mrs. Lock.”

  He realized then that the nurse was not just annoyed with them because of the hour.

  It was this particular patient or resident or whatever you called them. Something about the woman bothered her.

  Something about the woman scared her.

  He began to see why. The old woman turned so abruptly it was almost shocking. Suddenly wide-awake, her milky blue eyes taking in Rule and Covitski at a glance.

  He had the sense of being swallowed.

  The nurse took one step back. The woman ignored her and swung her legs off the bed. The legs were thin and naked, webbed with ropy blue veins, the skin dry and cracked as the dry bed of a stream.

  Her lips were thin. They pulled back in a sly smile that looked surprisingly glad to see them.

  “You’re police,” she said. Her voice was low. It seemed much younger than the rest of her. Her long, gray, stringy hair had billowed out in sleep.

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Rule. “My name’s Rule and this is Lieutenant Covitski. We understand from Miss…”

  “Maitland,” said the nurse.

  “…Miss Maitland, that you had a call tonight. We’re wondering if it might have been from Wayne, your son.”

  “My son?”

  “Excuse me,” said the nurse. “If you don’t need me anymore…”

>   She was already moving past them through the door. To Rule it seemed like a getaway. A whiff of spicy perfume elbowed its way past the fusty old-woman smell in the room.

  “That’s fine. Thanks,” he said.

  She closed the door behind her.

  The woman was watching him.

  “What about my son?”

  “We need to ask him some questions, ma’am.”

  Her eyes narrowed. He noticed that the flesh around the eyes was deeply lined. The lines ran all the way down through the hollow depressions of her cheeks. Her mouth, on the other hand, was almost without them and none of the lines were deep. As though the accustomed expression of the mouth was no expression at all.

  He felt Covitski shift uneasily beside him.

  “My son,” she said.

  Her low voice filled the room completely, hung there, as though the room were empty of all furnishings, even of life.

  She was staring straight into his eyes. He had to resist the impulse to look away.

  “You want to know if he called me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Today.”

  “That’s correct.”

  She leaned forward on the bed.

  “My son is a cunting little coward,” she said. “Did you know that?”

  The voice was as empty, flat and desolate as her dresser top. Despite the words, he did not sense hatred there. He sensed no emotion at all. Only statement of fact. Her son was a cunting little coward. End of story.

  He wanted out. He needed some fresh air.

  The nurse was right.

  This one was better left asleep.

  “Do you know what I suffer from?” she said. “Fainting spells. That’s right. They happen sometimes once a week, sometimes twice a day. It’s my blood pressure. Otherwise my health is perfect. I get fainting spells. And they are what has allowed my son Wayne to gain custodianship over me and put me into this place so that I can smell the shit of the dying all day. My son cannot take care of me in the home I lived in for thirty-five years, he says, he has to go to work and is afraid to leave me alone, he says. Do you know what the shit of the dying smells like, Officer Rule? I doubt that you do.”

  Rule glanced at Covitski. He saw he was not alone in wanting out of there. Covitski couldn’t have looked worse if it were his own mother sitting in front of him talking this way.