by Jack Ketchum
He didn’t want to touch her—for all they knew her neck could be broken—he didn’t want to touch her much less pick her up but there was still no arguing with the gun and however bad this was they both were still alive. He lifted her head, bent down and angled it so that it lay against his chest, got one arm up under her legs and the other across her back and lifted with his legs. They barely took the burden.
Lee stood and turned and faced him. He could feel the wetness spreading across his shirt.
“Where…?” he said.
“Home,” said Wayne.
He picked up his suitcase and motioned with the gun.
“We’re going home, Lee. At least I am. You? I don’t know where you’re going. I honestly don’t. I really wish I knew.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“He tried to choke me once,” said Susan.
“When was this?”
Okay. We’re finally getting down to it, he thought. Down to why she’d left him.
On everything else Rule had found the girl thoroughly cooperative. On this subject only she was still evasive. Even after knowing why they were looking for Wayne. But now she was sitting at his desk drinking coffee and she had this determined look on her face and he knew she was working on it and working through whatever was making her reluctant.
He didn’t press her. He waited.
“Just last Saturday,” she said. “We were…having sex.”
There you go, he thought.
“And he tried to choke you?”
“We were making love and he was…and everything was perfectly normal. Then all of a sudden he just started choking me.”
“And this was where? Your place or Wayne’s?”
She shook her head.
“Neither. We were on the mountain. At the Notch.”
“The Notch?”
“We were hiking. We’d brought a picnic. We were going up to the pond. Then I got tired and we stopped and there was nobody around anywhere…so we…so I…we started making love.”
He couldn’t believe it. He wanted to say you thought you were alone up there but he didn’t.
He had a very good idea what was coming next.
“Susan, when he did this to you…after he did this to you, what did you do?”
“I got mad. I got absolutely furious. I left him.”
“You left him?” She nodded. “You went back down the mountain?”
“That’s right.”
“And what did he do then?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him at all since then. Stayed up there, I guess. I mean, he didn’t try to follow me or anything. Why?”
Wayne had hung around. He’d seen them. He was not an accomplice. He’d seen them murder Howard and then he’d gotten to them somehow. It was all a nasty piece of luck but it was all in place now.
“Susan, would you mind if I call Lieutenant Covitski in on this? I know it’s tough for you but…”
“I don’t mind. The hard time was this time, you know what I mean?”
He knew. And he could have kissed her. He went and got Covitski.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
“Set her there,” he said. He pointed to the couch. “No, hold on a minute. Come here. Walk.” He pushed the Magnum into the small of Lee’s back and walked him through the living room down a short hall into the kitchen. He opened a drawer and took out a handful of white linen towels.
“Okay, back,” he said.
In the living room he folded two of the towels in half and spread them out on a pillow on the couch. Lee put her down. The right side of his shirt was soaked through with blood from his shoulder to his belt.
“Here,” he said. He handed him a towel. “Wrap her head.”
Her eyelids fluttered.
He folded the linen as Wayne had done, laid it across the top of her head over the wound and tied it beneath her chin. The blood started seeping through.
“Not enough,” he said. “We need a doctor.”
“Here.”
He handed him another towel. It was something. Lee tied it over the first one. He pressed it down gently with his hand, trying to stop the bleeding, all the time thinking, Concussion—how hard is too hard? Goddammit I have no idea what I’m doing here.
“See? Better.”
“It’s not better. Jesus! She could die, Wayne!”
He seemed to consider that.
“Did I tell you I was once a paramedic, Lee?”
“Bullshit.”
“No, it’s true. I did it for about a year or so. Then I got bored.”
“Bored, Wayne?”
He seemed to realize that the choice of words was the wrong one, a very long stretch of logic.
Lee felt his face flush. He’d like to have torn this guy limb from limb.
He thought he could do anything, this bastard. Get away with anything!
“Don’t argue with me, Lee. If I say I was a paramedic then I was. I’ll take care of her. We don’t need any goddamn doctor. Now take her clothes off. We’ll have a look.”
“What?”
“We’ll check her out.”
“Fuck you.”
“Did you take her pulse? No. Did you listen to her heart beat? No. See? You don’t know anything! Better yet, move over away from there. I’ll do it.”
“The hell you will.”
“The hell I won’t, Lee.”
He held up the Magnum. Lee got to his feet. Finally sick of him. Sick to goddamn death of him.
“You use that thing and you’ll wake the neighbors for miles around. You’ll have the police here in minutes.”
Wayne reached around into his back pocket.
“I’ll use this, then.”
He put the Magnum down on the table beside him and pointed the .38, reached into his pants and took out what looked like a piece of green rubber tubing, black and exploded at the end. He fitted it onto the gun barrel.
“And this will make it quieter.”
“I thought you wanted us alive, Wayne.”
“I did. Then you two had to go fuck it up. You went after me. I thought we could all be buddies but all you wanted to do was hurt me from the start and do me harm.”
“We wanted to hurt you.”
“That’s right.”
Keep him talking, he thought.
The Magnum was down now. Not far.
Get closer.
He took a step.
“I think it’s been the other way around, Wayne.”
“I couldn’t give a shit what you think, Lee.”
“I thought we were supposed to be witnesses. Witnesses to what, Wayne?”
“To me, you asshole! To me! Don’t you understand anything?”
“Why? Are you supposed to be some kind of natural phenomenon or something? Like the weather?”
“Yes! Yes exactly! Like the weather, Lee! Like a goddamn storm! I’m the storm! The one that blows it all away, that tears down all the houses, that crushes all you little assholes inside! That takes away everything you’ve got including your miserable fucking stupid empty lives! You got it now? You got that?”
What you did with a storm was you waited for it to blow out.
I can outthink this son of a bitch, he thought. I can maneuver him. And I can live.
Control.
“You got it?”
“Yes. I think so, Wayne,” he said.
Use his name.
He took a step and held out his hand. He kept it low and nonthreatening. Held it out palm up.
“Listen, Wayne, I don’t want to cross you. I don’t want to harm you. You’ve got us both wrong. Figure it out. What would you do if you were us? Wouldn’t you try to get free? You promised to let us go. But you didn’t. You put us in the goddamn trunk of a car, Wayne. Wouldn’t you try to get free after that if you were me?”
“I might.”
“So?”
Wayne just stared at him. He could read nothing from the man, no feeling whatsoever one way or the othe
r.
He sighed. “Listen, could I…would you mind if I had a smoke, Wayne? I’m out. Have you got one? Jesus, I don’t know what to think about all this. I just know I could use a smoke.”
“Don’t fuck with me, Lee.”
“I wouldn’t fuck with you, Wayne. I’m asking for a cigarette. That’s all.”
“What about her?”
He nodded toward Carole.
“Do what you want, Wayne. Go ahead. Take her clothes off. You say you’re a paramedic, and if you say so, then maybe you are. I honestly don’t care anymore. I’ve had it. I’m exhausted.”
A step. To the side this time. Not pushing him. Don’t push him. To the side but a little closer.
The Magnum gleaming in the light from the table lamp in front of him.
The empty ceramic ashtray sitting right beside it.
Cigarettes and ashtrays.
“So how about the smoke?”
Wayne’s eyes narrowed. His lips turned up at the corners in what he guessed was supposed to be a smile.
“Fuck the smoke, Lee. You don’t want the smoke. You want the gun. You want the gun? Then go for it.”
“I don’t want the gun.”
“Yes you do. You’re going to be a hero now. Aren’t you.”
“No.”
“Of course you are.”
“It’s not what I had in mind, Wayne.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“A cigarette.”
“A cigarette.”
“That’s right.”
“You’re a liar, Lee. Suppose we go back to plan one. You strip the bitch and I have a look at her.”
It’s not supposed to go this way, he thought. How could Wayne see through him like this? It wasn’t the first time he’d done it, either. It was as though the guy had some secret track into his mind. Reading him, constantly reading him. It was scary as hell.
“I just don’t want to do that, Wayne.”
“Why not?”
“Could I just have the cigarette?”
“You’re saying no to me, Lee?”
“Look. I’m not…yes. I guess I am. On this one I am. I guess I’m saying no to you, Wayne.”
“Why?”
“Why? For Christ’s sake!”
He was losing it. He was not supposed to lose control but this guy could push buttons where he didn’t even know he had buttons. It was somehow necessary to him that Carole’s clothes stay exactly as they were, where they were. Why was that? What could it matter? Wayne was going to do what he was going to do unless he could reach the gun, and for that he needed control.
“I think what you’re trying to do here, Lee, is you’re trying to make things normal again and be my buddy again or something, you’re trying to lull me. Just a smoke between friends, that sort of thing.
“But it’s too late, Lee. We passed that.
“The bitch is going to die. You realize that?”
Concentrate, he thought. There’s got to be a way. Don’t let him get to you. Forget about Carole. You have to. It’s just the two of us now. It has to be.
“I’m going to sit here and watch her die.”
His face went dreamy.
“It should be interesting, you know? She’ll be naked. I’ll watch. Her breathing will get more and more shallow. Her breasts will rise and fall. Rise and fall.
“Then they just…won’t anymore.
“They’ll get cold. Turn white. Blue and white. The blood will drain away…
“So. Want to hang around and join me?
“Want to watch?
“Still want to be buddies, Lee?”
It was impossible.
He felt the imperative turning like a waterwheel inside him. Electric energy, roaring water.
There was only one way to relieve the pressure and that was to shoot him and see him die.
He dove for the table.
He heard the gun go off, something spitting across the few feet of floor space and into his chest, knocking him away. He reached for the leg of the table, twisted and pulled and the table fell, the lamp smashing, bulb popping, spraying Wayne’s feet with shattered glass as the Magnum bounced once on the throw rug, its grip striking the rug and spinning it toward him.
He reached and found it with icy fingers as Wayne’s gun went off a second time and he felt the bullet strike his chest not an inch from the first one directly above it like he was a cardboard target in a shooting gallery. His fingers went numb, the heavy handle slipped away, the numbness spreading through his chest and his arm from the shoulder on down and he turned, twisted, trying to grab at it with his left hand but it was out of reach.
He fell back and saw Wayne fire one last time, felt the uncanny accuracy of it slapping into him in a tight triangular pattern and looked down at himself, his blood mixed with her blood spreading out all across his chest.
He thought Look what I’ve done.
He thought You’ll never see any doctor now. Oh Jesus, surprised that as he lay dying this thought was in fact for her and not for him at all and saddened, so late, to finally learn that he was capable of that.
Look, he thought. Look what I’ve done to you.
Look.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
He wrapped another towel around her head. He didn’t want to stain the couch.
He took the top button of her dress between thumb and index finger and slid it slowly through the buttonhole. And the next. And the next. He took his time.
He parted the dress away. The thin pale lavender bra hooked in front. He snapped it free.
“You lied,” he said.
She had said there were no scars, yet there were scars. In particular, a thin white line that ran from the center of her chest across her right breast and through the nipple, disappearing down the slope of the breast on the other side.
He slipped off her shoes and put them next to Lee, lying slumped against the couch at his feet.
The panties matched the bra. They were thin and lacy. He slid them down off her hips, folded them once, and placed them beside the shoes.
Dawn was breaking.
Her skin seemed to glow in its pale light. There was virtually no tan line. It was possible to think, looking at her flesh, that she was already dead. He could see her shallow breathing and knew this wasn’t true. But the notion delighted him. He thought that even with the towels and the clotted blood on her face that she was very pretty.
So pretty the dead. So vulnerable.
He unbuckled his belt. Unzipped his pants and slid them off.
To fuck the dead and dying.
He lowered himself down.
Her skin still felt so warm. It spoiled the illusion. It was good skin, soft. Smooth as Susan’s had been though Carole was probably ten years older. But he had expected a coolness from all that loss of blood. Some slight chill at least. More of an approximation.
He wasn’t hard.
Not nearly hard enough.
It surprised him.
That bitch back off the road in Plymouth, he thought. That bitch’s fault.
She’d drained him.
He bit at the scar to make himself hard.
Her body never stirred.
In that respect at least it was almost as though she were dead.
And thinking that he finally began to rise. He tried to push himself inside her but she was much too dry so he licked the palm of his hand until it was slick with spit and rubbed himself and tried again.
It wasn’t working.
Goddammit!
It was Carole who was doing this. Carole doing this to him. Not the Plymouth whore.
Fucking Carole.
Fucking Carole on his case again.
Let us go. No no. You can’t do that. I won’t do that.
Bitch!
He bit down at the scar until he could taste her blood but it didn’t do his cock any good at all, the bitch was just lying there doing nothing for him, nothing, there was no excitement, no thrill, no
pleasure in her anywhere. It was no goddamn good.
He wasn’t stupid. He knew she was trying to defeat him again the same way she’d tried to defeat him at the bar, refusing to go over to the couple at the table next to them but he’d shown her then, he’d blown away six or seven people since then yes it was seven counting Lee and he could damn well show her again.
Show everybody.
“Fuck you,” he said. “Fuck all of you!”
He shoved himself off and stood over her and slapped her hard across the face. Her blood splattered the sofa, a red mist across the faded chinz pattern.
She made no sound.
It was frustrating that she could be so unaware of him after all this time. He realized that scaring the hell out of her and Lee had been tremendous fun. Tremendous fun.
He almost missed them.
Christ! Look at the goddamn mess she was making!
He pushed back the coffee table, lifted her off the couch and dumped her on the floor. It would be easier to clean up the floor than the couch later after he was through.
Fuck her, he thought.
Let her lie there and just drop quietly dead.
He didn’t need to see. It would have been nice to see her die but he had other priorities.
She was nothing.
Lee was nothing.
There were others.
He didn’t even need to consult the book. He had it all in his head. He always had. The book was just to remind him.
RETAL.
He pulled up his pants and belted them. He took the .38 off the table and checked the load and the load was down so he opened the suitcase and took out a fresh clip, inserted it and stuffed six more clips into his pockets. It was too bad he didn’t have more shells for the Magnum but he had used them sparingly and by his count he had six rounds left in that gun too.
He looked at himself in the living room mirror.
Here I am friends and neighbors.
Mister Disaster. The guy who lives to blow your ass away. The guy who loves you, blood and bone.
It’s payback time.
One holy hell of a good time. Was had by all.
Here I come.
He laughed and then stopped laughing. He opened the door and stepped out into the dawn, stood for a moment in the warm morning breeze scented with dew already baking off the grass, gazed around him at his home, at his white birch castle walls and then walked toward the street.