by Jack Ketchum
“I told her my father had come into my room the night before and said that he was leaving her any day now. That he was sick of this too. And that he was taking me with him. So fuck her and her bodies buried in the garden, she could dig them up herself.
“I think I did it because it was a combination of the fact that that was what I was wishing for, that he would take me away somewhere, that and because I thought that she’d tell him what I’d said. Confront him with it. I couldn’t tell him myself. We didn’t have the kind of thing where I could just go up to him and say, ‘Come on, dad, let’s get the hell out of here, let’s put her in a loony bin and split.’ But I guess I thought she’d confront him with what I said to her and that way he’d know how I felt.
“But she didn’t. What she did do was constantly accuse him of planning to leave. Like now he’s part of the conspiracy against her. She’d search his drawers for maps and tickets and travel folders. Call the bank hour after hour to make sure he was actually there at work and not flown away to some island somewhere. She was driving him and his assistants bananas. Not once that I know of did she mention me saying anything to her or even mention me much at all. It was like I couldn’t be part of the conspiracy, I was out of the evil loop because I was her daughter. When in fact if anybody was conspiring against her, it was me.
“Anyhow that was kind of the last straw, her not being able to trust my father. The conspiracies got crazier and crazier, with satanists involved. She’s calling the cops on a daily basis only she’s calling them in Orange County because all the cops in our county are all after her and crooked and finally she gets this thing in her head that my father’s given her syphillis, so that she’s rotting away inside.
“Medication didn’t work. You couldn’t medicate her because she’d hide whole bottles of pills and say she lost them and then take more than she was supposed to. Or else she’d decide she was fine and the meds were part of the problem anyway, part of the plot. So when medication time rolled around she’d hide her pill under her tongue and then spit it out when we weren’t looking.
“Then one night while we were asleep she went downstairs. She went to the kitchen. We had all the knives and all the sharp stuff locked away by then. We had an electric range, though, not a gas stove. She turned the two front burners on high and waited till the coils were red and she put both her hands on the burners and held them there and woke us with her screaming. The idea was, she was trying to burn away her fingerprints. It’s not even possible to do that. I remember the coils were still smoking when we got down there.
“She wouldn’t let my dad touch her. Just me. But I didn’t know what the fuck to do with burns that bad and basically neither did he. So we had to wait for the emergency crew, me holding her squatting on the floor while she’s howling and sobbing and my dad at the kitchen table just sitting there crying into the palms of his hands. The way I knew he was crying was I could see his shoulders shake. She never painted again after that Even though after a while she could have once the burns had healed. When she got out of emergency care and was stable enough, he finally committed her.”
He sat back in his chair looking at her. He realized his second drink was almost gone. He finished it.
“Damn,” he said.
She finished hers too.
“That’s three questions each,” she said. “You want to go another round?”
He thought it was a hell of a story. What he had here, he thought, was one tough girl.
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Neither do I. Let’s get out of here.”
She raised her hand for the waitress and asked for the check. The girl smiled and did the addition and tore the check off the pad and put it facedown beside his drink, telling them both to have a lovely evening. You too, he said and had a look at the check.
“Steep?”
He guessed she could see by his expression.
“Nine bucks. Steep where I come from, anyway.”
“Leave her a dollar.”
“That’s only ten percent. You sure?”
“No. I mean leave her a dollar, period.”
“Huh?”
“The blonde you’ve been eyeing every damn chance you get, Ray. Stiff her.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m asking you to. Will you do that for me?”
He wondered what they did to you walking out on a check in New York City. But okay, he thought, we’ll play that game too. He reached for his wallet and saw that the blonde was taking an order from a table to the left, she was leaning over a fat man with a mustache and mostly had her back to him. He pulled out a dollar and put it on top of the check and put the ashtray on top of that. He stood and shook his head.
“You’re something,” he said. He meant it. He’d never met one like this before. “Let’s go.”
Somewhere inside the Lincoln Tunnel she thought how odd it was that she’d told him as much as she had, in such detail and that telling it still hurt. She thought of her father visiting her mother in the hospital tomorrow morning and that what he’d be visiting would be a vegetable, basically, a catatonic. Somebody who sat there and rocked and stared and maybe moaned but that was all and who used to be her mother.
He’d asked her to come along.
She was glad she hadn’t but maybe she should have.
She didn’t know.
Fuck it She had other things to think about right now. Like this guy here smoking a joint and driving her back to Sparta.
What to do with Ray.
“I’ll just walk you up the stairs. Make sure you get in okay.”
She smiled at him as though to say she was a big girl and besides, the line was transparent as hell but sure, okay, why not? A complicated smile but then he got the feeling all her smiles were complicated in one way or another.
“All right.”
She led him up the walkway and up the stairs and fished her keys out of her purse and then turned to him very serious and looked at him. He realized his heart was pounding. He felt like a kid on his first date ever and his first date ever just happened to be the senior prom.
“Thanks, Ray. I had a really good time.”
He put on the grin. Wore it like a Halloween mask.
Trick or treat.
“So hey. Do I get a kiss at least?”
“I don’t fuck on the first date, Ray.”
“I didn’t say you did. Though actually it’s our second date. And we kissed that time, remember?”
She laughed. “You’re counting that little barhop with Tim and Jennifer? I don’t think so.”
“I asked if I got a kiss at least. Did I say a thing about fucking?”
She set her purse down on the porch.
“Sure,” she said. “Sure you do.”
She slid into him and wrapped her arms around his neck and her mouth tasted like beer and cigarettes but sweet underneath like the mouth of a very young girl. He was very aware of the trim strength of her body and even more aware that she was just as tall as he was, taller if you counted what was stuffed inside his boots and aware of her breasts beneath the man’s white shirt, her breasts moving against his chest and he wanted very much to move his hand around to touch them but knew he’d better not, not this time, not unless she actually led him in that direction, which was almost like a prayer for him just then but then like most prayers he doubted it would do him a damned bit of good.
He had one arm across the center of her back and the other down lower near the base of her spine and he pressed her into him so she’d know he was hard for her even if she wasn’t having any. It was a message to her, and he guessed she got it because she moaned a little and her left hand went into his hair and then through his hair and down to the base of his neck and she kissed him harder, moving against him then pulling away, nipping at his lower lip and then she kissed him again.
The kiss was softer this time and he could almost feel her drift away from him, it was a goodnight kiss, he knew one when he felt one and he had
all he could do not to start mauling her then and there right on the porch, to hell with what she wanted and not fucking on the first or second date. But his good sense told him he still had tomorrow and her father would still be out of town that night as well. He was not used to waiting. But he was not used to a girl like this either.
“Good night, Ray,” she said.
“Tomorrow night?” he said and that was another prayer. He didn’t know what he’d do if she refused him. She let it hang for a moment.
“Okay. One condition.”
“What?”
“You pick what we do this time. And you make it interesting.”
“What happened just now was interesting.”
She smiled. “Other than that.”
“You telling me it’s out of the question?”
“Did I say that? I said make it interesting. Surprise me. Think you can manage that?”
He already had one idea in mind. It came to him as soon as she said surprise me. He’d surprise her all right. His grin was real this time.
“Yeah, I can do that.”
“Good. Nine o’clock?”
“Nine o’clock. You got it.”
She pecked him on the cheek and opened the door and stepped inside and with her back to him said, “’Night, Ray.”
“’Night.”
When she was gone it was like all the breath had gone out of him, like she’d punched him in the gut and he took a moment to collect himself and realized he still had a hard-on for godsake and then he headed for his car. Then had to sit there a while catching his breath, slowing down his heartbeat. Then he started up the car and backed slowly out of the driveway.
The wind in his hair felt like her fingers in his hair as he sped away.
Chapter Twenty-three
Saturday, August 9
The News
Jennifer Fitch was doing the dinner dishes when she heard the news. She heard it from her foster mother Mrs. Griffith who had just seen a report on television. Mrs. Griffith’s opinion on the matter was that in this day and age you had to be terribly careful who you associated with. Jennifer knew that this was directed none too subtly at her but made no comment. Telling Ray about it was an excuse to phone him so she did that just as soon as she finished the dishes, feeling bad for a moment that it wasn’t Tim she was thinking of calling but the line was busy and by the time she got through to him Ray already knew.
Charlie Schilling heard it earlier on the radio in Ed Anderson’s backyard. It was Charlie’s day off and Ed had invited him over for a barbecue that evening, said he hadn’t been over for a couple of beers and a sirloin all summer long and it was damn well time he did. He knew Ed had a fine hand with a sirloin on the grill and allowed himself to be persuaded.
When he got there around five he wished he hadn’t. Because there was Sally Richmond in charge of the potato salad and tossed greens and corn on the cob and taking photos of the three of them with her Nikkormat. Talking with her at the motel was one thing but partying with her when he knew what Bill and June Richmond would say about it was another. It was too late to back out now but he was going to have to read Ed the riot act tomorrow. Ed’s business was Ed’s business and he thought that Sally was a nice girl but two grown men drinking beer with a eighteen-year-old in shorts and halter top was not exactly kosher, not in his book anyway.
And then there was the matter of Sally’s getting a job at the station. He had to discuss that piece of business with Ed too. He’d made a point of asking around on Wednesday and it didn’t take long for him to see that word of Ed and Sally had made the rounds. He got a lot of averted glances. Nobody he spoke to needed anybody even on a part-time basis, though desks were stacked with paper wherever you looked. Not even Johannson, who was usually so lazy with his paperwork Schilling had gotten into the habit of going though his desk for him in order to find whatever file he happened to need. Most cops would bristle at such an intrusion but not Johannson. His desk was strictly help yourself.
Even he didn’t need anybody.
What it came down to was that everybody at the station liked Ed but nobody was going to get involved with a situation where an ex-cop was making it with a teenager. He thought of taking Sally on at his own desk but he really didn’t need anybody. He’d been the only guy in his typing class in high school and though he took a lot of ribbing for it at the time he was also the fastest one in his class and the most accurate. A lefty who wrote his longhand painfully and badly, his grades had soared. It was what had enabled him to go on so long without taking on another partner after Ed. His own desk was clear.
Besides, as Ed’s best friend taking on Sally seemed somehow wrong to him. It would indicate approval. He guessed that was part of what the others were going through too.
He decided to go to the head of the class, to Jackowitz himself. Figuring as captain he’d be the last to know. The boss usually was. Jackowitz just looked him in the eye and said Bill Richmond’s a very prominent man. I don’t think it’s a real good idea, Charlie.
Jackowitz hardly even knew Ed, and word had got to him too.
He had to talk to Ed about it but he kept stalling. He didn’t like to hurt him and this was going to hurt no matter how diplomatically he tried to put it. He certainly wasn’t going to get into it here in Ed’s backyard. Not unless somebody asked.
Luckily they didn’t.
They were listening to the radio, some top-ten station and Ed had his sprinkler going way in back so that when the wind wasn’t blowing the delicious smell of charcoal-broiled steak at you there was the fresh green scent of watered lawn and he settled in on a lawn chair with a beer and willed himself to relax and have a nice evening despite the peculiar circumstances. Sally’s Volkswagen parked on the grass nearby—so it couldn’t be seen from the street—seemed the emblem of his discomfiture. He’d finished half the beer when the news came on, the newscaster managing to sound both grim and all excited both at once.
When the report was over Ed flipped the steak and shook his head and said I don’t know what the hell this world is coming to.
Sally was petting the stray black cat curled up purring at her feet. Poor little girl, she said to the cat. In the Middle Ages they’d have burned you. Probably some of these creeps still would bum you just for fun.
Tim Bess heard it on the radio too, only half an hour later. He was sitting on a towel at Alpine Pool stewing about why Jennifer hadn’t called, hadn’t returned the two calls he’d made, the first one answered by Mr. Griffith and the second by Mrs. Griffith both of whom had assured him that they’d relay the message. No contact whatsoever since she’d fucked him and what the hell did that mean?
The beach was practically deserted. Most of the kids had gone home to dinner and so would’ve Tim but his ten-year-old little sister Ginnie had begged him for one more dip in the pool. And Ginnie was a pretty good kid as little kids went. So he let her. His sister was a seal in the water, a much better swimmer than Tim and he actually liked watching her out there diving and surfacing and barely making a ripple.
Besides, he had to think. And you couldn’t do that home. Especially not around dinnertime. His father was okay and mostly just read the paper but his mother was a nonstop talker. Either that or she was always humming something 100 percent tuneless and whether she was talking or humming it was irritating as hell. It was as though his mother couldn’t stand a silence. You couldn’t think there. Here you could. So he indulged his little sister and stayed.
So how come she hadn’t called?
He couldn’t have been that bad in bed.
They’d been friends for years.
He felt confused and hurt and for some reason, he had to admit it, a little bit worried. He didn’t know why. It was the way you feel when it’s dark outside and you’re walking all alone and you get the feeling somebody’s waiting for you just around the next corner. Probably irrational as hell but maybe not.
He was thinking that maybe he’d better just drop by the Griffith
house tonight and see what was up with Jennifer even though he didn’t usually do that because Mr. and Mrs. Griffith obviously didn’t like him. Like he wasn’t good enough to hang around with Jennifer. Who wasn’t even their real daughter. He thought that maybe it had more to do with Tim’s being friends with Ray than with Tim himself but they still didn’t like him coming over.
He was considering doing it anyway when he heard the news on the radio.
Christ, he thought. I gotta phone Ray.
He got up off the towel and started packing their gear. When Ginnie surfaced he called her, said it was time to go and she didn’t fight him like some kids would, she just smiled and waded dripping out of the water and squeezed out her long brown hair.
They climbed the trail to his father’s pickup and spread their towels out on the seats and got in the car. All the way home he had the radio on, switching from station to station but all he got was music and commercials. He went right to his room and peeled off his trunks and put on a pair of jeans. He could smell his mother’s spaghetti sauce cooking on the stove downstairs but figured he still had plenty of time to phone Ray before she called him down for dinner.
He picked up on the second ring.
“Did you hear what happened last night?”
“No. What?”
He didn’t sound bored or disinterested the way he did sometimes. Maybe because Tim’s own voice was so excited.
“They killed Sharon Tate, man!”
“Killed who?”
“Sharon Tate! The girl in Playboy? Remember that vampire thing in Playboy? That movie Valley of the Dolls? Wrecking Crew? Sharon Tate, man! Oh and man, that witchy thing, you know, that witchy thing, Eye of the Demon or Eye of the Devil or something.”
“Cool down. Who killed her?”
“They don’t know. But man, they think it was satanists. That’s the really weird part. See, there was blood on the walls and stuff, writing, like it was some kind of ritual murder or something. I heard it on the radio, there was blood all over the place. She was pregnant and they like ripped the baby out, man. Ripped it right out of her and they found these black hoods like satanists wear and they killed this other woman, some heiress or something and two other guys, some guy who was her hairdresser or makeup guy, I dunno which. Cut the shit out of all of ’em.”