by Jack Ketchum
“Shit!”
Ray was impressed he could tell. He didn’t get to impress Ray real often.
“And see, she’s married to Roman Polanski, right? The guy who directed Rosemary’s Baby. Which is all about witches, right? And she was in that Eye of the Devil thing. We saw it at the drive-in a long time ago, remember?”
“Yeah. I kinda do. She was fucking gorgeous.”
“So it’s got to be satanists. Has to be. You gotta wonder what shit Polanski was into.”
“Wild. Hey listen, I’m gonna turn on the TV. See if they show any pictures or anything. Let me know if you hear any more about it. Call me.”
“Sure. What’s on for tonight?”
“I got another date with Katherine. I wanna go turn on the tube. Call you later.”
“Okay.”
And just like Jennifer he never did.
Katherine heard the six o’clock news on TV in her bedroom.
Etta had just gone home for the evening. The smell of pot still wafted up the stairs.
In fact they did have pictures. Of the victims as they’d been in life. The attractive brunette heiress to the Folger coffee fortune standing beside her Polish jet-set lover. Publicity photos of the handsome, internationally known hairstylist, who looked to her a lot like the French movie actor Alain Delon. And of the beautiful young ash-blond starlet married to the famous director. There was no picture of the teenage boy they’d found in the car outside and no mention yet of his name.
They’d filmed an aerial view of the big sprawling house at 10050 Cielo Drive and of the winding road leading up to it and of the gate outside.
They made a big deal about Sharon Tate being eight months pregnant as though it were the most tragic and horrible thing imaginable for an unborn child to be denied its birth. Whereas as far as she was concerned the most horrible thing imaginable had happened to the actress herself, to be murdered in all likelihood begging for her life at the most awful moment Katherine could think of, full of beauty and hopes for career and family, probably in love with the guy she married and carrying his baby and maybe even at the brink of real stardom. She had to wonder just when it had become clear to Sharon Tate that none of these things was to be. That all her sweet beginnings were endings now.
It was almost impossible to imagine what she must have felt like. You thought about it and you almost wanted to cry. You wanted to smash things. It just confirmed her opinion that basically, the world sucked.
Who would do that kind of thing?
She switched the station to a rerun of “Wild Kingdom,” about water buffalos of all things and finished painting her toenails. In less than half an hour “The Dating Game” was on, a stupid show but like “Wild Kingdom” it would take her mind off Sharon Tate, which had disturbed her to a surprising degree.
She wondered why it should.
Chapter Twenty-four
Ray
He parked the car a few blocks away and cut the lights. He got out and jogged uphill to her house so that he was puffing by the time he got there and then stood awhile in the darkness beside the hedges catching his breath and looking up at the lighted dormer. Her bedroom window.
He checked his watch. Just after 8:30.
He was supposed to be there at nine.
She wanted a surprise. He’d give her one.
Incredible to be doing this on this of all nights. The night after Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring. And what a weird coincidence that he’d thought of doing it the same night they were getting murdered. He wondered how those guys had managed to get in. He wondered if they’d climbed a tree like he was doing now.
He’d noticed the tree right away the first time he drove her home, and more than once he’d thought about spying but this was better than spying. He wondered why they hadn’t cut the branches back farther. Because you could step from one of the limbs right out onto the roof, the limb was thick and looked reliable.
He hadn’t climbed much since he was a kid but this was easy, a whole lot easier than the flying rings, the tree had handholds and footholds wherever you needed them, more like a ladder than a tree with very few obstructions so that pretty soon he was standing on a limb just off the bole a few feet from the roof and slightly above it and dusting off his hands. The slope of the roof didn’t look bad and the chimney was right there in front of him. He could grab on to that and from there the gable with the darkened dormer that would be the master bedroom, her father’s bedroom, then slide across the few feet of shingles to the second gable where the light was burning.
Yeah, sure. A whole lot easier said than done.
The chimney was fine but he almost lost his footing getting from there to the first gable, his boots a major disadvantage on the shingles, and crossing from the first to the second gable he had to go flat out on the fucking roof, inching across, sweating and grunting like a pig and hoping like hell the shingles would hold or else he was going down right over the overhang into the bushes below, wondering why the hell he’d thought of this dumb idea in the first place and hoping she wouldn’t hear him scraping his way along crab-wise, looking ridiculous up there, until finally he was able to grasp the corner board of the second gable, hold on to the thing and rest. By then the palms of his hands and fingers felt raw, his knees were scraped inside the jeans and probably he was filthy pretty much all over.
Some balcony scene. Some fucking Romeo.
Still, damned if this wouldn’t surprise her.
He inched over and rested squatting with his back to the gable for a minute and dusted off his shirt and jeans. Luckily he’d picked black again for both. The dirt didn’t show as much. He ran his fingers through his hair and then turned and looked through the window.
She wasn’t there. The light on the dressing table was burning and the one beside the bed. The bathroom door was open and he could see the toilet and the edge of the sink but that was all. She could be in the bathroom or she could be downstairs. He could hear her air-conditioner humming from the window opposite just beside the bed.
If anything his heart was beating faster now than it had when he was crossing the roof. He considered the possibilities. He could try the window and if it opened, climb into the room. He could wait outside until she showed up and tap on it. It occurred to him then that if she was downstairs already she might just wait for him there and not go back to her room at all, not even to turn off the lights. Daddy had money. Maybe she couldn’t give a shit about wasting the electricity. He hadn’t thought of that and it was a helluva thing to have to think about now. Not only would all of this have been for nothing but he’d have to find his way down off the roof without breaking his goddamn neck.
You better check the window.
It opened. Now his choices were easier.
He liked the idea of being inside. There was still the possibility of slipping off this stupid perch of his, the very real possibility of broken bones.
He raised the window all the way and gripped the inside jambs on both sides and hauled himself in. The room smelled strongly of her perfume. The bed was made, the pillows plumped. She kept the place pretty neat. There was a fine dusting of powder on the dressing table and the poster of John Lennon in his granny glasses, the same fucking poster Tim had, was folding down off the thumbtack on the top left side. But that was about all he could find out of place there.
He wouldn’t have figured Kath for a neat freak.
He sat down on the bed, smiling, because this was gonna be good and no sooner had he done so than she walked in from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her hair and another around her body and jumped and gasped like she’d damn near been run over by a passing train.
“What the . . . fuck, Ray?”
“Hi. Surprise you?”
“Surprise me? Yeah, I guess you could say that. Jesus!”
“You told me to surprise you.”
“I didn’t tell you to scare me half to death. What the hell are you doing here?”
He pointed to the o
pen window.
“Came in through there.”
“Bullshit. I left the door open downstairs. I must have.”
“Maybe you did and maybe you didn’t but I came in through there.”
She walked over to the window and looked outside. “You’re telling me you somehow got up on the roof and opened the window and climbed in. That’s ridiculous. There’s no ladder out there. You took the stairs.”
He stood. “Do I look like I took the stairs? Didn’t think I’d get this dirty, but what the hell, it was worth it. It was fun.”
It was not fun but she didn’t have to know that. “See that tree? I climbed that and then over past your dad’s bedroom and over across the roof.”
She looked him carefully up and down and finally he saw that she believed him.
“You’re crazy. You could have gotten yourself killed. What are you, a part-time cat burgler?”
He couldn’t tell if she was impressed or peeved or what. He shrugged.
“A lady tells me to surprise her, I surprise her.”
“I guess you do. So now what? You want to hang around and watch me dress? Is that it?”
“It hadn’t occurred to me but sure. Love to.”
“In your dreams, Ray. There are some beers and Pepsis down in the fridge. Help yourself. Where we going, by the way?”
“I thought Bertrand’s Island.”
“Bertrand’s Island?”
“You never heard of it? It’s an amusement park.”
She nodded. “An amusement park, huh? They have a roller coaster?”
“Best around.”
She took the towel off her head and began drying her hair. He couldn’t tell what her reaction was to his plan for the evening any more than he could tell how she felt about him coming in through the window. He had a hard time reading this one, he really did.
“You hear about those murders out in L.A.?”
“Yeah. I heard on TV.”
“Pretty wild, huh?”
“Wild’s one way to put it. Go have yourself a drink. I’ll be down in a few minutes,” she said.
He was dismissed.
She looked great again. Tight black sleeveless sweater and a cream-colored miniskirt. Though this time there was a bra.
But how the hell to get to her?
He couldn’t really seem to impress her tonight no matter what he said or did. At Bertrand’s Island she appeared to have a pretty good time. She said the roller coaster was okay but you could see she’d been on better, you could tell by the way she said it—though she didn’t rub it in or anything by naming any or saying where. Probably fucking California. They’d gone around twice on the ’coaster and did the Tilt-a-Whirl and the Wild Mouse, which dipped way out over the shore of Lake Hopatcong and swooped back in again. In between they put away a few beers dosed with Chivas from his hip flask but mostly they just walked around looking at the lights and the people, listening to calliope music and the screams off the rides. He’d shot ducks well enough to win her a teddy bear and thrown darts at the balloons well enough to win her another. Aim-wise he was in top form. The beers and scotch loosened him up. He wished he felt in top form otherwise.
She seemed to like the teddy bears and the rides but he could tell she was a little bored.
Bored with him?
It wasn’t something he was used to.
When she said no to the Ferris wheel he knew he had to come up with a new idea and do it soon. The longer they did nothing but wander the grounds the worse it was going to get. The drag strip would have been perfect. But the strip had gotten busted last weekend and the Man would be watching it, so that was out. After a while he figured it.
“So. Want to split?”
“Sure. Where to?”
He grinned. “You’ll see.”
In the parking lot she stopped about ten feet from his car and started looking around.
“Car’s over here,” he said.
“I know,” she said and kept looking. “You know how to hot-wire, Ray?”
He laughed. “No. I’ve seen it in the movies. But I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
“I do. I had a boyfriend, Deke. Knew all kinds of good things. Which one do you like?”
“Which car do I like? I like my own car.”
She shot him a glance. “Fine. Then you can just drive yourself home in it. I’m thinking that little black ’Vette over there. Thanks for the teddy bears, Ray. It’s been real.”
And the next thing he knew she was walking over to the Corvette and trying the door handle, the teddy bears like small hostages tucked beneath her arm. He couldn’t believe it. He stood there like a damn fool watching her.
“Shit. It’s locked.” She walked around and tried the passenger side. “Shit!”
Anybody in the lot could have heard her. He all of a sudden felt very exposed. The night air felt too damn thick and too damn warm.
“I don’t suppose you know how to break into a car?”
“Jesus, Kath! What the hell are you doing?”
She looked around again and then walked over to a big red Caddy in the corner of the lot and tried all four doors on that one. The Caddy was locked too. Thank god.
“Oh, well. Fuck it. The rest of these junkers aren’t worth the trouble. What the hell. It was an idea.”
She marched back over to his Chevy and smiled like nothing unusual had happened here so he unlocked the passenger side for her, which was about all he could think to do and she opened the door and got in. She tossed the teddy bears in the backseat and then propped them up next to each other.
The hostages were passengers now. He slid behind the wheel.
Was this lady strange or what?
He couldn’t tell if she was just testing him again or if she’d really have gotten him involved in an auto theft.
Grand theft auto? Jesus!
“Let’s go,” she said.
They rounded the corner up the hill, the dirt road winding through the thick stands of trees and when he stopped he was glad to see there were no other cars or campers anywhere. They’d be alone. He’d had a feeling that they would be. Since the night he’d done the two girls locals tended to avoid the place. Even though Turner’s Pool below was a whole lot better than Alpine across the mountain. Tourists came by every now and then but even some of them got spooked away by what the locals said. As though the place were cursed or something. It was stupid.
He didn’t know why he’d thought to take her here except it felt right. In a way it was his turf. And he had the feeling that they’d be alone here.
She was staring at a blackened campfire site in the headlights.
“What. We’re going camping?”
“Nah. Swimming. There’s a real neat pool down there. You’ll see.”
“You want to swim?”
“It’s a warm night, sure.”
“No swimsuits, Ray.”
“You always use a swimsuit?”
Saying that like maybe she was the one who was chicken.
“No towels either.”
“So? We air-dry.”
She looked across the clearing and into the woods beyond and then back. Her smile was complicated again.
“You better have a flashlight.”
“In the glove compartment. Same as with the church key.”
She opened it and took it out.
“Okay. Swimming.”
She turned on the flashlight and got out of the car and he pointed her toward the path leading down to the pool and then they were moving through the thick tangled woods and down over the rocks and she was giving him hardly any slack at all, using the flashlight in front of her and only rarely sweeping it back to him but he knew this path almost as well as he knew his own apartment. He and Tim had been coming here forever. Only once did he lose his footing and there was a tree beside him to grab on to so she never even knew it had happened.
At the narrow pebble shoreline she stood there letting the light play over the black ex
panse of water. It sounded like a thousand frogs were out there in the darkness hidden from the beam.
“Leeches,” she said.
“It’s possible. That bother you?”
“Not if it doesn’t bother you. I mean, the thought of a leech on your dick.”
“My dick will have to take its chances.”
She kicked off her tennis shoes and stepped into the water.
“Chilly.”
“That should keep down the leeches.”
“Enough with the leeches, Ray.”
He laughed. He could tell the idea bothered her. Maybe not scared her exactly but bothered her. Close enough. He felt a slight shift in the balance of power. If you managed to scare somebody you always had the advantage. For the first time all night long and maybe both nights together he felt he had one up on her.
So push it, he thought.
“Twenty bucks says you haven’t got the guts to go in first without me. Face all those nasty leeches all by yourself. Maybe even a snake or two. Who knows?”
“I thought this was your idea. Cool in the pool.”
“I’ll be right in after you. Twenty bucks.”
“You want to watch me get naked. Right?”
He gave her the smile. “Who, me? No interest at all.”
“Make it thirty and you even get to hold the flashlight. How’s that for a deal?”
“Okay, thirty’s fine. You want it now or later?”
“Later. I’ll trust you.”
She hesitated a moment and then handed him the flashlight and he turned it on her, right into her eyes to see how she’d take it but she didn’t hardly blink, just pulled the sweater off over her head and dropped it onto the sand and already he had a raging hard-on. She was staring directly into the light. She unzipped the miniskirt and stepped out of it and dropped it on top of the sweater and then reached around to unhook the bra and slipped it off her shoulders and tossed it down, hooked the panties with her thumbs and skidded them down over her hips and stood there.