Night Prey

by Carol Davis Luce

  “Do you ever eat lunch out?” he asked.

  “Rarely. We take turns going for sandwiches.”

  “You’re quite involved with your work, aren’t you?”

  “I guess.”

  “Were you always this enthusiastic? Or has it increased since the accident?”

  “Are you asking if I’ve suddenly become immersed in my job to take my mind off something else?” she said warily.

  “No, I’m not. But have you?”

  She stopped in front of the brick building and reached for the bag in his hand. “Thanks for the help. I have to go. They’re waiting.”

  “I’ll take it in.”

  “No, that’s all right. I can manage from here.”

  “You don’t care much for psychiatrists, do you, Miss Paxton?”

  “Before his stroke, my father was a practicing psychiatrist.”

  “Yes, I know. I’ve read several of his papers. Dr. Paxton’s a brilliant man, but that doesn’t answer my question.”

  “It would be unfair of me to judge an entire profession by one man,” she said evenly, conscious of her evasiveness but unable to stop herself.

  “It would.”

  She reached for the doorknob.

  “Miss Paxton, I’m researching a book on battered women. I wonder if you could give me a hand. You’d be doing me a tremendous favor, and perhaps I can help you in turn.”

  Robbi looked at him, distrustful. “Help me? What makes you think I need help?”

  “I meant with the center. Donations, time, anything I can do.”

  “I don’t know. I—”

  “Tomorrow I’ll be at my place at Tahoe. Come up for the day. It’ll give you a chance to relax, take in some sun and mountain air. I really think you’ll enjoy it.”

  Could she work with him, trust him? Dr. Reynolds was like no psychiatrist she’d ever met. If he was working on a book about domestic abuse, they certainly had something in common.

  “All right. I’ll come.”

  “Great,” he said, a smile brightening his face. He backed up. “I’ll call and give you directions.”

  The rest of the day her work took a backseat to thoughts of the doctor. Who was he? What kind of man was he? Images of his smile, so captivating, played across her mind.

  FOURTEEN

  Roberta cruised the narrow street slowly, taking in the quiet solitude of the evergreen-shaded lane. The sharp scent of ponderosa pine reached inside the closed car as cones and needles crunched under the tires of her Jeep Cherokee. Straight ahead, like a mirror reflecting the clear blue of the sky, lay the deep, icy waters of Lake Tahoe.

  On the phone that morning Dr. Reynolds had given her directions to his summer place at Incline Village. His lake-front house was to the left, within yards of the sandy beach of Crystal Bay. A neighborhood dock moored several powerboats and a sailboat. In the driveway sat a classic white T-bird.

  She found the doctor on a large wooden deck that faced the lake. At a picnic table covered with books and papers, held down by fist-size rocks, he sat barefooted behind a manual typewriter, wearing a navy blue tank shirt and white tennis shorts. A stack of papers balanced in his lap.

  She climbed the steps to the deck.

  “Hi,” he said, smiling as she crossed to him. “Thanks for agreeing to drive up.”

  “It’s certainly no hardship.” Her gaze swept the landscape appreciatively.

  He dumped the papers onto the table, rose to his full six feet, and stretched.

  He had the body of an athlete. Solid, though not too muscular. Good, strong legs, looking even more tan in contrast to the white shorts. A tennis physique, she thought. Waterskiing for certain, since he lived right on the lake.

  At a smaller table with a striped umbrella he pulled out a lime green director chair for her.

  “Relax,” Jake said when she sat. “Take a half dozen deep breaths while I play host.” He went inside.

  Robbi took his advice and filled her lungs with the clean mountain air. She looked around at the assortment of evergreen trees surrounding the house. In the yard, clusters of wildflowers in purple, red, and blue complemented the greens. He returned minutes later with a tray bearing two mugs of coffee, a plate of sliced pound cake, bowls of whole strawberries, brown sugar, and thinned sour cream.

  “Goodness,” she said.

  “I want this to be as painless as possible,” he said, putting down the tray and sitting opposite Robbi.

  “You’re doing all the right things.” Robbi sipped the coffee, pleased by its rich, nutty flavor.

  For several minutes while they drank coffee and ate, they engaged in small talk about the area. Mesmerized, Roberta watched a bright parasail, its two riders soaring high over the water behind the speedboat that towed it.

  Jake refilled their cups.

  “I’m into the chapter on the battered woman’s syndrome as a legal defense,” Jake explained. “I’ve plenty of the dry material, statistics, trials, and such. I could use some insight, personal and general, and an anecdote or two.”

  For the next hour, without using names, Roberta related one case history after another. When nothing more came to mind, they took a break. Jake brought out fresh coffee.

  He leaned back in his chair. “The nightmares you spoke of in the hospital, tell me about them.”

  Her guard went up. She had agreed to help him with his research, and now he was asking about the nightmares again.

  With her thumb she rubbed away the light lipstick mark on the rim of the coffee mug. “Dr. Reynolds—”

  “None of that ‘doctor’ stuff. Please, it’s Jake.”

  Despite the picturesque surroundings, his casual attire, and his attempts to make her feel like a guest, she had the discerning feeling that this little tête-à-tête was between a doctor and his patient. All the directors at the center were trained as counselors. She was no stranger to the techniques of therapy. He observed her without being obvious. He listened carefully to what she said, the underlying nuances in particular. He didn’t miss a beat.

  “The nightmares are still with you, aren’t they?”

  “I can’t afford you. Doctor.”

  “This is between friends.”

  She stared silently off into the distance. Should she tell him? Why was he so eager to get inside her head? Occupational involvement, perhaps. Could an artist take in a spectacular landscape without a desire to capture it on canvas? Before him sat a woman whose mind was filled with mysteries—unexplored.

  “What happened that day in the woods, Roberta?”

  After a long pause, she said, “I saw something . .

  “Go on.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “Tell me about the dream, then.”

  “I’m being chased through the woods on a rainy night.” And with that admission, despite her reservations, she found herself powerless to remain quiet.

  “Man or beast?”

  “Man. A man-beast.”

  “And?”

  “And I dream of a man who holds a woman against her will.”

  “Where does he hold her?”

  “In the woods. In a cabin, I believe.”

  “Does she know him? Are they married?”

  “No, he abducted her. I mean, in my dream, he forcibly took her.”

  “From where?”

  “From an alley outside a bar.”

  Jake dipped a strawberry in the sour cream, then twirled it in the brown sugar. He held it up and stared at it. “What does she look like?”

  “Long blond hair. Fair skin. Slender.”

  “Any distinguishing marks or features?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Jewelry? Rings, pendants, that type of thing?”

  “Jake, it’s only a dream.” Why did she sense his questions went beyond mere curiosity, to the point of interrogation?

  Jake rubbed the end of the pen along his eyebrow as he stared out toward the lake. “The day of your accident, what did
you see in the woods?”

  “You don’t give up easily, do you?”

  A corner of his mouth lifted in a smile.

  “Everything was pretty murky ...” On the table Robbi formed a small mound of brown sugar with a forefinger. “I’d fallen, hit my head. The rain was pouring down and I was just coming around ... everything was hazy...

  “Tell me what you saw.”

  She glanced at him, looked away. “A man, a very big man, chased down this woman and ... and he strangled her.”

  Jake shifted around. “How far from where you were?”

  She contemplated. “About eight to ten yards.”

  “Then you couldn’t have seen her very clearly.”

  “Before he caught her, she’d run within just feet of me.”

  “Could you describe her?” Jake asked. “And him.”

  “She was slender, with long blond hair. He was large, six-feet four or five. Black hair and a beard. A mountain man.”

  “You’ve described the woman in your dream.”

  “And the man,” she said. “Jake, if what I saw that day was real, a woman was murdered. If it wasn’t real, then—”

  “Assuming it was an illusion—”

  “Ah, the psychiatrist speaking,” she asked tightly. “Shoot for the screwed-up head first. Dismiss it as hallucinatory. The doctor neatly files it under trauma, burnout, or a dozen other psychological buzz words, and we’re off and running.”

  “Roberta, I’m only trying to--”

  She stood. “I’m not your patient, Doctor. I agreed to help you with your research, not become your mental guinea pig.”

  Without another word she turned and left the deck.

  In her rearview mirror, as she drove off, she saw the doctor standing in the middle of the road. Behind him whitecaps broke the smooth surface of the lake.

  FIFTEEN

  Hot excitement throbbed in his blood, racing through his veins as he stealthily moved from tree to tree along the back of the ranch-style house. It was dark. Moon shadows crossed the yard to angle sharply up the rough wood siding. The fragrant scent of night jasmine filled the air. A cat meowed, rubbed against his ankle. Eckker pushed it away with his foot. Crickets chirped. Another cat’s meow joined the first. They weren’t afraid of him. The big man was no stranger to them.

  He had to see her; it couldn’t hurt anything to just look at her. He would have his look, then go.

  He usually got his way. He learned early in life to take what he wanted. But there were still certain rules. He had survived the streets. He had survived his crazy mother—who struck out first and asked questions later, only to strike out again—and her rotten, worthless men. And in the end she’d gotten hers.

  The window was dark. Disappointment dropped over him like a heavy shroud. He had to see her. A glimpse and nothing more. He looked around, considered circling the house, checking other rooms. He moved forward. The light came on. His heart jumped in his chest. He slipped back into the shadows.

  Dressed in a white bathrobe, the girl strode into the room. She moved to the full-length mirror and stood before it, soberly contemplating her image.

  Pulling her hair up on top of her head, she tilted her head this way and that, assessing the effect. She smiled, frowned, pouted, then leaned in, partially closed her eyes as she lightly placed her lips to the mirror in a chaste kiss.

  The man in the shadows absently kneaded his bunched hands against the coarse fabric of his pants.

  The young girl leaned back, stared at her face for several moments longer, then she put her palms over the nubby terry cloth at her chest and pressed upward, creating a slight cleavage at the V of the robe. Her fingertips closed around the bodice and gingerly pulled the two pieces apart, exposing small, budding breasts with swollen dusty rose-colored nipples.

  With the side of his face pressed to the rough wood of the house, he watched her from the corner of his eyes. His breathing came heavy, raspy. His gaze burned into her, consuming her.

  SIXTEEN

  The group, six in all, sat in a loose circle on orange plastic contour chairs in a conference room in the Medical Plaza. They met one morning a week. To Jake’s left a boy, bushy red hair shaved close to his head on one side, doodled on his palm with a Marks-a- Lot pen as he spoke.

  “No one’s gonna find those guys guilty. Christ, they’re a famous rock group. They got more money than God.”

  “Do you really think they put subliminal death messages in their songs?” A pretty girl named Beverly, who sat directly across from Jake, asked. “I mean, why would entertainers want kids—their fans—to kill themselves? Who’d be left to buy their albums?”

  The group shrugged and mumbled.

  Jake glanced at Beverly. She was staring at him with a strange, faraway gaze and a hint of a smile, as if they shared some personal secret.

  He quickly looked away. There was one in every group. That one teenage girl who came on to him in this, her advanced exercise in the seduction of the older professional man. More than once in today’s session he had inadvertently looked up to see her miniskirted legs crossing and uncrossing, exposing flashes of creamy inner thigh and peachy lace. Five years earlier seventeen-year-old Belinda Sardi had been the group femme fatale. Thinking of Belinda made him think of Roberta Paxton. She claimed to have seen a woman murdered in the woods. Could there possibly be a connection?

  A fat, unkempt boy blurted out, “My grandmother’s dumping me back on my mom.”

  “She’s threatened that before,” Jake said.

  “This time she means it. She snagged some old fart. She’s moving him in and me out.”

  “Good for her,” the girl on Jake’s right said. “Grannies need lovin’ too.”

  The fat boy glared at her.

  “Well, since it’s an ongoing issue that so far has remained unchanged,” Jake said, “let’s just see what happens.”

  “Dr. Reynolds,” Beverly said. Her leg lifted, slowly crossed over the other. “My mother wants to know if I can have private sessions with you?”

  One boy whistled under his breath, another snickered.

  “I’ll talk to her about it.” In a pig’s eye, Jake told himself. He stole a glance at the large school clock on the wall. He was due in court to testify for the prosecution on an insanity plea murder trial. “Anything else, ladies and gentlemen? If not, I’m going to set you free for the day. I have to be at the courthouse in half an hour.”

  The kids shifted, stood, began gathering their things. Within several minutes they had all filed out, all but Beverly.

  “Dr. Reynolds, since you’re going to the courthouse and I’m going there, too, maybe you could give me a ride?”

  “Sorry, Beverly, can’t do.” He put on his suit jacket.

  “If you’re not ready to leave now, I can wait.”

  “The reason I can’t is that I’m your doctor, you’re a minor, and you’re a very pretty girl who likes to play games.”

  “Sometimes I forget you’re a doctor. You’re really cool.” She stepped in closer, emanating a robust exotic scent. “Don’t you like games?”

  “Not that kind. I’m not eligible to play. Sorry.” He picked up his attaché folder, tucked it under his arm, and strode out of the door.

  Fifteen minutes later on the steps of the Washoe County Courthouse, Jake pressed through the crowd of demonstrators for the heavy-metal rock group. He struggled to pull open the main door and quickly entered.

  In the middle of the wide marble vestibule, talking to a woman with a baby in her arms, was someone Reynolds had been thinking a great deal about since he’d last seen her at the lake a week earlier. He recognized her instantly by the light chestnut hair with its red highlights, her statuesque posture and the cane she absently twirled, like a baton, in her fingers. She patted the woman’s shoulder, lightly touched the baby’s cheek, then turned and headed toward Jake.

  Her face devoid of emotion, Roberta was eye to eye with Jake when she focused on him for the first
time.

  She quickly looked away and pushed through the door. The chants of the demonstrators poured in as she rushed out.

  He watched her work her way gingerly through the crowd on the steps until she was gone. The enigmatic Roberta Paxton undoubtedly had his attention. How could he get hers?

  Robbi used her forearm to stop a rivulet of perspiration making its way down her temple to her jaw. It was nine P.M. and hot. Wearing shorts, a midriff top, her masses of hair twisted and clipped on top of her head, she stood barefoot in the laundry room, putting new vinyl on the walls. Earlier she had juggled the washer and dryer to the center of the small room.

  As she smoothed a strip of pink and sea-green vinyl on the wall, she heard a car stop in front of the house. She eased a bubble out to the edge and took a final swipe with a damp sponge.

  The doorbell rang.

  Through the kitchen window she saw Dr. Reynolds’s white sports car at the curb.

  He was the last person she wanted to talk with. After seeing him at the courthouse that afternoon she’d felt uneasy, anxious. It was hard to explain, and she knew it sounded irrational, but somehow he made her feel disconnected and out of touch with reality. Her father had that same effect on her.

  She went to the front door, unlocked the dead bolt, and opened it.

  “Hi,” he said. He had changed clothes. The suit replaced with jeans and pullover shirt.

  “Hello.”

  “Saw you today at the courthouse. . “ He let the words trail off.

  She remained silent. What did he want with her? Why the great interest?

  “I should have called first.” He turned his head, looked down the street. “I guess I was afraid you’d hang up on me. I just want to know how you’re doing? If you’re okay?”

  She rested her head against the open door, waited a moment longer than she said, “I’m fine, Dr. Reynolds.”

  He stared at her solemnly. “You took off rather abruptly the other day. I made you angry and I hadn’t meant to. Seems I may have overstepped my bounds.”