by Dianne Emley
Marge’s great-nieces began yelling for their new friend from the back of the house.
“Gotta go,” Brianna importantly announced, and sped off.
Summer was wiping her face with her hand when Rose appeared with a tissue. Iris could always count on her mother to have a supply of tissues, no matter what the circumstances.
“Thanks.” Summer delicately dabbed the tissue against her face. “Well, I’d better go. Can I come see her again?”
Iris nodded, even though she was jealous of Summer and Brianna’s close bond. “Sure. You’re still at that hotel. The Château…”
“Bordeaux. Bungalow Five.” Summer sniffed and smiled, putting on a brave face behind her tears.
Iris felt a flicker of sympathy for the woman, even though she still wanted to slap her silly.
Summer raced back to the Range Rover in the rain, like a featured performer in a chipper diet soda commercial. Iris watched Summer’s bouncy buttocks recede and considered her dislike of bimbos. It was almost an instinctive thing, like a snake and a mongoose or a Crip and a Blood. But she was now beginning to wonder whether Summer wasn’t being dumb like a fox.
It took Iris a few minutes to realize she had awakened for a reason, that it was more than her subconscious churning too loudly that had made her open her eyes and blink at the darkness. It was hard to separate other noises from the rain, but something about the sound of her front door opening was like no other. She heard it on a visceral rather than aural level.
She threw off the goose-down comforter and layers of blankets and struggled to untwist herself from her long flannel nightgown before she managed to set her bare foot on the floor. She pulled open the bedroom door, which she had left ajar, and walked down the hallway, passing the room that Brianna was sleeping in on her right. She would have peeked in there but something else caught her attention. Moonlit rain was pounding on the porch outside the open front door. A small semicircle had been cut from the adjacent window.
She ran to Brianna’s room and switched on the light. Her bed was empty. Iris climbed on top of it, looking around and underneath, whimpering, her heart pounding, hoping that the child was hiding somewhere, knowing her hope was irrational but hoping anyway. She flung off the covers, finding a doll and stuffed dog but no Brianna. Crayons were scattered on the bed, as if Brianna had been drawing when she dropped off to sleep. The pad of drawing paper had worked to the end of the bed. Iris grabbed it. On it was another portrait of Slade Slayer in black with crudely drawn sneer and gun. The figure was wearing flip-flops, like in her other drawings, but in this rendering, each of the spindly toes was topped with a blob of hot pink.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Iris stumbled into some clothes, her mind and mouth going a mile a minute, with nothing lucid resulting.
“Why didn’t I get an alarm? I have to call Kip. What if he didn’t take her? I have to get her back before he finds out. Why didn’t I install better locks? I should call the police. They won’t believe me, they never believe me. They’ll take forever to get here and by then…Oh my God!”
She threw on a raincoat, pulled a baseball cap on her head, and waded to the Triumph. A river of water coursed down the hill. She cranked the engine and was soon off. The intersection of Casa Marina Drive and the Pacific Coast Highway was flooded, submerging the low Triumph to its floorboards. She ran the traffic light at the bottom of the hill, not daring to risk having the car short out and become trapped in the swirling water. There wasn’t much traffic to worry about. A person had to be nuts to be outside.
There was no easy way to get where she was going. The freeways in the rain could frequently be more treacherous than the surface streets, developing vast lakes many yards in diameter and as deep as a foot in low spots. She took Sunset Boulevard, where the two lanes closest to the center were the only ones navigable. Some of the intersections were flooded, and she forced herself to slow to a crawl going through them to avoid hydroplaning. She cooed to the Triumph, “C’mon, baby. Do it for Momma,” which valiantly kept running even though its guts had been partially submerged.
The low, wide car held the curves as Sunset twisted and turned through Pacific Palisades, Brentwood, Westwood, and Beverly Hills. At the Sunset Strip, the boulevard straightened. The marquee lights of the clubs and restaurants were dark. It was then that Iris noticed everything was dark. The electricity was out.
She parked on the street near the gardens and bungalows of the Château Bordeaux. Taking her cheap flashlight from the glove compartment, she pounded on it. It lit, darkened, then lit again. She climbed the grassy knoll, the flashlight barely illuminating a few feet ahead of her, the rain saturating her hair through the baseball cap, and headed for the bungalow farthest from the others. When she got close enough, she could see a brass 5 on the closed door. She knocked, and the unlatched door creaked open.
“Hello? Summer? Brianna?”
She smelled cigarette smoke as she leaned over the threshold without entering the room. She shone the flashlight around. On a table next to an easy chair near the door was a full ashtray and a cigarette lighter that looked like Evan Finn’s. She felt the flashlight batteries clunk to the end of the base, breaking the connection and cutting the beam.
“Crap!”
She madly shook the flashlight to no avail, then pushed the door all the way open, letting in the scant light available from the night sky. She made out the silhouette of someone sitting in a chair against the wall across the room.
“Summer?”
Iris futilely pounded the flashlight as she crept closer to the motionless figure. Suddenly, the electricity sputtered on, powering the lamps in the room, throwing it into a bright light. Summer was wearing a flimsy pink nightgown and a bullet hole between her sculptured eyebrows.
The door to the small kitchen creaked open an inch, and Iris was confronted with the platinum crew cut and porcelain sneer of Slade Slayer. As the lights again went out, Iris saw the flash from the gun before she heard it. She ran.
When she was halfway across the lawn, she turned to see Slade Slayer, dressed in black, taking aim. She flung herself onto the ground, and the bullet hit the soggy grass in front of her. She clambered up and kept low as she lurched across the grass, finally reaching the Triumph. She smoothly got her keys from her pocket and into the ignition without a second lost and cranked the key for all it was worth. The starter clicked. She tried again. It clicked again.
“Son of a bitch.”
Slade Slayer was almost upon her. She gave the ignition one last try before fleeing the car and running down the sidewalk. Another bullet sailed past, again missing her. She was terrified to look back but had to see how close the monster was. She did. It was close.
A car heading in the opposite direction on Sunset Boulevard slowed as it neared Iris. It skidded as it made a U-turn on the vacant street, hopped the curb, and came to a stop almost in front of her. It was a green Range Rover. The passenger door flew open. Evan leaned across the seat and yelled, “Get in!”
Iris looked at him, then at Slade Slayer, who was again taking aim, and climbed inside just as a bullet hit the open passenger door. Before she could close it, Evan peeled away from the curb, the tires skidding on the wet street. Iris madly grabbed at the open door, trying to snag it without falling from the car. Then Evan took a curve hard and the door slammed closed on its own, propelling her into him.
Iris didn’t breathe a sigh of relief.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he snapped. “I didn’t kill her. I went out to pick up some food, came back, and that’s how I found her.”
“Where’s Brianna?”
“Isn’t she with you?” Evan sounded genuinely surprised.
“You and Summer didn’t kidnap her?”
“No!”
“Take me to a police station.”
Evan didn’t respond and kept driving, too fast on the rain-slick streets.
“Why were you driving by just now?” Iris asked.
“I told you—I went out to get cigarettes. I saw Summer dead and split. My car was parked in back. I swung around the front, that’s all.”
“You said you went out to get food.”
“Cigarettes. I went to get cigarettes.”
He had turned off Sunset into the hills above Hollywood. On the other side of the hills were sparsely populated canyons. A favorite dumping ground for bodies.
“Where are we going?” she demanded.
He didn’t say anything or look at her. She detected a satisfied curl around the edges of his lips.
“They’re going to think you murdered Summer, you know,” she attempted. “You did prison time for manslaughter. You left the scene of this murder.” She looked around, trying to figure out where they were. “I hope you know that I wasn’t really going to shoot you this morning,” she tittered nervously.
Evan didn’t respond but reached inside a pocket on the driver’s door and pulled out a fresh pack of cigarettes. He opened them, steering the car with his forearms, put one between his lips, and then started patting his front pockets.
“You left your lighter in Summer’s bungalow. I saw it near the door.”
“Shit!”
Iris could tell his mind was racing. She helped it along. “Did you sleep in that room?”
“No.”
“Did you have sex?”
“Yesterday, but the maid changed the sheets since then.”
“There’s still probably trace evidence around. Course, your lighter is a bit more than a trace, especially if your fingerprints are on it. And the cigarette butts—bound to have your DNA on them. Oh, boy. Even worse.” Iris became overtly thoughtful. “If I were you, I wouldn’t be so flip about leaving stuff like that at the scene of a murder.”
“You think the cops are there yet?”
“I doubt it. In this rain and darkness, I’d be surprised if anyone heard or saw anything that would merit calling the police.”
Evan stopped the car in the middle of a narrow street, turned around, and started back.
Iris barely breathed, afraid she’d exhale a sigh of relief if she did. She forced herself not to fidget. Finally, the Château Bordeaux was in sight.
“You’re in luck, Evan. Doesn’t look like there are any—” As he was slowing down to park, Iris jumped out of the still-moving Range Rover and fell into the street. Evan screeched to a stop a few yards ahead, threw the car into reverse and headed for her. She hopped inside the Triumph and locked the door. The keys were in the ignition where she’d left them. She cranked it.
“C’mon, baby.”
It clicked. She tried again and again and it clicked. Evan was out of the Range Rover and next to the Triumph. He pulled on the locked door. When it wouldn’t give, he pounded his fist on the rag top.
She continued trying to get the engine to turn over as Evan opened a pocketknife. He slit a gash in the car’s top, reached in with both hands, and grabbed her. She held on to the steering wheel with her left hand and cranked the ignition key with her right. Just as she was about to lose her grip and go sailing out the top of the car, the engine turned over. He still had hold of her. She struggled to reach the gearshift. Her fingertips grazed the plastic knob, her foot barely depressing the clutch pedal. He pulled her hard and her foot slipped from the clutch, popping it. The car stalled but not before it lurched forward, making him slip on the street and lose his grip on her. He started to pull himself up, clinging to the door handle. She turned the ignition key. It again clicked without firing. She tried again. The engine turned over. She threw it into first gear and tore down the boulevard, knocking Evan into the street.
Iris swung the Triumph around the dead-end street in front of the Cross house, positioning it for a quick getaway. She left the lights on and the engine running. The electricity was out here too, and she’d lost her crummy flashlight somewhere at the Château Bordeaux. Lightning flashed high in the sky, followed by a clap of thunder.
She opened the front door, which Kip never seemed to lock anymore, and left it open.
“Brianna?”
She felt her way down the corridor and into Bridget’s office.
“Kip?”
She squinted into the darkness, to which her eyes were now adjusted. The office was empty. She heard Brianna scream.
She ran down the hall into the family room. Through the French doors, next to the pool, she saw Kip standing in front of Brianna, shielding her from Slade Slayer, who was holding them both at gunpoint. Now that Iris got a good look at the size of the person wearing the mask, she was confident she knew who it was.
Iris picked up a telephone from the coffee table. The line was dead. The storm had knocked the phones out. She remembered the gun Kip had in his office and wondered whether it was still there and if she had time to get it. Something in Kip’s posture grew more frantic, and something in the monster’s became restless and edgy. Iris decided she’d run out of time.
She ran to the French doors, raised both fists, and started pounding on the glass. “Hey! I’m over here! Yoo-hoo! Come and get me!”
When Slade Slayer turned to look, Kip lunged for the creature’s ankles. Iris flew from the house and scooped the terrified child into her arms. Just as she reached the back gate, she heard a gunshot and a sharp cry. She covered Brianna’s eyes and turned to see Kip falling backward into the pool.
Iris ran out the gate and down the stairs as fast as she could, carrying Brianna. She wasn’t aware of the child’s weight. She wasn’t aware of anything except the need to get away. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, she ran across Capri Road. She took a quick look behind her and saw that Slade Slayer was close. Iris ran into the abandoned house.
The front door swung open from a single hinge. The foyer was cluttered with trash, broken masonry, the remnants of a dead campfire, and piles of clothing. The walls were covered with spray-painted graffiti. Iris peeked behind the dangling front door, then squeezed herself and Brianna into that space.
“Don’t be scared,” she told the child, telling herself at the same time. “We’ll hide until it’s safe. Shhh.” She lowered Brianna to the floor and wrapped her arms tightly around her.
Iris clutched Brianna tighter as they heard footsteps pass on the warped and pitted hardwood floor. The footsteps receded, then returned. Iris was relieved when she heard their pursuer ascend the staircase. The second she heard footsteps on the floor above, she and Brianna would slip unseen out the front door.
Iris felt something brush against her jeans leg. She thought it was Brianna’s foot, but looked down and saw a large rat sniffing around their legs. She looked away, gritting her teeth, hoping that Brianna didn’t see the rat. It didn’t work. The child screamed.
Iris picked Brianna up underneath her arms and swung her from behind the door onto the cracked front porch. “Run down the stairs to Aunt Marge’s and pound on the door.”
Brianna looked at her with a mixture of confusion and fear. She took a hesitant step, and then turned back. “I don’t want to leave you!”
Iris pointed in the direction of the stairs. “I’ll be fine. Go!”
Brianna looked as if she was about to burst into tears, but she turned and ran. Iris went back into the house as the figure of Slade Slayer appeared at the top of the stairs. Iris darted into the rubbish-strewn living room, which looked ghostly in the light filtering through the broken windows, leaped onto one of the window frames, and was about to lower herself onto the hill below when the whole house shuddered. She lost her balance and fell into the mud.
She was struggling to pull her arms from her long, mud-soaked raincoat when she saw Slade Slayer in the window above her. She freed herself from the coat but couldn’t get out of the way before her would-be killer jumped. The rain-soaked earth shifted again. They both slid down the hill in the mud, helpless to halt their descent. When they stopped, the masked figure was climbing to its knees, aiming a gun at her. Iris sprang forward. They struggled for the weapon. There was a terri
fying noise above them as the house moved. Then they were in motion again, tumbling down with the mudslide.
Iris toppled head over heels, futilely grabbing at passing bushes, some of which were sliding along with her. Slade Slayer had gone down headfirst, losing the gun. When the slide stopped, Iris’s head was partially submerged in mud. Grunting, choking, she pulled free. Looking up, she saw the exposed foundation of the house above. The huge structure creaked ominously.
Iris screamed as the figure of Slade Slayer loomed above her, black-gloved hands reaching to wrap themselves around her throat and push her head down into the soft, suffocating mud.
Iris grabbed the face above her with both hands, jamming her thumbs through the mask’s eyeholes. Slade Slayer emitted a guttural moan but still did not release her. Mud seeped into Iris’s mouth, but she maintained her grip. Finally, the monster let go. Iris spit mud as she tried to sit up but couldn’t. The suction-like mud held her fast.
The house creaked loudly.
The monster was crouched low, keening as it rubbed its eyes with one hand and steadied itself with the other against the mud, as if dazed. Iris had almost pulled herself free when Slade Slayer screamed with fury and again fell upon her. Iris blindly clutched at the ground. Her hand grazed something hard. She tightened her fingers around a chunk of concrete, said a prayer, then slammed it with all her might against Slade Slayer’s head.
The masked creature fell backward. Iris leaned over and continued to strike…until with a cry of horror, she let the concrete fall from her hand. Hurriedly, she hooked her fingers beneath the edge of the killer’s torn mask and laboriously pulled it off, revealing the bloody, unconscious face of Toni Burton.
“Oh, my God!” Iris cried.
On her knees, Iris grabbed Toni by the collar and began dragging her over the rumbling, shifting ground toward the stairs, sobbing with the effort. She slipped against the slick mud but reached the railing, grabbing it and hauling herself onto the staircase. Gasping, spitting out mud, she slipped one arm underneath Toni’s and was hoisting her onto the steps when the house, and the hillside beneath it, gave way.