CRIME THRILLERS-A Box Set

by Billie Sue Mosiman

  It had been a long night. He meant to sleep it off. If he didn't wake up for eighteen hours he wouldn't be a bit surprised.

  In his own room he slipped off his shoes, took his belt from the loops of his slacks, and fell onto the bed without drawing back the covers. He couldn't sleep yet. His mind turned over the kill the way a farmer with a shovel turns over rich earth for spring planting. Down one row, up another until an entire patch of ground has been tilled.

  His thoughts took him down the street, into the conversation with Riaro beside the Rockola, down the street again after his prey, then up close, tight shot of Riaro's look of betrayal, his comprehension of his dilemma, his sprint for freedom.

  The fight. The suction of Cruise's fist as he withdrew it from Riaro's torso. The fall. The quick death. The blood...

  #

  Molly stood shivering in the dark just inside the door of her room. She listened breathlessly for Cruise to leave. Bands of moonlight marched across the floor from the far window--a ladder of yellow beckoning her to climb it, to escape by it.

  He was insane. That's all she could think. It was the sole explanation for what happened tonight. Even though the Mexican had pulled a knife, it was Cruise who pursued him, Cruise who ripped open his belly and left him to die in the street.

  Then that creepy little walk outside of town to the cemetery. All the weird talk of the dead being better off. The strange pledge of loyalty to his ideas that he demanded from her before he would let her go. She had been so afraid she thought she might wet all over herself. That or faint outright in his arms. She knew what he wanted to hear and suspected violence had she not said it. She knew she must agree with him.

  If he wanted to make her feel safe and secure, he had gone about it like no other man would have. He committed murder without a qualm, apparently without any remorse whatsoever. He had been composed enough to enter the cantina afterward and wash his hands. His actions were like those of a mechanical man, a computerized automaton with a fairly intelligent brain, but a soul made of silicon chips and soldered connections.

  What had she done taking a ride with him? She knew with a certainty that came from intuition rather than any past experience beyond the scene she had witnessed tonight that he was extremely dangerous. He inspired a fear in her that left her wordless.

  She didn't know how long she had been standing next to the door straining to hear any sound. Surely Cruise had left by now. She must escape before he woke at dusk to drive them out of town. She had to call her father and ask what she should do. She needed help. She had to get away from Cruise before something terrible happened to her. Something fatal.

  She wanted to reach out a hand to the door and open it, but for long seconds her arm felt paralyzed. She knew that uncontrollable desperation shimmered right at the edge of her thought processes. She also understood that if she wasn't careful, if she wasn't strong and diligent in containing that fear it could permanently disable her.

  If she'd only not taken a lift from Cruise. If only she'd not fallen into his web.

  Home. She had to call Daddy. She had to ask him what she must do to save herself.

  She made her arm move, forced her hand to close over the doorknob. She turned it, moved to the crack and peeked out, let out a breath when she found the hall empty.

  Wait! She needed to take her clothes bag. She rushed across the room to the bath and snatched up her things. Colgate toothpaste, orange toothbrush, blue bottles of Finesse shampoo and conditioner. Secret solid stick deodorant. He'd said she smelled like baby powder. It caused her to shiver inside to think she'd been attracted to him because when he finally took her into his arms, she knew her life was in jeopardy. It repulsed her now that she had thought of him as a potential lover. She must have been crazy.

  Then in the bedroom she found her purse on the dresser, threw the hot pink hairbrush into it, snapped it shut. Stuffed her dirty clothes into the blue bag, zipped it, hurried again to the door.

  Couldn't get her breath. Couldn't think. Paused at the open door, clutched her purse and bag in her arms. What if he was near the elevator?

  She stuck her head into the hall and looked. No. He wasn't there. He had gone to his room and was asleep by now. If she didn't find a way to control her thoughts, she'd never make it out of the hotel.

  She drew in a deep breath and stepped into the hall. Closed the door behind her. Walked along the carpeted hall to the elevator. Saw that it wasn't in use. Punched the down button. When the doors slid open she jumped. The noise was unbearable. Surely everyone in the entire hotel could hear the cables of the elevator working as it came to fetch her. She was ready to turn and run the opposite direction. For just a second she imagined Cruise in the elevator staring down at her sadly. Saying something crazy like, "You're not going anywhere, little girl." She must get her imagination under control.

  She ran inside the elevator and pushed the button for the lobby. She had to find a phone, get someone to help her. She hadn't any idea how she was going to do that, but she must.

  Empty lobby. No one behind the registration desk. She flew across the room, stood up on tiptoe to look behind the desk and into a hallway that led off from the area. "Anyone here?" she called. She looked behind her, saw the elevator doors closing. Had someone called for the elevator? Was it Cruise? Oh, God. Oh, God.

  "Hey! Anyone?" No one came forward. It was a ghost hotel. She didn't see a phone on the counter or behind it. She couldn't get high enough, even by standing on the brass foot rail, to see over onto the back of the counter.

  In the lobby again she wandered around looking at the flocked wallpaper, beginning to feel disjointed. Where were the pay phones? Didn't they have them here the way they did in the States? She went a little ways down two separate hallways that must have led to the closed dining room and the bar looking for a phone or someone to ask. Damn. Nothing.

  The doorman was missing from the door. Where had everyone gone? She ran out and down the long wide steps to the sidewalk. Sunrise painted the east a dusty pink-violet. Birds sang morning chorals somewhere along the red-tiled rooftop of the hotel. All the stars were gone and the moon was no more than a smudge in the sky.

  She'd find something open. A store. A cafe. She'd beg them to let her use the phone.

  It was eerie to listen to her lone footsteps on the sidewalks. Now that day was coming she could see what the town really looked like. It wasn't a place she'd want to spend any time. Weeds grew to the edges of the sidewalk. Paper cups and beer cans littered the curbs along the poorly paved street. The storefronts were dust-covered and looked hurriedly painted. Everything had a temporary look to it as if the people could pick up and leave on the spur of the moment. It was more of an encampment than a real town.

  At the cafe where Cruise had told her to wait all the chairs had been turned upside down on the tabletops. A mangy gray cat sat beneath one of the tables eating something that looked green and moldy. The hungry feline hissed as Molly neared so that she had to go to the edge of the sidewalk to avoid an attack.

  "Bitch," Molly whispered at the cat. "You're no help unless you happen to know where I can find a phone."

  The cat growled and showed its teeth, hair rising along its spine. Molly went on down the sidewalk, eying the locked doors, the barred and shuttered windows. The farther away she got from the imposing structure of the hotel at the end of the street, the easier she found it to breathe.

  But everyone was asleep. She hadn't yet seen a soul on the street. Every bar was closed. Curtains fluttered in open windows on second floors.

  At the corner she turned left. More closed shops, cafes, bars. Ahead, though, she saw houses. Since this street ran north and south, on one side the houses were in shadow, on the other weak morning sunlight threw the shacks in relief. Some of them looked as if they might fall down when a strong wind came. The roofs were made of every imaginable substance from sheets of corrugated tin to raw planks in varying lengths and widths. She stepped up her pace. She'd knock on a d
oor, find someone with a telephone, call her father...

  ...she thought she heard someone walking behind her. She whirled around so hard her hair covered her eyes. She pushed it out of the way and stared back where she'd come. She saw no one, but she was almost sure she wasn't alone now. Someone else was up, moving about the town. She waited for him to turn the corner and follow her to make sure it wasn't Cruise, but she couldn't hear footsteps any longer. She turned back to the task at hand. Might as well try any door, she thought. It was a good possibility that few of the Mexicans had private telephones, but she must try to find one regardless. Until the stores and cafes opened she hadn't any choice.

  She crossed the street to the nearest house and knocked loudly. She heard animal sounds and wondered where they were coming from. It was a hea-hea-hea sound, not like a cat or dog, but some animal she didn't recognize.

  She started to knock again when the door opened. It swung back on great noisy hinges. A little boy in white briefs stood looking up at her. His eyes were big, wide awake, black as soot.

  "Please, do you have a telephone?" She pantomimed using a phone, holding the receiver in her hand to her ear. If they didn't understand her English she'd move on to the next house. She hadn't any time to lose.

  The boy was moved gently aside by a man. His thick black hair rose in a three-inch pompadour and sideburns grew down each brown cheek. He was bare-chested, but wore a slouchy pair of brown pants that he held up with one hand. "Senorita?"

  "I need a phone. A phone? Telephone." Again she pretended to be dialing a phone, lifting a receiver to her ear.

  "I have to call my father in the United States. In Florida? I'm in trouble and I need..."

  The man hadn't moved or given any indication he had understood her. She stopped talking when a gray and white spotted goat nudged aside the man's leg. It stuck its triangular head up at her and bleated plaintively. She saw the pink tongue, the white even bottom teeth, the black marble eyes.

  "Shoo!" the Mexican said, pushing back the goat with his knee. "Come in, lady," he said to Molly. "I have a telephone for you to use, please. It's early, si? We were sleeping."

  She wondered fleetingly why his hair had stayed so perfect even in bed sleeping.

  "I'm so sorry to bother you, and I wouldn't except it's really important. But you do have a phone? That's'great. Thanks a lot. I couldn't find a pay phone anywhere in town..." Again her sentence trailed off as she entered the dark little house. A fetid smell assaulted her and she wanted to gag. The reflex hit her throat, the contraction came, but she forced herself to breathe, to control the urge. She looked down and saw the floor was made of earth. She had accidentally stepped into goat dung. She scraped her rubber-soled sneaker in the dirt to get it off. All around her swarmed goats. Big ones with horns. Smaller ones, the females, she supposed. Baby ewes, downy-haired, little perked ears, all those shiny marble eyes. There must have been a dozen of them altogether. Some were of one solid color, others were speckled, patched with browns or grays or blacks. When her vision adjusted to the lack of light inside the house she saw not only goats, but people--the man's family. A woman sitting on the side of a drooping cot in a cotton nightgown. Three children. All boys under the age of ten including the little one who had answered the door. They were trying to get the goats away from her and corralled into one corner of the room. An old man and an old woman, probably the grandparents, were buttoning shirts and fastening pants and skirts, slipping on sandals. The room was a circus, crowded, smelly, close, and disorderly. Molly couldn't speak.

  "In here," the Mexican said, leading her by the hand through the goats and children, through a printed cotton curtain into what appeared to be a kitchen of sorts. There was a brick oven in an outside wall, wooden counters along two other walls, pots and pans hanging from the rafters, a huge pottery bowl of flour. The smell of grease and cooked food drowned the scent of the goats from the other room. Next to a big water barrel with a tin dipper hanging from the side stood an old stool and on it sat an ancient black dial phone, the kind Molly had seen only at antique markets. The telephone wire also went up to the open rafters, was looped on hooks across the room to the open window. It evidently hooked up directly to a pole outdoors.

  "Amazing," Molly said.

  "It is, is it not?" the Mexican said, his bare, hairless chest puffed with pride. "Not everyone can have a telephone." He took the receiver, listened for the dial tone, then smiled and handed it over. "It works. It always works unless we get a lot of rain."

  "Wonderful."

  "This will be collect, si?"

  "Oh, yes, it'll be collect. Thank you. Thank you so much." She took the phone, waited for him to return to the front sleeping room. When he did not, she shrugged, and dialed the operator. It took several minutes to explain to the operator that she wanted to make a collect call to the United States, to Flor-re-da, and to give her the number. The Mexican watched, his face beaming, his smile flaring his cheeks so that the sideburns stood out on his face like the ties on a woman's bonnet.

  Finally Molly heard the phone ringing on the other end of the line. The connection had gone through. It continued ringing. Ringing. "C'mon, Daddy," she whispered. "Answer the phone."

  After an interminable time the long-distance operator came on the line and said the party was not answering. Molly almost said she knew that, she could hear, for God's sake.

  When she replaced the receiver in its cradle she was near tears. She wondered what time it was in Florida. Maybe her father was out for a while. If he'd been sleeping, the ringing would have wakened him.

  "Bad news?" the Mexican asked.

  "I got through, but no one answered." She was almost in tears. The man looked saddened by that fact along with her.

  There was a racket in the sleeping room. Goats stomping and bleating again, children speaking unintelligible Spanish. Someone called a name and the man pushed back the curtain. Rather than enter the room, however, he stayed where he was, blocking Molly's way. She had meant to follow him. Maybe she could get him to help her. Since he spoke English and was so kind, maybe he could find her a way back to Texas before Cruise woke up at sundown.

  Suddenly the man turned and took her arm. He led her forward through the curtain. She didn't think to resist.

  "What is it?" she asked, confused.

  Cruise stood towering over the assembled Mexican family. His shoulders kept the sunlight from entering through the front door. He stood silently, his gaze never leaving her. Goats pressed against his legs and nibbled at the cuffs of his slacks. The children were at their mother's side, unmoving.

  Molly's heart sank. She tried to pull free of the Mexican. "Let me go!" She might leap out the window in the kitchen.

  "I didn't know she was your girl, Senor Cruise. She asked to use the phone. I could not say no."

  "Come with me, Molly."

  "I don't want to go with you. I want to stay here."

  He smiled at that. He looked at the Mexican. "She wants to stay here."

  "Oh, no, oh, no, she cannot do that!" The Mexican faced her. His hair had gone wild in disarray from the shaking he was doing to his head. The pompadour was coming apart. "You can't stay here. you must go with Senor Cruise."

  It was impossible. She hadn't any way out. She hadn't even made it to the edge of town. He must have followed her since she left the hotel. It was his footfalls she had heard behind her.

  "You can't stay here, Molly," Cruise said. He crossed the space between them and took her hand. The Mexican held out her arm as if it were a gift, as if to say, Take her, take her and all the trouble that comes with her.

  Molly was jerked out of the small house and into blinding sunshine. She squinted her eyes, tried to keep up with Cruise's long strides down the sidewalk and into the street.

  She wanted to scream, but the people here knew Cruise, they feared him, they gave in to his wishes. Her screams, she realized, would do her no good in this place.

  "Who were you calling?"

 
"Cruise, I want to go home. I never should have run away from home, I know that now. I don't want to be on my own. I was just being a stupid rebellious kid."

  "Yes, you do want to be on your own. You left home and you aren't going back. Once you leave home, it's forever. Now. Who were you calling?"

  "My father."

  "What did you tell him?"

  Before she could stop her tongue, she had told the truth. "He didn't answer." As soon as she said it she knew it was a mistake. She should have lied and said she told him where she was and with whom. Damn it to hell. How much more stupid could she get? One wrong turn after another.

  "That's good," Cruise said. "You don't need your daddy. You've got me."

  A1l the way to the hotel Molly tried to soothe Cruise's anger. It seethed beneath the surface and deepened the tone of his voice. It made him abrupt with her, jerking her over curbstones, up stairs, into the waiting elevator. Nothing she said was working.

  "I didn't want to have to do this, Molly." He had her in her room and dropped her into the chair.

  "Do what?" Punish her?

  "Tie you up during my sleep time." He stooped to the floor and picked up nylon lengths of rope.

  "Where'd you get those?"

  "As soon as you left this room I brought them here."

  "You're going to tie me to the chair?"

  "It's all your fault." He tied her ankles first, kneeling, head bowed. Sunlight came through the windows and lit his brown and silver hair with a halo of gold. She stared at his hair, at the back of his head. She knew he had a knife there. It was unbelievable, but she'd seen him take it from his hair.

  Molly wouldn't cry. Not in front of him. Not in front of a crazy man. She wouldn't fight him either, not now when she hadn't any chance of escape. She'd give in. She'd endure.

  "I'm disappointed that you lied to me. Everything would have been all right if you hadn't lied," he said, tying her hands in her lap, then looping the rope through the arms of the chair.