“Then just untie the knot.”
I shook my head.
She stared into my eyes and said nothing for a few moments. Then, in a softer voice, she said, “You don’t have to do it now. It can wait till you come back.”
“When I come back?”
“From switching the cars.”
“Oh. Right.” I pulled one of the bandanas out of my pocket, wiped the knife clean, and tossed the knife to the ground. Then I stepped behind Judy.
“What’re you doing?” she asked.
“I don’t want you yelling for help.”
“I won’t. I promise. Don’t put that on me. Please.”
“There are other ways to shut you up,” I said.
She didn’t argue after that, but just stood motionless while I put the gag into her mouth and tied it behind her neck.
Then I stepped around to the front.
She stared into my eyes. She was breathing hard again, air hissing through her nostrils.
“I’m not switching the cars,” I explained. “It’s a stupid idea. Somebody’d probably see me. Anyway, I’m too tired to play any more games. What I’m going to do, Judy, is leave you here just as you are.”
She nodded slightly.
“I’m not going to kill you. Okay?”
Her nod grew a little more enthusiastic.
“I mean, you helped me out with Fatso. If you hadn’t kicked him in the head…I don’t know, maybe he would’ve gotten me. So I owe you for that. Besides, none of this is your fault. I just bumped into you by mistake. Wrong address. I was afraid Tony might have a redial button…Whoa!”
Judy’s eyebrows lifted.
We needed to talk.
Instead of bothering to untie the gag, I hooked a forefinger underneath it at each corner of her mouth, pulled roughly, and dragged it down over her chin. The bandana hung around her neck like a dog scarf.
And like a dog, she panted for air.
“What about redial?” I asked. “Did Tony have it?”
“Just…wait.”
“Come on. Did he? I know he moved to a new apartment and you’ve never been there, but what sort of phone did he have at his old place? He might’ve taken it with him. Did it have redial?”
“If I tell…”
“You’d better tell, unless you wanta die right now!”
“No gag, okay? Please?”
I punched her in the belly. A good hard one. Her breath gushed against my face. She couldn’t fold over because of the way she was hanging; instead, the blow made her knees jump up and sent her swinging backward.
When she swung forward, I caught her by the sides. I stopped her, held her steady for a moment, then took a couple of steps backward so I could see her better.
Mouth agape, she wheezed for breath. Her eyes were shut tightly. She kept her knees high, so all that held her up was the rope around her wrists.
She really looked as if she were being stretched. Her arms and torso actually seemed longer and skinnier than before. Her belly was sunken in. Her ribcage was high and bulging. Her breasts were pulled almost flat against her chest.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Put your feet down.”
She just kept hanging there, gasping.
“Put them down and stand up.”
She didn’t.
Instead, she blurted, “I just…I just…You didn’t have to…”
“Shut up and tell me about his redial!”
“Okay. Okay.”
“Stand up!”
She lowered her legs until her feet met the ground. Though she still had to stand tall, she no longer looked as if she were being pulled apart on the rack.
“Now,” I said, “what about it?”
“He doesn’t. Have it.”
“Have you been to his new place?
She shook her head.
“Then how do you know what kind of phone he has?”
“I…gave it to him.”
“What?”
“His phone. I gave it to him. When we were…going together. He…I don’t think he’d…get rid of it.”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t,” I said. “Not if it came from you. And it didn’t have redial?”
“No. Huh-uh.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“You’ve told me a lot of lies tonight,” I pointed out. “How do I know this isn’t another one?”
“I swear. Honest to God.”
“Why’d you buy him a phone that didn’t have redial?”
Her face contorted with confusion or pain or disgust—hard to tell which, since it was sort of battered. She said, “Huh?”
“If you’re buying your boyfriend a new telephone, why do you get him one that doesn’t have a redial button?”
“I don’t know. It didn’t…I didn’t buy it for him. It was my old phone. I got a new one…I was going to throw it away, but…he asked me for it. So I gave it to him.”
“Why do you want to lie about a thing like this?” I asked her.
“I’m not lying.”
“Did you forget about Tony’s answering machine?”
“No. That’s what it was…an answering machine. The one I gave him.”
“I don’t think so. Tony told me that you never had an answering machine.”
“But…That’s not so.”
“Oh, yes it is. Why did you lie about it?”
“I didn’t. Honest.”
“You lie like a rug, Judy.”
“So do you.”
“But I’m running this show,” I said, and started to unbuckle my belt.
“What’re you doing?”
I pulled the belt out of its loops, and my cut-offs fell down. I stepped out of them.
“Hey,” Judy said. She sounded like a kid again. “Come on, Alice. Don’t.”
“Admit you lied.”
“Haven’t you hurt me enough?”
“I saved your life. Remember? You said I can do anything I want.”
“Why do you want to hurt me?”
“Because you lied. Admit you lied.”
“Okay. I lied. Okay?”
“You didn’t give him his phone?”
“No.”
“You wanted me to leave here thinking he didn’t have redial. Why?”
“I don’t know.”
I swung the belt. My sidestroke, at a slightly downward angle, caught her just above the hip then curled around and lashed her across the buttocks. She jerked and gasped.
“Why?” I asked again.
“I don’t know what he’s got!” she blurted.
“Then why did you lie?”
“You won’t…”
“Won’t what?”
“Believe me.”
“Try me.”
“It was just…just because…I didn’t want you to worry.”
“What?”
“Your…You must figure…redial’s got your number. If he has it. You’re scared.”
“Does he have it? Do you know?”
“He’s got it.”
“Shit!”
“It’s…I know his answering machine. It’s got…everything.”
“Fuck!”
So then I sort of lost it.
I whipped the hell out of her with Tony’s belt, lashing her with all my strength, circling her as I swung.
Finally, my arm fell to my side, spent. The belt swaying by my leg, I stumbled around to Judy’s front.
She was limp, her feet on the ground but her knees bent, all her weight on the rope again.
The fire had burnt down low, so I couldn’t see her very well.
I staggered over to it, squatted, and added some twigs and branches. I could hardly catch my breath. Sweat poured off me. The shirt was clinging to my back and my loafers felt slimy inside. I didn’t like being this close to the fire. It was too damn hot. But I wanted the fire bright, so I kept adding fuel for a while.
Finally, the light reached Judy and turned her to polished gold. A
long with her other injuries, she now had stripes. In some places, the stripes bled. All down her body, her skin was shiny with blood and sweat.
I rose from my squat and hobbled over to her.
She was panting for breath and crying. It made her shake a lot.
I picked up my cut-offs, then stood to the side and watched her.
She was really shaking. It made me wonder if she had a fever.
“Sorry you made me do that to you,” I said.
She raised her head and looked at me.
“Now, I suppose you’ll tell on me.”
Her head moved slowly from side to side.
“No?” I asked.
When she spoke, her lips made some small bubbles. Red bubbles of spit and blood.
She said, “You…saved…me.”
“You’re not gonna tell?”
“Milo…did…it.”
As I worked Tony’s belt into the loops of my cut-offs, I said to Judy, “How do I know you’re not lying again?”
She didn’t answer.
I fastened the belt, then looked down at the knife on the ground.
I knew that I ought to finish her off.
I’d told her that I wouldn’t, though. And besides, you should’ve seen her. She looked so vulnerable and hurt, hanging there in the firelight. And so beautiful. And she had that bandana hanging around her neck.
I bet you couldn’t have killed her, either.
“You’d better not tell on me,” I said to her. “If the cops ever come looking for me, I’ll hunt you down. And what I’ll do to you…you’ll wish I’d left you for Milo.”
She moved her head slowly up and down.
“Hang in there, honey,” I said. And then I left.
25
ON THE WAY OUT
Dumb, I know.
Just call me Miss Sentimental. I knew better than to walk off and leave her alive, but that’s exactly what I did. My heart got in the way of my brain.
I’d gotten to like her. That was the problem. It isn’t easy to kill someone you like. Let that be a warning to you.
Of course, as I wrote early on, it’s better not to kill anyone at all. Hell, look what happened to me all because I got carried away and whacked Tony with my saber. An accident, and look at all the shit that’s already flown because of it. And we’ve still got plenty of book to go, so you don’t even know the half of it yet.
You give some poor jerk a chop in the head and you’re in for a world of troubles. So try not to do it.
Anyway, I left Judy behind, hanging by the rope and pretty beaten up—but alive—and hurried out of the clearing.
After so much time with the firelight, the woods seemed blacker than a pit. I walked slowly, feeling my way with both hands, trying not to crash into anything or fall down again. Before long, I’d lost all sense of direction and didn’t know where I was.
Somewhere in Miller’s Woods, that’s all I knew for sure.
But I still had high hopes of finding my way home before dawn.
As I trudged through the woods, my night vision returned. No longer completely blind, I could make out the shapes in the darkness.
I kept thinking about how stupid I’d been about Judy. If only I’d finished her off, I would now be completely in the clear. The cops would never in a million years connect me with anything.
Now, I was in Judy’s hands.
She probably would finger me. Why not?
Because I’d saved her from the clutches of Milo?
I’d also spared her from myself.
I mean, I’d hurt her, but I hadn’t killed her. So, really, I’d saved her life twice.
She owed me, and she knew it, but she would probably spill everything to the cops anyway. As you may have noticed, she’s a goody-two-shoes. A regular Girl Scout. A gal like her might be grateful to me and she might lie sometimes—for instance, if she’s trying to pull a trick on someone planning to kill her—but she’ll have this compulsion to be truthful to the cops.
She’ll rat me out.
Which wasn’t exactly a sudden revelation. I’d known it all along. Sort of. Even while she’d been telling me about her big plan to leave me out of the picture, I’d never quite believed she would carry out her end of it.
Maybe she’d thought she would.
Or maybe the whole business had been a lie to save her ass.
Well, something had saved her ass. I’m not sure what. Maybe a combination of things.
Such as a ton of luck. Plus the facts that she was beautiful and friendly and all that. And I knew it was only by a mistake of mine that she got dragged into this whole mess in the first place. Then I had to feel sorry for her because she’d gotten herself raped by Milo. Then I had to feel grateful because she kicked him in the head. Then she confused me with promises about never telling on me.
Those are probably some of the things that saved her, but maybe not all of them.
Who knows why stuff happens?
Not me, that’s for sure.
I’m interested, and I like to look for answers, but the answers don’t seem to be very simple and I’ve got a feeling that there’re secret forces at work. Genes, for instance. Or Fate. Or God. Or gremlins. Or certain stuff you don’t want to admit, not even to yourself. I mean, who the hell knows? Maybe we aren’t even supposed to know the real answers.
Maybe “the truth is out there,” like they say on the TV show, but that doesn’t mean we can ever find it out.
All I knew for sure was that I didn’t kill Judy, so now my life was in her hands.
It made me feel like a patsy. A softie. A dope.
But it made me feel good, too, somehow. I liked knowing that she was still alive back there at the camp. And that she was only alive because of me.
In a few hours, she would probably be back in her apartment.
Even if she couldn’t get out of the rope, somebody would be sure to find her soon.
Maybe not.
Though I knew Miller’s Woods pretty well (at least in daylight), I wasn’t exactly sure where the campsite was located. It might’ve been in a remote part of the woods, not close to any trails. I mean, if you’re going to do what Milo’d been doing to people, you’d make sure to set up camp where a bunch of nature lovers won’t stumble into it.
He must’ve had plenty of confidence in its remoteness, or he wouldn’t have built a fire. He’d not only built the fire, but he’d left it burning—and Judy dangling—while he went to bed in his tent.
That’s confidence.
Or stupidity.
He must’ve been awfully sure, too, that he’d tied Judy so well she didn’t stand a chance of getting loose.
What if she can’t get loose and she doesn’t get found?
She could die at the end of that rope.
That’d be fine, I told myself. If she dies that way, it won’t be my fault. Milo put her there, not me. But she’ll be just as dead, so she won’t be able to tell on me.
I wondered how long it would take her to die that way.
A few days?
Hell, somebody would probably find her before that. Or she’d work her way out of the rope.
I could go back and save her.
Yeah, right. In my condition, I’d be lucky to make it home. I sure couldn’t turn back, now, and go hunting for the camp.
Maybe tomorrow. Get some rest, and go looking in daylight.
1. Why would I want to?
2. I probably couldn’t find the campsite again, even if I tried.
3. If I did find it, the cops might be there waiting for me.
Maybe I’m a sentimental fool, but I’m not crazy.
Eventually, after trekking through the woods for at least an hour, I made my way into familiar territory. I’d really hoped that I might come out in Serena and Charlie’s back yard, but it didn’t work out that way. The familiar territory was only the creek.
But I sure was glad to find it.
I worked my way out to the middle of the creek (with
out falling!), sat down, leaned back, and let the wonderful, chilly water rush all over me. It felt so good it hurt.
I was in awful shape. I’d never been so worn out in my life, and I still had a long hike home. At least a mile through the woods. It made me almost cry, just thinking about it.
The night was still dark, though. I still had time. So I lay in the water with just my face out, and rested for a while. Soon, the water didn’t feel so cold. It seemed cozy and almost warm.
A nice bath. Gotta have a nice, long bath when I get home.
Then I thought about how to get there. I’d made the hike between home and the picnic area many times during my three years living above Serena and Charlie’s garage. Never in the dark, though. I’d always been afraid of the woods at night.
They even frightened me a little in daylight. Though I loved the solitude and quiet, I’d always been aware that someone might be lurking nearby, watching me, stalking me. Not that I’d ever discovered anyone doing that sort of thing. But I’d felt the potential. I’d even felt the urge, myself, to sneak around and spy on other people I found in the woods.
A few times, I’d surrendered to the urge.
But that’s another story.
The deal is, I knew how to get home from the picnic area by hiking through the woods. But I wasn’t too sure about doing it at night. The trails got tricky in places. I might miss a turn-off and end up lost. There were slopes and ditches to contend with. I might take a bad fall. Or walk into a broken limb and skewer myself.
What about taking Judy’s car?
At first, the idea seemed incredibly idiotic. For one thing, somebody might see me driving it. For another, what would I do with her car afterward? Where would I leave it?
I’d be asking for trouble.
On the other hand, I had Judy’s keys in my pocket. Her car was waiting for me just up the slope from the creek and it could get me home in less than ten minutes.
Fantastic!
I’d park it in the garage, directly under my room, where it would be safely hidden. I could dispose of it later—tomorrow night, for instance.
I was awfully tempted.
It’d be so easy!
But it’d be so incriminating, too. What if I got caught with Judy’s car?
Then came a thought that changed everything.
After Midnight Page 16