Roy pressed to end the call and handed the phone back to Anita.
She was speechless. She had never seen Roy like this before. It scared her.
He grabbed his latest margarita and finished it in a gulp.
When the bill came, they both reached for it.
“Come on, Roy, my turn,” she said.
“What, you think I’m poor white trash?” he snapped, and she immediately let it go.
Roy pulled out his wallet. He had a thick wad of bills stuffed inside. Where does a truck driver get all that money?
As they stepped outside the restaurant, Anita immediately started looking for a cab. But no cab. Hardly any cars. A cool breeze swept the air from the direction of Lake Michigan.
“Let’s walk it,” said Roy.
“You haven’t seen my blisters—” started Anita.
“Do you want to go somewhere for drinks?”
“No. I’ve had one, that’s enough.”
“How come you don’t like to drink?”
She considered telling him about Dennis and his alcohol problems, the whole history, but decided not to go there. “I’m tired,” she said simply.
They began walking back toward the direction of Michigan Avenue. They would have to cross the bridge over the Chicago River to get back to the hotel. Anita kept her eyes peeled for a cab.
Roy hovered close. He was silent. He was starting to creep her out again. There was no one else around, no pedestrians, not enough streetlights. More than anything, Anita wished that Dennis was here, now, at her side.
Anita started to think about the pepper spray in her purse. She tried to pick up the pace, but Roy was walking slowly.
“What’s your hurry?” he asked.
“It’s late. It’s dark. I don’t really know where I am.”
“It’s a nice night. Enjoy it.” His tone was weird. Was it the alcohol? She looked at him. He had an eerie, blurred look in his eyes.
A lone car drove past and disappeared. No other cars were forthcoming.
Anita suddenly felt very, very frightened.
What was Roy’s story anyway?
Fragments of information began moving in her mind, combining like some kind of equation.
He immediately flies to Chicago when she tells him she saw Tim…
He’s got wads of cash…
He’s acting weird, he discourages contact with the police, he’s apprehensive about Dennis…
He takes her to a restaurant in the middle of nowhere and tries to feed her drinks…
What if Roy is somehow involved in all this?
Then the thundering thought: black market adoption.
She picked up her pace.
“Slow down!” said Roy.
“No,” she responded. She stepped off the sidewalk and into the street, into the light.
He quickened his pace to keep up with her.
What if Roy killed Pam…staged Tim’s death…and sold him to someone in Chicago?
“Anita…” said Roy.
“I see a cab!” she shouted. In the distance. Heading her way. She waved frantically.
It started to turn in the wrong direction.
“Taxi!” she shrieked.
It stopped. Reversed. Came at them.
“Jesus Christ,” muttered Roy.
“I told you, I have blisters,” said Anita.
Roy said nothing during the cab drive back to the hotel. She tried to calm down. If I panic, I won’t handle this correctly. I need to think, I need to regroup…
Inside the hotel lobby, she told Roy, “I’ll call you in the morning.”
“I’ll walk you to your room,” he said.
“No, thanks, I’m fine.” She headed for the elevators.
“There are crazies in this city. They’ve got your phone number now.”
“They don’t have my room number.” She jabbed the elevator button.
“C’mon…”
“No,” she said firmly. The doors slid open and she entered. She pressed seven.
Just before the elevator closed, Roy stepped inside. The doors shut behind him.
He said nothing on the ride up, standing near her. She could hear his breathing. She saw sweat on his sideburns.
When the elevator doors opened, she stepped out and simultaneously reached into her purse for her card key. He followed.
The corridor was quiet, empty.
Heart pounding, she stood at her room door. “Thanks for walking me up. I’ll be fine now.”
He didn’t budge. “Can I come in for a sec?”
“No,” she said. “Why?”
“I need to talk with you.”
“Then talk.”
“Not out here,” he said.
“Can it wait until morning?”
He looked at the carpet and shrugged. “I suppose.”
“Thanks,” she said. Time to move quick. “Goodnight, Roy.” Anita unlocked the door and slipped inside. Immediately she turned to close it.
Roy jammed his foot in the way. The door wouldn’t close.
“Stop it!” exclaimed Anita, in full panic.
Roy shoved hard and the door opened wide. He pushed his way inside.
Everything happened in fast motion, a flurry of movements.
Roy came toward her as she frantically stuffed her hand into her purse. She felt the pepper spray canister graze her fingertips. She clutched at it. Was it upside-down? Was the trigger unlocked?
He had her cornered against the wall. As she brought the pepper spray out of her purse, the canister fumbled from her grasp. It landed on the floor. Roy’s shoe knocked it, sending it spinning across the carpet. He moved in on her.
Anita opened her mouth to scream.
Roy kissed her.
A drunk, margarita-and-quesadilla-tasting kiss, not rough, but not gentle, either. She had no reaction for the first few seconds, stunned into compliance. Then she grabbed his arms and pushed him away. He stumbled backward.
She stared at him.
He looked dopey now, drunk and pathetic. She did not see a killer in his eyes. Just a sad sack, a buffoon.
“Shit, I didn’t…I’m sorry,” he said. He appeared genuinely startled. By her mortified expression or his own behavior?
“What the hell is wrong with you?” she asked, breathing hard, eyes locked on him.
“I lost my head,” he mumbled.
“I thought you were going to kill me,” she said, heart still pounding.
He looked perplexed. “Kill you?”
She nodded.
“Why would I want to kill you?”
Anita didn’t reply.
Roy continued looking at her. He stumbled on the words, but they still came out coherent enough to sting. “Anita, I think I love you.”
She was speechless for a moment, and finally said, “You’re drunk.”
“No. I’ve felt this way since I got here.”
“It can’t work,” she said.
“Why not?” he asked. “We’ve got some chemistry.”
“We do?”
“Come on, haven’t you noticed?”
“My mind…has been on other things, Roy.”
“Then let those other things go for a minute,” he said softly. He moved forward and kissed her again. This time, she accepted it for a long moment. She shut her eyes and took in the adrenaline rush. It felt good, reviving a faraway sensuality…but finally she jerked away again.
“No,” said Anita. “This won’t work.”
“Because why?” he said. “Because you think I’m out to kill you? I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I. Why are you here, Roy? Really?”
“I came here to clear my sister, just like you want to find your boy.”
She fixed him with a skeptical stare.
He stepped back for a moment and gave her space. He started to unbutton the top of his shirt.
“What are you doing?” she asked instantly.
“Hold your horses, it’s not what
you think.” Roy opened part of his shirt, reached in, and took out a thin gold necklace. He showed her the small cross attached to it.
“I wear this every day,” he said. “It used to belong to Pam. I know I’m not real good about showing my feelings, but Pam was my sister and she’s dead. She wasn’t a bad person like everybody says. She was the nicest person you’d ever know. She’s no murderer.”
Anita watched Roy’s face soften. His eyes looked sad.
“I want to get to the bottom of this just as bad as you,” he said.
“Good,” said Anita. “Then, please, let’s just stick to that mission. I can’t get involved with you, Roy.”
“Yeah,” he said, returning the crucifix inside his shirt, buttoning up.
“Are we still on for tomorrow?”
“Of course.”
“Thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for helping me and thank you for believing.”
She moved toward the door, and he understood the signal. He joined her and opened it.
“G’night, Anita,” he said. He stepped into the hall. He gently shut the door behind him and was gone.
She locked it.
“Holy shit,” she muttered to herself.
She wanted to go to bed, but her drowsiness was all shot to hell now. She returned the pepper spray to her purse and turned on the TV. She tried to concentrate on Jay Leno. She was not successful. She paced the room.
She couldn’t get the kiss out of her mind. He’s infatuated with me.
Anita kept replaying the encounter in her head. Did she have feelings for him or was it just the blast of relief that he wasn’t a killer, the excitement of the moment that created electricity, which she had not felt in a kiss for…years.
Sure, he was handsome in a rough kind of way, but it would never work. Never work. Not the brother of the woman who…
…who what?
She sank into a chair, overwhelmed by confusion, realizing she didn’t know what to think or who to believe anymore.
PART THREE
XV
Thunk!
Roy stapled another poster to another telephone pole, wincing as the sound pierced his head. He felt like shit. The sun was too bright. The air was too hot. He was hungover. And he was a goddamned idiot.
Last night’s embarrassment clung to him like a leech. Too many drinks, a sloppy, impulsive kiss, and a most definite rejection. He couldn’t help it. He had always been struck by Anita Sherwood’s looks and drawn to her intensity, ever since that day she came home in the hot red dress, all tits and ass and mascara, to find him in the living room. The day his ding-a-ling sister lost her ring down the kitchen sink.
Anita gave off the vibe of a sexually repressed mommy who needed someone to pop her cork. But the next time he saw her, the whole Pam-Tim thing had erupted, effectively wiping out any romantic fantasies. He had never given it another thought until she pulled him out here, out of all the possible people in the world. She pleaded with him. She needed him.
Joining her in Chicago, he had cleaned up, dressed up, treated her to meals, paid his way, tried to impress her as being something better than what he was…a bread truck driver. The drama of their search together only stirred him up more. They had laughs, they made a connection. On their first dinner out, she dressed in a tight skirt and heels, all done up like a date. Her husband was out of the picture.
True, she was a sophisticated college grad and businesswoman, and he was a blue-collar knucklehead who didn’t even own a computer. They were the odd couple for sure. Yet through the death of Pam, they were bonded forever.
He was drawn to her. So he drank too many margaritas and gracelessly made a move. And she freaked. She said she thought he was going to kill her.
What the hell was that all about?
Then, to confuse things further, she accepted a second kiss with just enough return change to tantalize him. Then he was shown the door.
Roy had a theory for all this. Anita Sherwood was not sane. The missing kid thing had messed up her mind real bad. Evidence? There was the psycho fit when she saw Roy at the pharmacy, looking at a magazine. There was the well-publicized incident where she closed down Sears. There was the buzz in the community that, well, the woman had lost it, ditched her job and husband, fled the area and gone into seclusion.
People whispered about her. They gossiped. And he felt a kinship, because he knew that the same thing happened to him. People gave him funny looks. Anger, sympathy, freak show curiosity, all of the above. After all, he was the brother of Pam Beckert, the infamous baby killer—
Whap whap whap.
Teenagers were playing basketball in a small court outside a youth center. The pounding of the ball on the pavement prodded his already sensitive skull. Roy swiftly moved out of the area.
Coffee. I need more coffee, he told himself. Any kind would do, nothing fancy, none of that Starbucks crap. Gas station sludge would be welcome.
Roy headed up Belmont Avenue, away from the apartment buildings and townhouses and into a busy business strip. His bag of posters didn’t feel much lighter, but he knew he had posted dozens in the past hour.
Was it worth it? He had been helping Anita for three days now. He was having serious doubts that she really saw her son. It simply didn’t make sense. Anita’s mission was desperate, fueled more by hope than logic.
During the mostly silent breakfast they shared together in the hotel café, he had asked her, “How many days are you going to do this?”
“As many as it takes,” she stated plainly.
He didn’t tell her then, but he was already determined to leave soon. In all honesty, he couldn’t afford a bunch of nights in a fancy Chicago hotel. He wished he had accepted her offer to pay, but no, he had to act cool, be a hotshot, like money was no big deal.
Money mattered. And this was costing a lot. But there was another factor telling him to go home. Anita’s ex-husband would be arriving tomorrow. And two’s company, three’s a crowd.
Roy bought a large cup of coffee, no cream, no sugar, at a convenience mart that already had one of the missing Tim posters in the window.
He brought the coffee with him to a small adjacent parking lot and found a spot to sit on a concrete block. Not too comfortable, but he had to rest for a few minutes. The hammers in his head said so.
As Roy sipped his coffee, he took out one of the posters and stared at it to refamiliarize himself with the faces he was looking for.
The illustration of the woman didn’t have much distinction and looked like a lot of people. It was everybody and nobody. But the photo of the boy definitely made an impact. The eyes seemed to stare right out at you. He looked like a good kid.
And he was probably dead.
My sister murdered this little boy?
The police and FBI said so. But they didn’t know Pam. They didn’t know how crazy and implausible it was.
Pam Beckert? The frail, passive little thing that got beat up so many times in grade school that he finally took it upon himself to pound her attackers for her?
True, she was something of a nutjob, but a nice one. That’s what everybody used to call her: “Nice.” How could she go from nice to evil overnight? Does it happen to people?
People just snap, one cop had said. Even good people.
Maybe the whole Tim thing was a release of thirty-eight years of pent-up aggression. Maybe Pam was unhinged from the start. He just didn’t know.
Roy and Pam were never particularly close, but they always got along. He wished he had talked more with her. Unfortunately, the lasting image Roy had of his sister was the broken, drowned, pale corpse that he had to identify for the police. It was gruesome, something out of a horror movie, and stocked him up with nightmares for months to come.
A few days before her burial, he retrieved her necklace, the one with the small gold cross. It was the only thing he owned that had belonged to her, and he wore it around his neck as a lasting statement.
You’re my sis
ter, maybe you did this horrible, awful thing and maybe you didn’t, but I will not abandon you.
Most everyone else did. Pam’s funeral hardly attracted a handful—even close relatives stayed away. Meanwhile Tim’s funeral drew an overflow crowd and all the public sympathy.
Pam was the monster, as he was reminded countless times through the vicious crank calls and anonymous, scribbly letters shoved in his mail. “YOURE HOLE FAMILY WILL ROT IN HELL” was one of the classics. Many contained religious rants or death threats.
At least he was strong enough to handle it. They could all kiss his ass. But his mother—
Roy swallowed. It hurt to think about this, but he couldn’t stop.
Their mother took all the impact and then some. Without a doubt, it caused the stroke. It destroyed her health. Dad was useless to help, as always, a pitiful fool who simply increased his hours at the hardware store, hanging out there with his cronies, even when he wasn’t being paid.
At least Dad had cronies. Roy’s own friends faded away overnight, as if they feared getting arrested for talking to the brother of a killer. It didn’t help him find a steady woman in his life, either. But he could usually snag a one- or two-night-stand before the realization hit and his phone calls went unreturned.
Screw it. Most of them were bimbos anyway.
Roy shook the moping out of his head. This was not helping his hangover. He finished his coffee in a long gulp and crumpled the cup. It was time to circulate more posters. If Anita saw him taking a long break like this, she’d probably lose it. She wasn’t exactly keeping her cool lately.
Roy walked the sidewalk, looking at kids and moms. He smiled politely when they caught his stares. Nobody matched the poster people.
He stopped various folks to show them the poster, and received the usual shrugs, nonreactions, and funny looks. Some of them were already familiar with it. Hell, it was everywhere now.
As Roy returned to the residential area he had been assigned, he noticed a bunch of poles he had missed during his first go around. Then it seemed like he had overlooked entire blocks—but he knew he hadn’t. This was territory he had covered just hours ago.
Then he noticed the remains of one of his posters clinging to a post. It had been torn down.
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