by Jack Ketchum
“Cinemax? HBO? Showtime?”
“No.”
She saw him take in the furnishings—the Boston rocker, the rows of hand-carved decoys, the country primitive desk and pie safe and chairs and table, the 1821 children’s sampler, the hundred-year-old map of the Hudson River, the heavy carved-oak shelving, the Tiffany-style lamps.
“I wouldn’t think you were that penurious,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“I wouldn’t think you were that penurious. That you’d just have basic cable, I mean. You have so many encumbrances here.”
She sure did.
It seemed forever sitting there with Billy flicking his goddamn knife open and shut with one hand and the channels with the other but it was probably no more than fifteen minutes because she was only on her second smoke when the bedroom door opened and there was Marion, this time draped in a bedsheet. Her bedsheet.
“Janet? Come on in a minute, would ya?”
Her bedroom seemed sullied to her now. Foreign. Enemy territory. She didn’t care for the notion of going in.
“Why?”
“Got to ask you something.”
“Ask me here.”
“It’s girl talk, honey.”
She stubbed out the cigarette. As she passed she saw Ray seated in the kitchen, the bottle in front of him, pulling cards out of his wallet and shoving them back again, frustrated. Still looking for that family photo. She wondered if it even existed.
At the door Marion took her arm and led her into the room and there was Emil on the bed lying sprawled beneath her coverlet. Marion closed the door behind her and stood there and Emil smiled.
“Next,” he said.
It was a gut punch that turned instantly to rage and fear.
“Fuck you!” she said, and turned and saw Marion blocking her way and didn’t hesitate for a moment—her two elder brothers had taught her to fight way back when and damned if she’d forgotten. She threw her right to the side of her jaw and Marion went down against the pinewood door like so much raw meat. She shoved her out of the way and her hand was on the doorknob when Emil lunged naked off the bed and she felt the warm sweat of his arms around her waist straight through her clothing. He pulled her down on top of him and she turned in his arms, kicking and squirming and trying to pull free but he was too strong. He shoved and rolled her so that he was on top of her straddling her hips, his hands pinning hers to the mattress near the foot of the bed. Then she felt other hands on her wrists, not as strong but strong enough and she heard Marion spit the word bitch and looked up at her naked and looming over her and holding her down, Billy and Ray standing in the doorway behind her and she knew she’d get no help from either one of them.
“Don’t do this. Please, Marion!”
Marion smiled. And there was so much wrong with that smile that she knew she’d never understand it as long as she lived.
“Oh, honey,” she said. “It ain’t nothing. I had boyfriends used to give it to me rough all the time. You lay back, watch the ceiling. You’ll get used to it.”
Emil’s fingers went to her blouse, to the buttons. Billy had his pocket knife in one hand and was poking its tip to his opposite thumb as though testing it while he and Ray moved to the bedside, watching them, an impossible drift of soulless motion and for the first time she really did fear for her life, knew that this might be the end of her right here on this bed, knew it so deeply and well that when her skirt went down and her panties went down and she felt his cock, hard and still beslimed with Marion against her thigh the room swirled and she nearly fainted in the knowledge, but she didn’t, she wasn’t going to be that lucky. She just looked away from them, from all of it and heard him spit on his hand and felt him wipe it across her and then the bright pain of entry like a thousand needles sinking all at once into her flesh and she cried out and heard the drone of Marion’s voice above.
“There, there, darlin’. You might as well know it. Life’s nothing but a trail of tears for us girls. You might as well know.”
And then later, Billy demurring but not Ray. Ray the family man, solemnly stripping off his clothes. She turned away again.
And again that voice above her. Dreamy and cooing evil at her.
“You’ve never seen what I’ve seen. There’s so much you’ve just been protected from. Had a guy once, beat me morning, noon and night, regular, pretty much every day. And people used to say, why do you stay with him? He beats you! And I’d say I love him. He’s mine. And I did, and he was. He may be crazy drunk nights but days he’s mine, I said. What’s a woman to expect from a man, anyhow? So don’t you worry about any of this, honey. A woman can get over near anything. And I’m the living proof.”
When it was over they left her alone but did not completely close the door and she knew they could hear her sobbing so she stopped sobbing and wiped away the snot and tears and got up and used the bathroom, gave herself a whore’s bath in the sink and washed away the blood across her face and hairline, then left the water running so they could hear and went back to the bedroom and opened the bedside drawer and silently as possible took out a pen and notepad, thought hard and began to write.
Emil leaned into the room just as she was zipping up her skirt and asked if she was ready. She said she was. She guessed they weren’t going to kill her quite yet. He looked strangely hesitant for a man who’d just finished raping her.
“You’re pretty much okay, right?”
“I’m . . . (going to fucking get you) . . . yes. (Somehow I’ll see you dead for this.) I’m all right.”
“Good. That’s good.”
She walked past him, fists clenched, on into the living room and saw the other three standing set to leave but ignored them and walked straight to the kitchen, took the half-empty bottle of Glenlivet off the counter and poured all that was left into a tall tumbler off the dish rack and drank prodigiously—an old magician’s trick, a little slight-of-hand, fellas—because as she drank they were watching that and trying to gauge her. So that they did not see her set down the bottle on the small square of paper she’d slipped onto the counter beside it.
She drank most of what was in the glass. It wasn’t only to complete the illusion. She needed it.
She slammed the glass to the counter.
“Let’s go.”
“Janet!”
Ever since the crime scene back on the highway he hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that something was seriously wrong. Something wrong with Janet. He’d phoned Kaltzas’s garage and got through this time and nobody had heard from her. It was the most likely place to go for help and she hadn’t.
Why?
Inside the house was silent. Living room, study, silent. Just as he’d left them.
But not the bedroom.
The sheets were stripped off the bed and piled on the floor and that wasn’t like her at all, they’d be in the hamper if she was planning to do a laundry when she came home tonight and that was troubling enough but then he saw the pair of beer cans on the dresser. She never drank beer. Hated the stuff.
So that now he was really worried.
Phone the police.
In the kitchen he saw more beer cans in the garbage and two more on the counter along with the empty bottle of Glenlivet.
Jesus. The Glenlivet was fucking empty. That was wrong too. They’d had a nightcap last night before bed and the bottle was still nearly full when he put it away. Then he saw the scrap of paper beneath it and pulled it out from under.
NY TA45567
blue Dodge wagon
regist Marion Lane
Emil? Ray? Billy?
murder, Rt 605—8:30 p.m.?
HELP!
The handwriting was shaky but hers. He reached for the phone and heard nothing but dead air so he followed the line down to where they’d pulled it out of the wall socket—Who? Emil? Ray? Billy?—plugged it back in and dialed 911. What if I hadn’t come back for the goddamn briefs? he thought. What in god’s name if I hadn’t? The
n the cop was on the line.
“Officer Hutt speaking. How can I help you?”
He put on his most businesslike, no-nonsense voice. A little amazed that he could do so.
“Listen carefully. My name is Alan Laymon and I’m an attorney. I have specific information regarding the murder of a police officer on Route Six-o-five at approximately eight-thirty this evening. I have a plate number for a blue Dodge wagon. The killers are holding at least one hostage, maybe two. I have names or partial names for all of them. Do you understand me?”
He did.
All told, Emil thought, things were looking good. He’d had two pieces of ass in a single night. He more or less preferred the one he hadn’t raped. Which was fine since it was simpler. He had both of them here in the front seat beside him right where they ought to be.
He’d shot a cop—dangerous as hell, sure, but something he’d seriously wanted to do since fucking prison.
Not a bad night at all.
They were headed along a narrow dirt access road toward a farmhouse. Margaret or whatever her name was had spotted it, one light burning in a window in the valley below. She’d killed the lights when he told her to but the moonlight was plenty bright enough.
“Go easy,” he said.
To the side of the farmhouse he saw a rusted-out Ford pickup that looked like it hadn’t been on the road in years but beside it in front of the porch, a light-colored, four-door Chevy. It would do.
“Pull up here,” he said. “Keep her running.” They were about three car lengths away.
“Chevy looks just the ticket. Ray? You want to do the honors?”
Ray, the one with the hands. He nodded.
“Billy, go along and keep an eye on the house. Real quiet.”
They opened both doors and stepped outside. He didn’t have to tell them not to shut them. He turned to the woman beside him.
“You too,” he said. “Real quiet. Are we clear about that?”
“Yes.”
He watched them move to the driver’s side of the Chevy and saw Ray open the door and duck in, Billy a little in front of him watching the house and already jittering like he had the shits, looking back at Ray as though willing him to hurry. He heard the engine sputter and die and sputter again through the still night air and thought, damn! just as the living room window flew open and the shotgun appeared and let fly and the Chevy’s windshield exploded. He saw Billy hit the ground and start crawling toward the back of the car, Ray nowhere in sight.
“Get outa there! Goddammit! I’ll blow your goddamn ears off!”
An old man’s voice. One very pissed off old man.
The shotgun sparked and roared again and punched a hole in the grille. The car shuddered and the hood flew up as he fired a third time and then the left front tire was down and hissing. He saw Ray bail out of the seat and stumble for cover toward the rear of the Chevy and crouch beside Billy.
“Aw, shit,” he said.
He put his arm out the window and fired at the same time the old man did and this time the blast kicked the hood off its hinges entirely and back against what was left of the windshield. The bastard’s sure doing a fuck of a job on his own car, he thought. Doesn’t seem to give a fuck either. Only now he’d discovered that there was somebody in the station wagon firing back at him, and Emil saw the shotgun glint and shift in the moonlight.
“Hit it, Maggie!”
He got off three fast ones toward the window and saw wood fly off the sill as she slammed her foot to the gas pedal and sent the car screeching into a turn behind the Chevy, spraying dirt and gravel as the goddamn woman beside him tried to haul herself over the seat, making for the open rear doors so that he had to reach for the back of her blouse and grab hold of her with one hand and fire at the farmer with the other and the farmer was shooting back. He felt the impact thump and quiver through the right rear body of the wagon. Ray and Billy were up and running for the wide-open backseat doors as she pulled the car through the full 180-degree turn, getting them the hell out of there, yes! and picking up speed, the two of them racing for the car and catching it right and left just as the shotgun roared a final time and they finally slammed the doors.
“Whew! That was one single-minded guy,” Ray said.
“Disreputable,” said Billy.
The detective—the bigger of the two, Frommer his name was—was seated on the couch flipping through his notepad, frowning. Alan sat across from him on the edge of the armchair and waited. He heard the toilet flush and finally the smaller cop came out of the bathroom so that then they could begin.
“What we’ve got here’s kind of unusual, Mr. Laymon,” Frommer said. “Three out-of-staters and a local girl.”
“Why unusual?”
“The boys turn up easy on the computer. Emil Rothert, Ray Short and Billy Ripper. Rothert and Short originally from Dead River, Maine. High school buddies, what little they had of it. Mostly they had Juvenile. Assault, arson, skin the neighbor’s cat, that kind of thing. Graduated to armed robbery, rape and aggravated assault. No convictions. Both did time in Jersey—armed robbery again. And we figure they linked up with Ripper there because next we got all three of ’em booked for auto theft in Bristol, Connecticut, charges dismissed. This Ripper’s a total fruitcake. Went after his mom eight years ago with a straight razor and damn near killed her. Lady sixty-six years old. Imagine that? But the real puzzler’s this Lane woman.”
“How come?”
“Let’s just say the consensus is that she ain’t got all her cookies in the jar,” the smaller cop said. Frommer shot him a look that went from hot to cold. Then he shrugged.
“It’s true,” he said. “I wish I had a buck for every time she’s called the station with some lame news or another. First she says she’s being followed by some guy in a white Mercedes. Then she’s getting obscene calls every night and she can’t be sure but she thinks the caller’s a woman. She can tell by the breathing. She calls us at least a dozen times on this one. Then somebody breaks in and cuts the wire to her window fan in the dead of summer. Then somebody breaks in again and cuts her phone line. Finally somebody sets fire to her garage.
“Well, there was a fire. Burned up an old sleeping bag and some old clothes and papers. We got no proof but two guesses who set the thing. She was all right I guess until her boyfriend ran off and dumped her. Since then, whacko.”
“So you’re saying . . .”
“So I’m saying we don’t know if she’s with ’em or against ’em. We figure she wasn’t in on the killing. The driver who called it in said their car was off the road trying to kiss a tree. But other than that? Could easily be the one as the other. So the point is . . .”
He knew what the point was. “Jesus,” he said.
“Right. We could be talking three bad guys and two hostages, or three bad guys, one hostage and one crazy. And I got to be honest with you. Either way it could get very nasty here.”
They’re up against it now, she thought. The police band had them made. Not just the car but them. She didn’t know whether it made her feel frightened or elated. Maybe both.
“. . . suspects identified as Emil Rothert, thirty-four, white male, six feet two inches, two hundred fifteen pounds . . . Ray Short, thirty-four, white male, five feet eleven inches, one hundred seventy pounds . . . William Grant Ripper, thirty-one, white male, five feet nine inches, one hundred forty pounds. . . .”
Emil reached over and turned it off.
“I don’t like this,” Ray said. “This ain’t good at all.”
“We’re fine. All we need’s a car.”
His voice was different though. Maybe she was seeing the first cracks in the great Emil Rothert bravado. She could hope so.
“They got the names, Emil, they got the plate number, the registration . . .”
“Which is why we need the car.”
“And maybe here she comes,” said Marion.
Headlights gleamed in the rearview mirror.
“Go for i
t, Mags,” Emil said.
Marion got out and slammed the door and Emil reached across and locked it. His look said she had better not move, locked or unlocked. He turned and offered Marion’s .22 to Ray and Billy.
“Who wants it?”
“I’ll take it,” Billy said. “Thank you very much.”
“Everybody down.”
In the mirror above she could see Marion waving frantically at the car’s approach and she thought how she’d been doing exactly the same thing a few hours ago, just looking for a lift and then watched the car slow and stop directly behind them, the driver, a man in jacket and tie, leaning out and Marion walking over and leaning down, pointing back at the wagon, the man opening his door and getting out and his car’s courtesy light blinking on so that she could see that there were other people in the car too, a woman in the front passenger seat and two smaller figures in back, Marion gesturing with fake exasperation as they walked toward the wagon, heard their footsteps approach and stop and the man say what the . . . ? in surprise as the two left-side doors swung open and Emil and Billy stepped out. She sat up. The man’s eyes were going back and forth from gun to gun.
“Oh god. Oh, Jesus. Listen, please . . . my family. Whatever you want. Anything you want. Please . . .”
“Sir,” Emil said. “We won’t hurt your family. Just walk back to your car nice and slow. We’re not gonna hurt anybody. Just take it easy, now, okay, sir?”
The man was clearly terrified but he did as he was told, turned and started walking. Emil, Marion and Billy followed.
Emil called over his shoulder, “Hey, Ray!”
“Yeah?”
“Bring her.”
“Ray, you don’t have to do this,” she said. “Let me help you. Remember our talk? I can help you.”
He sighed. “Listen, lady, I don’t want your help. And I’m not so stupid that I’m gonna trust you either. Now get out of the car. Nothing’s gonna happen to those people except we take their wheels.”
“You can promise me that, Ray? Really?”