He crossed the street, his breath jangling in his ears like dog tags.
He shot a glance at the patch of sky and the dark figure of his wife.
His pace quickened.
As he headed over a lawn, a young man bolted out of the shrubs, a pair of horn-rimmed glasses clattering from his face.
With Ritz crackers and a five-pack of Hydrox cookies in one hand, she drew the knob toward her, cutting the sliver of light from Kathy's room, and made for the stairs.
There was a knock on the front door.
The stairway was an unknown in the dark. She waited.
Finally, "Sharon? Can you get that?"
The knock again.
She descended, pressing against the wall.
"Just a—" She felt a catch in her throat. Why?
The door swung open.
The kid was squirming on the lawn, his face jumping.
"Whatsa matter? I'm on my way home from a study date! Whatsa matter?"
Joe closed the cuffs, pressed the key into the notch and set the lock.
Something in the young man's face, swarming in a film of sweat, refused to let Joe relax. He shoved the glasses at him and pulled him to his feet. He glanced ahead. The sky was dark, too dark to see her.
He whipped the antenna up on his walkie-talkie. It shook in his hands, waving back and forth in the night air.
She saw a woman, backlit in the open doorway.
"I'm sorry," said the woman. "But I wonder if you've seen my husband. He was supposed to meet—"
"No, I—" stammered Lissa. "Do you mean he was outside?" Where was Sharon? Where? She left the doorway. "Just a minute, okay?"
She felt around the room. "Share?" she called. I know, she thought. She said she was hungry. I'll check the kitchen. If I can only find the light!
"Sha-ron!" she called, and wondered why her voice was breaking.
"We don't want to hurt you," Joe said. "Believe that."
He drew his prisoner through the shrubs, crushing twigs and unseen garden creatures in his path.
He turned up the gain and depressed the call button. He needed back-up. His throat was dry and the back of his tongue hurt.
A shrill electronic sound whined close by. Instantly he recognized it. It was feedback—his own signal being picked up on another receiver.
"I guess you wouldn't know who I mean," the woman said from the doorway. "But he's one of the Security…"
It's so dark, thought Lissa at the door to the kitchen. She forced herself across the chill linoleum, her arms outstretched like antennae.
She beard a sound—a low voice. It was singing:
some folks like t' talk about it
some don't
A wind from nowhere blew through her chest.
He pushed the kid ahead of him, following the sound.
Louder. Joe was relieved. Reinforcements were near.
Then he noticed his prisoner's stare.
At the rear of the last house by the parking lot, dark shapes were moving.
She seemed to swim through darkness past the smooth pulsating refrigerator where there were always tooth marks in the cheese, to the drawer from which the tools had been quietly disappearing for weeks, clamoring for something, anything with which to protect herself. It was silly, she knew, but—there. A butcher knife.
Joe released his own wrist and locked the kid to the branch of what might have been a rubber tree.
"We'll be back for you, Charlie," he said.
She felt herself drawn down the short stone steps from the kitchen to the storage porch, to the low singing and other voices and what sounded like a scratching close to the screen door that opened into the back yard.
The officer plunges through the shrubbery. At that someone slams out the back door, sees dark forms and the girl held to the dirt and reflexively cocks back an arm, white moons rising on the nails that clench the knife. The officer sees the downed girl, uniforms, another figure lunging into it. There is no time to question, not now while there is still time to stop it before it happens again. He remembers them sitting there dumbly in their baggy pajamas, their wooden bowls empty of the ice cream a few minutes before it happened, and how he had gone away and done nothing, not even when he heard the laughter and the grunting and the automatic fire. And the screams. But not this time. He dodges and grabs the empty hand, wrenching it into a hammerlock as he encircles the waist with his left arm, releasing the wrist with his right and setting his forearm under the chin. The back arches and the legs kick madly, but the hand refuses to let go the knife. Faces turn up. One of the officers stays atop their victim. It is Williams who closes in from the front, spreading his milky palm across the distorted mouth, covering it. "Nice going, Joe." He grins. "Now you one of us, too." Joe does not yet understand. Now he feels a slip in the neck and the body swings like the clapper of a bell in his arms. Now he hears new footsteps behind him and a sudden skull-splitting screech. It is the scream of a woman. He thinks he recognizes it but it is too late, now it really is too late as the girl in his arms swings one last anguished time, as her knife slices at the dark with a flash and he sees a face reflected in the blade for an instant before it drops into the leaves. But he must know what he has seen. He has seen the face of a killer. It is the same face he has always seen.
The moonlight washes down on them all.
The Scar
This time they were walking a divided highway, the toes of their shoes powdered white with gravel dust. The little girl ran ahead, skipping eagerly along the shoulder, while her mother lagged back to keep pace with the man.
"Mind the trucks," called the woman, barely raising her voice. Soon the girl would be able to take care of herself; that was her hope. She turned to him, showing the good side of her face. "Do you see one yet?"
He lifted his chin and squinted.
She followed his gaze to the other side of the highway. There, squatting in the haze beyond the overpass, was a Weenie Wigwam Fast Food Restaurant.
"Thank God," she said. She thought of the Chinese Smorgasbord, the Beef Bowl, the Thai Take-Out and the many others they had seen already. She added, "This one will be all right, won't it?"
It was the edge of the town, RV dealerships and fleet sales on one side of the road, family diners and budget motels on the other. Overloaded station wagons and moving vans laden with freight hammered the asphalt, bringing thunder to the gray twilight. Without breaking stride the man leaned down to scoop up a handful of gravel, then skimmed stones between the little girl's thin legs and into the ditch; he held onto one last piece, a sharp quartz chip, and deposited it in his jacket pocket.
"Maybe," he said.
"Aren't you sure?"
He did not answer.
"Well," she said, "let's try it. Laura will be hungry, I know."
She hurried to catch the little girl at the crossing. When she turned back, the man was handling an empty beer bottle from the roadside. She looked away. As he moved up to join them, zippering the front of his service jacket, the woman forced a smile, as if she had not seen.
In the parking lot, the man took their hands. A heavy tanker geared down and pounded the curve, bucking and hissing away behind them. As it passed, the driver sounded his horn at the traffic. The sudden blast, so near that it rattled her spine, seemed to release her from a bad dream. She laced her fingers more securely with his and swung her arm out and back and out again, hardly feeling the weight of his hand between them.
"This is a nice place," she said, already reading a banner for the all-day breakfast special. "I'm glad we waited. Aren't you glad, Laura?"
"Can I ride the horse?" asked the little girl.
The woman looked at the sculpted gray-and-white Indian pinto, its blanket saddle worn down to the fiberglass. There were no other children waiting at the machine. She let go of his hand and dug in her purse for a coin.
"I don't see why not," she said.
The little girl broke away.
He came to a stop, h
is empty hands opening and closing.
"Just one ride," the woman said quickly. "And then you come right inside, hear?"
On the other side of the glass, couples moved between tables. A few had children, some Laura's age. Families, she thought. She wished that the three of them could go inside together.
Laura's pony began to wobble and pitch. But the man was not watching. He stood there with his chin up, his nostrils flared, like an animal waiting for a sign. His hands continued to flex.
"I'll see about a table," she said when he did not move to open the door.
A moment later she glanced outside and saw him examining a piece of brick that had come loose from the front of the restaurant. He turned it over and over.
The menus came. They sat reading them in a corner booth, under crossed tomahawks. The food items were named in keeping with the native American motif, suggesting that the burgers and the several varieties of hot dogs had been invented by hunters and gatherers. Bleary travelers hunched over creased roadmaps, gulping coffee and estimating mileage, their eyes stark in the chill fluorescent lighting.
"What would you like, Laura?" asked the woman.
"Peanut butter and jelly sandwich."
"Do they have that?"
"And a vanilla milkshake."
The woman sighed.
"And Wampum Pancakes. Papoose-size."
She opened her purse and counted the money. She blinked and looked at the man.
He got up and went over to the silverware station.
"What's he doing?" said the little girl.
"Never mind," said the woman. "His knife and fork must be dirty."
He came back and sat down.
"And Buffalo Fries," said the little girl.
The woman studied him. "Is it still okay?" she asked.
"What?" he said.
She waited, but now he was busy observing the customers. She gave up and returned to the menu. It was difficult for her to choose, not knowing what he would order. "I'll just have a small dinner salad," she said at last.
The others in the restaurant kept to themselves. A man with a sample case ate a piece of pecan pie and scanned the local newspaper. A young couple fed their baby apple juice from a bottle. A take-away order was picked up at the counter, then carried out to a Winnebago. Soft, vaguely familiar music lilted from wall speakers designed to look like tom-toms, muffling the clink of cups and the murmur of private conversations.
"Want to go to the bathroom," said the little girl.
"In a minute, baby," the woman told her. A waitress in an imitation buckskin mini-dress was coming this way.
The little girl squirmed. "Mommy!"
The waitress was almost here, carrying a pitcher and glasses of water on a tray.
The woman looked at the man.
Finally he leaned back and opened his hands on the table.
"Could you order for us?" she asked carefully.
He nodded.
In the rest room, she reapplied make-up to one side of her face, then added another layer to be sure. At a certain angle the deformity did not show at all, she told herself. Besides, he had not looked at her, really looked at her in a long time; perhaps he had forgotten. She practiced a smile in the mirror until it was almost natural. She waited for her daughter to finish, then led her back to the dining room.
"Where is he?" said the little girl.
The woman tensed, the smile freezing on her lips. He was not at the table. The food on the placemats was untouched.
"Go sit down," she told the little girl. "Now."
Then she saw him, his jacket with the embroidered patches and the narrow map like a dragon on the back. He was on the far side of the room, under a framed bow and arrow display.
She touched his arm. He turned too swiftly, bending his legs, his feet apart. Then he saw who it was.
"Hi," she said. Her throat was so dry that her voice cracked. "Come on, before your food gets cold."
As she walked him to the table, she was aware of eyes on them.
"I had a bow and arrow," he said. "I could pick a sentry out of a tree at a hundred yards. Just like that. No sound."
She did not know what to say. She never did. She gave him plenty of room before sitting down between him and the little girl. That put her on his other side, so that he would be able to see the bad part of her face. She tried not to think about it.
He had only coffee and a small sandwich. It took him awhile to start on it. Always travel light, he had told her once. She picked at her salad. The people at the other tables stopped looking and resumed their meals.
"Where's my food?" asked the little girl.
"In front of you," said the woman. "Now eat and keep quiet."
"Where's my pancakes?"
"You don't need pancakes."
"I do, too!"
"Hush. You've got enough." Without turning her face the woman said to the man, "How's your sandwich?"
Out of the corner of her eye she noticed that he was hesitating between bites, listening to the sounds of the room. She paused, trying to hear what he heard. There was the music, the undercurrent of voices, the occasional ratcheting of the cash register. The swelling traffic outside. The chink of dishes in the kitchen, as faint as rain on a tin roof. Nothing else.
"Mommy, I didn't get my Buffalo Fries."
"I know, Laura. Next time."
"When?"
She realized she did not know the answer. She felt a tightening in her face and a dull ache in her throat so that she could not eat. Don't let me cry, she thought. I don't want her to see. This is the best we can do — can't she understand?
Now his head turned toward the kitchen.
From behind the door came distant clatter as plates were stacked, the squeak of wet glasses, the metallic clicking of flatware, the high good humor of unseen cooks and dishwashers. The steel door vibrated on its hinges.
He stopped chewing.
She saw him check the room one more time: the sharply-angled tables, the crisp bills left for tips, the half-eaten dinners hardening into waste, the full bellies and taut belts and bright new clothing, too bright under the harsh fixtures as night fell, shuttering the windows with leaden darkness. Somewhere outside headlights gathered as vehicles jammed the turnoff, stabbing the glass like approaching searchlights.
He put down his sandwich.
The steel door trembled, then swung wide.
A shiny cart rolled into the dining room, pushed by a busboy in a clean white uniform. He said something over his shoulder to the kitchen crew, rapid-fire words in a language she did not understand. The cooks and dishwashers roared back at his joke. She saw the tone of their skin, the stocky, muscular bodies behind the aprons. The door flapped shut. The cart was coming this way.
He spat out a mouthful of food as though afraid that he had been poisoned.
"It's okay," she said. "See? They're Mexicans, that's all…."
He ignored her and reached inside his jacket. She saw the emblems from his Asian tour of duty. But there were also patches from Tegucigalpa and Managua and the fighting that had gone on there. She had never noticed these before. Her eyes went wide.
The busboy came to their booth.
Under the table, the man took something from his pants pocket and set it beside him on the seat. Then he took something else from the other side. Then his fists closed against his knees.
"Can I have a bite?" said the little girl. She started to reach for the uneaten part of his sandwich.
"Laura!" said the woman.
"Well, he doesn't want it, does he?"
The man looked at her. His face was utterly without expression. The woman held her breath.
"Excuse," said the busboy.
The man turned his head back. It seemed to take a very long time. She watched, unable to stop any of this from happening.
When the man did not say anything, the busboy tried to take his plate away.
A fork came up from below, glinted, then arced down i
n a blur, pinning the brown hand to the table.
The boy cried out and swung wildly with his other hand.
The man reached under his jacket again and brought a beer bottle down on the boy's head. The boy folded, his scalp splitting under the lank black hair and pumping blood. Then the cart and chairs went flying as the man stood and grabbed for the tomahawks on the wall. But they were only plastic. He tossed them aside and went over the table.
A waitress stepped into his path, holding her palms out. Then she was down and he was in the middle of the room. The salesman stood up, long enough to take half a brick in the face. Then the manager and the man with the baby got in the way. A sharp stone came out, and a lockback knife, and then a water pitcher shattered, the fragments carrying gouts of flesh to the floor.
The woman covered her little girl as more bodies fell and the room became red.
He was going for the bow and arrow, she realized.
Sirens screamed, cutting through the clot of traffic. There was not much time. She crossed the parking lot, carrying the little girl toward the Winnebago. A retired couple peered through the windshield, trying to see. The child kicked until the woman had to put her down.
"Go. Get in right now and go with them before — "
"Are you going, too?"
"Baby, I can't. I can't take care of you anymore. It isn't safe. Don't you understand?"
"Want to stay with you!"
"Can we be of assistance?" said the elderly man, rolling his window down.
She knelt and gripped the little girl's arms. "I don't know where to go," she said. "I can't figure it out by myself." She lifted her hair away from the side of her face. "Look at me! I was born this way. No one else would want to help us. But it's not too late for you."
The little girl's eyes overflowed.
The woman pressed the child to her. "Please," she said, "it's not that I want to leave you…"
"We heard noises," said the elderly woman. "What happened?"
Tall legs stepped in front of the camper, blocking the way. "Nothing," said the man. His jacket was torn and spattered. He pulled the woman and the little girl to their feet. "Come on."
He took them around to the back of the lot, then through a break in the fence and into a dark field, as red lights converged on the restaurant. They did not look back. They came to the other side of the field and then they were crossing the frontage road to a maze of residential streets. They turned in a different direction at every corner, a random route that no one would be able to follow. After a mile or so they were out again and back to the divided highway, walking rapidly along in the ditch.
Got to Kill Them All & Other Stories Page 11