Walking After Midnight

by Karen Robards

  Frankenstein sat sprawled on the couch, watching her descend. His hands rested on his lap. His wrists were bound together with gray duct tape. Fresh blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. Over him stood a thug with a pistol, who glanced up as Summer and her entourage appeared.

  “Who’s she?” the thug standing over Frankenstein asked him.

  “Never saw her before in my life,” Frankenstein answered. His glance darted to Summer, daring her to contradict him. He needn’t have worried: she didn’t feel the slightest inclination to do so. Glancing around the basement, she had discovered a tableau as horrifying as it was riveting.

  Not far from the stairs but out of Summer’s direct line of vision until she had nearly reached the bottom, a red-haired woman had been hog-tied to a kitchen chair. Summer’s first thought was simply that that chair had no business being in the basement. It was a tall ladderback, purchased unfinished and then painstakingly stained dark green by herself, and it belonged to the set in the kitchen. Then she took a good look at its occupant, and all other concerns vanished from her mind. The woman slumped bonelessly forward, kept from falling only by the bonds that held her to the chair. Her head drooped so that her chin rested on her chest, concealing her face from view. Her tumbling hair was a two-tone sea of dark roots and red waves. The outfit she was wearing was identical to the one Summer had on: a Daisy Fresh uniform.

  Except the front of the woman’s blouse was dyed a dark, wet-looking crimson. The chair sat in a puddle of scarlet. It took a few seconds for Summer to realize that what looked like bright red paint spilled all over the woman and the floor was really blood.

  With a sense of shock Summer identified the woman as Linda Miller, one half of her worthless Saturday night work crew. Summer was almost positive that she was dead.

  14

  “She was sneakin’ around outside.” The man whose backside Summer had made the monumental error of poking spoke from behind her.

  “Oh, yeah?” The third thug’s gaze swept over Summer again, darted to Linda Miller and then to Frankenstein. “She the cunt in the van, Calhoun?”

  “I told you, I never saw her before in my life.”

  The third thug’s eyes narrowed. Without warning he hit Frankenstein across the face with the butt end of the pistol. The blow made a sickening thunk as it landed, opening a gash across his poor abused cheek. Frankenstein’s head snapped back, and he grimaced, but he didn’t make a sound. Summer did.

  “Don’t hit him!” she cried, appalled. “Yes, I was in the van.”

  “Ah.” The third thug smiled while blood welled into the jagged tear he had opened in Frankenstein’s face. Summer watched with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach as blood began to run down his swollen, discolored jaw. “So you live in this house, right? You’re Summer McAfee.”

  “That’s right.” They must have found her purse.

  Frankenstein shot her a warning look, but Summer couldn’t see that whether or not she admitted her identity made much difference at this point, except that it might keep the goon with the gun from hitting him again. No matter what she did, it seemed pretty obvious that they were going to wind up dead. Hideous, unbelievable thought! She was too young to die! Think, she told herself desperately. Think of a way out. Only, she couldn’t seem to come up with anything.

  Now that she had admitted her identity, the thugs seemed to relax. The third thug—a bristly black mustache adorned his upper lip, matching the fringe of hair surrounding his bald dome—looked almost genial as he glanced over at Linda Miller’s body. He was in his late forties, dressed in stained, loose-fitting jeans and an aqua double-knit sport shirt. His face was tanned and wrinkled from prolonged exposure to the sun. Incredibly, considering that the dark blotches on his jeans were most likely blood, he almost looked kind.

  “Guess the cunt was tellin’ the truth after all,” he said. “She kinda looked like the picture on the driver’s license, though, you gotta admit.”

  “I thought it was kinda funny that she’d be carryin’ a TV out of her own house,” said the second thug—the man who’d opened the patio door—as he propelled Summer down the remaining stairs. He was a short, stocky man, fiftyish, with a grizzled gray crew cut, dressed in gray slacks and a navy nylon windbreaker.

  “You mean she really was burglarizing the place?” The first thug snickered. The sound made Summer glance behind her, then watch with fascination as his belly, which formed a slight paunch over the ornate western belt that cinched his jeans, shook when he laughed. Getting her first good look at him in a strong light, Summer wondered how on earth she had ever mistaken him for Frankenstein, even in the dark. Frankenstein might weigh a ton, but his physique was that of a football player: all solid sinew and muscle. This guy was broad, all right, but flabby. His hair was even the wrong color and style: auburn and long around the ears rather than close-clipped black. The only similarity she could see between the two men was that they were both a hair under six feet tall, and they both wore black knit shirts. The thug’s was an expensive Polo. Frankenstein’s was a ripped, too tight T-shirt sporting a picture of a beer-guzzling bullterrier above the legend “Rude Dog Rules.”

  She must have been blind to make such a mistake. Her concern for her roses must have temporarily unhinged her mind.

  “Hell, no wonder we couldn’t get her to say nothin’ different. She didn’t know nothin’ to tell.”

  “Yeah, well …” The third thug shrugged. “We woulda had to kill her anyway. We just could’ve saved ourselves the trouble of tryin’ to make her talk first. I thought she was one tough babe. I’ve never seen the man I couldn’t break, let alone the chick.”

  The first thug shook his head. “Ya still shouldn’t’ve killed her. Not till we knew she didn’t know anything. If she’d been the right chick, we’d be up shit creek now.”

  “Hey, it was an accident, okay? She spit in my face and I lost it for a minute. Anyway, we could’ve gotten everything we need to know out of Calhoun here.”

  “Girls is easier. And more fun.”

  “Yeah, well, so now we’ve got another girl to work on. She your girlfriend, Calhoun?”

  “Hell, no. I like my women young and blond. She doesn’t know anything about this. She’s a janitor, for God’s sake. She was cleaning the funeral home where your pals dumped me when I pulled a knife on her and forced her to drive me out of there. You’re wasting your time with her.”

  “He don’t tell us the truth, we’re gonna beat the crap out of him till he does,” the third thug warned, looking at Summer. “You his girlfriend?”

  “Yes.” If it would save Frankenstein from another beating, Summer was willing to say anything. She was still trying to digest the mind-boggling notion that Linda Miller might have been burglarizing her house when she’d been killed. It was possible, she supposed. Linda was new in town and had worked for Daisy Fresh for only a few weeks. She and her cleaning partner, Betty Kern, had applied for the job together and asked to work together. Summer had seen no reason not to hire them. Their references had been in order. Now she had to wonder if they had deliberately not shown up for the Harmon Brothers job, a job they’d been told was vital to Daisy Fresh, knowing that Summer herself would have to take it because getting a replacement with no warning at that time of night would be all but impossible. As a blueprint for burglary, Summer had to admit that it was nearly foolproof. She felt a spurt of anger at Linda for her treachery, but then one glance at the bloody body tied to the chair replaced anger with pity and a sick fear for herself. Whatever Linda had done, she didn’t deserve to be butchered. No one did.

  Including herself and Frankenstein. Fear made Summer’s heart beat faster. This was unbelievable. It was too much. No way could any of this be happening to her.

  “See? Girls is easy,” the first thug said.

  “Yeah.” The third thug sounded almost disappointed. In response to a jerk of his head, Summer was propelled over to the couch and pushed down beside Frankenstein. Her leg brus
hed his as she sank into the faded chintz upholstery. He didn’t even glance at her. His attention was all on the three thugs, who now stood over them, a gloat ing triumvirate of toughs. Summer could feel the rigidity in his body. He was waiting, waiting—but what, realistically, could he do?

  It was time for the posse to burst in.

  Where was Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was really needed?

  More to the point, where was Betty Kern? Had she been in on the burglary? If so, could she possibly have escaped and gone for help?

  “So you gonna be a smart guy and tell us where the van is, Calhoun, or are we gonna hafta hurt your girlfriend first?” the third thug asked genially.

  Summer’s eyes widened at the threat. She would tell them where the van was in a heartbeat, if push came to shove. No way was she going to get hurt to conceal the whereabouts of a smashed-up, shot-up, dead-body-bearing van.

  “I told you, she’s not my girlfriend. If you want to hurt her, go ahead.” Frankenstein shrugged indifferently. Summer stiffened. Beside her, Frankenstein was as taut as a coiled spring. He directed a distorted smile at the thug. His battered face seemed to sneer. Summer swallowed but didn’t say a word.

  “Maybe we’ll hurt you instead, asshole.” The thug slammed his pistol into Frankenstein’s forehead. The sound of metal whacking into bone made Summer flinch. Her stomach lurched as Frankenstein’s head snapped sideways. For an instant, as he blinked in the aftermath of the blow, Summer found herself looking into his eyes. Both eyes. Almost obscured by the swollen flesh surrounding them, they were nevertheless both open, and retained a surprising impact. They were cold eyes, she saw, dead eyes, with the irises almost as black as the pupils. They were not the eyes of anyone she would ever wish to befriend, or even know. Ordinarily they would give her the shivers. At the moment they glinted with pain and rage. And, she thought, silent warning: Say nothing.

  But why? She wanted to scream the question, but instead she asked it silently. He returned her look without expression for another fraction of an instant. Then his mouth tightened, and he straightened. His gaze refocused on the man standing over him as casually, as easily, as if he got hit over the head with a pistol every day.

  But his body was, if anything, more tense than before.

  Then Summer got it. Whether she picked it up out of the air, as some sort of psychic message from his brain to hers, or whether she just plain figured it out she didn’t know. But she got it. For some reason the bad guys wanted the van even more than they wanted Frankenstein, but they didn’t know where it was. She and Frankenstein did. That knowledge was all that was keeping them alive. The whys and wherefores of it she didn’t understand, but she knew that whatever they did to her she couldn’t, for the life of her, break down. If she could help it. One look at Frankenstein’s purple balloon of a face, one glance at Linda Miller, and she didn’t know how long she would be able to hold out if they began to focus their efforts on her. Maybe a quick death would be preferable to hours of torture.

  Get moving, Arnold!

  Icy, shaking terror bubbled up inside her. She had to face it: Arnold wasn’t coming. There would be no last-second heroic rescue by the Terminator. This was real life.

  Help.

  The third thug reached for her hand and dragged it, resisting, from her lap. For a moment he smiled at her, stroking the soft skin over her knuckles with a rough-padded thumb. Summer felt as though a tarantula were crawling across her hand. She wanted to snatch it back, and scream, and scream, and scream.

  The Lord helps those who help themselves. She was a Southern Baptist, bred up on Sunday school, and that tenet had been drummed into her from childhood. Her choir-leader mother had put it another way: Praise the Lord, but pass the ammunition.

  The thug lifted her hand to his mouth and lightly kissed the back of it. His fellow thugs were grinning. Summer shivered with revulsion.

  Please, Lord, she prayed, send some ammunition fast.

  “It’s up to you, sweetheart. You can tell us what we want to know right now, the easy way, or we can start breaking your fingers, one by one. I’ll start with this little pinky. It won’t take hardly a second—and it’ll hurt a whole lot.” He cradled her hand in both of his, stroked her fragile pinky with his thumb, then suddenly wrapped his big hand around it so that she could feel the strength of his grip.

  Summer knew he could break her finger as easily as a twig. Hideous anticipation paralyzed her. She froze, waiting for pain.

  “Then you can tell us. But make no mistake, you will tell us. Now, where is the van?”

  “I told you, she doesn’t …” Frankenstein growled, coming partway off the couch. Suddenly the business end of a pistol was shoved against his temple by thug number two, who looked as if he might enjoy using it.

  “You sit on back down, now, boy,” number two said, and Frankenstein slowly, reluctantly subsided.

  “I’m going to tell them,” Summer said in a shrill voice that she had trouble recognizing as her own, flicking a scared glance at Frankenstein. She then looked directly up at the man squeezing her pinky. The first thug hovered at his shoulder like an evil genie. The second one continued to hold a pistol to Frankenstein’s head. “I’ll—I’ll tell you anything you want to know. Just—just don’t hurt me. Or him.”

  “Shut your stupid mouth,” Frankenstein growled.

  “Shut yours, or I’ll blow your head off,” the second thug answered, jabbing the mouth of the pistol viciously against Frankenstein’s temple. Frankenstein grimaced and was silent. The thugs exchanged satisfied glances.

  “So where’s the van?”

  For a moment Summer had to think. Frankenstein was her boyfriend, right? She couldn’t call him Frankenstein. “St-Steve left it, you know? It wasn’t running very well, because it was all shot up. He said a bullet must have pierced something in the engine. So he left it.”

  “Where? Where did he leave it?” As one they leaned toward her.

  “In a field.”

  “What field?”

  “I don’t know. A field, okay? I’d—I’d have to show you.” Summer tried to infuse a desperate cunning into her voice. “But only if you promise to let us go, after.”

  “Sure, sweetheart. You show us, we let you go.” The soothing promise was about as believable as a crocodile’s tears, but Summer managed a timorously relieved smile. She’d always been a good actress—once she had thought she might be able to make it a career—and under the circumstances she was ready, willing, and able to give the performance of her life. For her life.

  “See? It wasn’t so stupid of me to tell them.”

  She addressed that remark, adrip with a pathetic bravado, to Frankenstein, who glowered at her and growled, “Don’t be a damned fool.”

  At least he wasn’t stupid, her monster.

  Hands grasped her upper arms, and Summer was hauled to her feet.

  “No point in taking him. We can just waste him here.” The comment, made by thug number two, was low-voiced, but Summer heard it. She made no pretense that she hadn’t.

  “You promised to let us go if I showed you! Steve too!”

  “Sure, sweetheart, sure we’ll let you go. Both of you. Soon as we get our van back. Shut up, you lughead.” This was hissed at thug number two. Thug number three, the speaker, wrapped a hard hand around Summer’s upper arm and propelled her toward the stairs.

  “Bring him,” he ordered, glancing over his shoulder.

  “But …”

  “She might be lying. She might not remember. Whatever. We don’t want to burn any bridges until we’re sure.”

  So the thugs weren’t as stupid as all that. Summer’s spirits, which had started to rise, sank again. But at least she’d bought them some time.

  Summer was just starting to climb the stairs when she heard it: the click, click, click, of someone, or something, in heels or taps or some other odd kind of footgear, walking across the kitchen linoleum toward the basement door.

  Arnold?

&nb
sp; The cavalry?

  Betty Kern?

  Almost without realizing it, Summer stopped climbing and held her breath. Behind her, the thugs and Frankenstein stopped too.

  Everyone froze, listening.

  15

  A hand clamped over Summer’s mouth. She was dragged backward down the stairs, then set on her feet again. The five of them, thugs and victims, clustered in a tight little group at the base of the steps, craning their necks in a futile attempt to peer into the darkness beyond the sliver of light cast by the barely ajar basement door.

  A pistol pressed hard against Summer’s temple. The third thug’s hand still squashed her mouth. It tasted strongly of beer. Summer loathed beer. Under less dire circumstances she would have gagged.

  Frankenstein faced her, a pistol held to his head, too, compliments of the second thug. The concrete floor felt hard and cold beneath Summer’s one bare foot. The mouth of the pistol felt colder against her temple.

  “Check it out,” the third thug muttered to the first.

  Summer and Frankenstein exchanged tense glances. The first thug cautiously crept upward toward the door. He kept his back pressed to the concrete wall of the stairwell. His pistol was drawn and ready.

  The curious clicking footsteps stopped.

  Summer realized she was holding her breath.

  The first thug reached the top of the stairs and listened hard. Silence.

  Summer dared to hope. In her imagination, a whole squad of friendly policemen was crouched in her kitchen, ready to spring to the rescue.

  Policemen in high heels or tap shoes? She didn’t think so.

  Okay, then, Arnold.

  The notion of the Terminator in pumps was almost enough to make her smile even under the circumstances.

  She would settle for Betty Kern. Heck, at this point she would settle for anyone she could get.