The Mural

by Michael Mallory

  “Cree, whatever it is that’s happened to Elley, she’s still my wife,” Jack said. “I don’t want you to just gun her down.”

  “I have no intention of gunning her down, Jack. But if I can get the better of her this time, maybe I can defuse the situation before it becomes lethal. Sorry, but I’m in this to the end, so just put any conflicting thought out of your mind. So, you want to go get some acid or what?”

  “Yes,” said Dani. “Let’s get it over with.”

  “All right,” Jack said.

  “Fine,” Creeley said. “I’ll go home and get my truck, and then head out to get some acid. I’d suggest that you two go on down to the station and don’t leave until you hear from me. Carl should be there, he’ll keep you company. Oh, and tell him he’s in charge until I return. He won’t like that, particularly, but he’ll go along with it.”

  After Jack paid the bill, which emptied his wallet, the three walked out of the motel. “Leave your car here,” Jack said to Dani. “We’ll take my truck to the Glenowen police station. It will do better on the road to Wood City. As he approached his truck in the parking lot, he could see that the passenger door was ajar. “Dani, don’t move!” he ordered, and she froze. “Cree, come here,” he called, and the policeman trotted over. “Look at that,” Jack said, pointing to his pickup. “I never leave the doors open like that, I always leave it locked. Someone has broken in.”

  “Stay back,” Creeley said, drawing his gun as he crept slowly toward the truck. “If someone is inside that truck, you’d better come out. This is the police.”

  There was no reply.

  More cautiously now, Creeley knelt down and scanned underneath the truck, then rose again. “I’m locked and loaded, so don’t do anything dumb.” A couple other people in the parking lot now backed away as Creeley slowly stepped toward the cab of the pickup, his gun poised in front of him, stopping when he was close enough to see inside through the back window. Then Creeley dropped the gun and opened the door. “All right, Jack, it’s safe,” he called back.

  Jack trotted up and saw the policeman examining the passenger door window. “Probably used a slim jim,” Creeley said. “Check and see if anything’s missing.”

  Jack looked through the cab and found his papers and notebooks intact. His microcassette recorder was on the seat. Looking through the glove compartment, he discovered nothing missing. Even the small cloth bag filled with several dollars worth of change for parking meters was still there. “Everything’s here,” he said. “Why break into a truck and not take anything?”

  “Maybe someone wanted to leave something, not take it,” Creeley suggested.

  Jack looked through the cab again, even checking behind the sun visors and under the seat, but found nothing that should not be there. He shrugged and started to close the door, but then said: “Wait a minute, I know what’s gone now.” Searching the cab yet again, he told Creeley, “I had a small video camera in here. That’s what’s missing. I must have left it in plain sight and someone got it.”

  “Was it valuable?” Dani asked.

  “Not really. It was a couple of years old, and not that fancy. The last thing I used it for was to videotape the mural. Oh, god....”

  “What?”

  Jack gave a mirthless laugh. “I photographed that mother when it was at it’s nastiest,” he said, “so whoever took the camera is in for a hell of a shock if they happen to hit playback.”

  * * * * * * *

  Betty Dorgan thought she heard a knock at the front door, but had not been sure. Carl was at the station—something unusual was going on in the village, though he would not tell her what—and Kevin, her beautiful, loving Kevin, was still setting up his own household, so she was at home alone, which felt strange. Imagine, not experiencing empty nest syndrome until the age of fifty-five. Her own mother had already shooed the last chick away by the time she was forty.

  Betty answered the door but found no one there. Maybe it had been her imagination, or perhaps simply the fact of having an empty, quiet house was introducing her to little noises and bumps that had always been there, but had been obscured the sounds of daily life. She was about to close the door when she noticed the object lying in front of it. It looked like one of those palm-sized video recorders.

  “That’s certainly strange,” Betty muttered to herself. She was not the most technologically advanced of people in her circle, certainly not like her friend Helene, who even had one of those iPad things, or Pod, or whatever they were—the kind of contraption that totally confused her. Carl knew about some of this stuff, though the smaller the devices got, the harder a time he had with them, given the size of his hands.

  Betty knelt down and picked it up, and saw that there was a note attached to it. Adjusting her glasses, she read: Carl Dorgan must watch this—urgent! Heavens, it must be a clue to some case he’s working on. Taking the recorder and the note, she turned to go back inside, but stopped when she felt wetness on her thumb. The ink with which the note had been written was still wet, and she had smeared it. “Oh, shoot,” Betty Dorgan said, careful not to wipe it on her dress, particularly since it felt not like ink at all, but rather paint.

  Whoever had written the note and left the video recorder must have been in a real hurry. Whatever this was all about, it must be important.

  * * * * * * *

  Robynn was tired.

  She was tired of riding in cars. She was tired of living in rooms that weren’t hers. She wanted to go home. She wanted her daddy. She wanted Noni.

  She wanted her mommy, too, even though she was a little bit afraid of her now.

  But Uncle Tim was nice. He wasn’t like that other man who had taken her from school, who was always mad, and then started acting really funny when she had to go pee.

  She just wanted to go to sleep and wake up and have her life like it had been before—except she wanted Oyster Cracker to be there, too. She wanted to go back to school. She wanted to see her teacher again. But she also wanted to stop having those dreams that scared her, which meant that she didn’t really want to go to sleep.

  But she was so tired; tired enough to start crying.

  “You okay back there, honey?” Uncle Tim asked from the front seat.

  “Mm-hmm,” Robynn said, closing her eyes.

  “That’s all right, you can take a nap if you want.”

  Robynn didn’t know how he could see her in the front seat, but she was too tired to try and figure it out. The movement of a car rarely lulled her to sleep, but today she was just too tired to resist.

  But please, she thought before drifting off, don’t let that man, the muverfucker, near me.

  Tim Kinchloe meanwhile had spent the last eleven miles wondering exactly what he had gotten himself into. He was on his way to the San Luis Obispo airport with a little girl he had only just met, to whom he could establish absolutely no relationship or even prior contact, should anyone ask, and then he would fly home with her and put her up in his apartment, not having the faintest idea how to take care of a five year old. That’s providing he even got her on the plane here and off the plane in Portland without being stopped by a Transportation Safety officer.

  If he was stopped by the authorities anywhere along the way, all he had to do was have them call Chief Creeley, who would explain everything, or at least give a good cover story. Still, that did little to wipe away his present visions of headlines reading: Portland journalist arrested on suspicion of kidnapping.

  But it was too late to turn back now.

  Behind him, the girl was muttering something. Adjusting the rearview to glance back, he saw that she appeared to be sound asleep. Maybe she talked in her sleep. Lots of kids did. From what Tim had been briefed on, she’d been through a lot lately, so it would not be surprising if she was having a nightmare.

  And Robynn Hayden was dreaming, but it was not a nightmare. She was at her school, playing in the sandbox, and the shadow of someone came up to her. Robynn looked up and saw who it was.
“Noni!” she cried, getting up and giving the old woman, who had knelt down, a sandy hug. Robynn knew it was Noni, but this Noni looked different; younger.

  “Hello, punkin,” Noni said.

  “I miss you.”

  “I miss you too, but we’re here now. Only for a minute, though. Robynn, there’s something I need to tell you.”

  “What?”

  Now they were in the back seat of a car. Robynn wasn’t strapped in to a car seat. She liked that, being able to ride like a big person. Noni was seated next to her.”

  “It’s something very important, and you need to remember it.”

  “Okay.”

  Althea leaned closer to her. “Always remember, punkin, it’s harder for somebody to hurt you when you’re not scared.”

  “What does that mean, Noni?”

  “Just that. Some people may try to scare you, but if you don’t let them, then they have a lot less power over you. Can you remember that?”

  “I think so.”

  “Well, here, maybe this will help you remember.” Noni reached behind her neck and unclasped a necklace, then held it out in front of her. It was a silver chain and it had a matching locket on the front. She carefully opened the locket, doing it slowly so that Robynn could see how to do it, and showed her a picture inside. The picture was of a young man.

  “That’s Howard!” Robynn said.

  “That’s right. I never took that picture out, and nobody ever opened this locket except me, so I’ve carried his picture around with me my whole life with no one any the wiser. It has given me strength at times when I needed it, so now I’m going to give it to you.” She dropped the necklace into Robynn’s small hand.

  “Thank you, Noni! Can I put it on?”

  “Yes, punkin, and remember what I said about not letting people scare you. If you start to feel frightened, just hold onto that locket. It will be like having me there with you, holding your hand. You can even open it and look at the picture if you like.”

  “Okay.” Not so expertly as Noni, but still carefully, Robynn opened the locket and looked at Howard.

  “I have to go now, punkin. Bye-bye.”

  “Noni, will I see you again?” she asked, but Noni was already gone. Then Robynn Hayden closed her eyes.

  When she opened them again, she was in her car seat in the back of Uncle Tim’s car. She was awake again. They weren’t driving, though. They had pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway. Tim was looking back at her, his face ashen. “How come we’re not going?” she asked.

  Tim Kinchloe was breathing into a baggie, which he removed long enough to say: “I had to stop for a minute. I need to rest.” She could see that his hands were shaking. He breathed in and out into the baggie for a few minutes, then took it down from his face.

  “Are you gonna barf?” Robynn asked.

  “No, I’ll be all right. It’s hard to explain what the bag’s for, but sometimes I need it.”

  “Okay,” Robynn said, letting go of the locket, which fell down onto her lap.

  Tim Kinchloe took several deep breaths, holding the last one, and releasing it very slowly. “My grandmother wore that necklace for as long as I can remember,” he said.

  “She gave it to me,” Robynn said.

  “I know, honey. I know she did.” Tim knew that because when he looked in his rearview mirror, he saw his dead grandmother sitting back there with Robynn. He saw her hand the locket to the girl and smile. That was why Tim had nearly run the car off the road, screeching to a halt on the shoulder. That was why he had to use the baggie in his pocket to keep from hyperventilating.

  And having to use the baggie to keep from hyperventilating, to get over the shock of seeing Noni in the backseat of his rental car, is why Tim Kinchloe did not notice that an old beat-up station wagon, driven by a woman, had just pulled up on the narrow shoulder behind him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  “Must be a big sale day,” Jack said as he slowed his pickup down to nothing to look for a parking spot in the middle of Glenowen village. They had already slid past the police station, and even on the side streets, the village seemed parked to capacity. He went up to the next block, only to find it parked up as well. “I take that back, it must be free beer day,” he said. He had drive past antique shop row at the outer edge of the business district before finding an empty spot. “Good god,” he said, irritably, throwing the truck into park with a bump. “We’re damn near out of town.”

  “The walk might do us good,” Dani reasoned. “Give us something to do, anyway.”

  They got out of the truck and started back toward the police station, several blocks down, trudging on in silence, each knowing that if they started to talk with each other, the conversation might lead to questions of just what in the hell they thought they were doing fighting this nightmare, which in turn might weaken their resolve.

  While he was not speaking out loud as they walked, Jack became lost in thought. Why did the stupid schoolyard taunts bother Igee so much? he continued to wonder. Then understanding flooded over him like a tsunami: because his arrogance was punctured; his ego. That was the secret. That was Louis Norman Igee’s weak spot. Maybe that was the weak spot of every evil person, the belief in their own invulnerability! All he had to do was keep pounding on Igee’s vanity, his arrogance, and—

  “Daddy, help me!”

  Jack pulled up so suddenly he nearly fell over, instantly shaken out of his self-imposed trance

  “Owwww, they’re hurting me! Daddy, please!”

  “Robynn?” he shouted, looking around.

  It was all different now. Every foot of downtown Glenowen was different. The buildings and stores were not the same as they had been earlier, and there were no cars parked alongside the curbs. In fact, the streets weren’t even paved. There were no people either, no pedestrians. There was only one prominent building on this block, and Jack recognized it immediately.

  The Saddleback Inn.

  “Daddeee, help me!” his daughter’s voice shrieked from inside the building.

  “I’m coming, Robynn!” Jack shouted, running up to the building and disappearing inside.

  On the street behind him, Dani called out, “Jack, what are you doing?” but it was too late. He was already inside, only it was not a saloon that Dani had watched him race into; it was a public toilet structure. She had heard him call Robynn’s name right before entering the facility, and feared that something was playing with his head. She needed to get Jack out of the public building and shake him out of his delusion.

  Somewhere in the village, a clock struck four.

  Dani ran over to the small cinderblock building and knocked on the door of the side marked Men. “Anyone in there?” she called, and no one answered, not even Jack. That was not a good sign. Knocking heavily on the door and calling again, receiving no reply, she decided to brave it and pushed her way inside. Dani had not been inside a men’s bathroom since high school, when she did it on a dare, so she had no way of knowing if the drab, foul-smelling place was representative of the breed. She hoped not. The room had two stalls, one regular sized and one made to accommodate wheelchairs, and two brown-stained urinals fixed to one wall. On the same wall were two sinks, separated from the urinals by a rusting partition. The corners of the place were filthy and the floor was sickeningly damp. The place reeked of urine.

  The door of the regular stall was closed, indicating someone was inside. “Jack?” she called, hearing her voice echo slightly as it bounced off the austere walls. “Jack, are you in there?”

  No answer came.

  Crouching down, Dani looked under the rusting-out cubicle walls of the toilet stalls for feet and found none. “Shit,” she muttered. Scanning the place for any kind of escape route, she saw a small window at the top of one wall, but it seemed hardly big enough for someone Jack’s size to squeeze through, and would have been damned difficult to reach anyway. Clearly he did not flush himself down the drain. So where was he?

  S
he turned around and faced the scratched mirror over the dripping sink, which enabled her to see most of the rest of the reeking bathroom behind her. She knew she could not stay in here much longer, since someone would eventually come in and wonder why there was a woman in the place, but she hated the idea of leaving without knowing what had happened to Jack. Could it be that he really went into the women’s side, and she only thought it was the men’s? It didn’t seem likely—she had seen what she had seen, after all—but at least that made more sense than his disappearing off the face of the earth. Besides, she could check in the women’s side without any fear of discovery.

  Still looking in the mirror, Dani ran her hand through her hair to straighten it, and then smiled at her folly. Everything’s turning to shit and she’s worried about her hair being messed up. She had no sooner turned to leave when she heard a man’s voice say: “Danica.”

  She spun back around. “Jack?”

  “No, Danica, it’s me.”

  The voice sounded faintly familiar, but she could not place it. But now she noticed that there were feet and legs visible under the partition in the small toilet stall; hairy legs that were partially bare because the man’s pants were around his ankles. “It’s so nice to see you, Danica,” the voice said.

  “Who are you? How do you know me?”

  “I was the first one who tried to know you, don’t you remember? I called you my little tulip.”

  Dani Lindstrom clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle a scream. That voice...now it was all too horribly familiar. It was Mr. Maurison, her sixth grade teacher, who had attempted to molest her.

  “Remember, Danica? It was in a bathroom back then, too, all those years ago when I introduced you to Mister Six-Incher. Remember?”

  Frozen, Dani watched what appeared to be a very, very old hand reach down and pick up the pants, lifting them up. She heard the jangle of a belt buckle followed by a loud zip sound, and then the sound of a toilet flushing.