by James Dixon
The car door opened and Lieutenant Perkins got out. He spoke to some other people still in the car. “Supervisor of the reservoir usually lives here. We moved him to a motel,” he said.
Jody appeared. “Here, let me help you,” said Perkins, helping her out of the back seat. Eugene was getting out the other side, stiff from his bandages.
As Jody, Eugene, and Perkins crossed the front lawn, the driver, a uniformed policeman, reached into the back seat and took out several hangers bearing clothes.
Another car appeared up the tree-shaded driveway. It stopped, letting out its one passenger, Mallory.
He walked toward the three, inspecting the house as he approached.
“Cozy,” he said, smiling, meaning to be funny.
Jody stiffened. Even after Eugene had told her who he was and why he acted the way he did, she still couldn’t stand the man. What was she doing here with these men, with these clothes they had bought for her and Eugene with funds from the city budget?
Gene had explained the whole thing in the hospital. They were to be brought to this house near where Frank Davis was killed. How do they know that? Jody thought. Gene saw the body—oh, he wouldn’t miss it, as if he were the county coroner, or something—but how do they know the baby, my baby, killed him? Why would he kill Frank Davis? He was the only one trying to save his life, for God’s sake!
Now we’re supposed to be the—what did he call it? The bait. Yes, that’s it, the bait. We’re supposed to sit here in the middle of these woods and wait for the baby, looking for his mother, to show up, so they can blast him, kill him, with their guns.
“Will you get the groceries out of the trunk?” Perkins asked, turning to the policeman.
“Sure thing,” said the policeman, handing Jody her new clothes.
“Thank you,” said Jody, just as her mother taught her. Groceries! Boy, they think of everything. I bet they had the city nutritionist figure out what the average mother and father would eat, waiting as “bait” two or three days for someone to kill their child.
“How do you like it, Mrs. Scott?” asked Mallory, trying to be friendly.
“It’s funny,” said Jody. “I saw a house like this in a dream once. No, more than once. It kept coming back. Maybe it was a nightmare.”
Perkins looked at her strangely, anxious to change the subject, get them in the house, get this whole thing worked out, finish this damn thing and be done with it.
“The bedrooms are upstairs. Two of them,” he said, leading them toward the house.
“That’ll be perfect,” said Eugene. Jody was not the only one who had been thinking. Eugene still remembered how Jody had turned away from him in that room. And then at the hospital, not a word about his wounds, nothing. Only, “Where’s the baby?” The baby! That thing is no baby . . . Well, she can sleep alone from now on. At least until she makes the first move.
“Well, let’s go. Might as well get it over with,” said Eugene, offering a hand to Jody. That was the best he could do—help her up the stairs.
Jody coldly turned the other way.
Eugene shrugged and bounded up the stairs and through the door Perkins held open for them.
Inside, Perkins showed them around the tiny house. The uniformed policeman was stacking the shelves and the refrigerator with the city-bought groceries.
Finished downstairs, Perkins led the Scotts up the narrow stairway to the second floor.
“This is the hall,” said Perkins.
“No kidding,” remarked Jody under her breath.
Eugene turned, annoyed. Perkins apparently had not heard as he brightly led them into the first bedroom.
Jody didn’t care who had heard as she followed Perkins into the bedroom.
Very quaint. The interior decorator could have been Norman Rockwell. It was all there, the canopy bed, the furnishings complete in Colonial decor.
I can just imagine the supervisor of the reservoir’s sex life, said Jody wickedly to herself.
“The only thing they warned us about were some holes in the roof. But the forecast doesn’t predict rain,” said Perkins. “If there’s one thing this city could use, it’s rain.”
The required small talk, thought Jody, trying to put us all at ease. And now the other one, the other killer, is going to talk. Mallory looked as if he were getting ready to speak.
“We patched in special direct lines yesterday,” he said. “If you need us, you can dial seven. We made several dry runs. We can be here in under five minutes.”
“It’s still somewhere in these hills,” Perkins added. “They found a coyote this morning with its throat cut out. Nothing else could have done it.”
“You’re sure, Lieutenant?” asked Jody.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” said Perkins, looking over at her.
“You’re sure it was . . .” She searched to find the correct word, then blurted out, “. . . my baby?”
“Yes, Mrs. Scott,” Perkins answered. “Yes, we are.”
“Did you do an autopsy on the coyote?” she asked sarcastically.
“Yes, ma’am, that’s exactly what we did,” said Perkins. “We found traces of blood on the coyote that matched up with traces of blood found on Davis’s body.”
“Which also matched up,” interjected Mallory, “with the blood found in the motor home in Tucson.”
There was a lengthy silence. Then Jody spoke. “So that’s that.”
“I’m afraid so,” said Perkins.
Again the silence. The four stood there awkwardly, Eugene anxiously trying to think of something to say.
“And you think it’ll come to us?” he said, knowing the answer already, having discussed all this at the hospital earlier.
Mallory didn’t mind, he would play the game. After all, he had talked about little else for the past two years, anyway. “If you’re here alone it will. It sure will.”
“We can’t be too close,” said Perkins. “It’ll sense our presence. It’s all going to be up to you.”
“For four minutes, that is,” said Jody.
“For four minutes,” Perkins repeated. “Four minutes is a long time when you’re dealing with something like this.”
He opened a small bag he had been carrying and withdrew two deadly-looking .38 caliber pistols and two boxes of ammunition. He placed them almost tenderly on the gleaming, well-cared-for surface of an oak bureau as if he were afraid he might damage the antique wood.
He then turned, and carefully avoiding any mention of what he had done, crossed the room. “Let us know,” he said, “when you run out of groceries.”
Jody moved quickly across the room, picking up one of the guns. She would not let Perkins off as easily as that. “I don’t know if I can use this thing, Lieutenant,” she called after him.
Perkins turned, his eyes soft, about to say something, but Mallory stepped in, his voice hard and threatening. “You saw what it did to your husband, didn’t you?”
“That wasn’t ours,” Jody flared back at Mallory. “You know that wasn’t ours.”
Mallory fired right back at her, “Want to see some photographs of Frank Davis’s body?”
“No, I don’t, Mr. Mallory,” stormed Jody, “though I’m sure you have them right there in your wallet.”
“All right, come on now,” said Perkins.
Finally Eugene intruded, backing his wife. “Listen, we’re volunteers, remember. You were all set to send us back to Tucson. We’ll do our job here, won’t we, Jody?”
Jody turned away, facing the corner.
“Just get the hell out of here,” said Jody. “We’ll do what’s expected of us.”
Mallory spun around and left. Perkins followed but stopped at the door.
“I wish there were some other way,” he said.
Jody remained facing the wall. Eugene nodded.
“Remember, four minutes,” she heard Perkins say, then his heavy footsteps receded down the stairs.
Eugene looked at Jody. Her slim back still faced him
.
“Jody?” he said.
“Leave me alone,” she said, not turning around. “Please.”
Silence . . . and then Eugene’s footsteps leaving the room.
“I’ll take the other bedroom,” he muttered as he left.
The door closed. Jody heard another sound outside. She moved a step or two toward the window. Mallory and Perkins were getting into their cars, pulling out and down the dirt road; then disappeared into the trees.
Is this me, is all this happening to me? Jody thought. What am I doing here? She heard a noise in another part of the house. It was Eugene downstairs.
Jody went out the door and down the narrow stairway into the living room and then into the kitchen. Eugene was rearranging the groceries, “Want something to eat?” he asked. “Got eggs, bacon, all sorts of things.”
“No, thanks,” said Jody.
Eugene shrugged and went on with his sorting. Jody sat at the table, listlessly staring at a black telephone. When was the last time I saw a black telephone? she thought.
“How long have they been gone?” asked Jody.
“Who?” said Eugene, absorbed in his groceries.
“Perkins and that other one,” she said.
“About five minutes.”
Jody picked up the phone and quickly dialed seven. That was all, just the number seven.
Instantly a voice came on—Perkins! “Yes?” he said.
“I just wanted to see if you were there,” Jody said quickly, immediately hanging up the phone.
Eugene looked over. “You all right?” he asked.
“ ’Course I’m all right,” she said, her face hard, closed. “Never felt better.”
It was night. Jody was in bed, eyes wide, staring fixedly at the wall. The room was lit by a small lamp with a lampshade that exactly matched the wallpaper. The wallpaper! Jody could not get over the wallpaper.
A dashing gentleman in a top hat, jacket, tight-fitting trousers, and gleaming leather boots had just dismounted from his horse. He stood talking to a young woman in a gown of yards and yards of the finest material.
My God, Jody thought, what it must have cost to dress in those days—the dry cleaning alone. They didn’t have dry cleaning in those days, she grinned to herself.
Suddenly she was cold. She put her hands under the covers, feeling her stomach, still soft from the baby. She heard a noise, as if someone were turning in bed, having a hard time getting to sleep.
“Gene,” she said. “Oh, Gene, I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry, I can’t help it. Please forgive me. Please . . .” She said it softly, intentionally so . . . so that Gene couldn’t hear her.
The next morning as Jody came downstairs, Eugene was lying on the couch watching her.
“You were here all night?” she asked.
“Most of it, couldn’t sleep,” he answered.
Jody went to the window and looked out. “They didn’t even leave us a car to get out in.”
Eugene got up. He came to the window. “They’re watching us from that fire station way up on the ridge,” he said, pointing up the hill behind the house, making sure he stayed far enough away from his wife so that they didn’t accidentally touch. “They know every move we make.”
Jody looked up suddenly. She caught him looking tenderly down at her long dark hair. Eugene turned quickly away. He searched for something to say, something impersonal to break the mood of that look he had been caught with.
“Oh,” he said, crossing the room, “somebody was kind enough”—he picked up a cardboard box that came with the groceries—“to forward our mail.”
He began sorting through the cardboard box, bringing out this letter and that. “I was rummaging through here this morning and found this. No matter what happens, the wheels of society must turn, you know.”
He selected one letter and held it up for Jody. “Here it is. We better do something about this or they’ll turn off our electricity.”
Jody came to join him as Eugene searched for another one and, finding it, pulled it triumphantly out of the box. “Oh, yes, here it is. Guess who this is from?” he shouted, holding up the envelope.
“Who?” said Jody.
He laughed, a strangled kind of laugh. “You won’t believe it,” he said.
“Who is it?” she asked again.
He ripped it open. “Dr. Fairchild,” he laughed. “He’s billing us for the delivery.”
He was laughing harder now, a forced, almost insane laugh. Jody stood watching him, terrified. She felt she was about to break, but not Eugene. She had thought no matter what happened, Eugene would always be there, steady, strong, to lean on. Now she watched him sitting there, cracking like fragile glass in front of her.
“You know, if you don’t pay him,” he laughed insanely, “he’ll probably sue you and will win, too! He’ll ruin your credit. They’ll take away your Master Charge.”
Jody couldn’t take it any more. “Oh, Gene,” she said, going to him, holding him. “Gene, I’m sorry, so sorry.”
But it was empty. It had to be empty, she thought. What was she sorry about? What had she done that she wouldn’t do again?
CHAPTER TWELVE
It was night again, two days later. In the same fire station, Perkins, Mallory, and police officials were watching the reservoir supervisor’s house through long-range telescopes.
Perkins was tired; he hadn’t slept. “Three days,” he said. “Seems more like months.”
“It’s got to come,” said Mallory. He was alert, expectant, and fresh. He fed on this, as if he smelled the proximity of the creature and it energized him. “It’s got to try to kill them both. That’s it’s nature.”
“You’re sure?” said another policeman behind Perkins.
“I’m positive,” said Mallory, quickly, surreptitiously, bringing his hand to his mouth and taking a bite of what was left of the nail on his right index finger.
Perkins glanced over. Mallory immediately brought the hand down, hiding it in his jacket pocket. Perkins looked away, into the telescope again. Then, just as quickly, unseen by Mallory, he looked back. There goes that hand again, up to Mallory’s mouth, he thought. The nails had been bitten away, down to the quick. On some of the fingers so much nail had been gnawed away that thin strips of blood were beginning to show beneath the nail surface.
Perkins looked over at the other hand, grasped firmly around the telephone linked to the house below.
The nails on that hand were in the same condition; worse even.
Below them the tiny Colonial house stood waiting for its expected visitor. High up on the roof was a jagged opening where some shingles were gone and where, most likely, over the years squirrels and other small animals had worked their way in, seeking the warmth and protection of the attic to store their food. The hole had grown bigger, as if invaded by larger animals.
The reservoir caretaker? What did he care? He’d been around animals all his life. He didn’t care if a few of them wanted to roost every now and then in his attic.
Now, just about anything could work its way in there . . . just about anything.
Eugene Scott, stripped to the waist, leaned forward on a stool. Jody was changing the dressings on his back; a painful process, applying the ointment and the new bandages to the still-tender area.
Things between them, inwardly, were still the same. They still used separate bedrooms; they never got closer to each other than was absolutely necessary. Outwardly they talked to each other, prepared each other’s food. Jody even cared for his wounds, as she was doing right now.
“Ouch!”
“Sorry,” Jody apologized.
“Biting on a bullet might help,” he said.
That’s the worst part of it, him saying those clever little things, thought Jody, when the last thing she wanted to do was to laugh, to smile even.
As an afterthought, Eugene asked, “Where’s your gun?”
“I left it upstairs by the bed,” she said, applying the last of the ointmen
t and pressing the bandage down into place.
“I told you to keep it with you all the time. Please, Jody,” he said, “get it!”
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
Exasperated, Jody set aside the bandages and hurried up the stairs to the second floor.
“Treats me like a child,” she mumbled.
Then she paused. She looked up at the ceiling. She had heard something that made her heart stop, a soft scratching, scraping sound in the crawl hole!
She turned; Eugene was still downstairs, his back turned. She tried waving to him, trying to catch his eye. Eugene turned. He saw her standing there with an odd expression on her face.
“What’s the matter?” he whispered.
Before she could think of what to say, she pointed to the ceiling.
Quickly Eugene moved across the room to the foot of the stairs. He heard it, too, a soft scraping, crawling sound between the first and second floors. He moved closer to his wife.
“In the crawl hole,” he whispered. He took the gun out of his belt.
“Oh, no,” she gasped, the words inadvertently escaping her dry lips.
Eugene, intent on what he was doing, did not hear her. “The phone,” he whispered, “use the phone,” as he moved softly and silently up the narrow stairway.
Then it was gone. It seemed to have moved away. Perhaps up through the hollow structure of the house to the next floor, as if seeking a way to get into the house. This thing that had come through the roof was now trying to get into the house proper, to get to Eugene and Jody.
Below, Jody had moved halfway across the living room, halfway to the phone, and stopped. Eugene looked back. He saw her standing in the middle of the living room.
“Go ahead,” he motioned, “go ahead, call them.”
Then he climbed higher, disappearing up the stairwell as Jody moved docilely toward the phone.
Eugene reached the top step. Cautiously, quietly, he made his way across the creaky old floors, his eyes constantly scanning the ceiling for any new noise, any opening that might be an entrance into that crawl hole.
Then, carefully, he opened one bedroom door, the one his wife had been sleeping in, and peering around in the semidarkness, stepped in. He heard something! Over there, by the closet!