Red House Blues

by sallie tierney

  Down the hill, the King Street train station would be open. It was always open, dispensing acidic fake coffee to early commuters. But that could be risky. Marla would be catching the train back to Portland in the morning. If Suzan fell asleep on a bench . . . no, that would not be good. Then again perhaps Marla wouldn’t head out of town until she was sure Suzan had turned tail.

  Paranoia. Or common sense? Suppose Marla had hooked up with her at the Sea Turtle Hostel knowing in advance she was coming to Seattle, who she was and what she wanted. How would that be possible? Why would anyone care? What threat did she represent to Marla and Ferlin that they had gone to such trouble?

  Suzan felt a sick dread. It came down to Claire. She was the only one who knew her plans before she left Bellingham. In fact Claire had been the one to urge her to go to Seattle. No. She didn’t want to believe Claire was involved with these people, couldn’t believe that and be sane. Yet it was certainly possible Claire had inadvertently passed along her itinerary to the wrong person.

  Claire had gotten the information on the Sea Turtle Hostel from the internet. What if she talked to or e-mailed someone at the hostel and let something slip? Something that rang somebody’s bell. What if Cliff, the deskman, heard something he passed on to his pal Marla?

  That didn’t work. That scenario relied on coincidence and Suzan was sick to death of coincidences. And it didn’t explain how they knew she was connected to Sean. Pike is a pretty common name.

  What were the chances that Claire happened upon the one hostel connected with Sean and his pals? There were plenty of hostels, B & Bs, and cheap hotels in Seattle, any of which Claire could have settled upon. So, if Sean and his friends had some link to the hostel that meant . . . it meant that her landing at the Sea Turtle was no accident. She had been deliberately sent to the Sea Turtle.

  She had to talk to Claire. First thing in the morning she would email . . . Tony! God! Suddenly it was so clear. Who would want to hurt her? Who had probably known all along where his best friend had run off to? Suzan didn’t like the direction her thoughts were taking her. She and Tony used to be friends. How could he have manipulated her into this situation? Surely Claire didn’t know or she never would have cooperated, never would have allowed Suzan to leave Bellingham.

  Technically it was already morning, though ground fog sealed itself over her like a coffin lid as she trudged slowly toward the end of block. She was walking blind but felt she had to keep moving to stay warm. She could think as she walked. She needed to think.

  The intersection at Jackson emerged from the mist as a smudge of airbrushed neon. Six blocks to the right was the International District but Suzan was too tired and cold to go that way. It was doubtful any of the Chinese restaurants were open at two a. m. anyhow. What she hoped to find was a convenience store, someplace with hot drinks and microwave sandwiches. She was fairly sure there was a gas station on Martin Luther King Street. Something with a restroom would be great. She started off in that direction. Just before she reached the crosswalk she thought she saw the form of a man, hunched beside the bus shelter. On closer inspection it transformed out of the mist into a newspaper box. Still jumpy from that episode at the house. She felt as if she were the last living person on earth wandering through a silent city on an island in a sea of fog. Made to order for doing your head in.

  Across the street, Starbucks was closed and dark except for its glowing green mermaid logo. It wouldn’t open before five for commuters, hours away. Too late to do her any good. Marla or no Marla, the smart thing would be to get herself to the train station.

  She was nearly to the flower shop on the corner of Jackson and Twenty-third when she stopped to shift her purse to her other shoulder. She hadn’t the first clue where to go from there. There was really nowhere to go. No obvious direction she could take. Two o’clock in the morning in a strange city shrouded in fog, running away from ... from what? A tattooed woman and a beat up old hippie? At two a.m. everything looks worse than it is, every headache is a stroke, every worry is the end of the world. Give yourself time, Suzan, she told herself. Let the sun come up before doing anything crazy.

  But what am I doing this for in the first place? For the love of a man I swore to love until death parted us? A man I can barely remember? No, a man I never knew in the first place. It’s true. Who was this other Sean who lived in this far city, in a crash-pad dump of a house, who shot up all day and played in a Punk band all night? No one I had ever met and no one I could ever have loved. And where did this stranger get his money? Steal it? Deal drugs? How would I know what a person like that would do? He couldn’t have supported his habit on one-dollar cover charges in some cheap hole-in-the-wall tavern.

  And had she known where he had fled would she have come to rescue him, save him from himself, haul him out of the mire? Did she really think she could have descended into this underworld and dragged him back from the precipice? It was a question that had no answer.

  There on the sidewalk at two in the morning, soaked to the skin, Suzan realized for the first time that she didn’t love her husband. Her dead husband. Not any more. Tony Gabriola had been right, though not in the way he thought. The boy she had fallen in love with in high school died years before he left her. Since then she had been in love with a fantasy, a man who didn’t exist, might never have existed. And she realized that she didn’t care anymore what led to Sean’s death - that stranger with her husband’s name - whether an accident, or a drug deal gone bad, it didn’t concern her. Marla and her little friends could keep their dangerous secrets. They had nothing to do with her. She would go home, just go home and leave the whole ugly thing behind her in the fog. Suzan would never know what happened to Sean.

  It wasn’t a matter of running away or giving up. It was a realization that things had changed. She had changed. At first light Suzan would go back to Linda’s, pack, then catch the next northbound train for Bellingham.

  She looked around, trying to work out where she was in relation to King Street train station. It occurred to her she might have come a block too far to cut directly down the hill. It was then the bus hit her - or what felt like a bus - something big, solid - rushing out of the fog, throwing her sideways into the vacant lot next to the flower shop. She felt herself crash through a razor wire snarl of blackberry brambles, then something solid like a chunk of concrete collided with her face.

  Chapter 20

  May 1, 1993

  Kiki had run from the Comet before Marla could catch her. Have to find her, she thought. She can’t do this to me, leave like this, take Alexis on the tour as if she hadn’t heard a thing I said. How could she think she could do this? Make a total fool of me. As if she had no idea what she was doing, how she’d teased me, used me. She turns her back and runs into the night, without a thought.

  But she guessed where Kiki was headed. She’d run to Alexis. Run to the loving arms of that devious bitch. Pour out in detail every painful, embarrassing, wrenching thing she’d said to Kiki. And Alexis would laugh. Of course she would. She’d be overjoyed that Marla had finally made herself look like a lovesick idiot in front of the whole tavern. Now everyone knew what she felt for Kiki - how she wanted her - if they hadn’t already guessed long before - and they also knew how that love had been thrown back in her face like a dirty rag.

  If only she could take back the words. Explain that it was okay, things could go back the way they were. She had been upset. How could she not be when Kiki told her she was going to ask Alexis to go on the tour with her? The Grid’s first big tour and she wanted Alexis with her, not Marla.

  How could she not know how I felt? There for her, up front every time she performed - there from the first when no one had even heard of her, when she came from back east all excited about what she’d heard of Seattle’s music scene - when she was just another skinny chick with a big voice and a folder full of scribbled lyrics. But I was the one who saw how different she was from the all the rest, saw how great she could be. It wasn’t Ale
xis who introduced her to the guys who became her band, who arranged the first gigs for The Grid and talked Sam Allenbaum into helping them cut a demo. It wasn’t Alexis, it was me. Me, the one she wouldn’t take on tour.

  Marla wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and unlocked her borrowed car, a car “borrowed” from a guy so drunk he’d never remember where he parked it. She’d re-park it close to the Comet, she thought, when she was done with it. Anyway she heard Cliff say he was going to send him home in a cab. No harm, no foul. But tonight she needed a car to catch Kiki before she got to Alexis. If she could only talk to her quietly, without the band and all the confusion she was sure Kiki would see how important it was that she be included - that she was invaluable to the band if not to her personally. She had to see reason.

  Marla drove slowly south toward the Central District, scanning the sidewalks on either side of the street. Kiki couldn’t have gotten too far on foot and she didn’t have a car. Bus service was pathetic after midnight so she’d have to have been unbelievably lucky to catch one going in the right direction. Would she have hailed a cab? Possibly but not likely. Kiki was careful with money, especially since she needed all she could get to launch the tour. She wouldn’t make anything on it or the c.d. for a while, even supposing a big success. Small startup Punk bands didn’t make much above expenses, if that.

  Marla prayed Kiki just decided to walk off her temper, as she had done on those other rare occasions she lost it. Kiki wasn’t one for losing control but when she did - no matter how mad she got - she liked to cool off on her own. Marla figured Kiki would take her time walking the mile to Fir Street, enjoying the unseasonably warm spring night. Marla rolled down the window so she could hear the street sounds - so she could call out to Kiki when she spotted her.

  Did I pass her already? Where in hell is she? You’d think I’d see her if she was up ahead. Or would I? Could she have turned down the hill at Alder - or maybe at Spruce? This is a waste of time - Kiki could be anywhere. I’ll have to cut her off at Fir before she reaches the house.

  Then as she slowed to take a right on Spruce a shadow bolted across the street from the left straight for the front of the car, someone running flat out. Marla stood on the brake pedal, sliding to a slewed stop half way onto the sidewalk.

  “Help me, oh God, help me,” screamed the woman, slamming her hand on the hood of the car - her shirt shredded, her eyes huge in the headlights. It was Kiki.

  Marla unlocked the passenger from the console.

  “Get in the car!” she yelled out the window.

  Stunned, Kiki stood in the halo of headlights.

  “Marla?”

  “Get in the car, Kiki!”

  Staggering to the other side, she opened the door and fell into the car as if she were climbing onto a life raft.

  “God, Marla, how ...” she started to say, the words collapsing. “I don’t know where he came from,” she sobbed. “He grabbed me. I was walking and I didn’t see anything and then there he was.”

  “You idiot! What the hell did you think would happen? Are you out of your mind running off like that?”

  “I think he hurt me, Marla. I think I need to go to the hospital.”

  “You’re lucky he didn’t kill you. You deserve it, you heartless brain-dead bitch! How could you run off like that. From me, for chrissakes! You owe me better than that, Kiki.” Marla put the car in gear and pulled back onto the street, not sparing a glance for the woman hunched and whimpering in the passenger seat.

  “Kiki, I want you to explain to me why, for chrissake,” said Marla. “Why you’re so hot for Alexis all of a sudden and you’re treating me like shit.”

  “I’m hurt, Marla. I have to see a doctor.”

  “You’re hurt? You don’t know hurt. We’re going to find a quiet place to park and you are going to tell me why you decided to ditch me in front of everyone we know. Then I’ll take you over to see your little girlfriend. And maybe I’ll smash her face in just for kicks.”

  The woman beside her was silent then. And her silence was a blow. It spoke of fear. How could that be? Surely she knew Marla couldn’t ever harm her? This was Kiki, her Kiki.

  “I didn’t mean that,” said Marla. “I was just pissed off and worried. You scared the crap out of me, you know?”

  A few blocks up Marla swung the car into a narrow passage between a dry cleaners and a teriyaki shop, into an alley that threaded garbage cans behind the shops. There she turned off the ignition.

  She would talk to the woman cowering in the passenger seat - that was all - make her case, plead maybe - who knows. It would be okay after all. She’ll realize I’m the only one who really loves her, the only one she can depend upon. I’ll hold her in my arms, care for her. We’ll cry together. Then I’ll take her up to Harborview and stay with her while they check her out, be with her as she makes out the police reports. After tonight we’ll never be separated again. She’ll be a star and I’ll be there by her side the whole time supporting her, protecting her. We’ll put this night behind us, forget we ever fought.

  What happened then would remain frozen in Marla’s memory - unchangeable - even fantastical. A thing that couldn’t have happened but did, where everything went wrong. Angry words flung between them - words that they should never have said, but once said they were words, only words that should have been easily forgiven. Could have been forgiven had there been time. But there was no time. A blow. Then fury. The words like knives. Hands grab for the torn strip of fabric at the tee shirt’s neck. Twist off the words, shut out the sound. And it was over.

  It never should have been. But she could not take it back now, not make it right. Marla sat still for minutes hoping that time would run backward and Kiki would wake up. At last she knew no wishes would be granted that night. She needed to do something with the body. There were plenty of places she could dump it, she thought. Drive out into the mountains. Or just shove it into one of the Dumpsters. But this was Kiki. She couldn’t dispose of her as if she were trash.

  In the end, what she did was lay the body out in the middle of the alley. Stretched the arms out to the sides as if she were embracing eternity, crossing the legs chastely at the ankles out of respect.

  Marla returned the car to the lot where she had borrowed it, rubbed the keys with dirt and threw them under the car. She didn’t worry about traces of her or Kiki’s presence being found in the car. Nothing connected them with Ronny Jonson’s car that, as far as any one knew, had been in the lot all night after its owner went home in a cab. She thought it would probably be dawn before someone found Kiki.

  As it was, a homeboy cutting through the alley found the body only two hours later. The kid called it in on a stolen cell phone, then took off. Months later the cops got a tip on the caller, picked him up but even though he had juvenile priors they couldn’t connect him with Zell. They questioned all of her friends. None had seen her with a man after she left the Comet. All the police knew for sure was that Kiki Zell had been raped, strangled and left in an alley a little after midnight on the first of May of 1993. It would be ten years before they finally had the technology to locate the man who raped her.

  * * *

  Only two people knew that the Alaskan fisherman had raped Zell but hadn’t killed her - until one night after the guilty verdict when Ronny Jonson was drinking at the Comet with Scalplock’s new front man. The kid said he wished he’d met Zell, wished he’d been there that night she died. Jonson said he had been there that night. “Damned if I remember much though,” he said. “God, I was destroyed! Had a hangover for days. Didn’t go back for my car ‘til Tuesday.”

  Ronny hadn’t thought of that night in years. But now sitting at the Comet, looking back at that awful night an unsettling memory stirred. Something about his car. The keys. That was it, the keys. They hadn’t been in his pants pocket when he looked for them the next day. He figured the bartender must have confiscated them when he called the cab. But when he checked with Cliff, who was tending bar tha
t night, Cliff said he didn’t have the keys. Jonson called Triple-A to get him into the locked car, thinking he must have left the keys inside. But they weren’t in the ignition. He searched under the dash and the seat but came up empty. It was the Triple-A guy who found them under the car.

  “Thing was, I wasn’t drunk,” Ronny told the kid. “Not when I got to the Comet. I always put my keys in my right front pants pocket. Never lost a key in my life ‘til that night. I know I had them. So how did they get under my car?”

  “Did you loan the car to someone?” asked the kid. “You know, later when you were hammered, and not remembered it? Or maybe someone ripped you off?”

  “I don’t know.” He said. “I remember a fight. Some women were really mixing it up but I wasn’t tracking too good by then. Cliff put me in a cab. No, not Cliff. Marla. That’s weird. I forgot it was Marla who got me into the cab. What do you think of that?”

  Chapter 21

  The boat rocks gently at anchor. Listen, eyes closed, to the sloshing of soft waves against the hull. A comforting, soothing rhythm like breathing. Please let me sleep forever. Tired, bones gone to water. Tired beyond dreams, beyond caring. Somehow I have come home to Whidbey Island. Sean’s death and the trip to Seattle. Murders and monster houses. All dreams. Doesn’t matter, I’m home. In a little while I will row back to the dock, tie up and go find Claire. She will have a theory about my dream. Before long we’ll be laughing.

  Sleeping, my back pressed to the ribs of the boat. I will be sore and bruised in the morning. So dark, the moon must have gone down. Or the sky is overcast. Can’t make out details of the boat but it feels small. Rowboat small. I’m still half asleep. But why am I in a boat? When I was a kid I’d take Dad’s dinghy, row out into the center of the bay, ship the oars and drift. But why am I out here at night?