“You coming in or not?”
You better be, he thought. Otherwise you’ve got a long walk home.
She must have been thinking the same thing, because she abruptly opened the door and got out, not waiting for him, and walked toward the front steps. Jimmy got out and followed. He groped around under the porch, panicking for a moment when he couldn’t locate the hook on the first try, then retrieved the spare key, for some dumb reason holding it up in front of her and then going to the door with it.
He felt conspicuous parked by the shoulder of the main road. He knew cops went by here, probably not often, but they traveled this road like they traveled all the others. He rolled the windows down, tried to get his thoughts and anticipation under control. It was still unseasonably warm, the air soft, and while most of the leaves had changed color they remained on the trees, closing in around him and shielding him both from the road and the cottages below. There was the faint, languid buzz of insects and he felt suddenly drowsy, the weight of his expectations and excitement leaving him for a moment as he yawned, his jaw cracking. He thought of literally backing away from this, just putting the van into reverse and going back the way he’d come.
He recognized all of this for what it was. Fear. Fear was part of all this, part of the excitement, normal. He smiled at that, at his own definition of ‘normal’, and realized the feeling was essential to him even as he felt his heartbeat slowly accelerate.
The way down was really more of a path than a road, two well defined wheel ruts cutting through overhanging trees, a slight downhill grade that became sharply steeper as it approached the shoreline. He drove slowly, the van pitching up and down in the occasional pothole.
They had to be going into one of the cottages, and by now they’d have had time to get inside. If they were watching out the windows—he snorted inwardly, that was unlikely—his van would attract attention, but he knew that he could just pull into another cottage as if he belonged there. Most of them would be boarded up and vacant anyway.
He drove very slowly, not wanting to risk getting hung up or hitting something, taking a mental snapshot of the path in case there were any large rocks or deadfalls ahead. If he tore out the underside of the van...but the way looked clear, and it didn’t look like the Camaro had had any trouble with it.
He felt his own rising impatience and forced himself to stop one more time, then count off two more deliberate minutes, second by second, one thousand one thousand two....just to be safe, just to slow himself down.
They could only be going down there for one reason, he thought, and it angered him to think that somebody else could be inside her, taking her right now...he did his best to control the feeling, adding another full minute to his count.
Just to demonstrate to himself that he was in control.
For a moment he thought he’d made the wrong decision by leaving his lights on, that it might warn them, but he realized that a vehicle not showing lights down there would probably look more suspicious. He decided to brazen it out, stick with his original plan of just driving down there like a local resident. He took a deep breath and started down again. The van lurched slowly forward, tree branches scraping noisily along its sides as he drove down the path and negotiated a very tight left hand turn. When he straightened out he was looking down a long straight stretch, five or six cottages scattered on either side of the road. He could see the faint outline of the Camaro in front of the one at the end of the road where it flared out into a turnaround. The place looked like it may have been a farmhouse at one time, sitting up on a small hill across the road from the lake.
He looked at it a moment longer, then swung the van into the first driveway he saw and finally dowsed the lights. He sat still, methodically counting out the seconds in another full minute, opened the door and then shut it again very quietly. The driveway was on the blind side of the cottage, screened from view, and he decided to walk up from the beach side, then changed his mind when he saw the heavy brush between the cottages. He went back to the road, staying to one side, and walked toward the cottage at the end. The porch backed on a bank of three old-fashioned windows but he couldn’t see any lights.
“Slow down, Jimmy, okay?” she tried to squirm away from him, “we just got here.”
He had her pinned up against the living room wall, hard enough to keep her there unless she really wanted to get away. He wanted her, wanted her real bad like he always did, but both of them knew he wouldn’t force her to do anything she didn’t want to do. Wasn’t his style, never had been. As much as he wanted Emily he was a little afraid of her too, afraid of screwing up and losing her.
“You’re kidding,” he said, “You called me, remember?”
“I know, but...”
He could hear it in her voice, could tell that she was giving in. She always did this to him, teased him, made him work for it.
He undid the button at the waistband of her jeans, then slowly pulled down the zipper and slid the palm of his hand downward along her belly. It was flat, almost concave, and it was nothing to work his forefinger up inside her. She moaned, whether from pleasure or discomfort he couldn’t tell. He felt her hips lift slightly against his hand and then begin to move slowly against him.
The railing of the porch made it impossible to see inside from ground level. He decided to take a chance, stepping softly up onto the porch itself and approaching the windows from the side. The planking on the porch was old and he was careful to move slowly, not to make any noise. No lights were showing and he moved cautiously along the wall to the first window, dropping low to its corner so he could look inside without being noticed.
It was shadowed and dark inside and at first he couldn’t see anything. It was the dim flicker of movement that finally caught his eye, a rhythmic rocking motion that couldn’t have been mistaken for anything other than what it was. The boy had her pushed up against the wall and at first he thought he was forcing her, but then she turned her head back against the wall. Her eyes were closed, her face inexpressibly beautiful and savage—she wanted everything that was happening to her.
It tore at him. He wanted to stop it, take the boy’s place, but he became suddenly aware of headlights approaching on the road and he instinctively went to the far end of the porch and over the low railing, dropping to the ground and staying close to the corner of the house. He waited for the headlights to turn around and go back the way they came, but they didn’t. Instead he heard the crunch of tires on gravel and a door opening. He took a chance, raising himself up enough so he could see what was happening, confident that the darkness and the structure of the porch itself would shield him from view. He saw a girl standing by an old Toyota sedan. She was staring up at the front of the house, her face a suspicious mask. Even from where he was he could see the swell of her breasts in a low cut white top over a very short checked skirt—it looked like some kind of costume, a stylized version of something a schoolgirl would wear, a uniform, and then he realized that’s what it was, what the waitresses wore in that pool hall.
She closed the door of the Toyota—not latching it, as if she was trying to be quiet—and walked up toward the porch, following the same path he had only a couple of minutes ago. She even went to the window the same way he had. She stood there for a long moment, her face contorting with disbelief and then rage. She was so intent on what she was seeing that he didn’t worry about being seen himself. She turned and reached for the door—but at the last moment she stopped. It was an unconscious pose that accentuated the contours of her body—in her own way she was beautiful, even—he searched for the word—voluptuous, maybe more so than the girl he wanted, and for a moment he thought of taking her instead. Then the moment was gone and she ran back to her car. She put the car into reverse and pulled out, driving very fast back up the road, the Toyota’s red brake lights flashing just in time for the sharp corner at the end, then staying on as the girl locked the brakes on loose dirt and gravel and nearly plowed straight on into the line o
f trees at the end of the road. The car sat there motionless for a moment, its nose nearly buried in the undergrowth. Then its wheels spun again as it backed up a few feet and turned its front wheels uphill. The car stalled. He could hear the engine coughing itself to life and the girl hit the gas hard, the little car fishtailing up the hill, its lights flickering through the trees as it hurtled up the approach road. He waited to hear an impact of some kind but got instead the shriek of rubber on asphalt as it turned onto the paved road at the top, the engine’s exhaust note loud and ragged before it finally faded in the distance.
He stayed patient, stayed where he was, expecting the front door to fly open in response to the noise the girl had made driving away.
Nothing happened. If somebody had come out that would have worked better for him, set up an ambush of sorts there on the porch, but after another silent count to himself he realized they hadn’t heard anything, or just ignored it if they had.
Cautiously he climbed back up on the porch and looked inside the window again. The girl was astride the boy now, perfect breasts bouncing up and down as she rode him. No doubt about what she was now, and he watched, aroused and revulsed all at once, as they rolled over onto the floor, those glistening legs coming up to enfold the boy as he mindlessly pounded away at her, his mouth hanging open and his face blank. Her head was turned toward the window now and for a moment he panicked, thinking she could see him at the corner of the window, but her eyes were glazed, hooded, and even though for a moment he thought her eyes met his he realized that she was just rutting, not seeing anything at all.
He thought now of turning away from the whole thing, just walking away. He’d been duped—had duped himself—into thinking she was something special, unique. Now he knew she wasn’t, and the deception angered him.
He looked around him on the porch for something he could use, but there was nothing.
He’d seen far too much already, and he kept his eyes away from the windows and walked softly across the porch, turning the corner and heading along the house. He took out his gloves and put them on.
There was a woodpile at the back. The ax was lying where it had been dropped carelessly on the ground. He picked it up, trying to control his breathing, and then alternately brushed his hands against his trousers to wipe the sweat off. He went back along the side of the house and went back to the porch, never stopping, the ax held loosely in one hand as he silently eased the door open with the other.
He was quiet, very quiet, but as he stepped inside the house he chided himself—there wasn’t any need for silence on his part. He covered the last few steps deliberately, smoothly, and suddenly he was there, looking down at both of them. The boy was still on top of her, and they were both so intent on fucking each other that she never saw him until he raised the ax and swung it sidearm, down and across and nearly all the way through the boy’s head from the right ear to the left. His head exploded in a bloody mist. The girl’s eyes widened and she screamed and he was on her, pushing what was left of the boy away and pulling at his belt even as she kept screaming and he pushed up inside her, then recoiled, bewildered. She was very slick and wet inside—he wasn’t used to that, and as delicious as it felt the feeling was entirely foreign to him. He was used to the resistance of dry, unreceptive flesh, and it took him an instant to realize that he was inheriting someone else’s passion, and only a moment more to take advantage of it. He was much stronger and he was able to ease himself back into her even as she hysterically tried to buck him off. He released the ax onto the floor and clamped his right hand over her mouth, letting her scream into the palm of his glove, imagining that she was climaxing even as he came himself, too fast.
He collapsed on top of her and it took a moment for him to realize that she wasn’t moving. He knew he hadn’t—no, she’d passed out. He pulled out of her, taking his time because she felt so good, and rocked back on his knees, panting and looking dumbly back and forth between the boy’s ruined head and the girl’s inert body. His mouth was slack, open, and he could feel a rivulet of saliva sliding down over his chin. He turned his head slowly from left to right, taking in the blood on the floor, a huge splash of it surrounding the brain matter leaking out from the cleft in the ruined head.
He felt exhausted, just wanted to topple forward and pass out, but knew that was impossible. He gathered himself and looked at the ax. Rules of engagement, he reminded himself. He’d done what he wanted, had what he wanted.
By his own rules he should just kill her now.
20
Langdon swore when he saw the kid’s car in the driveway. He didn’t feel like company, especially company he hadn’t invited, and especially not at six o’clock in the morning when all he wanted to do was crash. Having these guys around came in handy sometimes and it was good for his ego, but it was also a pain in the ass. Truth of the matter was he was the only one of them who had things together and the others just took advantage, stroked his ego so they could sponge off him.
He knew they used his place as a fuck pad, and he tolerated that because it gave him leverage. It was a perk, and because of it and other benefits—cheap dope and cigarettes among them—they’d run errands, do things for him as ‘favors’ rather than cash. Kept his overhead down and his profile low—but they better not be in my bed, he thought. That had happened once before—wasn’t this kid, it was another one—and Langdon pounded the shit out of him, threw him out of the room, and when the girl had tried to leave he’d just reached out for her and pushed her gently back on the bed and fucked the girl himself. In the state she was in she didn’t care, she might even have liked it, and Langdon figured he might as well get something for his inconvenience.
He was actually two steps inside the front door before the mess on the floor and the walls registered. His instincts kicked in—even as he rocked back against the doorframe he tried to remember where his nearest weapon was. He saw the bloody ax lying on the floor—he thought about going for it but knew enough not to.
He backed out of the house, turning and going back to his car. He felt the urge to just get in the car and keep going but dismissed it almost as soon as it came. He kept his head up, groping under the driver’s seat until his hand closed around the grip of the old 1911 .45, go big or go home, and he took a deep breath and went back up to the cottage, going wide of the front door and this time taking the door to the kitchen on the other side.
It took him more than ten sweaty, scary minutes to finally satisfy himself that the rest of the house was empty, going room to room with the .45 out in front of him, both hands, like he’d seen in the movies. Hell, you had to learn this shit somewhere.
Finally he was full circle back in the living room, staring again at the horror show on the floor. It was beyond bad, bad enough that he knew it was Jimmy only because of the clothes and the car. His head was split almost in half, the edges caved in from the impact of the blade. Brain matter and part of one eye spilled out from the mass of drying blood.
Langdon was a little surprised to find how calm he’d become. This was worse than anything he’d ever done to anybody, but not by much if you counted that asshole a year ago. He’d used an aluminum baseball bat on him, not as gory but with what would have been the same result if he hadn’t been pulled off.
He backed up until he hit the wall, sidestepped into a corner, and then slid down into a sitting position, the big Colt still in his hand. No guarantee that whoever had done this wouldn’t come back. He sat there for a period of time he couldn’t measure, trying to keep his eyes away from the body but drawn to it again and again.
Finally he started to snap out of it, his own well developed sense of self—preservation asserting itself. He figured he had two options and he didn’t like either of them. The first, and probably the most sensible, was to do what any citizen would do and call 911. There was a problem with that—he wasn’t just any citizen. He didn’t think of himself that way and the cops didn’t either. As far as they were concerned he was responsi
ble for anything bad that happened around here, up to and including the weather. A known associate all hacked up on his living room floor? Slam dunk.
The second option was to clean up this mess himself, and he knew he didn’t have much time to decide. Even so, he tried to slow himself down, to think it through. There wouldn’t be any way back once he started.
Once he made up his mind he moved fast—but only after he filled a water glass with Jack Daniels and drank it straight. He kept the bottle close.
It would be simple, when you came right down to it. Four things to do. Get rid of the car, get rid of the body, lose the weapon, and clean the fucking place up even though right now it looked like it could never be clean again. Not much time to do all that, and he had to do it alone. He went out to the shed, keeping the gun with him—he swore at himself, realizing he should have checked the shed right after he checked the house—and approached it carefully before going inside. He came back out with an old canvas tarp, old mismatched work gloves and an ancient canvas tent. He looked out at the road and the lake, saw no sign of anyone else, and hurried back into the house.
The gloves were dirty and stiff from long disuse. He put them on and just stood there staring at what was left of the poor bastard’s head. He wasn’t being squeamish, but he was being realistic. Langdon was wiry, probably stronger than most guys his size, but what he really had going for him was mainly a sense of what he could and couldn’t do, ego be damned.
Jimmy wasn’t a big guy—Langdon guessed maybe one-fifty—but Langdon knew he wouldn’t be able to carry him far on foot—at least not far enough to remove any connection. He looked out at Jimmy’s Camaro. Not famous for trunk space.
He turned away from the window, took a very deep breath, and picked up the axe.
21
Adrienne always needed an alarm clock to get herself moving in the morning. This time, though, she came wide awake entirely by herself, knowing something in the house didn’t feel the way it should. She got up, not bothering to throw on a robe, and went to the door of Emily’s room. The strange feeling she had in her stomach was confirmed when she knocked softly on the door and opened it.
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