by Medora Sale
Through the cleaning of the bathroom, through the rearranging of the furniture, through the clattering of dishes being put away, Lesley still slept. When she found herself staring speculatively at the huge window, polishing cloth clutched tightly in her hand, Jane shook her head and went downstairs. There she defiantly raised up the great wide door that gave onto the lake. The reflection of the morning sun on the water lit Amos’s table in an otherworldly glow. Too otherworldly, Jane decided. Exaggerate your effects, and you cheapen and lose them. She ran lightly up the stairs, pulled out her suitcase from under the bed, and extracted from it the small camera and couple of lenses that she had hidden away in it. Before she went down again, she detoured to grab a white sheet from a pile in the bathroom.
Humming to herself, she pulled a stool over to serve as a makeshift tripod, and began to experiment with her lenses. By the time Lesley wandered down the stairs, a cup of coffee in her hand, Jane was on the stepladder, fastening the white sheet to the wall with tacks, and draping it over the tool bench.
“What are you doing?” asked Lesley. Her voice was dull and slurred, her face pale and heavy with sleep, but she was up and on her feet and dressed. She was wearing neatly pressed, sand-coloured shorts, conservatively mid-thigh in length, and a matching shirt with its long sleeves rolled up to the elbows. She moved stiffly, like someone the day after a particularly hard workout, but other than that, only the flesh-coloured bandage on her left forearm testified to her ordeal.
“Playing around with the light and stuff,” said Jane. “I’m a little short of equipment, but I wanted to try to get this table before he ships it off to the guy who ordered it.”
Lesley could feel no interest in modern furniture, but she walked cautiously up to the open door, looked up and down the lake for a long time, and then settled down like a cat in a patch of sun on the edge of the dock, her legs stretched out in the sun and her head in the shade. Their separate occupations lasted for the better part of an hour. When Jane had finished shooting her last roll of film and had packed up and put away everything she had disturbed, she turned back to her sister. Lesley had taken off her shirt, and was lying on her stomach on the dock, apparently sleeping again.
“How about some lunch?” Jane asked brightly. “I’m starving. And I’ll bet you didn’t have any breakfast. Come on, let’s see what there is in the refrigerator.” She almost bit her tongue in irritation as the words rolled around in her head. No matter how hard she tried to be normal, she knew that she was behaving like a nurse humoring a fractious patient. She wondered if Lesley, wherever she was, noticed what Jane had just said. Because her sister had abandoned—at least temporarily—this neat, polite shell. And it was difficult to find the exact level at which to speak to the zombie she had left behind.
“He’s still following me, you know,” replied Lesley, opening one eye and looking at her. “I saw him. He has a pair of binoculars and he’s watching us from miles and miles away, across the lake, but I can still see him if I turn my head. It’s all right, though,” she added reassuringly. “He doesn’t scare me anymore.”
“Come on, sweetheart,” said Jane. “Nobody knows we’re here. And nobody’s following us. Let’s get some lunch.”
Lunch had been a horror. Jane had thrown together a Basque omelet and a green salad. The effect was light, colourful, and spicy—a textbook perfect meal, she had thought, looking down at the table, for the recovering invalid. Lesley had thanked her politely and then played with her food like a bored two-year-old, stirring it about, pretending to eat, and refusing to talk, before wandering off to stare out the window at the manicured lawns and cedar hedges of the main house. Jane took a deep breath and decided to counter her irritation by turning some of Amos’s resupply effort of the evening before into a large-scale Bolognese sauce. That would keep them going for a while, and Lesley had always liked pasta. She should have remembered that her little sister had never had much use for food, except as a means of staving off the discomfort of hunger pains. There was no point in going all out to create little delicacies for her and expecting her to enjoy them. By the time Jane had chopped a sufficient quantity of onions and garlic, carrots and celery, and reduced a pile of chicken livers to a fine mince, she had restored herself to good humor. She washed and put away her knives, and began patiently browning the ground meat for the sauce.
As she worked, vast, round, blue-black clouds started to pour through a break in the mountains to the west, piling in over the lake, and obliterating the sun. When the light levels diminished, she had turned on the kitchen light without thinking or remembering to close the curtains, and had continued working happily, humming to herself. Now the noise of the handfuls of meat browning in hot oil was drowned out by a ferocious clap of thunder. “Good lord,” she said, glancing over to her left at the window and catching sight of black lake and menacing sky. “He was right. The weather is changing.” She turned to where Lesley had been curled up in the basket chair. It was empty.
“Lesley?” she called. There was no response. “Lesley, where are you?” Her sister had always been terrified of thunderstorms.
Then she heard a rustle, looked around, and saw a newly formed hump under the duvet on the double bed. There was no point in trying to talk Lesley out from under the covers, but she did make a quick dash to the other end of the room to yank the heavy draperies on the east wall shut and deaden the sound of the storm. That problem dealt with, she turned back to her sauce.
The rain hit a minute later, slashing across the lake, battering the windows, and pounding against the roof. Jane glanced out again. The sky was blue-black now, and the wind, churning up the water of the lake, sent waves crashing into the dock, and flinging themselves against the boathouse door, until the entire building was vibrating with the force. Her body tensed, heavy and ill-at-ease. “Don’t be stupid, Jane,” she murmured to herself. “It’s just a thunderstorm. You’re perfectly safe here.” Perhaps it was Amos who was causing all this visceral anxiety. But surely he wasn’t working outside in this storm. He’d have the sense to pack up and come home, she thought uncertainly, and returned to the sizzling meat on the stove.
A rolling clap of thunder drowned the noise of the glass in the east door breaking; the rattle of the rain hitting the boathouse covered the turning of the handle inside. The door refused to open. A gloved hand delicately removed shard after shard of broken glass and then felt cautiously up and down the frame looking for the obstruction. The storm grew in intensity. During the next crash of thunder, the bolt screeched open.
Jane threw the last handful of meat into the oil, wiped her hands on a damp cloth, and picked up her wooden spoon again, singing under her breath as she scraped the browned portions up and over to the side of the pot. Without even thinking about it, she had forgotten to be terrified. She was lost in her world of cooking noises, happy in her conviction that this was one thing in her skewed life that she knew she could get right.
Her first intimation that something was amiss was the gloved hand that grabbed her left arm and wrenched it hard behind her. Her scream disappeared in the rising wind and rolling thunder. The other gloved hand reached around and pressed a knife against her throat.
The meat began to smoke.
“Turn that fucking stuff off,” said the shape behind her.
She stretched out her free right hand and turned off the burner.
“Now, you thieving little bitch, where is it?” There was a long silence. “I know you have it; you were waving it at Southfield when you tried to sell it to him. That was pretty funny, you going down to New York and trying to sell to Southfield and Pitt. We already had a deal with them. One million, cash, American, in hundred-dollar bills. Do you know how much that is? That’s one thousand bills, stacked up, and that was ours, you fucking cow, it was ours. And you just sailed out of there like nothing had happened. And then you come back here, and flaunt your bare ass out on the fucking dock.”
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The body behind her pressed harder; shoving her up against the stove, forcing her head back with the knife at her throat. Even if the sheer surprise of the attack had not rendered her speechless, the accusations would have. She wanted to say in her own defense that she didn’t know anyone called Southfield, that she hadn’t been out on the dock, but the pressure of the knife on her throat temporarily choked off her ability to talk. And in that heaven-sent pause, the name Southfield and Pitt bounced up from her memory bank. Guy’s list of shady dealers. He must have got it from Guy. New York City. Lesley had been there. And she remembered that Lesley had been lying on the dock, half-naked, and it occurred to her, suddenly and belatedly, that he hadn’t realized that Lesley was with her in the room. Hadn’t, in fact, realized that Lesley existed. And that realization kept her silent.
“And besides that, I’ve got this hole in my side that hurts like hell every time I move, and you’re going to pay for that, too.” He paused, considering. “It will be hours before your new boyfriend gets back from work. I checked. At least three. Uninterrupted. And trust me. By the time those three hours are over, you’ll tell me everything you know and then all the stuff you don’t even know you know.” His voice rose to a dramatic pitch and then fell again, menacingly. “Just like Beaumont, doll. Just like that rat, Beaumont. But more fun.” And Jane realized, with a jolt of terror, that this man was completely enveloped in some mad barbaric vision of himself, quoting snatches of tough dialogue from old movies and cop shows, miles beyond the reach of a human voice, miles beyond reasoning with.
Feeling blind with the sharp point of his knife, he ran it down her throat until he met the obstruction of her shirt. He yanked down as hard as he could. The point scraped against her skin and a button tore off. “Turn around.” He gave her arm one more vicious upward shove and then let it go. Replacing the knife in its position against her neck, he swiveled her around slowly, turning her with his free hand.
He was a burly, broad-shouldered man with a thick head of glossy dark hair that accentuated the gray pallor of his skin. He looked strong enough to tear her apart; he looked mad from exhaustion or perhaps pain and illness, with his unshaven chin blue with stubble and his eyes burning dark as the pits of hell, but when Jane saw him she almost laughed in relief. She had never seen him before. He wasn’t anyone of the figures that had been haunting her nightmares. He was just a person.
“Let’s have a look at you,” he said. He pushed the point deep into the skin of the throat, very gently, so that it did not puncture. “Undo the rest of the buttons.” He nudged even deeper with the blade. She gagged. Jane undid the three remaining buttons and her shirt fell open.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, and wriggled his left hand out of his glove. He pushed the shirt back to inspect her. “You must have been wearing a bulletproof vest.”
A wave of hysterical laughter threatened to overwhelm her. He didn’t care about her body, only her scars. Here she was, face to face with Lesley’s mugger, and he hadn’t noticed yet that his victims had been switched on him. At least that proved that Lesley had been followed and attacked to get the map, thought Jane wryly. She didn’t have to believe in a set of massive coincidences.
“You haven’t suffered at all, baby. What in hell were you doing in the hospital? Hiding?”
A flicker of movement on the periphery of Jane’s vision made her look over and freeze, horrified. Lesley was edging very slowly out from under the duvet and lowering herself onto the floor, but the pounding of the rain covered the faint hiss of skin and cotton against the sheet. Through lowered eyelids Jane watched her sister reach under the bed and pull something out. Her suitcase. Even through the rumble of distant thunder she could hear the scrape of its smooth metal studs moving across the floor and the click of the lock giving way. It seemed impossible that he could fail to notice. Jane concentrated her eyes and mind on her feet. Don’t look up, she screamed silently to herself. Not now, not ever.
With one somewhat awkward hand, he pulled out the belt from her jeans; the other hand continued to press the knife point deep into her throat. “Put your wrists together,” he said. She didn’t move. He pressed the knife farther in and she felt a hideous urge to cough and claw at her throat. She crossed her wrists and glanced up.
Lesley was on her stomach, pressed against the baseboard of the north wall of the loft, pulling herself forward very delicately.
He backed her up against the stove again, settling his knee in her crotch and pushing hard to hold her still. He looped the belt around her wrists, tightened it hard, and then yanked the end over the sturdy curtain rod that divided kitchen from living room. For a second or two, he held the knife between his teeth and ripped off his other glove in order to thread the end of the belt through its loop again, pull up to the last hole, and slip the tongue into it. Her only contact with the floor now was her toes.
From beneath her hooded eyes, she could see that Lesley had crawled past the space Jane had left between the chesterfield and the wall when she had rearranged the furniture, and was crouched behind one of the dining room chairs. She looked like a colt trying to hide behind a sapling and Jane drew in a quick breath of annoyance and apprehension. Then her sister yanked something blank and silver from the hip pocket of her neatly tailored shorts and dove silently under the table. It seemed absolutely incomprehensible that he could not—did not—see her.
But he was concentrating on his plans for Jane. “That’s better,” he said. “Now I can look at you.” He stood in front of her, deep in thought, knife in his hand. Then he ran it lightly down her chest between her breasts and stopped at the top button of her jeans. “That’s in the way,” he said.
She could feel Lesley rushing toward her, rushing toward her own destruction at an ever-increasing speed. Jane could just catch a glimpse of her crouched underneath the round table, almost in the kitchen itself, right at her feet.
He reached out with his left hand and tried to undo the button. It was too stiff to budge. He switched the knife to his left hand and tried with his right. It still stuck. With a sigh of exasperation he put the knife down on the counter and reached for the button with both hands.
Lesley rose swiftly to her full height, her movements controlled and steady in spite of their speed. The kitchen light reflected a flash of silver as her arm whipped forward and suddenly Jane was distracted by another very rapid movement across the length of the room.
The man’s head jerked up and his shoulders began to twist as soon as he heard the footsteps coming up the room; he wasn’t quick enough, though, and the knife blade, razor-sharp and thin, plunged into the middle of his back and was jerked out again. As he started to topple, he reached convulsively for his own knife, and Amos yanked him back out of the way. Lesley’s next downward thrust whistled emptily by him.
“Jesus Christ,” Amos said, grabbing the knife from the counter and with a single slashing movement cutting Jane’s arms free.
Jane stood where she had been, shaking with rage and shock, and stared down at the body at her feet. Lesley had stepped back and then sat down, suddenly, on the floor. “What in hell happened?” asked Amos, his voice harsh with anger and his face white.
“He got in that door,” said Jane hoarsely.
“I know. As soon as I saw the ladder up to the deck, I figured that one out,” he snapped.
“I never heard him come in. It was the storm—he grabbed me. And Lesley crawled over. On her belly. Oh, God, it took her so long and I was so afraid that I’d look at her and he’d realize she was there. And then she . . .”
“I saw that. How in hell did he manage to miss her?”
“She was under the duvet, hiding from the storm. She’s always been afraid of lightning. And besides, he wasn’t looking for her. He didn’t seem to know there were two of us.”
He looked down at the girl sitting, absolutely silent, on the floor, and at Jane, standing in the kitchen
, tears streaming down her cheeks, and walked over to the telephone.
“What are you going to do?” asked Jane.
“Call the sheriff’s department,” he said. His voice was grim.
“Oh, God, Amos, you can’t do that,” said Jane. She walked over to the table and collapsed on a chair. “The police will—”
“Don’t be stupid, Jane,” he said angrily. “What do you want me to do? Bury him in the garden? Because I’m not going to do it. It’s time you and your crazy sister here started telling the truth, and got everything straightened out once and for all.”
Jane nodded, helpless with exhaustion.
When he hung up the phone again, Lesley was still sitting on the floor, deep in a world of her own contrivance. The knife was still tight in her fist, and blood from the dark-haired man was smeared on her hands, her bare legs, her shorts, her shirt. Amos walked over to her and held out his hand. “Why don’t you give me that knife, Lesley?” he asked gently. He touched her hand, and then tried to pull the weapon out of her grasp by the hasp. She tightened her fingers and said nothing. “Shit!” he muttered in exasperation.
“What’s wrong?” asked Jane, who at that point was beyond noticing the absurdity of the question.
“Nothing, really,” he said bitterly. “I just had one of those stupid gallant impulses that get me into trouble from time to time. It occurred to me that our local deputy might have less trouble with the idea of me defending you two against a vicious intruder than with Lesley creeping up and stabbing him in the back. But if I can’t get the knife out of her hands, there isn’t much point, is there? Besides we’re better off with something closer to the truth.”