The Girls He Adored

by Jonathan Nasaw

  “The third one's name was Ann Marie Peterson,” he began.

  I can do this, Irene told herself. I can do anything I have to do.

  75

  PENDER NEARLY KNOCKED his Stetson off again entering the Old Umpqua Pharmacy. It felt like going back in time, to the drugstore on the corner of Clinton and Main, in Cortland, in the early fifties. Wooden floors, ceiling fan, white-jacketed pharmacist behind a high marble counter decorated with antique apothecary jars. Pender would have bet a week's salary that the old fellow was known as Doc to the townspeople. The only thing missing was the soda fountain where you could buy a cherry phosphate for a dime.

  “Good afternoon,” said the pharmacist. “What can I do for you?”

  Pender identified himself, flashed his tin, and slid Maxwell's mug shot across the counter. “Seen this fella lately?”

  “Can't say I have.”

  “Does the name Max ring a bell?”

  “ 'Fraid not.”

  “Christopher? Lee? Lyssy?”

  “Nope, nope, and nope.”

  “He was in the news about ten, twelve years ago—a fire, maybe a scandal?”

  “Sorry—I only moved down from Portland five years ago. Always had a dream of owning a place like this.”

  Pender switched from the official to the conversational mode. “So how's it working out?”

  “It was working out pretty well, up until they built that Rite-Aid across town.”

  “Happening all over the country, from what I hear. Damn shame, too. Listen, Doc—do they call you Doc?”

  “Some do.”

  “Well, Doc, this fella here, I know he was in here around a year ago. My witness said he disguised himself to look older—maybe he was wearing a gray wig.”

  “Oh, him.”

  Oh- ho! Two little words, and the universe undergoes a paradigm shift.

  “That's Ulysses Maxwell. Caretaker for a woman named Julia Miller. They live way out on Scorned Ridge. He first came in to get her prescription for morphine ampoules refilled not long after I bought the place. Of course I couldn't do it, just give out morphine sulfate to a third party like that. It's a Schedule Two narcotic. I told him he had to get some paperwork filled out. Oh my, if looks could kill!

  “But he came back the next day with all the forms. Comes in regular, now, every month or so.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “Yesterday afternoon, around two o'clock. Picked up Miss Miller's refills and a bottle of Lady Clairol—Strawberry Blonds Forever, as I recall.”

  Oh-ho. Oh-fucking- ho. “Do you happen to have an address on file?”

  “Sure do. Hold on, I'll find it for you.”

  Just as the pharmacist disappeared into the back room, the bell over the door tinkled, and an elderly woman entered. Pender tipped his hat to her. He'd never worn a cowboy hat before—he found he enjoyed tipping it to people. Especially now that he was high as a kite on adrenaline and a sense of destiny.

  Because while the extraordinary run of luck Pender had been enjoying for the last three days—Anh Tranh to Big Nig to Caz Buckley to Doc to a live address—wasn't unprecedented in his experience (and long overdue when you considered he'd gone several years without a single damn break in the case), the way the pieces were falling into place, Pender was ready to believe that destiny, or fate, or God, or whatever you wanted to call it, had selected him for this particular job.

  Once again he glimpsed that mental image of the strawberry blonds waiting for him in the darkness. And although thus far Ed Pender had never seen much evidence of order to the universe (an occupational hazard), much less the hand of a micromanaging God, it now occurred to him that perhaps his whole life had been leading up to this day.

  76

  TUESDAY MORNING'S SESSION stretched on into the early afternoon. When Maxwell suggested they take a picnic break down by the river, Irene was leery, but agreed. Her bathing suit (or rather, she now knew, Mary Malloy's, Sandy Faircloth's, Ann Marie Peterson's, Victoria Martin's, Susan Schlade's, Zizi Alain's, Gloria Whitworth's, Ellen Rubenstein's, Dolores Moon's, Tammy Brown's, or Donna Hughes's bathing suit) was still on the line from Sunday's swim. She took it up to her room to change, while Maxwell packed their lunch.

  White meat chicken sandwiches with Grey Poupon, a bottle of white wine, chocolate-dipped ladyfingers for dessert. Maxwell doublewrapped the sandwiches and cookies, first in foil, then in baggies, remembered to pack napkins, plastic cups, and a corkscrew, and went down to the wine cellar to select a bottle of wine to cool in the creek while he and Irene swam.

  He switched on the cellar light and trotted down the stairs, past the display of strawberry blond wigs mounted on mannequin heads in a glass-fronted case in the dark cellar to keep the color from fading. Only a few were still acceptable to Miss Miller, but they retained one from each of the gals for sentimental reasons.

  The wine rack was behind the display case. He settled on a nice Ventana Chablis. It was a Monterey County wine—Irene would be bound to appreciate that. Maxwell slipped the bottle into his backpack, crossed the cellar to the fuse box, unlocked it, switched off the power to the electric fence.

  And he was in a good mood as he climbed back up the cellar stairs. A little therapy, a refreshing swim, a picnic lunch, a little alfresco sex— a lot of alfresco sex—with a woman still in the head-over-heels-with-Christopher stage: who could ask for anything more?

  A bracing swim, a delicious lunch, a short nap on the mossy riverbank, one last swim. When he made his move, Irene wasn't surprised. She'd known it was coming—she just hadn't known when or how, or, despite all she'd told herself, whether she would be able to go through with it.

  When was during that last swim. How was, he came paddling up to her from behind, rested both hands on her shoulders, and began kissing the nape of her neck. And at first it seemed as if she would be able to handle it, even after he stripped her bathing suit down to her waist and began to fondle her breasts from behind.

  It's a movie, she told herself—an attempt at deliberate dissociation. Her nipples were already pebbled from the cold water. He's my leading man, and it's a movie. She started to turn toward him, but he held her in place. Until then, she hadn't really appreciated how strong he was. He seized her wrist and drew her hand behind her, down to his crotch. His penis was flaccid and shrunken—from the cold, she thought at first. He wanted her to masturbate him. It was uncomfortable, reaching down and behind her like that—it hurt her shoulder. Again she tried to turn around in the water. Again he prevented her.

  And then she knew. Not Christopher, but Max. Max all along. Max performing another of his devastatingly accurate impressions—this time of Christopher. Max whose hand she had held, Max whose eyes she had gazed into, Max whose red lips she had kissed, and worst of all, Max with whom she'd discussed his own betrayal.

  I'm dead, she thought, feeling his penis harden in her hand.

  Am not, replied a little voice in her head—a dissociated little voice. And following its promptings, she hooked her thumbs into the bathing suit at her waist and rolled it down the rest of the way, kicked it off, then bent forward, as if to provide him greater ease of access.

  She held her breath as he positioned himself behind her with one hand, while fondling her breasts with the other.

  “Give it to me, baby,” she whispered, then threw her head back sharply, heard a crack! saw a bright light. The arm around her went slack. She threw herself forward, kicked hard at his stomach with both feet, and struck out for the opposite shore of the river.

  77

  BEFORE LEAVING THE PHARMACY, Pender purchased a box of one-and-a-half-by-four-inch Band-Aids and a nail scissors. Back in his room, he removed his old bandages and inspected his scalp in the bathroom mirror. Wong's salve had done its job. All three wounds had closed, no redness, no puffiness. Using the nail scissors, Pender took his own stitches out, rubbed on a little more salve, and covered the scars with three of the big Band-Aids, overlapped.
>
  His next order of business was to write Steve McDougal a long letter on hotel stationery, detailing his movements in the last few days, and for the first time ever, putting a name—Ulysses Maxwell—to the suspect known up until then only as Casey.

  Pender stuffed the letter into an envelope, sealed the envelope, scrawled McDougal's name and fax number across the front, and gave it to the desk clerk on his way out. “You have a fax machine?”

  “Sure do.”

  “If I'm not back by tomorrow morning, I want you to open this, and fax the document inside to this number.”

  “You got it,” said the clerk, pocketing the twenty Pender had slipped him along with the envelope.

  “Open it before then, and you're looking at a federal rap.”

  “Wouldn't dream of it.”

  “Good man. Now, can you tell me how to find Charbonneau Road?”

  “No, but here's somebody who can. Hey Tom,” he called to someone behind Pender. “You know where Charbonneau Road is?”

  “Way out in the boonies.” Pender turned to see a uniformed postman coming through the hotel door. “RFD—Remote Frickin' Delivery. What you're gonna want to do, you're gonna want to get back on the highway, follow 'er east for about twenty miles. Look for a sign on your right says Horned Ridge Lodge. The lodge has been closed about ten, fifteen years, but the sign's still up, far as I know. That's your Charbonneau Road—it's one lane wide. Loops on back to the highway east of the county line. Whatcha driving?”

  “Dodge Intrepid.”

  “You're gonna want to take 'er easy, then,” the postman said. “Unless they've done some major work since I had that route, there isn't a straight nor level stretch much longer than your car from one end of Charbonneau to the other.”

  Tom the mailman had scarcely been exaggerating. After turning off the highway, Pender averaged ten miles an hour the rest of the way, and even that was pushing it. Consequently, it was well into the afternoon when he finally spotted the mailbox at the bottom of a blacktop driveway to the left.

  He drove by slowly. Wooden fence, six rails high, padlocked gate, blacktop driveway snaking up through the trees on the other side. He couldn't see a house; couldn't even see the top of the ridge. Which meant they probably couldn't see him, either. The bad news was that he had a fence to climb, and a long, steep walk ahead of him. The good news was, he hadn't thrown away his Hush Puppies.

  Once past the driveway, Pender started looking for a spot to pull over. It was another three-tenths of a mile by the odometer before he found a cleared level spot wide enough to park the Intrepid.

  He pulled off to the side of the road, changed shoes, loaded a fifteen-round clip (supposedly available only to law enforcement personnel) into the SIG Sauer, and chambered a round before reholstering the weapon. (The SIG was engineered to fire with the hammer down and a round up the spout; a heavy trigger pull served as safety.)

  Pender closed the trunk and started down the road, then turned back almost immediately, popped the trunk, and tossed his new hat inside. It had occurred to him that the white Stetson was not exactly camouflage wear. Of course neither was his big bald Band-Aid-striped head, he realized, but there wasn't much he could do about that now.

  78

  NAKED, IRENE SCRAMBLED UP the rocky slope on the far side of the swimming hole. She could hear Maxwell splashing behind her. The muddy bank was slippery, the littoral rocks slimy. As she reached for an overhanging willow branch, her feet went out from under her and she fell face forward onto the steepest part of the bank. He splashed out of the water and grabbed her by the ankle. She kicked free and scrabbled for purchase with her fingers, then scrambled the rest of the way up the bank on her hands and knees.

  She reached the top of the slope, looked around wildly. All the same, every direction. Skinny white-barked trees, sunlight slanting crazily. Before she could decide which way to run, he was on top of her, his weight crushing the breath from her. She squirmed around onto her back. He inched forward until he was sitting on her chest, with his knees pinning her shoulders. His lower lip was split, but his grin, though bloody, was joyful; in his upraised hand, a jagged rock, poised to strike.

  “We—we had a contract,” was all she could think of to say. She was mesmerized by the blood dripping down his chin and onto his hairless chest. It occurred to her that if he leaned forward, it would be dripping directly onto her face. Somehow that bothered her more than the rock in his upraised hand.

  “The fuck you talkin' about?” He blinked slowly, like a crocodile, then turned his head to the side and spat out a mouthful of blood. “ I never signed no fuckin' contract.”

  It was not Max's voice. Nor Christopher, nor Useless, nor Lee, nor Alicea. But she'd heard it before. When? Where? Then it came to her. This was the alter who'd killed the highway patrolman—this was Kinch. I'm dead.

  Are not.

  Prompted again by that tiny inner voice, Irene extended her life, at least for the time being, with a simple question. “Who are you?” she called loudly. “What is your name?”

  Before Kinch could answer, his eyes rolled up and to the right, his eyelids fluttered, and Max found himself back in the body. He lowered the rock, rubbed it against his thigh to ground himself, then tossed it away. Because whatever else Max may have been— certainly a Cluster B sociopath, possibly a demon born of a demon, if you believe in that sort of thing—he wasn't the type to waste a perfectly good strawberry blond by bashing her brains out before her hair had been harvested at least once. If Kinch had had his way, Max knew, there'd have been hell to pay with Miss Miller.

  79

  HE COULDN'T HAVE SAID whether the majestic trees keeping the sun off his pate were redwoods, pines, or firs. After all the twists and turns Charbonneau Road had taken, he didn't know whether he was on the north, south, east, or west of the ridge. All Ed Pender knew was that it was hot, and his ribs hurt where he'd scraped them hauling his lard ass over the gate down by the road, and the jeans he'd bought yesterday in Dallas were beginning to chafe.

  Pender was starting to have his doubts about going after Maxwell alone, realizing he'd be lucky to have the strength to even pull a trigger by the time he'd dragged himself up the side of this damned mountain. This got-damned mountain, as Buckley would have said. But Pender never seriously considered turning back—at least not without having checked the place out.

  Because if he did a careful reconnoiter, the Hostage Rescue Team would have to consult with him before going in. He'd have a chance to remind them that Maxwell had recently killed a hostage when threatened with arrest, and stress the importance of a stealth assault.

  Oh yeah, stealth. . . . Pender left the blacktop for the last part of the climb, moving uphill behind the cover of the trees, stepping lightly on the dry fallen needles, looking down often to avoid snapping twigs underfoot. Sweat was running down his bald head in rivulets and stinging his eyes. He patted his scalp. The Band-Aids were gone, sluiced away. He took out the navy blue cowboy bandanna that Alvin Ralphs had thrown in for lagniappe, folded it diagonally, and tied it around his forehead.

  When he came in sight of the strange sally port, and the fence with the yellow High Voltage signs, Pender's inner voice, the smart one, told him to turn back and call in the troops.

  Just lemme take a peek at that lock, he told himself, crossing the blacktop at a crouch (as if that would do any good were someone watching) and hefting the gimcracky dimestore padlock securing the gate in the outer fence. What kind of idiot would spend all this money on the security fence, he wondered, reaching for his wallet, then practically invite anybody with a lock pick through the front door?

  A minute later he'd sprung the lock, opened the gate, and learned the answer to his question: it was a trap. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a dark blur. The hundred-and-fifty-pound Rottweiler hit him high, knocking him off his feet, sending his wallet and wire pick flying. He tried to grab for his weapon as he went down, and landed awkwardly on his side, driving his elbow in
to his ribs, knocking the wind out of himself. He lay there stunned for a moment, unable to move.

  Paradoxically, the temporary paralysis saved Pender's life. If he'd struggled, or tried to run, the pack would have torn him to pieces. Instead they surrounded the interloper, hackles bristling, growling deep in their throats (but not barking: Miss Miller hated the sound of barking dogs), and waited for the command from their master or mistress that would either call them off, or give them the go-ahead to attack.

  And the fact that neither their master nor their mistress was around to give either command, and might not be around for hours, made no difference to the dogs. They'd wait. They'd wait for their master or mistress until hell froze over, and then they'd wait frozen. They were good dogs, you see; they were all good dogs, and they lived to please.

  80

  “MAX! MAX, WE HAVE a contract.”

  He climbed off her, breathing hard, and sat down, bare-assed and dripping, on a warm rock, in an oblong shaft of sunlight. “Therapy's over, Dr. Cogan.” He spat out a mouthful of blood. “We'll just have to muddle on as best we can without you.”

  “Christopher,” she called hopelessly. “Christopher, I need to speak with you.”

  Max pressed the back of his hand against his split lip until the bleeding slowed. “Don't worry about Christopher—I've promised him he'll get his turn with you if he behaves himself. Not for a few months, though—not until you're too disgusting for the poor sap to even imagine he's falling in love with you.”

  “So it's been you all along?”

  “Just since this morning.” He touched his lip again—still bleeding. The pain was interesting, but not overwhelming. “Let's go, Irene. I think it's time to introduce you to your new friends in the drying shed.”