by Lonni Lees
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 2007, 2011 by Lonni Lees
“Prologue” was previously published under the title
“Tumbleweed” in Hardboiled #36, January 2007.
Published by Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidebooks.com
DEDICATION
To Nancy Skinner Nordhoff, founder of Hedgebrook Writer’s Retreat for Women on Whidbey Island, Washington, for her encouragement and friendship and selfless support. And to Hedgebrook, for their precious and priceless gifts of time and inspiration and solitude.
To my husband, Jonathan DuHamel, for showing his love by building me a room of my own.
And to the memory of Donna F., a young victim who did not survive.
PROLOGUE
“Often the test of courage is not to die but to live.”
—Conte Vittorio Alfieri
Charlie Blackhawk drove the silver 1979 Nova with his left hand on the wheel and his right hand around the cold can of beer planted between his legs. Its coolness against his thighs felt good. The small finger of his right hand absent-mindedly rubbed against his crotch as he hummed along to an old Waylon Jennings song on the radio. The day had hardly begun, but he was already getting itchy and restless.
Forty minutes had passed since Charlie had last seen another car along the deserted stretch of road. The main road had too many trucks and too many drunks heading to or from Las Vegas, so he’d picked up the secondary road at Jean, Nevada and was driving along the dusty, isolated route that passed through Nipton on the California side.
Charlie had already sped through Ivanpah, Cima, and Kelso, blurs on a forgotten map of nowhere. He drove along an empty stretch of desert called the Devil’s Playground. It’s got a nice ring to it, Charlie thought to himself as he hummed off-key to a honky-tonk instrumental playing on the car radio. He planned to pick up U.S. 91 again when he reached his gas stop in Barstow.
Charlie felt himself getting hard beneath the Levis where his hand rested. He jerked his hand away, nearly spilling the can of beer.
“I wasn’t being bad, Momma. I wasn’t doin’ nothing bad.” He spat out the words through clenched teeth.
Charlie pulled the Nova to the shoulder of the road, still mumbling to himself. He turned off the key and pushed open the door. Pacing along the length of the car, he uttered words that had meaning only to himself while he kicked the desert sand with his boots. Charlie was six-foot-one, tanned, and well-built. He had a rugged, outdoors man look about him with a chiseled face that hid his dark intentions.
This morning’s beer was begging for release from Charlie’s full bladder. His boots crunched the sand along the desert floor. He paused, unzipped his pants. Steam rose as he pissed a sunning lizard off its resting place on a rock, sending it scurrying to safer ground. Urine streamed down the rock, collecting in hot puddles on the ground.
Charlie laughed.
Paiute Wells was behind him.
That little hell-hole of a town had managed to bore him to death in less than a month. Nothing happened there. Nothing that would go unnoticed, so Charlie was itching for some action. So far, 1990 was proving to be a good year. He had been working his way back to California for the last three months, stopping off here and there to work for enough pocket money to keep him going. It was easy to find some dive or greasy spoon that was happy to pay a hungry drifter cash under the table. For half the going wage. He had figured that out years ago. But they didn’t ask questions and he left no footprint. Like he’d never been there. Like he was invisible. Like he was nobody at all.
It was time to head back to the cabin. He walked back to the car, guzzled the remaining beer, and tossed the empty can to the floor.
He reached across the seat for his Camel Filters, pulled one from the pack, and lit it. He drew the soothing smoke into his lungs, then exhaled as he turned the key in the ignition, stepped on the gas and returned to the road.
Driving along the desolate stretch of highway, Charlie’s mind drifted like the desert sands…from past to present and back again. It was a trick that his thoughts liked to play on him—taking him back, each time pulling ugly little pieces of that past and wedging them into the present. Sometimes Charlie drifted so deeply into the fogbank of mental trickery that he lost all concept of time and space. More often than not he was unaware of the retrogressions.
Three miles farther down the road, Charlie spotted the twisted wreckage.
He slowed to forty, then thirty, then to a crawl as he pulled up behind the mangled cars. They were a black Mercedes and an old Dodge and judging by appearances they’d hit head on. A New Mexico license plate hung loosely from the back bumper of the Mercedes. The front end was pushed in and the left fender was crushed against the Dodge.
There was a young woman slumped behind the wheel of the Mercedes. Her head had fallen forward and long blonde hair partially covered her face.
She was not moving.
As he walked up to the dented door on the driver’s side he saw the blood trickling from her ear, sunlight flickering along its path—bright and shiny and beautiful. One eye was dislodged from its socket.
He’d be back.
He turned and walked to the Dodge and looked inside. The man who had been driving was thrown to the passenger’s side, his skull crushed where it must have slammed against the metal of the door.
He was dead.
No problem there.
Charlie returned to his own car and reached in for his keys. He walked around to the back and opened the trunk, pushing aside several license plates that lay among his clothing and other belongings. Removing a screwdriver from his tool kit he then walked around to the back of the Mercedes.
Crouching down, Charlie began to unscrew the license plate.
He heard a faint moan from inside the car.
Ignoring it, Charlie finished loosening the license plate, stood up and walked slowly back to his car. He whistled as he walked, then threw the license and the screwdriver into the trunk and walked over to the passenger side of the Dodge.
The door was jammed.
Charlie held the handle and pushed away from the car with his left foot while he pulled with all his strength on the handle. It finally gave way with a loud, creaking moan. The body fell, its arm and what was left of its head thudding to the ground.
Rifling through the man’s pockets, Charlie finally found what he sought. He opened the wallet and counted the money that it held. Seventy-two dollars. Charlie took sixty dollars and pushed the wallet back into the dead man’s pocket. He grabbed the corpse under the arms and lifted it back to the seat. Brains, like a spilled bucket of earthworms, oozed from the crushed cranium. The blood was already clotting. Charlie kicked the door shut with his boot and spat on the ground.
He walked over to the Mercedes and tried the door. It was locked. Humming and smiling as he walked to the other side of the car, he then tried the door on the passenger’s side.
The door opened.
The woman moaned although she didn’t move.
“H…help…please,” she stammered, almost inaudibly.
Charlie knew that look very well. She was dying. He didn’t need a doctor or a paramedic or a fucking coroner to tell him that!
Charlie liked to watch things die, but he ignored her as his eyes searched the floor for her purse. He finally spotted it, sandwiched between the woman and the door. He grabbed a fistful of her hair and roughly pulled her head back. He reached across her slumped body and took the purse. He looked up at her bloody face—at the eyeball gutter balling across her cheek. Blood continued to trickle from her ears as she moaned. It was fun for Charlie to watch her—he was hypnotized by the tracks of blood that zigzagged across her face like a crazy road map, but he did not want to be distract
ed from his main objective. He had business to take care of and he didn’t know how much time he had before another car might come along this road. It could be an hour or it could be five minutes. He returned his focus to her purse.
There was over seven-hundred dollars in cash along with several credit cards. He left the credit cards—they could be monitored and traced, if anyone figured out he’d been there, which was doubtful. Charlie was always careful. He never got caught. He was invisible. Nothing more than a phantom riding a dark wind. He took six-hundred and thirty dollars and shoved the remaining seventy back into the wallet. Not a hint of a crime. Not a clue anyone had been there.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to carry so much cash?” he whispered softly, as if to a lover. “Dumb, stupid bitch.”
His tongue slowly traced the outline of her lips as she groaned. He lapped at the blood on her cheek. It tasted sweet and sticky and metallic as it danced across his taste buds. He flicked the eyeball with his finger and laughed as it rolled back and forth like a pendulum. Then he slid across the seat and was exiting the car when he spotted the small body in the back seat. It was a little girl about six or seven years old. Her neck appeared to be broken. She looked like a sleeping little Girl Scout in the pale green dress that was rumpled above her thighs.
She looked just like Lucy Mae. His sweet little sister from so very long ago.
He opened the back door and slid in. He put his arms around her, lifting her limp body and holding her close. Her head fell back. He hummed a lullaby as he rocked her in his arms.
Charlie Blackhawk was crying.
He laid the little girl back on the seat and watched her with sadness. The past melted into the present, confusing his thoughts.
“You murdering bitch!” Charlie yelled at the dying woman in the front seat, his screams assaulting the desert silence.
His calloused hand wiped angry tears from his face.
He reached for the girl. The feel of soft green fabric shot a current of electricity up his arm as he caressed it with his fingertips. His other hand toyed with the ruffle on her undies, exciting him, confusing him with mixed emotions. “I miss you Lucy,” he whispered. “Please don’t die.” Gently, he removed the child’s undies, rubbed them against his eyelids, then slipped them into his pocket. A part of him wanted her, another part longed to protect her. He wanted to protect the child but a darker force washed over him.
He inhaled deeply, then exhaled his fetid breath like a gust of wind from the depths of hell.
He sat up, leaned against the back of the seat and unzipped his fly.
It was time for the watching game.
That was when Charlie saw the car on the horizon.
The car that jolted him to the present with a thud. He judged it to be about five minutes away.
He reached for the handle on the car door. But the bitch in the front seat moaned. She was still alive. She was dying but she was still alive! What if she wasn’t dead yet when the car reached the crash site? What if she could talk?
No problem.
No problem at all.
Charlie’s strong hands reached toward the front seat. He grabbed the woman firmly by the head.
It was as easy as killing a chicken for a Sunday picnic.
No problem at all.
He walked casually back to his Nova and started the engine. He adjusted the rear-view mirror and pushed the dark, curly hair from his forehead.
Charlie’s eyes were as grey as frozen smoke.
His car took off. Swirling clouds of dust devils danced in its wake as it headed for the gas stations and coffee shops of Barstow.
Charlie Blackhawk had worked up an appetite.
CHAPTER ONE
Spring was unpredictable, an inconstant season at best—a spoiled bitch who wouldn’t make up her mind. In California, people rummaged through their closets for last year’s bathing suits one day and reopened their umbrellas the next. Spring held her head with the defiance of a naughty child.
Hidden Meadows lay in a quiet valley forty miles north of Los Angeles, a graffiti-free Shangri-La, a place where bad things didn’t happen. It was the unwritten clause in the escrow papers.
No smog—no urban blight—no problems.
But there is no idyllic meadow safe from the shadows cast by passing clouds.
Residents found false comfort in their illusions, for without the darkness there can be no light.
The day’s weather was indecisive. Housewives debated turning on their pool heaters. By late afternoon clouds had pushed their way across the sky, forcing the early morning nip back into the air.
The rain began softly. By the middle of the night silver bullets of rain pinged against the darkened windows of the new two-story Colonial at 11 Avenida Larkspur. Rivulets formed in the contours of unsod dirt, their fingers coaxing mud from yard to gutter.
There was no moon.
An evil mist floated through the darkness as the rain tap-tap-tapped against the windows in an ominous monotone.
The night was black.
Amy woke up screaming.
It was the bad dream again. The same nightmare that woke her up last night and the night before. Once again, it was his face that had frightened her, staring at her with eyes that glowed cold like steel grey ball bearings. His face was the Gobi desert, deep wrinkled paths crisscrossing in an abstract pattern across his leathered skin.
Amy didn’t know where he came from or why he frightened her so, but she knew that he was a threat—a terrible danger that her eleven-year-old mind was unable to comprehend. In the dream, the man would stand across the room and look at her. Just look at her with those cold grey eyes. He would not move. But he wouldn’t stop staring either. He was scary. Now awake, Amy sat upright and cowered into the corner of her bed, pressing her back against the wall. Tiny trembling hands grasped the soft pink comforter and pulled it up around her face, leaving only her pale green eyes peering out into the darkness like a cowering fawn.
When she blinked, tears streamed down her cheeks, creating a silent, erratic pattern on the soft pink comforter held tightly against her face. She felt hot urine trickle onto her flannel pajama bottoms and couldn’t make it stop.
She sobbed.
By the time Amy’s father reached her room, her sobs had turned into frantic gasps. Her arms reached desperately toward his comforting presence.
The nightlight was all that kept the room from total darkness. Jerry Hamill stumbled across the room and sat on the bed. He put his arms around his daughter and held her tightly. She was damp with perspiration, her body trembling. Jerry released his hold and gently pushed her matted, pale red hair from her eyes. Even in the semi-darkness her eyes startled him. She was terrified. But of what? A nightmare?
Now fully awake, the horror still clung to her like a decomposing phantom. Her mind tried to push away the ghostly form whose menacing face continued to stare at her.
His was the face of the future.
Amy squeezed her eyes shut, trying desperately to erase his image as it etched itself against her closed lids. A horrified moan worked its way up from deep inside her, along with the bile that burned like acrid lava along the passage of her throat. Swallowing and gasping, she clung tightly to her father. To the safety she always felt in his arms.
Something was wrong. She knew that something was terribly wrong with her. There had always been the dreams. As far back as she could remember. The kind of dreams that were so real she could have sworn that they were the worst reality imaginable—the kind that left her disoriented and frightened upon awakening. At those times she would just lie there, unscrambling the images in her head until she was sure that it had, indeed, been only a dream.
A very bad dream.
There were also those that she dreamed when she was wide awake. On one level they were even worse. It had taken her a long time to realize what was happening. Sometimes she remembered them. Sometimes she was only aware of a time lapse. Occasionally, in school, she woul
d find the other children staring at her. Or whispering. Or pointing at her, laughing. Then she knew that it had happened again—that she had blurted out some kind of nonsense—that the kids looked at her as if they thought she was crazy. Each episode gave them one more reason to laugh at her; one more reason to tease and taunt.
One more reason to label her different.
The dreams and images had not actually terrorized her until recently. Before, they had only been pictures, spontaneous splashes that some unknown artist had brushed across her mind. At times they were beautiful. Sometimes they were brief spurts—an unkempt garden bordered by bushes of bright orange geraniums—a meaningless exchange of unfamiliar words.
But the words!
At times the sentences staggered from her mouth like drunken sailors to the shock of herself and those around her. Bad words. Words that Amy would never have used. Dirty words.
But now, now the visions had taken on the face of terror and for the first time she was truly frightened. Control was slipping, sliding like heavy snow down a mountain slope. An avalanche that was roaring down a distant recess of her mind.
The bad man had disappeared, not all at once, but in an ecto-plasmic fog that spun and drifted, slowly dissipating in a malevolent zephyr that blew straight from the mouth of hell, until finally all traces of him were sucked into the darkness.
It had drained her, leaving her exhausted.
Jerry saw the dark circles that had painted themselves below Amy’s eyes. His brow furrowed in worry and concern as he held her. He tucked the comforter around his daughter and it reminded him of the pink blanket she had been wrapped in the day he brought her home. A fragile bundle—a little bird with no feathers, fighting so hard for life. She had won life’s first battle, but to this day remained a delicate child. Even now she was more the size of a seven-year-old than an eleven-year-old nearing another birthday.
He had always loved Amy. Loved her more than his own life.
More than his own wife…EX-wife.
Jerry held Amy close, whispering reassurances, soothing her, holding her patiently in his arms until he finally felt her elfin form relax. He continued to hold his little girl long after her breathing slowed to the steady, undisturbed rhythm of sleep. He stayed with her through the night, protecting her from the unnamed darkness.