Family Reunion

by Nicholas Sarazen

  Frank toyed with the plastic net that wrapped the glass candle holder in the middle of the table. "I still think you've got the wrong guy, Tony," he said in an even voice.

  "Get outa here. How can you say we got the wrong guy? We found him in the basement, covered with blood. What more do you want?"

  "I'd want the real killer." Frank picked up a pack of matches from the empty ashtray and lit the candle. "You said yourself the kid has never been known to be violent. And how about motive? Or weapons? The old man was stabbed and his wife was shot, but you don't have either weapon. Why would the kid go to the bother of ditching the weapons, then hide in the basement where he knows someone is going to find him?"

  Donelli held his hands up in front of him. "The guy's crazy. Who can figure what he's thinkin'? We'll find the weapons, then we got him cold." Donelli looked at Stephanie. "That's always been Frankie's problem," he said to her as he jerked a thumb toward Frank. "I've seen this guy work overtime to cut some slimeball loose, simply because all the details aren't just right."

  "I don't see anything wrong with that," Frank said. "We should be willing to work just as hard to prove someone is innocent as we are to prove someone is guilty. To me, that's what being a good cop is all about."

  "Whatever you say, Batman," Donelli replied. "I'm just telling you that everything is pointing to this kid."

  "But what if you're wrong?" Frank asked.

  Donelli shrugged. "Then we got a problem."

  Stephanie looked at her watch. "I wish I could stay, guys, but I've got to run." She got her purse and started to get up. "It was very nice meeting you, Tony."

  "Same here. But what's your hurry?"

  "I have at least four hours of writing ahead of me. If I don't get it done my editor will beat me till I bleed ink." Stephanie gave Frank a quick kiss on the cheek. "Be glad you don't have deadlines."

  "No," Frank said with a sigh, "just dead people."

  Chapter 39

  Dr. Thomas opened the French doors. "We've got quite a bit to talk about tonight, Cindy." He sat down behind his desk and picked up his pipe. "Well, how'd it go?"

  "It was okay, I guess." She stared at a twisted tree in the Oriental rug beneath her chair.

  "Okay, you guess? You just attended the social event of the decade and that's all you can say about it? What happened? Some people not show up or something?"

  "No. Most of them came." Her gaze remained fixed on the rug.

  Dr. Thomas leaned forward and folded his hands. "You don't sound like you had a very good time."

  Cindy shrugged without looking at him.

  "I'll bet it was hard to go back to work today," he said.

  "I didn't go in. I took the day off."

  "They wore you out that much, eh?" Dr. Thomas tamped the tobacco in his pipe. "Tell me about it."

  Cindy swallowed hard. "Well, everybody got there on Friday night. We just talked and had a few drinks. Saturday we played stuff like volleyball and croquet. There was a party Saturday night. We got up yesterday and had breakfast, then after that we just talked and said our goodbyes. I stayed with some of the others until late afternoon to help Stephanie and Hal clean things up."

  "Who's Hal?"

  "He's Stephanie's editor at the paper."

  Dr. Thomas watched his patient with worried eyes. "Tell me, how do you feel now that it's over? Was it a good idea to see them again?"

  Cindy shifted in her chair. She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could get any words out her lower lip began to quiver. She closed her eyes and looked away. When she turned back to Dr. Thomas there were wet streaks on her cheeks. "I tried to stop it. I really did." She began to sob.

  "What is it, Cindy?"

  "It was so awful."

  Dr. Thomas had known the reunion might be an experience she was not emotionally equipped to handle. Now, as he looked at her, he wished he had made more of an effort to convince her not to go.

  "Cindy, you need to open up. I can't help unless you talk to me." He handed her a tissue.

  She blotted her eyes and cheeks. "Nothing was supposed to happen. It was just meant to be fun, that's all. I wanted to quit after the first place, but they put so much pressure on me."

  "Quit? Quit what?"

  "Slithering."

  Dr. Thomas hadn't heard the term in years. He moved forward in his chair. "Did you say slithering? You went slithering this weekend? With The Family?"

  Cindy nodded, then lowered her head again. "Last night. After the reunion broke up I offered to take some of them to the airport. They weren't in any hurry, so we swung by my apartment. When we got there Xeno was waiting to see me."

  "Xeno?"

  "He was in The Family, too. He wasn't invited to the reunion, but he had heard about it. Somehow he knew I was going, so he told me he got my address out of the telephone book and dropped by just to see how it went. He was really surprised that the others were with me. We went in and just sat around telling him all about the reunion. I got out some wine. Gator had some grass with him and everybody but Xeno got high. Then we started talking about the old days, and somehow slithering came up. Squaw said she had always wanted to do it back then but had never gotten to go along. Gator said it's never too late. The more they talked about it the more they wanted to do it. I didn't want to, but I let them talk me into it. So we went in my van."

  "How many of you were there?"

  "Five. Me, Xeno, Gator, Squaw, and Hunter. Everything went fine at the first house. We all went in except Xeno. He drove around and picked us up when we came out. When it was over Gator wanted to go somewhere else and do it again, but I said once was enough. He wouldn't listen. He said it had been too easy, too much fun. So we went to another house, in Beverly Hills. Xeno drove around again while we went inside."

  "What happened? Did you get caught?"

  Cindy shook her head as her sobs began anew. "They...they killed them..."

  "Killed them?" Suddenly Dr. Thomas felt sick. The couple in Beverly Hills! "Oh, Cindy. Oh, no."

  She twisted a strand of her hair. "We were inside, downstairs in a sitting room, I guess. Squaw bumped into a table and knocked over a vase. We heard voices upstairs, and then it got real quiet. We thought we might be okay until we heard someone coming down the steps. I was so scared. Then this shadow came around the corner. Hunter thought the guy had a rifle, so he threw his knife...only...only it wasn't a rifle, Dr. Thomas...it was a cane. It was just an old man with a cane." Her voice cracked and she buried her face in her open palms.

  "Cindy, you have to tell me everything." He handed her a wad of tissues. "Please."

  "Okay, I'll try." She wiped her eyes and caught her breath. "It just got crazy after that. Gator turned on the light and there was this old man on the floor with a knife in his chest. Hunter started saying that it was an accident, that he thought the old man had a gun. I was crying and Gator was telling us all to shut up. With all the noise we didn't hear the old man's wife come down the stairs. When she came around the corner she saw us, then she saw her husband and started screaming. Gator just went crazy. The old lady took off through the house and he was chasing her. I heard a door slam and then I heard gunshots. I didn't even know he had a gun. Hunter and Squaw went running after them, but I stayed to see if there was anything I could do for that poor old man." Her voice broke again. "There wasn't anything anyone could do. The knife had gone right into his heart. I just sat there and cried. The next thing I knew we were all back in the van." Cindy looked away. "Squaw told me she used Hunter's knife to stab the old man's body, just to see what it was like. It's all so sick, I still can't believe it."

  "Where are they now?" Dr. Thomas asked.

  "They're still at my place."

  "Do they know you're here?"

  Cindy nodded. "Gator said we're all in this together, that we're all just as guilty as he is. He made me keep my appointment to see if you suspected anything because I had told you about the reunion. I'm worried, Dr. Thomas. Stephanie told us she
'd kept everything a secret. Gator said that means that other than Family, only you, Stephanie and Hal Blancett know about the reunion. He said if the three of you were eliminated we could all go home and no one would ever know what happened. I'm afraid he's got the others believing he's right. Please do something, Dr. Thomas. I don't want anybody else to get hurt."

  "No one else will, Cindy. But we've got to warn the others. Do you know Stephanie Kenyon's phone number?"

  "She gave me her business card. I think she even wrote her home number on it." Cindy rummaged through her purse. "I know I've got it somewhere. Here it is."

  Dr. Thomas rose from his chair. As he took the card from her hand she heard him grunt.

  "Doc?" He didn't respond. "Dr. Thomas?"

  His eyes bulged in their sockets. He gasped and made a gurgling noise, and his legs wobbled as he dropped to his chair. Blood ran over his lower lip and down into the whiskers on his chin. When he slumped forward on his desk she saw the knife handle in the middle of his back. She watched in terror as the big man came in through the open French doors. He pulled the knife out and wiped the blade clean on the psychologist's shirt. He looked at her and shook his head.

  "Dumb, Cindy. Real dumb."

  The door opened and the man climbed inside the van.

  "Let's get out of here."

  "Where's Cindy?"

  "You were right, we couldn't trust her. She told him everything. But it doesn't matter now."

  "You fool! We can't just leave her there."

  "He's right," said a female voice. "They might figure out it was us."

  "How? They're both dead. No one will know she was one of us, not after we're finished tonight."

  "That shrink knew all about her being in The Family. It has to be in his files. Somebody's got to go in to get her body and find the records."

  "I'll go."

  "All right, Xeno. But hurry up. We've got to go get Blancett and Kenyon."

  Xeno crept through the French doors and surveyed the office. Cindy lay sprawled on the floor, just in front of the psychologist's desk. The Oriental rug under her was soaked with blood.

  Dr. Thomas was still in his chair, slumped forward, face down on the desk. Xeno noticed the small card still clutched in his fingers. He took it and looked at it closely, then put it back in the psychologist's hand. After a few moments Xeno pushed him back in his chair, dipped his fingers in the small pool of blood on the desk, and made a red X in the center of the dead man's forehead.

  Cindy's file was in a basket on the corner of the desk. Xeno grabbed it and tucked it under his arm. He had just picked up the phone and punched three numbers when he heard a voice through the French doors.

  "Come on, Xeno. Hurry up in there."

  Xeno laid the receiver on the desk. He then took Cindy's body by the arms and dragged her into the darkness.

  Chapter 40

  Tulley put his hand over the telephone mouthpiece. "Hey, Frank. You here?"

  Satterfield scowled at the bartender and shook his head. "Find out who it is and then tell 'em I just left."

  Tulley talked for a few seconds, then again covered the phone. "You might want to take this one. It's that lady who was here with you earlier. Sounds important."

  Satterfield got up from the booth and walked over to the bar. He took the phone from Tulley. "Stephanie?"

  "Frank, I'm so glad I caught you. I just got a rather disturbing phone call. I wanted to check with you to see if someone might be playing another twisted joke on me."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Do you know a homicide detective by the name of William Mendez?"

  "Yeah, I know him. Why?"

  "Then it must be true," Stephanie said. "He just called me from some psychologist's office, a psychologist by the name of Wayne Thomas. He was found murdered."

  "What did Mendez want with you?"

  "The dead man had my business card in his hand."

  "Your business card? Do you know him?"

  "No, I've never heard of him."

  "Look, I'll call in and have them patch me through to Mendez. I'll see what else I can find out, then I'll get back with you. Just stick by the phone, okay?" Satterfield waited for her reply. "Stephanie...Stephanie?" He depressed the switchhook several times, then quickly punched Stephanie's number.

  Donelli was standing beside him. "What's going on?" he asked. "Something wrong?"

  Satterfield looked at Donelli and shook his head. "I don't know. I was talking to Stephanie and she just hung up on me." He listened to a few more rings then slammed down the receiver. "Tony, I'm going to run over there. You mind riding along?"

  Donelli threw down the rest of his beer. "Let's go."

  Satterfield drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he waited for the light to change.

  "Frankie," Donelli said, interrupting the silence, "I still don't see any reason to put your gut through a grinder."

  "You heard Mendez say the psychologist had a bloody red X on his forehead. Stephanie told me about a guy Xeno killed in Griffith Park. That's the same thing Xeno did to him. It's too much to be a coincidence. And why didn't she answer the damn phone?" A horn blared behind them. He tromped the gas pedal and the car sped forward.

  "Maybe she had something on the stove, or maybe she got company. Who knows? You're just getting yourself all worked up over nothing." Donelli frowned. "And that shrink. You're not trying to tell me you think The Family is out killing again?"

  "Of course not. But one of them--Xeno--could be. I think Stephanie knows a lot more about him than she's told me. I just hope she hasn't gotten in over her head with this Family thing."

  "Geez, listen to yourself, Frankie. Mother Earth and all her hippie-dippies are locked up and always will be, and if this Xeno is anything like them, don't you think he would have stepped out of line long before this? Any goddamn skullcase can smear an X on somebody's forehead. The city's full of nuts."

  "Yeah, yeah, I know. You're probably right. But why'd the guy have Stephanie's card in his hand?"

  Stephanie wondered how long she had been unconscious. The blindfold was snug and let in almost no light. She tried to swallow but her throat was too swollen and dry. The back of her head throbbed and she felt something warm trickling down behind her right ear. Her hands, bound tightly behind her, tingled with numbness. Her feet were bound as well.

  It had happened so quickly she didn't even have time to scream. With the strips of tape over her mouth she couldn't scream now if she tried. She had been in her bedroom, talking on the phone with Frank. Her back was to the door. For an instant she had a sense of movement behind her, then everything went blank.

  From the ride and the feel of the metal against her back she could tell she was on the floor of a van. Something, maybe a box of tools, rattled every time the van hit a bump. The muffler rumbled and the acrid smell of exhaust fumes nauseated her. She could hear voices coming from the front, but she couldn't make out any words. Once she thought she heard a woman's voice.

  Why are they doing this to me? Who are they? Could this be Lance Melrose's way of getting even? No, not even his twisted mind would go this far.

  Stephanie strained to hear sounds from the outside that might give her some idea of where she was, but she could hear very little over the rumbling of the muffler. When the van went around a curve the centrifugal force pushed her against the wall. For awhile she tried to memorize the turns, but she knew it was pointless.

  Jessie! What if they've hurt her! Stephanie tried to remember if anything was amiss when she had driven past Jessie's house on her way home, but the spot above her ear was pounding and she could no longer concentrate. She felt things begin to spin.

  Stones flew from under the tires as Satterfield cut the corner a little too sharply. The car raced up the driveway past the Helmsley estate and pulled to a stop in front of Stephanie's open garage door.

  "Her car's gone." Satterfield looked at Donelli. "It's gone."

  "I told you she probably went
someplace."

  "But look, there's Eye's Odd." Satterfield pointed at the disfigured cat walking out of the garage toward their car. "She told me he's an indoor cat." Satterfield left the headlights on and bolted from the car. He bounded up the wooden steps and tried the door. "Stephanie! It's me, Frank!"

  Donelli joined him on the porch and also rattled the doorknob. "Is there a way in from the garage?"

  "No, this is it. Damn, where could she be?" He put his hands on the porch railing and drew in a deep breath. "Something is very wrong here, Tony."

  "Frankie?"

  Satterfield turned to see someone with a flashlight coming up the driveway.

  "Hey," barked a female voice, "what's going on here? Who are you?"

  "We're looking for Stephanie Kenyon," Satterfield responded. He could now see that the person carrying the flashlight was an elderly woman.

  "I'm Jessie Helmsley, the owner of this property." She started up the steps. "And who might you be?"

  "Frank Satterfield, LAPD. This is Lieutenant Donelli."

  "Oh, you're Stephanie's friend." The woman's tone softened. "Why didn't you say so? She's told me so many nice--"

  "Do you know where she is?" Satterfield asked.

  "No, but she sure was in a hurry when she left."

  Satterfield's brow wrinkled. "Why do you say that?"

  "A van went zooming out of here just after dark. Stephanie was following right behind in her car. So when I saw your car I decided to find out what the heck is going on here tonight."

  "Are you sure Stephanie was driving her car?" Satterfield asked. "You actually saw her?"

  "Well, no. I didn't get a good look, but I just assumed it was her. It was her car." Jessie looked puzzled. "But what's her garage door doing open? She's never in such a hurry that she doesn't close the garage door."