“I don’t care,” I said, letting my anger get the better of me.
“But I care. I’ve cared about you from the moment you opened that fortune cookie, and if you don’t know that by now then you’re not the girl I think you are.”
And with that, he slipped out of the door.
Chapter 40
Eileen started from her light sleep and gasped when she caught sight of me.
“Oh, Scout,” she said, “I thought I’d lost you.”
“You’ll never lose me, Eileen. I’ll always be with you.”
She had forgotten all about Mike, or even what time of year it was. Her eyes reflected the myriad pinpoints of the Christmas lights as she saw them anew.
“Is it Christmas already?” she asked.
“Not until tomorrow.”
Before then I would have to bathe her and get her ready for bed. I dreaded what I might find underneath her clothes, expecting weeks of accumulated dirt. But Eileen’s skin was as clean and soft as a baby’s. Knowing that she was returning home, the staff at Bethesda had taken care of her.
Bath time was short. I dusted her in talcum and slipped on a nightdress that didn’t stink of disinfectant. Eileen stood with her arms held high as I slipped on the cotton dress, as if it were an everyday thing to stand naked in front of your daughter. There was no acknowledgement at the end of it, no hug and no smile.
Expect nothing, I told myself. Not even at Christmas.
Eileen didn’t settle easily, tossing in her bed as if she was uncomfortable. I watched her for a while, hoping that she would slip off so that I could kiss her on the forehead. But when I leant over, her eyes were still open.
“I saw an old lady in the mirror.”
“It was a dream.”
She must’ve caught sight of herself in a bathroom mirror at Bethesda.
“Tomorrow’s Christmas, Eileen.”
“Is it?” she said, suddenly excited.
“If you get to sleep, then in the morning there will be presents.”
“And waffles?”
“And maple syrup, and bacon and eggs.”
“I love Christmas!”
“So do I. And we’ll have a great day together. But first of all you must sleep.”
“I don’t think I’ll get to sleep.”
“Close your eyes.”
I sat by her until her breathing became soft and regular, and her body relaxed into the mattress. As I clicked off the light, I kissed her on the forehead.
“Goodnight, Mom,” I whispered.
*
Mike’s present was on the kitchen counter. A square box, wrapped as only a boy wraps a present – with too much paper, and with so much tape that I’d need an acetylene torch to open it. He had wrapped it for me, not expecting anything in return.
Was that a definition of love? I wondered. To give, without condition?
Mike had done his best to apologise – it wasn’t his fault that he was as subtle as his size elevens. We all make mistakes. We all do things we regret. Mike’s face at the kitchen door, as he said goodbye, was a picture of remorse.
What kind of monster would I be if I didn’t meet him halfway?
I was about to place the box amongst the other presents, when I caught sight of the clock on the ancient VCR. It was after midnight, which made this Christmas Day.
Suddenly, I craved whatever it was that Mike wanted to give me.
I ripped open the parcel. The paper refused to yield, and I have no nails to speak of. I stabbed a pair of scissors into the corner, cursing Mike’s practical talent. In the future I might call on him to build an addition to the house, but not to wrap a parcel. This was overkill.
A jeweller’s box tumbled out. I snapped it open, and a silver locket and chain dropped into the palm of my hand. The lights from the Christmas tree twinkled on the burnished surface.
Inside the locket was a small compass. As I held it level, the needle pivoted on its axis until it found magnetic north. It was, without doubt, the sweetest and most suitable present that anyone could have given to a girl called Scout.
I slipped the chain around my neck and clasped the compass to my chest.
I’ll take a picture of me wearing it, I thought. And send it to him!
Not one of those pictures. I’d keep my clothes on, but I hoped that he would be excited to see where the locket nestled.
I ran to my bedroom for the cell phone. As I passed the kitchen, I heard the outside door rattle.
I must have left it unlocked when Mike left. What an idiot! Not for leaving it unlocked, but for allowing Mike to leave!
I didn’t dare waste a moment. He had to know – right now! – what I felt for him.
What a loser! I should have told him when I had the chance.
I snapped on the phone. Yes! – the battery was charged. It took me a moment to work out how to take a picture of myself. I had spent my high-school years making acid comments about girls who preened for their phones. Cheeks were sucked in, stomach held tight, and photos taken to be sent to hot boys. You could see the process in action at lunchtime. One group of girls would cluster around a phone, and then moments later a table of boys would erupt in laughter and cheers. The more flesh revealed in the photo, the louder the boys ‘whooped’, like a band of gorillas.
Yet here I was, a year after graduation, staring at myself on the screen of my phone, trying to strike the perfect pose. I fiddled with the settings - ‘Beauty Face’ or ‘Natural’? I puffed out my chest, trying to make it look bigger. From this high angle, the camera leered down my top. I told myself that it was all the better to show off the locket. In truth, I wanted Mike to think about my breasts.
My finger hovered over the camera icon. Just as I pressed, and the phone made that fake ‘shutter’ sound, the door exploded inwards, and a figure dressed in black launched itself at me.
The phone was knocked from my hand as the weight of a body – a male body – toppled me to the floor. The great sweaty mass of him crushed the air from my lungs, mashing my face into the rug.
I was pinned, too stunned to move, unable to breath. With a practised action, he wrenched my arms around my back and cinched them with a plastic tie. The thin cable cut into my skin, and I wanted to cry out in pain but nothing came.
And then he grabbed my hair. It almost ripped out of my scalp as he pulled back my head. My neck could have broken right then, so abrupt was the move. I could feel the bones in my spine scrape against one another.
A gloved hand was on my mouth, slapping down a strip of duct tape. I heard it tearing off the roll. He wrapped the tape around my head with no thought of how the glue would catch in my hair. To him, I was no more human than a parcel.
It was the killer!
He moved with the frenzied strength of someone much younger, but there was no doubt that this was the man who had preyed on young boys for thirty years. I could sense the emptiness within him, as if there were no feeling behind his action. He was pure purpose, nothing more. But it wasn’t the remorseless violence in his attack that gave him away.
It was the music.
All the while he trussed me up, he made a limpid tune in the back of his throat. Missing the percussion, it was hard to recognise for what it was – a marching tune. As he pulled me to my feet, he had to breathe harder, and the tune became louder.
It made sense of what I had seen in those last instants on the cell phone’s screen. The figure leaping at me from the doorway was a man whose name I did not know, but who always hummed the same tune:
‘Straighten up, Missouri’.
It was played at football matches, and cheerleaders practised herkie jumps to it. The tune smelt of high-school bleachers and the sweat of the locker room. A tune that went with the twirl of a majorette’s baton in the sunshine.
‘Mr Missouri’ held
me tight and propelled me towards the back door. As he forced me out of the house he whistled the tune that inspired his nickname:
‘Straighten up, Missouri, straighten up!
You can shine, Missouri, and win the Cup!
If you fly like an arrow,
Keep to the straight and narrow,
You can break the spell!
Give ‘em hell, Missouri, give ‘em hell!’
Chapter 41
My feet tripped on the ledge of the door as Mr Missouri shoved me into the carport. I fell against the metal siding, cutting my forehead. He pulled me to my feet, all the while humming the same demented refrain.
Up ahead was his bookmobile. The truck was a common sight – so common that no one would notice it. He parked outside supermarkets and school playgrounds. There was nothing memorable about the man himself apart from his favourite tune. No one knew his name, and no one remembered him. He was invisible, and yet children trusted him.
Librarians, after all, were nice people. Once the younger ones were bored with The Hungry Caterpillar, he would recommend The Gruffalo; and for those who were distraught to have finished all the Harry Potter books, there was always Tolkien.
Ever helpful Mr Missouri.
Once he trapped me in the mobile library, I would be finished. He pushed me towards it, my legs as useless as rubber. The back door of the truck was open, and the steps were down. I could make out the book stacks within. He was about to file me amidst their number, and I would never be seen again.
I had to escape.
I stumbled forward, pulling the killer after me. As he lost balance, I jerked backwards and smashed my head as hard as I could into his nose. I heard a crack, and I hoped I’d broken it.
Mr Missouri cried out and dropped his hand from my neck.
I ran.
Believe me - it is hard to run with your hands tied behind your back, and harder still on ice. I skidded like a penguin. I ran through the slush left by the television trucks. They’d parked out front all day, waiting for drama. Now that there was something actually worth filming, they had abandoned me.
And you wonder why I don’t like TV crews?
I ran up the road, a muffled cry breaking out from beneath the duct tape. It was impossible to breathe and to scream at the same time.
Festive lights winked at me from every porch. My neighbours would be at home, asleep and waiting for the soft arrival of sleigh bells. I was one delivery they wouldn’t expect, but right now I needed help.
I skittered up the drive of the house opposite. Iris and Pete were good people – he drove a Kenworth rig, and she cleaned offices downtown. I picked them because Pete weighed 270 and was scared of no one. Plus - Pete had shovelled the snow off his drive, so there was no chance of me slipping.
There was a growl from behind. It was Mr Missouri, running to catch up.
I tripped on the lip of the porch, rolling onto my shoulder and somehow somersaulting back to my feet. I used the momentum to crash into the front door, hoping that the impact would wake Pete. There was no movement in the house. No bedroom light snapped on.
C’mon, Pete!
I lowered my head to ring the doorbell. Unable to use my hands, I would have to use my nose. It was a delicate operation, particularly as my heart was beating 200 times a minute and my chest was heaving for air. I steered the tip of my nose onto the buzzer, ignoring the maniac on my tail, and pushed.
Nothing happened.
My nose was too soft, or the button was too stiff. Either way, Pete and Iris slept soundly.
The killer bulldozed me from the door. I slapped to the decking. The wooden staves juddered against my face as Mr Missouri lifted me into the air and hung my arms on a hook on the wall. I dangled like a puppet, my shoulder sockets on fire.
Mr Missouri loomed into my face. One of the lenses of his glasses was cracked, and a gratifying amount of blood streamed from his swollen nostrils.
He shook his head and tutted.
“You thought you were gonna find me, eh?” he said. “But I found you first – Scout!”
He had seen me on television. Kathy Tremaine’s report had tipped him off that I was the only threat to his safety. Whilst the police stumbled in their investigation, I had the ability to find him, and he couldn’t risk that. Kathy Tremaine had signed my death warrant as surely as if she had been a hanging judge.
Mr Missouri slapped my cheek. Hard.
“I’ll be back.”
Then he trotted off, leaving me strapped up in Pete’s carport. I swung around, trying to dislodge myself, but Mr Missouri had taken no chances. The hook was strong, used by Pete for his kayak, and my feet did not touch the ground.
Then it struck me: the carport was empty, and the kayak was gone. Only now did I remember that Pete and Iris had travelled to spend the holiday with his sister in Ventura, California. His plan was to kayak around Santa Cruz Island. Even if the bell had rung, they wouldn’t have heard me. Not from that distance.
I kicked my feet, trying to climb off the hook. I grew more frantic as I saw the bookmobile reverse towards me. I was crying like a stuck pig. Mr Missouri backed it into the carport and stepped down, as relaxed as you like.
He was in no hurry. I was hidden from view, and Mr Missouri could do with me as he wished. He grabbed both my legs. I tried to kick, but he punched me in the face and I blacked out for a moment. When I woke, he was wrapping duct tape in generous arcs around my legs. He bound them tight, my ankle bones grinding together.
And during it all, he whistled that jaunty tune, as if he were playing the flute in a marching band.
‘Straighten up, Missouri’.
He had done this to the others. They had been young children and had had no explanation of what was happening to them. Up until now I had tasted their fear second-hand.
This was the real thing.
Mr Missouri lifted me up, like a side of meat, and slung me over his shoulder. I was not a human anymore. I was just part of the food chain.
He carried me to the mobile library. I had always relished the smell of books, that musty aroma of yellowing pages. It was redolent of journeys that I was yet to take, and vistas I was yet to see. Now the smell turned my stomach. I would soon be as dead as the authors of these books, my life a footnote to this man’s exploits. I would never get to read any of the stories on these shelves, or experience any of the wonders they described.
I was seventeen, and my life was going to end in a cramped cupboard in a mobile library.
He folded my legs so that they bunched under my chin, the weight of my body resting on my bound hands. The cupboard doors slammed shut in my face. The smell of varnish enveloped me. Sweet and cloying – like the smell of the grave.
Try as I might, I could not shift. The knuckles of my hands dug into the small of my back, but I could not relieve the grotesque agony.
I heard him whistling as he folded up the steps and shut the rear door. I heard the crunch of his feet on Pete’s gritted driveway, and the growl of the engine as he engaged first gear.
The truck drove onto the avenue.
The librarian would take me somewhere and leave me. It might be an empty maintenance room in an abandoned mill, or it might be a forgotten space between two walls. He was going to bury me alive.
I kicked and I kicked, but the cupboard was built fast against the side of the truck. There was no shifting it. I had to stop kicking because I couldn’t breathe. I was wracked with panic, struggling for air in that dark coffin.
And then the van stopped, and he killed the engine.
Mr Missouri had only driven a short distance. He had not taken me to an industrial wasteland. He had parked on Brighton Avenue, just as he always parked. Outside his house.
The tailgate opened, and steps were pulled down.
He was whistling all the while.
And then I heard a soft scraping on the outside of the cupboard. Mr Missouri was separated from me by an inch of wood. If I could have reached out, I would have strangled him.
“I know you can hear me,” he said. His voice was unpleasant, but it was better than the whistling.
“You’re probably wondering what I’m going to do with you?”
I tried not to think about it.
“The thing is, Scout – I can call you ‘Scout’, can’t I? That’s what your friends call you. And me and you, we’re quite intimate now, aren’t we? We’ve met a few times before.
“I’m not going to harm you in any way at all, Scout. You got it wrong. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I didn’t touch those boys. What do you take me for – a pervert?”
That had crossed my mind.
“You’re safe now, Scout. Like all the others. I put them somewhere safe, where the world can’t harm them. And no one will touch you here, because no one will find you. Your friends from the TV will be here – maybe tomorrow, or the day after. I imagine the whole circus will start up again, with trucks up the road and live interviews happening all the time. They might even stop me and ask what I thought of you, and I’ll say ‘I didn’t really know her. She kept herself to herself’. That’s what people always say on TV, isn’t it?”
His fingers drummed on the top of the cupboard, just above my head. It was easy to pick out the rhythm that he was keeping. A marching tune. You know the one I mean.
Mr Missouri leant in and whispered through the crack.
“The library service doesn’t start again until January 5th. I’m on holiday till then, and this truck is going to stay right here. You’ll be under their noses, but they won’t know it. I’ll look out of my window every day and see the cop cars pass. In some ways, it will be my greatest triumph. Sleep well, Scout. Sleep well.”
And then he thumped the cupboard so hard that I screamed behind the gag of duct tape. My head rocketed into the ceiling.
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