Don't Leave Me

by James Scott Bell

  Granny Shotgun led him to the kitchen and pointed to a wall phone with the gun.

  Chuck dialed Royce.

  “Man, you got to come get me right now,” Chuck said. “I haven’t got time to explain. You free?”

  Royce groaned, then, “What time is it?”

  “There’s all sorts of stuff going down right now and I just need you to get me out of here.”

  “Stuff?”

  “I’ll tell you when you get here.”

  “Where is here?”

  Chuck looked at the old woman. “What’s your address?”

  “I’m not telling anybody where I live,” she said.

  “Please!”

  She was still holding the shotgun, lazily in her arms, so the twin barrels pointed at his feet. She shook her head.

  Fine, wonderful, this was just what the doctor ordered!

  Royce. He was the kind of guy who could sell responsibility to teenagers. Chuck said, “Tell this nice lady who I am and who you are, would you do that?”

  “Chuck––”

  He held out the phone to the woman. She said, “Just let it hang and step over next to Bobby Sherman.”

  Chuck followed her eyes to a faded poster of a guy dressed in gaudy '70s clothes, from thick-striped pants to puffy shirt.

  Whatever.

  Chuck let the phone dangle from its base and went to the poster.

  Granny Shotgun picked up the phone and said, “Talk.”

  Chuck read her face as she listened. It went through a few permutations of canyon skepticism before melting into warm acceptance.

  Next thing he knew she was giving Royce her address.

  She hung up the phone and put the shotgun down, leaning in a corner. “Thank you for your service,” she said.

  Chuck said nothing, but managed a nod.

  “You want a Fig Newton?”

  “I just want to rest.”

  “I want to talk. I want to know what trouble you’re in. I want to use it.”

  “Use it? For what?”

  “My show.” She shuffled over to a desk, and Chuck noticed for the first time that she was wearing a bathrobe with no belt. He silently prayed he wouldn’t get a glimpse of anything.

  She came back and handed him a piece of paper. It looked like the first page of a script.

  The Audacity of Nope

  The new one-woman show by Henrietta Hoover

  I take the stage from the left. A spot hits me.

  ME: Get that light out of my eyes!

  Chuck looked up at her. “I guess you’re Henrietta Hoover.”

  “That’s not just who I am, that’s who the hell I am.”

  Chuck said nothing.

  “That’s my tag line,” she said. “I stole it from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”

  I have fallen into the rabbit hole, Chuck thought.

  “You don’t know about my stuff, I gather. Not a theater person, huh? I’ve done several pieces. I was written up in LA Weekly. I was nominated for Drama Circle award. But maybe that doesn’t mean anything to you.”

  “I—”

  “This show is about my embrace of atheism, which I was stating publicly before any of these cockamamie new atheists with their fancy books came along.”

  She made a gesture with her arms and her robe threatened to flash open. Chuck looked at the floor.

  “Ma’am, I’m just hoping—”

  “Don’t call me ma’am! What do you think I am, some sort of schoolmarm?”

  “I don’t have anything against—”

  “I come out on stage, see, and I say to the light, stay out of my face. I don’t need you. And then I sing a song about the pointlessness of existence.”

  Chuck said, “Would you mind keeping your robe closed?”

  She looked down at her exposure. “Do you have something against the human body?”

  “I just, um, have my mind on other things.”

  “What other things? There is nothing more elemental than the human body. We do not have minds that exist outside of our bodies, we do not have souls. Do you think we have souls?”

  This was beginning to feel like one of those conversations from high school, when he was baked at the beach with his band friends. But there was no choice except to talk on. He was going to stay inside until Royce came, and the main thing was to keep her from disrobing until that moment. Or maybe ever.

  “Sure,” Chuck said. “We have souls.”

  “Who made these souls?” Henrietta Hoover asked.

  “God.”

  “Oh really? Out of what?”

  “Ms. Hoover, I’d be thrilled to come see your show, but—”

  “Listen! What if, just like particles of matter existing before the Big Bang, particles of unconscious consciousness existed right alongside them? And then when the universe all came together, these particles did, too?”

  Make me a particle and float me out of here, Chuck thought.

  .

  Stan heard somebody knock on the other side of the door.

  “What’s going on, Stan?” It was Julia’s voice.

  “I think you know,” Stan said. That sounded good to him. It was good and tough. He was going to fool them all right.

  “I need you not to do anything foolish,” Julia said.

  “Just you wait and see!”

  A moment’s pause. Stan hoped she wouldn’t go away. That would spoil his plan.

  He heard beeping from outside and then the door clacked open. Julia came in and shut the door behind her.

  “You’re not being very nice, Stan,” Julia said.

  “Am too! You’re the one who’s not being nice. You have Chuck and you’re going to hurt him!”

  “Stan, listen to me. I won’t let them hurt Chuck. All they want is to talk to him. It’s very important. Can you understand that, Stan?”

  He shook his head. Hard.

  “No, I don’t think you can.” Julia came to him and made like she was going to hug him. Stan jumped back and gave her the don’t-touch-me glare. Chuck said it made him look like a mad dog when he did that. Fine. Good. He was going to mad dog them all, starting with Julia.

  She didn’t look mad.

  “Stan, I always thought you were the greatest kid in the world.”

  “I’m not a kid.”

  “I thought of you like that. Like you were my kid brother. You know there was an old song, and whenever I’d hear it I’d think of you, Stan.”

  “What song?”

  “It’s called 'Vincent.’ It’s about Vincent Van Gogh. Do you know who he was?”

  “He was a painter and there was a movie about him starring Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn.”

  “That’s right. This song was about him. And there’s a line in it that says this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.”

  Stan frowned.

  “I wish this world wasn’t the way it was, Stan. I wish there was a place where you didn’t have to go through all this.”

  “I don’t know if you’re a bad guy or a good guy, Julia.” He felt like crying just then, but he told himself not to because that wouldn’t be good for the plan.

  “I don’t know myself, Stan. But will you promise not to try to hurt yourself or do anything foolish?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. I know you have some imagination. No one’s going to get hurt if we all just stay calm. Okay?”

  “How did you fool us, Julia?”

  “What?”

  “How did you do that trick where we thought you were dead?”

  Julia looked at him a long time. “Don’t think about such things, Stan. You just wait. You’ll be with Chuck soon.”

  Sooner than you even think, Julia!

  She turned and punched the keypad again.

  And this time a picture zoomed into Stan’s mind, just like he knew it would. A snowman was holding a cannon that fired a ball into a duck’s butt.

  The duck went Quaaacck!<
br />
  .

  Ray Hunt slumped at his desk in the study, the tightening in his chest threatening to throw his heart to the floor. He’d done some wrestling in high school. Got to the state championships as a welterweight. He was crushed in the semis by a kid from Stockton who squeezed all the air out of Ray’s lungs.

  Funny that picture should come to him now. Or maybe not so funny.

  It was dark in the house. Ray liked it that way just before bed. Astrid, as was her custom, would have cracked a book upstairs in bed, read three pages, and dropped off to sleep. Ray would come up and remove the book from her stomach and flick off the light.

  But until then he would sit with only the desk lamp on, writing in his journal. He wrote it out in longhand, with a Bic pen, the greatest pen ever invented, the best value. He loved the feel of it on the page and knew he would not ever consign his most intimate thoughts to the keyboard and the computer. He wanted them on paper, because someday he’d be dead and he needed this journal to be found.

  It was his confession and his catharsis.

  And Astrid knew nothing about it.

  He couldn’t bear it if she did, until he was completely finished. Astrid, whom he’d known since they were in junior high school. The woman of his long years, of the good times and bad. And there would never be another to take her place if she were to go before him.

  But what if he died first? And what if then she found the unfinished confessions of Raymond Hunt? He could only hope that she would understand, as she always did when she heard him out. He would craft the journal as carefully as he could, as a closing argument of sorts. He’d once harbored thoughts of going to law school and becoming a great trial lawyer. Viet Nam changed his perspective on all that. He was too restless when he got home to wait three years for a sheepskin and a shingle. He operated under the impression that he could die at any time, and there was no time to waste. So he and Astrid started the Academy on a proverbial shoestring.

  And to all the world he looked like a success. A clean, upright example of the American dream.

  He started writing in the journal, and out came The American dream can easily turn into a nightmare.

  A noise in the hallway startled him. Astrid? No, it couldn’t be, she would have come down the stairs and immediately alerted him to her presence.

  The cat? Not with that heavy a paw step.

  He looked out the open door of the study. Only darkness, with a bit of illumination from his desk lamp spilling onto his wife’s display case. Astrid was a collector of things beautiful and porcelain, and entirely uninteresting to Ray Hunt. But because they were hers, he was happy they were there.

  The floorboards squeaked.

  “Who is it?” Ray said, feeling immediately stupid, as if some intruder would say, Excuse me for disturbing you, sir. I’m just taking your TV . . .

  But then a form stepped into the doorway, and the form held a handgun.

  “Jimmy needs your help,” Tommy Stone said.

  Ray’s blood vibrated. Somehow he knew this was coming. Tommy Stone, Jimmy’s younger brother, was going to go crazy someday under his brother’s influence.

  “How did you get in here?” Ray said.

  Tommy was taller and skinnier than his brother. Jimmy had been a student at Hunt until they had to expel him. He wasn’t going to let Tommy in, but that was before the money issue. That was before everything started to go south.

  “Put the gun away, Tommy.”

  “You’re going to help Jimmy,” Tommy said. His voice gave off the embarrassing squeak of the pubescent boy, even though Tommy should have been well over all that by now. His gun hand was trembling.

  Ray Hunt said, “He needs more than my help.” And then Ray knew there was only one way left. “Tommy, let’s go to the police––”

  “You took our money! You owe us!”

  “You don’t have to be part of this. You don’t have to go down that road.”

  “Stop talking. Jimmy needs a lawyer, a good one.”

  “Think about it, Tommy, you’re––”

  “Shut up!”

  Ray Hunt stood. His legs were unsteady. He put a hand on his desk.

  “Sit down!” Tommy Stone said.

  “I’m not going to do this anymore,” Ray Hunt said. “I can’t. I know your brother killed that girl, that witness.”

  “You better watch your mouth, old man.”

  “Help him.”

  “Shut up!”

  “He needs to come in. You need to bring him in.”

  Tommy pointed the gun at Ray Hunt sideways, gang style. “I told you shut up!”

  From behind Tommy Stone came a voice. “Don’t do it, son.”

  Tommy jumped, turned.

  Ray Hunt watched, unable to move.

  “Put the gun down,” the voice from the shadows said.

  Tommy fired into the darkness. One shot. Another. Wild.

  Ray heard his wife scream at the top of the stairs.

  Tommy turned again to Ray. His face was as frightened as any Ray had ever seen. Tommy’s hand shook like a cold, wet dog as he pointed the gun at Ray’s face.

  Blam.

  Chapter 58

  When Sandy Epperson pulled into the small lot of the ranger station it was stuffed with two Malibu police cars and a sheriff’s vehicle. She saw three uniforms and one white clad older man moving in slow circles inside. A team of unsynchronized swimmers.

  Had Samson called the local cops too? He had sounded truly spooked over the phone. She only hoped he wasn’t talking too freely without her being present.

  One Malibu cop stood sentry at the door. Sandy flashed her badge and the cop, a clean scrubbed football player type, said, “Far from home, huh?”

  “This involves a case I’m working,” Sandy said. “What’s going on in there?”

  “You need to talk to Lt. Shriber.” He pointed to a guy in plain clothes.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “I’ll get him.” He went through the door. Sandy followed him in and stayed by the entrance. Cop etiquette demanded checking in with the other jurisdictional lead before stepping into a scene. But what kind of scene was this? Did they have Samson in a chair somewhere? The one called Shriber snapped to attention when the cop said something to him. He came from around the front counter and approached Sandy. “Who are you again?” he said. He was thin of body and of hair. What was left on his pate was slate-colored.

  Sandy flashed her badge once more. “Where is Mr. Samson?”

  “Who?”

  “Samson. Charles Samson.”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about. I got—”

  “He’s the one who called me. From here.”

  “And who is this guy?” Shriber asked.

  “A guy I’m interested in. On another matter.”

  “That doesn’t help me.”

  Sandy wondered how much to give him. The complete story? No, not relevant. She wanted to find Samson, and quick. “He’s in some trouble. There may be people after him.”

  “You say he called you from here?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s a broken bathroom window. Maybe that’s where your Samson slipped out, after shooting this young man.”

  Sandy was too stunned to say anything. Shriber motioned for her to come through the counter gate.

  The victim was on the floor, blood pooled around his head. There was a crater where the back of his skull should have been.

  “Samson did not do that,” Sandy said.

  “Yeah?” Shriber said, with an uptick in tone that invited her to continue.

  “Samson’s no killer. He called me, he wanted help.”

  “Maybe he made his own help. Describe this guy for me.”

  “Whoever is after him did this, most likely. There’s no sign of robbery, is there?”

  “I don’t know. We’re not through.”

  “You won’t find
any,” Sandy said. “And the exit wound, that indicates a serious weapon, not your average handgun.”

  “I know that.”

  “Have you got a couple of cruisers out there looking for people with guns?”

  “Not yet.”

  Sandy said, “I’m just going to look at that bathroom window if you don’t mind.”

  “Now wait, this is a secured scene.”

  “It won’t hurt to cooperate.”

  “I have a scene to observe if you don’t—”

  “Then you might want to observe the blood satellites.” Sandy nodded toward the small blood spatters that separated from the parent upon impact with the floor. Crime scenes always told a story. Blood spatters were subplots.

  Shriber looked down.

  “The pattern is interrupted in the middle,” Sandy said. “There’s a slight smear. That’s where your killer crossed over and headed toward the back, the bathroom.”

  “Samson maybe.”

  “To find the least favorable way out of this place?”

  “Maybe somebody was in the front, spooked him. He looked for a back way out of here.”

  “There a back door?”

  Shriber looked toward the rear and had nothing to say.

  “Keep looking,” Sandy said. She pulled out her card and handed it to him, then went to the front. As she went out she almost knocked over another woman coming in. Charging in, more like it.

  “Detective Epperson, I presume?” The woman had short brown hair and was dressed like a professional, with navy blue coat over crisp white shirt.

  “Yes,” Sandy said.

  “My name is Lucy Bowers. We have to talk.”

  Lucy Bowers? Where had she heard that name? Wait. She lived across the street from Charles Samson.

  Or had, until she disappeared.

  But she sure wasn’t disappeared now.

  When Sandy had been a little girl, and her mother found herself inside some hard situation, she used to say, “That’s a fine kettle of fish.”

  Well, here is the kettle, Sandy thought, and I’m in it. And fishy doesn’t even begin to describe the smell.