The Edge of Sleep jb-3

by David Wiltse

  Karen called the headquarters once more. They were still unable to raise Becker on the radio in the cruiser that he had commandeered from Blocker. Blocker himself had last reported in just before starting up the mountain with two patrolmen. Because of the mountains, the walkie-talkies were useful only for the men to communicate with each other; they could not reach headquarters with so weak a signal.

  “He said to say there were four, though,” the officer at headquarters said.

  “Four what?”

  “I don’t know; he must have been jumping out of the car when he said it. All I got was ‘tell Reese there are four,’ then I couldn’t raise him anymore.”

  Karen looked to Reese. “Four what? What does it mean?” Reese thrust his lower lip forward as he concentrated.

  “Four motels?” he said at last.

  “You mean there’s another one?”

  “That’s all I can think he means.”

  “Is there another one, god damn it?”

  “Well… sort of. There’s the Melba. But no one would stay there.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s a dump. It’s out of the way. It’s off the road, no one goes there…”

  “That’s exactly what he would want!”

  “I didn’t think you would be interested. There isn’t even a manager there this time of day…”

  “Drive, damn it! Drive,” she said. It took all of her control not to hit him.

  “He doesn’t even open the office half the time during the day,” Reese said defensively. He could see the motel a quarter of a mile away. “The couple of regulars who live there don’t need him, and otherwise there just isn’t any business until it gets dark. If someone happens to come by, they can call him at home-not that he’s at home during the day, either. He works at the post office and is most likely out delivering mail…”

  The cop car slid into the driveway and Karen told Reese to begin at one end of the line of units while she started at the other. They would try the easy way first, and if that didn’t work, Karen was prepared to get into the rooms any way she could. She pounded on the first door and waited. From the general state of disrepair, it didn’t look as if it would take much to spring a lock or two. If the door was locked from the inside with a dead bolt, they couldn’t get in right away-but they would know someone was inside, too.

  Dee opened the door to the officer as if she had been waiting for him.

  “Thank God you’re here,” she said. “I’ve been calling and calling.”

  “What…?”

  “He’s fallen, he hit his head, I can’t wake him up!” Reese looked around, saw no one but the frantic woman. “In here,” she said. “Hurry, please hurry!”

  Reese followed her into the bathroom. She pulled back the shower curtain and revealed a man lying in the tub, fully clothed. His eyes were wide and staring.

  “Who…”

  “My husband,” Dee said. “He slipped, I can’t wake him up. Do something, do something, please.”

  The man’s head was tilted crazily to one side as if his neck were broken. Reese stared at him, uncertainly, then to the woman who stood next to him, one hand behind her back. The guy looked to Reese as if he were beyond first aid, looked, in fact, as if he’d been dead a day or two.

  “See if he has a pulse,” the woman said frantically. “Please see, Lyle.”

  Reese didn’t know why she called him Lyle, if he had heard her right. He didn’t want to check the man’s pulse, didn’t want to touch an obvious corpse at all if he could help it, but he felt that he should give the appearance of trying to help before doing the obvious thing and calling the ambulance.

  He leaned over the tub, reaching for the man’s wrist. Dee made one swift pass with the razor blade across Reese’s jugular vein, then drove her knee into his ass, propelling him headfirst into the tub. His head hit porcelain. Dee continued the pressure with her knee while lifting on his belt, keeping him upside down and off balance.

  Reese barely felt the slice across his throat; it was the banging of his head that enraged him. The crazy woman had him up on his toes, his face pressed onto the corpse so they were nose to nose. Reese tried to push up off the tub, but she kicked him behind the knees so his legs went out from under him and he tipped farther forward. Something hot and liquid gushed past his face and across his eyes, but he didn’t know what it was. He flailed backward with his right hand, reaching for his gun, but she grabbed his wrist and used his arm like a lever, pushing him still farther into the tub. His lips pressed against the corpse’s mouth and Reese wrenched his head away and more steaming liquid poured into his face and he tasted blood. He was not even yet convinced that it was his own blood when his strength seemed to leave him entirely. As he slumped forward and fell atop the body in the tub, he was dimly aware that his throat had been cut. The slice was beginning to hurt. He reached for his neck and felt a moment of terror as the blood pumped over his fingers, and then he was gone.

  Dee pushed Reese’s feet into the tub so that the officer lay along the length of Edgar’s body; then she drew the curtain closed. She rinsed the razor blade and put it on the sink, then picked it up again when she heard the sound from the other room.

  The door was ajar and Karen called through it, “Officer Reese.” She had completed her run of the units and was looking impatiently for Reese now so that she could begin the second phase.

  “Reese? Are you in there?”

  “Thank God you’ve come,” came a frantic feminine voice. The voice sounded faintly familiar to Karen. She pushed the door open all the way and saw Dee rushing at her.

  “I’ve been calling and calling,” Dee said. She grabbed Karen’s sleeve and pulled her into the room, but she knew immediately that the agent had recognized her. There was no time to repeat the charade at the tub, so Dee turned and slashed at Karen’s throat with the razor blade.

  Karen jerked back instinctively. The blade cut her neck but missed the jugular, and Karen managed to get her arm in the air to partially fend off the return swipe. Dee struck again, more wildly this time, and the blade sliced into Karen’s scalp, then again, into the protective hand Karen had thrown before her face.

  Karen recoiled, then kicked out, her instep hitting Dee just above the knee. Dee staggered back, surprised by the pain. Karen dug inside her jacket for her gun when Dee lunged forward again. The razor slid across Karen’s temple.

  The butt of the gun was slippery in Karen’s hand because of the blood on her palm, and the weapon tumbled to the floor. Before she could reach for it. Dee was on her again, slashing wildly. Karen stepped to one side and kicked out again, knocking Dee back a few steps, but she kept coming.

  Blood was flowing down Karen’s face from her temple, clouding the vision in one eye. She tried to circle the other way, keeping her clear eye on Dee while swiping at the bloody one with her hand.

  Dee was on her again, head lowered, her arms swinging around in a bear hug. Karen hit down with her balled fist into Dee’s face, felt something crack, then hit her on the back of her neck with a karate chop. Dee’s arms were around Karen’s back and Karen felt the razor slash into her again and again like an animal’s claws. Dee was working the blade upwards, searching for Karen’s neck, but with her own head lowered she could not reach quite high enough without releasing her hold on the agent.

  The razor pierced Karen’s jacket and tore down the length of her shoulder blade. Karen dragged Dee backwards, imprisoning the other’s arms against the wall, but the pressure of their combined weight drove the blade deeper into Karen’s flesh. The pain made Karen yell, but she leaned into it, using her shoulders as a fulcrum as she brought her knee into Dee’s stomach. She drove her heel into the instep of Dee’s foot, then savagely brought the knee up again. Dee groaned and Karen drove the heels of both hands into the side of Dee’s head at the ears.

  She fell Dee’s knees buckle and drove her knee into her once more and followed it with another chop to the back of the neck. Dee crump
led, sagging to the floor, and Karen came off of the wall enough to release Dee’s arms. The woman fell in a heap.

  Karen tried to clear her eye of blood again and suddenly felt the razor rip across the tendons at the back of her knee. She tried to kick out, but the leg was suddenly useless and Dee was rising, grinning. Her nose looked broken and was pouring blood and she had lost teeth, but she was smiling, her eyes still glinting dementedly.

  “You dirty bitch,” she said, panting. “You’ll never take him away from me again.” She lifted the razor blade, now scarlet with Karen’s blood, still gripping it lethally between her finger and thumb.

  Karen’s gun lay on the floor, ten feet away. Too far with two good legs, impossible with only one that worked. She cast wildly about for a weapon, saw the telephone on the table a few feet to her left. Karen lunged for it as Dee struck again. The razor caught her high on the forehead, ripped all the way across, then sliced the edge of her ear as Karen’s momentum continued to carry her away. Her hand grasped the telephone, slipped momentarily because of the blood, then held and Karen swung it round with all of her strength, ripping it from the wall. Dee was rushing right into it, eager to get at Karen. The telephone caught her flush on the temple and she collapsed to the floor, sprawling onto her back.

  Karen tried to walk across the room, but her leg would not hold her and she hopped, fell, then crawled on hands and knees to her gun. She swiveled quickly, seated, her back against the door, and lifted the gun with shaking arms toward Dee, who lay where she had fallen, twitching slightly.

  Gasping for breath, Karen lowered the gun to her lap and tried to assess her condition. She seemed to be bleeding everywhere. Her hands were cut, her legs, her arms. She could feel the pain of the spot in her shoulder where the razor had been driven deeply, but the rest of the cuts did not seem to hurt. But how they bled. The slice across her forehead was pouring blood now and she had to wipe her face with her sleeve to keep her vision.

  Head wounds always bleed a lot, she reminded herself. You’re not dying, you can still move, you can still think. But you need help.

  Dee stirred and moaned and Karen lifted the gun to point at her. She needed the woman alive in order to find Jack. She had to get up, get help, get this woman under control and out of here. Where the hell was Reese?

  The blood was in her eyes again and suddenly Karen blacked out. She came to herself frantically, fearing she was blind. She clawed the blood from her eyes and scrabbled for the gun. It was still in her lap. The other woman was still across the room, but she was dragging herself against the wall, sitting up. The razor blade was still in her hand and Karen cursed herself for not taking it when she had the chance.

  Karen pointed her service automatic at the woman. “You’re under arrest,” she said, realizing how inadequate the words sounded.

  Dee laughed, then swallowed some of her own blood and coughed.

  “Where’s my son?” Karen demanded.

  “He’s my boy, cunt.”

  “Where is he?”

  “You’ll never get him again, bitch. He’s gone forever.”

  The roar of the automatic was deafening in the closed room and both women jerked in reaction. Dee turned her head and saw the hole in the wall a few inches from her head. Smiling, she looked again at Karen who sat across the room with her back to the door, the gun now pointed directly at Dee’s body.

  “Go ahead,” Dee said. ‘Try again. We’ll see who gets there first.”

  Holding the razor with surprising delicacy, her last three fingers off the blade. Dee sought her vein, then drew the edge slowly and deliberately from just inside her elbow to her wrist. The line blossomed with blood.

  Smiling at Karen as if proud of her handiwork. Dee put the razor in her left hand and expertly cut the length of the vein on her right arm. She dropped the razor at last and leaned back against the wall, letting her arms hang straight down. She balled and released her fists to increase the blood flow.

  “So where’s that good-looking man you had with you last time you visited me? What was his name, Lyle? He wanted me, you know. Did you know that?”

  Karen pushed herself upright, her weight on her good leg. Her head swam and she had to wait a moment for it to clear before she opened the door and looked outside. There was no one in sight. Reese’s cruiser was at the other end of the courtyard, impossibly far to drag herself and the other woman. The woman’s car was right outside the door.

  “Did you kill the cop?” Karen asked. She looked at Dee, who was sitting placidly, observing the process with detachment as her life seeped out of her arms.

  “Who, Lyle? You were better off with the good-looking one, believe me.”

  The phone lay on the floor close to Dee, the case smashed, the cord torn, useless.

  Dragging her crippled leg, Karen crossed to where Dee sat and picked up the razor while holding the gun in the other woman’s face. She sliced strips from the pillow case and tied hasty tourniquets on Dee’s arms. Dee sat watching and grinning, as if it were happening to someone else.

  “I can tell you’re not real good at this, are you? Those won’t work.”

  Dee’s purse was on the bed. Karen found the car keys and put them between her teeth. Tucking the automatic in the skirt waist behind her back where Dee could not reach it, Karen started to drag the other woman across the room. She stopped after the first backward hop, mopping the blood from her eyes and waiting for the dizziness to pass. I should have tried to stop my own bleeding first, she thought. But she wasn’t dying, and the other woman surely would. The cuts in the veins had been surgical: the woman was a nurse and knew what she was doing, and she was probably right: the tourniquets wouldn’t do the job.

  Hopping backwards two or three times, stopping to wipe her eyes, then hopping again. Karen dragged Dee out of the room, across the mix of grass and gravel and up to the passenger door of the car. Dee was talking to herself now, mumbling in tones too low for Karen to understand. She grunted with the exertion of lifting the other woman. Her good fool slipped and Karen fell to her knees. Dee’s face was level with her own and she smiled at Karen beatifically. Her teeth were red with her own blood.

  Karen folded Dee into the car by stages, then hopped to the driver’s side, using the car for support. She almost blacked out again as she opened the door, but she held on, fighting against her weakness. When it passed, she dropped behind the steering wheel, pulling her bad leg in with both hands.

  She looked at Dee, whose head was back against the seat, her mouth open slightly. Despite the tourniquets, blood dripped steadily from her fingertips onto the floor. From the corner of her eye, Karen saw a blanket in the backseat move, then a shape rose up rapidly, the blanket fanning out like Dracula’s cape, blotting her vision and falling upon her.

  She was lifted straight over the seat, her arms pinned at her sides, then she was on the floor of the car and encased, as if in a shell of flesh. She tried to struggle, but she seemed to be held everywhere by a great weight that could crush her if it would, but merely restrained her so that she could not move.

  “FBI,” she tried to say, knowing it was pointless. The blood from her head wounds seemed to be pouring out of her now, filling her mouth and nose as well as her eyes. With the last of her strength she pushed up with her good leg, her arms, arching her back like a cat, trying to make a space for herself off the floor. The weight over her yielded that much, allowing her to position herself as she would, but not releasing her.

  Karen froze in position, keeping the two feet of leeway for herself between her body and the floor. She could feel the man atop her positioning himself in the same way, accommodating her so as not to crush her while still imprisoning her.

  “Dee?” Ash called. “Dee, are you all right?”

  Dee said weakly, “Where’s my precious boy?”

  Karen tilted one shoulder down, trying to keep the man’s body in place atop the other shoulder. He held his position. Fighting against the fainting sensation, she slowl
y arched her back forward while still thrusting upwards with her buttocks. Again the man atop her kept his position. She now had just room enough to slip one hand behind her back.

  “I did what you told me,” Ash said.

  Karen felt the grip of the automatic with her straining fingers, slick with blood. She pulled it slowly from the waist of her skirt.

  “You didn’t let them take him away from me again?” Dee asked. Her voice was very faint. Karen could scarcely hear her.

  “No,” said Ash. “The men wanted to steal him, but I didn’t let them. I dropped him over the cliff.”

  Karen turned her wrist, pointing the barrel upwards, and pulled the trigger. She kept pulling until the noise stopped and the man’s full weight fell upon her, crushing her against the floor. She felt blood soaking her body, but she was no longer certain if it was his or hers. As she slipped into unconsciousness she thought she heard Jack’s voice calling her, but she knew it was an illusion.

  Chapter 25

  Becker lay in bed, waiting for her to return. Karen had heard a sound and had gotten out of bed to check on her son. Jack slept now in the living room, just outside of their bedroom door, and Karen would be out of bed at the slightest noise. Often as not, she would find Jack lying awake. He would smile at her, seemingly untroubled, but his eyes looked as alert as if it were midday.

  Sometimes Becker would be awakened in the middle of the night by their whispers as they lay in their separate beds, reaching out to each other for reassurance that the other was still there.

  Karen came into the bedroom, limping with the walking cast on her leg. The scars on her head and hands were still red and angry, but healing. Becker had tried to assure Karen that they would not harm her appearance, that indeed, they merely added character to a face already beautiful. She had seemed a good deal less interested in the way she looked than he was, accepting the scars as a price she paid for the return of her son. He was certain she would have borne the loss of a limb with equal equanimity if it had brought Jack safely back to her.