In the daylight the beach house couldn’t have looked more calm and benign but this idyllic place was the setting of my nightmares: dreams of evil, clutching at me, grabbing me, pulling me down ’til I woke in a tangle of sheets, sweat pouring off my body, to pace the dark room until fear was beaten back down. It takes more than bright sunshine and chirping birds to wipe out the kind of fear that haunted me.
One day soon the German owners would sell the beach house for a million dollars or more and huge machines would move in to knock it down. In less than a day the twelve-hundred-square-foot dwelling would disappear, as if it had never been. Then the lot would be mounded to protect the new dwelling from onshore waves and tidal surges and a new monster house, stretching from lot line to lot line, would grow out of the sand, towering over its surroundings. When this house disappeared, for once I wouldn’t swear and curse at my changing world. I’d be glad when it was gone.
I got out of the Miata, leaving the door open so I could leave fast. This time I left the key in the ignition, the soft pinging sounded reassuring.
I slowly climbed the stairs to the front door, looking warily around. There was no sign of anyone. There never had been. I knocked on the door. Silence. I walked around the house. Someone had taken down the storm shutters. I could see inside. It looked the same as when I’d been in there with Styles, except more tired and dusty.
On the north side of the house the hole in the underbrush between the lots looked like a mouth with a tooth missing. I walked to the opening and crossed over into the Haverty property where I’d met Bodillia.
A man with a red bandana covering the lower half of his face was spraying the underbrush. He looked up and saw me.
“Excuse me,” I started to say but stopped. There was something familiar about the man. I started backing up, instinct kicking in faster than intelligence. I started running.
I slammed the car door even as I shoved the transmission into drive. Gravel flew. I spun out of driveway and onto the road, looking in the rearview. No one ran out after me but as I hit the road a beat-up sedan shot out of the driveway in front of me. I jerked the wheel hard to the left. Screeching metal: branches screaming and scraping along the sides…violent rocking, then I slid away from him.
Really, there wasn’t a chance that he could catch me now; the little red bomb was a dream of a car on the narrow twisting roads. It could take the corners smoothly miles faster than the wreck behind me, but blind curves with trees growing not six inches off the shoulder made it impossible to push it too hard and I fought against the panic urging me towards stupidity. “You’re safe,” I told myself. “You don’t want to end up wrapped around one of those palms. Just stay in front of him. Stay cool.”
I was looking in the rearview when the crash happened behind me. He took a corner wide, overcorrected and put the sedan right into a palm tree on the right side. Sweet.
I slammed on the brakes, watching in the rearview. Steam rose from the rad, but nothing else moved. I got the cell phone out of my purse and dialed 911 and ordered an ambulance. Then I called Styles.
I told Styles’ voice mail. “T here was someone living over the old garage of the Haverty house — the guy that killed Gina.”
Chapter 72
A giant fist slammed down on the roof of the car and a face pushed up against the window. Blood from a gash in his forehead streamed down Lester Cathers’ face, pooling around his eye.
I screamed and lunged for the lock button as Lester opened the door. He grabbed the cell phone from my hand and threw it deep into the mangroves. Then Lester pushed me across to the passenger side, his hand locked onto the nape of my neck, his fingers biting deep into my spinal cord, paralyzing me. One little twist, one violent shake, and he could snap my neck. “Please,” I begged, “please, don’t hurt me.” He didn’t respond but then Lester never did. His brutal fingers forced my face forward to my knees. I stared at my red high-tops, whimpering in terror as he climbed into the driver’s seat.
Driving one-handed, Lester made a U-turn and started back south down the beach. The little car swept right and left, traveling too fast for the road. I waited for the impact of the next tree Lester was going to hit but instead the car slowed and turned right and then hard left. It bumped over uneven ground and came to a stop. His hand released my head. I sat up, rubbing the back of my neck and trying to decide where we were.
The car was parked tight behind the old garage on the Haverty property. Off to the left of the drive, the little red car was well screened by shrubbery. No one would know we were there. Hell, you couldn’t even see the house from here. No one was going to find us.
Lester turned off the car. “Why did you have to come here?” He stared straight ahead. “I was going away soon.” He turned to face me. “Stayed too long.” Blood cut a river down his cheek and ran in the corner of his mouth. “Your fault.” His lips peeled away from his blood etched teeth. “Stupid bitch.”
His fingers dug deep into my neck again. My hands went up to cover his, to try and relax his hold. “Sorry, sorry,” I panted. “Please, please don’t hurt me.”
Grabbing me by the hair, he opened the car door and pulled me out of the car after him. My knee knocked against the gearshift and I screamed in pain.
“Shut up,” he growled, shaking me like rag doll.
We staggered towards the garage. Lester pushed me ahead of him, making me stumble to my knees. I wrapped my arms around a step and clung to it sobbing, certain if I went into that building I’d never come out alive. I didn’t want to die.
“No,” Lester said and pried me loose.
I screamed. He slapped me hard across the face and covered my mouth with his hand. Then, clutching the waistband of my jeans, he propelled me forward up the stairs. The weathered stairs going up the outside of the building had no railing but that didn’t slow Lester down.
Up on the landing, he slammed me against the splintered wall and held me there with one hand while he fought to get the warped door open, kicking the base and sending it crashing inside. He threw me into the dim interior, my face scraping and burning along the floor. I scrambled to my knees, scuttling sideways, looking for a place to hide as he slammed the door and came after me.
Chapter 73
Blood streamed into his left eye. Only now did he seem aware of his injuries. He put a hand up to explore the gash and then looked at his bloody fingers in wonderment. He went to an old paint-stained laundry tub in the far corner of the room and turned on the taps, which sputtered and expelled a few rusty drops before settling into a modest trickle. I was on my feet. When he bent to rinse his face, I bolted for the door.
Stuck tight in the warped frame, it wouldn’t open. I tugged with both hands.
Lester was on me in a heartbeat, grabbing me from behind and dragging me by the hair back to the center of the room. He dumped me on the floor and pressed his work boot into my chest to hold me down while he took off his belt.
With a handful of my tee-shirt, he jerked me upright. Then he pulled my hands behind me and wrapped the belt around them. I felt him feed it through the buckle and when he yanked on the strap, the edges of the belt bit into my wrists. “Please.” The belt bit into my flesh. “It’s too tight,” I told him, big tears rolling down and dripping off my chin. “It’ll cut off my circulation.”
His only answer was to jerk me by the forearm towards a folding chair and ram me down violently.
He leaned over me again. The acrid bite of sweat and chemicals filled my nose as he fastened the belt to the chair and pulled it tighter. He came around to face me, his nose only inches from mine. White fat peeled back from the edges of the three-inch gash in his forehead. Blood oozing from it ran down through the stubble on his face. He stared at me. He seemed curious, interested in me, examining me like a fascinating bug. He reached out to touch my breast, just held his hand without any pressure, fingers still, not really feeling
it or even touching it with pleasure but more to show he could. We stared a teach other. Blood dropped onto the hand that held my breast. He watched it drop. Then he squeezed my breast hard. I screamed in pain. Pleasure swamped his face now.
There was more blood. He looked down at his hand, looked at the blood, something new and interesting but not alarming. He lifted his hand and licked at the blood. Smiling at me, he turned away and went to where the shower curtain hung on a circular frame from the ceiling. He pulled down a gray towel, once white, and pressed it to his wound, watching me while he wiped away the blood.
The roof sloped to about four feet at the sides and you could only stand up in the middle of the room. A rusted iron cot had been pushed under the bare wood eaves on the left. On the right, across from the bed, was a small chest of drawers, incongruously painted white and stenciled with pink and yellow flowers. A card table, with a large hole in the brown padded top, was beside me in the middle of the room. A small microwave oven, trailing a jumble of extension cords, took up half the table. A toilet, the laundry tub and a metal shower stall were at the other end of the room. There was a small, uncurtained window over the laundry tub. This disgusting makeshift room wasn’t meant for a human to live in, but then Lester wasn’t quite human.
It was hot. Sweat seeped from my hair, stinging my eyes. The stale air stank of old cooking, garbage, Lester’s unwashed body and the pile of soiled clothes dumped on the floor beside me.
Lester went to the chest of drawers. Out of the top drawer he took a gun. He looked back at me and smiled happily. The first real smile I’d ever seen on his face, a smile of genuine pleasure.
I was going to die. Small little meowing sounds escaped my clenched jaw. I wanted to be brave but I just wasn’t. Wanted to be clever but I wasn’t. I was just going to die. He was going to kill me and I couldn’t think of one damn thing to do to stop him.
Chapter 74
The gun hung limp at his side.
“Why did you kill those women?” I croaked, curious to the end. How dumb was that?
He shrugged. “I liked it,” he said in a voice raspy and unused. And then he smiled again. His teeth, ragged and uneven, were riddled with decay. “I like killing things.” He had a dreamy look on his face and seemed in no hurry for whatever came next. “I used to kill things back home, chickens and rabbits and things. I liked that. But I like killing those bitches most.” He hefted the gun and stroked it as if it were a woman.
I reefed on the belt. The plastic gave some, yielding a little relief. “Home, where’s home?”
“New York State.” He wiped his cheek once more and then studied the blood on the towel. “Used to make steel there…all gone. Everybody left.” He looked at me. “My mother left. I was glad.” The mention of his mother changed his face. “So your father raised you?” I forced my hands further apart and the belt stretched a little more but still my fingers were numb.
He shook his head. “Nah. Never knew who my old man was. Ma likely didn’t either.” He tossed the towel aside.
He came over to me, pulled out the other folding chair from the table and sat in front of me. Close, almost intimate, his evil enveloped me.
He placed the gun in his lap and ran his hand along my cheek. “You’re pretty.” The blood already smeared across his face by the towel was being overlaid by new lines running down from his head. “Real pretty,” he said tenderly.
I fought down nausea.
His rough hand scraped along my cheek. “And you’re nice too.”
“You left those flowers, didn’t you?” He smiled again. “You was the only one nice to me.”
“Then don’t hurt me, Lester. Please.”
He brushed his hand over my head. “We’ll wait here. Dark we’ll go away.” He touched me.
I closed my eyes biting down on my lip and pressing my knees hard together, not wanting to see what his hands were doing but unable to deny their creeping invasion. “Water, may I have some water, Lester?” I heard the scrape of his chair and felt him move away from me. I opened my eyes. Lester seemed calm. Relaxed even. He rose and walked away. The gun lay on the table, just inches away.
I tugged harder at the belt, fighting to free my hands, my eyes fixed on the gun, tantalizingly close. Lester stopped. He turned around and looked at me and then came back and picked up the gun. His dry lips stretched in amusement. Tucking the gun in the waistband of his blue work pants, he went to the bureau. He searched through the drawer and brought out a box of plastic bandages. He peeled the bandages and stuck them over his gash almost at random, without looking in a mirror to see where they were ending up.
“Keep him talking,” my brain said. I tried to find the words to save my life. I thought of all the drunks I’d dealt with over the years, mean ones, funny ones, even ones who declared their undying love. This was different. I couldn’t get control of this situation. “So you grew up in New York State?” My voice sounded like tumbling gravel, harsh and ragged. Lester didn’t reply. Just went on peeling and sticking. “Keep him focused on something besides killing you,” I told myself while I pulled and tugged at the belt cutting into my hands. “Must be pretty there.” Dumb but what else was there? “Why’d you come to Florida?”
“Like to move. Course, with a hobby like mine you need to keep moving.” He gave a wheezing giggle and looked around at me. “Yeah, that’s what it is, a hobby.” He peeled another bandage and smoothed it across the cut. “Hobby? What’s your hobby?”
Chapter 75
“Taking care of the bitches.” He drew a piece of clothing out of the drawer and used it to wipe the blood, still leaking from between the edges of the bandage strips. He tossed the shirt back in the open drawer.
“Gina wasn’t a bitch,” I said. “She was a nice woman.” He came towards me. A mishmash row of bandage strips spread over the cut, overlapping and stuck down at odd angles, but the blood still seeped out and around them and flowed over them.
He stood over me. “But she knew…came the day of the hurricane…didn’t see my car, thought I was gone. She picked up the crowbar downstairs and came up to break in. I was just leaving. Opened the door to leave and there she was.” He started laughing, a nasty wheezing sound, not a sound of merriment. “She jumped backwards real quick when she saw me.” He hopped backwards, mimicking Gina’s shock. “Nearly fell off the stairs.” The memory pleased him. “Thought I’d left. So she was going to break in, trying to find something to prove I done her sister.”
“Did you kill her sister?”
“Bitch deserved killing…more than any other. It was good.”
“You killed Gina with the crowbar.”
“Yup, and I took her gun.” He stroked the gun stuck in the front of his pants. “Found it in her purse. Maybe she wanted to shoot me but I killed her instead.” He liked that thought, made him feel superior. “I like having a gun again.” He sat back down on the chair, legs splayed and at ease.
“After you killed Gina, you put her in her car and drove away.”
“Put her in the trunk…found a whole bunch of stuff there about me.” He smiled. “I was waiting ’til the last minute to leave the island. Thought I’d do a few houses before I went. See what I could pick up.” He frowned. “Storm sure seemed to come awfully quick after it got started.”
“And the tree was across the road. You couldn’t get out with Gina’s body.”
“Yeah. Wanted her away from the house so no one would come snooping around here.” “But the police did come.”
“Yeah, but I was all right. Those Havertys aren’t supposed to have anyone living here. Guess they’d get in trouble if anyone knew so they didn’t tell the police about me.”
“But you were trapped out here during the storm, just like me.”
He looked puzzled. “Were you out here too? I didn’t know that.” It was a momentary distraction. His thoughts went back to Gina. “I
pulled her out of the car like it was an accident. Sure thought the cops would think it was an accident. Why didn’t they?”
“What did you do after you left Gina there?”
“No good going back for my car. That tree wouldn’t let me drive out. Took the stuff all about me and just kept walking. Broke into a house up the beach and waited out the storm.” He leaned towards me. “Shuddered and shook, thought it was coming down. Waves came in the downstairs. Damn scary.” “And then you just walked back in.”
He nodded. “No one knew I was here all the time.” He smiled and crossed his arms in satisfaction. “The Havertys didn’t know?”
“Them!” He gave a harsh snort of disgust. “This old garage was supposed to be torn down with the old house. Wonder the hurricane didn’t bring it down. They let me stay here as long as I mow the lawn and clean the pool and stuff. Cheap bastards. All their money.” The Havertys were getting him upset again. I didn’t want that.
“This belt is really tight. Couldn’t you loosen it just a little?”
At first I thought he was going to refuse but then he climbed to his feet and came around behind me. His fingers worked on the binding and I felt them loosen a notch, not much, but enough.
He sat back on the chair and stared at me. His wet tongue licked across his cracked lips. He was getting real worked up. “Do you still have family back in New York?” A frown furrowed his brows. It must have hurt his gash. He reached up and touched the bandages, dabbing at them with his fingertips and sticking them down again. “Nope. Grandparents dead…good riddance! Mean. Old man beat me for fun. She was no better.” He leaned forward. “Lived in an old dump on the edge of town. No neighbors, no friends and no food if I didn’t please Grandpa and Grandma. Always hungry. Winter I was cold.” His eyes were looking at the past, not me. “Made me go into dumpsters behind this big grocery store and toss stuff out…bread, baked stuff…sometimes cans with nothing wrong with them but a little dent. Other stuff too,” he said, looking up at me. “Good stuff.”
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