King had made her feel this way once, she reminded herself, trying to cool her ardor, worried that she was on the edge of losing control. She had felt the same bang inside of her with King. She remembered it vividly. She had been convinced, without conscious thought, that everything in her life up to that point had been an electric thread carrying her to him. Oscar Desario, the king of love, had her face in his hands, and he turned and moved slowly down the hall of the apartment he rented on Jones Street, leaving one hand behind on her cheek until his arm reached its limit and the palm released with a tiny pop of suction. The fingers grazed her bottom lip and then they were gone, too, trailing the rest of King down the hall. She followed, of course. He never had any doubt that she would, and neither did she. She walked down the hallway as if hypnotized, every part of her body tingling, the core of her on fire.
She was eighteen years old and she was innocent. Actually innocent. She thought about that now and couldn’t believe it. There were plenty of boys in high school who would have loved to put their hands all over her, but she had been too scared. She couldn’t even look them in the eye—how could she let them reach under her shirt, put their lips on hers?
She remembered touching the knob of King’s bedroom door, which stood half-open. She had been in the apartment once before, earlier in the week, and she had looked in the bedroom after using the toilet. She had pushed the door open and saw the double bed in the corner, the expensive stereo system on the shelf above it, the framed posters for Hair, his radio show, and the Who, his favorite band. A photograph of a pretty blond girl stood on the top of the cheap, chipped dresser. She didn’t dare ask who the girl was; she hoped it was his sister.
She stepped into the room for the second time knowing exactly what was going to happen. This time she didn’t see the posters or the blond girl in the frame or the expensive stereo. She saw only King Desario, naked, standing in front of his bed. He had just pushed his underwear off his hips. It had dropped to his feet, and he flung it with his toes. It flipped in the air before parachuting to the floor near a half-full laundry basket. She looked at him, at all of him. She’d never seen a naked man in the flesh before. She stared at the hard, bumpy ribbon of his abs, before her gaze continued farther down. “Here I am,” she said, feeling a blob of sweat drop out of her right armpit and roll down her side.
She wasn’t sweating now, out in the open air, the tang of salt water in her nose. She wasn’t nervous. She’d had sex with two men other than King in the past year—sordid, unsatisfying, cheater’s sex, one-offs both times, just to prove she could do it with someone else. One of them was her boss, with his bad breath huffing in her ear as he leaned back in his leather executive chair. The other had been Larry, the resort’s travel agent, who always called her darling, never her given name. But it would be different with Jackson, she told herself. This time she was in the clear. She’d broken up with King. Left him on the side of the road. She could enjoy herself and her body’s sensations with whoever she wanted, whenever she wanted. She could do anything. The world was hers. Light-headed, from drink or her liberation or both, she stumbled, and Jackson caught her like she weighed nothing at all. She rolled in his arms. She couldn’t ever remember being so happy.
She didn’t hear the man at first, but she felt Jackson stiffen.
“Yeah, you,” the voice said, rough and rural. She didn’t have to see the man to know what he looked like. He would have a square head with reddish-blond hair cut tight to the skull. He would have soft, girly lips, like a retard or Mick Jagger. He would be strong, but his muscle already would be halfway turned to fat. He played football in high school—he was a star—but that was a long time ago. He would be wearing Bermuda shorts with white socks and a too-tight white undershirt.
“Let that lady go,” the man said.
Janice felt herself swing upright. Jackson placed her on her feet, steadied her with a hand, and stepped away from her. Janice could now see who was addressing them. It wasn’t just some redneck with a hard-on. It was a man in a dark uniform—a cop.
“Yes, sir,” Jackson said. “There’s no problem, officer.”
Janice, confused by what was happening, heard something strange in Jackson’s voice. Fear.
“Put your hands on your head,” the officer said.
“What’s going on here?” Janice heard herself say. She felt fear take hold of her, too. All at once she had to pee.
“Quiet, Miss,” the cop said, holding out his left hand like a stop sign.
“Did we do something wrong?” she said.
The cop’s face swiveled to her, the eyes narrowing in anger and—there was no other possibility—hate. “Do not speak, ma’am,” he said.
Janice realized that the cop’s right hand was on his holster. She brought her hands up to her face, and she noticed there was another man behind the cop, another police officer.
Jackson raised his hands over his head.
“Get down on the ground now,” the cop in the front said. Jackson glanced at Janice.
“What did he do?” Janice said. She realized she was crying. “Did he do something?”
Jackson eased onto his knees. The second officer stepped forward and shoved him down by the head, pressed his face into the pavement.
“Please tell me what’s happening,” Janice said, really crying now. She began to hyperventilate. She ducked her head forward. She reached into her pocket, felt nothing, and remembered she had finished off the canister. Shit! She couldn’t let herself have an attack. She squatted and took deep, ragged breaths in between sobs. She balled her fists and pushed them into her chest as hard as she could. She stayed there, eyes closed, concentrating on her breathing. A tickle in her throat bobbed, threatening to rise up and take over, but it didn’t. She’d beaten it, headed it off. She wiped at her face, swallowed, and stood.
The policemen—and Jackson—were gone.
She spun around, looking in every direction. She could see only two people, one of the couples that had been kissing by the water. They watched her with concerned eyes but said nothing.
“Where’d they go?” she asked.
The woman glanced at her man, back to Janice, and pointed toward the hotel above them.
Janice realized what she must look like to these people: eyes bugged out, smeared makeup, hair helter-skelter. Jesus, she thought, what difference did that make? She raced along the path toward the hotel, bounded up the stairs, and wheeled around the corner. She stopped, out of breath, and saw a police cruiser idling in the hotel’s car turnaround. She spotted Jackson in the back seat, his head dropped forward. A cop, a different one, almost obscenely fat, was opening the front passenger door, starting to lower himself into the seat. Janice looked around for the two officers who’d arrested Jackson, but she didn’t see them. They must be foot patrol, she thought. They must have called a car just to take Jackson away and now they were back on the waterfront, looking for someone else to hassle, maybe looking for her. Janice hustled toward the vehicle. She could hear the engine revving.
“Wait! Wait!” she called out, watching the cruiser bend from the cop’s weight. She grabbed hold of the door before he could pull it shut.
The officer, startled, looked up. “Step away from the car, ma’am,” he said.
“Please . . . please . . .” She didn’t know what to say. “Can you tell me what he did?”
The cop looked up at her with his small, watery eyes. Janice understood the look immediately: he knew who she was, and he felt pity for her. The man blinked heavily, then flicked his head at the back of the car, at Jackson. “Someone like this . . .” he said. “You have to be careful. Some men want to take advantage of a pretty girl like yourself.”
Janice felt her face get hot. “Excuse me?”
“Let this be a lesson,” he said.
“But . . . what’s going to happen to him?”
The cop s
hrugged. “Night in jail. ‘Les you want to come down and make a statement.”
Janice gawped at him, and he shrugged again. “You should consider yourself lucky,” he said, easing the door shut.
Janice couldn’t believe what she had just heard. This cop thought she was a whore. He thought Jackson was planning to bed her and maybe rob her, that he didn’t care about her at all. This fat bastard cop who probably couldn’t find his pecker with a magnifying glass. She wanted to spit in his fat goddamn face.
“Walter Lame?”
Janice turned. She found Jackson peering at her through the car’s back window, his eyes like saucers.
“What?” she said, putting a hand to the glass as the car began to pull away from the curb. Had they beaten him? Was he incoherent?
“What’s your last name?” he shouted through the window.
Janice saw the fat officer turn around in his seat, no doubt to tell Jackson to pipe down. The car angled toward the driveway and gained speed. My God, she thought, panicked. He really does like me.
“Littlepaugh!” she yelled. She started to jog after the cruiser. “L-i-t-t . . .” The car rolled out of the turnaround and headed down the driveway. She couldn’t tell if Jackson was looking at her through the back window. The vehicle slipped from view.
Chapter Twenty-Five
They gathered in clumps on the sidewalk. One small group clasped hands when the corpses were finally brought out. Alice Krendel’s bare right leg had fallen free of the plastic covering. There was a dark bruise on her kneecap. Everyone stared, unable to look away as they knew they should. One man raised his hands to the sky, to the heavens, and began to loudly chant as the deputies put Alice’s body into the back of the vehicle. Once the bodies had been driven away, none of the gawkers wanted to be there anymore, standing around with nothing to say to one another. But they couldn’t bring themselves to leave.
Around them, the little downtown was returning to normal. Other than the gaggle on the sidewalk, few people knew what had happened at the bank. Most of Mammoth View’s citizens were happy to be home after a panicked day driving around Bakersfield or Los Angeles. Cruising down Main Street in their pickups and station wagons and Continentals, they honked their horns at neighbors and waved. Winnie raised her hand reflexively at the sound as she stepped into the street, but she couldn’t match Arlen Thomas’s smile as he rolled past in his Dodge. How rude he must think I am, she told herself. She turned at Third, heading for Main. She had assumed she needed to be alone after her ordeal, but she discovered she couldn’t bear it. The silence in the house had pressed against her ears, the lack of movement in the rooms made her flinch every time she looked up. She hoped Angelo’s was open. She’d sit at the bar, by herself but surrounded by the soft, comforting murmur of other people’s conversations. She flinched as a bird or a bat swooped down from a rooftop. It shot across the street and disappeared under an eave. Ahead, near the bank, dulled human reflexes tried to keep up with the creature, swiveling to follow it. The movement made Winnie realize something was up. She spotted Frank Durr, Ben and Sharon Langely, and a dozen more, all gathered as a group. Some of them held hands, comforting each other. Winnie’s stomach dropped. Could they know what had happened to her?
She stopped and took stock. She was wearing bell-bottomed jeans and a white T-shirt with an image of Tweety Bird on the chest. Hair pulled back into a ponytail. No makeup. She’d go on anyway, she decided. Deflect their questions, accept their concern but tell them it wasn’t as bad as they’d heard. She’d confront Marco tomorrow about why he’d told everyone.
“Winnie, it’s so awful,” Sharon Langely said, taking Winnie’s hands in hers.
Winnie started to dismiss Sharon’s concerns, but the words stuck in her chest. Panic seized her, followed by a strange, discombobulated feeling. No one else was looking at her. Ben had glanced away, his eyes flicking over his shoulder. He always looked angry, she thought. Deep creases streaked horizontally from the corners of his eyes, demarcating his face into two halves, the lid and the container. With a jolt, Winnie realized this gathering wasn’t because of her.
“What’s happened?” she asked.
Tears bubbled in Sharon’s eyes. Her round, middle-aged face shone in the streetlight. “There’s been a bank robbery,” she said. “You haven’t talked to Johnny? Alice Krendel is dead . . .”
“Oh, no,” Winnie said.
“. . . and the bank manager. Mister—I don’t know. What is his name, Ben?”
Ben swung his head around. He shrugged.
A pounding rhythm filled Winnie’s head. Her eyes lost focus, and she gripped Sharon’s hands to steady herself. “Was it the Johnsons?”
“That bastard Melvin Johnson is no good,” Ben said, the hatred filling his pupils. “The other one’s a dummy. The chief and your husband are after them. But you must know that.”
“Yes, yes,” she said. “I didn’t know about this, though. Dear God.”
Dead, Winnie thought. Sweet Alice Krendel was dead. Alice Krendel, who could never hurt a fly, who couldn’t even look at you straight on.
“Oh, darling girl,” Sharon said, grabbing Winnie by the shoulders and pulling her into a motherly hug. “He was just trying to protect you. He doesn’t want you to know there’s such evil in the world.”
“If you watch the evening news, you can be under no illusions about that,” Ben said.
Winnie stepped back from Sharon’s embrace. She didn’t want to ask for details, but she wanted to know. She wanted to know what the Johnsons were capable of doing, what she had just barely avoided. What had they done to poor Alice before putting her out of her misery?
“I’m not feeling well,” Winnie said. “I shouldn’t have come out.”
“Of course, dear. Of course. We’ll walk you home, won’t we, Ben?”
Ben looked up. “Yes, sure.”
“Thank you, but I’m fine on my own. It’s just a few blocks.”
“Let’s us walk with you—you can’t be too careful,” Sharon said.
“No, no, thank you. Really. The Johnsons are long gone. I’m fine.”
“You never can be sure.”
“We should let her be, if that’s what she wants,” Ben said. He put his hand on his wife’s forearm.
Winnie smiled, thanked them again. She turned and headed back the way she had come. She bypassed Third, deciding to take the long way around. She wasn’t afraid. She felt confident the Johnsons were indeed long gone—and that Johnny and the chief would track them down. Johnny was a stud, she thought. He understood human nature; he understood the way people thought when they were panicking. He’d find them. He’d make them pay.
She wondered if she’d have to testify at the trial. They’d punched her smack in the face and dragged her away, thrown her in the trunk of a car. Those were serious crimes. They hadn’t succeeded in raping her, so maybe there’d be no need to bring that up. You couldn’t prove something that hadn’t actually happened; it wouldn’t be allowed in court. She didn’t want her parents to know that the dumb one had torn her blouse and yanked her pants down. That he’d been so excited he’d snorted like a pig. She couldn’t help thinking about what would have happened if the chief hadn’t arrived. How much would she have fought? Could she have fought him off?
The road rose as she headed out of downtown, and she leaned into it. The pressure in her knees vibrated up her legs. Houses stutter-stepped up the hill with her, close together. People sometimes opened their windows to talk to their next-door neighbors—it was considered perfectly normal. Most of the front doors along this block weren’t even locked, she knew. Nobody worried about crime here, at least not during the off-season. That’s how it was in a town where everybody knew everybody.
When she and Johnny moved to Mammoth View, she figured he would soon grow bored and would want to move on, that he’d find a position in a police department
in a real city, a place with culture. But now, quite suddenly, things had gotten interesting for him. And, to her surprise, she realized she didn’t want to leave—or at least she wasn’t entirely sure about it. She’d grown to like Mammoth View. What was so wrong with the slow pace of life here? This was a good place to raise a child. She stretched her hands over her head, reaching for the sky. Trees—the forest—rose behind the houses like a huge barrier, as if the town was walled off from the rest of the world. If only that were so. It really was beautiful here. The most beautiful place she’d ever been.
At the top of the rise, she turned and looked back over the little downtown. The rooftops spiked and dipped under the blue-black sky. Beyond, Winnie’s eyes caught a flash, a speck in the moonlight. She squinted, trying to make out what she was seeing. Was it two specks? She searched for the hiking trail that fell from the mountain like a waterfall and circled Mammoth View, but it was difficult in the darkness, with only the moonlight to guide her. The muscles in her stomach clenched. The Johnson brothers had sneaked back into the town. They were coming for her. Fear sucked the air out of her lungs. She couldn’t feel her legs, couldn’t say for sure her feet were planted on the ground.
She squatted and put her face in her hands. She was seeing things, phantoms, she told herself. Take a deep breath. Deep goddamn breaths. She crossed herself. Forgive me, Father. She wiped tears from the corners of her eyes and flung them into the dark. She stood and took a deep breath. The Johnsons were miles away, out in the forest running for their lives. Johnny was after them. She had nothing to worry about. Those creeps didn’t even know her name.
She started to walk. She decided this was a good example of why her parents should have had another child. She’d longed for an older sister throughout her adolescence—a confident, popular girl who would ease Winnie’s way with teachers and give her advice about boys. She longed for one even more in adulthood. She needed someone—a woman—she could trust absolutely. A sister would answer the phone and wouldn’t be angry with her no matter how late she called. A sister would soothe her when she began to cry and know just what to say. Winnie would be able to unburden herself to a sibling. Her sister would understand what she was feeling right now, would tell her it was perfectly normal, that she’d been through a terrible trauma and she was okay.
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