by Ray Garton
“I’m gonna make you a piece of toast to eat with the pills so you don’t get sick, okay, hon?”
“‘Kay,” Kendra said. There was pain in her voice.
Anna poured milk into a glass and took it and the pills to Anna. “Here you go, sweetheart.”
As Kendra took the pills, Anna watched her and wondered. How did she bring it up with Kendra? How did she approach it? She had posed for those pictures – but how? Why? Surely she had not done it because she wanted to. Then again, maybe she really didn’t know any better. Maybe she didn’t think there was anything wrong with it.
Anna remembered all the times her sister Rose had lectured her about having The Talk with Kendra. Maybe if Anna had talked with her about the birds and the bees, she never would have posed for those pictures. Anna could not hold Kendra responsible for them, no matter what.
However Anna chose to broach the subject, she could not do it tonight. Her emotions were too close to the surface. She had just killed the man, for God’s sake. It would have to wait. Maybe tomorrow night, or the next night, she could talk to Kendra about it without flying apart in a million pieces like a plane slamming into the side of a mountain.
The toast popped up and Anna returned to the kitchen with the empty glass. “Would you like some jam on your toast, or just butter?” she said.
“Jam’s good,” Kendra said. “Do we have raspberry?”
“We sure do, honey. Comin’ right up.”
Anna got raspberry jam from the refrigerator and spread a generous helping on the toast, then put it on a small plate, and took it to Kendra in the living room. She was still watching the Game show Network. Match Game was on. Anna sat down beside her and watched her eat the toast. She reached over and ran a hand through Kendra’s long, shiny hair.
Kendra was almost done with her toast when she said, “How come you’re starin’ at me, Mommy?”
“I’m sorry, was I staring?”
Kendra smiled gently, as much as her pain would allow.
“I guess I’m just thinking about how much I love you,” Anna said, her voice breaking. “You know, sweetheart… there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. Nothing.”
“Me, too, Mommy. I mean, there’s nothin’ I wouldn’t do for you, neither.”
“Either.”
“Either.”
“How’s your toast?”
“It’s good.”
Kendra finished the toast and handed the little plate to Anna.
Unexpectedly, even to Anna, she flung her arms around Kendra and held her tightly. Anna’s eyes stung with tears and her throat felt thick. She kissed Kendra on the forehead, then stood and quickly turned and went back to the kitchen with the plate, before Kendra could see the tears in her eyes.
* * * *
His hair still wet from the shower, Reznick stared at the pictures on his computer screen. He enlarged them one at a time and looked at them, studied them, absorbed them.
It was, indeed, Kendra. She did not appear to be under duress. Her smile seemed genuine, and her eyes sparkled. The sight of her naked body made his heartbeat quicken, made him harden. She was everything he’d expected and more. Her large breasts were firm and unblemished, with rosy, puffy nipples he could imagine touching with his tongue, tasting, sucking on.
Seeing her naked on the computer monitor only frustrated him more. He wanted her naked in front of him where he could touch her, hold her, kiss her.
And he would. He’d told Anna she owed him big-time, and that he would collect. Kendra would be his payment. Anna might never know about it, but if she found out, Reznick would not worry about it. He would not feel guilty as he would have before. Now, Anna was in debt to him in a big way, and if she didn’t like it, a single anonymous phone call would send the cops in her direction.
He looked at the pictures over and over again. The last one was of Kendra’s laughing face spattered with semen. She seemed to be enjoying herself. That was good to know – that she enjoyed that. That meant she would enjoy it even more because, after all, she had a crush on him.
Reznick did not plan to wait around, either. He planned to go to work late the next day, if at all. He planned to drop in on Kendra in the morning.
He would be gentle and loving. Much more than that cretin with the website, he was sure.
That night, Reznick did not sleep well. It was not the heat that kept him awake. It was thoughts of Kendra, of those pictures, and of what he would do the following day.
Twenty-Two
“How about some scrambled eggs, Andy?” Sherry said.
“Yeah, that sounds good,” he said as he sat up in bed. He stretched his arms overhead as he opened his mouth in a big yawn.
Sherry slid her legs off the bed and sat up on the edge. She was naked and had slept without a single cover on. They’d gotten to bed late last night. People kept coming to the door. When Andy had pot to sell, they got a lot of visitors, customers coming to buy weed. Sometimes they stayed and chatted awhile if it was someone they knew, but the strangers only stayed long enough to buy the stuff. They’d come late into the night last night, once word had gotten out that Andy had some weed to sell.
“Hey,” Andy said. He grabbed her upper right arm and pulled her back down on the bed. “I ever tell you how nice it is to wake up to your naked body?”
She smiled tiredly as Andy squeezed a breast, then put his mouth over the nipple and gently gnawed on it.
“Mmm,” Sherry said, closing her eyes. “You want breakfast, or you wanna fool around? Tell you the truth, it’s too hot to fool around. Too hot already. Jeez, I hate summers in Shasta County. Why don’t we move to Oregon, or Washington, or somethin’?”
“You wanna move to Oregon or Washington? Maybe we will.”
“Really?”
“Well, it’s not impossible. I got a couple friends in Oregon and one in Seattle. We oughtta think about it, if you want. They like it real good there, my friends do.”
“Really?” she said again.
“We oughtta think about it.”
“Yeah, we oughtta.”
“I’m hungry.”
“I’ll get breakfast goin’.”
“I’m gonna fire up the lab later this evening,” he said, “so get out the fans and open all the windows.”
“Oh, shit. I hate that smell.”
“It pays the bills.”
“Yeah. Maybe I’ll call Lissa. Maybe we’ll go to a movie, or somethin’.”
“That’d be good. Get outta the trailer.”
Sherry got out of bed, put on a T-shirt and some shorts, and left the bedroom.
In the kitchen, she turned on the radio on the table, then opened the refrigerator. The icy chill felt good on her.
The radio was tuned to an album rock station, but the news was on. It didn’t catch her attention until she heard the name.
“… Arnold Garvis, who was found dead early this morning in his Washington, D.C. apartment, the apparent victim of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning. His father, Senator Wilson Garvis, has retreated to his Louisiana home where he and his family are in mourning. Arnold Garvis was twenty-two years old. In the Supreme Court today, there will be… “
But Sherry had already tuned out. “Andy! Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” he said as he came down the hall.
“On the news just now.”
“No.”
“It just said Arnold Garvis was found dead in his Washington, D.C. apartment early this morning, dead from accidental carbon monoxide poisoning. Can you believe that? Carbon monoxide!”
“Well, David said they’d come up with some other reason for his death. Sounds like they did.”
“But what about us?” Sherry said with wide eyes.
“What about us?”
“We know he didn’t die of carbon monoxide poisoning. How can they let us live?”
“Are you gonna start on that again?”
“I’m sorry, Andy, if you don’t agree, but I happen
to have a very bad feeling about this.”
“You and your bad feelings. Am I gonna have to fix breakfast myself, or what?”
“No, I’ll fix it, I’ll fix it,” she said with irritation, frustrated that he didn’t care.
Sherry remembered the two men who had come to take Arnie away, the promise they had made to cause trouble for them if they didn’t let them in to get Arnie. If they really wanted the world to believe that Arnold Garvis died of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning, why would they allow Sherry and Andy and Rob and Philpott and Lissa and David to live if they knew otherwise? It did not seem logical to Sherry. Why couldn’t Andy see that? Why wasn’t he worried?
Sherry was worried. Very worried. And she couldn’t shake it.
She started breakfast and tried to push the bothersome thoughts from her mind.
* * * *
“I want you to go over to Aunt Rose’s today,” Anna said.
“No! I don’t want to!”
“Please, Kendra?”
“No. I promise, I won’t even go get the mail. I just want to stay here and watch TV. I don’t feel good. My finger throbs.”
Anna sighed. “You promise? You’ll stay in the trailer?”
“I promise. It’s already hot. It’s gonna be too hot to go outside.” Kendra wondered if that qualified as a white lie. What difference did it make if she went outside or not while Mommy was gone? It wouldn’t hurt Mommy if she never knew about it, would it? It qualified as a white lie as far as Kendra was concerned.
“Well… okay. If you promise.”
“I promise.”
“Before I leave, I’m going to go get Marc’s phone number so you can call him if you need anything, okay?”
“‘Kay.”
“How’s your finger feel now?”
“It’s throbbing.”
“You can take a couple pills with your breakfast.”
* * * *
Reznick was pouring a cup of coffee when someone knocked on his door. He took his coffee with him to the door and pulled it open. Anna stood outside. She smiled up at him.
“Hi, Marc.”
“Hi.” He pushed open the screen door and came down the steps. “What’s up?”
“I’m leaving Kendra home alone again today. I was wondering if I could get your cell phone number, just in case she needs something. Would you mind if she called you?”
“Not at all. I don’t think I’m going in to work today, so I’ll be around.”
“Oh, good. Thank you.” She held a yellow Post It pad in one hand and a pen in the other. Reznick gave her his cell phone number and she wrote it down.
Reznick bowed his head and looked around. The blood stains were everywhere. Speckles of it lead to his trailer, then across the way to another trailer, then diagonally to another. It was all over the pavement and concrete.
“I’ll see you later, then,” Anna said.
“Yeah, see ya.”
As Anna walked away, Reznick wondered how long it would take for someone to notice the bloodstains on the concrete and pavement, how long it would take for the police to get involved.
* * * *
Anna walked slowly on her way back to the trailer, looking at the trails of spattered blood all over the cracked pavement of the road. It zigzagged here and there, and it had all come off of her as she’d walked away from the man she’d murdered.
The man she’d murdered.
When she’d awakened that morning, it had felt like a nightmare she’d had the night before. A horrible nightmare that clung to the backs of her eyelids in startlingly vivid images. Then, when she remembered it had not been a nightmare, when it all had come flooding back into her mind, the whole bloody, gory thing, she’d gotten out of bed and hurried to the bathroom, where she’d closed and locked the door, knelt at the toilet, and vomited, trembling, her head throbbing. It had gone on for a while, mostly dry heaves, as if her body were trying to expel her guilt. When she was finished, she’d washed her face and brushed her teeth, then stared at herself in the mirror.
She did not have time to worry about it. She had to go about her day. She had to go to work. She could not worry about how she was going to talk to Kendra about those pictures on the Internet, not now. She had to go to work. She couldn’t call in sick or anything, not now, not with this new job. She had to be there, and on time.
Anna walked back to her trailer and went inside.
* * * *
While the coffee maker made coffee, Muriel Snodgrass opened her front door and stepped outside on the porch. It was going to be another scorcher. In her left hand, she held a letter to her sister in Bend, Oregon, sealed in a stamped envelope, and in her right, a cigarette, which she put in the corner of her mouth. It dangled there, sending up tendrils of smoke as she went down the front steps.
Her sister Alice had never gotten a computer. She was the only person Muriel knew who was not yet online. Muriel kept in touch with all her other relatives and friends by e-mail, but not with Alice. She had to stay in touch with Alice the old-fashioned way – with a letter in an addressed envelope with a stamp on it.
Muriel wore a sleeveless lime-green blouse, a pair of stretchy black shorts, and pale-blue mules on her feet. A sliver of her pale, hanging belly peeked out from beneath the bottom of the blouse. She started on her way to the mailboxes to post the letter to Alice. Her slippers shuffled over the cracked, broken pavement as she walked.
The cigarette dangled from the corner of her mouth and she puffed on it now and then, exhaling smoke through her nose. She had not yet put her teeth in, so her lips stuck out like a small bill.
Miss Dunfy’s car backed out of unit eight, and pulled up beside her. Miss Dunfy rolled down her window.
“Hello, Mrs. Snodgrass,” Anna Dunfy said.
“Hi, there.”
“Look, Kendra’s going to be home alone again today. She cut her finger really bad yesterday.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear it,” Muriel said, the cigarette bobbing in her mouth.
“Yeah, Mr. Reznick in space nine took her to the hospital and she had to have five stitches. She bled all over the place. Anyway, she’s on painkillers, so she’s not feeling so well. If you could keep an eye out for her today, I’d sure appreciate it.”
“Be happy to, honey, you know me. I might even pop in on her today, see how she’s doin’.” A long ash fell from the cigarette.
“Thank you so much.”
“You got a job?”
“Yeah, one of the temp jobs has turned into something a little more permanent. For a while, anyway.”
“Well, good for you, honey. You have a good day.”
“Bye-bye.”
“Oh, wait,” Muriel said. “You wanna do me a big favor?”
“Sure, what?”
Muriel held out the letter. “You wanna stick this in my mailbox and put the flag up for me on your way out? I’d sure appreciate it.”
“Sure, no problem.”
“Thanks a lot, hon. See ya later.”
Anna drove away.
Muriel turned around to head back to the house when something caught her eye, something on the ground. She stopped walking and squinted down at the ground. Something dark was spattered over the broken pavement, a trail of it. It went this way and that, over there, over here. She couldn’t get a good look at it – she’d left her glasses back at the house, and whatever it was, it was blurry. But it looked like…
“‘Zat blood?” Muriel muttered.
She remembered Anna saying Kendra had cut her finger badly the day before.
She bled all over the place.
That must have been it. The poor girl had staggered and stumbled all over the place on her way to the trailer just next door. Probably the squeamish type, messed up by the sight of blood, especially her own.
Muriel’s cigarette had developed another long ash, and there wasn’t much left to it. She plucked it from her mouth and dropped it to the ground, stamped it out with her slipper. Then sh
e went inside to get a cup of coffee and start breakfast.
* * * *
The day was scorching hot. By ten o’clock, the temperature was a hundred and five degrees. The trees above the Riverside Mobile Home Park, dry and rustling in the hot breeze, were filled with birds – their chirping and screeching clashed in a shrill cacophony that did not pause.
Shortly after ten, Reznick took Conan and left the trailer. The little dog followed him over to the Dunfy trailer next door. At the screen, Reznick knocked and looked inside and said, “Hello?”
“Hi,” Kendra said. She came to the door and opened the screen for him. “C’mon in.”
Reznick went up the steps and Conan followed him.
“I thought maybe Conan and Dexter would like to see each other this morning,” he said. “I hope it’s all right that I brought him over.”
“Oh, sure, I like Conan. Hey, Conan, you cutie.” She bent down and petted him.
“How’s the finger?”
“Not bad right now,” she said.
She wore a plain white cotton T-shirt and yet another pair of short denim cutoffs, this one with a yellow daisy sewn onto the back pocket. The T-shirt’s material was thin and Reznick could see the faintest hint of her rosy nipples beneath it.
“You want somethin’ to drink?” she said. “Mommy’s got beer, or there’s Pepsi.”
“A Pepsi sounds good.”
Kendra went to the refrigerator, got a Pepsi, and brought the can back to him. “C’mon in and sit down.”
They both sat down on the couch.
“I was watchin’ The Joker’s Wild,” she said. “You like game shows? I love game shows.”
“Yeah, game shows are fun.”
Kendra stretched out on the couch and put her bare feet in Reznick’s lap. He looked down at them – the small, perfect toes with their red-painted nails, the paint chipping in places. He let his eyes move slowly up her long legs. He followed his eyes with one hand, running it up her leg, feeling the smooth skin, the lump of her knee, the firmness of her thigh. Then he looked at her.