“You couldn’t. You’re hurting my wrists.”
I let go of her. “Why couldn’t I? Look at me, babe. Give me the element of surprise and I can put Godzilla out of action. There’s nothing for you to be afraid of.”
“No one will believe me.”
I gave up. “I’m going to let you up and you’re going to go to bed and go to sleep. The house is wired. If you open a door or a window, you’ll set off an alarm that will wake up most of Oregon. There’s also a silent alarm and the cops will be here in five minutes. And you won’t find the car keys, so don’t bother looking.”
“You can’t keep me here against my will. It’s… kidnapping or something.”
“Jesus Christ. There’s a phone in almost every room in the house. Call the cops. I’m sure they’ll come to the rescue.”
I got off her. She got into bed, sobbing, and buried her head in a pillow. I carried the luggage in from the car and locked the keys and my gun in the room beneath the stairs. Allison refused to get up and undress so I pulled her shoes off and lay down beside her, leaving my jeans and T-shirt on. I managed to get a corner of the comforter away from her and pulled it over my shoulders.
As Allison’s sobs abated, I started drifting. I jerked awake. Would I notice if she got out of bed? Didn’t matter. She couldn’t get out of the house without setting off the alarm. She wouldn’t get far on foot and I could catch her easily enough. I drifted again. And was jerked awake again by a vision of Allison holding a knife dripping blood. My blood. Ridiculous. She wouldn’t kill me. I rolled onto my other side and drifted again. Jerked awake. Allison with a knife dripping blood. Her blood. Even more ridiculous. She wasn’t suicidal, she was hell bent on surviving. I rolled over again. Drifted. Jerked awake. Knives in the kitchen. Razorblades in the bathroom. An old bottle of codeine pills in the medicine chest. Drain opener under the kitchen sink. I rolled over. Fireplace poker, drapery cords, electrical outlets, picture-hanging wire. I rolled over. Allison sat up and looked at me and lay down again. Rope in the garage. Axes. Gasoline. Kerosene. Insecticide. Weed killer. Chain saw. Screwdrivers. Hammers. A thousand blunt instruments and sharp objects. The whole house was lethal.
I sat up.
“What’s the matter?” Allison asked.
“Nothing. I’m crazy.”
She muttered something, probably an agreement, as I got out of bed. I rummaged around in a drawer, placing a key on the bureau before I returned to bed. She was lying on her right side, her back to me. I found her left wrist and slipped the cuff on it then clicked the other one around my own left wrist. She sat up, staring in disbelief at our hands.
“You can’t handcuff me,” she wailed.
“I just did. I can’t get any sleep worrying about what you’re doing.”
“You can’t handcuff me,” she said again, shaking our joined hands. After a moment, she said, “What if I have to go to the bathroom?”
“I’ve seen women pee before. Go to sleep.”
She lay down, turning away from me and yanking my arm across her waist. Otherwise, our bodies weren’t touching. I closed my eyes. I was drifting again when she backed up into the curve of my body. I pulled her closer and kissed the back of her head. I fell asleep feeling bad for her. She had no one to turn to for comfort but the son-of-a-bitch who was going to hand her over to the police.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
I was aware of someone entering the house the next day, but whoever came in knew how to turn off the alarm, so my subconscious registered the sounds as harmless. I didn’t really wake up until Allison kicked me in the shin with her heel and stage-whispered, “Someone’s here.”
She yanked the covers up over her head just as Carrie appeared in the doorway, Melissa at her side.
Carrie said, “Oh, sorry,” then stood there looking confused. She knew I never brought women to the house. She looked more confused as she took in the fact that I was dressed. She frowned at me then stared at the lump beside me. I sat up, my left hand pulled across me and hidden beneath the blankets. “She’s shy.”
Carrie raised an eyebrow. “Evidently, so are you.” She jerked her head toward the door. “I need to talk to you.”
“This really isn’t a good time.”
She didn’t go away. She started at the lump some more, then looked at me. It was her “oh-my-god-what-have-you-done-now-you-idiot” look. I sighed.
“There’s a little key on the dresser. Hand it to me, will you?”
She found the key and gave it to me. I pulled my hand and Allison’s clenched fist out from under the blankets and disconnected us. “There’s a perfectly good explanation for this,” I said.
“Uh-huh.” Carrie said. She clapped a hand over her mouth and left the room in a hurry, dragging Melissa with her.
I patted Allison on the backside and told her not to go away. I left the French doors slightly open so I could hear if she tried to go out the sliding glass door that led to the patio out back.
Carrie was standing in the middle of the living room. “You’re all over the front page,” she said. “People died. I thought you might want some company.”
“I have more company than I can handle already. The men I killed were responsible for the deaths of at least four girls and were going to douse my client’s daughter with gasoline and burn her to death. I’m not having any trouble coping with it. Is my picture in the paper?”
“Your picture? No. Why?”
We stood there looking at each other for a couple minutes. Neither of us bothered to look at Melissa, who suddenly shoved the French doors wide open. My sister and I turned toward the bedroom. Allison was standing by the bed, her hair in wild tangles, a pillowcase wrinkle imprinted on her cheek.
Very quietly, Carrie said, “Allison Wonderland.”
I introduced them. Carrie said, “How do you do?” and Allison said, “Fine, thank you. How are you?”
“Fine, thank you,” Carried replied.
Melissa climbed onto the waterbed and started bouncing.
Carrie said, “Um.”
Allison burst into tears.
I took Carrie’s arm and pulled her away from the doors. She resisted, looking frantically over her shoulder toward the room where her beloved first-born was bouncing and squealing a few feet away from a sobbing cold-blooded murderess.
“She’s fine,” I said. “I want you to go home. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”
“Not really. Have bail money ready.”
“This isn’t funny, Zachariah. She’s wanted for murder. What are you doing with her? Where did you find her? The whole state’s looking for her.”
“I told you. I found her down a rabbit hole.”
In the other room, Melissa suddenly broke off in mid-squeal. I trotted after Carrie, who was moving fast for a very pregnant woman. Allison, her face tear-streaked, was holding Melissa, who had fistfuls of long blond hair and was chortling happily. Allison smiled tentatively at Carrie. “She’s very pretty,” she said.
“Thank you,” Carrie said.
“Come on, Missy,” I said. “Mommy’s taking you home now.” I pried her fists open and took her from Allison. Carrie followed me to the front door. I handed Melissa to her. “Everything will be fine,” I said. “Go home. If you see Chief Harkins, give him a shit-eating grin for me.”
She smiled, the creases in her cheeks appearing. “I’d like to see his face when you turn her in.” The creases disappeared. “You are turning her in, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Go home.”
I waited until she headed her car down the long drive, then I went back into the bedroom to see what Allison was doing. She was curled into a tight ball on the bed. She refused to get up, refused to talk to me, and denied being hungry. I turned the alarm on and took a quick shower.
I had coffee brewing and was trying to decide whether I wanted breakfast or lunch when Allison wandered in and asked me what time it was. There were more cloc
ks than telephones in the house. She had passed at least four of them on her way to the kitchen. I looked pointedly at the clock on the microwave and said, “It’s eleven-oh-four. What would you like to eat? There’s no milk unless you can stand powdered. I have some hot chocolate mix.”
“I don’t want anything.”
“That’s easy enough.” I made a cheese and onion omelet and ate it while she stood across the counter and watched me. When I finished she said, “There’s no tub in the bathroom.”
“That’s the powder room, babe. There’s a shower in the bathroom off the laundry room. That way.” I pointed toward the back hall. If you want a tub, you’ll have to go upstairs. There are two of them up there. The rooms aren’t finished, but the plumbing works.”
“You have four bathrooms?”
“Seems a little excessive, doesn’t it?”
She headed off down the back hall. As soon as I heard the shower start, I called the police. Phil Pauling wasn’t there. I left word for him to call me then called his apartment and left a message on his answering machine.
Allison stalked past me, wrapped in a beach towel. I gave her enough time to get dressed then I went into the bedroom. She wasn’t dressed. She was sitting at the bureau, her wet hair combed smooth, the beach towel tucked beneath her arms. She looked as if she’d been hatching up a plot and when her eyes met mine in the mirror I knew what it was. The oldest trick in the books.
She walked over to me. When she was very close, she dropped the towel and slid her arms around my neck, pressing her body against me. Five feet ten inches of sheer heaven. I kissed her forehead and said, “If you wanted anything else at all this would work just fine.”
She jerked away from me, slapped my face, stooped for the towel and held it one-handed in front of her while she slapped me again. I grabbed her wrist. “Calm down. This isn’t doing any good.”
She re-wrapped the towel and flung herself down on the bed. It sloshed.
“Get dressed and come into the living room. I want to talk to you.”
She rolled over and sat up. “I don’t want to talk to you. I hate you. You lied to me. You’re going to call the police. I hate you. You said you cared what happened to me and now he’s going to kill me. I shouldn’t have stayed with you. I should have left while we were in Portland. Oh, god, why didn’t I leave?”
“Get dressed.”
She took her time but eventually she appeared in the living room, wearing her jeans and a blue T-shirt I had bought for her at the Saturday Market. “Somebody in Oregon Loves Me” was silkscreened across the front in rainbow colors.
She sat in the middle of the couch, hands clasped in her lap, and said, “I want you to let me go.”
“I can’t. Too many people know, for one thing.”
Her eyes widened. “Will your sister tell anyone?”
“Just her husband. That’s as far as it will go. But they aren’t the only ones.” I told her about Sarge and watched her fear deepen into panic. She paced in front of the couch.
“You can still let me go. He already lied to the police. You can make him keep quiet.”
“It wouldn’t do any good. The paper is full of the story about the pornography bust. It’s a nice sensational story full of sex and violence and the press is going to milk it for all it’s worth. I bet anything that by the time tomorrow’s paper hits the street someone will have dug up a picture of me. A lot of people saw us together in Portland. No one remembers me well enough to give the cops a good description, but if my picture’s in the paper, someone will recognize me.”
“You can say I left days ago, before you knew who I am.”
“I’ve been pumping Phil Pauling for information all week. He’ll never believe I didn’t know.”
“I don’t care. Just let me go. Say I got away from you on the way here. You don’t care about me, you’re just worried about yourself.”
“Allison, I wouldn’t do it even if I could get away with it. It isn’t fair to Tom and Carrie. They wouldn’t tell anyone but it would put them in an awkward situation. They know most of the cops in town. The Chief of Police lives next door to them. I can’t ask them to do it. Besides, I don’t want to let you go. You can’t spend the rest of your life running.”
“I hate you! I hope you do get in trouble. I hope they put you in jail for the rest of your life.”
We covered the same ground several more times, with Allison pointing out at length what a mean, heartless, selfish, et cetera bastard I was. I left the room when she got all wound up in a lengthy threat about all the things she was going to tell the cops I did to her if I turned her in. For a virgin, she knew a lot of perversions.
I carried a telephone upstairs and called the police station again. Just as the line was answered, the house filled with a painful whooping shriek. I slammed the phone down and swore all the way down the stairs. Allison was standing at the open front door, hands over her ears, screaming something about the police. I silenced the alarm and called the alarm company. The only neighbors close enough to hear the alarm weren’t due back from Europe for a few more weeks.
“Do that again,” I said, “and I’m letting them come.
The afternoon passed with teeth-grinding slowness. Allison alternated between sulking and sobbing. She asked once why I didn’t just call the police and get it over with. I told her to mind her own business, which offended her sense of fairness so badly that she stomped her foot at me.
I left a dozen messages for Phil at the police station and a dozen more on his answering machine. No one seemed to know if he was on duty or off.
By five o’clock the house had become oppressively claustrophobic. The soft hum of the air conditioning swelled to the sound of a swarm of angry bees. I collected Allison’s belongings and locked them in the room beneath the stairs. She watched me duck into the closet with my arms full then come out empty-handed. She padded barefoot over to the closet and peered inside, then shoved the jackets on the rod aside and looked some more. She glared at me and went into the family room to stare at the television, which wasn’t on.
I turned off the alarm system and opened doors and windows. Heat and sunshine poured into the house. I changed into cut-off jeans and a T-shirt and went out back to the patio. The bricks were hot against my feet and the sun spread its warmth over me as I stretched out in a redwood lounge chair. After a while, Allison joined me, lying back in the matching chair beside me.
“I wish I had some shorts,” she said.
“Just take your jeans off. There’s no one here but me. You’ve been running around half-naked all week.”
“It did work.”
I sat up and smiled at her. “If it had worked, it wouldn’t change anything. It would be all the more reason for me to want you to get this mess cleared up so you can get on with your life.”
“He’s going to kill me. I won’t have any life.” She got up and went into the house. When she came out she was wearing a sleeveless undershirt of mine over her bra and panties. She lay down again after angling her chair so her face would be partially shaded by a tree. Her hair gleamed in filtered sunlight. Dancing shadows played across the planes and angles of her face. The sun glistened on her long slender legs. I watched the movement of her dark eyes as she tracked the flight of birds far overhead.
I considered methods of torture. It wouldn’t take much. Twist her arm up behind her. Sometime before the point of agony, she would blurt out the truth. If the mystery man existed, she would tell me his name. More likely, she would confess to murder and once she admitted it to me I thought I could convince her to talk to a lawyer. I looked at the graceful line of the arm she had raised to shade her eyes and felt faintly nauseated. Not her arm. Thumbs are good. They hurt like hell. But they don’t always heal properly. Okay, not her thumb. Her little finger. That would do it. Bend it back to the breaking point and she’d tell me anything.
I crouched beside her chair and took her left hand. She watched me solemnly as I studied her fin
gers. They were long and slender, fragile, half the thickness of mine. I kissed her palm and released her hand.
“Why can’t you let me go?” she asked.
“Because,” I said, sounding a lot like Melissa. But I finished the sentence in my mind. Because I would never see you again.
I lit the coals in the barbecue. When they were ready, I went inside and put two potatoes in the microwave and opened a jar of three-bean salad. I put the steak I had removed from the freezer earlier onto the grill then set two places at the picnic table.
“I’m not hungry,” Allison said.
“You haven’t eaten anything all day. You’re going to make yourself sick again.”
“I’m going to be dead,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if I’m sick.”
I ate. She didn’t. I sat quietly after I finished, watching her. She seemed to be asleep but I didn’t think she was. I thought she was lying there awake, gathering courage, storing strength, waiting—like a cornered wild thing—for a chance to make one last desperate bid for freedom.
I carried the dishes inside, putting Allison’s dinner in the refrigerator in case she wanted it later. I made another call to the police station. I had talked to several people during the day and none of them had any idea where Phil was. This time the line was answered by Sam O’Connell. He asked me to hold on while he went to a different phone. I waited, curious because I barely knew O’Connell. He had reversed the usual procedure, putting in several years with the Portland Police Bureau before hiring on with Mackie PD shortly after I resigned in a blaze of shattered pumpkin shell.
“Smith?” I could tell by the lack of background noise that he was in an interrogation room.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I’m worried about Phil. He’s supposed to be working but he got into it with Harkins this morning and he slammed out of here and hasn’t come back. The Chief is pissed as hell and is threatening to fire him as soon as he shows up.”
“Christ. What were they fighting about?”
“What weren’t they? Harkins has had a bee up his ass ever since this murder went down and Phil’s catching the worst of it, as usual. I’ve never seen either of them so mad before. I thought they were going to pull their guns and shoot it out. I know Phil’s been on the wagon for a long time, but the way he looked when he walked out of here… I’m afraid he may be out drinking. You think you can look for him?”
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