by L. R. Wright
“Oh God oh Jesus,” Gardiner kept saying, over and over again: “Oh God oh Jesus.”
Eddie didn’t say anything. He just looked out the window into the darkness and waited for his heart to stop pounding, waited for his chest to stop hurting; waited for what had happened not to be true. He stared intently at the world Gardiner was rushing them through, seeing it awash in light from the moon. The few houses they sped past were dark; there were no cars on the road, and even when they reached the town he saw streetlights but no sign of life: it was as if they were all dead, everybody in Sechelt, as if every single person had died when those two girls died.
Except, of course, the girl that got away. But maybe she was dead by now too, Eddie thought, lying dead in the forest, scared to death.
Gardiner took the winding, hilly road to the ferry terminal so fast that Eddie felt like he was on a roller coaster. When they got there, a sign told them that the first ferry didn’t leave until six o’clock.
Gardiner turned to Eddie. “What do we do?”
“Go back in the bush, I guess.”
Eddie thought about Sylvia for a minute. He wanted to call her up, so he could hear her talking to him. It wouldn’t matter what she said or even if she was mad at him for calling her so early; it would be very good to hear her voice.
Gardiner turned around and drove back to town, and through it, and along the highway for a while, and off onto the logging road, and he parked in the same place where they’d spent the evening, waiting for it to be night. “What are we gonna do, Eddie?” he said, when he’d turned off the motor.
Eddie shrugged, feeling immensely weary.
“Do you think she saw us?”
“I don’t know.”
“We’ve gotta get outa here. Isn’t there another way? Isn’t there a goddamn road somewhere?”
“There’s another ferry. Up at the other end. It goes over to Vancouver Island.”
“And then what, for fuck’s sake? We’d have to take another ferry, right? Back to Vancouver? So one way we take one ferry, and the other way we take two ferries—is that right?”
“Right.”
Gardiner sank back in his seat. “Fuck. What a fucking mess.”
Maybe if they stayed here long enough, Eddie thought, looking at the squashed beer cans and the empty potato chip bags cluttering up the moonlight, time would go back to when it hadn’t happened yet. The bends in the beer cans would go away and they’d fill up with beer again and the potato chip bags would get smoothed out and fill up with potato chips and it would be last night again and he and Gardiner could change their minds and take the last ferry home.
***
“We gotta disguise ourselves,” Gardiner had said—only a few hours ago, although it seemed like years.
“What?” said Eddie, dismayed. “How?”
“Bags over our heads.” Gardiner, tossing a can out the window, started cackling. “Or socks. Or those nylon stocking things. Panty hose.”
“I’m not wearing a bag on my head,” said Eddie sullenly. “And what’re you talking about, socks? You couldn’t get a sock to go over your head. And I’m not wearing any damn nylon stocking on my face, either.”
Gardiner was hooting with laughter now, clutching at his stomach, banging his forehead against the steering wheel.
“We don’t need disguises,” Eddie insisted loudly. “We’re going in there in the middle of the night; they’re gonna be asleep.”
“No, but we gotta,” said Gardiner, sobering up. “You never know, one of them might wake up; maybe a car drives by and backfires or something, and somebody wakes up. It happens, Ed, believe me.” He was shaking his head and looking like he knew stuff that Eddie didn’t. He started the car and drove them back down to Sechelt.
“Okay,” he said to Eddie, parking outside a drugstore. “Go in there and get us some panty hose.”
“Fuck you,” said Eddie promptly.
Gardiner leaned back and sighed. “Look, weasel. Why am I here, eh? Outa friendship. I’m doing you a big favor here, helping you get yourself outa a big horse trough of shit.”
Eddie sat there for a long time. Then he got out of the car and went into the drugstore.
He came out fifteen minutes later, carrying a plastic shopping bag.
“What the fuck you got in there?”
“Never mind. Just drive.”
“What’s in there?” Gardiner said again, pulling out into the traffic.
“Stuff.”
“What stuff? Did you get them or not?”
“I got them, I got them.”
When they were parked off the logging road in the bush again, Gardiner snatched the bag from Eddie’s lap and dumped the contents onto the seat between them. Two pairs of black panty hose, queen size. “Queen size? Queen size?” Gardiner sniggered. He pawed through the rest of the stuff: a Road & Track magazine, two packages of sugarless gum, an alarm clock in a cardboard box, a bottle of aspirin, and a box of Kleenex. “Why’d you get all this other crap?”
“I couldn’t go in there and just get the panty hose,” Eddie snapped. “It’d look suspicious.”
Gardiner tore open one of the packages, shook the hose free from a piece of cardboard, took hold of the waistband, and pulled it over his head. “Whaddya think?” he said to Eddie. Eddie put up his hand to hide his face. “What do I do with these?” said Gardiner, fingering the legs, which hung down on either side of his head like two enormous rabbit ears.
“You’re the expert,” said Eddie, smiling behind his hand. “Tie them on top of your head,” he suggested, “like they were shoelaces.”
So Gardiner did. Eddie laughed out loud.
Gardiner yanked the rearview mirror around so he could get a look at himself. “Fuck,” he said, staring. “I’ll cut them off.”
Eddie unwrapped the second package. Cautiously, he pulled the panty hose over his head. Gardiner, who had removed his mask, looked closely at Eddie. “Jesus, Ed. It really works.” He pushed the mirror toward him.
Eddie studied himself. Behind the fabric—which was not really black but dark gray—he was unrecognizable, even to himself. His nose was pushed slightly to one side. There were blackish spots where his eyes were, and as he breathed, he made a small wet spot. His ears were pushed flat against his head. He had no hair. His whole head looked like a nonhuman thing made of something like rubber.
“Yeah,” he said to Gardiner. “It really works. It really does.”
***
And now they were back here again, and the intervening hours had changed their lives forever. The beer cans lay where they’d thrown them, and the potato chip bags too; maybe blown around a little by the wind, but basically right where they’d tossed them. The magazine was on the floor, and the aspirin bottle was down there too, and also the alarm clock in its box. The gum was in Eddie’s pocket. The Kleenex was next to him on the seat. Eddie stared at these things. He could give the alarm clock to Willie, he thought.
“What happened, Eddie? What the fuck happened, anyway?” Gardiner asked him in a whisper. Gardiner’s eyes were huge.
Eddie just shook his head again. “I don’t know,” he said, and he was surprised that there wasn’t any expression in his voice. It felt like something had cracked to death in his chest, and he would have thought this would be obvious in his voice, but it wasn’t.
***
In the car, parked across the road from the house, they’d pulled the panty hose over their heads and made sure the interior light wouldn’t come on when they opened the doors.
“Okay, man, let’s go for it,” said Gardiner, and they got out of the car. “Wait a minute,” he’d said, pushing the driver’s door softly closed. He went around to the back, unlocked the trunk, and hauled out the shotgun.
“What’s that for?” said Eddie, alarmed.
“Just in case they wake up. We’d need it, you know”—he pointed the shotgun at Eddie—“to keep them under control. Till we get them tied up and gagged.” He walked
across the road and onto the lawn.
“They’re not gonna wake up,” said Eddie in a furious whisper, following him.
“How the fuck do we get in?” said Gardiner, keeping his voice low. “Maybe they don’t lock their doors.” He jiggled the handle.
“Shhh!” said Eddie.
Gardiner began tiptoeing along the front of the house.
Eddie pulled nervously at the waistband of the panty hose around his neck. He could see tufts of Gardiner’s hair sticking through the holes where the legs had been, and he fumbled at the top of his head to see if that was happening to his hair too.
“Look at this!” Gardiner whispered excitedly, and he pointed to a window that had been left open about three inches.
Eddie pushed it up and climbed through, and took the shotgun from Gardiner while he climbed in.
They stood still for a moment, listening intently. Eddie blinked frequently behind his mask; it felt like he was keeping his eyes open under water.
Once they were sure nobody had heard them, they looked cautiously around. They were in a small dining room. Straight ahead, there was a kitchen. Off to the right, across a hallway, a lot of moonlight was pouring into what looked like a living room. The moon was so bright that it lit up the whole front part of the house, which was full of stuff, boxes and bags and piles of clothes. Eddie couldn’t see any sign of boxes with MELANIE on them.
“Okay, let’s get going,” whispered Gardiner. “What does this box look like?” Before Eddie could answer, he went on: “It’s probably in the bedroom. We’re probably gonna have to go in the bedroom, wake them up. Whattya say we locate some rope,” he said, still whispering, and he started opening cupboards and drawers.
“Shhh!” Eddie hissed.
And all of a sudden it was like some kind of dream, being there. He couldn’t believe he was standing there in some stranger’s kitchen. I’ve done breaking and entering, he kept thinking: breaking and entering…breaking and entering… It repeated itself over and over in his head.
“No,” he said to Gardiner, and pulled off his mask. “This is crazy. No.” He felt dazed and stupid and terrified. And when he heard noises down the hall, it wasn’t a surprise to him—it felt to him like thunder does: first you see the lightning, and then comes the thunder. You might not like it much, it might scare the hell out of you, but you knew it was coming; it’s no surprise.
Eddie moved two steps to his right and looked down the hall and saw her come out of one of the rooms down there. She looked at him for a split second, and he saw that she had carroty-colored hair, like him. And then Eddie raised the shotgun and fired.
She dropped to the floor amazingly fast, as if he’d shot her legs right out from under her. And behind where she’d been standing, the wall was sprayed red.
Eddie started down the hall toward her—he didn’t know what he planned to do when he got there—and heard a sound coming from behind a door on his left. He pushed it open and saw another girl, sitting up in bed, wearing something white, and he lifted the shotgun and fired again. Gardiner was shrieking at him, clawing at his arm. Eddie’s only thought was that there were three of them: three girls. He went down the hall to the third bedroom and found an empty bed and an open window. The blind had been whacked upward so hard and so fast that it was still bouncing.
Eddie and Gardiner saw the third girl pause at the edge of the woods, look back toward the house, and disappear into the trees. Gardiner tore his mask off.
“Eddie—Christ—” He was crying and shaking. “What the fuck—why? why? why?”
47
“I HEARD THERE was a witness,” said Sokolowski from the doorway.
“Yeah. Come on in, Sid.”
The sergeant entered Alberg’s office and sat down. “What do you figure, Karl?”
Alberg picked up his notebook and flipped back the pages. “Two guys. Amateurs. We know there were two of them because they left footprints, for Christ’s sake. Under the window. They climbed in through an open window. An open window,” he repeated, looking at Sokolowski, who just shook his head.
“They come in through the window, wearing nylon masks—which they left behind, by the way—and they blow two of the three girls away, and they leave.” He tossed the notebook down on his desk. “We got roadblocks at both ferry terminals and the airport. The victims lived in Vancouver—they’d only just arrived here. If it was a premeditated thing, it’s got to be somebody they knew over there.”
“Why didn’t they do the witness too?”
“Because she happened to be awake and on her feet when the shooting started. She got away. Out the window. Christ. They come in a front window, she goes out a back window—what a farce. Except that in between, two girls get splattered all over the walls. Christ.”
“What’s she got to say?”
“She heard the first shot and ran. That’s what she told Sanducci—he picked her up on the highway. I just got back from the hospital, but now she’s in shock, and she’s not saying anything at all.” He went over to the window and raised the venetian blind. “She told him something else too. Originally there were four of them. Four roommates. Sharing a house in Vancouver. A week and a half ago, one of them was the victim of a hit-and-run.” He looked quizzically at Sid.
“Are you—are you connecting that with this?” said Sokolowski doubtfully.
“I don’t know yet. I’ve got a call in to Vancouver.”
“When can you talk to the witness?”
“They say maybe by noon.” He leaned toward the sergeant. “If she can give us suspects, we’ve got the masks, footprints—maybe enough evidence already to nail the bastards.”
“But if they went in there to kill them, and not to rob them, then why bother with the masks?”
Alberg shrugged. “In case somebody saw them going in or coming out, maybe.”
“Okay. Another alternative. Maybe we got us a couple of local looney tunes here.”
“It’s possible,” said Alberg. “But I don’t think so. We know all the crazies on the Coast. I can’t think of one of them who’d pull something like this.”
***
“I gotta get something to eat,” said Eddie, talking loudly over the sound of the wind rushing in through the open window.
“Fuck that. Wait till we’re on the ferry—then eat,” said Gardiner, maneuvering the Olds pell-mell along the road toward Sechelt.
“I gotta eat now. Or I’m gonna pass out or something. I need something on my stomach right now. Stop at the next place. I mean it, Gardiner. I’m gonna be sick, or die, or something.” If he’d been in Vancouver, he could have gone to Sylvia’s house for a lettuce and tomato sandwich and a beer. But he wasn’t in Vancouver, and it scared him not to be there, because it was making Sylvia’s house get hazy in his mind—it was like he was running away from it, backward, watching it get smaller and smaller.
Gardiner was shrieking at him. “What are you, crazy? We gotta get outa here!”
“No, I gotta eat first,” said Eddie doggedly. Gardiner was sweating a lot. He kept wiping the sweat off his face with his shirt sleeve, but it just popped out again, and it must’ve been pouring into his armpits too. The smell of it was making Eddie nauseous.
“Shut the damn window,” Gardiner yelled, and Eddie was shivering with the cold by now, so he rolled up the window, which made the smell a whole lot worse.
“I gotta eat,” said Eddie. “Right now.”
“Shit!” said Gardiner. But he swerved off the road to park in front of a café with a sign out front that said EARL’S.
From the car, they peered in through the big front window.
“This is crazy, man, crazy,” said Gardiner.
Eddie opened the passenger door and got out. All his bones ached. He’d always been convinced that when he got pain, it was more pain than most people would suffer from exactly the same ailment. Eddie was bigger than most people, and therefore so was his pain.
They sidled into the café—that is, Gardi
ner sidled in; Eddie just walked in as if everything was normal, thinking about nothing but the pain in his bones and his hunger. Gardiner led the way to the table that was farthest from the door. He slithered into a chair and immediately opened the menu, crouching down behind it.
Eddie didn’t look at the menu. He already knew what he wanted. “Pancakes and sausages,” he said to the Chinese man who took their order. “And a large glass of orange juice. And coffee.”
“Just coffee,” said Gardiner. “I want to look at this some more,” he said, hanging on to the menu.
Eddie took a few cautious looks around. There weren’t many people in the place. A big guy with a beard sat at a table near the window; there was a young brown-and-white dog at his feet, which kind of surprised Eddie, who thought there was some kind of law against letting animals into restaurants. Unless they were Seeing Eye dogs, of course, which this one wasn’t. And a tired-looking woman sat at another table, drinking coffee and smoking and reading a paperback book. And there was a young guy at the counter. He was wearing the kind of coveralls that mechanics wear, and eating what looked to be bacon and eggs.
Gardiner continued to hide behind the menu.
The Chinese man set down the orange juice and two mugs of coffee.
A little later, he returned with Eddie’s pancakes and sausages. “Put down the menu, Gardiner,” said Eddie, just as a young guy with longish hair came in.
“Hi, Warren,” said the young guy, sitting down next to the mechanic.
“Yo, Bentley,” said the mechanic.
“I’ll have a coffee, Earl,” said Bentley.
Eddie, eating his pancakes, listened to them, at first idly, and then intently. Gardiner, once he clued in to what they were saying, started giving Eddie urgent little kicks under the table, which Eddie ignored.
“Who is this you’re talking about?” said Warren, the mechanic.
“Girls from Vancouver. Over here for the summer. They were renting the Lester place up on Anchor Road,” said Bentley, who, it turned out, was an ambulance driver.
“And somebody killed them?” said the mechanic, sounding incredulous. “Why?”
