Joyride

by Jack Ketchum

  “You know the one about the real-estate developer who thinks he’s a prize stud?” he said.

  Gardner looked like he’d swallowed something still alive and twitching.

  “No,” he said. “What.”

  “He got gelded in the courts,” said Rule. And handed him the order.

  It should have ended with that, but it didn’t.

  Gardner after the divorce was as bad as Gardner before the divorce. Worse.

  He’d bought her out of Green Gables as part of the settlement and she’d taken up with a man named Lee Edwards, Howard’s one-time manager over at the Inn and then, since meeting her, manager at Woodchip Pines. A step down but what the hell. She had plenty for both of them.

  The problem was that Howard wasn’t leaving her alone. He acted like he fully expected her back, Edwards or no Edwards.

  He’d even held onto a quarter-million-dollar insurance policy in her name.

  Rule thought the guy was crazy.

  He thought that with an ego that big Howard could probably be president someday…

  He pulled into the circular driveway and cut the motor. His old Chrysler wagon coughed once and then obeyed. He sat in silence for a moment, her white BMW parked in front of him like somebody’s snooty cousin.

  The house stood on a green, well-tended ridge with about three acres of woodland rolling down the hill behind it. He’d been inside a couple of times. The interior was light and elegant, if a little too modern for his tastes and a lot too sprawling. Four bedrooms, two floors. Long and wide. Imported Italian marble sinks with slim gold faucets in the bathrooms. Restaurant-size refrigerator in the kitchen. A circular bed and massive new four-posters of brass and mahogany. Sauna and Jacuzzi.

  He remembered pulling Howard off the lawn one winter at four in the morning, the man’s voice carrying for blocks through the clear, crisp air and empty streets. He was calling her a whore one minute and telling her she’d come crawling back to him the next. Waving a liter bottle of Glenlivet with about an inch left in the bottle.

  “Come on, Howard,” Rule had said and took him by the arm. It was an unexpectedly muscular arm beneath the rumpled, hand-tailored jacket.

  “She loves it.” He grinned. “She called you? She called the cops? Hey, that’s just a game she plays.”

  “Sure,” Rule said and cuffed him.

  Howard looked surprised. Then he nodded.

  “You know what?” he said. “You’re very efficient. I like you. You wanna job?”

  He remembered her standing at the door, a beautiful woman, haggard and worn. Edwards standing behind her, holding onto her shoulders as though he was afraid she might break.

  She didn’t break. But that wasn’t the end of it either.

  He went through Howard’s file in his head.

  He’d harassed them by phone every night for two months running, calling at all hours of the morning. Threats. Obscenities. The usual. Except that Howard really had a flair for it. I’m going to carve you slit to slit, he told her, from cunt to lips. Then I’m going to pull you open and fuck your liver.

  What a guy.

  She changed her number. Twice. Both times Howard found it. Finally they put a tracer on her phone. The calls stopped dead. They removed it after two weeks and they started up again. Rule didn’t know how he knew, but he did.

  He paid a fine for drunk and disorderly and for violation of a restraining order for the episode out on the lawn and that was the last the court system ever saw of him.

  Not Rule though.

  In mid-March he got a call saying Carole Gardner was at the station filing a complaint against her husband and would he please come by. He found her in Joyce’s office. She was nearly hysterical.

  Around noon that day Howard had climbed through an open window off the patio. When she came out of the laundry room he put a Colt revolver to her head and moved her onto the couch, where he raped her, punched her, wrapped the cord of a standing lamp around her neck and toyed for a while with the notion of strangulation.

  She said she’d come straight there to the station because she was afraid that if Edwards came home from work and she had to tell him about it Edwards might be mad enough to kill him. Howard was not the only one who owned a handgun. There was a .357 Magnum in her top dresser drawer.

  Rule drove to Howard’s office complex with an arrest warrant burning holes in his pocket. Howard was sitting at his desk with Bill Clinton and Harold McDermott, two of the stockholders in Gables, Inc., his company. The stockholders swore that Howard had been with them all day long on a drive to Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, for a look at the Mountolive Inn for possible purchase by their corporation and they were both perfectly willing to sign affidavits to that effect.

  Both men were unshakable and maddeningly smug. Like rape was just fine by them if it happened to be your ex-wife you were raping.

  The fact that both these guys were divorced themselves was not lost on him.

  But he had no case.

  Then finally just last month he had another call from her. It was puzzling.

  She’d sounded extremely upset again, he could barely understand what she was saying. He’d tried to calm her, but then he’d had to put her on hold for a moment while Hamsun, his chief, ran over some detail on the arrest report of a suspect in the breaking-and-entering item that had come in the night before.

  By the time he got back to her all she would say was that she was sorry she’d bothered him, it was really nothing—and when he pressed her, said she was just afraid that Howard was going to do something, not that anything had actually happened, she was just afraid that something might. She sounded a little better by then so he’d had to let it go at that. He could hear Edwards in the background saying something to her but he couldn’t make out what.

  And that was the last he’d heard from her.

  He walked up the fieldstone steps to the porch and rang the bell. He waited.

  When she came to the door his first impression was that here it was nearly five o’clock and she looked like she’d just gotten herself ready and put together for the day. Her blouse and jeans looked crisp, like she’d just put them on. Her hair looked freshly brushed, makeup newly applied.

  Rich people, he thought. She’s probably changed clothes six times already.

  She smiled and opened the door. He decided she looked a little tired but otherwise okay.

  “Lieutenant Rule. Joe. Come on in.”

  This is bullshit, he thought. Howard’s been missing maybe eight, nine hours. There’s nothing wrong here.

  He watched her move through the hall ahead of him into the living room. The room was neat and tidy.

  “What can I do for you? I just made coffee. Want some?”

  She turned. The smile looked fine too as far as he could see.

  “No thanks. I don’t want to hold you up. I was just wondering what you’d heard from Howard lately.”

  She sighed and sat down on the couch. Rule joined her.

  “Nothing, thank god.”

  “Nothing? No phone calls?”

  She shook her head. “I think he’s finally given up on me. Can you believe it? I thought he never would.”

  “I was beginning to agree with you. Congratulations. When’s the last you heard from him?”

  She thought about it.

  “I guess that would be…the night I phoned you. The middle of last month.”

  “Nothing since?”

  “Nothing. No.”

  “I’d been wanting to ask you for a while, what was that all about? You sounded pretty bad there.”

  She shrugged and shook her head again.

  “Just another phone call. But this one was…worse than most.”

  “How so?”

  “Threatening. You know. He’s going to do this to me and he’s going to do that. I don’t remember exactly what he said. Maybe I’ve blocked it. Or maybe it’s just faded away into…into all the rest of them. Anyway, it upset me, so I phoned you. And the
n I thought, my god, it’s just a telephone call for god’s sake. You’ve had plenty. You ought to be used to them by now.”

  She studied him a moment.

  “Is this just a follow-up, Joe?”

  “Not exactly. Your husband’s—Howard’s—secretary called. He didn’t show up for work today. She can’t seem to reach him.”

  “So?”

  Which was his reaction entirely.

  He sighed. “You know how it is. Howard’s rich and he’s connected. If he’s missing, he gets missed. If it was the guy who mows his lawn nobody’d think twice about it. As it is, people worry.”

  She looked at him again and he could see the implications of the thing slowly dawn on her. But all it read was normal curiosity.

  “You’re treating this as a potential homicide, aren’t you,” she said.

  “No. Not really. Not at this point. Right now it’s just a missing persons. Is Lee still working over at the Pines?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could he have heard from Howard?”

  “I think he would have said something.”

  “Probably. Can you think of anywhere Howard might have disappeared to for a day or so?”

  “God. Anywhere. He’s got a sailboat docked over in Waterbury. There’s a sister in Lexington, Massachusetts. June Rusch is her name. And he travels a lot scouting real estate. But I’d think his secretary would know about anything like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “I’d think so. Yeah.”

  “Maybe he’s got a girlfriend. Maybe that’s why I haven’t heard from him lately. Is that possible?”

  “Sure it’s possible. Got any candidates?”

  She laughed. “Anybody who works for him, is under thirty and dumb enough to find him charming. And I mean dumb—not stupid. Believe me, I know the difference.”

  He smiled and got out of his chair.

  “When Lee gets in have him give me a call, will you? Just in case he’s heard from him. And if you think of anything—or anybody—let me know, okay?”

  “I will.”

  She walked him to the door.

  “Do you think he could have…what do they call it? Bottomed out?”

  He looked at her.

  “The alcohol,” she said.

  “It happens.”

  “In that case he could be anywhere, couldn’t he. Some bar somewhere. Some alley.”

  He smiled. She didn’t seem terribly unhappy about the prospect. But then he could see why either notion—a serious girlfriend or some final crashing bender—would agree with her. In either case she benefited. She’d be rid of the guy for a while.

  “Not too many dark alleys in Barstow these days,” he said.

  She flushed. “It doesn’t have to be Barstow, does it?”

  “No, it doesn’t. In fact with a man in Howard’s position it’s probably unlikely. Too many ways to embarrass yourself here. He’d probably head out of town if he had any clue he was about to go under. Anyway, thanks. I’ll be in touch with you.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Good luck.”

  As she opened the door he saw a tremble dart through her hand, coming and going like the passage of a sparrow in sudden flight. He headed down the stairs.

  Nah, he thought. Couldn’t be.

  Around cops people got nervous.

  And then he thought, sure it could.

  There was the insurance money for one thing. He wondered if Howard still carried the policy. He’d have to check that.

  He liked the woman. He didn’t like to think about her that way but he had to.

  It always could.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “He was here already? Jesus.”

  “He wants you to call.”

  “Why?”

  “In case you’d heard from him lately and didn’t want to tell me.”

  He was standing in the hallway at a distance from her. As though he were afraid of her. As though Rule might have contaminated her somehow. Not that she was looking for hugs and kisses now anyway.

  What she wanted was another vodka.

  She headed for the sideboard.

  “You’re drinking too much,” he said.

  She dropped some ice into her glass.

  “Talk to him first. Then decide how much is too much. For you. Not for me.”

  “He was rough on you?”

  “Not at all. He said it was just a missing persons, that the only reason he was talking to me is that we might have had some phone calls recently. That we might have heard from him.”

  “How did you…?”

  She whirled.

  “I did just fine, Lee. I surprised myself. I’m probably the best little liar in Barstow right now, okay? Are you happy?”

  He watched her pour the Stoli. She was gripping the bottle like the bottle had legs and just might run away from her. She thunked it down.

  “For god’s sake make your call,” she said. “Believe me, you have nothing to worry about. He’s not going to cross-examine you. Not today, anyhow.”

  “Carole…”

  His tone brought her up short. She knew what she’d been doing. In the hour since Rule left it was as though she’d spun a large protective cocoon all around herself, so that whatever she touched never really touched her back—not the couch nor the bottle nor even the warm summer air flowing around her—and that was the way she wanted it, the way she needed it to be.

  But what had grown up inside the cocoon was ugly.

  She put down the glass and walked over. Put her arms around him.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He hugged her.

  “It’s all right. We never expected this to be a breeze, did we.”

  “No. We didn’t.”

  “I’ll call him.” He pointed to the bottle. “But I think I’d like one of those first. What the hell. I’m a hypocrite. Sue me.”

  He kissed her. It was their first real kiss in days.

  And even now she needed to break the embrace. She knew he could feel it. He let her go.

  “Pour me one, will you?” he said. “I want to go clean up. Then I want you to tell me everything you said to him. The whole conversation. Then I’ll call.”

  She nodded. He leaned over and kissed her again.

  “We’re going to beat this, all right? We’re not gonna pay for what that son of a bitch did to you.”

  She smiled. Not much of a smile but the first, she realized, since he’d walked through the door. For a moment it was almost possible to believe him.

  The red ‘93 Volvo was his prize possession. He’d bought it outright, with cash, as a present to himself after his mother was gone. Wayne sat behind the wheel gazing at the big house on the hill and thought that the Volvo fit right in with the neighborhood. Screw BMWs.

  He was taking a risk but it was worth it.

  The risk was that he’d been arrested just a month ago Saturday night driving home from a bar out on Stagecoach Road in Morrisville. They got him out of the car and had him walk straight ahead heel-to-toe and then close his eyes and stretch out his arms and touch his nose and then recite the alphabet and he was so damn furious and upset at being pulled over in the first place that he forgot the fucking alphabet! He did! He forgot it! He got to the letter P and skipped over Q-R-S-T-U and went directly to V-W-X-Y-Z.

  He did it twice!

  So they handcuffed him and shoved him in the squad car and he rode there silently, burning. At the station he blew .165 on the Intoxilyzer. Which was kind of high. They took his watch, his license, his cigarettes, his wallet and his belt and put him in a cinderblock holding cell painted white, the underpaint showing through like veins in a bloodshot eye.

  There were six other guys in there, two of them real hardcases, you could see that right away. They were already dressed in jailhouse orange. They’d come up from the cells below. They were in for skipping bail on charges of armed robbery and they were big guys, pacing around, right in there with him! and four other guys who, like him, had done nothing but
get themselves arrested on a lousy DWI.

  They kept him there all night, sick, cold, and hungry, with not even a clock or a wristwatch so you could know how long it was till daylight, most of that time in the same little cell with nothing but two rows of wooden benches and a shiny metal toilet sitting right in the middle of the goddamn room. He was glad he didn’t have to take a leak or a shit, not with all those other guys looking on, not with those hardcases.

  One of the drunks was crazy. He kept rocking back and forth on the bench saying, “Cell! You’re in it now!” and laughing, and all Wayne wanted to do was kick him to death and curl up against the hard cold wall and disappear.

  And later, get even.

  There were notes in his book on arresting officer Gustafson, the crazy drunk, the two thugs in the cell, the judge—who was fat and female no less—the prosecutor named Barker, and his own lawyer, who cost him nearly a grand, who joked with the prosecutor like they were old golfing buddies which probably they were, while Wayne listened to himself sentenced to six months’ probation, maintenance fee forty bucks per month and conditional on a seven-week drinking-and-driving program which met every Saturday for chrissake, his fucking day off, and which cost him another two hundred dollars, plus the fine of four hundred sixty-eight dollars. It was going to be easily two thousand dollars and a lot of wasted time before he was through.

  So he had a lot of notes.

  He was taking a risk but he couldn’t imagine being unlucky enough to get caught driving without his license just this once. And there was simply no way he could resist coming up here for a look.

  How could he?

  Besides, he had to know the place, see how many people were living here, whether they had kids or dogs or anything. That kind of thing.

  He saw no evidence of children. Just two cars in the wide circular driveway.

  And no dogs.

  It was just the two of them.

  They were all alone.

  He lit a cigarette and sat back to watch a while. The sun would be setting soon and he’d want to get out of there before it did. No sense acting suspicious. And he had to work tonight anyhow.

  He saw the woman move past the bay window.

  He thought, They’re absolutely all alone in this.