The Summer Man

by S. D. Perry

  “Chief,” Bob said, nodding in greeting. “Officer Henderson.”

  Vincent’s eyes narrowed. “What do you want?”

  Bob raised his eyebrows, startled by the obvious antagonism. “Just to talk a minute.”

  “I don’t have a minute,” Vincent snapped. “You want a story, call the office tomorrow.”

  “I…ah, I may have some information for you,” Bob said. “About the attack.”

  Vincent glanced at Henderson, back at Bob. “What attack is that?”

  “The rape,” Bob said. “A woman was raped, is that right?”

  “How did you hear about it?”

  Bob looked to Henderson, saw Vincent’s grim suspicion mirrored on the other man’s face. Both men were looking at him as if he’d raped someone.

  “I was at a friend’s house, and he got a call—”

  “Who’s your friend?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Bob said. “Look, was the victim able to identify her attackers?”

  Vincent’s gaze narrowed further. “You didn’t answer my question, Mr. Sayers.”

  He didn’t anger easily, but the chief’s rudeness was starting to get to him…and it was also deciding his course of action, as far as how truthful to be.

  “Brian Glover and a couple of his buddies were talking about attacking someone, at the town picnic,” Bob said. “I heard some other teenagers discussing it.”

  Stan Vincent was suddenly close enough that Bob could feel his breath across his face, hot and sour. “Who? What teenagers?”

  Bob took a step back, kept his expression impassive. “Some kids, I don’t know.”

  “And you didn’t report it?” Henderson asked.

  Bob couldn’t help a stab of guilt. “No. I mean, it was just kids, talking.”

  Vincent’s eyes were cold and hard. “Talking about beating and raping a woman.”

  “If I’d really believed it, I would have called you, obviously,” Bob said. “And I’m not saying this Glover kid did do it. I’m just telling you what I heard.”

  “From ‘some other teenagers’ you don’t know, is that right?” Vincent asked. He made no effort to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

  “That’s what I said.”

  Vincent stared at him another moment, then nodded, once. “I’ll want you at the station, first thing in the morning. Don’t make me come get you.”

  Bob stared back. He had no idea how to respond. Vincent finally looked away, to the other cop.

  “Let’s go,” he said, and Henderson nodded, and both men started for the doors.

  Bob watched them walk away, troubled by the brief encounter, by Vincent’s behavior. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but the anger, the abrupt dismissal…Stan Vincent wasn’t acting like himself either; not at all.

  “What the hell is going on around here?” Bob murmured aloud, unable to imagine what the answer might be.

  Amanda woke up as soon as she heard the car pull into the lot, headlights splashing across the wall in lengthening slats. She blinked at the digital clock on top of the TV, saw that it was just after four in the morning. Eric had left around midnight. He’d wanted to stay, but Amanda couldn’t think of a more embarrassing, personal, awful scene to witness: Grace would be shit-faced, as usual, they would fight, she was sure, and it would suck.

  She sat up on the couch and turned the TV off, surprised that she’d fallen asleep; the fireworks had still been going strong when she’d dozed off. Postadrenaline crash, maybe. She’d been keyed up for a couple of hours after Peter had gone. Eric had wanted to call the cops, but Amanda knew she had to tell Grace first. Her mother would never forgive her if she called the police on her boyfriend without at least warning her. It was Saturday, which Grace always considered a license to drink excessively—but Amanda hoped it wouldn’t be too bad, that she’d be clearheaded enough to at least hear her side of the story. She had no doubt that Peter had shown up at the end of Grace’s shift to spin his own version of things. He might even come home with her, which would make the fight all the more ugly. She was glad she’d sent Eric home.

  Amanda and Eric had stayed in. They’d smoked and talked and eaten and had finally had sex in her small bed as late twilight passed into dark, as the fan buzzed in the corner and the fireworks started in earnest. The assorted trash families that lived in the complex loved nothing more than to make shit explode, and the parking lot had been overrun with them, shouting and laughing in between the pops and whistles. Eric had been tender and gentle with her, touching her hair and face as they’d done it, and she hadn’t gotten off but it had been mind-blowingly intimate and therefore amazing, anyway. She’d been able to feel the way he wanted to protect her and how good he felt inside her…she hadn’t shied away from the emotional connection, from knowing what she couldn’t know, and she’d felt…engulfed by him, as he smiled into her eyes. It had been thrilling and frightening and beautiful.

  Amanda folded her arms across her stomach, a hard, heavy knot as a car door slammed. A key scraped in the lock, and the headlights pulled away, the car’s engine rumbling loudly in the predawn quiet; it wasn’t Peter, then. One of the waitresses usually gave Grace a lift when she’d had a few too many.

  Her mother opened the door and saw her on the couch, waiting—and gave her a look of such deep unhappiness, of anger and bitter regard, that Amanda felt suddenly very, very lonely.

  It’s over, Amanda thought. The loneliness bloomed into sorrow. Grace had never been very good at the mothering thing, but she had tried; there’d been a few good years in there, before the drinking had gotten too bad, when it had just been the two of them. “Us against them, Manda-pie,” she’d say, and hug her tight-tight-tight.

  It wasn’t fair…but then, it had never been fair.

  “So,” Grace slurred, closing the door, tossing her keys on the coffee table. She threw them too hard, and they skidded over the edge. She unshouldered her purse, let it fall on the floor. “So, you wanna fuck Peter, issat it?”

  “He attacked me,” Amanda said, aware that it was useless.

  “Right, right,” Grace said, her smile sad and sneering at once. “You come on to him and try to fuck ’im behind my back, and now he attacked you.”

  “I never came on to him. He’s lying.”

  “I gave birth to you,” Grace said, her eyes welling up. “You were my baby.”

  “He’s a liar,” Amanda said, her voice clear and cold. “He came in here and fucking grabbed me. He was going to rape me.”

  “I see how you are with him,” her mother said, like she hadn’t said anything. The tears spilled over, her mouth curved in sudden rage. “The way you look at him, the way you’re always touching him.”

  Amanda stared. “What?”

  “He tol’ me about you, calling him when I’m at work, pushing up against him—showing him your tits—”

  “What?” Amanda couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “I would never!”’

  Grace nodded, grinning now, her eyes shining. “Oh, yes. I’ve seen it. I tol’ myself it was a crush, that you’d never do that to me. I’m your mother; I’m the only family you have, after your father left me all alone…”

  The mood shifts were fast, even for Grace. She bit at her lower lip, tears spilling again.

  “I know I haven’t always been perfect, but I thought we were friends! I never thought that you would—that you could—” She broke down, sobbing.

  Amanda watched, wondering. For most of her short childhood, she’d cried when her mother’s tears had started to fall. But they fell so often and almost always meant nothing the next morning. Her childhood had been pretty much over by the time she was twelve. Devon had printed out some stuff for her once from Al Anon, about how alcoholics were emotionally stunted by their drinking, unable to grow past the age they started, often as teens. Amanda had seen it play out every day of her life. Grace, drunk, creating dramas from nothing, from the air. Anger and blame, remorse and self-recrimination, tears and
more tears; there were promises made, to do better, and sloppy, showy hugs, and always another drink, to celebrate. It was all about Grace, and Grace’s problems, and what she needed, and what she wanted. What Amanda wondered at now was how clearly she could really see it, the jagged, broken selfishness that her mother wore like a cloak, so wounded that she couldn’t allow anything else to grow, either.

  “Mom,” she said, and felt her throat lock up anyway, understanding the reality of what was happening. “Mom, this is no good. We can’t talk when you’re drunk.”

  “You’re not putting this off, sweetie,” her mother said, abruptly spiteful through her tears, vicious. “He told me what you were wearing when he came by. He told me what you said, how if he didn’t dump me you’d say he, he molested you.”

  “And you believe him?” Amanda asked, feeling calmer than she’d expected—but more hurt, too, the ache like a rotten tooth in her stomach. How could her mother even think that of her? “I can’t stand him; don’t you know me at all?”

  Grace stared at her, swaying slightly, her mouth turned down in an ugly grimace of crocodile sorrow. “I thought I did. Maybe when you were little. But you’re a grown-up now, all grown up, aren’tcha? You want to be a grown-up, you can pack your shit and get the fuck out.”

  “You believe him,” Amanda said, answering her own question.

  “He told me weeks ago that you started flirtin’, and I thought he was—I thought he’d made a mistake. I didn’t know, then. But I been watching you, the way you look at him. The way you’re pushing yourself at him.” She was drunk enough to repeat herself, to forget what she was saying, but the words hurt all over again. “Showing him your tits, like some whore. And he came in tonight and said what you did, how you tried to kiss him, and then screamed when one of your friends knocked on the door.”

  The suspicion was on Grace’s face in every line, every wrinkle. She looked old, witchlike, and her terrible smile quivered with the effort she was putting into holding it. “It was a setup, wasn’t it? I think you set him up, so you’d have a witness, so you could, could…” She grasped for the word. “Support your lies. That’s what he thinks, too. But he loves me, he loves me. Not you. He wants us to move in together, and you—I don’t want you here when that happens. I mean it. I can’t trust you.”

  “Mom, listen to me,” Amanda said, standing so that she could meet her mother’s jittery gaze, so that she could make her mother see her. “He hit on me a couple of weeks ago. When I told him I’d tell you, he backed off. Tonight, he was going to do it, he was going to rape me. He would have if Eric hadn’t shown up. He told me that he was going to tell you I was the one who asked for it. He even told me how my story would play to the cops, if I reported it—how he’d make it look like I was trying to stay out of trouble by accusing him.” Even thinking about it now, she felt a chill of the dread she’d felt earlier, when he’d been touching her—understanding that he’d thought it all out, that he’d planned to force sex with her and get away with it. It was shocking, even for a mean bigot like Peter, that he could be so deliberately evil.

  “Don’t you see what he’s doing? He’s a bad guy, Mom, he’s no good. Don’t let him do this to us.”

  For just a beat, Grace stared at her, her face slack—and Amanda wanted to feel hope, wanted to think that she’d gotten through, but her mother’s feelings radiated from her like a dark aura of heat, of betrayal and mistrust. Her expression meant only that she was too drunk to process her daughter’s words.

  “You’re the liar,” her mother said finally. “And a whore, prob’ly. Who’s your friend, anyway? Somebody else you’re fucking? It’s no wonder your father left. I’da left, too, if I’d known what you were gonna turn into.”

  Amanda felt empty inside. “That’s great, that’s really great. That’s awesome parenting.”

  “You’re so mean to me,” Grace said. Fresh tears had sprung up. “I don’t need you around always telling me what a fuckup I am. Why don’t you get your shit and get out?”

  The last was nearly screamed. Grace had made the threat in the past, when she’d first caught Amanda smoking and again when she’d found weed in her bag last year, but those had been weepy, showy scenes; this time was different. Grace was different. Amanda’s emptiness filled with fear, with not knowing what would happen, where she would go. Devon? Eric? One of the cheap motels down on the highway? It was four in the morning. “Can I pack a bag, at least?”

  “Pack a bag, take some money out of the tip jar,” Grace said. “Take all of it, because it’s all you’re getting from me. Just be gone when I get up.”

  Her mother stared at her another moment, a caricature of bitterness, of self-absorbed addiction. “You were looking for an excuse to leave, anyway. Always were.”

  The last word; Grace staggered toward her bedroom. The cheap interior door didn’t slam, but Amanda heard the lock click, heard her mother talking to herself in a loud, unsteady voice.

  She sat back down on the couch, distraught and disoriented. It had all happened so fast. She took a deep breath, then another. Tomorrow morning Grace might regret kicking her out; she could wait. But even if Grace took it back, there was no reason to stay.

  She’d pack some things, take the money—her mother stuffed most of her tips in a jar on top of the fridge, for groceries and bills; at any given time, there was a couple hundred dollars in the jar—and try to sleep another few hours, although she couldn’t imagine how, knowing that she was officially homeless. She’d go get some coffee, then find Devon. Devon would put her up, she knew, and his Uncle Sid was a decent man; she’d have a roof over her head for a while, until she could figure out what to do next. She had her savings, too; she could…could…

  Her own tears came up, and she let herself topple, falling into the battered old couch with a soft wail. Even a month ago, she couldn’t have imagined this. Grace had been a pretty awful parent, as far as parents went, but there’d never been any question about Amanda being welcome in her home—in their home.

  Everything is changing, she thought, which made her think of what she’d been seeing, what she’d been feeling, ever since that horrible vision of Lisa Meyers’s death…and she felt quite strongly now that the everything was connected somehow, the death and strangeness in her life and in Port Isley.

  Amanda cried for a while, then got up to start gathering her things.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  To add insult to injury, after their tasteless, despicable prank, leaving the cat tails on the grounds of the retreat, Cole Jessup’s compound of drunken crazies had detonated fireworks until three in the morning. By the time they stopped, Miranda was too angry to sleep. She finally dozed off around four and woke up just after seven, unrested and too angry to lie still. James was snoring gently as she slipped on a tracksuit in the faint, early light from their bedroom window and went downstairs to make coffee…but when she reached the kitchen, she paused only long enough to put her shoes on, then went outside.

  Tom Corwin, the community’s unofficial handyman, had removed the cats’ tails after the police had come; he’d buried them near the herb garden. Miranda’s mouth twisted in a small, bitter smile; the police, weren’t they just the most helpful organization? They’d sent some part-time officer she’d never met before who’d arrived a full three hours after she’d called. The officer had seen the tails and had listened to everything and taken some notes and promised to get back to them, and Miranda could see in the young man’s bland sincerity that nothing would be done. The crazies would deny everything, and the police would drop the matter, perhaps advise her to consider a civil case, and her sweet kitties would still have been murdered and hacked up by one of those crazies.

  Her stomach knotted. Most of the tails had been nothing but bone and desiccated skin, a few sad tufts of fur. For years, someone had been keeping them, God only knew why, or why this psycho had suddenly decided to…to taunt her with them. How could anyone be so malicious, and for no reason at all? Had she
ever done anything to deserve such cruelty?

  The woods were peaceful, alive with small creatures and morning birds rustling through the brush. Miranda walked slowly, holding herself against the chill. She walked without paying particular attention to direction, thinking about Darrin Everret’s proposals for settling the score. They’d all talked about it the night before, at the retreat’s picnic, over several shared bottles of wine. The most popular idea was to sneak over to the compound late one night and paint everything bubblegum pink—the front gate, the trees, any of the buildings they could get to without waking everyone up. It was a funny idea, but even drunk and in shock over her kitties, Miranda couldn’t bring herself to advocate the plan. Besides the fact that playing such a prank was beneath their dignity, there was also the issue of retribution—Jessup and his people would know who did it, and if they weren’t above killing cats, God only knew what they might do to take their revenge…

  Besides which, it’s not enough, she thought, stepping over a fallen tree. Not nearly enough. She’d thought about slipping poison into their food or water and writing a note to make it look like some kind of cult suicide. She’d imagined those hard, lined faces, soft with bloat in the summer heat, the woods silent and peaceful as the crime scene people shook their heads, as the reporters referenced Heaven’s Gate and the People’s Temple. She’d thought about blocking their doors and setting a fire; even if they managed to escape, they’d have nowhere to live and might move away. And if they didn’t get out, if the flames consumed them all…well, things like that happened sometimes, didn’t they? People died.

  As gratifying as the dark dreams had been at one in the morning, they really had been harmless; there were children at the compound. She would never harm a child, even a child destined to grow up as damaged and dull as its parents. Still, she felt that circumstances demanded she do something, and if the police wouldn’t help her, what choices did she have?