Alarums

by Richard Laymon

  'Take the slowest route.'

  'You don't mean that.'

  'I know.'

  The light changed. Driving through the intersection, she looked up the road and saw the hospital in the distance. She thought of her father lying in bed, kept alive by tubes. 'I didn't even go and see him today,' she said.

  'We'll go tomorrow.'

  We. The word made her feel good. 'You're not going back to Phoenix tonight?'

  'It's a little late for that. Besides, things have changed. Things have changed, haven't they?'

  'A lot,' Pen assured him.

  'You're not going to let Melanie…?'

  'She smashed you on the head. She might've killed you, doing a thing like that. She lost whatever claim she had.'

  'I don't think she'll see it that way.'

  'Tough.' Pen made a left onto Olympic, and picked up speed.

  'What's the hurry?' Bodie asked.

  'You got me,' Pen said, but she didn't slow down. 'Melanie's had about an hour to do whatever she wanted to do.'

  'What do you think she is doing?'

  'Who knows? I was absolutely certain she planned to murder you. I was wrong about that, thank God. Who knows? I just hope it's all over before we get there.'

  'I don't want anything to happen to her.'

  'I don't either, but…'

  'It'll be our fault. We pushed her over the edge, Bodie. Whatever happens, we're responsible. You and me.'

  'Don't forget she spent the afternoon in Harrison 's closet. That was before she caught us together.'

  'Did you see the look on her face when she found us on the sofa?'

  'I'm not saying she wasn't upset. But the fact that she didn't take the pills proves she planned to sneak out.'

  'She thought I wanted to put her out so you and I could be alone.' Pen sped up to make it through a yellow light. 'Maybe she was right. I didn't consciously do it for that reason, but… maybe it was in the back of my mind.'

  'Whatever our guilt may be,' Bodie said, 'we're doing our penance now. We could be back in your apartment. Instead, we're racing to the rescue.'

  'Or to pick up the pieces.'

  Harrison 's Mercedes stood in the driveway of his house. Joyce's Continental was no longer parked in front.

  'Playing it smart,' Pen said as she drove slowly past the front of the house. 'For all they know, we've been to the police. Wouldn't look too good if Joyce spent the night with him.'

  'So she went home,' Bodie said.

  'And where's Melanie?'

  Bodie shrugged. He had been checking both sides of

  the street for his van, but so far hadn't spotted it. 'Keep going,' he said. 'Maybe she left it in back.'

  Pen turned, then turned again. She drove past Harrison 's block, then made another right, returned to his street and stopped at the corner. 'What do you think?'

  'Don't ask me,' Bodie said. 'I've been wrong twice already.'

  'She must've gone to Dad's.'

  'The house? That'd be my guess, too. This is looking better and better. I figured we'd have a run-in with Harrison. Of course, he might've gone there with Joyce. In her car.'

  'I doubt it,' Pen said. They probably split up.'

  'Should we check his place?'

  Shaking her head, Pen made a left turn on Harrison 's street, heading away. 'We're looking for Melanie,' she said.

  She waited for a break in the traffic on 26th Street, then turned left.

  'I just hope…'

  'What?' she asked.

  'Melanie might've already been to Harrison's. They might've… gotten her. That could be why the van wasn't there. Maybe Harrison drove her away in it. Joyce would've followed in her car to pick him up after they… disposed of her.'

  Pen glanced at him. In the dim gray light from the streetlamps, her eyes were wide, her lips twisted.

  'It's just a possibility,' he said, wishing he'd kept the theory to himself.

  'If he's hurt Melanie…'

  'We'll probably find her at your dad's house.'

  Pen stopped for a red light at San Vicente. Leaning forward, she pressed her forehead against the top of the steering wheel.

  Bodie reached over. He rubbed her back through the soft sweatshirt. 'It'll be all right,' he said.

  'Will it? Dad's in a coma. Melanie… God knows.' She turned her head. Her face was a mask of agony. 'It's all my fault.'

  'It's Harrison's,' Bodie said.

  A car horn beeped behind them.

  The light had gone green, and the car ahead of them was moving into the intersection. Pen turned right onto San Vicente.

  'I could have stopped it all,' she said. 'If I hadn't kept my mouth shut. I didn't want to hurt Dad. It would've been such a blow to him. He thought Harrison was such a terrific guy. But if I'd told… maybe the bastard would be in prison right now, though I doubt it. Would've been tough convincing a jury I wasn't asking for it. But it might've changed everything. I should've told, damn it.'

  Bodie, breathless, stared at her. He felt as if he'd been kicked in the stomach. 'Asking for it?'

  'Harrison raped me.'

  'No.'

  'I should've told.'

  'Were you… hurt?'

  She faced Bodie. She nodded. Tears were glistening in her eyes. They looked silver in the streetlights. 'I was battered up some,' she murmured.

  'Did you fight him?'

  'As much as I could,' she said, her voice shaking. 'He had me handcuffed.'

  Bodie groaned.

  'He worked on me… for a long time.' With the back of her wrist, she wiped tears off her cheek. 'I haven't been with a man since then.' Sniffing, she looked at Bodie. 'You'll be the first - if you still want me, now that you know…'

  'Oh, Pen.' He put a hand on her thigh and squeezed it gently through her sweatpants. Heat seemed to flow up his arm. 'I've never wanted anyone the way I want you.'

  'It doesn't bother you that…?'

  'I'd like to kill the bastard,' Bodie muttered.

  'I never told anyone,' she said. 'I just pretended it never happened, and Harrison acted as if it really hadn't happened, and after a while it was almost as if…'

  'A way to live with it,' Bodie said.

  'I should've told. Maybe none of this would've happened.' She rubbed a sleeve across her face.

  Bodie stroked her leg as she slowed the car and turned left onto the narrow road leading to her father's house. He wished he could pull her into his arms and hold her tight and make all the pain go away - her pain and his own.

  Harrison had raped her. Handcuffed her, beaten her up, fucked her.

  The scum.

  The piece of shit.

  'Bodie, you're hurting me.'

  'I'm sorry.' He unclamped his fingers from Pen's thigh and wrapped them around the steel of the shotgun's barrel.

  Then he looked along the roadside for his van. They drove slowly past a Ferrari, a Porsche, a Jaguar.

  Pen stopped her car in front of the garage. 'She's not here. It must be like you said and they took her away in the van.'

  'Drive on a little further.'

  Pen steered around a bend in the road and there was Bodie's van, snug against a leafy hedge. Bodie felt his bowels tighten.

  Pen shifted to reverse, twisted herself sideways, hooked an arm over the seatback, and looked out the rear window. She backed up slowly.

  Bodie gazed at her.

  It seemed important, somehow, to see what she looked like right now and to keep it for a memory and never lose it.

  The dim silhouette of her face. The pale white of her eye and the silver trail of a tear leading down from its corner. The flow of soft hair. The way her lower lip was caught between her teeth. The curve of her jawline. The hollow of her throat. The way her breasts pushed out her sweatshirt, forming soft mounds, the right higher than the left because her right arm was raised onto the seatback.

  His gaze followed Pen's left arm to the steering wheel. The sleeve was drawn up above her slim wrist. Her hand,
moving the wheel slightly from side to side, seemed small and fragile. He looked at the way her sweatpants were gathered over her lap, and how they draped her thighs. Then he looked again at her face.

  So beautiful. All of her. And she's mine now.

  I'll never let anything bad happen to her again, he thought, and felt a terrible hollow ache of loss because he knew it was an empty promise. The future would hurt them both, kill them both sooner or later no matter what.

  Pen stopped the car broadside in front of the garage door. She set the brake, shut off the headlights, and turned to Bodie.

  He lifted the shotgun out of the way. He put his arms around her and drew her gently against him. They kissed. He slipped his hands beneath the sweatshirt, moved them up the velvety skin of her back.

  'I wish we didn't have to go in there,' she whispered.

  'We don't have to.'

  Pen kissed him lightly, then eased herself away. She took the key from the ignition. She opened her door.

  Bodie climbed out, taking the shotgun with him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Pen stopped at the front door and searched through her keys with trembling fingers. 'I wish we knew whether Joyce is here,' she said.

  'The garage have any windows?'

  'No.'

  She found the house key and opened the door. She started to enter, but Bodie put a hand on her shoulder. He stepped inside. Pen followed.

  And heard Melanie's voice.

  '… here alone, or I'll kill her… I don't think you want to do that. I've got a paper here that the cops would find very interesting.'

  Pen silently shut the door and followed Bodie across the foyer.

  'You'll see when you get here. You'd better make it quick. I'll kill her if you're not here in ten minutes.'

  She hung up as they stepped into the den.

  'Melanie?'

  She turned around. 'The lovebirds,' she said, staring at them through strands of black hair. She stroked the hair away from her face, her fingertips drawing stripes of blood across her forehead. Her white blouse was untucked, its front smeared with blood as if she had used it repeatedly to wipe her hands.

  'Oh, Mel,' Pen muttered, 'what have you done?'

  With a smirk, she raised a sheet of paper.

  Bodie took it from her and studied it.

  'You guys would've let them get away with killing Dad.'

  'They didn't kill him,' Pen said.

  Melanie's lips quivered. 'You just wanted to take Bodie away from me. That was all you cared about. You didn't care what they did to Dad.'

  'Of course I care,' Pen said, realizing that Melanie now seemed more coherent than she'd been when Bodie took her away from the apartment. More coherent, but no less crazy.

  The girl's lips peeled up, a dog snarl that changed into a sick grin. 'You cared about spreading your legs.'

  Bodie handed the paper to Pen. Its edges had bloody fingerprints. She read the shaky handwriting:

  This is my confession. I, Joyce Conway, conspired with Harrison Donner to murder my husband, Whit Conway. We were lovers behind his back. We wanted him dead so as to get his insurance and inheritance.

  'That was Harrison you told to come over?' Bodie asked.

  'Who else?'

  'He'll probably show up with a goddamn SWAT team.'

  'I don't think so.'

  I let Harrison in on where and when we planned to have dinner and he waited in his car. When Whit started to cross the street, he hit him with the car.

  It was a stolen car, as he didn't want to use his own.

  Joyce's signature was scribbled at the bottom in the same handwriting as the confession.

  'Where is she?' Bodie asked.

  'Want to see her?' Melanie looked at her wristwatch. It was Bodie's. 'I guess we have a few minutes.' She took the paper from Pen and stepped past them. As they followed her to the stairway, she glanced back. 'We'll have to hide before Harrison shows up. The element of surprise, you know.'

  At the bottom of the stairs, Bodie looked at Pen. His face was gray. He took her hand. His fingers felt like ice.

  They rushed up the stairs behind Melanie. She led the way along the corridor.

  Pen knew they would find carnage. She felt lightheaded and numb. The lights seemed too dim. When she blinked, an electric-blue aura surrounded Melanie. Pen was nauseous. Just like Friday night, she thought, the mystery writers' meeting, the coroner's shock-show.

  Post-mortem lividity, bite marks on the corpse's buttock, the gray penis of the dead man, fly eggs in the nostril.

  I've gotta get out of here.

  Fresh air.

  Bodie stopped her at the door of the master bedroom. 'Wait here,' he said.

  Pen leaned against the doorframe, her back to the room. Bodie let go of her hand. He stepped past her. Sliding down, Pen hung her head and stared between her knees at the carpet.

  I shouldn't, she thought. Shouldn't let him face it alone. It'll help him if I'm there.

  She forced herself to stand.

  She heard nothing from inside the room.

  Turning to the doorway, she saw Bodie and Melanie standing side by side. Their backs were toward her. Their bodies blocked her view of whatever they were looking at. Whatever? Joyce.

  Pen walked slowly closer.

  She smelled blood, and gagged. Quickly, she lifted the front of her sweatshirt. She pressed the soft fabric to her nose and mouth. It had a fresh scent that masked the coppery odor of the blood. She stopped gagging. She blinked the tears from her eyes and stepped to Bodie's side.

  Joyce, on a straight-backed chair, gazed at her from a crimson face. She blinked away the blood that dribbled into her eyes from her cut forehead. She was gasping through her nose. A strip of cloth, probably a robe belt, was tied across her mouth.

  'I had to do a little number on her,' Melanie said.

  Bodie tipped the shotgun toward Pen. It was resting on the floor, barrel up. Keeping the sweatshirt over her mouth, she gripped the barrel with her other hand and held the weapon upright while Bodie stepped behind the chair.

  Joyce's feet were tied to the chair legs. Her nightgown clung to her with blood, but Pen couldn't see any other wounds. All the blood, she thought, had come from the cuts on Joyce's forehead.

  If that was all, she ought to recover.

  Could've been worse, Pen thought. A lot worse.

  She looked at Melanie. Melanie was staring at the shotgun. No, she realized. Not at the shotgun.

  At me with my sweatshirt pulled up.

  A chill squirmed up her back. She tugged the sweatshirt down. Melanie's gaze lifted to her face.

  Pen could hardly believe the hatred in her sister's eyes.

  The gaze shifted away from her as Bodie slipped the cloth from Joyce's mouth. 'What're you doing?' she demanded.

  'For Godsake,' Bodie muttered. He crouched to untie Joyce's hands.

  'Leave her alone.'

  Pen realized that Joyce's mouth was stuffed with something. Stepping closer, she shifted the shotgun barrel to her other hand and bent over the woman.

  'Don't do that,' Melanie warned.

  'Shut up,' Pen said, and dug fingers into Joyce's mouth. She pulled out a sodden rag. A nylon stocking.

  Joyce gasped for breath.

  'You want her to warn Harrison?'

  'Are you all right?' Pen asked.

  'Muh… my face.'

  'Are you hurt anywhere else?'

  'Has a nasty bump on the back of her head,' Bodie said.

  Pen patted the wadded stocking gently against Joyce's forehead. Lifting the nylon away, she looked at the wounds. The letters AM had been carved into her brow. Holding the cloth to the cuts, she scowled over her shoulder at Melanie. 'What the hell is this!'

  'You two are such fucking literary types, figure it out.'

  'I can't get her hands undone,' Bodie said.

  'Why did you do it?' Pen blurted. 'God Almighty, Mel…'

  ' "A" for adultery, "M" for murder.'<
br />
  'Why did you do it!'

  'To get her confession, of course.'

  'You idiot! That confession's no good. It's worthless. You tortured it out of her.'

  'She wouldn't write it. I had to make her.'

  'Lying,' Joyce murmured. 'She did this… after. Just… to hurt me.'

  'The confession's no good,' Pen repeated.

  'Too bad,' Melanie said. Lunging sideways, she rammed Pen.

  'Hey!' Bodie yelled.

  Pen's feet tangled. She struck the floor shoulder first and cried out as the shotgun barrel hammered her fingers against the carpet.

  Bodie sprang up from his crouch behind Joyce. He shouted, 'NO!' and flung his hands forward to shove Melanie away.

  Too late.

  The knife (where did that come from?) slashed Joyce's throat and a spray of blood whipped across the front of Melanie's blouse as Bodie's hands smashed her shoulders and sent her stumbling away.

  She landed on her back.

  Pen, getting up, watched Bodie run through the flying blood. He bent over Melanie. 'Give me that!' he yelled. He reached for the knife and drew his hand back fast as Melanie slashed at it. 'Give me that! God! God!' Melanie squirmed and twisted on the floor, kicking at his shins and slashing at him. Bodie kept yelling and trying to snatch her knife hand.

  Pen picked up the shotgun. 'Get out of the way!' she snapped at Bodie.

  He looked at her.

  Melanie's right leg kicked up, her shoe smashing him in the groin. His eyes bulged. Clutching himself, he doubled over. His knees pounded the floor.

  Melanie rolled away from him.

  Pen aimed the shotgun at her as she scrambled to her feet. 'Stop!'

  Melanie walked slowly toward Pen, hunched over, the knife in her right hand, her eyes almost hidden behind hanging ropes of hair. 'Gonna blow me away, sister? Go ahead. Well, do it. It's you or me.'

  Pen backed away from her.

  'I'm gonna cut you up. I'm gonna cut up that gorgeous face for you. I'm gonna cut off your precious tits. Then we'll see, won't we? Think Bodie's gonna want you then? Do you? Huh?'

  The wall stopped Pen's retreat. She flicked the safety off. 'Just stop.'

  'No, no, no, not me.'

  Pen pulled the trigger. The shotgun jerked in her hands. Its roar blasted her ears. A circle of ceiling beyond Melanie's head exploded away. White dust and chunks of plaster fell.