“I like to look at pictures of naked women. That’s exciting and doesn’t hurt other people. You saying that don’t make me bad?”
“No, that’s normal. You’re wired to like pictures of naked women. Males are made that way. That’s what keeps the species going.” She wanted the words back immediately. That bit of anthropology only confused him. How senseless to have said it; she was trying to empathize enough to influence him. She tried to recover, “The trick is to recognize the feeling, realize it’s normal, and move on to something constructive.”
“No, the trick is to find more pictures. Anyway, you’re wrong. I happen to know it’s bad to look at dirty pictures. Everyone knows that. And you know it too. You’re trying to mess with my head. I know what you’re trying to do right now. Saw it on TV. Don’t you love those movies where the bad guy is about to attack the hot girl and she’s in a corner all shook. She’s got this skirt that’s kind of up, you know. Too bad you have on jeans. Anyway, he’s drooling and looking at her with those funny eyes they can make bad people have in the movies. And she tries to keep him talking because there’s scissors or something just out of reach she can stab him with if only she can keep him distracted until she can get it. She tries to get in his head to confuse him and give her time. You know what I’m saying?”
He seemed a bit smarter than she’d expected. Moron #2 his stepmother had called him. She didn’t think for a moment he was brainless. “Tell me if Jamie is okay.”
“I don’t really know if she’s okay.”
“But she’s alive, isn’t she? At least tell me if she’s alive.”
“I don’t want to talk about her now. Maybe I will after we’ve gotten acquainted.”
“So, that’s it. I’m supposed to make a trade with you.”
“Don’t know what you mean by that. I just don’t want to talk about the kid.”
“Just tell me, is she alive?”
“This is like that movie where the beautiful girl is helpless, but she’s really smart, see. And she tries to explain to the bad guy it’s going down because he hates his mother. She keeps at him until at the end he gets all shook and like comes all apart. You’d be good doing that. Except I already know I hate my stepmother and she hates me. That’s not news. Don’t know my real mother guess I hate her too.”
This wasn’t good, she knew. He spoke more forcefully and now made eye contact. Becoming confident. Losing his fear of her. No question he was dangerous, the way he came in and attacked her. She was uncertain how to handle him. She didn’t know which button to push and which to avoid. She didn’t want him thinking about naked women that was certain. It was quite possible nothing she did would deter him from what he had in mind. She tried to put him back on the defensive. “You ever make it with a consenting woman?”
“There have been girls.”
“Name someone.”
“Well...there’s Crystal. She’ll do anything I want and she’s always around. Keeps her mouth shut, too. And I don’t have to get her hot. If you can get a girl hot, then she’ll do anything. You know about that? That’s what the guys say.”
“You mean the guys in the eighth grade?” Perhaps treating him as a juvenile was her best tactic. It was difficult for her to imagine him functioning socially in the adult world. “You’ve had girlfriends. Didn’t you go out with Abby?”
“Sure, but I hardly ever find anyone like that. I don’t have the looks and never know what to say to a girl. This right here might be the longest conversation I’ve ever had with a girl. I say hello to them and they tell me to fuck off. Just like that, and all I say is hello. If I could get them hot, they wouldn’t say that.”
“It’s not fair for a woman to say that to you if you’re being polite. Tell me about Jamie. Is she alive?”
“Other guys talk women into bed all the time. I see some guy talking to a girl and the next day he tells me, sure she was really good stuff. How do they do that? I could never do that. That’s what I liked about Abby. Didn’t have to talk. We just drank ourselves stupid. Then after a while she just said okay, I’m ready, let’s go fuck. Didn’t have to say anything to turn her on, didn’t have to worry about saying something that was gonna turn her off. But then she changed her mind and didn’t want to do it. I thought I had something going, but then I screwed up the money thing.”
“What money thing?”
No answer. He seemed to be studying the buttons on her blouse.
His girlfriend talk sounded juvenile and didn’t fit in with his aggressiveness in putting her in this position. She thought something was in his mind encouraging him. Control over her was the objective, but some fantasy had inspired him to corner her here. Next came the surprise.
“I can already tell you don’t have half the boobs that stripper had.”
“Did you go to a club and watch a stripper, Toby?”
“The paper said she was one of those strippers. She had the body.”
Then it clicked. What was that beach...Privado? The incident. What was it...about a stripper? Oh, god. Detective Triney had told her about it and she immediately filed it away under horrible but irrelevant. Nothing to do with the Banks shooting or the kidnapping. Not her concern. Some creep molesting a corpse. Not a crime she particularly wanted in her memory. She had her own problems and none of them had any tie-in to a naked body found on a beach. No connection whatever—unless the creep was someone she knew. No connection until now. A flow of reality made her tremble.
Did Toby see the body on Privado Beach? Or was he merely inspired by newspaper accounts? “So you read about the stripper in the paper?”
“I knew it’d be wrong, but her body was right there. It practically glowed. Something to see, but you don’t get that. I told you I liked naked women and you just said, hey no problem.”
Now she began to feel sick. Was he the one? Did he strangle the woman with something big and soft like a beach towel that left no marks, and fooled the medical examiner into thinking she had innocently choked because she had traces of pretzel in her mouth? “We really need to talk about this,” she said. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”
“Just lying there like she was sleeping.”
Perhaps he has been thinking about another silent body since the beach incident. A passive woman he can control. The possibility of her being killed and raped was real. A man capable of all that might be sitting there before her. She’s already helpless, what happens next, and what after that. Even if he didn’t kill her first, would he rape her and then just walk away—knowing that she knows who he is and would tell his stepmother?
“She couldn’t yell at me or make fun of me, or tell me to fuck off.”
Was she his second opportunity? Would he kill her first to relive the beach episode? That was crazy. Yet why was he here facing her with a knife. All he had to do was take a dishtowel and twist it around her neck again. She’d be unconscious in seconds, dead in minutes. Asphyxiated like the woman on the beach. Next, he’d lay waste to her and walk away.
“Good to have a girl powerless. Nice and quiet like she’s sleeping—except you can touch her all you want.”
She shuddered recognizing what this man was capable of. She had to keep her mind focused. She had to keep thinking. But her imagination began to overcome her. Her mind slipped off into panic. She couldn’t help it. She didn’t want to die. In horror she blurted out, “How many women have you raped?”
It just came out. She wasn’t trying to psych him out now. She wasn’t thinking about how to divert his attention. She was thinking about dying. Absolutely a mistake having him think about his victims, but she was terrified and had to know.
She repeated, “How many women have you raped?” She couldn’t help the quiver in her voice.
“Why are you jumping into that? You see, I can’t talk to girls. We don’t connect. What do you talk about with girls? I mean, I’ve got my sex stuff and she’s got her sex stuff. How can I just ignore that? What am I supposed to say? I held a girl’
s hand once walking home from school. I thought about what she was hiding, but I didn’t say anything. You’ve got no idea what I’m talking about, do you.”
She tried to calm herself down. Think Sandy, think. Try not to say anything that would set him off. “I’m sorry, Toby. You’re right. I’ll talk to you. Do you want to talk about getting along with women?” Was that another mistake? Talking about women would get him more excited. The conversation was going around in a circle. What else is there to talk about? Sex is why he’s here.
“I’ve never raped anyone. Would I do it if nobody would find out and nothing would happen to me? Nothing bad, nothing at all?” He opened his eyes wide. “You bet I would.”
As disgusting as that sounded, he did seem to recognize guilt. It gave her a little opening. “Something bad would happen to you. Something bad would definitely happen to you. Everyone would know and you’d go to prison like your father. They’d never let you out. Everyone there would hate you. You know the worst part? You’d have to face your stepmother and you know what she’d do.”
He leaned back in the chair thinking about that. “Maybe it’d be like an invading army after conquering a village. I saw that on TV. They just grab any woman who happens to be around. Nobody’s to stop them. I guess men will do it if there’s no penalty. Most guys anyway, under the right circumstances. And you say that’s normal?”
“No, I didn’t say that.” Keep him talking, she thought. Talking about anything. Maybe Abby will come back home, maybe the phone will ring, maybe a huge meteor will crash into the house. Anything, something, everything. Possibly the guilt thing would work. “But you did rape. How can you live with yourself after what you did that night on the beach? I guess you figured you lucked out. Like finders keepers. Look what I found, guys, a helpless woman who can’t stop me.”
“Hey, I didn’t take her there. I didn’t kill her.”
“Yeah right, and you didn’t touch her body.”
“At first, I didn’t intend to do anything at all. Then I thought it wouldn’t be so wrong to just touch her. So, I shook her a little, like trying to see if she was really dead. She was soft and warm. I didn’t expect that. I thought she’d be cold and hard. She felt nice. The wind was slowly moving her hair. That seemed weird like at any moment she’d open her eyes and yell at me. Then I thought, hey, it’s just her body there. She wasn’t around to mind.”
“It’s not permitted. We’re evolved humans. We’re better than that. A dead body is off limits.”
“I didn’t do it, and nobody saw me do it.”
She didn’t know what that meant. “It’s not allowed. Do you know that?”
“Stop it. I didn’t chuck it in her!”
“Sure you didn’t. You knew she was forbidden, but there she was like low-hanging fruit.”
“I don’t know what that means. I know there wasn’t any little man on my shoulder telling me it was fucking wrong.”
“He should have shouted you’re a fucking creep.”
“I was real excited looking down at her. Getting dark by then, about like it is here now. I could see her stretched out there and she was every girl I’ve ever wanted to touch. All of them right there. My whole body throbbed. I couldn’t stop...you know...I juiced out just looking at her. Not as good as the real thing, but still exciting. After doing that, I felt bad and was afraid someone would know what happened so I’d better get out of there fast. After I’d driven away and no one saw me, I thought, wow, was she really spread out there like that? I started feeling good like everything was okay. I got excited again and that’s when I thought about going back.”
“You shouldn’t have gone back, Toby, that was wrong. You knew it was wrong. That’s why you feel so bad about what you did. You must let me go, so you’ll start feeling good again.”
“Wish I could start over with all of it. You should do things when you have the chance. Smart guys don’t pass up something handed to them.”
Which was it? Did he feel guilty because he did it, or regret not taking advantage of his chance? “Toby, did you go back or didn’t you?”
He wasn’t listening. The fantasy was still in his head. After a moment he continued, “You know the movie I really like. Totally cool. I have it at home. Got it from a guy. I watch it on my computer. It’s about this guy he’s in this club, see? He starts talking to this super hot girl. When she’s not looking, he puts this pill in her drink. This hot-looking girl’s drink at the bar. They don’t tell you what the pill is, but I got it right away. You get it? Isn’t that cool? And they tease you about whether she’s really going to drink it. You know, she puts it to her lips and something interrupts her and she sets it back down. They do that a couple times. Every time I watch I’m yelling, drink it baby, drink it! Eventually, she does drink it. Then he takes her home. She’s out of it so he can do anything he wants.”
“Like the woman on the beach.”
“Exactly. But that’s all they showed. Instead of really showing something, they fade out. The rest of the movie totally sucked. I never play the rest of it. Like it was some big deal in the girl’s life and she’s like in shock or something for the rest of her life. Always has to take some kind of medicine. That’s what the movie was supposedly all about. I didn’t get all that. Sure, I suppose it wasn’t cool for her, but messed up for the rest of her life...gimme a break. I guess they have to put in that shit. Sometimes I dream about getting some of those pills. I’d pay a million dollars for just one of them. Once I got that pill in my hand, I’d start looking for the hottest girl in the world. Magic fucking pills, huh?”
Talking about the movie had excited him. She had watched his expression change. Now he seemed unconcerned with how she felt sitting there or how she responded. He no longer saw her as a person, just a bundle of female goodies sitting before him. Like he said, the bad guys in the movies always have a mad gleam in their eyes. Toby now had that look. The look that said, smart guys don’t pass up something handed to them. Now frowning. Now breathing heavily. His eyes all over her, looking straight through her clothes. What was his next move? She stammered, “Tell me about another good movie, Toby.”
One of his hands was now at his crotch adjusting himself. Her legs were still under his chair. Maybe there’s enough room for her to bring her legs up together and smash him in the groin. What would that do? Stopping him for a few minutes wouldn’t be enough. Just make him angry. It’d have to be viciously hard to disable him long enough for her to get away.
Then he scooted his chair closer. No way could she get her legs out now. His eyes narrowed. One hand went back to squeezing the bulge in his crotch. With the other hand, he reached out and fumbled around her breasts. She had expected that eventually, but it still surprised her and she flinched. He was no longer thinking with his brain. He was excited and now had enough nerve. This was it. She was there for the taking.
Is this what it’s like when you know you’re going to die? She imagined them calling Triney to investigate. He’d stand there with his notebook looking down at her wasted body outlined in chalk, and in a loud voice he’d vow to all the police personnel now busy at the scene of her death that he was going to get the bastard that did it.
No! It’s not going to be like that. She knew she was smarter than this. At that moment, a wild thought flashed across her mind. In a sudden burst she screamed at Toby, “You little moron, you dumb fucking moron! You’re just as goddamn stupid as your moron father!”
He jerked back instantly. He cringed down in the chair. Started trembling. Closed his eyes tightly. He raised his arms to protect his head.
After a minute, he lowered his arms slowly. Still shaking. His face red. His forehead moist with sweat. “Get up,” he ordered.
“What are we doing?”
“We’re leaving.”
She didn’t like this. She wasn’t going to get into his vehicle. He’d have to strangle her right here. “Where?”
He kicked the chair away and pulled her to her feet.
/>
“For chrissake, Toby, untie me. We’ll walk out of here and I’ll forget the whole thing. You can go home and watch that movie again.”
He was silent.
“You’re not taking me to the beach, Toby. Get that out of your head. I won’t go!”
He pushed her ahead of him walking through the dark kitchen and out on to the back porch. She stopped abruptly at the edge of the porch steps.
He came up beside her. “Go on, don’t stop.”
She yelled, “My feet!”
When he looked down, she threw her entire weight against him and he stumbled backward off the porch. She jumped off the steps. She started running down the driveway her arms still tied behind her. If she could at least get to the street, she could start screaming. She heard his footsteps on the gravel behind her. He was repeating her name. He caught her. She felt the yank as he grabbed the back of her shirt. He jerked her backwards down hard to the gravel. She screamed. She kicked at him and squirmed around trying to maneuver her tied hands under her feet to get them in front of her.
“Sandy, I can...,” he sounded strangely calm.
That’s when she saw the flash of light and heard the loud pop. Too loud and much too close. Her ears rang. Something warm and sticky sprayed across her face. He staggered and leaned against the side of his vehicle. She stared as his face morphed into a weird contorted mask. His heavy limp body fell forward across her legs. His blood blossomed out wet across his shirt and dripped down on her legs.
Chapter Sixteen
Sandy didn’t move, at least not at first. Was another shot coming? She stayed curled up in the driveway, her shoulder against the SUV’s rear tire. Blood dripped from Toby’s lifeless body down across her legs and formed rivulets on the gravel. She was relieved when she began to hear voices, then some yelling, then in the distance the wonderful wail of a siren.
She moved enough to look down at Toby. Harmless now. A confused and dangerous young man who now would never master his demons. She had survived. She was alive. She stopped shivering and let out a deep breath. She put her head down on the gravel and began to cry.
The Price of Candy Page 11
