Bitch Factor

by Chris Rogers

  “Keys,” Dixie said, holding out her hand.

  “You don’t really think I’d try to drive out of here?”

  “I don’t think you’re that big a fool, but why risk it?”

  With a shrug and a yawn, Dann slipped the keys from the ignition, dropped them into her hand. Dixie zipped herself into his parka, shoving the .45 deep in a pocket, then trudged through gusting snow to the rental office. A bell jangled above the door. The rich aroma of roast pork filled her nostrils. A thin elderly woman in a green calico dress and round eyeglasses smiled across a counter sign that identified her as Emma Sparks, Proprietor. She wore a corsage of holly sprigs and gold Christmas balls. No computer-chip designs stamped into the gold finish, Dixie noticed, and felt absurdly uplifted by that fact.

  Emma Sparks handed her a steaming mug of a liquid that smelled like hot apple pie.

  “Spiced cider,” she said. “It’ll warm you right up.” The woman had an infectious smile.

  “It’s wonderful.” Dixie hadn’t realized how ravenous she was. “Thanks.”

  “Lord, I was worried sick you folks’d got yourselves stuck someplace. Told Arnie, that’s my son, if you didn’t turn up in another half hour he’d best go fetch you.”

  Dixie tugged off her gloves and dug out her wallet.

  “We appreciate your staying open for us, being Christmas Eve and all.”

  “Honey, out on that highway you’d be a snowball come morning.” Emma plucked a brass key off a wall peg. “The cabin’s not a bit fancy, but it’s warm and the bed’s good.”

  “Don’t suppose you have two beds in there, do you?” Dixie counted out some bills. Glancing up to see the woman’s smile had faded, she forced a grin. “That man kicks like a mule, but I’d hate to put him on the floor on such a cold night.”

  “Ha! I’ve been there before.” Emma Sparks laughed and rang up the sale. “Got a dilapidated old cot, won’t be too comfortable. I’d let you have an extra room, but the others are all filled.” She opened a closet door behind her and lifted out an aluminum camp cot, the army green canvas worn thin in places.

  Dixie rounded the counter to take it from her.

  “There’s extra bedding in your cabin,” the woman said. “On the closet shelf.”

  “Thank you. This will beat getting kicked blue.” Dixie hefted the cot, hating the deception but aware that no good could come from telling Emma Sparks that a child killer would be sleeping under her roof. Turning to go, Dixie remembered the acute emptiness of her stomach.

  “Suppose there’s any place open in town to get a hamburger?”

  The old woman’s smile brightened like a Christmas candle.

  “Cafe’s closed, but I knew you folks’d be hungry, so I put a tray in your room. Nothing fancy, mind. Buck, that’s my husband, cooked up a big ham this morning, way more than we’ll ever eat. I made some sandwiches. Put some fresh fruit on the tray, too, and a thermos of that hot cider. The room has a little refrigerator stocked with juice and sodas, just pay for what you use, and there’s instant coffee packets, tea, cocoa—not the Hilton, honey, but we won’t let you starve.”

  Sounded a damn sight better than the Hilton at the moment. Homemade ham sandwiches? Dixie’s mouth was already watering. Emma bustled around to open the door for her.

  “Last cabin on the right. You can park on the side there, out of the wind.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Sparks. Sure was good of you to be open.”

  “It’s Emma, honey, and listen, there’s a phone in your room, if you need anything. Just dial eight. We won’t have the office open, so no sense in you trudging over here in the storm.”

  “How long does a storm like this usually last?”

  “This’n’s worse than most, but I expect it’ll blow over by morning. Clearing the roads might take a day or two.”

  Dixie couldn’t keep the misery from showing in her face. Even if the roads were miraculously clear by morning, no way she’d make it home by Christmas night. Seeing her feelings reflected in Emma Sparks’ inquisitive eyes, Dixie forced a smile before pushing back out into the blizzard.

  The wind tried to wrestle the cot from her hands as she carried it to the Mustang and shoved it onto the backseat.

  “Let’s go.” She cocked a thumb toward their cabin handed Dann the car keys, and wished like hell she hadn’t le Belle Richards talk her into taking this sorry job.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Hell is a hard cot in a cold motel room, Dixie decided, pulling the scratchy wool blanket around her neck. The heating system moaned and clanked, doing its damnedest to pump warm air through the vents, but the tempest howling past the windows challenged the aging mechanism beyond its limits. Dixie had slept nearly seven hours. She could easily sleep another seven if only she could get warm and comfortable.

  Scooting lower on the cot, she heard a rip and felt the canvas give way under her butt. A knife of cold air promptly stabbed her through the tear. Terrific.

  She shifted her weight gingerly to elbows and heels, pushed herself toward the top of the cot, and held her breath as she settled. With the rip no longer under the heaviest part of her body, the canvas might hold.

  Punching her pillow into a fluffier lump, she looked across the room to where Parker Dann was stretched out on the bed, snoring. Comfortable, no doubt, on his innerspring mattress. And warm. The only place to cuff him securely had turned out to be the bed’s curved iron headboard, its vertical bars strong and firmly welded in place.

  Funny how bright the room was for just past midnight. The raging snow outside the windows reflected red light from the motel’s NO VACANCY sign. Dixie wriggled sideways to avoid an aluminum side bar and slowly relaxed her muscles, listening for the sound of fabric tearing… heard only the creak of the cot’s frame rocking beneath her… and drifted off to sleep.

  Three hours later she awoke with her midsection wedged through the rip in the canvas, her frozen rump nearly dragging the pine floor. Flailing her arms, she groped for something to grab hold of to pull herself out; the canvas had trapped her just below the arms and above the knees. She must look like a giant bug tipped on its back, she thought, cursing softly and feeling a flash of empathy for the Kafka character who awoke as a giant cockroach.

  She glanced at Dann. He was sitting up, leaning against the pillow-padded headboard, and wearing his cocky grin, a twinkle of malice in his blue eyes.

  “Merry Christmas! Be happy to lend a hand, only…” He rattled the handcuff along the iron bar where it was fastened. “Afraid I’m temporarily inconvenienced.”

  “Perhaps you’d be less inconvenienced sleeping in the backseat of the Mustang. Or in that clawfoot bathtub.” Dixie swallowed her anger. It wasn’t Dann’s fault he had the more comfortable bed. She had actually considered cuffing him to a bathtub faucet knob, but there was no way he could’ve wormed his big frame into a sleeping position, and staying awake all night, he might’ve figured a way to get the knob off. From where she sat now, her decision needed reconsideration.

  Pushing at the sides of the cot with her upper arms, she managed to gain enough leverage to pull herself out of the hole. She rose stiffly and stumbled to the bathroom. Splashed a handful of icy water on her face. Wiped it dry on a thin terry towel with faded yellow flowers.

  Through the bathroom door, she heard bedsprings creak as Dann shifted positions, and she knew he could hear the rush of water as she emptied her bladder. Never had she been in such intimate circumstances with a prisoner. She didn’t like it.

  Emerging from the bathroom, she found he had turned on a reading lamp and was playing solitaire with a dog-eared deck of red bicycle cards. The air had warmed up some and the wind had quieted down. In a partially open drawer of the bedside table she saw a scratch pad, pencils, a box of dominoes, and a book of crossword puzzles alongside the empty playing-card box. Apparently, Sisseton wasn’t brimming with tourist attractions.

  Dann scooped up the cards and shuffled them.

  “I suppose, sooner
or later, the prisoner will get a turn at using the facilities,” he said. “Or did you carry in my Mountain Spring Water bottle?”

  Dixie massaged a kink in her neck as she considered the wisdom of uncuffing him. He was smart enough to bide his time until he saw the perfect opportunity to escape, but she didn’t expect that would happen until they were out of the storm and into a more populated area, where he’d have a chance of melting into a crowd. Glancing out the window, she noticed it had stopped snowing and ambled over to look out.

  “Holy hell,” she whispered.

  Snowdrifts swooped and dipped across the landscape, level with the knotty pine windowsills. One drift completely covered the motel office entrance. Similar drifts barricaded the doors to the other cabins.

  Dixie strode to their own door, twisted the lock, and pulled. For a moment it resisted; then she heard a sucking noise and the door swung free to reveal a solid wall of snow.

  Packed tight.

  Not a chink of sky showing anywhere. They were snowed in.

  Frigid air curled into the room from the white barrier.

  Why doesn’t it cave in? she wondered.

  She touched a tentative hand to the center of the mass. A fist-size section tumbled to the floor. She shut the door quickly.

  “Looks of that, we’ll be here all day, maybe another night,” Dann said.

  Dixie strode to the window, an old-fashioned casement like the ones at home. A metal storm window was mounted outside it. She opened the toggle locks and pushed upward. Stuck.

  “Probably frozen” Dann offered cheerfully. “Be surprised if these old windows were airtight.”

  Dixie banged on the casement and tried again to raise it; but it held firm. Ice had caked around the ropes and pulleys. What she needed was a crowbar.

  “Sort of like being in jail,” Dann said, “only more comfortable.”

  She could pry the window open and…

  And what? Surely Buck and Emma Sparks had a back door to their house and tools for dealing with this sort of thing. It was three-thirty A.M., too early for the Sparkses to be awake.

  “We won’t be going anywhere for a while,” Dann said. “Might as well get comfortable.”

  The Mustang made a hump in the snow, its chrome side mirrors all that distinguished it from other humps, probably shrubs. Eventually, she would have to dig the car out, but until snowplows came through there’d be no place to go. Dann was right. She might as well relax until daylight, when the Sparkses would be up and around. It galled her, though, being trapped.

  Behind her she could hear Dann shuffling the cards.

  “Gin?” He had smoothed the chenille bedspread and had dealt two hands, the deck centered between them, a discard faceup. Catching Dixie’s eye, he wiggled his heavy brows so comically she almost smiled.

  What the hell. They’d get through the day a lot easier if they were both comfortable. Might as well start by letting Dann wash up.

  She picked up her keys from the windowsill where she’d laid them the night before and tossed them to Dann. So far he’d been a model prisoner, but she wasn’t about to get close enough for him to hook one of those tree-limb arms around her neck.

  While he worked the handcuff lock awkwardly with his left hand, she retrieved the .45 from the floor beside the cot, took the gun’s magazine from her pocket, shoved it in place, and sat down in one of the wooden chairs. When Dann had freed himself, she held out her hand for the keys.

  “Five minutes,” she said.

  “Right. We’re on a tight schedule here.”

  “You need more time than that, maybe we’ll get a doctor in to check you over, see if you’re getting enough fiber in your diet.”

  “Flannigan, we got a bathroom here with no window, no sharp objects, no chemicals to build a bomb—on the off chance that I knew how to build a bomb. I’m flattered you think I’m so crafty, but short of stopping up the plumbing, I don’t think I can create much chaos in there.”

  “Four and a half minutes.”

  He shot her a dark look and slammed the door.

  Dixie laid the gun and keys on the table. She emptied a packet of coffee in the automatic dripolator positioned on a pine shelf that served as a sideboard. Having filled it with water the night before, she now plugged it in. She inspected two cups for spiders. The pot gurgled, filling the air with a rich coffee aroma.

  Scooping up one of the gin rummy hands—two aces; king, ten, and three of hearts; five of spades; deuce of clubs—she thought about checking out the other hand, wondered if Dann had already seen it, and before she could make up her mind, the bathroom door opened. Drops of water clung to the front of Dann’s dark hair. His shirttail was tucked in neatly. Being shut in together would be less frustrating, she realized, if Dann weren’t so obviously male.

  She tossed him the keys. “You’ll have to double-lock the cuffs to keep them from tightening down as you move.”

  “Ah, yes. ‘Trust not the deviant mind, though it be dulled by sloth or drink or age; ‘tis nonetheless twisted and therefore… treacherous.’ Better lock me up, Flannigan. No telling how much mayhem I’d cause if allowed to move about freely.”

  “Fancy yourself an intellectual, do you, Dann?”

  He bounced the keys a few inches into the air, watched them clink back into his palm.

  “A student, Flannigan. Merely a student of life.”

  “Especially when you’re a few hours in the bottle, right?”

  He flushed, which surprised her. Most drunks she’d known were hardened to criticism about their drinking, always certain they had it under control. She must have hit a nerve.

  He bounced the keys in his hand again, making no move toward the handcuff.

  “Being chained to this bed might make sense if there were somewhere for me to go. How far you think I’d get with four feet of snow on the ground?”

  Dixie couldn’t argue the four feet of snow.

  “I don’t cotton to spending another day and night cramped up with one arm anchored to that friggin headboard.”

  Better than a cot with no canvas. Dixie sympathized, but she couldn’t let Dann roam freely about the cabin. He probably had a whole bag of tricks she hadn’t seen yet. She aimed the .45 at his kneecap.

  Bunching his fist around the keys, he pointed to the phone.

  “Say I did get free. Call the sheriff. A snowmobile would run me down in no time.”

  With each word, she could see his anger mounting.

  “Dann, you’ll be a damn sight less comfortable with a busted leg.”

  “And you’d have some explaining to do. Listen to how quiet it is out there. Think that gunshot won’t ring out all over the countryside?”

  Dixie reached behind her. The gun never wavering, she pulled the wool blanket off her cot and wrapped it around her gun hand.

  “Now nobody will hear the shot.”

  Dann stood his ground, blue eyes fierce in the lamplight.

  “I don’t think you’ll do it, Flannigan. You won’t shoot me in cold blood.”

  “Think again.” Dixie cocked the .45, the click barely audible through the folds of wool. “Remember those jailhouse stories you heard?” She hoped he’d heard the meanest ones.

  He vacillated another thirty seconds, knuckles pale and rigid around the keys. Then he picked up the loose handcuff, snapped it around his wrist, and locked it.

  Dixie put the gun down and accepted the keys, glad as hell he hadn’t called her bluff Then she stood and turned her back to him, her hands shaking as she poured two cups of coffee. She set one cup on the bedside table for Dann.

  “You really think we’ll have to stay another night?” she said, as if the past few minutes had not occurred.

  Anger engraved in every line of his face, Dann picked up the coffee cup. She could see him making an effort to calm down. Finally, he glanced up at her. His blue eyes had regained their amused insolence. He had backed off this time. They both knew he’d try again. Meanwhile, the time would pass easi
er if they put the incident behind them.

  “According to the radio reports,” he said, “this was a freak storm. Sudden, violent, widespread. They’ll clear the main highways and essential routes first, to airports, hospitals, shelters… I’d guess the storm hit this area hard, being on the plains. Means some folks will need emergency rescue.” Hooking the other wooden chair with his foot, he scooted it over beside the bed and sat down. The lines in his face had relaxed. He picked up his card hand and moved the deck to where they could both reach it. “Considering also that it’s Christmas, the cleanup crews will be shorthanded. All in all, lady, there’s not a chance in hell we’ll be out of here before tomorrow.”

  Twenty-four hours, maybe thirty. Dixie recalled the snow-flakes she had caught on her tongue, and one of Kathleen’s needlepoint maxims came to mind—Be Careful What You Wish. Dixie had gotten her white Christmas, all right Unfortunately, she was spending it with a prisoner.

  She fanned her cards, paired up the aces, moved the deuce to one side. Drawing a jack of hearts, she discarded the deuce, and for a few minutes they played in silence, the cards giving the antsy part of her mind something to do while another part wrapped around the problem of what to tell Buck and Emma Sparks about Dann.

  If she managed to get the window unstuck and helped shovel snow, they’d wonder why Dann wasn’t helping, too. If she sat tight and waited until Buck Sparks dug the snow away from the door, he’d surely knock and she’d have to mince around to keep him from spotting Dann’s handcuffs. A lot depended on how friendly their hosts turned out to be.

  “Strange job for a woman,” Dann said. “Bounty hunting.” He drew a card from the deck and tossed down the four of clubs.

  “Strange job for anybody, but someone has to do it.”

  He grinned. “Otherwise scum like me would be shirking their comeuppance all over the country.”

  “Screwing up the judicial system, putting bail bondsmen out of business.”

  “Cheating juries out of their moment in the limelight.”

  “Not to mention disappointing the arresting officers.” She drew the four of hearts, thought about it for a moment, and dropped it on the discard pile.