Angie felt better after that, even if she still felt a bit guilty for wasting the cops’ time. The old house was, in a word, spooky, and maybe she’d just let it get to her a little more than usual. She thought of going straight to bed but she was too enervated to sleep. Instead she poured herself a big glass of just average Pinot noir and went into what in earlier days had probably been a study but now was snugly furnished with a couch, two overstuffed chairs and a television. She always felt more at home there than in either of the two cavernous formal parlors on the same floor, and she flicked through the remote control before she found an old Bridget Jones movie she’d seen before, probably more than once. That was reassuring too, and she sat back against the arm of the couch and pulled a throw over her lap with one hand while she cradled the glass of wine in the other. After a few minutes she could feel herself drifting off, which was what she wanted, and she remembered to reach back and carefully place the wine glass on the end table.
• • •
Vince had watched the exchange at the front door, the big cop standing behind his partner and partially obscuring both women from view. The conversation had only taken a couple of minutes, the two cops coming back off the porch and splitting away from each other at the front walk, the woman switching on her flashlight and looping toward the back through the driveway while the big guy lumbered around the house in the other direction. They took their time, the woman actually finding a way through the hedge that separated the driveway from the neighboring yard, close to the spot where he’d been only a few minutes before. Then she angled back out toward the back of the house and disappeared into the back yard. For about five minutes there was only the occasional play of flashlight beams as they checked the back yard and the back of the house. Vince wasn’t sure what he’d tripped over that had made all the noise, garden tools or something, but they’d been lying on the porch where he didn’t see them, hadn’t been neatly stacked or anything. They’ll notice or they won’t, he thought, watching as the two cops reappeared out of the back yard, flashlights off now. If anything on the porch had aroused suspicion it wasn’t reflected in their movements. They were casually walking side by side, straight toward the end of the driveway and directly across from where he lay in the darkness. Instinctively he pressed himself lower into the ground, but he kept his eyes up. If they came across the street toward him he’d have to move. Instead they stood at the end of the driveway for a moment longer and then the woman detached herself from the man and went toward the front of the house, climbing the steps to the porch and knocking on the front door. The door opened immediately and this time the big cop wasn’t in the way. The lights were on inside and he could see Angela’s backlit figure as she and the cop exchanged a few words, the usual Serve and Protect routine. He found himself mesmerized by what he saw, how beautiful she was, and then too late remembered that he should have been watching the other cop.
He swore to himself, knew the distraction could have been fatal. The guy could have been all over him by now but instead he’d just moved closer to the front of the house and was looking back at the doorway, maybe as focused on the woman inside as Vince was. Then the female cop turned away from the door and went down the steps to rejoin her partner. Angela Lowry was still in the open doorway watching the cops leave, but for an instant it looked like she was staring directly at Vince. The cops walked off in the same direction from which they’d arrived, both of them still relaxed and unhurried. Apparently their threat perception didn’t extend to anything all the way across the street.
Vince stayed where he was, not willing to assume anything. They could always change their minds or cross the street and come back. He was better off where he was, at least for now, and a minute later the question of how they’d gotten there in the first place answered itself. He heard a big V-8 start up around the corner, and a moment after that a police cruiser trolled slowly past in front of him, the silhouettes of its occupants loosely matching up with the two officers who’d checked the house. They weren’t much at searches but they’d been smart enough to roll up slowly and out of sight.
He filed that one away.
50
Frank had been outside when he heard the phone ring inside the house, felt no particular inclination to answer it. He’d been away from the job too long now to feel any urgency when a phone rang, even late at night. There had been a time not long ago when he would have kept the phone with him in case he missed a miraculously conciliatory call from Adrienne, but that time had passed too. He wasn’t sure when exactly that had happened, just that the feeling had gone away.
He stayed where he was, comfortably sprawled in a rickety lawn chair across from where Billy Dancer sat on the old picnic table, itself threatening to disintegrate under his weight. He concentrated on appearing to listen attentively as Billy haltingly asked for his advice – about women, of all things.
“Billy,” he said carefully, trying not to smile, “I don’t know if I’m the right man to ask. I don’t have a good track record in that department.”
The big man looked at him for a moment, maybe trying to decide if Frank was right and if he should ask someone else instead. Billy was like that, took absolutely everything said to him completely at face value, and Frank had grown accustomed to those long uncomprehending pauses while Billy tried to process the meaning of what he was being told.
“I have to ask you, Frank,” he said sheepishly. “There’s nobody else I can ask.”
It was Frank’s turn to pause. He and Billy hadn’t talked since the night he’d pulled him out of Saunders’ place, and once again he felt guilty for the way Billy had found out he was leaving. Whether he liked it or not he owed Billy more than that, and he certainly owed it to Billy’s late aunt and uncle. They’d been good neighbors to him, family friends from the same era as Frank’s own parents, and Frank couldn’t shake the feeling that his decision to leave Strothwood was a kind of betrayal. He was pretty sure Billy felt the same way, and there was justification if he did. Maybe that was why Frank had pulled back, but for the first time Billy had started to pull back too. Frank had been surprised when there’d been a tentative knock on the door a few minutes ago and found Billy on his doorstep.
“Billy,” he asked, “Are you asking about women in general or someone in particular?”
Billy squirmed, embarrassed.
“That girl,” he said finally, “the one who works at the gas station.”
The place Billy was talking about was a little more than a mile away in the direction of town, a combination gas station and convenience store where virtually everyone in the area stopped a couple of times a week. That included Frank, and he allowed himself to relax. There were a couple of women who worked there on different shifts, and like everybody else in the area Billy was probably in there on a regular basis. Maybe too regular, Frank thought. Frank knew them both and they were good people. Billy would be a known quantity to them and unlike most other people in town they wouldn’t be intimidated by his appearance. That didn’t mean they’d be happy if Billy had somehow developed a crush on one of them. He was big and admittedly rough looking, but there wasn’t a mean or aggressive bone in his body where women and children were concerned. They’d know that, but if Billy started hanging around the gas station too much it wouldn’t be good for business or their jobs. It was hard to know what to say. Frank skated, bought some time.
“Which one?” he asked.
“The little one,” Billy said, like that explained everything.
“Billy,” Frank grinned, “to you everybody is little. What’s her name?”
“I don’t know,” Billy admitted.
“Maybe you should ask her.”
“Okay,” Billy smiled, as if that was valuable advice, a major step forward.
Frank reminded himself to backpedal a bit. There was all kinds of potential for a misunderstanding here, and Billy had endured enough of those in his life already. Especially if Frank wasn’t going to be around to smoot
h things over. He made a mental note to give the ladies at the gas station a heads-up.
“I’ll get us another drink.”
He picked up their glasses and headed inside, a little bemused by Billy’s sudden interest in the woman at the gas station, whoever she was. Billy was about the same age as Frank but mentally and emotionally he was a painfully slow teenager. Frank had to be careful about what he said because Billy could take it very literally. It was just one more thing to worry about when he had too much going on already. Speaking of which… Frank remembered the phone call, picked it up and listened to the message. After what had happened he hadn’t expected to hear from Angie, but there was genuine alarm, even fear, in her voice and there was no way he could dismiss it.
Especially after he called back and she didn’t answer.
51
Vince couldn’t decide whether he was exercising a hunter’s patience or just being stupid. Either way he’d waited it out, stayed motionless outside the house until he was able to tell himself that the cops weren’t coming back. Then he’d gone a couple of back yards to his left and crossed the street, reversing his path and going through the whole laborious yard-hopping exercise all over again.
All that had taken time and that had worked in his favor. Time for Angela Lowry to settle down, time for the neighborhood to become even more somnolent that it had been when he’d first gotten there. Almost all of the nearby houses were completely dark, the only remaining light coming from a couple of widely spaced street lights. They were easy to avoid, although he had blundered into a motion detector on his way through one of the other yards. It startled him but he glanced at the darkened house it belonged to and then just kept moving, told himself that nobody in the neighborhood would be awake to see him.
This was a reckless act. If his approach to one of the men had been compromised in the same way he would have backed off, left it for another time. The fact that she was a woman had somehow introduced urgency into his methods. He was moving fast and taking chances he would have avoided with the men. That was dangerous, but not dangerous enough to stop him from going for it. His sense of righteous mission was eroding into something else.
The first three had been efficient, almost clinical, but something had changed with the Dennison woman and continued to change with this one. He supposed it had something to do with the years of enforced celibacy inside. He felt a sense of arousal, temptation, and he knew that it was counterproductive to what he was supposed to be doing here. This was supposed to be about Tommy, and giving in to his thoughts would cheapen what he was trying to achieve. On a more practical level it was a dangerous distraction that could lead to a fatal mistake and an uncompleted task.
He shook himself back into the here and now, couldn’t think how long he’d been standing there staring down at her. Getting into the house had been simple, much quieter this time now that he’d paid attention to avoiding the potential pitfalls, the serendipity of stumbling into something as prosaic as the loose pile of garden tools that had alerted her the first time. Now that he was here it was hard to reconcile what he had to do with the woman he saw in front of him.
The visit by the police had apparently reassured her enough that she had felt safe in falling asleep on the sofa. There was only one light on in the room, an ornate table lamp that looked old and valuable. It threw only a dimly sepia light but he switched it off anyway. An open bottle of California red wine sat on the end table along with a cheap wine glass with only a thin film of liquid left in its belly. Angela was lying on her side, her shoes off and her legs drawn up almost to her midsection, her lips slightly parted. She hadn’t stirred and just for an instant he contemplated an encounter like this in a different time and place, different lives, a different outcome.
That thought was as dangerous as the erection that had swelled with his thoughts. He could dismiss the thoughts more readily than the erection itself, and he tried to focus on the simple mechanics of bringing the heavy cloth out of his shirt and soaking it in the liquid from the small bottle he held in his other hand. It was a homemade mixture, nonlethal, and the fact that she had obliged him by falling into a deep sleep had made things immeasurably easier. It was just chloroform, not something you would use on big game like a grown, conscious man but effective enough on a sleeping woman. He gently spread the saturated cloth over her mouth and nose and while she inevitably woke and fought for air, the struggle didn’t last and he easily held her in place until she slipped away again.
The chloroform was a clumsy, amateurish solution but it didn’t have to last long, just long enough to move her without a struggle. If he’d done the same thing with her that he’d done with McIvor she’d already be dead and he’d be on his way safely out of the house. Instead he was increasing his exposure, complicating things far beyond what was necessary. There’d been something missing until now, and at least this time he thought the increased risk might be worth it. He’d carefully orchestrated the others, done what he’d set out to do, but even with all that he’d left something unaccounted for. None of them knew why he was taking their lives. There’d been no dramatic revelations, no tearful admissions of guilt or regret, no climactic j’accuse moments. There hadn’t been time. Killing was messy, imperfect, and violent, and the person you were intent on destroying had their own ideas about what was going to happen next.
This time would be different. He wanted to make sure this woman knew exactly why he was there, that this was retribution for the wrong she had done. He wanted to give her time to feel raw, gnawing terror. He had to get himself under control, be as meticulous about arranging that as he had been about everything else.
He waited there in the darkness, long enough to make sure she was truly unconscious. Taking her out of the house was impossible. It had to be done here, but away from windows or the possibility of being overheard. That meant the basement, so he went to look for the way down. He took the Mag-Lite off his belt and held a masking hand over the lens, went out into the hallway. The second door he tried opened onto a dark wooden stairwell. He ran the flashlight beam down its length, saw that it ended on a dirty concrete floor. There was an ancient light switch near the top of the stairs, just inside the door, and he took the chance. He turned it on, triggering a pale bloom of murky, yellowish light in the basement. He went back down the hallway to where she lay on the couch and awkwardly hoisted her over his shoulder. The faint light leaking from the basement door into the hallway was just enough for him to home in on before he started down.
He had her over his right shoulder, the fingers of his right hand splayed across the back of her thighs, her hip tucked into and against the side of his face and neck. She was light, probably no more than a hundred and twenty pounds, but he still had to be careful when he took a step not to overbalance and topple forward. The stairway was narrow and the steps slippery with the use of decades. A broken leg would change everything. He wanted time with her alone, but when it was over he didn’t want to stay down there with her.
He was becoming aroused again, whether because of the physical contact or her helplessness or both. He got to the bottom of the stairway and looked around for a place to put her, saw a door a few feet away that opened into what looked like an old-fashioned cold room, a place to store vegetables or meat. He fished the Mag-Lite out with his left hand, saw that the room was surprisingly large, maybe fifteen by twenty feet. It had a crude workbench and even an old straight-backed chair that looked like it hadn’t been moved in decades. The whole tableau looked as if someone decades before had been prescient, had prepared the room for what he was doing now. The thought unnerved him.
He put the flashlight on the workbench and dragged the chair toward the center of the room, then lowered the girl gently into a sitting position. The irony of his solicitude wasn’t lost on him. He was taking an enormous chance and there could be only one reason for that, something only for himself and a perversion of his true purpose.
He forced the thought away and taped
her wrists to the spindles of the chair back, saw that she was starting to stir. He placed a shorter length of tape across her mouth, then picked up the flashlight again and went back upstairs to shut off the basement light.
52
Angie jerked suddenly awake, tried to move and found that she couldn’t. Her arms were pinioned behind her, her wrists painfully bound together. At first she thought she was on the tail end of a bad dream but when she tried to cry out she heard only a stifled moan. There was something that felt like heavy tape across her mouth and some kind of fabric stretched tightly across her eyes. She panicked, frantically tried to pull as much air as she could through her nostrils. The air was musty and still, somehow familiar. She heard a door close somewhere above her, then the sound of footsteps on a stairway. The sound changed again, off the stairs now and getting closer. She felt a palpable shift in the air pressure, a presence.
“What am I going to do with you, Angie?”
It was a man’s voice, mocking and gentle at the same time, and it was no dream. It was coming from somewhere in front of her, somewhere close.
“I suppose,” he said, “there’s no harm in you seeing me.”
She heard the scrape of chair legs on the floor. I don’t want to see you, you sonofabitch fucking bastard. If I see you I’m dead.
“I know, Angie,” his voice was maddeningly calm, almost apologetic. “If I let you see me that means I’m going to kill you.”
Justice Page 18
