She turned and ran for the car. The rutted earth slowed her down. She was afraid of turning an ankle and falling. She leaped the last six feet, grabbing for the door handle. Something swung around her neck, a hickory limb in a flannel sleeve. Her feet actually flew out in front of her. Before they could touch down she was moving backward. She felt as if the wind were pushing her away from the direction she wanted to go. She was reliving an old nightmare.
“Wrong way, little nursie,” Abilene drawled close to her ear. “You might fall in and drown.”
Something pushed against her ribs and she knew what it was before she felt its sting.
One of her heels caught in a rut. She twisted her foot sideways. Abilene pulled, stopped. His grip tightened.
“You don’t want to fight. I ain’t your husband. There’s loads of shit I can do to you short of finishing you off.”
“Where are you taking me?” Her voice croaked in her ears.
“My crib. West Hollywood. Smells like a Mexican shit-house, but it’s home. You can yell your head off and they’ll just think it’s Ramirez beating his wife again.”
“I need my sweater. I’m cold.”
“Jeep’s warmed up. We’re headed south. In a mile or two you’ll want to go topless.”
“I want my sweater!” She writhed. The blade broke her flesh. He pulled it away to keep her from goring herself. Then he uncoiled his arm and shoved her hard. She stumbled and had to twist to the right to keep from putting her face through the window. She struck the doorpost with her shoulder.
“Get the fucking sweater! Jesus Christ! Button it up to your ears. You get hot, you can take off your goddamn panties.”
She tore open the door and sprawled across the backseat. When Abilene stepped forward, prodded by some reflex, she swung the antique shotgun around, bumped the headrest on the driver’s seat with the barrels, and jumped them over. The sweater was still hanging off the muzzles when she raked back both hammers with her palm and tripped the triggers. Bits of pink fiber continued flying around long after the ocean had swallowed the roar.
TWENTY-EIGHT
She lay twisted on the seat long after the concussion of sound had subsided, wanting to scream but unable to fill her lungs with the breath necessary. She had been six years old the last time that had happened. She’d fallen while playing on her grandfather’s parked tractor, striking her head on the flywheel and opening a gash in her scalp that bled and bled, the blood stinging her eyes and blinding her. She’d staggered up the lane, gasping and trying to cry, nothing coming out, until her grandmother looked up from her flowerbed and dropped her watering can and ran to scoop her up and throw her into the car and drive her to the emergency room. Laurie still had the scar, its raised whiteness visible when she spread her hair, and although she had no memory of the pain she remembered the desperation of her silence.
And then she broke free in a loud, gulping sob, just as she had at the hospital when the doctor was stitching up her cut. He’d been reluctant to use a local anesthetic on so young a patient, and the pricking of the needle had burst the bubble. A neighbor who’d been visiting a friend at the hospital had told her grandparents later he’d heard Laurie shouting as far as the parking lot.
But in front of Los Ojos Antiques & Gifts there was no one to hear, just the chugging of the surf and the wind carrying its mixture of water and saline in thick salty gusts.
The cry had restored locomotion to her limbs. She pushed herself into a sitting position, groped at the ground with a foot, and stood, dragging the shotgun out of the car for no reason other than that it was harder to release her grip than to carry its weight. She looked down, half comprehending, at the body spread in a Maltese cross on the ground, the upended Stetson lying two feet beyond the head as if frozen in the act of flying off, a cartoon attitude of surprise. Abilene’s fingers were still curled around the handle of his big folding knife. His slantwise grin was in place, unconnected to the emptiness in his eyes. His flannel shirt was plastered and dark from the third button down to where he’d tucked it under his belt, and almost flat to the ground, as if he’d been stepped on by an enormous foot where he lay. Two barrels full of ten-gauge shot had simply obliterated the middle third of his body.
“Laurie?”
It was the exact same tone her grandmother had used when she’d seen her staggering up the lane, her face a mask of blood. Laurie spun around. She hadn’t heard the car approaching, angling in past the front of the Jeep, or the door opening. The man coming her way was a giant. Then she realized the extra ten feet was his own shadow, cast by the horizontal rays of the sun against the slope behind him and seeming to sprout from the top of his head.
She swung the shotgun level and in the same movement palmed back the hammers and jerked the triggers.
When the hammers snapped on the spent shells, the man, who had lunged to take hold of the gun, closed one hand around the barrels. He’d started to twist the gun out of her grip, then in his realization and relief simply pushed it aside.
“You used up your load,” he said.
“Peter?”
She really was uncertain. The sun lay full on his face and she recognized the deep lines, the eyes of indeterminate color, the receding temples. But the face was not Peter’s. Then when she said his name, the features seemed to blur and shimmer and rearrange themselves, assuming the tired gentle cast she knew. It was as if he’d removed a mask of some kind.
Or put one on.
Then his arms were around her and she resisted, not because she wanted to resist but because she wanted to surrender, and then it was too much effort because the shock was wearing off. She dropped the shotgun and flattened her palms to his back and laid her face against his chest, smelling his musk. He hadn’t showered, she could tell, probably had not changed clothes in days, and she preferred the humanness of stale masculine sweat to the cold clean ventilated breath of the heartless Pacific.
Something went through her then, a hot bolt. She shoved away, breaking his grip, and clawed at his face with both hands.
“Bastard!” She was shrieking. “Fucking murderer! How many? What’s the score? Killer. Fucking killer! How many? You going to kill me, killer? I know you’re a killer, so you have to. Isn’t that how it works?”
She’d drawn blood. It ran down from his cheeks like tears. He took hold of her wrists, exerted leverage, and twisted them down and away from his face, turning her elbows out. She felt a stinging in both forearms and then immediate numbness. His face behind the tracks of blood was the one she’d seen before she’d spoken his name.
“We have to get rid of the body,” he said.
There was nothing suitable in the Jeep or the two cars, so he jimmied open a window in the shop and crawled inside, navigating by the fading light until he found a canvas dropcloth stiff with old paint and a coil of yellow nylon rope in a store-room.
Laurie had regressed into silence. She was still in shock, but she’d recovered enough reason to stay out of the way. He was grateful for her nurse’s training. She even obeyed when he told her to find some rocks. While she was combing the beach behind the building, he pocketed Abilene’s knife and rolled the body into the dropcloth. He used a flashlight he found in the Jeep’s glove compartment to locate bits of entrail and a roadmap to scoop them up and deposited them and the map inside the bundle. Finally he kicked dirt over the spray of blood on the ground and scrubbed it around with both feet. By daylight it would be just another wet patch among many that close to the ocean. He hoped. The first good rain would wash away most of what remained. There were always microscopic traces, but if he did the rest of his job properly it would be a long time before anyone thought to run a test, if ever. He would get rid of his stained shoes.
When Laurie returned, lugging a double armload of rocks, the largest of which was about the size of a grapefruit, he tucked them in with Abilene, jammed his Stetson and Laurie’s ruined sweater into a convenient space, folded down the ends of the dropcloth like a burri
to, and tied up the bundle, tightly enough to hold but with sufficient play so the ropes wouldn’t burst with the first pull of the undertow. Fortunately, there was no danger of bloating and floating. The shotgun had carried away everything that would hold the gas.
He looked up from his handiwork, aware that Laurie was watching him. It was too dark now to see her expression, but he knew what she was thinking. There had been no wasted movements, no pauses while he figured out what had to be done next. She’d probably concluded this was how he cleaned up after himself all the time. Actually there had been only two burials at sea before. One, if you didn’t count Lake Huron.
He put a hand under one of the cross-ties palm up, gave it a tug to make sure it held, then reversed his grip, inserted his other hand, and began dragging. His back was stiff from fifteen hundred miles of almost continuous driving, and he had to stop inside a dozen yards to stretch his trunk and work the rubber out of his arms. He shouldn’t have used so many rocks. But he knew he’d used just enough. He’d lost count of how many things had happened during the past several days to remind him he was middle-aged. He bent back to his work.
He’d dragged the bundle another five or six feet when suddenly it stopped resisting. He looked back—and saw Laurie’s silhouette against the slightly lighter sky, her shoulders bent over the other end. She’d picked it up and was carrying it behind him.
There was just enough light bouncing off the water to allow them to pick their way down the rocky slope to where the waves smacked the shore. Finally they came to a shelf of granite just wide enough to stand with the bundle hammocked between them, parallel to the water’s edge. The surface was slimy. He shouted at her to make sure of her footing.
“It has to clear the rocks.” His voice cracked. He’d come all the way from Texas without using it and now he had to compete with Neptune. “On three.” He began to swing.
“Wait!”
He stopped, exhausted past exasperation. She was having second thoughts.
“Throw on three, or one, two, three, throw?” she shouted.
He exhaled, relieved. “On three.”
They swung in tandem, rocking the bundle toward shore, then out toward the Philippines and Japan, gathering momentum. Once, twice.
“Three!”
They grunted together as they let go. The bundle (Roy Skeets. It’s Leroy, actually, but you don’t have to bother with that. Folks generally call me Abilene) arced up and out beyond the bulge of the California coast and fell. It turned over once, just before it splashed, without a sound against the thrashing of the waves. A flap of white ocean peeled back to receive it, then closed like the petal of a carnivorous plant.
Peter used his flashlight to find the drag marks and scuffed them out with his feet. Then he picked up the shotgun and went back the way he’d come. He wasn’t carrying it when he returned. She thought it a shame to have to throw a piece of frontier history into the ocean. The old woman in the bed-and-breakfast was going to be upset when she found it was missing. Then she’d forget. Then she’d find out again it was missing. She’d probably blame her daughter-in-law. Laurie was thinking ahead and away, willing herself out of her body.
But Peter was talking again, saying he was going to take Abilene’s Jeep north and abandon it and that she was to follow him in the rental. After she picked him up, they would return here and she would follow him again until he found a place to leave the car he’d driven. She’d asked what was wrong with it.
“It’s stolen.”
She said, “Oh, right,” as if she should have thought of that.
Following him north, she realized he hadn’t asked if she was up to driving. It seemed funny she would think of that. She’d just finished helping him dispose of a body. A body she—But she stopped thinking in that direction. She had to think ahead and away. She wondered if it was possible for a person to live her entire life in forward motion. It certainly seemed worth a try. She supposed she was in a state of shock. Another dangerous thought. Like realizing you were dreaming, and then waking up because you realized it. She concentrated on the back of the Jeep, memorizing the plate. She didn’t want to become separated and wind up following the wrong vehicle.
They drove a couple of miles past Santa Barbara and a mile or so inland, where Peter parked in a commercial drive and threw away the keys. In a day or so the Jeep would probably be towed to some impound lot and forgotten until someone decided to run a trace on the absent owner.
Peter tapped on her window. She lowered it.
“I’d better drive.”
She unlocked the door and climbed into the passenger’s seat. Nothing was said during the drive back to Montecito. She looked ahead through the windshield. The last time she’d ridden that stretch with Peter at the wheel, she’d spent it looking at him.
As they passed the scenic overlook nearing the antique shop he slowed down, and she knew then why he’d insisted on driving. He was making sure no one—the police, for instance—had discovered the lone car parked off the edge of the highway. She couldn’t be trusted to be in control if it came to a chase.
Macklin pulled into McGrath State Beach by Ventura and left the car in one of the diagonal spaces, pausing to pull his shirtcuff over the heel of one hand and wipe the steering wheel and shift lever and the smart stick on the column. Cops never bothered to dust stolen vehicles unless they were pretty sure they hooked up with something heavier, but you never knew when some bored plainclothesman might catch the squeal and get a bright idea.
This time when he approached the Buick, Laurie climbed over without waiting to be asked. She didn’t say a word for twenty-five miles. Then:
“Is there anything you’ve told me since the day we met that wasn’t a lie?”
He went another mile. “The only time I lied was when I said there was a problem with the store-chain transfer. Abilene was in the hallway. There wasn’t time for the truth.”
“Were you afraid of him?”
“Abilene? He was a bug. Step on one.”
“You told me you were in the retail camera business.”
“I was.”
“Didn’t you make enough killing people? I thought there was money in that.”
“You can’t put it down on Form 1040.”
A pair of headlights came around a curve on high beam. He looked away and didn’t flash. He couldn’t afford a possible case of road rage with traces of blood on the soles of his shoes and nitrate all over Laurie.
“I came back,” he said.
A pause. She started to say something, stopped. She swallowed and said, “Did you do what they wanted?”
“Yes.”
“Was it—like Abilene?”
“Not quite. He was a crook. Nobody very important. But not like Abilene.”
He was suddenly drowsy. Adrenaline was like that. You could travel on the fumes for a long time, and then when they were gone it was all at once. He had to bug his eyes to keep them open.
“That’s why you have to understand I came back,” he said, speaking faster now. “Maggiore’s a treacherous prick, but he doesn’t kill legits if he can afford not to. He’d have let you go as soon as he heard. I didn’t come back because I had to.”
“Do you like it?” It came so fast he couldn’t believe she’d been listening. The dash lights glowed blue-green off her profile. She was staring through the windshield.
“‘It’?”
“You know.”
“No. I’m not a psycho.”
“Is that why you retired? You’re retired?”
“That’s another truth I told. It’s one reason. The other one is I’m not young anymore.”
“Is that why you started? You were young and stupid?”
“If I were stupid I wouldn’t have gotten old.”
“Then why?” Her voice cracked.
“Why did you decide to become a nurse?”
“I wanted to help people.”
“That’s what you told the registrar. He didn’t believe
it either.”
“She.” She let out her breath. “I thought I’d be good at it.”
He let up on the pedal on curves, obeying the signs. “I didn’t just want a clean start.” It was a murmur.
“What?”
He raised his voice. “I didn’t just want a clean start. I wanted everything that happened before you not to have happened. That’s why I didn’t say anything. If I didn’t say anything maybe it was something that happened to someone else.”
“That’s childish.”
“It had to be. I wasn’t much more than a child when it started.”
After another half-mile she said, “What now?”
“Finish up.”
“You said it was finished.”
“Not as far as Maggiore’s concerned.”
She surprised him. It was easy to forget how quickly she picked up on things at her age. “You said—”
“I said he doesn’t kill legits. I’ll drop you off at the hotel. Unless you want to fly back home tonight. After that, whatever you decide. I won’t contest it.”
She started to say something. She cleared her throat, started again. “I think I will.”
“Will what?”
“Fly back home tonight. Alone.”
He accelerated coming out of the last curve. “All right.”
“Oh God.”
She broke then. It was like with adrenaline. You never knew when. They were driving past state-owned beach, no houses. He lowered her window and let her scream out into the night. Said nothing.
Which was a mistake. As long as he’d been talking he’d kept himself entertained.
“Peter!”
He was drifting off the road. He hit the brakes, skidded on gravel, wrestled the wheel left, bumped up onto the asphalt, and had to correct right to keep from slewing into the opposite lane, where a line of cars blared their horns in a warped chain as they passed. He took his foot off the accelerator and coasted to a stop on the apron.
Laurie opened her door. Her face was drawn and streaked under the dome light. She looked thinner than he remembered. But she’d stopped screaming.
Something Borrowed, Something Black Page 19
