by Meg Gardiner
“I knew Sharlayne. She was a first-grade teacher.” My eyes felt tired. I rubbed them. “Excuse me.”
I headed to the counter for a soda. As I filled my cup I saw Valerie Skinner walk in.
In the daylight she looked papery. The weight loss emphasized her fragility. Her eyes were feverish and her chemo-porcelain skin gave her an ethereal look, as though she’d been transported from another time. Under the brassy wig she had a Renaissance face. She walked over.
“Quite a morning, huh? Looks like Kelly took cuts with the Reaper. Jumped the line ahead of me.”
I inhaled.
“Sorry, black humor doesn’t go over with everybody.”
“That’s not it.” I rubbed my eyes again, weary. “Can we let the water go under the bridge?”
“Yeah.” She crossed her arms as if she were cold, though she was wearing long sleeves and it was ninety degrees. “That’s why I came. It’s bygones-be-bygones time. You know, don’t sweat the small stuff. Flush all your shit.”
“Amen.” We stared at each other. “So it’s a done deal?”
“Flushed.” She leaned toward me, smiling. “How was it?”
“What?”
“Banging him.”
I blinked. She looked at Jesse, smirking.
“I saw you coming out of your room together. What did you do, hold chariot races? You give him the whip?”
Twenty years on, and I was still slow to spot the wily glint in her eyes. I colored. “And here I was having trouble recognizing you. You haven’t changed at all.”
“I can flush the shit and still yank your chain.” She cleared her throat. “I have problems with my memory, but I know damn well that nobody in our class was that hot. Wheelchair or not. You brought him with you.”
She gave him another look. Her energy faded, from blue to wistful. “Good for you. Enjoy each other.”
The Hankins kids came storming past, Abbie on their heels.
“Predator beat Alien,” Travis said. “Totally.”
“Raptors could beat Predator,” Dulcie said. “They’re genetically engineered.”
Little Hayley followed them. “What if Barbie fought Predator?”
Abbie shooed them ahead, saying, “Go get yourselves some food,” and hauled me into a hug.
“You run a science-fiction household? I like it,” I said.
“Nothing makes you feel old and stupid like hearing about genetic engineering from an eight-year-old.” She smiled at Valerie. “How you doing, woman?”
“I’m ready for my close-up, don’t you think?” Valerie said.
Across the patio, a group of teachers was congregating. They looked plumper and dowdier than I recalled. Ms. Shepard stood arm in arm with her husband, Dr. Tully Cantwell. She was wearing a tie-dyed magenta skirt and a T-shirt emblazoned with petroglyph designs.
Abbie rolled her eyes. “It’s the center of the cosmos. Remember? Spirals are the Mother Earth navel. . . .”
I put up my hand. “Don’t. That day alienated me from Mother Earth for good.”
“Heh.” She smiled and waved. “Dr. C.”
For frump, Dr. Tully Cantwell had the teachers beat hands down. He had a ruddy face and an endearingly inept combover. He made his way through the crowd toward us. He was the official doctor for Bassett’s sports teams and unofficial sounding board for kids at the school: jovial, sympathetic, and matter-of-fact. With touching devotion, he was wearing a blue-and-green tie and a tie clip that said, Go, Hounds.
Valerie turned away. “I’m sick of doctors. And I don’t need old Smiley Face acting all caring about my health.”
She walked off. Dr. Cantwell approached, extending his hand.
“Abbie. How’s the knee?”
“It’s craptastic, but I’m great. You’re looking dapper.”
He smiled at me as well. “Evan?”
“Got it in one.”
We chatted for a minute before I excused myself and headed to the hot food table. Jesse was getting a drink. Beside him, the Hankins kids were piling their plates with burgers and potato salad.
Dulcie looked sober. “So what if Alien has acid blood. The Borg have shields.”
I got a plate. “I’m with you on that one, girl.”
She stuck out her tongue at her brother.
Hayley stacked cookies on her plate. Barbecued beans slid onto the floor. “If raptors fought the My Little Ponys, the ponies would win because they’re magic.”
I grabbed her plate. When I handed her a pile of napkins she squatted down and wiped the beans into a bigger mess. I took over for her, looking up at Jesse.
“Have you seen Tommy?”
He nodded at the far side of the patio. “He’s up to his elbows in the murder investigation. Looking a little stressed.”
Hayley poked a finger into her potato salad. “Who would win if infinity fought googolplex?”
Jesse and I turned, staring at her.
“Infinity,” Jesse said.
She shook her head. “Googolplex. Infinity’s bigger, but it’s just an eight on its side. Googolplex is ten times ten, ten to the hundredth times. It has powers.”
Jesse and I gaped at each other.
Hayley licked her finger. “I have seven My Little Ponys.”
Two women walked up. “I heard she was tortured. It was ritualistic.” They shook their heads. “Drug addicts.”
Glaring at them, I ushered Hayley away from the table. Jesse took Dulcie and Travis to go find a seat. When I went back to finish cleaning up the spill, Tommy walked past. He was chewing gum, hard. His eyes were red around the edges.
“How you holding up?” I said.
He pulled up his sleeve, showing off two nicotine patches. “Enough said?”
“Sorry.”
“Everybody here has a theory. It’s drug-related. It’s gang-related. It’s satanists. It’s a lust killing. Two people have asked if we’re arresting Kelly’s husband, and Scotty was pulling a double shift on base when it happened.” He mashed his porkpie hat down on his head. “Ritual slaying, that’s popular.”
“I heard that one.”
Across the patio, a group called to him. “Chang. It true he wrote a message on the wall in her blood?”
“That’s it. I’m out of here,” he said.
“They shouldn’t have started serving beer so early.”
“Watch out for yourself, all right?” He winked as Valerie walked up. “And, Rocky, no tackling. Take care, Val.”
“Be good, Tommy,” she said.
She sipped water through a straw, watching him walk across the rec center. “How’d a guy like him end up in such a creepy job?”
“Pardon?”
“Cop. Sometimes they wear a wire. They might be recording your conversation; you never know.” She sipped her water, then stopped. “That sounded paranoid.”
“Slightly.” More than slightly.
“Must be time for more happy pills.” She shrugged, trying to laugh it off. “At least I’m talking about somebody else kicking off. That’s a change of pace.”
Her black humor was as heavy as a fireplace poker. I wondered if it was designed to keep people from getting too close.
I pushed it. “Thirteen classmates—we’re off the scale statistically, Valerie.”
“Curse of China Lake, some such shit.” She peered at me with mock suspicion. “You’re healthy, right?”
“As a herd of My Little Ponys.”
Laughter barked from a nearby table. Stace Wilkins and Bo Krause were hunched over, drinking beer and smoking. They had their backs to us. Bo tipped ash onto his empty plate.
“ ’Tards’ field trip. Little outing for him and chemo girl, but instead of Disneyland they bring him out here and let him get laid by the homecoming queen.”
Stace laughed. “I could get with that.” He slapped his hand against his chest as though he were spastic. “I have special needs.”
I saw black. As in that fireplace poker, swinging hard against the ba
cks of their knees. But I counted to ten, because this was anger, not self-defense, and I didn’t want to get sued by these pinheads.
Valerie set down her water. “You jackholes aren’t kidding.”
They turned around, startled.
“As I recall, you couldn’t find your dicks with both hands and a compass. If there’s retards around, I’m talking to them.”
She turned, her face shiny, and handed me a piece of paper with a phone number and an e-mail address. “Keep in touch.”
Bo and Stace were glaring into their beers. I smiled at Valerie.
“Well done, crude diva. Thanks,” I said.
Her smile was snarky but winning. “A compliment from you? My life’s complete.”
Ceci Lezak sat in her car, watching from the parking lot as everybody went into the rec center for the picnic. She’d been sitting in her car since she left the police station. All night, wide-awake. She couldn’t make herself open the door and get out.
Everybody at the picnic would bombard her with questions. What was it like finding Kelly? How did she look? What did he do to her? Heat pressed in, squeezing her chest until she could barely breathe. If she told them, they would recoil. The sausage casings. Glistening tubes, stinking and bloody. She gagged, her eyes burning.
Wally’s van was parked across the lot. When he pulled in her heart had spun faster. She’d been sure he would come over and comfort her, soothe her with his jolly, authoritative voice. Instead, the brood spilled out of the van, three little towheads whose white-blond hair flickered in the breeze. They all looked like their mother. Abbie climbed out, talking too loud, and Wally waved them toward the rec center and took the backpack from Abbie, lightening her load, and threw his arm around her shoulder. He didn’t even see Ceci.
She started the engine and squealed out of the parking lot. The road was a blur.
She saw Kelly again, sprawled on her back with her skirt pulled up to her waist and her blouse ripped open. The carving knife was shoved into her belly button. Entrails had exploded through the wound. Gray and bloody, intestines like glossy fat worms, bursting from her abdomen and slithering onto the kitchen floor. The smell of offal and excrement and corrosive chemicals had made her gag. But that wasn’t what made her scream.
She couldn’t go home, not alone. Pushing her foot to the floor, she drove to the office.
She felt calm at the office, organized and safe. It was Sunday, so the place was cool and quiet, and it felt like Wally. She turned up the air-conditioning and the sound system. The Muzak soothed her. In exam room one a tray of dental implements sat on the counter. She straightened them into a perfect row an inch apart, arranged by size. The scalers, the little mirror, the curettes and hoes.
Kelly’s legs had been spread, the insides of her thighs slashed. The pattern was orderly, beginning near her knees and growing deeper and longer as they ascended her legs. The slashes looked like claw marks.
The instruments on the tray were sterilized but didn’t look clean. She found a piece of gauze and began polishing them, scrubbing, and scrubbing harder.
Claw marks, but no animal had poured Drano on Kelly’s wounds and watched the lye burn into her shredded flesh. No animal had cut her legs . . . all the way up. No animal had jammed a funnel into the wound on her stomach and poured the rest of the drain cleaner into it.
The screaming was only in her head this time. She gagged and leaned over the sink, fighting off dry heaves.
In the outer office there was a knock on the door. “Hello?”
A woman’s voice, tentative. Ceci spit in the sink and walked out to the desk, holding the sickle scaler.
“May I help you?”
She stopped, brought up short. It wasn’t a woman, but a man with a high-pitched voice. He was holding his palm against his cheek.
“Didn’t mean to startle you,” he said. “Dr. Hankins said to come on over and he’d be right along.”
“I’m sorry?”
His voice was muffled, and she understood the strange pitch: toothache voice. He had on a Go, Hounds baseball cap with little green paw prints, the kind they were passing out at the picnic.
“Cracked a filling,” he said. “Hurts like hell.”
“You came from the rec center?” Ceci said.
“Yeah. Robin Klijsters.”
She frowned, trying to place him. “I know you, don’t I?”
“I was Antonia Shepard’s student teacher. I’m here with Len Bradovich.”
Ceci unwound. Len Bradovich had played on the basketball team. Six-foot-three with soft hands. He never gave her a look and he threw like a girl. Well, well. Robin Klijsters couldn’t have topped five-five. He was soft and pouty and had a silly punk-rock haircut and those cheekbones. Huh. She’d always wondered if Len played for the boy-on-boy team. And here was a girlie little man he’d hooked up with.
His eyes were dark and wide, all pupil. Did pain do that to sissy boys? He dabbed the back of his hand to his forehead.
“Sorry, dentists’ offices make me nervous. Think you could get me set up? I don’t want to hang around longer than I have to.”
Ceci put on her professional smile, businesslike and wise. “Let’s wait for Dr. Hankins. In fact, why don’t I call him and see if he’s—”
“Please.” Pain spun in his eyes. “He said he’d be right here. And Len, I promised him I’d get back to the picnic as soon as possible.”
Pussy-whipped, and by another man. What a homo. He was even wearing a fanny pack. Heterosexual men didn’t wear fanny packs, except maybe artists or academic types.
She waved him through. “Come on back.”
In the exam room she gestured toward the chair, patting him on the shoulder, as she liked to do with nervous patients. He flinched. So did she. Under the baggy shirt he was rock-hard. She put on her safety glasses, snapped on a pair of latex gloves and pulled over the implement tray. He had not sat down.
She gestured again to the chair and turned on the big examination light. “Please, Mr. Klijsters. The only way we’ll repair that filling is if you sit down and open your mouth.”
She put a hand on his back, nudging him toward the chair. He lurched, grabbed the examination light, and swung it into her chin.
Ceci’s head snapped back. What the hell? She put a hand to her mouth. She’d bitten her tongue. She stared at Klijsters, appalled.
“You freaking little wussy,” she said.
He swung his arm, backhanding her across the face. Her safety glasses flew off. She crashed into the implement tray. Oh, shit.
He stood absolutely still, staring at her with those black eyes.
She grabbed a curette from the implement tray. Before she could think twice, she stabbed him with it. She shoved it straight at his chest, impaling him through his shirt.
He jerked from the impact, but his eyes remained cool.
“Fight,” he said. “Excellent.”
The curette protruded from his chest. Blood coursed down the front of his shirt. He let it run. He didn’t flinch. He unzipped the fanny pack.
Ceci ran for the door.
The Taser darts struck the back of her blouse. She went rigid, hair to fingertips, vision streaking white with the electric shock. She saw the room tipping sideways, heard the noise as she hit the implement tray. She crashed to the floor.
She heard a sound. Snap. Snap. Klijsters was double-gloving.
He hit the power button for the dentist’s chair, raising it and tilting back the seat. The examination light hung above Ceci’s face, surgically bright. Her hands and feet were bound to the chair with electrical tape.
Klijsters appeared above her. He was no longer cringing with toothache. And he wasn’t Robin Klijsters, she knew. He looked calm.
“Now.”
She heard the sound of metal implements tinging against each other. The sickle scaler appeared in his hand. The pick on the end was long and slightly curved and sharp at the tip. He leaned toward her.
“No,” she said
.
She turned her head away. The Taser appeared in his other hand. It was shaped like a gun, but with electrical contacts instead of a muzzle at the end of a solid barrel. He pressed the contacts to her eyelids.
“Do not move.”
She smelled talc and latex. He touched the sickle scaler to her lips. She felt the raggedness of her tongue where she’d bitten it. Klijsters leaned closer. The sickle scaler teased her mouth and poked into her lower lip, pulling it open.
“Does it hurt?” he said.
“Stop. Don’t,” she mumbled.
His eyes examined her face. He jammed the scaler all the way through her lip and pulled it up as though she were a trout hooked on a lure.
“Answer me. Does it hurt?”
She shrieked. He hit her with the Taser again. Her vision shot white and she jerked stiff.
He twisted the scaler through her lip and ripped, tearing her mouth open like a broken zipper. She felt a warm gush of blood, and gutted flesh and numbness.
He touched the bloody scaler to her cheek. His gaze was clinical. The scaler groped its way up her face, covered with the gore of her bottom lip. The sharp tip tugged her flesh like a talon.
His face was all business. The scaler clawed its way up her cheek. Deeper, cutting open her face, again and again.
He put his thumb and forefinger on either side of her left eye and spread the lid wide.
“Answer me. Does it hurt?”
His eyes were dispassionate, but more. Like the guys Wally talked about who should never have been admitted to dental school, the Little Shop of Horrors dentists who loved it too much. And then a great sob welled inside her chest, because she knew that Wally wasn’t on his way over here. Nobody was.
Behind her ruined lip she worked her tongue to form the word. “No.”
He drove the scaler into her eye.
4
When the patrolman appeared at the rec center flanked by two Shore Patrol officers, I was talking to Becky O’Keefe. She had a little photo album open on the picnic table, showing me pictures of her two-year-old son.
“He’s a fireball.” She smiled broadly. “You’ve really written three novels? That is so neat.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s always awesome when you can find a way to make your passion work. Like me and crafts.”
