Daddy's Little Girl

by Ed Gorman

  “Hi,” Carnes said to the waitress.

  “His.”

  “I’m looking for my daughter.”

  The waitress laughed. “I know how that goes. I’ve got one of my own. Nine years old in a week.”

  “This one’s a little older. Sixteen.” Carnes described her. “I thought maybe she’d come over, to use your bathroom or get a drink or something.”

  The waitress shook her head. Sympathy tucked at her mouth and shone in her eyes. “I’m sure she’s all right. Probably just stretching her legs.”

  “Yeah,” Carnes said. “Well, thanks.”

  He went back outside, the greasy smell of fried food following him.

  The first thing he did was check the Volvo. Maybe the waitress was correct. Maybe Deirdre was just stretching her legs.

  The Volvo was empty.

  Unreasonable terror gripped Carnes now. His heart began slamming against his chest. His bowels tightened to the point of pain.

  He went back into the motel office.

  The old man was just as slow getting up this time. No matter what his resemblance to Edgar Buchanan, the old man no longer amused him.

  “My daughter,” Carnes blurted, “have you seen her?”

  “What daughter?” the clerk said. “Hell, mister, you didn’t list no daughter on the registration.” He nodded solemnly to the book.

  Which was true. Carnes had listed only himself. Somehow it just hadn’t seemed important to list Deirdre.

  “Do you have a public toilet that she might have used?”

  “Nope. Only johnnies we got are in the rooms, except for the one behind me. And I didn’t see her, mister.”

  Carnes stared at the old man as if he were trying to divine some secret in the clerk’s face.

  But there was nothing to learn from the Edgar Buchanan visage, except that here was a man who didn’t give a damn about anything else around him. Not as long as Johnny Carson was on the air.

  Carnes burst out of the motel office, back to the macadam and the Volvo.

  Hoping against hope, he jerked open the back door and searched under the luggage piled on the seat.

  Nothing.

  Irrationally, only dimly aware that what he was about to do made absolutely no sense, he went around to the rear of the car and opened the trunk.

  Maniacally, he began hurling suitcases and clothes to the pavement, as if she might somehow be hiding beneath them and getting ready to jump up and surprise him.

  Nothing, nothing, nothing.

  Carnes surveyed the vast dark night, the long road he’d traveled up to the motel, the interstate with its roaring trucks beyond, the starry sky.

  Nothing.

  A bittersweet prayer caught in his throat. He rarely prayed, and then only selfishly. But for now all he knew how to do was pray.

  Dear God, please bring her back to me safely.

  Please.

  3

  The promise had been kept.

  His gift had been delivered.

  The man had brought her to the edge of the woods and left her there.

  Now she was his.

  At first he was so excited he didn’t know how to treat her.

  She had started to revive from the punches on her head ... and then he had to apply some of his own force to keep her quiet.

  He threw her over his shoulder and proceeded on through the woods.

  He could imagine the animals smiling at him.

  Happy for him.

  It had been so long since—

  He liked the way her breasts felt against his back as he carried her through the piney darkness.

  Sumptuous flesh.

  Jostling.

  His mouth got dry.

  She was going to be much more fun than the last one.

  That one had died too soon.

  Before he could even experiment with her—

  Before he could see her cry—

  At one point he had to set her down.

  In a bed of leaves.

  He knelt beside her, watching her in the moonlight.

  Watching the jut of her hips in her jeans, the press of her breasts against the fabric of her blouse. The innocent erotic slant of her mouth.

  He put a hand out to touch her and that’s when he noticed the blood.

  Not a good thing.

  Blood on your hands.

  If anybody saw him later they’d be suspicious.

  Maybe even try to hurt him.

  People were like that.

  They didn’t understand that you did what you did only because you had no choice, only because there was such a need and a longing—

  Some nights he lay in bed and writhed like the drug addicts he’d seen on television. Writhed with need. Hunger.

  He examined her briefly, afraid she would die. He didn’t want her to die.

  Dead, he couldn’t use her the way he wanted to—

  He touched his head to her chest.

  Still breathing.

  Then he looked on her dotingly, as if she were a small field animal like a mouse or something—

  He wanted her to live.

  For his sake—

  The blood, he’d found, had come from where she’d been punched by the other man.

  He was a brutal man, no doubt about that.

  He lifted her gently again, putting her up on his shoulders.

  Started further into the woods.

  The moon followed him.

  An ancient, cold companion.

  Watching.

  He was happy.

  Excited.

  He had his gift.

  And nothing could take it from him.

  He had his gift.

  And she was going to live.

  Long enough so that he could have the kind of pleasure his needs demanded.

  Long enough so that she’d cry.

  Oh yes, oh yes; she’d cry.

  4

  Some day she was going to clean up this place.

  Beth Daye, running a slender hand through her silken dark hair, stood in the tiny outer office of the Burton County Sentinel, of which she was publisher, editor, and sales staff, and put a frown on her pretty face.

  At thirty-two, widow of Sam Daye, who had been the Sentinel’s publisher for twenty years before his death, Beth should by now have become accustomed to the mess the small place was always in.

  Across all three desks were littered ad layouts, pieces of copy, illustrations, unanswered pink phone messages, empty plastic coffee cups, paste-up sheets, back issues of the Sentinel, and even a stray chicken bone or two from the Kentucky Fried next door.

  It was a long way from the Times, she thought, surveying the mess; a newspaper that carried little more than wedding announcements and softball scores, with a chicken shop on one side and a barber shop on the other, was hardly the bane of journalism. Still and all, it was a newspaper she loved, whatever its size and shortcomings, particularly since it filled the vaguely gnawing void left by the death of her husband two years earlier.

  Without children, and without quite giving herself permission to find another man, Beth had little else in life except the Sentinel. She gave herself to it as passionately as she’d once given herself to Sam.

  And anyway, she thought, since finding Sam’s notebook in his army duffle bag in the attic, she could well be onto something that resembled a genuine journalistic scoop, though precisely what it was, she had no idea.

  Not yet.

  Pushing herself slowly into the interior office, she cleared some papers off the chair in front of her Royal Selectric and sat down, tossing an armload of brand new Sentinels on her desk.

  It still thrilled her, the smell of fresh ink, the feel of a minutes-old newspaper. She had her printing done two blocks away, and every week at around this time, eleven or so at night, she walked down there to get sample copies and bring them back.

  Tonight, however, Beth did not spend as much time as usual reading through the paper.

  I
nstead, her tired mind drifted back to the pages of her husband’s notebook. She was still curious as to why he’d chosen to hide it where she would obviously never find it. Whom was he afraid of? Her—his wife of six years?

  She put her feet up on the desk, wishing she could have one of the Salems she’d managed to quit four months ago, closing her eyes and trying to recall the exact, and curious, phrasing of her husband’s notebook on the first page.

  June 8, 1953. The insatiable animal is born.

  Since discovering the notebook, quite by accident as she’d looked through the attic with an eye to throwing unused things away, she had spent the day trying to find out what, if anything, had happened in Burton on June 8, 1953. Lettie Bolan, the ancient librarian who could have guided her through the newspaper stacks in the library basement, was off today with a head cold.

  Tomorrow, then. First thing. It was a nagging problem that would have to be resolved—June 8, 1953; she found herself doodling the date on scratch pads, on napkins at lunch, on grocery lists at the supermarket.

  As for the rest of the notebook, it was no help at all. It was blank, except for that one cryptic notation.

  At first, wildly, her mind had conjectured that the notation might have had something to do with Sam’s death. But no. Impossible. The car accident had been the result of something far more sinister than melodramatic plots. Sam had been an alcoholic, albeit one who could not admit the truth to himself or his wife. He had died not in some criminal conspiracy but by running blindly into a tree at seventy miles per hour. Volkswagens just weren’t meant for that kind of treatment.

  Still, the phrase from the notebook teased and taunted her as she thought of how Sam had been the last few weeks of his life. Tense, angry. At the time she’d put his behavior down to alcohol and some minor financial problems the paper was having.

  Now she wondered....

  For tonight, at least, she decided, she had to put all her dark thoughts out of her mind.

  Because this was the day she put the Sentinel to bed, the longest day of her week, she was tired to the point of exhaustion and needed sleep badly. Sleep never seemed to come when she was brooding about something....

  The rasping against her rear window didn’t bother her at first. She assumed it was the sudden wind brushing a budding branch against the glass.

  She closed her eyes and leaned back in the chair, trying to summon enough strength to get up, get in her car, and drive home.

  She was deep into an Agatha Christie. A chapter or two of that and she’d be wonderfully asleep....

  The rasping again.

  This time an alarm went off in her nervous system; she started, turning reluctantly toward the glass.

  A yellowed venetian blind, gray in places with dust, covered the window that opened onto the alley out back. Usually the narrow alley was home for nothing more dangerous than prowling cats and dogs and an occasional vagrant passing through town bedding down for a night’s sleep.

  For some reason, she was afraid to know what was out there now....

  This time the noise was more a pawing than a rasping.

  Swallowing hard, wanting to get it over with, Beth approached the window just as a small animal noise started to accompany the pawing.

  Like something pleading, almost ...

  Beth jerked back the venetian blind, the metal clacking with the violence of her move, and there he stood.

  Richard.

  He had a last name, but nobody ever used it. He was just Richard, a man who wore scarecrow clothes and reeked of sweat, a man whose dark, stupid eyes spoke of unending suffering.

  Richard had suffered what folks around Burton called an “accident.” The feeling was he’d fallen down a slope and injured himself at play. But Richard, in his slow, tortured way, knew better.

  Richard, then a young boy with all his faculties, had been playing in the woods one day when he saw another boy his age doing something with himself that Richard knew was wrong.

  At least everybody said it was wrong.

  Said it caused you to go blind.

  Said it made you crazy.

  There were even stories that this was how you were turned into a werewolf....

  Then the other boy had seen Richard and started up the hill after him.

  Afraid, Richard had run.

  But the other boy, strong, agile, quick, had pursued Richard and caught him.

  “You’ll tell, won’t you?”

  “No, I won’t, I promise,” Richard pleaded.

  The other boy smiled nastily.

  Then, quietly, he picked up a nearby rock and smashed it against Richard’s head.

  Smashed it several times ...

  Each generation of Burton children discovered Richard for itself, discovered how much fun he was to throw stones at and laugh at, to run from as he shuffled down the street as if he were the authentic boogeyman, to make up lies about when it was midnight and time to tell ghost stories.

  The ministers and priests of Burton kept Richard alive by having him do handy work and giving him three meals a day. He slept in the basement of a Catholic church. He always seemed to be on some mysterious mission, his feet shuffling fast, his dark eyes vaguely excited. But if you followed him you saw that his missions, many and varied as they were, were not at all mysterious. He was just out to collect pop cans that nobody wanted, so he could haul them in for nickels; or to find pretty stones and skip them along the river; or to sit on the edge of a field and watch animals play in open fields, as if he understood them in a way no normal human being could. Beth had seen him cry once when a group of boys trapped him against a barn—seen the fear and terror in his eyes spill over into tears. She had been so moved by pity that she was dumbstruck. When she finally gathered her senses she had cracked one of the boys across the mouth hard enough to draw blood.

  Looking at him now, she realized that he could have been thirty or seventy. There was something ageless in his innocent, dumb face. In his ragged brown suit coat, which hung slackly on his bony frame, he looked at her with imploring eyes. You never knew what Richard wanted. Food, or simply to touch some bright piece of clothing you were wearing. Or simply to evoke a smile for some arcane reason of his own.

  She stared at him, at the brown teeth, the unshaven chin, the straw-colored, dirty hair. She shook her head in a burdened pity.

  She was about to invite him in, tell him she’d go next door and buy him a chicken leg (he was fussy about which chicken parts he ate), when for the first time she noticed the long, slender hands he was holding up to her, as if for inspection.

  Horror filled her as she moved closer to the window for a better look at the dark coloration staining his hands.

  Even from here, even in light less than optimum, she knew what she was seeing.

  She knew what Richard had all over his hands.

  There could be no mistaking.

  Blood.

  Chapter Two

  1

  Behind the crowd of onlookers, many of whom were dressed in the pajamas, robes, and nightgowns they’d been wearing in their motel rooms, flashing red emergency lights appeared to bathe them in a bloody glow.

  The sheriff, the man Adam Carnes had called ten minutes ago, was pulling into the motel driveway.

  The onlookers had been attracted to the noise Carnes had been making as he’d combed the local countryside in a crazed search for any sign of Deirdre. A few people had joined in to help him. Deirdre had been missing nearly half an hour now.

  The sheriff was a tall, flabby man in his early sixties who introduced himself as Bill Wayman. That he looked wide awake and sober at this time of night impressed Carnes, who had feared that the local law would resemble the Jackie Gleason character in the “Smokey” movies.

  “She’s gone,” Carnes said as soon as Wayman had finished the introductions. Carnes knew how shaky he sounded and appeared. He could gauge his present condition by the expressions of the onlookers. Most seemed sorry for him, a few seemed just
happy for the excitement, and a handful looked as though no real man, even with his daughter missing, should carry on this way.

  Sheriff Wayman shusshed the crowd away as if he were dispersing a herd of cattle. Tilting his western-style hat off his head to reveal a bald dome with white fringes, he nodded to the motel office and said, “Why don’t we go up there, Mr. Carnes, where we can talk in private?”

  Carnes agreed, moving automatically up the incline to where the motel clerk stood outside sipping on a Coke. “She’ll turn up, son. You wait and see.” There was real sympathy in his voice. Carnes appreciated it.

  “You mind if we use your office, Slocum?” Sheriff Wayman asked the man.

  “Heck, no, Sheriff.” Slocum even held the door for them.

  Inside, the sheriff found a coffee pot that still held liquid and poured them both a cup. Ordinarily, Carnes never drank coffee past six p.m. Tonight he had a terrible sense that he was going to drink pots of the stuff before the light of tomorrow morning.

  Wayman sat down with a squeak of leather from his gunbelt and the deep sigh of a man carrying too much weight. He had an eagle beak of a nose, brown intelligent eyes, and a leisurely, reassuring manner. Carnes trusted the man.

  Wayman tucked a sardonic twist on his mouth. “Afraid I’m going to have to ask you a few questions that may irritate you, Mr. Carnes.”

  “How about calling me Adam?”

  “Sure,” Wayman said, “if that’s what makes you comfortable.”

  Carnes nodded, impatient to get on with the interview.

  “Did you and your daughter have an argument?”

  “She didn’t run away, Sheriff. That I can say for sure.” Carnes could not keep the testiness out of his voice.

  “I said I was going to irritate you,” Wayman reminded him gently.

  Carnes cooled down. “She didn’t run away, Sheriff.” He explained the divorce situation, how this was their first extended time together. “She was looking forward to the trip as much as I am.” He realized with brutal reality that he had just spoken in the past tense where Deirdre was concerned.

  Please, dear God.

  “So you didn’t have any arguments?”