Daddy's Little Girl

by Ed Gorman

  “Neither do I,” Carnes said, standing up. “All I know right now is that it means something.”

  In a rush, they left the library.

  4

  “You feelin’ all right, Vince?” Donna said.

  Vince glowered at her. “I ask you to call your cousin in Texas and ask her if she’d like some visitors, and you’re treating me like I’m a lunatic.”

  Donna and Vince sat in the breakfast nook of their mobile home. It was near the end of his lunch hour. Donna didn’t know what to make of the last half hour. Usually Vince came home and wanted a little food and a little sex. Sometimes he relaxed to the point of kicking off his boots and sitting in the recliner and watching a soap opera with her. Today he had burst through the door telling her to call her cousin in Texas and see if it would be all right if they came down there for a few days.

  Her cousin in Texas!

  Why they barely had enough money in the bank to get them through till payday.

  Texas!

  But there’d been no reasoning with him. He’d even gone into the bedroom and started throwing things into a suitcase. She could never recall having seen him like this. He reminded her of a spooked horse she’d once seen. Nothing was able to calm that mare down. Nothing she did was able to calm Vince down.

  “Hon,” she said.

  He still glared at her. He scared her.

  “What?”

  “You want a Valium?”

  “No, I don’t want a Valium.”

  “Hon?”

  “What?”

  “You’re scarin’ me, you know that?”

  He kept his eyes on her—bulging, mad eyes—but he did not say a word.

  Just watched.

  She collected the dishes. He watched. She washed them. He watched.

  All unblinkingly.

  Watching.

  She wanted to go over and close his eyes, the way you did a dead person’s.

  He was terrifying her.

  Finally, she turned away from the sink and back to him.

  He said, “You come over here and sit down.”

  “You’re not going to hurt me, are you?”

  “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “You promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “Well,” she said.

  “You come over here and sit down,” he said. It was still a command, but a softer one.

  She went over and sat down.

  He surprised her by putting his hand out.

  She touched it with her own hand at once, thankful for the intimacy and love his gesture implied.

  “I want to tell you something,” he said.

  “What?”

  “But I want you to promise me you won’t scream and you won’t tell anybody.”

  “I promise.”

  “Don’t promise too fast. Think about it. I want your promise to be serious.”

  “All my promises are serious, hon.”

  “Not all of them.”

  She thought a moment. A long moment. “All right. I promise.”

  He said, “I think they’re going to try to kill me. Probably tonight.”

  She looked as if she was going to scream.

  He pointed at her. “You promised.”

  She slapped her hand over her mouth.

  Then, taking her hand away, she said, “Who is going to kill you? Nobody’d want to kill you, Vince. You’re a popular man in Burton.”

  “I know something, babe. Something I shouldn’t.”

  “What do you know?”

  He laughed. He sounded crazy. It was the fear, she knew. “That’s the funny thing. I don’t know what I know.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Right now, what I know doesn’t matter. Right now all that matters is that we’ve got to get our money out of the bank in cash and get out of here. You heard about Reverend Heath this morning?”

  She clucked. “Why would a minister kill himself?”

  “That’s the point, babe.”

  “What?”

  “He didn’t kill himself. He was murdered.”

  “But everbody—”

  “Everybody thinks he killed himself. That’s just what they want everybody to think.”

  “But—”

  He shusshed her.

  Then he got up and walked down the narrow corridor of the trailer to the rear. He had heard gravel crunching on the lot outside.

  He flicked back the curtain and peered outside.

  Even from the living room she could hear the click of his service revolver as the safety was pushed off.

  “Honey,” she said, getting up, running to him.

  “They’re here,” he said, taking aim with his weapon. “They’re here.”

  5

  Richard could not stop picking his nose.

  The retarded man knew that it was not polite to walk along the roadside, in full view of any oncoming traffic, with his finger scooping out the treasures to be found in his nose ... but he did it, anyway.

  The stretch ahead of him was long. He was tired from not getting much sleep last night, and tired of the questions he’d had to answer today. First from Beth, then from Vince Reeves, and then from the man named Carnes.

  The man named Carnes frightened Richard.

  He sensed that Carnes was capable of hurting him, the same way the man had hurt him last night when Richard had found the blood.

  Richard winced, trying to blank out his senses so that the thought of pain would go away.

  The man in the butcher’s apron had been very good at inflicting pain. First he had gotten Richard on the ground and started to twist his ear until Richard had cried out ... and then he took to kicking Richard in the groin and the sides until Richard had almost blacked out.

  Richard had escaped, his hands slick with the blood he’d found, his sides aching from the punishment the man in the apron had given him.

  Richard paused on his journey, fascinated with the sudden appearance of a black crow against the skyline. The crow swooped and wheeled in the blue of the sky. Richard got tears in his eyes instantly. Something about birds moved him profoundly. Maybe it was their freedom. Maybe it was their beauty. He didn’t know and really didn’t give it much thought. All he knew was that he wished he knew how to fly.... The people of Burton thought he was completely stupid, which was not the case at all. Indeed, he used his slowness as a weapon ... a means of keeping them from knowing what was really going on in his shattered little world.

  But then ... he was not smart, either.

  He watched the crow, enviously.

  No ... he was not smart. Ever since the accident years before ... he would phase in and out of reality. Sometimes reality was too terrible to contemplate, and so he retreated into a world of his own making ... populated by cute, friendly animals who spoke as animals did in stories for children ... animals who believed in, and cherished, and nurtured Richard ... animals who could be counted on to fill his long dark hours with the light of affection....

  Not like the man last night.

  Richard moved the sun out of his eyes by bringing a knuckly hand to his forehead.

  Up yonder was the Foster estate where nice Ruth Foster and nice Minerva lived. He liked the long walk to the mansion—then he remembered Jake Darcy, the handyman who worked there. Jake, who gave Richard cookies. Jake was gentle with Richard and even spoke up for Richard when the townspeople started making fun of him. That’s where Richard would go now, not to the Foster estate, but to Jake’s.

  So he turned around and headed back toward town, where Jake lived.

  Yes, it was Jake he would tell about the man in the apron, because it had been near the Foster estate that Richard had found the blood and had seen the man.

  Yes, then he would feel better, Richard would. Feel much better. Not have to listen to any more questions rain on him like fists.

  Yes, he would feel much better when he had discussed the man with Jake.

  R
ichard trudged onward, peaceful for the first time since he’d awakened this morning to find the man with the knife in his room.

  So far he had done exactly what the man had told him to do—kept to himself what he’d seen last night.

  The man had put the knife to Richard’s throat and pressed hard enough that Richard had started to cry.

  He knew what the man could do ... send Richard to death.

  Richard knew death was a bad place. A very bad place.

  A couple of teenagers drove by in a VW and honked their horn, startling Richard. They laughed and smirked as they drove past.

  Richard put his eyes to the ground.

  He had learned long ago that in this world it was better to be meek and foolish if you wanted to survive evil.

  Then he broke into a loping, almost comic run. He was going to see his good friend Jake ... the only good friend he had in the world.

  6

  Minerva stood at the basement door, saying a prayer under her breath.

  Then she put out a hand and touched the doorknob.

  The door opened with no problem.

  Last night, after being knocked unconscious, and not by any bat, either, Minerva had made herself a promise. She was going to go into the basement and check it out thoroughly.

  Over the years the curious noises had continued. Seeping up from the basement like poison gases.

  There had to be an explanation.

  A logical one.

  Minerva, her heart hammering, widened the door even more, then peered down into the darkness of the stairs.

  A strange sense of void filled the woman, as if she was looking down into the center of a vortex.

  Summoning her strength, she put out a tentative foot and started down the steps, clipping on the light as she moved.

  The basement was broken up into a wide, empty concrete area, to the right of which lay small cubicles constructed of wood that always smelled like autumn to Minerva, a damp, leafy odor.

  The cubicles stretched back the entire length of the house. Each was dark, empty, from the days decades ago when antiques had been stored in them, the Foster clan in those days having been collectors.

  Minerva had often thought that anything could be hiding in the cubicles and nobody would ever know—until it was too late.

  Minerva started her inspection, walking down the line of cubicles—which put her in mind of the Catacombs she’d studied about in her Sunday school days—flicking her eyes into each one as she passed.

  She had not forgotten last night, how something had appeared out of the darkness and knocked her unconscious.

  A sheen of sweat appeared on her face. She ground her nails into the palms of her hands.

  But she was not going to retreat. Once and for all she was going to see if something was in the basement, or if it was, just as Ruth Foster said, only animals that had somehow gotten in through a window.

  The further Minerva went toward the rear of the basement, the darker it became, the narrower her passage. She began to feel as if she were in a crypt, especially when spiderwebs showed silver in the murky light, and the feeling of dampness got much heavier.

  She came to one cubicle with a door in it. Odd, she thought, that one should have a door, when the rest didn’t.

  Immediately, she tested the knob.

  The door wouldn’t budge.

  Wiping sweat off with her sleeve, Minerva stood back from the door, staring at it, as if she had magical powers to remove the padlock that kept it shut.

  She did not want to tell Ruth—who was taking her afternoon nap—what she was doing. That would upset her employer, no doubt about it.

  Instead, she went back to the front of the basement where a tool kit was kept. Minerva got a hammer and a large screwdriver.

  Back at the door, using the screwdriver as a lever, she began work on the padlock. Three strikes of the hammer and the lock fell to the ground, clattering.

  Minerva pushed open the door. It creaked on rusting hinges.

  The smell inside was foul, rancid, as if spoiled meat had been stored here.

  She took the flashlight that she had tucked inside her belt and sprayed light around.

  This cubicle, too, was empty.

  She went inside, shining the light into each corner, across the floor.

  She was just about to give up when she heard what was unmistakably a footstep.

  A leather shoe creaking.

  She just had time to register this impression in her mind when the door in front of her closed.

  Slammed tightly shut.

  In her panic, Minerva dropped her flashlight. Its glass shattered on the floor, going dark.

  Minerva threw herself against the door, pounding. She screamed, “Open the door! Open the door!”

  The squeak of leather shoes again.

  Moving closer.

  Minerva got her wish.

  The door opened.

  A shadowy face began to peer in.

  Minerva, horrified, covered her eyes.

  Long seconds passed.

  She could scarcely breathe.

  She sensed, rather than saw, her visitor move on.

  After a time, praying that the basement was safe again, Minerva started away from the wall.

  Dimly, she heard the squeaking shoe leather retreating.

  The basement was free.

  At least for now.

  Chapter Eight

  1

  She was a woman who had aged long before her time.

  She sat in a rocking chair in front of a fuzzy color television set in a house filled with plastic cuckoo clocks and large lace doilies. She wore a housecoat the color of pewter, and there were enough blue veins in her face to give the impression of illness.

  Despite her white hair, her thick glasses, and her old-lady shawl, she was not much older than Adam Carnes and Beth Daye, who sat across from her.

  The woman was Dora Jean Williams, the same Dora Jean who had been molested in June of 1953 by somebody she’d described to the police as sounding like an animal.

  “I guess it’s warm enough for iced tea,” Dora Jean’s mother said, coming back into the tiny living room with a tray loaded with iced tea glasses and cookies.

  Carnes and Beth were polite enough to partake.

  Carnes sat there during the next few minutes scarcely able to restrain himself. He was having one of those moments of panic. Terrible, bloody visions of his daughter’s fate filled his mind.

  Grasping at straws though he was, he was hoping that maybe this woman could tell him something useful ... something that would at least get the sheriff working on his behalf instead of treating his daughter like just another runaway.

  Carnes watched Mrs. Williams sit across from her daughter, staring at her fondly. Mrs. Williams had explained that a few years after the incident in the park with the would-be rapist, Dora Jean, who had always been nervous anyway, had suffered a breakdown.

  Here she was now, a zombie of sorts.

  Mrs. Williams had said that she was difficult to talk to, but that she didn’t see any harm in trying. She said Dora Jean didn’t get upset about the incident anymore. Talked about it freely, as a matter of fact. Her depression and anxiety were so generalized that neither their presence nor their questions would disturb her.

  “Dora Jean, honey, these two nice people would like to ask you some questions.”

  Dora Jean looked over at them and smiled with bad teeth.

  “Honey, they want to ask you about that night in the park. That night with the man.”

  For a moment Dora Jean’s face clouded. She frowned. She appeared on the verge of tears.

  Then her expression cleared and she smiled at them again.

  “He was a very bad man,” Dora Jean said.

  “You said he sounded like an animal,” Carnes said. “What did you mean by that?”

  Dora Jean shrugged, her shawl slipping down from around her shoulders. Her mother got up and went over and put the shawl back
up where it belonged.

  “He growled. Like a dog.” Dora Jean smiled again.

  This time the smile told Carnes just how far gone the poor woman was.

  Beth Daye put her tender hand on his. To steady him. Obviously, she sensed what he was going through.

  “Was there anything else special you remember about him, Dora Jean?” Carnes asked.

  “He ran. Very fast.”

  Carnes sighed. Glanced at her mother. The woman was shaking her head at Dora Jean. Obviously the victim wasn’t getting upset by the questions, but her mother was.

  Carnes tried to be as delicate as possible, “Did you see his face?”

  At that Dora Jean looked puzzled.

  Then suddenly she broke into tears.

  Her mother was up on her feet and comforting Dora Jean in seconds.

  She cuddled the woman the way she would have an infant.

  Dora Jean sobbed softly into her mother’s arms.

  “Kenny,” Dora Jean said.

  Carnes and Beth looked at each other.

  “There now, there now,” Mrs. Williams said.

  But Dora Jean distinctly said it again.

  “Kenny.”

  “Who is Kenny?” Carnes asked, leaning forward.

  “Dora Jean just gets confused sometimes, don’t you, honey?”

  Dora Jean looked up at her mother. Nodded softly. “There now. You just calm yourself.”

  It was obvious to Carnes that the woman did not want them to continue asking questions about the name “Kenny.”

  Why, Carnes couldn’t fathom. Until a few moments ago, the woman had been extremely cooperative and helpful.

  Carnes sensed that Mrs. Williams wanted them to go now. Her displeasure was on the air, thick as the dust in the sunlight.

  Dora Jean had gone back to dumbly staring at the TV.

  Beth was edgily tapping her nails on her knee.

  “Dora Jean,” Carnes said.

  Mrs. Williams glanced over at him unhappily. “Maybe it’s time for you to go, Mr. Carnes.”

  “She mentioned Kenny.”

  Mrs. Williams sighed. “That she did, Mr. Carnes.”

  “Well, don’t I have a right to know who that is?”

  “Like I said, Mr. Carnes, Dora Jean, as you might well imagine, just gets confused sometimes. She gets confused especially about that night when the incident took place. She’s described various people as being there that night—and chasing her. The psychologist we saw for a long time said that Dora Jean had always felt secretly persecuted, so that she fantasizes about any number of people being in the park that night.” Mrs. Williams smiled, trying to make the moment more pleasant. “Why, there have been times when Dora Jean imagines it was me who chased her that night. Haven’t you, honey?”