A Face at the Window

by Sarah Graves

  "Who is this?" But she knew; the new blister throbbed as her hand tightened on the wheel.

  "Don't talk. Listen." Campbell's raspy voice. "Now that you know who's really in control here, I think we should meet. Soon."

  She fought to control her own voice. "What have you done with Lee? The little girl?"

  "Nothing. I'm not in the habit of harming kids. Don't annoy me, though, or I might change that."

  With an effort she bit back a retort. "What do you want?"

  "Not so fast. You need to understand me, first. Get a real sense of our…special relationship."

  I understand you, you murdering son of a bitch. She passed the old power plant, painted army green, at the rear of a field full of yellow goldenrod off Route 190.

  "It's a stony road you're traveling, Jacobia," he said. "I think you should stay on it a while. See what you might find. And not to alarm you, but…you'd better hurry."

  The connection went dead. She cursed at the phone, pulled to the side of the road, and punched in Sandy O’Neill's number again, got his voice mail yet again—what the hell was he doing?— and left an urgent message asking him to call her back. Then she keyed in Bob Arnold's number, paused, and canceled it before throwing the phone down and pulling back out onto the pavement.

  If she called Bob now and this was just another taunt from Campbell, a false alarm, then her credibility with Bob would be even more damaged than it already was. Having the phone meant she could still summon help in an instant, though, if she needed it. So…

  Wait. Don't do anything until you know something. And then she saw it, opposite the airport driveway on her left: a street sign. Stony Road ran uphill past a wire-fenced pony paddock. Two brown-and-white Shetlands frisked in the neatly kept enclosure while a girl in boots forked out fresh hay.

  Jake took the turn. The road climbed steadily around a field of sunflowers. At the end of it stood a ranch-style house with another horse fenced in behind it, this one a roan mare. A German shepherd dog got up alertly from his spot in front of the garage as she went by.

  Past the house a sandy cut ran through raspberry cane and burdock. She slowed again, feeling the car's tires digging in as around the next curve the road opened into a gravel pit, behind it a wooded area with trails; she'd often brought the dogs for long walks here. She stopped when the track ended at a mountain of sand, the car door's slam loud as a rifle shot. A crow flapped overhead, cawing as it vanished into the trees.

  "Hello?" Kids came here to ride ATVs and scramble around in the sand, though it was forbidden as unsafe, and it was an-other isolated place on the island where the older ones gathered to drink beer and hang out, as a litter of cans and other detritus showed.

  But now it was deserted except for a yellow backhoe parked a few yards from a mountain of gravel near what looked like a brush heap. A loose rock clattered down the gravel pile; startled, she whirled, then felt foolish. Unless—

  Better hurry… Around her, shadows lengthened; at nearly five o'clock the sky was still light overhead but to the east it was deepening fast, a few early stars coming out in it. The brush heap was larger than she'd thought, filling and towering up from an excavated depression at the pit's far end.

  She approached it. Campbell had been hinting at something with his remark about the stony road; it couldn't possibly be a coincidence. But when she peered in, slash-cut brush was all that she could see in the pit.

  She opened the phone, punched in all but the last digit of Bob Arnold's number, then crept to the edge of the brush heap. It smelled faintly of gasoline.

  Puzzled, she peered through the branches, took a few steps back and approached the heap of cut greenery and tree limbs from the other side. A car lay half on its side, backed at an angle into the depression behind the brush heap.

  Above and behind it loomed the huge pile of stones with the backhoe standing silent beside it, so that between the brush and the stone heap the car was hidden unless you looked just so. It was a black Ford sedan with a pink plastic barrette clipped to the right front sun visor.

  Helen's car. The driver's side door was exposed, facing up. The windshield was intact, as were the other windows Jake could see, on the passenger side. Leaning against the car, she peered in. The keys hung in the ignition on Helen's beaded key fob. And something was in the backseat.

  Not Lee. Don't let it be…

  Stuffing the phone in her pocket to grasp the door handle with both hands, she pulled, braced her feet apart, and pulled harder. Opening the latch was easy but the car rested on a sharp slant so lifting the door up against gravity was a struggle. When the opening was as wide as her body, she slipped in and pushed up from behind it, until the door opened the rest of the way.

  "Lee?" Heart thudding, she crawled in, releasing the door very carefully. It stayed open, and it would only take a moment to be sure about the thing on the seat. Please not…

  Dark. Her weight made the car settle, branches scraping all around and beneath it. "Baby, are you … ?"

  She knelt on the front seat, leaned over, and put her hands out, feeling around. On the backseat lay a lump of blankets. A sob caught in her throat as she shoved her hand beneath.

  Nothing. She closed her eyes briefly. Thank you…

  Behind her the car door fell shut with a thud. She jumped, bumping her head as the car settled a fraction more, seemed to hesitate, then sank abruptly another foot on the driver's side.

  Very dark. But never fear, the door would open again and if worse came to worst, she still had the phone.…And the car was resting on piled brush, wasn't it? So it couldn't sink too far.

  She felt for the door handle with one hand and gripped the phone with the other. Don't lose it.… But then a new sound made her pause, a loud, rumbling noise, like a dump truck or—

  A backhoe. It was the backhoe's engine, starting.

  So you're sure you did like I told you?" Marky demanded yet again. "You wiped off everything in that freakin’ car? You didn't miss nothing?"

  Bouncing along on the dirt road, Anthony kept the map open on his knees. It was a different map from the one he'd used while getting them here from New Jersey, showing more detail.

  Anthony thought about the job of making the map, finding the camping areas, boat ramps, and rest stops, and drawing the tiny picnic tables and tents representing these places. The road they were on now was a dotted line snaking around Money Lake, Havey's Pond, Fickett Lake, and Little Cranberry Swamp.

  There were no tent or picnic table icons on this part of the map. " ‘Cause we still got somethin’ to do out here and I ain't gonna till I know you freakin’ stuck to the instructions," Marky continued.

  He turned. "Hey. You listenin’ to me?"

  "I stuck to them." Anthony wished the map showed a rocket ship icon that he could get into and blast off to another planet. Something about the way he'd begun talking made Anthony nervous, as if maybe Marky's plan from here on out wouldn't be so good.

  Or that it wouldn't be good for Anthony. Recalling how Marky had flung the kid's doll out the car window as they crossed the causeway, the surging water seizing the toy and hurrying it away toward the ocean, made Anthony feel bad.

  Marky grinning as he did it, like a mean kid torturing some poor dumb creature that couldn't fight back. Like he enjoyed it.

  Marky patted the gun in his inside jacket pocket again, not seeming to realize he was doing it. "You got your prints on file, y'know. Freakin’ juvenile delinquent, they still go in the database. You screw up, anyone gets your prints off the car, you're the one—"

  "Yeah," Anthony said flatly "I know."

  Marky glanced sharply at him. "Yeah, I know," he repeated in a sarcastic singsong. "You know, huh? What d'you think you know? You don't know nothing, you punk."

  He swerved around a rock in the awful road, and then through a rut; the old Monte swayed mushily on its big, soft suspension before leveling out. "Freakin’ punk."

  The girl in the backseat wept steadily, her strangle
d sobs through the rag in her mouth making a steady counterpoint to the thuds and bangs of stones hitting the car's underside. Beside her the little kid still slept like the dead.

  "Shut up, will you?" Marky snapped suddenly at her, glaring into the rearview. "Jeeze, we should've given her the freakin’ dope juice instead of the kid."

  "Yeah, maybe," Anthony replied. They'd already had to retie her wrists; somehow when they weren't watching her, she'd nearly gotten the ropes off, and Marky had blown his top over it.

  At Anthony, of course. "Look at the map, there. Keep your mind on the job, will you, please? Are we there yet or what?"

  When Marky talked this much it meant he was getting nervous, too, and Anthony knew why. He'd figured it out a while ago, when they turned onto this road and just kept going, into a wilderness that only got more desolate the farther in they got.

  They weren't just going to dump the girl. They couldn't; she had seen their faces. They could've worn masks when they grabbed her but Marky had vetoed it.

  So they were going to kill her. Marky wanted to; had wanted to all along, Anthony realized. The not-covering-up-their-faces thing was just his excuse.

  And the girl knew it, too. Anthony could tell by her eyes, the one time he'd accidentally looked into them while he tied her up again, tighter this time, the way Marky had ordered.

  Marky had also told him to hit her again, but Anthony had ignored this; he wasn't sure why. Because she was going to die soon, maybe. Although hearing her sobbing was like listening to an animal suffer, so maybe he should have knocked her out.

  He didn't know. Staring out the window in the fading light, he just wished it was over and done with.

  "Well?" Marky snapped.

  Anthony squinted at the map. "I think…okay. Yeah, I think this is it."

  "You think, you think." Marky looked disgusted. "Lemme ask you something. Do you ever know anything, or do you just think?" But he pulled the car into the grassy turnoff, gunning it through the tall weeds until it was hidden from the road.

  In the backseat, the girl sobbed harder.

  "All right. Both of you get out, now." Marky stared straight ahead through the windshield at a sky full of near-sunset colors: rose, purple, and gold.

  "What about you?" Anthony asked.

  Marky turned slowly, the look in his eyes unreadable. His right hand reached into the left inside pocket of his jacket, and Anthony went ice cold. But it was okay.

  For now. "Take this. Do what needs to be done," said Marky.

  Anthony stared. "What're you, nuts?" he blurted without thinking. Because of course Marky was nuts, everyone in the whole tristate area knew that. It was his stock-in-trade, being nuts enough to do things that nobody else would.

  Crack skulls, crush a guy's fingers … It was what Anthony had thought they were doing, coming up here. That a guy owed some money and wouldn't pay, so they were coming up here to collect.

  "I never did anything like this," said Anthony.

  The girl had stopped sobbing. He could practically feel her listening back there, wanting to know if there was hope. Anthony could have told her there wasn't.

  Murder, he thought, wondering for a wild instant if maybe the map still open on his knees had an icon for it, a tiny gun or a knife. And not even the result of a too-energetic beating on a guy who deserved it, for being a deadbeat or for some other sin.

  In the backseat the girl began screaming again through the gag, kicking and struggling. Ignoring her, Marky looked serious, like back in the juvie home when one of the counselors would try explaining something to Anthony for his own good.

  "Listen to me, you punk," said Marky, still holding out the gun. "This is gonna happen one of two ways. I am gonna drive out of here with you and that little kid back there, or it is gonna be just me and the kid. Because so far you have seen everything, but you ain't had to do much of anything. Get it?"

  Anthony nodded, trying to come up with some way out of doing this particular thing and not finding one. Marky meant that if they got caught he didn't want Anthony rolling over on him, which he figured Anthony couldn't if Anthony pulled the trigger.

  Which was probably true, but it wasn't the only true thing. Anthony thought of grabbing the gun right now and shooting Marky with it. Catching him by surprise, driving the girl home, letting her out; the kid, too. Then coming back here, maybe.

  Here where it was quiet, the shadows lengthening all around and something—an owl, maybe—Aoo-Aooing in the woods nearby.

  But Marky must've seen this in Anthony's eyes, or maybe he'd been expecting it. His own face relaxed into something like pity, mingled with contempt.

  "You punk," Marky said softly. Kindly, almost. Reaching out, pressing the gun into Anthony Colapietro's unwilling hand.

  She'd tried keeping her head on straight, tried getting her hands untied, tried kicking the seat back and screaming and begging through the gag in her mouth, and none of it had worked.

  Now the young one from the passenger seat got a handful of her hair in his hand and hauled her out of the car. She fell down at once, partly to make it difficult for him and partly because she almost couldn't feel her own body anymore, she was so scared.

  He untied the rope from around her ankles and yanked her up again, shoving her against the car. Her head banged against the window so hard she saw stars, and through them the little girl's body limp and motionless on the backseat.

  Lee… He seized Helen's collar, bunching it up in his hand so that it tightened chokingly around her throat, and with his other hand he put the gun to her head.

  "Walk," he said.

  The gun was like an ice-cold fingertip on the back of her neck. It was cold out here, and nearly dark. The path was a deer trail, barely visible in the gathering gloom, but if she got free she could probably outrun him, and hide.

  He tightened his grip, cutting off the shuddery gasps that were all she had left for breath. "Don't even think about it."

  The one in the leather jacket sat in the car waiting. Soon the two of them would drive back out of here.

  With Lee. But not with Helen. It hit her, then, that this was happening to her and there was nothing she could do about it. To stop it or make it happen any differently.

  Or at some other time. Tomorrow, the next day. Any time but now. That death wasn't a thing that happened only to old people, an event she wouldn't have to worry about until some unspecified time in the distant future.

  That it was real. That she, Helen Ann Nevelson of Eastport, Maine, was really and truly about to die.

  Suddenly the world seemed so precious and good to her, she thought she must surely get another chance just for knowing it so certainly. That it was good to be alive.…

  Under her bare feet the grass was icy cold and she was shivering uncontrollably, more falling forward with each step and catching herself than walking. And so afraid, more scared than she'd ever believed possible.

  "Stop," the guy named Anthony said.

  As if from a long distance and in slow motion she heard the trigger moving, metal sliding against metal. Then came a spring-loaded creak of the hammer and the cylinder's oiled whisper as it lined the charged projectile up between the firing pin at one end of the weapon and the barrel at the other.

  Jody, she thought, because he had taught her all this. Her stepfather, who had wanted to be her friend. But he was far away, now, back there in the life she was leaving.

  In the sky, early stars hung around a round, white moon even as the last bloodred shreds of the dying day hung stubbornly on.

  Through her tears, Helen gazed lovingly at them.

  Thwack! A huge rock smacked the windshield on the passenger side, starring it. Then the clatter of stones rose to a hammering roar as Jake sat in Helen Nevelson's car, cursing herself. The cascading gravel rose up past the windows with astonishing speed; within moments, the darkness inside the car was complete.

  Damn, how stupid was this? She could've called, told someone where she was going.
Right before she approached the car, even, she could have finished punching in Bob Arnold's number.

  But no, she had to see for herself, first. Praying not to find Lee there, or if she was there that she was still alive. She would call the instant she knew, Jake had thought.

  Well, now she did know. But she'd dropped the phone when the door slammed shut and now, in the darkness…She fumbled upward, snapped on the dome light. Searching around, she discovered that Helen's car held every safety item and piece of emergency gear imaginable, plus some whose usefulness she could not fathom.

  Jody Pierce had put it all there, no doubt. Young girls didn't think of stuff like this. Flashlight, emergency flares, an ice scraper, hat-and-gloves combo with the price tag still on it, a tire inflator, matches, a blanket, a safety-glass hammer, a sheet of plywood the same size and shape as the backseat, placed on the seat as if to reinforce it—except for the flashlight, none of it looked useful.

  And still no phone. But it had to be here somewhere.…

  Fool, she berated herself. Getting in, she'd told herself it was reasonably safe. This of course had been an exaggeration, but what if Lee was inside? Jake couldn't very well just stand there ignoring the possibility that the little girl was mere feet away, perhaps in need of immediate first aid.

  But then the trap had snapped shut. Someone out there waiting for her to investigate the car's interior—someone who had known she would; Campbell, probably—had started the backhoe and given the gravel mountain a shove.

  Onto her, burying her here. Cross-legged in the front seat, she pressed her fingers to her lips and tried to think, turned the ignition on and ran the fan for a few minutes. Fresh air came through the vents, smelling of damp earth and tree sap from the broken branches all around and beneath her.

  Stuck. Although on the plus side, the roof hadn't collapsed. She wasn't going to suffocate or get crushed, or at any rate not soon. Not unless whoever it was turned that backhoe on again…