A Face at the Window

by Sarah Graves

  He wore designer jeans, a white T-shirt with blood spattered on it, and a black leather jacket that was a half-size too big for him and a little too shiny. Fat gold chains hung around his neck, and he had a gun.

  Two of them, actually. Her own, and—"I could shoot you right now, you know that?" he smirked.

  The gun he had was a snub-nosed .38-caliber Police Special; Wade had one in his shop. It crossed her mind fleetingly that not being scared of guns was a point in her favor.

  A slim point. "I'm supposed to meet Campbell," she said. "So where is he?" But the guy wasn't listening.

  "Why couldn't you just follow the freakin’ instructions?" he demanded peevishly. "What, it wasn't simple enough? The ‘alone’ part? But no, you had to bring somebody. Dumb freakin’ broad."

  "Marky, maybe we should try helping—" the tall one began nervously.

  "Shut up!" yelled Marky. "What're you, a freakin’ Red Cross nurse now? Who cares about him?"

  He turned back to Jake. "Get in there," he said, waving her down a short hall.

  At the entrance to the living area she paused. It ran almost the length of the house, with sliding glass doors facing where the water must be on the long side, a fireplace and sitting area at one end, to the right, and the dining area at the other.

  One of the long glass door panels was broken, glass pellets scattered on the shiny prefinished wooden floor nearby. It was the first broken thing she'd seen here; after her own old house, the smooth unmarred surfaces and level floors in this one seemed almost too perfect to be real.

  No expense had been spared, she saw by the terra-cotta tile and brushed aluminum appliances past the archway leading into the kitchen. And although the owners only came here in one season, the house had been built to be livable in all four, so the glass doors had storm sliders, one closed to cover the broken section.

  "Sit," Marky ordered coldly. The taller one stood watching from the kitchen archway, still looking frightened.

  He's not into this, she thought. Or…no, somethings wrong. He doesn't want to say what it is. Something Marky doesn't—

  In the kitchen a cabinet door edged silently open. Bottom cabinet on the right…Jake's heart stopped. Please, let it be—

  "Aunty Jake!" yelled Lee, tumbling out of the cabinet. As Lee scrambled toward her, the taller guy's face went slack with relief. Then the child was in her arms, warm and real and…

  Alive, she thought gratefully as Lee's arms clasped tightly around her neck. "Hi, baby," she whispered, breathing in the warm sweet scent of the child's hair and trying not to weep. "I'm so glad to see you. Are you okay?"

  Lee seemed uninjured, and her silky blond head nodded jyes. But: "I losted my dolly," she whimpered desolately. "And I losted Aunty Helen…"

  "Ssh, that's okay. I found your doll; it's at home. You can have her as soon as we get there. And we'll find Aunt Helen, too," Jake promised, wondering if it was true.

  Across the room, the one the taller guy called Marky turned impatiently to sorting among some equipment on the dining table. The goggles they'd worn, a spotting scope, a cell phone, and … a tape machine. A small, old-fashioned…

  An old cassette machine; seeing it, she knew how she'd been tricked. That scream…

  Faked. Lee snuggled closer in her arms as, abandoning the gear, Marky began yanking the chain-switch of a floor lamp that stood near the table, harder each time but without any result.

  The tall guy in the kitchen watched anxiously. He was in his early twenties, still wearing the Jersey Devils jacket she'd seen in the VCR tape over a sweatshirt and dungarees, with a long, sallow face and a big, beaky nose that he hadn't yet quite grown into. His arm was bleeding, inexpertly bandaged with what looked like a torn strip of sheet.

  "I can fix that lamp," she said, nodding her head at the one Marky fumed over. Because she needed an angle, any angle at all, and anyway, it would help her to be working on something. Just…

  It just would, that was all. "Marky. Listen up a minute. She says she can—" ventured the taller guy.

  "Oh, yeah?" Marky glared. "Get over here, then," he ordered belligerently "You, too," he added to the tall one. "Anthony," he added sarcastically.

  Go with what you know, said Ellie White softly in Jake's head. Ellie, Lee's mother and Jake's dearest friend…

  Ellie, sweet and delicate as a fairy-tale princess on the outside, was tough as tree bark when push came to shove. As it had now, Jake thought; if she put Lee down on one of the sofas, she decided, when she got near Marky with that lamp in her hands she could swing it.

  "I'll hold the kid," said Anthony, stepping forward to lift Lee from Jake's arms. "Don't," he added in lower tones, "make any of this worse." His gaze met hers impassively.

  Damn. "Do you have any tools?" she asked. "A screwdriver or something?"

  Marky spoke again. "Oh, yeah. We got the freakin’ Snap-on tools guy comin’ in here twice a week. What are you, stupid?"

  He checked his wristwatch, a large, many-dialed monstrosity that would've looked more like a Rolex if the gold paint around the bezel hadn't been wearing off. "Okay, let ‘er fix the damn thing," he told Anthony. "But that's it. When the time comes…"

  He looked straight at her, drew a finger across his throat. "That's it. I guess that's why they call it a freakin’ deadline."

  He chuckled, a dry, unpleasant sound like sharp knives clattering together in a drawer.

  Yeah. Maybe that's why, she thought.

  A few minutes later she had the lamp unplugged and the bulb removed. It was a high intensity fluorescent bulb, its slender tube wound in a spiral shape; staring at it, she wondered for a dazed instant if wiring fluorescent fixtures might be different somehow.

  But no. The bulbs were interchangeable so the wiring scheme must be, too. Anthony produced an imitation Swiss Army knife with a minuscule screwdriver attachment and grudg ingly handed it over; she used the flimsy nippers on it to seize and unscrew the nut at the base of the bulb receptacle while Anthony went outdoors. In his absence she considered gripping the knife handle in her fist and plunging the screwdriver's blade into Marky, if she got the chance. A fast sideways punch should do it

  But he kept dancing out of range. "Come on," he demanded, stepping briefly nearer to peer over her shoulder. "What's the problem? I thought you said…"

  He didn't need the lamp. It just made him angry when things wouldn't do what he wanted them to. Objects, people—they were all the same to him; they obeyed or he destroyed them. She'd met his type often, back in the city, where very few of her money-management clients had resembled Mother Teresa.

  Mostly they'd been more like Marky, but with better clothes and more expensive haircuts. And a little better impulse control, maybe. With the bulb receptacle pulled apart she took the brass wire off one of the tiny screws in the switch unit; the silvery wire had already separated from the other screw.

  So that was the problem: a broken circuit in the switch. But as she'd hoped, it was easily repaired; she twisted each wire's strands together tightly, then bent a small hook into the end of each one, pulled on the switch's chain again to make sure there were no problems there. Finally she hooked the wires back over their own screws again, brass to brass and silver to silver. She was screwing the bulb's receptacle back onto the lamp base and tightening the lock nut once more when Anthony returned, raising his hands in a What-can-I-do? gesture at Marky's querying glance.

  "Freakin’ guy," Anthony said, and she took this to mean that Jody Pierce was refusing to die. So there was hope; if she could get that cell phone, or if she could put even one of these guys out of action…

  "Awright," Marky said disgustedly, with the air of someone stepping manfully up to a chore no one else had the stomach for. He pulled the gun from his inside jacket pocket. "Lemme go out there, then, for freak's sake. I'll take care of—"

  "Wait." A feeling of unreality swept over her as with shaky fingers she slid the switch casing into its base until it locked.

  The
feeling, she realized with a stab of panic, was one step away from not being able to do anything about any of this, so why even try? Why not just give up, give in, get it over with?

  Just one step, one stray thought, one panicked feeling. But that way lay disaster. "I've got it," she managed through lips that had suddenly gone papery-dry. "Don't you want to see it go on?"

  Praying that the loose wire really had been the trouble, she glanced up at Anthony. She had a feeling he knew perfectly well what she was up to: keeping his pal Marky from going outside and finding Pierce, still lying there in the driveway, and finishing him off as easily as clipping a pesky hangnail.

  "Okay," Marky allowed grudgingly. Thank God, she thought in a brief burst of optimism, for short attention spans. And when the lamp snapped obligingly on, "Big deal, I could've done that," he said, turning away.

  Eyes narrowed, he stood with his arms folded as if waiting for something. Anthony gave him a "What?" look.

  "The knife, you schmuck. Or were you gonna let her keep it? Maybe I should give her the gun, too? Moron," Marky added.

  "Hey, it was worth a try," she said, attempting a light tone as she relinquished it. But at her words, alarm filled Anthony's face and in the next instant, Marky's hands were on her throat.

  "Don't," he uttered viciously as his thumbs dug into her voice box. "Don't freakin’ try anything. Keep your mouth shut and do what I say, you got it?"

  He let go. Her eyes prickled with black stars. "You, too," he added to Anthony as she dragged in a harsh breath.

  See? Anthony's look said. See what I'm dealing with, here?

  Silently he followed his partner out to the kitchen, leaving her in the pool of light shed by the newly repaired lamp.

  She crossed the room, gathered Lee up, and held her. Yes, she thought as the child moved fretfully in her arms, then settled. I do see. You're so far up the creek that your chances of getting down again are just about zero.

  Like mine, she realized with sad certainty. And the chances of the man lying out there in the driveway were even slimmer.

  If he was still alive at all.

  "Damn kids," the walrus-mustached man raged, glaring at Helen Nevelson before seizing her and yanking her up out of the kayak. In the darkness he couldn't see that she was injured.

  Or maybe he didn't care, too angry at the destruction she'd caused. "Alla you, got no respect for people's property. Come out here, throw your pot parties and booze parties and I don't know what all."

  The smell of his breath said he'd been having a party of his own recently He pushed her ahead of him up the pebbled path alongside the cabin, shoving her when she faltered.

  "Kids stole all the kayaks, so I locked ‘em up," he ranted. "Now you come along and smash the shed lock, break the windows."

  She knew him, she realized dimly. His name was Hank Harriman and he lived across the lake on Roughy Hill Road where she'd been heading; he went hunting and fishing sometimes with Jody

  But not often; Jody hadn't cared for Mr. Harriman's habit of getting loaded, even before he got into the woods. And the one time Mr. Harriman had seen Helen, she was much younger and he'd been half in the bag, as Jody had put it.

  As he was this minute; more than half, even. Way more, so Mr. Harriman didn't know her now.

  "Teach you a damn lesson," he slurred. Lesshun. The motion detectors on the yard lights must've set off an alarm over at his house across the lake, so he'd come to check. Jody had probably hooked the alarm up; it was the kind of thing Jody was good at, and everyone around here knew it.

  "Throwin’ around beer cans, trashing the whole area. Why'n the hell a man can't have a place to himself ‘thout a bun-cha you little brats comin’ in an’—Git along, there," he said, shoving her angrily again.

  She tried to speak, but by now her broken mouth was so badly swollen that all she could produce was a sort of baaing sound as he hustled her out to his pickup truck. It was an old GMC beater with a plow mount on the front, a trailer hitch on the back, and a two-way radio with a Radio Shack microphone wired into the dashboard, probably also by Jody—he's your friend, she tried and failed again to croak out—some time or another.

  He'd even stopped by to see her mother not too long ago, she recalled, to get a book that had been put aside for him. But he hadn't seen Helen; she wished now she'd gone in from the screened porch to speak to him, but—

  He yanked the cab's passenger door open. "Get in there," he snarled. "You and your trashy ways. Stole clothes, too, I see," he added, spying the sneakers she'd found in the cabin, and the old sweaters.

  When she faltered at the high running-board step, he grabbed her and hoisted her up one-handed, sending her sprawling.

  "Now you just sit there," he growled. She was crying again and couldn't stop, gasping and sobbing with pain and renewed fear. Most of the people you ran into around the lakes were like Jody, good-hearted and easygoing.

  But not this guy. "Little bawl-baby," he growled. "Guess your scummy pals must've put a pretty decent beating on you, on top of everything else. Teach you to hang around with ‘em."

  She scrambled upright as he leaned into the truck cab to survey her in disgust. "Buncha losers," he spat contemptuously, backing out again and slamming the door.

  In the yard lights she watched his stocky form stomping into the cabin. Shudderingly, she battled to get back some composure, to stop crying and figure out something to make him understand-

  There. On the dashboard, a notebook black with finger marks, and a stubby pencil clipped to it. Relief flooded her; of course, she could write him a note.

  Opening the notebook she flipped rapidly through a dozen or more pages of symbols and numbers with counting marks lined up alongside them, four upright marks and a diagonal line indicating five of something. A counting system, maybe for plow jobs so he'd know how much to bill people. But why not write their names down?

  She didn't bother wondering any more about it, though, just kept flipping until she came to a blank page. On it, she printed her name, Jody's name, the word daughter, and three more words: Help Me Please. When he came back, she waited until he was all the way in but with the door still hanging open and the dome light still on, then thrust the notebook at him.

  "What the—?" He scowled at her, his eyes full of angry contempt and… something else. Fear, she realized. But of what?

  Fear and… shame. Too late, she understood why.

  "What the hell is this?" he demanded, shaking the notebook at her. "It ain't enough you kids come out here trespassin’ and ruinin’ my stuff, now you gotta screw up my job book?"

  He flung it at her, started the truck up, and jammed it into gear. Jouncing down the dirt road, they passed through an open gate; he jumped down from the cab, swung it shut, and locked it behind them, then climbed back in and accelerated again, heedless of the way the truck clanked and rattled over the bumps.

  He couldn't read. That's why her writing in the notebook had made him angry; he couldn't, and he was embarrassed about it. He had stopped by the house to get materials for something about the reading lessons her mother gave; that's what the book he'd gotten was, another part of the lesson material.

  So the note she had written him wasn't just useless. It had made things worse.

  "Fasten your damn belt," he growled when they got out to the main road, Route 1 a ribbon of darkness in the larger dark.

  While she was out cold her jaw had released. "Please," she managed to whisper. It came out "bleh." But he understood, as they sat there waiting for an eighteen-wheeler to pass by.

  "Oh, sure," he said scathingly. "Now you're scared. You've had your fun, paid for it, too, you thought, with the clobberin’ they put on you. Well, you're gonna pay more," he went on with vindictive relish. "I'll teach you a lesson you'll never forget."

  She didn't like the sound of that one bit. Behind the truck came a poky little subcompact, too slow and underpowered to pass on the downhills and too scared, probably, to try it on the ups. Mr. Harri
man waited angrily for the slowpoke; she didn't like the sodden gleam in his eye, either, as he sat contemplating whatever it was that he was planning to do with her.

  The subcompact was very slow. He'd miscalculated in waiting for it and now he fumed impatiently while it struggled up the hill behind the truck. Helen unbuckled her seat belt stealthily.

  "You're gonna learn," he recited. "Oh, yeah. Think you know it all?" His mustache twitched damply in anticipation, big hands tightening on the wheel.

  Helen's mind worked frantically. She wasn't afraid of jail, or the cops. By now, they must know she was missing and she'd be able to communicate with them. So they would help her.

  And she hurt, oh, God, she still hurt so bad; more than almost anything in the world, she wanted to pour her story out to the police, and then lie down and let people take care of her.

  Mr. Harriman was still talking. If you could call it that: "Kids nowadays, buncha little whining, grabby parasites, got no respect at all for other people's hard-earned…"

  Tuning him out, she struggled to remember what it was she had to tell someone. A name? An address, a phone number, or—

  No. None of those things. The answer went through her like an electric shock: she knew where they were going.

  "But first, you're gonna gimme all the names of everyone who was out there at my place with you, drinkin’ and dopin’ and—"

  Carrying on, Mr. Harriman would've finished, but she didn't hear him because she was already out of the truck, flinging the door open in the last instant before he roared out onto Route 1.

  "Hey!" he yelled furiously as she hurled herself out of the truck's cab into the roadside gravel. Clambering up, she tripped and fell headlong into a ditch full of icy rainwater, then hauled herself desperately hand-over-hand up and out the other side.

  "I'll get you, you little—" But before he could chase her, Mr. Harriman was still sober enough to realize, he had to back the pickup truck out of the travel lane and put the parking brake on. And by the time he'd done that, Helen was in the trees.