A Face at the Window

by Sarah Graves

  "What's wrong with you?" Marky mumbled. There was something wrong with his mouth. "Can't you freakin’ follow instructions?"

  He waved at a heap of dry clothing piled on the sand nearby. Her own drenched things clung clammily to her, and she'd been in the water too long; if she didn't warm up soon hypothermia would get to her. Still, she hesitated.

  "You want us to turn our backs? Anthony, turn your freakin’ back," Marky said.

  Despite his teeth all being broken, he still sounded alert. But then he reeled unsteadily a few steps and his eyes rolled whitely up; he was out cold even before he hit the cave floor.

  Anthony plucked the gun from his partner's limp hand. "I'm not turning my back," said Anthony flatly, looking as if a car had run over him. Bruised eyes, bleeding arm…

  She wondered if the .38 had been in the water and if it would still fire, decided this might not be the time to try to find out. "Fine," she said. "I'll turn mine."

  Stripping her wet clothes off she dressed hastily in what had been provided: a long-sleeved cotton undershirt and pants, a crimson hooded sweatshirt with the word MAINE lettered in white on the front, green cotton trousers with a drawstring waist.

  Socks and sneakers, too, all new and in the right size; she didn't like thinking about what that meant. A detail guy, Sandy O’Neill had said of Ozzie Campbell.

  Yeah, no kidding. Pushing her arms into the sweatshirt, she winced as sharp pain in her shoulder triggered a sudden memory of being hauled, gasping and with her arm yanked back unmercifully, through the ice-cold water. But she couldn't recall more.

  Marky snored wetly "Get the dry stuff on her, too," said Anthony, waving the gun at Lee.

  Outside, a breeze gusted fitfully around the cave's bright mouth, sending bits of sea lavender and dried seaweed tumbling. Lee sang tunelessly as Jake crouched in front of her.

  "Honey? Hey, it's me, Aunty Jake." The child's skin and lips were blue, her chubby fingers reddened with cold and her eyes wide and staring. "What, you couldn't even get her out of her wet things?" Jake demanded furiously of Anthony.

  "Not my job. Go on," he waved the gun again. "Hurry up, it's almost time."

  "Ain't you forgotten something, you freakin’ moron?" Marky raised himself up on one elbow, leering like something out of a horror movie at them, all bloody and grinning.

  "How're we gettin’ away from here?" he demanded. "Freakin’ boat's gone, we got no car—"

  Anthony half turned in surprise. "You're awake," he said. And then: "I'll get us a car," he added smoothly. "As soon as we deliver them I'll go find a parked car and poke the ignition…"

  He put a hand on his back pocket, remembered his knife, and turned a speculative eye on Jake. Bending to the wet clothes she had discarded, he fished among them.

  "Cute," he said to her, coming up with the knife. "I'll poke the ignition with this," he finished, turning to Marky again, "and bring the car here. Then when we're done we'll go get our own car and put the stolen one back where it was, so nobody'll—"

  Marky's nose leaked bright red. "Yeah? I'm gonna sit here waitin’?" He hoisted himself up, took a moist, hitching breath.

  "Go now, you moron," he ordered thickly. "Get a car, we'll hand these two over to the guy, get our money and split. Got it?"

  "Sure, Marky," Anthony said, again so easily that she knew he must be lying. Marky knew it, too, or suspected.

  "You'd better not freakin’ leave me here," he threatened. "You hear me? You better not run."

  "Marky," Anthony said reassuringly, "you know I wouldn't do that. After how good you've been to me?"

  Cold-eyed, Anthony watched without expression as his partner slowly drifted back into semiconsciousness. But he flinched when Marky's eyes snapped suddenly open again.

  "Your mother…" Marky muttered venomously. He was talking out of his head.

  "Hey, Marky? Shut up about my mother, okay?"

  Anthony spoke lightly but Marky's eyes brightened, un-fooled. "Your freakin’ mother. You think nobody knows about her and you?"

  A spasm went through him; a seizure, it looked like, limbs trembling, heels drumming. But when it was over he still wouldn't quit. "Never seen the ocean," he slurred mockingly.

  "Marky, cut it out." Anthony's tone was cautioning, now. But Marky either ignored it or didn't hear it.

  "Yeah, ‘cause your ma kept you locked up in a closet," he said. His voice sounded stronger.

  But under the circumstances, that didn't mean much. Waxing and waning consciousness, Jake knew from her long-ago stint as a brain surgeon's wife, was a bad sign.

  A very bad sign. "I seen your file from the juvie home, An-tho-nee. I got a buddy works there; before I brought you in on this thing here, I went an’ had a real good look at your record."

  A strange expression spread over Anthony's face as Marky went on babbling. "She burned you with cigarettes, gave you dog food to eat. Hey, you were lucky to be in juvie, you know? ‘Cause when you got big enough, your loser mom would'a rented you out to any stinking, no-good bunch of—"

  "Shut up, Marky," said Anthony. But Marky didn't.

  "—freaks and weirdos…"

  Anthony looked down, aimed the gun at close range, and shot Marky in the head. Marky's body jerked like a fish trying to flip itself off a hook as Jake scrambled Lee into her arms and cradled her. "Don't hurt her," she said, looking up at Anthony.

  He'd committed a murder right there in front of her, so he would have to shoot her; from his point of view, he had no choice but to eliminate the only eyewitness.

  But he didn't have to kill Lee. A three-year-old couldn't…

  A three-year-old couldn't identify anyone.

  Hold that thought, she told herself as she began stripping wet clothes off the child's body, hastily dressing her in the dry ones. As if that could stop Anthony, as if just one normal thing after another could—

  "No," he said, but not to Jake. To himself, maybe, looking around at the low cave as if unsure how he'd gotten there.

  "No, I'm done, now." He dropped the gun, turned, and walked out, crouching briefly at the mouth of the cave because he was tall.

  Then he was gone and sudden urgency flooded her as she tried to stuff Lee's limp, uncooperative arm into the sweater, gave up, and buttoned the garment around her. Swiftly she wrapped the wet life jacket atop the sweater and tied it again, not so tightly as before.

  That way, she could wear Lee like a backpack and keep her hands free. Grabbing the .38 and sticking it into the pocket of the loose trousers she wore, she scrambled to the entrance of the cave and peeked out of it, scanning for Anthony.

  Nowhere in sight, but Campbell was around here somewhere; he must be. That's what all this was about. So they had to run, but from atop the cliffs the grassy bluffs of Dog Island were visible for their whole expanse. If he was there, he need only wait until she clambered up to him.

  Along the beach, then. It would be slippery and difficult, but at least they wouldn't be sitting ducks. Lee coughed weakly, her lungs spasming with a congested sound Jake didn't like.

  "Okay, baby," she whispered over her shoulder. "Hang on."

  Heart thudding, she crept out into the sudden brightness. A seagull cried distantly. Small waves slopped on the stony beach. A plane drew an expanding white arrow overhead on the blue sky.

  "Hang on," she repeated, uttering it like a mantra. "Aunty Jake is taking you—"

  "Oh, leaving so soon?" called a voice from high above; a familiar voice, raspy and harsh even at this distance.

  "I think not, actually," Ozzie Campbell said. From atop the path that ran up beside the sheer cliff he gazed confidently down at them both, smiling and holding a high-powered rifle.

  Jake stared dry-mouthed. The sudden sight of him after all this time was like an unexpected gut-punch, knocking the breath out of her and turning her knees to water. Sparse, sandy hair; round, red cheeks ravaged by years of weather—a construction worker, Sandy O’Neill had told her; a steel man in his prime— and
that nose of his, once hawkish but now purple and crumpled like a piece of rotten fruit pressed to his face.

  A big, powerful-appearing man with broad shoulders and wide chest, he didn't look at all like she remembered him, except.…

  Except for the earring, the ruby stud glimmering in his left ear. She'd last seen it shining with its twin, on the night her mother died.

  Unbidden, Jake's hand rose in a reaching gesture as Anthony appeared beside Campbell. "Get the child, please," Campbell said. And when Anthony hesitated: "Or I could shoot you, have your body disposed of by this fellow I know, he owns a cat food company."

  I have a gun, she thought clearly. To her surprise, her shock at seeing Campbell again had dispersed as suddenly as it came. So go ahead. Try taking her.

  Just try it. Campbell twitched the rifle. "Oh, and Jacobia," he called, "before I forget. Please drop the weapon my careless young friend, here, accidentally left with you."

  He must have heard the shot that killed Marky, she realized, then intercepted Anthony trying to get away across the bluffs. And since Anthony didn't have the weapon, Campbell had known—

  "Drop it where I can see it and then step away from it," he added, as Anthony started down.

  "You're going to hell for this," Jake told him when he got to her and picked up the gun.

  The oar mark on the side of his face was a mess, and his lip was freshly split. The dry shirt he'd changed into in the cave shone with fresh blood, the front saturated and the sleeve oozing brightly. The only thing keeping him upright was his youth.

  And even that wouldn't help him for much longer. "Hell," he repeated with a bitter laugh, then turned her and shoved her.

  "Don't worry, I'm not planning to harm the child," Campbell called down. "Not unless you resist my friend Anthony, here."

  Of course he would say that. Maybe it was even true. One thing was for sure, though; Anthony wasn't the problem anymore. At this point, a light breeze could've tipped him over.

  Campbell was, and she had no chance of doing anything about him unless she got closer to him. Mano a mono, as Sam would have put it, but jokingly; he'd never been much of a fighter. She wondered distantly if she would ever see her son again.

  "Okay," she called up to Campbell. "You want me, you've got me. But leave this kid out of it, okay? I'm here, now, you don't need her anymore."

  A new thought hit her. "Listen, why not let Anthony take her into town, to the clinic? She's getting sick, she needs a doctor, and he's not in such great shape, either—"

  "Oh, please cut the crap," Campbell interrupted. "Who do I look like here, Florence Nightingale? If I gave a rat's ass for that punk's health I'd call him an ambulance."

  He shifted the rifle impatiently "Now get up here, or the only place that precious kid's going is in the water."

  Anthony took the child from her while Campbell held the gun on all of them. Lee put up limply with being handed over, her eyes glassy again and her breathing harsh as he carried her away.

  The path turned back sharply upon itself several times as it ascended the slope flanking the cliffs, the handholds on it few and crumbly and the sandy soil slipping under her feet. Gasping, she hauled herself hand over hand the last few yards.

  At the top stood Anthony, sucking in ragged breaths. Lee was already in Campbell's arms as he strode away. Without looking, he unslung the rifle from his shoulder and hurled it over the edge.

  He didn't need it anymore. He had the .38—and Lee. "Hey!" she called after him, but he didn't look back. Which made no sense; there was nothing ahead of him but the cliffs and—

  The Knife Edge. Stark, forbidding, and in places vanishingly narrow, it stuck out over the water like a diving board out of a height-phobic's bad dream. Ozzie Campbell stepped out onto it as if casually visiting somebody's stone patio, and kept going.

  "Wait," she cried, but he didn't. "You wanted to—"

  At its far end the long, narrow promontory widened minimally to a tablelike platform, four feet square and a hundred feet at least above the waves churning around the jagged rocks below. He reached the platform and turned.

  Crumbs of loose shale rattled away beneath his feet. A gull sailed past him, nearly brushing his head with its wing tip. Lee looked half-conscious, one small hand dangling as she hung from beneath his arm like a parcel he'd forgotten he was carrying.

  Jake reached the edge of the cliff. Campbell smiled serenely.

  "So. We meet again."

  She crept a few feet out onto the promontory, stopped as a wave of dizziness swept over her. "What do you want?"

  No reply. The ruby stud in his ear flashed brilliantly. "You know I can't hurt you with that statement I sent in. No one cares what a three-year-old saw all those years ago."

  She crept forward another foot or so. From a distance the Knife Edge had appeared hopelessly narrow, but now that she was out on it a small rational part of her mind noted that it was in fact about three feet wide.

  Like my front walk. As wide as a sidewalk. Anyone can make it down a sidewalk.

  "So you've figured that out, have you?" Campbell said, then turned toward Anthony. "Go get that car, like you meant to," he called out, and as the wounded youth turned to obey, added:

  "Don't think, Anthony, okay? Punk like you starts trying to think independently?" Campbell glanced down at the beach where in one of the caves, Marky's body still lay.

  "Nothing but trouble," said Campbell softly. Anthony stood still, absorbing the veiled threat: that Anthony was the one who had committed murder. He'd better do as he was told.

  "Yeah," Anthony muttered, then limped off painfully through the tall grass to do as he was bidden. He'd find a car to steal, Jake estimated, in only a few minutes. Then he would be back.

  And against the two of them she had no chance…Shakily she got to her feet on the Knife Edge. Sidewalk's width or no, it was still a precarious spot, and its sturdiness was not precisely a reassuring feature, either. Out at its middle, halfway between the bluff where it began and the pinnacle where it ended, the ancient stone bridge to nowhere was only a few inches thick.

  A chunk plummeted from it, then another. Eons old, battered and worn, like even the most durable geological entities the Knife Edge had its allotted life span, its beginning and end in time as well as in space.

  And now its physical end had begun. Another big chunk of it dropped out as Campbell watched Jake with avid interest.

  With an effort she dragged her gaze up to meet his. He was enjoying this, she saw from his mocking grin. He'd planned it all right down to the last detail, and now he was doing it; how he'd readied himself for a hop-skip-and-jump right out to the end of a suicidal drop-off, she couldn't imagine.

  But somehow, Ozzie Campbell had done that, too. "Whatever it is you want, it doesn't matter to me," she told him. "I'll do it. Just…give me the little girl."

  "Really?" The smile on the face of the tiger had nothing on the one that spread toothily over Campbell's face now, the bloodred earring in his ear flashing wickedly as he replied.

  "Good. I'm glad we understand one another, then." He thrust Lee out over the yawning emptiness below. "Just—"

  "What?" she demanded. If Lee's clothes tore, if a wind gust hit him or he just got dizzy…"Tell me what you want, you…"

  What? A wave of unreality washed over her: There he was, the man who'd killed her mother, who'd haunted her dreams, driven her father into hiding and made her, in effect, an orphan. Yet facing him now she felt…

  Nothing. Zero. All this time she'd believed that if only he were caught and punished, if he were locked up where people even worse than he was might hurt him even worse than he'd hurt her…

  Vengeance. She'd wanted it; yearned for it. But nothing in her life anymore was about what he'd done.

  A pang of regret pierced her for all the time she'd wasted thinking about him, and then…gone. Like a wisp of smoke. "What do you want?" she demanded again. "Why won't you give her back to me?"

  His smile
widened. Tauntingly, he swung Lee's body back and forth. "Give her back? Oh, no. That would be too easy. That, my dear Jacobia, wouldn't achieve my goal at all."

  The smile vanished. "No, I have a plan for you, and I want to be sure you understand that you will cooperate in every way. I want to be sure you know how serious I am…and will remain."

  He swung Lee like a rag doll. "That's what all this has been about, you see. The detail, the complexity—that you believe me, that you know I can do what I say I will, no matter what."

  His voice and his gestures were growing more grandiose. He'd won—or so he believed. "So you can have her back," he finished in a mock-reasonable, smarmily obnoxious tone, "just as soon as I'm convinced you understand your end of the bargain."

  She crouched again, trying to catch her breath as she clung there listening to him, taking one deep breath after another in an effort not to throw up. Her heart raced, her hands on the narrow stone bridge suddenly sweat-slick and prickling with fright.

  "And to prove that you do," Campbell finished, "I want you to come right out here to me and get her…now."

  This might still turn out to be his lucky day after all, Anthony thought. Hurting and bleeding, black spots floating in front of his eyes…but he could hang in a little longer.

  Absolutely he could. Long enough to run away. He had the feeling that overall, he might not be thinking very clearly. But he was clear on the running part. Screw the money; he'd murdered Marky and now it was time to get out, to run so far and fast that even the bedbugs from his old place wouldn't be able to find him.

  Almost immediately, he came upon a big white mommy-van parked at a haphazard angle in a yard so full of scattered toys and other assorted crap, you could hardly see the house. The garage with its door hanging open was crammed with junk, too, stuff they just threw in there and forgot about. Build a garage and park the car out on the lawn, he thought scornfully; at least in the juvie home, they'd taught him to keep his things in order.

  The few he'd had. Inside the van was also wall-to-wall chaos and naturally the keys hung from the ignition where somebody had left them. He sat in the driver's seat, surrounded by half-empty organic juice bottles, abandoned clothes, and the other dirty or ruined belongings of these foolish people.