I'm dead, she thought, feeling his penis harden in her hand.
Am not, replied a little voice in her head-a dissociated little voice. And following its promptings, she hooked her thumbs into the bathing suit at her waist and rolled it down the rest of the way, kicked it off, then bent forward, as if to provide him greater ease of access.
She held her breath as he positioned himself behind her with one hand, while fondling her breasts with the other.
“Give it to me, baby,” she whispered, then threw her head back sharply, heard a crack! saw a bright light. The arm around her went slack. She threw herself forward, kicked hard at his stomach with both feet, and struck out for the opposite shore of the river.
77
Before leaving the pharmacy, Pender purchased a box of one-and-a-half-by-four-inch Band-Aids and a nail scissors. Back in his room, he removed his old bandages and inspected his scalp in the bathroom mirror. Wong's salve had done its job. All three wounds had closed, no redness, no puffiness. Using the nail scissors, Pender took his own stitches out, rubbed on a little more salve, and covered the scars with three of the big Band-Aids, overlapped.
His next order of business was to write Steve McDougal a long letter on hotel stationery, detailing his movements in the last few days, and for the first time ever, putting a name-Ulysses Maxwell-to the suspect known up until then only as Casey.
Pender stuffed the letter into an envelope, sealed the envelope, scrawled McDougal's name and fax number across the front, and gave it to the desk clerk on his way out. “You have a fax machine?”
“Sure do.”
“If I'm not back by tomorrow morning, I want you to open this, and fax the document inside to this number.”
“You got it,” said the clerk, pocketing the twenty Pender had slipped him along with the envelope.
“Open it before then, and you're looking at a federal rap.”
“Wouldn't dream of it.”
“Good man. Now, can you tell me how to find Charbonneau Road?”
“No, but here's somebody who can. Hey Tom,” he called to someone behind Pender. “You know where Charbonneau Road is?”
“Way out in the boonies.” Pender turned to see a uniformed postman coming through the hotel door. “RFD-Remote Frickin' Delivery. What you're gonna want to do, you're gonna want to get back on the highway, follow 'er east for about twenty miles. Look for a sign on your right says Horned Ridge Lodge. The lodge has been closed about ten, fifteen years, but the sign's still up, far as I know. That's your Charbonneau Road-it's one lane wide. Loops on back to the highway east of the county line. Whatcha driving?”
“Dodge Intrepid.”
“You're gonna want to take 'er easy, then,” the postman said. “Unless they've done some major work since I had that route, there isn't a straight nor level stretch much longer than your car from one end of Charbonneau to the other.”
Tom the mailman had scarcely been exaggerating. After turning off the highway, Pender averaged ten miles an hour the rest of the way, and even that was pushing it. Consequently, it was well into the afternoon when he finally spotted the mailbox at the bottom of a blacktop driveway to the left.
He drove by slowly. Wooden fence, six rails high, padlocked gate, blacktop driveway snaking up through the trees on the other side. He couldn't see a house; couldn't even see the top of the ridge. Which meant they probably couldn't see him, either. The bad news was that he had a fence to climb, and a long, steep walk ahead of him. The good news was, he hadn't thrown away his Hush Puppies.
Once past the driveway, Pender started looking for a spot to pull over. It was another three-tenths of a mile by the odometer before he found a cleared level spot wide enough to park the Intrepid.
He pulled off to the side of the road, changed shoes, loaded a fifteen-round clip (supposedly available only to law enforcement personnel) into the SIG Sauer, and chambered a round before reholstering the weapon. (The SIG was engineered to fire with the hammer down and a round up the spout; a heavy trigger pull served as safety.)
Pender closed the trunk and started down the road, then turned back almost immediately, popped the trunk, and tossed his new hat inside. It had occurred to him that the white Stetson was not exactly camouflage wear. Of course neither was his big bald Band-Aid-striped head, he realized, but there wasn't much he could do about that now.
78
Naked, Irene scrambled up the rocky slope on the far side of the swimming hole. She could hear Maxwell splashing behind her. The muddy bank was slippery, the littoral rocks slimy. As she reached for an overhanging willow branch, her feet went out from under her and she fell face forward onto the steepest part of the bank. He splashed out of the water and grabbed her by the ankle. She kicked free and scrabbled for purchase with her fingers, then scrambled the rest of the way up the bank on her hands and knees.
She reached the top of the slope, looked around wildly. All the same, every direction. Skinny white-barked trees, sunlight slanting crazily. Before she could decide which way to run, he was on top of her, his weight crushing the breath from her. She squirmed around onto her back. He inched forward until he was sitting on her chest, with his knees pinning her shoulders. His lower lip was split, but his grin, though bloody, was joyful; in his upraised hand, a jagged rock, poised to strike.
“We-we had a contract,” was all she could think of to say. She was mesmerized by the blood dripping down his chin and onto his hairless chest. It occurred to her that if he leaned forward, it would be dripping directly onto her face. Somehow that bothered her more than the rock in his upraised hand.
“The fuck you talkin' about?” He blinked slowly, like a crocodile, then turned his head to the side and spat out a mouthful of blood. “ I never signed no fuckin' contract.”
It was not Max's voice. Nor Christopher, nor Useless, nor Lee, nor Alicea. But she'd heard it before. When? Where? Then it came to her. This was the alter who'd killed the highway patrolman-this was Kinch. I'm dead.
Are not.
Prompted again by that tiny inner voice, Irene extended her life, at least for the time being, with a simple question. “Who are you?” she called loudly. “What is your name?”
Before Kinch could answer, his eyes rolled up and to the right, his eyelids fluttered, and Max found himself back in the body. He lowered the rock, rubbed it against his thigh to ground himself, then tossed it away. Because whatever else Max may have been- certainly a Cluster B sociopath, possibly a demon born of a demon, if you believe in that sort of thing-he wasn't the type to waste a perfectly good strawberry blond by bashing her brains out before her hair had been harvested at least once. If Kinch had had his way, Max knew, there'd have been hell to pay with Miss Miller.
79
He couldn't have said whether the majestic trees keeping the sun off his pate were redwoods, pines, or firs. After all the twists and turns Charbonneau Road had taken, he didn't know whether he was on the north, south, east, or west of the ridge. All Ed Pender knew was that it was hot, and his ribs hurt where he'd scraped them hauling his lard ass over the gate down by the road, and the jeans he'd bought yesterday in Dallas were beginning to chafe.
Pender was starting to have his doubts about going after Maxwell alone, realizing he'd be lucky to have the strength to even pull a trigger by the time he'd dragged himself up the side of this damned mountain. This got — damned mountain, as Buckley would have said. But Pender never seriously considered turning back-at least not without having checked the place out.
Because if he did a careful reconnoiter, the Hostage Rescue Team would have to consult with him before going in. He'd have a chance to remind them that Maxwell had recently killed a hostage when threatened with arrest, and stress the importance of a stealth assault.
Oh yeah, stealth… Pender left the blacktop for the last part of the climb, moving uphill behind the cover of the trees, stepping lightly on the dry fallen needles, looking down often to avoid snapping twigs underfoot. Sweat was running down his ba
ld head in rivulets and stinging his eyes. He patted his scalp. The Band-Aids were gone, sluiced away. He took out the navy blue cowboy bandanna that Alvin Ralphs had thrown in for lagniappe, folded it diagonally, and tied it around his forehead.
When he came in sight of the strange sally port, and the fence with the yellow High Voltage signs, Pender's inner voice, the smart one, told him to turn back and call in the troops.
Just lemme take a peek at that lock, he told himself, crossing the blacktop at a crouch (as if that would do any good were someone watching) and hefting the gimcracky dimestore padlock securing the gate in the outer fence. What kind of idiot would spend all this money on the security fence, he wondered, reaching for his wallet, then practically invite anybody with a lock pick through the front door?
A minute later he'd sprung the lock, opened the gate, and learned the answer to his question: it was a trap. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a dark blur. The hundred-and-fifty-pound Rottweiler hit him high, knocking him off his feet, sending his wallet and wire pick flying. He tried to grab for his weapon as he went down, and landed awkwardly on his side, driving his elbow into his ribs, knocking the wind out of himself. He lay there stunned for a moment, unable to move.
Paradoxically, the temporary paralysis saved Pender's life. If he'd struggled, or tried to run, the pack would have torn him to pieces. Instead they surrounded the interloper, hackles bristling, growling deep in their throats (but not barking: Miss Miller hated the sound of barking dogs), and waited for the command from their master or mistress that would either call them off, or give them the go-ahead to attack.
And the fact that neither their master nor their mistress was around to give either command, and might not be around for hours, made no difference to the dogs. They'd wait. They'd wait for their master or mistress until hell froze over, and then they'd wait frozen. They were good dogs, you see; they were all good dogs, and they lived to please.
80
“Max! Max, we have a contract.”
He climbed off her, breathing hard, and sat down, bare-assed and dripping, on a warm rock, in an oblong shaft of sunlight. “Therapy's over, Dr. Cogan.” He spat out a mouthful of blood. “We'll just have to muddle on as best we can without you.”
“Christopher,” she called hopelessly. “Christopher, I need to speak with you.”
Max pressed the back of his hand against his split lip until the bleeding slowed. “Don't worry about Christopher-I've promised him he'll get his turn with you if he behaves himself. Not for a few months, though-not until you're too disgusting for the poor sap to even imagine he's falling in love with you.”
“So it's been you all along?”
“Just since this morning.” He touched his lip again-still bleeding. The pain was interesting, but not overwhelming. “Let's go, Irene. I think it's time to introduce you to your new friends in the drying shed.”
“You go to hell.”
“I come from hell,” he replied, holding his lip.
From her bedroom window, Julia Miller watched Ulysses and the new one, the psychiatrist, crossing the meadow, both of them stark staring naked. The psychiatrist was stumbling forward, her arms crossed over her breasts; Ulysses was behind her, pinching his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger with one hand and shoving her ahead of him with the other when she faltered. It looked very much as if the honeymoon was over.
It also looked as if the new one had restored her hair to its original, strawberry blond color.
Good things come to she who waits, thought Miss Miller, leaving her bedroom for the first time that day. Ulysses would be needing his clippers. She decided to bring him one of his new guns, too. The big one.
A horizontal trapdoor, flush with the ground. A descent into a dark stairwell. Another door, vertical. A glaring, diffuse white light overhead, a stifling heat. Two women, emaciated as concentration camp survivors, each with a blanket around her shoulders, standing in the center of the room, their arms around each other's waists. The smaller one's skin was stretched tightly over her cheekbones, and her lips had drawn away from her teeth-a death's head surrounded by a nimbus of red-gold stubble. The larger one had a little more flesh on her, and her hair was longer. Same color, though, except for a touch of gray at the temples.
“Harvest time,” said Maxwell, shoving Irene toward them. “Clean her the fuck up.”
As Max locked the inner door, the hatch slid open above him. Miss Miller started down the steps with her sewing basket over her forearm. The soundproofed hatch closed automatically above her. Ignoring his nakedness, she handed him the basket containing his battery-powered Panasonic hair clippers, along with his new Glock.
“Miss Miller, you're a wonder.” Max's lower lip had stopped bleeding, but felt stiff-a crust had formed over the split. “I was just on my way up to fetch these.”
“I'm not optimistic about that new one's hair,” she said. “I'll try to make it work, but you know I prefer natural color. Which reminds me, Ulysses: did you notice the old one in there is turning gray?”
“I did. I was planning to take care of her tonight,” Max told her. It was the truth, too. Kinch was extremely disappointed at having been deprived first of Barbara, then Bernadette, and then, most cruelly, just as he was poised to strike, of Irene. And a disappointed Kinch was an angry Kinch, an unmanageable Kinch. Maxwell understood full well that he needed to throw the bloodthirsty alter a bone. And what better bone than Donna Hughes, the once desirable Texan, now only another mouth to feed?
“Oh, how lovely.” Miss Miller was genuinely pleased. And why not? — things were finally getting back to normal on Scorned Ridge after the disruption of Ulysses's protracted absence, followed by the presence of the meddling psychiatrist. “By the way, sweetheart, I was thinking of steaming some vegetables and rice for supper- how does that sound?”
“Slice up a couple of those hot sausages I bought yesterday, and you've got a deal.”
“ Have a deal,” she corrected, then turned and started back up the steps.
“About tonight,” Maxwell called up to her. “Did you want to watch?”
“Thank you for asking,” she said, pushing the button that caused the hatch to slide open again. “I'm a little fatigued from all this excitement. Let me see how I feel after a nice long nap.”
“Whatever you decide-it's up to you.”
“Of course it is, my sweetness and light. Of course it is.”
81
Pender had been a dog owner most of his life. He liked dogs. Lost the last one, a handsome shepherd named Cassidy, in the divorce-the house he didn't mind losing so much, but he was still bitter about the dog and had steadfastly refused to get another, though he understood perfectly well that he was only punishing himself.
So shooting the Rottweilers would be no cakewalk, either emotionally or physically. Pender was lying on his left side, his right hand under his jacket. Once he'd caught his breath he began drawing the SIG Sauer millimeter by agonizing millimeter, until it was free of the holster but still concealed beneath his coat-most dogs this well trained would have been taught to recognize a weapon and disarm the bearer. Slowly, though his every instinct screamed at him to do the opposite, to protect his underbelly and his manhood by curling up into a fetal ball, he rolled onto his back.
Warning behavior from the dogs-snarls, a display of incisors.
“Good dogs. Aren't you good dogs?” Pender crooned to them in his soulful tenor. Though the muzzle of the SIG pointed to the left, he'd have to begin shooting from right to left, before the dogs on the right side got to his shooting arm. The dogs to the left he figured he could fend off with his left arm until he could swing the gun around. “Calm down, now. Nice and easy. See, I'm not gonna-”
Blam. Blam. Blam. He dropped the first three with head shots, and the other three turned tail and ran whimpering for the kennel. Apparently they weren't that well trained after all, thought Pender, climbing to his feet and mentally thanking SIG Sauer for the dual-action firing
mechanism. Then he smelled something burning. He looked down, saw the smoldering bullet holes riddling his new jacket: the blood-spattered fabric had been ignited by the muzzle flash.
After slapping the fire out with his bare hands, Pender raced around the sally port, hurriedly gathering up the ID, receipts, credit cards, scraps of notes, ticket stubs, and business cards that had fallen from his wallet when the dogs hit him, then looked around the sally port, trying to work out his next move.
In one direction, an unlocked gate leading to safety; in the opposite direction, a locked gate leading to Maxwell. Pender knew what the smart move was, but once again he was blinded by his secret vision of the strawberry blonds waiting in the darkness. And even if they were a fantasy, he told himself, Dr. Cogan wasn't. If Pender left now, what was to prevent Maxwell from executing her, then fleeing? He had cash and cunning-how many more would die before they ran him to ground?
With no time to waste, Pender had already wasted precious seconds. He ran toward the inner fence and fired a fourth round into the lock-he figured the element of surprise was pretty much lost anyway. Then he crashed through the gate shoulder first and hurriedly left the blacktop, cutting to his right, into the relative safety of the woods.
The first structure Pender came upon was a weathered shack six feet square. A pumphouse; he could hear the high thin whine of a motor and smell the water in the deep covered well.
He ducked inside and waited, listening. Nothing out there-no barking, shouting, no gunshots, no footsteps. Where the hell is Maxwell? He's not deaf-is he gone? It was tempting to rest there in the cool darkness for a few minutes; instead he closed the door behind him quietly and moved on, following the ridge.
The Girls He Adored elp-1 Page 28
