by J. S. Bailey
AFTER CHECKING his own brake lines to make sure the vandal hadn’t struck twice, Bobby sat in his Nissan and watched Randy’s defunct Ford get loaded onto a flatbed and secured into place. He’d considered leaving but thought better of it since Randy would need someone to take him home.
Bobby’s heart fluttered more frantically than a caged bird and he had to take slow breaths to prevent his vision from going gray. Running across a parking lot didn’t top the list of things he often did. Rarer still did he find it necessary to tackle someone who exceeded him in both strength and weight. But if he hadn’t . . . if he’d hesitated for only one moment . . .
A knock sounded on the passenger side window, which Bobby then rolled down. “Were you waiting for me?” Randy asked.
“I thought you’d need a ride.”
“Thanks. I appreciate that.”
Bobby disengaged the locks, and a very wet, very forlorn Randy climbed into the seat beside him. “I’ll direct you,” Randy said. “It’s not far.”
They spent the next few minutes in silence save for the occasional “Turn here” that came from Bobby’s passenger. Every minute or so Randy would twist around and glance out the rear windshield as if he were concerned about being followed.
Bobby wanted to ask the man a thousand different questions, but he suspected that Randy would either be elusive or refuse to answer altogether.
At last Randy directed him to turn left down a long, gravel lane about a mile north of the Autumn Ridge town limits. Trees pressed close on both sides so Bobby couldn’t see the house that lay at the end. The car jolted as he failed to avoid inches-deep potholes that seemed to comprise most of the lane. Mud sprayed onto the hood and windows, but if the weather kept up like this, it would be washed off again in no time.
“I think you need to get a new load of gravel,” Bobby commented as they struck another pothole that sounded like it nearly busted an axle.
Randy shrugged. “Sorry. I don’t want it to look like anyone lives here.”
The statement added yet another question to the long list that had already formed in Bobby’s mind. Randy seemed less and less a janitor and more like a fugitive.
His mind replayed the image of Randy sliding his knife back into its leather sheath.
He hoped he wasn’t unknowingly abetting a criminal.
They pulled up in front of a ramshackle house begging for a bulldozer to come put it out of its misery. The concrete porch had more cracks than a California fault line, all the windows hid behind nailed-on plywood, and white paint peeled away from the siding like skin after a bad sunburn.
Randy must have been reading the look on Bobby’s face. “Don’t judge,” he said. “I got it cheap. The bank was practically giving it away.”
“I haven’t the slightest idea why.”
Randy pierced him with a long gaze and then smiled. “Come on inside. I’ll fix you something to eat.”
BOBBY IMAGINED confronting a horde of rats and garbage when they stepped through the door, so his surprise couldn’t have been greater when he saw that unlike the house’s façade, the inside was clean, organized, and smelled of fresh paint.
“Wow,” Bobby said when Randy flipped on the light. Most of the furniture looked like cheap IKEA finds that would have been named TAYBULL and CHAYURR or something along those lines. The walls were a vibrant coral color, and a large print of Our Lady of Guadalupe dominated the one to Bobby’s left. A crucifix hung over an open archway leading to a kitchen that had white cabinets, aqua countertops, and a coral-and-aqua checkerboard floor.
“Lupe helped decorate,” Randy explained. “She’s my fiancée.”
Bobby looked back at the painting. “Lupe? Like Guadalupe?” He pointed at the piece of art, which depicted the Virgin Mary standing atop a crescent moon with her hands pressed together in prayer.
“It’s her namesake, but don’t ever call her Guadalupe to her face or she might try to sucker punch you.” Randy kicked off his Doc Martens and went into the kitchen. Bobby followed for lack of anything better to do. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to put on some dry clothes before I catch my death. You want me to bring you a fresh shirt and pants?”
He had to be kidding. Bobby barely weighed 145 on a bad day, and Randy weighed at least forty pounds more than that. “Thanks,” he said, “but I’ll pass.”
“Suit yourself—or not.” Randy disappeared through a second archway at the other end of the kitchen, leaving Bobby alone.
Bobby sank into a metal chair that had a vinyl cushion the same color as the countertops. This was crazy. Being the quiet type, he’d barely spoken to anyone other than Caleb Young and his coworkers at the restaurant since coming to this state a year ago, and here he was loafing around in the kitchen of a man he’d only met in the past hour—a man who, by the look of it, may or may not be a serial killer.
Below him, a creaking sound put his senses on alert. Did this place have a basement? He thought he’d heard Randy go up a set of stairs when he left the kitchen, not down. Maybe sound just traveled funny in this house. Yeah, that was it. This place had to be fifty or sixty years old. Houses like this made all kinds of spooky noises. He should know; he’d grown up in one.
He shifted his weight in the chair and checked the time on his phone. Five minutes to nine.
Below him, a toilet flushed.
Ten seconds later, someone else did the same on the floor above him.
So two people lived in the house. Big deal. Except the lights had been off when they’d arrived, and no other cars occupied the driveway.
“I’m back.” Randy emerged from the darkness beyond the archway, this time wearing a plain red shirt and blue jeans. “Are you all right?”
Bobby stuffed his phone back into his pocket. “Who said anything is wrong?”
Randy glided over to the refrigerator and pulled a pizza out of the freezer. “Your face did. You may not be aware of this, but you’re not very good at hiding your thoughts.”
“You pulled a knife on me back there!”
Randy’s face sobered. “I’m sorry about that. Truly.” He put the pizza on a tray and shoved it in the oven. “If it makes you feel better, it wasn’t anything personal. An old friend almost killed me last year, so I’ve been a little more cautious lately. When you knocked me over, I assumed the worst.”
A little more cautious. Ha. “Was it that Graham person you mentioned?”
Randy turned away for a minute and busied himself at the sink. “Yes.”
“What did he do to you?”
“Why do you want to know so badly?” Randy turned back from the sink and folded his arms, wearing a dark expression that sent goosebumps racing down Bobby’s spine.
“Just making conversation, I guess.” Bobby swallowed. He shouldn’t have agreed to come inside. He should have just gone home to pick around on his guitar like he’d do any other time he wasn’t working. At least around Caleb he usually didn’t feel like a guy walking across a minefield.
“Conversation is fine,” Randy said. “Just not conversation about that. I just . . .” He shook his head. “Sorry. Graham was a good friend who, for reasons unknown to me, thought my life should end. I don’t have an explanation for it.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Randy pulled two glass tumblers out of a dish strainer, filled them from the tap, and plunked them down on the table.
Creeeaaak. Bobby stiffened. That sound again from below. “Do you have a basement?”
“Why do you ask?”
Then a muffled sound like a sneeze came through the floorboards. Sweat began to bead on Bobby’s brow. “Is somebody down there?”
“Is somebody down where?”
“Never mind.” Bobby pushed back from the table and stood up. Randy Bellison was a creep, plain and simple, and Bobby had always done his best to avoid that type of person. “Thanks for the offer of dinner, but to be honest, I ate before I came to the interview.”
“That’s too bad.”<
br />
No, really, it’s just fine.
Bobby made his way to the door as fast as he could without actually running, and Randy followed him. “I’ll see you at seven tomorrow night.”
Bobby pulled the door open. “Yeah. Uh, thanks for letting me have the job.”
A genuine smile brightened Randy’s features. “That was nothing. Thank you for saving my life.”
Bobby had no fitting response to that, so he just nodded and left and prayed that Randy wouldn’t come after him.
As he drove home, he thanked the heavens that he and Randy wouldn’t be working together at the church. Bobby’s life was creepy enough already.
WHEN THE oven timer went off, Randy got out two paper plates and divided the hot pizza between them, then poured a third tumbler of water—this one plastic—and carried it and one of the plates downstairs, saying a silent prayer for the wellbeing of the person staying with him.
She’d been here for days already. Too many by his count.
He couldn’t let her go free until he was finished with her.
The entrance to the basement lay a short distance down the unlit hallway. Bobby wouldn’t have been able to see it or the faint light that spilled from under the closed door from where he’d sat in the kitchen, but the soft sounds of his guest moving around would have been a dead giveaway of her presence.
It had probably been a mistake to have let Bobby inside in the first place, but he couldn’t just send his unlikely savior away without offering him the courtesy of food and drink.
Randy reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped out into the refurbished space that had been a bare concrete room when he moved in seven months ago. He and his friend Phil Mason had furnished it with plush furniture and a bathroom and walled off the half that contained the furnace, water heater, and washer and dryer. A burgundy couch in the center of the open space was heaped with red and gold throw pillows, as were the matching armchairs. He and Phil had covered up the drab cement floor with deep red wall-to-wall carpet that felt as soft as goose down beneath one’s feet.
His guests would never complain of discomfort.
A midnight-blue comforter and pillows covered the bed in the corner. On it a pale, slender figure sat upright with her legs dangling over the edge. Her hair, which had been a tangled mess of blond mats when she first came to him, had since been brushed out but now looked disheveled as if she had only recently awakened.
She watched him with dark eyes. “Who was that?” she asked in a quiet voice.
“A visitor.” He set the plate and tumbler on the polished coffee table in the center of the room.
“For me?” The plaintive note of hope in her voice nearly rent his soul in two.
“No,” he said, “not for you. I didn’t even tell him you’re here. Now come and eat.”
She rose gingerly and crossed the room on bare feet. A bead of sweat rolled down Randy’s brow when she drew near to where he stood.
She sat down on the couch and continued to stare at him. Her manner was both innocent and sinister, and the combination spooked him. He knew very little about her except for her name: Trish. She looked about eighteen. Maybe twenty. No more than that, for sure.
“Go on,” he said, making certain his voice remained firm. “Eat it.”
Her gaze seemed to bore a tunnel into his soul, and he knew that the thing living within her was reading him. “Why should I?” That same soft voice, though with a slightly harder edge to it.
He took a deep breath. Father, help me remain patient. “Trish, we’ve been over this before. You need to eat so you can be strong. We can’t have you wasting away like this.”
She had been a wisp of a woman to begin with, but now she looked even thinner. It crossed his mind that she might be purging herself of food every time he left her following a meal. It might do her well if he stayed down here to watch her for a greater length of time each day just to make sure she didn’t.
Trish’s eyes welled up with tears. “I don’t want to live anymore. It’s terrible. They say awful things to me.” She shuddered. “Did you know our time is drawing near?”
He didn’t know exactly what she meant, but he nodded anyway. “Our time is always drawing near. That’s why we need to repent of our sins now before it’s too late.”
“I can’t repent! Randy, if only you knew the things I’ve done to people! To poor girls like me.” Her expression softened with a suddenness that startled him, and the soul-reading gaze returned to her face. “Look at you, Randy. You think you’re such a holy man, but you’re no different from anyone else.” Her lip curled. “You think you’re better than I am! You think you can keep me here!”
“You came here of your own accord,” he reminded her. They had been through this before, as well. She had shown up at church in hysterics, and since Father Preston had been out visiting a sick parishioner that day, Randy was the only one around to offer her any solace.
Her problem became apparent to him even before she spoke.
His heart had broken with the knowledge that yet another soul lived under such oppression, even after he had helped rescue so many already. But there would always be others no matter how many he saved. He could only keep their numbers in check, and pray.
And Graham had wanted him to step down from it all.
Randy quickly banished all thoughts of his would-be murderer. The feelings he had for the man were anything but holy, and he had no desire for Trish’s tormentor to use those thoughts against him.
“Trish,” he said in the gentlest voice he could muster, “please eat. Have faith, and you’ll come through this just fine.”
She glared at him.
“Your pizza’s getting cold.”
She told him to put the pizza in a place where no pizza ever deserved to go.
He sighed.
This was going to be a long night.
GRAHAM WILLARD had the television on as he nursed a Bloody Mary he had concocted himself. He felt younger than he had in decades, and every nerve ending in his body buzzed with anticipation as he watched the news reports for word of the accident he’d thought about day and night since he’d planned it.
He’d thought he might feel a sudden shift in the atmosphere when it happened, but there was no guarantee such a thing would occur. Randy’s death would likely have all the fanfare of a snuffed candle, though the newfound darkness that would ensue would be decidedly more terrifying than that.
Such was the price he would pay for his freedom.
Right now the news anchor yammered on about a robbery at that god-awful Arnie’s Stop-N-Eat place a couple nights ago. Graham had been there twice before deciding the manager was too conceited to deserve anyone’s hard-earned cash. Served him right he’d been robbed.
Graham yawned and checked the time. Maybe Randy hadn’t left yet. He’d always kept an unusual schedule, so depending on when he’d shown up, it could be hours before he got done washing toilets and dusting hymnals and whatever else he did in that confounded church he attended.
The next segment covered an upcoming Founders Day parade and festival. Then a discussion about a proposed tax levy, and after that, a recap of a 5k race that had been held at Dennison Park earlier in the day. The traffic report stated that all roads and Interstate 5 were clear, except for a disabled semi that had been sitting on the shoulder of Highway 98 for the past hour.
Graham’s patience began to wear thin. He clicked the television off and set his glass aside. It had been a mistake to leave Randy immediately after shooting him last year because the man had survived. Heck, it had been a mistake to not shoot him straight through the brain or heart. And the thing was, he didn’t even know why he hadn’t. A momentary lapse in judgment?
He wouldn’t be making mistakes like those anymore. You live and you learn.
If Graham left the house right now, he might have the chance to watch the debacle himself if it hadn’t happened already. That way he would know without a doubt that Randy had died.
He tested his sobriety by walking in what approximated a straight line across the floor. He wobbled a little and had to grab onto the arm of a chair to steady himself, but it would be good enough. If asked by an officer, Graham could blame his unsteadiness on his age.
He put on his shoes and drove the twenty-odd miles to St. Paul’s, not once topping the speed limit or crossing the yellow lines in the center of the road.
He turned into the church parking lot.
A crumpled potato chip bag skittered across the pavement. Some leaves that had blown out of the trees were plastered to the ground like green papier-mâché. A cat loitered near the overflowing recycle bin tucked into the lot’s northwest corner by the road.
Other than that, the lot was empty.
Graham gripped the wheel so tightly the joints in his fingers practically screamed their objection at him.
He made a big looping turn and sped back out onto the wet street. It was high time he paid somebody a visit.
AS HE drove to the apartment, Graham thought about the other plan he had put into motion. It had been intended as a joke, but Graham knew he’d be the only one laughing.
However, Graham had grown impatient with that plan. As far as he knew, the joke had not yet played out. Killing Randy by disabling his car would cut the joke short, but sometimes you had to sacrifice your fun for the sake of convenience. He couldn’t keep putting off the boy’s murder. Graham was seventy-five years old now, and though the quality of his health exceeded that of other men his age (or so his doctor said), it wasn’t unheard of for an unexpected stroke or heart attack to strike a man down.
He would have liked to see Randy’s reaction to the joke—and maybe he still would if Graham was able to salvage it.
Graham hobbled up to the door when he arrived at the apartment, playing the part of decrepit grandfather for the benefit of anyone who may have been watching.
He rang the bell.
