“Why would he hide them in a locked cabinet?”
“Paranoid.”
“Well, who the hell is he?”
“His name appears to be Steven Stoat.”
• • •
“Coffee?” I asked Stoat.
“Sure thing.”
“It’s just instant. In the microwave.”
“Good enough.” Rather messily enjoying his eggs, he was still in a benign mood, which had given me time to think and stiffen my own spine. Okay, Stoat the Goat claimed to have killed Justin, but why hadn’t he said so before, when I had found Justin’s Magic Marker note on the picnic table in the fishing shack? Had he been preoccupied by the snakebite? Or had he only recently fabricated Justin’s death to torment me? This seemed quite possible. But even if Justin was dead, I was still alive and needed to keep living. If only Stoat would stay human for a few minutes, I had a request. But never disturb animals when they’re eating, Mother had always told me. Patience might possibly mean survival. I had to wait.
I even waited until he was finished sipping his coffee but, with precise timing, slipped it in before he started to get up from the table. I looked up to speak to Stoat as nearly as I could like one human being to another. And in the most natural voice I could manage, I said, “Hey, boss, I’d like to go brush my teeth, okay?”
This was a baby step in the right direction, namely, the bathroom. What I really wanted, desperately, was a shower.
Being filthy was beyond unpleasant, almost unbearable. I could actually feel the yellow scum coating my teeth, the crud forming between my toes, and a disgusting crust developing behind my ears. Not to speak of the cuts, scabs, and blisters on the bottom of my bare feet.
Stoat gave me a long, expressionless look out of his one functioning eye. “You women and your teeth,” he said finally, as if dental hygiene were on a par with lipstick. “No way am I letting you in that bathroom with the door shut, cuz there ain’t no bars on the window.”
“That’s all right,” I said, and the pitiful thing was, I meant it.
“No funny business, now,” Stoat warned. “Me ’n’ my shotgun and my buck knife are coming with you.”
“Yes, sir.” Standing up to lead the way, I added, “I expected nothing less of you, sir.”
“Are you being a smart-ass, Lee Anna?”
“No, sir. Not at all.”
Hefting his weapons in both hands, he stood in the bathroom doorway, blocking the door from closing, as I took my time brushing my teeth and flossing them and brushing them again, ostensibly paying no attention to Stoat but actually very aware of his growing boredom. When he yawned, I about-faced, stepped into the shower barefoot but otherwise fully clothed, slid the shower curtain closed, and turned the water on full blast. I had really good water pressure, and I did not even mind that at first it spurted out freezing cold.
“What the fuck!” Stoat swiped the shower curtain out of the way to get at me and was zinged in his swollen face by needles of water. He jumped back, and I closed the curtain again.
“I’m not going anywhere except right here in this shower, Mr. Stoat, sir,” I sang out earnestly.
“You crazy bitch!” He sounded angry, but not enraged. I judged myself safe for the time being and shed my clothes like a lizard clawing its old skin off. Never before in my life had a shower felt so good, or perhaps so necessary. I soaped myself all over with my sudsy pink ball-of-mesh scrubber, twice. I shampooed and conditioned my hair. I made the mistake of thinking of Justin, which gave me a pang, so in order to counteract it I sang what I could remember of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” and actually heard a snort of laughter from the blurry shotgun-laden presence right outside the shower curtain.
I would have stayed in the shower all day if I’d thought I could get away with it, but all blissful relief must end. To maintain my own morale, I kept singing, transitioning to “Achy Breaky Heart” as, spiderlike, I reached out from behind the shower curtain with one arm to snatch a towel.
“What the hell is the use of drying off?” Stoat asked. “You’re gonna get back in them same wet clothes, ain’t you?”
Aaak. I hadn’t thought far enough ahead. Parading in front of Stoat wrapped in a towel would soooo not be a good idea. I stalled for time. “Just let me dry my hair.”
“You goddamn get dressed and come out of there.”
His tone bespoke a loss of patience. I goddamn got dressed and came out of there with my arms folded across my breasts to hide my tits; I never wore a bra, and now I might as well have been in a wet T-shirt contest.
Oddly, my modesty irritated Stoat. “What the fuck? You think I’m gonna rape you? You think you’re attractive to me? Crazy bitch, I’d rather fuck a warthog. I’m a pedophile and proud of it. Ped-o-phile. Say it.”
What a bizarre way to be reassured. “Pedophile,” I mumbled, starting to shiver from cold in my wet clothes.
“Louder!”
Squaring my shoulders, I shouted, “Sir, you are a pedophile, sir!”
I suppose I was a bit feckless.
Stoat swung his shotgun at my head.
TWENTY
That man struck like a rattlesnake, although that comparison is unfair to the snake, because Stoat made no sound of warning before deploying his shotgun. But because he tried to reverse it to strike me with the butt, I was able to duck the blow and run.
But I was startled and frightened right out of my mind. Instead of running for the front door, which would have made more sense, I ran to my bedroom, where my dry clothes were, with some vague idea of locking Stoat out.
Just as I reached the door, he caught up with me and clubbed me on the back of the head, knocking me all the way down and half-unconscious. Rather than try to fight back, I curled sideways on the floor, knees to my chin, eyes squinched shut, and hands protecting my head. Something flat, probably the shotgun butt, smashed my hands. Something pointed, probably the metal-clad toe of a goddamn redneck cowboy boot, struck my ribs. Hard. Hurt. Then my spine. Really hard. Hurt even worse. Then my hip. I don’t know why the hell I didn’t scream, except out of mindless pride, as the blows sent me spinning across the linoleum floor like a hockey puck.
With what goal? That whimsical idea coaxed my eyes open to see whither was I spinning. I caught a glimpse of a shadowy lair where Stoat’s booted foot could not reach me, and with more instinct than thought, I uncurled to scoot under the bed like a coachwhip snake.
“Hey!” I heard a clatter as Stoat dropped his shotgun, felt his fingers trying to grab my fleeing ankles, and it was my turn to kick, hard. I think I connected nicely with one heel, and it seems to me that I hit him on the swollen side of his face. I felt him let go of me, howling. “Bitch!” he yelled. “Now look what you done. It’s bleeding!”
He said a great deal more, of course, cursing me vehemently and brilliantly, mingling the scatological, the profane, and the obscene. Huddled under the bed with the dust bunnies sticking to my wet clothes, skin, and hair—so much for feeling clean again—I listened to his virtuoso performance with shock and awe.
A moment later the bedclothes were jerked away, and I got an unnerving view of his grotesquely distorted face, black-and-blue and now red with blood, as he got down on his hands and knees to peer at me, positioning himself to see me with his good eye. Luckily, because this room of my pink shack was so small, I’d tucked my full-sized bed into the corner, jammed against the wall, and now I’d jammed myself there also. Stoat couldn’t reach me. Dripping red spots onto the linoleum, he did not look pleased. Indeed, the expression of his single slitty eye gave me new insight into the meaning of the word “ugly.”
Rather too softly he told me, “You get your goddamn lard ass out from under there.”
My only answer was not to move.
“I’m telling you, bitch, get out from under that bed and clean up this mess.”
I almost smiled. Stoat, neat freak, unable to stand the mess his blood was making on the floor, what a crazy—yes, crazy. Viscer
ally in that moment I understood for the first time that Stoat’s obsession with tidiness was not a harmless quirk, but an extension of his need to control. Not just normal control: Stoat needed to control everything. Quite aside from any practical considerations of not wanting to go to jail, he had to control Justin even if it meant—
Goddess damn the pervert to hell.
Abruptly I asked him, “How did you kill Justin?” With the knife, he had said earlier, but I wanted to see what he’d say now.
“The way I’m going to kill you, asshole! With this gun.” One way or the other Stoat was a liar, but he gave me no time to appreciate this. He shoved his shotgun under my bed. No doubt about it, Stoat couldn’t reach me but his artillery could.
“Not a good idea,” I said.
Paying no attention, he said louder, “And if you don’t get your fat butt out from under there right now, I’m going to make it hurt.”
“Whoever those people are across the road at your place, they’ll hear a gunshot right away,” I continued as if with sincere concern for his welfare. “Just like I did when you shot Schweitzer.”
He started to edge the gun into position, but then, in a delayed reaction, he heard what I had said. I saw common sense kick him in the face. He demanded, “Are they still there?”
“How should I know?”
“Who are they? Cops?”
“How should I know that either?”
He swore himself silly, and if my position was undignified, well, so was his. I could almost see capital-C Control clashing against capital-R Reality within his underdeveloped mind.
Finally his eyes snapped back to me and he yelled, “I’ll use a silencer! A pillow!”
“You expect me to hold it for you?”
Checkmate. I watched him take it in. It’s pretty impossible for a person with only two hands to aim and fire a shotgun while pressing a pillow to the muzzle at the same time.
I added, “Besides, if you kill me, who’s going to clean up the mess?” And now that he was no longer ordering me to move my lard ass, perversely I began to wriggle out from under the bed.
I did this because, having had his rant and rave, Stoat might be comparatively harmless for a while now, judging by my experience of him. Actually, I felt not at all sure he wouldn’t still shoot me—or, as a more silent measure, knife me—but I couldn’t stay under the bed forever. I scrambled out from under its foot, stood up, and brushed dust off myself. Parts of me, where Stoat had struck or kicked me, hurt considerably, but I ignored them.
Standing a few feet away from me, Stoat kept the shotgun aimed at me.
I looked at him and felt only annoyance, which I did not allow to show in my face. I said, “What does a person need to do around here to get into some dry clothes?”
That was a mistake, my letting him know what I wanted. Deep in his scrawny chest he chuckled. Then he ordered, “Clean up this mess.”
Sure, whatever. I didn’t want blood drying on my bedroom floor. But I didn’t want to treat my bathroom towels like cleaning rags either. “I’ll go get paper towels from the kitchen.”
“No. Use these towels right here.”
Something in his voice warned me that I’d pushed him far enough. So I did as he said. But the irony was, as I scrubbed on hands and knees to clean his blood off the floor, my own blood ran down from my lacerated scalp to drip on all the same places.
• • •
Because State Trooper Willet had ordered him and his brother to vacate what he now knew to be the Stoat premises, Quinn tried calling the Maypop Borough Police instead, and lucked out. The officer assigned to the Clymer/Leppo case had shown up for work. “I was just about to return your call, Mr. Leppo.”
Sure you were, Quinn thought, but he kept acid out of his voice as he briefed the officer, telling him only that they had found their mother’s purse at a neighbor’s house and the man’s name was Steven Stoat; was he known to the police?
“Steven Stoat, huh? Doesn’t ring any bells, but let me bring him up on the computer. Hold on just a minute.”
“He’s running Stoat for us,” Quinn whispered to Forrest. Some people liked to say yes and some people liked to say no; this cop seemed to be one of the former, happy to help.
Back on the line a moment later, the man sounded disappointed to report, “He’s clean.”
“No criminal history at all?” Quinn’s voice shot up.
“Two speeding tickets and one DUI years ago. Nothing to flag him as a violent offender. Perhaps he and your mother simply went somewhere together.”
“Leaving a dead dog on her living room carpet?”
“Well, that could be an unconnected incident.”
What were the chances? With clenched teeth Quinn said, “It looks as if my mother might have been held here against her will.”
“What makes you think that?”
“A bed with bloody handcuffs.”
“I see.” The police officer’s voice rippled with innuendo.
“No, you don’t see! It’s a bare bed and the handcuffs are neither pink nor fuzzy! If you—”
“There’s no need to shout, Mr. Leppo. I will be glad to put out a BOLO on Stoat as a person of interest in your mother’s case.”
“Fine. Thank you.”
Concluding the call, Quinn looked at Forrest silently standing by in the messed-up bedroom. “Now what?”
“More of the same, I guess. Try the Sheriff’s Office.”
Quinn did so, to find that the deputy assigned to his mother’s case was still unavailable. But on impulse he asked whether he could speak with Deputy Morales. A few moments later, Morales came on the phone sounding like an old family friend. “Quinn! How are you and Forrest? Did you sleep?”
“Some. Listen, Deputy, I know this isn’t your case, but—”
“Please, call me Bernie. I am glad to hear from you. What is going on?”
So Quinn told him about the barricaded bathroom window and the weird bare bed with shackles and the sex toys and finding the key to the gun cabinet in a dildo. At this point, much to his own embarrassment Quinn suffered a jag of the giggles. He had already realized his need to talk was emotionally driven, but he hadn’t realized he was cracking up. The only way to stop giggling was to cry. Damn everything. With tears burning at his eyes, he put the cell phone on speaker and passed it to Forrest. Then he folded to a seat on the bedroom’s clothing-strewn floor, putting his arms around his legs and his head on his knees.
He could hear Bernie Morales saying, “It sounds like not very nice sex kinks. You found out who is this man?”
Forrest told him, “Steven Stoat.”
“Stoat! I know Stoat. Pineapple face, cave chest, goat beard, big mouth like he eats the hot dog sideways, ugly like someone hit him in the face with a sack of nickels . . . no wonder he never got married.”
Forrest asked, “How come you know him if he has no criminal history?”
“Oh, Stoat, everybody knows him. Kind of creepy, compulsive. At the Stoat family reunion he lines up the folding chairs with a ruler, all straight and the same distance apart. I pity the nephew who lives with him.”
Quinn suddenly recovered. Forget the nephew; his thoughts were all for his mother. He raised his head and, loud enough for Bernie to hear him, he exclaimed, “It sounds like he must be the one who rearranged Mom’s stuff!” Furniture lined up, crockery marching single file down the middle of the table.
Bernie said, “You back, Quinn? Yes, it sounds like Stoat, but what does that prove?”
“Nothing,” Quinn muttered.
“Nothing,” Forrest repeated into the phone for his brother. “So now what?”
“Me, I can do nothing. It is not my case. What will you two do?”
Forrest said, “I have no idea.”
Quinn stood up and said, “There are more things here we need to look at.”
He half expected Bernie to warn them about trespassing or staying out of it, letting the authorities take care of it. But Berni
e did not respond like a cop. Instead, he said, “Stoat left nothing but ammunition in the gun cabinet?”
Forrest deployed his eyebrows and remained silent. Quinn said, “That’s right.”
“Then he has the guns. Keep a lookout. If he comes to the front door, you go out the back.”
• • •
After concluding the call to Bernie Morales, Forrest eyed his brother, checking on him without comment, glad that Quinn had broken down first. Forrest knew his own turn could come at any minute.
Quinn saw him watching and demanded peevishly, “What?”
“Nothing. I need to get out of this sicko room.” The sight of whips and leathers and dildos strewn on the bed made him queasy. He badly wanted to get out of this entire shadowy blue shack, but apparently Quinn had something else in mind. Turning sharply, Forrest headed into the living room.
It felt marginally less like a sauna in there. Forrest stood watching, numb and uncomprehending, as Quinn shoved the sofa back together. Once he had done that, the only things strewn in that room were videotapes, Disney cartoons, all over the floor. Forrest stared down at them.
Walking up to stand beside him, Quinn said quietly, “Exactly. A guy who comes fully equipped for sadomasochism, watching Bambi?”
Forrest stiffened. No longer numb, he felt sick. Defying his own queasiness, he picked up the first tape that came to hand, stuck it in the VCR, then sat on the sofa, grabbed the remote from its place on an end table, aimed, and clicked. The TV glowed to life.
The video started to run. There were no polite preliminaries, no introduction, no scene-establishing sequence, and it was not Bambi or any other Disney classic. It was a home video showing a man and a boy naked. What the man was getting ready to do to the boy shocked Forrest so badly that he could not take in everything at once. As if the film were illuminated by a strobe light, he could take in only shards out of sequence. Pubic hair, body hair, chest hair. Hollow chest and skinny, sloppy physique, folds of belly skin. Big-knuckled ink-stained hands grabbing the boy. Forrest bit his lip and had to close his eyes for a moment. He remembered as if in a bad dream that the kid had dark eyes yet blond hair kinked into cornrows. The man, the pervert, the pedophile, liked kinks. Forrest opened his eyes and for the first time focused on the man’s face, visible over the boy’s head. It was a face as ugly as the deed, acne-scarred skin dark with beard stubble, small stony eyes glittering with gratification. From the boy’s eyes flowed tears. The man grinned, and decaying teeth bristled from his mouth. In a raspy voice he urged, “Cry, baby boy, cry!”
Drawn Into Darkness Page 19
