The Menace Within

by Ursula Curtiss

  Almost without transition, because this was the only other place in the church offering even elementary cover, she was pinned in light, and Peter Dickens said, “Here she is.”

  It might have been some ugly game. Amanda got to her fee c, made awkward by failure and humiliation more than by her burden. She said steadily into the blinding flare, I don’t know who you are, either of you, but if I don’t return this child to her parents right away, and they can’t reach me, they’ll call the police.”

  No pause at all; they had expected this. “You’ll have to call the parents then, won’t you?” said Dickens. His voice was mockingly reasonable. “Come on, let’s go.” Neither man touched her as she walked up the aisle in the directed flashlight beam, but she felt as if there were a cattle prod or something far worse poised just behind her shoulder. With echoes no longer mattering, she said clearly to the stilled and shrinking child, “Don’t worry, I’m going to call your father and we’ll have you home in just a few minutes. He’s a deputy sheriff, by the way,” she lied as a bold afterthought.

  Rosie understood “your father” because Amanda had always found something arch about “your daddy”—but at once, in order to remind her that there was no safe harbor, she said fearfully, Daddy all go—”

  “Because he’ll be worried,” said Amanda, rushing to cover that and feeling obscurely that as long as she was talking she had some measure of control over her situation, “and so will your mother.”

  “Daddy all gone, huh?” observed Dickens alertly, and then they were out in the windy cold.

  It was still snowing. Amanda glanced automatically at her own earlier footprints, now shallow depressions visible only to someone looking for them. If she had had ten minutes more? But they would still have looked inside the church, knowing what it held, and even if she had had the courage and the strength to return Ellie Peale to concealment they would have followed the traces of moisture from her wet shoes and tracked her down like an animal.

  Without a word, she was shepherded—Dickens in front, Ellie Peale’s still-unseen killer behind—toward a green pickup. It was like a stone in her chest to remember Maria Lopez, glowing in her cream pantsuit and blue eye makeup, handing over her fragile child and saying, “I can’t thank you enough. Merry Christmas. . . .”

  At least, thought Amanda numbly as Dickens opened the door with an imperative gesture, it was not the murder van.

  The van had been stolen, as confidently expected by Sweet, half an hour after he had abandoned it near Contessa Park two nights earlier.

  Leaving a vehicle untended in this area, even without the keys in the ignition, was tantamount to leaving a roast of beef accessible in a house which contained a dog. Contessa Park, handy to a number of bars which tailed into the local skid row, was a magnet for petty criminals, vagrants, groups of malcontents, troublemakers of every variety. It was not unusual for a band of youths to while away a summer afternoon attacking any innocents who strayed into the park to shoot baskets on a cracked cement apron, and passing cars occasionally had their windshields shattered. Unless specifically summoned, the police inclined to give the place a wide berth.

  A number of people came to New Mexico for reasons of health. So, indirectly, had Sal Arcudi, for whom there were eight warrants out in his native California. He had annexed to himself en route a stray named Shirley, a fact which mystified all who saw her: At nineteen she had a figure which seemed heavily and unsuccessfully corseted, and a countenance so forbidding that it suggested knitting and a scaffold.

  Sal was down to his last twenty dollars, and Shirley to her last seven and her mother’s watch, when they came upon the van, keys in place. It could not have been called a jewel—its seats were splitting and only bright slivers remained of its rearview mirror—but there was half a tank of gas and Sal knew of a thicket along the river where they could pull in and, for a time, subsist. They were off in a twinkling.

  Not surprisingly, because the police bulletin had been late in its issuance and there was no year, make, or even exact color to go by, they reached their destination unmolested. Both Sal and Shirley slept late in the morning, bundled into the sleeping bags they had traveled with, and when Shirley finally trudged up to the road and found a store where she could buy sweet rolls and a can of fruit juice, the morning papers had long since been sold out.

  The van’s radio did not work until Sal, bored, skilled with his fingers, brought it to life by early afternoon. They listened to the news, in search of the weather forecast because they were contemplating El Paso, and stared at each other in wild surmise. There was no blood in the van, as far as they could see, but they might very well be stopped routinely on a highway. In addition to being wanted in California, Sal was five feet eleven and dark haired, and his fingerprints were now all over the van.

  They wiped the surfaces with thoroughness, only realizing when they had finished that if this were the vehicle used in the abduction—and here they remembered those inviting keys—they might have erased the prints that mattered and inadvertently left one of Sal’s somewhere.

  It was imperative to put distance between themselves and the van. The autumn winds had brought down a lot of small debris, and they piled it over the roof and hood, cementing it with matted cottonwood leaves; Shirley, growing tired and mulish, nevertheless made a number of trips up to the road to report on the effect. Then they took measuring stock of each other.

  Shirley’s face was square; she wore her dark-blonde hair in grimly coroneted braids; even at a glance she weighed a good thirty pounds more than the missing girl described on the radio. Sal had begun to sprout a Fu Manchu moustache, but it Was still wispy enough to go unnoticed at a distance and in spite of the need for haste he took time to darken it generously with Shirley’s eyebrow pencil. Together, sleeping bags rolled and lashed to their backs, they would pass easily as a pair of sociology majors getting a late start home for the Christmas holidays.

  Speed notwithstanding, they had done well. When they gained the road and glanced back and down, the van was invisible to any but an educated eye.

  It was some time before Amanda realized that the pickup’s radio was turned to the police band. What was being said in a monotonous male voice with frequent crackling pauses in between was unintelligible to her, but she supposed that it would alert criminals to the progress of the opposition.

  She sat rigidly in the middle, patting the child on her lap now and then as she might have patted a trembling puppy, trying to flinch her shoulders inward from any contact with Dickens, at the wheel, or the silent shape on her other side. She had glanced at him elliptically once, under the pretext of rearranging strayed folds of Rosie’s blanket. His profile was set and queerly blunted, and although he was utterly motionless he gave an impression of being ready to spring. He must have been wearing a dark wig when he took Ellie Peale from the convenience store, because the dim light from the dashboard picked out a smooth edge of blondish hair.

  Eeriness being the very fabric of nightmare, it did not seem odd to Amanda that what she had seen in the church, and what they had bundled back into the confessional, was not mentioned in that short and purposeful drive through the snow. She would not have dared, sandwiched in between the killer and his accessory, and they scarcely needed to bring her situation home to her.

  The radio muttered. Rosie, lulled by sound and motion, normally oblivious in her crib by six o’clock, had fallen asleep. Amanda held herself so tense in avoidance of the flanking men that her shoulders and the small of her back ached, and began to record with bared nerves the fact that the uncommunicativeness in the truck was more than lack of utterance. It had an explosive quality which she had encountered, watered down a number of times, upon entering a room where there had just been a fierce domestic quarrel. Were they at odds as to what to do about her, the witness? Or was it simply concerted rage over a miscarriage in their plans?

  Here was the lighted crossroads and the telephone booth, snow topped, its glass wooled over. D
ickens backed the pickup into darkness, pulled on the brake but left the motor running, reached into the glove compartment for the flashlight. He opened the door and got out. “Come on, make your call,” he said, and then, when Amanda maneuvered across the seat with Rosie balanced against her shoulder, “The kid stays.”

  With the man who had plunged a knife into Ellie Peale? “I won’t leave her,” said Amanda, trying for calm. You can’t make—”

  “You don’t think so?” He didn’t bother to be sardonic; he was brief and matter-of-fact. “She’ll be okay if you do as you’re told.”

  And there was the pattern, stark and unbreakable. As long as one of them had Rosie, and a vehicle in which to drive off with her to some unfindable place, she would indeed do as she was told. With a swarm of hatred that burned just under her ribs, Amanda set the sleepily stirring child down on the seat, said gently, “I’ll be right back,” and, because there were times which demanded the deliberate self-infliction of pain, jumped savagely out into the snow.

  Her ankle, stiffened and swollen, responded with a searing flash that made her catch her breath. Dickens did not comment on her limp as they walked to the telephone booth. Instead, he asked intently, “What happened to your aunt?”

  Amanda was tempted fleetingly to say that thanks to him Mrs. Balsam had been very nearly frightened to death—but that would imply that she had recognized the man in her house as the subject of a police-artist’s sketch. Certainly, given a description, she would be able to put a name to Dickens. He must not be allowed to think himself endangered in that way, with Ellie Peale’s body revealed in the church, because then he would be forced—

  “Nobody knows, except that it’s her heart,” said Amanda, sending up an apology because lies of this nature made her very uneasy. “They don’t expect her to regain consciousness.”

  With her clear memory of the hospital room she did not have to pretend bleakness, and something about Dickens’ alert glance at her suggested a small easing of tension. He opened the door of the telephone booth, handed her two dimes, squeezed himself in with her. He said, “Tell them the snow is bad up here and the kid’s asleep so you’re staying the night,” adding conversationally, “If you try anything, I blink the flashlight and he takes off.”

  How likely was he to let her near a telephone again, even standing so vigilantly close? Heart beating hard, Amanda dropped the coins in, dialed the Lopez number in her time-buying ploy, let it drawl ten times. I can’t understand it,” she said. “They’re never out this late. Maybe the snow . . . I suppose they could have had an accident, but the first thing they’ll do is try to reach—”

  “ They must have neighbors, or friends you can leave a message with,” said Dickens. His pleasant voice had acquired a grate. “Don’t tell me—”

  “Well, there’s his brother,” said Amanda carefully, stomach tightening. “They don’t get along, but I suppose he’d leave a note on their door.”

  At Dickens’ curt order she lifted the chained telephone directory, opened it to the L’s, pretended to seek out one particular Lopez from a double-page spread of them. The type shifted and blurred in front of her eyes. Justin would know her voice no matter how she addressed him, would realize that she was speaking under duress, would—what?

  Amanda couldn’t imagine, but neither could she walk away from her one chance at communication having made no effort at all. She retrieved the two dimes, dropped them in, and dialed.

  Chapter 11

  Oblique distress signals tumbled through her head as she listened to the ringing commence at the other end; she refused to entertain the possibility that it was echoing once more through an empty apartment.

  “The snow’s fairly deep up here and I’ve never really learned to drive in it.” It was New England-bred Justin who had taught her how to reduce the possibility of skids to a minimum.

  And: “Tell Maria not to bother phoning me—” Dickens ought to approve of this “—because everything’s fine and I’m just going to bed myself.” In her agitation over Amanda’s nonappearance Maria must have gotten it across that they were depending upon her because of their arranged flight east.

  What gave her away? A very slight tremor of the tightly gripped receiver as she realized the risk she was running in this total dependence on Justin’s quick-wittedness? From behind, Dickens suddenly reached around and wrenched the receiver from her hand. Amanda saw the silhouetted flashlight, his thumb ready on the button, poised against the snow outside and aimed in the direction of the waiting pickup. He said, fast and dangerous, “What’s your name?”

  “Amanda. Morley.” She had to add it, to defuse these perilous few seconds.

  A further burr, and then Justin: “Hello?” Amanda closed her eyes; it seemed the final bitterness, after her vain attempts to reach him from Mrs. Balsam’s house, that she could hear him quite clearly. He sounded eager and out of breath, as though he had battled with his door key to answer this summons.

  “Mr. Lopez?”

  Justin, going flat: “I’m afraid you have the wrong— “Oh, wait, sorry, that’s someone I’ve been trying to reach for the last five minutes.” Which could happen easily; Amanda had often made this kind of mistake. “I’m calling for Amanda, there seems to be trouble on that line. She’s at Mrs. Balsam’s, taking care of Apple and the horse while her aunt’s away and baby-sitting at the same time. We had quite a job getting Rosie to sleep —strange house, I guess—and she wanted me to let you know that she’s staying there tonight.”

  We. The intimacy of putting a small child to bed, possibly taking turns with stories, probably having a drink afterward by way of mutual congratulation. Was Justin believing it? There was no reason why he shouldn’t. He didn’t know about her self-imposed solitary evenings, and Dickens was projecting himself as courteous and civilized; no one listening to him would dream of a snatched receiver, a menacing flashlight. Mrs. Balsam, not naive, had trusted him to the extent that he had access to her house and the cellar into which he had introduced a killer.

  The unsuspected cellar, which held a special bafflement: It had no windows, and surely that was unusual?

  “ . . . I see. I tried the house and couldn’t get an answer,” said Justin, now neutral, and Amanda, hearing that, imagining the welcome ring and the familiar voice, clenched her hands hopelessly. Where had she been? Out feeding the palomino? Wrestling the car along the road? Or—hardest of all to bear—standing frozen in Mrs. Balsam’s bedroom, listening to the telephone ring and whispering to Rosie that they wouldn’t answer it?

  She could turn her head right now and cry, “Help!’ and no matter how fast Dickens was Justin would hear. But by the time he had called the police (with no idea of where this call was originating) and they had taken his name and address, and hers and very possibly Rosie’s, and inquired as to his place in all this, what would have happened to her, and where would Rosie be?

  Justin was saying something about the storm, and then: “Thanks for calling, Mr. . . .?” He was careful about such details, and of course he would think he was getting a real name.

  “Williams.” Let him try looking that up, in case some oddity occurred to him and he wanted to call back. “No trouble. Goodnight.” Dickens was friendly and brisk—until he hung up the receiver, opened the door for a shower of weak gold light, turned on Amanda. If there had been more room in the booth, she knew that he would have swung the flashlight at her face. The openness that he could will into his eyes had been replaced by a cold and blazing rage. “Goddamn you, I ought—”

  He stared out at the pickup, visibly controlling himself, and then back at Amanda, lashes narrowing as he added up the hour, the snow, the fact of a semi-invalid child. “The parents aren’t expecting her back tonight, are they?”

  Amanda, briefly unable to speak, shook her head.

  “Understand one thing. That kid is nothing to me, nothing. She doesn’t look like she’s got too long anyway,” said Dickens with casual brutality. “Another trick out of you
and she’s going to get mislaid someplace. Hive you got that?”

  Amanda nodded mutely and then, sensing a return of his fury, said, “Yes. All right.”

  Her whole being echoed with shock as she walked ahead of him back to the pickup. She had thought she recognized Dickens for what he was, a man without scruple of any kind, trading on his looks as successfully as an attractive and poisonous plant, but insensibly, because outward appearance had a tendency to govern even in the face of facts, she had relied upon his being the more rational of the two, the more approachable. She had been wrong. He might be better balanced than the man who had walked into a store and carried a girl off to her death, but he was nakedly singleminded: He was going to get them both out of this at whatever cost, and his commitment made his temper a terrifying thing.

  From her exhausted little sniffles and gasps, Rosie had been crying. Had she simply run out of energy, or had she been stopped with a slap? In the pickup, Amanda gathered her close and kissed a wet cheek, trying to communicate comfort with her arms. That kid is nothing to me, nothing.

  Someone braver might have asked boldly as the truck was set in motion, “Where are you taking us? What are you going to do with us?” To Amanda, who had never deceived herself about being brave when it came to physical threat, any questions seemed better unasked. In a silence—could the man on her right conceivably be a mute?—broken only by the staccato and incomprehensible mutterings from the radio, they turned in the direction of Mrs. Balsam’s house.

  To lock her and Rosie in the cellar?

  At the very thought, Amanda’s toes curled in her icy shoes. She had never been in a cellar—most Southwestern houses were not so equipped, being built directly on slab—but in fiction at least they were places of rodents, cobwebs, impromptu burials. This one, windowless, would be utterly black. She tried to reassure herself by the fact that Dickens had been forced to mention Mrs. Balsam’s house to Justin—but how much risk was that, with his easy use of her name, and Rosie’s and the Afghan’s? Justin would imagine them all bedded down for the night, warm and safe.