Stop it, Dorrie, I told myself. You’re wigging out. Light-headed. In need of food. And also, I realized at that moment, going into a stress-induced lupus flare. As soon as I paid attention to myself, I could feel the fever skewing my perception. I could feel the fiery red rash popping out on my face, the membranes in my mouth and nose ulcerating. I could feel every joint starting to swell, aching even more than usual.
Still crawling along in the Kia, I fumbled a couple of Tylenol from my purse and gulped them dry, having long since learned to take pills without water, on the go, as casually as most people partook of fast food. As soon as I possibly could, I needed to take my heavy-duty lupus meds, or I’d end up in the hospital.
But not yet. Those pills would knock me out, and I had to be able to function. I had to drive a car. I had to keep going until Juliet was safe.
I had to find a place where I could phone—
Whoa! Was that really a public phone on the next corner?
Sure enough, it was, standing one-legged, like a stunted metal stork. NO PARKING signs stood guard on my side of the street, so I turned in at the cross street—not a street, really, but a side road too narrow to park along. I passed a large brick building, apparently deserted, its windows boarded up with plywood, then pulled into a gravel lot behind it.
And nearly screamed.
The van!
Or for a moment, as my headlights caught on it, I thought it was the van. With its rear end toward the street, it stood by itself in a far corner of the premises, the only vehicle there besides mine. I slammed on my brakes, gawking at it, not so sure now; was it the right color? Hard to tell in the dark, but it seemed to be some light neutral shade, spectral in the glare of my headlights. I eased my Kia closer to it, and yes, the chrome lettering on its back doors read DODGE RAM. Yes, stripes of darker paint ran along its sides. My heart pounded harder—
But then I shook my head, angry at myself. Where was the ram logo I had seen on the wheel cover? This van had no logo, no wheel cover, and no spare wheel. Moreover, any dunce could see that this van was a derelict with four flat tires and no license plate, a junker left to rust in the weeds that had sprung up in the elbow of the parking lot’s rotting plank fence. This heap probably didn’t even have an engine in it.
Scolding myself, Dorrie, you can’t go seeing that van everywhere, I swung my steering wheel all the way around and stepped on the gas. In order to park near the public phone, I scooted the Kia to the other end of the parking lot from the derelict van, close to the abandoned brick building.
And received what may have been the nastiest shock of my life.
Sweeping the concrete foundation of the boarded-up building, my headlights illuminated a sizable sample of graffiti printed in crisp black letters on the pale exterior of the basement. It read:
CANDY GOT LAID HERE
* * *
Bless my right foot, it stamped on the brake before I crashed into the wall. In that moment I found out what the word “thunderstruck” meant. A bolt of lightning out of the black sky couldn’t have incapacitated me more. None of my other faculties functioned at all as I sat staring.
CANDY GOT LAID HERE
It still said the same thing.
Nothing made sense. I wasn’t dead and laid to rest. Nobody except Blake had ever called me Candy. And where was “here”? This building—
Oh, God.
It was the library.
I recognized it now, lopsided old edifice, the way one recognizes a face without being able to describe the exact features. With a jolt like an earthquake’s aftershock I viscerally remembered this utilitarian Victorian pile, which had been a cigar factory before it had become the Appletree Public Library.
Where I used to go rather frequently after school.
CANDY GOT LAID HERE
A fist of fire clenched my heart, and my vocabulary comprehension improved again as I found out what the word “mortified” means. It means wanting to die.
God. Who had painted that—that—that slap in the face?
Not Blake. It couldn’t have been Blake.
But who else knew?
Grandpa knows all about it.
That was ridiculous. I’d never even met Blake’s grandfather.
It must have been that girl, the one who had tried to warn me off. Spying. Jealous. Mean. She must have written it.
CANDY GOT LAID HERE
Had my parents seen it, way back then when we lived here? Had Mom maybe gotten Dad to drive her down to the library so she could check on me, see whether I was really going there every day after school? They had parked the car here, and—dear Lord, no wonder they had rushed home, packed their bags, left town for good, and never told me why. They were trying to spare me—
No, wait, was I losing my mind? Letting myself think as if this had all happened yesterday, letting that babyish whimper wind out of my mouth, letting my buttocks clench as if I expected to be spanked. Get a grip, Dorrie. That misery was seventeen years ago.
Yet—
CANDY GOT LAID HERE
It should be faded, worn away, nearly gone. But it looked freshly painted. Not spray-painted either. Brush printed. Big angular lettering.
Nothing made sense. Either time had slipped off track or I had gone insane. Either way, this place was to blame. Appletree. Making me crazy. Panic kicked me in the gut; I had to get out of here.
Shaking, I whipped the car around and gunned it toward the old parking lot’s single entrance/exit. Jouncing, scraping asphalt, I bolted onto the side street—
Saw the pay phone.
God Almighty. Juliet.
For a few minutes I had completely forgotten about her. I hated me. Every second of time passing put her in worse danger. Where was she? What was happening to her?
I had to get to that phone.
NO PARKING, read the signs.
What I should have done was just stop the car in the middle of the empty street. What I actually did showed how badly that graffito was making me lose it. Muttering, “No Parking, Schmarking, Farking,” I aimed my poor Kia at the curb, pushed the gas, whammed my way up onto the sidewalk, and stopped beside the public phone.
There, dammit.
Dammit? Where had that come from? I never swore.
Darn it. I turned off the car and tried to get out.
My body didn’t want to function. For all the usual reasons, lupus aches and pains and fatigue, but beyond that, I felt as if I’d just been punched out. I reeled like a drunk from my car to the phone, then had to lean against its Plexiglas housing as I dialed 911. By the light of the corner streetlamp I looked at the palm of my left hand for the license number I’d written there, the magic number that would make the police find and stop the kidnapper, wherever he was.
It wasn’t there.
I stared and squinted. Detail was hard to see in the peckish streetlamp light. Hard to see when my eyes stung with weariness and unshed tears, hurting almost as badly as my heart. That license number had to be there.
But no, it wasn’t. I’d sweated it off while gripping the steering wheel or I’d worn it off wrestling with my smashed hood or I’d wiped it off in the grass when I had squatted in a benighted bush to relieve myself. Remorselessly all the various forces of entropy had removed it from me. It was gone.
Moreover, I was standing there holding a silent phone to my ear.
No dial tone.
But—but I didn’t know what to do if I couldn’t call the police.
I hung up and tried again.
Still no dial tone.
With shaking hands I fumbled in the bottom of my purse—whoever had designed that purse ought to be hung by the toes—and I found the car keys, for once, when I wasn’t looking for them, and then, finally, some change. I shoved a number of coins into
the phone and tried again.
Still nothing.
The telephone’s cord had a kink in it. I straightened it. I listened for a dial tone again. None. Quite gently I hung up the phone, drooped against it, and stared into the night.
Now what?
A few hours and a few traumas earlier I would have thought, Find another way to phone, come on, get moving, and I suppose I might have done so. But even such a simple alternative no longer seemed sensible or possible. What I wanted now was someone to help me. Help me. God, I wished Sam were there. I’d seen him buy meals for homeless people, I’d seen him change flat tires for strangers, I’d known him to help down-on-their-luck employees with personal no-interest loans, no questions asked, no blame and no shame. Somehow Sam had come out of his religion ingrained with kindness. So much the opposite of my parents. With the regretful certainty of hindsight, I knew I should have trusted him with my secret from the start. If I had, maybe he’d know where to find me.
But he didn’t know.
And there didn’t seem to be anybody else around. I’d seen a few cars passing, but nary a human face in Appletree’s decaying core. Appletree had never been a place where Saturday night counted for anything, and now it was so quiet it seemed sinister. I felt like a corpse waiting to be discovered, but no one was likely to trip over me till morning. Too punch-drunk to move or think, hanging on to the otherwise useless phone for support, I gazed blindly into the darkness behind the former library. That lumpen Victorian mass of brick cast a large shadow.
Not quite dark.
Funny pale blue flashing light.
Faint. I wouldn’t have noticed it if the parking lot behind the deserted library weren’t so black.
Sapphire blue strobe flash, very faint. Blink. Blink.
From inside stupid metal bread loaf.
Derelict van.
Dodge Ram. Pale. Darker stripes along the sides. Looked just like . . .
Sapphire blue strobe flashing.
A lightning-bolt jolt of panicked joy stood me straight on my feet. What adrenaline could do was amazing. I don’t even remember lunging into my car and finding the flashlight Sam had put in the glove box for me. Instead, I remember discovering the flashlight in my hand as I ran toward the van, keys jangling as my purse jounced on my arm, that and the chuff-chuff sound of my cheap sneakers on gravel loud in my ears. At the same time I must have regained vestiges of good sense, because I slowed to a walk, flicked on the flashlight, and scanned the dark corner I was heading into as if I might trip over a body.
My heart pounded, and I started to shake, suddenly convinced that Juliet lay dead in that van.
I couldn’t stand to look.
But I had to do it.
Trying to move silently—as if I hadn’t already thundered across the parking lot like a rhinoceros—I walked softly up to the van and aimed the flashlight beam in the side window.
Seats, floor, rubber mats on the carpet. Nothing more.
I breathed out.
I scanned the interior, limped to the passenger-seat window, scanned some more. Nothing. No papers, no plastic shopping bags, none of the usual debris.
No dead leaves either, or mouse turds, or bird nests.
Good upholstery. Good carpeting. Protected by mats.
Abandoned van, my hind foot.
I shone my flashlight on the flat tires. The weeds grew up around them, yes, but some weeds also lay squashed under them.
Huh. He’d let the air out of the tires. Removed the license plate. Removed the spare wheel, stowed it someplace. And now nobody would give the van a second glance. This guy was smart.
I still hadn’t seen the source of the blue flashing light. Flicking off my flashlight, I waited until the darkness seeped back and once more I could see the faint sapphire glow come and go, come and go. From under the driver’s seat. I couldn’t see what was causing it.
It didn’t matter. I knew.
Juliet had been carrying her newly purchased bauble in her hand when the kidnapper had hit her on the head. She’d dropped it when she fell. It had rolled under the driver’s seat, where he hadn’t noticed it. Its flashing hadn’t caught his attention in daylight. By dark its battery was dying. He’d overlooked it.
I knew all this as clearly as if I’d been there and seen.
And at the same time I knew it was crazy. Why would the kidnapper have brought my daughter here, to Appletree, of all places?
But the question caused a door to slam and lock in my mind. Don’t go there. Quickly I decided the Appletree connection had to be a coincidence. Stranger things had been known to happen.
* * *
Sam muttered to himself, “I can’t face this.”
Yet he knew he had to.
He flung open Dorrie’s closet door.
And released his breath almost with a sob. There stood Dorrie’s old flower-fabric suitcase, right where it belonged. There hung her big soft dresses and tops and skirts, posy-print calico, peach, pale green, denim blue with daisy trim. Taking mental inventory of the closet, Sam didn’t see a thing missing.
He felt certain now that she hadn’t left him in any premeditated sense of the word.
Suddenly a bit weak in the knees, Sam sank to a seat on Dorrie’s side of the queen-sized bed. He stared at the clothes in the closet, relieved enough to think maybe the police would listen to him now. So far all he’d gotten was No. No, there hadn’t been an accident or incident, No, his wife hadn’t been taken to the hospital, and No, they wouldn’t consider her a missing person until at least twenty-four hours had passed, unless she was retarded, disabled, or suffering a life-threatening medical condition. Sam had tried to convince them that Dorrie needed to have her lupus medication, but he had never been a good fibber. He knew Dorrie carried her meds in her purse, and he knew her purse was virtually grafted onto her arm, and the police had evinced no concern when he had told them otherwise. Maybe they had heard the lie in his voice. Maybe they were too preoccupied by the Juliet Phillips case to care. Anyway, the answer had been No. They weren’t even sending an officer to take a report.
Later, Sam told himself, after he’d found Dorrie and when he had time to get righteously outraged, certain people in public office in Fulcrum were going to hear his opinion regarding the FPD. But right now he had to focus on locating his missing wife.
Sam stared at the bedside phone. Sitting around waiting for the confounded thing to ring was—Sam suppressed an urge to invoke the word “hell” in a nonbiblical context. The urge showed how upset he was. Couldn’t stand much more of this. He needed to do something. Go looking for Dorrie. But where?
Sam blinked and shook his head. He didn’t know. He’d lived with Dorrie and loved her for ten years, yet he felt as if he didn’t really know her at all.
“Think,” Sam whispered to himself.
But thinking was of no use. Anything could have happened to her. Accident. Rape. Abduction. Murder. And the body could be anywhere.
“Stop that,” Sam told himself fiercely. Imagining such things wouldn’t help anything. Much as it hurt, it was better to believe that Dorrie might have gone somewhere on her own, on impulse. But where?
Tonight Sam comprehended as never before how alone in the world Dorrie was. Friends? He’d already phoned all three of them. Relatives? Dorrie’s family seldom kept in any kind of contact except Christmas cards. Parents? You’d think they’d be closer; Dorrie was their only child, and they ought to cherish her—but instead the old broomsticks poked at her as if she were a wild animal in a rickety cage, as if they were afraid she might attack. Nutty old Birch rods lived right here in Fulcrum, might as well be on the moon for all the good they did Dorrie. Home? Ha. What kind of a—
Wait a minute. Childhood home?
“Appletree,” Sam muttered.
Most peo
ple felt the need to return to their childhood home at some time. Dorrie would tell you Appletree was her hometown. She had reminisced with Sam about barefoot summers spent catching crayfish in the brook, or helping her mother make strawberry-rhubarb pie, or flying high, higher in the swing her father had slung from the oak tree for her. She fondly remembered feeding chickadees and juncos in the wintertime, playing “church” with fir cones on the old graves in the cemetery, finding a puppy her parents actually let her keep. But for some reason she never wanted to go back to Appletree, even though it wasn’t too far away. A few times, feeling as if Dorrie could use a break from routine, Sam had suggested a Sunday drive down there so that Dorrie could show him the house where she had been born and raised. He’d thought she might like going back there, but she would only look away and shake her head. And she’d warned Sam never to mention Appletree to her parents. But she wouldn’t say why.
Sam started to feel a familiar discomfort, almost as familiar as the fear that Dorrie was unhappy with him. That one he usually suppressed by focusing his energy on the machine shop. This one was maybe not quite as irrational, and sometimes he had allowed it a few moments of consideration. Now, for the first time, he vocalized it.
“Something weird happened in Appletree,” he mumbled.
Dark Lie (9781101607084) Page 6
