by Dean Koontz
Colin’s fascination was changing to embarrassment. He didn’t need or want to hear every sordid detail. He looked around self-consciously to see if anyone could overhear, but there was no one near the bench.
She turned away from the sea and stared into his eyes. “Why did you come here, young man? Why did you tell me Roy’s secret?”
He shrugged. “I thought you ought to know.”
“Did you expect me to do something to him?”
“Aren’t you going to?”
“I wish I could,” she said with genuine malice. “But I can‘t, If I start telling them that he killed my little girl, it’ll be like before. They’ll send me away to the county hospital again.”
“Oh.” That was what he had figured even before he spoke to her.
“Nobody will ever believe me when it comes to Roy,” she said. “And who’s going to believe you? I understand from your mother that there’s some problem with drugs.”
“No. That’s not true.”
“Who’s going to believe either of us?”
“No one,” he said.
“What we need is proof.”
“Yeah.”
“Irrefutable proof.”
“Right.”
“Something tangible,” she said. “Maybe ... if you could get him to tell you all about it again... about how he killed her on purpose ... and maybe have a tape recorder hidden someplace...”
Colin winced at the mention of a recorder. “That’s a thought.”
“There must be a way,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“We’ll both think about it.”
“All right.”
“Think about a way to trap him.”
“Okay.”
“And we’ll meet again.”
“We will?”
“Here,” she said. “Tomorrow.”
“But—”
“It’s always been just me against him,” she said, leaning close to Colin. He could feel her breath against his face. And he could smell it, too: spearmint. “But now there’s you,” she said. “Two people know about him now. Together we ought to be able to think of a way to get him. I want to get him. I want everyone to know how he planned to kill my little girl. When they know the truth, how can they expect me to keep him in my house? We’ll send him back where he came from. The neighbors won’t talk. How can they, after they know what he did? I’ll be free of him. I want that more than anything.” Her voice fell to a conspiratorial whisper. “You’ll be my ally, won’t you?”
He had the insane thought that she was going to go through the blood-brother ritual with him.
“Won’t you?” she asked.
“Okay.” But he didn’t intend to meet with her again; she was almost as scary as Roy.
She put her hand on his cheek, and he started to pull away before he realized that she was only being affectionate. Her fingers were cold.
“You’re a good boy,” she said. “You did a good thing—coming to me like this.”
He wished she would take her hand away.
“I’ve always known the truth,” she said, “but what a relief it is to have someone else who knows. You be here tomorrow. Same time.”
Just to get rid of her, he said, “Sure.”
She got up abruptly and walked away, toward Treasured Things.
As Colin watched her go, he thought that she was far more terrifying than any of the monsters he’d feared throughout his childhood and adolescence. Christopher Lee, Peter Gushing, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi—none of them had ever portrayed a character quite as chilling as Helen Borden. She was worse than a ghoul or a vampire, doubly dangerous because she was so well disguised. She looked rather ordinary, even drab, unremarkable in every respect, but inside she was an awful creature. He could still feel where her icy fingers had pressed against his face.
He took the recorder out of the windbreaker and switched it off.
Incredibly, he was ashamed of himself for some of the things he had said about Roy, and for the way he had so eagerly played to her hatred of her son. It was true that Roy was sick; it was also true that he was a killer; but it was not true that he had always been that way. He wasn‘t, as Colin had said, “born evil.” Fundamentally, he was not less of a human being than anyone else. He had not murdered his sister in cold blood, Judging from all the evidence that Colin had seen, Belinda Jane’s death had been an accident. Roy’s sickness had developed in the aftermath of that tragedy.
Depressed, Colin got off the bench and went out to the parking lot. He unchained his bike from the security rack.
He no longer wanted revenge against Roy. He just wanted to put a stop to the violence. He wanted to get the evidence so the proper authorities would believe and act. He was weary.
Although it was pointless to tell them, although they would never understand, Mr. and Mrs. Borden were killers, too. They had turned Roy into one of the living dead.
39
Colin called Heather.
“Did you talk to Roy’s mother?” she asked.
“Yeah. And I got more than I bargained for.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s too complicated over the phone. You’ve got to hear the tape.”
“Why don’t you bring it here? My parents are gone for the day.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
“Don’t come by the front way,” she said. “Roy just might happen to be at the cemetery across the street; you never can tell. Take the alley and come through the backyard.”
He made certain he wasn’t followed, and she was waiting for him on the patio behind the house. They went into the cheery yellow-and-white kitchen, sat at the table, and listened to the taped conversation between him and Mrs. Borden.
When Colin finally switched off the machine, Heather said, “It’s awful.”
“I know.”
“Poor Roy.”
“I know what you mean,” Colin said morosely.
“I’m kind of sorry I said those mean things about him. He can’t help what he is, can he?”
“It affected me the same way. But we can’t let ourselves feel too sorry for him. Not yet. We don’t dare. We’ve got to remember that he’s dangerous. We’ve got to keep in mind that he’d happily kill me—and rape and kill you—if he thought he could get away with it.”
The kitchen clock ticked hollowly.
Heather said, “If we played this tape for the police, it might convince them.”
“Of what? That Roy was an abused child? That he was maybe abused enough to grow up twisted? Yeah. Maybe it would convince them of that, all right. But it wouldn’t prove a thing. It wouldn’t prove that Roy killed those two boys or that he tried to wreck a train the other night or that he’s trying to kill me. We need more than this. We have to go through with the rest of the plan.”
“Tonight,” she said.
“Yeah.”
40
Weezy came home at five-thirty, and they had an early supper together. She brought stuff from the deli: sliced ham, sliced turkey breast, sliced cheese, macaroni salad, potato salad, big dill pickles, and wedges of cheesecake. There was a lot of food, but neither of them ate much; she was always watching her figure, conscious of every extra ounce, and Colin was simply too worried about the coming night to have much of an appetite.
“You going back to the gallery?” he asked.
“In about an hour.”
“Be home at nine?”
“‘Fraid not. We close at nine, sweep the floor, dust the furniture, and open again at ten.”
“What for?”
“We’ve having a private, invitation-only showing of a new artist.”
“At ten o‘clock at night?”
“It’s supposed to be an elegant after-dinner affair. Guests will have their choice of brandy or champagne. Sound swell to you?”
“I guess.”
She put a daub of mustard on her plate, rolled up a slice of ham, dipped the ham in the mustard,
and nibbled daintily. “All of our best local customers are coming.”
“How late will it last?”
“Midnight or thereabouts.”
“Will you come home after that?”
“I expect so.”
He tasted the cheesecake.
“Don’t forget your curfew,” she said.
“I won’t.”
“You be home before dark.”
“You can trust me.”
“I hope so. For your sake, I hope so.”
“Call and check if you want.”
“I probably will.”
“I’ll be here,” he lied.
After she had showered and changed and left for the evening, he went into her room and took the pistol from the dresser drawer. He put it in a small cardboard box. He also put the tape recorder, two flashlights, and a squeeze bottle of ketchup in the box. He took a dish towel out of the linen closet and cut it in half, the long way. He put the two strips of cloth with the other things. He went out to the garage and fetched a coil of rope from the wall, where it had been hanging ever since they moved into the house, and he added that to the bundle.
He had some time to kill before he could set out for the Kingman house. He went to his room and tried to work on one of his monster models. He couldn’t do it. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
An hour before nightfall, he picked up the box that contained the pistol, the tape recorder, and the other items. He left the house and strapped the package to the carrier on his bicycle. He followed an indirect route to the abandoned Kingman house at the top of Hawk Drive, and he was certain he was not followed.
Heather was waiting just inside the front door of the ruined mansion. She stepped out of the shadows when Colin arrived. She was wearing short blue shorts and a long-sleeved white blouse, and she was beautiful.
He put the bicycle on its side, out of sight in the tall dry grass, and he carried the cardboard box inside.
The house was always a strange place, but perhaps even stranger than usual at twilight. The slanting copper sunlight streamed through a few broken, shutterless windows and gave the place a somewhat bloody look. Motes of dust spun lazily in the fading beams. In one comer a huge spider web gleamed like crystal. The shadows crept as if they were living things.
“I look terrible,” Heather said as soon as he joined her in the house.
“You look great. Terrific.”
“My shampoo didn’t work,” she said. “My hair came out all stringy.”
“Your hair is nice. Very nice. You couldn’t ask for prettier hair.”
“He’s not going to be interested in me,” she said, quite sure of that. “As soon as he sees that it’s me you’ve got here, he’ll just turn and walk out.”
“Don’t be silly. You’re perfect. Absolutely perfect.”
“Do you really think so?”
“I really do.” He gave her a warm, tender, lingering kiss. Her lips were soft, tremulous. “Come on,” he said gently. “We have to get the trap set.” He was involving her in an extremely dangerous situation, using her, manipulating her, not unlike Roy had manipulated him, and he hated himself for it. But he didn’t call it off while there was still time.
She followed him, and as he started up the stairs toward the second floor, she said, “Why not down here?”
He stopped, turned, looked down at her. “The shutters have fallen or been torn off almost all the windows on the first floor. If we staged it down there, the lights would be visible outside the house. We might attract someone. Other kids. They might interrupt us before we’ve gotten what we want out of Roy. Some of the rooms on the second floor still have all their shutters.”
“If something goes wrong,” she said, “it would be easier to get away from him if we were on the first floor.”
“Nothing’s going to go wrong,” he said. “Besides, we’ve got the gun. Remember?” He patted the box that he was carrying under his right arm.
He started up the steps again and was relieved to hear her following him.
The second-floor hall was gloomy, and the room he was interested in was dark except for threads of late-afternoon sun around the edges of the bolted shutters. He switched on one of the flashlights.
He had chosen a large bedroom just to the left of the head of the stairs. Ancient, yellowed wallpaper was peeling off the walls and hanging in long loops across the ceiling, like old bunting left over from a festive occasion a hundred years ago. The room was dusty and smelled vaguely of mildew, but it wasn’t littered with rubble as many of the other chambers were; there were only scattered pieces of lath and a few chunks of plaster and a couple of ribbons of wallpaper on the floor along the far wall.
He handed Heather the flashlight and put down the box. He picked up the second light, turned it on, and propped it against the wall so that the beam shone up at the ceiling and was reflected back down.
“It’s a spooky place,” Heather said.
“There’s nothing to be scared of,” Colin said.
He took the tape recorder out of the box and placed it on the floor, near the wall that was opposite the door. He gathered up some of the rubble and carefully arranged it over the small machine, letting only the head of the microphone in the open, and concealing even that in a shadowy little pocket of tangled wallpaper.
“Does it look natural?” he asked.
“I guess so.”
“Look at it closely.”
She did. “It’s okay. It doesn’t look arranged.”
“You can’t see the recorder at all?”
“No.”
He retrieved the second flashlight and shone it on the pile of trash, looking closely for a glint of metal or plastic, a reflection that would betray the trick.
“Okay,” he said at last, satisfied with his work. “I think it’ll fool him. He probably won’t even give it a second look.”
“Now what?” she asked.
“We’ve got to make you look like you’ve been roughed up a bit,” Colin said. “Roy won’t believe a word of it unless you look like you put up a struggle.” He took the squeeze bottle of ketchup out of the box.
“What’s that for?”
“Blood.”
“Are you serious?”
“I’ll admit it’s trite,” Colin said. “But it ought to be effective.”
He squeezed some of the ketchup onto his fingers, then artfully smeared it along her left temple, matting her golden hair with it.
She winced. “Yuch.”
Colin stepped back a couple of feet and studied her. “Good,” he said. “It’s a little too bright right now. Too red. But when it dries a bit, it ought to look just about like the real thing.”
“If we’d really struggled, like you’re going to tell him we did, then I’d be rumpled and dirty,” she said.
“Right.”
She pulled her blouse half out of her shorts. She stooped, wiped her hands over the dust-covered floor, and made long sooty marks on her shorts and blouse.
When she stood up, Colin regarded her critically, looking for the false note, trying to see her as Roy would see her. “Yeah. That’s better. But maybe one more thing might help.”
“What’s that?”
“If the sleeve of your blouse was torn.”
She frowned. “It’s one of my better blouses.”
“I’ll pay for it.”
She shook her head. “No. I said I’d help. I’m in this all the way. Go ahead. Tear it.”
He jerked on the material on both sides of her left shoulder seam, jerked once, twice, three times. The stitching finally parted with a nasty sound, and the sleeve sagged on her arm, torn half away.
“Yeah,” he said. “That sure does it. You’re very, very convincing.”
“But now that I’m such a mess, will he want anything to do with me?”
“It’s funny ...” Colin stared at her thoughtfully. “In a strange way, you’re even more appealing than you were before.”
“Are
you sure? I mean, I’m all dirty. And I wasn’t all that fabulous when I was clean.”
“You look great,” he assured her. “Just right.”
“But if this is going to work, he really has to want to ... well ... he has to want to rape me. I mean, he’ll never get the chance. But he has to want to.”
Again, Colin was acutely aware of the danger into which he was putting her, and he didn’t like himself very much.
“There’s just one more thing I can do that might help,” she said.
Before he realized what she intended, she grasped the front of her blouse and tugged hard on it. Buttons popped; one of them struck Colin’s chin. She tore the blouse open all the way, and for an instant he saw one small, beautiful, quivering breast and a dark nipple, but then the halves of the blouse fell part of the way together again, and he could see nothing more than the soft, sweet swell of flesh that marked the beginning of her breasts.
He looked up, met her eyes.
She was blushing fiercely.
For a long moment neither of them spoke.
He licked his lips. His throat was suddenly parched.
At last, trembling, she said, “I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t help much to have my blouse open a little. I mean, I don’t have much to show.”
“Perfect,” he said weakly. “It’s the perfect touch.” He looked away from her, went to the cardboard box, and picked up the coil of rope.
“I wish I didn’t have to be tied up,” she said.
“There’s no other way,” he said. “But you won’t really be tied. Not tightly. The rope will just be wrapped around your wrists a few times; it won’t be knotted there. You’ll be able to get your hands free in a flash. And where there are knots, they’ll be the kind that slip open easily. I’ll show you how. You’ll be able to get out of the ropes in a couple of seconds if you have to. But you won’t have to. He won’t get anywhere near you. He won’t get his hands on you. Nothing will go wrong. I have the gun.”
