Just After Sunset

  He snapped his head around. There was an animal quickness to him that made her stomach sink. His eyes were of a blue much more vivid than Deke Hollis's. She saw nothing in them she recognized as sanity, and her heart sank further. On the floor--the same ugly gray as the outside of the house, only tile instead of cement--there was a dark, filmy track about nine inches wide. Em thought it was probably blood. It was very easy to imagine the blond girl's hair making it as Pickering dragged her through the room by her feet, to some unknown destination.

  "You're awake," he said. "Good deal. Awesome. Think I wanted to kill her? I didn't want to kill her. She had a knife in her gosh-damn sock! I pinched her on the arm, that's all." He seemed to consider this, and while he did, he blotted the dark, blood-filled gash below his elbow with a wad of paper towels. "Well, also on the tit. But all girls expect that. Or should. It's called FORE-play. Or in this case, WHORE-play."

  He made quotation marks with the first and second fingers of his hands each time. To Em, he looked like he was trying to play creep-mouse with her. He also looked crazy. In fact, there was no doubt about his state of mind. Thunder crashed overhead, loud as a load of dropped furniture. Em jumped--as well as she could, bound to a kitchen chair--but the man standing by the stainless-steel double-basin sink didn't glance up at the sound. It was as though he hadn't heard. His lower lip was thrust out.

  "So I took it away from her. And then I lost my head. I admit it. People think I'm Mr. Cool, and I try to live up to that. I do. I try to live up to that. But any man can lose his head. That's what they don't realize. Any man. Under the right set of circumstances."

  Rain poured down as if God had pulled the chain up there in His own personal WC.

  "Who could reasonably assume you're here?"

  "Lots of people." This answer came without hesitation.

  He was across the room in a flash. Flash was the word. At one moment he was by the sink, at the next beside her and whacking her face hard enough to make white spots explode in front of her eyes. These shot around the room, drawing bright cometary tails after them. Her head snapped to the side. Her hair flew against her cheek, and she felt blood begin to flow into her mouth as her lower lip burst. The inner lining had been cut by her teeth, and deep. Almost all the way through, it felt like. Outside, the rain rushed down. I'm going to die while it's raining, Em thought. But she didn't believe it. Maybe no one did, when the deal actually came down.

  "Who knows?" He was leaning over, bellowing into her face.

  "Lots of people," she reiterated, and the words came out losh of people because her lower lip was swelling. And she felt blood spilling down her chin in a small stream. Still, her mind wasn't swelling, in spite of the pain and fear. It knew her one chance at life was making this man believe he'd be caught if he killed her. Of course he would also be caught if he let her go, but she would deal with that later. One nightmare at a time.

  "Losh of people!" she said again, defiantly.

  He flashed back to the sink and when he returned, he had a knife in his hand. A little one. Very likely the one the dead girl had taken from her sock. He put the tip on Em's lower eyelid and pulled it down. That was when her bladder let go, all at once, in a rush.

  An expression of somehow prissy disgust momentarily tightened Pickering's face, yet he also seemed delighted. Some part of Em's mind wondered how any person could hold two such conflicting emotions in his mind at the same time. He took a half step back, but the point of the knife didn't waver. It still dimpled into her skin, simultaneously pulling down her lower eyelid and pushing her eyeball up gently in its socket.

  "Nice," he said. "Another mess to clean up. Not unexpected, though. No. And like the man said, there's more room out than there is in. That's what the man said." He actually laughed, one quick yip, and then he leaned forward, his vivid blue eyes staring into her hazel ones. "Tell me one person who knows you're here. Don't hesitate. Do not hesitate. If you hesitate I'll know you're making something up and I'll lift your eye right out of its socket and flip it into the sink. I can do it. So tell me. Now."

  "Deke Hollis," she said. It was tattling, bad tattling, but it was also nothing but reflex. She didn't want to lose her eye.

  "Who else?"

  No name occurred to her--her mind was a roaring blank--and she believed him when he said hesitating would cost her her left eye. "No one, okay?" she cried. And surely Deke would be enough. Surely one person would be enough, unless he was so crazy that--

  He drew the knife away, and although her peripheral vision couldn't quite pick it up, she felt a tiny seed pearl of blood blooming there. She didn't care. She was just glad to still have peripheral vision.

  "Okay," Pickering said. "Okay, okay, good, okay." He walked back to the sink and tossed the little knife into it. She started to be relieved. Then he opened one of the drawers beside the sink and brought out a bigger one: a long, pointed butcher knife.

  "Okay." He came back to her. There was no blood on him that she could see, not even a spot. How was that possible? How long had she been out?

  "Okay, okay." He ran the hand not holding the knife through the short, stupidly expensive tailoring of his hair. It sprang right back into place. "Who's Deke Hollis?"

  "The drawbridge keeper," she said. Her voice was unsteady, wavering. "We talked about you. That's why I stopped to look in." She had a burst of inspiration. "He saw the girl! Your niece, he called her!"

  "Yeah, yeah, the girls always go back by boat, that's all he knows. That's all he knows in the world. Are people ever nosy! Where's your car? Answer me now or you get the new special, a breast amputation. Quick but not painless."

  "The Grass Shack!" It was all she could think of to say.

  "What's that?"

  "The little conch house at the end of the key. It's my dad's." She had another burst of inspiration. "He knows I'm here!"

  "Yeah, yeah." This didn't seem to interest Pickering. "Yeah, okay. Right, big-time. Are you saying you live here?"

  "Yes..."

  He looked down at her shorts, now a darker blue. "Runner, are you?" She didn't answer this, but Pickering didn't seem to care. "Yeah, you're a runner, damn right you are. Look at those legs." Incredibly, he bowed at the waist--as if meeting royalty--and with a loud smack kissed her left thigh just below the hem of her shorts. When he straightened up, she observed with a sinking heart that the front of his pants were sticking out. Not good.

  "You run up, you run back." He flicked the blade of the butcher knife in an arc, like a conductor with a baton. It was hypnotic. Outside, the rain continued to pour down. It would go on that way for forty minutes, maybe an hour, and then the sun would come back out. Em wondered if she would be alive to see it. She didn't think so. Yet this was still hard to believe. Impossible, really.

  "You run up, you run back. Up and back. Sometimes you pass the time of day with that old man in the straw hat, but you don't pass it with anyone else." She was scared, but not too scared to realize he wasn't talking to her. "Right. Not with anyone else. Because there's nobody else here. If any of the tree-planting, grass-cutting beaners who work down here saw you on your afternoon run, will they remember? Will they?"

  The knife blade ticked back and forth. He eyed the tip, seeming to depend on this for an answer.

  "No," he said. "No, and I'll tell you why. Because you're just another rich gringa running her buns off. They're everywhere. See 'em every day. Health nuts. Have to kick 'em out of your way. If not running, on bikes. Wearing those dumb little potty helmets. Okay? Okay. Say your prayers, Lady Jane, but make it quick. I'm in a hurry. Big, big hurry."

  He raised the knife to his shoulder. She saw his lips tighten down in anticipation of the killing stroke. For Em, the whole world suddenly came clear; everything stood out with exclamatory brilliance. She thought: I'm coming, Amy. And then, absurdly, something she might have heard on ESPN: Be there, baby.

  But then he paused. He looked around, exactly as if someone had spoken. "Yeah," he said. Then: "Ye
ah?" And then: "Yeah." There was a Formica-topped island in the middle of the room, for food preparation. He dropped the knife on it with a clatter instead of sticking it into Emily.

  He said, "Sit there. I'm not going to kill you. I changed my mind. Man can change his mind. I got nothing from Nicole but a poke in the arm."

  There was a depleted roll of duct tape on the island. He picked it up. A moment later he was kneeling in front of her, the back of his head and the naked nape of his neck exposed and vulnerable. In a better world--a fairer world--she could have laced her hands together and brought them down on that exposed nape, but her hands were bound at the wrists to the chair's heavy maple arms. Her torso was bound to the back by more duct tape, thick corsets of the stuff at the waist and just below her breasts. Her legs were bound to the chair's legs at the knees, the upper calves, the lower calves, and the ankles. He had been very thorough.

  The legs of the chair were taped to the floor, and now he put on fresh layers, first in front of her, then behind. When he was finished, all the tape was gone. He stood up and put the empty cardboard core on the Formica island. "There," he said. "Not bad. Okay. All set. You wait here." He must have found something funny in this, because he cocked his head upward and loosed another of those brief, yapping laughs. "Don't get bored and run off, okay? I need to go take care of your nosy old friend, and I want to do it while it's still raining."

  This time he flashed to a door that proved to be a closet. He yanked out a yellow slicker. "Knew this was in here somewhere. Everybody trusts a guy in a raincoat. I don't know why. It's just one of those mystery facts. Okay, girlfriend, sit tight." He uttered another of those laughs that sounded like the bark of an angry poodle, and then he was gone.

  -6-

  Still 9:15.

  When the front door slammed and Em knew he had really left, that abnormal brightness in the world started to turn gray, and she realized she was on the verge of fainting. She could not afford to faint. If there was an afterlife and she eventually saw her father there, how could she explain to Rusty Jackson that she had wasted her last minutes on earth in unconsciousness? He would be disappointed in her. Even if they met in heaven, standing ankle-deep in clouds while angels all around them played the music of the spheres (arranged for harp), he would be disappointed in her for wasting her only chance in a Victorian swoon.

  Em deliberately ground the lacerated lining of her lower lip against her teeth...then bit down, bringing fresh blood. The world jumped back to brightness. The sound of the wind and down-rushing rain swelled like strange music.

  How long did she have? It was a quarter of a mile from the Pillbox to the drawbridge. Because of the slicker, and because she hadn't heard the Mercedes start up, she had to think he was running. She knew she might not have heard the engine over the rain and thunder, but she just didn't believe he would take his car. Deke Hollis knew the red Mercedes and didn't like the man who drove it. The red Mercedes might put Deke on his guard. Emily believed Pickering would know that. Pickering was crazy--part of the time he'd been talking to himself, but at least some of the time he'd been talking to someone he could see but she couldn't, an invisible partner in crime--but he wasn't stupid. Neither was Deke, of course, but he would be alone in his little gatehouse. No cars passing, no boats waiting to go through, either. Not in this downpour.

  Plus, he was old.

  "I have maybe fifteen minutes," she said to the empty room--or perhaps it was the bloodstain on the floor she was talking to. He hadn't gagged her, at least; why bother? There would be no one to hear her scream, not in this ugly, boxy, concrete fortress. She thought she could have stood in the middle of the road, screaming at the top of her lungs, and still no one would have heard her. Right now even the Mexican groundskeepers would be under cover, sitting in the cabs of their trucks drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes.

  "Fifteen minutes at most."

  Yes. Probably. Then Pickering would come back and rape her, as he had been planning to rape Nicole. After that he would kill her, as he had already killed Nicole. Her and how many other "nieces"? Em didn't know, but she felt certain this was not--as Rusty Jackson might have said--his first rodeo.

  Fifteen minutes. Maybe just ten.

  She looked down at her feet. They weren't duct-taped to the floor, but the feet of the chair were. Still...

  You're a runner; damn right you are. Look at those legs.

  They were good legs, all right, and she didn't need anyone to kiss them to make her aware of it. Especially not a lunatic like Pickering. She didn't know if they were good in the sense of being beautiful, or sexy, but in utilitarian terms, they were very good. They had carried her a long way since the morning she and Henry had found Amy dead in her crib. Pickering clearly had great faith in the powers of duct tape, had probably seen it employed by dozens of psycho killers in dozens of movies, and none of his "nieces" had given him any cause to doubt its efficacy. Maybe because he hadn't given them a chance, maybe because they were too frightened. But maybe...especially on a wet day, in an unaired house so damp she could smell the mildew...

  Em leaned forward as far as the corsets binding her would allow and gradually began to flex the muscles of her thighs and calves: those new runner's muscles the lunatic had so admired. First just a little flex, then up to half. She was approaching full flex, and starting to lose hope, when she heard a sucking sound. It was low at first, barely more than a wish, but it got louder. The tape had been wrapped and then rewrapped in crisscrossing layers, it was hellishly strong, but it was pulling free of the floor just the same. But slowly. Dear God, so slowly.

  She relaxed, breathing hard, sweat now breaking on her forehead, under her arms, between her breasts. She wanted to go again at once, but her experience running the Cleveland South track told her she must wait and let her rapidly pumping heart flush the lactic acid from her muscles. Her next effort would generate less force and be less successful if she didn't. But it was hard. Waiting was hard. She had no idea how long he had been gone. There was a clock on the wall--a sunburst executed in stainless steel (like seemingly everything else in this horrible, heartless room, except the red maple chair she was bound to)--but it had stopped at 9:15. Probably it was a battery job and its battery had died.

  She tried to remain still until she had counted to thirty (with a delightful Maisie after each number), and could only hold out to seventeen. Then she flexed again, pushing down with all her might. This time the sucking sound was immediate and louder. She felt the chair begin to lift. Just a little, but it was definitely rising.

  Em strained, her head thrown back, her teeth bared, fresh blood running down her chin from her swollen lip. The cords on her neck stood out. The sucking sound became louder still, and now she also heard a low ripping sound.

  Hot pain bloomed suddenly in her right calf, tightening it. For a moment Em almost kept on straining--the stakes were high, after all, the stakes were her life--but then she relaxed within her bonds again, gasping for air. And counting.

  "One, delightful Maisie. Two, delightful Maisie. Three..."

  Because she could probably pull the chair free of the floor in spite of that warning tightness. She was almost sure she could. But if she did so at the expense of a charley horse in her right calf (she'd had them there before; on a couple of occasions they'd hit so hard the muscle had felt like stone rather than flesh), she would lose more time than she gained. And she'd still be bound to the fucking chair. Glued to the fucking chair.

  She knew the clock on the wall was dead, but she looked at it anyway. It was a reflex. Still 9:15. Was he at the drawbridge yet? She had a sudden wild hope: Deke would blow the warning horn and scare him off. Could a thing like that happen? She thought it could. She thought Pickering was like a hyena, only dangerous when he was sure he had the upper hand. And, probably like a hyena, wasn't able to imagine not having it.

  She listened. She heard thunder, and steadily whooshing rain, but not the blare of the air horn mounted beside the drawbri
dge keeper's cabin.

  She tried pulling the chair off the floor again, and almost went catapulting facefirst into the stove when it came free almost at once. She staggered, tottered, almost fell over, and backed against the Formica-topped service island in the middle of the kitchen to keep from doing so. Her heart was now running so fast, she couldn't detect the individual beats; it seemed to be just a steady hard hum in her chest and high in her neck, below the points of her jaw. If she had fallen over, she would have been like a turtle lying on its back. There wouldn't have been a chance in the world of getting up again.

  I'm all right, she thought. It didn't happen.

  No. But she could see herself lying there all the same, and with hellish clarity. Lying there with only the swash of blood made by Nicole's hair for company. Lying there and waiting for Pickering to come back and have his fun with her before ending her life. And he would be back when? In seven minutes? Five? Only three?

  She looked at the clock. It was 9:15.

  She hunched beside the counter, gasping for breath, a woman who had grown a chair out of her back. There was the butcher knife on the counter, but she couldn't reach it with her hands bound to the chair's arms. Even if she could have grasped it, what then? Just stand there, hunched over, with it in her hand. There was nothing she could reach with it, nothing she could cut with it.

  She looked at the stove, and wondered if she could turn on one of the burners. If she could do that, then maybe...

  Another hellish vision came to her: trying to burn through the tape and having her clothes catch on fire from the gas ring instead. She wouldn't risk it. If someone had offered her pills (or even a bullet in the head) to escape the possibility of rape, torture, and death--likely a slow one, preceded by unspeakable mutilations--she might have overcome the dissenting voice of her father ("Never give up, Emmy, good things are always just around some corner or other") and gone for it. But risking the possibility of third-degree burns all over the upper half of her body? Lying half-baked on the floor, waiting for Pickering to come back, praying for him to come back and put her out of her misery?