Except for several weeks last September, when the mid-afternoon sun had been so intense that she had arrived home dizzy with heat and drenched with perspiration, Tracy had never minded the walk to and from school. Since there were few families with teenagers living on South Cotton, there was no one she felt obligated to walk with, and the solitary twenty minutes at either end of the school day had quickly become one of the few real pleasures in her current life. Her aunt, a real estate agent, worked irregular hours, and all too often, Tracy arrived home from school to find Aunt Rene already there waiting for her, eager to visit and “have a nice chat” about the events of the day. Because of this, Tracy usually tried to prolong her walk as much as possible.
Generally she used this time alone for emotional unwinding. Today, however, she had some heavy thinking to do. She had done something on impulse that had not only been stupid but possibly even dangerous, and she did not know why she had done it or what she ought to do next.
She should never have encouraged Brad Johnson to get in touch with her. It had been a crazy thing to do, and at the time she had sensed that. It was not even as if the invitation had come tumbling out in an accidental manner during the course of their lunchtime conversation. She had been even more brazen than Gina, whose line about being “the only Scarpellis in the phone book” was a standing joke at school. Gina, at least, had tried to sound philanthropic—“If you get desperate for human companionship” was the way she had put it. In Tracy’s case, there had been no such pretense. She had left the cafeteria and, once she was safely away, had deliberately turned back to hand herself over to a stranger who, even then, she had had good reason to believe was a fraud.
Why had she done such a thing? she asked herself. Was it because of his extreme good looks? Yes, if she were to be honest, she would have to admit that that had certainly been part of it. Although slight in build, the boy who called himself Brad Johnson had a face that was almost too handsome to be believed. The perfect features; the heavy-lashed eyes and the wide, sensitive mouth gave him a look of ethereal beauty that was very different from the burly cloddishness that she had come to associate with the “Winfield rednecks.”
When Gina had first pointed him out to her—“Mr. Gorgeous over there by the water fountain is checking us out!”—Tracy had glanced across with no more than idle curiosity and surprised herself with her immediate positive reaction. She had not had the slightest interest in dating since she had arrived in Winfield, but the sight of this particular boy had had a strange effect on her. He looked like the type of young man she was used to seeing at the theaters and museums and art galleries she had attended with her mother. When she had seen him again at noon in the cafeteria, it had been hard to pretend to be listening to Gina’s chatter. She had known even before he got up from his seat that he was going to come over to their table, and she had known, too, that she wanted him to do just that.
It was not until later that she had come to realize that he was not what he was pretending to be.
Now, shifting her load of books from one arm to the other, Tracy left the sidewalk and crossed Rosemont Street to the northwest corner of Lamar Park. Rows of trees flanked the park’s entrance, and almost as soon as she stepped onto the gravel pathway the afternoon sunlight was blocked by leafy branches, and shade settled onto her shoulders with weighted coolness.
The park was laid out as a rectangle and arbitrarily divided into sections, each of which was unofficially designated for a particular use. The northern end, screened off by a golden wall of forsythia, was a romantic haven for lovers. There, on spring and summer evenings, young people lay entwined in each other’s arms like pink and white islands dotting a grass green sea. The center of the park was wide and open and provided an unobstructed area for dog walking, ball playing, or frisbee tossing. The southeast corner, bordering on Cotton Road, was the playground area, and contained swings, slides, and a set of monkey bars. Benches were positioned at strategic points along the edges of the playground so mothers could sit and visit with each other while remaining alert, on call to swings.
The park was always liveliest in the early mornings. That was when the joggers were out, dressed in bright sweat suits, chugging clockwise around the park’s perimeter like center-ring ponies in a circus. The dog walkers were active then, too, clinging to leashes and carrying their pooper scoopers, enthusiastically greeting each other like members of some elite fraternity. When she cut through the park in the mornings on her way to school, Tracy often felt as though she were crashing a private party.
In the afternoons usually only the playground was occupied. Today, as she walked past the beds of pansies beside the fountain, she could see, framed in a gap between two bushes, several young women chatting together at the park’s south end, while a group of small children chased each other up and down the slides.
It was then that she suddenly realized that she was being watched.
There was no specific reason for the awareness, but it was as undeniable as the feeling she had experienced at lunchtime when she had felt Brad Johnson staring at her. On that occasion she had been disconcerted yet flattered; there was nothing sinister about being the object of someone’s attention in a school cafeteria. What she was feeling now, however, was something quite different, because the person who was watching her was keeping himself hidden.
She was alone in that section of the park—or, at least, she had assumed she was. Tracy glanced surreptitiously about her, hoping to find that she had been mistaken. Even a child, stretched out on the grass behind the fountain, would provide an innocent explanation for what she was feeling.
Λ hasty perusal confirmed the fact that no such person existed. To all appearances, she was alone, as she had thought she was. And yet she felt certain this was not true. Her skin was starting to prickle, and her scalp was getting a tingling sensation, as though an icy wind were blowing against the back of her neck.
The first thought that flashed into her mind was that she was being staked out for a mugging. With effort she fought the temptation to break into a run. If she ran it would alert her pursuer that she was aware of his existence, and the last thing she wanted to do was trigger an attack. She began to walk slightly faster to get away from the trees, the most likely shelter for someone who wanted to conceal himself. She did not permit herself to glance back over her shoulder but kept her ears tuned for the telltale sound of crackling bushes or a sudden burst of footsteps rushing up behind her.
A scream lay formed and ready at the back of her throat. If she released it, the mothers at the playground would be sure to hear her, but the bushes would block their view of what was happening. How they would react to a disembodied scream was hard to anticipate. For all she knew, their whole concern might be for their children. Instead of rushing to her assistance they might grab their youngsters and run the other way.
Never before had the northern end of the park seemed so vast and empty. She was by now well past the fountain, but the hedge of forsythia seemed to stretch on indefinitely, cutting her off from any human contact. She could hear the sound of her own breathing, as ragged and rasping as though she had just run a marathon, and the muscles in her legs were cramping with the effort it was taking her to hold them in check.
Walk, don’t run, she counseled herself. Steady and fast will get you there. You’ve made a lot of progress during the past few minutes. Anybody hiding back behind the trees will have a lot of distance to cover before he can get at you now.
If he was still back behind the trees. But what if he wasn’t? What if he had left his station there and was closing the distance between them, while the pounding of her heart drowned out his footsteps?
Pull yourself together, Tracy commanded. There isn’t any reason to panic. This is a little town in Texas, not New York City. It’s the middle of the afternoon, not two in the morning.
Besides, even if she was correct about the fact that someone was observing her, that did not necessarily mean he was out to mol
est her. No halfway intelligent mugger would risk a daylight attack on a schoolgirl who was obviously good for nothing but an armload of textbooks.
The hedge extended only several more yards before it ended at the edge of the softball field. If she did run now, she told herself, she would be certain to reach the clearing before anyone pursuing her could overtake her.
With that realization, Tracy found her legs taking over for her brain. Without having made a conscious decision to do so, she started to run. Sprinting to the end of the hedgerow, she hurled herself around the last of the bushes and burst out into the open section of the park.
The relief that swept over her drained all strength from her body and left her light-headed and gasping like a half drowned swimmer. The world around her shimmied as though distorted by heat waves, and her legs felt loose-jointed and rubbery.
Then, as moments passed and her heartrate gradually returned to normal, she deliberately turned and peered back at the empty expanse of grass that stretched innocently to the flower-encircled fountain. No one was there, of course. Nobody had been chasing her.
For a fleeting moment she contemplated the possibility that she might also have been wrong about being watched. Then, as if to lay that doubt to rest, she heard a car door slam and an engine start up beyond the trees and shrubbery that blocked her view of Rosemont. It was the first car engine she had been aware of since she had entered the park. Rosemont was a small residential street where there was little traffic, except in the early morning, when its residents left for work, and from five to six o’clock in the evening, when they returned home.
The rumble of the engine leapt to a roar, and a squeal of tires pierced the afternoon quiet like a shriek of pain. Too surprised to react, Tracy stood frozen for an instant too long. By the time she had thought to drop her books and run back along the path to the street, the throb of the motor had already been softened by distance.
He’s gone, she thought, disgusted with herself for not having moved quickly enough to have identified the driver. Even so, the sound of the car speeding away in such an unorthodox fashion was proof of sorts that she had not been the victim of paranoia.
What she had sensed had been real—as real as the danger her mother must have sensed in that final incredulous instant before she felt the knife.
Chapter 3
BRAD CURSED HIMSELF ALL the way from the park to the motel. Following her had been an inexcusably risky thing to have done. It had also been pointless. There had been nothing to be gained by driving along at a snail’s pace a block and a half behind Tracy Lloyd as she walked from Winfield High School to her aunt and uncle’s home.
It was not as though he had needed to find out where the house was. When they had parted company after B lunch, he had immediately left the school building to locate a convenience store, where he had used their old-fashioned phone directory to look up the name Cory Stevenson and found the address listed as 1214 South Cotton Road. When he flipped to the city map in the back of the book he discovered that Cotton was a north-south street, located only about a quarter of a mile to the east of the school.
He had torn the corner off the cover of the phone book, jotted down the information he needed, and stuck the scrap of paper in the pocket of his jeans. Then, with the whole long afternoon still stretching in front of him, he had decided to kill some time by going to the movies. In the dark interior of a nearly empty theater situated in a shopping mall, he shared two hours of an ancient spy movie with three middle-aged women, a whimpering baby, and an elderly drunk who evidently had seen the picture before, because he kept shouting warnings to the hero whenever danger threatened.
Despite the drunk’s contagious enthusiasm, once ensconced in the theater Brad found himself unable to concentrate on the picture. He was too souped up, too excited about the way things were going. It was going to work after all—at least, it appeared that way. The fact that Tracy had returned on her own to tell him how to get in touch with her convinced him it was preordained she was to be his partner.
When the movie was over he managed to use up most of another hour walking through the shopping mall. He was not surprised to find many of the same stores that he was used to seeing in New Mexico and felt he was on familiar turf as he strolled past Sears, a Little Professor bookstore, a Hallmark card shop, and a Thom Mc An shoe store.
Midway along the mall’s lower level he came upon a sporting goods store with a display of target pistols in the window. He stood for a number of minutes, staring longingly at the handguns laid out behind the glass. How he wished he had one of those instead of the cumbersome hunting rifle that he had brought with him from Albuquerque! He considered going into the store and trying to buy a pistol but decided against it. He was unfamiliar with the Texas laws that governed the purchase of firearms and did not want to risk being asked to present ID.
He left the shopping center at approximately half past three, drove aimlessly about for a while, and then, as if drawn by a magnet, headed back to the high school. Classes had been out for some time now, and the student parking lot was practically empty. Several small groups of teenagers stood chatting beside the few remaining cars, but it was obvious that the brunt of the students had long since taken off for home.
Brad pulled up across the street from the school and hung there with the engine idling, watching a group of younger boys laughing and shoving each other around on the steps of the building. Had there ever been a time when he had been that carefree? As if in answer, a picture flashed into his mind of himself as a ten-year-old, rough-housing with his friend, Jamie, during recess. Taller and stronger than Brad was back in their preteens, it had been Jamie who had taught him to stand up for himself so he wouldn’t get picked on. Over the years he’d had some wonderful times with Jamie, but he had never been part of a group the way these boys were.
The kids on the steps eventually began drifting over to the bicycle rack. Brad put the car into gear. There was nothing more he could do until evening, he told himself, so he might as well drive back to the motel and watch some television.
Pulling away from the curb, he shifted into second. That was when he saw her, a little more than half a block ahead of him on the far side of the street. He recognized her instantly, even from the back, by the set of her shoulders and her graceful, long-strided walk. Although he had seen her for the first time only the day before, already she seemed incredibly familiar.
He glanced at his watch and then back at the girl on the sidewalk. It was late for her to be leaving school. He wondered what could have held her there this long. The sight of her at a time when he had not been looking for her made him feel like the recipient of an undeserved present. Without making a conscious decision to follow her, he kept the car in second gear and inched it along, letting the distance widen between them so that if for some reason she turned to look back, she would not notice he was tailing her. She walked two blocks along Third Street and then turned onto Rosemont. When, a few moments later, Brad, too, came opposite the corner, he was startled to find that she had vanished.
Not vanished, he corrected himself. Nobody just vanishes. Maybe she had entered one of the houses on the west side of the street. That didn’t seem reasonable, though, since the Stevensons’ address had been listed in the phone book as being on South Cotton. A second possibility occurred to him; perhaps she had crossed the street and gone into the park. A gravel path ran diagonally in from the corner, but a row of trees and a screen of flowering bushes cut off his view of the interior, so he could not tell whether or not she had entered.
Once again, acting strictly on impulse, Brad stopped the car, turned off the motor, and got out. He crossed Rosemont and walked down the path until he came to the inner edge of the clump of trees. Standing in a pocket of shadow formed by the leafy branches, he was surprised at the extent of his relief at seeing Tracy some twenty yards ahead of him.
He struggled against the temptation to call out her name. For a moment he actually contemplated d
oing so. He had intended a slower approach—first a casual phone call, then perhaps a movie date, and, if those went well, the initiation of an in-depth talk during which he would explain to her what had to be done. Much as he hated the idea of wasting time in such a manner, he had been afraid that if he moved too quickly she might refuse him. He had thought he would start the ball rolling by phoning her that evening. Now he found himself wondering if the elaborate preparation was necessary.
While he was trying to decide whether to take advantage of this unexpected opportunity or to stick with his original, more carefully conceived plan, Tracy broke into a run. The suddenness of her flight took Brad by such surprise that he froze where he was and then moved hastily back into the protective covering of the bushes. What in the world had happened? he asked himself. He was not aware of having made a sound. She had not glanced over her shoulder, so there seemed to be no way she could have known he was there. Somehow, though, she had sensed it, and that realization had been enough to send her skittering away like a frightened rabbit.
Brad silently cursed himself for his own stupidity. How could he have been idiotic enough to have let this happen! Now she was all worked up, and by this evening when he made his phone call, she would probably have developed a full-blown case of the jitters. There was no telling what the result of that might be. She might not even be willing to come to the phone.
The one thing he did know for certain was that it was imperative that he get out of her range of vision before she reached the edge of the hedgerow and decided to turn around to look behind her.
Hurrying back along the path to the street, he quickly got into his car and turned the key in the ignition, cringing as the afternoon quiet was broken by the roar of the engine springing to life. There was no way Tracy could have missed hearing that racket, he thought grimly, and it was bound to reinforce her suspicion that she had been followed. He knew her too slightly to be able to predict her reaction. She might panic further at this indication that someone had indeed been spying on her, or she might throw caution to the winds and rush back to investigate.