It’s all right, after all.
Melvin parked near the end of the block. He thought he might wait in his car, but he quickly grew restless.
What if I’m wrong? he wondered. What if she’s in there with a guy?
No, not Vicki. She wouldn’t. No.
But Melvin couldn’t get the idea out of his head. He wanted to believe in her, to trust her. But he had to know.
He walked back to the house.
Most of the windows had curtains that were shut, but not the kitchen. The curtains there were wide open.
First, he saw only Vicki. Then the guy stepped up to the counter.
Melvin tried to convince himself that the guy was the husband of Vicki’s patient. She could be asking about the wife’s condition. Any contractions yet?
Bullshit.
Who is he? What’re they talking about?
It was like watching a drive-in movie without any sound. He could see Vicki and the guy perfectly. But the window was shut and an air conditioning unit hummed loudly nearby, so he couldn’t hear a damn thing.
If only he could read the fucker’s lips.
Vicki turned sideways and slid off the stool. She stepped around the end of the counter. The guy was saying something. And watching her.
Melvin couldn’t read his lips.
But he could read his eyes.
“How long have you lived here?” Vicki asked.
“What?” Jack called. “You’ve got to speak up.”
“Wise guy.”
Jack smiled at her from the couch. It looked soft and comfortable, but Vicki had settled into an easy chair a short distance from the corner where he was sitting. “What’d I do wrong, this time?” he asked.
“You bought a white couch and you gave me black coffee. I don’t think the two would go well together.” She raised the cup to her lips. Steam drifted up, hot against her face. She took a sip of the coffee, and sighed.
“Take a chance,” Jack said.
“I’m fine here.”
“But out of reach.”
“We can admire each other from afar.”
“Should I confess to something?” he asked. “Would that get you over here?”
The words made her stomach tighten. “Don’t rub it in, okay? I don’t like what I did. It was a rotten trick.”
“Not nearly as rotten as committing murder. If your maneuvers end up getting Dobbs put away, you’ve done society a considerable service. You’ll have taken a killer off the streets. That counts for a lot.”
“I suppose.”
“No supposing about it. It’s certainly possible that Pollock wasn’t his first victim. And might not be his last, if he isn’t stopped.”
“Possible, I guess.”
“That nurse, for instance. He told you that he hypnotized her?”
Vicki nodded, and took another drink of coffee.
“Pretty far out. But we’re going on the assumption that he was telling the truth, right? So, if he put her into some kind of trance instead of just asking her politely to knock the guy off, that means she wasn’t acting on her own volition. She was compelled to kill Pollock. So what happens to her afterward? Is Dobbs going to let her go on her merry way?”
“He could get her to forget everything that happened while she was under hypnosis,” Vicki said. She frowned into her coffee. A thought, a new idea, a realization heavy with portent was stirring somewhere deep in her mind. She concentrated, trying to force it to the surface. But Jack spoke again, distracting her.
“The nurse might forget it, but the cops know she was involved and they’re looking for her. If they got their hands on her, they might make her remember.”
“If they hypnotized her again,” Vicki said, “they might be able to get the truth.” What was that thought? Where’d it go?
“And if Dobbs knows enough on the subject to persuade someone to commit murder—I imagine that takes quite an expert—then he’d have to realize she’s a threat to him. As long as she’s alive.”
“Yeah.” Vicki searched her mind. It was like swimming under murky water, hunting a message hidden deep in the weeds along the bottom.
And having to come up for air when Jack spoke.
“It’s my guess,” he said, “that Dobbs has already killed the nurse. Eliminated the only person—except for you—who can tie him in.”
Vicki held up her hand.
“What?”
She shook her head and gazed into the coffee. She submerged herself again, thought of herself as taking a deep breath and plunging into the darkness. Going deeper. Her mind was a river and the lost thought was down there someplace. Come on, where are you?
Suddenly, Charlie Gaines was on her back, clinging to her, groping her, driving her down. The horrors of last night rushed in. She could feel him, feel the ache in her lungs…
“What’s wrong?” Jack asked.
His words wrenched her to the surface. The coffee was shivering, the cup tinkling against the saucer. She rose carefully out of the chair, placed the cup and saucer on the table, then stepped around the table and sat down on the couch close to Jack.
He slipped an arm around her. She leaned against his side.
“I didn’t mean to scare you, Vicki. But the fact remains that you’ve put yourself at considerable risk by…”
“It isn’t that,” she said. “I had…I flashed back to last night. Charlie. In the river.”
His hand gently covered her wounded shoulder. “I’m sorry. You know, with all this Dobbs business, I’d almost forgotten about Charlie. That must’ve been so awful for you.”
Looking up at Jack, she managed a smile. “Hey, it wasn’t all bad. Afterward was pretty nice.”
“Till you conked out on me.”
“I hope you minded your manners.”
“It wasn’t easy, but…”
The lost thought burst to the surface of her mind, full and clear. As if it had waited for her to stop searching, then popped up to surprise her. “My God,” she muttered, stunned by what she suddenly knew. Knew.
“Honest, I was a perfect gentleman.”
“Hypnosis. That’s how…” She squeezed Jack’s leg. “Melvin killed Charlie.”
“What?”
“Oh, Jesus. Melvin…he was doing me another favor, the scum. First, he gave me the car. Then, he ‘defended my honor’ by making Patricia kill Pollock. And then…then he got hold of Charlie. He knew I owed money to Charlie. He knew I wasn’t a partner at the clinic. So he got hold of Charlie and helped me.”
“That would explain a lot,” Jack said, staring at her, understanding. “If Charlie was under Dobbs’s influence when he called me in Monday morning…”
“I knew something was wrong.”
“I remember. You were concerned about his health, thought he might be dying.”
“Melvin made him do it. Hypnotized him, just like Patricia, and told him to make me a partner, make me inherit the whole clinic…Oh, damn it. The dirty…it wasn’t any accident last night. Charlie’s crash…Melvin must’ve staged it. He was giving me the clinic.”
“It makes sense,” Jack said. “It’s all supposition, but it sure fits neatly into the pattern. If he really did hypnotize Patricia and compel her to murder Pollock, which he’s admitted, then the rest of it follows.”
She stared into Jack’s eyes.
He believed her. He knew. She didn’t have to convince him.
Something seemed to tear inside her.
She turned and hunched herself down against Jack’s chest. He put his arms around her.
“I killed Charlie,” she whispered.
“No.”
“I did. I killed him.”
Jack held her gently. She could hear the quick beating of his heart.
My damn mouth, she thought. I murdered him when I told Melvin I wasn’t a partner. When I told him about the loan.
“And Pollock,” she murmured. “And Patricia, if she’s dead. I killed them all.”
“Shh
h.” Jack stroked her hair, carressed her back. “You didn’t do any of that.”
I stopped at Melvin’s station. Bought gas from him. Thought the Arco might be closed. Couldn’t wait for morning to fill the tank. That’s how I started it.
No, I started it back in high school. Didn’t tease him. Didn’t torment him. I was nice to him.
I was nice to him, and two people are dead. Maybe three. Three lives.
Because of me.
Melvin, face pressed to the window screen, watched through a gap in the curtains. A tiny gap. No more than half an inch, but enough.
He saw Vicki when she twisted around on the couch, saw when she huddled against the big man’s chest, saw when he put his arms around her.
The filthy, lying cunt!
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“You might be wrong about all of this, you know.”
“I’m not wrong.” She rubbed her face against the soft knit fabric of Jack’s shirt, feeling his sturdy chest beneath it, feeling his warmth. “It was his way of…courting me. They’d all be alive.”
“You can’t take the blame on yourself.”
“None of it would’ve happened.”
Jack’s hands moved slowly up and down her back. In a gentle, soothing voice, he said, “I was a prosecutor in Detroit for a short time. Before I moved here. I moved here because I couldn’t stand it. The brutalities, the viciousness I saw every day. My last case, the one that finished me…two guys walked into a liquor store with shotguns. The owner, a fellow named John Baxter, didn’t give them any trouble. He handed over all the money in the cash register. It was a lot of money. And the robbers had it in their hands. Then they proceeded to blast everyone in the store. They killed Baxter in front of his wife. She was bagging a six-pack of Pepsi for two teenaged girls who’d stopped by on their way home from the junior high down the road. They killed the wife and both girls. They killed a mother whose three kids were waiting in their car while she ran in for a carton of cigarettes. They killed a guy over at the paperback rack. And a stock boy who showed up when he heard the shots.”
“Horrible,” Vicki muttered.
“About as horrible as it can get,” Jack said. His caressing hands stopped in the middle of her back. In a low voice, he said, “We got a murder-one conviction against the money in the cash register.”
Vicki raised her face and looked him in the eyes. “Is that some kind of a bad joke?”
“A lesson,” he said. “A lesson in blame. That pair of mutants went into the liquor store because they wanted the money in the cash register. In spite of that, you apparently think it’s absurd to blame the money for the slaughter of those seven people. Isn’t that right?”
“Of course.”
“Then how can you blame yourself for what Dobbs may have done because he wanted you?”
“How can I not?” she asked.
When she said that, she saw tears come into his eyes. He turned his head away quickly. Vicki raised a hand to his cheek. She eased his face around, stretched upward and pressed her lips to his mouth.
She sank into a warm, quiet place where there was only the feel of him. “The moist softness of his lips and tongue. The gentle pressure of his hands. The firm muscles of his chest. The smooth skin she caressed through the shoulder and side of his shirt.
But she was twisted so, to hold him this way.
“I’m breaking,” she finally whispered against his lips.
“Can’t have that happen,” he said. “You’re too precious to break.”
She brushed her lips against his, then climbed off the couch. She looked down at him. He was slumped against the cushion, big arms hanging at his sides, knees spread. His white shirt was askew, his hair mussed. His mouth, open just a bit, had a reddish hue around the lips from pressure and rub of the kissing. He gazed up at her with eyes that seemed, somehow, both calm and eager. She watched them lower slowly down her body, and up again, and linger on her face.
Her heart pounded. Her mouth suddenly felt parched.
Jack raised an eyebrow. He glanced at the length of the couch. “Shall we stretch out, or…?”
“What’s upstairs?” Vicki asked.
“The bedrooms.”
“Show me?”
He pursed his lips and blew softly, not making a sound.
“Just a thought.”
“And a fine one, at that.”
Vicki stepped out of the way, and Jack got to his feet. They crossed the living room, walking side by side, almost touching. At the bottom of the stairway, Vicki reached across his back and rested her hand on his hip. He moved in against her. She felt him caress her shoulder blade, sliding the slick fabric against her skin. Together, they climbed the stairs.
As they walked along the second floor hallway, she looked at him. He faced her and smiled. She bumped him with her hip. His smiled widened.
They entered a room, and he flicked a light switch. A lamp came on beside the king-sized bed. The bed was made, the rest of the room tidy.
Vicki halted just inside the doorway.
Suddenly doubting.
He was a man who lived alone. His bedroom shouldn’t necessarily be a mess, but…
He’d cleaned it up. Gathered the dirty clothes, hidden the clutter, put on fresh sheets.
Knowing I’d be here.
Knowing.
In the back seat of his car, Melvin stripped naked. He struggled into his greasy coveralls and pulled the zipper up. Then, he pushed his bare feet into the old leather shoes he liked to wear at the station.
Outside, he opened the trunk. He took out his tire tool. It had a lug wrench at one end, a prying wedge at the other. It felt good and heavy in his hand. He lowered the trunk lid. Holding it down, he turned his back to it, hopped up, and drove it down with his rump. The latch made a quiet click.
He swung the bar, slapping it into his left hand as he walked toward the house.
I’ll fix the bitch, he thought. The dirty, lying whore.
He couldn’t stop seeing her. The way she turned on the couch and pressed herself against that bastard’s chest. The way she kissed him. And how the guy’s hands moved on her back as if he owned her.
The images sickened him. He felt as if cold hands were wringing his guts.
She’ll be sorry. She’ll be so sorry.
Melvin hurried alongside the house to its rear. The windows back here were dark. The patio, dim in the moonlight was a concrete slab with a couple of lounge chairs and a barbeque.
The screen door wasn’t latched. It squeaked as he eased it open. Holding it away with his back, he tried the knob of the inner, wooden door. Locked.
He rammed the wedge of the tire tool into the crack between the door and the jamb just where he figured the lock tongue should be. He threw his weight against the bar. The wood made crunching sounds. It bulged out, cracking. He drove the bar in deeper, working it back and forth, thrusting it, feeling the give of the lock’s steel tongue.
The door swung inward.
He stepped into the house, drawing the screen door slowly shut. The kitchen was dark except for a glow of light spilling in from the entryway.
He listened. He heard only the pounding rush of his own heartbeat.
When he took a step, the sole of his shoe made a scuffing sound. He squatted down and loosened his laces. He stepped out of the shoes. The linoleum floor felt cool and slick under his sweaty feet.
He took a deep breath. He felt so tight and cold and shaky inside. If only he could calm down.
Calm down and enjoy what he was about to do.
He wished he could feel some excitement.
The kind of thrill he got when he nailed all the others.
But he couldn’t. He hurt too much.
She had hurt him too much.
Now you’re gonna pay for it. You don’t fuck with Melvin Dobbs.
Silently, he made his way toward the light.
“Something wrong?” Jack asked, stepping up behind her. She felt the ligh
t pressure of him against her back. He put his hands on her sides. His warm breath stirred her hair, made her scalp tingle.
“It’s…going awfully fast.”
“It doesn’t have to.”
“I know I’m the one who suggested…”
“In the heat of the moment.”
“Yeah. I was a little carried away.”
His hands slipped around to her front. They made small circles, sliding the blouse against her belly. Vicki felt as if warm oil was being spread on her skin. She caressed the backs of his hands, his wrists and forearms.
“Shall we go downstairs?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she whispered.
She remembered her regret that she hadn’t made love with Paul that morning so long ago on the driving raft. It had been their last chance, and she had missed it. There had been other men…a few…but she’d loved none of them.
Do I love Jack? she wondered. It comes down to that, doesn’t it?
She knew that she cared for him, that she desired him. But love?
The feelings that she’d had for Paul certainly weren’t there—the intimacy, the mystery, the ache of longing when they were apart. But maybe you only get that once. Maybe that’s all they hand out, and Paul was it.
She had refused to settle for anything less than what she’d known with him. She’d looked back on their times together as the way it should be. Nothing afterward had even come close.
Jack comes close, she told herself.
I can’t go through the rest of my life crippled by the memories of how it was with Paul. It was a brief, wonderful time, but it’s gone. Forever.
And Jack’s here.
And who knows about tomorrow. This could be it, our one and only chance, and if I don’t take it maybe years from now I’ll look back and wish…
“You’re trembling,” Jack said.
“I know.”
“Let’s go on down to the living room.”
She guided his hands down the front of her blouse and up beneath it to her belly. As they drifted over her skin, she unfastened the buttons. She sank against him, reaching back and holding the sides of his legs. His hands moved slowly, lightly roaming as if he were a blind man who could only know her by touch, whose hands were his eyes and he wanted to see the texture of her skin and memorize every curve and hollow. Their slow exploration brushed her blouse open. Soon, they curled over her brassière. Her nipples, already hard, ached against the lacey cups. She didn’t want the fabric in the way, shielding her from the feel of his skin.