Melvin guessed her patience had lasted about as long as the potato chips.
She headed for the corner of the building. Just to make sure she wouldn’t look into the window and spot the guy on the floor, Melvin stood up and stared out at her. She caught a glimpse of him, and did as he expected—she looked the other way. He kept gazing at her, turning around when she reached the corner, and she kept looking elsewhere until there was no more window between them.
This was working out just fine.
Melvin figured she would come back into the office when she couldn’t find the guy in the restroom, but he preferred to take care of her out back where he wouldn’t have to worry about anyone driving past the station or stopping in for a fill-up.
He hurried out of the office and around the corner. Walking alongside the building, he heard her knocking. Then her voice. “Rod? What’re you doing in there?”
He reached the rear corner and stepped past it.
She was facing the men’s room door. She knocked on it again. “Rod, you either answer me or I’m coming in.”
Melvin stood motionless. She hadn’t noticed him.
“All right for you, I’m coming in.” She turned the knob and pulled the door open. The light had been left on inside. She stood in the glow of it for a moment, then stepped through the doorway.
As the door swung shut, Melvin started moving. When it was completely closed, he ran.
He jerked it open and rushed in.
The gal whirled around, letting go of the toilet stall’s door.
This time, she didn’t try to avoid his eyes.
Pretty hard to ignore me now, Melvin thought.
“Get out of here,” she said. Her voice was high-pitched. She didn’t seem angry, yet, just surprised and confused as if she couldn’t believe he’d blundered into the restroom with her. “I’m in here. Get out.”
“You’re in the men’s,” he said, and smiled.
“I know that. I was looking for someone.”
“Rod’s in the office.”
“Okay.” She flapped a hand sideways, gesturing for him to step out of the way.
Melvin didn’t move.
Her head turned a bit as if she figured that glaring at Melvin from the corners of her eyes, instead of straight on, was somehow more intimidating. “You’d better just let me by.”
“Gonna tell Rod on me?”
She tipped her head back and kept staring at him. “I’m warning you.”
With a shrug, Melvin stepped aside. He swept an arm toward the door.
“That’s better,” she said. She walked toward the door, watching him with narrow eyes, looking sure of herself and eager to tell Rod about this creep who’d given her a hard time in the john. As she passed Melvin, she turned her face toward the door. She reached out and grabbed the knob. She pushed and the door opened.
Melvin snatched her hair and jerked. She yelped. Her hand, still on the knob, slammed the door as she flew backward. He swept a foot out from under her, gave her hair another yank and let go and watched her go down. Her back slapped the tile floor and she skidded.
Before she could start to get up, Melvin dropped onto her chest. Her breath whooshed out. Her eyes bugged. Her face went bright red. She squirmed, but her arms were pinned under Melvin’s knees.
He lifted his shirt, peeled the cellophane away from his skin, folded the plastic film to double its thickness, and stretched it taut across her face.
With his hands clamped to the sides of her head, he had a good view through the clear plastic. Her face was distorted, eyelids stretched sideways so she looked oriental like a robber in a stocking mask. Her nose, mashed down, had a white tip. The flattened lips of her wide mouth were pale. The disk of cellophane over her mouth crackled as she sucked and puffed. It fogged up.
She bucked and twisted and writhed under Melvin, but he rode her like a bronco.
Her tongue thrust into the plastic, making it bulge. Though the film didn’t break, it stretched and formed a bubble. When she drew in her tongue, the bubble snapped into her mouth. It puffed out with a soft whupping sound, then was sucked in again. And she bit it. She caught it between her big crooked front teeth and worked her jaw back and forth—grinding it, chewing it. Her tongue pushed a hole through the plastic, darted back into her mouth, and she loudly sucked air into her lungs.
The air came out screaming.
Melvin slapped a hand across her mouth. That muffled the noise, but he doubted his ability to suffocate her with the hand. Especially the way she was flinging herself and shaking her head. The screaming soon stopped, but she kept breaking the seal and breathing.
Shit! He hadn’t wanted to damage her. The cellophane usually worked.
She lurched violently, almost throwing Melvin, and suddenly her teeth found the edge of his hand. Before he could jerk it free, she bit. He felt her teeth sink into his palm, saw them break the skin on the back of his hand and go in. He heard himself cry, “YEEEOOOW!” as pain bolted up his arm.
It took four punches with his left fist to her temple, each punch jarring her head and tearing his right hand, before he got it out of her mouth.
She was still conscious, her head rolling from side to side.
Melvin peeled the plastic wrap off her face.
Her eyes were half shut. She was moaning.
The side of her face was red from the punches, and starting to swell up.
Damn it.
Now she was marred.
She wouldn’t have been pretty, anyway, Melvin consoled himself, but he hated the idea of leaving her bruised. After all, the bruise would probably be permanent.
Maybe some make-up.
She was stirring a little more.
With his left hand, Melvin grabbed the hair on top of her head. He lifted her head and gave it a bounce off the floor.
That settled her down.
He wrapped some plastic around his hand, partly to hold in the blood and partly to give himself a firm hold. Then he picked up the other end and stretched an unbroken section of the cellophane across her nose and mouth.
If at first you don’t succeed…
This time, she didn’t fight it.
Chapter Six
Vicki pressed the ten-minute snooze button on her alarm clock and snuggled down with her face in the pillow.
It’s Wednesday, she thought. Charlie’d be heading out to the golf course, so this would be her first full day alone at the clinic. She felt a little nervous about that, and told herself to relax. Nothing was likely to come up that she couldn’t handle—certainly nothing to compare with some of the emergencies she’d had to face during her residency at Good Samaritan.
Like Rhonda Jones. That was about the worst. Rhonda was brought to the ER by a truck driver who found her wandering along the highway, eyes slashed and both hands cut off by some maniac who’d raped her. One of the nurses actually fainted at the sight. Vicki, applying tourniquets and setting up the IV, kept a clear head and thought to herself at the time that she should be grateful to Melvin Dobbs and his Amazing Miracle Machine. Because, after seeing him try to jump-start Darlene and watching her head fall off, even the horrible mutilation of Rhonda Jones couldn’t shock her senseless.
I don’t believe I’ll thank him, she thought.
Saving yourself for me?
She remembered that she’d dreamed about him again last night, and woke up gasping at around 2:30 with her nightgown soaked. She hadn’t been able to remember the nightmare, but supposed it was pretty much the same as the one she’d had at Ace’s house. She sure remembered that one.
She’d had dreams about Melvin every night since coming back. Three times, they’d caused her to wake up. She supposed the brief encounter with him at the gas station had done a number on her subconscious. The nightmares, bad as they were, didn’t trouble her much except while she was in the midst of them.
After all, she was used to nightmares.
Following the Science Fair, she’d had them cons
tantly for about two months. Then they’d become less frequent. Eventually, they’d dwindled down to one every two or three months, except when something disturbing came up to trigger a new series.
These would undoubtedly peter out, just like the old ones. Until that happened, she would just have to live with them.
She preferred the old nightmares. Those had pretty much been replays of the real event, lacking the weird variations present in the recent dreams. And in those, she’d been an observer, not a participant. Now, it seemed that Melvin’s perverse stunt was directed at her.
All my fault, she thought. I shouldn’t have stopped at his place for gas.
Vicki sighed. So much for enjoying a few extra minutes snuggling in bed. She reached out, shut off the snooze alarm in time to prevent it from blaring, and got up.
She made her way through the darkness to the bathroom. After using the toilet, she returned to her bedroom and put on the running clothes that she had arranged on the chair the night before. She slipped a thin chain over her head. It held the apartment key and a police whistle. She dropped them down the front of her T-shirt.
The corridor outside her rooms was dimly lighted. She walked silently, and pressed a hand against her chest to stop the jangling of the key and whistle.
She didn’t like this corridor. Not late at night, and not at 5:00 in the morning.
It gave her the creeps.
All corridors gave her the creeps when she was by herself in a quiet building. You name it, she thought: school, dormitory, hospital, office building, apartment house. Just something about a deserted hallway when everybody else is either gone or asleep—or supposed to be.
A feeling that, if you make any noise, someone might just throw open a door and jump out at you.
This particular corridor was L-shaped so Vicki had to step around a corner before reaching the lobby and front entrance. She didn’t much care for that corner.
But she stepped around it without hesitating.
The landlord’s door was open.
Oh, great.
She cast a glance as she walked by, and sucked in a quick breath. Dexter Pollock was standing motionless just inside the doorway, wearing a bathrobe, bare-legged, staring out at her. She twisted her mouth into a smile of greeting, muttered “Hi,” and kept walking.
“Word with you,” Dexter said.
Dandy.
He didn’t come out of the doorway, so she had to go back to him. He stood there with his hands tucked into the pockets of his robe. His legs looked very pale in the faint light. He was a big man, well over sixty now and gone to fat, but when Vicki had been a girl he was chief of the Ellsworth Police Department, and she suspected that he still had the soul of a tyrant. She could kill Ace for choosing an apartment building that was owned by this man.
She leaned against the far wall of the corridor to keep the maximum distance from him, and crossed her ankles. He was known to be a lech. She was very aware of her bare legs—and his. She supposed he was probably naked under the robe.
“Early in the day to be going out,” he said.
“I suppose it is.”
“Still dark out there.”
“It’s almost dawn.”
“You’re a good-looking young woman.”
She didn’t say anything. His words made her feel squirmy inside.
“Didn’t your folks ever caution you about going out alone in the dark?”
“Sure they did.”
“I know they did. Your folks are fine people.”
“Thanks.”
“You think they’d approve, you going out at this hour and dressed in your skimpies?”
“I do it when I visit them. They don’t seem to mind.” Then she added, “I’m dressed fine,” though she wished at the moment that she was wearing her warmups instead of the T-shirt and flimsy shorts.
Dexter’s eyes were pale blurs, but Vicki saw his head lower and rise as he inspected her. “You’re a rape,” he said, “looking for a place to happen.”
“I have to get going,” she told him, hating the weak sound of her voice. You oughta tell him to shove it, she thought. She pushed herself off the wall and turned away from him.
“I’m still talking to you, Miss Chandler.”
“Doctor Chandler,” she said.
“Be that as it may. You have some respect and listen to me.”
She turned to him, frowning.
“You been away, so you’re likely not on top of the local situation, and besides which, it’s been kept pretty quiet. Nobody wants to get folks stirred up. Thing is, there’s been half a dozen young women in this county vanish without so much as a trace being found of them. That’s just in the past eight or ten months. And that’s just the ones that got reported missing. Might be plenty more we don’t even know about. So you’d best keep that in mind and think twice before you go off gallivanting at all hours in your underwear.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll be extra careful. May I go now?”
“Do what you want.”
She pushed herself away from the wall and walked away, forcing herself not to hurry. As she reached the lobby, she glanced back. Dexter had stepped into the corridor. He was facing her.
She pulled open the glass door and stepped outside. The summer morning was warm, but she was trembling.
Thanks a real lot, pal, she thought.
His news about the disappearances was a little disturbing, but not much. She’d never kidded herself into thinking that Ellsworth was completely safe. No place was safe, especially for women.
What she found upsetting was Dexter ambushing her that way.
Had he been waiting for her? How did he know she’d come by?
Creep.
She liked to do her warm-up exercises on the broad stoop of the apartment building. But Dexter might just wander into the lobby and watch her through the glass, so she trotted down the stairs and started along the sidewalk.
She wondered if he would make a habit of waiting for her.
There was no way to leave the apartment without passing his door. The only other exit, conveniently located at her end of the corridor, would trigger an alarm if she tried to use it.
She came to the corner, and looked back. At least Dexter hadn’t followed her. The sidewalk, gray in the glow of the streetlights, was deserted except for a cat sitting near the end of the block, rubbing a paw across its face.
Before starting to warm up, Vicki turned completely around and scanned every direction.
I always check, she told herself. Nothing to do with Dexter’s warning.
Satisfied that no one was lurking nearby, she began bending at the waist and touching her toes.
I’m not going to put up with him, she thought. I’ll just have to find a new place. Such a pain, though, moving.
Even with Ace’s help, it had taken hours to unload the U-Haul and carry all her stuff into the apartment. And both of them with hangovers. Torture. She wasn’t eager to repeat the process.
She sat down. The concrete felt cool through her shorts. She straightened out her legs, bent forward and grabbed the toes of her running shoes.
Give it some time, she told herself. Maybe Dexter won’t make a habit of bugging me. He had his say. And I went out in spite of it.
But Vicki suspected that his “say” was nothing more than an excuse to stop her, ogle her, and test his powers of intimidation.
Acts as if he’s still the police chief.
He’d always been a jerk. Most of the kids in town used to despise him. He didn’t just make them toe the line, he seemed to enjoy giving them grief. He probably picked on kids because he was such a coward when it came to adults.
The stories had it that he’d let his partner, Joey Milbourne, get beaten half to death by a couple of lumberjacks from the Bay who got drunk in the Riverfront Bar. He ran off and locked himself in his patrol car instead of giving Joey a hand.
But he sure was the tough guy, a regular Dirty Harry, when it came to a
teenager snowballing a car or knocking a baseball through somebody’s window or parking by the river to neck.
He even gave Ace a bad time the night of the senior dance, which made Vicki especially glad they hadn’t double-dated. According to Ace, she was butt-naked in the back seat of Rob’s Firebird, going at it hot and heavy, when Dexter shined his flashlight through the window. He opened the door and ordered them both out of the car. He didn’t even allow them time to put their clothes on. Ace snatched her gown off the floor as she crawled out, and held it against herself while Dexter brow-beat them about fornication and the possibility of getting themselves killed by a wandering lunatic. About the time he was threatening to run them in for indecent exposure and phone their parents, headlights appeared up the road. Ace dropped her gown and put her hands on top of her head. “Guess you wanta frisk me,” she said. Dexter grabbed up her gown and shoved it at her and yelled, “Get outa here, you crazy bitch!” And she and Rob scampered into his car and peeled away while the other car was still approaching.
Vicki got to her feet, brushed off the rear of her shorts, and started running.
Anyone other than Ace, she thought, would’ve been too humiliated from an experience like that to ever look Dexter in the eye again. So what does she do? She rents me an apartment from him.
When Vicki had found out, over vodka and tonic that first night at Ace’s house, that Dexter Pollock was the owner, she’d said, “Are you out of your mind?”
“I told him it was for you,” Ace said, “and he dropped the rent ten percent.”
“I hope you’re kidding.”
“He said he figured it’d be handy having a doctor in the building.”
“I’m not a plumber, for Pete’s sake.”
“Probably wants you to look after his plumbing.”
“Ha ha. Jesus.”
“He’s not such a bad guy. He mellowed out some, after his Minnie kicked over.”
“You’ve sure got a short memory, Ace. You forget all about Senior Dance night?”
“Nope.” She grinned. “Neither’s he. Poor old fart goes red as a pimple every time he looks at me. The truth is, I scare him shitless. He thinks I’m nuts.”