Eight
Twigs and torn branches littered the gray dawn, the
house inside ominously dark and quiet. Lori shivered in the deceptive
peace of the cool morning. The end of the world would begin with a day as
foreboding as this.
She used the barbecue on the back porch to fry eggs
and sausage on aluminum foil. Leslie begged to stay home from school, but
the yellow school bus dutifully arrived in its haze of diesel fumes, and
Leslie and Wendy waved reluctant farewell from the back window.
Lori used the last of the warm water in the electric
heater for a bath. She shed her clothes and sank into the tub of tepid
water with a moan of relief. Her over accumulation of tension melted
slowly in the hissing suds.
Time passed. She luxuriated in a serene,
half-conscious state of existence, floating in a void and oblivious to how
far she drifted away from the safety of waking reality.
The door slammed shut with a dull thud. The
wooden brace dropped in place with resounding impact, and every muscle of
her immobilized body twitched. A light came on overhead and glimmered
against the curved lens of the glass eye positioned alongside her right
foot for a shallow, three-quarter view of her body. With a start of
surprise, she tried as usual to roll away from its obscene stare only to
again pull painfully at the cords binding her wrists and ankles.
Her assailant chatted amiable as he moved about.
Or she. Lori couldn't quite make out what was being said, or who was
saying it. The individual chuckled at one point, and smiled an evil
smile. Lori almost, but not quite, caught a glimpse of a face.
Through the fog of her confusion, she tried to
pinpoint her location in time and space. A hospital was her first guess.
It always was. She had been in an accident. She had been immobilized to
keep her from hurting herself. She tried to voice her protest, but no
sound escaped her quivering lips. She tried to focus more clearly upon
her surroundings, but she failed to make sense of any but the jumble of
shapes, sounds, and sensations around her.
She had been here before. Too many time before.
A hand pressed upon the ribcage beneath her left
breast. The other hand held a curved blade in the fashion of a surgeon.
Her assailant leaned over her, focusing full concentration upon the task
at hand. The blade descended from view and she felt it prick the skin at
the pit of her stomach.
There was a flash of silver light…
Lori heaved mightily to free herself, horrified and
panic-stricken to the depth of her soul. She escaped her bonds somehow,
and her eyes flew open to gray, cold light. With her feet drawn
instinctively against her stomach, her body slid down the incline of the
tub, and her face slipped beneath her cooling bath water.
Soap stung her eyes and nostrils. She thrashed to
right herself in the soap-slickened tub, banging her elbows and knees
painfully against enameled cast iron and setting it gonging like a bell.
When panic gave way to dread, fearful she would drown, she regained enough
presence of mind to reach about for the smooth lip and then pull herself
up. She sat choking on the soapy water in her nose and lungs until her
chest ached.
One end of the old plastic curtain had fallen down.
A rough edge brushed against her face, stirred by a breeze slipping in
through the opened window. She paused in recognition of the sharp
sensation against her skin. She had worked it into her dream with wicked
effectiveness.
She scrambled to her feet, chilled to the bone by the
cold wind and disquieted by the ease with which her own imagination had
betrayed her. She slammed the window closed. With water cascading from
her hair and body, she looked around for a towel.
"Kitchen," she hissed through clenched teeth. "The
towels are in the laundry basket, you dizzy wanna-be blonde.”
She padded on bare feet through the chilled house,
her eyes on the curtains swaying in the dining room. Could she be seen
moving naked through the darkened house? She entered the kitchen and
rounded the table without seeing Ronnie Bates standing in the shadows
alongside the back door. In one moment she was alone. In the next she
shared the room with a hulking male presence, his wide, vacant eyes fixed
upon her exposed breasts with an expression of dumb surprise.
Lori's flesh crawled. She brought up her left arm to
cover herself, then moved to put the kitchen table between herself and the
boy when his eyes began to roam. He stood utterly at ease in his odd,
slightly hunched fashion and held something out to her, a piece of paper
offered with an outstretched arm and a self-satisfied smile.
Rage exploded inside her that he could so mindlessly
violate her privacy and then blatantly stare at her with the blind hunger
of an animal. Lori rushed around the table with an upraised hand. It was
far too late to try to hide her nakedness from him. The sound of the
open-handed slap against the side of his face cut through the silence like
a gunshot.
Her hand went numb with the impact. Ronnie fell back
against the wall with a cry of surprise.
"Damn you! I told you to knock! You're not that
goddamn retarded!"
But he only stared at her, his face empty of
expression. A single tear escaped the corner of one eye.
She had no choice but to follow through. She grabbed
his arm, spun him around, and shoved him out the back door. Only her
blind anger and the boy's passive confusion rendered the husky
sixteen-year-old less than an even match for her.
She slammed and locked the door behind her, turned,
and leaned her weight against it. Her heart palpitated. Her knees
wobbled, forcing her to drop to her knees to wait out her moment of panic.
"God," she murmured, shaking uncontrollably, the
dream of the glass eye still reverberating inside her. She remembered
Wendy's reaction to her encounter with the boy. Karen's persistent
distrust of him came to mind.
She got up, snatched a towel from the laundry basket
on the table, and tied it about her waist. She reached for the wall phone
and tapped out a number from memory. Peg answered, Carl Adler's elderly
cashier. A minute passed before Carl's gruff voice sounded.
"Mr. Adler, Ronnie's entering homes without
knocking." Lori swallowed hard to control her anger. Her voice
trembled. "He's been warned once. Once apparently wasn't enough."
"I'm sorry," the man said casually. "I really don't
know who I'm talking to."
"Lori Malcolm."
"Yes, of course. I sent Ronnie over with your bill.
You forgot to stop in Friday to settle your account, I believe."
The oversight startled her. She closed her eyes,
burning with humiliation. "Oh, damn, damn, damn!" she hissed through
clenched teeth.
"What was that?"
"Mr. Adler, I'll stop over this morning and pay the
bill. I'm sorry for the oversight. But as for Ronnie..."
"Look, Mrs. Malcolm. You pay the boy fifty cents a
sack to deliver groceries. If he's causing trouble, feel free to pick
them up yourself, and simply lock your doors."
"I'll do both, but considering those ungodly rumors
circulating around town..."
The man's tone of voice dropped ominously. "You take
your unwarranted accusations up with the sheriff, not with me. You know
Ronnie's limitations. You've used his services for years without
complaint. If you have a problem, deal with it. Is there anything else,
Mrs. Malcolm?"
"No, nothing more. I'm sorry I bothered you."
She hung up, humiliated by her mindless display of
self-righteous indignation. She had written out Carl's check. She
searched her purse and found it still attached in her checkbook.
As for keeping the doors locked, she had never
thought it necessary, not in all the years she had lived in Sorrel.
Karen's paranoia was finally catching up with her, an entire year's worth
of insidious intimations and insinuations of Ronnie's involvement in
Gloria's disappearance. In trying to ignore them, half-formed fears had
managed to sneak up upon her unnoticed. After all, Ronnie had blundered
into the house at a bad time once or twice in the past, now that she gave
it some thought. He had once caught Dave in nothing but a jock strap.
They had all had a good laugh over that incident. Why was Wendy's
encounter, or even her own, any different?
She walked to the store later in the morning to pay
the overdue bill, braced for the need to apologize to Carl Adler for her
behavior. Neither Carl nor Ronnie Bates were about. Peg accepted her
check for the week's grocery bill. The old woman scrawled Lori's driver's
license number on the back in indecipherable numerals. She then ventured
a cool smile, slipped the check into the cash register, and hobbled into
the shadowy depths of the store to answer a ringing phone.
Lori slowed her pace on the way home. The sun came
out from behind retreating clouds and turned the gray morning bright and
golden. She drank in the therapeutic quality of Sorrel's warm and
tranquil peacefulness.
If she felt stranded so far from civilization, it was
all her own fault. They hadn't been able to afford a house in Clayton
early in their marriage. Sorrel had been a godsend back then, although it
was the time that had passed, not the place, that had lulled her into a
sense of complacency while her sense of independence drained slowly way.
Despite the hectic insanity of the past few days, it felt good to be
reliant upon her own resources for a solution to her problems. She felt
more like her old self again, the high school graduate determined to work
her way through a degree in accounting and make a name for herself in the
world.
A car pulled up behind her and stopped with a squeal
of brakes. She looked around in alarm at the blue and white sheriff's
cruiser with its jewel-like rack of red and blue emergency lights
stretched across the roof. A thrill of exhilaration jangled her nerves
when she saw who sat behind the wheel.
Deputy Trent Scarelli leaned over and threw the
passenger door open. "You're a wanted woman, Mrs. Malcolm. Hop in,
please."
Nervously, she slipped into the passenger's seat and
closed the door. She sat with her hands folded in her lap and her pulse
racing. "Am I under arrest, Deputy Scarelli?"
"If that were the case, I'd have to frisk and
handcuff you, ma'am. Departmental policy."
She glanced at him in horror. He chuckled at her
reaction. "It's the truth, you know."
Lori blushed furiously. "What sort of crime would I
have to commit to warrant this molestation and bondage fetish of yours?"
"Public intoxication"
She frowned her confusion. "I wasn't walking a
straight line?"
"That wasn't the kind of intoxication I had in mind.
I was thinking more along the lines of intoxicating beauty. Or is that
too corny to be funny? I'm not known for my wit, you know."
"You're known for those big brown eyes of yours in
the circle I run with."
He smiled. As was usually the case, the smile seemed
both reserved and sad. "Nice morning to be out walking. Did you enjoy
the storm last night?"
"I was scared to death, I'll have you know. How long
will the power be out?"
"I think it's already been restored. We had a
tornado touch down by Jumer. It gobbled up a telephone pole, about twenty
feet of barbed wire fence and probably a chicken coop or two. We lucked
out this time around."
Jumer was another small town a bit further on down
the highway. A tornado touching down so close alarmed her. But why had
he stopped her? Was this the inevitable come-on she had feared, and if
so, was she doing anything at all to discourage it?
"You said you wanted to know how the Cornell case
would be handled," Trent said, reading her confused expression, if not her
mind. "Remember?"
"Oh, that." She dropped her eyes to her lap,
embarrassed by the oversight. "Yes. Thank you."
Trent's expression went from serious to solemn.
"It's being handled as a homicide. There are too many suspicious factors
to let it slide."
Lori closed her eyes, shifting gears to deal with the
fact that Virginia's death meant that one of Sorrel's fifteen hundred
residents was a murderer.
"Your little town has been hopping these past few
days," Trent said. "I'm sure all the excitement is not in the least bit
appreciated."
"Not in the least," she said softly.
"I try to keep an eye on things."
At times it seemed that he tried too hard.
"You and Carol are close," he said. "Have you met
that new boyfriend of hers yet?"
"Not in person." She felt suddenly despondent now
that his reason for stopping her was clear. It wasn’t personal after
all. "I think he's trouble," she added.
"I gave the lady fair warning. There's nothing more
I can do. Want to do both of us a favor?"
"And what would that be?" she asked despairingly,
fearful that she was about to be asked to spy on her best friend. Was it
the only reason Trent had taken an interest in her?
Trent glanced at the rear view mirror. He put the
car in gear and pulled out into the street.
Lori tensed against a swell of panic. "Where are we
going?"
Trent swung around the block and pulled to the curb a
half block from her house, their way blocked by several cars parked in the
street.
Carol stood on the sidewalk, dressed in the day-glow
pink of her waitress uniform. Men in dark suits surrounded her, some with
notepads and pens, others with two-way radios held to their lips. Still
others milled about the cars, bored and waiting for the petty drama to
end. The cars were plain and gray, with moon hub caps and whip antennas
rising from rear fenders.
Cops. Sorrel was swarming with plainclothes
policemen.
A spark of fear shot through her. "Ruben," Lori spat
in anger. She had feared this would happen.
"Those are feds and state police," Trent said.
"Carol's friend Ruben is being held for questioning."
"I've heard."
"She's not in any trouble herself. Not yet. Have a
talk with her. Don't let her get involved any further. The situation's
more serious than she knows."
Lori sat trembling and feeling helpless. "I don't
know what I can do."
"Tell her what I'm telling you. Maybe it'll have
more of an impact coming from you. Let her know that Ruben is involved
with organized crime. The cops tracked him here. Tell Carol under no
circumstance does she want to meet his friends. If she wants friends of
that caliber, a litter of spoiled pit bulls would be nice. If they track
him here, it’ll be too late for either of them to run and hide.”
Carol was in tears and looking her way with quiet
desperation. Lori reached for the door handle.
Trent put his hand on her shoulder. It was the first
time he had ever touched her. "We'll talk some other time," he said
softly. “I know this isn’t what you wanted.”
She glanced at him and gave a slight nod of
agreement. His gaze lingered, and Lori saw that her original suspicions
had been correct after all. Behind the sadness of his eyes, she sensed
the repressed hunger he kept hidden from view. Intentionally or
otherwise, he let just enough through to show her it existed.
"You'll have to arrest me the next time,” she said,
knowing it was exactly the right bait to set out for him.
“I’ll be sure to do that.”
She left the car on wobbly legs and waited for him to
drive away. Only then would she be able to shift the focus of her
attention.
The police on the sidewalk waved casually to the
county cruiser weaving through their ranks. When Trent was gone, Lori
crossed the street to join Carol, hoping she would never have the
opportunity to meet Carol's sinister Ruben face to face. If Ruben was
gone for good, it wasn't any too soon. One glass eye in her life, the one
in her dreams, was one too many.
