Sixteen
The day crawled for Lazarus Darker. Hell itself
couldn’t have tormented him worse. The thought of being alone with Evie
doubled him over with the most awful tension in the pit of his gut. He
trembled with the sheer pleasure of anticipation for the entire day.
He took Abe’s place in the shipping department,
watching that the marked spacers were placed in boxes going to the proper
destinations. Others in the plant were in on the conspiracy, two of the
packers themselves, the shipping foreman, and even the plant manager. But
the Darker brothers had been the moving force behind the scheme from the
beginning. Either Noah or Abe had always been on hand to monitor the
operation, and the whole plant knew that something was up with both Abe
and Noah missing.
They shunned Lazarus and he had left at the end of
the shift sullen with resentment. Despite his promise to that he would
stay away from Evie, he went directly to the house to pay Evie a visit,
size her up for the fun and games he had in mind, and to see if she had
heard anything from Abe or Noah.
Evie saw him coming down the drive on foot and met
him on the front porch. “Noah said you wouldn’t bother me, Lazarus
Darker.”
Lazarus took a step back. If she bolted, he’d not be
able to catch her. At least not until he gained her confidence and got a
little closer. “I’m not going to bother you, Evie.”
Evie sidestepped off the porch. The quickest way to
safety was through the trees to Ella May’s store, all the evidence he
needed that Evie had seen or heard nothing of either Abe or Noah in recent
hours. “I’m
going to stay with Ella May,” she said in a surly tone of voice.
Lazarus moved aside to make a point of his good
behavior. “That’s what Noah said to do. Git yourself moving. I ain’t
gonna hurt you.”
Evie disappeared into the trees. Lazarus sighed in
misery, wishing he could do something to ease the animosity between them.
The only pleasant memories of his entire life were of Evie. They had
slept in one another’s arms as children. He had never meant to hurt or
frighten her, but she had frustrated him terrible when he had gotten older, and
his frustration had bred anger. Of all the feelings that stirred in his gut,
anger was the one he could not control.
Lazarus followed her at a discreet distance, but he
went on by the grocery store on his way to the Silver Ridge Saloon rather
than risk having Ella May tattle on him. He wouldn’t do anything stupid,
he told himself. If he tried to mess with Evie now, Abe would be
uncontrollable. He had to wait until Noah got back. With Billy gone,
Evie’s hunger for the world outside Silver Ridge would die away. He told
himself that sooner or later, her own natural hungers would drive her back
to his bed in the night.
Lazarus sat in his corner booth at the Silver Ridge
Saloon. Noah was ready to leave at dusk, and he made a point of being
loud and drinking heavily, although he’d not get as drunk as he had
promised his younger brother. A budding ulcer sent the liquor back up the
way it had come if he drank too fast, and drinking any slower than that
only sent him to the can at frequent intervals, which in itself took a
quarter of every hour as the crowds gathered after dusk.
They turned the lights off and the music up to a
deafening volume after dark. They filled the darkness with swirling color
and shrill, maudlin country music. Most often, Lazarus took a bottle
home, or went down the valley to sit alongside the river by the mill.
This night, he had to make a point of being seen. He stayed sober enough
to remember faces that passed him by, greeting each with a salute of his
bottle. He ignored the snide comments until Leroy Tucker who worked
clean-up at the plant gave him the finger. He chased the man out across
the parking lot, then backtracked and crawled into the bed of a pickup
parked near the front entrance to nurse the pain of a throbbing skull.
The pickup belonged to old man Fender and his sons.
They dragged him out of the truck just before dawn, brushed him off, and
sent him off on foot down the highway with a hearty slap across the back.
The walk home in the cool dawn helped sober him. He sat on the front
porch of the house until daylight, waiting for Noah to return. The sun
came up and still Noah didn’t show up.
Something had gone wrong. When he heard Evie moving
about inside the house ready to be picked up and delivered to the Trevor
mansion, his heart began a rapid pounding in his chest. He had thought
about the possibility of failure only to the extent of shoving his fear
into the furthest corners of his mind. It was inconceivable that harm of
any kind could befall Noah.
He had to buy time. A hitch or two in their plans
wasn’t going to spell disaster, if he played his cards right. He’d have
to call in his and Noah’s absence to the plant for the day, and he had to
keep Evie from causing trouble. If he could handle that, he could buy
Noah a few more hours of time. Until Abe returned. He groaned at the
nightmarish thought and buried his face in his hands.
He gathered his courage tapped at the front door.
“Evie, it’s me!”
Evie opened the front door and peered up at him like
a distrustful doe. Lazarus brushed his unruly hair back. “Noah rode with
a shipment up to the state line. He said he’d be back this morning.”
“Yeah, well, he’s not here,” Evie said.
“He said for you to wait for him if he ran late.”
Evie wasn’t buying it. He could see it in her eyes.
If Evie ran to Ella May now, the two women would go to the sheriff.
Sheriff Krueger was one of Abe’s best friends. Krueger had interrogated
him the night he had run Evie and Billy Trevor off the road near the old
mill. He had spilled his guts then, and he’d do it again, if he was taken
in and questioned about Noah’s disappearance. This time, nobody would
cover for him. This time, Abe would kill him.
“Please, Evie. I don’t want any trouble.”
Evie closed the door in his face and locked it. If
his fear and growing confusion hadn’t outweighed his anger and frustration
in that moment, he would have gone through the door after her. Instead,
he sat behind the wheel of the pickup parked alongside the house, wishing
he had a bottle to sip. His mouth still hurt from Abe’s beating. His
whole body was trembled with nervousness.
It was nothing more than a twist of fate working in
his favor that he caught sight of movement in the rear view mirror. He
looked back over his shoulder in time to see Evie vanish into the weeds
behind the house. Lazarus threw the door open and sprinted for the
highway. Evie was taking the short cut. His only thought was to take the
long way around, beat her to the store, and try to reason with her.
He ran with a strength born of panic. Evie was
nowhere in sight when he reached the store with his lungs aflame. He
crashed his way through the front way without thinking.
The unexpected jangling of the bell overhead startled
him. He scanned the dusky interior of the store while he fought to catch
his breath. Ella May rose from behind the meat counter and paused in
surprise.
Lazarus had only seconds to act before Evie made her
appearance. He grabbed a loaf of bread and a newspaper and put on a fixed
smile on the way to the checkout counter.
Ella May approached hesitantly, wiping her hands on a
stained apron. “Don’t too often see you shopping,” she said, her husky
voice tinged with hostility.
Lazarus reached for his wallet, glancing often at the
back of the store for the shaft of daylight that would signal Evie’s
entrance through the back way. Until Ella May passed within reach, he had
no idea of how he intended to handle the situation. When his hand lashed
out as if of its own accord and clamped about the woman’s throat, he was
committed.
He dragged her squirming to the back of the store, then along
the meat counter to a side isle. When the back door banged open and
closed, he tightened his grip to both still Ella May’s struggle to free
herself and to silence her.
“Ella May!” Evie’s voice was breathless with
excitement. “Ella May, are you here?”
Lazarus endured Ella May’s fingernails gouging into
the flesh of his arm. He crouched, holding his breath and jamming his
eyes closed as if to hold reality itself at bay.
Evie walked to the front of the store.
“Ella May?”
Silence was absolute. Evie whimpered once in
defeat, then went out the front door and headed back to the house by way
of the highway.
Lazarus sighed and relaxed. Ella May slumped in his
arms. He looked down and watched her livid face grow slowly pale. He
knew he had killed her even before her last sigh passed from her body. He
had been dimly aware of his murderous grip around her throat the whole
time. What else could he have done?
Unforeseen circumstances were closing upon him like
the jaws of a vice. He had to do something with the body. The well out
back came to mind. Evie had almost fallen into it. Had Krueger fixed the
cover back in place, or could Ella May have possibly fallen to her death
on accident while cutting through the trees to visit Evie?
He grabbed the collar of Ella May’s blouse in his
fist and dragged her through the store and out the back way. He had no
choice but risk being seen. He hurried his burden into the trees and let
it fall alongside the gaping stone-rimmed hole in the ground.
The lid was still askew. Lazarus kicked it aside
with disdain, then rolled Ella May over the edge with the heel of his
boot. He watched her arms and legs flail briefly as she plummeted out of
sight. He heard the dull sounds of the body strike the rock walls on the
way down, then the sound of an impact in the shallow water far below.
He returned to the pickup truck alongside the house
and saw Evie peek from behind a curtain. Having gained a momentary
respite, he paced alongside the truck to assess his feelings. His teeth
chattered. He did not want to think of Abe’s reaction to Ella May’s
death. It was going to be awful.
Noah would understand the necessity. Ella May would
have torn apart the Darkers in the same way as Billy Trevor. With those
two out of the way, they could go on living as they always had. Lazarus
could imagine no other form of existence.
He ceased his restless pacing. Perhaps a sound from
inside the house alerted him, or maybe some connection with Evie at a deep
level of consciousness. Either way, it wasn’t hard to anticipate Evie’s
next move. After all, she had the phone at her disposal.
Lazarus ran for the phone line where it came down off
the pole and ripped the cable from the metal box. He went in through the
front door roaring in anger. Evie fled back through the house with a
shriek. She went out the back door and had almost reached the trees
before Lazarus caught a handful of her dark hair and whipped her about.
Briefly, she lashed out at him and clawed his arms, then went rigid as
Lazarus clutched her throat in his right hand and lifted her from the
ground.
She struggled furiously. Both shoes fell from her
feet and dropped to the ground. She went abruptly limp.
Lazarus snatched his hands from her body lest he kill
her, too. Not Evie. He could kill every living thing on the face of the
earth, but not Evie.
She fell in a limp heap at his feet. He watched to
see if she still breathed, astonished by the contrast between her
incredible energy and her utter fragility. Ella May had made far less
effort to fight him, but she had taken a great deal longer to lose
consciousness.
He scooped Evie off the ground, kicked her shoes into
the underbrush, and hurried to the shed. He lay Evie down on a plastic
tarp and hurriedly rolled her up. Once he had deposited her in the bed of
the pickup, he relaxed some.
He had to hide Evie until Noah got back. He thought
immediately of the old mill down by the river. They had played together
there as children, Evie, Noah, Abe, and himself. Billy and Evie had used
the old mill for their rendezvous the night he had run the Jag off the
road on its flight up the long hill to the highway.
A tremble passed through his lanky frame at the
thought of having Evie for himself in the dusty cellar for the day and
maybe even the night to come. A lifetime of his fondest, wildest
fantasies filtered through his consciousness. There would be nobody to
stop him. The funny feeling in the pit of his gut warned him that he’d
not be able to stop himself if he dared to start.
He scrambled into the cab of the truck and felt under
the dash for the spare key. He had no driver’s license, but he and Noah
as kids had taken enough cars and trucks around town on midnight joyrides
to know how to handle a stick. He started the engine, ground gears, and
crept down the driveway to the highway. He turned cautiously north. The
Trevor mansion loomed over the town less than a mile away, like a god
overseeing the evil little town below. Lazarus watched for anyone who
might see what he was about to do.
Evie rolled like a rag doll across the bed of the
truck. With his heart hammering in his chest, his teeth chattering
frantically, and his hunger for Evie growing by the minute, he turned onto
the gravel road that went down to the old mill. It was like driving back
through time to childhood and happier days. And finally, for the first
time since those happier days, he was utterly alone with Evie.
