Bad Desire (41 page)

She was there, before him.

My God, Sheila, why're you doing this?

She looked down at the toes of her shoes, then up at his face. Under his breath, Slater said, “What're you doing here?”

“I had to see you,” she answered quietly. “I had to—”

Quickly he glanced to the side and saw the bottom half of Reeves's pant leg six feet away. “Fill out these tickets,” he told her out of the police chief's range, then he slid a booklet of raffle tickets across the makeshift counter of plywood.

Reeves saw it unfold: suddenly Slater's attention was no longer on the booth and it was obvious where it had gone. He couldn't see Slater's eyes, but the look the girl was giving back to him was deep and seductive and intimate. Much too intimate. There was no mistaking the willfulness that flowed from her. It was pure voltage and it was concentrated directly at Slater.

Suddenly, for Reeves, it all fell into place—all the loose ends that he had struggled with. He knew.

He knew why it had happened. It was all in the girl's face.

Now Reeves knew everything he needed to know.

“Don't do this,” Slater whispered and immediately turned to greet a couple that had come up for tickets. I'll never recover from this now, he thought. When Reeves sees her here, he'll know for sure.

He took her tickets when Sheila had finished filling them out and collected the five dollars she placed in his hand. “What's wrong with you?”

Her smile withered. “Nothing,” she said, “nothing's wrong with me.”

“You shouldn't be here like this,” he whispered, his face grave.

Outwardly Sheila maintained her composure while inside she yearned for him; she wanted to touch him and to be touched. “Don't hold it against me,” she said. She didn't like to think that she had caused him trouble, but she was taking risks too and she thought he might appreciate it. She wanted him to do something, say something. She wanted him to tell her he still loved her, still wanted her. She needed to hear him say these things.

“Why don't you just go?” he said and turned away, abandoning her. He was gone—down the counter to talk with someone else.

How could you? she thought, astonished with the swiftness of his departure. Don't leave me standing here. How cruel that he had the power to destroy all her warmth with a few words. Sheila backed away and fled through the crowd to her car. “Well, thank you,” she muttered to herself, “thank you very much.”

Then it came to her for the first time: Henry had dropped her. Sheila tried to resist believing it, but she couldn't. He wasn't coming back. How could he change so much? In such a short time? I must've been out of my mind to think—Panicked, she wheeled the Karmann Ghia out into traffic.

Biting her lips to keep back the tears, she drove recklessly up the ramp, onto the interstate. She drove but there was no thrill in the speed, no joy in the rush of wind. “Henry—” she sobbed. She continued south, driving aimlessly, speeding, the needle twitching on seventy. The highway had filled with trucks; oncoming lights blinded her. Hopeless. Hopeless. She ached with exhaustion and loneliness and desire, wanting to be in his arms and to go to sleep with his warm body lying crushed upon her.

Why did I do it? Why did I say those things to him? It loomed in her mind larger and larger. Fleeting lights, silhouettes of trees, starlight—she turned into the graveled driveway on Canyon Valley Drive, leaning her head against the side window. Sheila felt as if this day had taken place a long time ago. It seemed like a year had passed with each minute.

She climbed out of the car and ran into the dark, empty house.
Home
, she thought.
I'm home! Gramma, I'm home!
Until this moment, it had seemed that Henry Slater and their time together was the brightest, clearest thing in her mind and that this house and Rachel's memory existed only in a haze. Now everything was reversed. Now only this home was real. But Sheila had sold it. For him. She couldn't get it back.

The hard truth of what she'd done brought back the sorrow of these many weeks, the sweet and exquisite pain … the loss … the life she'd had with Rachel and the time when all Henry did was give her things, the beautiful feeling she had lost and couldn't get back again, the place she could never return to, the dream of finding that place again and struggling not to let go, lying in bed clutching the past to her breast and yet feeling it slip away, like breath. That was when it was finally gone, when she could no longer bring back the memory of her own innocence, even in her dreams.

The tears were running down Sheila's face and she threw back her head and screamed.

The Malcolmsons, next door, heard the long, thin, eerie cry through their open windows. Then came a second, like an echo of the first. And a third.

Ted Malcolmson, his hands full of the Saturday evening newspaper, came into the hall from his study. His wife met him from the kitchen, wiping the dishwater from her hands on her apron and reaching behind herself to untie it. “My God,” she said, “that has to be Sheila. You'd better go over there. I'll come with you.”

It was hardly ten minutes later that the telephone rang at the Slaters' and Faith picked it up.

“Could you come right away?” asked Annie Malcolmson. “It's Sheila. She's awfully upset, Faith. She's asking for you.”

32

At a quarter to ten that evening Slater walked across the midway and ordered a dozen barbecue sandwiches at the Lions Club concession. Reeves thought, What's going on, Henry?

Shortly after ten, he slapped the police chief on the shoulder, picked up the bag of sandwiches and set off through the crowd. When he was nearly out of sight, Slater cast a glance back at Reeves silhouetted against the spinning, multicolored lights of the Ferris wheel.

Reeves stepped aside to allow free passage to the people moving around him, but his eyes were on Henry Slater.
Now what've you got up your sleeve?
He couldn't be sure of anything tonight; the man was too much of a wild card. Especially now that the girl had entered the picture. Reeves could see that Slater was really strung out. All his instincts told him to get to the District Attorney right away, but he didn't want to let Slater out of his sight. Tomorrow morning would have to be time enough to swear out a warrant for his arrest.

With the sack of barbecue sandwiches clutched in his left hand, Slater struck off through the park toward City Hall and was soon swallowed up in the crowd. All was in readiness, or nearly all. He walked briskly, keeping to the schedule he had set for himself hours earlier. The timer controlling the lamp in his office would come on at precisely ten-fifteen. He'd have twelve minutes, no more, to get past the policemen on duty and vanish down the lower-level hallway; they would think he was going to his office by way of the back stairs. It was going to be a little tight.

Slater didn't hurry; he was deliberately matter-of-fact in order to give the impression of not hurrying. He could feel the deep pulse of the city. The sound of a produce truck crossing the intersection echoed in the street. The city park and its crowds sank behind him. The street was empty now. He passed dark stores, locked doorways, parked cars.

He entered the municipal parking garage at the Concepción entrance, immediately took the elevator down to Lower Level One and got out. He looked at his watch. 10:12. Perfect. The door to the police department was three steps down. Going inside he always had the sensation of passing into a cavern hung with torches, bathed in half-light. As his eyes focused, a figure appeared—a patrolman faced him behind the front desk. “Evening, Mayor Slater.”

“Good evening,” he said. He saw two other patrolmen come to their feet in the background. “Thought you guys might like a snack,” he said, offering them the bag of sandwiches. “You having a fairly slow night?”

“There's nothing going on,” one of them said. “We've got a couple drunk and disorderlies dryin' out. That's all.”

After minutes of small talk, Slater winked and said, “I guess I'd better get on upstairs. You guys have a nice evening.”

“You, too,” they said. There were three of them, altogether, one about to go on patrol.

The hallway was quiet. His shadow loomed up and switched behind him as he went through pools of fluorescent light. Three quarters of the way down the corridor, he looked back over his shoulder: it was exactly as he'd hoped. The officers were too busy eating and laughing to notice his hand on the doorknob to the police chief's outer office. Slater turned it and stepped inside, immediately shutting the door behind him without a sound. The darkness sealed around him—he felt as if he stood in a black pit. For a moment, he leaned against the door frame, listening, listening. Nothing. Holding his hands out before him like a blind man, Slater moved forward until his fingers brushed the side of the secretary's desk.

He shut his eyes to let them adjust to the darkness, still trying to listen for any odd sound at all. Unless Reeves kept the diamond on him, which seemed highly unlikely, it was here somewhere, but Slater didn't have the time to search for it. Taking the penlight from his pocket and directing it at the floor, he turned it on.

A halo surrounded the thin projectile of light on the carpet. He moved behind the secretary's desk and opened the top right-hand drawer. He found what he was looking for in the rubberized compartment tray: the small ring containing the keys to Reeves's office and credenza.

He slid the drawer shut. Keeping the penlight aimed at the floor, Slater moved directly across the room, inserted the key into the office door, and switching off the light in his hand, let himself in. The drapes on the one large window had been left open and a beam of light from the parking lot outside cut through the office in a wide stripe. Remaining in the shadows, he crossed to Reeves's credenza and unlocked it.

The rectangular door clicked open. In seconds Slater found what he had come for—he lifted the LeFever shotgun from the oversized gym bag, checking to make sure Reeves hadn't dismantled it. The gun was assembled and in good working order and the thought of what it could do chilled him. Feeling through the dark, his hand closed on the cartridges—three of them, which he put in his pocket.

Taking the shotgun with him, he went around to the office door, stepped out, locked it and put the key into his pocket. His eyes had grown so accustomed to the dark that he was now able to navigate his way without using the penlight. Again, he listened, pressing his ear to the door that opened onto the hall. These were moments of intense danger; he could feel himself sweating and wiped his eyes and his brow with his sleeve. Placing the unloaded shotgun inside his jacket, he turned the knob and eased the door open two or three inches.

Through the gap, he studied the front desk at the end of the hall. Now even the smallest mistake would be disastrous. A lone officer sat at the desk paging through a magazine when a second policeman drifted into view and started a conversation. Slater couldn't decipher what they were saying but he heard them laughing. The officer at the desk turned a page; after a few seconds the other one sauntered from sight. Slater knew he couldn't wait any longer. Biting down on his lower lip, he stepped into the corridor, keeping close to the wall. With his free hand, he pulled the door gently shut.

He went out through the fire door and climbed the fire stairs two at a time to the second floor. From there he took the skywalk across to the parking garage. It was 10:29. There was no one in sight. Everything was so still that his light footsteps resounded from the concrete walls. Slater got behind the wheel of the Jeep and thought about his next move without haste. He started the engine and drove slowly out of the garage.

Slater inhabited a night world full of waiting. Waiting for Reeves. He kept wanting to turn his head, wanting to search the street behind him, but he knew he shouldn't. He strained, listening for the sound of another engine turning over somewhere on one of the nearby streets, but he heard nothing. He was a man alone driving through the streets at night, nothing more.

Reeves must still be at the picnic.

I've got to put myself in his path.

When he drove by the entrance to the carnival, he saw him. There you are, Reeves. Confident, menacing Reeves, leaning against the front fender of his new cruiser. Slater drove past him without appearing to look, but he saw the long, sleek shape of Reeves's new cruiser. Now it was only a matter of time.

Reeves's headlights flashed in his rearview mirror as the cruiser swept round and into the lane nearly a full block behind him.

That's right, Reeves, follow me.

They were driving along Columbia Avenue, bypassing the interstate, coming steadily closer to the old parkway that ran south along the oceanfront then tapered inland through the country. Never had he noticed how deserted this section of Rio Del Palmos was at night. The pavement narrowed, the trees grew thicker and more erratic, garden walls were interspersed with fields. When he looked in the rearview mirror, headlights reflected in his eyes.

I must be crazy, he thought.

Sheila. Will you forgive me for this, Sheila? God, you don't know what I've had to do. Don't you see? Sheila, don't you see I have to do it?

Every fraction of a second he and Reeves were drawing nearer and nearer the place where it would happen and Slater could feel his heart beating, marking off the time. He wanted to get out of the car and run and run, but there was no getting away from this.

He sped through the darkness, heading out of town. Again he glanced in his mirror and saw the headlights. Stay with me, Reeves. The lovely slickness of the night moved with him. He saw Sheila's face staring after him, all great wide eyes, as he sped deeper and deeper into darkness. It's almost over, he thought. He wanted to tell her so many things.

The road he was looking for was unmarked and overgrown with honeysuckle. Finally it was before him. Vines trailed across his windshield; branches full of leaves brushed the bottom of the Jeep. Somewhere to his right, beyond the black rim of trees, was the glimmer of the ocean.