Dancing with the Dead (17 page)

“What about the union? You talk to the shop steward? Maybe you could file a grievance or something.”

He stopped smiling and grunted in disdain, all the while with his gaze nailed to her. She knew suddenly what kind of black mood he was in; apprehension knotted her stomach. “You oughta know the goddamn union’s in bed with the company,” he told her. “That’s how it works these days. They’re all of a sudden saying at the warehouse that seniority goes by department instead of for the whole crew. What a crock of shit!”

“Well, they’re not laying off, are they?”

With an elaborate, lazy shrug, Jake pushed away from the doorjamb and stepped into the room. He was wearing faded Levi’s and a gray T-shirt with SCREW THE WHALES lettered on it. “It ain’t like I’m about to get laid off,” he snarled. “But this way they can throw my ass into a boxcar and make me unload produce instead of keeping me checking outgoing shipments, where I fucking deserve to be. They got a guy been there five years less than me playing with his pencil on the loading dock. He don’t know his ass from a hole in the ground about checking outgoing.”

She walked over to him and lightly touched his arm, trying to defuse him with a display of sympathy. The arm was tense, cool yet sticky with sweat. “Listen, Jake, things’ll come around. Anyway, it’s time-out for a while. There’s no need to bring the job home with you. Just forget about it till you go in tomorrow, okay? Let’s go in the kitchen and I’ll—”

He pushed her hand away and glared at her. She saw the hostility in him, the hungry violence circling like a great bird looking for a deserving victim. She didn’t want to be the object of that violence. She backed away.

“Like you don’t bring your half-ass obsession home?” he asked. “Like you forget about ballroom dancing when you’re not swishing around with your fag instructor at the studio?”

“Jake, for God’s sake, Mel’s straight as you are.”

She knew immediately she shouldn’t have said it. In his present mood, Jake might interpret her words as an attack on his manhood. His hooded dark eyes fixed on her and didn’t blink. A familiar, dangerous calm settled over him. The cruel thing that lived inside him was taking control.

No, no, no, not again!
“Anyway,” she said, “you know what I mean. Don’t you?”

He moved very close; she could smell onion on his warm, fetid breath. Not liquor, thank God. “No,” he said, “how could I know; you got a mind like a goddamn circus. Why don’t you tell me what you mean?”

“I mean . . . I guess I mean there’s nothing effeminate about Mel Holt.”

“Ha! You don’t call showing desperate women where to put their feet when they ain’t waving ’em in the air a fag occupation?”

“No, I don’t. Really, you wouldn’t, either, if you understood.” Why did she keep saying the wrong thing?

He glided slowly toward her until her back was pressed against the wall. His breath hissed regularly, like great pressure escaping, but not fast enough to prevent more from building. She was beginning to experience the paralysis of fear. Her arms and legs seemed detached, independent creatures with sluggish wills of their own.

“Jake, don’t start this! Please!”

“I want you to tell me that Mel asshole’s probably a faggot,” he said in a gentle voice that didn’t fool her. “Go ahead, tell me.”

“I can’t do that, Jake. Honestly, he’s not.”

“Oh? How would you know? You sleep with him?”

“Of course not! You know I didn’t!”

“How the hell could I know that? I don’t just
know
stuff, like you do. Not without any goddamn proof.”

She tried to slide between his bulk and the wall, but he blocked her with his arm and she hadn’t any strength to resist.

Suddenly she was ten years old, trapped in Duke’s grip as he ignored her feeble struggles and unbuckled and removed his belt to administer one of the beatings Angie still maintained Mary deserved. What had she done? Messed up at school? Broken something valuable? Spilled something at the table? What had she done this time?

Nothing, damn it! Nothing!
It wasn’t fair!

“Jake!” She placed her hands on his chest and shoved, whipping her head from side to side and trying to pull free. She was aware of him drawing back his hand, as if to deliver a hammer blow. No way to avoid it. No way to prevent the pain.

She stopped struggling, clenching her eyes shut.

Resigned.

Waiting.

And suddenly he was no longer against her. The warmth of his bulk, the oppressive smells of onion and perspiration, were gone.

She opened her eyes barely in time to see him hurrying out the door, his shoulders bunched as if he were hunkered down and angling into a fierce wind.

“Jake!”

She heard the door to the hall open and close.

Silence then. A cessation of time. Her aloneness seeped into her and lay like a cold slab in her stomach.

For a while she stood hugging herself, cupping her bony elbows in her hands and gently swaying.

Then she walked over to the tape deck, pushed Rewind, and began to dance.

Around midnight she took two Benadryl capsules, hoping they would help her sleep, then went to bed and lay staring into the darkness. It had cooled down outside, so she had the air-conditioner off and the window open. A breeze was playing with the curtains; writhing shadows brought grotesque life to the wall next to the bed. Trying not to think, listening to the night sounds of the city, she fell asleep.

When the bed lurched she awoke. The luminous blue digital numbers on the clock said it was ten minutes past three. The Benadryl capsules hadn’t worked to keep her asleep, or maybe she’d developed a resistance to them.

She let her gaze slide sideways through the darkness. Jake was settling down beside her on the mattress. He sighed and she smelled bourbon. He mumbled something that sounded like “Motherfuckers,” then he was motionless and quiet. Within a few minutes he began to snore.

Mary lay without moving, barely breathing. It was impossible to know how deeply Jake was sleeping. Or what he might do if he awoke.

She was still and fearful until daylight, dozing only in brief and intermittent stretches, and wakened suddenly by thrills of panic.

Five minutes before the alarm was due to rip the silence, she turned it off. Then she climbed out of bed gingerly, wincing as the springs squealed. Stepping where she knew from experience that the floor wouldn’t squeak, she gathered her clothes and carried them into the bathroom to dress. She could go without breakfast, or she might drive through McDonald’s and pick up coffee and a Danish to eat at work.

Careful not to disturb Jake, she crept from the apartment and made her way down the creaking wooden stairs to the vestibule. She pushed out into the bright warm morning, hating the fear that walked with her.

Jake had come within a heartbeat of starting in on her last night. When that happened, it usually wasn’t long before whatever it was that sometimes stopped up short of violence failed, and he’d be rough on her. Jake the time bomb. When he was this way she could almost bring herself to leave him and to mean it.

Almost.

She was like a ship captive to an undertow. Drifting toward the rocks and unable to do anything about it, because that was what happened sometimes if you were a ship.

The ocean she sailed on terrified her, but the inevitability of its tides was something she had faith in and understood.

T
WO DAYS LATER
he called. Mary was in the kitchen, about to insert a frozen lasagna dinner into the microwave, when the phone rang. She quickly wiped her hands on a paper towel, then lifted the receiver from the extension phone mounted on the wall near the refrigerator. Said hello.

“Mary Arlington?”

She recognized his voice at once, the Southern accent, but for a moment she couldn’t answer. She’d been expecting Angie to call.

“Yes, it’s, uh, me,” she said, feeling awkward, not knowing quite how to respond. She needed time, a few seconds to gather herself. She noticed the front of her blouse was vibrating with her heartbeat.

“You told me it’d be okay if I called,” Rene said. “This a bad time?”

“No, not at all. I was just about to defrost something for supper.” She forced a laugh, as if she’d made a joke and usually she prepared elaborate meals. Stupid, stupid to mention supper! Now he’d think she was hungry and hurry the conversation.

“You said you might help me, Mary, and I think maybe there’s a way you can.”

She started to speak but the words lodged painfully in her throat. Everything in the kitchen, the microwave oven with its door hanging open and its light softly glowing, the glistening drop of water poised to plummet from the mouth of the sink faucet, the gleaming chrome toaster smudged with fingerprints, all seemed more vivid than they had before the phone rang. The sharp scent of bacon grease rose from the skillet Jake had used and left on the stove.

“Still feel that way?” he asked.

“Sure. I mean, of course I meant it when I told you I’d help.”

“I’m calling from a pay phone,” he said, “because I think the police might have my home phone tapped, and I don’t want to involve you in this to the point where you might get hurt or embarrassed.”

That seemed reasonable to Mary. This was something like a film
noir
movie on late-night cable TV—intrigue and shadows and romance. “Did you find out anything in Seattle?” Barbara Stanwyck asked in black-and-white.

“I visited the studio where Martha Roundner trained. Talked to some of the people in the Seattle dance community. They told me Martha Roundner was a regular at quite a few night spots where there was dancing. Not unusual for somebody as far into ballroom dancing as she was. But I guess you know that. You go out dancing often?”

“Sometimes, not often.”

“There’s a good chance Martha Roundner went dancing the night of her death, though nobody at any of the dance clubs remembers seeing her.”

“They wouldn’t, necessarily,” Mary told him. “Those places are full of activity and usually very noisy. Sometimes the lighting’s low, or tricks are done with it. Strobe lights, colored beams, moving shadows, that sorta thing.”

“I know. It doesn’t mean much to me, either, that nobody remembers for sure she was out dancing that night. It was her roommate who said she thought that was where Martha mentioned she was going. Said Martha danced three or four nights a week. Her favorites were the Latin dances, especially tango.”

“That’s my favorite, too,” Mary heard herself say.

“They found her car in the airport parking lot, miles from where her body was discovered. Seems obvious the killer drove it there, then flew out of town.”

“Maybe that’s what he wanted everyone to think,” Mary suggested.

“That’s what Martha’s parents said, despite the fact there are no fingerprints other than their daughter’s in the car. Poor old people are getting no more satisfaction outa the police investigation than I am. Sweet Lord, you talk to them and your heart almost tears in half.”

“I bet her parents are right, though, and the police are wrong.”

“Uh-huh. A certain deviousness accompanies whatever compels somebody so mentally twisted. Which is why the police make no headway; they’re looking for the usual criminal type with a penitentiary IQ.” He was quiet for a moment, but she could hear his breathing, in counterpoint time with her own. “What I need, Mary, if it’s not too much trouble, is some old dance programs from the various competitions in different cities. I want to check the names of the entrants against police homicide records. Maybe Martha Roundner and Danielle aren’t the only victims of this psychopath.”

Romance Studio subscribed to most of the trade magazines, and competition programs tended not to be thrown away. Mary thought about the stack of magazines and dance programs on a bottom shelf in Ray Huggins’s office.

“Don’t say yes if you have the slightest reservation,” Rene told her. “I probably shouldn’t have called.”

“I was only trying to think of the best way to go about it,” Mary said. “I’m pretty sure I can at least send you copies of the registration lists from some of the competitions.”

“That’d be terrific. But, listen, don’t mail them to my home. I wouldn’t be surprised if the police are watching my mail. I rented a post office box in Baton Rouge. I’ll give you the number and zip code. Address the envelope to Roger Lane. Can you remember that?”

“I think so.”

“Good. You don’t think I’m paranoid, do you? About the police?”

“No. I can understand why you feel the way you do.”

“They keep their secrets, play everything so tight. They still probably haven’t told the news media everything about the murders.”

Mary said, “It’s just the way they are, I guess.”

“I don’t wanna cause you any trouble. Don’t want anybody to know you did this.”

“Me, either,” Mary said. “But really, I don’t mind.”

“It’s kind of you to help me. You’ve got your own life, your own problems. When something like Danielle’s murder happens, it leaves the husband so . . . alone. More alone than I’ve ever been, or than I’d wish on anybody else.”

“Well, nobody’s got a corner on loneliness.”

“Misery doesn’t love company, in this case. Misery just hates misery.”

“I know exactly what you mean.”

“Why? You’re not miserable, I hope.”

“Only sometimes.”

“Oh? Is there some way I can repay? Some way
I
can help
you
?”

“No, no, it’s mainly my mother. She’s not in good health.”

“What’s wrong with her? I can afford the best doctors.”

“We don’t know exactly what’s wrong. Then there’s . . .”

“What?”

“Jake.”

“A guy named Jake’s a problem?”

“Yeah, I’m afraid sometimes he is.”

“He somebody you’re romantically involved with?”

“He lives with me.”

“And it’s not going well?”

“No.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

“No. Or maybe yes. God, I don’t know.”

“It can’t do any harm if I play Dear Abby. So what’s the trouble between you and Jake?”

“He . . . gets physical at times.”

“You mean he beats you?” Rene didn’t sound surprised.