Dead Even (2 page)

As her friend Bess had once commented, “Honey, Hays is like the little old farm girl who comes to town. She puts on lipstick and curls her hair, but underneath the paint she's still the little old farm gal with manure on her boots.”

Well, schizophrenic or not, it was now
her
hometown and she loved it. She had a sense of belonging.

In the parking lot Audra unlocked her eight-year-old Datsun, automatically glancing in the back seat before entering the car. For some reason she always felt safer in the early mornings, but still she was careful.

It was a bitterly cold January morning, and the motor made a few deep groans of protest before grudgingly coming to life. Audra rubbed her bare hands together as she waited for the car to warm, then reached over and turned on the radio, contented to hear “Party Line,” a local show where people called in with items to buy or sell. Perfect. Maybe she would get lucky. There were so many items she and Gerald needed for the unfurnished duplex they had leased.
And with all the money we're wasting on this wedding, we have to really watch it.
She stopped, aware she was beginning to sound petty, even to herself.

Pulling out of the parking lot, she turned west. Traffic was beginning to pick up, but even on a busy day it was light compared to larger cities. Audra liked the fact that she could get anywhere she wanted to go in less than fifteen minutes. She reached Vine Street, one of the main thoroughfares, turned north and headed out toward McDonald's, half listening to the radio and mentally going over the opening activities for her kindergarten class. It was going to be a busy morning. Pictures. A visit to Sternburg Museum.

She listened as one caller offered free kittens, and another had a brass bed for sale. Then the radio announcer took another call. “Good morning. This is Party Line. Go ahead, please.”

The caller started to speak. “I'm looking for a small accent table—” The deep, raspy voice coming from the radio was drowned out by Audra's scream as her hands froze on the steering wheel. She recognized the horrible voice instantly.
God, no! It's him!

She was vaguely aware of a horn honking frantically and realized she was drifting over into the left lane of traffic. She jerked her Datsun back hard to the right and pulled off the well-traveled road into the parking lot of one of the many discount stores lining the highway.

He was still on the phone, and she fumbled for the knob to increase the volume. The raspy voice blared out at her. There was no question in her mind. It was him. She had heard that voice in her nightmares for ten agonizing years. Blood left her face, her stomach turned, and her hands began to tremble uncontrollably. God. After all this time. How could it be? She opened the car door and hung her head out to get more air. She could almost feel his rough hands on her body once again—feel the pain of the knife going into her repeatedly when he was finished with her.

“Oh, no. Oh God, no. Please,” she whispered the words aloud. The same words she had said to
him
so long ago. But they hadn't stopped him. Nothing had stopped him during the five hours he held her.

She had been seventeen years old, and just beginning her second semester of college at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. It was the first day of enrollment, a Wednesday, and she was leaving the library to do a five-mile run before returning to her dorm for dinner. The sun was just setting, bouncing off the hoods of the hundred or so cars in the parking lot. There was nothing to warn her of the nightmare to come; nothing to prepare her for the massive destruction, both to her body and mind, that lay ahead. Even now, ten years later, all she could remember with clarity about that day was the effect of sun glinting off the cars as she cut through the parking lot, heading toward her normal running route. From that point on, her recollections were hazy, laced with bits and fragments she had picked up from listening to the people around her, as she floated in and out of consciousness in the hospital. Sometimes it was hard to distinguish a true memory from what she had heard, or was told, about the incident.

The incident.
How bizarre to refer to something that ripped out your insides, both literally and figuratively, as
the incident.

“And what time did you leave the library the night of
the incident,
Miss Delaney?”

“Could you tell us what happened to the clothing you were wearing the night of
the incident,
Miss Delaney?”

The incident.
The incident that had left her partially paralyzed for months; the incident that had precipitated her father's heart attack, leaving her alone to face her fears; the incident that had made her terrified of relationships, cringing in agony at the slightest sign of a sexual overture; the incident that still brought on unexpected panic attacks and odious nightmares.

And the voice. Always the voice. She had awakened over and over those first months, screaming about
the voice.
She could not rid her memory of that low-pitched, guttural, noise. She had tried to explain it to the police. “It—It sounded sort of like when a person starts to talk, and they have a frog in their throat. Only his—his voice was that way all the time—like it was hard for him to speak.”

“What did he say to you?” they had asked her.

“I—I don't remember,” she had answered.

“You were with him for over five hours. Can't you remember anything at all he said to you?”

She had covered her ears with her hands and screamed at them. “No! No, I can't remember. Please don't make me remember! Get out! Get out! I don't want to talk to you any more!”

Finally, they had let her alone.

Did she have the strength to go through it all again? The questions. The looks. The newspaper accounts. She wasn't seventeen now—there would be no keeping her name out of print this time. Should she go to the police? If she did, everyone would know.

Audra put her head down on the steering wheel of her car. How could she even be considering not going to the police? Of course she would go. She couldn't let that bastard get away with what he had done to her. She would just give the police her information, and they could take it from there.

What information? It suddenly dawned on Audra she knew nothing about the caller. What would she say to the police?
Someone called in to Party Line and, yes, sir, I know he is a rapist and would-be murderer? No, sir, I don't know which caller it was. No, I don't remember what he was selling.

Audra clinched the steering wheel tightly in her hands.
Think, damnit!

If she could only remember more of what happened that night so long ago, but it was buried deep within her subconscious, and nothing she had tried would jar it loose. She could vaguely remember the rape, like a fuzzy dream, and begging with the man to stop. She could remember the knife held against her throat, and then plunged into her when he was finished. She even had a hazy recollection of pulling herself out of the ravine when she heard music blaring from a parked car a few minutes later. The two teenagers who finally noticed her saved her life that night. They had stripped off parts of their own clothing, bound her naked body as best they could to stem the flow of blood, and raced for the hospital. Dimly, she could even remember hearing a nurse comment that she would never make it—not with the amount of blood she had lost, and the way she was torn up inside.

Those things she could remember, but nothing else. The face of her attacker was locked up somewhere in her mind and she had never been able to release it. The detective assigned to her case had tried everything, to no avail. She had been held for over five hours, but could not remember a single word the man said to her. She had not been able to give the police one concrete piece of information, except for her description of the man's voice.

Why? Why couldn't she bring it forward? Even under hypnosis, she would reach a certain point, then begin screaming and have to be brought out of the hypnotic state. She had been in therapy for three years after the attack, an emotional wreck who could not handle even the most simple of tasks. Finally one day, she packed up her meager belongings in her father's antiquated Ford station wagon that she had inherited, and headed west on I-70. Audra hadn't the slightest idea where she was going, but knew only that she needed to get out of the city that held so many bad memories for her.

The old Ford had lasted only about three hours, and coughed out its death rale just as she was approaching Hays, Kansas. She walked the half-mile into town, and had been there ever since.

Hays had been good to her. When she trudged into town that night, with only eighty dollars to her name, she had plunked down half of it for a week's lodging at the Rock Road Inn—a small, privately owned motel right off of the interstate that had been built in the early forties. Most of its tenants were down on their luck, low on money, and in need of the cheapest lodging they could find.

That first night, Audra had bolted her door, pushed the dresser over in front of it, and cried herself to sleep. She was twenty years old, broke, alone in a strange town, and she felt there wasn't a person on earth who cared if she lived or died.

The next morning she showered, dressed, and went to the small office to ask where the employment agency was located. The thin, wrinkled lady sitting on a stool behind the desk had looked her up and down before answering. “If you're willing to work, I could use some help around here.” And with those words, Bess Truman entered her life. “And, no, before you ask, I ain't no relation.” Bess had smiled a toothless grin at her. “If I'd knowed marrying my Billy would of caused me so much aggravation, I might've thought twice,” she had winked broadly at Audra. “We always did say it was just a good thing his momma didn't name him Harry.”

For some reason, Bess Truman was exactly what Audra needed at that particular juncture in her life. Bess chain-smoked, talked nonstop, gummed her food when she would finally remember to eat, and sipped on diet Coke all day, occasionally lacing it with rum. But she worked hard, had a heart of gold, and seemed to know everyone in town.

By the end of the first month, she had moved Audra into her small house located on the west side of the motel. “There's just no reason you stayin' at the motel, not with me havin' all this room over here. Besides, you know how I like to talk—why, you'll be doin' me a favor.”

It was six months before Audra told Bess about the attack. Bess had listened, silent, while Audra poured out all of her frustration and fears, then gave her better advice than all the psychiatrists she had seen. “Well, child, I say screw that son of a bitch all to hell.” Audra had looked at her blankly for a moment, then burst out laughing. “You're absolutely right, Bess. Screw that son of a bitch all to hell!” It was the first time she could remember laughing in three years.

It hadn't been easy, but gradually she had put
the incident
behind her. Though it was always there, lurking in her memory, she got on with her life. When she had confided to Bess that she had planned to become a teacher but now thought it impossible, Bess had chided her gently. “Ain't nothin' impossible, Audra. We have a fine university here in town—one of the best teachers' colleges in the state, or so I've heard. They got lots of ways to help kids like you—scholarships—grants—student loans. Ain't no reason you can't go back to school.”

Audra would most likely have let the whole idea drop there, but Bess had been persistent and immediately began making plans. “I know the dean and a few others at the college, even the president. I'll just run up there this afternoon and see what can be worked out.”

The thought of Bess—dressed in baggy slacks and a plaid shirt, her gray hair fashioned carelessly into a ponytail by a blackened rubber band salvaged from the newspaper—walking into the president's office and flashing her toothless grin, had made Audra smile and touched her deeply. People like Bess, thank God, had no concept of social barriers or invisible lines drawn between certain segments of society. Bess would always be as much at home talking with a transient down on his luck as with the president of the United States—or the president of Fort Hays State University.

Somehow, it hadn't surprised Audra much when Bess had returned from the college with an array of grant and scholarship forms for her to fill out. They had stayed up far into the night completing them all, laughing and talking about her new life ahead.

She had graduated with honors four years later, with Bess sitting in the front row of chairs at the outdoor ceremony and whistling loudly as she crossed the stage. Audra had flashed her a thumbs-up sign as she returned to her seat.

Her luck had held, and she found a position in Hays at a private school, teaching kindergarten. It was an eight-year elementary school with an unusual concept. Geared exclusively to the poor or disadvantaged students who often fell through the cracks of the educational system, William's Academy, in the twenty years of its existence, had already gained national attention as a model school. The high school dropout rate of the children who spent their first years at William's was almost nonexistent, and the percentage who went on to higher learning was among the best in the country.

Audra had grabbed Bess and swung her around the living room the evening she received the phone call. “I got it, Bess! I got the job! At William's!” They had gone to the Pizza Hut to celebrate. Impulsively, Audra had reached across the checkered tablecloth and taken Bess's hand in hers. “I owe this all to you, Bess. You're the best friend I could ever hope to have, and I want you to know I love you very much.” Bess had patted her hand warmly. “I love you, too, child. As much as if you were my own.”

She had lived with Bess for one more year, then moved into her own apartment. She had been reluctant to make the break, but Bess had insisted. “Now it just ain't right for you to still be stayin' with me. You need to find your own way in the world, child. If you were my own daughter I would be sayin' the same thing. It's fun to have your own place—fix it up like you want, and be on your own. I'll always be here if you need me, don't forget that, but you need to start spendin' time with people your own age—start seein' a young man or two.” So Audra had found a small apartment near the university, and was surprised to find she enjoyed the novelty of her own place.