Gecko (16 page)

“
I’m locking it now,” she said. Then she added, “I’ll see you when you get here.”

“
Love you,” he said.

“
Love you too, Dad.”

* * *

On the one hand she understood why he wanted her out of the way. He was her father. Protecting her was natural, but dammit, she didn’t want to be left out. She wasn’t a little girl. She was living on her own, earning her own income. She lit a cigarette. Life is so unfair, she thought.

Maybe she should just go on over there. What could he say? He’d have to let her stay, to let her see the murder scene and the investigation first hand. But she knew if she disobeyed him, he would pack her back to Long Beach on the first bus out of town. No, she would have to do as she was told and earn his respect.

She decided to take a bath. She took the last drag off the cigarette, then stubbed it out in a crystal ashtray. She went into the bathroom and turned on the hot water, checking it with her hand under the flow. When it was hot, she added the cold. She let the water run while she undressed. Then she padded into the bedroom and picked up her pack of cigarettes off the nightstand.

Only one left. Damn. She loved to sit in the tub and smoke and think and this was definitely a three or four cigarette bath coming up. She went back to the bathroom, checked the water. Too cold. She turned off the cold and turned the hot down to a slow trickle.

Then she remembered her father always had a spare pack in the glove compartment. She smiled as she jumped into her Levi’s, ignoring her panties. She pulled on her tee shirt, leaving the bra where it had fallen on the bathroom floor. She thought about the shoes, but it was a warm night and she liked going barefoot. She went through the connecting doors, picked up her father’s keys from the nightstand. Then she started for the door. She would have her four cigarette bath after all.

She left the room, smiling as she felt the cool tile of the walkway on her bare feet. The rock tile stairs sent little shivers of feeling from her feet to her shins. It felt good. At the bottom of the stairs she started for the car, then thought, one peek, from a distance, what could it hurt. Her father need never know.

She went through the parking lot, glanced at Power Glide and kept walking. She didn’t want to go through the lobby, so she went around the main building, trying to see which room her father was in. The sound of a distant siren pierced the night, getting closer. She ran from the inn part of the complex to the restaurant, where she hid by the side of the building. She didn’t have to wait long.

Two black and white cruisers pulled into the parking lot, sirens blazing, lights flashing. She watched as two officers emerged from each car. They talked for a few seconds, then all four went up the steps. Two held back at the top of the stairs, just in case, she thought. Just in case her father came out shooting. But before the other two reached the room, the door opened and her father came out, hands well away from his body.

“
I’m a police officer.” He said, showing his shield in his right hand.

“
Then you’ll understand when we tell you to step away from the door, turn and face the wall, put your hands on the wall and spread ’em.” Her dad tossed the uniformed officer his shield then did as he was told.

“
I have a thirty-eight, in a right shoulder holster,” he said to the officer frisking him. The policeman removed it and stepped back.

“
Give him back his piece. This is the guy that called it in,” the other officer said.

Glenna stood silent and still, seeing and hearing everything, afraid to move, afraid to breathe, until her father and the other officers entered the room. They didn’t close the door, but she was confident they couldn’t see her through the cloud covered night. She was about to make her way back to the parking lot, when she felt something on her foot. She looked down and stifled a scream as she jerked her foot up, shaking the gecko off, sending it flying into the night.

Shaken, she shivered. She needed a cigarette. She walked across the cool grass next to the brick walkway, preferring the feel of the grass on her feet. She covered the distance from the restaurant to the parking lot in quick strides. She wanted the cigarettes and she wanted to be back up in her room in a peaceful bath, soaking in hot-as-could-be water. She wished she had some bubble bath.

She slowed her pace when she reached the parking lot, taking short, shallow steps toward the car. She’d skinned her feet when she was a little girl, pushing a new bicycle down their asphalt driveway on a cold Christmas morning. Ever since, whenever she walked barefoot on asphalt, chills ran from the balls of her feet to the back of her neck.

She was fifteen strides into the parking lot and halfway to the car, when the winds aloft opened a patch of sky, showing the full moon and removing the veil of darkness that covered the ground. Her spirits lightened and she anticipated the taste of one of her father’s stale Marlboros. She picked up her pace and stubbed her toe. Damn. She stopped. It hurt. There was blood. She started limping toward the car. She heard something. She stopped, cautious, like a deer that had just heard a twig snap.

She heard it again. A scraping sound. Still she didn’t move. The sound stopped and for a full fifteen seconds she stood stock still. She heard it again. Something scraping along the asphalt, for only an instant, then it stopped.

“
Is somebody there?” she said in a small, soft voice.

A low animal sound answered. A rumbling sound, a bass sound—halfway between a giant cat-purr and a rough, dog-like growl. She reached into her pocket, took out her father’s keys. The animal sound was moving behind the parking lot, to her right. If she could get in the car and lock it, she would be safe. Oblivious to the pain in her foot she started slowly, carefully toward the car. The sound got louder and she picked up her pace. All of a sudden it was in front of her, coming from somewhere close to the Chevy. Her safe haven was cut off.

She stopped, backed up two paces, then stopped again. The moving clouds partly covered the moon, cutting off most of the light, but not all of it. She strained her eyes, willing them to see through the night. The animal growled again. She wanted to run, but didn’t. It’s a dog, she told herself. A dog, nothing else. Probably a watch dog. She wasn’t afraid of dogs. She had a way with them. Even when she was a little girl, she had been able to tame the meanest, mangiest dog in the neighbor hood, Mr. Howard’s German Shepherd, with her soothing voice and her lack of fear. Dogs sensed fear and she was never afraid. Not of dogs. Her father said that she must have been a golden collie in another life and, when she was a child, she believed him, because dogs, all dogs, seemed to love her.

“
Here boy,” she said, “I won’t hurt you.”

Silence.

She made a clicking sound, encouraging the animal to come forward.

Silence.

Her fear contained, her confidence returned, she started toward the car, taking oh-so-slow steps, her hand out, palm down.

“
Easy, boy. Easy. I won’t hurt you.”

The animal growled, a deep, raw, throaty sound. She stopped. It didn’t sound like a dog. But what else could it be out here in the middle of nowhere? A coyote, maybe? Unlikely, they stay away from people. Something bigger? A bear? No, there were no bears here. In the mountains maybe, but not here. No, it was a dog, nothing else, nothing to be afraid of.

She made the clicking sound again.

“
Come on out, I won’t hurt you.”

It answered with another growl, a bottomless sound, a train deep in a water well, rumbling out of the dark and the wet. It was a dog, it couldn’t be anything else.

But it sounded like it might be hurt. Would her magic work on an injured animal. Maybe it was hungry. Hungry and hurt. Maybe it was a wild dog. No, that didn’t make sense. There were no wild dogs out here. Were there? Maybe. There were people, a town, there could be wild dogs. But she had never heard of a wild dog attacking people. No it had to be a watch dog and she could deal with a watch dog.

She started to call out again, when the animal growl turned into a tiger-like roar. A quiet roar, but a roar nonetheless. It wasn’t a dog. She wanted to move, but couldn’t. Some invisible force was pressing down on her. She was a tree, her feet were roots, betraying her by clawing into the asphalt. She was helpless. Her body shook, she could feel sweat under her arms. She tried to quell her quivering thighs, tried to control her quick shallow breath, but her racing heart was in charge. She wanted to scream, but the invisible force turned her scream into a whimper.

She heard the scraping again and her eyes were glued to the direction of the sound. They were glued to her father’s fifty-nine Impala. Glued through the dark. The clouds stirred above and again allowed the moonlight to chase away enough of the dark for her to see. There was something under her dad’s car and it wasn’t a dog.

It slithered forward, till its head was under the front grill. Its bright yellow eyes centered between Power Glide’s headlights. Its reptilian head reminded her of a gecko, till it opened its mouth and she saw scissor-like teeth. Teeth that more rightly belonged in the mouth of a thresher shark. This was a bad thing.

It was crouching under the car and she knew why. It was waiting for her. As clear as a winter dawn, she knew that this thing was connected some way with the gecko she’d shaken from her foot earlier. Somehow that gecko was a warning, a warning she’d failed to heed. She was being warned away, but from what? Her mind raged and her heart raced. If she knew, if she only knew, she would stay away. Oh God, she would stay away.

The thing thrust clawed feet in front of itself and pulled its way from under the car, making the scraping sound she’d heard earlier. She watched as it emerged, like a dragon from its den, a giant gecko with shark’s teeth, breathing steam on a hot night, captivating her with its glowing yellow eyes, the yellow moonlight reflecting off its green skin, giving it an iridescent, radioactive glow.

She was too stunned to scream. Too stunned to run. Her root-like feet refused to obey. The thing inched forward, opening and closing its bear trap jaws, slamming its shark teeth together with a frenzied metallic fury.

Then it came at her. She could do nothing. She was helpless. She was going to die and there was nothing she could do about it.

Then she heard the sound of tires spinning, smelled the smoke of rubber burning and saw the white Ford Explorer come leaping forward.

The reptile thing was so close, jaws open wide, the stench of its foul breath stinging her nostrils, its eyes tearing through to her very core, when the Explorer struck it square in the side, sending it flying away from her. It turned, yellow eyes glazed, and let out a roar that ripped through the night and made her flesh crawl.

“
Get in!” The driver flung the passenger door open and she sprang to life.

The slimy lizard thing with the hot breath roared again, only momentarily stunned. It started for her, but this time her feet had wings and she dove into the open door and slammed it shut as Jim Monday put his foot to the floor and once again she heard screeching tires as the back end of the Explorer fishtailed out of the parking lot.

Chapter Ten

He spun the car to the left, in the direction of the slide, and tightened his hands on the wheel, until the tires bit into the road. He concentrated on the ramp ahead. The speedometer read forty when he entered it, heading toward San Francisco, sixty when they shot out onto the interstate.

He let the needle climb to seventy-five, thought about passing the semi ahead, then decided against it. He didn’t want to be stopped for speeding. He settled back, slowed to sixty-five and rode in the wake of the big truck.

Then the girl screamed.

“
Please stop.” He glanced over at her. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

She screamed louder. She was shaking, hands pushing against the dash for support.

“
Please!” He raised his voice more than he wanted.

She stopped. He grabbed another quick look. Sweat ringed her forehand. Small spasms seemed to be running through her body, but the violent shaking had stopped.

“
You’re safe now. That thing can’t get you here.”

She was quietly sobbing.

“
Are you all right?”

She nodded, wiping a tear from her eye with a bent finger.

“
I’m Jim Monday.” He glanced at her when he said it, saw a flicker of understanding. “You must know who I am. I saw you when you arrived with Washington, the cop from Long Beach. I was hiding in the shrubbery, by the parking lot. I snuck in the car after you went to check in. I needed sleep. Then I saw that thing creeping out from under your car before I had a chance to nod off. How did Washington know where I was?”

She didn’t answer and he put her out of his mind as he followed the big truck north.

Ten miles later she said, “You stink.”

He was covered in wet cow manure. It was in his hair, on his face, neck and arms. It was seeping through his clothes. He was surprised that it didn’t repulse him, surprised that he’d adjusted so quickly.

“
Compared with that thing back there, a little cow shit is the least of my problems.”

“
They’ll catch you pretty quick looking and smelling like that.”