Kiss The Girls and Make Them Die (23 page)

She wondered why she felt no fear. Surely there was no greater terror than to realize you have become separated from your own body. There she sat, vacant eyed, hand frozen on the telephone. What if the building were to catch fire? Would she watch her flesh burn, char, sizzle, and pop?

The idea amused her. She realized she was smiling—not inside her mind, but with her mouth. Still smiling, she lifted the receiver and spun the dial. Her bones articulated smoothly, the movement of her body was a sensual joy, almost a rapture. She decided to get up and dance, just as soon as she finished making the call …

“Switchboard.”

She loved the girl, whoever she was. “Get me Ward Six, will you dear?”

Click –
bzzzt … bzzzt … bzzzt
. The electronic sounds annoyed her. She was losing her sense of remoteness. She had come back to her body but it felt like a strange house that she had occupied by mistake. Why was she calling Ward Six? Hadn’t she planned to call Jeff?

A voice answered: “Crisis ward.”

“Who is this, please?”

From the other end came a sudden explosion of laugh sounds which she identified as the Learned Doctor’s. If a polar bear could laugh, that’s how he would laugh.

“Tom, what are you doing?”

“Came to visit my old buddy. Is this Elizabeth?”

From some hidden wellspring her anger surged up like a volcanic eruption; all the miserable days she’d spent with Bobby, the gang rape on the desert, the indignity at the border, came up like clots of phlegm and exploded from her mouth. “You son-of-a-bitch. You filthy, lying … deceptive … immoral PIG! You’re as greasy as those lizards you left to take care of me, you cowardly … insignificant … FREAK!”

There was more, as she dug into her memory and raked up every insult she could think of, until at last she realized she was empty, and relieved, and no longer angry.

And Tom, who had been trying to break in, finally said: “You’re absolutely right. It was a sticky moral dilemma …”

Here comes another load
, she thought

“… whether to bring you along, and take the risk that you’d blow the whole deal, or sacrifice my own integrity in order to get the job done. In the end …”

“In the end you ran out.”

“I had a mission—”

“That’s an old one. You’re pure, the rest of us are devils. Therefore it’s okay, whatever you do to us—”

“It isn’t that way, Liza. We’re on the defensive. All we want is out.”

“And how can you be sure you’re not turning loose a killer?”

“Because we’ve shared water with him. Look, even if you’re right—well, it’s started and we won’t stop.”

“Let me talk to Danny.”

There was a minute of silence, then a new voice came on, remote, strained, muffled. “Hello, Liza.”

“Danny, you won’t find any help out there.”

“I’m not getting any here, either.”

“I know. I’ve heard Jeff’s side, now I want to hear yours. Will you call it off? Then we’ll have lots of time to talk.”

“Wrong, Liza. There’s no time to talk.”

“Wait. What are you planning to do? Find out who really committed the murders?”

“… Yes.”

“Why did you hesitate? Don’t you know that’s the only way you can possibly get out of this?”

“I’m not sure even that …”

“What is it, Danny?”

“I don’t know.”

“There is something bothering you. Is it Debra?”

There was no answer, only a click, and a humming in her ears. She hung up and swung her chair around to face the window. She could see the gabled “L” of the crisis ward off to her left, silhouetted by glaring floodlights. She watched the square van nose out into the road and swing left. They were avoiding the main highway, where most runaways were quickly scooped up. They were going through the old agricultural area, past the old dairy barn where Cotter had hanged himself, out toward the national forest which lay twenty miles to the south.

She sat there until the van was out of sight, then smoked a cigarette and went home.

The smell of cigarette smoke tickled her nostrils as she opened the door to her apartment. She looked through the door of her living room and saw a man seated on the demisofa with a tall beaded glass on the endiable beside him.

He looked at her and smiled, the hairs of his drooping black moustache spreading out over a picketfence of large white teeth. From there his face sloped back in both directions, giving him a streamlined, predatory look. She glanced down at his hand-tooled Texas-style boots.

“You must be Debra’s husband. Boots Virdon?”

He lifted his glass and nodded. “I fixed a pitcher. It’s in the fridge.”

She stood still while her eyes took in the scene. His elbow rested only a few inches from her beige telephone, but the apartment door was just behind her.

“I might ask how you got in.”

“You’ve got a cheap lock on your back door. The builder always skimps on that part of the building.”

“I see. You’re very versatile.” She hesitated, then walked past him into the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator door and gazed into it without seeing, breathing the dank cold air, the smell of vegetables and dairy products. She wondered if she were doing the right thing. What if her theory and Jeff’s were both wrong; what if Boots was the real killer?
You’re playing with death, Liza …

She took down the pitcher and poured herself a glass. The liquid looked almost transparent; she took a sip and tasted the sharp bite of vodka, tempered by a faint flavor of orange. She walked back into the living room, seated herself in the single chair, and tucked her feet under her. “I don’t like people coming into my apartment uninvited, but I assume you had a reason. Tell me what it is.”

His face settled into a sullenness. He reached into his pocket and took out a folded paper. The note was scrawled in hasty penciled lines.

Liza looked up. “Helen …”

He shrugged. “The housekeeper. She raised the twins after Debra’s mama died. She’s sort of raised our kids too. Debra wasn’t what you’d call the domestic type.”

“I see.” Liza folded the note and gave it back to him. “And you thought I might know where she’d gone?”

“I thought she might be here. I know she visited your office. You didn’t answer the telephone, so I thought—” He squinted his eyes at her; they were black, with an oily sheen, and protruded slightly from his head. “You talk to Danny much out at the funny farm?”

She nodded. “He was one of my patients for a time.”

“Then you know he and Debra had a weird thing going.” He held up two fingers pressed together. “Like that. You couldn’t break into it, nobody from outside got even a sniff of what went on between them.” He took a long drink and wiped his lips. “I got taken over the falls in a barrel. Five years I tried to get an orgasm out of her. Hell, I’d have settled for even a tiny grunt of pleasure. It was like trying to start a fire with wet wood.”

“You weren’t exactly true to her either, were you?”

He glared at her. “What are you talking about?”

“The girls you took to the cabin.”

“Ah—” He drained his glass and set it on the table. “They were just whores I picked up in the city.”

“And I suppose you took them back when you finished?”

“Sure. You think I’d keep ‘em around?” His eyes slitted as he looked at her. “What the hell are you after?”

“The neighbors testified that nobody else used the cabin during the three years that Danny lived there. That wasn’t true, and you could have told them so. Why didn’t you?”

“Shit.” He stood up and walked to the center of the room in jerky, stiff-legged steps. She realized he was no taller than she was, even with his two-inch heels. He wore tapered slacks of a rust-red color, held by a wide belt with a brass buckle bearing the embossed head of a horse. “I had a sensitive operation going, trying to develop a lake resort. To deal with these turkeys you gotta keep up a respectable front.” He made a chopping gesture with his hand. “Anyway it’s down the drain,”

“And so is Danny, right?”

He whirled on her. “You think I planned it? I didn’t know they’d find all those bodies. I didn’t know he was a homicidal nut.”

“You don’t really think he is.”

“The jury found him guilty.”

“You have such great faith in the law. Suppose I told the police you broke in here tonight?”

He hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his pale doeskin jacket and looked down at her. “You wouldn’t do that.”

“No. I just thought I’d remind you, everyone has their own reason for doing what they do. You broke in because you wanted to see your wife. You see? Debra and Danny had reasons for doing what they did. They don’t seem sane to us, but then we aren’t in their situation, are we?”

“I’ve been in it too damn long. You know what she did on our wedding night? She called her brother in Cambodia, talked for a whole twenty minutes.” He swung away abruptly, walked to the door. “The hell with it. I’m getting out.”

“Out?”

“I mean I’ve sold the firm, Yates Realty took over all my listings. I’m shaking the dust of this country off my
feet.” He opened the door, then turned and said: “You better make sure you keep a strong guard on Danny. Debra’s been sneaking food out of the house. There’s blankets missing and a couple of hunting rifles. You can make out of it what you want.”

The door slammed behind him. Liza sat without moving until she heard his car drive away, then got up and poured her drink into the commode.

Now comes the hard part, she thought as she turned out the light and crawled between the satin sheets. She slept nude, her skin sensitized by the fabric. She could feel the soft pressure of the little dog against her hip. As a watchdog he was useless; the only way she would know when danger approached was if he hid under the bed.

Gazing up, she saw the headlight beams from the highway fan across her ceiling. She thought of Debra, that strange, fanatical girl. And Danny, operating under a posthypnotic command which he was not aware of. Jeff, you’ll pay for that, somehow … She recalled the Learned Doctor’s words:
“I figure it’s my job to turn Danny loose”

And what is mine? she wondered.

Dan lay on a pile of moldy hay and looked up through the open door of the barn loft. The night had been sliced open in several places; dawn leaked through in flat bars of salmon-colored light. The Learned Doctor sat on the edge of the trapdoor, his legs dangling over the feedway. He took a joint from his shirt pocket, glanced around at the dry hay, rolled it nervously between his fingers. “Dan, the plane takes off at eight-thirty. Frog’s waiting on the road with a rental car, just a five-minute walk through the woods. So what are you doing up here, transcendental meditation?”

“I’m thinking that was a shitty thing to do, leave her there.”

“You’d rather I brought her back with me? ‘Now you just wait in the car, Miz Staff Psychiatrist Bodac, we gonna
borrow your keys and bust this buddy out of the booby-hatch, okay? Then we’re gonna give back your keys and you just go to work tomorra and forget the whole thing.’ Man, she believes in that shit.”

“Why don’t you just go on?”

“Oh God!” He stood up, lifted his hands to the sky, dug his fingers into his hair. “You know what I had to do to set this up? First—” He held up one finger. “I had to get involved with Bobby. That’s a job I equate morally with cleaning out the grease trap under the kitchen sink. Then to bankroll this operation I—me, and Lona and Frog, risked our freedom, in fact our lives—”

“Hold on while I get my violin.”

“I’m just trying to show you what we’ve put into this, man. Hauling two pounds of nose-candy across the frontera—man, I don’t even
approve
of cocaine, and here I am dealing the shit wholesale, getting mixed up with a bunch of greasy lizards in the syndicate, and for what? So you can sit in a goddam barn and debate whether or not you oughta leave without your sister. Jesus, I’ve heard of some weird hangups, but that one takes the cigar.”

“I know. Look, don’t ask me any more about it, okay? You wanta leave, leave. I’ve got something I wanta do first.”

“When?”

“Just as soon as it gets light enough.”

“How long will it take?”

“Couple hours.”

“And then will you go?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh Christ.” The Learned Doctor caught the top rung of the ladder and swung down. He paused to look at Danny, his head protruding above the floor of the hayloft. “I’ll wait another half-hour at the car. If you don’t show, we’re off and running.”

“Okay, Tom. Have a good trip.”

Tom blew out his breath through clenched teeth, looked at Danny for a minute, then tossed him the twisted joint
“See you on the other side,” he said, and descended out of sight.

Dan lay still for several minutes, then got up and put his eye to a knothole in the wall. He could see the green asphalt shingles of Miz Adam’s house sticking up above the top of the hill. The breeze coming through the hole and soaked up the sun. He wondered how soon the helicopters would start searching. Depended on whether Rusty had run a bedcheck; the very latest possibility was six
a.m
., when everybody was awakened for breakfast.

Hearing the scrape of shoes on the ladder, he whirled, saw Lona’s sun-streaked head rise up through the trapdoor. She kept her pale gray eyes on him as she climbed up into the loft, lay back in the hollow left by his body. “They’re going without you.”

He nodded. “What about yourself?”

“I’ve got my own ticket.” She clamped a stem of alfalfa between her white teeth and slanted her eyes up at him. “Do they still put stuff in your food so you can’t fuck?”

“I don’t know.”

“Shall we find out?” Her lips curved as she unbuttoned her denim shirt. The tips of her breasts were dark brown against her golden torso. She kicked off her trousers, and he saw the narrow white bikini strip circling her wide hips, just missing the dark blonde turf of pubic hair. Light leaked through holes in the roof and slanted down like bars of smooth glowing plastic. He walked over and looked down at Lona, remembering how Debra had looked in the barnloft of the old place. Lady of the Dark Tower …

“You want me to do you?” she asked.

“Oh, sure. Okay.”

He seemed to see himself from far away, a tall sallow man shucking down his pants and stretching out in the hay beside a sunbrowned nymph.
She sits up, bends over him. The hair hangs down on each side of her face and veils her actions. He strokes her hair, kneads the firm flesh of her shoulder, gently pinches a swollen nipple. His eyes are open, unfocussed, his mind turned inward. He
hears rustling sounds from below as the cows rise from sleep and begin munching hay in the manger. His eyelids squeezed shut, his lips curl back from his teeth, his breathing grows coarse and ragged …

He followed the ridge tops, moving at an easy lope. The grime and grunge of the institution seemed to have been cleared away when the first rays of the sun beamed through the old barn. And Lona—give her credit—had helped blow the rust out of his pipes. He’d left her in a post-coital drowse, after she’d promised to leave. “I
won’t hang you up, Danny. You know me better than that”

He swerved to avoid a gnarled blackjack limb, leaped a fallen log. He was Old Coyote, sleek muscles rippling under shaggy fur. He halted, panting, and looked down at his cabin. He ignored the scarred earth around the pond, the blank staring windows, the dead chimney. He saw it the way it had looked on acid, a magic vale with sparkling fountains and trees exploding into light. Paradise lost, he thought to himself.
Ah well, life is short
.

He bypassed the cabin and circled down toward the creek. Walking through the dead leaves was like tromping on cornflakes. He saw the limestone butte, like a prehistoric dinosaur standing guard over the stream. He walked along the base of the cliff, stumbled as his foot sank into a hollow filled with dead leaves. He kicked away the litter and saw the frost sparkling on the stones which covered the bottom. He dropped to his knees and pried them up with his fingers. A fingernail broke; he caught it between his teeth and ripped it loose, saw the blood oozing from the quick.
Patience, Danny. Everything’s cool …

His fingers touched something smooth, like satin. He drew it out slowly, hoping it was only a frayed ribbon, avoiding the question of why anyone would bury a red ribbon in the woods. A piece of what looked like wrinkled parchment clung to the threads—no, they were not threads, but hair of a dark sorrel color.
Like Patricia’s
. He pried up another stone, gazed at a grinning row of yellowed
teeth, and let the stone fall back in place. He let out a long sigh and sat back on his heels.
“Now, Danny
—” The voice in his head sounded like Jeff’s. “—
Now you can face reality …”