Malevolent (24 page)

After this, he got multiple requests for “Hokey Pokey”—and thought,
what the hell?—
and watched the party vermin stick out arms, legs and hips.

Tim hooted. While it was always the low point of any wedding reception he’d ever worked, the novelty song lent itself well to the raucous parody the young masters made of it. They ground their skinny hips and bumped each other violently when the time came to spin, shake or twirl.

“You put your whole body in, you put your whole body out…”

Tim bent back to the little fridge, extracted another beer bottle and took a healthy swig while still squatting out of view, all but forgotten.

“You lay yourself flat, you pick yourself up, you lay yourself flat and you flop-flop all about…”

Oh, really? Tim couldn’t remember that verse. It was on cassette, though, obviously a very old version of the moronic classic. He was pretty sure he’d played the song countless times, though, and would have known if he’d seen anyone in the audience doing
this
.

They were on the floor, flopping around like crazy. Obviously having a ball, looking like fish in a net—so who cares, right?

“You stand on your head, you twist and you fall, you stand on your head and you jerk it all about.”

“Ow,” someone cried. “That’s hard.”

Yes, and it looked painful too, Tim thought, wincing as the boys stood precariously on their heads and put all of their weight on their necks. A young master yelped.

“Careful,” Tim muttered as several more boys cried out. Little bodies toppled onto each other, but they all got back to it.

“Let’s not do this anymore,” someone whined.

It might have been Dustin, who’d already proven to have a delicate stomach. Good time to put an end to this, Tim told himself as he reached for the Stop button on his console.

“You dash yourself down, you pick yourself up, you dash yourself down and you knock yourself out…”

“What the…”

Tim hit the Stop button again. Nothing stopped.

The room was a tangle of fallen bodies, and now they were all up again before toppling, all together now, back to the hard floor.
Ouch
. One boy was sobbing, his broken eyeglasses glued to his face by sweat. Droplets of blood mixed with his tears.

“Stop it right now,” Tim snapped, still jabbing the Stop button.

“I can’t,” several boys moaned.

“The hell,” Tim grumbled, staring at his console.

“You slam your head down, you raise your head up…”

He heard small heads battering the carpeted floor and what sounded sickeningly like a bone snapping. A scream filled the air.

He grabbed his car keys and used them to pry the cassette out of the deck, leaving a trail of gutted tape in his wake. He crushed the whole mess in his fist and threw it against a wall.

“…and you bang yourself up…”

Tim stared helplessly at his sound system.

The recorded voices, a nameless woman backed by a small male chorus, sounded unfailingly upbeat. Manic, even, as they directed the eight-year-olds to bang skulls, break bones.

Tim followed the electrical cord to the wall and yanked it out.

“You throw a punch here, you throw a punch there…”

The bruised boys threw and absorbed punches. The scene was so unreal, the music’s very existence so utterly impossible that Tim could only watch and listen with a serene sense of awe washing over him.

“My God, what is happening here?”

The music turned sluggish and bassy, as though powered by dying batteries. By the time Patty’s boss and her husband hurried to the bloodied and sobbing children, the music had faded out.

He was sipping his beer quite calmly when the Davenports issued their quiet threats of police calls and legal action. The lawyer husband was calling for an ambulance for a boy with a broken nose and another with what looked to be a fractured wrist when Tim slunk away.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

If Patty had been asked to describe the furniture upon which their flat-screen television sat, she might have failed. The wooden trunk with its brass hinges and clamps had been bequeathed her by her grandfather, and was probably worth something. As a girl, she’d used it to store old yearbooks and photos and silly love letters which e-mail made obsolete. As an adult, she’d made it serve as a nearly forgotten TV stand.

How could it possibly interest her now?

And yet it did. Its contents tantalized her, while at the same time she wanted to know nothing. This much Patty already knew—whatever she found in there would change everything. So she sat on her new sofa with its bright splashes of color for fifteen minutes, just staring at her steamer trunk, before bringing herself to act.

The TV, a thirty-inch flat-screen, was too heavy for her to lift alone. She’d have to wait for Tim.

Yeah, right. Truth was, she’d have to be finished before he walked in the door or he’d do everything possible to dissuade her. This much she knew, without knowing how or why.

She grunted, her back and shoulder muscles bunched. Let her knees do the work, she told herself. Protect the back. She half lifted, half dragged the television from off of the trunk and let it slide down one leg and bump to the floor.

She stood, grimacing with lower back pain despite her caution, but felt unaccountably proud. The hard work was over. All she had to do now was unbuckle the clasps and peel open the lid.

Then look the dead body right in its rotting eyes.

Patty chuckled, a dry, untrustworthy sound. She felt herself grow giddy. She took a deep breath and set aside everything that got in the way of what she was about to do. She squatted before the trunk and the lid squealed as she raised it.

Papers. Letters. High school yearbooks. Photographs. Report cards and programs for plays she’d been in during high school. Pretty much what she’d expected. Dusty, musty odor and a treasure chest of shit. No rotting meat or blood scent.

The tapes and CDs and vinyl record albums were stuffed, a few at a time, on the ends of shelves and in nooks and crannies and wherever else an inch or two of space allowed. Patsy Cline and Johnny Paycheck and Charlie Pride. The Highwaymen and the Carter Family. George Jones and Tammy Wynette. Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn, Lorrie Morgan and Craig Morgan, Hank Williams and Hank Snow.
Traditional
country, Tim had called it while sneering at what he called the
white-hat, MTV, cute-chick cowboy crowd
.

Patty took each out and read the covers and let them fall into her lap and around her knees, three hundred dollars worth of hidden music. She stood, brushing off tapes and album covers and CD jewel cases like lint.

She’d been the monster, keeping him from the music he needed in order to advance his career. That’s how he would have explained it to the very understanding Melinda Dillon.

Of course, understanding women were never in short supply for good-looking Tim Brentwood. Kayla Cosgrove came to mind. And others. Tim’s too-understanding mother and sister, for instance.

But did Melinda Dillon, his newest understanding female, understand the real problem? That the economy was a bitch and staff cuts were going on all around her, the dead bodies piling up closer and closer, and there was no money to spend for more music so Charlotte Taft could give him a few more hours of work for a few weeks, until she changed her mind about country and went back to karaoke. When that happened, Tim would find himself screwed again at the Beer Belly Saloon.

Patty stopped, unaware until that very moment that she’d been pacing, living room to dining nook, dining nook to living room.

Screwed again at the Beer Belly.

Was that what her anger was really all about?

She sank to her sofa to think it over. Tim had met Kayla Cosgrove at the Beer Belly, but Patty had forgiven him for that indiscretion. She had, hadn’t she? Or had her fury spilled over to infect the bar itself and his chosen line of work? If there’d been no Kayla, how would she have felt about him buying the music? Would he have then felt the need to smuggle it into their home?

The phone on the dining room wall went off like a shot.

She jumped like before, and wondered if it was Tim. Doubtful. He’d call her cell. She stared at the music spilling out of her steamer trunk and tried shaping what she’d say if it was him.

She picked up the phone on the third ring.

“I never thought you’d go soft on me, sister.”

Reminding Patty of how Tim had shared his little secret with the woman on the line. How could Patty forgive or forget
that
? She tried to gather her scattered thoughts and form them into some kind of a reply, but Melinda Dillon beat her to it.

“Seems like the more you know, the more you put up with. Stand by your man, eh? Tim’s got the Tammy Wynette version in your trunk. You oughta listen to it.”

Patty’s hand went numb on the receiver, but she said nothing.

“At what point do you say enough is enough?”

“Jesus,” Patty croaked. “How did you—”

“Maybe I can help you step out of the way, girl. Under the underwear stack in his third dresser drawer, take a look. By the way, what’s with all the tighty whities. Looks like the excitement’s gone, but that’ll change. You can’t imagine what he’ll be wearing with me.”

She managed to get to the bedroom okay, so she mustn’t be in too much shock. She even remembered to notice in the mirror how normal she looked. She was holding up just fine. Her honest appraisal was that she even looked attractive, all things considered. She was tall and fit, with a creamy complexion, slender nose, soft eyes, high cheekbones, welcoming hips.

Patty stopped in front of Tim’s dresser and fought down a surge of panic. She pulled open the third drawer and scattered aside a stack of white cotton briefs.

She’d expected love notes, phone numbers on cocktail napkins, condoms, porn, whatever. What she found were letters with foil windows. She frowned.

It was porn, all right. Financial porn. A hidden stash from Visa and MasterCard and Discover Card. There were unopened bills from his gasoline credit card and WalMart and Target. Bills he’d said he’d paid. Bills he was responsible for paying while she covered the rent and bought groceries and paid the utilities and saved for a house. She carefully tucked his unpaid bills back into the bottom of his drawer and layered his underwear over them like before. She closed the drawer and left the bedroom. She returned to the kitchen just as the phone rang.

“Seen enough?” the caller asked. “Or you’re still standin’ by your man?”

Again she said nothing. Numbness tightened her jaw and desolation robbed her of words, even if she had a mind to form them.

“No, I can see it wasn’t enough,” the voice on the line purred. “I’m coming over and I’m out of patience. Be gone by the time I get there.”

Patty took the phone receiver with her as she sank slowly to the dining room floor. It was some time before she became aware of the dial tone droning in her ear.

Chapter Forty

The first gunshot splintered the wood and must have gnarled the metal lock. The front door slammed against the wall that stopped the momentum of the kick.

All of this, from the front of the apartment, Patty heard from her fetal position on the dining room floor. She scooted forward and peeked her head forward just far enough to see the petite, sandy-haired woman who’d haunted her thoughts, the woman who’d just gotten off the phone with Patty and was now in her living room with a big gun in one hand.

The second shot whistled by her ear and slammed into the wall behind her, sending missile shards of plaster streaming off in all directions. Patty bleated, a short gasp of a sound, as she crawled into the kitchen. She hunched against a bank of cupboards, panting, trying to steady herself while listening to a sound she couldn’t identify at first. A small sound, like metal being dragged across metal.

Then she realized she’d hit the nail right on the head. Melinda Dillon was latching the front door by locking the safety chain in place. Sealing the two of them alone together in the upstairs apartment.

Steady, steady, steady,
Patty told herself. She came to her feet and froze. Spooked by the tiniest sounds, wondering if she’d have the strength to move when the time came that she heard approaching footsteps. Her limbs felt limp, drained, yet strangely stiff at the same time. She glanced one way and took in the back door, every inch of it caked in white paint.

She’d realized the safety hazard of only having one exit, but the door had been painted over long before them and it would take a blowtorch to unseal it. Now she wished they’d taken the time.

What about Mrs. Lascic? Patty could hear the soft murmur of the landlady’s television set, her constant companion down there. Patty pictured the woman lying dead in a pool of blood. Why else wouldn’t she be pounding on her ceiling for silence by now?

Then she had no more time for wondering anything. That soft creaking of the wooden floor wasn’t the house settling. It was a deliberately light tread. It was Melinda Dillon coming for her.

All at once, her assailant gave up the sneaky approach. She ran the last several steps into the kitchen, both hands coming together with the big black gun between them.