No Sanctuary (36 page)

Carefully, she sat up. She looked around, forcing her head to turn on her tight neck.

She was sitting on a shelf of rock that jutted out no more than five or six feet from the sheer face of the mountain. It was less than four feet wide. The center was depressed slightly, and as sandy as a beach.

She started to look down, felt a swell of panic, and scooted cautiously until her back pressed the solid wall of rock. There, she gripped the edge beside her right hip. She took deep breaths. She shut her eyes, but snapped them open, fearful of falling. Too close to the edge. She eased herself closer to the middle.

What am I doing here?

She tried to think back. Her brain pulsed and burned with the headache. Her memory seemed scattered.

She remembered a fall—from a diving board. At Jerry’s swimming pool. But that was a long time ago.

At least I remembered it, she thought. A place to start.

The board had torn off her bikini pants. Jerry gave her a robe to wear. She wore it next door, to the place she was staying. That was a house she’d broken into. She must’ve been on one of her adventures, her intrusions.

She’d gone back to the house. She remembered opening the drier to put the robe in, and ...

The scrapbook.

Fredrick Holden.

She suddenly remembered. She skipped her mind over the nightmare that started with her capture, touching on bits and pieces of her ordeal, and found the part she needed to remember.

The last seconds.

Holden had been chasing her through the woods. She’d rushed right up to the edge of a cliff, tried to stop, teetered for a moment, then fallen. She’d expected her body to be dashed apart on the rocks far below.

By some miracle, she was still alive.

By the miracle of landing on this, she thought, looking at the small shelf surrounding her.

She couldn’t remember landing. She must’ve been knocked senseless by ...

Holden!

Wincing, she twisted her head and looked up the mountain.

Holden was nowhere in sight.

The wall looming above her was nearly vertical. She couldn’t see the top.

From what Gillian could see, however, she guessed that her perch must be well below the edge.

She realized she would have a better view if she crawled out to the end of the shelf and turned her back to the open space.

No way.

Instead, she raised her knees. Her right knee was stiff and swollen, and hurt when she bent it. But she kept it bent along with her left, to hold her feet away from the edge when she scooted forward. With her back a few inches from the wall, she looked over each shoulder and scanned the area above her.

She still couldn’t see Holden.

Still couldn’t see the top.

But she saw that the rock face was slightly concave. Though the angle was so slight that the mountainside didn’t appear to overhang her, there was enough tilt to prevent Holden from climbing down to her.

Unless he had a good long rope.

There was no mountain climbing rope in the trunk of his car, that she knew. And she would bet he didn’t have one in the front, either.

Only one way he’ll get down here, she thought. The same way I did.

He’s a fucking lunatic, but he’s not suicidal. Nobody would jump off up there on the chance of landing the way I did. Not even me. I would’ve let him catch me before I would’ve jumped. Maybe.

If he tries it, he’ll miss.

If he lands here, I’ll kick him off.

He won’t try it. Not a chance. He cares a hell of a lot for his own hide. Here’s a bastard who goes out ofstate to do his killings, who drove me hundreds of miles just so my body wouldn’t turn up near his neighborhood. He’s a bastard who loves himself and wants to live so he can go on torturing and , murdering. No way is he going to jump off a goddamn cliff.

But he can’t let me live. No way is he going to drive away and leave me breathing.

Gillian slid backward until she was safely against the wall again.

Maybe he thinks I’m dead, she told herself.

He must have gone to the edge of the cliff and looked down. If he did that, he saw me. I was out cold for a while. Was he still looking when I woke up and tossed my cookies?

Maybe, maybe not. Maybe he does think I’m dead.

I must’ve looked dead. Gillian straightened out her legs, moaning at the pain in her knee. Yeah, she thought, I look messed up pretty good.

Her skin was shiny with sweat, glowing from the sun, streaked and smeared with blood and dirt, cross-hatched with fresh welts, scratched and scraped, split in six or eight places from knife wounds that looked raw but no longer bled. There were swollen patches of red, a deeper hue than the sun had caused, that would turn into bruises. There were even purple-gray marks left over from the beating at his house like an undercoating of old hurts. Gillian touched her face. She felt dry, puffy lips, a knot on the point of her chin, a left cheek that seemed like twice its normal size. She could actually see a slope of cheek below her eye.

She ran her tongue gently along the broken edges of her teeth.

And started to weep.

Cut it out, she told herself. I’m alive. •■•■»

My dentist is gonna love me.

Couple months, I’ll look good as new.

If I’m still alive. If I make it out of here.

Holden, he’s not gonna leave till he’s sure I’m dead.

Maybe he does think I’m dead, she told herself again.

A guy like him, how come he didn’t drop some rocks on me? When he saw me down here, he could’ve bombed me till he crushed my head. How come he didn’t?

Maybe he fell.

The thought struck her like a promise of life. She wiped the tears from her eyes.

What if Holden came running out of the trees, full tilt, the same way I did? What if he couldn’t stop in time, either, and went right over the edge?

She whispered, “Jesus,” through her broken lips.

Then she crawled forward on her hands and knees. When • she neared the edge, a falling sensation forced her to lie down flat. She squirmed a few more inches forward, then peered down over the rim.

A short distance below her perch, other rocks protruded from the mountain wall. None were large enough to break a fall. The slope was still nearly vertical for fifty or sixty feet. If Holden went off the cliff, he would’ve dropped that distance, then crashed onto the boulders that were heaped at the foot of the wall.

Gillian didn’t see his body.

Doesn’t prove anything, she told herself. The body , might’ve gone down in between the rocks.

Some were the size of refrigerators, others the size of cars. They were all tilted and tipped every which way, with big shadowy gaps between their edges. A body could fall into one of those crevices, Gillian thought, and never be found.

She felt a trickle of joy.

But over the years she had lived like a thief in sixty-six houses and she had never been caught until this time. Luck, she knew, had been a factor in that. But the main factor was her mind. She’d gotten away with her intrusions because she was smart. She didn’t let herself run on luck, hoping for the best. She studied the possibilities, foresaw the dangers, took precautions, and was always creative and quick enough to keep herself safe.

So now, in spite of her thrill at the thought that Holden lay broken and lifeless among the rocks below, she warned herself not to count on it.

You don’t see his goddamn body. Therefore, he isn’t dead.

If he isn’t dead, what’s he doing?

For some dumb crazy kind of reason—why, at a time like tbis?-she was back in the white stucco house on Silverston. The deco place. If ever she made it back to LA in one piece, which, let’s face it, doesn’t seem too likely, the memory of the hot tub she’d taken that day would live on in her mind forever.

What happened afterward, though, in number 1309, almost put paid to her illustrious career. Of intrusions, house-sittings, that is. ,

Finito. Full stop.

She wished that it had. Then she wouldn’t be here now, halfway up this bastard mountain, bare-ass naked and a murdering psycho after her hide.

Back to the house that time forgot ...

She’d lain there, soaking up the sheer luxury of that tub, breathing in lilac perfume, like she was in some mystical Garden of Allah.

Then the bathroom door blew ajar. That’s right, a puff of wind opened the door.

She remembered thinking, Holy shit ...

And sitting up with a start, arms wrapped around her breasts, shivering in the cold draft. Faint, familiar music wafted through the door. So faint, it was hardly there at all.

Then, the weirdest thing. She’d had this powerful urge to get up out of the tub, wrap herself in one of those thick white towels hanging over the towel rail and walk out the door.

Leaving a trail of wet footprints behind her, she padded across the marble landing. No ideas as to where her feet were taking her. In a kind of dream, she let them have their lead. They took her to a white door which had the name A-L-I-C-E printed on it in silver letters. ALICE?

Alice who?

Looking at those letters made her feel like she’d stumbled across somebody’s private place. Somebody’s very private place.

A special place.

The old familiar buzz tugged at the pit of her stomach. It melded into an ache, setting her mons alight with longing.

“Here goes,” she breathed. She’d invaded a lot of private space in her time. One more wouldn’t hurt.

Her breath came out in huffs, quick and shallow. Not knowing what she would find behind the door, she opened it, slowly, and peeped into a tiny room that was straight from the past.

Chintzy flowered drapes, a doll’s cradle, a rocking chair.

And a big, brown teddy bear sitting in the far corner. The bear wore several bald patches and stared across at her with beady eyes. She imagined it saying, Who are you? You’re an intruder. You don’t belong here.

Her eyes turned to the small single bed. Not much more than a cot, really. Floral drapes were drawn around it. Not knowing why, she knew that she must open them. It was as if she’d come to this house specifically to discover what lay behind the drapes.

Stepping forward, she did just that. Slowly. Drawing back the fabric with tentative fingers. A gasp broke from her lips. Wide-eyed, she stared at a small wizened figure, prostrate on the bed. It was no more than four feet ten at the most.

Little Bo Peep in a long floral dress, matching poke bonnet and a shepherd’s crook by her side. Little Bo Peep with a drunken monkey face and bright rouge spots high on her cheeks. And ludicrously red, cupid bow lips.

The large blue eyes, ringed with thick mascara’d lashes—false, they had to be, they were so long and curly—gazed curiously into Gillian’s face.

She gasped, clamping a hand over her mouth. She felt the warm towel swish down her legs and fall around her ankles.

My GOD!

This is it. Curtains. I’ve been caught out. No more intrusions for this baby. Hello, real world—LAPD here I come ....

“I’m sorry ...” she began. Then clamped her lips together, hard. Something was up. The blue eyes weren’t moving.

Slowly, carefully, Gillian reached out and lifted Little Bo Peep’s thin, blueveined hand. The bony fingers sparkled with clusters of gold and diamond rings. The hand was ice cold. Stiff. Gillian let it fall back onto the white lace bed sheets.

She exhaled slowly, gratefully. A huge feeling of relief built up inside her. The initial shock over, she looked down at the figure on the bed and felt a brief surge of pity.

No more sheep for this Little Bo Peep, she murmured to herself.

Gillian got out of there. Fast. Checking first, making sure she’d left no trace of her presence behind. Nothing that could involve her with Bo Peep’s death. She touched her Minolta, briefly, and grimaced. Yuk. No. No photographs for her files this time.

Anyway. Cases like these, you can’t be too sure. Film could get lost, or stolen. Unless the finder was either a weirdo or somebody seriously interested in nursery rhymes, the film could easily end up in the wrong hands.

For a full three months after that, intrusions were out. Gillian had to admit, though, there were days back there when she’d been sorely tempted. She’d resisted, but it hadn’t been easy. When she’d felt like giving in, she had only to remember that strange shrunken figure lying dead in its cot.

Yeah. The memory of that house on Silverston still haunted her like some terrible dream.

Would’ve made a spooky movie, though.

One day, she reckoned, she was gonna meet up with real trouble. Find herself doing time, no sweat. So she quit. No more house-sitting, she promised herself. That last time at Creepy Hollow had scared the shit clean out of her.

Then the old urge, that all-consuming desire, need, came flooding back. As inviting, as seductive as ever.

Yeah, Mr.-Fat’n’sassy Shrink. I’m hooked on
other
people’s
private places. I coulda told you that ...’n
saved myself a
whole heap
o’ money in
the process.

If she’d been into visiting shrinks, that is.

Which she wasn’t.

She rolled onto her shoulder and looked around. The sheer face of the mountain continued for some distance, maybe a few hundred yards. Then it dissolved like a more gradual slope.

A slope that Holden could descend.

He could go down that way, Gillian thought, approach from below, and get to me by climbing up.

She didn’t see him, but the area along the base of the slope was heavily wooded. Holden could be down there, out of sight, making his way through the trees along the edge of the valley.

She spotted a trail among the trees. On the far side of the trail was a stream. It rushed along, shining in the afternoon sunlight. In places, it was white with froth. Gillian could hear the distant sound of it tumbling through the rocks.

She rolled flat again. The trail and stream followed the side of the gulley. Directly below her, the trees opened up. That was good. If Holden descended all the way to the bottom and came through the woods, he’d be in plain sight for a while before reaching the heaped boulders.