Praying for Sleep (39 page)

Then she remembered Tom Wheeler.

How old had they been? Twelve or thirteen probably both of them. One fall afternoon — maybe November, like tonight — the skinny red-haired boy had shown up in yard. Portia strolled outside and they sat on the back steps. She managed simultaneously to both ignore and converse with him, teasing mercilessly. Finally he suggested they go to the state park.

"Why?" she asked.

"I dunno," he responded. "Hang out, you know. Got the new Jeffer Airplane." He nodded lethargically at an eight-track-tape player at his feet. She told him no, she didn't want to, a moment later she disappeared into the house and returned with a blanket.

He started for the state park.

"Uh-uh," Portia announced. "This way."

And led him to the vegetable garden. Here she spread the blanket in partial view of the house and lay down, kicking off her Keds and stretching sumptuously. But somebody might see, he protested. Somebody could be watching right now! She placed his hand on her breast and he stop worrying about voyeurs. Portia lay on her back, surrounded by slug-chewed pumpkins and short blond cornstalks. Tommy beside her, covering her hot mouth with his; she had to breathe for long stretches through her nose. She now recalled smelling this same scent of wet, late fall. Drowsy flies strafed them. Finally, confusing him by not protesting, she allowed his pale, freckled hand to pass the elastic barrier. He glanced at the windows of the house then jabbed with a shaking finger, leaving inside her a glow of pain and on her bare hip a large wet spot that matched the one spreading across the front of his dungarees.

They lay awkwardly, side by side, for a few minutes then he suddenly whispered, "I think there's somebody there."

Though he'd said that only to escape and he rose quickly and vanished down the driveway. Hearing the resonant guitar licks fade, Portia grew dizzy as she watched the thick clouds pass overhead and wondered about the mysteries of bodies. She spent a long time unsuccessfully trying to convince herself to feel bad that he'd fled.

Portia now realized, with a twist in her belly, that it was not this memory of speedy Tommy Wheeler at all that was so troubling. It was Indian Leap.

She had almost not accompanied her sister and brother-in-law on the picnic. She had no interest in the out-of-doors, no interest in state parks — especially the park to which she'd been dragged by teachers on tedious field trips and in which she later spent hours gazing at treetops, as she lay beneath boyfriends, or friends of boyfriends, or sometimes strangers.

No, it was essentially a decision by default. She was fed up with the quiet anxiety of solo life in Manhattan: The dinners of turkey sandwiches and cole slaw. The companionship of rented movies. The tired come-ons in bars and at parties, delivered as if the men actually thought she hadn't heard it all a thousand times before. Socializing with lean, ponytailed girlfriends who'd discard you in an instant if doing so moved them an inch closer to a Better Job or an Available Man.

So, on that May 1, she'd reluctantly packed bagels and lox and cream cheese and magazines and bikini and sunscreen. She endured the surly rent-a-car clerk, she endured the traffic, she endured the tense company of the poor, shy Claire. She suffered through all the stress of a day in the country. Yet there was one aspect of the trip that didn't require enduring. Robert Gillespie, Portia thought at first, was hardly a catch. As she sat in the back of his 4x4 with Lis and Claire, en route to Indian Leap, she reviewed his ledger and came up mostly with debits: only marginally cute, fifteen pounds overweight, too smooth, too pompous, too talkative, a wife who was a complete cipher.

There was, Portia realized, no logical basis for finding him irresistible. But irresistible he was. While Lis had dozed in the back of the truck and while dull Dorothy liberally applied her oh-puh-leaze red nail polish, Robert deluged Portia with questions. Where did she live, did she like the city, did she know this or that restaurant, did she like her job? It was all a come-on. Of course it was. But still... And his liquid eyes danced with excitement as they talked. Portia recalled thinking helplessly, Oh, it's true: seduce my mind and my body will follow.

By the time they arrived at the park, Portia L'Auberget was his for the asking.

As they walked along the path from the parking lot to the car, he glanced at her running shoes and discreetly asked — in a way that was both intimate and lighthearted — if they might take a run together.

She responded, "Maybe."

He took this to mean yes. "Let me leave before you," he whispered. "Then I'll meet you near the old cave. Give me ten minutes. Then follow me."

"Maybe."

When they got to the beach she appraised her power over him and decided not to abdicate a single bit of it. She did a few fast stretches then jogged away first, blatantly ignoring him. She ran a half mile to the secluded gully he'd mentioned. Past the cave was a stand of pine trees, beneath which was an inviting nest of soft needles, some green, some ruddy. Portia sat on a nearby rock, wondering if he'd join her. Maybe he'd retaliate for her defiance by remaining with his wife and Lis. She'd certainly have more respect for him if he did. Yet Portia L'Auberget had no particular desire, or need, to respect men, especially men like Robert Gillespie, and decided he fucking well better show; she'd make his day miserable if he didn't.

She examined the small clearing, which was gloomy and shadowed by the steep walls of pale rock rising on either side of the trees. Overhead the sky had turned heavily overcast. Much less romantic, she reflected, than a Club Med beach in Curaçao or Nassau. On the other hand there were no condoms littering the ground here.

She scooted from the rock to the needle bed, separated from sight of the clearing by a tall line of bushes and young hemlocks. A half hour passed, then forty minutes, and finally Robert came jogging toward her. He caught his breath and earned many points by not saying a word to Portia about disregarding his instructions. He was studying his chest, pouting.

She laughed. "What?"

"My wife says I'm getting tits."

Portia pulled off her T-shirt and sports bra. "Let's compare."

They rolled back under the pine trees. Robert kissed her firmly, stroking her bare nipples with the backs of his hands. He closed his fingers around hers and placed them on her breasts. She began fondling herself while his tongue slid down to her navel then continued to her thighs and knees. He remained there, teasing, until Portia finally seized his head in both hands and directed it firmly between her legs. Her thighs rose as her head pressed back hard into the pine bed, needles fixing themselves in her sweat-damp hair. Staring through half-closed lids at the speeding clouds she gasped for breath. He rolled on top of her, and their mouths met hard, brutally. He had just entwined her legs around his waist and was thrusting into her savagely when a branch snapped near their heads.

Claire walked out of a stand of trees and stopped, frozen, six feet from them. Her hand rose to her mouth in shock.

"Oh, my God," Portia shouted.

"Claire, honey..." Robert began, as he rolled to his knees.

Claire, speechless, stared at his groin. Portia remembered thinking, My God, she's eighteen. This can't be her first hard-on.

It took a moment for Robert to recover some wits and he looked frantically for his shirt or shorts. As the girl's eyes remained fixed on him, Portia watched the young blonde. This curious à trois voyeurism aroused her all the more. Robert grabbed his shirt and wrapped the knit garment about his waist, abashed and grinning. Portia didn't move. Then Claire choked a sob and turned, running past the cave and back up the path.

"Oh, shit," Robert muttered.

"Don't worry."

"What?"

"Oh, don't take it so seriously. Every teenager gets a shock at some point. I'll talk to her."

"She's just a kid."

"Forget her," Portia said offhandedly, then whispered, "Come on over here."

"She's going —"

"She's not going to say anything. Hmm, what's that? You're still interested. I can tell."

"Jesus, what if she tells Lis?"

"Come on," she urged breathlessly. "Don't stop now. Fuck me!"

"I think we ought to get back."

Portia dropped to her knees and pulled his shirt away, taking him deep into her mouth.

"No," Robert whispered.

He was standing, head back, eyes closed, shuddering uncontrollably and gasping when Lis stepped into the clearing.

Claire must have run into her almost immediately and Lis had either learned, or deduced, what had happened. She stood above the half-naked couple and stared down at them. "Portia!" she raged. "How could you?" Her expression of horror matched Robert's perfectly.

The young woman stood and wiped her face with her bra. She turned to face her sister and with detachment watched Lis's throat grow remarkably red as the tendons rose and her jaw quivered. Robert pulled up his running shorts, looking around again for his shirt. He seemed incapable of speaking. Portia refused to act like a caught schoolgirl. "How could you?" Lis gripped her arm but Portia stepped away abruptly. Meeting her sister's furious gaze she dressed slowly then, saying nothing, left Lis and Robert in the clearing.

Portia walked back to the beach, where Dorothy was starting to pack up; the temperature had dropped and it was clearly going to rain. She looked at Portia and seemed to sense something was wrong but said nothing. The wind picked up and the two women hurried to gather up the picnic baskets and blankets, carting them to the truck. They made one more trip back to the beach, looking for their companions. Then the downpour began.

Moments later sirens filled the park and police and medics arrived. It was in a rain-drenched intersection of two canyons that Portia met her sister, red-eyed and muddy and disheveled, looking like a madwoman, being led by two tall rangers out of a flooded arroyo.

Portia had stepped toward her. "Lis! What —?"

The slap was oddly quiet but so powerful it brought Portia down on one knee. She cried out in pain and shock. Neither woman moved, and Lis's hand remained frozen in the air as they stared at each other for a long moment. A shocked ranger helped Portia to her feet and explained about the deaths.

"Oh, no!" Portia cried.

"Oh, no!" Lis mimicked with bitter scorn then stepped forward, pushed the ranger aside and put her mouth close to her sister's ear. In a rasping whisper she said, "You killed that girl, you fucking whore."

Portia faced her sister. Her eyes grew as cold as the wet rocks around them. "Goodbye, Lis."

And goodbye it had been. Apart from a few brief, stilted phone conversations, those words had been virtually the last communication between the sisters until tonight.

Indian Leap. It was the first thing in Portia's mind when Lis had invited her here this evening — just as it had reared in her thoughts when the subject of the nursery was raised, and, for that matter, every time Portia had thought of moving back to Ridgeton, which — though she'd never confess it to Lis — she'd considered frequently in the past few years.

Indian Leap...

Oh, Lis, Portia thought, don't you see? That's what dooms the L'Auberget sisters, and always will. Not the tragedy, not the deaths, not the bitter words or the months of silence afterwards, but the past that led us to that pine bed, the past that's certain to keep leading us to places just as terrible again and again and again.

The past, with all its spirits of the dead.

Portia now looked at her sister, ten feet away, as Lis put aside the shovel and waded toward the front seat of the car.

The sisters' eyes met.

Lis frowned, troubled by Portia's expression. "What is it?" she asked.

But just then a low whistle squealed from the car's grille. The engine choked, and kicked hard several times as the fan blade slapped water. Then with a shudder it died, leaving the night filled only with the sounds of the wind, the rain and the lilting music of a clever baroque composer.

24

"Well, I didn't go for help because it's over a half mile to the neighbors and if you've listened to the radio you know what kind of storm it's supposed to be. I mean, doesn't it make sense."

The words fired from the pale mouth of the petite blonde. She'd stopped crying but was pouring down brandy from a dusty bottle in a medicinal way. "And anyway," she said to Trenton Heck, "he told me not to and if you ever saw him you'd do what he told you. Oh, my Lord. All I kept thinking was, Lucky me, lucky me, I had communion today."

Owen Atcheson returned from the side yard to the house's tiny living room, where Heck and the fragile woman stood.

"Lucky me," she whispered and tossed down a belt of liquor. She started to cry again.

"He just pulled one wire out," Owen reported. He lifted the receiver. "I got it working."

"He's got my car. It's a beige Subaru station wagon. An '89. Apologized about ten times. 'I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry...' Phew." Her tears stopped. "That's what I mean when I call him strange. Well, you can imagine. Asked me for the keys and of course I gave them. Then off he went, squatting behind the wheel. Missed the drive completely but found the road. Guess I'll write that vehicle off."

Owen grimaced. "If we'd gone that way he would've come right to us."

Heck looked again at the tiny skull, resting on the paper towel in which she'd handed it to him, unwilling to touch the bone itself.

"Well," the woman continued, "you can find him on 315."

"How's that?"

"He's going to Boyleston. Route 315."

"He said that?"

"He asked me about the nearest town with a train station. I told him Boyleston. He asked me how to get there. And then asked me for fifty dollars for a train ticket. I gave it to him. And a little more."

Heck stared at the phone for a minute. Can't keep it a secret anymore, he thought. Not with Hrubek killing one woman and terrorizing another. He sighed and sucked air through bent teeth. Very conspicuous in Heck's mind now was the thought that if he'd called Haversham like he'd thought of doing — after figuring out that Hrubek was heading west — they might've caught him before he got to that house in Cloverton. All law enforcers, Heck too, had inventories of times when their mistakes and failings had gotten other people hurt — times that occasionally returned hard and kept them from sleeping, and sometimes did worse than that. Though he was removed from the sorrow at the moment, he supposed that that woman's death would be the most prominent in his personal store of those events, and he could only guess how bad it would later come back to him.