Stone Rain (12 page)

“Don’t touch anything,” I said. “Just leave everything the way it is.” I looked away again, took a couple of deep breaths. “I’ll go call the police.”

“Look,” Trixie said, pulling herself together. “There’s a note.”

A piece of paper was rolled up and tucked into one of the closed handcuffs hanging from the wall display. She slid it out.

“Trixie, you shouldn’t be touching that. The police will want it, they’ll want to check it for fingerprints, they’ll—”

Trixie unrolled the sheet, looked at what was written on it, and went very white. She whispered, “They’ve found me.”

“Who?” I said. “Who’s found you?”

“Someone must have seen the photo and told them. They’ve got friends everywhere.” There was panic in her voice.

“What does it say?” I asked her. “Show me the note.”

But she had already folded it and put it in the front pocket of her jeans. She stood a moment, breathing out slowly, pulling herself together.

“You’re going to have to help me,” she said.

“Help you what?”

“We have to get rid of the body.”

Perhaps, if I weren’t still in some sort of shock at discovering a dead guy in Trixie’s basement, a guy that Trixie would probably have been happy to see dead a few days earlier, I might have been able to laugh at her suggestion. But I was too numb for that. Instead, very slowly, I said, “Trixie, we have to call the police. And we have to call them right now.”

She took a step toward me. “You don’t understand. There are things I have to do. Things I have to sort out. I don’t have time to waste talking to the police. I can’t get involved with them. I’ve got some plastic in the garage, we could wrap him up, find someplace to dump him—”

“Trixie!”

I guess she was unaccustomed to hearing me raise my voice, to actually shout. Her eyes danced for a second, and she focused on me as though seeing me for the first time.

“Trixie, we are not hiding the body. You’re not hiding it, and I’m not helping you. You have to tell me what the hell is going on. Who’s done this? Who did this to Benson?” I paused a moment. “You didn’t do it, did you?”

“You think I’m capable of this? Of
this
?” Her arm flung out in the direction of Benson. “You don’t know me better than to think I would do something like that?”

“There seems to be a lot I don’t know about you, Trixie. Like what’s written on that note. Why you were so scared for your picture to show up in the paper. Why those guys selling stun guns put you on edge. Does this have something to do with Canborough, Trixie? Something that happened five years ago?”

She blinked.

“Is this all related to three bikers getting killed? Did you see something that night, Trixie? Are you on the run? Are you some kind of a witness?”

“What have you been doing? Have you been checking up on me? What gives you the right to start poking into my personal affairs and—”

“Trixie, forget about that. We have to call the police. They can protect you. They can get whoever did this to Benson, they can make it so you don’t have to be on the run.”

Trixie appeared to be weighing her options. “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “I can’t keep living this way.”

I smiled. “Okay. Let’s go upstairs. I’ll make the call if you want.”

“Maybe you should,” she said, and reached out for my hand.

It happened so fast, I never had a chance to react.

As she slapped a cuff around my right wrist, she pulled my body toward her, yanking my right arm forward toward the base of the stair handrail, onto which she snapped the matching cuff.

Thrown off balance, I shouted, “Jesus Christ! Trixie, what the hell are you doing?”

She jumped back, afraid that I might try to grab her with my free arm. I yanked my right arm and the handcuffs jangled, cut into my wrist. The handrail held firm. I shook it several times, unable to believe my predicament. When I looked back at Trixie, she was holding a second pair of cuffs.

“I’m going to toss these to you,” she said, “and I want you to put them on your other wrist, then put the other cuff on the railing.”

“What?”

“I need to be able to get by you on the stairs, Zack. I can’t trust that you won’t try to hang on to me.” She tossed the cuffs and they landed by my foot.

“I’m not putting them on,” I said.

Without saying a word, Trixie disappeared around the corner where I guess the fridge that held the coffee was, and returned a moment later with a gun in her hand.

“Trixie, you wouldn’t.”

“You’re probably right, Zack, but I’m in a rather desperate situation at the moment, and I don’t think you should test me.” She raised the gun and pointed it at me.

I stared at her a good ten seconds, then bent down, picked up the cuff with my left hand, moved it close to my right hand, which I used to apply half the cuff. Then I slipped the other cuff around the railing and closed it.

“I need to hear it close,” Trixie said. I squeezed it, and she heard the telltale click. “That’s good.” She produced two keys from her jeans. “I’m going to leave these right on the table here, so that when someone comes to rescue you, you’ll be able to get those off right away. And promise me you won’t start yelling your head off as soon as I leave here. I need some time to get away. If you’re going to yell, I’m going to have to leave you gagged.” She nodded at some red balls attached to straps that were hanging on the wall with the other S&M equipment.

“That won’t be necessary,” I said quietly.

Still holding the gun, she came up close to me. “Where are your car keys?”

“What?”

“Zack, just tell me where they are.”

“Front pants pocket,” I said, and Trixie came alongside me and slid her slender fingers down into the pocket of my jeans as I once again tested the cuffs on the railing.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m only going after your keys.” She found them, gave them a shake. “I’ll just take the car keys, not your house keys. I figure they know what kind of car I’ve got, so it’s better if I get a running start in yours. You can have my car. I’ll leave you my set on the kitchen counter.”

“Trixie, you’re making a big mistake. Let me help you through this.”

“I need help, that’s for sure,” she said. “But not the kind I think you’re up to.” She leaned in close to me, her face so close to mine I could feel her breath. “I know I keep telling you this, Zack, but I’m really sorry about everything. Maybe someday I can make it up to you.”

And she leaned in and kissed me, placed her mouth squarely on mine, slipped a hand behind my head so I couldn’t try to pull away. She moved her lips over mine for a second or more, pulled away, leaned in to me again for a small, follow-up peck, and smiled sadly at the shocked expression I guess was on my face.

“Sarah’s a very lucky gal,” she said, and climbed to the top of the stairs. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure someone comes and finds you.”

“Trixie,” I said, one last time. “Just tell me. Why are you doing this?”

She paused, looked at me very seriously for a moment, and said, “I’m not going to let them get my little girl.”

And then she was gone.

She was late.

A couple of days, Miranda didn’t worry. Took note of it, but didn’t panic or anything. But then it was a week. Ten days. Now it was time to panic. She went to the drugstore and came home with a pregnancy test. Went into the bathroom, closed the door.

“What’s up, Candace?” Eldon said. “You seem funny.”

She came out a few minutes later. “You’ve knocked me up,” she said.

“Huh?” he said.

“I’m gonna have a kid,” Miranda said. She had no idea what he would do. Storm out, maybe? Start screaming? Accuse her of fucking up her birth control? She thought maybe he’d hit her. That’s the sort of thing her dad did when she said something that upset him. Just whacked her upside the head. Eldon had never hit her, but there was always a first time. There always had to be a first time when a guy you thought loved you took a swing at you.

He said, “You think it’s a girl?”

She said, “What?”

“A girl. You think it’s a girl? Because, you’re so beautiful, if it’s a girl, she’ll be beautiful too.”

The guy was full of surprises.

Gary had already been letting her split her time between the stage and the office upstairs. He’d turned over the books to her, but once in a while, a girl would take off sick, Gary’d tell her, “Go downstairs and do some bump and grind. If we didn’t have the ol’ bump and grind goin’ on, there’d be no books to balance.” Like Miranda should be grateful he was giving her a chance to take her clothes off because it gave her money to count upstairs later.

But once she started showing, well, that was it. Nobody wanted to drink their beer watching some chick who was knocked up.

So in a way, it all worked out okay. Sort of.

But in the back of her mind, Miranda was thinking about the kind of world she was going to bring this baby into. She hadn’t known, for several years now, a particularly respectable life. Not like her sister, Claire. She and Don had gotten married, they had a decent apartment now, not some place over a pizza joint. She had her secretary job, he had his job at Ford. Not that they’d have to worry that much about bringing any kid into the world. Claire couldn’t have kids, it turned out.

How crazy. Claire’s home was the perfect one in which to raise a child, but she couldn’t have one.

And I’m the one who’s pregnant,
thought Miranda
. Working in a bar with strippers and hookers and dope dealers.

I need my head read.

But she did have a man in her life. Eldon seemed excited about the idea of becoming a father. She would talk to him—she still had not told him that her real name was not Candace—about getting some sort of new life. Of leaving the Kickstart. Of getting respectable jobs. Of making a proper home for their baby.

“Yeah,” he would say. “That sounds like a good idea. Maybe I should start looking for something else,” he said. “Maybe I should take some courses too. You know what I’ve always been interested in? Electrical work. Wiring.”

“Electricians make a fortune,” Miranda said.

So she worked all the time in the upstairs office, doing the finances, turning dirty money into clean. It was a gift, no doubt about it.

And then one day, sitting upstairs at the computer, she knew this was it. She phoned down to the bar, asked for Eldon. “This is it,” she said.

It was a girl.

Her name was Katie.

THE MOMENT I HEARD
the front door close, I yanked on the cuffs. The stair railing didn’t budge but the cuffs cut sharply into my wrists and I winced from the pain. Already I could feel my fingers starting to go numb from reduced circulation. Outside, I could hear the door of my Virtue hybrid car open and close. The vehicle was so quiet, I didn’t hear it start or back out of the drive and pull away.

I hadn’t heard Trixie make any phone calls from upstairs, but I had to hope, certainly if I couldn’t get free on my own, that she’d keep her word and send someone to rescue me. The handcuff keys were on a table only ten feet away, but they might as well have been in the next town for all the good they did me now.

I glanced in the direction of Martin Benson, not wanting to look at him, yet not able to take my eyes off him. The slice across his neck was a macabre grin.
Look what happens when you mess with me
, it seemed to be saying. I tried not to think about what might happen if the person or persons who did that decided to return before I could get myself out of these handcuffs and the hell out of this house.

Rather than yank on the railing with the cuffs again and make my wrists even more sore, I put my hands directly on the railing and pulled. If I could pry it off the wall and drag it just ten feet, I could reach the keys and get out of here. I pulled once, and nothing. Clearly, the screws that held the hardware to the wall had been sunk into studs and not just drywall. I tried again, really putting my back into it this time, still without success. I cursed under my breath.

Even if I could free myself, it wasn’t necessarily my plan to run. I’d feel a lot safer than I did now as long as I had the freedom to move around. If Trixie wanted to make a break for it, well, that was her decision. Evidently she had her reasons, one of which had just been revealed to me.

“I’m not going to let them get my little girl.”

Just when I thought there was so little I knew about Trixie, I found myself realizing there was even more I did not know. Not long after I’d first met her, I’d asked her whether she had children, and she had said no.

While Trixie might have had her reasons to flee before the police arrived, I couldn’t see myself following suit. I had to stay and explain this as best I could. Chances were I wouldn’t even need to call the police. They were probably on the way now, or at least would be soon. Once Trixie felt she had enough of a head start, I was reasonably confident that she’d let them know about me, and Benson.

So I would explain this to the police as best I could. That was the Zack Walker way. You bring in the authorities. You extricate yourself from the situation and let the professionals take over.

Not that that had always been my approach. There was that one time, when I found myself in a situation where I figured I was the most likely suspect in a homicide, that I did not pick up the phone and immediately call police. There were extenuating circumstances.

But surely that wasn’t the case this time. I would not be the prime suspect this time. What possible reason would I have to want Martin Benson—

Hold on.

I started to work it out in my head.

What would Martin Benson’s editor have to say when the police interviewed him?
He was investigating this dominatrix
, the editor would say.
Must have been ruffling some feathers too, because some writer from the
Metropolitan
tried to talk him out of it. The M.E. there’s an old friend of mine. Told him all about it
.