The Cellar (8 page)

He joined the others beside the car. The wind felt good, cutting the heat like a cool spray.

“Are we off?” Larry asked Donna.

“We off?” she asked Jud.

“I’m ready. You ready, Sandy?”

“You’re
all
weird.”

They walked single file along a narrow trail that angled downward between two sandy hills. Jud squinted into the wind. It fluttered in his ears, batting
away all but the loudest words as Larry told of a childhood experience at the beach.

After they rounded a curve in the trail, the ocean came into view. Its choppy blue was frothing with rows of whitecaps. Waves slammed against a rocky point. Just this side of the point, the waves washed quietly onto a stretch of sand. Jud could see nobody down there.

“Ah wonderful!” Larry yelled, spreading his arms and sniffing a deep breath. “Last one to the beach is a rotten egg!” He began to run. Sandy chased after him.

Jud turned to Donna. “Don’t you feel like racing?”

“Nope.” Wind threw strands of hair across her face. Jud brushed them away. He couldn’t look away from her eyes.

“I bet I know why,” he said.

“Why?”

“You’re afraid I’ll beat you.”

“Is that it?” Her eyes were amused, but serious, as if she wouldn’t permit herself to be distracted by his banter.

“That’s it,” he said.

“Is your name really Judgment?”

“It really is.”

“I wish we were alone, Judgment.”

He put his hands on her shoulders and drew her against him, feeling the press of her body, the light touch of her hands against his back, the smooth, moist opening of her lips.

“We’re not alone,” she said after a while.

“I guess we’d better quit, huh?”

“While the quitting’s good.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s good,” Jud said.

“Me neither.”

Holding hands, they walked down the trail. Below, Sandy was running across the beach just ahead of Larry. She splashed into the water. Larry stopped at the water’s edge and dropped to his knees. The girl waved for him to come in, but he shook his head. “Come on!” Jud heard through the noise of the wind and surf.

Sandy pranced in the water, crouched and splashed at Larry.

“We’d better hurry,” Donna said, “before my charming daughter gets carried away and drags him in.”

Even as she said it, the girl ran ashore and began to tug one of Larry’s arms.

“Leave him alone, Sandy!”

Larry, still on his knees, managed to look around. “It’s really all right, Donna,” he called. “She’s nothing I can’t handle.”

Letting go of his arm, Sandy circled behind him and leaped onto his back. “Giddyap!” she shouted.

He lunged and twisted, scrambling through the sand on hands and knees, making a noise that sounded, at first, like the whinny of a horse. Then he was on his feet. Sandy, clutching him tightly around the neck, looked back at Donna and Jud. Though she said nothing, her face showed fear. Larry swung himself in a circle, tugging at the
girl’s arms, and Jud saw terror in his wide eyes. His whinnies were ragged gasps of panic. He pranced and bucked, trying to tear himself free.

“Oh my God!” Donna cried, and broke into a run.

Jud raced past her toward the girl now screaming in horror.

“Larry, stop!” he yelled.

The man didn’t seem to hear. He kept jumping and writhing, pulling frantically at the girl’s arms.

Then Sandy was falling backward, her legs still hugging Larry’s hips but her arms loose and flailing. One of her small hands clutched Larry’s collar. The shirt split down his back, and he screamed. Jud caught the falling girl. He pulled her free.

Larry spun, looking at them, his eyes wild. He began backing away. He fell. Propping himself on an elbow, he still gazed at them. Slowly, the strangeness left his face. His harsh breathing grew calm.

Jud left Sandy in her mother’s arms and went to him.

“She shouldn’t…have jumped on my back.” His voice was a high whine. “Not on my
back
.”

“It’s all right now,” Jud said.

“Not on my back.” He lay on the sand, covering his eyes with his forearms, and wept silently.

Jud knelt beside him. “It’s all right, Larry. It’s all over.”

“It’s not over. It’ll never be over. Never.”

“You gave the kid a terrible scare.”

“I kno-o-o-w,” he said, stretching the word like a
groan of misery. “I’m sor-ry. Maybe…if I apologize.”

“Might help.”

He sniffed, and wiped his eyes. When he sat up, Jud saw the scars. They criss-crossed his shoulders and back in a savage tracery more white than his pale skin.

“They’re not from the beast, if that’s what you think. I got them from my fall. The beast never touched me. Never.”

Roy made certain, once again, that Joni was securely tied. Probably it didn’t matter. She’d obviously lost her marbles. But Roy wanted nothing left to chance.

In the living room, he bent down and lit the candle. He patted the newspaper wads to make certain, once again, they were touching the candle stick. Then he headed for the kitchen, stepping high, his feet crushing the newspaper wads and clothes he’d scattered along the floor.

The fire might not destroy all the evidence, but it couldn’t hurt.

He put on sunglasses and a faded Dodger cap that had belonged to Marv, and went out the back door. Pulling it shut, he twisted his hand to smear prints on the knob. He trotted down three steps to the patio, then hurried to the driveway. Looking toward the street, he saw that a gate blocked the
driveway. He walked casually to it, unlatched it, and opened it.

The neighbor’s house was very close. He watched its windows, but saw nobody looking out.

He walked up the driveway to the garage. A twocar garage, with two doors separated by a beam. He raised the left-hand door. Inside was a red Chevy. He climbed into it, glanced at the three sets of keys he’d brought from the house, and easily found the Chevrolet keys.

He started the car and backed out of the garage. He stopped close to the kitchen door. Then he got out and opened the trunk. He brought Joni out of the house, set her inside the trunk, and slammed the lid shut.

The trip to Karen’s house took less than ten minutes. He’d expected to recognize the house, but it didn’t look familiar at all. He checked the address again. Then he remembered that she and Bob moved just before the trial. This was the right house.

He parked in front. He checked his wristwatch—Marv’s wristwatch—his now. Nearly two-thirty.

The neighborhood seemed very quiet. He looked up and down the block as he walked to the front door. Four houses to the right, a Japanese gardener was whacking limbs from a bush. To the left, a lawn away, a lone tabby cat crouched, stalking something. Roy didn’t bother trying to spot its prey. He had some prey of his own.

Grinning, he rang the doorbell. He waited, and rang again. Finally he decided nobody was in.

He headed around the side of the house, took two steps past the rear corner, and stopped abruptly.

There she was. Maybe not Karen, but
some
woman on a chaise lounge, listening to music from a transistor radio. The lounge was facing away, so its back blocked Roy’s view of all but her slim, tanned legs, her left arm, and the crown of her hat. A white hat, like a sailor’s.

Roy scanned the yard. High shrubbery enclosed its sides and rear. Good and secluded. Bending low, he raised his pants leg and slipped the knife from its sheath.

Silently, he stepped closer until he could see over the back of the lounge. The woman was wearing a white bikini, its straps hanging off her shoulders. Her skin was glossy with oil. She held a folded magazine in her right hand, keeping it off to the side so it wouldn’t cast a shadow on her belly.

Her hand jerked, dropping the magazine as Roy clutched her mouth.

He pressed the knife edge to her throat.

“Don’t make a sound, or I’ll open you up.”

She tried to say something through his hand.

“Shut up. I’m gonna take my hand away, and you’re not gonna make a sound. Ready?”

Her head nodded once.

Roy let go of her mouth, flung the sailor’s hat
off her head, and clutched her brown hair. “Okay, stand up.” He helped by pulling her hair. When she was up, he jerked her head around. The tanned face belonged to Karen, all right. He could tell that, even through the sunglasses. “Not a word,” he muttered.

He guided her to the back door.

“Open it,” he said.

She pulled open the screen door. They stepped into the kitchen. It seemed very dark after the sunny yard, but Roy couldn’t spare a hand to take off his sunglasses. “I need rope,” he said. “Where do you keep it?”

“You mean I’m allowed to talk now?”

“Where’s some rope?”

“We don’t have any.”

He put pressure on the blade. “You’d better hope you do. Now, where is it?”

“I don’t…” She gasped as he yanked her hair. “We have some with the camping gear, I think.”

“Show me.” He lifted the knife off her throat, but kept it half an inch away, his wrist propped on her shoulder. “Move.”

They went out the kitchen, and turned left down a hallway. They walked past closed doors: closets, probably. Past the bathroom. Into a doorway on the right. The room was a study with bookshelves, a cluttered desk, a rocking chair.

“Any kids?” Roy asked.

“No.”

“Too bad.”

She stopped at a door beside the rocker. “In there,” she said.

“Open it.”

She pulled open the door. The closet held nothing but camping gear: two mummy bags suspended from hangers, hiking boots on the floor, backpacks propped against the wall. A metaltipped walking stick hung from a hook. Beside it were two soft felt hats. Yellow foam-rubber pads, strapped neatly into rolls, stood upright beside the packs. On the shelf was a long red stuffbag, probably containing a mountain tent. On hangers were outdoor clothes: rain ponchos, flannel shirts, even a pair of gray leather Liederhosen.

“Where’s the rope?”

“In the packs.”

He let go of her hair. He took the knife away from her throat and touched the point to her bare back. “Get it.”

She stepped into the closet and knelt down. She flipped back the red cover of a Kelty pack. She tipped the pack forward, reaching into it, and rummaged through it. Her hand came out with a coil of stiff, new clothesline.

“Is there more?” He took it from her and tossed it behind him.

“Isn’t that enough?”

“Look in the other pack.”

She turned to it without closing the first one. As she peeled back its cover, her arm seemed to freeze.

“Don’t.” Roy slipped the blade through Karen’s hair until its point stopped against the back of her neck. She sucked a quick breath. Keeping the knife at her neck, Roy bent down. He reached over her shoulder and lifted the hand ax out of the pack. Its haft was wood. A leather case enclosed its head. He tossed the ax behind him. It thumped heavily on the carpeted floor.

“Okay, now get the other rope.”

She searched inside the pack and brought out a coil of clothesline much like the first, but gray and soft with wear.

“Get up.”

She stood.

Roy swung her around to face him. “Hands out.” He pulled the rope away from her. He slid his knife under his belt and tightly bound her hands together. He stepped away from her, paying out rope. Then he picked up the hand ax and the spare coil. Pulling the rope, he led her out the doorway and into the hall. He found the master bedroom at the end of the hall. He pulled her into it.

“Guess what happens now,” he said.

“Aren’t I too old for you?”

He grinned, remembering Joni. “You’re way too old for me,” he said. He led her across the carpeted room to a closet. He opened its door halfway and shoved Karen against the wall. With the door between them, he passed the rope over its top and pulled.

“Damn it!” she muttered.

“Shut up.”

“Roy!”

He yanked the rope. The door knocked against him as Karen hit its other side. He saw her fingertips over its top. No doorknob on the inside. Shit! He ran the taut line down to the bottom of the door. Crawling, he brought it under the edge to the front. He lifted one of Karen’s feet. She kicked at him. He punched her behind the knee, making her cry out. Then he brought the rope up between her legs and crossed it over her right leg. He tied it to the knob, next to her hip.

He stepped back and admired his work. Karen stood pressed to the door, arms stretched to the top. The rope appeared at the bottom of the door, near the center, and angled to the right, passing over her leg to the doorknob.

“Now tell me what I want to know.”

“What’s that?”

“Where’re Donna and Sandy?”

“At their place?” she asked. In spite of her situation, her voice maintained a sarcastic edge.

Roy sliced through one shoulder strap of her bikini, then the other. “They aren’t there, and you know it.”

“They aren’t?”

He cut through its back. He reached to her side, and tugged the bikini top from between her body and the door. “Tell me where they are.”

“If they aren’t at home, I wouldn’t…”

He sliced through the left side of her bikini pants. The edges flopped away. She clamped her legs shut to keep the pants from slipping down.

“What time does your husband get home?”

“Soon.”

“What time?” He pulled the pants down to her ankles.

“Maybe four-thirty.”

“It’s only three now. That gives us lots of time.”

“I don’t know where they went.”

“Oh?” He laughed. “You may be able to take a lot of pain. I’ll be happy to give it to you. But let me tell you something: If you love that husband of yours, you’ll tell me what I want to know before he gets home. When you tell me where they are, I’ll leave. I won’t hurt you, I won’t hurt your husband. If I’m still here when he gets home, though, I’m going to kill you and him both.”

“I don’t
know
where she is.”

“Sure you do.”

“I don’t.”

“Well then, that’s too bad for both of you, isn’t it?”

She said nothing.

“Where did they go?”

Crouching, he drew a question mark on the white flesh of her left buttock, and watched it bleed.