The Lost (16 page)

“Out! Outa here!” he said and pushed them back out of the doorway and slammed the door in their faces.

Some of the shit was still floating. He had to wait for the water to rise again so he could flush again. It seemed like a fucking eternity.

The cops were in his face again.

Shit! Dammit!

The uniforms were Shack and Hallan, two good kids only a few years out of high school themselves and they readily accepted that his being there was nothing more than happy coincidence. He let them do the work initially. Tim Bess opened the door. Shack and Hallan stood on the threshold peering in.

“Excuse me, sir,” said Hallan. Hallan had been taught to be polite, giving Bess a
sir
though Bess was just a kid. “We’ve had a noise complaint. This your place?”

“Unh-unh. Belongs to a friend.”

“May I speak to your friend, then, please?”

“I think he’s in the john.”

“He’s in the john?”

“Yes.”

“Would you get him for me, please?”

“Sure.” He turned to go.

“Do you mind if we come in?”

“I think . . . I think you’d better wait and ask Ray. Ray Pye. I mean, it’s his apartment.”

“Then would you get him for me, please?”

“Sure.”

Except for the music the room had gone dead silent. Tom Jones was warbling some love song in a baritone so forced and labored it sounded like he was giving birth to twins. The kids were all either watching the cops or making an elaborate show of not watching. Schilling saw some familiar faces. Also saw that about half the kids were under the legal drinking age just as he’d suspected they’d be. None of them had a bottle in hand though. He guessed that was too much to ask.

Pye came to the door elaborately adjusting his jeans. He wondered how much dope had just gone down the crapper. He hoped it was plenty.

“Officers? Is there some problem?”

Schilling figured it was time he stepped in.

“Hi, Ray. Mind if we all come in and talk a moment?”

“I don’t guess you have a warrant.”

“Why would we need a warrant on a simple noise complaint? Nah, just a little chat like we had yesterday. Remember yesterday? You know, the guy killed those two young girls. The guy who looked kinda like you?”

He sent
that
out to the entire room.

Ray flushed and then turned to the uniforms as though to say, this guy is nuts but from regular fellas like they were he expected some sanity.

“Listen officers, we’re having a party here. We’ll turn down the volume, okay? We’re sorry if we disturbed anybody.”

Shack and Hallan just looked at him. Giving him nothing.

Good boys.

“You smell anything funny, guys?”

“I kinda do,” said Shack. “Now that you mention it.”

“You smoking a little weed, Ray?”

“Nope. I guess what you smell is just cigarettes. Oh, and we burnt a pan on the stove. Making popcorn.”

“Making popcorn.”

“Yeah.”

“And you burnt a pan.”

“That’s right.”

He nodded. “Uh-huh.”

And then he just stared at him. Ray stared back awhile and then looked away, glanced over at Tim.

So Schilling had won
that
pissing contest, anyhow.

“Okay,” he said, “party’s over.”

There were groans from the crowd.

“You can’t do that.”

“Sure I can, Ray. I think I see some minors here. I can definitely see beer cans and bottles from right where I’m standing. You want us to start IDing everybody? Have them walk the line? It’d take a little while but we don’t mind, do we fellas?”

“IDing everybody’d be fine,” said Shack. “Recite the alphabet. Stretch out your hands, touch the tip of your nose. All of that, sure. We got plenty of time.”

“
Jesus,”
Ray muttered and shook his head.

He was very pissed off.

Excellent.

“What’s that, Ray?”

“Nothing.”

“I thought you said
Jesus
. Which some people could definitely construe as a curse word. Used in the presence of officers of the law. You cursing in the presence of officers of the law, Ray?”

“No. All right.” He turned abruptly. “You heard the man. The party’s over.”

More groans, a lot of muttering. But they collected their sweaters and jackets anyway and filed out the door. Schilling and the uniforms stepped back to let them through. Tim Bess was the last one out, looking back at Ray, and he read the clear silent message between them that Bess was wanting to stay. Ray shook his head no.

Finally there was only Ray and a girl Schilling remembered as Jennifer something.

“You too, miss.”

“I’m . . . I’m staying here,” she said.

“Permanently?”

“Tonight.”

“Your parents know about that?”

The girl sighed, impatient with him but nervous.

“I’m twenty years old,” she said.

“May I see some ID, please?”

She sighed again and went to get her purse off the kitchen counter. Ray just stood there with his arms folded staring at the shelf filled with records, not looking at the records but just glaring in their general direction, his lips pressed together in a thin tight line. Schilling thought that at the very least he’d gotten beyond Ray’s cute little bland facade tonight.

Hey, it was a start.

The girl handed him her driver’s license. As he’d figured she was telling the truth. She was twenty. A shame though because moving her out of there would have managed to annoy Ray further.

“Okay. Sorry to have troubled you, miss. See you around, Ray.”

He figured it had to be taking all Ray’s willpower not to slam the door behind him.

He would not have wanted any daughter of his to be in that little girl’s shoes tonight. Unless he missed his guess she was going to catch a lot of flak, a lot of anger. He thought she was nuts to stick around.

“What was that business about some guy killed a couple of girls? Somebody who looks like this asshole?” Shack asked him.

“Ray’s got an interest in police detection. We had a little talk, that’s all. What do you think? Would you want to have him in the department?”

“God forbid. I’d just as soon not have the little dick-head in the same town as me, let alone the department.”

Schilling patted him on the back and smiled. “I like the way you think, Officer Shack. You’ll make detective one of these days. You just wait and see.”

Chapter Eighteen

Jennifer

She didn’t know why she was staying but something told her she should, something instinctive saying that Ray was very vulnerable now so it was a perfect opportunity to wean him back away from this Katherine person he was so interested in, away from that stupid Dee Dee and the rest of them including this new girl Sally. She suspected a storm from him but also suspected she could weather one.

She was an old hand at weathering them by now.

She hadn’t expected him to trash the place.

She sat rigid on the bed with her back pressed to the headboard and her hands balled into fists while he toppled the kitchen table, beer and pretzels flying all over the kitchen and the table slamming against the wall, kicked over the kitchen chairs and stomped them, cracked their ribs, broke records over his knee and threw them spinning against the living-room wall, ripped the wires out of the turntable and heaved it all the way across the room, tore his Stones poster down and ripped it in half, smashed glasses and half-empty beer bottles in the sink, against the cupboard, against the wall, all the time cursing the cops and Schilling and whoever the fucker was who’d called and turned him in and his
fucking mother
and his
fucking father
neither of whom had done a thing as far as she could see, his hair streaming down his face, screaming and jabbing his finger at her like it was her fault though of course it wasn’t, she knew it wasn’t, she was just there in the room and human and that was plenty.

She remembered the jagged edge of the beer bottle against her skin.

She stayed put.

She watched it all with a kind of awe, like watching a hurricane from what might or might not be a safe distance. Scared of him and scared
for
him, scared that the police would come back because if the party had been loud the party was nothing, absolutely nothing compared to this. It was as though he was actually daring them to come back. And if they did she was afraid he might go after them. It almost seemed he’d have to he was so mad.

You could get yourself killed that way.

She’d seen him mad before but not this mad, never, so that when finally he exhausted himself and fell back across the bed she was afraid to go near him, afraid he’d go off again for some reason so she stayed huddled right where she was, knees hugged up to her chin, back tight against the bedboard, fingernails digging deep into the palms of her hands as though the reality of pain might make everything she’d just seen and heard bearable, might bury it like a nasty dream.

She was barefoot and glass was everywhere.

He was breathing like a long-distance runner. Staring up at the ceiling, face contorted as though from some massive migraine headache.

“
Ray?”

She had to try. It was what she was here for. To reach out to him.

To be there.

What did the actors say? That was her
motivation
.

“Ray?”

It was as though she weren’t there. She knew the feeling. He’d done it to her before, cut her off like this and it hurt worse than anything.

“Come on, Ray. Talk to me,” she said gently. “I know how you feel, I really do. It was a great party too, before they came along. They really screwed you. I don’t blame you one bit for being mad. Hell, I’d be mad. Anybody would. Just talk to me and maybe in a while we’ll clean up the place and forget all about the goddamn stupid cops. Plan another party, maybe for the weekend. Throw an even bigger party. That’d show them, wouldn’t it?”

“You thought it was a really great party?”

He said it so low she almost didn’t hear him.

“Sure I did. Everybody did.”

“Then what were you doing the entire time standing by the fucking window sulking with Timmy?”

And that she
did
hear. His voice like a razor sometimes. Cutting deep, scraping bone.

“I was just a little tired, Ray. I wasn’t sulking. Honest.”

He reached over and grabbed her by the front of the blouse and pulled her across the bed, not even moving off his back, until she was face-to-face with him and sometimes his strength simply amazed her, you wouldn’t think he was that strong because he wasn’t that big and she was scared of him again.

“You’re a lying little bitch, Jennifer. You don’t he to me. You don’t lie to Ray. You tell Ray the fucking truth. I
saw
you. You were fucking sulking. Why the hell was that? At
my
party?”

Her blouse had pulled up out of her jeans. She could feel cool air from the open windows across her stomach. He had the collar balled up in his fist. There was something thrilling and sexy about it huddled inside the scariness.

“I . . . I guess I got a little depressed, Ray. I mean, I saw all those other girls there. You know. And that Dee Dee. I’m sorry. But you know how I feel about us, Ray. I couldn’t help it. I got a little depressed, that’s all. It was dumb I guess because I love you and I know you love me back but . . . I’m sorry.”

He looked her in the eye a moment and the eyes were hard and mean and then suddenly he let her go.

“Take off your blouse. I want to see your tits.”

This was more familiar ground and she did as he said. Kneeling in front of him, slowly unbuttoning the blouse from the bottom up, not the top down, doing it the way he liked. She knew her breasts were good and she was proud of them and of their power to excite him. He always wanted to see her breasts and squeeze and bite and suckle them like a baby. She slipped the blouse down off her shoulders.

“Undo me.”

She unfastened his belt. She unzipped his fly and he raised his hips so she could pull down his jeans and his BVDs.

“You want them all the way off?”

“Did I say I wanted them all the way off?”

She knew sometimes he didn’t. She pulled them down to his knees. His cock lay flaccid against his thigh.

“Suck it.”

She put it in her mouth and sucked up and down until it was gleaming wet with her saliva. She could smell his mustiness and taste it. She took the shaft between her thumb and forefinger and stroked halfway upward while her lips moved down tight over his glans to meet them halfway down. Most girls didn’t know how to do this right Ray said, they’d move fingers and lips both in the same direction but Ray had taught her.