Back | Next
Contents

Twenty-five

Raydir Quantrill strapped on his axe, tugged the phones up over his ears, and prepared to vent his frustration and sorrow in his art. The studio was darkened. He had set the controls himself in the sound booth before coming down here to play and to listen to his own echo until everything else in his life was no more than background static.

He knew he was a little stoned. He had to be. His kid was missing, and her mother, who was maybe the only woman he'd ever had who gave a shit about him, was dead. And Gerardine—well, if he stayed straight long enough, he would have to admit that behind that beautiful face and body there was one scary female. He'd fallen for her at first not only because she was gorgeous but because her ego was even bigger than his. Shouldn't be the problems with insecurity he'd had with Sno's mother.

He'd been fairly crazy about his gorgeous new wife to begin with, and after Sno's bust had even stopped getting zoned for a while. That's when he began to see that Gerry had this thing, this model thing, about her looks. And something uglier, something he did not even want to think about, that settled on Sno.

The kid was way fucked up. The only thing he could think of to do about it was the school. That had worked pretty good, kept her out of trouble while he was on the road, and better, kept her out of Gerry's way.

Yeah. The whole idea was fuckin' brilliant. That's why they were now looking for his kid—or, face it, his kid's body—up in the mountains someplace, where some psycho had done god-knows-what to her.

He'd never been able to protect her. He'd never had time to help her. The truth was, he was so busy, so wrapped up in his music, his love life, partying, that he never knew she needed help until it was all over.

"Nonsense," a voice in his earphones challenged. "You bloody well know now." He saw no one, though anybody could have snuck into the control booth.

He was too stoned to worry about it. He just took it for granted that if he heard a voice, somebody was there, somebody who thought he ought to have an answer. Somebody who was blaming him, holding him accountable.

"Oh, for pity's sake," the voice said, reading his mind again as if he had physically opened his mouth to broadcast through the mike. "Your only child has disappeared in the forest in the middle of winter and you're sitting here feeling sorry for yourself, thinking everything is about you. Pretty soon you'll have yourself convinced that she'd be better off dead because you're such a terrible father."

"What the hell am I supposed to do?" he half-demanded, half-cried, realizing as he spoke that underneath the druggy fog he was actually pretty upset about it. "I can't join the search. I can't confront the son of a bitch."

"Can't you?"

"No. I offered to equip a plane with infrared, rent a chopper, anything to help, and they told me, real nice and while acting like they wanted to ask for my autograph, mind you, but real clear, to butt out, stay home and wait to arrange for the funeral."

"And of course, you always do what you're told and obey all the rules, don't you?"

"Well, no, but it's my kid and . . ."

"Precisely. But don't you suppose that if you gave your real name instead of your stage name and dressed a bit more practically for the enterprise, those heading the search might fail to recognize you? And if you showed up driving the sort of 4X4 vehicle they find particularly useful and offered humbly to help the search in any way you could without interfering with anyone—and you must refrain from interfering with the searchers if they're to find your daughter and only do what they tell you will be helpful—don't you think that perhaps it would be a good thing to be there when and if they find her, in whatever condition?"

His head was suddenly clear. That was exactly what he wanted to do. He unstrapped the axe, pulled off the cans and sprinted up the stairs into the control booth, but it was as dark and empty as ever.

However, one of the playbacks suddenly switched on and a voice said, "One thing though, Raymond. You mustn't tell your wife."

 

* * *

 

Meanwhile, unnoticed by Quantrill or his mysterious caller, a toad was loose on the premises. Like many toads, it was about the size of a coffee mug, it was green and it was bumpy. But unlike most toads, it had a bad attitude and it was, at this point, hopping mad.

It also had the mind of a seasoned murderer and a karma to match, it wanted revenge, and it wanted to start buying its way back to humanity. And the toad knew just the bitch who ought to foot part of the bill.

The toad had never been in this particular mansion before, but it had seen the inside of its share of fancy places, and locating the bitch's bedroom was no problem. She was sleeping like a baby. The toad gave an extra mighty hop and leaped right into her face. She opened her eyes and they were looking, a bit crosswise, into the eyes of a killer with a grudge.

The doll was no dummy. She figured out immediately, in her witch-bitch way, that this was no ordinary amphibian she was dealing with.

"Who are you?" she asked.

Shit! He could almost wish that fuckin' cat was here to translate. How could he tell her he was the dude who took the fall for her when she tried to have her own kid killed?

Then she sat up, and he fell off her face. "Oh, no, it can't be . . ."

Well, if her conscience or whatever was bothering her, it ought to. "You got it, babe," he reedeeped at her. "Sorry I didn't send the scarf."

She didn't act shocked or panicked or any of the things you'd expect of most women. She simply eyed him like he was a lab specimen she was about to dissect—and he'd have to be careful about that—and said in a cool, sweet voice, "Now, I wonder how you got in that shape? I hope you're not here expecting me to catch flies for you or something as payment. You didn't follow my instructions, and by now the little twit's told people all about both of us. If I hadn't gone to a great deal of trouble to mix a little poison with her favorite smoke and expended a lot of mental and physical energy to find her and get her to take the bait, everything would have been ruined by your unprofessional behavior." She leaned over the side of the bed and picked up a high-heeled shoe, which she raised slowly over his head.

He hopped down off the bed, and she was out and after him. He could hop faster than her famous long legs could run, but she knew the house better. He made a terrible mistake, however, when he hopped through a door into a cool, watery, inviting place filled with plants.

He realized his mistake when he saw the toilet.

"Got you now," she said, as she flashed past the full-length mirror. He hopped into the tub as she stopped cold, gazing into the mirror.

He eyed her from the far side of the tub with increasing satisfaction. "That ain't all you got, doll," he told her.

Whether she heard him or whether she had caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror long enough for it to register before she stopped to stare, he didn't know and he didn't care, since she got the point. "Warts!" she cried, running frightened fingertips over the brown hairy spots starting to appear on her perfect nose, her perfect upper lip, and her perfect cheeks in sort of a frog's-butt-shaped pattern. She moaned and wept hysterically. It didn't take a genius to figure out she was not only no longer the fairest in the land, or even the house, but unless she found some magician with a miracle wart cure, her modeling days were over.

"Sayonara, sweetheart," he said as he leaped behind her and out the door while she pawed her blemishes.

He had thought to find Felicity but when he saw the 4X4 pulling out of the garage and Raydir himself behind the wheel, he had a better idea.

He hopped in.

 

* * *

 

"She did what?" the man yelled into the portable telephone. With the other hand, he held Gigi by the hair. The more she struggled, the worse it hurt, but she knew she had to get away from him, had to, that he wanted to do bad things to her, kill her, maybe eat her and Hank both, like the witch in the fairy tales. Susan Buchanan hadn't said exactly—well, Gigi hadn't exactly understood—what it was people like this did to little kids, but she wanted no part of it.

"Okay, okay, calm down. Listen to me. I know this girl. She works at DFS—I recognized her. No, I don't know if she recognized me too, but it seems to me that if she did, she wouldn't have needed the license number. But listen, I spoke with her supervisor only yesterday about her for something altogether different and I planted a not unwelcome hint that she get canned. So if she did recognize me, and tries to implicate me in anything, it'll seem like sour grapes."

He didn't talk for a minute while he shifted Gigi against him, almost sticking his arm in her mouth. "Well, what about you? It stands to reason if she can't hurt me she can't hurt you either. All she has is a license number, even if she is broadcasting it on her answering machine and has given it to the police. Have they showed up yet? When and if they do, have your attorney slap a suit on the woman for harassment. No, well, I can see where you wouldn't want it investigated. That does present quite a problem for you. I think you'd better take care of it." Somebody squawked like Donald Duck on the other end of the phone. "No, there's no point in bringing her over here. I already told you, the place is occupied at the moment. No, blackmail photographs are not a good idea and certainly not here. Listen, leave it alone or shut her up, but the deal was, if she was over here, I'd take care of it, if she's over there, you do it. I don't care how you handle it, just leave me out of it!" The man was shouting by now. "No! No, don't bring her here. I'm telling you, nobody comes here unless I bring them. You're getting hysterical. Stop threatening . . .!"

He was holding Gigi too tight, his arm cutting off her breathing, so she bit it. He threw the phone in the air and let go of her hair to grab his arm. Then she ran through the bathroom and into another room and opened the door and was out the door and down the hall while the man yelled behind her.

Should she go back to the basement and get Hank? No, then the man would find her for sure.

Instead she ran only as far as the front door and tugged, but it wouldn't open.

Locked.

A window. A window. An open window?

No—it was too cold. No open window.

But she had to get away. Had to escape the man. Had to help Hank before the man killed him. She tried the door again and heard the man yelling into the phone, "Don't do anything! I'll call you back!"

Break the window? How? It was only glass. Breaking a window would be bad, but he was bad too and she hated him. The fireplace. That heavy thing Daddy and Mama used to use to poke the fire back in Forks. It would break the window, and she could pick it up by herself. She did and crawled with it up onto the sofa and swung with all her might at the window. It broke the glass and sailed through it, the window shattering and falling out in big pieces of glass. Gigi climbed out of the broken place in the pane, not quite avoiding all the broken glass, and ran as fast as she could down the sidewalk, between the rows of reindeer and the Santa whose smile looked mean to her now.

It was dark outside, with no streetlights, and in places the sidewalk wasn't finished. She ran down the street and ran and ran, hoping someone would see her, someone would take her to a policeman or home or anywhere else. Her ears whirred and her legs ached and she got a stitch in her side. She looked behind her and didn't see anything coming, so she ran up to a house and knocked on the door but nobody came. About that time, she saw a car coming and she thought it must be the man, so she stepped off behind a big patch of weeds and huddled there, and when it had gone, she started running again. She kept doing this and kept doing it, but nobody ever answered their door.

She had not started to read yet, and certainly couldn't read the "Development Under Construction" sign that had been there for years, ever since the developer had gone bankrupt and been unable to finish the project.

So she kept running, knocking and ducking out of sight when a car came by until she knew not how much later, long past dark, when she hid beside one of the houses and didn't immediately get up and run some more. Instead, she fell asleep and dreamed of running and being chased by monsters.

She had no idea how much later it was when she woke up, though it was still dark. She tried pounding on the door again, still with no luck. But she must be getting someplace soon. She'd come so far, it seemed to her. A few more steps, and she saw the lights on the highway ahead of her. She could no longer run, but she walked with dragging steps toward it. She didn't feel like she could go any farther. Why didn't anybody find her? Maybe the man had given up by now. The lines of houses ended, all of them darkened for as far back as she could see. She no longer saw the reindeer in the man's yard.

Near the highway, a river of car lights flowed past her. She had no idea how to get to them.

Suddenly, a car pulled up beside her. She turned, hoping for help, as the car stopped, but it was the man. This time she was too weary and sore to even try to outrun him.

Quietly, grimly, he slid out of his car and ran around it to scoop her up. Nobody else was near, nobody heard her crying. He held on to her as he gunned the car forward, onto the freeway.

"I don't want to hear a word out of you, little girl," he growled. Even though he talked quietly, he sounded madder than she'd ever heard anybody sound, even Daddy when he hit Mama. His eyes had gone funny now too, and his eyebrow kept jumping all by itself. "You've cost me hours and hours of valuable time and now you'd better be a real good girl and not draw attention to yourself. I didn't want to bring you with me but your little escapade has had me out looking for you most of the night and I don't have time to take you back now. We're going to take a little ferry ride, won't that be nice? We're going over to Bremerton and we're going to take care of a nosy young woman and make sure she doesn't make trouble for anyone and if someone else has beat us to her, and we find him there, we'll take care of him too. If not, we'll make a little tour of it, up to Bainbridge Island. He has a very nice home there. You'll like it. I'll let you play in the hot tub if you're good."

A sob escaped Gigi before she could stop it.

The man turned and glared at her. "And if you're not, both you and your brother will be very, very sorry."

 

* * *

 

Rose knew something was wrong by the way the cats were acting. They sat up, alert, tails lashing and ears and whiskers atwitch as they seemingly looked through the walls. She had just awakened as one of the animals walked across her face to go stand on the windowsill and look out into the side yard. Rose felt as if she was going to snap if she moved too quickly, every muscle aching and stiff and her head heavy with exhaustion as she turned toward the window and raised herself on her elbows. Dawn was breaking over the tops of her bare-branched apple trees. She rolled across her bed to get a closer look, but could see nothing but the yard, looking a little frosted around the edges, but otherwise much the same as usual.

Sometime during the night she had been vaguely aware of the phone ringing and her message machine going off, but she hadn't been able to wake up enough to answer had she wanted to. Nothing could have awakened her but furry feet with the threat of claws lurking in every tread padding across her nose and forehead.

Cats made great alarm clocks.

Normally she would have had to arise fifteen minutes from now to get up and go to work anyway or call in sick if she preferred. Actually, she felt sick. She knew that calling in would cost her not only in terms of pay, which the state no longer gave to employees who were sick but not hospitalized, and in the fact that once she returned to work there would be twice as much to plow through, and she would be placing an extra burden on Patrick and George. She had had a long weekend. And, oh yeah, she had comp time coming, since the state no longer paid overtime. Well, that solved that. She'd go in to work, coordinate with Fred and Felicity about when the search was to start, and work until time to begin.

She got up and padded to the bathroom, tripped and impeded at every step by darting velvety pillows hurtling themselves broadside at her bare legs and screeching at the tops of their lungs that they hadn't been fed in weeks.

She didn't have time to do more than brush her teeth, wash her face and take vitamins. To dress for work, she needed slacks and something businesslike. For a horseback search, jeans, a sweatshirt and a jacket. She pulled on the latter, plus a pair of cowboy boots and socks that would go okay at the office too, grabbed a blazer and slacks, and stuffed them and Felicity's clothes from yesterday into a sack.

She'd have to steer the car to the ferry on autopilot and get her coffee at the espresso bar on board the boat.

The car was parked in the circular drive that led through the apple trees, formerly an orchard that was now her front yard. She never locked it in her own yard, as she usually had several loads of stuff she shuttled back and forth between the house and the car and was always forgetting something, including her keys. She slid behind the wheel and closed the door, and was vaguely aware of something flashing in the rearview mirror just before the business end of a gun barrel was pressed against her right temple. "Don't you know driving without a license is against the law?" a voice asked.

 

* * *

 

Dico was in hog heaven. Ding and his friends took Dico back to their neighborhood, and they were completely different from how they'd been before. They acted now like Dico was one of them, well, almost, and they were real nice to him. They sat on the steps visiting for a while till Ding said he needed to go inside and make supper for his folks, who would be getting off their night shifts soon.

"You cook, man?" Dico asked.

"What about it? Where I'm from, we were lucky to have food . . ."

"I can relate to that okay. Naw, I'm not dissin' you, Ding. I'm impressed. Whaddaya cook?"

"Rice mostly. Here it's easy to get good shrimp or a little fish sometimes, but the folks don't like to eat too heavy before they go to bed. After so many years of eating light, too much disagrees with them."

"Where you folks come from?"

"I was born in a camp in Hong Kong after my folks got out of Vietnam."

"No shit! My daddy—my real daddy—got killed in Vietnam. My stepdaddy and my mama got killed a little while ago. But your folks got through it all okay. That's good."

"Yeah," Ding said, wrinkling his nose. "Look, you want to clean up? The bathroom's through that door, and I'll loan you some clothes."

"That," Dico said, "would be great."

While Dico was cleaning up, Ding was busy in the kitchen.

"Hey, man, that smells great," Dico told him. "Where'd you learn to cook?"

Ding shrugged. "Here. When I finally had enough food. Me, I like burgers and tacos and pizza, but the folks still want the same kinda stuff they had in the camp."

"You guys camp out?" Dico asked. "That where you know the cat lady from?"

Because he didn't seem to be prying, didn't seem to know, and maybe, having been on the streets himself for a while, could understand, Ding told him a little about the camp.

"Heavy," was all Dico said then. He wondered about it, though. His mama had told him once Daddy had confessed to her in a letter that he had a kid by a Vietnamese woman. That made Dico feel sorta related to Ding, in a funny kind of way.

Later, when Ding's mom and dad came home, they ate as Dico had not eaten for months. He polished off his fifth plate of rice, fish and vegetables and ate two more eggrolls while Ding's parents kept offering him more until he began worrying that he'd eaten them out of a week's worth of groceries.

"This sure is nice of you folks," Dico said. One reason he was eating so much was that he was hungry. The other was that he knew he had better save at least half the fish for Puss or he'd never hear the end of it.

Ding looked a little embarrassed, and somewhat pained, at the way Dico acted toward his parents. Dico explained about his—what would it be, cousin?—in Vietnam that he knew about but hadn't met.

Mrs. Nguyen shook her head sadly and looked at her husband. "My sister had such a child," Mrs. Nguyen explained. "But she and the child were both killed."

Dico asked how that had happened, and pretty soon they were telling him all about it, all about Vietnam in the old days before the war, and the war, and working for Americans while friends and family members worked for the Viet Cong. They talked and talked, well past the time when they should have been sleeping, getting ready for their night jobs.

Dico only noticed once that Ding looked bored and angry, but then, later in the day, as the parents continued to talk, he saw that Ding had taken out a tape recorder, no doubt hot, and was taping everything his parents said, while meanwhile making notes in a spiral notebook.

Back | Next
Framed