A Face at the Window (17 page)

She waited patiently while he did this—arms crossed, not quite tapping her booted foot at him—then began forking the
ravioli hungrily into her mouth. No milk; kids drank milk, he remembered from the juvie home.

Although back there it was powdered milk inadequately mixed into not-very-cold water, a concoction the mere memory of whose taste threatened to gag him, not to mention its gritty texture. But there was a case of root beer in the pantry, so he opened one of those plus another one for himself, and she swallowed some of it without protest.

When she'd washed down the final ravioli with a gulp of the stuff, she plunked the bottle down in businesslike fashion like a guy drinking beer out of one and began scraping up applesauce, holding the spoon in a clumsy, overhand way but getting it in there all right.

She sure knew how to put away the groceries, he thought with grudging admiration; she might be little, but the kid had stones. Figuring it would take her a while to finish, he turned back to the kitchen cabinets. Canned stuff was all they held, that and dry staples: rice, macaroni, freeze-dried potato mix with what looked in the picture like melted cheese, but it was really only powder in a packet. Something called Instant Breakfast lurked at the rear of the top shelf; it looked like some kind of chocolate drink and the kid might like it.

So mix it with water, maybe. Fill up her little belly, maybe she'd fall asleep soon, although he was not opposed to breaking out the sedative bottle again if that proved necessary. Or even just convenient, because from the sound of things in the living room, Marky was getting drunk in there.

"Shoot," Marky snarled thickly, only that wasn't what he said, exactly. "Shoot, shoot, shoot," he recited, slurring the
sh
sound a little more each time.

Then came the sound of something hitting the wall hard and
shattering against it, plastic pieces clattering to the floor and scattering. A TV remote, maybe; there was a satellite dish in the yard but most likely that service hadn't been left on.

Marky appeared in the kitchen doorway. "What the freak?" he uttered unpleasantly "Where's the freakin’ food?"

He narrowed his eyes at the child still seated at the table, finishing off the saltines. There was an orange smear of ravioli sauce on her face and a root beer dribble stained the front of her overalls. "Hi!" she greeted Marky brightly.

Uh-oh, thought Anthony, whose experience with Marky didn't lead him to believe the kid's chutzpah would impress Marky very much. Or at all, actually.

But Anthony had found a bottle of olive oil, another can of ravioli, some unopened Ritz crackers, and a jar of peanut butter plus a can of Cheez Whiz. While the kid ate, the ravioli had been sizzling in the olive oil on the stove and he'd made cheese-and-peanut-butter snacks.

"Here," he said, thrusting a full plate at Marky, hoping the food would distract him.

"What the shoot is this?" Marky asked sourly, but he took it and went back unsteadily into the living room with it.

Anthony wished the TV worked, because Marky with a snootful was not exactly going to be a joy to be around this evening, Anthony could already tell. Also, he was pretty hungry, himself. But the kid was done eating and starting to get antsy, pounding on the table, her plate, and her empty root beer bottle with the side of her fork.

"Down, down, down," she chanted in time to the clinks and bangs. "I wanna get down, get me
down,
I wanna get
down—"

"Shaddup in there!" Marky yelled. "What do I hafta do to get a little peace and…"

"Quiet," Anthony whispered to the kid, who stopped in midchant,
her eyes widening. She was, he realized suddenly, scared out of her little mind; that, not some freaky adult fearlessness, was why she was being so good. Holding herself together, waiting for this to end, waiting for things to go back to the way they'd been before.

Waiting to go home. Good luck, Anthony thought, feeling the same way. In fact when you got down to it, he couldn't remember a time when he hadn't felt it.

Maybe there'd never been one. He put his hands around the kid's middle. "I hear you," he said, lifting her, remembering to keep her teeth away from himself. Her booted feet started moving even before they hit the floor.

"Yayyy!" she shouted, running away.
Oh, jeeze,
he thought,
now we're in for it.
But in the doorway she stopped short.

"Ssshh," she whispered, turning back to the kitchen with an elaborate finger to her lips. "Man is sleeping."

Sweeping:
the kid way of pronouncing it. "Yeah, he is," said Anthony, moving up beside her.

Peeking into the living room, he saw Marky sprawled on one of the sofas with his empty plate on his lap, a cut crystal glass with an inch of whiskey still in it on the floor beside him.

"Come on," he said, reaching his hand down to the kid. He didn't want her running away from him again, yelling her head off and maybe waking Marky up early.

Couple of hours yet, before Marky needed to be up and doing. "He's taking a nap," Anthony said. "So we should be very quiet."

The kid considered this. Slowly she nodded, then wrapped her small fingers deliberately around his and let him lead her toward a small room off the kitchen. It was set up like an office with a desk, swivel chair, and two-drawer filing cabinet.

But there was a daybed in the corner, a table and a lamp,
and a low bookshelf that mostly held reference books. There were a few kids’ books in it, too, though, some even with pictures.

"Lie down," Anthony said, and the kid climbed onto the bed obediently. He handed her a book. "Stay here," he said, turning. But when he got to the doorway a whimper stopped him, and when he turned her eyes implored him, huge and tear-filled.

"Aw, jeeze. What is it now?" He hadn't made her take the boots off, which she probably expected at bedtime. But the night was young and there were a lot of things left to do.

Like Marky, she'd be up again in only a few hours. And that, Anthony hoped, would be the end of this mess. "What do you want?"

She held the book out. "Read. You read."

Christ.
"Listen, kid, I don't have time for—"

"Read!" she insisted, and he could tell from her quavering tone that despite her weird, calm self-control so far, she was getting ready to lose it.

Bottom line, the only thing keeping her cooperative was her desire to stop anything worse from happening. Which it could, and not just to her. If she didn't keep quiet, she'd wake Marky. Then Marky might start asking questions, wanting to know for instance how Anthony felt after killing someone for the first time.

On the way here he hadn't asked, because all he'd wanted was to get out of the woods and back to the house without incident. After that he'd been hungry, then drunk, then asleep. But when he got up he would ask, and if Anthony couldn't come up with a good, convincing answer, Marky really would go apeshit.

Anthony bent to the kid. "Okay, I'll read to you. But I'm hungry. You had your supper, right?"

She nodded reluctantly "Well, see, now I want mine. Look,
I'll be right back, you just lemme go get a buncha crackers an’ some root beer for myself."

Her lower lip thrust out mutinously. She was going to start bawling, and Marky would shut her up if Anthony couldn't.

"All right," he gave in. "You can come with me. But
quiet.
Okay? Leave the book here," he instructed as she slid off the bed to follow him. "I mean it, now, we gotta
tiptoe."

"Quiet," she echoed softly, padding along behind him with exaggerated care. "We be vewy, vewy—"

"Hey!" yelled Marky from the other room, stopping them both in their tracks. "Hey, what the freak? You said the lights worked and now the gee-dee light don't work. The freak's the problem?"

Damn.
The lights did work, but one of the lamps was broken and of course Marky would choose that one to fixate on. Yet again came the sound of its chain being pulled repeatedly, and then the crash of the lamp hitting a wall.

Finally came footsteps, Marky stomping angrily through the house. "Hey! Where the freak are you? I'm callin’ you here, an’ when I call for you, you punk, you better answer me.
Capisce?
"

Yeah,
Anthony thought.
I
capisce,
all right.
Marky liked to use the old Italian words he'd learned from the gangster movies.
I
capisce
that you're a nut job and I never should've come here with you at all. But now here I am.

He looked down at the kid, who stood with one cowboy-booted foot held theatrically up in mid-tiptoe while Marky kept charging around out there. Yelling, and coming closer.

"Hide," Anthony told the kid.

Buried alive…

Jacobia crouched in the car's pitch-dark front seat, in the
gravel pit on Stony Road. By now, someone had probably seen that her house was dark, too, but they wouldn't have begun looking for her. A casual passerby would simply believe she hadn't come home yet this evening, and anyone who habitually paid closer attention to her whereabouts was away or busy.

So here she was; screwed, blued, and tattooed, as Sam would've put it. She hunched against the car door with her arms wrapped around her knees. It was cold in here.

Cold and miserable. And silent, except for the creaks and groans of the vehicle as it went on settling.

Collapsing, she amended bitterly as somewhere outside in the night, the distant
whap-whap-whap
of a helicopter sounded; not looking for her, though. Why should it be? No one had missed her.

At least Campbell wasn't still out there, or at any rate she hadn't heard him lately. Probably when the rain started he'd gone back to wherever it was he was staying. Because after all, why be uncomfortable when you're committing murder?

Another
murder, she reminded herself bleakly, aware of the faint, constant noises of the car giving in to the weight on it. And that
thrumming
sound…

She sat up, little patters of gravel falling to the floor; she'd stopped bothering to brush them off. It
was
a new sound out there now, a deep, rumble-and-crunch sound, faint but definite.

Getting louder. Or…nearer? Panting with anxiety, she shoved her fist under the section of windshield that had collapsed in over the steering wheel. The horn, where the hell in this godforsaken vehicle had they put the—?

She found it, heard its muffled bleat. Three long and three short, the universal distress signal—not that the sound of a car horn from under a rock pile wouldn't signal distress clearly enough all by itself.
Hear it, please let whoever it is hear.…

The thrumming sound became a growl. Suddenly she was aware of how bad the air in here had become, sour and evil-tasting.

Her clothes, stinking of fear-sweat, clung wetly to her. She hit the dying horn again, heard its wavering
wonk!

"Hello? Hello, is anyone out there? Can you hear me?"

No answer. No sound of an engine anymore, either. So what was it, or who? A teenager on an all-terrain vehicle out buzzing around the gravel pit in the dark? Or could it be Ozzie Campbell come back to taunt her again? Taunt her, or…worse?

Then came a sliding metallic clank, fast and rhythmic. She recognized it: Someone was trying to dig her out with a shovel.

But it wasn't going to be enough, because the gravel had begun pouring in thick and fast again. Each time whoever it was hit the pile with the shovel, more shifted and came inside.

Please let this get better somehow.
But instead things got terrifyingly worse as the digging sounds stopped and the car lurched suddenly backward.
Tow chain, someone's hooked a tow chain to the—

With a loud, wet, ripping sound the windshield fell in. She dove away as the car's rear end rose abruptly; her neck twisted, her arm and shoulder sliding down into the foot well.

She couldn't breathe; her chin was jammed too hard into her throat. Light strafed the car's interior as it went vertical all at once, her face jammed in between the accelerator and the brake pedal, until with a bone-jarring thud the vehicle slammed down onto its tires and the driver's-side door opened.

Someone grabbed her shirt. Her head hit the steering wheel, the door frame, finally the ground. There was an awful whooping sound from somewhere; her mouth, she realized, sucking in air.

She struggled to her knees, stomach heaving. A voice came from nearby but she couldn't understand it or see whose it was;
after the darkness in the car, the light was violent as a hammer blow. Hideously, she began to weep.

"Jake. Hey, you're okay. We've got you, now, you're out."

Hands gripped her shoulders, lifting her.

Breathe. Breathe. "Jake? Look at me, now, come on."

She looked. Breathe. Again. Disbelievingly. "Wade?"

It was Wade Sorenson holding her tightly, whose strong hands had seized her, dragged her from the death trap she'd blundered into. Over a thick sweatshirt with the Federal Marine anchor logo stenciled in white on the chest, he wore an old denim jacket that smelled of diesel fuel and engine lubricant.

She pressed her face into it. "Wade," she whispered. "She's gone. Lee—and Helen, too—they really are
gone"