One Summer (28 page)

He’d forgotten. “Goddamn!” he said bitterly. Turning, he walked to the TV, snatched his keys off the top where Glenda had left them, and headed out the front door.

“Johnny, stop! You cain’t just leave!”

“The hell I can’t!”

Glenda followed him outside. She was almost wringing her hands, she was so upset. “But she’s coming! She’ll be here any minute! What’ll she think if you’re gone? And anyway, you’re still drunk. You cain’t ride that motorcycle drunk.”

“I don’t give a damn what Miss Goody Two-Shoes thinks. And I’m not drunk.”

He reached his motorcycle and pulled it down from its center stand. For a minute he had to brace himself against the weight of it, which normally wouldn’t have bothered him.

“You are so. Give me those keys!”

She had followed him down to the gravel drive that ran past her trailer. Hers was closest to the road, and a sickly yellow lamp at the gate of the development shed a meager amount of illumination on the scene. By its light, he was able to see that she was really upset.

He put his bike on its kickstand and caught her by the shoulders.

“Hey, I’ll be all right,” he said, his voice gentling.

Glenda stared up at him for a minute. Without bright daylight to point out her flaws, she looked almost as young as she had all those years ago, when they’d been friends more than lovers. Kind of like now, Johnny thought, and felt a rush of affection for her.

“You really like her, don’t you? Miss Grant.”

Johnny thought about lying, but he was too on edge and too buzzed and too sick of playing the whole stupid game. “Yeah, I really like her.”

“She’s real classy, I know. But isn’t she—well, like, old?”

Johnny shrugged. “We’re both adults.”

“Are you sleeping with her?”

Johnny released Glenda’s shoulders and turned away. “You don’t think I’m going to answer that, do you?” Grabbing the motorcycle’s handlebars, he kicked the stand up and straddled the seat.

“Johnny, wait!” Glenda pressed up against him and threw her arms around his neck. Johnny looked down at her with more than a hint of irritation.

“Let go, Glenda.”

“You’re just gonna get hurt, messin’ around with her. She’s not your kind. Not our kind.”

“That’s my problem, isn’t it? Would you please let go of my neck?”

“But—” Glenda’s eyes shifted briefly, staring out into the night, and when they returned to his, there was resignation in her face. “Yeah, I guess it is your problem. You
be careful, you hear? I’d hate to wake up in the mornin’ and hear that you’d been arrested—or had a bad wreck.”

“I’ll be careful.” Surprised by her easy capitulation, Johnny dropped a quick kiss onto her cheek and inserted the key into the ignition. Turning it, he gunned the throttle and kicked the engine into life.

Maybe he had a buzz on—okay, he did have a buzz on—but he could ride this baby through hell in the dark blindfolded. He’d get home all right.

With a wave to Glenda and a shower of gravel he was gone, roaring into the night.

28

G
lenda watched him go, a kind of sadness on her face as she wrapped her arms around herself. He hadn’t seen what she’d seen—the blue car coming around the bend, past the light at the other end of the trailer park. It was Rachel Grant’s. That kind of foreign car was unique enough in Tylerville that it was instantly recognizable.

Johnny had been mad as hell at her for calling Miss Grant to come fetch him, but who else could she have called? Not many people she knew around town wanted to let Johnny Harris into a car with them. A lot of them thought he’d killed that girl. Glenda didn’t. She’d known him all her life, and she’d never seen him lift a hand to a woman in violence. A man who didn’t hit, to her way of thinking, didn’t kill. Maybe another man in a drunken fight, but not a woman, and not the way that girl was killed. It took somebody vicious mean, or crazy, for violence like that.

Johnny was going to be mad when he found out that he hadn’t succeeded in avoiding Miss Grant after all. The lane leading back to the trailer park was wide enough for only one vehicle to traverse at a time. Glenda didn’t see the schoolteacher politely pulling over to let Johnny by. Glenda had told Rachel that he was drunk as a skunk and liable to kill himself before he went a mile.

Johnny and Miss Grant, getting it on. Now that she thought about it, Glenda wondered why she hadn’t suspected it before. He’d always had a soft spot for the schoolteacher, reading books and writing things to impress her and being real polite when she was around. And since he’d come back, the two of them had hung out together a lot. Why, she’d even given Johnny a job in her daddy’s hardware store.

And Miss Grant was kind of pretty, in a well-scrubbed sort of way. Her clothes were all wrong—really frumpy, with none of the style on which Glenda prided herself—and she had no chest at all. But her complexion was good, very good, for a woman her age, and she had a snooty air about her that a man from a background like Johnny’s might find kind of sexy. A challenge and all that.

Still, it put paid to her budding hopes that she could grab him for herself. Not that she was crazy in love with him or anything, but he was good with the kids.

“Glenda!” The whisper startled her out of her reverie. Stiffening, eyes widening, she turned and peered around. On three sides there was nothing but darkness. Behind her now was the dim glow of the light.

“Who is it?” For some unknown reason, she was afraid. Which was silly. There was nothing to be afraid of in Tylerville. No crime at all, except an occasional silly teenager shooting out some lights or knocking over a mailbox with a bat. Nothing violent, not even a mugging, in eleven years.

“Could you give me a hand with this?”

The whisper must belong to Mr. Janusky, the frail octogenarian who lived in the trailer just behind hers. Mr. Janusky had been suffering from the flu, and that was why his voice sounded odd. But what on earth was the old man doing outside at this time of night? It must be close to twelve, and he was usually in bed at nine.

“Is that you, Mr. Janusky?”

“Yes. Hurry, Glenda.”

The voice was coming out of the darkness to the left of the trailer, over where the Dumpster stood. Maybe the old fellow had come outside to throw out some trash and discovered he couldn’t lift it high enough to get it in the bin.

“Where are you?” Having reasoned away the shivers, Glenda walked in the direction of the voice.

“Over here.”

Glenda moved out of the pool of light, took a few steps into the enveloping darkness, and stopped dead. A feeling of dread washed over her like a shower of icy rain. But before she could act on it, before she could run or scream or even move, something hard crashed into the side of her head, hitting her with such blinding force that she was thrown to the ground and blacked out for a minute and saw stars.

When she came to, it was to pain, and fear, and the realization that she was being stabbed. And stabbed and stabbed again, in a frenzy of fury. Whimpering, half lifting an arm in a futile attempt to ward off her attacker, she had just an instant to register the unbelievable fact that she was being murdered.

In that instant, her only coherent thought was a frantic prayer: “Oh, please, God—I don’t want to leave my kids! Oh, no! Oh, please! Oh, please!”

Then the darkness descended again like a heavy velvet stage curtain.

29

B
etter. The watcher felt better, cleansed almost, now that justice had been done. Blood was everywhere, and he drank in the remembered scent with growing pleasure, rubbing red-coated hands together, relishing the warm, wet sliminess of the liquid of life. Like the other woman eleven years before, this one had deserved to die. The watcher stared down at the woman on the ground gloatingly. She lay motionless, her flesh torn and bleeding, silent now, past trying to fight. He felt no pity for her.

The watcher slowly bent to retrieve the dark red roses that would be his tribute to the departing soul. With quick movements, hands still coated with blood scattered velvety petals over the still-warm body.

Summersweet for the first one, who had been young if not innocent. Roses slightly past their prime for this one.

How fitting, the watcher thought, and finished the task before vanishing into the night.

30

R
achel slammed on her brakes, and not a moment too soon. There, in the bright beam of her headlights, hurtling toward her like a bat out of hell, roared Johnny’s motorcycle. He must have seen her at approximately the same time, because the cycle checked, then swerved violently to the left and almost seemed to fly off the road.

When Rachel got out of the car, the cycle was lying on its side in the grass, wheels still spinning. Johnny was pulling himself into a sitting position beside it, cursing furiously under his breath.

“Dear God, are you all right?” Rachel ran to him, leaning over him with one hand on his shoulder as she peered at the face beneath the silver helmet.

“No thanks to you,” he grunted, and clambered rather shakily to his feet. For a moment he stood there swaying, his fingers fumbling with the clasp under his ear. Then it clicked free, and he pulled the helmet off.

“You
are
drunk,” Rachel said, taking a step back as the beer fumes hit her in the face. “When your friend called me, I had a hard time believing that you would actually do something as dumb as drive after drinking nine beers. But obviously you’re stupider than I thought.”

“I couldn’t have had more than six—or maybe seven,”
Johnny said, scowling. “I’m not drunk. I’ve just got a little buzz going.”

“Oh, yes?” Rachel asked furiously. “Then how come you wrecked your motorcycle?”

“Because you damned near ran me off the road!”

“I had my headlights on, and I was driving within the speed limit! If you didn’t see me until too late, it’s because you’re drunk!”

“I am not!”

“You are too!”

For a moment they stood almost nose to nose. Rachel, with her head thrown back and her hands on her hips, glared up at him. His answering look was just as unfriendly. Then his eyes slid sideways to his downed bike.

“Look what you did.” His tone was faintly plaintive as he turned away to bend over the machine.

“You did it, not me! You’re lucky to still be alive.”

“I might not be, if I hadn’t laid it over on its side. See that big oak over there? I was headed right toward it.”

Rachel looked and shuddered. Johnny caught the cycle by its handlebars and hauled it upright, heaving it up on its center stand as he examined it with obvious anxiety. The stench of spilled gas was even stronger than the smell of beer.

“Blew a tire.” Obviously disgusted, Johnny straightened up from where he had crouched by the rear of the bike.

“Too bad.”

Johnny hesitated, looking at her truculently. “You’ll have to give me a ride home.”

“That’s what I came for.”

“I’ll come back for my bike tomorrow.”

“Fine.”

Rachel was already heading back toward her car, which was parked in the middle of the road, lights on, still running, its driver’s side door wide open. She didn’t even look behind her to see if Johnny followed as she got in.