Authors: Jack Ketchum
“So? There’ll be a bunch of us. No big deal.” He laughed. “Besides, my
mother’s
the boss. I’m just an employee. Just like you.”
“You’re the manager, Ray. Sorry. I couldn’t do that. But thanks for asking.”
She was trying to let him down easy with last comment, he knew.
Thanks for asking
. She wasn’t fooling anybody. She was giving him the brush. Fine. Chalk it up to first-day nerves. It pissed him off but he figured that tomorrow was another day. Right now it was time to retreat. As gracefully as possible.
“You’re welcome, Sally,” he said. He smiled again. “I’ll leave you to your work. Just think about the photos, okay? We really, honestly could use them. Have a good day.”
Thinking about it now the encounter pissed him off even more. His position as manager usually gave him the upper hand with the new girls. Not the opposite, not like in this case. Here she is, changing dirty sheets for a living and acting like
she’s
got the upper hand. Snotty little shit.
He wondered how to work her.
At least Jennifer was out of his hair for a while.
Jim Brown
. Fucking spade for chrissake.
He got up and walked into the bathroom and had a good long look at himself in the mirror. The face looking back at him was boyish and handsome, a dark-haired version, he thought, of James Dean. He smiled. The smile in the mirror was bright, the teeth even. He opened the medicine cabinet and took out the eyeshadow, eyebrow pencil and mascara, pancake, blush and lip gloss, closed the cabinet door and began with the pancake and blush. He was good at this. Better than most women in fact. A lot of them looked like clowns or sluts but Ray knew how to make it subtle. Very few people would even notice he was wearing it and his story if they did was that when you played in a band you had to know about things like makeup and hair color, it went with the territory, part of being serious about what you did.
There was something very comforting about applying the makeup and as he worked on the eyes he felt himself relax for the first time that evening. By the time he got to the mole on his cheek, darkening it with eyebrow pencil, he was humming.
He’d find a way to get to her. Miss Sally Richmond.
There were still a few days before his Friday-night date with Katherine. He liked to keep his plate as full as possible.
He was Ray Pye, man! He’d find a way.
He always did.
He dialed the Starlight Motel from his desk and when Ray answered Schilling hung up on him. He gathered together the file on Billy Shade, child molester, rapist, in jail over six years now. He took it out to his car, protecting it with his jacket against the light warm misty rain. He drove to the motel, parked, took the photo of Shade out of the file and slipped it into the pocket of his jacket.
What he was about to do wasn’t anywhere near kosher and would definitely get him a reprimand if Jackowitz got word of it but he doubted that would happen. Even if it did Schilling figured it was worth it. He wasn’t going to get fired over the thing. He got out of the car and crossed the steaming macadam to the office.
Ray looked up at him from behind the desk and his face went totally blank. He’d seen him wear that look before. Plenty of times. Too many times.
“Ray.”
“Detective Schilling.”
“Not much of a day so far, is it.”
He shrugged and closed the accounts book and placed his hands flat on the desk. “We needed some rain.”
“We do? Hell, I don’t.” He smiled. “But maybe you’ve got a little vegetable garden out back. Tomatoes and cucumbers. Little maryjane on the side, maybe.”
Pye smiled back. “You know me better than that, Lieutenant Schilling.”
“Yeah, but you know how kids are today. They’re all of them into the stuff. Silly of me for even giving it a thought, though. What can I say.”
“I’m not exactly a kid, Lieutenant.”
“No. That’s true. You’re not.”
He reached into his jacket and pulled out the photo and placed it on the desk.
“Seen this guy?”
Pye frowned and picked up the photo and studied it. Then he put it down.
“No. Never. Why?”
“Very interesting actually. He’s wanted for murder over in Hopatcong and naturally we’re cooperating. Seems he shot and killed two teenage girls, campers, in the park overlooking the lake. Interesting because we had a shooting a whole lot like that a few years back. Also in a park, up by Turner’s Pool. You remember that, right?”
“Of course I do. You and Detective Anderson questioned me about it a few times.”
“A few times, yeah.”
“And some friends of mine.”
“You don’t resent that or anything, do you? I mean, I’m hoping there’s no hard feelings.”
He shrugged. “I walked in. Told you I’d been there. I guess I made myself conspicuous. No hard feelings. You were just doing your job.”
“That’s right. You got that right exactly.”
“That second girl from that night, she just died recently, didn’t she? I think I heard that someplace.”
You little fuck
, he thought.
You cold little piece of shit
.
Schilling slid the picture back across the desk away from Ray and appeared to study it himself a moment.
“Yeah, Ray. She just died. Guy looks a bit like you, don’t you think?”
“This guy? Not really.”
“Have a look again.” He handed it back to him.
He’d chosen Billy Shade precisely because he remembered Shade
did
look a lot like Pye, young and dark and good-looking if you liked them on the sleazy side.
He wondered how Shade was doing m the joint these days. With all those good looks.
“Okay. I guess. A little.” His face lit up suddenly like a kid who’d just been handed a brand-new bicycle. “You think maybe he could be the
same
guy? I mean the same guy who shot those girls over here?”
Schilling gave it a beat, staring at Pye straight on and then said, “Anything’s possible. But no, Ray. We don’t think he’s the guy who shot those girls over here. We think that was some other guy. We’re actually pretty sure of it.”
He reached for the photo and Ray handed it to him. His face had gone blank again. Maybe it could only be animated by lies.
“Can I see your registry for today?”
“Sure.”
He pulled it out of the desk drawer and opened it and found the page and turned the book toward Schilling. Schilling ran his finger down the page, pretended to look.
“Who else is on today? Besides you?”
“Two girls on housekeeping. Pool man was in this morning but he’s already gone for the day.”
“Your father?”
“Not till tonight.”
“Okay if I talk to the two on housekeeping?”
“Sure. No problem.”
Schilling got out a pad and pencil. “You want to give me their names, Ray.”
“Ginny Robertshaw, she’d be on the second floor. First floor’s Sally Richmond. She’s new, though.”
“We’ll take the new girl first. Where’d I find her?”
“You want me to show you?”
“Nah. You just hold the fort here, Ray. General location’s fine.”
“She’d be working the right side of the pool. Ginny will be over on the left side. Sure you don’t want me to come along? It’s no trouble.”
“No thanks, Ray. I’m a detective, remember? I gather information for a living. I find things, people. Sometimes it takes me a while because I’m kind of slow. But usually I find them eventually. You have a nice day, Ray.”
He found Sally in the very last unit. Ed Anderson had told him she was lovely and he wasn’t kidding. She reminded Schilling of a doe you might surprise in a clearing. Everything about her looked soft and feminine and gentle but you could see raw natural power running beneath it and know there wasn’t a spare ounce of fat on her body.
“Sally Richmond?”
He held out his shield. She put down the two rolls of toilet paper and the tiny bars of soap and brushed at a loose strand of hair.
“Yes?”
“I’m Detective Charlie Schilling. A friend of Ed’s.”
He saw that it was possible for her to blush. But also that she recovered quickly.
“He’s mentioned you. Often. My god! This isn’t about him, is it?”
The concern in her voice was absolutely genuine. He decided right then and there that he liked her.
“No, Ed’s fine. He’s a little worried about you, though.”
She looked puzzled at first but she was quick.
“You mean about the job. You mean Ray.”
“I mean Ray. He come on to you yet?”
She laughed and nodded. “Yesterday. My first day here. Can you believe it?”
“I can believe pretty much anything about Ray Pye. What did Ed tell you about him exactly?”
“That he was a suspect in that murder a few years ago. Your main suspect.”
“Two corrections, Sally. First, it’s not murder, it’s murders. Elise Hanlon died just a few days ago. Second, Ray wasn’t our main suspect, he was our
only
suspect. Both of us liked him for it from the get-go. In an interview situation that boy’s eyes would go empty as a blue summer sky. I just found out they still can. I’m morally certain he’s our guy, Sally. So is Ed. We just couldn’t put it on him. And now you’re telling me he’s come on to you. And I’m wondering if he didn’t come on to one of those girls back then and she told him thanks but no thanks, and that’s why they’re both of them dead now. You see what I’m saying?”
She saw, all right. He knew he’d disturbed her.
But disturbing her was the point.
“I
need
this job, Mr. Schilling.”
“No you don’t. There are other jobs. Suppose I told you I’d make it my business to try to find you one?”
“At anywhere near the money? I understand what you’re telling me and I’m not a fool. I’d probably jump at it.”
“Good. In the meantime think about this. Whoever shot Lisa Steiner shot her in the shoulder, in the mouth and directly into her left eye from not three feet away. Elise Hanlon was shot in the head and just below the breast. This was cold-blooded as it gets, Sally. From all I could learn they were a pair of nice young women. No enemies. Nobody
needed
to do this to them. Somebody just felt like it. I don’t mean to frighten you but you’d do well to stay as far away from Ray as possible until we get you out of here.”
“Okay. Thanks, Mr. Schilling.”
“It’s Lieutenant Schilling. But to you I guess it’s got to be Charlie.”
He pulled the photo out of his pocket and held it out to her.
“Ever see this guy around here?”
“No, sorry.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“Looks a little like Ray, though. Sort of.”
He grinned and put the photograph away.
“Yeah,” he said, “does, doesn’t he.”
He walked away to find the other girl Ginny. It was all smoke and mirrors just in case Ray was paying attention and to cover the fact that the real reason he was here was Sally. That and to shake Ray’s tree a little.
When what he really wanted to do was bulldoze his tree to the ground.
When he was finished going through the motions he went back to the car and slipped the photo in the file and drove on back to the office. He really did wonder how Billy Shade was making out in jail. Because however he was doing, a punk like Pye would probably do just as badly.
Ray
, he thought,
don’t lose your looks. Hang on to ’em a while
.
By noon the gray rainy mist had burned away but the sunlight felt thick with humidity. There was the lake or Alpine Pool. She’d been told there was another bigger pool somewhere up by the State Forest campgrounds but she didn’t know the campgrounds yet or how to get to the pool and it was far too hot to go hunting around. The lake would be crowded with tourists and summer people. There would be motorboats and fishermen and kids and radios. Alpine Pool was up in the hills, not much more than a swimming hole really, filthy after a good hard rain but probably fine after a light one like today. The pool was mostly used by the locals. Katherine decided she was a local now, like it or not.
She drove to the ridge off Summit Road which was the nearest you could get to the pool by car and parked the little black Corvette her father had given her for her seventeenth birthday on the gravel shoulder. There were only three other cars there besides her own so she figured she could expect some privacy. She took her blanket, towel and beach bag off the passenger seat and headed down the narrow trail through the woods.