Authors: Jack Ketchum
He could see from the rear window of the office that the lights were on in the bedroom of the house and there were flickering lights in the living room so she had the TV on which meant she was in there. But she wasn’t answering. He’d tried three times already.
He called Ray’s apartment but got no answer there either, though he hadn’t really expected one. He’d seen Ray drive away and hadn’t seen him return again.
But that she wasn’t answering seriously puzzled him. Could she have the TV up
that
loud? Was there something wrong with the phone? Could something have happened to her, a heart attack, a fall or something? Jane had always had her health but they were no spring chickens, either one of them.
The confusion part was what to do about it. He wasn’t supposed to leave the office. That was the rule. It was Jane’s rule actually. He didn’t really know what she was afraid of—whether it was that somebody would break in and steal the cashbox or that somebody’d want a room and no one would be there to rent them one or or that somebody’d need change for the Coke machine or what the hell it was she worried about. But that was the rule. He’d never broken it.
Meantime his stomach rumbled.
It was the stomach more than anything else, more than any real worry about her, that decided him.
It would only take a minute.
He took the keys for the office off the rack behind him and locked the drawer to the cashbox and turned off the silent TV. Raised the desk gate and walked around the desk and out the door and double-locked it behind him. He crossed the parking lot and walked past Ray’s apartment which was dark. He climbed the walkway up the hill to the house.
He was going to catch hell for this.
But it would only take him a minute. Maybe five minutes when you figured in the ham and cheese sandwich.
His stomach said it was worth it.
Ray parked the car directly in front of Katherine’s house. The reason was her father. He remembered clearly that her father was a big man, and you had to wonder how many shots it would take to bring a big man down. He remembered the girls in the woods who had taken more shooting than expected.
Kath knew his car. It was possible that she’d see it parked here with the lights on and the motor running from inside the house and come out all angry and pissed at him and then it would be a simple thing and not a more complicated thing like dealing with her father.
He debated.
Tim was scared so he was easy. He told them what had elapsed since Schilling’s visits to him and Jennifer. The telephone calls. Jennifer’s telling Ray off at the motel, throwing the ring at him. Ray punching a hole in his bedroom wall. Even about the hash he’d been muling. Schilling hadn’t promised him immunity. They hadn’t promised him a goddamn thing. They’d Mirandized him and that was all they did. It was as though something wound tight had snapped in the boy and now his propeller was spinning all by itself.
He told them about the night four years ago. His own and Jennifer’s part in it. The boy was in tears by then. The boy was remorseful.
He could see that Ed was moved by that.
Schilling wasn’t. Fuck this kid’s remorse. Two more people were dead because it didn’t kick in quite quick enough. Too little and far too late.
He didn’t show his feelings to the kid. He wasn’t going to show him anything.
“So where would he take them, Tim? Where would he go?”
“His apartment?”
“We’ve had a car there since the first shooting went down. He hasn’t shown.”
He shook his head. “I dunno. Turner’s Pool, maybe? Where he did the . . . other? Jesus, I dunno
how
he thinks anymore. I used to figure I did.
Oh jesus
. Oh my
god
!”
“What?”
“Kath. Katherine Wallace. It wasn’t just Jennifer he was pissed off at, or Sally. He was maybe pissed at Kath more than
any
of them. See, they’d gone out a few times and Ray really liked her and then Kath’s mother died and she went to California and when she came back she wouldn’t go out with him again, said she didn’t want to get involved with anybody, he was telling me all this shit over at my place too and Ray . . .”
“Where’s she live?”
He told them. Schilling looked at Ed.
“New player,” he said. “We better go.”
Ray was sick of waiting. It was a long shot she’d see him out here anyway. He was wasting his fucking time. And a .38 wasn’t the same as a .22 in terms of stopping power. A .38 was truly
mean
. He’d seen that once tonight already. He spooned another snort of coke out of the small brown bottle and turned off the engine and cut the lights. Got out of the car and shut the door. He heard the girls pounding on the hood of the trunk. It didn’t annoy him. It amused him. The girls weren’t going anywhere. Nobody was going to hear them. There wasn’t a soul in sight. The girls were playing drums to his lead guitar, that was all.
He shouldered the rifle and as he climbed the steps kicked off the safety on the pistol. He reached for the gleaming polished doorknob. And turned it. And smiled.
Her father was talking in his sleep again. Kath closed the copy of
Cosmo
and tried to make out the words coming from his bedroom down the hall. There were times he spoke so clearly in his sleep it was startling. This wasn’t one of them. One night in their room in California she’d awakened to hear him say
she’s what she is, she can’t help it
and wondered who the
she
might be and if her mother was peopling his dream or if she herself was. This time all she heard was something like
amoomphanawful
but listened further just in case. It seemed important for some reason to have more clues about him now.
He was sleeping a lot the past few days. All the way home on the plane and then a long nap yesterday afternoon and tonight he’d said he wanted to lie down for an hour or so just after finishing Etta’s good roast chicken and here he was still sleeping. More than three hours later. Probably it was the tranquilizers. She wondered if all this sleep was good for him. If it was avoidance or healing or possibly some strange mix of both. She’d read a little psychology but mostly it was about sex. Not the loss of a loved one. Not death.
She listened a few moments longer and then went back to her magazine. The article was stupid. Something about the usefulness of keeping at least one rich boyfriend around for special parties and social occasions even if you were dating somebody else you liked better. As though most girls had either of these options. She was only half-reading it anyway. She’d found that no-brainers could be soothing sometimes plus she still was keyed to her father, to whether he’d speak again more clearly this time, and that was the reason that she heard the soft footsteps in the carpeted hallway and why she leapt out of bed.
Jackowitz took the call. It was Patrolman Shack on the line and he was calling from the living room of the Pye residence. He and Patrolman Hallan had Harold Pye with them and Pye was in a bad way. They’d been watching the motel through a pair of binoculars from their patrol car parked along a side street when Hallan saw him come running down the walkway from the house like the man had a pack of wolves at his heels, stumbling and off balance like the wolves had already halfway gutted him. They got out of the car and went to his aid.
He brought them up the hill and opened the door and they saw what they saw.
Pye had passed out on seeing her a second time and Hallan was working on him with an ice pack. They’d already called in an ambulance. And what Shack wanted to know right now was, once they got Pye off to the hospital, did they go back to staking out the motel or what?
Jackowitz said you bet you do. And you don’t seal up the place either. Leave the place just as it is, lights burning and everything. Go back to what you were doing on the off-chance the crazy little bastard decides to come home again.
And now he had to tell Schilling.
He’d left the force in Newark for a nice quiet town in the lakes district.
He thought that maybe there weren’t any nice quiet towns anymore with what was going on in this country. Maybe the days of nice quiet towns were over with.
So what he’d do was, he’d try to put a muzzle on this one at least temporarily.
“Get me Schilling,” he said.
She didn’t know how she knew it was him but she did and she hit him full speed in the chest with her shoulder and knocked him down flat to the carpet and when she saw what he was carrying, the pistol and the rifle on his back there was no further question but that his story was true and she hesitated because her father was in the next room vulnerable and asleep, and then thought
no, it’s you he’s after, he doesn’t give a damn about your father
, understood that in the certainty that she also understood his cowardice, that he would not make a move against her father unless he had to, unless her father woke, that he was fine if she just got out of there
now
and she leapt over him, over his legs sprawled beneath her as he whipped around and lunged for her, she could almost feel his hand claw for the loose shirttails billowing out behind her, could almost see it happen. And then she was past him running down the hall down the stairs and heard him hit the stairs too but she had the distance on him, she held the moment, he couldn’t run in those goddamn boots of his and if he didn’t shoot her
right now
this very second she was going to be out the door.
She grabbed hold of the handle and twisted and it was then she almost screamed, it was only the father upstairs sleeping in his room that kept her from screaming because Ray was smarter than she’d thought he was and the seconds she’d bought hitting him knocking him down were suddenly denied her.
He’d thrown the lock
.
He’d locked the door behind him
.
Locked them in
.
She reached down and threw it to the open position but by then it was far too late and she knew it, the despair was already upon her and when she felt the cold steel of the pistol jab painfully into the back of her neck it had the force of inevitability behind it, the touch of a dark reckless god who it seemed had stalked her all her life.
“
Gotcha
,” he said.
His breath was rank with some kind of drug.
He reached around her and opened up the door.
She heard footsteps shuffle across the landing above and a muttered
whaa?
and he turned and fired even as she shoved him against the doorjamb and fired again and then the hand that held the gun arced toward her and the world went black.
In all probability he’d killed Ed’s girlfriend. Jennifer Fitch too. Tonianne Primiano and Harry Griffith
.
Now Pye’s mother
.
Ed was right. He should have quit this job long ago. Taken half pension and retired. He’d been nothing but an accident waiting to happen and now the waiting was over and innocent people were paying for his arrogance and stupidity. The fact that he’d been correct about Pye and Steiner/Hanlon all along carried about as much weight for him now as a fly splattered across the windshield of his car and the results were a whole lot messier and worlds more important.
They hadn’t spoken a word to one another since Jackowitz’s call about Jane and Harold Pye. For the first time he could remember he hadn’t the slightest idea what Ed was thinking. In the past it had been easy to know, intuitive, the way it was with the best partners. Now he hadn’t a clue. He couldn’t read anything in the set of his face but anxiety.
Ed said he wasn’t to blame.
That was what he
said
.
They pulled into the Wallace driveway and saw that the lights were on inside.
“Wait here,” he said.
“Like hell.”
“You’re a civilian.”
“I just heard you deputize me.”
Schilling looked at him and nodded. They walked up the stairs to the porch and he rang the bell. No one answered. He ran again. And now he had a bad feeling about this one too.
He slipped a plastic Baggie on his hand and used the doorknob. They drew their weapons and walked inside.
The hall and living room were neat and tidy and practically empty of furniture, the home of some rich ascetic. They saw him on the landing right away. A big man in rumpled white shirt and trousers sitting propped against the wall, a long smear of blood against the white wall where he’d fallen. There was a dark hole in the man’s chest and the smear was the exit wound. He went up the stairs while Ed proceeded through the house making sure it was clear. The man’s eyes were blinking in tiny rapid flutters and he looked up at Schilling stupidly as though trying to figure what in hell had happened to him. His breath came in shallow gulps.
Schilling stepped over him and moved carefully down the hall. The first bedroom door was open and he looked inside half expecting to see yet another body. He checked the closet and under the bed. The girl’s room was empty and so was the bathroom. The second bedroom door was shut and he opened it and had a look around inside and the father’s room was empty too. He walked back to the man and crouched beside him.