Authors: Ray Garton
“Well, David said they’d come up with some other reason for his death. Sounds like they did.”
“But what about us?” Sherry said with wide eyes.
“What
about
us?”
“
We
know he didn’t die of carbon monoxide poisoning. How can they let us live?”
“Are you gonna start on that again?”
“I’m
sorry
, Andy, if you don’t agree, but I happen to have a very bad feeling about this.”
“You and your bad feelings. Am I gonna have to fix breakfast myself, or what?”
“No, I’ll fix it, I’ll fix it,” she said with irritation, frustrated that he didn’t care.
Sherry remembered the two men who had come to take Arnie away, the promise they had made to cause trouble for them if they didn’t let them in to get Arnie. If they
really
wanted the world to believe that Arnold Garvis died of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning, why would they allow Sherry and Andy and Rob and Philpott and Lissa and David to live if they knew otherwise? It did not seem logical to Sherry. Why couldn’t Andy see that? Why wasn’t he
worried
?
Sherry was worried. Very worried. And she couldn’t shake it.
She started breakfast and tried to push the bothersome thoughts from her mind.
* * * *
“I want you to go over to Aunt Rose’s today,” Anna said.
“No! I don’t want to!”
“Please, Kendra?”
“No. I promise, I won’t even go get the mail. I just want to stay here and watch TV. I don’t feel good. My finger throbs.”
Anna sighed. “You promise? You’ll stay in the trailer?”
“I promise. It’s already hot. It’s gonna be too hot to go outside.” Kendra wondered if that qualified as a white lie. What difference did it make if she went outside or not while Mommy was gone? It wouldn’t hurt Mommy if she never knew about it, would it? It qualified as a white lie as far as Kendra was concerned.
“Well ... okay. If you promise.”
“I
promise
.”
“Before I leave, I’m going to go get Marc’s phone number so you can call him if you need anything, okay?”
“‘Kay.”
“How’s your finger feel now?”
“It’s throbbing.”
“You can take a couple pills with your breakfast.”
* * * *
Reznick was pouring a cup of coffee when someone knocked on his door. He took his coffee with him to the door and pulled it open. Anna stood outside. She smiled up at him.
“Hi, Marc.”
“Hi.” He pushed open the screen door and came down the steps. “What’s up?”
“I’m leaving Kendra home alone again today. I was wondering if I could get your cell phone number, just in case she needs something. Would you mind if she called you?”
“Not at all. I don’t think I’m going in to work today, so I’ll be around.”
“Oh, good. Thank you.” She held a yellow Post It pad in one hand and a pen in the other. Reznick gave her his cell phone number and she wrote it down.
Reznick bowed his head and looked around. The blood stains were everywhere. Speckles of it lead to his trailer, then across the way to another trailer, then diagonally to another. It was all over the pavement and concrete.
“I’ll see you later, then,” Anna said.
“Yeah, see ya.”
As Anna walked away, Reznick wondered how long it would take for someone to notice the bloodstains on the concrete and pavement, how long it would take for the police to get involved.
* * * *
Anna walked slowly on her way back to the trailer, looking at the trails of spattered blood all over the cracked pavement of the road. It zigzagged here and there, and it had all come off of her as she’d walked away from the man she’d murdered.
The man she’d murdered.
When she’d awakened that morning, it had felt like a nightmare she’d had the night before. A horrible nightmare that clung to the backs of her eyelids in startlingly vivid images. Then, when she remembered it had not been a nightmare, when it all had come flooding back into her mind, the whole bloody, gory thing, she’d gotten out of bed and hurried to the bathroom, where she’d closed and locked the door, knelt at the toilet, and vomited, trembling, her head throbbing. It had gone on for a while, mostly dry heaves, as if her body were trying to expel her guilt. When she was finished, she’d washed her face and brushed her teeth, then stared at herself in the mirror.
She did not have time to worry about it. She had to go about her day. She had to go to work. She could not worry about how she was going to talk to Kendra about those pictures on the Internet, not now. She had to go to work. She couldn’t call in sick or anything, not now, not with this new job. She had to be there, and on time.
Anna walked back to her trailer and went inside.
* * * *
While the coffee maker made coffee, Muriel Snodgrass opened her front door and stepped outside on the porch. It was going to be another scorcher. In her left hand, she held a letter to her sister in Bend, Oregon, sealed in a stamped envelope, and in her right, a cigarette, which she put in the corner of her mouth. It dangled there, sending up tendrils of smoke as she went down the front steps.
Her sister Alice had never gotten a computer. She was the only person Muriel knew who was not yet online. Muriel kept in touch with all her other relatives and friends by e-mail, but not with Alice. She had to stay in touch with Alice the old-fashioned way – with a letter in an addressed envelope with a stamp on it.
Muriel wore a sleeveless lime-green blouse, a pair of stretchy black shorts, and pale-blue mules on her feet. A sliver of her pale, hanging belly peeked out from beneath the bottom of the blouse. She started on her way to the mailboxes to post the letter to Alice. Her slippers shuffled over the cracked, broken pavement as she walked.
The cigarette dangled from the corner of her mouth and she puffed on it now and then, exhaling smoke through her nose. She had not yet put her teeth in, so her lips stuck out like a small bill.
Miss Dunfy’s car backed out of unit eight, and pulled up beside her. Miss Dunfy rolled down her window.
“Hello, Mrs. Snodgrass,” Anna Dunfy said.
“Hi, there.”
“Look, Kendra’s going to be home alone again today. She cut her finger really bad yesterday.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear it,” Muriel said, the cigarette bobbing in her mouth.
“Yeah, Mr. Reznick in space nine took her to the hospital and she had to have five stitches. She bled all over the place. Anyway, she’s on painkillers, so she’s not feeling so well. If you could keep an eye out for her today, I’d sure appreciate it.”
“Be happy to, honey, you know me. I might even pop in on her today, see how she’s doin’.” A long ash fell from the cigarette.
“Thank you so much.”
“You got a job?”
“Yeah, one of the temp jobs has turned into something a little more permanent. For a while, anyway.”
“Well, good for you, honey. You have a good day.”
“Bye-bye.”
“Oh, wait,” Muriel said. “You wanna do me a big favor?”
“Sure, what?”
Muriel held out the letter. “You wanna stick this in my mailbox and put the flag up for me on your way out? I’d sure appreciate it.”
“Sure, no problem.”
“Thanks a lot, hon. See ya later.”
Anna drove away.
Muriel turned around to head back to the house when something caught her eye, something on the ground. She stopped walking and squinted down at the ground. Something dark was spattered over the broken pavement, a trail of it. It went this way and that, over there, over here. She couldn’t get a good look at it – she’d left her glasses back at the house, and whatever it was, it was blurry. But it looked like ...
“‘Zat blood?” Muriel muttered.
She remembered Anna saying Kendra had cut her finger badly the day before.
She bled all over the place.
That must have been it. The poor girl had staggered and stumbled all over the place on her way to the trailer just next door. Probably the squeamish type, messed up by the sight of blood, especially her own.
Muriel’s cigarette had developed another long ash, and there wasn’t much left to it. She plucked it from her mouth and dropped it to the ground, stamped it out with her slipper. Then she went inside to get a cup of coffee and start breakfast.
* * * *
The day was scorching hot. By ten o’clock, the temperature was a hundred and five degrees. The trees above the Riverside Mobile Home Park, dry and rustling in the hot breeze, were filled with birds – their chirping and screeching clashed in a shrill cacophony that did not pause.
Shortly after ten, Reznick took Conan and left the trailer. The little dog followed him over to the Dunfy trailer next door. At the screen, Reznick knocked and looked inside and said, “Hello?”
“Hi,” Kendra said. She came to the door and opened the screen for him. “C’mon in.”
Reznick went up the steps and Conan followed him.
“I thought maybe Conan and Dexter would like to see each other this morning,” he said. “I hope it’s all right that I brought him over.”
“Oh, sure, I like Conan. Hey, Conan, you cutie.” She bent down and petted him.
“How’s the finger?”
“Not bad right now,” she said.
She wore a plain white cotton T-shirt and yet another pair of short denim cutoffs, this one with a yellow daisy sewn onto the back pocket. The T-shirt’s material was thin and Reznick could see the faintest hint of her rosy nipples beneath it.
“You want somethin’ to drink?” she said. “Mommy’s got beer, or there’s Pepsi.”
“A Pepsi sounds good.”
Kendra went to the refrigerator, got a Pepsi, and brought the can back to him. “C’mon in and sit down.”
They both sat down on the couch.
“I was watchin’
The Joker’s Wild
,” she said. “You like game shows? I
love
game shows.”
“Yeah, game shows are fun.”
Kendra stretched out on the couch and put her bare feet in Reznick’s lap. He looked down at them – the small, perfect toes with their red-painted nails, the paint chipping in places. He let his eyes move slowly up her long legs. He followed his eyes with one hand, running it up her leg, feeling the smooth skin, the lump of her knee, the firmness of her thigh. Then he looked at her.
She was smiling at him. She liked it.
He smiled back and said, “What have you been up to today, Kendra?”
She shrugged. “Just watchin’ TV.”
He nodded. “And ... what have you been up to ...
lately
?”
Another shrug. “Just layin’ around since I cut my finger. The pills make me sleepy, but they also make me feel real good. I mean, they make me feel all floaty, like. I never felt nothing like that before.”
“Yeah, codeine’ll do that to you. No, I meant the last few days. I was wondering what you’ve been up to. If maybe you’ve been ... say ... posing for some pictures?”
The smile dropped off Kendra’s face and her beautiful blue eyes popped open wide, lips parted, head tilted back just a little. She stayed that way for a long moment, frozen in place.
Reznick smiled. “I’ve seen your pictures online, Kendra.”
“You ... have?”
“TrailerParkGirls.com. See, my work sorta brought me into contact with the man in unit five. What’s his name again?”
“Steven. Steven Regent.”
“Yeah, he’s the one. Steven Regent. I needed to look up his websites for a case I was working on, and I saw your pictures on TrailerParkGirls.com.”
For a moment, Kendra looked as if she were about to cry.
“They’re beautiful pictures, Kendra,” he said, almost whispering. “You’re a beautiful young woman.”
One corner of her mouth curled up into a half-smile. “Re ... really?”
“Looking at your pictures ... it excited me.”
“It ... did?”
“Oh, yes. It made me
very
excited.”
His hand was still on her thigh, moving back and forth slightly, and the sensation of their skin rubbing together made him hard. With his right hand, he pressed her ankle down against his erection.
The other corner of her mouth curled up, too. Her cheeks became rosy, but that didn’t last.
“Do you like me, Mr. Reznick?” she said, tilting her head to one side.
“Kendra, you’re one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said. “And I’ve wanted you since the first time I saw you on the roof of this trailer.”
“You’ve ...
wanted
me?” she said, her eyebrows rising curiously.