After Midnight

After Midnight

Richard Laymon

INTRODUCTION

Hello.

I’m Alice.

I’ve never written a book before, but figured I might as well start by saying who I am.

Alice.

That’s not my real name. I’d have to be an idiot to tell you my real name, wouldn’t I? Identify myself, then go on to write a book that tells more than anyone should ever know about my private life and adventures and passions and crimes.

Just call me Alice.

Sounds like “alias,” doesn’t it?

I’m somebody, alias Alice.

Anyway, names are the only things I’ll lie about. I’ll make up names for all my characters, because they’re real people—or were—and I don’t want any trouble. If I start giving true names, no telling where it might lead.

Obviously, that’ll have to go for place names, too. Not just people. I don’t want to give away where stuff happened, or someone might start putting two and two-together.

Except for the names of people and places, everything else will be completely true. I promise. I mean, why bother to write my story if I’m not going to tell the truth? What would be the point?

For that matter, what is the point?

Why am I sitting down to write this book?

I’m not doing it for the money. I would do it for the money, but how can you get paid for a book without letting someone know who you really are? How do they make out the checks? I haven’t figured that out yet, but I’m working on it.

I’m not doing it for fame, either. How can I make myself famous if nobody knows who I am?

But I want to write it anyway.

My story only happened about six months ago, but I already feel it starting to slip into the past. If I don’t hurry and get it down the way it was, I’m afraid I’ll lose it.

I’ll never forget the main stuff, but little pieces are sure to fall away and others will change on me.

I want a record of how it really was. Every detail. So when I read it, later on, I’ll have a way to live it all over again.

Also, it might come in handy if they ever try to prosecute me. It’ll give the complete truth about my side of things, and might help me off the hook.

Or maybe it won’t.

I might be better off burning it.

Anyway, here we go.

1

IT STARTS

I’ve already explained, my name is Alice (but not really). I was twenty-six years old when all this took place last summer, and living in a comfortable little room over the garage of my best friend’s house.

That was Serena.

She had it all. Not only the huge old house at the edge of the woods, but a husband named Charlie and two kids—a four-year-old named Debbie who was every bit as beautiful as her mother, and a baby named Jeff.

Some people have all the luck, don’t they?

I mean Serena, not me.

What it mostly boils down to is genes. Serena was hugely, incredibly lucky in the genes department. Which is to say, she was born beautiful and smart. When you’ve got that going for you, everything else is a whizz. It was only natural for Serena to marry a handsome, wealthy fellow, move into a great house, and have a couple of terrific kids.

I didn’t make out quite so well in the genes department.

My parents were a couple of duds. Good, hard-working people, but duds. Not that I hold it against them. It wasn’t their fault; they came from duds, themselves, and couldn’t help it. Just as I can’t help who I am.

And I don’t resent who I am.

You can’t do anything about your genes, so you have to do the best you can with what you’ve got.

I did all right.

This isn’t meant to be an autobiography, so I won’t bore you with the details of my youth. This is supposed to be about what happened because of the stranger who showed up on that night last summer, so I’ll skip to there.

As already stated, I was living in the room over Serena’s garage. I paid a monthly rent. She had tried to talk me out of paying (she really had no use for the money, anyway), but I insisted. Even though I was between jobs, I had some savings. I was glad to part with it, so as not to be considered a freeloader.

Even if a person doesn’t look like a beauty queen, she can still keep her dignity.

Am I giving you the impression that I’m an ugly, pathetic cow?

Writing is harder than it looks, I guess. Especially if you want to tell something the way it really is and not mislead people.

The fact is, I’m not and never was ugly. My face doesn’t stop clocks. But then, it doesn’t stop traffic, either. People have said I have a “sweet” face, and I’ve been called “cute.” Not many people have ever used the term “beautiful” in connection with me. Those who did—like my parents—were either blinded by prejudice in my favor, lying outright to spare my feelings, or hoping to lay me.

George Gunderson used to call me “beautiful” and “gorgeous,” but you should’ve seen George. I was probably the only gal in the history of his life who didn’t run away screaming. Besides, he was just flattering me to get in my pants. Guys are that way, in case you never noticed.

Anyway, I’m not exactly beautiful or gorgeous. I just have an ordinary, fairly pleasant-looking face. My natural hair color is brown, but I tint it a nice, light shade of blond. My eyes are brown. So are my teeth.

Just kidding about the teeth.

Maybe I shouldn’t joke around like that. After all, this is supposed to be a serious book. People do tell me, though, that I’ve got an interesting sense of humor.

My two greatest attributes, if you listen to what other people say, are my sense of humor and my smile. They also say I’m a “nice” person, and that I’m “caring.” But what do they know?

Though I’m nothing special in the face department, I do have a damn good body on me. I’m large for a woman (five-foot ten), and used to be on the husky side. Hell, I was fat and dumpy. But my first year at college, I pulled myself together and got into shape. Ever since then, I’ve stayed fit. I look great in a swimsuit—and even better out of one.

But mostly, I keep my main assets well hidden. I don’t like for guys to see what I’ve got.

Back when I was dumpy, they never wanted to look at me or be seen with me. After I got into shape, though, I had to fight them off. Just about all of them were total jerks. They didn’t want to know me or have fun. All they cared about was the fact that I was “built.”

According to several charmers, I was “built like a brick shithouse.”

I don’t even know what a brick shithouse looks like.

What the hell is a brick shithouse? Why would anyone want to compare me to one? It’s not only crass, but it doesn’t even make sense.

When you come right down to it, most guys stink. By the time I was twenty-six and living above Serena’s garage, I’d pretty much given up on them.

But then came the night the stranger showed up.

It was a hot night in July. Serena and Charlie were off on a vacation with the kids, and wouldn’t be coming back for a week. In the meantime, I had the entire house to myself. They always encouraged me to stay in the real house whenever they went away. They said it made the house look “lived in,” so it wouldn’t be a target for burglars. Maybe they believed what they were saying. Personally, though, I think they were just being nice to me. They figured I would much rather spend the week in their house than in my room above the garage.

They were partly right. They had a wonderful kitchen, a master bathroom with a sunken tub that was absolutely heavenly, and a den with a thirty-five-inch television. Whenever I had the run of the house, I prepared great meals for myself, lounged in the bathtub, and spent hours watching the big-screen TV.

In the master bedroom was a king-sized bed about three times the size of my bed in the garage. The walls and closet doors on both sides of it were lined with mirrors, and another huge mirror was fixed to the ceiling directly above the mattress. Serena told me they were Charlie’s idea. They probably were. Serena must’ve like them, too, though. The mirrors wouldn’t have gone up if she hadn’t approved. She and Charlie were both a couple of gorgeous specimens, so it’s hardly any wonder that they liked to watch each other—and themselves.

The first time I ever stayed overnight in the house, I tried out their bed. I looked pretty good in the mirrors, myself, but I also looked very alone sprawled out in the center of that enormous mattress. And then I got to thinking about Serena and Charlie, and how this was their bed. Time after time, they’d probably made love right in the very place where I was lying. Right on the very sheet. But now it was me on the sheet, not Serena, not Charlie. To make a long story short, my imagination ran wild and nothing could stop it. Even after I finally fell asleep, my mind wouldn’t settle down. All night long, I thrashed about and sweated, plagued by feverish dreams—or hallucinations—so vivid they seemed real.

When I woke up the next morning, I was so worn out and ashamed of myself that I vowed never to spend another night in Serena and Charlie’s bed. From then on, I always returned to the garage for bedtime.

It suited me.

As much as I liked their kitchen and bathroom and television, I often got the willies at night. The place was too big—more rooms than you could use, a hallway that ran from one end of the house to the other, windows all over the place and too many doors. You always had to worry that someone might be peering at you through a window—or already inside, hiding and ready to jump you.

Not at all like my small, cozy place above the garage.

My place was about twenty-five feet square, a single room with a kitchenette and “half a bath”—meaning I had a fully equipped bathroom, minus a tub. From the middle of the room, with the bathroom door open, I could see every door and window. I could also hear the slightest sound.

After entering my quarters, I never failed to look around to make sure nobody had crept in during my absence. And I listened. An intruder might hide motionless and holding his breath, but I figured I would be able to hear his heartbeat.

I always felt very safe, back in my own room.

But getting to it could be hard on the nerves.

On that hot July night when the stranger came, I’d stayed in the house until after midnight. Normally, I would’ve left earlier. But this was the first day of Serena and Charlie’s vacation, and I hadn’t had the house to myself since their spring trip to San Francisco. As a result, I’d forgotten the wisdom of early departures. So I stayed too long in their house that night.

Overdid it.

Serena and Charlie have a lovely swimming pool in the back yard. With no other houses nearby and a wild forest behind their property, the pool is like a private, woodland pond.

A pond that I avoided like a swamp.

Except when I was house-sitting, nobody around to look at me or interfere.

The day everything started, Serena and Charlie didn’t get away until early afternoon. In the driveway, I gave everyone goodbye kisses, wished them a great time, then waved as Charlie backed his car toward the road.

As soon as they were out of sight, I celebrated my new freedom by running up to my room, throwing off my clothes and jumping into my new, two-piece swimsuit. I’d already packed a small bag with things I might need during the day. I grabbed it and hurried down to their house.

First, I made myself a Bloody Mary. Then I went out to the pool.

Slick with oil and gleaming with sunlight, I spent all afternoon relaxing on the lounger, drinking this and that drink, reading a paperback mystery, daydreaming and napping. Now and then, when I grew terribly hot and drippy, I went into the water for a chilly, refreshing swim.

It was a luscious afternoon.

I drank too much and slept too much and got too much sun and loved it.

Later, I barbecued a steak on the outdoor grill. I ate it by the pool. After supper, I figured I’d had enough outdoor living for one day, and moved inside. I took a long, hot shower, soaping myself all over to get the oil off. When I rinsed, my skin gleamed. It had a warm coppery glow from the sun.

My tan was great, but it made me look a little silly in the bedroom mirrors. That’s because of the places where I wasn’t tanned. I looked as if I were wearing a swimsuit made from the skin of someone else, a stranger who’d never been out in the sunlight.

I used some of Serena’s skin lotion to keep myself nice and moist. Then I slipped into Charlie’s blue silk robe, went into the den, and watched television. I just loved their big-screen TV. It made everything look huge.

Their house was too far out of town for cable, so they had a satellite dish. The little TV in my own room was hooked up to the same system, so I knew how to work it.

You could get a zillion shows.

I found a movie that started at eight. While I was watching it, night came so I had to get off the couch and shut the den curtains. I don’t like curtains being open at night. Somebody might be out in the dark, looking in. You can’t see him, but he can see you. It really gives me the creeps.

That particular night, I felt more edgy than usual. It was probably a case of first-night jitters. Or else a premonition.

I turned on a couple of lamps to make the den bright.

I’d planned to take a long bath by candlelight after the movie. When the time came, though, I changed my mind. I much preferred to stay in the bright den with the television on, its volume good and loud. I’d lost every desire to go wandering through the dark house or to sit all alone in the hot water, surrounded by silence and flickering candle flames and shadows.

With the change of plans, I wanted popcorn—at least until I thought about the long journey to the kitchen. There were windows all along the way—enormous windows and sliding glass doors and walls of glass—every one of them facing the pool area, the back lawn and the woods. If only I’d remembered to shut those curtains before dark!

With the curtains wide open, it would almost be the same as if the house didn’t have any rear wall, at all.

I had walked that particular gauntlet before.

That’s true. I’d often walked it at night when the curtains were wide open and I was all alone in the house. Sometimes, I hadn’t even gotten a case of the jitters. Usually, though, I found myself hurrying along, goosebumps from head to toe, afraid to even glance toward the windows, absolutely certain that someone horrible must be gazing in at me.

Tonight, I was already feeling too damn jumpy.

The popcorn wasn’t worth a trip that might scare me half out of my wits, so I went ahead and watched the next movie without any.

It ended a little after midnight.

Which was late. Normally, eleven o’clock would’ve been about the right time for letting myself out of the house and hurrying to my room above the garage.

As late as it already was, I didn’t feel the least bit sleepy. Maybe because I’d taken all those naps beside the pool.

So why not stay and watch one more movie?

Why not? Because if I watched another, I would have to make my trip to the garage at 1:30 or 2:00.

Way too late.

My swimsuit was still in the master bathroom. I decided to leave it there. Since I had nothing else to put on, I stayed in Charlie’s robe. I liked wearing it, anyway. It was very lightweight, and felt slippery and cool against my skin. Also, it made me feel funny, sometimes, knowing it was his. Funny in a good, familiar sort of way.

My purse was with me on the sofa, so I didn’t need to go searching for it. I didn’t have to wander around the rest of the house to make sure all the doors were locked, either. I’d taken care of that before the sun went down. I’d also made sure that every light was off except for those that were supposed to stay on all night: the one in the foyer and a couple out in front of the house.

Serena and Charlie never lit up the rear of the house—the deck or pool or yard—except when they were out there. (And sometimes not even then.) I never asked them why. If it was me, though, I would’ve kept them off because of the woods.

Who knows what they might attract? There were things in the woods that might see the lights and come over to investigate. Nasty, wild things that belonged in the deep woods, not in your back yard. Not in your house.

2

THE STRANGER

Midnight.

I wished I was already back inside my safe little place above the garage.

Before I could be there, though, I had to get there.

Getting there was the bad thing about staying in Serena and Charlie’s house. It was the price that had to be paid. Not a terrible price, really. I’d always been willing to pay it for the luxury of using their house.

I mean, it was my choice to stay after dark, to stay until midnight. I could’ve returned to my place before sundown, or even kept out of their house entirely and avoided the whole problem.

Or, having stayed late, I could’ve avoided the return trip by remaining in the house.

But here’s the deal.

It only takes me two or three minutes to step outside, hurry over to the garage, climb the flight of stairs to my door, unlock it and get inside. If I’m really scared, I can probably do it in less than a minute.

The trip always frightens me, but it doesn’t last long. If I avoid it by spending all night in the house, however, I end up being tormented for hours and hours, not a few minutes.

It makes sense to me.

I do things my own way, that’s the thing. If enjoying the luxuries of the house means I have to make a scary rush back to my own place in the middle of the night, so be it. I’ll pay the price.

Anyway, it was time to go. Past time.

So I shut off the television, then turned off all the lamps in the den. After that, there was only darkness except for a dim, gray glow of moonlight that seeped in through the curtains. I opened the curtains. The glow brightened a lot. I stepped up close to the glass door and looked out.

With the den dark behind me and the area behind the house spread with moonlight, I felt invisible.

I took my time, gazing out. I wanted to be completely sure it was safe before unlocking the door and stepping into the night.

Impossible, of course.

You can never be sure it’s safe.

The full moon, that night, was very bright. It laid a dazzling silver path across the surface of the swimming pool. The concrete around the pool looked gray like dirty snow. The lawn beyond the concrete was as dark as the water. Like the water, it had a path of moonlight. The path on the grass was as dim as old iron, but led straight to the brilliant path that came over the pool toward me.

At the far end of the lawn, the forest started. The tops of the trees looked as if they’d been misted with silver spraypaint. Below their tops, the trees were completely dark. So dark they looked gone. They cast a black shadow over part of the lawn.

I saw nobody.

But there was so much blackness.

Someone might be lurking at the border of the woods, or even closer than that.

In the pool, for instance.

The water level is a foot or more below the rim, so the far wall casts a shadow along its entire length. A dozen faces—two dozen—might be hidden in that strip of blackness…all of them watching me. The near side of the pool could provide another hiding place, not because of any shadow but because the concrete edge, itself, blocked my view of whatever might be waiting beneath it.

If he preferred to stay dry, an assailant might simply wait for me, nearby but out of sight, with his back pressed to the very wall of the house. I wouldn’t be able to spot him there until I’d opened the door and leaned out. And that might be the end of me.

Or he might position himself around the corner to jump me in the space between the house and the garage.

Do you see what I mean about safety?

I stared out the door for a very long time. Even though I saw nobody, I couldn’t quite force myself to move. I kept thinking about all the places where someone might be.

My breath kept fogging up the glass. I guess that’s because the air conditioner was on in the house. Every now and then, a milky white cloud would ruin my view. I had to sway to one side or another, or crouch, in order to find some clear glass. Sometimes, I wiped away the fog with my hand or forearm or the front of my robe.

The way I’m telling it, you must think I was standing there forever and that I’m a hopeless coward.

It sort of felt like forever, but it probably wasn’t more than fifteen or twenty minutes.

And even though I’m not the bravest person in the world, it’s a fact that I’d made the trip from the house to the garage many times in the past, often at very late hours of the night. Serena and Charlie did a lot of traveling. I’d lived above their garage for three years, and I always came over when they were away.

Sometimes, I hardly gave a glance out the door before sliding it open and walking out. That was rare, but it happened. More often, I spent five or ten minutes. A couple of times, I’d been so spooked that it had taken me more than an hour to work up my courage to leave.

But I’d always gone, sooner or later.

So I wouldn’t call myself a hopeless coward.

I’m a hopeful one.

Finally, you decide it’s time. You hope nobody’s out there waiting to jump you, because you can’t be sure. Then you take a deep breath, flip open the lock, roll open the door, and go for it.

That night, the time finally came.

I was trembling quite a lot by then. Also, my robe was hanging open because I’d been using it to wipe the glass. I pulled it shut, tightened the silk belt, took a deep breath that trembled on its way in, and unfastened the lock.

I pulled, and the door rolled away to my right.

Things looked so much clearer, suddenly.

Just at that moment, before I’d even had a chance to step outside, someone crept out of the blackness at the edge of the woods.

I almost made a sudden break for the garage. But I held back.

If I darted out and ran, he would see me for sure.

And do what? Chase me down?

Holding my breath, staying absolutely motionless except for my right arm, I slowly reached sideways and found the door handle. I pulled gently, easing the door along its tracks. It made a soft rumbling sound, which the stranger didn’t seem to hear.

As I slid the door shut in front of me, I kept my eyes on him.

If he noticed me, he gave no sign of it. His head didn’t seem to be fixed in my direction. It turned this way and that. A few times, he even glanced over one shoulder or the other.

The full moon lit his hair and shoulders, but not his face. Most of his front was vague with shadow. I could make out his silhouette clearly, though. He was wearing shorts, but no shirt. When I caught a side view, he didn’t seem to have breasts.

That was my big clue as to his gender.

The stranger still might’ve been a girl—maybe a thin and shapeless tomboy—but I doubted it.

This was a guy.

A guy who’d come sneaking out of the woods and was making his way closer and closer to the house.

Soon, the door bumped softly shut in front of me. I fastened its lock, then took one step backward and stopped.

I knew exactly what to do.

Hurry over to the telephone and call the police.

It’s what I intended to do.

But the telephone was out of reach. To put my hands on it, I would need to abandon the glass door and make my way through the darkness to the other end of the couch.

That couldn’t be done without losing sight of the intruder.

So I stood where I was, and watched him.

He still seemed unaware of my presence. Maybe that was an act, but I doubted it. Though he was stealthy about the way he approached the house, he didn’t seem to be in any hurry.

Maybe he cut the phone line and knows I can’t call for help.

Don’t be ridiculous, I told myself. That’s movie stuff, cutting phone lines. Nobody does it in real life.

Do they?

More than likely, he didn’t even know I was in the house: I’d turned off the lights fifteen or twenty minutes before he put in his appearance. For all he knew, nobody was home.

But how long had he been watching?

What if he’d started watching before the lights went out?

Suppose he’s been watching me all day?

When that thought shoved its way into my mind, I suddenly felt sick with fear.

What does he want?

Maybe nothing. Maybe he’s just a guy who happens to enjoy wandering around in the middle of the night. Maybe just someone who got lost in the woods and only now has managed to find his way out.

Or a harmless nut of some kind.

Or…

A burglar. A rapist. A killer.

Trembling, I watched him step onto the concrete directly across the pool from where I stood.

He had no weapons or tools that I could see.

But his shorts had pockets.

Near the edge of the pool, he stopped. He seemed to stare straight at me.

He can’t see me, I told myself. The room’s completely dark. The moon is probably glaring on the door glass.

His head swiveled slowly from side to side. He turned around in a complete circle as if to make sure he wasn’t being observed. Then he took off his shorts.

They appeared to be cut-off jeans. First he had to unbuckle his belt. After the belt was open, he unfastened a button or snap at his waist and lowered the zipper. Bending over, he drew the shorts down his legs. Then he stepped out of them and stood up straight.

The moon, high in the sky behind him, rimmed his body with white so I could see right away that he didn’t have on a stitch of clothing.

Though his front was poorly lighted, I could see the general gray of his bare skin all the way from his face down to his feet. His eyes and mouth looked like dim smudges. His nipples were like an extra set of eyes spaced wide apart on his chest. His navel was just a small, dark dot. Down from there was more skin, then a nest of hair and his penis.

He stood there for a while as if he wanted me to take a good, long look at him—even though I know he couldn’t see me standing on the other side of the glass door.

Then he looked around, turning his head and body. When he turned, I got a side view.

It made me feel a little sick.

And very frightened.

He wants to shove that into me.

No, he doesn’t, I told myself. He doesn’t even know I’m here.

He’d better not. If he knows, he won’t quit till he nails me with that thing.

The prowler sat down on the concrete, swung his legs over the edge of the pool, scooted forward and slid down into the water.

3

IN THE WATER

You suddenly couldn’t see him at all. He’d vanished. I stared at where he’d been, but he was gone as if he’d turned invisible.

Not invisible, but black.

The pool looked empty. I knew it wasn’t, though.

I pictured him swimming underwater for a few more seconds, then bursting out, hurling himself onto the pool’s edge and dashing at my door.

The door might slow him down, but it wouldn’t stop him.

I mean, it was glass.

I tried to prepare myself for the shock of a sudden assault.

Don’t scream, just turn around and run like hell.

Go for the kitchen.

Grab one of the butcher knives.

I saw him.

Out near the middle of the pool, the back of his head and then his buttocks slid across the moonlight’s silver path. He seemed to be on his way to the shallow end, doing a leisurely breast stroke.

Not coming for me, after all.

Not yet.

But the pool had tile stairs underwater at a corner of the shallow end. When he came to them, he might climb out.

I stepped a little closer to the glass door.

He didn’t swim toward the stairs. Instead, he kept to the center. At the end of the pool, he stood up. His wet skin gleamed in the moonlight, but only down to his waist. There, the black water cut him off. He looked as if he’d lost his lower body—legs, ass, and the all the rest—as if whacked apart by a terrible sword.

The saber.

I suddenly remembered Charlie’s saber. It hung on hooks above the fireplace in the living room, along with a framed citation that had something to do with the Civil War service of his great-great-grandfather.

The saber was an actual relic of the war.

It hadn’t belonged to Charlie’s ancestor, though; Serena had bought it for him as a Christmas present.

We’d all fooled around with it, now and then.

It was about four feet long, and sharp.

Out in the pool, the stranger turned around. He eased down into the water, his body disappearing until nothing was left except his face. Then he started swimming again, apparently on his way to the deep end.

I stepped backward, turned away from the glass door and went to get the saber.

I’d forgotten that the foyer light was on. It was halfway down the long corridor, too far away for its brightness to reach the doorway of the den. But I saw it the moment I stepped out. Seeing the foyer light, I also remembered that the living room curtains were wide open.

The wall out there was mostly glass from one end to the other, from floor to ceiling. Like the wall of an aquarium.

From anywhere near the deep end of the pool, the stranger would have a fine view in.

I muttered a curse.

To be honest about it, I said “Shit.”

I hated my stupidity for not remembering to shut the curtains before dark. Bad enough that I’d missed out on popcorn because they were open, but now I couldn’t even go for the saber.

Obviously, I could go for it if I wanted to.

But I’m not that stupid.

Suppose, so far, the guy had no idea that anyone was in the house? He sees me sneaking through the living room, trying to get the saber, and he’ll know I’m here.

He’ll assume I’m alone.

Maybe he’ll like the looks of me. Even though I’m no glamour queen, I’ve got a great figure and I am wearing a clingy, revealing robe.

And he is already naked and aroused.

Maybe, so far, he’d only been interested in a little midnight skinny-dipping. But seeing me…

No way.

I wasn’t going to risk it.

I’ll wait till he tries to break in.

And maybe he won’t, I thought. Maybe he really did come here only to use the swimming pool. He might do a few laps, then walk back into the woods and that’ll be the end of it.

He might be breaking in right now.

I stepped back into the den. This time, I shut the door behind me to make sure no light could possibly sneak in from the foyer.

It had already dimmed my night vision. Except for the outside glow coming through the glass door, everything in the den looked much darker than before.

From where I stood, I could only see a small section of the pool. The stranger wasn’t in sight, and that worried me. So I hurried.

My bare left foot kicked a leg of the coffee table. From the sound, you’d think I’d struck the table with a hammer. My toes crumpled. Pain rushed up my leg. Tears flooded my eyes. My mouth flew open to let out a cry of agony, but I kept quiet and hobbled sideways and fell backward onto the couch. The couch scooted and bumped the wall. Flinging my leg up, I clutched my ruined foot.

From the feel of things, I figured two or three toes might be broken.

But the pain subsided after a couple of minutes.

Wet-faced and breathless, I fingered my toes. I wiggled them. They felt sore and kind of tired, but they seemed okay otherwise.

I wondered what the stranger was up to.

But I no longer wanted to look. I wanted to remain right where I was. The couch felt good under my back, even though my rear end was hanging off the cushion and I had to keep at least one foot planted on the floor to stop myself from sliding off.

Maybe I should swing my legs up, make myself comfortable, and stay put.

I wasn’t required to stand at the door and watch the stranger swim his laps.

He would go away, sooner or later.

Go away, or break in.

If he tries to break in, I’ll go for the saber. If he doesn’t, I’ll just…

What if I don’t hear him?

Such a huge house, he could make almost any kind of noise at the other end and I’d be none the wiser. Especially now that I’d shut the den door.

Also, there was the air conditioner.

The house had central air.

I couldn’t hear its machinery. The compressor, or whatever, was outside and pretty far away. But the den had a couple of vents and an air intake. They didn’t make enough noise to notice, usually. Just soft, breezy, breathy sounds. But now they seemed as loud as a gale.

The stranger could hurl a brick through the living-room window and I probably wouldn’t hear it.

Turn off the air.

The control box was mounted on the hallway wall, not far from the den. Only minutes ago, I’d been standing within reach of it. Too bad I hadn’t thought to reach out and flick it off. But my mind had been on the saber, not on the quiet noise of the air conditioner.

So, do it now.

I pushed myself off the couch and stood up. My toes ached, but not badly. I hardly limped at all on my way to the door. I wrapped my hand around its knob.

And suddenly wished, badly, that I hadn’t shut it.

What if I open it and he’s standing right there?

I pictured him on the other side of the door, naked and hard, dripping water onto the hallway carpet, grinning at me. He’d grabbed Charlie’s saber on his way through the house, and held it overhead with both hands like a Samurai all eager to split me down the middle.

My imagination likes to torture me with stuff like that.

I figured he probably wasn’t really there, or even in the house at all.

But my hand and arm felt frozen. I couldn’t force myself to open the door.

Then all of a sudden I got to thinking the knob might start to turn in my hand and he might throw the door open, crashing it into me and rushing in.

This was just my imagination at work, and I knew it.

But it scared me.

I let go of the knob and backed away from the door, pretty much expecting it to fly open. But it stayed shut. So then I turned around and faced the sliding glass door.

From where I stood, I could see the pool. Not much of it, though.

And not the stranger.

Where is he?

This time, I was extra careful crossing the room. My feet hit nothing. As I neared the door, I put a hand forward. Soon, my fingers touched the cool glass.

I eased closer, peering out.

Still no sign of him.

When my breasts met the glass, I stopped. This was about as close to the door as I could get without bumping my nose or forehead.

I stared out.

Where’d he go?

He didn’t seem to be in the pool, and he obviously wasn’t standing nearby on the concrete or lawn.

Maybe he’d gone away.

Maybe he’s already in the house.

The chill from the glass, seeping through my robe, was making my nipples ache. I eased back a little to get away from it.

The glass in front of my face had fogged up, so I wiped it with my hand.

And that’s when I saw him.

He was in the pool, after all.

Maybe he’d been below the surface for a while. Or maybe he’d been floating somewhere that I couldn’t see him.

Anyway, there he was.

He drifted on his back near the middle of the pool, his arms spread out, his legs apart. He didn’t move a muscle. The water, calm and almost motionless itself, rippled around him, turned him slowly, eased him along as if it had a vague destination for him but wasn’t in any hurry.

His wet skin shone like silver in the moonlight.

He looked asleep.

He was probably awake, though, feeling the lift of the water beneath him, enjoying its cool lick, relishing the warm breezes drifting over the regions of his skin that weren’t below the surface.

He looked as if he might be waiting for a lover to come, drawn to him by his open naked body, lured by the invitation of the pillar of flesh that stood tall and ready, shiny in the moonlight.

What if it’s me?

What if he’s waiting for me?

He wants me, knows I’m watching, thinks he can lure me out of the house.

You’ve got another think coming, buster. You can wave that thing in the air till hell freezes over, or IT does. I’m not stepping one foot outside.

Just because he looked beautiful in the moonlight didn’t mean he wasn’t a rapist, a killer, a madman.

There had to be something wrong with him. A normal person doesn’t sneak out of the woods in the middle of the night, strip naked and go for a dip in the swimming pool of a total stranger.

Maybe he knows Charlie or Serena and they told him it’s okay.

That hadn’t occurred to me before.

But it seemed highly unlikely. Virtually impossible. For one thing, they wouldn’t give someone permission to use the pool in their absence without telling me about it. After all, I’d be here and take him for an intruder.

For another thing, I knew all their friends. The man in the pool wasn’t one of them.

I didn’t think so, anyway.

It was hard to tell exactly what his face looked like, but I was pretty sure that a body as fine as his didn’t belong to anyone I’d ever seen around the house or pool.

Serena and Charlie were sociable people. They did like to invite friends over for pool parties. But I was the only one with permission to use it when they were away. That’s another reason I knew this guy didn’t belong here.

Nobody but me was allowed in the pool when they weren’t home.

As far as I knew, anyway.

And I knew plenty. I’d been living over the garage for three years, and I could see the pool from my windows.

People just didn’t show up and start using it. Whenever I’d seen anyone at the pool, Serena or Charlie or both of them had been there, too.

Of course, I hadn’t spent all my time watching for pool activity. Things might’ve gone on, now and then, that I didn’t know about.

But not much.

I’ve seen squirrels, raccoons, deer and other animals come out of the woods to drink at the pool. I’ve watched Charlie swim his laps at dawn when he probably assumed I was asleep. I’ve even observed the times, fairly often in the summer, when Serena and Charlie went skinny-dipping late at night. They kept the pool lights off, of course, and spoke in whispers or not at all. Whenever they used the pool that way, they always ended up making love. They did it right out in the open, so they must’ve figured I was asleep or blind. Whereas, actually, I happened to be looking out my window.

I was looking out my window more than anyone would’ve guessed, but I’d never found a stranger in the pool.

Not until tonight.

He’d hardly moved at all in the past few minutes. Just drifted this way and that on his back. I began to wonder if maybe he’d fallen asleep. If asleep, he must’ve been having a doozy of a dream.

The telephone rang.

After midnight, and it suddenly let out a loud jangle in the silence and darkness of the den.

I jumped and yelped.

Out on the pool, the stranger’s head jerked sideways in the water. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I knew he was staring straight at me.

4

THE PHONE CALL

Not that he could see me.

If you’re in real darkness and someone else is out in the moonlight, he doesn’t stand a chance of spotting you.

But I felt his eyes on me.

I flinched as the phone rang again.

A phone isn’t meant to ring that late at night. It scares you. Even if you’re not alone in the house and spying on a prowler, the ringing rips through your nerves.

Friends don’t call after nine. Not unless there’s an emergency.

It rang again, and I flinched again.

Out in the pool, the man rolled over, turned and started gliding toward me with his head up.

The phone rang again as I took slow backward steps away from the glass door.

Why did it have to be so loud?

I knew he could hear it. Maybe not this particular phone, but a general clamor. I’d been swimming in the pool myself, sometimes, when people called. Even with the doors and windows shut, you could hear rings and chirps and warbles and tweets from all over the house. I don’t even know how many phones Serena had, but at least five—maybe seven or eight. It was a big house, and there were phones in nearly every room.

The only answering machine was in the den.

With me.

After the fourth ring came clicks that meant the machine was responding.

I kept creeping backward.

Outside, the stranger arrived at the side of the pool. He stood up, put his hands on the concrete edge, and seemed to stare straight at me.

I’m not big on distances. My guess, though—he was only twelve or fifteen feet away from the glass door. And I was on the other side of it, five or six feet back.

More clicks from the machine.

A man’s voice said, “Ah, you finally got yourself an answering machine. Hope it’s not because of me. But it probably is, huh? Who’s the guy you got to record the greeting for you?” A pause. “Never mind. It’s none of my business, I guess. Anyway, are you there? Judy? If you’re there, would you pick up? Please? I know you probably don’t want to talk to me, but…I don’t want to lose you. I love you. Are you there? Please, talk to me.”

He went silent.

The man in the pool jumped, planted a foot on the edge, and climbed out.

“The thing is, I’m not going to call again. I’m not going to beg you to change your mind. I’m not going to plead with you. I’ve got to hang on to a little of my dignity, you know?”

The man started walking slowly toward the glass door.

“So this’ll be it. The ball’s in your court. If you really want it to be over, fine. I’ll accept that. I’ll never bug you again. It’ll be adios, Tony. Forever. I don’t want that to happen, but hell…Are you there, Judy? It feels weird, talking to you this way. Would you please pick up, if you’re there?”

The stranger arrived at the door and peered in.

Could he see me?

Could he hear the quick loud thudding of my heart?

I stood motionless, staring at him. He had his arms raised like a guy who’s been ordered to “stick ’em up.” His open hands were pressed against the glass. So was his forehead. But his nose didn’t touch the glass. Neither did his chest or belly or legs. Nothing else touched except for the tip of his penis, which looked like a smooth and strange little face pushing against the glass to help him search for me.

“Okay,” Tony said to the answering machine. “If that’s how you want it. Anyway, I’ve moved to a new place. I couldn’t stand being in the old apartment anymore, not after everything that’d happened there.” He sounded as if he were trying not to cry. “I’ll give you my number, and you can call me if you want to. If you don’t call, I’ll understand.”

As Tony gave his new telephone number, the man outside took a step away from the door, reached down and grabbed the handle and jerked it.

Snatching up the phone with one hand, I blurted, “Tony!”

With my other hand, I slapped up the light switch.

A lamp came on by the couch.

The sudden brightness hurt my eyes, made me squint, obliterated my moonlit view of the stranger. The sliding door was now a mirror. It showed me a hollow, transparent version of the coffee table, the lamp, and me.

I saw myself with the phone against my left ear. I stood crooked, still bent sideways to the right as if frozen in my reach for the light switch. My belt had come loose. The open robe seemed to split me down the middle. It still covered my left side from shoulder to thigh, but my entire right side was bare to the gaze of the stranger.

If he was still there.

He must’ve leaped back when the light first came on.

Now he returned, looming out of the darkness just beyond the door and pressing his body against the glass.

Tony was talking into my ear. I didn’t pay much attention, but he seemed to believe I was Judy.

The stranger gaped in at me. With his body pressed to the door, the lamplight reached him. He looked awful—grotesquely flattened and spread out—like an alien creature trying to ooze through the glass.

“HELLO!” I shouted into the phone. “POLICE! I WANT TO REPORT A PROWLER!”

“Huh?” Tony asked. “A prowler?”

The stranger writhed against the glass, licked it, rubbed it with his body and open hands as if making believe it was me.

From where I stood, it looked like me.

My reflection was superimposed over him.

He couldn’t see that, though. And didn’t need to, because he had a great view of the real me.

“YES! HE’S IN THE YARD! HE’S TRYING TO FORCE HIS WAY IN. THIS IS 3838 WOODSIDE LANE. YOU’VE GOT TO GET OVER HERE RIGHT AWAY!”

“Who is this? This isn’t Judy?”

“HE’S A WHITE MALE, ABOUT TWENTY YEARS OLD, SIX FEET TALL, A HUNDRED AND EIGHTY POUNDS, WITH SHORT BLOND HAIR.”

“Is this for real? Do you really have a prowler?”

“YES! AND HE’S NAKED, AND HE’S TRYING TO GET IN! YOU’VE GOT TO SEND A SQUAD CAR RIGHT AWAY!”

“Holy shit,” Tony said.

“PLEASE HURRY!”

“Do you want me to hang up and call the police?”

Taking the phone away from my mouth, I yelled at the man, “THE COPS ARE ON THE WAY, YOU SICK BASTARD! THEY’LL BE HERE IN TWO MINUTES!”

I know he heard me, but he seemed to be lost in his own world of skin and glass and me.

Watching him, I saw myself. I looked like a ghost being molested by a mad, drooling mime. He writhed against me, caressed me, kissed me, then suddenly went rigid and started to jerk, shaking the door in its frame. For a moment, I thought he was having a seizure.

In a way, he was.

When I realized what was going on, I gasped and turned my head away.

My eyes met the light switch.

I shot my hand out and flipped it down. Darkness clamped down on the room.

The door stopped shaking.

I looked.

The stranger took a few steps backward, then whirled around. He ran to the edge of the pool, dived in, and swam for the other side.

While I watched him, I heard Tony’s tiny, faint voice coming from the phone’s earpiece down by my side.

The stranger boosted himself out of the pool, scurried over the concrete, swooped down and snatched up his shorts. He didn’t put them on. Clutching them in one hand, he dashed onto the lawn and ran toward the woods.

I lifted the phone.

Tony sounded frantic.“…okay? Hello? What’s happening?”

“I’m here,” I said.

“What happened? What’s going on?”

“I think it’s all right now. He just ran away.”

“You’d better call the cops.”

“He thinks I just did. That’s what scared him off.”

“Maybe you’d better call them for real.”

“I don’t know. He’s gone now.”

“How do you know he won’t come back?”

“Thanks a lot, Tony.”

“Sorry. Are you okay?”

“Just a little shook up. I’m all by myself, and he came sneaking out of the woods behind the house.”

“You said he was naked?”

“Yeah. Well, he took off his shorts and started swimming in the pool.”

“Weird. You don’t have any idea who he was?”

“Not a clue. Just some guy who came out of the woods.”

“Miller’s Woods?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s bad. A lot of real oddballs hang around in there.”

“This is the first time anyone ever came sneaking out to use the pool. That I know about, anyway.”

“You’re lucky that’s all he did.”

“Yeah,” I said. I thought about what he’d done on the door, but kept my mouth shut about it.

“You really should call the cops,” Tony told me.

“I know. You’re probably right.”

“They keep finding bodies in those woods.”

He wasn’t telling me anything new. “Now and then,” I said. “But most of them weren’t killed there. They were just dropped off, you know? It’s not like there’s necessarily a homicidal maniac hanging around in the woods.”

“I sure wouldn’t want to live near them.”

“Well, I don’t mind. I like it, normally. It’s nice and peaceful.”

“You live there alone?”

“I’m alone tonight.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be. I know you don’t want to hear this, but you really can’t be sure he won’t come back.”

“I wish you’d stop saying that.”

“You sound like a nice person.”

“Thanks.”

“I’d hate to think you might end up…you know.”

“I won’t,” I told him.

“Do you have a name?” he asked.

“No, actually I’m one of those people who isn’t that lucky.”

He laughed a little, and I smiled.

“My name’s Alice,” I said. (That isn’t really what I told him. I told him my true name, which is a secret as far as this book is concerned…unless you’re smart enough to find my hidden message.)

“Hello, Alice,” he said.

“Hello, Tony.” (Tony isn’t his real name, either, by the way—in case you were daydreaming when you read the introduction. Tony, Serena, Charlie, Judy, etc.—all made up. The same goes for Miller’s Woods, and so on. Just thought I’d remind you.)

“I guess I dialed a wrong number,” Tony said.

“I guess you did.”

“I was trying to call this gal…”

“I know. Judy. She must’ve dumped you, huh?”

“Something like that.”

“You probably called her once too many times after midnight.”

“Think so?”

“It scares people. You shouldn’t do it.”

“Maybe not.”

“Besides which, it makes you sound desperate. If you want to get back on Judy’s good side, you don’t want her to think you’re desperate about it.”

“You’re probably right.”

“You bet I’m right.”

“Good thing I dialed the wrong number,” he said.

“I’m glad you did. My creepy visitor would probably still be here.”

“So, what are you going to do?”

“Nothing. Go to bed, I guess.”

“You shouldn’t stay there. Not by yourself.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Is there a neighbor you could stay with for the rest of the night?”

“Not exactly. Nobody nearby.”

“What about…?”

“Anyway, I’ll be fine. I really don’t think he’ll be coming back tonight. As far as he knows, the cops are on the way over.”

“I hope you’re right,” Tony said.

“So do I.”

“I’d hate to read about you in the paper.”

“Me, too.”

He laughed quietly. Then he said, “I’m serious about this, though. Is there a friend you can call? Someone who might be willing to come over? Maybe a relative?”

“None.”

“What about heading over to a motel?”

“At this hour?”

“Most of them over by the highway are open all night. You might have to ring a bell, or something, but…”

“I’m not going to any motel. Are you kidding? I’m probably ten times safer staying right here than if I try to drive over to one of those places at this hour. Anyway, haven’t you ever heard of Norman Bates?”

“You’ll be fine if you don’t take a shower.”

“I’ll just stay home and take one.”

Tony was silent for a few moments. It made me wonder what he was thinking about. Then he said, “Look. Why don’t I come over there? Just so you won’t be alone in case this guy decides to try something.”

His suggestion didn’t come as a huge surprise. Still, it made me feel uneasy.

“I don’t think so, Tony. Thanks for asking.”

“I realize we don’t know each other very well.”

“We don’t know each other period,” I pointed out. “You called the wrong number and we’ve been talking for about five minutes. Now you want to come over?”

“I’m worried about you.”

“Maybe you are and maybe you aren’t. Maybe this whole thing’s a set-up. It’s pretty convenient, you just happening to call here when you did.”

“I dialed the wrong number.”

“Maybe you did and maybe you didn’t.”

“Jeez,” he said.

For a few moments, he was silent.

Then he said, “Anyway, it’s getting pretty late. I’d better hit the sack. Good luck with your intruder, Alice. It was nice talking to you. Pretty much. Bye.”

He hung up.

5

EXIT

After that, I put down the phone and crept through the darkness to the sliding door.

The other side of the glass was smeared where the stranger had licked it, where he’d rubbed it with his wet face. It looked like a dirty car windshield after you’ve run wipers across it.

I found a clean place next to the mess his face had made, and peered out as if gazing over his shoulder.

The warnings from Tony made me nervous. Maybe the stranger would sneak back.

Maybe, next time, he wouldn’t let a door stop him.

Not that it had actually stopped him, this time.

I could still picture him writhing against it.

Trying my best to ignore the image, I must’ve spent about ten minutes pressed to the glass. I had to make sure the coast was clear. But I couldn’t get the awful picture out of my mind.

If he’d still been there—the glass gone—my right breast might’ve been pushing against his bare chest. He could’ve been squirming against me, rubbing me, spurting on me.

I finally stumbled backward to get away from the door.

The moonlight showed what he’d left on the glass.

It made me feel sick. Trembling, I turned away. I shut the curtains, then found my purse on the couch and made my way to the other door. I opened it and stepped into the hallway. This time, I was glad to see the foyer light.

This time, too, I wasn’t afraid of being seen.

That’s not quite true. The idea of being seen frightened me; it just didn’t stop me. I walked swiftly down the hall and into the living room. Almost nothing showed on the other side of the glass wall. Just darkness. But the glass gave back an image of me.

Me, striding across the carpet, my purse swinging by my hip, the robe flowing around me, my legs flashing out long and bare as if the robe were an exotic gown with a slit up its front.

I looked like the heroine of a gothic romance.

Or a madwoman from a horror movie.

Especially when I reached up with both hands and lifted the saber off its hooks above the fireplace.

The saber felt good and heavy.

I stepped away from the fireplace, turned toward my dark image in the glass, and watched myself slash the air a few times.

Was he watching?

With the wall of glass in front of me and the foyer light behind my back, I could probably be seen clearly all the way from the edge of the woods.

I raised the saber high.

“You want me, pal?” I asked. “Come and get me.”

I swung the blade a few more times.

I felt powerful and excited. I looked pretty cool, too.

But then I started to feel stupid and silly and even a little scared, so I turned away from the glass and hurried toward the foyer.

Normally, I would’ve left the house through the sliding door in the den. That was just my habit. It probably started because the den was where I spent most of my time, after dark. I’d be in it for hours watching the big-screen television, so I generally felt comfortable there and didn’t want to wander through the huge, empty house to get out. So simple just to use the door that was there, slip outside, slide it shut and hurry over to the garage.

Not tonight.

I just couldn’t. Not after what the stranger had done on the other side of it.

Somebody will have to clean that up, I thought.

Not me. Not tonight, anyhow.

Standing in the foyer, I wondered if there was anything I needed. I had my keys inside my purse. Since I planned to come back first thing in the morning, there was no reason to take my swimsuit, towel, oil, paperback, etc.

The doors were locked. I’d turned off all the lights except for those that were supposed to remain on all night.

I suddenly remembered the air conditioning.

Serena and Charlie usually turned it off before retiring—except when the weather was terribly hot.

When I was in command, I often forgot about the thing and left it going all night.

Since I’d just now thought of it, I rested the saber against my shoulder and marched up the hallway. At the thermostat, I flicked the switch to the Off position.

“What a good girl am I,” I whispered.

Then I wondered which door to use.

Not the den door, that was for sure.

Serena and Charlie’s bedroom had a sliding door. So did the living room, and the dining room beyond that. But all those doors could be seen from the back yard, the pool and the woods. If the stranger was watching, he might see me leave the house. He might even see me go to the garage.

And know where to find me.

I decided to leave by the front door.

First, though, I had to pee. The guest bathroom was just off the hall on my way back to the foyer, so I went in. I’d given little Debbie a Winnie the Pooh nightlight for her second birthday, and there it was, spreading a soft glow through the dark.

I didn’t touch the switch for the overhead lights.

Late at night, it’s always best to avoid turning on lights. At least if you’re in a room with windows. The sudden brightness, where a moment earlier the windows had been patches of empty black, announces you to the world, gives away your exact location.

The bathroom had a pair of high, frosted windows that were clearly visible from nearly anywhere outside the front of the house.

So I settled for the light from Pooh bear.

With the door open and the lights off, I placed the saber and my purse on the rug just in front of the toilet. Then I took off the robe, draped it over a towel bar, and sat down.

Too bad I’d already shut off the air conditioning. Not because I suddenly felt hot, but because I was so noisy. Without the air going, the only sound in the house seemed to be me.

Talk about giving away your location!

Leaning forward, elbows on my knees, I could see out the open bathroom door. I kept watching. I half expected someone to drift by in the hallway, or come in.

The thoughts gave me gooseflesh. Prickly bumps sprouted all over me, the way they do sometimes when I try to squash a really awful spider in the corner of a ceiling and it gets away and falls on my bare arm.

I felt crawly all up and down my body.

Nobody showed up in the doorway, though.

Finally, I got finished. I was reluctant to flush, but did it anyway. In the silence, the noise of the flush was like a sudden roar.

So loud that anything might’ve happened somewhere else in the house: phones might’ve rung; somebody could have shouted out my name; the stranger might’ve smashed the glass of a window or door.

At last, the noise subsided.

I put the robe on, belted it shut, then crouched and picked up my purse and the saber. In the doorway, I stopped. I leaned forward, easing my head into the hall, and looked both ways.

Nobody.

Of course.

I stepped out and walked quickly to the front door.

Getting it unlocked and open would’ve been tricky with my left hand, since I’m a righty. So I switched the sword to my left hand. With the blade resting against my shoulder, I used my right hand to unfasten the deadbolt, turn the knob, and pull the door open.

It swept toward me.

For some reason, the porch light was off.

It shouldn’t have been off.

And nobody should’ve been standing on the front stoop, but someone was.

A tall, dark figure reaching for me.

I shrieked.

Through the noise of my outcry, he said something. I couldn’t hear it, though. Still shrieking, I swung the saber at him.

A left-handed, feeble try.

He staggered backward to avoid the blade.

It missed him, but he stumbled off the edge of the stoop and fell backward. He landed on the grass. A whoomp exploded out of him; the impact with the lawn must’ve knocked his wind out.

I leaped over the threshold, ran across the stoop and hopped down. Stradling his hips, I raised the saber high with both hands and swept it down as hard as I could.

It chopped his head down the middle, cleaving his face in half. It split his head open most of the way to his neck, but his jaw stopped the blade.

He thrashed and gurgled between my feet.

My saber was stuck, either between a couple of his lower front teeth or in the bone of his jaw. I shook it and tugged it. Instead of coming loose, it jerked his head this way and that.

At last, it came out.

I was all set to give him another chop, but he’d quit moving.

He looked pretty dead.

Pretty isn’t a great choice of words, under the circumstances. Anyway, there was no good reason to give him another whack.

I felt too shocked and worn out to do much of anything, so I just kept standing over him, his hips between my ankles. I had the sword clutched in my right hand, but held it off to the side so blood wouldn’t rub off or drip on me.

I stood there for a long time.

Staring down at the body.

It was lit by the dim glow from a lamp near the driveway.

It wore a short-sleeved plaid shirt, blue jeans and loafers. No socks.

It sure wasn’t my prowler.

I figured it was probably Tony.

6

DISCOVERIES

My guess was right.

When I finally recovered enough to move, I stepped away from him, put my saber down on the grass, then crouched beside him and searched the pockets of his jeans.

He had a comb and handkerchief in his left front pocket. A wallet in the left back pocket. In the right front, a leather key case and some coins. In the right back, a pistol.

A pistol!

Had he come here planning to stand guard and protect me?

Or to use the gun against me?

I put his things into the pockets of my robe, but the gun was too heavy. It felt like a hand tugging down on my pocket. Afraid it might ruin the robe, I took it out and carried it.

Back inside the house, I shut the door. I sat down on the cool marble floor of the foyer and inspected my findings.

The white handkerchief looked clean. I didn’t study the comb very closely; combs can be gross. He had eighty-five cents in change. Six keys in his leather case. Thirty-eight dollars in the bill compartment of his wallet.

The wallet was full of stuff, but I won’t bore you with a list. I’ll cut to the chase, as they say. It contained two foilwrapped condoms—meant for me?—and a driver’s license that identified him as Anthony Joseph Romano.

His date of birth was two years earlier than mine, which made him twenty-eight. The photo must’ve been taken a few years ago, because he hardly looked old enough to be out of high school. He had short blond hair, freckles across his nose, and a friendly smile.

It made me feel bad, looking at him.

Knowing I’d killed him.

He’d probably driven over here to protect me. Nothing more sinister than that.

He thought he was being a good guy.

Like they say, “No good deed goes unpunished.”

I felt rotten about killing him, but not particularly guilty. It wasn’t my fault he paid me a surprise visit and got his head chopped open for the trouble. I hadn’t invited him over.

He should’ve minded his own business.

Not only had he gotten himself killed, but he’d put me into a horrible situation.

What was I supposed to do now?

I stopped looking at his photo, and checked the address on his driver’s license. 4468 Washington Avenue, Apt. 212. (Sounds like a real address, doesn’t it? I made it up.) I knew the general area. It wasn’t far from here. Less than ten minutes. After hanging up the phone, he must’ve grabbed his pistol and hurried right out to his car…

No.

He probably hadn’t come here from the Washington Avenue address. He’d moved to a new place because of all the memories. That’s one of the reasons he’d tried to phone Judy—to let her know his new phone number.

Unless he’d made the move a couple of months ago, the address on his driver’s license almost had to be wrong.

I gave the wallet another search. Sure enough, tucked into the bill compartment was a folded slip of paper with an address scribbled on it in pencil: 645 Little Oak Lane, Apt. 12. (But not really.) This was probably his new address.

I put the paper back where I’d found it, set the wallet aside, and picked up the pistol.

It was a small, stainless steel .22 automatic with a black plastic handle. The fine print in the steel told me that it was a Smith & Wesson.

The safety wasn’t on.

I dropped the loaded magazine into my hand, then pulled back the slide. Tony didn’t have a bullet in the chamber. I shoved the magazine back up the handle until it clicked into place, then worked the slide, watching through the port to make sure it fed in a round. Then I thumbed the safety on.

After that, I just kept sitting there.

I didn’t have the energy to get up.

Besides, get up and do what?

Deal is, I didn’t know what to do next. So I just sat there, staring.

I’ve gotta do something, I kept telling myself.

What’s the best course of action if you’ve just butchered an innocent man?

The answer probably seems obvious to you: call the cops and tell them the whole truth about everything.

Or fudge a little, maybe. Claim that he was holding the pistol when I opened the door. To make that version work, I would only have to take the gun outside and put it into his hand.

Which hand? That always trips up the criminals on TV. They stick the gun into the right hand of a lefty.

I’m a tad smarter than that.

Tony’d been carrying the weapon in his right rear pocket. Also, he’d reached for me with his right hand.

Reached for me? Maybe he’d been reaching for the doorbell button.

In either case, the evidence seemed to prove him a righty.

Not that it mattered. I had no intention of planting the pistol on him.

I had no intention of calling the cops, either.

Right now, you’re probably thinking, Oh, you stupid idiot! A guy you’ve never seen before in your life showed up in the middle of the night with a gun! It’s a clear case of self-defense! Call the cops right now! Fess up! They probably won’t even charge you with anything!

Wrong.

Calling the police might be smart for you to do, but you’re probably one of those people who’s never gotten in trouble. A good, upstanding citizen.

If I were you, I probably would call the cops and admit everything. And I’m sure it’d turn out hunky-dory.

But I’m not you.

I’m me, alias Alice.

I could’ve gotten away with calling about the prowler. I might have actually done it, too, if the phone had been handy. It would’ve been safe. My troubles were several years earlier and in a different state. Cops coming over to save me from a prowler wouldn’t even know about me or what I’d done.

But if they came to investigate Tony’s death, they’d investigate me.

They’d run my prints.

Find out who I am.

After that, I wouldn’t stand a chance.

So Tony had to go.

Tony and his car, if he’d driven one here.

Obviously, I had a long night ahead of me. But I stayed sitting on the marble floor for a while longer, wondering what to do first, where to start.

Finally, I decided to start by changing my clothes.

No matter what I might end up doing, I didn’t want to do it wearing Charlie’s robe. I liked the robe too much. It was bound to get bloody if I kept it on.

Whatever got bloody would have to be destroyed.

For that reason, I couldn’t wear clothes belonging to Serena or Charlie. I wasn’t eager to sacrifice any of my own clothes, either, but figured it had to be done.

Which meant a trip to my place above the garage.

Now that my mind was made up, I stuffed Tony’s hanky and comb and everything else into the pockets of my robe. Everything except the pistol. I held on to that.

Then I went out the front door again.

I didn’t plan to go back inside the house until everything was taken care of, so I locked the door and shut it after me.

Just for the hell of it, I went over to the porch light, reached up and gave the bulb a twist.

It turned easily.

The light came on, almost blinded me.

“Very interesting,” I muttered.

Had Tony loosened it? Had someone else? Or had the bulb simply worked its way loose all on its own, with nobody’s help? (Light bulbs do that, you know. Almost as if they’re living creatures unscrewing themselves for sport or for reasons we’ll never guess.)

I left it screwed in.

All the better to see by.

Here’s the deal: I wasn’t worried about anyone noticing Tony’s body on the lawn. That could only happen if a person came down the driveway.

Not likely to happen at this hour of the night—or morning.

His body couldn’t be seen from the street because a thick, tall hedge stood in the way. Hedges also ran along both sides of the lawn.

In addition to that, we had no neighbors.

None close enough to worry about, anyway.

There were vacant lots to the right and left, and a string of vacant lots across the road. The nearest house, a couple of lots to the left, was empty and up for sale. The nearest occupied house stood about a quarter of a mile to the right, and on the other side of the road.

We were pretty much alone out here.

It couldn’t hurt to leave the light on. But then I thought, why take the risk? I wouldn’t have any use for the porch light until I came back from the garage.

As I reached up for the bulb, though, my eyes strayed over to Tony.

I hadn’t really seen him before. Not in halfway good light, anyway.

From the chin up, he was a horrible wreck.

You wouldn’t recognize him as the guy in his driver’s license photo.

He looked like a nightmare.

Considering the gory ruin of his head, I was surprised to notice how clean his clothes seemed to be.

With the light still on, I went over to him and checked more carefully. His shirt had a few spots of blood on it, but nothing obvious. His jeans seemed fine.

Why not?

First, I took the purse off my shoulder and removed my robe. I left them on the dry concrete of the front stoop.

Then I crouched over Tony and stripped him. It wasn’t easy, especially because the night was so hot. Even though I’m in pretty good shape, I ended up out of breath and sweaty.

When I was done, I slipped into his loafers. They were a little too big for me, but I could walk in them okay. I carried his jeans and shirt over to the stoop and dropped them.

Then I stretched out naked on my back for a rest.

The concrete felt cool and nice.

Too nice. I could hardly force myself to get moving again.

Finally, though, I stood up to put his clothes on. I started with the shirt. It was very large, and hung halfway down my thighs. But it would do just fine. Next, I slipped his shoes off and climbed into the blue jeans.

They were way too big. When I had them all the way up around my waist, my feet were still inside the denim legs. Also, I had a huge amount of spare room inside the waistband. Looking down the gap, I could see all the way to my knees. I fastened the belt, anyway. It had enough holes to let me cinch it tight and keep the jeans from falling. With that taken care of, I bent over and rolled up the legs. The cuffs reached almost to my knees. I looked like I was wearing waders.

The jeans felt too hot and too heavy.

I needed them, though. I wanted the pockets; otherwise, I could’ve gotten rid of the jeans and just worn the shirt like a dress.

What I finally did was use the saber to cut the legs off. I took the legs off very high, then slit the sides almost up to the belt.

After that, the jeans felt light and airy.

What was left of them.

I returned all of Tony’s belongings to the pockets where I’d found them. I also slipped my own key case into a pocket.

Then I unlocked the front door and went back inside the house, but only long enough to put my purse and Charlie’s robe in the living room.

I left again.

Reaching up, I unscrewed the porch bulb. It was pretty hot by then, and made my fingertips smart.

7

CLEAN UP

Ever try to carry around a dead guy?

Let me tell you, it isn’t easy.

So I left Tony sprawled on the lawn, right where he’d fallen, and went hiking up the driveway without him.

On the road, just to the right of the driveway entrance, a car was parked at the curb. It was the only car in sight.

The driver’s door was locked, but one of Tony’s keys did the trick. I climbed in and tried a key in the ignition. The engine started. Keeping the headlights off, I swung away from the curb, did a U-turn, and drove into the driveway.

When the trunk seemed to be even with Tony, I stopped the car. I got out and opened the trunk. It looked pretty empty except for the spare tire. Leaving it open, I went over to Tony.

I picked up his legs by the ankles, turned him, and started dragging him toward the driveway. The grass was still wet from the sprinklers. The wetness helped his body slide, but also made my footing tricky. A couple of times, my feet flew out from under me and I landed on my butt, which didn’t feel too swift.

By the time we reached the edge of the driveway, I knew we had a problem. Not to be too graphic about it, his split head had left a trail across the grass. The stuff on the grass wasn’t what worried me, though. Most of it would go away after the automatic sprinkling system had gone through a few cycles. Birds, ants, and so forth would take care of the rest. The problem, for me, was whatever might get on the driveway. I didn’t want to wake up in the morning and find bloodstains on the concrete. They’d be hard to get rid of.

At first, the only possible solution seemed to be a plastic bag over Tony’s head to catch whatever might want to slop out.

But I was in no mood to run around hunting for a bag.

Finally, I came up with a simple answer to the problem. All I had to do was turn the car sideways so its rear jutted out over the grass.

So that’s what I did. The driveway was wide enough to make it fairly simple.

I lined the car up with Tony, backed up until the rear tires almost went off the edge of the driveway, then climbed out and looked at him.

Loading his body into the trunk was going to be a bear.

And messy, too.

But it couldn’t be avoided.

Before getting started, I took off the shirt and cut-off jeans and tossed them onto the driver’s seat. For one thing, I didn’t want them to get gory. For another, the night was too hot for clothes, especially if you’re doing hard work.

I stepped out of the shoes and left them on the driveway.

Then I walked onto the slippery wet grass, straddled Tony’s hips, bent down, clutched his wrists and straightened up, pulling him. His back came off the ground. But then, instead of continuing to rise, he slid on his butt and went scooting between my legs. I scurried backward, trying to stay with him, and bumped into the rear of the car.

“Shit!”

He was up to his waist beneath the car like a grease monkey going under to make repairs.

Hanging on to his wrists, I waddled forward to drag him out. He just lay beneath me, staring at the show while I hobbled over him, my breasts lurching from side to side between my down-stretched arms.

By the time I’d left his head behind me, I was doubled over like a contortionist, my arms straining backward between my legs. At last, he started to slide.

I shuffled onward, pulling him.

He finally cleared the car. By then, I was huffing and sweaty again.

I sat down on the rear bumper.

“Should’ve minded your own business,” I muttered. “You wouldn’t be dead, for one thing. For another, you wouldn’t be putting me through all this shit.”

He didn’t answer.

He probably figured, though, that I didn’t have much room for complaining. I was still alive, after all, whereas he wasn’t. I was inconvenienced, but he was toes up.

“This is more than a little inconvenience, buddy,” I told him. “This is a major pain in the ass.”

The night was way too hot for such work. Sweat was pouring down my body. It made my eyes sting. It tickled my sides and back.

How nice it would’ve been, just then, to go around back and jump in the pool.

Thinking about the pool, I remembered the prowler. A funny thing, though. The thought of him didn’t frighten me, disgust me, thrill me—nothing. He’d lost all his powers to intimidate or fascinate me. Probably the moment I put the saber through Tony’s head.

His fault.

All his fault.

True enough, I thought. That bastard got Tony killed as sure as if he’d been the one swinging the sword.

I oughta kill his ass for doing this to Tony and me.

If I went swimming, he might show up and give me the chance. I should take the pistol or saber with me, just in case.

But which?

I couldn’t exactly swim with either weapon.

Forget it. Forget which weapon to take, forget having a swim. Time’s a-wasting.

Tony had to be dealt with.

I tried again.

This time, I straddled his head instead of his hips. Bending down, I jammed my open hands underneath his shoulders and grabbed his armpits. When I lifted him, he started to slide away. Instead of letting him go, I hauled back on him, pulled him against me and hoisted him up.

His full weight shoved against my chest.

Instead of rushing forward and throwing him headlong into the trunk, the way I’d figured, I found myself suddenly staggering backward. I fell, and he came down on top of me. His split-open head mashed against my face.

I wanted to scream.

But you can’t scream with your mouth shut. God knows, I kept it shut. If I hadn’t, it might’ve ended up full of Tony’s brains or whatever.

So the scream only happened in my mind.

Twisting and bucking, I threw him off me.

I crawled away from him. Still on my hands and knees, I lost my steak supper on the grass. The steak, and then some. I couldn’t stop vomiting. After a while, nothing came out except slobber.

Finally, I did stop. I crawled away from the glop, stayed on all fours while I tried to catch my breath, then struggled to my feet. Bending over, I put my hands on my knees. I stayed that way for a few minutes.

I felt stuff sticking to my face.

When I had the strength to move again, I wiped my face with both hands, then squatted and rubbed my hands against the damp grass.

I wanted to take a shower.

I wanted to scrub Tony off me.

His blood and goo.

But that would have to wait. First I needed to deal with his body.

I wandered over to it, being careful where I stepped with my bare feet.

“What the hell am I gonna do with you?” I asked.

“That’s your problem,” he seemed to tell me. “You should’ve thought of that before you split my head open, you dumb bitch.”

He was sprawled face down, the way he’d landed after I threw him off me.

I grabbed the elastic waistband of his skivvies, hoisted him to his knees and started dragging him backward. We made it about halfway to the trunk of the car before the elastic gave out. The shorts tore away, and he flopped.

I tossed the useless rag into the trunk, straddled his butt, grabbed him by the knobs of his hipbones and hauled him up.

It seemed to be working.

I reared back, bringing him higher and higher.

Then my hands slipped off his hips. I wasn’t ready for that. Not at all. I flew backward, slammed the rear of the car and tumbled into the trunk with my feet kicking at the sky.

It hurt so much that my eyes filled with tears.

He was dead, but beating up on me.

And defeating me.

“Bastard!” I shouted at him.

I could almost hear him laughing at me.

Crying, I twisted my body around and crawled out of the trunk.

Tony was sprawled on the grass.

“Think you can beat me?” I asked him.

“Think it?” I could hear him taunt me. “I know it! You’re too weak to get me in the trunk. I’m too big, and you’re too weak. I’ll still be lying here tomorrow when the sun comes up. I’ll still be lying here next week when Serena and Charlie come home.”

“Oh, no you won’t,” I said.

But he was right in a way.

Not about me being too weak. I was in great shape, and I probably could’ve lifted him if everything hadn’t been so wet and slippery.

He was right about his size.

He was too big.

I took care of that with the saber.

He lost ten or eleven inches very quickly.

I figured his head wouldn’t make that much difference, though. It probably didn’t weigh more than ten or fifteen pounds. So after tossing it into the trunk, I removed both his arms. They didn’t come off as easily as his head. I couldn’t just whack them off with a couple of good blows, but had to really work at it. And the arms were easy compared to his legs.

This was very rough work for a hot night.

When I had Tony down to his torso, I stuck the sword in the ground, got down on my knees, wrapped my arm around his chest, and picked him up.

At that point, he was still pretty heavy.

But manageable.

His torso shook the car when I dumped it into the trunk on top of his other parts.

I slammed the trunk shut.

By then, I was really tuckered out.

Not to mention filthy.

So exhausted I could hardly walk, I stumbled away from the driveway, found a clean place on the lawn, and flopped. The cool, wet grass felt wonderful. I lay on my back, panting for air, sweat pouring off my body.

In my mind, I was floating on the cool water of the pool.

That’s how I’ll spend tomorrow, I told myself. This whole mess will be over by then, and I’ll do nothing all day except float around in the pool and drink ice-cold cocktails and sunbathe.

Something in the grass under my back started to bother me. A stone or a twig, probably. It had been pushing against me from the start, but I’d been too worn out to care.

Now, I rolled over to get away from it.

Flat on my stomach, I crossed my arms under my face. They were sticky, though, and didn’t smell very good, so I got them away from my face and spread them out. With nothing for a pillow, I lowered my head onto the lawn.

But I didn’t like having my face in the grass.

The grass tickled. Especially where it brushed against my eyelid and lips. Also, I wondered what sort of bugs might be under me. I didn’t want ants or spiders crawling on my face, getting into my nostrils, my mouth, my eyes.

For that matter, I didn’t like the idea of bugs crawling on me anywhere.

I wondered what might be drawn to me by the smell of Tony’s blood.

Before you know it, I felt tiny creatures scurrying all over my bare skin. Most of them were probably just in my mind, but they seemed real enough.

That ended my rest period.

I got to my feet and staggered across the lawn. At the front of the house, in the space between a couple of bushes, was a coiled garden hose. Charlie used it, every so often, to wash the car in the driveway.

I used it to wash me.

The first water to blast out of the nozzle was warm from cooking inside the hose all day. I aimed the hard stream at my hands and forearms. It hit me with such force that it hurt, but it sure knocked the blood and filth off me.

Even before I finished hosing off my arms, cold water was shooting out. I adjusted the nozzle. The rough, narrow rod of shooting water spread out and became a spray. I could’ve made it a gentle, light shower, but I kept it powerful enough to do the job.

Raising the nozzle, I aimed down at the top of my head. The water drummed my skull, froze my scalp, matted my hair, rushed all the way down my body. I flinched under the frigid attack. I cringed and shuddered. After the first shock, though, it didn’t feel so horrible. The spray was no less cold, but I must’ve been getting used to it. Pretty soon, it seemed pleasantly cool.

I moved the nozzle around, spraying myself straight in the face, under my arms and down my sides, and so on. When the water hit certain areas—where I was still especially hot—it again felt ice cold.

Soon, I was as clean as I could get without soap and hot water.

I felt human again.

But thirsty. Afraid of choking if I shot the water straight into my mouth, I aimed the nozzle sideways in front of my lips, darted my head forward and took bites out of the spray. It worked pretty well. But sometimes I didn’t get away quickly enough. Then, the water pelted the inside of my cheek, making quick hollow tapping sounds, and flooded my mouth. I ended up choking a couple of times, but nothing serious.

After taking care of my thirst, I went on spraying myself.

Why stop?

For one thing, it made me feel so much better after all that hot, dirty work.

For another, I deserved a treat. I’d gotten Tony safely stowed inside the trunk of his car, so the worst part of the job was over. Now, it was just a matter of driving him away.

But to where?

Until I could figure out a good place to leave his car, there was no reason to quit enjoying the hose.

Just take it somewhere far away, I thought. The farther away, the better.

Oh, really? How do you think you’ll get home?

How far away is his place? I wondered. Not the old place, but the new one. Which street was it on?

I tried to picture the writing on the slip of paper in his wallet.

Little Oak Lane!

Not far away, at all.

Well, four or five miles, but I could walk a distance like that in about an hour.

What if I drop the car off—with him in it—right where he lives?

Perfect!

They might not find his body for days.

And when they do, they won’t have a clue as to where he went to get himself killed.

That matter solved, I dragged the hose across the lawn, being careful not to step in anything nasty. Along the way, I stopped and gave the saber a long, hard squirt. It was planted half a foot deep in the earth, and vibrated as the water struck it.

When I got in range of Tony’s car, I twisted the nozzle. The spray tightened into a stiff tube of water that reached all the way. My aim was too high, at first. The water slammed against the rear window and seemed to explode off the glass, sending a shower skyward while most of the water sluiced down the top of the trunk. I lowered the nozzle slightly and hit the edge of the trunk lid dead on, nailed it where I’d touched it the most and where it was most bloody. The water blasted it, rumbling and bursting away.

Then I did the rear bumper, then the back tires.

Done with the car, I adjusted the nozzle to make a soft spray. For a while, I watered the lawn. Along with the lawn, I watered whatever of Tony was spread around. Even in the lousy yellow light from the porch and nearby lamps, I could see rusty stains on the grass, and small bits of him. My vomit, too.

Soon, the grass looked green again.

I carried the hose back to its place near the front of the house, arranged it in a proper coil, gave my hands a final rinse, then reached in between the bushes and shut the water off.

Not much remained to be done.

I gathered the two denim legs that I’d cut from Tony’s jeans. With one of them, I wiped the saber.

I thought about taking the saber into the house, but I was naked and dripping and didn’t want to bother. I certainly couldn’t take it with me. So I slid it inside the severed legs of the jeans and hid it in the bushes.

That was pretty much the end of the clean up.

8

TONY GOES HOME

I was still wet when I put on Tony’s jeans and shirt. They stuck to me. I slipped my feet into his loafers, then climbed into the driver’s seat.

The car started fine. With a couple of easy maneuvers, I straightened it out. It ended up with its front toward the road.

Before taking off, I gave the lawn a final glance.

Everything looked okay.

Daylight might be another story, but I intended to take a good, long look at the whole area after the sun came up and make sure nothing showed that shouldn’t.

Feeling weary but good, the job nearly done—and the worst of it definitely over—I gave the car some gas and headed for the road.

At the top of the driveway, I turned left. There was no traffic in sight, so I kept the headlights off and drove along the two-lane country road by moonlight. With the windows wide open, the night air rushed in. It felt wonderful, blowing against me. And it smelled so fine, too. Sweet and moist and woodsy.

I almost turned on the radio. It would’ve been great to be tooling along through the darkness with a summertime song in my ears. But I was on a stealth mission. I kept the radio off, so the only sounds came from the car’s engine and the hiss of its tires on the pavement and the wind rushing by.

It was lovely, even without a song.

It made me want to go out every night—but not with a dismembered body in the trunk.

Just drive and drive along the empty country roads in the moonlight, smelling the smells of the night, feeling the soft rush of the wind. Just roam with nowhere to go. And with nothing to give me that tingly little scared feeling deep down inside.

Of course, maybe the scared feeling gave the trip a little extra flavor.

It’s hard to tell the difference, sometimes, between fear and excitement.

Anyway, the good part of the trip only lasted a few minutes. Coming to the town limits, I had to slow down and put the headlights on. Then I headed for Little Oak Lane, which I figured was in the newer residential area on the other side of town.

If I hadn’t been in Tony’s car (with him in the trunk), I probably would’ve made a straight shot through the middle of downtown on Central Street. I like to call it “the scenic tour,” because there’s nothing worth seeing in downtown Chester. (Not the town’s real name. I’ve dubbed it Chester in honor of Chester from Gunsmoke—because it’s a really lame town that just limps along.)

Downtown Chester fills both sides of Central Street for five blocks. And that’s about it. The street gets pretty crowded during the day, though I can’t imagine why. Maybe it’s people looking to buy discount lamps or old-lady shoes. For any serious shopping, you go elsewhere. Like to the Ralph’s supermarket or the mall or the Wal-Mart or Home Depot—none of which is anywhere near Chester’s business district.

When I came to Central, I slowed down and looked. The street was well lighted, and almost empty. But not empty enough. A couple of drinking establishments must’ve still been open. I spotted about a dozen parked cars, two or three people roaming around, and even one car heading toward me.

So I got away from Central and drove an extra block before turning.

On this road, nothing was open. I saw nobody milling about. No cars were coming, either. I glimpsed some activity when I looked down sidestreets, but nothing to worry me.

I only had two real concerns about the drive. First, that somebody would recognize Tony’s car and remember that it was on the move that night. Second, that I might be seen behind the wheel.

Neither problem was likely to arise unless somebody got pretty close to us.

Which never happened, as far as I could tell.

I did take detours, a couple of times, to avoid approaching vehicles. Once, I even pulled to the curb, shut off the engine and headlights, and ducked until a car’d gone by. Later, driving past a jogger, I turned my head aside so he wouldn’t be able to see my face.

I also had to wait at an intersection for an old bum lady to push her shopping cart across the street in front of me. Normally, a person like that would’ve given me the creeps.

But she didn’t spook me at all.

I just worried that she might get a good look at me. Hunched over her shopping cart, though, she never glanced in my direction.

Soon after she’d gone by, I came to Little Oak Lane. Stopping under a street light, I pulled the slip of paper out of Tony’s wallet and checked the address.

645 Little Oak Lane, Apt. 12.

It was only a block away.

A two-story, stucco apartment house with a subterranean parking lot.

Near the entrance, a driveway swooped into the lot.

Rolling slowly past it, I glanced down the concrete ramp.

Awfully well-lighted down there.

The little tremor in my belly grew large.

I drove around the block to give myself time to think. On the one hand, the building’s lot seemed like the perfect place to drop off Tony’s car. He probably had an assigned parking space in there.

Where better to leave his car than precisely where it should be?

Seeing it there in the morning, who would ever guess he’d gone somewhere in the middle of the night and gotten himself killed?

And his body might not be discovered for days.

On the other hand, someone might enter the parking lot and see me.

Which would screw up everything.

What are the chances?

Slim, I told myself. Very slim. The danger would only last for a minute or two—long enough to drive in, locate Tony’s space, park his car, jump out and run back up the ramp to get outside.

Worth the risk.

I came to that conclusion just in time to make the turn.

Oh, God, here we go!

I swung to the right and drove slowly down the ramp into the lot. Nobody seemed to be coming or going. The place looked deserted except for the parked cars. Lots of them. I began to worry about finding a space for Tony’s car.

That turned out not to be the problem.

Among the twenty or so parked cars, I found three empty spaces. But they were labelled with letters, not numbers.

L, R and W.

That was the problem.

One of them had to be reserved for Tony’s car.

But which one? He rented apartment 12, not apartment L, R or W.

After making one full loop through the lot, I stopped and tried to think.

I sure didn’t want to leave Tony’s car in the wrong slot. That would make it really conspicuous. Better to abandon it on a street than to leave it in someone else’s space.

A one-in-three chance of getting it right made for lousy odds.

I needed a clue, and fast. At any moment, one of the two missing cars might return and I’d be seen.

Think!

If Tony had been worried about forgetting the letter of his parking space, wouldn’t he have written it on the same paper as his address?

I hauled out the paper again and double-checked it.

645 Little Oak Lane, Apt. 12.

No L, no R, no W. Nothing except the address.

Forget it! Park and get out of here!

No, wait!

Could there be a correlation between Tony’s apartment number and any of the letters?

With the help of my fingers, I counted to the twelfth letter of the alphabet.

12 was L!

Fabulous!

It didn’t make anything certain, but at least it was a clue.

I swung his car into space L, shut off the headlights, killed the engine, put the keys in my pocket, and pulled out Tony’s handkerchief. With that, I wiped the steering wheel, shift lever, interior door handle, and every other surface that I might’ve touched. Then I climbed out, locked the door, and shut it so gently that it hardly made a noise.

For the next minute or so, I used the hanky to wipe the outside. The rear of the car was still wet from getting hosed. That didn’t worry me much. It was just water. It would dry soon enough.

I saw no traces of blood.

Tucking the hanky into my pocket, I headed for the driveway ramp. It seemed like an endless distance away. I listened for sounds of approaching cars. And for footfalls. The only sounds came from Tony’s loafers on my feet, clumping along the concrete. They sounded loud and hollow.

Finally, I reached the ramp.

My legs felt shaky as I hurried to the top.

Suddenly, I was out!

In and out, slick as a whistle, unseen!

I almost clapped my hands, but didn’t. Someone might glance out a window to see who’d made the noise.

Feeling light and free, I quickened my pace.

I’d be home in an hour.

Five, six miles.

Maybe a little longer than an hour. At a good pace, I can make four miles in an hour. But it might take an hour and a half for six miles.

Then I got to thinking.

Suddenly, I wasn’t certain of the mileage.

The drive had felt like a lot more than six miles. I must’ve been in the car for half an hour.

Half an hour, averaging about thirty miles per hour…

Fifteen miles!

But I did make those detours, pull over once, drive around the block while I was trying to make up my mind, and sit in parking lot for a few minutes trying to figure out which slot to use.

So maybe the distance was more like ten or twelve miles.

It can’t possibly be that far!

But I had no way of knowing for sure.

During the drive over, I hadn’t paid any attention to the clock or to the odometer.

If only I’d checked the odometer before starting out from home…

Or set the tripometer.

Oh, my God!

I stopped walking.

Was Tony’s car equipped with a tripometer?

I tried to call up an image of the dashboard. I pictured a dashboard, okay, and it had a tripometer, but I didn’t know whether my picture was accurate. Maybe I was just imagining the device.

But if Tony did have one, and if he’d set it to zero before coming to my rescue…

I had to go back.

9

THE LOST DETAIL

So many little details to think about.

And if you don’t think about them, too bad, tough toenails, you’re done for.

Just don’t kill anyone. That’s my big advice to you, if you’re reading this. I’ve heard that books are supposed to be meaningful and help a person gain insights into themselves, or life, or something. So maybe that’s what you should get from my book—don’t kill anyone or you’ll be sorry.

Of course, I guess any person with half an ounce of sense knows that already.

The bad part is, even if you know better, you might end up doing it anyway.

Like me.

I sure never set out to split open Tony’s head. It could have happened to anyone. It’s all a matter of circumstances.

Just like we’re all at the mercy of our genes—which pretty much decide everything about how we look and act and even what diseases we’ll probably get—we’re also at the mercy of circumstances.

All of a sudden, WHAM! and we’ve killed someone.

You might be pretty smug and sure you’ll never do it, but just try popping out of your house in the middle of the night and finding a stranger on your doorstep about to grab you. See what happens then.

See what you’d do.

It’s you or him, and you figure he’s there to rape or kill you.

If you don’t get him fast, he’ll get you.

I bet you’d whack him if you could.

And then what would you do, after he’s splayed out on your lawn as dead as a carp?

I know, you’d call the cops.

And ruin your life.

The thing is—do you want the straight scoop?

Even if you’re a goody-two-shoes who has never been in trouble in your life, you’ll be walking into a nightmare if you bring the cops into the picture. For one thing, maybe the courts won’t see the killing as self-defense. You might get convicted of murder or manslaughter and end up in jail. But suppose you make out fine with the legal system? They either don’t hit you with criminal charges at all, or you get acquitted. Great. Congratulations. But what about the friends and relatives of the guy you killed?

Ever hear of a wrongful death lawsuit?

Ever hear of revenge?

I think about stuff like this.

I bet you’d think about it, too, if you ever killed somebody.

Even by accident.

You’d sure better think about it. Do you really want to call the cops? Especially considering this: if you don’t call them—and you’re smart and lucky and have the guts to do whatever it takes—the whole situation might go away.

Just like it never happened.

Me, that’s what I wanted.

I wanted it to go away.

I would’ve done anything to make it go away, and that included making a return trip to Tony’s car in the parking lot. I hated to go back, but I had to.

With a simple push of a button, the tripometer’s wheels would spin to 000 and the cops would lose their best clue about where Tony got killed.

I was sure glad I’d thought of it.

On my way to the parking lot, I tried to think of any other details that needed my attention.

I came up with nothing else in connection with Tony’s car or apartment. Just set back the tripometer, and leave.

But several details would need to be taken care of, back home.

I made a mental list of them.

1. Immediately retrieve the saber from where I hid it in the bushes.

2. First thing in the morning, check the lawn carefully and clean up any remaining blood or debris. Whatever little pieces of Tony I might find in the grass (and there shouldn’t be much) could go down the garbage disposal in Serena’s kitchen.

3. Make sure to clean off the glass door where the stranger made his mess. (This had nothing to do with covering up Tony’s death, but was for my own peace of mind.)

4. Clean the saber and return it to its proper place on the living room wall.

5. Get rid of Tony’s stuff. If suspicion somehow ended up falling on me, I’d better not get caught with his jeans, shirt, wallet, shoes, etc.

That was all I could think of.

But I felt as if I must be forgetting something.

I kept going over the list in my mind, wondering what I’d missed.

And came up with:

6. Check the street in front of the house, just in case. He’d parked there. Maybe he’d dropped something.

7. Check the driveway.

Hell, check everywhere. And double-check. Make sure there’s absolutely nothing that might lead anyone to think Tony was there, or that anybody’d gotten killed.

That should cover it.

But I still had an uneasy sensation that I’d forgotten a very important piece of evidence.

What could it be?

Maybe nothing. Have you ever started off on a trip feeling absolutely certain you’d forgotten something? Maybe you’d neglected to turn off the coffee pot, or you’d left behind your swimsuit or toothbrush? But you can’t think of what it is, so you don’t go back? Then it turns out that you hadn’t forgotten anything at all?

I’ve had that happen to me.

Just as often, though, it turns out that the feeling was right and you did forget something.

Anyway, I still hadn’t thought of it by the time I arrived back at Tony’s building.

Then I had bigger things to worry about, such as being seen in the parking lot. I’d been lucky, last time. Going back down would be pressing my luck. Tempting fate. I didn’t like it.

But I did it.

Dripping sweat, breathing hard and trembling, I walked to the bottom of the driveway. Nobody seemed to be around, so I ran all the way to Tony’s car. I stopped beside it, huffing, and dug the keys out of my pocket. Then I unlocked the door, opened it, leaned in and stared at the dashboard.

A tripometer!

He did have one, and it showed 14.2 miles.

Divide it in half, you get 7.1 miles.

Almost certainly, that was the distance to Serena and Charlie’s house.

Tony had set his tripometer.

My God! I thought. What if I hadn’t thought of it?

Reaching into the car, I stabbed the reset button with my forefinger. The numbers spun back to form a row of zeros.

The evidence was erased.

With the hanky, I wiped the front of the button.

Erased?

Something about that word.

I locked and shut the car door and wiped its handle.

Erased.

Backing away from the car, I looked around. So far, so good. I headed for the driveway ramp, walking fast.

Erased?

Why did that word stick in my head? Should I erase something? Was there an incriminating note that needed to be…?

The tape!

I chugged my way up the driveway.

That’s it! The audio tape on Serena and Charlie’s answering machine!

How could I possibly have forgotten about that? It had Tony’s message on it, all that stuff he was trying to tell Judy.

The dead man’s voice on a tape in Serena’s home.

My God, how could a detail like that slip my mind?

At the top of the driveway, I hurried over to the sidewalk. Once more, I’d made it away from the parking lot undetected. Plus, I’d erased the mileage from the tripometer and I’d remembered the lost detail—the message tape.

Simple enough to get rid of that.

I added it to my mental list of things to do at home.

Erase it right away, tonight, as soon as you get back. Bring in the saber, then erase the tape. Maybe destroy it entirely, just to be sure. Burn it.

Leaving Tony’s apartment building behind me, I walked to the corner of the block. There was no traffic in sight. I jogged across the street, then slowed to a long, easy stride.

Pace yourself, I thought. It’s more than seven miles. That’s a pretty good hike.

Should take less than two hours, though.

What if Tony taped the call?

I felt a flutter deep inside.

If he did…

He didn’t, I told myself. Nobody does that.

Most people don’t, anyway. It would be a very strange, abnormal thing to do. Illegal, too, unless you tell the other person about it.

But if he did record it, he’s got my address on tape. My voice and my name, too. The minute the cops search his room, they’ll find out everything.

BUT PEOPLE DON’T TAPE THEIR CALLS!

Of course they don’t. And only a fool would return to Tony’s in order to destroy a tape that doesn’t even exist.

But might.

I’d have to actually go inside the building, break into his room…

I’ve got his keys.

But the risk! For nothing! For a tape that doesn’t exist.

I continued walking, determined not to go back for the non-existent tape.

And I wouldn’t have gone back, either.

I would’ve kept on walking home, but all of a sudden, from thinking about tapes and answering machines and telephones, something popped into my mind that made my insides go cold and squirmy.

Redial.

10

THE THIRD KEY

SHIT!

I had to go back again.

Almost nobody tapes their own telephone conversations, but damn near everyone has a redial button.

After our talk, Tony’d had no time to make another call. He’d probably dropped everything, grabbed his gun, rushed out to his car and sped over to guard me.

So a touch of the redial button on his phone would place a call to Serena’s phone.

Unless the cops were very stupid or careless, they’d pay me a visit within hours of finding Tony’s body.

I had to take care of the redial.

I turned around and headed back.

This is crazy!

But what choice did I have?

When you kill someone, you’ve got to clean up afterward. Not just the body and gore, but the rest of the pieces, too. Tripometers, telephone messages, redials, the whole nine yards.

It sucks big.

If you don’t take care of every detail, you go down.

Not me.

When I was about to cross the last intersection before Tony’s building, a car turned onto the road a block to my right. I lurched backward fast, heart slamming. Before the car even got close, I found a good place to hide behind a clump of bushes. I crouched there, gasping for breath, sweat pouring down my face and trickling down the nape of my neck. Tony’s shirt clung to my back and sides. The seat of his jeans felt damp against my butt.

Waiting for the car to pass, I picked up the front of the shirt and wiped my face.

And wished I were back home so I could jump into the swimming pool.

That suddenly made me picture the prowler in it, drifting on his back, and how the moonlight glinted on his body.

His gorgeous body.

Stop that! I told myself. He’s a disgusting pervert! And this is all his fault. If he hadn’t come along, Tony would still be alive. I wouldn’t be here in the bushes, hot and miserable and hiding like a criminal. And I wouldn’t need to break into Tony’s apartment in the middle of the night.

The car passed me and kept on going.

I stayed hidden for a while.

Cars have rearview mirrors.

When it was out of sight, I stood up, plucked the clinging clothes away from my skin, and returned to the street corner.

I stared at Tony’s building.

Talk about pressing your luck.

I felt like running away.

But the details had to be taken care of, or I’d be sunk.

I started to cross the street.

What’ll I do when I’m inside?

1. Find Tony’s telephones. (Remember, he might have more than one.)

2. Make a few random calls on any phones I find to make absolutely sure redial won’t give away Serena’s number. (Also, if the cops manage to check Tony’s phone records, there’ll be calls originating from his place after the one to Serena. That should help.)

3. Check around to make sure there’s no tape recording of his call. If there is, take it. But there won’t be.

4. How about leaving his wallet and keys in his room? That way…

No, I’d better keep them. No telling where my fingerprints might be. And what if I should need his keys again, later on? Keep that stuff and get rid of it later.

Anything else while I’m in his room?

Just be careful about fingerprints and stuff.

And don’t get caught.

What if he has a roommate?

That idea gave me a scare, but only for a few seconds. Tony was twenty-eight years old. Apparently, he’d just moved into the new place because of Judy. He’d loved her so badly. They’d spent so much time together at his old place that he just couldn’t stand to be there without her.

A guy like that doesn’t have a roommate.

Probably.

The danger would be from tenants of other apartments who might notice me in the building’s entryway and corridors.

Nobody’ll see me. Not at this hour of the night.

What about security cameras?

As I approached the front stairs, I spread the collar of my shirt and lifted it, pulling the shirt up to hide most of my face.

You didn’t do this in the parking lot, stupid.

Fear slammed through me again.

Had there been security cameras in the parking lot?

I didn’t know.

I hadn’t noticed any, but I hadn’t been looking, either.

Instead of climbing the stairs to the front doors, I made a third trip to the parking lot. This time, I searched high and low for video cameras.

I was awfully damn shaken up.

What the hell would I do if I found cameras?

I didn’t have the slightest idea, but I’d probably be sunk. There I’d be on video tape somewhere, delivering Tony’s car in the middle of the night—even wiping it for prints!

I felt sick inside just thinking about it.

Thank God, there didn’t seem to be any video equipment down there.

As you might’ve already noticed, the parking lot didn’t have a gated entrance, either. Anyone could’ve driven or walked in, as I proved. Frankly, the lot had no security whatsoever.

Nor did the rest of the building, as I soon found out.

This might surprise some of you. You might even think I’m lying. Because if you live in a place like Los Angeles or New York City, you probably think every apartment house in the world has security measures like a Wells Fargo bank.

But you’re wrong.

In Chester, we did have plenty of buildings designed to foil criminals. But we also had some that were wide open—ungated, unguarded, uncameraed, and virtually unlocked. They were usually older places that didn’t charge you a fortune in rent.

They aren’t only in Chester, either.

I’d lived in a few of them, myself, before coming to town and moving in over Serena and Charlie’s garage. They weren’t so bad. You had to worry about prowlers, but at least you had your freedom. You weren’t locked in a cage, and your every move wasn’t caught on video tape. There’s a lot to be said for that.

Even if you aren’t doing something bad.

If you are up to no good, a lack of security is splendid.

After finishing my search for video cameras, I didn’t even bother going back outside. I just trotted up a stairway near the front of the parking lot, came to an unlocked door, opened it and found myself inside the foyer.

The foyer and corridor were dimly lighted.

I saw no one.

Nor did I hear any sounds from the rooms as I sneaked down the corridor looking for apartment 12.

Everyone’s asleep, I thought.

God, I hope so.

I felt like a wreck. My mouth was dry, my heart slamming, my whole body dripping with sweat. I was panting for air like a worn-out dog. And shaking like crazy.

The nasty green carpet silenced my footfalls.

But every so often, a board creaked.

What if somebody hears me?

What if a door suddenly opens?

A door wouldn’t even have to open—each had a peephole. Someone might look out at me and I’d never even know.

I felt sick with fear.

If anybody sees me, it blows the whole deal.

What’ll I do?

Pray it doesn’t happen.

At last, I came to number 12. As quietly as possible, I reached into the right front pocket of my cut-offs and pulled out Tony’s key case. I unsnapped it.

Of the six keys, two belonged to Tony’s car.

Four to pick from, but one of them didn’t really look like a room key. It might go to a padlock, or something.

So I selected a key from the remaining three.

You can’t fool around with a bunch of keys and not make some noise. They clinked and jingled, sounding awfully loud in the silence.

When I finally had the key pinched between my thumb and forefinger, I couldn’t hold it still. My hand shook so badly that the tip kept scraping around on the face of the lock, and wouldn’t go in the hole.

At last, it went in.

But just the point of it. I tried to force it in the rest of the way, but it wouldn’t go.

When that sort of thing happens, sometimes you’ve got the key upside down. So I turned it over and tried again.

No luck.

Wrong key.

With more clinking and jingling, I fumbled about for key number two.

By the time I had it ready, my hand was shaking worse than ever. The key bumped and scratched against the lock, and kept missing the hole. I used my left hand to hold my right hand steady. That didn’t help a lot, but it helped some. Enough.

I made it to the hole.

This time, the key slid in all the way.

Yes!

But I couldn’t turn it.

Shit!

No matter how hard I twisted the key, all it did was rattle deep inside the lock somewhere. It wouldn’t turn. The damn thing seemed to be frozen in an upright position.

Letting the bunch of keys dangle, I looked at my hand. I had a red imprint on my thumb and forefinger.

I wiped my hand dry on the front of my shirt, then tried again. This time, I twisted the key so hard that I started to worry about breaking it.

So I quit and let go again.

What the hell is wrong? I wondered. The key fit. It had gone in all the way. Why wouldn’t it turn?

Maybe it’s the wrong damn key.

But it fit!

Sure. Okay. It’s the right size to go in the hole, but not completely right.

Obviously not right enough to unlock the door.

I jerked it out, turned it over, then tried to stick it back in.

This time, it would only go halfway in.

I muttered, “Shit,” yanked it out, then fumbled for the third key. And dropped the whole case. It landed on the carpet in front of the door with a quiet thump and a loud jangle.

I crouched and grabbed it.

Then stood again, holding my breath and glancing up and down the corridor.

Nothing happened.

I took a deep breath, sighed with relief, and got back to work.

Having dropped the case, I’d lost track of the third key.

All three “door” keys—including the two failures—looked pretty much alike.

So I picked one at random.

As I aimed it for the lock hole, the door swung open in front of my face.

11

APARTMENT TWELVE

A young woman inside the room frowned out at me. Maybe “frown” isn’t the right word, since she didn’t seem angry. She looked concerned or confused.

God only knows how I must’ve looked.

I felt as if the floor had dropped out from under me.

What’s she doing here?

Nobody’s supposed to be here!

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“I…I must have the wrong apartment, or…”

“This is twelve,” she said, then glanced at the number on the door as if to make sure of it.

She must’ve just gotten out of bed. She had a crease on her cheek, her short blond hair was mussed, and she wore wrinkled pajamas.

She was probably two or three years younger than me.

And beautiful.

Not exotic, glamorous beautiful.

Wholesome, girl-next-door beautiful, like an Iowa cheerleader.

I would’ve given my left arm to look half as good as this gal.

“Where are you trying to go?” she asked.

“Maybe I’m in the wrong building.”

She shrugged.

“Is this 645 Little Oak Lane?”

Why hadn’t I said 465? She would’ve told me, “Oh, no, this is 645. I’m afraid you do have the wrong building.” And that would’ve been the end of the situation.

But I was curious, for one thing. I wanted to find out what was going on.

For another thing, the damage was already done. She’d seen me.

And I didn’t know what to do about it.

After hearing the address, she nodded and looked more confused than before. “You seem to be in the right place, but…”

“Doesn’t Tony live here?” I asked.

“Tony?”

“Yeah, Tony.” I tried to remember his last name. “Romano.”

“What?” Now, she seemed confused and surprised. “Tony Romano?”

“Is this his apartment?”

“No. This is my apartment.”

“But you know him, don’t you?” I asked.

“Sure. Do you?”

“He gave me this address.”

“What for?”

“He said he lived here. And that…I should come over tonight. He gave me his keys. See?” I held up the key case in front of her. “I was supposed to let myself in. And wait for him.”

“Huh?”

I shrugged.

“But he doesn’t live here,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“This isn’t his place. It’s mine. He lives over on Washington Avenue.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure, all right. I used to spend half my life over there. Why on earth did he give you my address?”

“I don’t know.”

But I suddenly had a pretty good idea how I’d gotten the wrong address—and who she was.

“Are you Judy?” I asked.

“Yeah?” She said it softly, like a question.

I put on a big smile. “You’re Tony’s girlfriend!”

“Not anymore. But yeah. We were…” She shrugged.

“It’s nice to meet you. My name’s Alice.” I held out my hand, and she shook it.

“Hi, Alice,” she said.

“So, why did he give me your address?” I asked.

“I have no idea. It’s weird. But Tony can be weird, sometimes. Why don’t you come on in? Maybe you should call him, or something.” She opened the door wider and I stepped into her apartment.

Only a single lamp was on. It didn’t do a very good job. It cast a yellowish light that left corners of the living room in shadows.

I looked around and didn’t see anybody.

From the looks of the furniture, Judy wasn’t exactly rich. She had an old armchair, a sofa with threadbare cushions, a few lamps and small tables, and bookshelves against most of the walls. The shelves were crammed with books, mostly paperbacks.

After shutting the door, she said, “Tony does oddball stuff, sometimes.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed.”

“Isn’t that one of his shirts you’re wearing?”

I forced a smile.

Wearing his jeans and shoes, too.

She wasn’t likely to recognize them, though. Most blue jeans and brown loafers look pretty much alike. Besides, I’d customized Tony’s jeans.

“I’m just borrowing his shirt for the night,” I told her. “Mine got spilled on.”

“So you saw him tonight?” She didn’t sound suspicious, just curious.

“Yeah, we had dinner together.”

“How’s he doing?”

“He really misses you.”

She winced slightly. “I miss him, too. Sometimes. Not that I’ll ever go back to him. Would you like something to drink? A Pepsi or a beer or something?”

“Okay, sure.”

“How about a beer?”

“Great!”

Being careful not to touch anything, I followed her into the kitchen.

She turned on a light and went to the refrigerator. The top of her kitchen table was hidden under a computer and piles of books and papers.

“So, how do you know Tony?” she asked.

Without even pausing to think, I said, “We met at a bar. The Cactus Bar and Grill.”

“Really?” She set a couple of beer bottles on the counter, then reached up and opened a cupboard. “I ate there with him once. I’m surprised he went back. He thought they had lousy margaritas.”

“He sure put down a lot of them the night we met.”

“No kidding.” Shaking her head, she filled a pair of glass mugs with beer. Then she turned around and handed one to me.

“All he could talk about was you,” I said. “And how much he loves you.”

“Really?” Her smile seemed a little sad.

“Yeah. He’s miserable.”

We went into the living room. Judy sat in the armchair, and I took the sofa.

I still had no idea what I was doing.

That’s not quite true.

I was stalling.

Playing things by ear.

Because I had no idea what to do.

Shoot her?

I was sitting on Tony’s pistol. It made my butt hurt on the right side, and I would’ve been glad to take it out of my pocket.

But shoot her?

Gunshots in a place like this, at an hour like this, would probably wake up half the people in the building.

I’d be shafted.

“So you don’t think you’ll get back together with Tony?” I asked, then tried the beer. It was very cold and bitter and I liked it a lot.

“Not a chance,” Judy said. “Did he tell you why we broke up?”

For a while, I couldn’t answer because I was busy swallowing that wonderful beer. Then I said, “I think it was too painful for him to talk about.”

“He was probably too embarrassed.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. It’s not the sort of thing you want to tell people about. Especially not a woman.”

“Oh, well, you don’t have to…”

“I’ll tell you. Hey, I’ve got to tell you, if you’re going with him now. He beat me up.”

“He beat you up?”

“Yeah.”

“My God! Why’d he do that?”

Judy’s face suddenly changed from nicely tanned to bright red. “Well, he was drunk. It was a sex thing. He wanted to do something, and I wouldn’t let him.”

“So he pounded you?”

She nodded. Her face was scarlet.

“What did he want to do?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter.”

An idea struck me. Frowning, I leaned forward and said, “Do you want to know why I’m really wearing Tony’s shirt? Because he ripped mine off me. Tore it right off.”

She looked shocked. “Tonight?”

“Yeah.”

“Jeez. Was he drunk?”

“As a skunk,” I said.

“’Cause, I mean, he’s not usually like that. How long have you known him?”

“Just a few days.”

“He must be in really bad shape. I mean, we went together for months, and he never pulled anything like that. He drank too much a few times, but he never attacked me. He was always so sweet. You wouldn’t have thought he had a mean bone in his body. Till that night he went berserk on me.”

I nodded eagerly.

We’ve both been there, girl!

“Tonight,” I said, “was the first time he ever got ugly with me. I couldn’t believe it. He’d seemed so gentle, before. Like a really sensitive, sincere guy.”

“Exactly,” Judy said.

“But, boy…” I shook my head. “Not tonight. He scared me half to death.”

“What did he do?”

I drank some more beer, sighed, then set the mug down on the table in front of the sofa and said, “Well, he came over to my place for dinner. After that we went and saw Independence Day. Everything was fine till after the movie. We went back to my place and had a few drinks. We were planning to fool around, but my roommate came home. She always shows up at exactly the worst possible time.”

Judy smiled slightly. “That’s what roommates are for.”

“Do you have one?” I asked, suddenly worried.

“Not since college.”

“They can be a real pain in the butt,” I said.

“No kidding.”

“Anyway, the three of us sat around and had a few drinks. And I could tell that Tony was starting to lose his patience. He wanted to…you know, mess around. But we couldn’t do it in front of Jane. Finally, he said it was time for him to go home. And he asked me if I wanted to come with him. So I said, ‘Sure,’ and we left.”

“Was he okay to drive?” Judy asked.

“No. Hardly. But neither was I. I mean, we were both pretty looped. We shouldn’t have driven at all. But I wanted to get out of there, too, before something happened between him and Jane. She was starting to look at him a certain way, you know? Besides, I was interested in seeing where he lived. He’d been kind of funny about the place, like he didn’t want me there for some reason.”

“Strange. He had me there all the time.”

“Well…” I shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe that had something to do with it. You know? The way he feels about you, maybe he thought I might—taint the place, or something.”

“That’d be really strange.”

“Anyway, he didn’t take me there, after all. He drove us into the woods, instead.”

12

TONY TALES

“Drove into what woods?” Judy asked.

“Miller’s Woods.”

“You’re kidding. At night?”

“Yeah. Tonight.”

“You let him?”

“Like I said, we were both a little smashed.”

“My God.”

“We went to that picnic area. With the fireplaces and tables?”

Judy nodded. “I’ve been there a few times. Never at night, though.”

“Well, that’s where we went.”

“Was anybody around?”

“Just me and Tony. Which is what he wanted, I guess…to have me out there alone. Anyway, we went over and sat on one of those tables.”

“You got out of the car? Weren’t you frightened?”

“Yeah, sort of. As a matter of fact, that was the whole problem. It was so dark and spooky. I had this awful feeling like we were being watched. I wanted to get the hell out of there. But Tony kept saying there was nothing to worry about. And he laughed at me for being scared.”

“That wasn’t very nice,” Judy said.

“I didn’t think so, either. I thought it was rotten. So I really wasn’t in any mood to fool around with him. Anyway, we were sitting on top of a picnic table with our feet on the bench. Tony had a bottle of tequila. He drank from it with one hand and rubbed my back with the other. Before you know it, he snuck that hand under my blouse. Then he started trying to unhook the back of my bra, so I told him to stop it.”

“Naturally, he didn’t.”

“Of course not. He went ahead and unhooked my bra, so I stood up on the bench and said, ‘I mean it, Tony. Not here. This place gives me the creeps.’

“He said that’s what he likes about it. So I said, ‘Let’s just go over to your apartment, okay?’ Then I jumped off the bench and started walking away, but he suddenly leaps up and grabs me by the collar and jerks me off my feet. But he catches me, you know? So then I’m leaning against him and he reaches around in front and rips my blouse open. I mean, he was just vicious about it. It was a pullover, and he tore it apart right down the front and ruined it. Which is the real reason I’m wearing his shirt right now.”

Judy nodded, a solemn look on her face. “Not because yours got spilled on.”

“That was a little fib. I’m sorry. I never thought I’d end up telling you this stuff.” I tried to smile, making it look like a strain. “You’re really a good listener, Judy.”

“Thanks. I’ve been through a few of these things, myself.”

“Guys are such awful pigs.”

“They can be.”

“He completely ruined my blouse.”

“He’s ruined a couple of mine, too,” Judy said. “And a good dress.”

“Tore them?”

“Different things.”

I could tell she didn’t want to go into details, so I went on with my story. “The whole thing just scared the hell out of me,” I said. “Him flipping out like that. And also, you know, being in those woods. I really panicked. I just wanted to get away. But he wouldn’t let me. He jerked my shorts down and threw me onto the picnic table. I tried to get up, but he slugged me in the stomach.”

Judy winced as if she could feel the blow, herself.

“That knocked my wind out. All I could do was squirm on the table. It felt like I was drowning. Then the next thing I know, he’s on top of me. We’re both naked and he’s…” I made a face. “You know.”

“Screwing you?”

“Yeah.”

Her face suddenly went crimson again, and she said, “In the right place?”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.” She was really flustered. “It’s none of my business. Forget I asked, okay?”

“You mean, did he do it to me in the vagina?”

“Well. Yeah.”

“Yeah, that’s where.”

Grimacing, she said, “And not with anything funny?”

“What do you mean, funny?”

“He obviously didn’t, or you wouldn’t have to ask.”

“What’d he do to you?”

“Nothing. I wouldn’t let him. That’s why he beat me up.” She smiled a little sadly. “You should’ve seen me afterward. I was a wreck. You look like you lucked out.”

“This was my lucky night, okay.”

“You got off without too much damage. That’s all I meant.”

“I guess that’s true.”

“How did it turn out?” she asked.

“Where were we?”

“On the picnic table.”

“Oh, that’s right. He was screwing me. In the vagina. With his penis. Without a condom.”

“Well, at least you don’t have to worry about AIDS or anything. I happen to know that he’s perfectly healthy.”

I laughed.

Couldn’t help it.

Luckily, I didn’t have a mouthful of beer. It would’ve spewed.

Judy raised her eyebrows as if she hoped I might let her in on the joke.

“As a matter of fact,” I said, “he isn’t.”

“Isn’t?”

“Perfectly healthy.”

“What do you mean?”

“He probably has a major headache, right now. If he’s awake yet.”

“Awake?”

“I knocked him out cold with his tequila bottle. He’d left it on the table where I could reach it. So while he was busy humping me, I grabbed it and gave him a good one. Busted it against his head.”

Judy’s mouth dropped open. She gaped at me, an odd look in her eyes as if she might be tempted to laugh, herself.

“Knocked him out cold,” I said. “But he was still on top of me, so I rolled over. He fell off me and the table, and whacked the bench, then rolled off it and landed on the ground. Took a pretty good fall.”

“Was he all right?”

“Not really. He was out like a light and his head was bleeding. He wasn’t dead, though.”

“Where is he now?”

“I don’t know. And I don’t care. He’s probably on a back road, somewhere, walking home. But he won’t have an easy time of it. I was still really angry at him, you know? A bit more than angry. I was furious. I mean, he’d raped me. Wouldn’t you call that a rape?”

“I’d call it a rape,” Judy said.

“So would I.”

“Are you going to press charges against him?”

“I don’t think so. I think I’ve punished him pretty good without the cops. You know what I did? I left him there in the woods completely naked. Out cold, and naked as the day he was born. I kept his shirt, since he’d wrecked mine. All the rest of his clothes, I burned in one of the fireplaces. His underwear and everything. Except his shoes. I threw those into the woods. He’ll never find them. Then I hopped into his car and drove off.”

“You really left him there?”

I grinned. “Seemed like a good idea. Part of my revenge. But it didn’t seem like enough revenge. So I thought I’d drive over to his apartment and trash the place. Just to teach him a lesson, you know? Teach him that he can’t do that sort of thing to a girl.”

“So why did you come here?”

“I thought this was his place. I’ll show you.” I drank the last of the beer, set the mug on the table again, then pulled Tony’s wallet out of my rear pocket. Taking out the slip of paper, I walked over to Judy’s chair. “See this?” I handed it to her.

She scowled at it. “That’s my address. It’s also my handwriting. I gave this to Tony…months ago. When we first met.”

I sighed and shook my head.

She held the paper toward me.

“You might as well keep it,” I told her. On my way back to the sofa, I stuffed Tony’s wallet into my pocket.

“What made you think this was his address?”

“I found it in his wallet. I just assumed it was where he lived. Pretty stupid, huh?”

From the look in Judy’s eyes, she seemed to agree. But she didn’t make any sort of crack about it. All she said was, “You should’ve checked his driver’s license.”

“He didn’t have it with him.”

“He didn’t?”

“He’d gotten it revoked.”

She gasped. “You’re kidding!”

“No. They took it away from him about a week ago. For drunk driving and leaving the scene of an accident.”

“My God! An accident?”

“It wasn’t anything serious. Nobody got hurt. But Tony sped off, afterward. He got caught about a mile away. He was lucky he didn’t end up in jail.”

“Poor Tony,” Judy said.

“Yeah. He’s been having a hard time of it, lately. He just can’t get over losing you.”

“Jeez.”

“Anyway, that’s why he didn’t have a license. When I found the address in his wallet, I just automatically figured it must be where he lived. So here I am. Guess I would’ve figured out something was wrong when none of his keys fit the door.”

“I heard you trying them,” Judy explained.

Trying to look embarrassed, I asked, “Did I wake you up?”

“No. I wasn’t asleep. I’d been asleep, but then I had this horrible nightmare that woke me up. Really freaked me out.”

“I hate nightmares.”

“Me, too. I think they’re scarier than real life.”

“Think so?”

“Sure,” she said. “Nightmares just give you raw fear. If the same stuff happened in real life, you’d still be scared, but you’d also be thinking rationally and trying to figure things out. How to get away, that sort of stuff. In nightmares, all you have is the fear. Just fear, and nothing else. That’s what makes them so terrible.”

“But you wake up from nightmares,” I pointed out.

“I sure woke up from this one tonight. And then I wasn’t very eager to fall asleep again. If you go back to sleep too soon, you know, you can wind up back inside the same nightmare. So I got up and went to the bathroom.”

“That gives me the creeps,” I told her. “Going to the john in the middle of the night. I always think I hear things.”

“I heard you trying to unlock the door.”

“Oh, wow. That must’ve freaked you out.”

“I didn’t think it was my door. I thought it might be the one across the hall. But the sounds went on a lot longer than they should’ve, so I looked out the peephole.”

“And there I was.”

“There you were.”

“You sure scared the hell out of me, opening the door like that.”

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” Judy said. “I just thought you looked like you needed help.”

“You were right about that.”

She didn’t say anything for a few seconds, just looked at me like maybe she was worried about hurting my feelings or making me mad. Then she said, “Now it’s Tony who needs the help.”

“What?”

“I don’t blame you for what you did to him,” she said. “I’m sure he deserved it. Maybe even worse. But…I owe him. If I hadn’t dumped him, none of this bad stuff would’ve happened tonight.”

Funny, but she was absolutely right about that.

Then she said, “It sounds as if he’s…come apart at the seams.”

“He really has,” I said.

13

RINGING UP THE DEAD GUY

“I just can’t leave him out there,” Judy told me.

“He’s probably on his way home, by now.”

“But he was still unconscious when you drove off and left him, wasn’t he?”

“Dead to the world.”

“So for all we know, he might still be out cold.”

“I guess it’s possible,” I admitted. “Look, I have an idea. Why don’t you give him a call?”

It seemed like a fine idea. Judy didn’t know that he’d moved to a new apartment. She would obviously dial his old number and get a recorded message explaining that Tony’s phone was out of service.

“Maybe he’s already home by now,” I added.

“It’s worth a try.”

Judy leaned forward in the big, old chair and stood up. Her phone was on the lamp table near the end of the sofa. As she walked over and picked it up, she said, “I can’t imagine he’s home, though. Not if he had to walk.” She picked up the handset and started to tap in a number. “It’s an awfully long way from Miller’s Woods to his place.”

“Especially if you’re bare-ass naked,” I said.

Which made her laugh. “You’re terrible,” she said.

“Yep.”

Listening at the earpiece, she suddenly frowned. “His number’s been changed,” she muttered. “They’re going to…” She stopped to listen.

They’re giving her the new number! I couldn’t even begin to figure out the ramifications of that.

While I sat there, stunned, she tapped in a series of numbers.

A moment later, she met my eyes and said, “It’s his machine.”

“Maybe you’d better hang up.”

“He might be monitoring.”

Should I stop her?

Maybe not. This could be a good deal.

Or a disaster.

“Hi, Tony,” she said. “It’s me, Judy. Are you there?” She stopped talking. She waited.

Leave it at that! Don’t say another word!

“I guess you’re not home. Okay. Well, I just called to see how you’re doing. Give me a call back if you want to. I’m still at the same number. So long.”

She hung up.

“We’ll probably get to him before he even hears it,” she said.

“I imagine so,” I said.

“It’s funny that he changed his number. Do you know why he did that?”

I couldn’t come up with a good lie right off the bat, so I just said, “No idea.”

“Maybe it has to do with his accident.”

“Could be.”

“At any rate, he hasn’t gotten home yet. I’m sure he would’ve picked up.”

“You can bet on that. He’s been dying to get a call from you. But you never know, maybe he’s taking a shower or something. We probably ought to wait a few minutes and try him again.”

Judy shook her head. “No. I don’t want to wait any longer. I need to go out and find him.”

“Want me to come with you?”

“You don’t have to,” she said, and turned away.

“Sure I do,” I said. From my seat on the sofa, I watched her stride into a nearby room and switch on a light. At the other end of the room was a rumpled bed.

Judy stepped out of sight.

Raising my voice, I said, “I can’t have you going out there all by yourself. Something might happen to you.”

“I’ll be all right,” she called.

“Maybe. But what if you’re not? I’m the one who left Tony stranded. I’d feel awful.”

“You hardly even know me.”

“I’d feel awful, anyway. You’re a nice person.”

A quiet laugh came from the bedroom. Then Judy said, “Well, I’m not sure how nice I am, but thanks.”

“You are nice. And trusting. I mean, I’m a complete stranger, but you let me in here in the middle of the night. You even gave me a beer.”

“Well, we’ve got a mutual friend, I guess. Or enemy.”

“I want to help you look for him. Really.”

“Fine with me. I might be a nice person with a lot of sterling qualities, but I am a chicken. It’ll be great to have you along.”

“You and me, Judy.”

She came out of the bedroom. Her pajamas were gone, and she was no longer barefoot. She wore white socks and blue sneakers, a pale blue skirt, and a short-sleeved white blouse that looked crisp and cool. Most of the blouse’s buttons weren’t fastened yet. It wasn’t tucked in, either, and hung down like a miniskirt. Only a few inches of her real skirt showed in front of her thighs.

“You’re wearing a skirt?” I asked.

“It’s a hot night.”

“Tony’ll like that.”

“I guess so,” she said.

“And no bra.”

She laughed. “Hot night. Besides, look who’s talking.”

“I have an excuse. Tony wrecked mine.”

“I don’t need an excuse. You’re not my mother.” Grinning, she looked down and worked on fastening the rest of her buttons. “It’s not like I’m trying to do Tony any favors,” she said. “I just want to be comfortable.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “Hell, you look great.”

“Thanks. I feel great. This is kind of fun, in a way. It’s like going out for an adventure.”

I found myself grinning. “Yeah,” I said. “It is.”

Finished with her buttons, she hurried into the kitchen. She came back with her purse and slipped its strap onto her shoulder. “All set,” she said. “You ready to go? Do you want to hit the bathroom first?”

“Ah. Maybe so. Good idea.”

She pointed the way.

I went in, turned on the light and shut the door. The bathroom was small, but very clean. A wonderful, flowery aroma filled the air. It seemed to come from a bar of soap on the sink.

Not wasting any time, I took the .22 out of my back pocket, pulled my cut-offs down and sat on the toilet.

While I peed, I wondered what the hell I’d gotten myself into.

A complete disaster, that’s what.

I’d actually brought Tony’s car—and corpse—to Judy’s building, not his.

Even if I could somehow learn the location of his new apartment—which seemed impossible—the plan was blown anyway because I’d come face to face with Judy.

Killing her wouldn’t fix everything, but it had to be done.

The worst part of it was, I liked her.

Too bad I hadn’t shot her right away. It would’ve been easier. Now that I knew her, it was going to be tough.

I kept staring at the pistol in my hand.

Maybe I should just do it. Go out there and shoot her right now.

With my thumb, I switched off the safety. It had been hiding a small red dot.

Wait till she turns around. Get up real close behind her, then put a couple in the back of her head.

Don’t let her know what’s coming. That way, she won’t be scared.

And won’t scream, either.

Maybe she’ll scream because it hurts.

I imagined it all happening, and it made me feel sick.

Let it wait, I told myself. There’s no big hurry. We’ll be leaving in a few minutes. Wait till we’re someplace where nobody will be likely to hear the gunshots.

Right away, I felt better.

I still had to kill her, but not until later.

I thumbed the safety back on, then reached over and set the pistol on the edge of the sink.

When I was done at the toilet, I pulled up my cut-offs and fastened the belt tight enough to keep them from falling down. Instead of putting the pistol into my back pocket, I slipped it into the right front pocket. That way, it would be easier to take out.

Then I washed my hands.

There was a mirror above the sink.

I hardly recognized myself. My hair looked strange—damp, ropey and coiled. My face was shiny with oils and sweat. The afternoon in the sun had turned it a dark, coppery color. My eyes looked all wrong—the whites too white, the gaze too intense.

I looked a little mad, a little wild.

Like someone well suited for bloody work.

I washed my hands with hot water, using the nice soap. When I finished, my hands smelled like spring flowers. I rinsed my face with cold water. I cupped some water to my mouth, and had a few swallows.

After drying, I used the towel to wipe the faucet and toilet handles and the light switch. I put the towel back on its bar, then shut off the light with the edge of my hand. Standing in the dark, I slipped my hand under the front of my shirt and grabbed the doorknob to let myself out.

“Ready?” Judy asked.

“All set,” I told her.

Our beer mugs were gone.

Along with my fingerprints!

Smiling, I said, “You cleaned up already?”

“Yeah. I hate coming back to a mess. Did you want your mug?”

“I just thought I might have a drink of water.”

“It’s already washed, but I’ll get you a clean one.”

Already washed!

“Never mind,” I said, pleasantly relieved. “We’d better go.”

“Are you sure? It wouldn’t be any trouble.”

“Yeah. Hey, I’d just end up having to pee again.”

“Okay.”

“Let’s go.”

Judy walked in front of me. I followed her toward the door, the pistol swinging in my pocket, rubbing against my thigh. She opened the door, then stepped aside.

I went out into the hallway. Nobody was there.

Judy came after me, using the outside knob to pull the door shut. Then she gave it a couple of twists and shoves to make sure the door was locked.

Which took care of any prints I might’ve left on the knob. Side by side, not saying a word, we walked down the silent hall to the foyer. There, she whispered, “Where’d you park Tony’s car?”

“In the lot.”

“This lot?”

“Yeah.”

“You found an empty space for it?”

“I put it in L. Is that okay?”

“Fine. That’s right next to mine.”

As we hurried down the stairway, she said, “I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we leave it there and take my car?”

“Are you sure you want to?” I asked.

What does this do to my plan?

Not that I actually had a plan anymore.

“This whole business is pretty hairy,” she said. “Going to the woods at this time of night. I’d just rather be doing it in my own car. At least I can be pretty sure it won’t break down on us.”

“Fine by me,” I said. “You drive.”

“You point the way.”

We came out of the stairwell into the parking lot.

Nobody else seemed to be around.

My loafers clopped loudly on the concrete floor. Judy’s sneakers were nearly silent.

“If we find Tony,” she said, “we’ll bring him back here so he can drive himself home. Unless he needs emergency treatment.”

“There’s his car,” I said, pointing at it.

“Yeah.”

It looked just fine sitting there. A few shiny drops of water sparkled on the trunk and rear bumper, but I saw nothing to worry about.

“That’s a good place for it,” Judy said. “Nobody ever parks there but guests. It can stay right where it is for a few days, if he needs to be hospitalized or something.”

“I don’t really think he’ll need to be hospitalized,” I told her.

14

NIGHT RIDERS

“Exciting, isn’t it?” Judy said as we reached the top of the driveway ramp.

“What is?” I asked.

“This. Going out like this.” She swung her car onto the road and picked up speed. “I never go anywhere this late at night. I’m almost always asleep by now.”

“Me, too,” I said, but I wasn’t really paying attention.

I was preoccupied, just then, with my feelings of relief. Now that we’d left the apartment building behind us, I was finally free of Tony.

I mean free!

He and his car were gone!

Adios, toot-toot, bye-bye!

I would never go near them again, and nobody would ever find out what I’d done.

Not even Judy.

I looked over at her. She kept turning her head, glancing around like an eager tourist. There wasn’t much to see, though, unless you’re fascinated by empty streets, porch lights and darkness.

“It is exciting to be out like this,” I told her.

“Sort of spooky, too,” she said.

“If you think it’s spooky now, wait till we get to the woods.”

“I can hardly wait.”

“Do you know how to get there?” I asked.

“I can find Miller’s Woods all right, but I’m not sure about the turn-off to the picnic area. How about you?”

“I’m pretty sure where it is.”

We were nearing the business district, so I said, “You’d better not take Central. When I came through, there were some unsavory characters hanging around.”

“We can do without unsavory characters,” she said.

A block short of Central, she turned onto the same street I’d used earlier. It looked deserted.

“The fewer people see us,” I said, “the better.”

“You’re probably right.”

“Two gals by themselves.”

“Are you trying to scare me?”

“We just have to be careful, that’s all. You never know who might be out there.”

“Most people are all right,” Judy said.

“Not the sort who are cruising the roads at this hour.”

“We are.”

“We’re the exception. Anyway, it only takes one lunatic to spoil the night.”

“You’re a regular cockeyed optimist,” she said.

“That’s me.”

“Maybe instead of a lunatic, we’ll run into a wonderful, charming stranger.”

“Run over one?”

“Into.” She turned her head and smiled at me. “You’re a trouble maker.”

“Yep.”

“I know ’em when I see ’em. I’m one, too.”

“You? A trouble maker? You seem like such a nice girl.”

“I’m that, too.”

“How can you be nice and a trouble maker?”

“I make benign mischief.”

Normally, I might’ve laughed at that. It was a pretty cute thing to say, benign mischief. But it almost made me cry.

Here Judy was, out in the middle of the night on a mission of mercy. Having herself an adventure. She’s nervous but excited and having fun, saying cute stuff, and she doesn’t have the slightest inkling that I’m going to leave her dead in the woods.

It was awfully sad if you think about it.

And I couldn’t help but think about it, riding along in the car with her.

On her last ride.

Too bad she wasn’t an ugly, snotty, miserable bitch. Then I wouldn’t have felt so bad.

“Are you okay?” she asked after a while.

“I guess so.”

“You’re kind of quiet. Worrying about lunatics?”

“Sure am.”

“Well, I think we’ll be perfectly safe as long as we stay in the car. We really shouldn’t need to get out, I don’t think.”

“Maybe not,” I agreed. “Depending on Tony.”

“With any luck, we’ll find him walking along the roadside before we even have to go into the woods.”

“I sure hope so,” I said.

But I didn’t really think it stood much chance of happening.

We were nearly to the town limits when Judy said, “Uh-oh.”

“What?”

“Here comes your lunatic, now.”

“Very funny.” Twisting sideways, I looked out the rear window and saw a pair of headlights in the distance.

“Man,” Judy said, “he’s really barreling down on us.”

“Just drive normal,” I told her. “Don’t speed up or anything. It might be a cop.”

“That’d be fine by me.”

The car bore down on us, full speed.

“What the hell is he doing?” Judy blurted.

The headbeams surged in through the windows and glared off our rearview mirror.

“God!” Judy cried out. “He’s going to ram us!”

But he didn’t.

At the last instant, the car swerved to our left.

It started to roar past us, then slowed enough to match our speed.

It wasn’t a cop car.

Cops don’t drive Cadillacs. Not in Chester, they don’t. Not in any town I’ve ever heard of. This thing looked like a giant old gas-gulping monster that belonged in a junk yard, not on the road. A real old clunker, but its engine sounded hot.

As it tooled along beside us, the guys checked us out.

Two of them.

Judy gave them a glance, then turned her face straight forward.

I was leaning toward the dashboard so I could look past her. I had a lousy view of the driver, but the one in the passenger seat looked like a tough guy. He stared back at us. He looked all of about eighteen years old and had a crew cut. A cig dangled off his lips. He wasn’t wearing a shirt.

“Real charming,” Judy said quietly, as if addressing the windshield.

“Don’t do anything. Don’t even look at them.” As I gave that advice, I settled back into my seat and stopped looking at them myself.

A few seconds later, the car sped past us and swerved into our lane, barely missing our front bumper. Judy hit the brakes. As I was thrown forward, she flung an arm across my chest. Her arm didn’t stop me, but my hands did. I slammed them against the dashboard.

The Cadillac pulled away from us.

“You okay?” Judy asked.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“Bastards,” she muttered.

We were moving along at a crawl.

The Cadillac kept going, gaining speed, and soon vanished around a bend in the road.

Judy gave us a little gas. As we picked up speed, she took a deep breath. Then she said, “Maybe you’d better put on your seatbelt.”

“Not me.”

“Huh?”

“I don’t use them. I’ll take my chances with the windshield.”

“Yeah?” She gave me a look, but there wasn’t enough light in the car to see whether she was smiling, smirking, frowning, or something else. “I’ll keep mine on,” she said. “Safety first.”

“No faith in your own driving?” I asked.

She laughed.

We glided around the bend. Ahead of us, the road was dark except for the moonlight. No sign of the Cadillac.

“You think they’re gone?” Judy asked.

“Looks that way,” I said. “But things aren’t always how they look.”

“I guess they were just fooling around.”

“Looks that way.”

“Could’ve gotten ugly. Maybe this wasn’t such a hot idea, after all.”

“What?” I asked.

“Coming out to look for Tony. I mean, what if those two guys had gotten serious?”

“Do you want to call it off and go back?”

She didn’t answer for a few seconds. Then she said, “I guess if they’d meant to nail us, they would’ve done it.”

“Probably.”

“Probably just wanted to give us a thrill.”

“As long as they don’t show up again,” I said, “we might as well keep going. We’re more than halfway there.”

“Gone past the point of no return?”

“Yep.”

“Gotta keep going, then.”

“You and me, babe.”

She turned her head toward me. Again, I couldn’t see her expression. She said, “Can you imagine what a couple of guys like that might do if they got their hands on Tony?”

“On Tony?”

“Yeah.”

“Wouldn’t be pretty.”

“I’d like to be there to see it,” Judy said.

“Whoa! What kind of talk is that? We’re on a mission to rescue the guy!”

“That doesn’t mean I wish him a full and rewarding life of health and happiness. Not after what he did to me. And to you, for that matter. It’d be sort of neat to see him really get creamed by a couple of punks.”

“I did a pretty good job on him,” I said.

“But just think what a couple of punks like that might do.”

“You shock me, Judy. I am truly shocked.”

“Sure you are.”

“Now, give me a clue. Why exactly are we driving out here to rescue him?”

“Good question.”

“Maybe we should turn back.”

“Nah,” she said. “Can’t.”

“Why not?”

“It’s my fault he’s out here tonight. I’m the one who made him nuts. He wasn’t a bad guy before I made him crazy. It’s my fault he beat me up, and it’s my fault he attacked you.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“No, it’s true. I got him into this mess, so I’ve now gotta help him get out.”

“Whether you want to or not.”

“Yeah, sort of. No, I want to. I mean, we had a lot of great times together. Before he went off the deep end.”

“You just feel sorry for him.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I was in love with him. That sort of thing…I can’t just pretend it never happened. He was the most important thing in my life for a while. The things we did…they’re all part of me, and always will be…in spite of everything else.”

“You’re nuts,” I said.

She laughed softly. “Think so?”

“Yeah. You sound like you’re still in love with him.”

“Maybe with the way he used to be.”

“Well, that guy’s gone forever.”

“I know. It can never be the same. But still, I owe him. For the good times, and because this crazy stuff happened because of me.”

“You gonna kiss and make up with him?”

She let out a sharp laugh. “No way!”

“Yep. And you’ll take him back to your place…supposedly so he can pick up his car. But before you know it, you’ll be asking him in for a beer. Maybe a coffee. Then wham! You’re all over each other.”

“Not a chance.”

“Next thing you know, it’s Humpty Dumpty time.”

“No!” she blurted, laughing, and slapped my leg. “That’s not going to happen. No way! Not in a zillion years.”

I happened to know she was right.

“It’s what he’d like to have happen,” I said. “He wants you back.”

“Well, I don’t want him back.”

“He kept pretending I was you.”

“He what?”

“Yeah. He’d shut his eyes whenever we were making love, and call me Judy.”

“Oh, my God.” She sounded appalled. “Really?”

“Yeah. He even did it tonight when he had me on the picnic table.”

“While he was raping you?”

“Yeah. He kept saying stuff like, ‘How do you like it, Judy? Huh? Big enough for you, Judy? Oh, Judy, you’re so tight and wet. I love your tight, wet pussy.’”

“Tony said that?”

“Not exactly. I cleaned it up a little. He didn’t say pussy.”

“Oh.” She stared straight out the windshield. Her face looked gray in the moonlight, but I bet its true color was bright red.

“That’s when I hit him with the bottle,” I explained.

“Good going.”

“Like I told you, guys are pigs.”

“I’m willing to concede that he is.”

“Trust me, they all are.”

“I wouldn’t go along with that,” she said. “Not a hundred percent.”

“Ninety percent?” I asked.

She said, “Ninety-nine.”

So then I had to laugh.

“I tell you what,” she said. “When we do find Tony, I’ll run him over.”

“All right!”

15

INTO THE WOODS

But she was joking, of course. About running him over. She wanted to rescue Tony, not kill him.

More’s the pity.

If she’d been sincere in her desire to murder the guy, I might’ve changed my mind about killing her.

No, not really.

Here’s the deal. No matter how much I might like Judy (and I liked her plenty), no matter how much she might despise Tony (though I frankly believe she still loved him in spite of everything), no matter ANYTHING—she had to die.

Didn’t she?

Because if she lived, she could tell on me. I’m not saying she would. But she might. And then where would I be?

Up the infamous Creek of Shit without a paddle, that’s where.

Kill her, and I’m home free.

Well, not completely. There was still the little problem of the redial button on Tony’s phone. If he even had a redial button. Wherever his phone might be. In his mystery apartment, wherever that might be.

I wished I could get to it, but I didn’t know how.

What could it show the cops, anyway? Only that Tony’s last call had been to Serena and Charlie’s phone.

It didn’t prove that anyone had answered it.

Serena and Charlie were away on a trip. I, of course, never heard the phone ring because I never left my room over the garage.

There was only one problem with that.

Phone records would show that the call had lasted a while. Four or five minutes? Which would lead the cops to figure he either talked to someone, or left a message on the answering machine.

My insides shriveled.

They’ll want to hear Tony’s message.

But I couldn’t let them hear it.

One little button on a telephone was going to destroy me if I couldn’t come up with a way to find Tony’s new apartment.

“We’re almost there, aren’t we?” Judy asked.

For a second or two, I didn’t know what she was talking about. Then I saw the woods on both sides of the road. “It’ll be pretty soon,” I said. “The turnoff. It’ll be on the right. Shady Creek Picnic Area.”

“I hope he’s okay.”

“But not too okay?”

“Medium okay, medium hurt. Maybe in great pain, but with no permanent damage.”

“You’re so caring, Judy.”

“I just hope he’s there. I thought we’d find him before now. You know, on his way home.”

“Don’t forget, he’s naked. He probably hides when a car comes along.”

“Yeah. We might’ve gone right by him.”

“Or he could’ve taken a different route.”

“What other route? There’s only one way to get back to town from out here.”

“If you stick to the roads,” I said. “But maybe he took a shortcut through the woods.” I spotted the sign up ahead and said, “Here it comes.”

Judy slowed down.

“I bet we’ll find him here,” I said as she made the turn.

“You hit him that hard?” she asked.

“No. He’s probably conscious by now. But if I were in his shoes…or shoeless and bare-ass naked, as the case may be…”

Judy laughed softly.

“I might just decide to stay put. At least I’d be in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by trees, so I wouldn’t need to worry about everyone seeing me.”

“You’d have to go home eventually.”

When she said that, I immediately thought of my prowler. Maybe he was a guy who hadn’t gone home eventually.

“I might just decide to stay in the woods,” I said, “and live like Tarzan.”

“Yeah. I can just see Tony swinging through the trees.”

“I said grab the VINE!”

Judy laughed, shaking her head. Then she said, “Ouch.”

“How would you know?” I asked.

“It’s gotta hurt.”

“I guess so.”

I knew so. I bit one, once. Chomped it right off, in fact. You should’ve seen the guy! It hurt, all right.

Don’t go feeling sorry for him, though. And don’t think I’m some kind of evil person or nut. He shouldn’t have gone and stuck it someplace where it didn’t belong. Especially not after I’d begged him not to.

He got no worse than he deserved.

But you should’ve heard him scream! It hurt, all right! And then he went crazy trying to get it out of my mouth. He yelled, “Give it back! Give it back, you fucking bitch!” I guess he figured they could sew it back on for him at a hospital. But I wouldn’t let him have it. He kept yelling and hitting me, but I went ahead and chewed it up. After I swallowed it, he really went berserk and almost killed me.

Anyway, enough about that. Like I said near the front, this book isn’t an autobiography. I just had to tell you about that incident because of how it fit in with what Judy and I were saying on the road to the Shady Creek Picnic Area.

I didn’t tell Judy about it, though.

I never told anyone about it, until now. Not even my mom or the people in the hospital where they took care of me afterwards. I made up a story about getting beaten up by a mugger, and the guy never told.

I don’t know what ever happened to him.

Well, I can vouch for two or three inches. Not the rest, though. When I got better and went back to school, we had a new principal. He got hired because the one before him had suddenly and mysteriously left town.

Anyway, that’s really more than I intended to tell. I guess I’ll leave it in, though. Why not? It’s the truth. And it also goes to show you what pigs men are—even school principals.

I only have one regret about what I did to him.

No mustard!

That’s a little joke.

Anyway, I’ve strayed away from the real story.

When I left off, I’d just told Judy the old Tarzan joke about grabbing the vine, and we were having some laughs about that. She was driving us along the road to the picnic area. She thought we might find Tony there. I was sitting in the passenger seat, and had Tony’s pistol in the front pocket of my cut-offs. I’d be using it on her pretty soon.

The next thing you know, we came to the end of the road. The pavement spread out into a clearing with logs laid out to show you where to park. There were places for six or eight cars, but no other cars were there. Judy drove up to one of the logs and stopped.

The beams of our headlights reached out into the picnic area, lighting a couple of the green wooden tables.

“I don’t see him,” Judy said. “Do you?”

“No. But we weren’t up here. We were down by the creek. If you want, I’ll run down and see if he’s there.”

“No, don’t do that. We’d better stay in the car.”

“What if he’s still unconscious?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll just run down and take a quick look.”

“No, don’t.”

“It’ll only take a minute.”

“I’ll go with you,” Judy said, and shut off the headlights.

The night dropped down on us.

“My God,” she said. “It’s dark out here.”

“Do you have a flashlight?”

“Sure. Back in my bedroom. Maybe I should go get it.” But she was kidding. Instead of turning the car around, she shut off its engine and unfastened her seatbelt.

“Ready?” I asked.

“Not hardly. I don’t want to go out there.”

“Then stay here. That’s fine. I’ll just go…”

“No way. If you’re going, I’m coming with you.”

“Then we might as well get it over with,” I said, and opened the passenger door. The car’s overhead light came on.

“Much better,” Judy said.

I climbed out. My legs were trembling. I was shaking all over, and sweating. My heart was pounding like mad. I was a genuine wreck.

For one thing, the place gave me the creeps. As a general rule, I don’t like to be in forests at night. Plus, a lot of bad stuff had gone on in Miller’s Woods, and I was a little nervous about the prowler. He might be nearby. After his visit to Serena and Charlie’s house, he’d gone back into the woods only about a mile from here.

My other reason for being a wreck is that I had to kill Judy. It stank, but there was no way out of it. And this was the perfect place for it.

Dark as death, secluded, and within reasonable walking distance of home if I took the shortcut through the woods.

When we shut our doors, the light in the car went out. We met in front, but didn’t say anything. As if we were afraid to speak. Afraid of who might hear us.

Side by side, we walked up the gentle slope toward the place where we’d seen the picnic tables. We could still see them, but now they looked so dark and vague that they hardly seemed real.

Here and there, tiny dabs of moonlight made it down through the trees. A soft, warm breeze was blowing. It might’ve felt good, if things had been different. Just then, there was no such thing as good. Good, for a while, seemed to be gone from the face of the earth.

We walked past the picnic tables, and went on to the crest of the hill. There, we stopped and gazed down toward the creek. I saw a few places that looked like moonlight glinting off water. And I saw a flat shape that might’ve been a picnic table. But nothing looked very clear or very real. Mostly, there was only darkness.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Judy whispered.

What are you, psychic?

“What kind of bad feeling?” I asked. I didn’t really want to know, but I had to ask.

“Like we’re really going to regret going down there.”

“You don’t have to go down.”

“Yeah. I do.”

Brave, innocent, stupid Judy.

16

KILLING JUDY

As we made our way down the slope, I reached into the front pocket of my cut-offs and took hold of the pistol. With my thumb, I flicked its safety off.

“Tony?” Judy called softly. “Are you there?”

I slipped the .22 out of my pocket, but kept it by my side, out of sight.

“Tony?” she called again. “It’s Judy. Are you down there?”

I didn’t want her to know what was coming, so I slowed down a little. She was about one stride downhill from me and two feet to my left when I brought the pistol up and fired point blank at the side of her head.

That should’ve done it.

But on the way up, the muzzle of the pistol snagged her ear.

I must’ve been standing too close. Probably because of the darkness.

She yelped, “Ow!”

The pistol spat out a bright, quick flash. In that instant, I saw the tilt of Judy’s head and the angle of my pistol.

And I couldn’t tell if I’d gotten her.

But she cried out, grabbed her head above the ear and fell, tumbling crookedly.

On her way down, I took aim but decided not to fire again.

For one thing, I didn’t want the noise. If you haven’t been around a .22, you might think it just makes a tiny bang like a cap gun, or something. But it’s more like a strong firecracker.

BAM! My ears were ringing from the shot, and the sound of the blast must’ve carried for a mile.

I probably could’ve heard it from my room above the garage, if I’d been there.

My prowler must’ve heard it, unless he’d left the woods entirely.

He’s the other reason I didn’t put a few more rounds into Judy. The fewer I used on her, the more I’d still have in the pistol in case I met him on my way back home through the woods.

Him, or some other creep.

(What about the guys in the Cadillac? Were they gone for good?)

So instead of using Judy for target practice as she tumbled down the slope, I thumbed the safety on and hurried after her. She rolled all the way to the bottom, her arms and legs flopping around. When the ground leveled out, she rolled over a couple more times and stopped.

She came to rest in a patch of moonlight.

Her white blouse had come unbuttoned. It was wide open, leaving her bare to the waistband of her skirt. The skirt had gotten pushed up around her hips.

Except for the patch of white fabric between her legs, she looked like somebody who’d just gotten herself raped and murdered.

Raped and murdered.

An idea suddenly leaped into my head.

A brilliant idea.

I slipped the pistol into my pocket, then picked Judy up by the ankles and dragged her toward the picnic table. Along the way, she groaned a couple of times.

Still alive.

But she didn’t struggle at all, just remained limp.

I stopped dragging her when the backs of my knees met the edge of the picnic table’s wooden bench. I lowered her feet to the grass.

With such deep darkness, I couldn’t see any blood on her. But her head had to be bloody. So I took off my shirt—Tony’s shirt—and put it near the end of the bench, out of harm’s way.

After that, I straddled Judy, squatted down, grabbed her sides just below her armpits, and pulled her up to a sitting position. Then I hugged her against me and stood up.

A good thing I’d taken off the shirt. Her face was so slippery against my shoulder and breast, it must’ve been covered with blood.

Though Judy felt awfully heavy, she didn’t weigh nearly as much as Tony. I managed to seat her on the bench and lean her backward against the edge of the table. Then, keeping a hand on her shoulder so she wouldn’t tip over, I climbed on top of the table. I crouched down, grabbed her, and hauled her up.

Then I stretched her out so she was lying lengthwise on her back.

By that time, I was sweating like a hog. I wanted to get it done, though, so I didn’t waste any time resting.

First, I pulled the blouse off her shoulders and about halfway down her arms. Which made her bare all the way down to the top of her skirt. It also pinned her arms against her sides, in case she might wake up and try to struggle.

Second, I rucked her skirt up around her waist. I was tempted to take it off her entirely. Some guys do that, preferring their victim naked. But most of them, when it gets to a certain stage, are in an awfully big hurry to get in. They’ll just shove the skirt up and go for it. Some guys even like you to be wearing clothes when they screw you. It turns them on.

I know all about this sort of stuff.

When you’re built “like a brick shithouse,” you learn plenty.

I’m what you might call an expert.

Anyway, never mind.

After I’d shoved up Judy’s skirt, I spread open her legs about as wide as they would go, so her feet hung over the sides of the table.

Next, I had to rip her panties off. A guy who wants to rape you will hardly ever just pull them down. He has to do it with violence. If he has a knife, he’ll cut them off you and maybe cut you a little bit in the process. Some guys will tear them off with their teeth. That can hurt, too. Accidently on purpose, they’ll bite more than your panties. Usually, though, they rip them off you with their hands. That’s how I decided to do it.

On my knees between Judy’s legs, I slipped a hand inside the crotch of her panties. The flimsy fabric was moist. I jerked it sideways hard and fast. Half the crotch panel ripped away from her waistband. One more tug, and it tore completely off. I let go, and the tattered flap fell against the table top. She still wore the narrow strip of elastic low across her belly, but there was nothing in the way.

Then I went to work on her.

Coming to my senses afterward, I found myself sprawled on top of her. I was completely naked. She was slippery underneath me, and still alive. I felt the slight rise and fall of her chest, the thump of her heartbeat.

Suddenly, a hot sickness rushed through me.

What have I done?

Blown everything.

All I’d wanted to do from the start was clean up after myself, make it impossible for anyone to suspect me of killing Tony—destroy every link to me, wipe out every trace.

What’ll I do?

For starters, I pushed myself up. Our bodies came apart with quiet, wet sounds. I climbed off her, got down from the top of the table, and sat on the bench. Leaning forward, I put my elbows on my knees and tried to figure a solution.

I must’ve looked like that statue, The Thinker.

The famous one by the sculptor, Godzilla.

Just kidding. Rodin, right?

The Thinker, but a female version and built like a brick shithouse.

Thinking, How the hell do I get out of this?

What a mess.

If only I’d kept things simple! But no! I had to get clever and tricky. Make them think she was murdered by a rapist. Brilliant idea!

In the process, I’d turned her into a petri dish of Alice samples.

So clean her up!

Sure thing, I thought. What about the marks. I’d put on her body?

The Thinker returned to thought.

Suddenly, I sat up straight and blurted, “Yes!”

First, I had to find my clothes. I slipped into my shoes—Tony’s loafers. Then I hunted for my cut-offs. I found them on the ground where I’d thrown them during the frenzy with Judy. I put them on the bench so they wouldn’t get lost again.

Carrying Tony’s shirt, I went to the creek. Though I could hear the quiet gurgle and see bits of moonlight glinting on the water, the embankment took me by surprise. It was like stepping off a stair in the darkness. I gasped and fell and hoped like hell I wouldn’t go down on a sharp rock.

Luckily, I hit nothing but water. It was about a foot deep. It splashed up cool against my face and underside as my hands and knees punched through the surface. The rocky bottom hurt my knees a little, but not much. The shirt protected my hands.

I eased myself all the way down into the water so it covered me and glided gently over me. It felt wonderful. It probably wasn’t very clean, though. Not like the swimming pool.

Thinking of the pool, I couldn’t help but remember the prowler. I pictured him floating on his back, and how he’d gleamed with moonlight. So beautiful and dangerous. Then he was out of the pool and squirming against the glass door, throbbing and spurting.

If they find some of that stuff on Judy…

That’ll cinch it for sure.

My brilliant idea was suddenly more brilliant than ever.

But it would require a trip to Serena and Charlie’s house.

It’ll be worth it.

Not wasting another moment, I pushed myself out of the water. With the sodden shirt in my hands, I climbed the bank and hurried to the table.

Judy was sprawled on top, the same way I’d left her.

Sitting on the bench, I dumped the water out of my shoes. Then I put them on again, climbed the bench and bent over her. Starting at her face, I washed her with the shirt. Water spilled off her, running onto the table, dribbling through the cracks between its boards and hitting the ground under the table with quiet splattery sounds.

I thought the water might wake her up, but it didn’t. She stayed limp.

I mopped her neck, her shoulders and breasts, then decided I needed more water. So I hurried back to the creek. This time, I didn’t fall in. With the shirt sopping again, I returned to Judy and worked my way lower down her body.

I made two more trips to the creek for water.

By the time I was done cleaning Judy, I’d drenched her from head to ankles and scrubbed every inch of her with the shirt.

Every inch of her front, anyway.

I didn’t turn her over, or see any reason to.

She gave me no trouble at all, just stayed limp except for a few times when she squirmed. Now and then, she made soft moaning sounds.

I washed the shirt out a final time and put it on the bench with my cut-offs.

It took a while, in the darkness, to find a good stick. There were plenty to choose from, though. I finally came up with a piece of branch about four feet long. At one end, it was just about the right thickness to wrap my fingers around. From there, it tapered down to about half that size. It had a few small limbs along the way, but I snapped them off.

Then I knelt on the table and went back to work on Judy.

Right away, she flinched and cried out and tried to sit up.

I clubbed her down with the heavy end of the stick. Four or five blows to the head and face, and she was limp again. After that, I focused on the places where I might’ve left bruises with my teeth and hands.

Really laid into her.

The heavy end made thunking sounds when it struck her. The other end whistled each time I swung it down, and whapped her skin like a switch.

She never flinched or cried out. Those early blows to the head had done her in.

At least for now.

Exhausted and drenched with sweat, I went down to the creek. I rolled in the cool water, then lay on my back for a while with only my face in the air. It felt great. But work still needed to be done.

Not quite ready to get going, I stayed in the water and made a list in my head:

1. Make sure Judy is dead.

2. Wipe my fingerprints off her car.

3. Run back to Serena and Charlie’s house.

4. Collect the sample off the glass door.

5. Run back here.

6. Add the sample to Judy’s body.

7. Go home.

It all had to be finished before sunrise. How much time did that give me? Two or three hours, probably.

Plenty of time.

But not if I spent the rest of the night relaxing in the creek.

So I climbed out and returned to the table. Kneeling on the bench, I put my ear close to Judy’s mouth. She didn’t seem to be breathing. Nor could I find a pulse at her neck or wrist.

She seemed to be dead.

But I’m no expert on that sort of thing.

I had to be completely sure.

The best way, I decided, was to cave in her head with a rock. Why use a rock? Because I didn’t want to fire my pistol again, I had no knife or saber, strangling or suffocating her seemed iffy, and drowning her in the creek would’ve been too much work. With a good, heavy rock, I could crack open her skull and spill her brains out and know she was dead.

To get one, I returned to the creek.

Standing in the water, I reached down between my feet and plucked out a rough-edged rock the size of a baseball.

It should do the job fine.

With the rock clutched in my right hand, I climbed onto the bank and took a couple of strides toward the picnic table.

And stopped.

The top of the table was speckled with moonlight.

A flat, empty surface.

Judy was gone.

17

GONE

No!

She wasn’t on the table, but she couldn’t be gone. Maybe she’d rolled off and fallen.

I ran to the table.

Without enough light to see if she was on the ground, I searched for her with my feet. I circled the entire table, sweeping my feet this way and that, hoping to kick her.

No Judy.

I tossed the rock away, dropped to my hands and knees, and crawled under the table. The ground was soggy.

No Judy.

I crawled backward. Clear of the table, I scrambled on my knees to the bench where I’d left my clothes. My shirt and cut-offs were still there.

So was the pistol.

My panic faded a little.

I stood up, quickly put on the shorts, and pulled the pistol out of my pocket. Turning slowly, I scanned the area. Judy couldn’t have gone far. In her shape, she was lucky she’d been able to move at all, much less get down from the table and sneak into the trees.

Unless she had help.

The prowler, for instance.

The idea sickened me with dread, but only for a moment.