CHAPTER THIRTEEN 1.


Sunlight on his face woke Roy. He lifted his head off his rolled jeans, and propped himself up with his elbows. The campfire was out. A sparrow, near the campfire remains, was plucking bread from a clump that Joni had probably spit out. The backpack stood upright, closed and safe.

In daylight, the clearing didn’t seem nearly as secluded as it had in the dark. The trees surrounding it were farther apart, the spaces between them offering a wider view than he’d thought. Worse, a hillside overlooked the area.

As he looked up at the hillside, he heard an engine. He saw the blue roof of a car rush by.

“Oh shit,” he muttered.

He unzipped the side of the mummy bag and crawled out. Standing, he unrolled his jeans. He reached into them and pulled out his Jockey shorts. Balancing on one foot, then the other, he stepped into them.

He heard voices.

“Oh shit oh shit.”

He sat down quickly on the mummy bag and started pulling on his jeans.

Two hikers, a young couple, came striding along the hillside just above his camp. They wore soft felt hats, like the ones he’d seen in Karen and Bob’s closet.

They came closer and closer.

Lifting his rump, he pulled up his jeans. Zipped them. Buckled them.

The couple stepped into the clearing.

He couldn’t believe it! The fucking trail ran right past his mummy bag!

“Oh hello,” said the man of the pair. He seemed pleasantly surprised to meet Roy.

“Hi,” said the girl with him. She seemed no older than eighteen.

“Hello,” Roy answered. “You almost caught me with my pants down.”

The girl grinned. She had a big mouth for smiling, and huge teeth. Also huge breasts. They did a lot of swinging inside her tight, green tank top. She wore white shorts. Her legs looked tanned and powerful.

The man pulled a briar pipe from a pocket of his shorts. “You camped smack in the middle of the trail,” he said, as if he found it amusing.

“I didn’t want to get lost.”

He slipped a leather pouch out of his rear pocket and started filling his pipe. “What’d you use for water?”

“I did without.”

“There’s a public campground about a mile that way.” He pointed his pipe stem at the hill. “Faucets there, toilets.”

“That’s good to know. Maybe I’ll head up that way.”

He lit a match and sucked its flame down into his pipe. “Illegal camping here, you know.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Yep. Anywhere but the public sites.”

“I can’t stand those places,” Roy said. “They’re too crowded. I’d rather stay home.”

“They are awful,” agreed the girl.

“Yep,” the man said, and puffed.

“Where are you headed?” Roy asked, hoping to get them on their way.

“Stinson Beach,” said the man.

“How far’s that?”

“We plan to get there by noon.”

“Well,” Roy said, “have a good hike.”

“That’s some nice equipment you’ve got. Where’d you outfit yourself?”

“I’m from L.A.,” he said.

“That so? Been over to Kelty’s in Glendale?”

“That’s where I bought most of my stuff.”

“I’ve been there. Bought my boots there, in fact. Back about six years ago.” He looked down fondly at them.

“Who’s that in your sleeping bag?” the girl asked.

Roy’s stomach clenched. He thought about his knife. It was rolled inside his shirt, within easy reach of his right hand.

“It’s my wife,” he said.

The man grinned, gripping the pipe in his teeth. “You both fit in the same bag?”

“It’s cozy that way,” Roy said.

“Do you have room to maneuver?” asked the man.

“Enough.”

The man laughed. “We ought to try that, huh, Jack?”

Jack, the girl, didn’t look amused.

“Our bags zip together,” the man. “You ought to try it that way. Gives a lot more room.”

“What’s wrong with her?” Jack asked.

“Nothing, why? ’Cause she doesn’t come out? She’s a pretty heavy sleeper.”

“Can she breathe in there?” asked the man.

“Sure. She always sleeps that way. Far down like that. She doesn’t like her head getting cold.”

“Yeah?” The girl named Jack looked skeptical.

“Well, we’d better be off,” said the man.

“Have a nice hike,” Roy told him.

“You too.”

They walked past him. He watched until they disappeared into the trees, then he unrolled his shirt. He raised his pant leg, and slipped the knife into the sheath taped to his calf. Then he put on his shirt.

He took Joni’s blouse and skirt out of the pack, and knelt at the head of the mummy bag. He scanned the trees. Nobody around.

Joni groaned as he pulled her out by the arm. She opened one eye, and closed it again. Roy arranged her face-up on top of the bag.

The sight of her sunlit, naked body excited him.

Not now.

Shit, not now.

He pulled the dress up her legs, and fastened it. Then he raised her to a sitting position, and worked the blouse up her arms. He let her fall back. Quickly, he buttoned her blouse.

“Wake up,” he said. He slapped her.

Her eyes squeezed tight at the sudden pain, then fluttered open.

“Get up.”

Slowly, she rolled over and got to her knees. Her hair was bloody and matted to the back of her head where the knife hilt had bludgeoned her.

Breaking camp seemed to take a long time. While he worked, he watched Joni closely. He listened for voices. He kept glancing up the hillside at the trail and the road. Finally, everything was loaded in the pack. He swung it to his shoulders, grabbed Joni’s hand, and led her down to the lower road.

A Ford van passed.

He waved and smiled.

When the road was deserted again, he opened the Pontiac’s trunk. “Climb in, honey.” 2.


As Roy drove, he heard radio reports about a house fire and double murder in Santa Monica. They didn’t give the victims’ names, but mentioned a missing eight-year-old girl. He heard nothing about Karen and Bob Marston.

That worried him.

He went over it in his mind: how Karen had spilled the beans about Malcasa Point; how surprised she was when, instead of leaving, he gagged her and really got down to business until she died; how he had waited, hidden in the hall, for Bob to come home; the way Bob shook his head and moaned when he stepped into the bedroom and saw his wife hanging on the door; the sound of Bob’s head splitting under the ax; the candle placed carefully in a circle of paper wads, just the way he’d done it at the other place.

Maybe a visitor dropped by and stopped the fire.

Maybe, somehow, the candle blew out.

If the candle blew out, maybe the bodies hadn’t been discovered yet.

He couldn’t take that chance. He’d better just act as if the car is hot, and get himself a new one.

He swung it onto a dirt turn-out, the tires flinging up clouds of yellow dust. He got out, opened the hood, and leaned under it, waiting.

Soon he heard the sound of an approaching car. He stayed under the hood and reached toward the fan belt. The car sped past. It kept going. He tried the same tactic with two more cars. Neither stopped.

The next time he heard an engine, he leaned under the hood until the car was close, then stood up and made a frustrated face, and waved. The driver shook his head. His face said, “Not a chance, buddy.”

Roy yelled, “Fuck you, too!”

When the next car came, he simply stuck out his thumb. He saw the woman passenger shake her head at the driver. The car kept going. So did the next.

He slammed the hood.

As he stepped to the car’s rear, a van approached. A sunburst was painted on its front. The driver was a woman with straight, black hair. She wore a headband, and a leather vest. He saw her right arm point him out. He waved. He liked the looks of her.

But he didn’t like the looks of the man who called out the passenger window. “Car trouble?” The man’s voice was raspy. He wore a faded, sweatstained cowboy hat, sunglasses, and a black, shaggy mustache. His blue Levi’s jacket was sleeveless. His upper arm bore the tattoo of a dripping stiletto.

“No trouble,” Roy called. “I just stopped to take a leak.”

“Power to you.” The man saluted him with a clenched fist, and the van pulled away.

Roy waited until it was out of sight, then opened the trunk. Joni looked up at him. The hot dog he’d bought at Stinson Beach and tossed into the trunk earlier that morning was gone. The can of Pepsi lay open on its side, empty. Must’ve been tricky, he thought, drinking it in the trunk.

“Climb out,” he said.

He helped her and shut the trunk.

Joni looked around as if wondering where they had stopped, and why. She didn’t seem to find the answer. She looked up at Roy.

“We need a new car,” he said. “You’re gonna help us get it.”

He led her along the roadside. When they were fifty or sixty feet from the rear of his car, he told her to lie down in the northbound lane.

Joni shook her head.

Just as well. He really couldn’t trust her, anyway. She would probably try to run.

He tried to think of a way to do this without hurting his hand: a rock, a club of wood, or his knife handle would do fine. Maybe too fine. He didn’t want to take a chance on killing her. Not yet. So he decided on his hand. Gripping the neck of her blouse, he jerked her forward. As she stumbled toward him, he slammed his right fist against her temple. Her legs went out. He dragged her partway into the road, and set her down. Quickly, he arranged her arms and legs so she looked awkwardly sprawled. Then he returned to his car, ducked into the nearby trees, and waited.

The wait was short.

He grinned, amazed by his good fortune as he watched a black Rolls-Royce round the corner. A man was driving; a woman passenger sat beside him.

The car swerved to miss Joni, then slowed, and pulled behind Roy’s Pontiac. The driver stepped out. Leaving his door open, he walked quickly back toward Joni. He was a big man, well over six feet tall, and at least two hundred pounds.

A goddamn football player!

Shit.

The big man knelt beside Joni. He touched her neck, probably trying to find a pulse. The Rolls was about twenty feet from Roy. All the windows were up. The woman, turned away, was looking through the rear window.

The man began to pull off his sports jacket.

Roy lunged from behind the trees. His boots crushed underbrush. The man glanced over his shoulder. The woman began to turn her head. Leaping, Roy’s boot thudded onto the hood of the Rolls. The car lurched under his weight. The man was standing. Roy jumped down between the side of the car and the open door. The woman screamed as he thrust himself onto the driver’s seat. He pulled the door shut, and locked it a moment before the man arrived.

The screaming woman threw her shoulder toward the passenger door. Roy jerked the neck of her blouse. It ripped, but it stopped her long enough for Roy to grab her hair. He pulled her toward him. Her cheek hit the steering wheel. He forced her head down to his lap, then chopped her neck with the edge of his hand.

The man’s face pressed the window, rage in his eyes, fists pounding the glass.

Roy realized that the car was still running. He shifted into reverse and stepped on the gas pedal. The car shot backward. The big man, staggering after a quick leap aside, looked at him through the tumbling cloud of dust.

He seemed to know.

Roy shifted to drive. As the Rolls sped forward, the man jumped onto the Pontiac’s trunk. Roy braced himself. He hit the Pontiac hard. The man’s legs flew out. He dropped heavily onto the hood of the Rolls. With a quick shift to reverse, Roy jerked the Rolls backward and tumbled the man off.

Right off the front.

He sped forward. The car made a satisfying bounce, passing over the man.

Easy as rolling over a log. Roy grinned.

The grin stopped at once.

What if another car comes along?

The woman across his lap was unconscious, maybe dead.

He left the car running, and got out. The man’s body lay conveniently close to the rear of the Pontiac. Roy opened its trunk. He didn’t want to look closely at the body, much less touch it—not with the way the head had been mashed. But he had no choice. Something made splashy, plopping sounds as he lifted the body. He dropped it into the trunk, and vomited onto it. Then he slammed the trunk shut.

Running back to the girl, he looked down at himself. His shirt and pants were dripping gore. Though he gagged, he kept running. He lifted Joni, smearing her with the dead man’s blood, and carried her to the Rolls. He set her down on the backseat. He ran to the Pontiac, grabbed his backpack, and threw it into the Rolls beside Joni. Then he climbed into the front and swung the car onto the road. 3.


Roy drove the Rolls for nearly an hour before he found a side road he liked. It led over bare hills to the left. He was sure it would take him to the ocean, so he turned onto it.

Joni was conscious in the backseat, but so far she had just stayed there, lying on her side, staring forward. The woman in the front seat was dead. Roy didn’t like the way her head lay on his lap, but he decided against trying to set her upright: though there was no blood, the struggle for air had left her face hideously contorted. Her skin had a gray-blue tint. If he had her sitting up, people might notice. So he simply accepted the repulsive weight of her head on his lap, just as he accepted the blood on his hands and shirt and pants. He had to accept them, at least until he could find a deserted stretch of shoreline.

This up ahead looked promising.

The road ended a hundred yards from the shore. He parked in the shade. There were no cars in sight. A few cows grazed on the hillside. He got out. Just to the left of the road, the ground slanted down, forming a gorge choked with heavy bushes. A footpath along the edge of the gorge led to a beach.

He would like to get the woman’s body into the water, tow it far out, and let it go. But carrying it to the water would be tough. Dangerous, too. Forget it.

He would roll her into the gorge.

Not now, though. Not until he and Joni were cleaned up and ready to leave. In the meantime, he couldn’t just leave her in the front seat. Someone might come along.

He thought of the trunk.

Then he got a better idea. Checking once again to be certain he was unobserved, he got out and pulled her across the front seat. Her feet hit the road, knocking off one of her platform shoes. He dragged her in front of the car. There, he stretched her out lengthwise on the dirt shoulder. Her arms and legs were a little stiff, but he managed to straighten them. With her legs together and her arms flat against her sides, Roy went back to the car.

He drove slowly forward.

Over the top of the black hood, he watched as the car seemed to swallow her.

He stopped and climbed out. He had to get down on his hands and knees to see her in the darkness beneath the car.

A great hiding place.

He pulled Joni out of the backseat. Together, they walked down the footpath to the beach. 4.


The water, cold at first, quickly lost the shock of its chill and felt almost warm to Roy. Joni still stood on the shore. Only the largest waves reached far enough to wash over her feet.

Roy took off his shirt. He scrubbed the cloth with his knuckles, trying to wash it. Waves caught him, lifted him, turned him. When they carried him too far from Joni, he swam closer. He held up his blue shirt and studied it in the sunlight. If blood remained on it, which he didn’t doubt, at least the stains were barely noticeable.

“Come on in, Joni, and wash up.”

She shook her head. She stepped backward, farther from the water, and sat down on the sand.

“You know what happens,” Roy called, “when you don’t do like I say.”

She looked down the beach, where a point of rocks jutted into the water. Breakers smashed against the rocks, splashing white froth high. She looked up the beach. In that direction, the shoreline curved inward and disappeared. “Don’t try it,” Roy yelled, wading forward.

She stood up and walked into the water. It wound around her ankles. She kept moving. A high wave came, wetting her to the waist, sticking the pleated skirt to her skin. She stopped there. The water receded. Bending, she splashed it onto the bloodstains on her blouse. She rubbed the stains. A wave came, knocking her backward. She fell, and the white water swirled over her head.

Roy went to her. He lifted her. He kissed her forehead. Then, wrapping his hand in his shirt, he scrubbed the bloodstains on her blouse. They grew faint, but wouldn’t vanish altogether. Finally he gave up.

He pulled her deeper into the water, and did his best to wash the blood from her hair. Whenever he touched the sensitive wound left by the knife’s hilt, she jerked her head away. Finally her hair was clean enough to suit him. He led her out of the water.

On the beach, he removed her blouse and skirt. He spread them on the sand to dry. Then he took off his own clothes, and spread them next to hers.

They sat down on the sand. It was hot under Roy, almost burning.

“Try to sleep,” he said.

Joni lay back and shut her eyes.

Roy looked at her. Water made tiny points of her eyelashes. Her skin was lightly tanned, except where a two-piece bathing suit had left it pale. Just like a little lady.

Beads of water rolled down her skin, glinting sunlight. He wished he had oil. Suntan oil, or baby oil. He would rub her all over with it. Her skin would be slick and hot.

He lay on his side, and propped himself up on an elbow to look at her. Her eyelids fluttered. She was only pretending to sleep, of course.

She opened her eyes when he touched her.

She turned her head and stared at him. He wondered, briefly, if she looked so sad because of what happened to her parents, or because of what he’d been doing to her.

Not that he gave a shit.

Inching closer, he kissed her on the mouth. His hand began moving down her sun-hot skin.


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