“Perhaps she’s all right. She might have fled.”
“You’d better pray she did.” Turning away, Marty shouted up the hillside. “Janice! Jaaan—nice!”
Gorman crouched and picked up Brian’s camera. The flash attachment was in place. He peeled off the lens cap, and raised the camera to his eye. Peering through the viewfinder, he aimed at the blanket. The girl’s jeans and panties were also in frame. He snapped a shot. In the quick burst of light, he saw that the panties were pink, the blue jeans faded, the blue blanket splashed with crimson. The automatic film advance buzzed.
The
He turned the camera toward Janice’s boots. They were close together, one standing at a slant, propped up by the sole of the other.
Fabulous.
She died with her boots off.
As his fingertip sought the shutter release, Marty blocked the view and drove a fist into Gorman’s belly. The blow smashed his wind out, knocked him backwards. The camera flew from his hands. His back hit the slope. He skidded downhill. His legs flipped high and he somersaulted. The earth pounded his knees, his belly. He clutched at weeds to stop his slide. Through his loud gasps for breath, he heard Claire shouting for Marty to stop.
The man came charging down.
“No!” Gorman cried.
Still in motion, Marty kicked at his head. Gorman shoved his face into the weeds. He felt the breeze of the passing shoe. Looking up, he saw that the momentum of the kick had thrown the man off balance. Marty flailed his arms and fell backwards. He landed on his rump. As he slid, the edge of a shoe scraped Gorman’s ear.
Gorman grabbed the shoe and twisted it sharply. He heard a crackly sound of tearing cartilage. Marty flinched with pain. His mouth sprang open and he let out a cry.
“Marty!” Claire yelled. She started down.
In seconds, Gorman would have her to contend with. Two against one. It’s not fair!
He tugged Marty’s foot. When the groaning man was close enough, Gorman punched him in the groin.
“Leave him alone!” Claire shouted. “Don’t touch him, you bastard!”
She was only a few yards away.
Gorman found a rock the size of a coconut, and slammed it down on Marty’s forehead. He felt the skull crush under its impact.
A whiny sound came from Claire. She was climbing the slope backwards, shaking her head from side to side with tight little jerks, her arms batting the air for balance.
Gorman got to his knees. “It’s all right,” he told her. “Don’t be frightened. We’ll get him to a doctor.”
Claire suddenly whirled around and bolted up the hillside.
Gorman went after her. “Don’t run!” he called. “We can’t help Marty if you run. Wait up!”
She kept going.
“Goddamn it, wait! I won’t hurt you!”
Her foot landed on one of Janice’s boots. She stumbled, but didn’t fall.
Gorman hurled the rock. It caught her between the shoulder blades and bounced off. She went down, sprawling flat, and scurried to get up again. Gorman pounced on her back. His weight smashed her to the ground. Clutching her hair, he tugged her head toward him and stretched his right arm out past her shoulder and brought his fist back sharply to strike her face. The position was awkward. He couldn’t get much power behind the punch. But he pounded her face again and again, very fast. She was crying and attempting to turn her face away. When she managed to grab his wrist, he yanked it free and drove his elbow down hard on her shoulder. That sent a shudder through her body, so he kept hammering down with his elbow, each blow making her cry out and squirm, until finally he somehow struck his crazy bone. His arm went tingly and numb.
Keeping his grip on her hair, he raised himself off her back. He sat on her rump. Her feeble writhing didn’t worry him. He knew he’d taken the starch out of her. But he wasn’t quite sure how to finish her off. As he shook his arm and waited for its weakness to pass, he scanned the moonlit ground. He saw no rocks close enough to reach.
She twisted under him.
“Stop it,” he snapped. He gave her hair a savage tug. “And stop that sobbing.”
In a moment, his arm felt better. He raked his fingers through the weeds alongside Claire’s body, and found a stick. It was slightly larger than a pencil, and neither end had much of a point. But perhaps it would do.
Clutching it like a knife, Gorman scooted up her back and rammed it at her neck, just below her right ear. The stick skidded down her skin, clawing a furrow. Screaming, Claire bucked and twisted in a frenzy. Gorman struck again. This time, a couple of inches broke off the stick, leaving a decent point. The third blow penetrated. Her shriek leaped to a higher pitch. She thrashed wildly as he forced the stick deeper. Then he pulled it out and stabbed again. He kept plunging the stick into her neck long after the screams stopped and she lay motionless beneath him.
Then he climbed off her. The sleeve of his jacket was sheathed with blood. He wiped his hand on the seat of her jeans.
Patting his pockets, he made sure he hadn’t lost his wallet or cassette recorder during the struggles.
The recorder. He took it out. Good God, it had been running throughout the killings. He would have to destroy the tape.
He would also have to get rid of his clothes. Every stitch. But that could wait.
Down the slope, he picked up Brian’s pants. The underwear fluttered out. He dug into the pocket and removed the car keys. Wandering along the hillside, he found the camera. Finally, he knelt over Marty’s body. The contract was in a pocket of the shirt. He took it out. Though he wasn’t precisely sure why, at that moment, he also took Marty’s keys.
Then he rushed down to the fence. With a final glance at Brian’s impaled body, he ran.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The air felt chilly on Tyler’s face, but the rest of her body was snug under the covers. Rolling over, she pushed her face into the soft warmth of the pillow.
The chirp and warble of birds sounded peaceful, stirred memories of distant summer mornings when she lay in bed, so comfortable she didn’t want to get up, but eager to get outside. Adventures beckoned: today the comic book stand (she’d make a fortune!), today the careers tournament with Sally and Huss and Loretta, today a picnic at the lake, today exploring.
Exploring was maybe the best—taking off, on bike or foot, to follow that road, that forest path, those train tracks, farther than she’d ever gone before.
Later came the mornings, almost painful with excitement, when she couldn’t wait to get up and take the bus to the public pool where Skip Robinson would be practicing his backstroke and this time he might notice her. Finally, he did. And he was so shy. And he always smelled like Coppertone.
Abe smells like Brut. She squirmed against the bed, remembering the feel of his body as he embraced her last night. There on the stoop like a couple of teenagers while Nora led Jack into her room. If she’d asked Abe to come in, he would be next to her now. Instead, they’d gone alone to their rooms. Tyler had regretted it even then, feeling the loss like an empty ache.
I hardly know the man, she thought.
But Dan had been in her mind. She’d come here to find Dan, and it would’ve been some kind of vague betrayal to make love with Abe.
She wished she had.
She owed nothing to Dan. They’d made their choices five years ago and even if she found him today (in Beast House?) it was probably over for good. She shouldn’t have let thoughts of Dan stop her.
More than that had stopped her. It was also wanting Abe so badly and knowing she might never see him again after today. He and Jack would head north; she and Nora would head south. And if she’d made love with Abe, the parting would be worse.
Thinking about it now, she felt the loss as if he were already gone.
We have today, she told herself.
