“You’re a sick fuck.”
I hung up the phone.
It began to ring again. I picked it up.
“Leave me the fuck alone!” I screamed, slamming it back down in the cradle.
It began to ring again.
. . .
The dead hooker was found in the early morning hours of May 24, propped up on a bench in Applegate Park. She was naked as the day she was born, her knees tied with twine to the armrests so her ravaged privates were exposed to anyone who was unlucky enough to pass by. Her raven-black hair was sheared off, probably with the knife that had killed her, and tossed about like birdseed on the grass. Her insides were unraveled and spread out along the dirt path along the lake, and in her head where her eyes used to be were two red roses.
And I felt as responsible for her death as the man who had done the deed.
I immediately regretted sending the hunting knife off to the police. Not that I should have held on to it, but I shouldn’t have lied when I wrote I had come across it in the park. This was a terrible coincidence, and I feared that the mailed-in knife would wreak havoc with their investigation.
I blinked, and all of a sudden I was seeing the world through Pearce’s dead eyes. He was up at the Crowley property. The wolf charged forward, becoming all he could see.
“No!” cried Pearce, but it was too late. The vision ended.
All this shit was really fucking me up. I needed to see Alice. She was the only thing left that made me feel at least the slightest bit normal.
I took a seat on the edge of the soft bed and lit a cigarette. There was a part of me that was tempted to take all my clothes off and ravage Alice the second she walked through that door, but there was another part of me that wasn’t feeling it at all. I also knew that after having lost a friend, just like me, she probably wouldn’t be in the mood to do the nasty. It was unfortunate that there wasn’t a union for hookers. She would have been able to take the day off.
Alice stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. She was wearing a long white nightgown and a pair of slippers. She would usually come in with a smile on her face no matter what the circumstances were, but not on this day. There was only so much she could pretend. I patted the bed next to me and gave her my cigarette.
“Tough day?”
“Yes,” she said softly. “The police have been in and out, and Mama Snow’s worried about what’s going to happen.”
“Are they gonna shut it down?”
“Never,” said Alice. “You’d be surprised who comes here.”
“I’m worried about you,” I said.
“Were you and Josie close?”
“As close as you can be, living this way,” she said.
I lit myself another cigarette. “We don’t have to do anything tonight. I just wanted to be here with you is all.”
“How come?”
“To make sure you’re okay.”
She laughed.
“You don’t have to do that. Leon’s here.”
“I know,” I said. “With all that’s going on, I just wish you didn’t have to do this. They’re saying on the TV that no one’s safe now, and this isn’t exactly the safest … you know …”
“I know,” she said, “but I can’t just stop.”
“What if I asked you to?”
“What?”
“Just till all this is over. Just so I know you’re okay?”
“Marley …”
“I don’t know. Maybe you can stay at my place for a while. I got
an extra room and all….”
“I couldn’t.”
“Maybe, like, if you wanted to, I could drive you around. Pick you up at home, drive you home in the morning. Just so you don’t have to be alone.”
I regretted asking. I knew just by her expression how much I had made her uncomfortable.
“Marley,” she said, “that just wouldn’t be appropriate.”
I hung my head.
“I know.”
“I know you know. There’s a line …”
“I know,” I said, cutting her off. “I just don’t want anything to happen to you.”
I could have told her how much she meant to me. I could have told her that if I lost her, I wouldn’t care who the wolf went after, because I’d have no reason to go on anyway. But I didn’t. I’d have been out on my ear faster than lightning.
“I can take care of myself,” Alice said.
I’m sure Josie Jones had said the same thing a thousand times, but I didn’t press the issue. Before long, we went to bed, and in the morning I left with a little bit of pain in my heart, just like I always did.
By the time I got to work, two things had happened. One, the trucker whose knife it was had contacted the police when the knife made an appearance on the news as a possible murder weapon. He claimed ownership of it, and stated on the television that he had been robbed of it almost three weeks earlier. He was not charged with anything.
Two, since the Rose Killer had struck too close to home for me, I decided to keep an eye on Alice. She had been unwilling or unable to accept my offer of protection. I couldn’t let a little thing like acceptance stand in my way. I had lost too much. I couldn’t lose her too. And maybe, just maybe, she would lead me to the bad guy.
FIFTEEN
Alice left her house at seven-thirty in the evening, got behind the wheel of her Honda, and drove to work. I was right behind her in the truck.
She parked on the corner, several doors away from Mama Snow’s, and walked the rest of the way. At the front door, she was greeted by the monster known as Leon, who actually smiled. I drove past the house, made a U-turn, and parked on the far corner for my nightlong stakeout. I had a full view of everything, like a mountain bird.
Before long, the sky grew black.
It gnawed at my soul knowing she was in that house for all those hours with men that weren’t me. There was a part of me that understood what she did for a living, the fact that I paid her just like everybody else. But there was another part of me that longed for something more than that. It was the part of me that cared and was much more likely to get me into trouble. What made those long, dark hours worse was that the radio didn’t work in the truck. I couldn’t very well keep the overhead light on, so I sat in the dark all night, stewing in my own crap thoughts, and watching German cars pull up to Mama Snow’s one after another.
As midnight came and went, I got to thinking about the war.
At night in Vietnam we spent a lot of time staring into the longest, blackest night, waiting for something bad to happen, like hearing a twig snap, or hearing a bang and realizing someone just died. We couldn’t smoke because the snipers would be able to put a bullet in your face. The glow at the end of a cigarette became a beacon for VC—
