Phillip was crying hopelessly. “Shut up, Phillip,” said the man who’d played baseball with him that afternoon. “Every time you cry, I’ll hit your sister. Won’t I, sis?” and the golf club whistled through the air and Bankston broke my collarbone. My shriek must have covered Melanie’s steps, because suddenly she was there looking down at me with pleasure.
“When I pulled in, the Scarecrow was searching the parking lot,” she said to Bankston. “Here’s the tape recorder. I can’t believe we forgot it!”
Gee, what a madcap couple. She sounded for all the world like a housewife who’d remembered the potato salad in the fridge just as the family was leaving on its picnic.
I decided, when the pain had ebbed enough for me to think, that “the Scarecrow” was Robin. I managed to look at Phillip again. God bless him, he was trying so hard not to make sounds, so Bankston wouldn’t hit me again. I tried to push the pain away so I could look reassuring, but I could only stare at him and try not to scream myself. If I screamed, Bankston would hit me quite a lot.
Or maybe he would hit Phillip.
“What do you think?” Bankston asked her.
“No way we can get them out of here now,” Melanie said matter-of-factly. “He said he’d called the police. One of us better go up soon and offer to help search. If we don’t the police will want to look in here, I guess, get suspicious. We can’t have that, can we?” and she smiled archly, and poked, my leg with her foot, as if I were a piece of naughtiness that they had to conceal for convention’s sake. She saw me looking at her. “Get up and get over there by the kid,” she said, and then she kicked me. I moaned. “I’ve always wanted to do that,” she said to Bankston with a smile.
It was not only the fall and the blows that made it hard to move, but the shock. I was in this most prosaic basement with these most prosaic people, and they were monsters that were going to kill me, me and my brother. I had read and marvelled for years at people living cheek by jowl with psychopaths, and not suspecting. And here I was, trying desperately to crawl across a concrete floor in a building my mother owned while friends looked for my brother outside, because I had never never thought it could happen to me. I got to Phillip’s side in a few moments, though the young woman I’d known all my life and gone to church with did kick me a few times on the journey. I grabbed the edge of the seat and dragged myself to my knees, and clumsily draped my good arm around Phillip. I wished Phillip would faint. His face was more than I could stand, and I had no consolation for him. We were looking at the faces of demons, and all the rules of kindness and courtesy that Phillip and I had been taught so carefully did not apply. No reward for good behavior.
“I got the tape recorder, but now we can’t use it,” Melanie was pouting. “I think that’s when she got suspicious, when she saw me pull out of the parking lot. I didn’t want to have to help her look, so I had to act like I didn’t hear her. I don’t guess we’ll get to have any fun tonight.”
“I didn’t think this through,” Bankston agreed. “Now they’ll be out there looking for the boy and her all night, and we’ll have to go volunteer, too. At least now we’ve got her keys, they can’t use the master set to come in here.” He held them up. I must have dropped them when I fell.
“You think they might insist on searching all the apartments?” Melanie asked anxiously. “We can’t turn them down if they ask.”
Bankston pondered. They were at the foot of the steps still. I could not get by them. I could not see any weapons besides the golf club, but even if I did attack them with my one good arm and my little remaining energy, the two of them could easily overcome me and the noise would not be heard by anyone… unless the Crandalls had decided to spend the evening in their basement. “We’ll just have to wing it,” Bankston said finally.
The baseball! Maybe Robin would see it, like I had.
“Did you talk to anyone when you pulled in?” Bankston was asking.
“Just what I told you before. Robin asked me if I had seen the boy, and I said no, but that I’d be glad to help look,” Melanie said with no irony whatsoever. “Roe left the back door open, so I closed and relocked it. And I picked up the kid’s baseball, it was still out on the patio.”
That was our death warrant, I reckoned.
Bankston cursed. “How did it end up out there? I was sure I’d brought it in.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Melanie said. “Even if they did find it, you could just have said you’d been keeping it for him but he didn’t ever show up looking for it.”
“You’re right,” Bankston said fondly. “What shall we do with those two? If we leave them tied up down here while we go help to search, they might somehow get loose. If we kill them right now, we lose our fun with the boy.” He strolled over to us and Melanie followed.
“You acted on impulse when you grabbed him,” Melanie observed. “We should just go on and take care of them now, and hide them down here good. Then when the search dies down, we’ll see if we can get them out to the car and dump them. Next time, no impulses, we’ll do what we planned and nothing extra.”
“Are you criticizing me?” Bankston asked sharply. His voice was low and dangerous.
Her posture changed. I had never seen anything like it. She cringed and folded and became another person. “No, never,” she whimpered, and she bent and licked his hand. I saw her eyes, and she was role-playing and it excited her immensely.
I was nauseated. I hoped I was blocking Phillip’s view sufficiently. I huddled closer to him, though the pain from my collarbone was becoming more insistent. Phillip was shaking and he had wet himself. His breath was getting more and more ragged, and muffled sobs and whimpers broke out from time to time.
Melanie and Bankston were giving each other a kiss, and Bankston bent and bit her shoulder. She held him to her as though they would use each other right there, but then they unclenched and she said, “We’d better do it now. Why run any more risks?”
“You’re right,” Bankston agreed. He gave her the golf club, and she swung it through the air experimentally while he searched his pockets. In her black slacks and green sweater and knotted scarf she looked ready to tee off at the country club. In that small area the club whistled past me with no room to spare, and I started to protest, when I realized yet again that Melanie absolutely could not care less. Old assumptions die hard.
I saw a foot on the stairs behind them.
“Give me your scarf, Mel,” Bankston said suddenly. Melanie unknotted it instantly. “This would be less messy, and I’ve never done it before,” he observed cheerfully. They never looked at me or at Phillip, except in passing, and I could tell to them we were not people like they were.
The foot was joined by a matching foot, and silently took another step down.
“Maybe I should tape this,” Melanie said brightly. “It won’t be what we had planned, but it might be interesting.”
The next step squeaked, and I screamed, “God damn you to hell! How can you do this to me? How can you do this to a little boy?”
They were as shocked as though a chair had spoken. Melanie swung the club instantly with both hands. My body was covering Phillip’s on the chair, but the blow was so strong the chair was rocked. It was easy to shriek as loud as a freight train. I saw the feet descend all the way in a rush.
“Shut up, bitch!” Melanie said furiously.
“Naw, you shut up,” a flat voice advised her.
It was old Mr. Crandall, and he was carrying a very large gun.
The only sound in the basement was the sobbing coming from me, as I struggled to control myself. Phillip raised his bound wrists to loop his arms over my head. I wished more than ever that he’d faint.
“You’re not going to shoot,” Bankston said. “You old idiot. With this concrete floor, it’ll ricochet and hit them.”
“I’d rather shoot them directly than leave them to you,” Mr. Crandall said simply.
“Which one of us will you shoot first?” Melanie asked furiously. She’d been sidling away from Bankston a little at a time. “You can’t get us both, old man.”
“But I can,” said Robin from higher on the stairs, and he wasn’t nearly as calm as Mr. Crandall. I managed to look up. I saw Robin descending with a shotgun. “Now I don’t know as much about guns as Mr. Crandall, but he loaded this for me, and if I point it and fire I am real sure I will hit something.”
If they tried anything desperate it would be now. I could feel the turmoil pouring from them. They looked at each other. I could only stare through a haze of pain at the green silk scarf in Bankston’s hand. Oh, surely they must see it was over, over.
