“He was taking my blood,” she said again, as if she wanted to be sure I understood.
I pointed to the two sweatshirts. She selected one and pulled it on, thought about it for a second, then pulled the second one on over the first. Karla hadn’t asked the girl her shoe size, but the tennis shoes looked just right. A good example, I thought, of how naturally attentive Karla was to the details of her surroundings. If she wasn’t a vampire’s chauffeur, she would have made a good CIA operative.
Just to settle the matter of the Arnauds’ niece, there was something I wanted to ask the girl before we got to the bus depot. “Joy, were there other girls at that house with you?”
“There was another girl,” she said quietly.
“Do you know her name?”
“I never talked to her. I only heard her.”
She seemed to be embarrassed about something.
“That’s how I got away,” she continued. “The other girl started screaming, and the man left my door unlocked when he went to see why.”
“So you never saw her?”
“I saw her once. Just for a second.”
“What did she look like?”
“I think she was Chinese, or something. Just a little kid.”
“No one else?” I asked.
“No sir, I don’t think so.”
When we got to the Greyhound station, I waited in the car while Karla took Joy inside. She was gone for about half an hour. When she came back, she got in the car without saying anything, and sat for several minutes, fidgeting with the keys while she thought about what she wanted to say.
“The bus doesn’t leave until 8:15,” she said, finally.
“Do you think she’ll get on it?” I asked.
“I guess so.” Then added, as if she wasn’t sure how I would react, “I gave her some money.”
“That was thoughtful.”
“I gave her a thousand dollars,” she clarified.
“It’s expense money. For you to use at your discretion.”
She put the key in the ignition, but didn’t start the car. “Shake, I know I’m not supposed to ask a lot questions, but it would really help me if you told me what happened to that girl.”
She was almost pleading. “Help you?” I asked.
“Yes. Help me make sense out of what’s going on. Who was she?”
“You know as much about her as I do. She’s just a young girl who got caught in something, through no fault of her own, and then she got lucky.”
“So you won’t tell me?” she said, looking me in the eye so I’d know how unacceptable that was to her.
“To be honest, Karla, there are things I can’t explain, and telling you part of the story won’t put your mind at ease.”
“Jesus, Shake! We just rescued that girl from some psycho-fuck kidnapper, and instead of taking her to the cops, we put her on a bus to fucking Texas. And that’s supposed to be the end of it? Like, I’m not supposed to be curious?”
“Look, Karla. I know I’m asking a lot of you, but we’ve done everything we can. The girl was in trouble and we helped her. That should be enough.”
Karla folded her arms tightly across her chest, clearly disinclined to let it go. “What about that asshole in the mountains. Joy said he has another girl. What about her?”
And now, I thought, for the hard part. “I can’t do anything about that, Karla.”
“Can’t or won’t?” she asked, again staring me in the face.
“Both, I’m afraid.”
“I don’t get it,” she said, exasperated. “Who the fuck is this guy? Are you, like, afraid of him, or something?”
“I’m not exactly afraid of him.”
Karla studied my face, her mood shifting from frustration to one of curious surprise. “You know him, don’t you?”
“Our paths crossed once, a long time ago.”
“Jesus, Shake!”
“I’m not afraid of what he might do to me, Karla. I don’t think he’s a threat to me, any more than I’m a threat to him. But I don’t really know him. If I interfere, he might get vindictive. He might come after you, and I don’t want that. And believe me, you don’t, either.”
“We could tell the police. We could report him, like, anonymously, or something.”
“You can’t imagine how pointless that would be.”
“What about Mio? She could help us.”
Bringing up Mio took me completely by surprise.
“She could help us,” Karla said, more optimistically, “couldn’t she?”
“Maybe she could,” I granted, “but I don’t think she would. Either way, I can’t ask her for help. Not with this. And I can’t explain why. You just have to accept that Mio is not an option.”
Sensing the finality in my voice, Karla tried one last tack. “What if I reported him on my own?”
“It sounds like you’re asking me what I’ll do if you report him against my advice not to.”
Karla looked at me but didn’t say anything.
“You’re free to do as you wish, Karla. I can understand you wanting to help the other girl. But going to the police won’t do her any good.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“As I said, the choice is yours.”
“You really won’t do anything?”
“I’ll give you some good advice. Don’t go anywhere near that house in Pollock Pines, ever again. It’s not in your power to hurt the man who lives there. Neither you nor the police are going to do anything other than inconvenience him. As for the girl, my guess is she’s already gone. He won’t take any chances after Joy got away from him. The last thing you want to do is give him a reason to notice your existence, a reason to single you out.”
“Is he really that dangerous?”
“He’s dangerous in ways you can’t imagine. And he’s playing by a very different set of rules. That might not sound important to you, but it is. He’s willing to do things your humanity won’t allow, things you wouldn’t dream of doing. And that makes him unpredictable and extremely dangerous.”
We were nearing the university. Karla hadn’t said anything for several blocks. As we approached the footbridge, I told Karla to turn around, giving her directions to
