A Checklist for Murder (6 page)

Then Robert’s face was there, right in front of hers. She met his eyes, searching for some connection that might tell her there was an end to this in sight. But she found nothing, no hint of compassion, no trace of doubt about what he was doing. He had launched into some kind of plan and showed no hesitation. The expression told her she could forget any hope that he might falter or reverse the course he was following now.

“I can’t feel my hands anymore,” she said softly.

He regarded her for a moment, wondering, perhaps, if she was going to try anything funny. But then, Robert had control now.

He released the handcuffs and untied the rope that held her feet back against the cuff chain. Keeping her ankles tied together, he lowered her feet to the floor and pulled her arms around to the front, then fastened the cuffs again. But they weren’t as tight this time. They didn’t need to be. He had control to spare.

He held up a small glass full of amber-colored liquor. “Drink up,” he ordered, businesslike, a stern bartender suggesting some original concoction.

Tasha held the glass and sipped without fighting, but she had trouble getting it down. It was the same stuff that had dribbled down the tube, and the strong liquid kept gagging her. She turned her head for a second, trying to shake off the taste. The blue canvas hood caught her eye as it lay on the bedspread. She could see the plastic tube still wedged into the mask’s small mouth hole and saw for the first time that the tube was red in color. Teeth marks covered the mouth side of the tube. She realized that she must have chewed it nervously while Robert was out of the room.

But Robert pulled her gaze away from the face mask, taking her by the chin and holding the glass of liquor in his outstretched hand. “Come on, just cooperate. Drink it.”

She got about half of the glassful down before she began to choke on it. This time Robert didn’t push her to drink more.

“That’s okay.” He pulled the glass away, apparently satisfied that things were going as planned. But before he set the glass aside he produced a small oval-shaped white pill and put it between her lips. “Swallow it,” he ordered, offering her one final sip of the liquor to wash it down. The fresh burst of fear that washed over Tasha quickly dissolved into resignation. If he was going to poison her now, there wasn’t anything she could do to stop him. It might be better than the gun, anyway. She wondered if he could have gotten his hands on cyanide. Didn’t cyanide have some special kind of taste to it? But whatever taste the pill might have was covered over by the alcohol. In another second the pill was swallowed down.

Robert set the glass down on the nightstand. When he moved out of her line of vision she got a quick glimpse of
the spray bottle resting there as he set the glass down next to it.

A moment later he picked up the hood, pulling the leather strips so that the bottom of the hood was wide open. He moved closer to her with it. She didn’t bother lifting her cuffed hands to stop him; in seconds it was back over her head. And then everything was dark again. She felt the thin leather laces dig into her flesh as they were pulled tightly against her throat. He pushed her back over onto her side and walked out of the room, leaving Tasha to count her heartbeats by the throbbing in her throat. If he had indeed given her some kind of a drug, she felt no effect so far. The fear coursing through her must have beaten back any sense of being under the influence.

But if the pill was really some kind of poison, she wondered whether she would feel anything before it killed her. She lay quietly, searching her senses for any poisonous reaction. Minutes began to crawl by. Five … ten … fifteen. Time thickened.

She became aware of Robert nearby again, felt him pour more alcohol into the tube. It was easier to swallow, now. Soon he was gone once more.

The silence inside her became warmer as the music on the radio drifted up and down. It reminded her of some faraway boat bobbing along on the ocean, way off on the horizon. Natasha drifted with the boat, floating toward some destination she couldn’t begin to imagine, letting the current carry her along, helpless to do anything to alter its course. At some point an announcer on the radio gave the time: eight o’clock. Still, nothing happened. Nothing changed.

Until Robert’s voice stabbed her.

“Don’t make any noise!” he hissed. The sharp jolt shot through her electrically. She was instantly awake, her heart slamming, every sense wide open. Her father was there, right over the bed. He had come out of nowhere.

Her hearing had been sharpened by the blindness forced upon her. She picked up the difference in his voice right away. The volume was soft but his tone was harsh, desperate. She realized that something must have gone wrong with his plan. Something had entered into the situation that he’d never counted on.

Then her heart leapt into overdrive. Of course! Patty was there, it had to be her. Tasha’s breath began to heave in her chest like that of a sprinter pushing for the finish line. It
must
be Patricia. Instant gratitude flowed through her for whatever wisdom had kept her from revealing her plans for the evening when Robert asked about them.

And now her best friend was there to pick her up! Patty must have gotten tired of waiting for her to call and just decided to come on over. Help from the outside: her only hope had just become Robert’s worst nightmare.

Tasha heard her father duck back out of the bedroom and close the door. Her thoughts spun like wheels on slippery ice as she tried to think of how to use this chance. If she screamed now, would anyone outside the house hear her through the face mask, through the closed bedroom door, through the closed front door of the house? How long could she scream before Robert would be on her like a wolf bringing down a rabbit?

Besides, what if Patty was alone? Surely the front door was locked, just as it had been when Tasha came home. So what was Patty supposed to do, kick her way in like a SWAT team? What could she do against Robert, armed and waiting inside for her? Even if Tasha screamed and Patty ran for help, how long would
that
take? And in the meantime, what would Robert do to her in his panic and in his rage?

She couldn’t scream.

Maybe Patty would just figure out that something was wrong and call somebody. Tasha fought to remember: did Patty know where Claire worked? Could she reach Claire
even if she wanted to? A warning call to her mother at work might bring a call to the neighbors, maybe even the police.

Then she remembered—Patty could get in the house whether it was locked or not.

When the two lived there they had both used a method of jimmying the lock on the window next to the front door whenever they forgot the keys. If Patricia got curious enough about things, if she started to wonder if maybe Tasha had fallen and hit her head in the shower or God knows what, then she could be in the house almost as fast as anyone else could open the door with a key.

Tasha felt her blood run cold. Her heart sank as the question beat its way into her thoughts: Where was Robert right now? Was he cowering on the other side of that window, just in case his daughter’s best friend should get curious and decide to come on in, ruin his plans? And if Patty started in the window, what fate was waiting for her at this moment on the other side?

Tasha began to concentrate with all her might, to reach out mentally through an act of sheer willpower. She pictured her friend as clearly as she could, while she beamed the simple message to her:
Get away. Get help from somewhere. Get away. Get help from
anywhere.

She sent silent images of wrongness, feelings of danger. She wrapped them in a powerful mental plea and beamed it out with the energy of desperation to the one friend in the world she was closest to at this point in her life.

Bad trouble, Patricia
.

The very worst kind of trouble
.

Patty knew that Eric and Jeff weren’t going to hang out in her backseat all night waiting for her to figure out what was the deal with Tash. But it was her car, after all, and this neighborhood had some
vicious
hills for foot traffic. No, Patty knew that the guys were going to have to get a lot
more pissed off before they actually got out and started walking. Besides, hitchhiking to Magic Mountain would be a complete drag. So Patty figured she could give this thing another couple of minutes.

Because so far it was totally weird.

She had been calling the house over and over, beginning shortly after arriving home that afternoon. There had never been any answer, just that new answering machine Tasha’s dad had installed at the house three or four weeks before. It was bad enough having to leave messages on a machine with
his
voice answering the phone when he didn’t even live there, but not to get any answer from her friend, hour after hour—it gave her a creepy feeling that had grown stronger all afternoon.

The feeling had started when she’d happened to pick up her senior yearbook after getting home that day. She had reread Tasha’s note to her on one of the pages inside. It talked about their friendship, their plans to take a trip to Lake Tahoe together. And for some reason she didn’t fully understand, Patty picked up the phone and began calling over to Tasha’s house, even though they had just spent the day together and had already made plans for the evening.

She just felt this need to hear Natasha’s voice.

When the machine picked up her first phone call she wasn’t too concerned, even though it was bizarre to have a phone machine there when she knew perfectly well that Claire had refused to have one in the house for so long. Patty hoped that maybe Natasha was just out in the yard mowing the lawn and that her father had already left. That would be fine with her. Still, she had felt the need to hear her friend’s voice
right then
, not two hours later, so she kept calling and calling, leaving one message after another. As the time kept passing she didn’t like the way that the feeling kept building up inside of her, even though she couldn’t explain it. Finally
she went and got the two guys and headed on over without waiting for Tasha to give them the go-ahead.

But she had been knocking on the door for several minutes, getting no answer. Both of Mr. Peernock’s cars were still parked there just as they had been when Patty dropped off Tasha that afternoon. Darkness had closed in by now; she could see light from the TV screen coming through the curtain covering the front window.

Claire’s car wasn’t there. So, Patty thought, hadn’t she come home yet or what? Natasha was pretty reliable, especially when it came to going out and having fun together. If something had come up, she would have called.

She went around to Tasha’s bedroom window and knocked on it. Could her friend have fallen asleep?

“Hey, Tash, are you in there?” Patty called up at the window. No answer. Not a sound. There was something even stranger; the curtains were closed. Tasha never liked the curtains to be closed, and unless someone reminded her to shut them she tended just to leave them open. But now they were pulled tightly shut. And the TV was on inside. And nobody was answering the door.

Patty went back to the front, thinking that the whole situation was getting extreme. Mr. Peernock’s Cadillac was parked there all the time, it was true, but it was usually just covered up and sort of stored there. His regular car, the one he drove mostly, was hardly ever there at night. This wasn’t even his place anymore, really.

At that point she noticed that the grass hadn’t been touched, although Tasha had made it clear that one of her chores was to cut the lawn before she went out that night. So what was the deal? Tasha had to keep up with the chores if she wanted to get any cooperation out of her mom. No, it wasn’t like she would just blow it off or anything.

Finally she was back at the front door, knocking one last time. Was there a movement inside the house? Did she see
a shadow pass across the window curtain, or was it some reflection from the TV screen?

She could always go through the window. It was a small section of lower window, not high off the porch level. Patty got down on her knees. She reached for the latch … and the little hairs on the back of her neck stood up straight.

A cold feeling washed through her, a funny kind of cold. It gave her gooseflesh as a little shudder shook her.

Patricia stopped short.

Natasha’s best friend will never be able to prove that she was stopped by telepathy and not by sheer common sense. After all, on the practical side she knew better than to just barge into the house when Mr. Peernock was there. Back when Patty was staying there, he had made it clear that he didn’t like any of Tasha’s friends. And he wasn’t supposed to know that the lock on his door was a joke to these two resourceful girls. She knew that even if Tasha was stuck in there with him, maybe being put on restriction for something or other, Patty wouldn’t exactly be a welcome intruder. No, if Tash was going to make it out of the house, she’d already had plenty of chances.

And yet something made Patty turn away. Today she confirms that she can see it in terms of unspoken communication between two friends whose invisible link was strong. Whatever kept her on the safe side of the window that night—

She turned back.

Everything went quiet inside the house. Tasha tried to listen carefully, but the silence thickened again. Soon, with no disturbance to puncture the buzz of her thoughts, deprived senses began to focus on inner images alternating between hope and despair. She felt no doubt that Robert’s burst of panic had come from Patty’s arrival there, so while she lay physically helpless in the darkness and focused on pumping out messages of warning to her friend, she had listened with
dread for the sounds of commotion. Now each minute of silence that passed gave her the growing feeling that somehow she had reached Patty and kept her away.

But would her friend actually call the police? It seemed clear that Patty was safe now, but how strong would a psychic message have to be to make Patty start some kind of huge ruckus with the neighbors or with the cops? With a sinking sensation Tasha realized that wasn’t going to happen. And while she reasoned her way to that inevitable conclusion, a deep sense of dread began to creep through her.