At Risk (36 page)

She swallowed and focused on a yellowed newspaper article that she hadn’t seen in decades, yet she remembered every word by heart. A faded picture showed her father standing on a dock in front of his fishing boat. The front page headline—in bold black letters—read: “LOCAL WATERMAN SHOOTS INTRUDER.”

“Buck Juney,” she whispered hoarsely.

“Smart girl.”

She shuddered. “He’s dead.”

“Dead because Donald Clarke murdered him.”

Her eyes widened in shock as the horror of that long-ago summer afternoon flashed before her. She scrambled to think, to try and reason what and who this man was and what his connection to Buck Juney was. “You don’t understand,” she argued. “You don’t know what happened.”

“Your father killed him, but he paid for his crime.”

“My father?”

“Did you really believe he fell off that boat and drowned?”

The buzzing in Liz’s head grew louder. “No, you’re lying to me.” Her father had died in a boating accident. She couldn’t let Michael pull her into his madness. Everyone knew that her father was a heavy drinker, and . . .

“He was drunk, but not that drunk.”

“Stop it. It’s a lie, and you know it. You never knew my father.”

“Why do you think they never found his body, Professor? Or his anchor?”

A single tear ran down her bruised cheek.

“Are you crying for him or for yourself?”

“He was my father.”

“A redneck. A drunk.”

“A decent man. A man who would do anything for his family.”

“He was a cold-blooded murderer.”

“No! It wasn’t like that!”

Michael stripped away his glove and touched her cheek. She winced, but he only laughed as he brought his finger to his mouth and licked it. “Salty,” he said. “Don’t waste your tears, little professor. Save them for when you’ll need them.”

“You have everything mixed up. I don’t understand what you have to do with what happened then. You’re sick.”

“It’s you who are mistaken, Professor. I understand everything.” Michael tugged off the hood and his shirt, and then removed the second glove, all the while watching her with dead eyes.

She wanted to scream—to run, but there was nowhere to run, and she wasn’t certain her legs could carry her if she tried. “Who are you?”

“You don’t question me! You don’t question me!”

“Were you ever Michael Hubbard?”

“Michael? Michael? Don’t you know? You’re so smart. You should have guessed.” He turned, and she saw the map of twisted and discolored scars traversing his back, vanishing beneath the waistband of his black pants. “There’s more. Lots more.” He took off his shoes and, facing the wall, unsnapped his trousers.

Liz choked back a moan and knotted her fingers into tight fists. Michael wasn’t wearing briefs or boxers. Instead, he had a length of white cloth twisted around his middle and tucked between his legs. A loincloth? Or . . .

She almost burst into laughter as crazed as his. A diaper? Two large safety pins with yellow duck heads secured the obscenity that could only be a diaper. Ropes of purple scar tissue continued down Michael’s thighs to ruined legs that, despite the hollows and deformities, bulged with sinew and muscle. The sight of his poor tortured legs turned her fear to something akin to pity.

“Who hurt you? It wasn’t just the accident, was it? Someone hurt you.”

For the space of perhaps two minutes he stood there, not answering. And then he whirled on her, teeth bared. “She did! She did! She did!” His words shot out like bursts from a gun barrel, so closely together that it sounded like “
Shedidshedidshedid.
”

“Women steal the power,” he crooned. “But no more.” His grotesque grin became a chuckle. “The Game Master has a present for you, Professor.”

Liz shook her head. “I don’t want anything from you. Just let me go. I won’t tell anyone.”

“Bad girl. Bad, bad girl.” He frowned and shook his head. “Your lies won’t work here. The Game Master knows everything.” He moved forward, quicker than she would have thought possible, and slapped her twice across the face, rocking her head back with the force of the blows. “I told you not to speak. I have the power. I’ll tell you when to speak.”

She wanted to leap up, to throw herself on him and claw out his eyes, but she knew she would get only one chance—if any. She had to wait, to pretend, to play the game even though she didn’t know his rules. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll be good.”

“You will, won’t you?” Michael said. “My girls are always good here.” He took the lantern, walked to the far end of the cellar, and flicked on a light obviously intended for a child’s nursery—a round, yellow, plastic moon painted with eyes and a mouth. Across the top third of the fixture danced the figure of a blue cartoon cow wearing an old-fashioned bonnet.

The moon light illuminated what appeared to be a crude stage set representing a shack built on pilings in a marsh. The hovel was detailed, down to water-stained planks, a sagging window patched with tarpaper, tin and shingle roof, and decking complete with mooring posts set into the dirt floor.

Homemade fishing poles leaned against the house; rusty muskrat traps hung from the rotting windowsill, and a moth-eaten raccoon hide, complete with grinning head, was nailed to the shack wall.

Liz bit her bottom lip until she tasted blood. This wasn’t just any hut, but one that she had seen time and time again in her dreams. This was an exact replica of Buck Juney’s shack in the far end of the marsh at Clarke’s Purchase when she was a child.

“Do you like it?” Michael asked. “Do you?”

She looked away without answering. None of this made any sense.

“You didn’t even know his name, did you? He was a war hero, and you didn’t know his name. It was Eugene. Eugene Winston Juney.”

She closed her eyes, trying to concentrate—to remember. What had Jack’s mother told her? Had Buck had a wife and child?

“Now, tell me who I was.”

“Eugene’s son?” she guessed.

“Good girl.” He clapped. “Excellent. Now, what was my name?”

How the hell was she supposed to know? Gooseflesh rose on her arms. His name? His name? What was it?”

“Cat got your tongue?” he demanded. “Speak up, or I’ll cut it off.”

She took a wild stab. “Were you Eugene Winston Juney, Jr.?”

“Ding. Ding. Ding. Now, who killed Donald Clarke?”

“You?”

“Ding. Ding. Ding. The professor wins the grand prize.” Michael lifted the top of a nail keg, removed a dripping object, and carried it back to her. “Hold out your hand.”

God help me
, Liz thought.

He dropped a withered human finger onto her palm. She gave a cry, let the awful thing fall onto the deerskins, and stared in horror. The slender digit was obviously a woman’s. The nail was long, carefully filed, and painted with dark red nail polish.

“Do you recognize it?”

Liz shook her head.

“Think, Professor.”

“I don’t know.”

“Bad girl,” he admonished slyly. “You know. It belonged to the little sophomore. In your office . . .”

“Tracy?”

“Ding. Ding. Ding.”

“Why Tracy? She didn’t do anything to you.”

“For you, Professor. All for you.”

“Michael, for the love of God—”

“Not Michael! Don’t call me that. I took care of little Michael, and then he didn’t need his name anymore. Did he?” He smiled as he picked up the finger and brushed the red polished nail over his bottom lip. “Did you know that any crime a child younger than twelve commits is erased once he turns eighteen? He can become anything or anyone he wants. Even a policeman. Whoosh. All his past childish sins are washed away.” He chuckled. “Michael died for his sins, and the sophomore died for your sins.”

“And my father? Did he die for my—”

He cuffed her again, hard enough to send her sprawling half onto the dirt floor. “Stupid girl! We won’t go there again. I told you why he had to die.”

“For . . . for shooting Buck,” she managed. Her jaw felt as though he’d cracked the bone, and it was difficult to speak. One eye was swelling so that her view of him was distorted. “But what’s my sin? What did I do to you?”

“You know. You know what you did.” His voice had dropped to a gravelly rumble. “You stole him. He loved me, and you stole him.”

She sat up and drew her knees to her chest, unconsciously falling into a childhood habit, something she’d always done when she was afraid. “Who, Game Master?” she asked. “Who did I steal?”

He nodded. “All right. All right, Professor. Play dumb. I’ll play your game, if you’ll play mine. And mine is much more fun.” He returned to the shack and drew a canvas sack from under the rotting floorboards of the dock. She watched as he removed a bundle and unrolled an old rubber hip boot. “Come here,” he said. “Don’t make me come and get you.”

Liz did as he ordered, stopping out of arm’s reach. Blood trickled down her face, and she could feel her strength draining with each passing moment. But if she didn’t stay on her feet and keep fighting him, she’d be as dead as Jack. She’d never see her daughter again. And . . . oh, sweet Jesus. Katie would come home. He could do to Katie what he intended to do with her.

“See,” Michael said. “See.” He held a handful of black-and-white pictures, wrinkled and water-damaged. “Eugene was a good boy. Sometimes he had accidents and wet his bed in the night. That didn’t make him stupid. It didn’t make him bad.”

Liz took the offered photos, but she had only to glance at two to see know how vile and disgusting they were. She let them all slip through her fingers and turned her face away. “How could he? You were his son. How could he?”

The pictures showed a dark-haired boy, no more than six or seven, with a man. The child’s naked body was thin and bruised, his eyes large and frightened. And the man—the sick son of a bitch she knew as Buck Juney—was doing what no human being should ever do to a helpless child. The photographer’s finger covered one corner of the snapshot.

“Who else was there?” Liz asked. “Who took the pictures?”

“The first mommy. But she didn’t like Eugene. She was jealous, because the daddy loved Eugene best. He said Eugene was a good boy. But then you ruined everything. You lured him away. You stole the daddy from Eugene.”

“No,” she protested. “I didn’t. I never—”

“Liar!” Michael dropped to his knees and dug through the photos. “There!” he cried. “Proof!”

She tried to run then, but he dragged her down, rolled her onto her back, and shoved the picture in her face. She clamped her eyes shut.

He leaned close to her ear and whispered, “Look at it, Professor, or I’ll gouge your pretty eyes out and pin them to my wall.”

She opened her eyes. The photo was out of focus and taken from a distance, but she recognized herself at once. The picture must have been taken the summer that Buck died. It was a shot of the dock at Clarke’s Purchase. She and Crystal had been skinny dipping as they did most afternoons. The back of her sister’s head was clearly visible above the surface of the water. She, Liz, was laughing and diving off the top of the mooring post. She hadn’t reached puberty yet, and her bare chest was as flat as a boy’s.

“No more Eugene,” Michael said. “He didn’t want Eugene. He sent Eugene away. First the mommy tried to steal Eugene’s daddy from him, and then you.”

“What happened to the first mommy?” Liz asked, afraid to hear the answer. “Where is she?”

“Eugene fixed her.” He winked. “Daddy was angry at first, but then he understood why she deserved to die. The daddy was the one who thought of feeding her to the crabs. But then the daddy liked you best. He told Eugene he could never tell his real name or the daddy would come in the night and put him in a crab pot with Mommy. The daddy rowed all the way across the bay and left Eugene. Then the bad foster-home mommy was mean to Eugene. She said he was a stupid piss pants. She made him wear a diaper. Ten is too old for a diaper.”

“But Eugene wasn’t stupid,” Liz said. “He was smart.”

“Smart enough to make the fire look like an accident. Smart enough to fix the second mommy and Michael.”

“Did you hurt them?”

“Do you think you can trick me? Manage me?” He laughed. “Did you wonder why Tarkington never returned your phone calls? Why no one took your stalker complaints seriously? Why the police treated you like a crackpot?”

He drove a bare foot into her side, and she gasped in pain.

“The Game Master told them that you were a lonely woman who loved the publicity you got when the girl was murdered in your office at the college and didn’t want it to end. That you’d left California due to a mental breakdown.”

He kicked her again.

“He even told the dean that you’d made sexual advances to Cameron—that you left suggestive messages on his home voice mail at night.”

“Why?”

“Do you still think Eugene is stupid?”

“No,” she said when she could draw a breath. “I don’t. I don’t think Eugene was a bad boy. I think the foster mother was bad. Did she hurt Eugene?”

“All the mommies hurt Eugene,” Michael said lightly.

“Wasn’t there anyone to help him?”

“The Game Master.”

She swallowed. “Wait? What about your wife? What about Barbara? She loved you, didn’t she? Would she want you to—”

“Michael’s wife, not mine. Barbara was an ugly cow. Michael married her to get this property—next door to you.”

“I don’t believe that. I’ve seen you tending her grave. I know you—”

“You stupid bitch, you don’t know anything.”

“Barbara died years ago. I wasn’t at Clarke’s Purchase. You couldn’t have—”

“The Game Master knew you would come. He knew you couldn’t stay away from that house. All Michael had to do was get rid of Barbara and wait.”

She had to keep him talking. “Where is Michael now?”

“Gone.” He smiled. “Like you’ll be. And the daughter.” He jerked her to her feet and tugged her toward the corner of the room where the chopping block stood. “Will Katie like me best when you’re gone?”

“Stop. Please. You’re hurting me!”

“Game over, Professor,” he said. “This one has gone on too long. You’re boring me.”

Liz saw the hatchet and knew what was coming. She struggled with every ounce of her remaining strength, attempting to break his grip on her arm. But the contest was unequal—had been unequal from the moment he caught her in the marsh.