I Know What You Did Last Summer (17 page)

"But-but, how did you know? Who told you about that?" The
question caught on her tongue and threatened to strangle her.

"Nobody told me. I had to do a lot of searching to find it out.
They didn't tell me when Davy was killed. They couldn't reach me
with the news. I was in Nam. waiting to be flown back here to a
hospital. By the time I got the message it was all over-the
funeral-everything. I never got home for it"

"Who are you?" Helen whispered. "Who on earth are you?"

"You know that. I'm Collingsworth Wilson. My mother is married
to a man named Michael Gregg. David Gregg was my half brother."

"Your half brother!" Helen repeated shakily. "Oh, dear God!"

Collie did not seem to hear her. His eyes were dark with
remembering.

"All I could learn when I finally did get home was what my folks
could tell me. They said it was a hit and run. and the person who
called the police had sounded like a teenager. He had said, 'We hit
him,' so there were evidently several people in the car. There were
a lot of people at the funeral, my step-dad said. He showed me all
the cards and the sympathy letters. He said there was a whole
raft of yellow roses that came without a card. They were delivered
from People's Flower Shoppe.

"I went down to People's and talked to the saleslady. She
remembered the roses. She said they'd stuck in her mind because it
was so odd to see a young girl come in and spend so much money for
flowers and then not put a name on the card. The girl had red hair
and was wearing a silver cheer-leading megaphone on a chain around
her neck."

"Julie," Helen murmured. She knew that she should be running,
screaming, doing something, but she was too numb for movement. Her
throat muscles did not work. Her mouth formed the name-"Julie."

"It took me a while to find her. First I went around to the
different high schools during the basketball games, but there
weren't any cheerleaders who were redheads. Then I started asking
about last year's cheerleaders. I got talking with some of the guys
in the bleachers at half time, and pretty soon one of them
mentioned this cute girl with red hair who had dropped off the
squad. Just wasn't interested any longer-she had gone
intellectual and dropped out of everything. Wasn't even
dating."

"But you couldn't have known," Helen said. "You couldn't have
been sure."

"I wasn't at first, but it gave me an idea. I decided to
send her a note through the mail, something that would shake her up
if she was the right person but wouldn't mean a thing to her if she
wasn't She reacted, all right. That very afternoon she was over
here like a shot, and so was your friend, Barry. That's how I
learned about you, and I followed Barry when he left that night. I
watched him walk into the fraternity house. I learned where he
lived that way."

"And that's when you moved into Four Seasons?" Helen's shock was
fading and she was beginning to come alive again. Her eyes shifted
slightly, judging the distance from the sofa to the door. Collie's
chair sat directly in the path. The window was closed. If she could
reach it and yank it open and scream-

"You'll never make it," Collie said, reading her thoughts. "I'm
closer than you are, and you'd never have time to pull it open.
Don't you want to hear the rest?"

"No," Helen said with mounting terror. "I don't."

"Well, you're going to, so you'd better relax and listen. Yes, I
moved in here at Four Seasons, and I met you, and you filled me in
on Barry. You said you'd dated him through last year, so I knew he
had to have been the one with you that night I gave him a test too.
I phoned him and gave him a story about having some pictures of the
accident. He said he'd meet me out on the athletic field to look at
them."

"And you shot him?
You?"

"Right"

"But why?" Helen asked in horror. "Why would you do such a
thing? I can understand how you would feel about your brother and
how you'd want to see us punished. But couldn't you just have gone
to the police?"

"How would I have proved it?" Collie asked her.

"You wouldn't have had to. Just being accused would have been
enough. We would have confessed."

"And what do you think would have happened to you once you did?
You'd have been fined, perhaps. Whoever was driving would have had
his license revoked. Maybe the driver would have spent a little
time in jail with his sentence reduced by half for good behavior.
The law is awfully easy on minors. Whatever happened, it wouldn't
have been enough. Picture the thing-look at it through somebody
else's eyes for a change. Look at it through
my
eyes."

I don't want to see anything through his eyes, Helen thought in
terror. I don't even want to look at his eyes. There's something
wrong with them. They're getting darker! All the time he's been
talking, they've been getting darker and darker. How could I
ever have thought he had nice eyes?

"Listen, Helen," Collie continued in his low,
matter-of-fact voice which was somehow more dreadful than a
voice with emotion. "I cracked up over in Nam; did I tell you? Not
just me but plenty of other guys too. There's something about
seeing people blown to pieces that kind of gets to you. So, picture
this-I come home from Nam, and what do I find? My kid brother dead.
My mother in a loony bin in Las Lunas. My stepdad down there with
her. My sister Meg living all by herself in the house in the
mountains, worrying herself sick about everybody. Our whole family
is wrecked, and what about you four, the ones responsible? One of
you has a plush job in television. One is a college football hero.
One's off lolling on California beaches, and one's just got herself
accepted at Smith. All your lives are going along peaches and
cream."

"So, you decided to kill us." Helen spoke the words, but she
could not bring herself to believe them.

This is Collie, she thought. The boy who lives two apartments
over and has a slight crush on me. This is the boy who came to pick
me up at the studio the night Barry was shot. He drove me to the
hospital and waited there with me until there was news. Why did he
do that? Why was he so good to me?

"I took you
to St.
Joseph's," Collie said to the
unspoken question, "because it was the only way I had of learning
what had happened. It was dark out there on the field, and he
jumped when the flashlight went on. I wasn't sure where I hit him.
I meant to do the job right, but the way it turned out, it might be
better even. For a guy like Barry, life in a wheelchair might
be worse than no life at all."

The telephone shrilled sharply.

The sound was sudden, jabbing through the tension in the
room like a needle, causing Collie to jerk upright in his chair and
shift his eyes for an instant away from Helen's face.

In that instant, she moved. As the cord of terror that had been
holding her in place was suddenly broken, Helen was on her feet,
bolting across the room. She did not try to reach the door or the
window. Instead she whirled and ran in the opposite
direction, through the bedroom, into the bathroom.

Slamming the door behind her, she shot the bolt into place
seconds before the bulk of Collie's weight struck the door.

The knob rattled angrily. Frantically, Helen glanced around her
for something with which to arm herself. All about her, flimsy,
feminine objects mocked her-dusting powder, a plastic hairbrush, a
rack of fluffy bath towels, a cardboard container of bubble
bath.

The bathroom window was small and high, plated over with a
permanent sheet of translucent glass.

The rattling of the knob stopped abruptly. The only sound now
was the continued ring of the telephone in the front room.
After a few moments that stopped also.

"Collie?" Helen said nervously.

There was no answer other than a heavy silence.

Less than two hours ago Ray had informed her that the attack on
Barry had been simple robbery. How could he have lied to her in
such a way, lulling her into a false sense of security? Or
was
it Ray who had done the lying?

"It couldn't have been Ray," Julie had said on that day-was it
really only a week ago?-when she had brought the note that Collie
had sent her over to this very apartment. "I know Ray better than
either of you, and he just wouldn't do this."

"I don't think so either," Helen had agreed.

And now, in this new set of circumstances, she had to admit the
same thing, silently, to herself, as she stood trembling behind the
ominous silence of the bolted door. Ray would not have tricked her.
Ray would not have lied.

Ray had been repeating exactly what Barry had told him.

"It was Barry," she said softly. "It was Barry who didn't tell
the truth."

A hundred pictures of Barry flashed through her mind-Barry of
the loving words and the cocky grin, of the flaring temper and the
heavenly kisses. Barry who was going to marry her-or was he?- who
adored her-or did he?-who had never looked at another girl-or had
he?-since that day when he had drawn up behind her in that little
red sports-car and asked, "Do you want a ride?"

He lied, Helen thought. He lied to Ray about the shooting!

Why this should be, she did not know, nor did it matter. Whether
from anger over some imagined affront, from bitterness over his own
injury, from perversity, from fear that Ray might break the pact
and go to the police with the story of the accident, Barry had
lied. And with this lie he had disclosed how little their safety
meant to him-Ray's, Julie's, Helen's.

"He loved me," Helen whispered, but even to her own ears the
words were weak and meaningless. That was a lie too.

"Collie?" She spoke aloud. "Collie, are you out there?"

There was nothing but silence on the far side of
the
door.

What was he doing, she asked herself. Standing there, waiting?
Or was he back in the purple chair, sitting quietly, hoping that
she would assume he had gone away, that she would open the door and
step
tentatively out? Could he possibly
imagine her to be
that kind of fool?

If he wants me, Helen thought, why doesn't he force the door?
He's strong enough. Of course, that would make a lot of noise, the
kind of noise that carries. The whole apartment would shake. People
would come running up here to see what was happening.

Screams would get her nowhere. The Four Seasons Apartments
were virtually noise-proof. Stereos could blare, televisions blast,
wild parties churn until all hours of the night without disturbance
to slumbering neighbors. But the sound of a door being beaten
in-surely
that
sort of sound would make itself heard.

From the other side of the door there came a click. A faint,
scraping sound of metal against metal.

What in the world, Helen asked herself wildly-

The noise came again. Faint. Purposeful.

Helen's eyes flew upward to the top of the door, and she felt
her breath stop. The metal plate was moving.

"My God," she breathed, he's taking off the hinges!"

I can't just stand here, she thought, and wait for him. I have
to do something-anything-

Frantically, she yanked open the medicine cabinet over the sink
and saw the heavy, glass bottle of mouthwash. Snatching it from the
shelf, she stepped onto the closed toilet lid and then onto the top
of the tank.

She lifted the bottle high and brought it down with all her
strength against the pane of the window. Again and again she
struck, smashing away the jagged glass.

There was no time to feel the pain, no time to consider the
consequences as she thrust her head and shoulders through the
narrow opening.

"Help!" she cried. "Somebody help me-help me!"

Voices floated up from the pool area on the side of the
building-laughter-the twang of a guitar. The lawn below her lay
empty. The glow of the gas lights was broken by pockets of
darkness.

"Help!" Helen screamed.

And then, because it was the only thing left to do, she wriggled
forward through the frame of the window and let herself
fall.

chapter 18

"I wish you'd reconsider and stay home tonight." Mrs. James
regarded her daughter worriedly. "It sounds silly, I know, but I
have this feeling-"

"Oh, Mom! You and your feelings!" Julie spoke the words
laughingly, but she could not completely obliterate the twist of
uneasiness that stirred within her. There was something oddly
disturbing about her mother's premonitions. Many times, it was
true, they turned out not to mean a thing, but there had been other
times also. It was hard to forget the phone call that had seemed so
ridiculous, but had sent her home to find a smoke-filled
kitchen.

"I'm just going out for a couple of hours," she said now,
reassuringly. "It's just to a movie with Bud."

"I wish you'd call it off."

"Mom, I can't reach him. He's just moved into an apartment. The
phone hasn't been installed yet."

"Didn't you tell me he lives in Four Seasons?" Mrs. James
persisted. "You could call there and leave a message for him at the
office. Or you could phone Helen Rivers and ask her to run over to
his apartment and tell him. I'm sure she wouldn't mind doing it
Everybody in those big singles settlements seems to know everybody
else."

"It's probably too late. He's sure to have left by now." To
humor her mother, Julie got up and went over to the telephone. She
lifted the receiver, listened a moment, and set it down again.
"There-I couldn't call anyway. There's trouble with the line again.
There isn't even a dial tone."

The framed mirror over the telephone table gave her face back to
her, pinched and odd looking under the flame of red hair. She
raised her hand and pushed the hair back from her forehead.

I should have set it, she thought. I should have put on
blusher-my face looks so pale. What am I doing, going out on a
date, looking like this? What in the world is Bud going to think of
me?

Not that it mattered. Bud was just Bud-he could think what he
chose. If he didn't ask her out again, that was all right too. When
she thought back upon last year, on the hours she had spent getting
ready to go out with Ray-hair always freshly washed, make-up
perfect, heart filled with excited anticipation-it was like
looking back upon another girl in another world.

Sometimes she wondered how she had ever started dating Bud in
the first place. If their meeting had not been so simple, she
probably wouldn't have. But he had just come over to her at the
library and gestured to the book she was selecting and said,
"You'll like that one. Let me show you another by the same guy
that's even better." They had left the library at the same time,
and it had seemed natural that he would fall into step beside her
since they were going in the same direction.

After mat, date had followed date, because it had been easier to
say yes than no. It had been a diversion, it had gotten her
through the long evenings. She had even tried to convince herself
that she might come to care for Bud if she just kept seeing him
long enough. That was before Ray had come back. Fight it though she
would, it had taken all of one instant, one glimpse of the
quizzical green eyes, the thin face now bearded but warm and
familiar, the merest touch of a hand, and back she was exactly
where she had been in the beginning, when she had looked at this
boy whom other girls hardly noticed and told herself, "This is the
one."

And it wasn't fair-not to Bud-not to any of them. She should not
be leading him on with false hopes when she felt like this about
someone else.

The doorbell rang.

"That's Bud now," Julie said, and as she turned toward the door
she caught a glimpse of her mother's face and stopped.

"Okay. Mom," she said softly. "I won't go."

"I know I'm being silly but-"

"That's okay. I don't really want to go anyway. I was just being
stubborn." She went to the door and opened it. "Hi, Bud."

"Hello, Julie." He looked past her into the living room. "Hello,
Mrs. James. How are you tonight?"

"Fine, thank you, Bud," Julie's mother said. "Come in and have a
piece of cake with us, won't you? The coffee's all perked in the
kitchen."

"I've decided I'd rather not see a movie tonight," Julie said
apologetically, "if you don't mind too much. Mom is sort of uptight
and not feeling too great, and I'd kind of like to stay around
home. Would it be okay with you if we just watched TV or
something?"

"But i'ts a good show," Bud said. "I thought we'd agreed on
it."

"Can't we see it another night?" Julie asked him. "It's not
going to leave for at least a week."

"You promised you'd go tonight," Bud said.

His voice was flat and demanding. How funny, Julie thought in
surprise, I've never seen him act impatient before. Bud's face was
set with a look of intensity. His eyes seemed very dark. There was
something, some trick of light and shadow from the rays of the
living room lamp filtering out as they reached him in the doorway,
that made him for a moment look almost like a stranger.

I'm glad Mom made me promise not to go, Julie realized suddenly.
I don't want to go. I don't think I want to see this guy anymore at
all.

"If you're so hung up on seeing the movie tonight," she
suggested, "why don't you go ahead without me?"

"Look, Julie, we've got a date. You're not trying
to
dump me, are you, because your old boyfriend's back?"

"Oh, is that what this is about!" Abruptly the situation
became clear to her. "Ray doesn't have anything to do with
this, Bud, honestly. I-I just want to stay home tonight-that's all.
You're welcome to hang around here or go on to the show on your
own, whichever you want."

Bud stood silent a moment. His eyes flicked past Julie's face to
her mother, then back again. He seemed to be considering.

"Okay
,"
he said finally. "I recognize the
brush-off when I'm getting it How about walking me out to the
car?"

Julie hesitated. She too wanted to turn and look at her mother,
to consult with her in a glance, but to do so would have been so
pointed as to have been actively rude.

This is crazy, she told herself firmly. This is just Bud Wilson,
just old Collingsworth Wilson, and I've been out with him a full
dozen times. What am I getting so jittery about tonight?

"Look, I need to tell you something," Bud said. "It's important.
Just walk out with me, okay?" He paused. "I had lunch with a friend
of yours today. Ray Bronson."

"You did?" She was startled.

"We did some talking, he and I."

"About me?"

"Among other things. Are you walking me out to the car, or
aren't you?"

"All right," Julie said.

He held the door open for her, and she stepped out on to the
front porch. They went down the steps together. The night air
lapped around them, soft and sweet, and overhead the sky seemed to
curve like a dark bowl, studded with stars.

"It's a pretty night," he said, and he reached over to take her
hand.

Julie felt a shudder run through her.

What's wrong with me, she asked herself in bewilderment.
Bud's held my hand before. It doesn't mean anything. I've never
minded it. Why am I reacting like this now?

She thought, some of Mom's funny feelings must be rubbing off.
-

But she did not want to hurt him by drawing her hand away, so
she let it lie in his as they walked across the yard to his
car.

"Get in for a minute," Bud said. "Let's sit and talk."

"We can talk out here."

"What I want to say needs to be said sitting down," Bud
insisted. "Get into the car, will you? It'll just take a
minute."

"Bud-" Julie brought out the words in a burst- "whatever it is
that you're going to tell me, I don't think it's something I should
hear. You were right in what you said about Ray. Whatever he told
you when you saw him today is true. We used to matter to each other
very much at one time and-and it hasn't gone away. I hoped it
would, but it hasn't. I don't think you and I ought to see each
other anymore."

"Funny," Bud said, ignoring her statement. "You've never called
me Collie."

"Collie?" She could not see his face in the darkness, but
she was very much aware of his hand tightening on hers. "Why,
I didn't know you wanted me to. When we first met you told me that
everybody in your family called you Bud."

"My kid brother started it" He spoke quietly. "Davy was a cute
little kid. He couldn't say "Collingsworth.' He called me
Bubba-you know, fox 'brother.' That was when he was just a little
guy. When he got older he changed it to Bud."

"That's-that's cute," Julie said uncomfortably.

What is he talking about that for, she asked herself in
confusion. He's acting so odd. I wonder if he's sick. I wonder if
he's been taking drugs or drinking or something.

She said, "I have to go in now. Mom isn't feeling well.
Honest"

"My mother isn't either," Bud said. "She's in a damned sight
worse condition than your mother. I have an account to settle with
four of you, but it hasn't all worked out as I planned. You're the
most important one, though. You're the one who made a joke of it by
sending the flowers."

"Flowers?" Julie whispered. "You mean-oh, no! You're not-"

He released her hand. For a frozen instant Julie stood rooted,
gathering herself to scream. Then the strong hands were around her
throat and the scream started and ended in one short moan.

"Roses," Bud said. "Yellow roses-masses and tons of them! Dad
described them to me, all those roses that looked like sunshine! If
you'd wanted to give him sunshine, why didn't you go back to him?
Why didn't you sit in the road with him and hold his hand and wait
with him? Did you really think you could buy us
off
with
roses? What are roses to a little boy alone in the dark?"

The hands were tightening. There was nothing in the world now
except those hands-the hands and the pain and the roaring in her
ears and a million lights flashing behind her eyes.

He's going to kill me, Julie thought incredulously. He's going
to kill me!

It was impossible, the thing that the hands were going to
do.

I don't want to die. Julie thought frantically. I'm not ready to
die. I haven't even lived yet. There's so much still ahead-college
and work and a husband and children-my own home-so much living
still ahead for me!

She thought. Mom-what will this do to Mom? First Daddy and then
me. She can't lose everybody!

She thought Ray-I'll never see Ray again.

There was a time when she had looked into those tilted green
eyes and said. "I love you." So long ago

He'll never know, she thought wildly. He'll never know that I
still do!

And then she was thinking no longer. The heavy blackness was all
around her. And she knew at last what it was like to be alone in
the night

"Julie! Come out of it. Julie!"

From a long way off the voice came down to her. Muffled and
almost lost in the pounding of the blood through her head, the
words came trickling through.

"Julie! Come back to us. Julie!"

It's a dream, she thought. Do you dream when you're dead, I
wonder? Is David Gregg dreaming? Is my father dreaming?

"She's coming out of it," the voice said. It was familiar. It
was not a dream voice. "Julie?"

She opened her eyes. The stars were so low that they seemed to
be resting against her face The porch light was on, and its dim
yellow rays illuminated the features of the boy who bent over her.
"Julie, can you speak to us?" "Ray?" She whispered his name, and
the effort sent a thrust of agony through her throat "Bud-he was
going to-"

"I know," Ray said. His hand was on her hair, pushing it back
from her face. "You don't have to worry. He's not going to be doing
anything much for awhile. I clobbered him with a flashlight From
behind. It's not the way the good guys do it on television, but
there wasn't time to think about that" "Are you all right darling?"
Her mother was there also, kneeling on the ground beside her. "That
boy must be cra2y to attack you like that for no reason!"

"He had a reason," Julie told her. "And it was a good one.
Ray-how did you know to come? How could you have guessed?"

"I didn't guess," Ray said. "Barry called me a few minutes ago.
He said he was releasing us all from the pact, that we were in
danger, all three of us, and to get hold of you and Helen. I tried
calling her, but there wasn't an answer, and when I called you the
line was out of order. Then I remembered something. It just
flashed through my mind."

"What?" Julie asked him.

"Bud's hands. I sat with him today while he ate lunch, and he
had paint on the back of one of his hands. It didn't register then,
but after I talked to Barry it hit me. It was
yellow
paint-the same shade as the trim around the Greggs' roof. Remember,
I wondered then how somebody as short as Megan could have reached
it?"

"And the shirts on the line?"

"They were Bud's, of course. Megan's his sister."

"Please, tell me what this is all about," Mrs. James said in
bewilderment "I don't understand this at all. Did you come here
tonight. Ray, knowing that Bud was going to try to harm Julie? If
so, how -" She broke off the question. "What's this?"

Headlights cut the darkness of the street, and a car with a
rotating red signal light pulled up to the curb in front of the
house.

The car doors opened and slammed shut, and two uniformed figures
hurried up the driveway.

"We've had a call," the first of the patrolmen said as he
reached them, "that you people might be having some trouble.
A girl fell from a second-floor window at Four Seasons Apartments.
She was knocked unconscious in the fall, but when she came to, she
told the people who found her that a man named Wilson had tried to
attack her. She thought he would be headed over here. From the
looks of things-" His eyes took in the three of them and then
shifted past them to the inert form that was lying on the ground a
short distance away-"she was right."