Malice (20 page)

“Not one good goddamned station in this whole shitty town,” Glenn said. His face was pale and angry. “I want to believe you, Lysander. As hard as what you’re telling me is to swallow, I’m trying.” Glenn’s foot pressed down on the gas, pushing Lysander back in his seat.

“Where you going?”

“Reverend Small’s,” Glenn said ominously. “See if he’ll answer a few questions for us.” The smile that was growing on his face was the first genuine expression of pleasure Lysander could remember.

“No, we can’t! This isn’t a game.”

There was a plan brewing in Lysander’s head. Something he had been turning over secretly for a few days now, prodding carefully for holes. Feeling more certain with every passing day that it would work. Certain it was the only way.

“Lysander, you can’t tell me that the man who lives next door is trying to kill you and not let us do anything about it. I’m glad you told—no, that’s not it. What I’m glad for is that you felt you could trust me enough. This is between you and me. Something your mother can never know. She’s a wreck as it is these days, and something like this would destroy her.” His father looked somber. “We can’t risk another miscarriage.”

A needle pressed into Lysander’s heart. He swallowed it down as Glenn continued …

“But you can’t expect me to just sit by—”

Lysander was rubbing the patch of tender flesh above his eye. “You said that you were glad I had enough trust to tell you?”

After some hesitation, Glenn nodded.

“Then you have to learn to trust me again. Give me a couple of days and I’ll have enough to bring to the police.”

A car went by, and in the gleam Lysander could see that Glenn was shaking his head.

“Please,” Lysander whispered.

His father hardly glanced at him, but Lysander could see that for the first time his father’s normally hardened expression had changed. Perhaps it was the light or maybe not, but something had changed.

“I know I’m not the kind of father I thought I would be,” Glenn began. “There were mistakes my own father made and I swore to God I’d never repeat them. There have been times, too many to name, where I’ve caught myself doing to you exactly what I hated my father for doing to me. Maybe I knew I was doing them all along. I just …” Glenn stopped and bit his bottom lip.

His father’s vulnerability caught him off guard. For a moment the impenetrable veil between father and son was drawn back. His father didn’t need to explain any further because Lysander already knew.

Adversaries? No. That, he felt, was something they had left behind them tonight, shrinking away in the distance with every mile put between them and Jason Gibb’s place.

But friends? Perhaps the next two days would tell.

***

Three quarters of an hour later, despite the exhaustion that was overtaking him, Lysander snuck off to Samantha’s. Thirty minutes had passed before he had heard the steady rhythm of his father’s snoring and had felt it was safe enough to inch the garage door open and sneak his bike out.

Pulling away, Lysander failed to glance over his shoulder as his house faded rapidly in the distance. Had he done so he might have caught the hideous face in the window of his grandmother’s room watching him as he left.

At Sam’s he found a thick drain pipe that led up onto the roof over the garage. Sam’s room was on the other side of the house, and he would have to pass several windows, perhaps even the sheriff’s, before he could get to hers. Two cars were parked in the driveway. One of them, he knew, belonged to the sheriff, and it served as a reminder that the slightest misplaced step would end in a lot of unpleasant questions. His heart pounding, he shimmied up the pipe and then carefully maneuvered across the roof’s front lip, hoping his clumsy combat boots wouldn’t betray him.

Riding on his bike through the deathly quiet streets, his hands frozen to the bone, he had passed a TV news truck, barreling toward the center of town. KPXG News in trailing red letters. It had looked more like a blur since the truck had raced past him doing over seventy. They had probably heard about Derek: the advance guard from the realm of bloodsuckers out to cash in on the world’s misfortunes. Voyeurism dressed up nice and pretty. Lysander snickered at the thought that Sam’s cynicism was rubbing off on him.

But he knew the sheriff would have a hard time explaining this latest murder. No more of his old faithful routine: “Folks, the assailant is just a vagrant. I assure you, the killer does not live in Millingham.”

Lysander angled underneath a large paint-chipped window, trying to crab-walk so he wouldn’t be seen. As he angled his back to the roof, a patch of rotting shingles gave way like a grouping of loose rocks on the edge of a cliff. He was sliding toward the edge of the roof and a steep twelve-foot drop. Perhaps not enough to kill, but certainly enough to snap your femur right out of your pant leg.

Lysander jerked himself backward and spread his arms. His fingers clawed at rotted shingles. In desperation, he pressed his hands flat against the roof and pushed down with everything he had, hoping the friction would slow him down.

He felt the flesh on his palms tearing away as he slowed and then came to a stop, his combat boots dangling over the edge. A light came on in the room above him. The top of his head was bathed in yellow light as he clung to the roof with every ounce of his failing strength. A face peered out. Silver hair and mustache.

Please God. Don’t let him see me. I’ll do anything
...

He waited for what felt like a lifetime, holding his breath, his cheeks ballooned.

Eventually, the light flickered out.

Lysander remained motionless, legs dangling. Then, with the utmost care, he edged himself back up and continued, sliding one tenuous foot in front of another until finally he reached Sam’s window. He knew Derek had made this same trek several times in the past, and he couldn’t imagine how the big oaf had done it.

The thought of Derek made his bottom lip quiver and he held it between his teeth until the taste of salty blood told him the feeling had passed. “Men don’t cry,” he told himself. “Besides, how are you gonna do Sam any good if you’re a blubbering mess?”

He tapped at the window and waited.

No answer.

He tapped again, and as he did a thread of doubt began working into the conscious part of his mind.

This is Sam’s window, right?

He thought so. But he wasn’t so sure anymore. It was dark and he had only heard stories of Derek crossing the roof to see Samantha.

He tapped the window pane again, more tentative now.

Finally a weak light flickered on from behind the curtain. The curtains parted and Sam’s face, weary and pale, peered out at him. Her dour expression broke slightly when she saw who it was. She pulled the curtains back and unlocked the window latch, lifting it up. Lysander snuck in and drew the thick velvet curtains closed behind him. The window he left open, however, just in case he needed to make a run for his life.

Samantha’s face was sunken and haggard. He could see she had been through hell.

He drew close, pulled her face to his chest and stroked her long black hair. They had never hugged before. He felt as if a powerful magnet were pulling them together, sucking him into her and her into him. Had he not felt this from the very beginning, though? And yet this feeling, natural as it was, had gone swooping right over his head. How could he have been so blind?

That surge of energy continued to spike through his body.

This was something else, bigger than both of them. Even in his semi-dazed state, one question kept poking away at him: What took you so long, buster?

She peeled her head away from his chest and looked up at him. Her smile filled her entire face, as though she was thinking the same exact thing. She squeezed him tighter.

“Did they give you anything?” he asked. “Medicine…sleeping pills?”

“They did.” She spoke into his jacket. “I didn’t take them.”

If this moment had lasted forever, he would be the happiest man on earth. But he had come for a reason.

“You saw him tonight, the reverend?”

A dance of emotions flashed across her face. Lysander’s own complexion darkened. “We have to do something,” he said. “I was hoping it would be tonight, but it may have to wait till tomorrow.” He didn’t tell her that he had seen Sandy tonight and that somehow she had told him he would be dead in two days time.

“We need to get inside the reverend’s house.”

Her face went ashen.

Lysander felt the frustration bubbling up inside him. “There’s gotta be something in there.”

“Okay, and if we find this
thing
, then what?”

“We go to Alex.” Lysander’s face became hard and for a moment his expression reminded Sam of her father.

She shook her head.

He was fighting to keep his voice to a whisper. “I don’t like it either, but I think Alex is beginning to see.”

“Lysander, I’ll help you with whatever you want, but people here have their minds made up. Look at us. We’re every parent’s worst nightmare, and we’re accusing one of the most trusted people in town of—”

That look of defiance on Lysander’s face was back. “We’re just gonna have to unmake their minds, that’s all.” Yet the fierceness passed quickly. He brought his hand up to his mouth and yawned. Exhaustion was starting to catch up with him.

“You’re tired.”

“No, I’m all right.”

“You shouldn’t bike back like that.”

“I’ll be fine, honestly.”

Her eyes fell to the floor. “Why don’t you stay and help me fall asleep?” She suddenly looked more beautiful than she ever had. “Every time I doze off I see that face of his, staring back at me.” She blinked. “Once I’m asleep you can go.” She held out one of her tiny hands and led him to her bed.

They stopped short, and she suddenly brought her lips up to his, exploring the fullness of his mouth. She was wearing a loose pair of pajama bottoms, and Lysander’s hands slid under the elastic and around the cool curve of her buttocks. He squeezed and she let out a sigh. She pulled his shirt up and over his head. For a moment he felt a pang of self-consciousness about his chest, but she curled her hands around his waist, kissing his belly, working her way up to his nipples, teasing them between her teeth until they were rock hard. Between the bursts of pain and pleasure any concerns seemed to drift away. Samantha cinched her body up to his. She could feel his erection, pulsing against the tight confines of his pants, begging for freedom. She undid his belt and let his pants fall to his ankles. Then she maneuvered his underwear over his swollen member until they hung just below his cheeks. His penis sprang out at her like a diving board and they both laughed.

She put a hand on his chest and pushed him onto the bed.

“What are you doin …” was all he could manage before he felt the tip of his penis slid into her mouth.

Lysander’s eyes became saucer-shaped and then slowly rolled up to whites. He could feel one of her hands squeezing him tight, the other gently cupping his testicles. With her every move, a powerful force was building in his groin, a throbbing sensation that was growing more and more intense. His heart was beating wildly. The movement of Sam’s mouth and hands quickened. Bobbing rhythmically, driving Lysander crazy. If she didn’t stop he was going to explode for sure. Then her hands slowed and the top of her face turned up to him.

“I don’t want to get you too excited,” she said, pretending to nibble on the bulbous part of his erection.

Lysander buried his face in the crook of his arm. “Are you trying to kill me? I think you’re trying to kill me.”

There was a night table beside Sam’s bed and she opened the drawer and fumbled around inside for what felt to Lysander like an hour. When her hand came out, she was holding a condom.

“Ever wore one of these before?” she asked sheepishly.

The first thought that fired through his mind was of his sexual mishap with Kathleen Stapleton back in Hayward. The second was of sitting on the toilet seat at home, sliding on condoms to make sure they would fit all right. A spark of fear lit his eyes. Sam felt him going soft in her hand.

“Don’t worry, Sex Ed is the one class I never fell asleep in.”

“What would I ever do without you, Sam?”

She smiled as she reached a hand over and turned out the light.

Later, lying in bed with Samantha, tucked under her warm blankets, he looked into her deep brown eyes. Watching her, he could tell he was beginning to lose himself. No longer was he Lysander Goth, foreigner and outcast, and no longer was she Samantha who believed that all men were idiots.

She reached down under the covers and felt his erection. It was back again. She kissed his mouth hard. Their hands explored one other.

“Again?” he asked, incredulous that she wanted more. She giggled.

That night, two rooms down from a snoring Sheriff Crow and a restless Dorothy Olsen, Lysander was having the most intense and wonderful experience of his life.

At some point, tucked into the fold of Lysander’s arm, Samantha fell into a restful sleep. For the time being, not a thought appeared of that gleaming clown with his sharpened teeth.