Never Smile at Strangers (21 page)

HE WAS BECOMING unraveled. Undone. Half dragging, half carrying Chris’s body through a thousand feet of woods had been pure horror. Chris, from what little he knew, was a good ole boy, someone who would never hurt anyone.

Killing him had been more than unplanned, it had been evil. The same kind of evil that he’d practiced when he killed for his mother when he was a little boy. Senseless, brutal murder. Something that wasn’t a part of his soul, even as dark and twisted as it was. But Chris had fought him, forcing him to leave behind a bloody mess.

He wondered how his mother had managed to do it time and time again. He knew for a fact that the man that night hadn’t been her first. Or her last. There’d been several.

He quickly wrapped Chris in the lawn bags, careful not to look at the man’s eyes. He waded into the water and, several feet out, he let go.

Chris’s body disappeared instantly.

Back on land, he gazed up at the sky. Blood covered his clothes and skin, and tears ran down his cheeks. “Please. . . I was forced to,” he said, pleading to the God he feared. He knew he was getting closer to the end, and it frightened him as much as his mother did.

“Forgive me. Please,” he pleaded again. “I. . . I didn’t have a choice.”

The sun set and the sky became a radiant, peaceful blue. But there was a storm brewing inside him. One that he knew would never die down.

It was
the
storm.

The one that would finally end him.

***

FOR HOURS, HE paced the woods near his mother’s house, paralyzed with fear. He couldn’t bring himself to go back for Tom’s body. It was too dangerous. And he was almost certain it had already been found. People were still combing the woods for Sarah Greene. Someone had to have stumbled upon it.

He looked down at the blood on his clothes. The pond water had only done so much to cleanse him of the men’s blood.

Shivering, he walked to the house. A light was on inside. Had he left it on? Or was it them? Had they already come to get him? Allie couldn’t be home, could she? No, he told himself. She’d be out somewhere sinning with truck drivers.
Her clients.
Industrious little girl that she was.

The FBI agents were much more thorough than the detective, and they seemed to be able to see right through him.

Earlier that afternoon, they stopped by the house. His mother had screamed inside his head, and he could have sworn they heard her and saw the pain in his eyes. Sweat had formed along the length of his back and many times during the interview he felt like running through the house and out the back door. But he stayed, and at the end of the questioning, they smiled and shook his hand.

The woman agent told him that he should be commended for raising a teenage sister alone. Something hardly anyone in town even knew he’d been forced to do. Then they had left.

But he was certain they had put two and two together by now. That they’d realize what they’d seen in his eyes, know that he was the one.

He reluctantly entered through the back door. Allie stood in front of the stove, her back to him. She wore a purple half-shirt and a short blue jean skirt.

He wondered if he could get by without her seeing. But after two careful steps into the kitchen, she whirled around, holding the spatula out as though it were a knife. “You nearly scared the piss out of me!” she screamed. She turned back around to stir her brew. “Shit,” she muttered and forced air from her lungs in a loud sigh.

He studied her back, knowing she’d know what he had been up to. The damp clothes, the blood stains that couldn’t be washed away. She’d put everything together and run for help. She’d love to be the one to tell. She’d revel in watching them lead him away. His heart crashed against his chest so hard it felt as though it was tearing at the bone.

“I’m making Sloppy Joes,” she announced. He could see her profile from where she stood. She had a grin on her small face. “Enough for both of us. Want some? It’s kind of a gift to you for the one you gave me. I know I’m not Martha Stewart or anything but you should at least have some. I made it sweet.”

As she licked tomato sauce off the spatula, she turned to face him again. Her eyes took him in slowly, from head to toe. “Holy shit. What happened to you?”

He didn’t have an answer, so he just stood there. He knew he should move, but he couldn’t. And he was afraid to talk. He didn’t know what would come out.

A strong wind was now raging outside. The screen door behind him slammed shut, opened, slammed shut. The racket reminded him of his mother. Of the night when he was a boy and had seen her in the yard.

“Cat got your tongue?” she asked.

There was a rustling next to her. She looked down and his eyes followed. Ian emerged from behind the counter and wrapped his matted tail around her slutty clear platform heels. Her cherry red toes.

“What the—” he gasped.

“It likes me,” Allie beamed. “I’ve been giving it the spoiled milk from the fridge. It even likes beer.”

Ian watched him, a murderous look in its eyes.

“How. . . how long have you been feeding it?” he demanded, his voice wavering.

“Couple of months, maybe? It’s so skinny I felt sorry for it. Too bad all we usually have is beer. I know it can’t be good for him.”

He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out the stone. He rubbed it fiercely.

Ian stared even deeper into his eyes and mewed.

“It needs a bath. Can you give cats baths?” she asked.

He wanted to grab it and twist its neck. Couldn’t she see that this animal was evil?

He had nurtured Ian as he did his sister, feeding it the evening he had bought the groceries. Buying his sister the kind of gum that was supposed to make her not want to smoke her cigarettes.

“I asked you a question. Can you give cats baths?”

He laced his fingers behind his head in order not to strike out. To hurt the cat. To hurt Allie. To
really
hurt her.

“Why aren’t you answering me?”

“Yeah, if you want your eyes scratched out,” he said, his voice gravelly.

She screwed up her face and started stirring the food again. Then she looked thoughtful. “Why do you have books on Ted Bundy in your room? Don’t they scare you?”

He silently watched as a black widow spider hurried across a cabinet.

“And those magazines with the naked chicks. The pornos. It’s gross that you have so many of them. But you know what freaks me out even more? How you rip them up. Why do you do that?”

Lightning flashed behind his eyes. He leaned into the counter.

Allie looked startled for a moment. “You okay?”

He did his best to pull air into his lungs. He looked up and saw she was angry.

“What’s wrong with you?” she snarled at him. “I wanted to make up with you tonight! Quit being such a fucking freak, so we can get along for once,” she snapped.

The air came in trickles, but he needed more. The room started to spin and he clutched the counter more tightly.

“You walk in here looking like you’re some crazy person,” she said. She pointed at his shirt. “And what’s that all over you? For all I know it could be someone’s blood.”

It
is
someone’s blood, he thought.
I made a horrible mistake.

“I try to look past it all, to be friends with you, because I know you need one, but you won’t even fucking talk to me!” she spat, tears in her eyes. “You’re more interested in your piece of shit cat than you are me!”

She lunged for Ian and grabbed him firmly by the shoulders. Then she pulled open the screen door and flung him into the darkness.

He was gone by the time she turned back around.

THE NEXT MORNING, Haley spent an hour at Mrs. Perron’s. The two talked out on the porch while contractors worked inside, installing an addition to their living room. Haley wondered why the Perrons would add onto the house now that only two people lived there, and figured it was just part of Mrs. Perron trying to keep busy.

Unlike her own mother who coped by doping herself with sleeping pills, Mrs. Perron survived by cleaning and keeping busy. She’d installed new floors in their two-story home, re-papered most of the walls, and had the roof re-shingled. Now she was paying for an addition. The absolute only part of the house that seemed to be left unchanged was Tiffany’s room.

“Be careful out there,” Mrs. Perron told her as she left. “He’s goin’ after the pretty girls.”

***

ONCE HALEY ARRIVED home, she stopped at her mailbox. Seeing that it was empty, she loitered for a moment, closing her eyes and resting a palm on the warm metal. She was tired. Very, very tired. But for the first time in a long time, she was determined. And it felt good.

“Where’ve you been?” a voice called.

Haley opened her eyes and shielded them from the sun. Her mother was standing under the carport. Sasha stood next to her, wrapped in a bath towel.

“The Perrons,” she said, walking toward them.

“Where’s Becky?” her mother demanded.

“I don’t know. Why?”

Sasha ran from the carport, toward her. The towel dropped to the concrete driveway.

“Hay-wee! I falls into da water and sees a gatuh!”

“What?” Haley exclaimed, staring up at her mother. “He fell into the bayou?”

“He could’ve killed himself. I found him at the shallow end by the dock,” Mrs. Landry said. “But what if he hadn’t been? What if he would have fallen from the pier?”

Haley’s heart pitched.

“I dids. I dids see a gatuh. He had sharp teeths! He almost gots me, but Missus Landry got out o’ huh bed and sayfed me.”

The naked damp-haired little boy hugged Haley. He had no idea of the magnitude of what happened. What
could have
happened. Haley’s stomach felt like it was on the tumble cycle.

“If it hadn’t been for your father waking me up to tell me he was out there—” her mother said and stopped to hug her sides.

Haley’s face began to burn. She ignored her mother’s words. She wasn’t going to make this all about ghosts, death, the past. They needed to live in the present once and for all. She had made the decision earlier and she was going to stick to it. No matter what everyone else chose to do.

“This is
your
fault!” she screamed at her mother. “Becky’s fifteen, Mom. Fif-
teen
! If you’re not looking after her, no one is. What’s it going to take to get you to come to your senses? Sasha falling in the bayou again and actually drowning?” Sasha let go of her waist and took a couple of steps backward. He stared at Haley, his eyes wide. But Haley’s voice only grew louder. “Becky getting snatched up by some freakin’ lunatic while she’s out there taking rides from strangers? Happening across the
lunatic
stranger who took Tiffany? For one of us to die like Daddy did? It seems like that’s what it’ll take for you pay attention to
us
again!”

The woman’s face crumbled. “Oh God. I’m. . . a horrible mother.”

Haley hadn’t meant to scream, but she wasn’t sorry she had. It was months of built-up hurt and frustration that needed unleashing. She felt an immediate sense of relief.

She watched a lizard scale the front of the house and her eyes filled with tears. “Yes, you’ve been horrible. Becky’s impressionable and she needs you. We both do. This has to stop or you’re going to ruin her.”

Her mother gazed into the middle distance.

“Daddy’s been gone for nearly a year,” she added. “But we’re still here. We’re still here and Becky needs you. Be here for her. Be here for
us
. If you don’t, you’ll regret it. We all will. You’ve not only lost him, you’ll lose us, too. We’ll hate you and then you’ll have nobody.”

The woman nodded, her eyes flooded with tears. But for the first time since the accident, they were open.
Really
open.

ERICA SNEEZED AS she hurried in through the front door.

Pamela was in the living room, wearing denim overalls, a paint brush in her hand. “Oh, dang it, I wanted this to be a surprise!”

Ribbons of tape were everywhere, and the once white walls of the living room were now a cool, navy blue.

“Does my father know you’re painting in here?”

Pamela’s smile spread. “No, he’s still at work. It’s his surprise, too. Don’t it look nice?”

In a way it did. It was the type of look she imagined many New York City apartments boasted. Contemporary. A little airy. Cozier somehow. Erica had the suspicion that her mother would have thought the color gave the room more character.

She shrugged. “It’s okay.”

“You don’t mind, do you? I wanted to talk to you but you haven’t been home much. Then, I thought I’d just surprise you.”

No, she didn’t care. She wouldn’t care if Pamela had painted the living room walls black. This was her father’s house, not hers. Besides, she had much more important things on her mind than Pamela and her silly redecorating.

Through the fumes, Erica could smell Pamela’s perfume. It was new. Better. She’d also taken notice of the books the woman left around the house. Some romances, but most of it was nonfiction. From the titles, it was apparent Pamela wanted to learn how to cook more ethnic food and had a fascination with the subject of self-help. The woman liked to learn.

“Any news on the missing girls?”

Erica’s thoughts shifted. She doubted she’d ever forget the image of the man’s head. It had been beaten unrecognizable, a large chunk of it stuck to a nearby tree. He’d been dressed only in a robe, so there had been nothing to immediately identify him. Her mind hadn’t stopped racing since the discovery.

For some odd reason, Erica wanted to tell Pamela what she and Guitreaux had found. To just blurt out the news. But she didn’t.

“No, no news,” she said, then took off down the hallway.

“Erica?”

Erica turned. “What?”

“You goin’ back out?”

Erica frowned. She didn’t have to answer to her.

“Because if you are, I want you to be very careful. Those girls didn’t just run off. No,” she said, shaking her head. “They met with someone bad. I sense these things. . . I have since I was a little girl. And I haven’t been wrong yet.” Pamela sighed. “They’re gonna be found. . . and real soon. And not just those two either. There’ll be more.”