Ride the Nightmare (4 page)

“Honey, she’s going to wake up again,” he said.

“Chris, no.”

“Do what I say.”

Turning, she headed for the door, a sense of hideous inevitability crowding away all feeling. Her fingers closed over the knob and she tried to turn it. It’s broken, she thought in dull surprise and tried again. Abruptly, then, she realized that it was locked.

The bell rang again. Helen was about to unlock the door when an idea pierced her terror. Reaching over, she switched on the porch light. Then, holding her breath, she drew aside the blinds.

It was like a weight falling from her.

“It’s Bill,” she called out hollowly.

As she opened the door, she heard Chris moving in the kitchen, the sound of the drawer being shut again.

“Hi,” she said.

“Say, I’m sorry to be a pest, Helen,” Bill Albert said, “but we’re all out of ice cubes.”

“Of course.” Helen forced a smile back to her lips. “Come on in. We have plenty.” She wondered if her voice sounded as bad to Bill as it did to her.

Chris came out of the kitchen and smiled at Bill.

“Hi,” he said. “What’s up?”

“They’re out of ice cubes,” she explained.

“Oh.” Chris nodded. “Come on in the kitchen and we’ll get you some.”

“I sure hate to bother you like this,” said Bill.

“Not at all,” Chris told him.

Helen followed them toward the kitchen, her mind leaping ahead to investigate: the floor mopped, the sink clean, the newspaper page in the wastebasket, the pistol in the drawer, the dishwasher standing and loaded again.

The broken window!

“I hope I didn’t wake up Connie,” said Bill.

“No, not her,” said Chris. “She sleeps like the dead.”

Helen shivered, stopping in the kitchen doorway. Chris had pulled down the door shade again so the broken window was hidden.
Like the dead
, her mind repeated.

“Naturally Mary had to pick this afternoon to defrost,” said Bill. “I keep telling her to do it overnight. She keeps telling me to buy one that defrosts itself.”

“Know what you mean,” said Chris. He pulled open the refrigerator door and opened the freezer compartment.

Helen looked around the kitchen nervously. One of the plates in the washer had been lying in the blood. Moving to the washer, she pushed its top down quickly. As she turned, she saw Bill looking at her and smiled.

“How are you tonight?” he asked her.

“I’m fine.”

Bill smiled politely and Helen turned to watch Chris tugging at the ice cube tray. It was stuck to the surface of the freezer.

“Can I help?” Bill asked.

“I’ll get it,” said Chris. He didn’t sound very cheerful now. In a second, he’d wrenched the tray loose.

Now Bill had the tray wrapped in a towel and was apologizing once more for having disturbed them. Now Helen heard herself telling him not to worry about it and to take his time returning the tray. Now she was walking into the living room with the two men and listening to them say something about television which they decided to pretend was worth laughing at. Now they were saying good night and the front door was closing and Chris was leaning against it, breathing slowly, heavily.

“I’m going with you,” she said.

“What about—?”

“I’ll hold her on my lap,” she said. “She’ll be all right.”

“But—”

“
I won’t stay here
,” she said.

He stared at her a few seconds. Then he sighed.

“All right,” he said. “All right,” he said again.

***

Chris turned the Ford onto the hill that led to the coast highway. On the floor in back, there was a sound of something shifting and Helen felt her skin crawl.

Chris braked beside the red light at the foot of the hill. He sat, wordless, his hands clenched over the rim of the steering wheel. Then the light changed and he turned the Ford around the corner, heading north Helen closed her eyes as the car picked up speed. Maybe she could sleep, she thought.

After a while, she opened her eyes again and looked at the highway. The headbeams hurried on ahead, picking out a path of light for the car. She tried to shift Connie a little.

“She too heavy?” Chris asked. He sounded almost grateful for the excuse to speak to her.

“It’s all right,” Helen answered.

He stopped for the light at Santa Monica Canyon and Helen looked around the deserted intersection, at the steep hill angling off the highway, leading to the Palisades, the silent cafes and stores. The light changed and the car moved forward.

“Helen?”

“What?”

“I’d like to tell you about it.”

He waited as if expecting her to answer. Helen swallowed. “If you want,” she said.

“I know you think I lied to you because I was afraid of going to prison,” he said. “That isn’t true. It was you I was afraid of. You were so young when we married, so unprepared for anything like that.”

“That was seven years ago, Chris.”

“I know, I know,” he said. “It’s just that I never knew how to tell you.”

The Ford started along the stretch of highway that led toward Sunset Boulevard. “I was living in New Mexico when it happened,”
he said. “I told you about it. That part wasn’t a lie. I was working for a bank. I picked up deposits from the big stores and factories in the area. It wasn’t much—”

He broke off as Connie made a restless noise in her throat. Then, after several moments, he began again.

“I was living with my mother,” he said. “We didn’t get along. I was seventeen but, to her, I was still a baby. So, more to defy her than for any other reason I started going to the skid row section of the city. I bowled there, played pool, just sat around sometimes. I didn’t belong there and I knew it. I would have preferred going to a concert or reading a book. But music and books I associated with my mother. I didn’t want to have anything to do with them.”

He clenched his teeth and blew out breath. “That’s how I met Adam and Steve,” he said. “Later on, Cliff. The four of us sort of stuck together.”

The thought of Chris associating with the dead man gave Helen a restless, uncomfortable sensation. It made her wonder if Chris was really what he’d always seemed to be.

“We saw a lot of each other,” Chris was saying. “I don’t know if they worked except for Adam. He was an accountant at the Coca-Cola Bottling Plant; a sort of pseudo intellectual I guess you’d call him.”

For a few moments, there was only the sound of the Ford pulling quickly around the dark curve of highway that ran beside the ocean-fronting restaurants and houses.

“Why we decided to do what we did I’ll never know,” Chris said. “I can’t explain why four supposedly sane human beings should decide to commit a robbery.”

Helen closed her eyes and shuddered. There it was. They’d robbed someone and, during the robbery, that someone had been killed. And Chris had been there. Her Chris.

“We decided to rob one of the bank’s depositors,” Chris went on. “He owned a jewelry store. I’d told them how much money he deposited and—Adam picked him.”

They drove past the entrance to Topanga Canyon and Helen wondered why he didn’t turn in, deciding that it was because there were too many people living there. There was no safe place for burying things.

“We were to use Adam’s car,” Chris was saying. “I was supposed to knock on the back door of the jewelry store the way I usually
did. When the man opened it, they were going in to get the money while I waited in the car.”

His fingers tightened on the steering wheel and beneath his foot, the Ford accelerated steadily.

“I was supposed to warn them if anything went wrong,” he said.

He was silent for such a long time that Helen thought his story was finished. “Something went wrong, all right,” he finally said. “The old man who owned the store had an alarm system. It didn’t make any noise in the store itself though, only outside. I heard it. I was going to warn the others when I heard a police car coming.”

His foot pressed down harder on the accelerator and the speedometer needle quivered past sixty.

“I lost my nerve,” he said bitterly. “I didn’t warn them. I just drove away as fast as I could, ditched the car when it ran out of gas. I hitchhiked out of the state. Later on, I read that they’d been caught and that the old man had been killed.”

He sank back against the seat as if, suddenly, exhausted.

“That’s it,” he said. “I came to California. I changed my name. I managed to keep it all a secret. I thought I’d beaten it. Now…”

He gestured defeatedly with his right hand.

Neither one of them had noticed the red light blinking behind them. The first thing they were aware of was a harsh, metallic voice ringing out above the wind and engine noises.

“Blue Ford, pull over!”

A hundred yards back, the turning roof light of another car was just disappearing behind a curve.

“Put Connie in the back seat!” Chris told her.

“What is it?”

“A police car! Hurry!”

Breath choked in Helen’s throat. She tried to lift Connie and felt a painful drawing in her back and shoulder muscles.

“She’s too heavy!” she said.

“Grab the wheel then!”

Her left hand clutched at the wheel. Raising himself quickly, Chris grabbed Connie under the shoulders and legs and lifted her. For a second, Connie’s leg was in front of her face and Helen couldn’t see the highway. The Ford veered toward the opposite lane and she twisted the wheel sharply. Connie whimpered as she was dumped onto the plastic covering of the back seat. With desperate haste, Chris tucked the blanket around her. Before the police car had reappeared, he was steering the car again.

“Why did you do that?” Helen asked.

“They’ll probably look in back,” he said. “If they see Connie they may not look at the floor.” He pulled the car to the side of the road and braked.

“But is he—?”

“He’s covered,” said Chris.

Helen sat there woodenly, staring straight ahead, as the black and white police car angled to a halt in front of them. The red light on top of the car revolved slowly, glaring into their eyes. Two policemen got out and Helen listened to their shoes crunching over the roadside gravel. They were carrying something in their hands. Helen shuddered, realizing that they had flashlights.

“I’ll talk to them,” said Chris.

The policemen separated now, one to each side of the car. The one on Chris’s side directed the flashlight beam into his face.

“Don’t you read traffic signs?” the policeman asked.

“Yes. I—”

“You were doing seventy in a thirty five mile zone, did you know that?” the policeman interrupted.

“I’m sorry,” Chris said, “I—I wasn’t looking. We were—”

“License, please,” said the policeman.

Chris reached forward nervously and switched off the engine. He pulled out the key ring with the plastic-faced license holder attached to it and handed it out. The policeman took it and pointed his flashlight at it.

“You’re Christopher Martin?” he asked.

Helen felt something like an electric shock in her body as the other policeman pointed his flashlight beam at the back seat.

“Who’s that?” he asked.

She swallowed quickly. “My daughter,” she said. She was startled at the aloofness of her voice.

“You still live at twelve-o-four Twelfth Street?” the other policeman was asking Chris.

“Yes.”

The policeman lowered the license and looked at Chris again.

“Why were you going so fast, Martin?” he asked. His voice was less stiff now.

“Well,” Chris said, “we were going home and—”

Helen had stiffened even before the policeman said, “You were driving away from Santa Monica, Martin.”

Chris drew in a shaky breath.

“I mean my mother-in-law’s house,” he said. “She lives in Malibu. To tell you the truth, we’ve been—arguing and I’m taking my wife to her mother’s house. I’m very upset. That’s why I was going so fast. I wasn’t paying attention.”

The policeman looked at Chris another moment, then at Helen. “Is that right?” he asked.

If I told him now, it would be over, she thought. But, even as she thought it, she was nodding. “Yes,” she said.

“Well,” said the policeman, “I’ll have to give you a ticket, I’m afraid. You were going pretty fast. But I won’t put down your actual speed. That way you won’t have to appear in court.”

“Thank you,” said Chris.

They sat there quietly while the two policemen returned to their car. Helen sat staring at the light on the roof of the police car. It glared hypnotically into her eyes, then was gone, glared, was gone. In the back seat, Connie snored gently.

After a few minutes, the policeman returned and handed Chris the license and the ticket book. Chris signed his name and wrote his address. Then the policeman tore out the ticket and handed it in through the window.

“Take it slower now,” he said.

Chris nodded. “I will.”

The policeman cleared his throat.

“Look, it’s none of my business,” he said, “but—well, I’m an old married man myself. I have four kids and the missus and I have been through a lot together.”

He smiled at them. “What I mean is, these things seem a lot worse at night than they really are. I’m not trying to interfere but—well, why not wait till tomorrow before you decide anything? Go home, sleep on it. You’ll find it’s not half so bad in the morning.”

Helen braced herself.

“Thank you,” she said. “We will.”

The policeman smiled again. “Good,” he said. “Take it easy now.”

When he’d left, Chris said, “Now what are we going to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ll have to turn back and I was going to Latigo Canyon.”

“Oh.”

Chris started the engine. When the police car had pulled off the shoulder and disappeared around a bend ahead, he made a U-turn and started back toward Santa Monica. He kept looking up at the rear-view mirror to see if the police car were following.

“Where are we going to put him?” she asked.

“I guess it’ll have to be Topanga,” he said.

Helen twisted around and looked at Connie to see if she was all right. Then, unable to stop herself, she looked down at the floor. As the car turned into a curve, the body shifted and bumped against the seat. Helen turned back quickly.