Shame (26 page)

There was nothing to indicate the house had been compromised. And there was no sign the killer was anywhere nearby.

But then what usually marked his presence was a body.

Caleb made his way around to the east side of the house. He maintained his distance from it, kept at bay by yet another motion detector, but there didn’t appear to be a need for him to approach any closer. This side offered only two darkened rooms and what appeared to be a secure door.

Hunched over, he circled his way back to the lawn furniture. It seemed as good a place as any to wait. Over the next half hour, the night claimed its victims. First a light went off, and then a television went dark, but from what Caleb could see and sense, only the sandman was responsible for the outages.

The night grew quieter and little sounds grew louder, but that’s all they were, little sounds. Caleb’s vigil seemed fruitless until he saw the stealthy movements in the recreation room.

There were no lights on, but through the partially opened vertical blinds he could make out someone moving around. No—two people. There was an exaggerated furtiveness to their maneuvering about. They paused at the door, played with what
looked to be the alarm panel, then the vertical blinds separated and the sliding glass door opened.

Caleb flattened himself on the lawn. Giggling, the women, a blonde and a brunette, walked outside. Their movements activated the motion detector, which caused them to laugh a little more. They were apparently familiar with the sensor’s range and proceeded beyond it, taking up their spots near the barbecue. Only ten feet separated them from Caleb, but they didn’t notice him. After a minute the motion detector’s light kicked off, and he started breathing again.

He wasn’t the only one who welcomed the darkness. The two women seemed to relax, their whispers becoming more conversational. The purpose of their stealth became clear when a lighter flashed, and the women leaned over the flame, one lighting up a cigarette, the other a joint. Caleb suspected the tobacco was being used to hide the smell of pot, though in California it was possible it was the other way around.

The blonde was the first to exhale. “Did you see how Brunhilda acted? Right away she came to me and asked, ‘Were you smoking, Vicki?’ That cow thought I was the one that set off the alarm.”

“Shh,” said her friend. “Don’t wake her up.”

“Nothing’s going to wake her up. Did you hear the way she was snoring? We could sneak in the football team tonight and she wouldn’t know it.”

“I wish.”

They both giggled. The more they tried to suppress their laughter, the more they failed.

“I’d rather have the track team,” said Vicki. “I met a high-jumper at the Zetas’ party last week. He could jump me any time.”

Both of them laughed again, then exchanged their smoking sticks. They kept looking around, probably wary of being found out by the house mother.

“It’s so boring tonight,” said the dark-haired one.

“I know. I thought I’d get all this work done, but I didn’t even finish my report.”

“It was that dumb alarm.”

“No, it was Brunhilda. She should join the army. I mean, like, we all knew it was a false alarm, but first she has to take roll, and then she has to make sure there isn’t a fire or anything before resetting that stupid alarm. Like we all weren’t telling her, ‘Turn off the alarm.’ It was like she wanted our eardrums to pop.”

“Maybe she just wanted to show off her nightgown. Did you see that thing? God. Industrial-strength flannel.”

“In prison-guard green.”

They laughed a little more, finished up their toking exchanges, then carefully disposed of the evidence, shredding the remains and depositing them among the charcoal. As they walked toward the house, they tripped the sensor light again. Under the spotlight, Vicki did a little dance. Her shadow jumped all over Caleb, and pushed him that much further into the ground.

The women disappeared back inside, and the sensor light deactivated. Caleb raised his head and tried to think. He was bothered by what he had heard. The false alarm could have been an accident or a malfunction, but he couldn’t take that chance. In the chaos of everyone running outside, the killer could have gotten inside.

Was inside.

He had to act. Gas can in hand, he ran over to the west side of the property. There was a thicket of pampas grass that separated the sorority from the neighboring house. On occasion, Caleb’s job required him to clear brush by setting controlled fires, and he knew that pampas grass was extremely combustible. He poured the gas around the brush, then tossed the can in the middle of the pampas grass.

The pampas grass hadn’t been trimmed back in years, if ever. The interior, with all its old and dead leaves, was a fire waiting to
happen. He applied his lighter, saw the fire catch, and then watched as the flames quickly torched upward. As he ran up to a side window, he could see the reflection of the fire behind him. The orange flames seemed to be catching up to him. In a matter of moments, the pane was awash with the fiery glow. Caleb picked up one of the ornamental rocks and rapped it hard against the glass. The pane didn’t break and neither did the alarm go off. He hit it again, and this time the glass cracked and the clanging started.

Caleb ran across the street, looking for a vantage point from which he could see and yet not be conspicuous. There wasn’t any good spot. Maybe he should have set a second fire. Maybe he should have done lots of things.

He hid behind the line of cars. The fire would draw plenty of spectators, and in a minute or two he’d be able to circulate among the gawkers without drawing any attention. Already he could hear voices, people shouting. He looked over the hood of the car. Figures were spilling out of the sorority. A woman with an imposing figure and a loud voice took charge. Her green nightgown identified her: Brunhilda.

Under the house mother’s directions, the Kappa Omegas pulled the front hose over to the side and started spraying the pampas grass. At the same time, their neighbors on the west side were pulling their own hose into play. But the garden hoses didn’t seem to have any immediate effect on the torching pampas grass.

Sirens approached. Two cars with lights flashing came to dramatic stops. Campus police. In the distance other sirens could be heard. But Caleb was more interested in Brunhilda. She was doing a head count, making sure all of her charges were present.

“Where’s Dana?” she called. “Has anyone seen Dana?”

The house mother didn’t get an answer she liked. She ran inside the door. Even over the alarms her voice could be heard yelling, “Dana!”

Caleb almost didn’t notice it. With all the confusion it would have been only too easy to overlook the motion detector going
off on the east side of the house. People had flocked to the sorority, but they were all moving toward the fire, not away from it. Someone or something had set off the detector on the side of the house opposite the fire.

He ran across the street, had to sidestep a group of young males who were bemoaning the fact that they hadn’t brought marshmallows and beer, then ran from right to left along the front of the sorority house, making sure no one was emerging from the back. The east side had just gone dark again when he reached it. His appearance reactivated the motion detector. Caleb scanned the area but didn’t see anything.

“Dana?”

Brunhilda’s voice was near. Overhead a light went on in one of the upstairs rooms, followed by a scream: “Dana!”

Caleb started running. He ran to catch the killer and ran to get away from the scream. I didn’t know, he told himself. I couldn’t have known. But he had. To save himself he’d been willing to gamble with the lives of others.

He ran blind, headed south without consciously thinking about it. The way felt right, though. Caleb was sure that the killer hadn’t parked his car near the sorority. He would have parked a street or two away from it, and he would have scouted the terrain to plan his escape. That’s how his father would have done it. Caleb fought his way through fifty yards of brush, the remnants of a small, urban canyon, and came out at a fenced-in apartment complex.

Another choice. He could go right or left or scale the chain-link fence. Caleb chose left.

His stomach felt as if it were on fire. The cut had opened, and the wetness was spreading along his belly. His breathing was ragged, but he never slowed. He couldn’t. The killer had at least a minute’s head start on him, and the knowledge of where he was going. But as Caleb broke free to the street, he heard the sound of a car door closing.

Caleb looked for the appearance of headlights or brake lights but saw neither. He tried to quiet his breathing. In the distance he could hear the sorority’s alarm and the sound of still more sirens.

An ignition turned over, and an engine revved. Still no lights, but Caleb could see the car. It was almost hidden by the darkness and the shadows of a tree and its own color: it was black, a sedan. He ran toward it.

The car pulled away from the curb but didn’t attempt to avoid Caleb’s rush. It wanted to meet him more than halfway. Accelerating, the vehicle headed for him.

Caleb tensed, then made the conscious decision to leap for the windshield, to throw his body at the glass. He cared more about shattering the glass than shattering his bones. It would be his chance, maybe his only one, to reach for the killer’s throat.

The car came at him. He tensed to jump, but self-preservation took over. Instead of launching himself at the car, Caleb threw himself to the right, belly-flopping on the pavement. The car braked and swerved, narrowly avoided running into the curb, then came to a stop a hundred feet away.

Caleb raised himself from the asphalt. His chin and face were numb. He’d left a layer of skin behind on the street. He struggled to rise, but his legs kept betraying him. The car was sideways to Caleb. He couldn’t see the driver, was denied getting a good look by the dark night, the lack of lights, and the car’s privacy glass. But he could see the driver staring at him.

The car’s engine revved. Taunting him. This time Caleb would be helpless to avoid it.

The car revved again.

Son of a bitch. Caleb started staggering toward the sedan. He couldn’t walk a straight line. But he went two steps forward, three steps to the side, and then he started forward again.

The black car’s engine sounded, but it didn’t run him down. Instead it reversed and pulled away.

Caleb suddenly found himself immersed in lights, but at first he couldn’t understand why.

“Get out of the road, you idiot!”

The shouting was coming from behind him. Caleb turned around unsteadily and was blinded by the headlights of a pickup truck. He could vaguely make out a man’s head outside the driver’s window.

“Move it, would you? You’re in the middle of the fuckin’ road.”

It took him a moment to make sense of the words. Caleb tottered over a few steps, enough for the truck to pass him by. Good advice, he thought. Get out of the road. It made sense. The black car could be coming back for him. By trial and error, Caleb made his way to the sidewalk.

His coordination was coming back, as was his awareness. So many parts of him hurt that he found it hard to think, but he knew he needed to think like never before.

Head back toward College, he thought. The commercial district was only about half a mile away. He could find a pay phone there. But who could he call? There wasn’t anyone. He’d call a cab, he decided, but then reconsidered. There was no safe place to go.

Another siren. It sounded close. His appearance alone would be a magnet for the police to question him.

Childhood fears overwhelmed him. The pack had always been after him. He’d learned to be stealthy, had spent countless hours figuring out how to avoid capture, how to escape being seen. He had to act before the bullies saw him.

It was dark, but he could still see well enough to make out all the trees around him by their silhouettes. Caleb rejected the cypress, palms, and pines. A Pacific dogwood was too thin, and a box elder wasn’t leafy enough. There had to be a good tree. Enemies were coming.

He decided on a California laurel, a tree that stood about fifty feet high. It wasn’t perfect, but it would do. Adrenaline
straightened out Caleb’s senses long enough for him to trot over to the laurel and begin climbing the tree. Its bark was scaly enough to get a good hold, and he could reach almost all the way around its trunk. Most of the laurel’s branches weren’t thick, but they were close enough together for him to spread his weight over two or more limbs at a time. Two thirds up the tree, he decided, was high enough. He settled behind a particularly dense thicket of leaves but knew the camouflage was probably unnecessary. It was the rare person that looked up. People had their heads in the sand, not the clouds.

Caleb tried to get comfortable. He wished he had his harness. That was one of the perks of his job. Hanging from a limb, secure in his harness, was better than a hammock. Sometimes, staring up at a canopy of green, he’d lose track of time and self. Usually he felt more at home in trees than he did anywhere else. But not this time. Now he had to face the enormity of his failure. He had been given a chance and didn’t know if he would get another. Dana certainly wouldn’t. Another innocent murdered. And this time he couldn’t say it wasn’t his fault.

He assessed his wounds and scrapes, decided he’d live, but wished he were more excited at the prospect. His lips were chapped and his mouth was dry. Dehydrated already, and the siege was just begun.

Sirens sounded nearby. They were coming closer. He felt like a bear treed by hounds. Death kept baying. Caleb remembered another tree, another time.

Up in the big pecan tree, up higher than he’d ever been before.

His mama said the tree was over a hundred feet high. It had been there all his life, towering in their backyard. When he was little he’d thought the tree stretched up as high as Mr. Moon. As a boy, he’d looked up and been sure the moon rested on the tree’s branches.

The big pecan was the first tree he’d ever climbed. He had been six. In the five years since, Gray had gotten more daring, but he’d never been anywhere near this high before.