SUSPENSE THRILLERS-A Boxed Set (56 page)

She shook her head. “Someone else told me. I hardly ever have time to read.”

“Yeah, well, when I'm not on the job or in these places, time's all I've got.” He didn't appear happy to admit it.

“You married?” She knew it was the next question in the queue expected of her.

“I was once. No more. Cop's life, old story, nothing new, blah-blah-blah.” He smiled winningly and she liked that smile. “You?”

Now it was her turn to laugh at the absurdity of a question. “No,” she said.

“Divorced?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Widow,” she said. “My husband killed himself.” It had simply popped out. She felt like biting her tongue in half.

“Hell, that's a damn shame.”

“I think it was exactly what he should have done.” She sounded colder than a block of ice. She might as well stick to the truth as long as it never really told him anything specific about her past or her life now.

“Oh? Was he an asshole? Beat you, that sort of thing?”

She searched her brain for yet another subject to aim him toward and came up blank. Finally she said, “I don't want to talk about him. He'd dead. He's good and dead.”

The cop drank his coffee and sat watching her a while. She let him, unconcerned with his scrutiny. He ordered another drink. She asked for coffee too, straight, black.

“Any kids?” he asked, breaking the silence.

She frowned at him. “Look, you don't pay me to divulge my personal life history here. We can talk about books or dancing or the hole in the ozone layer, but not about my life. I'm afraid I have to leave now.”

She stood up, leaving the coffee, and went to gather her things from the locker in the dressing room. She hadn't looked back at him. She didn't care what he thought of her. She should have known a cop was going to pry, ask questions she didn't want to answer. That was the job they did. Next time he came to her table, she'd leave right away. So what if he was good-looking, with soft brown eyes, and a football quarterback's kind of body? So what if he had a crush on her?

She had no time for romantic involvements. She hadn't wanted a man for a long time. The bottom had dropped out of her sex drive. If her ovaries were still producing hormones, they just weren't moving through her bloodstream in enough quantity to make a damn bit of difference. She might as well be a nun as far as sex was concerned. And it wasn't that she was moving toward any lesbian relationship with Charlene either. Charlene was like a sister. She loved her, wished to protect her and keep her on track, but she sure as hell didn't want to get into bed with her.

Why was she making all these excuses to herself anyway? Why had she thought the cop's eyes were nice?

Christ. Maybe her hormones were working. Edging her toward the first tantalizing steps that would lead to normal sexual activity again.

Now wouldn't that be something? Goddamnit. But not with a cop! Especially one who asked so many piercing and potentially dangerous questions.

When she saw a drunken fool wending his way down the sidewalk and turning toward the parking lot where she was unlocking the driver's side door of her Toyota, she was suddenly very tired. So tired she wanted to just curl up on the backseat of the Toyota, cover her head, and go to sleep.

She wondered if Charlene was still up waiting for her and if she had made anything good to eat. She needed to tell her she had a fondness for lemon-meringue pie. She was positively lusting for any kind of lemony pie, all of a sudden. She could almost taste the lemon bite on her tongue. Pie and sleep. That's all she wanted. Nothing more. Except some peace from men—men, goddamn boring-ass men . . .

"Scuse me, baby, you goin' somewhere?” The drunk had her by the upper arm.

She wrenched away. “Get lost.”

She had shut and locked the car door before she heard what he replied. She knew all the curses. They did not bother her in the least. Fuck him and his need for her. That's what it was, too, need. Except for Frank . . . and maybe the cop . . . the men she had run into in the clubs were just eaten up with the need for a woman, any make or model of woman. A woman to bed down with, not just to talk to. It was as if all males over the age of fifteen had been stranded on a dry desert island for twenty years without female companionship. Or locked up in the penitentiary. Which is where most of them belonged.

Either there or the deep-blue sea.

Twenty-Two

While Charlene worked she thought about Shadow. It had been a rough night. Every creak in the mansion set her blood pressure soaring. She had developed a headache that no amount of aspirin could touch.

She bent over to wring out the mop in the bucket of Clorox and Pine Sol. She had put off cleaning the ballroom for too long. Now it must be done. She kept the lights blazing the whole time so there would be no shadowy corners calling to her overactive imagination. She took a portable radio with her and turned on 102.9FM—the easy-listening station—so as to drown out the voices in her head. With Bette Midler, Streisand, Michael Bolton, and an occasional Doris Day and Frank Sinatra singing at her back, she handily completed the chore, stood at the entrance door to the ballroom when she was finished, and beamed at how the floor shone clean and spacious. A sea of white marble.

Though the music kept the voices overpowered, they still talked to her as she worked, therefore the headache. It was like listening to FM with static bleeding through.

“Go away,” she whispered wearily, standing in the ballroom doorway holding the bucket of wash water in one hand, the mop in the other. “Please leave me alone.”

She remembered as a child chanting this same plea in her head all the time. At school, home, out shopping, on the bus, at the park, watching television, doing homework. Go away. Please leave me alone!

The voices had increased in both volume and frequency ever since she discovered Shadow was killing the men she brought home. Murder was something she never would have thought her friend capable of. But after stabbing the rapist, it appeared murder was the one thing Shadow did exceptionally well. Not only was she capable, she was expert at it.

The voices that dogged Charlene throughout the day and night now were new to her. They belonged to the three men Shadow had dropped into the bay. They said things to her that drove her crazy.

Why did you let her kill us, they said.

What did we do so horrible, we should die?

It's cold here, in the waters, in the deep waters. It's lonely here and cold.

Shadow is insane, they said, surely you know that. Surely you can stop her. You're not so crazy yourself that you can't stop her.

Watch her, they said. She'll kill you next. She'll poison you the way she poisoned us. Do you want to bleed to death? Internally? Do you know what that's like, to die that way?

She's evil, they said. She's monstrous.

Charlene sometimes argued back with the voices. She's not evil. She is my friend. She can't help it. She thinks she's doing right. And anyway, you were all horrible people. Shadow was right about that . . .

Not so horrible, they chorused. Not so horrible as you think.

But they were. Charlene came to know just how horrible they were the more they tromped around inside her head, giving her no peace and quiet. They invaded her sleep and created nightmares, forcing her to live through them until she woke screaming into her pillow. They badgered her endlessly to do something.

But what could she do? She loved Shadow and she loved living in the mansion even if sometimes, when she was alone here, she feared the big open spaces and the dark rooms and the many barred windows.

She didn't want to go back to the state hospital. She didn't want to go back there ever. Nor did she want Shadow to have to return. This time either or both of them could die there, never to be free again.

The price of freedom might just be learning to live with the new voices. If she couldn't persuade Shadow to stop.

She saw the car lights turn into the long drive before she heard the engine noise. She glanced at her wristwatch. Three-thirty-five a.m. Please, God, she begged silently. Don't let her bring anyone home tonight.

She sat on the top step just above the entrance, waiting. She could still smell the Clorox and pine scent on her hands, though she'd washed them with a bar of soap. She brought her hands down from where she'd had them propping up her chin and lay them in her lap. She straightened her aching back.

She wondered if there was anything stronger in the medicine cabinet than aspirin for the raging headache.

Shadow glanced up at her as she unlocked the front door and came into the foyer. “Hi there. What's the matter?”

“I have a headache.”

“You look terrible. Have you taken anything for it?”

Charlene watched her climb the staircase, put down the gym bag at her feet, and take a seat on a lower step so that she was looking up at her.

“I took aspirin. Hasn't helped.”

“Oh, poor baby. Want me to massage the back of your neck?”

Charlene shook her head and it made the headache shift from over her right eye to her left. She winced and held her head stiffly. “It'll go away soon. I wanted to talk.”

“Shoot. But first, tell me. Do we have any lemon pie filling or lemon pudding in the kitchen?”

“No. Butterscotch. Chocolate. No lemon.”

“Damn.”

“We have fresh lemons. I could make a glass of lemonade, if you want it.”

Shadow shook her head now, her silky black hair lifting from her neck and moving back and forth before lying still again. “I had a craving for lemon pie. Lemonade just doesn't sound the same.” She smiled.

“I'll make one tomorrow. I make pretty good pies.”

“So what did you want to talk about? Aren't you sleepy? I'm pretty beat, myself.”

“I won't keep you long. I just wanted to tell you . . .” She touched her temple where the headache throbbed, lowered her hand again. “It's the voices,” she blurted. “They want me to turn against you.”

Shadow went perfectly still. “Turn against me how?”

“I don't know how, exactly. They yammer at me all the time, hon. They tell me it's . . . cold in the water. They say it's . . . lonely.”

Shadow blinked and then some sense of understanding glowed in her eyes. “The men I dumped in the bay. They talk to you.”

“Yes. All the time. Even in my sleep. They call you ’evil‘ and they say we're both insane and they tell me I shouldn't let you do it anymore.”

“I see.”

“No, you don't see! If you could see what I suffer, you wouldn't let this happen. I'm your friend, Shadow. I wouldn't do anything that made you stop talking again. I wouldn't ever remind you of . . . of . . . things that bother you.”

“I know that, Charlene. That's why I love you the way I'd love a sister.”

But what can I do about these voices? What do I tell them when they say we're both crazier than loons? How do I stop thinking about them down in the water, cold and lonely? They say they weren't horrible like you said they were. They say you're just a . . . an . . . evil killer. A murderer.” Charlene started crying. The tears fell down her face and her eyes pleaded with Shadow to make things right again, the way they were before she began this deadly game of death.

Shadow moved up the steps quickly to sit next to Charlene. She put an arm around her shoulder and leaned her head against Charlene's, speaking softly.

“That first one, you know, the really big guy? Not the man who was in your bed that night, but the first one I brought home, remember him?”

Charlene nodded carefully so her headache wouldn't shift again. She didn't bother to wipe her eyes, though now the tears had stopped. The tear tracks cooled her face and cooling her face might help the headache.

“I think he was involved in maybe the Mafia or something. I think he was a sort of hit man. He told me things I don't even want to tell you, Charlene. Awful things. He was like some kind of creepy-crawly bug, he was so low and despicable. And the second guy? The one we just took out a few days ago? I told you he had molested kids. Even a little baby girl. A baby, Charlene. What do you think that baby girl will grow up to become? What kind of nightmares will she have because of him? Will she remember a big grown man going down on her? Spreading her little chubby baby legs and . . .”

“Don't!” Charlene covered her eyes with her hands. Tears started again and she didn't want them. The voices, too, were screaming for her attention, refuting every word Shadow said. Did not! they screamed. She's lying! Don't believe her.

“All right, all right, now, hush. Don't cry, Charlene. I just want you to understand how bad they were. There's so many of them, you wouldn't believe how many there are. They hang out in the club I dance in. They come over to my table and talk to me. I begin asking them questions, sometimes pretending I'm curious or I'm playing a game, and they start telling me things. Things you couldn't believe unless you were there and you saw their faces, saw their eyes, how they glitter. And then you know they mean it. They're telling you the truth and they don't care if you know, if it disgusts you, if it makes you sick to your stomach.”

“We'll have to go back to the hospital, Shadow. If this keeps on, they'll catch us, and they'll put us away forever. We won't get out again.”

“I don't think so. I don't think anyone will ever miss these putrid shits, if you want to know the truth. I'm doing the world a fucking favor.”

“They're missed already. At least they were found.” Charlene removed her hands from her face and turned to Shadow. “I've seen it on the TV news and heard it on the radio. They found the bodies.”

Shadow caught her breath audibly. Then she said, “You're sure? It's the men I took out in the bay?”

Charlene nodded. “They know about both of them. One washed into the channel and the other was snagged by a shrimp boat.”

Shadow looked down the stairs toward the door. “They won't find anything on them, we took their clothes. They'll never know it was me.”

“But what if they find out?”

“They won't.” She said this emphatically. She stood then and picked up the gym bag. “Listen, I want you to stop worrying. That makes the voices come to torture you, you know that. They aren't real voices, you know that too. They're like your conscience talking to you. And you have nothing to feel guilty about. You didn't do anything but help me carry them to the boat. You've never hurt anyone in your life. So ignore the voices. They're trying to make you sick, that's all, and they will too, if you let them.”