The Eleventh Victim (14 page)

“H
OW DOES THIS OUTFIT MAKE ME LOOK?” DANA ASKED HAILEY
, spinning in circles in her kitchenette as they waited for the morning’s second pot of coffee to brew.

“Curvy,” Hailey said, and reached out to brush a speck of lint from Dana’s snug blue dress.

“Curvy-good or curvy-fat?”

“Curvy-good.”

“I hope so. There are supposed to be a lot of single guys at this party tonight. Are you wearing those boots, or did you bring dress-up shoes to change into?”

“I’m wearing these boots…home. After work. And then I’m wearing a pair of socks,” Hailey told her as she took skim milk from the fridge.

“Party pooper. You said you were going.”

“I said I might go.”

And that was just to humor Theresa, one of the therapists who worked down the hall, who had popped over yesterday with an invitation to a housewarming party she and her roommate were throwing.

“Give me one good reason why you can’t,” Dana said.

“Because I don’t want to?” Hailey said with a smile.

“That’s not—”

“Excuse me,” a male voice interrupted from the doorway.

Hailey saw Dana light up and looked over her shoulder to see a familiar man dressed in a white coat, a sterile mask dangling around his neck.

“I’m Adam Springhurst…I work downstairs?”

“Hi! I’ve seen you around the building…I’m Dana. This is Hailey. It’s her office. I’m across the hall.”

“Oh, okay…that’s good. Nice to meet you.” The dentist shook Dana’s hand, then Hailey’s.

There was something so familiar about him…as if Hailey had seen him before…but of course she must have. He worked downstairs. You’d have to be blind not to notice the dark hair, dark eyes, and traces of a tan that spoke of outdoors.

Dana, looking him over head to toe, held out a mug. “Coffee?”

A peek at his ring finger revealed that it was bare.

Not that it mattered to Hailey.

“You’re probably wondering why I’m here.”

“To borrow a cup of sugar?” Dana asked him, openly flirting, and he smiled…at Hailey.

“Sugar?” He recoiled in playful horror. “Do you have any idea what that stuff does to teeth?”

Hailey couldn’t help but grin, and Dana laughed as if it were the funniest thing she’d ever heard.

“No, actually, we’ve got a leak in the ceiling right underneath this”—he indicated Hailey’s sink—“and I was wondering if you’d mind if someone came up to take a look at the pipes.”

“No problem. I’ll be here till six tonight, so…”

“Great. See you later, then, Hailey.”

She and Dana exchanged a startled glance.

“You’re going to inspect the pipes yourself?” Dana asked dubiously.

“Oh—no. Of course not. Maybe I’ll just come back up and see what the plumber finds. And to say hello again.”

“Hello again?” Dana echoed when he’d walked out, closing the door behind him. “Did you hear that? What did he mean by that?”

“Who knows?” Hailey turned away, taking a mug from the cabinet.

“Hailey! Don’t be so clueless. It means he’s interested in you.”

“How am I clueless when you’re the one who asked me what he meant?”

“We both know what he meant. And in the first place, don’t you think it’s a little strange that a dentist himself comes all the way up here to talk about the pipes, check out your office and
you
? Not one of those old birds that works in his office?”

“I don’t know…maybe.”

“I bet there’s not even a leak down there. It was probably just an excuse for him to come up and introduce himself.”

“That’s crazy.”

“So you’re not interested?”

“I hadn’t even thought about it…”

“So you
are
interested?”

Maybe…but she’d never let on to Dana. The next thing she knew, Dana would skip Theresa’s party to stick around here and play matchmaker.

“You know I’m not looking for anyone, Dana. I don’t want that in my life right now.”

“If you found the right person, I bet you’d change your mind.”

Hailey thought of Will. She already found the right person. And lost him.

“Maybe,” she told Dana. “But I don’t think so.”

T
HE GREYHOUND TOOK OFF FROM THE REIDSVILLE BUS STATION
, kicking up gravel and heading north in a cloud of dark gray exhaust.

It was headed directly to its main hub in inner-city Atlanta.

How many times had he poached the place like a fox…waiting for just the right woman to step off a bus from nowhere? How many times had he lurked a half block away, watching as a new crop of waitresses, hotel domestics, mall sales-clerks, secretaries, and showbiz wannabes hit town?

The bus stopped and the familiar smell of the hot, congested city’s downtown slinked its way through the heavy automatic doors, stealing all the way to the back row, where Cruise sat at an angle against the bus’s wall.

It hit him hard…the smell of the heat radiating off pavement, diesel fumes, and something else…something sweet and hot and familiar.

Downtown Atlanta, where it all mixed together: the heat, the exhaust, the whiff of downtown department stores full of pink-faced salesgirls meandering heavily air-conditioned aisles…the new steel and concrete sky-rises looking down on old flophouses right next door on the same city block, the smell of fresh boiled collard greens and cornbread served up on dinette four-tops at the cafeteria next to the station.

He was home.

Unlike the drifters pouring onto the sidewalk from all corners, this was
his
town.

He knew where to go, how to get by, where to have fun, and where to lay low when he needed to…when he was disgusted with
the sickening presence of other people. He knew where to find everything he wanted.

But not now.

It took every fiber of his being not to walk down the narrow center aisle and down the two bus steps, leave the bus behind, and melt back into his old haunts.

But instinct told him no.

Instead, Cruise stayed rooted to his seat, staring down at the gray-and-blue pattern woven into the upholstery, knowing that if he kept looking out the window into the city’s night, he’d walk out onto the sidewalk and fade into the hundreds of drifters milling around the bus terminal. He’d disappear right back into his own world, the world he had known before Reidsville Pen.

Twenty minutes later, the bus motor churned and they were off again.

He watched the last streaks of light leave the sky, replaced by total darkness.

Time seemed suspended as they headed north…far from the city’s core, through the suburbs and cul-de-sacs of cluster homes. Past the ball fields, the shopping malls, the Starbucks, the gas stations. They fell away from the highway like empty husks, like they’d never existed.

He’d be back…he knew it. He’d pick up his old life again. It was all just a matter of time.

First, he had business to take care of; business he’d dreamed of for all these years, business that gave him a reason to keep breathing in the cement crate he’d been crammed into.

I
T WAS PITCH DARK OUTSIDE, BUT THE MOON WAS SO BRIGHT VIRGINIA
could see in clear detail the separate limbs of tall, thin, lanky pine saplings near the entrance to an unpaved two-mile access road that ended at the Island’s southernmost beaches.

She eased her beat-up gray Jeep onto the dirt lane, then glanced into the rearview mirror.

Good. Nobody behind her. Nobody ahead of her.

She slowed to a full stop and took her time staring down the road as far as she could, until it took a rounded curve.

Just beyond her view were the most beautiful beaches on the Island, where the Atlantic first kissed the Georgia sand good morning each day.

On Saturdays, children played pirates and Civil War heroes and Indians there, hiding from parents back at home, closeted behind screen doors keeping out the onslaught of summer bugs, their curtains drawn shut against the heat.

It was to these same quiet, wind blown dunes that those very children, as high-schoolers, stole away to make love for the first time, each thinking they were the first to discover the once-in-a-lifetime spot under the Island sky.

And then even later, they would return to the familiar stretch of sea and sand as life crept up on them, the years suddenly grown too many. They came back to drink in the water and sand, and remember youth.

Then, at the end, there were last requests to see the south dunes and the ocean one more time. When Virginia’s time came, she wouldn’t mind if it happened right there, too; if her own last look at this earth was the Island dunes and ocean.

With a sigh, she turned off the engine, crunched down on the emergency brake, and got out of the Jeep.

She couldn’t help but look up and name the constellations in her mind, an old habit. She always imagined that somewhere in the world, the people she loved both dead and alive were looking at those same stars.

Suddenly remembering why she was creeping around a dirt road at midnight, she crawled under a thick metal chain draped across the road.

She took off into the dark, keeping an eye out for wildlife off the dunes, confident that, between her and the animals, if anyone were about to be caught off-guard and take off running, it would be
them,
not her.

No sooner than three or four minutes in, she turned the curve in the road and stopped cold.

In the distance, she saw something altogether foreign. Erected in the dead center of the road was some sort of small structure, painted stark white to thwart the heat of the sun.

Some sort of guardhouse. To guard what?

She continued walking, but slowly now, taking it all in.

Beyond the new guardhouse, she could make out the outlines of cement trucks and construction materials stacked in assorted piles. They went on and on, no lack of building materials here.

A gust of breeze confirmed her worst fears.

When it blew across her face, lifting her hair from her cheek, she sniffed not only the usual salt air, but the unmistakable odor of cement mix. That, and pine timber without the protection of its hard outer bark, sliced and laid open to the elements in long, thin boards.

There was a light in the tiny booth, and she could just make out the back of a man’s head.

Virginia knew she should stop, but she didn’t.

Instead of passing the booth on the road and in the open, she dipped into thick trees on the side of the dirt road and continued forward, using them as cover. About twenty yards in, she edged closer to the clearing to take a look.

Larry was right.

Huge sections of land leading to the beachfront had been cleared. In the milky white moonlight, the ground looked naked without the pine-scrub covering. The gentle dips and curves of dune had been flattened like a big, square pancake and cordoned off in neat, precise rectangles with construction string, waiting to be shored up with pine timbers, then filled in with thick concrete.

Her only witness a solitary Island owl, Virginia made her way back to the Jeep, stepping surely and silently through the trees, touching them gently, lovingly, with her fingertips as she went.

The night was black and the roads were dark, even with her brights on, as she drove back, the wind whipping in through the Jeep’s open windows, wet with sea salt.

The Island was no longer hers. It had grown suddenly into a strange, unfamiliar beast.

Everything seemed different now. Surreal. The curves on the back roads she had walked as a child and driven since she was fifteen jumped out at her as if she had never driven them before.

The worst she had imagined was that the beach-replenishing project was under way, started by the County Commission without her knowledge so as to avoid the predictable protests and sabotage that came with any proposed Island development.

What she had stumbled upon was much worse. This was no Magic Market, no two-pump gas station.

The development of condos on the Island’s south end meant the end of the beaches…the end of Island life as she knew it.

It meant the end if something wild and beautiful and the beginning of something common and predictable.

High-rises mean people, throngs of them. High-rises mean paved roads, boiling hot asphalt poured over machine-flattened dunes. There would be traffic lights and crosswalks and grocery stores and water slides, possibly even…
a mall
.

The delicate balance between marsh, beach, dune, and salt water would be strangled dead.

Virginia couldn’t let that happen.

She released the steering wheel with her right hand, reached into the glove compartment, and pulled out a cell phone and a knit cap she always wore to protect her brain from dangerous cell waves.

She veered off the soft shoulder while trying to turn on the cell, and then instinctively yanked the Jeep back onto the highway and jammed the cap on.

It was late, but she dialed the bungalow shared by her two most trusted guerrillas, Renee and Dottie.

Renee picked up on the second ring with a protective “Hello,” knowing calls at this hour could only mean a death in the immediate family or eminent nervous breakdown on the part of the caller.

“Did I wake you up?” Virginia asked.

“No…it’s okay, Dottie and I had just turned off
The Tonight Show.
Lily Tomlin was on. What’s up?”

“Code Orange!”

“Orange? What do you mean? What happened? Did they hold the Commission meeting behind our backs? What…they approved the replenishing? Are you hurt?
What?
”

Virginia’s throat caught. “No. It’s worse than that. High-rises are going up on the south beach. The foundation’s about to be poured.”

“But that’s impossible. Who told you?”

“Nobody told me, I saw it for myself, ten minutes ago. A guardhouse is protecting it so they must expect trouble. I’ve never seen a guardhouse on this Island in my life.”

“Oh my God.”

“Call everybody.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now!”

Virginia had a feeling in her heart that if she could just do something right now, she could single-handedly turn back time and change what had happened right under their noses, on their own Island. But she had to act
now
.

“I’m sure that would wake them up.”

“So wake them up. Just start the Chain.”

The Chain consisted of one guerrilla calling the next in a prearranged manner to which they all agreed in case of an emergency.

“What do I tell them all?”

“To come to my place. Hurry, Renee. Okay?”

“Okay. We’re on our way.”

“Just start the Chain.”

“Will do.”

She tried to thank Renee, but her voice broke. She hung up, tossed the phone and the cap into the backseat, and kept on driving.

Off the sides of the road, black silhouettes of pines and oaks and palmettos blew back and forth in the wind off the ocean with such a force that they blended to look like figures dancing wildly, savagely.

She continued to speed, taking crazy turns as they came one after the next, the road jumping out from behind the oaks as if it were alive, trying to leap out and scare her.

And she was scared. For the first time in her life, Virginia Gunn was afraid.