The Kill Riff (32 page)

    The tapedeck had been supplied by Lucas from that room, too. He'd been perfectly nonchalant about it. Maybe he was a fence for stolen electronic gear?

    The tapedeck/radio was most welcome. It supplied blissful noise while she did her dirty work in the cabin. It would also hide the sound of Reese crawling in through the back door, wobbling, homicidal, like the limbless killer in Freaks, squirming toward his victim in the dark with a knife clenched in his teeth, an undulating human snake, another monster that came while it was raining…

    
Stop it!

    Pulling in radio stations was difficult in these hills. She endured the static just to hear snatches of live, human voices elsewhere in the world as she picked up bits of TV and wiped blood off the counter and invented self-conscious busywork to keep her eyes from seeking the secret room again.

    She finally ran out of domestic chores.

    The first thing Reese had noticed was the Sony TV set. Cass lifted one of the Coleman kerosene lanterns inside, and the first thing she noticed (eyes widening with a horrific alternate scenario to the carnage of that afternoon) was the M-16. It lay on the floor, its black stock poking from beneath the workbench. It must have been leaning against the table, must have slipped and fallen while Reese was axing the door. The sight of it froze her. Her eyes saw Reese brandishing the rifle like a scepter of doom, filling her with perhaps twice the bullets needed to kill her. Saw Reese raping her spasming corpse, then venturing into the forest to blast trees and slaughter anything that rustled in the leaves. And laughing, all the while laughing, as his chromium eyes sought new things to kill.

    If Reese had not seen her holding the pistol, he would have turned back and seen the M-16… and Cass would never have had to worry about cleaning up.

    She put down the lantern and clicked on a Tensor light on the workbench. It was an M-16, yes. It had some kind of huge, bulbous scope on top. It seemed almost weightless; it felt made of plastic, toylike. She put the obscene thing down on the table. Here was a poster of some rockstar. A big hole was gouged in his paper belly. Here was a stack of albums and tapes, but no turntable. Lucas had mentioned an affection for rock 'n' roll, as a kind of anti-cliche for his generation. Here were nondescript boxes and memo pads and the mess caused when Reese had yanked the TV out of the nucleus of its webwork of wires. Facedown on the card table was a gold 5x7 picture frame, its stiff cardboard foot sticking up like the stabilizer on a jet plane. It was the sort of frame anyone could pick up at Thrifty Drug for family snaps, prom-night shots.

    Cass tilted the photograph into the minuscule circle of work light. It was a young girl, a teenager with straight blond hair and a bitter little smile, a smile somehow too cynical for such a youthful, unblemished face. The brownish-green eyes seemed very old. A curving diagonal fracture in the glass divided the girl's head from her silken blouse; the picture had struck the corner of a cassette case while falling.
Thanks again, Reese
.

    She eased into the chair; it was reminiscent of settling into the cramped cockpit of a jet, with the equipment and gear all around. The closeness of walls in the smaller room was comforting. She stood Kristen's picture in the light and contemplated it for a long time.

    The axe was still cocked against the doorframe where Reese had left it. The kitchen table could probably be repaired, but attempting that was beyond her right now. On the counter, the tapedeck radio lost the Stockton radio station Cass had nailed. Its feeble beep fuzzed out to pure static, courtesy of the storm. Getting San Francisco was impossible this far south, under these conditions, but a broadcast from San Jose or Santa Cruz might seep through the mountains. She would have to try AM next.

    The ritual of preparing coffee was also soothing to her. When the pot was on she fiddled with the radio some more and caught an all-nighter news hook-up in midsentence concerning something called "the 'Gasm concert tragedy" in Tucson, Arizona.

    Just as a chain of facts linked up for her, with the dizzying suddenness of a freeway smashup, she looked up to see the afterburn of headlights flashing across the cabin's front window.

    

    

    "-HIS WILL BE DONE! YOU just tote that microphone back over here, and I'll tell you all about God's plan to eliminate that Gabriel Stannard guy, next!"

    "No more," Sertha said sternly, and reached across Stannard to touch the remote control. The video image of Eldon Quantrill blinked out on the large video-beam screen. It was a considerably better image than that pulled in on Lucas Ellington's hotel TV; here, Quantrill was all the right colors. Stannard had videotaped the news coverage of his arrest and all subsequent updates. He had one of the mansion's maids sitting in a room in the west wing, right now, watching television, poised to record anything new. If he monitored the news himself, he'd miss the
Porky and Daffy
hour at four o'clock.

    Stannard's eyes remained on the blank gray screen. "I've got all the puzzle pieces," he said. "I just don't want to miss anything obvious, lover. I've gotta be ready when my time comes."

    "I don't understand." Trying to appear helpless to elicit his sympathy-and get a sensible explanation-would not work; she knew him that well. His behavior had become scary. At least when he had acted like a victimized child she felt a maternal protectiveness. That haunted look was gone now. The color was high in his face, but the price had been the bright, almost glazed aspect she now saw in his ice-blue eyes. It was a little like the expression she'd seen in Eldon Quantrill's eyes as Stannard replayed the videotape over and over-that look of righteous certainty. Like the certainty of a Salem inquisitor that you must be a witch, for example.

    Her eyes ached, and her neck was sore. Why was she so tired all the time? It had become a draining ordeal for all of them, but she could not escape the impression that Stannard was psychically vampirizing them all to feed his newfound purpose and keep the light in his eyes burning brilliantly.

    She finished her cigarette with a sigh of smoke. "I'm going to take a hot bath. I'm sore all over."

    There was nothing on the screen. Stannard watched it anyway, barely glancing back at her. "Have Horus give you a rubdown with his infamous collection of oils."

    At the threshold of the master bathroom she paused. "I'd rather it'd be you putting your hands all over me…"

    He grunted. "Maybe later."

    She closed the door, relieved at the definite sound of the latch clicking shut. This, too, was new-she generally bathed with the door open, so Stannard could wander in and out as he pleased, which pleased her even more. She twisted the hot taps in the tiled Roman tub full on and let steam mist the mirrors so she wouldn't have to consider the ravaged state of her body.

    Nude, she was angular and graceful, with an unmistakable thoroughbred hauteur. Her long, contoured legs had helped make her internationally famous. Her dark eyes, her flood of dark hair, made warm promises to the world at large. Now her hipbones seemed to jut out; her belly seemed sunken instead of flat. Her breasts hung, looking out of proportion to the anorexic state of her body. Her hair had lost luster, her eyes humanity. Her fine, slim feet looked bony and old, roped with blue veins.

    She lowered herself into the simmering suds and felt her skin drink up the bath oil. Time for repairs to commence.

    Sertha closed her eyes. Long black lashes-her own, not cosmetic fakes-drifted down to blot out the world. First, she thought, the drink. It was a mess of juices and protein powder and blenderized calf's liver and other disgusting gook her doctor had invented for her. Then a lot of steam and some time on the Uva-Sun table; some passive electronic exercise followed by a light workout in Stannard's impressive weight room. Laps in the pool. Then she could insinuate herself with the kitchen staff, to construct her own special salads.

    Horus seemed to have twice the number of muscle cables in his arms as a normal human being. She thought of the delicate interplay of those tendons and ligatures, all working in concert to squeeze the fatigue out of her body. It was pleasant, not frightening, as her halting consideration of Stannard's recent personality shift had been. She did not desire to have sex with Horus, though Stannard understood he had no right to protest if she ever did. To be sure, it would be an adventure, but she had long ago opted to spare herself the hassle. When dear Gabriel did not get his way, or disliked another person's decision, he was capable of acting like the most monumentally spoiled brat in the cosmos.

    Perhaps it was because he was a child, she thought -an overly pampered one, used to getting his way. He hated arguing fidelity with her, because it was a rule for grownups. The concept of faithfulness to one woman was, for him, a chore above and beyond the call of his profession. Part of the baggage of his chosen public persona was the parade of women-most of them girls, really-convinced that their lives would gain new meaning, and their hanger-on careers in the lightning-strike field of rock 'n' roll cemented, if only they spread their legs for Gabriel Stannard and partook of the power he represented. He handled this pressure ably-that is, he paid it next to no attention. Most couplings with his fans were restricted to sordid one-nighters in hotels while on tour. He told Sertha of needing such women only as steam valves for the pressure of the road, as a sexual analgesic. Horus was always there to hand last night's bimbette cab fare and usher her out of the Presence Magical.

    But the first time Sertha had accompanied him on the concert circuit, she had seen the cheated look in his eyes a hundred times. She resented being the villainess who had locked this jaunty child out of his candy store. Later, he had admitted to her that too much candy was never good for a kid, and she smiled. He smiled back. For a moment it was all genuine. He was capable of a mature attitude, but generally only for brief bursts. He was one of those men who always wanted whatever someone in authority told him he could not have. Sooner or later he would begin to resent the lack of new flesh, and Sertha would catch the flak.

    She knew the extent to which it was all part of his job. Calculated. Even the Beatles admitted to forming a band, at first, to "meet birds."

    When Sertha had been introduced, she had barely known he was a musician, although his wardrobe had tipped it instantly. He was fascinated by the concept that someone could not know who he was on sight. Naturally, she was not from this country. She was not blinded by his light. And he came after her with the ardor of a stable boy setting sights on a princess.

    Sertha wondered if the great passions of history had ever sat down to round-table the terms of their "relationship." He was not only childlike as well as childish, but like a narcotic-a golden, delicious drug, so pleasant to take and oh so difficult to resist. His charm could knock down her defenses like two double shots of vodka and sneak up on her in exactly the same way. Whenever she mustered and rehearsed the complaints that needed airing between them, he used his uncanny power to wipe them from her brain with a mystic pass, a perfect smile, a flash of heat from those ice-blue eyes, and the fine music his body could make against hers.

    And she had let him get away with it, times beyond measure. That was how good he was. But when she had looked in the bathroom mirror-actually looked, without lying to herself-she was forced to acknowledge that her vitality was somehow being leached away… and the most obvious suspect loomed large, with his ability to send blood rushing to her groin and fog to mist her brain, blotting out her little dissatisfactions. He was tapping her battery to keep the embers of his hate banked. He was stealing her heat and replacing it with none of his own. It was not the empathic transfer of energy she resented, it was the lack of compensation. Up until the events the press had labeled the Whip Hand Murders, Sertha had always gotten something back from her best lover.

    She could hear his voice in the next room as she simmered in the king-bed-sized tub. His words were unclear, but his tone told her he was busy sandwiching new layers onto his budding scheme of vengeance. She thought of what all that energy could do if it was channeled in her direction, applied toward keeping and pleasing her.

    She regretted recognizing the progression so easily. She had seen it before. Sex had become unimportant to Gabriel because he had discovered a new karmic vitamin. But the thing fueling him now was tainted, poisonous, ultimately fatal. That was the part he had not yet tasted. Basking in the healing heat of the tub, Sertha asked herself how much of the responsibility for saving him was hers.

    She stepped out of the tub and belted herself into a lush black terry robe, to hold in the warmth pulsing from her. Her damp hair hung untoweled. When she cracked the door, steam wisped out around her. Stannard was still talking.

    When she thought she might redirect his concentration so that he could become as hung up on her as she was on him, it gave her strength. "Love," she said. "I was nose-deep in the tub when I suddenly thought of two places. The Bahamas. And Europe. Suddenly I began plotting, and a lot of possibilities jumped up. The Paine villa is empty right now; they're friends of mine, and we could move right in…

    Sertha became aware that she was addressing an empty room. The big bed was cold, and the videotape deck was running. The tape chilled her down immediately.

    It was
Hollywood Weekend Wrap-Up
, playing again.

    The perverted parlance of America's so-called news programs had always confused her. No news report needed more than five minutes to impart its information, yet on television there was no such thing as a five-minute timeslot. In Southern California the malady of news overload was acute. The four o'clock hour bled into the five o'clock hour, which segued into the six o'clock hour, which was updated at eleven and repeated at one-thirty in the morning. Almost none of it was essential information. It was cluttered with sports scores, the cult of local personality, and time-wast-ing "human interest" features about people you would cross the street to avoid in real life. And that was the key-none of this represented life as Sertha knew it.