The Price of Candy (14 page)

She saw the glint of steel in the growing
darkness. “You don’t need a knife either.” She tried to keep her
voice calm. The dark traces of dried blood on the knife paralyzed
her for an instant. She hoped he hadn’t noticed.

“This is my hog knife, to gut wild hogs. Hogs
are smart you know that? They squirm around and make a lot of noise
at first, trying to get away. Eventually they give up and quiet
down. Then I can take my time with them. They just lie there
whimpering which I guess is a hog’s way of crying. The first time
it was me who gave up. I learned you have to keep on until they
realize struggling won’t do them any good. They might as well
relax. I'm going to do what I want with them. You like knives? Some
people are really scared of knives.” He held it up and turned it so
the long blade caught the light. “I keep this super sharp. Getting
all the blood off is a real bitch.”

“I’m not scared of your stupid knife. Now put
it away. If you need it, you can always pull it out.” In fact, she
was more afraid of the dishtowel. He had nearly strangled her with
it. Another five seconds would have done it. He had relaxed his
grip on the towel just in time. Was it a fluke that he let go when
he did, or did he in fact know what he was doing?

“I don’t get why you’re talking like this.
Giving me orders. I’ve got the knife and you’re tied up.”

“You’re right Toby. You’re the man. You’re in
control. Why don’t you untie my hands? You’ve got me trapped. I
can’t go anywhere. You’re too strong for me.”

“You sound real corny.”

“Look, Toby, we started off wrong. We haven’t
really met. You seem like a nice enough guy.” She forced a nice
smile. “Let’s go where we can get comfortable and really get to
know each other.”

“Yeah, we could do that, if I was dumb as pie
dough. That’s what mother says, dumb as pie dough. But if you’re
going to act as if everything’s cool then you won’t mind if I yank
your shirt up and check out what you got.”

Her impulse was to struggle, but struggling
would confirm his being in control. She just fiercely glared at
him. “Don’t you dare touch me.”

“Now there you go. What’s this don’t you dare
touch me, shit? I have the knife. You know, I could force you to
take off all your clothes. You’d be sitting there naked and you
wouldn’t be hiding stuff like you girls do. You saying my knife
isn’t enough. I also need permission to touch you?”

“That’s right, if you don’t have my
permission, it would be a criminal act to touch me. Have you been
doing many criminal acts, Toby?

“I’ve done some pretty weird shit.”

“By weird shit, do you mean illegal acts or
just stuff that was wrong?”

“When I think of wrong I just think of black.
Black smoke all full in my head. Wrong is black and bad. I don’t
know what else about it. What if I thought about a lot of terrible
things? And I did some of them because I liked doing them. Does
that make me bad?”

“You can think about a lot of terrible things
and that’s normal. There’s exciting things you can do without
hurting other people. I think you know the difference.”

“I like to look at pictures of naked women.
That’s exciting and doesn’t hurt other people. You saying that
don’t make me bad?”

“No, that’s normal. You’re wired to like
pictures of naked women. Males are made that way. That’s what keeps
the species going.” She wanted the words back immediately. That bit
of anthropology only confused him. How senseless to have said it;
she was trying to empathize enough to influence him. She tried to
recover, “The trick is to recognize the feeling, realize it’s
normal, and move on to something constructive.”

“No, the trick is to find more pictures.
Anyway, you’re wrong. I happen to know it’s bad to look at dirty
pictures. Everyone knows that. And you know it too. You’re trying
to mess with my head. I know what you’re trying to do right now.
Saw it on TV. Don’t you love those movies where the bad guy is
about to attack the hot girl and she’s in a corner all shook. She’s
got this skirt that’s kind of up, you know. Too bad you have on
jeans. Anyway, he’s drooling and looking at her with those funny
eyes they can make bad people have in the movies. And she tries to
keep him talking because there’s scissors or something just out of
reach she can stab him with if only she can keep him distracted
until she can get it. She tries to get in his head to confuse him
and give her time. You know what I’m saying?”

He seemed a bit smarter than she’d expected.
Moron #2 his stepmother had called him. She didn’t think for a
moment he was brainless. “Tell me if Jamie is okay.”

“I don’t really know if she’s okay.”

“But she’s alive, isn’t she? At least tell me
if she’s alive.”

“I don’t want to talk about her now. Maybe I
will after we’ve gotten acquainted.”

“So, that’s it. I’m supposed to make a trade
with you.”

“Don’t know what you mean by that. I just
don’t want to talk about the kid.”

“Just tell me, is she alive?”

“This is like that movie where the beautiful
girl is helpless, but she’s really smart, see. And she tries to
explain to the bad guy it’s going down because he hates his mother.
She keeps at him until at the end he gets all shook and like comes
all apart. You’d be good doing that. Except I already know I hate
my stepmother and she hates me. That’s not news. Don’t know my real
mother guess I hate her too.”

This wasn’t good, she knew. He spoke more
forcefully and now made eye contact. Becoming confident. Losing his
fear of her. No question he was dangerous, the way he came in and
attacked her. She was uncertain how to handle him. She didn’t know
which button to push and which to avoid. She didn’t want him
thinking about naked women that was certain. It was quite possible
nothing she did would deter him from what he had in mind. She tried
to put him back on the defensive. “You ever make it with a
consenting woman?”

“There have been girls.”

“Name someone.”

“Well...there’s Crystal. She’ll do anything I
want and she’s always around. Keeps her mouth shut, too. And I
don’t have to get her hot. If you can get a girl hot, then she’ll
do anything. You know about that? That’s what the guys say.”

“You mean the guys in the eighth grade?”
Perhaps treating him as a juvenile was her best tactic. It was
difficult for her to imagine him functioning socially in the adult
world. “You’ve had girlfriends. Didn’t you go out with Abby?”

“Sure, but I hardly ever find anyone like
that. I don’t have the looks and never know what to say to a girl.
This right here might be the longest conversation I’ve ever had
with a girl. I say hello to them and they tell me to fuck off. Just
like that, and all I say is hello. If I could get them hot, they
wouldn’t say that.”

“It’s not fair for a woman to say that to you
if you’re being polite. Tell me about Jamie. Is she alive?”

“Other guys talk women into bed all the time.
I see some guy talking to a girl and the next day he tells me, sure
she was really good stuff. How do they do that? I could never do
that. That’s what I liked about Abby. Didn’t have to talk. We just
drank ourselves stupid. Then after a while she just said okay, I’m
ready, let’s go fuck. Didn’t have to say anything to turn her on,
didn’t have to worry about saying something that was gonna turn her
off. But then she changed her mind and didn’t want to do it. I
thought I had something going, but then I screwed up the money
thing.”

“What money thing?”

No answer. He seemed to be studying the
buttons on her blouse.

His girlfriend talk sounded juvenile and
didn’t fit in with his aggressiveness in putting her in this
position. She thought something was in his mind encouraging him.
Control over her was the objective, but some fantasy had inspired
him to corner her here. Next came the surprise.

“I can already tell you don’t have half the
boobs that stripper had.”

“Did you go to a club and watch a stripper,
Toby?”

“The paper said she was one of those
strippers. She had the body.”

Then it clicked. What was that
beach...Privado? The incident. What was it...about a stripper? Oh,
god. Detective Triney had told her about it and she immediately
filed it away under horrible but irrelevant. Nothing to do with the
Banks shooting or the kidnapping. Not her concern. Some creep
molesting a corpse. Not a crime she particularly wanted in her
memory. She had her own problems and none of them had any tie-in to
a naked body found on a beach. No connection whatever—unless the
creep was someone she knew. No connection until now. A flow of
reality made her tremble.

Did Toby see the body on Privado Beach? Or
was he merely inspired by newspaper accounts? “So you read about
the stripper in the paper?”

“I knew it’d be wrong, but her body was right
there. It practically glowed. Something to see, but you don’t get
that. I told you I liked naked women and you just said, hey no
problem.”

Now she began to feel sick. Was he the one?
Did he strangle the woman with something big and soft like a beach
towel that left no marks, and fooled the medical examiner into
thinking she had innocently choked because she had traces of
pretzel in her mouth? “We really need to talk about this,” she
said. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”

“Just lying there like she was sleeping.”

Perhaps he has been thinking about another
silent body since the beach incident. A passive woman he can
control. The possibility of her being killed and raped was real. A
man capable of all that might be sitting there before her. She’s
already helpless, what happens next, and what after that. Even if
he didn’t kill her first, would he rape her and then just walk
away—knowing that she knows who he is and would tell his
stepmother?

“She couldn’t yell at me or make fun of me,
or tell me to fuck off.”

Was she his second opportunity? Would he kill
her first to relive the beach episode? That was crazy. Yet why was
he here facing her with a knife. All he had to do was take a
dishtowel and twist it around her neck again. She’d be unconscious
in seconds, dead in minutes. Asphyxiated like the woman on the
beach. Next, he’d lay waste to her and walk away.

“Good to have a girl powerless. Nice and
quiet like she’s sleeping—except you can touch her all you
want.”

She shuddered recognizing what this man was
capable of. She had to keep her mind focused. She had to keep
thinking. But her imagination began to overcome her. Her mind
slipped off into panic. She couldn’t help it. She didn’t want to
die. In horror she blurted out, “How many women have you
raped?”

It just came out. She wasn’t trying to psych
him out now. She wasn’t thinking about how to divert his attention.
She was thinking about dying. Absolutely a mistake having him think
about his victims, but she was terrified and had to know.

She repeated, “How many women have you
raped?” She couldn’t help the quiver in her voice.

“Why are you jumping into that? You see, I
can’t talk to girls. We don’t connect. What do you talk about with
girls? I mean, I’ve got my sex stuff and she’s got her sex stuff.
How can I just ignore that? What am I supposed to say? I held a
girl’s hand once walking home from school. I thought about what she
was hiding, but I didn’t say anything. You’ve got no idea what I’m
talking about, do you.”

She tried to calm herself down. Think Sandy,
think. Try not to say anything that would set him off. “I’m sorry,
Toby. You’re right. I’ll talk to you. Do you want to talk about
getting along with women?” Was that another mistake? Talking about
women would get him more excited. The conversation was going around
in a circle. What else is there to talk about? Sex is why he’s
here.

“I’ve never raped anyone. Would I do it if
nobody would find out and nothing would happen to me? Nothing bad,
nothing at all?” He opened his eyes wide. “You bet I would.”

As disgusting as that sounded, he did seem to
recognize guilt. It gave her a little opening. “Something bad would
happen to you. Something bad would definitely happen to you.
Everyone would know and you’d go to prison like your father. They’d
never let you out. Everyone there would hate you. You know the
worst part? You’d have to face your stepmother and you know what
she’d do.”

He leaned back in the chair thinking about
that. “Maybe it’d be like an invading army after conquering a
village. I saw that on TV. They just grab any woman who happens to
be around. Nobody’s to stop them. I guess men will do it if there’s
no penalty. Most guys anyway, under the right circumstances. And
you say that’s normal?”

“No, I didn’t say that.” Keep him talking,
she thought. Talking about anything. Maybe Abby will come back
home, maybe the phone will ring, maybe a huge meteor will crash
into the house. Anything, something, everything. Possibly the guilt
thing would work. “But you did rape. How can you live with yourself
after what you did that night on the beach? I guess you figured you
lucked out. Like finders keepers. Look what I found, guys, a
helpless woman who can’t stop me.”

“Hey, I didn’t take her there. I didn’t kill
her.”

“Yeah right, and you didn’t touch her
body.”

“At first, I didn’t intend to do anything at
all. Then I thought it wouldn’t be so wrong to just touch her. So,
I shook her a little, like trying to see if she was really dead.
She was soft and warm. I didn’t expect that. I thought she’d be
cold and hard. She felt nice. The wind was slowly moving her hair.
That seemed weird like at any moment she’d open her eyes and yell
at me. Then I thought, hey, it’s just her body there. She wasn’t
around to mind.”

“It’s not permitted. We’re evolved humans.
We’re better than that. A dead body is off limits.”