Be Mine (10 page)

Warm breezes fingered
along the
waterways that laced the heart of the San Joaquin Valley to the small country
cemetery near Lodi where San Francisco Police Homicide Inspector Clifford
Hooper was buried.

There was no marker. His headstone was not yet finished. Dying
flowers blanketed the dark earth of his grave. It had been a few days since
mourners stood to watch his casket being lowered into the ground. Then returned
to their lives and private fears.

Only Bleeder was here today. Alone in the silence, broken by the
panicked chirp of a small bird in high-speed flight, as if fleeing the fact
that a murderer stood among the dead.

Bleeder had come to pay his final respects. And as the sun dropped
beyond the Pacific, casting twilight over the valley and the Sierra Nevadas,
one question burned in his mind.

Why hadn’t Molly acknowledged what he’d done?

Hidden in the shadows at the edge of the cherry orchard bordering
the burial ground, he reached down for a long stalk of grass, placed it in his
mouth, and chewed on his situation.

Molly must know. Deep in her heart she had to know. So why hadn’t
she signaled to him that he was getting through to her? It’d been days since
he’d removed Hooper. Why was she ignoring him? He repeated the question during
the drive back to San Francisco.

The road rushed under him, time blurred, and memory pulled him back
through his life. His father was a career officer in the military, a job that
pinballed his family across the country. As an only child, Bleeder grew up
associating the smell of cardboard moving boxes with the sting of being the new
kid at school, the perpetual target of humiliation by hometown boys.

He grew accustomed to his loneliness.

When he reached his teens, he found the adventurous girls were drawn
to the mystique of the new guy. Their boredom led to the occasional sweaty
embrace at slow dances on Friday nights in the gym. But nothing beyond that.
That is, until he met Amy Tucker, a goddess from another world.

She was a local beauty, a contender for homecoming queen who shocked
him at one dance when she appeared before him, her eyes hinting at danger, like
embers that had swirled from a distant fire.

“You’re real cute,” Amy had said, taking his hand, peeling him from
the wall for a few dances. The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” floated in the
air and he held her so close he could feel her heart beating against his chest.
They were bathed in light streaking from the mirror ball. She smiled, then
kissed his cheek, then his mouth. Her lips tasted like cherry candy. She parted
them and her tongue found his. Later that night they made love under the empty
stadium bleachers. Amy was his first. She blew away his loneliness and his soul
came to life.

He bought her flowers. They held hands between classes. But he
missed the warning signs, the stares and stifled giggles in their wake at
school, until the afternoon he walked home alone through the field by the train
tracks. Then it all became crystalline.

Kyle Chambers and his friend Rowley Deet were waiting. They were big
farm boys who were defensive tackles on the football team. Kyle and Amy had
been going steady for two years ...

“... before you showed up.” Kyle jabbed his forefinger in Bleeder’s
chest. “What the hell do you think you’re doing with Amy, huh?” The insides of
Kyle’s forearms were scarred from a late summer of hoisting hay bales onto a
conveyor. “She’s my girl, shit-head.”

“No, she’s with me.”

“She used you and you know it.”

Used? Jesus. He didn’t want to hear that. But the giggles. The
stares. The way Amy always grabbed his hand on cue when Kyle was near. No. She
wouldn’t use him like that. It couldn’t be true.

“Stay the hell away from her.” Kyle’s forefinger jabbed him again.

“Don’t do that,” Bleeder said.

“Oh yeah?” Kyle stepped closer. His breath smelled of beer.

“You heard him,” Rowley said, his muscles stretching the tanned skin
of his upper arms. “Stay away from Amy.”

“Go to hell.”

“Say that again?” Kyle laughed. Rowley, too.

Bleeder didn’t care. Used. Jesus. Why? He just didn’t care.

“Go to hell, Kyle, and take dick-brain with you.”

Bleeder blocked Kyle’s first punch, slowed his second, but Rowley
doubled him with a pile driver to his gut, so powerful it winded him and he
puked. Then Kyle dropped him with a direct hit to the head. Bleeder fell to his
knees in a starry stupor, unsure whose boot plowed into his kidney, not feeling
the flurry of head blows that sent him to the rock-hard earth of the worn path.
He writhed in liquidy islands of undigested ham, lettuce, Swiss cheese, and
peanut butter cookies from the lunch his mother had made him. His face was wet
with blood, snot, and drool.

“Got it now, shit-head?” Kyle stood over him. “She used you to piss
me off.”

“Look at him. He sure is a bleeder,” Rowley said.

Kyle chuckled. “Hey, bleeder, you learned your lesson?”

Bleeder.

He didn’t speak. He didn’t cry. He rolled onto his back and through
the bloody web of his humiliation blinked at the sky, staying that way long
after Kyle and Rowley walked away, long after the echoes of their laughter
faded. He drifted in and out of consciousness as the stars emerged.

“She used you to piss me off.”

Lying there, he heard a distant hammering against the sky, then felt
the earth tremor. She used you. An approaching maelstrom of steel-on-steel grew
with a trumpet that emerged into the scream of the sixty-car freight train that
thundered by him, pounding into the night, leaving him in silence with nothing.
Except the truth.

She used you.

He heard it over and over as his ears rang. His brain throbbed. He
smelled something electric in the air. His head pounded. He tasted copper on
his tongue. Something bad was happening. His skull hummed and he gripped his
head until a surreal calmness fell over him. Then Bleeder spoke to him for the
first time in a voice as clear as if a new person were standing before him. But
he was inside. In his head.

Don’t worry, sport. It’s not over. I’ll take care of it.

Who was that?

He prodded his head before scrambling to his feet, navigating the
dark to his house, where he crawled into bed and scared his mother to death.
They said he fell into a coma state, or something, that lasted for just over three
days. After he got out of the hospital, he’d refused to tell his mother, his
father, the doctors, the school people, not even the sheriff’s deputy with the
squeaky leather holster, what had happened.

“I don’t know what happened. I never saw them.”

Amy never called him. None of the kids called him. When he went back
to school the chess club boys said the white bandage on his head made him look
like a Civil War soldier home from battle. Amy ignored him. Acted like she
didn’t even know him as she walked to classes with Kyle, his big farm boy arm
around her. Once Kyle made a show of snarling over his shoulder, “You following
us, Bleeder?”

“Bleeder?” Amy giggled.

“Yeah, that’s his new name. Bleeder. Take a hike, Bleeder.”

“Don’t worry, Blee-Dur.” Amy giggled. “You’re still cute.” Then she
whispered something in Kyle’s ear, making both of them laugh as they walked
away.

Alone at night in his room, he would stare at the cracks in his
ceiling, wiping his tears. His head would throb as if a spike were being hammered
into his brain, and the pain hummed in a dark corner of his mind, until it
became a strong voice, an
entity
within.

Is that you, Bleeder?

It’s me, sport.

Will you help me?

You bet. I’ll take care of it.

He never breathed a word about Bleeder to anyone. Bleeder was a
powerful and dangerous new friend. No one else would understand how it worked
between him and Bleeder. That’s why he had to keep him locked away, hidden.

Not long after the incident his father got transferred and they
moved away. Another state, another town, another high school. That move lasted
about nine months, then they moved again. More cardboard, more humiliation.

But now he had Bleeder.

And from that point on, he lived his life as most people do,
functioning normally. But under times of stress, he sought comfort in the
secret he possessed while grappling with the fear that maybe his secret
possessed him.

Such thoughts, brought on by his visit to Hooper’s grave near Lodi,
were making his head hurt. He tried to shrug it off, reaching in the seat next
to him for his bottle of headache pills, downing ten tablets.

As night descended he thought, It’s funny how everyone wears a mask.
To hide who we really are. So we can bear our little buckets of pain. Over
time, he had perfected his mask. No one knew that Bleeder was behind it,
studying them. His mask allowed him to get close to Molly Wilson. Like Amy, she
had stirred his desires. But he needed to get closer still to reveal the truth,
reveal what he’d come to know. That he possessed a deeper understanding of her.
More than anyone could know. That they shared something more profound than any
two souls could ever experience.

Soon she would see.

The Bay Area and San Francisco’s skyline glittered as he crossed the
Bay Bridge into the city. Bleeder needed to work harder to make certain she
would know the truth.

They belonged together.

It was a shame about Hooper. But she’d been getting too close to
him. Bleeder couldn’t accept that. It was dangerous. It wasn’t right. Action
was unavoidable. At first Bleeder fought off his urge to act, hoping she would
choose the right course. But she didn’t. So Bleeder took charge.

What was done was done. And he was stronger for it. His mask could
barely conceal what was seething beneath the surface of his skin. He was
supercharged. Forget the past. Forget everything. All that had happened up
until this point. Bleeder was alive. Bleeder was in control.

In San Francisco, he wheeled through the hilly streets to the edge
of Russian Hill, then North Beach where he resumed his vigil of her
neighborhood and building.

God, how he loved to watch her and dream of when they would be
together forever.

Molly tried to shove
Frank Yarrow from
her mind. Why did he have to show up at Cliff’s funeral?

Molly’s apartment came into view as she turned the corner on the
last leg of her morning jog. Anger had fueled her run.

Of all the places and times to appear. He emerged like a specter.
Molly was paralyzed. His appearance had left her speechless. She hadn’t told a
soul about him. Grief had overtaken her at the service, she’d explained later.

She dropped her keys and the morning paper on the kitchen table,
then collected fruit from the refrigerator and counter. She sliced bananas,
oranges, and strawberries into small heaps, dumping them with low-fat milk into
the blender. The whine of the mixing blades suited her rage. She had ignored
Frank at the service and was relieved not to see him afterward.

In the gathering following the funeral, Molly had made it clear to
her friends and coworkers that she wanted to be alone for a while. God, would
this hurting ever stop? she wondered, just as her phone rang. She’d let the
machine get it. But the caller didn’t leave a message. After a few moments, it
rang again.

Molly stared at the ceiling. It was likely a reporter. The calls
followed the same pattern. Then a third call came. Unable to stand it, she
seized the phone.

“What is it?”

“Hello, Molly, it’s me, Frank.”

Ice shot up her spine and her scalp tingled. She didn’t know what to
say. Hang up now, she told herself.

“Are you there?” he asked.

Her emotions swirled and she sat down. “I’d really like to talk.
Please.”

“This is a horrible time,” she said.

“I’m sorry. If you’d just give me a moment.”