Daddy's Little Girl (22 page)

It was so obvious it seemed like something out of a bad TV movie.

On the date of June 8, 1953, the disappearance of a young girl was recorded here in the pages of the Burton
Sentinel.
Then Beth saw, over the years of papers, eight other stories involving the disappearances of women passing through town. One woman had vanished from a Greyhound bus; another had had a flat tire; a third had been hitchhiking. Each near the town of Burton.

Sinking down in her library chair, Beth realized that it was the sort of pattern that escapes notice until something catches your attention.

For the first time, she believed that her husband had been murdered. And for the first time, she had the sense of a conspiracy taking place in Burton. Of a complicity on the part of many people, probably including Sheriff Wayman.

Surely he would have noticed something odd about disappearances keyed to June 8 by now.

And done something about it.

The knock on her front door startled her. When she stared out the window, she recognized Adam Carnes’s silhouette.

She was surprised by how warm she felt on seeing him again. She hated to think of what this might mean—her awakening after the long, lonely months, only to find the man who had awakened her gone.

She let him in and took him to the stack of papers she’d laid out.

“I’ve found something,” she said.

“Important?”

“Very.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “You were right about Mrs. Foster,” he said, as he started to look at the newspapers. “I got nowhere. Though she sounded very agitated when I brought up Kenny.”

“I suppose she misses him.”

“It’s more than that. Everybody in this whole damn town has something to hide.”

“Present company excepted.” She smiled.

“Oh, I don’t mean the regular, ordinary folks. I mean the officials, especially the sheriff.”

She said it simply. “I think my husband was murdered.”

Saying this, some of the old pain returned. She turned to Carnes without thinking.

He held her, sharing the strength that was momentarily his, just as she’d shared her strength with him.

He tilted her face back. “We have to stop them.”

“I know.”

“I don’t know what the hell is going on in this town. But something is, and Mrs. Foster has got to be at the center of it.”

“But what could she know?”

“We’re about to find out.”

“How?”

“We’re going out there.”

“But there’s a fence all the way around. Electric. We’ll never get in.”

“We’ll see about that.”

A crash sounded against the front door. She broke from his arms and ran toward it.

Instead of joining her, he reached over and snapped out the light, then started looking through the shadows for a place to hide.

From his belt he took the gun he’d relieved Deputy Shanks of.

“It’s Carl Laumer!” she whispered back to him.

Quickly, she explained that Laumer was one of the town council, a right-wing zealot and a leader in the town.

“I need to talk to you, ma’am,” Laumer said, in something like a drawl.

Obviously he had seen the light.

He had to be curious about why it had just been turned out.

Carnes put a finger to his lips.

When he heard the doorknob turning, he lowered the weapon so that it would be about on target when the man came through the door.

Then he had a better idea.

Seeing the window that opened on to the alley, and knowing that it would be at least a few minutes before Laumer could jimmy open the door, Carnes dragged Beth by the hand and helped her through the window.

She jumped to the ground below.

Just as he threw one leg over the sill, Carnes heard the door crash open under an assault of pressure.

He dropped to the ground.

With Laumer cursing at them from the open window, Carnes and Beth took off.

There was no hope of getting to either of their cars.

Laumer would be waiting for them.

Instead they plunged on into the night.

Half a block down the alley, Carnes understood why he kept in shape. For emergencies.

He knew that his passage would be perilous. But his mind had not been changed. His destination was still the Foster mansion.

The ache was in her very bones now.

Deirdre, suspended in space, suspended in darkness, twisted within her confines.

Her father’s face and voice seemed light-years away.

She thought of her high school and her friends there and the things they had worried about.

So petty.

In her exhaustion and terror, Deirdre felt as if she were coming to some real wisdom.

Some real insight as to what mattered and what did not matter.

She tugged on the shackles from above, praying again that they would magically loosen and set her free.

But that was not going to happen, she knew.

And that was what the wisdom was all about.

The horror balanced with the curious peacefulness.

Deirdre had read enough magazines to know what she was doing.

She was preparing herself for death.

Bobby Coughlin took a deep breath, then darted out from behind the big elm tree.

He ran in a single straight shot right up the driveway where the wealthy Evans’s kept all three of their cars.

For once, his wimpy size was going to come in handy.

Then he saw Dave coming out the side door and he knew that his plans had been spoiled.

You could smell Dave’s after-shave even from here. You could also hear his whistle.

Here was a guy who was expecting a primo night tonight.

Bobby would be happy to spoil the plans of his former friend. That had been his plan—before Dave had come out and ruined the idea.

To avoid being seen, Bobby had to dive behind some bushes. Dave would kick hell out of him for sure if he caught him. Bobby got as close to the wet earth as a worm could have. He lay there watching his fantastic plan to ruin Dave’s night go right down the dumper.

As for Dave, he just stood in the moonlit drive doing his dreamboat number with his comb.

The guy could build up his biceps, the way he wielded a comb.

Not to mention his ego.

Bobby had just started to slither backward, to forget all about his neat idea and crawl on home, when Dave proved himself to be a good friend after all.

Snapping his fingers as if he had forgotten something—probably condoms, knowing Dave—he ran back into the house.

Bobby knew he had only seconds.

He leaped up from the ground and started for the car.

True to nerd style, he tripped, falling flat-faced across the drive.

He jarred his senses hard enough that whorls of light appeared before his eyes.

Still, he knew that he couldn’t stop here.

He picked himself up and dove for the car.

He opened the door as if he were performing the most delicate kind of surgery. Then he climbed inside, into the back seat, huddled between front and back seat on the floor. He got down far enough that you’d never notice him unless you really looked.

Then Dave came back, his after-shave preceding him, his whistling bright on the pleasant night air.

The dome light went on.

Bobby froze. What if Dave saw him?

Many long seconds went by. Bobby was afraid to so much as draw a single breath.

Dave got in, hit the ignition. Rock and roll blasted through the stereo speakers. Dual exhausts made the car throb powerfully.

Dave was on his way.

Bobby had to smile to himself as the car backed out of the drive.

He was going to humiliate Dave tonight.

It had been a long time coming.

Richard sat on the steps outside Jake’s apartment tearing a beetle apart.

Sometimes he liked to see how things looked inside.

The trouble was, you never saw things like motors, the way you did with toys that little kids played with.

Richard, disappointed, tossed the dead insect into the darkness.

Richard huddled into himself, a bit cold.

The night was getting that way.

Richard reflected on the last few hours.

After leaving Jake’s that afternoon he had gone back to his cot in the church basement and taken a nap. When he awakened he helped the pastor unload groceries from the car and then he went in to watch the news with the cleric. But the news soon, as it always did, bored Richard, so he’d gone for a walk along the river. But that, too, bored him after a time. He decided to see Jake again. Jake never seemed to mind what time it was when Richard showed up.

Except now he was getting cold.

He thought of how terrible it was to catch a fever.

How you sweated, had nightmares.

Richard was afraid that if he sat out here too long that would happen to him.

The fever.

He stood up. He knew a way to get inside.

Deciding that Jake wouldn’t mind, Richard walked over to the window, got out his pocketknife, and pried open the frame.

He had done this once before, one day when he had felt terribly blue.

He had snuck in. Jake hadn’t been there. But just by sitting inside his friend’s apartment, Richard felt much better.

The way he always did in the presence of Jake.

His gangly body fitted itself through the window in a series of difficult motions.

Then he was inside, closing the window behind him, feeling the warmth of the little apartment.

He was going to reward himself with a cookie.

He was sure Jake wouldn’t mind.

In the refrigerator he found a plate of cookies. The light spilling from the interior bathed Richard as he reached in.

The light felt friendly, warm.

It was good to be back in the apartment.

Armed with cookies, he decided to go sit in Jake’s recliner chair.

Moonlight spilled through the window.

Somehow the light reminded him of trick-and-treat night.

Sometimes Richard dressed up.

Even though everybody knew who he was beneath the sheet, they pretended to be scared.

Richard always found this very funny.

While he sat there eating his cookies, watching the moonlight play across the various pieces of furniture, he began to notice the sticky red thing on the floor to his right.

In the silver light through the window the thing looked like it was almost alive.

It kind of shivered.

For some reason the thing scared Richard.

He wasn’t sure why.

Richard sank back in his chair.

He stopped eating.

Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to sneak in here after all.

He just kept staring at the thing.

By now he knew what the sticky stuff was.

Blood.

He also knew what the thing itself was. A rubber apron like they wore in the butcher plant.

What would it be doing in Jake’s apartment?

That was when he heard the noise. Instantly he froze.

The bathroom.

That’s where the noise had come from.

He shouldn’t have come here.

Richard got up from the chair just as the bathroom door started to creak open.

He didn’t know what to do.

To run or to try to hide.

Then the door opened very quickly and all Richard could really see was the knife.

And how it glinted in the moonlight.

And how the body of his assailant seemed to be everywhere at once.

All Richard could think of was—
I shouldn’t have come here.

But now, the knife tearing through the flesh of his chest to his heart, now it didn’t matter what he thought.

Not at all.

“Whew.”

“C’mon now.”

“Just ... touch me. Once.”

“Afterwards ... that’s our deal, remember?”

“C’mon, Angie. Just put your hand down there. Just once ... ok?”

Bobby Coughlin lay on the floor, only inches away from the mad, passionate love being made in the front seat.

Or not being made.

Dave Evans had driven maybe a block from Angie’s house and whipped into the curb.

The boy definitely had a gonad problem.

Now he was begging the girl.

Fucking begging her.

Just for a little touch of his cock.

Disgusting, thought Bobby Coughlin.

He wished Dave would start the car again and head to the Foster mansion.

It was going to be so much fun tonight.

So much fun.