Endless Night (22 page)

Tommy was only thirteen, so it wasn’t especially legal. He wasn’t the sort of guy to let that stop him, though. This wasn’t the first time he’d borrowed his mother’s car and tooled around in it.

The whole thing was nuts, really.

Tommy was mature for his age, I guess. Mentally. Physically, though, he looked thirteen. Any cop catching a glimpse of him behind the wheel would’ve pulled us over and pulled us in—and would’ve found Hester in the trunk. Of course, she was still alive at that point. They couldn’t have gotten us for murder.

Anyway, it didn’t happen.

We were all pretty tense, but we lucked out. Maybe everyone in L.A.—cops included—was over at the celebrity tennis tournament.

We relaxed as soon as we got through the security gate at Tommy’s.

He’s got a very long, winding driveway. We stopped before the house came into sight. By this time, Minnow had fiddled with the gun and pumped a round into its chamber. He used it to make Hester do what we wanted.

We made her climb out of the trunk and walk ahead of us into the trees. She was shaking and blubbering a lot. Pretty disgusting. But she didn’t try to scream or run away. I guess she was afraid Minnow might shoot her.

It was really a beautiful autumn afternoon. Some people say Los Angeles hasn’t got seasons, but it does. On autumn afternoons, the sunlight gets a mellow, dusty look. It’s more reddish than usual, and throws a soft golden haze over everything.

The afternoon was hot, but had a good breeze—a wonderful breeze that blew my hair and fluttered my clothes. It felt even better when my clothes were off.

Like I said a while back, it didn’t start out to be a killing.

I don’t think so, anyway.

The way I looked at it, we planned to teach her a lesson—teach her not to mess with any of us, and also give Minnow a chance to get even for the grief she’d caused him. Not kill her.

I guess I thought we might rough her up a little. Nothing serious, though.

That was before we started following her into the trees. Somehow, it all changed, then. For all of us, maybe.

The thing is, nobody knew we had her and nobody could see us.

We could do
anything
to her.

I suddenly knew it, and I could tell by the silence and the way we all gave each other nervous, eager looks that Tommy and Ranch and Minnow knew it, too.

We could do whatever we wanted, and nobody would ever find out.

Even Hester caught on.

She looked over her shoulder at us. All sad and pitiful and pouting. For about two seconds. Then she must’ve noticed the change in us. She suddenly had panic in her eyes. She gasped and ran.

Minnow shot her.

The pistol made a
bam
not much louder than the sound of an enthusiastic clap.

I heard the bullet smack her. Then she made an “Oof!” noise and fell to her knees.

The bullet had hit her behind the right shoulder. I saw a dot of blood on her white T-shirt.

She twisted her head around and tried to see the hole. She reached over with her left hand. Her fingers wiggled against her shoulder blade, but couldn’t get down to the hole.

We started walking toward her. “You shot me!” she cried out. “What’s the matter with you? You
shot
me! Are you nuts?”

“Yeah,” Minnow said. “How did you like it?” He took aim at her.

“Don’t shoot me again! Please! No! It
hurts!
Jesus!”

He was all set to shoot her again, anyway, but Tommy whispered, “Don’t. We don’t want her dead. Not yet.”

Ranch rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth. “What’re we gonna do with her?” he asked. His voice was shaking.

“Everything,” Tommy said. “First we strip. Don’t want to get any stains on our clothes.”

We stripped. We piled our clothes out of the way so they wouldn’t get messed up. We always carried pocket knives, so we took them with us.

It felt great being naked. The sun, the breeze. The way the twigs and leaves crackled under our feet.

Hester didn’t put up any fight.

She just cowered on the ground, crying and begging, while we ripped her clothes off.

Man.

She was a pig, but she was naked. For me and Ranch and Minnow, it was all brand new. (No telling what Tommy’d been up to before Hester, but I have the feeling that he was pretty experienced.) Anyway, we were so excited we hardly knew what to do.

We were all over her.

After just studying her and feeling her up for a while, we took turns fucking her.

She didn’t move at all while we did it. Just sobbed and stayed limp and still.

Sort of by accident, we found out that it made things better if we hurt her. She’d flinch and jerk and tighten up. So we started pinching her and biting her and poking her with our knives. The worse we hurt her, the better it got.

Then we found out it felt great to hurt her even when we weren’t fucking her.

When it got really rough, we stuffed her panties in her mouth to muffle her screams and we had to hold her down.

I think we were at her for about three hours before she died. What gave it away was when she just stayed limp when any normal person jabbed the way Ranch had just jabbed her would’ve jumped and shrieked.

“What’s the matter with her?” Minnow whispered.

“You want a list?” I asked him. I can sometimes be a real wit.

“She’s dead, you dorks,” Ranch said.

“Maybe not,” Tommy said. “Let’s see if her heart’s still beating.”

Things got very messy.

Pretty soon, Tommy was holding her heart in his cupped hands. “Is it beating?” he asked, grinning at it.

“Beats me,” I said.

He laughed and threw it at me. It bounced off my shoulder. I went after it and threw it back at him. He snatched it out of the air with a neat, one-handed grab. Then we all kind of played catch with it for a while. Made sort of an odd picture, four naked guys, drenched with blood, standing in a circle around Hester, tossing her heart around while Ranch whistled “Sweet Georgia Brown,” the Harlem Globetrotters’ song.

Anyway, that’s how our first kill happened.

We figured that Hester’s body was hidden just fine where it was. It couldn’t be seen from the air because of the trees, and it was a good, safe distance away from the driveway and house. Also, the property was walled in. Tommy never allowed his mother to hire any workers, so there was no chance of a landscape guy stumbling onto her.

The upshot was, we didn’t cover her or bury her or anything. Just left her sprawled on her back on the ground.

We hiked the rest of the way to Tommy’s house. On the front lawn, we hosed ourselves down. (Tommy’s mother watched us from an upstairs window—which seemed weird, and also kind of excited me. Tommy wasn’t worried. He laughed and waved at her.) The water was horribly cold. I still remember how it made me flinch and shudder, and gave me goose bumps.

After washing off all the blood and stuff, we went around to the back of the house and fooled around in the swimming pool. We raced and played tag. Then we climbed out and sprawled on lounges, shivering until the sun warmed us up.

“Your mom won’t tell on us, will she?” Minnow asked.

“You’ve gotta be kidding.”

“What if she finds the body?” I asked.

“She won’t. But even if she does, she won’t do anything about it. She knows what’d happen to her.”

After the sun had dried us, we walked back through the woods and found our clothes. We didn’t say anything while we were getting dressed. We all kept glancing over at the body, which was about twenty feet away. Some flies had found it.

Minnow handed the pistol to Tommy. “You’d better keep it. If I took it home, my mom’d find it. Then I’d be in for some real trouble.”

Tommy stuck the gun into his front pocket.

He’s the one who wanted a closer look at Hester.

When we were all dressed, we walked over to her.

“I guess that’s what she gets,” Minnow said. He didn’t sound very cheerful.

“I sure do wish we could bring her back to life,” Tommy said.

“What?” I asked. I couldn’t believe my ears. “Bring her back to life?”

“Yeah. So we could do it to her all over again.”

We all laughed at that one.

Later on, Tommy drove us home. Mom and Dad were out back, having cocktails. I helped myself to a handful of peanuts. “Did you have a good time over at Tommy’s?” Mom asked.

“Yeah! We played catch, swam in the pool ... It was great!”

Later, Dad did shish kebabs on the barbecue.

Speaking of shish kebabs, I’m starving. Haven’t had a bite since the sandwich I ate while I was unloading the fridge for Benedict, and it wasn’t much.

Problem is, I can’t go out bald and I really don’t feel like sticking Hillary’s clammy old scalp on my head right now. I’ve got to get my hands on a decent wig.

But first I’ve gotta eat.

Ah ha! I’ll phone in for something and have it delivered right here to my room.

It’ll mean touching that grimy phone, of course.

Guess I’ll clean it first.

Anyway, that’s it for right now. We’ll continue my adventures after I’ve put some chow inside me.

Chapter Twenty-one

Okay. All set. I ordered Chinese, by the way. Sweet and sour pork.

Hester was such a pig. Maybe all that talking about her is what made me hanker for pork.

It was very tasty, by the way.

Before the delivery boy arrived, I wrapped a bath towel around my head—the way some gals do when their hair is still wet. Seemed to work fine.

Anyway, back to my history of our nefarious deeds.

What we did to Hester pretty much changed everything. For starters, it was just incredibly exciting, sexually and every other way. Doing her that way was the biggest thrill I’d ever had. The rest of the guys felt that way, too. I know because we talked about it. A lot. Hell, we couldn’t
stop
talking about it.

Mixed in with how great it had been, there was a kind of sick feeling. We all had the sick feeling. It was partly fear that we might get caught and convicted of murder. Being only thirteen years old, though, we wouldn’t have had much to worry about from the California legal system. A couple of years in juvenile hall, maybe. But the notion that everybody would
find out
about what we’d done to Hester was enough to give me a yucky stomach. Mom and Dad, for instance. Talk about embarrassing.

I mean, this wasn’t like we’d shoplifted an album or smoked dope. This was serious stuff that could basically ruin our futures.

Nothing about Hester showed up in the newspaper or on the television news. Around school, rumor had it that she’d run away from home. She’d run away before, a year earlier, and had actually disappeared for a whole month. So nobody suspected foul play.

That was good news. But we figured it would all change if her body got found. Each day for the first week after the murder, Tommy checked to make sure her body was still where we’d left it. He tried to calm us down by saying it would never be found, impossible.

“And even if it is,” he said that Thursday, “the cops won’t have any reason to think we had anything to do with it.”

“She’s on
your
property,” I pointed out. “And what if we left fingerprints on her.”

“You can’t leave fingerprints on skin,” he said.

“Are you sure?”

“Well ... I don’t know for sure, but ...”

The next day, at lunch, Tommy had news for us. “I went to the library after school and checked out some books on criminal investigation techniques.” He wrinkled his nose. “Man, I had no idea. It’s a lot worse than I figured. There’s no telling what sort of stuff the cops might get on us if they find Hester: how many of us were there, our blood types, hair color, height and weight, not even to mention what they might find out about our clothes and shoes.”

“Just from her body?” Ranch asked, his nose wrinkled.

“Yeah, from her body, plus everything they’ll figure out when they study the crime scene.”

I suddenly felt like I might throw up.

Ranch and Minnow looked sick.

“What’ll we do?” Minnow asked.

“It’s no big problem,” Tommy said.

The big problem was waiting twenty-four hours without going nuts. On Saturday morning, Dad gave me a ride to Tommy’s house. He identified himself into a speaker on the gate, the gate swung open and we went up the driveway to the house. Dad mussed my hair. “Have a good one, pal,” he said. “If you won’t be home for dinner, give us a call.”

After everyone was there, Tommy equipped us with a couple of shovels, a pick, and a rake. Then he led us straight through the trees to Hester.

Man, what a mess. And what a stink.

I won’t go into that, though. Don’t want to make anybody sick.

Our job was to bury the body.

And what a job it was. Even with four of us taking turns at it, the digging was brutal.

Tommy did his fair share. He was still annoying, though. It seemed like all he could say was, “Not deep enough. It’s gotta be deeper. Deeper. Deeper.”

I was standing at the bottom of the grave when Tommy finally decided it
was
deep enough. “Just even out the bottom a little,” he told me.

So I bent over with my shovel to put in the final touches, and those sons of bitches tossed Hester down on me.

Hilarious. They thought so, anyhow.

She dropped onto my back and knocked me flat, and the
stink
! And she was slippery, like her skin had turned to goo. For better or for worse, I was naked (because of the heat, and so my clothes wouldn’t get filthy from the digging). That saved my clothes from being wrecked by Hester. But it meant there was nothing between her and me. Talk about revolting!

I guess it was pretty funny, throwing her on me like that. At the time, though, I was anything but amused. I had an awful time getting out from under her. The way her arms and legs wrapped around me, it was like she wanted to keep me down there with her. When I finally managed to squirm free, she rolled onto her back and her knees flopped apart till the sides of the hole stopped them. “Fuck me again.” That’s what I heard, and it damn near turned my bones to ice before I realized Tommy was the one who’d said it. He was up above with Ranch and Minnow staring down at us.