MalContents (16 page)

“I didn’t come up to the door.”

“You sure?”

“Pretty sure. Unless I’m sleep walking when I’m not asleep. Been here the whole time. Why, you see something?”

I nodded. My prior paranoia had been justified. Maybe movies are good survival training after all. “Yeah, someone was outside in the driveway, and I heard them come to the front door.” I traced the trajectory with my finger just in case he was dumber than tree bark.

“Nobody was in the driveway and nobody went to the front door. I’d have seen them.”

To say this concerned me is an understatement. I wanted to scream at him, tell him he was he worst excuse for a cop I’d ever seen, but instead I settled for, “Maybe you were doing something? Like talking on the radio or something?”

“Nope. Telling you, no one came by. But . . . just to be safe.”

Officer Valley got out and spent the next two minutes walking around my home. He came back with his head shaking and sat back in his car. “Didn’t see anyone. No footsteps around the house or leading to the woods. Just the ones you made.”

“I heard someone.”

“Not saying you didn’t But trust me, I don’t see anyone and I’m watching your house like a hawk. I take this stuff seriously, Mr. Baker. If you get hurt I lose my job. See?”

The cold wasn’t the only thing making my hairs stand on end now. I decided it was time to get out of Dodge. All that talk about life not being a movie wasn’t holding so much water any more. There had definitely been someone in my driveway, and that someone had walked the perimeter of my house. How this cop didn’t see the guy was beyond me, but I didn’t plan to stick around and find out who the mystery man was.

“I think I’m gonna stay somewhere else tonight,” I told him. From my pocket I took out the answering machine tape and handed it to him. “The bastard called me. I think he knows where the house is.

Can you follow me?”

“Where you going?”

I told him about the Raddison.

He turned the tape over in his hands. “I’ll have a unit meet you there. I’m curious to see if he shows up here.”

Great, a loose cannon cop who thought he knew it all, that’s just what I needed. “So then you’ll be here all night?” I asked.

“For a while. Don’t worry, if anyone shows up who doesn’t belong here we’ll nab him. ”

Back in the house, I grabbed a quick change of clothes, some toiletries, and stuffed them in the gym bag next to the gun case. I threw my coat on and made sure all the doors in the house were locked before getting in my car and turning the heater on.

The windshield was fogged up pretty badly so I opened a side window to help clear it up. By the time I got to the main road, there was a circle of transparency above the heating vents just large enough to see the road through. I willed it to expand, not wanting to drive into a curb, or worse, crash into another car.

Another minute and the windshield was almost completely defrosted. But as the frost melted away something else appeared in its place. The word CHOOSE had been smeared into the glass with someone’s finger. The heat from the car’s vents was sticking to it, making it swell into existence, the way kids will draw a smiley face on a window and then blow their hot breath on it to make it show up. And worse, I could see it had been done from the inside.

The son of a bitch had been in my driveway! He’d been in my car!

Immediately, I flipped a bitch and sped back to my own street, took the corner a bit fast and fishtailed. The car slid sideways and nearly clipped a stop sign, but I got it under control and pulled up next to the police car out front of my house, intent on showing Officer Valley how serious this was all getting. When I rolled down my window to yell at him, I noticed the cop car was empty.

Throwing my own car in park, I got out and went around to the drivers’ side of the patrol car, checked to make sure he wasn’t lying down in the backseat or something. In window’s reflection I could see my house behind me, the boughs of the trees in my yard casting long shadows across the snow-covered roof. There was something else on the roof, and when I spun to look I nearly went down on my knees in shock. Lying like a child who’d fallen asleep making snow angels, officer Valley was spread eagle on my roof. His neck was sliced open. A trail of crimson cut down through the pure, white snow and dripped steadily off the gutter onto the front steps. Next to his body, the word CHOOSE was gouged in the snow, showing through to the shingles underneath.

“Jesus Christ,” I whispered, wondering if any of my neighbors had heard or seen anything. But I knew it was useless; from where I stood I couldn’t even see their houses, so they couldn’t see mine.

Thoughts careened wildly through my mind, like would the cops think I’d done it, and was the bastard still around somewhere watching me, and should I call the cops now or later, and would the guy follow me if he was in fact watching? Like a roulette ball finding its number, my mind settled on: just get the hell outta here. Spinning around again, I caught my house’s reflection in the car window a second time, saw something else on the roof, something that hadn’t been there a second ago. A man in a white cowboy hat, head down, sitting next to the corpse. He waved at me, held something up. Something in his hand. It looked like the tape from my answering machine. I spun toward the house, shouted, “Leave me alone!”

But he was gone.

Shit, that was fast. Where’d he go?

I raced back to my car, threw it in drive, and kicked up a mountain of slush as I hauled ass back toward the main road. In the rearview mirror, for just the briefest of seconds, I saw the sick psycho sitting on my roof again. Waving.

Playing tricks on me.

As I drove through town, I kept one eye glued to the rearview mirror on lookout for anyone following me. As far as I could tell the bastard hadn’t given chase. I dialed the cops and told them what happened, made sure to explain it wasn’t me and I didn’t touch anything. You can only imagine the pissed-off silence on the other end before they started shouting like a war was on. They said they were on their way and told me to get my ass into the station so they could talk to me, but I told them I’d call them once I got somewhere safe. Of course this did not sit well with them, but when your family is on the line you worry about lawyers and courtrooms later.

The detective I’d met earlier in the day—Larson—jumped on the line and impressed upon me how badly it would look that I was running. I asked him if he had any leads yet, if he’d gotten a printout of the guy’s face? He said no. I said, “Well then, my plan remains the same. I’ll be in touch. Find this fucker already. I pay taxes, too.” As if that would make things better.

Angie’s car was already parked in the Raddison’s parking lot when I pulled in. She spotted me and walked my way, my daughter Mandy shuffling at her side, her black backpack slung over her shoulder. Jesus, what the hell was she wearing? Jeans that somehow defied gravity just a hint above her pelvis, a leather jacket, and a rock T-shirt cut in half revealing more of her midrift than I wanted to know she even had. Her bellybutton ring swished back and forth as she walked. When the hell had she pierced her bellybutton! Thought you had to be eighteen to get it done. No way my wife would have okayed it, which meant Mandy must have done it with some ice and a needle. Five degrees out and she’s got her stomached bared to the world. And were her lips painted black? I rarely saw her before I left for work in the morning, but I always saw her when I got home. I’d never seen her looking like this. She must change in the school’s bathroom or something, then clean herself up again before me and Angie get home.

“Mom says we’re being stalked by an ax murderer,” she said as I got out of the car, put my arms around my wife and hugged her.

“Not even close,” I said, knowing full well I couldn’t bring up the dead cop on our roof just yet. First I needed to get them inside and explain that a change of plans was in order. We sure as hell weren’t staying at the Raddison; too close to the house.

“You look rough,” my wife said, smoothing my hair out of my face. “Did the cops find anything yet?”

“No. Not yet.” I paused, taking in my family. My daughter’s nose was the spitting image of Angie’s and she had my green eyes. She was a beautiful girl, I had to admit, and she might even find herself a good man one day if she didn’t dress like a prostitute in training. I let the bellybutton ring go for now. “Change of plans,” I said. “We’re gonna head over to Birchville and stay there.”

“Okay, now I know something’s wrong,” Angie said. “Honestly, you’re scaring me.”

“Yeah, Dad, why can’t we just go home? Mom said the cops were watching the place.”

Were
watching was right. Were. Now they were peeling one of their own off the roof. I could see a bellhop watching us from inside the hotel’s foyer, wondering if we were coming in or not. He looked eager for a five dollar tip, and just as eager to tip the cops off to some loiterers.

“Look, let’s park your car back there.” I pointed to the rear of the hotel. “And we’ll take one car. We can talk on the way.”

“There are tow away signs everywhere, Dad.”

“We’ll risk it.” I doubted the hotel checked the license plates on a nightly basis.

“You’d better start talking, Peter,” Angie said, heading back to her car. “No more leaving me in the dark. Got me?”

I nodded. It took a couple minutes to park and transfer some belongings from Angie’s car to mine, and then we were back on the road, heading toward Birchville. Outside, the snow was almost too bright to look at, and the roads were wet with salted slush. The truck in front of us spit up a mist of wetness that forced me to put the windshield wipers on. Again, I noticed the word CHOOSE traced into the windshield. Thankfully, no one else did.

“So explain to me again why we’re going to Birchville?” Angie said.

I weighed the advantages and disadvantages of filling them in on what happened with the cop, opted for a safe middleground. “I think he came to the house.”

“What!”

“I said ‘think.’ I can’t be sure. My mind is going a little nuts here. So, just in case he heard me on the phone with you, we’re doing this instead.”

“Who is this guy and what does he want?” Angie asked.

“I don’t know.”

“So we are seriously being stalked,” Mandy said. For the first time, the fun seemed to wane from her voice. I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw her looking out the back window. “What does he look like?”

“I don’t know. I never saw his face.”

“How come we don’t just stay with the cops?” Mandy asked

“And what?” I replied. “Sit in the police station lobby with all the druggies and wife beaters they bring in a night? The only beds are in the cells, you know, and there’s no continental breakfast. I’m gonna call them when we get to Birchville. Don’t worry.”

Mandy rolled her eyes. “Jesus, don’t gotta be all agro about it. I was just asking.”

I glanced at Angie. “What’s agro mean?”

Angie ignored the question. “Are you sure you don’t know him? Maybe he was a customer of yours?”

“He said something like that, but I don’t remember him. I remember everyone I do work for. It’s a word of mouth referral business, you know that. And I’d remember this guy, trust me. The guy dresses like John Wayne.”

“Some stalkers make contact before they make threats,” Mandy said. “It’s a game they play.”

“How do you know that?”

“Movies.”

Again with movies. And here I thought she was paying attention in school. “By the way, oh wonderful daughter of mine, what the hell are you wearing. They let you walk around school like that? How’d you pierce your bellybutton?”

“I already chewed her out,” my wife put in. “We’re taking it out later when we have a first aid kit around.”

“It’s not infected, Mom.”

“I don’t care,” Angie replied, “It’s coming out. Don’t sass me.”

In the rearview mirror, Mandy tugged her shirt down, attempting to cover her belly and failing miserably since the shirt was so skimpy. From the vantage point of the mirror, I could see down her developing cleavage. Not something a dad wants to dwell on, trust me. At least she’d put a frigging bra on. I could only imagine what the boys at school thought of her. Easy. Slut. A Sure Thing. I sighed momentarily, thought Please, God, not my daughter, not my little sugarplum. I had never even talked to her about sex, and I had a hunch neither had Angie. “You dress like that again while you’re living under our roof and you’re gonna be grounded, got me?”

“Whatever,” she sneered, “who says we’re even gonna make it back to the house alive.”

Birchville is the quintessential American town, complete with a row of antique shops, a locally-owned coffee shop (no Starbucks here), a diner, some pharmacies, and one or two used books stores. Corporate America has been ousted, as voted on by the handful of residents who live in the area specifically for its Rockwellian charm. It took us about an hour and fifteen minutes to get there, and another twenty minutes to find our way up the gravel road to our destination.

The Fishhook Inn is so named because it sits on a lake and does a respectable tourist trade in the summer for wannabe anglers—big city yuppies who refer to this area as “the country.” I’d tried to get Mandy to come fishing with me here a few summers ago but she was-n’t having it, said she’d rather listen to The Ass Maggots sing (more like scream) about burning down the world. I’d taken Kelly instead, sort of a mentor/apprentice field trip, but he’d brought some pocket video game thingie and was way more interested in that than catching large mouth bass.