Ragged Man (22 page)

“
The other side as well,” she said, then asked, “What Ragged Man?”

“
He’s a killer with a sharp knife, a Jim Bowie knife. I think he’s the one who killed my dad. I—”

Tires screeched around the ramp, heading up, cutting off J.P. Words. The sound echoed in the underground garage. Christina wanted to call out, but it was too late, the two couples from the elevator were gone. She looked over the tops of the cars. The elevator was across the garage. It didn’t seem like a short walk anymore.

“
Listen,” J.P. whispered.

“
What?”

“
No noise,” he said. “No sound, it’s like when the Ghost Dog walks in the woods. I gotta get Dancer.” He started to tug away, but she closed her hand on his, holding him fast.

“
What are you talking about?”

“
The Ragged Man’s dog,” he squeezed her hand back. “The Ragged Man, you know, what I said, the man who killed my dad.”

Somebody kicked another can and the rattling across the concrete electrified the silence.

“
Down!” She pulled him to the floor behind the car. He was shaking and tense. She felt his sweaty, child hand in hers, and she started to get angry .

She let go of his hand and opened her purse. J.P. grinned when he saw the gun in her hand.

“
We should be okay now. The Ragged Man doesn’t have a gun.”

“
He could have bought one.” Her whisper was forced and clipped. She didn’t understand what the boy was talking about and this wasn’t the time to be humoring him. They were in serious trouble and she needed all her concentration.

“
I can’t let him hurt Dancer.”

“
We can see the cage from here. If he gets anywhere near it I’ll put his eyes out,” she said.

“
Does he look okay?”

“
He’s fine,” she said.

A wine bottle came flying from out of nowhere and smashed on the wall behind them, exploding with a shattering sound that made her scream. This time J.P. did the hand squeezing and she calmed down.

She wanted to jump up and shoot the bastard, but there was nobody to shoot at. Maybe J.P. was right, she thought, maybe he didn’t have a gun.

Then the lights went out.

“
He knows where we are,” she whispered into his ear. “We have to move.” She shifted the gun to her left hand and gave him a reassuring squeeze with her right. “We can’t take the elevator, we’d be too much of a target, so we’ll use the stairs.” The stairway leading up was adjacent to the elevator. “We’re going to crawl along the cars. I’ll go first, you stay right behind me.” Without waiting for him to answer, she started crawling along the row of parked cars.

More glass shattered behind them. Another wine bottle, she thought. She was tempted to let loose a few rounds, but didn’t. She didn’t want to let whoever was out there know she had a gun, because despite what J.P. said, he might have one, too. The last thing she wanted was bullets flying in all directions.

Then the man started moving. His hard shoes ricocheted off the concrete floor, each step, a thunderclap in a hollow cave, and the steps were coming toward them. She reached back and grabbed J.P.’s hand and started crawling faster. The steps stopped and she did, too. He was listening. Trying to find them in the dark and now the dark was as much their ally as their enemy. If they remained quiet he’d never find them and sooner or later someone had to come.

A can clattered behind them and she stifled a scream. It was what he wanted. Another rolled off to their left, the noise reverberating throughout the garage, ripping through her nerves. Icicles scattered out from her spine and she tightened her hand on the gun as they continued creeping toward the stars.

A car door opened. She bit into her lip as the door slammed shut, a cannon to her heart, sending her pulse racing. Was he leaving? Was he not after them, after all? Why had he done this?

The elevator doors opened and standing in the middle of a box of light was the black man in the new suit. The man squinted into the dark garage. The light from the elevator casting a Twilight Zone glow into the dark and J.P. saw the cage.

A car started.

“
I’m gonna get Dancer,” J.P. twisted free from her hand and ran toward the bird.

Tires screeched.

“
No!” Christina screamed, grabbing for him, but she was too late.

The black man saw the boy, heard the car and moved like an athlete. He darted for the boy as the headlights of the oncoming car captured him in their light, the boy’s face shining whiter as the car closed on its prey.

The big man dove for the boy, catching him and dragging him out of the way as the car screeched by, circling up the driveway to the street above. The car was gone by the time her nerves stopped shaking.

“
J.P.,” she screamed from across the garage.

“
He’s all right, ma’am,” the black man said.

“
That man, he was after us,” she said.

“
Gonna kill my bird,” J.P. said, clutching the cage to his chest.

“
It’s okay now, he’s gone, but I got a good look at him and I never forget a face.” He pushed the button for the elevator and the door opened wide, again shedding some light into the garage.

“
I can’t thank you enough,” Christina said.

“
You can put the gun away now. I’m a police officer,” the man said. He led them into the elevator. He was reaching into his pocket for identification as the doors were closing and he handed it to her.

“
Captain Hugh Washington,” she read. “Long Beach.”

“
Yes, ma’am,” he said as she handed it back. “I came back down because of the bird. When the boy said he wanted it to be a five hundred miler I got to thinking what’s five hundred miles away from here and then it hit me.”

“
What?” she asked.

“
Where I’d seen the boy before. Tampico.”

“
I remember you,” J.P. said. “You were on the beach that day. You waved to me when I let Dancer loose.”

“
That’s right,” Washington said. “I heard about what happened that day. I should have stayed. I saw the homeless man on the beach, but I didn’t think anything of it. I was sort of on leave when I was up there and my mind wasn’t as open as it should have been.”

“
That man sliced my tires,” Christina said.

“
It’s the times,” Washington said. “We catch them and the courts put them back on the streets.”

“
I guess I’ll have to get a taxi.”

“
What kind of car?”

“
Toyota.” She said.

“
I think I can help there,” he said and Christina and J.P. found themselves escorted to the convention hall where Hugh Washington enlisted the aid of several homicide detectives from throughout the world. When Christina and J.P. left the underground parking garage they had four new tires and four rented Toyotas had slashed spares in their trunks.

And all the way home she wondered why she hadn’t spilled her guts to Captain Washington. She was still wondering when she pulled into the driveway. It was dark, the lights weren’t on and the girls were still out.

She looked over at J.P. He was asleep. He’d had a rough day, a terrible yesterday and faced an uncertain tomorrow. She felt sorry for him. Asleep, he looked so vulnerable, with his head leaning against the passenger window and his arms wrapped around the cage that held his favorite bird.

“
Home again, home again, jig-a-de-jig,” she said, opening the passenger door.

“
My mom says that.” J.P. blinked away the sleep.

“
All moms say that, I think.”

“
Is Rick gonna come soon?”

“
I think he’ll be here in the morning.” She took the caged bird from his lap and he followed her to the door. She wanted to take him by the hand, to hug him, but she was afraid any sign of affection would throw the boy into tears. He was trying so hard to be a little man and fighting hard to hold on to his sanity. He was trying to be strong and she didn’t want to weaken him. There would be plenty of time for tears after the shock had worn off. She opened the door and J.P. followed her inside.

“
Oh wow,” he said, running across the living room and stooping to pick up a white kitten.

“
She’s only six weeks old. Swell brought her home yesterday.”

“
What’s her name?” he asked, holding the kitten to his cheek and stroking her fur.

“
We can’t decide.”

“
Can I name it?”

“
Sure.”

“
Can she sleep with me?”

“
Of course.”

She put J.P. to sleep in the downstairs den with his bird in its cage on the writing desk opposite the bed and the kitten locked in his arms. She sat in an antique rocker next to the bed, determined to stay with him till he fell asleep. She didn’t have long to wait, he was asleep inside of five minutes and the kitten hopped off the bed and scurried into the kitchen in search of milk.

Christina rose from the rocker, went to the phone and called the motel, only to find they were full, but would have a vacancy in the morning. Then she saw the blinking light on the answer machine. It was a message from the girls, they were going to a friend’s after the movie and would be home by midnight. They hadn’t left a number. Well, there was nothing for it, but to wait till they got back.

So she locked up, then tried to read, then tried television. Sometime around 11:00 she wrote a note for the girls, telling them about J.P. being in the guest room and asking them to wake her when they got back. They’d be safe enough tonight, she thought, but when she went up to bed, she left her purse downstairs, the gun inside it too.

Chapter Fourteen

Sam Storm moved down the street with a cracked leather satchel clutched in his right hand. Walking with a panther’s stealth, he mounted the front porch and tried the front door. It was locked, but he’d expected it would be. Even if she wasn’t the cautious kind, she would have been after last night.

He was caught off guard when he saw her in the hotel and acted without thinking. Who would have thought there would be a police convention in the same hotel the bootleggers always stayed in. He should have continued with his checkout when he saw her walk across the lobby with the boy in the Robert Plant tee shirt, but instead he followed them and tried to do them in a hotel full of cops.

Stupid.

And stupid again for not realizing right off the bat that the boy was the son. But he’d make up for it now. He looked down the street. The night was silent. The leaves were still. He could hear waves lapping on the beach a block away. He would make sure she didn’t scream.

He walked around to the back, cupped his hand over the gate latch to muffle the sound, and crept into the backyard. He tried the back door, also locked. Then he saw the curtains of a downstairs window, hanging still, waiting for a breeze. The window was open. It was a hot night. Like a midnight black cat, he ghosted in the window. He was a big man and had always been clumsy. He was still big, but lately he’d become agile. He felt twenty years younger. He felt like an athlete.

He climbed into the dining room. Stairs came into focus as his eyes adjusted to the dark. He took off his shoes, left them on the second step. He felt the rail with fingers that were alive, the oak crying out to him. He wrapped his hand around it. Solid, hard, like his heart. He started upward, a wraith in the night.

He eased the first door on the top of the stairs open and stepped into the room. Eyes now adjusted, he saw the woman. Her chest was rising and falling with the melodic rhythm of sleep. She was helpless.

He stared at her face. Peaceful in sleep. The curtains fluttered, an evening breeze coming from the sea. He smelled the salt on it, felt the sea in it, he wanted to go. He couldn’t. He was helpless.

Pleasure coursed through him. Goosebumps peppered his arms. He sighed with the chill of anticipation, touched himself between the legs and suffered a pleasure greater than any orgasm he’d ever known. He squeezed himself, almost called out with the joy of it.

He was afraid to approach and afraid not to. How much delight could one man possibly feel. He started to back away and felt an ache in his testicles. A few steps back and the ache was a dull pain. A few more and they were hot. If he didn’t go through with it, they’d burn. He had no choice.

He started back into the room and the joy returned. Standing above her, he reached into the satchel and removed a handkerchief and duct tape. He balled the handkerchief and cut off a piece of the gray tape. Then he grabbed the sleeping woman about the jaw, forcing it open with thumb and forefinger. He jammed the balled up cloth into her mouth and slapped on the tape.

The woman’s eyes popped open, wide with fright. He felt her fear and shivered. She tried to sit, but he forced her back with the heel of his palm against her chest. She struggled against the cloth, holding her tongue to the bottom of her mouth and tried to scream. Storm grabbed her face, palm around her chin, pinching her nose with thumb and fore finger, forcing her into the pillow, cutting off her air supply.

“
Be good,” he said, “and I’ll remove my hand. Do you understand?” Her face was hot on his hand and it made him hard. She started to buck, trying to throw him off and he shoved his other hand between her legs and forced her down into the mattress. Her sex scalded his hand and he quivered in ecstasy.