Shocking Pink (11 page)

A
ndie watched the clock, her feeling of dread increasing with each tick of the second hand. She fought the feeling off, calling herself chickenshit, worrywart. At seven-thirty it would still be light outside, too early for Mr. and Mrs. X to make an appearance. The three of them would go into the house, make sure there were no dead bodies anywhere, then take off. They would be there ten minutes, tops.

And then it would be over, behind them. She could do this, Andie told herself. It was no big deal.

Then why were her hands shaking? Why did she feel light-headed and winded, as if she had just run around the school gymnasium a half-dozen times?

Because she was scared. That they would be caught. That the couple would be there, and she would see them engaged in…what they did. And worst of all, that Julie would be right and they would find Mrs. X, dead. She didn’t know if she could handle that. She didn’t know if she would be able to live with that on her conscience.

Andie glanced at the clock above the kitchen sink, and her heart leaped to her throat.

Time had run out. Time to go.

She wiped her hands on the seat of her denim cutoffs and forced a deep breath into her lungs. Leaving the kitchen, she went to the family-room doorway. Her mother sat with Danny and Pete, watching some sports show on TV. One her dad used to watch with them.

“Mom?” Her mother looked over her shoulder. “The dishes are done. I’m going to go hang out with Julie and Raven for a while.”

Her mother smiled wanly. “Okay, honey. Have fun.”

Fun, Andie thought a moment later as she cut through her backyard, heading for Julie’s street. Her stomach rolled. Tonight was about anything but fun.

Raven was already there and waiting. Julie arrived only minutes after Andie. The three drew in what seemed a collective breath. Andie took charge. “We check the place, then we’re out of there. Right?”

The other two agreed, and they made their way to the house, circling around back. They went to the door; Raven retrieved the key from its hiding pace, unlocked and opened the door.

Before she could take a step inside, Andie caught her arm. “We’re in and out,” she said. “No messing around.”

“No messing around,” Raven repeated and stepped inside.

Andie, then Julie, crept in behind her. The first thing Andie noticed was the smell—stale, slightly sour. She wrinkled her nose. “What is that?”

“Oh, God…” Julie brought a hand to her stomach. “I bet it’s the…I bet it’s her!”

Raven shook her head and moved her gaze over the family room and adjoining kitchen. “No body here. No body parts, no blood.” At her friends’ horrified expressions, she laughed. “You two are the ones who started this gruesome quest. I’m only along to tell you I told you so after.”

Together they moved from room to room, checking corners and closets. Nothing appeared different than the first time they had been through.

Until they got to the master bedroom. It had a vaulted ceiling with exposed beams. Thrown over one was a rope.

The end of the rope was tied into a noose.

On the floor below sat two stools, a tall one directly under the noose, a short one beside it, the kind one keeps in a kitchen, to help with high cabinets.

For long moments, the girls said nothing, just stared.

“What the hell is that?” Andie asked. “I mean, what’s it for?”

The three looked at each other, eyes wide. “I don’t like this,” Andie said, taking a step backward, gooseflesh racing up her arms. “I want to get out of here.”

“Me, too.”

“Rave—”

Her friend was staring up at the beam and the rope. Something in her expression gave Andie the creeps. She realized that Raven hadn’t said a word since coming into this room. “Rave?” she said again, touching her friend’s arm. “Let’s go.”

Raven jumped, startled. “What?”

“This is creepy. Julie and I want to split.”

Raven didn’t argue. They started back the way they had come. Almost to the back door, they froze when they heard the unmistakable sound of the garage door rumbling shut.

Andie thought she was going to faint. The house’s interior was now almost completely in shadow, and she looked wildly around her. Not again, she thought, hysteria exploding inside her. She was not going to be trapped in here again. She grabbed Julie’s hand and bolted for the door. She wrenched it open and stumbled out, Julie behind her, almost crying out with relief.

From the house she heard the sound of another door opening, then a man’s voice. Followed by a woman’s. Andie pulled the door shut and ran for the cover of the adjoining wooded lot.

She reached it and ducked behind a tree, breathing hard. It was then she saw Raven wasn’t with them. Her heart flew to her throat, and she looked frantically around them. “Where’s Rave?” she asked, sounding as panicked as she felt.

Julie met her eyes, hers wide with horror. They simultaneously realized the same thing.

Raven hadn’t made it out. She was in that house with Mr. and Mrs. X.

I
nside the house, Raven eased closer to the crack between the door and the jamb, heart pounding. When she had heard the rumble of the garage door opening, when she had realized it was
them,
she had turned and run back here, to the bedroom, to the closet.

She drew in a deep, quiet breath, afraid and excited, trembling with anticipation. From her hiding place she could see only a sliver of the room beyond. But she saw the rope. The stools.

Mr. and Mrs. X.

They held each other, whispering things Raven couldn’t make out. Mrs. X seemed agitated. Even frightened. Was she frightened of him? Raven wondered. The rope? Or of something else. Someone else?

“Take off your clothes,” he said quietly.

Mrs. X shook her head, clinging to him. “I don’t want to.” Her voice quivered slightly, then broke. “Don’t make me.”

“Take off your clothes,” he said again, this time sharply, setting her away from him. “I don’t want to punish you, but I will.”

Whimpering, she did as he asked, removing one garment after another, her movements halting. She peeled away the last and stood before him, naked and trembling, head bowed.

“The ring,” he said. “Remove it.”

Raven pressed closer to the sliver of space, upper lip wet with perspiration. She saw Mrs. X struggling to get a ring off her finger. Her fourth finger. A wedding ring, Raven realized. Mrs. X was married. To somebody else.

“You belong to me,” Mr. X said, taking a step closer. “Don’t you?”

The woman lifted her face to his. Raven saw that she was crying. “Yes,” she whispered.

He reached out and curved his hand around her breast, but not gently, roughly, as if asserting his possession. “You’re mine.”

“Yes,” she said again.

“And I can do anything I want to you?”

She nodded.

He caught her other breast. “Say it.”

“Yes. You can do anything you want to me.”

“Even kill you.”

The words landed flatly, harshly, between them. They reverberated in Raven’s head. Her mouth went dry. She flexed her fingers, her heart pounding heavily.

Suddenly, her father’s voice popped into her head, clear, accusing.
Cheating whore. Disloyal bitch. I’ll kill you before I’ll let you leave.

Raven shook her head, trying to clear it, trying to force her father, the memory, out. Sweat dripped into her eyes. It stung, and she rubbed at them, rubbed until they burned. When she dropped her hands, she was at another door, her bedroom door. She was twelve again, peering through a different sliver of space.

She heard her father. And her mother.

Their last fight.

They had been going at it, on and off, all night. It had finally escalated to the point of no return, and Raven had known from hundreds of times before exactly where it would lead. She had tiptoed out of bed and to her bedroom door to listen.

“I’m going to ask you again,” her father had shouted, “where were you today?” Raven had rolled her eyes and mouthed her father’s next words, knowing them by heart. “I called and you didn’t answer the phone.”

“For God’s sake, Ron, I went to the grocery store, the dry cleaner, the scho—”

Her words were cut off by Ron Johnson’s furious bellow. “Lying whore! If you went to the grocery, why are we out of bread?” A cupboard door slammed; something crashed to the floor. “If you went to the cleaners, where are the clothes you brought home? How do you explain that?”

“I forgot bread! I took my navy dress! Remember, I spilled coffee on it last Sunday. After church. Don’t you remember?”

He said something Raven couldn’t understand, and her mother cried out in frustration. “I’m sick of your accusations! Sick of having to account for every move I make!”

“Do you think I like this?” he demanded. “Do you think I like having to come home to this? To your lies?”

“Yes! I think you do like it. But I can’t take it anymore. Do you hear me?” Her mother’s voice rose to a hysterical pitch. “I can’t take it anymore!”

Blah. Blah. Blah.
Raven made a sound of disgust. Same old story. Nothing ever changed here at 123 Park Lane. Raven turned to go back to bed, when her mother’s next words stopped her.

“I’m leaving you.”

The words seemed to echo in the ensuing quiet. Raven held her breath, waiting for her father’s reply, startled not by what her mother had said, but by the way she had said it. Gone was the desperation, hysteria and fear. In their place was a kind of calm determination. As if, for the first time her mother really meant it. The first time since the night six years ago when she had tried to leave him and crashed the car, the crash that had given Raven her scar. As if she finally had the courage to do it, to leave her husband.

“Like hell,” he shouted. “I won’t allow it.”

“I am, Ron. I’m leaving you. I won’t live like this anymore. I won’t take your crazy, jealous accusations another da—”

He cut her off with a chilling laugh. “You brought this on yourself by being a cheating, disloyal whore.”

“Stop it! You’re sick. You need help. Until tonight I was sick, too, living like this. No more. It’s over.”

“I’ll say when it’s over. Got that? Me, not you.”

“Take your hands off me. I’m done being bullied by you.”

Raven crept to the banister and looked over in time to see her mother struggle and break free of her husband’s grasp, then run toward the stairs. Raven dared a quick glance at her father before ducking back into her bedroom and shutting the door. He looked stunned, disbelieving, like a kid who had just been told there was no Santa Claus.

It was almost funny. Raven brought a hand to her mouth to hold back a giggle. Like when Dorothy and her friends pulled away the black curtain and found that the great and powerful Oz was nothing more than a little toad of a man.

Her mother passed her bedroom, then her father passed. Raven counted to ten, then cracked open the door and peeked down the hall. Her parents’ bedroom door was open, her mother was throwing clothes into a suitcase.

“I just figured out where this sudden backbone’s coming from,” her father said. “You’re going to your boyfriend, aren’t you? Your dirty lover?” He dragged the word out so it sounded vile, worse than the ugliest of curses. “Where do you fuck, Sandy? Here? In our bed? When he sticks it in you, what do you think? About me? Our daughter? Or do you just grunt like the pig-whore you are?”

“Stop it.” Her mother’s voice quavered, and Raven realized how much standing up to him was costing her. “I’ve never been unfaithful to you. Why would I want another man, Ron? Life with you has been hell.”

“Do you really think I’ll let you go?” he asked, his words and tone measured. “Don’t you know me any better than that?”

“You can’t stop me.”

“No?” He circled her, his expression openly contemptuous. “You belong to me. You’re mine.”

She replied by snapping the suitcase shut, dragging it off the bed and starting for the hall. Raven closed the door save for a crack, heart thundering, wondering if her mother was coming for her. She wouldn’t go. She was old enough to choose. She wouldn’t leave Andie and Julie.
They
were her family. She chose them.

As if her own fears had transmitted to her father’s thoughts, he called out, “What about Raven? Do you plan to walk out on her, too?” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that?”

Sandy Johnson stopped and turned. “No, not ‘just like that.’ I wish she was coming with me, I wish I could bring her with me. I can’t. She wouldn’t want to go.”

“Convenient, Sandy. A lot easier to abandon your child when you tell yourself she’ll like it. But lying comes so easily to you.”

“Wake up! Our daughter stopped caring about either one of us a long time ago. Don’t you see the way she looks at us? Don’t you see her contempt for us? Her hatred. She’ll be glad I’m gone. She won’t have to listen to…to this all the time.”

He grabbed her arm. “Without me you’re nothing. How will you survive without me to pay the bills, without me to tell you what to do and where to go and what to wear? You need me.”

She snatched her arm from his grasp. “You’re so convinced I have a lover, well, maybe he’ll take care of me. Maybe he’ll—”

Ron struck her sharply across the mouth. She stumbled backward, hitting the banister. She grabbed ahold of it to steady herself, then straightened and brought a hand to her bleeding lips. She met his eyes. “That’s the last time you’re ever going to hit me. I’m leaving you. I should have done this a long time ago. Maybe then my daughter would still have some respect for me.”

“I’ll kill you if I have to.”

Her mother paled. She stared up at him, frozen, her eyes wide. Then she laughed. “You’ve bullied and intimidated me for eighteen years. You’ve made it so I was afraid to go to the grocery or a PTA meeting or to call a friend on the phone. I’m done being afraid. And I’m done living this way.”

She had snatched up her suitcase and run down the stairs; the back door had opened, then slammed shut. Raven hadn’t been able to see her father, he’d had his back to the door, but she had heard his labored breathing, had felt his fury and frustration, had felt them as an almost physical wave of pure emotion.

Then he had followed his wife, his footsteps thundering on the stairs.

A sharp crack filled her head, like a gun going off or a car backfiring. Raven shuddered, jerking back to the present. Back to Mr. and Mrs. X.

The woman was blindfolded with the black silk scarf. Her hands were bound in front of her with its mate. The tall stool had somehow tipped over, and lay on its side on the wooden floor. Mr. X bent and righted it. As he did, he trailed his hand along the seat, the movement like a caress.

Raven swallowed hard, understanding. Mrs. X was completely vulnerable now, totally helpless. And he was all-powerful. He could do anything to her. Ask anything of her. And she would obey.

What a feeling that must be, Raven thought, feeling her own blood and adrenaline pumping through her, to her head, her heart, the tips of her fingers and toes. To be like a king. Or a god.

Mr. X turned, suddenly. His piercing gaze landed on the closet, the sliver of space. On Raven.

He knew she was there. He knew she was watching.

His eyes seemed to meet hers. His were a brilliant, heavenly blue, and Raven felt a connection between them—sharp and electric. A response to more than his good looks, she recognized that they had something important in common, shared something others didn’t—and couldn’t—understand.

As if they were two halves of the same whole.

He smiled, then turned, severing the connection. He went to his lamb; he led her to the waiting rope. Though Raven could see that Mrs. X was terrified, she did as he instructed her, climbing onto the stool and letting him fit the noose over her head and around her neck.

All the while he murmured words of encouragement and love. Of appreciation. The act reminded Raven of a religious ritual; Mr. X performed his duty with the solemnity of a priest delivering the Sacraments to his faithful followers.

His faithful follower whimpered with fear as the rope closed around her neck, as it tightened. A lamb led to the sacrifice. One wrong move and she would be dead. One easy act of betrayal, and she would be left dangling, her life’s breath forever cut off.

An act of betrayal. Like a wife leaving her husband.

Easy. Like a husband taking care of that wife.

Raven scooted backward in the closet, pressing her fists to her eyes.
No.
She didn’t want to remember. Not again.

It was already too late. She was there again, at her bedroom door, her father’s footsteps thundering on the stairs. She had heard the back door open then slam shut. Heart racing, she had darted out of her room and run to the hall window that overlooked the backyard and garage.

At first she hadn’t seen them. The light from the kitchen illuminated little more than the new patio her father had finished staking out that day, the very edge of the driveway and garage beyond.

Then she did. Her mother was at the car, trying to get the driver’s door open. Her father got hold of her shoulders and dragged her away from it, his face pinched with rage. Raven wondered why her mother didn’t scream. Why she didn’t shout for help. Years of trying to be quiet, she supposed. Years of trying to hide the truth about her marriage from the neighbors and everyone else.

Her father backed into the bags of cement mix, stumbling, knocking the shovel to the ground. Her mother broke free. She darted toward the car, wrenched the door open and crawled inside. Before she could get the door closed behind her, he had her. He dragged her out, toward the house. She flailed at him wildly, kicking, twisting, finally breaking free.

He grabbed the shovel and called for her to stop. She didn’t. Raven pressed her face to the window, breathing hard. Her father lifted the shovel and swung, hitting his wife in the shoulders and back of the neck.

Raven gasped. For one moment Sandy Johnson hung frozen in space, her expression one of complete surprise. Then her husband swung the shovel again, connecting this time with the side of her head.

Raven heard the crack of the metal blade connecting with bone. Something flew. Blood, she realized, her stomach leaping to her throat. Brains.

Clutching her middle, Raven sank to the floor.
Oh God… Oh God…
She felt as if she was going to puke, and she pressed her lips together, fighting the sickness back.
He’d said he would kill her… He’d said… What to do…what to do…

She drew in a deep, shaking breath.
The police, she had to call the police. They would send an ambulance. Maybe it wasn’t too late.

Raven inched up and peered over the window ledge. Her mother hadn’t moved. Neither had her father. He stood above her crumpled form, shovel still in his hand, staring. Suddenly, he turned. He crossed to the center of the new patio and began to dig.