Storm Front (12 page)
Authors: Robert Conroy
She had been napping in her bra and panties. She quickly threw on her sweat suit and slippers. Where was her cell phone? Downstairs in her purse. Where was Tony’s shotgun? All locked up in the basement for safety’s sake. Besides, she thought ruefully, she didn’t know how to shoot the damn thing anyhow.
A noise downstairs told her the strangers had forced their way into her house. This is my home, she wanted to scream, but reason held her tongue. Would her screams scare them off or excite them? She would be prudent and try not to draw attention to herself. They had talked about getting an alarm system, but hadn’t convinced themselves of the need. Sheridan was a safe community, wasn’t it? Or maybe there was no place safe anymore.
Where to hide? The attic crawlspace was a good choice, but then she remembered that a wall of old clothes was backed up against the closet ceiling hatch that led to it. Along with taking forever to clear, the noise would attract too much attention.
She heard more noises downstairs. She willed herself to be silent. Where would they search, and what were they looking for? Valuables, of course, and the most likely spot was the master bedroom, and she was in the master bedroom. After mentally racing through a number of bad alternatives, she took the best one available and crawled under the bed. It was so silly, she thought. Only in bad movies did anyone hide under a bed.
She heard footsteps on the stairs. Traci willed herself not to breathe, not to make a noise. They were in the hallway, and then the other rooms. She heard their voices, male voices. She was too terrified to make words out of the sounds—she only knew that they were as menacing as a tiger’s growl. She felt utterly helpless.
They were in her room. Strange, but they hadn’t turned on any lights. No one looked under a bed, she told herself. No one was even looking for her. They didn’t even know she was home. She’d cleaned up the kitchen, hadn’t she?
She screamed when a hand closed around her ankle and began pulling her out from under the bed.
* * *
As he pulled up on his snowmobile, Petkowski realized he had been to this place before. It was one of a number of nice, expensive detached condos on small lots. Affluent couples lived there, and, if he recalled correctly, association bylaws prohibited children. He thought the only way to really prevent children was to prevent screwing, but that was none of his business. He liked kids and hoped someday to have a handful.
These particular people were real winners, or whiners, he thought as he pushed his way through the almost waist-deep snow to the door. The woman seemed nice enough, petite and cute, although who knew what she was like when she was alone with her husband. Maybe she was a real viper who dared him to belt her and then she’d call the cops when he did. Regardless, that didn’t give her gonzo of a husband the right to slap her around. Mr. Happy Homeowner was a big guy, which suddenly gave Petkowski pause. He was all alone and he’d better not forget that. Backup was nonexistent.
He pounded on the door. Someone had cleared a space on the small porch so he could stand. Their names were Fred and Cindy Baumann and they were about thirty. The condo was expensive and maybe they had money problems. Probably cost more than they could afford. Thanks to the housing collapse, they probably owed more on it than it was worth and were trapped in a place they could neither sell nor afford to keep.
Or maybe their problems were more traditional. Maybe one was doing some extracurricular screwing. Hey, maybe both. Cindy Baumann was pretty good looking. Too bad she was married to such an asshole.
Petkowski pounded on the door a second time. It opened and Mrs. Baumann stood there. Her face was red and there was a welt forming under right eye. She looked physically and emotionally defeated and very much like a candidate for a personal protection order. Petkowski wondered if he should suggest it to her.
“Police,” he said and showed a badge. Otherwise he looked like anybody in a snowmobile suit. If the situation wasn’t so serious, it would’ve been funny.
“I’m sorry, officer, but the call was a mistake, a misunderstanding.”
“I’ll judge that,” he said. “When a call like this comes in, I am required to check it out.”
It wasn’t quite true. Sheridan Police operating procedures gave him considerable latitude and discretion in such matters. They just didn’t allow him to be wrong. He would be safe rather than sorry.
Mrs. Baumann didn’t resist as he pushed the door open and stepped inside. Mr. Big Bully Baumann got out of a reclining chair and approached Petkowski. His face was also flushed, although there was no bruising. Petkowski assumed he’d been drinking. One whiff of his breath confirmed that.
“Like my wife says, Officer, we don’t need you no more. Didn’t need you in the first place,” he corrected himself.
“And like I told her, sir, I’ll be the judge of that.” He turned to Mrs. Baumann. “Are you all right here? Do you want to come with me and press charges?”
She smiled quickly and he liked the change. “Come with you? Just how the heck would we accomplish that in this weather?” Her expression changed and she was again sad. “No, I’m not pressing charges. There’s nothing to press. It was a misunderstanding.”
“How’d you get the bruise?” Petkowski asked. “Did he hit you? That’s a criminal offense if he did.”
“She fell, if it’s any of your fucking business,” Fred Baumann said. He positioned himself so that he towered over the shorter Petkowski, who was beginning to really wonder why on earth he’d taken the run alone. “So why don’t you go back to ticketing speeders and get out of my house?” Baumann snarled. “What me and the lady do is my business, not yours.”
Petkowski shrugged and smiled broadly. “Hey, you’re right, Mr. Baumann. She’s yours and you can do whatever you want with her. Tell you what, I’ll run along. Why not walk me to the door?”
Fred Baumann laughed and walked a pace behind Petkowski. When they reached the doorway, Petkowski stepped out into the whirling snow, and Baumann followed. Petkowski turned quickly and snarled at him. “You are an asshole, Baumann, and a fucking coward for hitting a woman.”
Enraged, Baumann grabbed for Petkowski’s shoulder. Petkowski wheeled, grabbed Baumann’s wrist and launched the larger man headfirst into a snowdrift. When Baumann got up, sputtering and confused, Petkowski planted his right knee in Baumann’s gut. Baumann doubled over and puked at least two cans of beer into the otherwise pristine white snow. A second knee to the face straightened him up and bloodied his nose.
Baumann was dazed and vulnerable. Petkowski slapped and punched him a half dozen times. “I’m not going to give you a ticket, dickhead. It wouldn’t fly because you’ve scared your wife into silence. This time you get off with a warning. Did you like my warning? You made me come all the way out here in this miserable fucking weather for nothing. That does not make me happy.”
“You’re not allowed to hit me. I’ll sue,” Baumann said as he spat out blood and tried to keep from retching.
“See any witnesses? Hey, I don’t even see Frosty the Snowman.” Petkowski slapped him a couple of more times and Baumann began to whimper. Despite his size, Fred Baumann was not a fighter, and for that Petkowski was thankful.
“Besides, you started it by grabbing me and taking a swing at me. You’re so much bigger than me, so who’ll believe anything else? Hey, you want me to stop?”
“Yes,” he whimpered.
“Then leave your wife alone. I’ll check back and if I see any new bruises, I’ll find you and kick your ass right up between your ears. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Yes sir. Yes sir, Officer.”
At that moment, Cindy Baumann opened the door and looked at her bloody and dazed husband. She did not appear upset. “What happened?”
“He fell,” Petkowski said and held his breath. He shouldn’t have done what he’d done. He shouldn’t have pounded on her jerk of a husband, regardless of the provocation. He’d let the built-up rage and frustration of the day get to him. People were hungry, hurting, and dying out there, and these idiots couldn’t get along with each other for one night in a house full of expensive middle-class comforts. If Cindy Baumann still had feelings for the jerk, and so many abused women inexplicably did for their abusers, his career as a cop was over and he might just spend time in jail. He’d let his frustrations overwhelm him and now he might be in big trouble.
Cindy Baumann nodded solemnly and again permitted a trace of a smile. “He fell? I believe it. There’s a lot of that going around, especially if you’ve been drinking like a fish. He’s so sloshed he won’t remember much of anything tomorrow.”
* * *
“Would you believe the snow is actually tapering off?” Wally Wellman said.
Mort Cristman, the young anchor, smiled wanly. He was staring at a window that was covered with snow two thirds of its height. It was almost like being underwater, except that you could see better underwater. “I would no longer believe anything you told me. You are a weatherman and that makes you a congenital liar. Or is it genital liar?”
“No,” Wally answered, “lawyers are genital liars because they’re such pricks. Hey, I didn’t say it was stopping. Like I just said on the phone to the governor—who, by the way, called me and not you—and told her the rate of snowfall has slowed down. It is now no longer a deluge, merely a rotten heavy snowfall. It’s like a man who was drowning in fourteen feet of water being told that the water’s only twelve feet deep.”
Cristman stretched and yawned. They were seated in Wally’s cubicle. “Does that mean I can go home now? My mommy gets worried when I’m out after dark and it’s almost midnight.”
Wally laughed. The kid was beginning to grow on him. “I’ll bet you didn’t even bring a change of underwear, did you? How about a toothbrush or a razor?”
“Hell no. I had no idea I’d be camping here with you and all the other Scouts. Don’t tell me you bought a change?”
“I always keep fresh clothes in my file cabinet,” Wally said. “Emergencies are always unexpected. That’s why they call them emergencies. Tomorrow I will look fresh and bright, while you will look like road kill.”
“At least there’s a shower in the men’s room,” Cristman grumbled. “I won’t stink all that badly. Of course, who’d know?”
“I would,” said Wally. “By the way, there’s a couple of extra toothbrushes in my closet and, if you’re real nice, you can have one. A new one.”
Cristman yawned again. “Gracias, amigo. So tell me, is it true that you and the governor were once an item?”
Wally sighed. “Once upon a time when the earth was young, I thought that Lauren Landsman and I would spend eternity together. Then she found someone else and the rest is history. Eternity was a lot shorter than I expected.”
“And you found someone else, too, Wally. I know about your loss and you know I’m sorry. My mom died when I was eleven and I felt all alone and lost for so long. It took a lot of time to get over it.”
“To the extent that you ever do,” Wally added softly. “And thanks for the thought. Now I won’t charge you for the toothbrush. However, the toothpaste is extra.”
Strange, though, his conversations with Lauren had begun friendly enough and quickly achieved a level of comfortable intimacy that surprised him. During the last days of her life, he and Ellen had discussed his future. She hadn’t wanted him to mourn, or go into a shell and feel sorry for himself, which is exactly what he’d done. He’d known it was a betrayal of his promise to her that he would continue to live life to the fullest, but he simply couldn’t shake the depression until recently.
His conversations with old flame Lauren Landsman had been a surprising tonic. Better, he knew that Ellen would not complain one bit. He smiled inwardly. Who says a blizzard doesn’t have a silver lining? Now if he could only get Cristman a clean change of underwear before no one wanted to sit next to him.
CHAPTER 11
The teachers and other adults marooned in Patton Elementary had started a routine of four hours on duty with the kids and four hours off. The number of children had declined only a little as the parents who were going to be able to pick up their children had done so, and it looked as if they were stuck with themselves and the remainder for the duration, whatever that meant. The teachers made jokes that some parents who could pick up their kids had decided to let the schools provide free babysitting. Even if every student somehow disappeared, and there were those who thought that would be a good idea, there was no way for the teachers to depart. No one’s car would be able to navigate through the snow and they’d all heard about the roads blocked by thousands of unmoving cars.
“We’re going to be here until spring,” Maddy said in mock despair. “At which time someone will find our mummified corpses and we’ll make the national news or a National Geographic special. Our fifteen minutes of fame. I hope we get a nice memorial service. I just don’t want a school named after me.”
“I just hope we get some more toilet paper,” sniffed Donna Harris. “The little assholes are using too much.” She giggled at her own bad joke.
Of course, the brandy helped loosen them both up. They were in the principal’s office and each had downed a couple of shots in plastic cups. Neither was close to legally drunk, but the brandy, combined with fatigue and stress, had made them a little giddy. It was the first chance they’d had to relax and they were going to seize the moment.
Many of the kids were on their cell phones and talking to family and friends. It looked like the school’s prohibition on them had been a waste of time and effort. There were hundreds of the devices along with a smaller number of laptops with webcams throughout the building. Accepting the inevitable, the kids had been told to keep them all charged in case the power went out. Modern batteries had long lives, but would not last forever, especially if the owner was hell bent on talking to everyone he or she had ever known.
Donna took a sip from her cup and smiled. “So when are you going to sleep with Officer Mike?”
Maddy shrugged. “Don’t know. Soon. Maybe. Maybe never. It’s a big step. I’m just not certain I’m ready for it.”
Donna rolled her eyes. “Please don’t tell me you’re a virgin? I was fifteen when I tried sex for the first time and found that I liked it, really liked it.”
Maddy was mildly surprised. She’d always considered Donna to be far more sophisticated and liberated than she, but fifteen? “You make it sound like you’ve had sex with a lot of guys.”
“Define ‘a lot.’ Actually the first time was the night of the prom my sophomore year and it was with the senior boy who’d taken me. We’d been dating, thought we were in love, and it seemed like the right thing, and, wow, was it. I made him do it to me a second time, which was even better, and he nearly died on the third. After that, there were some other guys, but no one-night stands except for one time my first year teaching when I went to Mexico on Christmas vacation and got drunk and laid by some kid from Los Angeles. That doesn’t count, does it?”
“Of course not,” Maddy said and took another slow sip. “I’ve never been to Mexico, but I’ve heard it’s like Vegas—nothing that happens there counts against life.”
“That’s right. It’s a screw free zone. It’s also where I got my first tattoo.”
Maddy laughed. Donna had a surprising number of tattoos and had to dress carefully to keep some of the more interesting ones covered up. As to herself, she had but two—a small Tudor Rose at the base of her spine and a butterfly just below her navel.
“Then I met my beloved husband and have been faithful to him ever since, although we started having sex on the second date. Now, how about you?”
Maddy took a deep breath. Maybe it finally was time to talk about it. She’d kept it all cooped up in her mind for too long. Not even her parents knew the story. She’d been too embarrassed and ashamed to tell them.
“I was still a virgin when I went to college,” she said quietly, hesitantly. “Not a saint, in fact a long ways from one, but still a virgin. Never knew anybody in high school I wanted to do actually go all the way with. Part of the way, yes, even most of the way, but not totally. Some of it was fear of pregnancy, and the rest of it was that I had high standards regarding guys. Funny, but I wasn’t all that concerned about AIDS. That stuff happened to other people. Then, towards the middle of my junior year at State, I met Dirk.”
“Dirk?” Donna practically shrieked. “There is nobody named Dirk. He had to be joking, right?”
Maddy flushed. “His name was Dirk. I saw it on his passport and his driver’s license. He was from Sweden and studying architecture. He was also a slightly older man—a graduate assistant in his mid-twenties—and very sophisticated. At least I thought he was since he was so European. We went out a few times and I decided I was totally in love with him. He had money and a really nice apartment he shared with two other guys, and one night he arranged for his roommates to be out and we had sex.”
“How was it with Dirk? Did Dirk have a great dick?”
Despite herself, Maddy laughed. “You are just so evil, Donna. It was the most significant moment of my life and you make fun of it. Shame on you.”
And shame on me, Maddy thought, for not realizing just how funny it was. “At any rate, we dated for about a year. His two roommates, Tomas and Joe, were also from Sweden, had local girlfriends, Crystal and Jackie, and we sometimes went on weekend trips. He taught me everything about sex.”
“Everything?” Donna asked with a hint of incredulity. “Or just everything you know? Don’t tell me that sex with Dirk-Dick meant more than the approved missionary position and possibly included oral sex?”
Maddy smiled. “What can I say? Of course it did. We did anything and everything and I liked it. Loved it. Dirk made it wonderful. My whole life was enchanted.”
“Then what went wrong, Maddy?” She had seen the sudden change in Maddy’s expression. One second she’d been laughing, but now she looked grim.
“He betrayed me, and in the worst possible way,” she said angrily. “I thought we had a long-range relationship with maybe even marriage in the future. I was even thinking about what it would be like living in Sweden, but then it all changed.”
Maddy had gone to the apartment on a Saturday night for nothing more than the usual. There would be drinks, some music, and they’d all go to their respective beds with their respective lovers. The roommates were there along with their girlfriends, and there was marijuana, which wasn’t unusual, but Maddy didn’t smoke any. She didn’t trust the stuff, and she didn’t want a random test revealing it to the athletic department. She could lose her scholarship and that would be a disaster. Neither she nor her parents had the money to keep her away at school.
Dirk and Maddy went to his bedroom and made love. Afterwards, Dirk stood up and said he had an idea. Still naked, he left the room.
A couple of minutes later, he returned and grabbed her by the wrist. “Come on out and join the party.”
She protested for a moment, but the others, also naked, came in and laughingly dragged her out to the living room. She was only mildly upset. They’d all traveled together and there had been some casual intimacy. While Crystal and Jackie had sometimes wandered around nude, the farthest Maddy had gone was wearing only her panties. Athletics and solid Polish genetics had given her by far the best figure, which made Crystal and Jackie jealous. Crystal was a twig, and Jackie needed to lose a little. This moment, she quickly decided, was just another small step in her education as an adult.
Dirk said something to Crystal and she began to kiss and fondle Jackie. The two women asked her to join them and Maddy declined. She was surprised and mildly disgusted. Jackie and Crystal were soon writhing on the floor, moaning and groping at each other while the guys laughed.
“Ever do it with a woman?” Maddy asked Donna.
“No,” Donna answered and thought quickly about a sleepover with another girl when she’d been thirteen. They’d touched each other with their eyes closed in order to pretend it was somebody else, but that was all and it had never happened again.
“Me neither,” Maddy said and continued her story.
A few more drinks, and Dirk again stood. He was erect and aroused. But, instead of reaching for Maddy, he grabbed Crystal by the hand and pulled her off a gasping Jackie. He led her into the bedroom. Crystal was laughing and unprotesting. “Swap time,” Dirk announced.
Tomas grabbed an astonished Maddy and propelled her into another bedroom.
“I started crying,” she told Donna. “I said I didn’t do things like that. Tomas said I was going to start and that if Dirk could fuck his girlfriend, he could fuck me, and that Joe was going to be next.”
By now, even Donna was shocked. “What bastards. What did you do?”
“I wasn’t going to let him screw me. I was an athlete, but so was he. I tried to wrestle him away, but he was big and strong and aroused and angry, and obviously felt he deserved me in exchange for Dirk screwing Crystal. He said if I argued, he’d get Joe and they’d force me. I didn’t want to get hurt, so I did the next best thing.”
“You gave him a blow job, didn’t you?”
Tears started flowing down Maddy’s face. “No, although I said I would. He may have been stronger and bigger but he was drunk and stoned. When I agreed he relaxed and then I kneed him really hard in the balls. Then I found Dirk and now he was screwing Jackie, and told him I never wanted to see him again. It must have been a weird scene, because we were all still naked and everybody was screaming, including Tomas who was on the floor and couldn’t stand up. Dirk told me to get out and that I was a frigid American bitch and that he deserved better than a lower-class loser like me. The others pushed me out of the apartment, still naked, and then threw my clothes out. There were people in that hallway and they saw me and they laughed at me. I knew some of them and I wanted to die. I wanted to find a rock and live under it.”
“God,” Donna said and took another sip of her drink.
“I got dressed and went to my room. Later I saw a counselor who suggested I see a psychologist, which I did, and she helped a lot, but I still couldn’t get over it. At least I wasn’t suicidal or anything like that. I talked to the police, but a woman cop told me it was unlikely I could prove rape. She said five people would testify that I consented to everything and besides it would become public record, so I dropped the idea. I don’t think she was really all that interested in pursuing it. Dirk and his buddies told everyone that I liked group sex, so I had a lot of interesting date offers. I just stopped going out until I was out of school.”
She wiped the tears from her eyes and took a swallow of the brandy. “I ran into Crystal a few weeks later, and she told me that she and Jackie were always having sex with Dirk, and nobody seemed to mind so what the hell was my problem. I wanted to punch her lights out, but she was so thin I was afraid I’d break her. God, I wanted to, though.”
“I’ll bet.”
Maddy sighed. It did feel better to have told Donna. “So I gave up any thoughts of a love life and concentrated on grades and volleyball. When I tore up the ligament in my right knee it killed me a second time because I really thought I had pro or Olympic potential. After all, I’d been honorable mention Big Ten. Later, my coach said I should stop feeling sorry for myself because I really wasn’t all that good. Great coaching, huh? At any rate, I focused on classes and wound up with a great grade point average when I graduated. And that helped me get a job in Sheridan, which meant the whole ordeal hadn’t been a total waste.”
“And you’ve never dated since then? I’m not too sure I blame you, at least for slowing down, but not all men are pricks like Dirk and his sadistic little chums.”
“I’ve dated some guys since I graduated, but I’ve never allowed anyone to get close to me. Of course, I never found anyone I wanted to get close to me. That is, not until Mike and I’m still surprised that it’s happened.”
“And now you want to get up close and personal with him like you’ve never been since Dick the Prick, I mean Dirk.”
Maddy laughed. “That’s right. Dirk is back in Sweden and I hope he freezes to death. Or at least his balls freeze off. Tomas is in Europe as well, and I don’t know what happened to Joe. Crystal is a nurse in Chicago, and Jackie is an accountant with GM, and lives a few miles from here. Jackie called me once to tell me how sorry she was and how foolish they had all been and how she’d like to forget it. Of course, she’s getting married to some older guy lawyer who’s thinking of running for Congress, and she really would appreciate it if I didn’t tell anybody about the weekend sex and marijuana parties. I told her my lips were sealed.”
Maddy took another swallow. “Everybody always thought of me as an all-American girl. I was always so healthy, so intellectually and emotionally well rounded it was disgusting. I was wholesome, although, thank God, no one ever called me perky. I would have belted them. I showed them all, didn’t I? I screwed up royally.”
Donna checked her cup. It was empty. She poured them both a little more brandy. They would have to ration the bottle or they’d be out of liquor before the school ran out of toilet paper.
“So are you really over it?”
“Yes,” Maddy said, finally meaning it. She was crying again, but this time it was in relief. In retrospect it had been stupid on her part to let it dominate her life for so long. She’d known that, but acting on it was a different matter. Telling Donna was the smartest thing she’d done in a long while. Now, should she tell Mike? No, she decided. Not yet, but she would. He deserved to know.
Donna kicked back another swallow and looked at Maddy intently. “What they did to you was a rotten, shitty thing. I’m glad you’re not thinking of getting even with Jackie. I think Dirk and his boys used her as much as they used you.”
“Agreed.”
“What have you told Mike?”
“Nothing. He knows there was something that happened back in college, but I think he assumes it was date rape. Actually, in a strange sort of way, it was. He’s very understanding and helpful, but I’m not ready yet to admit that I was somebody’s sex toy. But for Mike I will be ready.”