SUSPENSE THRILLERS-A Boxed Set (50 page)

“See you in the morning,” she said, trying not to take it out on her friend.

Charlene was gone, evidently. There was a ringing silence in the house.

Shadow stretched out on her stomach in the middle of the bed. She clicked the ballpoint pen a few times while staring at the legal pad. The plan slowly jelled in her mind. Nothing about it seemed wrong, though she understood it was against the law both of God and man. That it was wrong according to law should have set off warning bells that maybe she was sliding back into that dark place where madness dwelled, but it did not. She had already killed once. That killing had been done to protect a friend. More might be done to protect herself and other women, and what was wrong with that? It might even protect children too, for that matter. And how often were they afforded real protection?

She printed out the word: GUN. Then crossed it out. She didn't know how to handle a gun. She wrote: KNIFE. Crossed it out. There were too many ways a knife might fail her. She wrote: POISON.

Stared at it. Wondered about it. What kind? She knew about household cleaners—bleach, lye, insecticide. She knew about some poison plants, having been warned about them as a child—belladonna, lily of the valley, honeysuckle, oleander. Even the smoke from burning an oleander bush could kill you. She needed the proper poison, one that worked fast. Fast and hard. Something painful for the victim. Oh yes, the more painful the better.

Beneath the word “poison,” she wrote the first question.

If you ever had thoughts about hurting someone you loved, would you go immediately for help or fight those thoughts on your own?

That was the question she wished she'd asked her husband. If she'd ever known he'd had those kinds of thoughts, she could have removed her children from the house and saved them. Blame. There was so much for which she was to blame. There must be some way she could make up for it.

If you were sexually excited but the woman said no, what would you do?

That was a good one. She'd have to decide when they answered if they were telling the truth. She'd make them tell the truth. She knew there would be more than one death. More than one poisoning. The world was just too full of men like the one who had hurt her tonight.

She continued writing down the questions she wanted to ask of men until she had ten of them. She went over the list several times, deciding if it was clear and direct enough. She didn't want any confusion, this was too important—it involved life or death. After a while, she wrote at the top of the pad in bold letters, TRUTH OR PAIN. But this wasn't a game like “Truth or Consequences.” She marked it out, going over the big letters again and again until there was a solid black box making them illegible. She could tell the men the name of the game once it was in play. Before then she didn't want them to see the list.

She glanced up from the pad at the bed she lay on. It had no headboard or footboard. It was a plain double mattress set on top of a rolling frame. Wouldn't do. Below the list of questions she added:

Iron bedstead.

Rope or scarves.

Whiskey. Good stuff.

A great sense of satisfaction at a job well done descended upon her and sleep tugged. She lay the pad and pen on the floor beside the bed and turned her cheek onto crossed arms. She'd rest a little. She'd get up in a minute and undress, turn out the light.

Before the minute had passed she was fast asleep, fully clothed, sprawled over the bed with her bare feet hanging off the end of the mattress. She didn't wake in nightmare or move until Charlene came knocking at noon, calling to tell her breakfast was ready.

~*~

After eating the pancakes Charlene had cooked, Shadow moved to the cupboard beneath the kitchen sink and opened the doors wide. She rummaged beneath, taking up bottles and cartons to inspect before putting them back again.

“What are you doing?” Charlene wanted to know. “What's this boric acid for?” She held up a quart plastic container.

“Roaches. That's what the state hospital used. Only thing seems to work. Why?”

“Just wondering.”

“What are you looking for?”

“We have any rat poison?”

“Rat poison? We got rats?”

Shadow smiled a secret smile, her face turned away from Charlene. They had rats all right. There were rats every goddamn where. “I thought I heard them in the walls last night. In my room.”

Charlene shivered where she sat at the table, nibbling the folded pancake she held in one hand. “I never heard any rats in the house.”

“It's a big house. I know we have rats.”

“I don't think we have any poison for them.” Shadow swiveled from the sink cupboard. She stood, closing the doors, “Let's go to the feed store.”

“What feed store?”

“Well, I don't know where one is, but all these little towns outside Houston have them. I'll look in the phone book.”

“You really heard rats in the walls? I don't like rats.”

“Don't worry, we'll get rid of them.” For all time, she thought.

They had to drive all the way to Channelview, but they found a country feed store. It smelled of hay and chicken feed and chicken shit. In the back was a cage of yellow fluffy chicks for sale. They peeped and chirped their distress. A huge gray cat meandered the aisles, tail held high, king of his domain. Bet that old torn would like to get the little chicks, she thought.

While Charlene played with a barrel of horses' hooves that were sold as chew toys for dogs, Shadow searched out the section of wall that held cans of poisons. All of them were wrapped with warning labels or had a skull and crossbones signature on the front. She read the ingredients on the back of one product: Warfarin—45%. Anticoagulant.

Made them bleed to death. Inside, she guessed. Down in their black guts.

The other rat poisons had a lesser concentration of the deadly chemical. She chose the forty-five percent. On the way to the cash register, she picked up a can of rose-and-flower insecticide spray, a small jeweled cat collar, flea powder, and cat wormer. Just normal stuff people bought from a feed store. She didn't want them remembering her buying just the rat poison.

Charlene pawed through the shopping bag when they were in the car on the way home. She was like a kid that way, looking at new purchases, hoping for a little gift. Shadow often brought her things home. Ribbons. A lace scarf. Coffee mugs.

“Roses?” she asked. “We don't have any, do we? And what's this cat stuff for? I don't know, hon, it seems like you might've been dreaming in that store or something.”

Shadow ignored the question of the rose insecticide. She said, “I think I'll go to the SPCA and adopt a kitten.”

“But you're hardly ever home.”

“I know. But you are.”

“For me? A kitten, really? I can have a pet?” And then she was off, excited as a four-year-old, talking about litter boxes and the best kind of litter to use so it wouldn't smell up the mansion and how, when she was a girl, she'd had cats, what good animals they were, how she loved them, but how she'd never had a home as an adult where she could keep one.

Shadow smiled at this childish enthusiasm, happy her friend was pleased. But she was really thinking about anticoagulants and internal hemorrhaging rather than listening to anything Charlene was saying.

Their next stop was an antiques store in the old part of Seabrook. They had a cast-iron bed with quilts spread over the mattress. “How much?” Shadow asked.

“A hundred and seventy-five,” the proprietor said. “If you want the mattress and box spring, that would be another hundred extra.”

“I only want the bed frame.”

This time Charlene was busy fingering the costume jewelry in a velvet case on the counter.

Shadow took the bills from her purse and paid. “You deliver?”

The owner said they would, for a small fee, and took down the address. “The old Shoreville Mansion?” she asked, raising an appreciative eyebrow.

“The very same. We're house-sitting for the owner.”

“There are tales about that place . . .”

“Yes, we know. Could I have the bed by tomorrow?”

And it was settled. It was all so easy, everything falling into place, clickety click.

Before they left the store, Shadow bought Charlene a rhinestone-and-paste necklace that was tawdry enough for a Mardi Gras costume. Charlene linked it around her scrawny neck and beamed all the way home. “Now my new kitty and me will have matching neckpieces,” she said. “Can I get a black cat? Pure black?”

Shadow agreed to everything. It was a beautiful day, the sun shining full, the water of the bay sparkling, and all the world waiting, holding its breath for someone to come along and set it right. She meant to do just that. At least in her own little corner of the world.

~*~

He gave her a hundred-dollar bill, that sharply creased bill, when she did her first set. And his mouth said, “It's Saturday, baby.” As if she might have forgotten.

She had the bed set up in her bedroom, the old bed stored away. She had a collection of long silk scarves. She had the box of Warfarin that she shook each night, as if it were a tambourine keeping time to the music in her head. She had cupped her hand and poured about a fourth of a cup of the poison into a tall glass of whiskey. It dissolved in a day, turning the alcohol slightly cloudy. She poured a small amount into a bowl and set it outdoors, behind the mansion. In two days she found three birds and a mangy old dog dead near the bowl. Blood had dripped from their eye sockets and from the muzzle and ears of the dog. She buried the animals quickly before Charlene saw them. God, she hadn't meant to kill a dog. She felt awful for days afterward.

Charlene spent more time indoors lately, petting and babying the black kitten. She named it Blackie, the sort of name a kid would choose. She carried it for a while in the pocket of her old gray sweater. She let it sleep with her. She had found something to devote herself to besides the housework and cooking for Shadow.

The man told her he was “connected,” and he said it in that proud voice people use when speaking of being a member of a respected organization. She didn't care and wasn't impressed. He could be “connected” to the President of the United States and he'd still be a target for what she had in mind for him. He was the sleazeball of the earth. He was the Black Hole of Calcutta. The Ruination of society. The Bringer of fear and humiliation. She knew him without knowing him. She had known him forever.

But she said, when he told her his little secret, acting impressed, “Oh, really?”

He sat next to her in the passenger seat of the Toyota, his body too large for the small cramped seats. He had to let the seat back as far as it would go and he still looked like a vulture in a canary's birdcage, craning its neck to find a way out. He had the window rolled down, one big elbow sticking out in the wind.

She had him drive his own car, follow her to the parking lot of a Burger King. When she parked he came over to her window. She shut off the engine and asked if he'd get them coffee from inside, then they would sit in her car to drink it.

She wouldn't go inside with him for fear one of the night-shift employees might remember them together. They'd find his car parked in the lot one day. And ask about his disappearance. She must be very careful. She must be very smart. She would not spend time behind prison bars for ridding the earth of its evil men.

“Sure, baby, I'll get you coffee,” he said, thinking he was playing the gallant gentleman.

While sipping at the coffee she said, “I'll drive you to my place. I don't like the neighbors seeing strange cars parked in the drive at night.”

He said that was fine as long as she'd bring him back to his car.

After she was on the freeway, taking I-45 south, he wanted to know just where the hell she lived anyway. “We going to Jersey or something?” He thought he was funny, a real card.

“It's down in Seabrook.”

“Christ, that's a long way from my car. You sure you're gonna want to drive me all the way back? I could follow you and park down the block or something.”

“This is better. I'll get you back, don't worry.” Telling lies is just as easy as dancing them, she thought. You just opened your mouth and said whatever the other person wanted to hear. Easy.

He tried to fondle her on the drive home, but she slapped his hand so hard it stung her palm and then she laughed prettily. “You'll just have to wait,” she said. “Tell me more about what you do before we get there.”

While he talked, she concentrated on her driving and the good feeling she was getting from the dispassionate mood that held her in thrall. It occurred to her that she had not felt anything in a long time. Other than anger and fury, nothing. Friendship, yes, for Charlene, but she hadn't felt any real joy for more than two years, or even disappointment, sorrow, shame at taking off her clothes in front of men, guilt for killing the rapist, or any real fear she'd be caught.

It was as if she had been dropped into another world when Scott killed the children. She had fallen into the world of lonesome, of despair and heartache.

She couldn't think of that. She couldn't allow the memories to become too vivid or they'd kill her.

“What am I gonna get for my money?” he asked, breaking into her reverie.

She cleared her throat and took the exit for NASA Road One that would take her into Seabrook. “Whatever you want, sugar.”

She could almost hear his mind clicking over. If his thoughts had lips, they'd be smacking right now. She truly hated him.

“Do you have a wife, a family?” she asked.

“Divorced. No kids. I never liked goddamn brats running around the place.”

Perfect, she thought. Besides. Who would have him? Who could stand his great ugly hands on her body, his huge flabby lips crawling along her skin? And she was glad for his unborn children, glad they had been spared being saddled with him for a father.

When she drove down the circle drive, the headlights spread over the mansion's wide marble front steps.

“Whoa,” he said. “I didn't know you made that kind of money dancing.”

“I don't. We're house-sitting. Rent's free.”