The Howling II (7 page)

Dr. Goetz got out of his chair and came over to sit beside her on the sofa. His pale blue eyes searched her face, then became unreadable. “Karyn, I think maybe we were hasty in cutting you down to one visit a week. If it’s possible, I’d like to see you more often. Twice. Three times, if you could manage it.”

Karyn wanted to cry. Ever since the crack-up in Las Vegas, she had made steady progress in her therapy. Until now. What was happening to her? She knew how it must sound - someone following her, noises in the night, and now seeing her supposedly dead husband. The classic symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia.

For the first time in many months Karyn wondered if she might be losing her grip on reality. Maybe she did need more time with the analyst.

“I’ll talk to my husband about it,” she said. “Goodbye, Doctor.”

*****

The front door of the Richter house flew open and banged shut with an unnecessary slam. Joey Richter raced in, dumped his schoolbooks on the hall table without slowing down, and made a speedy circuit of the downstairs rooms. He came to a stop at the foot of the stairs.

“Mom!” he called.

Mrs. Jensen came down the stairs carrying a basket of laundry. “Your mother isn’t home. And if she was, she’d tell you not to slam the door.”

“Where is she?”

“She had an appointment downtown.”

“With the doctor?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Why did she have to see the doctor today? This isn’t her day.”

“I’m sure I couldn’t say.”

“She’s probably having those dreams again. The ones that scare her.”

“I don’t know anything about any dreams,” Mrs. Jensen said. “Now come in and eat your lunch. It’s good vegetable soup.”

“Campbell’s?”

“No, it’s homemade.”

“I like Campbell’s.”

“You’re going to like this even better. Come on and I’ll dish it up for you.”

Joey clumped into the kitchen and ate two bowls of the soup, which he admitted was almost as good as Campbell’s. He finished up with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a glass of milk while Mrs. Jensen loaded clothes into the washer in the adjoining laundry room.

“I wish Mom would get home,” Joey said. “I want to tell her about the face last night.”

Mrs. Jensen came back into the kitchen. “Did you say a face?”

“Yeah. Last night it looked right in my window. Wow, was it ugly!”

“You had a dream, you mean.”

“Nah, it wasn’t any dream, it was a face. All kind of scrunched up and hairy and with great big teeth. Really ugly.”

The housekeeper studied the boy for a moment. “Did it scare you?”

Joey met her eye seriously, then broke into mischievous laughter. “No way. I knew who it was all the time.”

“Who?”

“That crazy Kelly in a rubber mask. He’s always doing crazy things. Probably climbed up on the roof and thought he could scare me. Crazy.”

“What would he be doing up so late?” Mrs. Jensen said with stern disapproval.

“He gets to stay up as late as he wants to,” Joey said. “I’m as old as he is and don’t even get to stay up and watch ‘Kojak.’ “

“It does you a lot more good to get your sleep than staying up to watch junk like that. Or playing dumb tricks like your friend Kelly.”

“I’ll tell Mom,” Joey said. “She’ll buy me a mask, a horribler one than Kelly’s even, then I’ll go to his house and really scare him.”

“I don’t think you’d better tell your mother about it,” Mrs. Jensen said.

“Why not? She’ll buy me a mask. I know she will.”

“Maybe so, but your mother’s not been feeling too well, and I don’t think it would do her any good to hear about faces at the window and such foolishness.”

“Awww.”

“You want her to get well, don’t you?”

“Sure.”

“Then don’t go bothering her with this kind of stuff.”

“Oh, okay.”

Joey jumped up from the table and ran outside, slamming the door firmly. Mrs. Jensen looked after him with a worried frown, then shook off the thought and got busy picking up the dishes.

ROOM 9 IN THE Evergreen Motel was cool and dim in the pale light that filtered in through the curtains. Roy Beatty sat beside the bed, holding the hand of the woman who lay among the twisted sheets.

“I was worried when you didn’t come home last night,” he said.

Marcia rolled her head on the pillow and looked at him. There were shadows around her deep green eyes, but they shone as brilliantly as ever.

She said, “I’m all right now. It was frightening when it happened. Last night was the first time I wasn’t prepared for it. It must have been the excitement of being so close, of seeing at last what we are going to do. I could not control the change.”

Roy stroked a strand of black hair from her forehead. “My poor Marcia.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “There is a patch of trees near their house. I was able to reach them and stay there until daylight. No one saw me, except perhaps the boy, and I don’t think he knew what he was seeing.”

“Maybe we should forget about this. Go away from here. For your sake.”

“Forget about it?” Marcia sat straight up in bed, and it seemed to Roy that he could see the strength flow into her body. “Never! I have not waited this long, come this far, only to turn back. As for what happened to me last night, I will take care to see that it does not happen again. I will keep a tighter hold on my emotions.”

Roy sighed and nodded his head slowly. He stood up and walked over to the window where he pulled aside the curtain and looked out over the asphalt of the parking lot. The Evergreen was not on one of the main highways which ran through Seattle, and in the middle of the week there was little business. There were only three cars parked outside, the white Ford which Roy had rented, and two others. They looked cold and abandoned in the misting rain.

“If it’s going to rain, I wish to Christ it would really rain,” he said irritably. “This everlasting drizzle is driving me up the wall.”

“We won’t have to be here much longer,” Marcia said. “Your Karyn is frightened and worried now. The way we want her.”

“Why do you keep calling her my Karyn?”

“I’m sorry. It was just an expression. I won’t do it any more if it annoys you.”

“Well, it does. Anyway, what’s the need for all this?” Roy continued to stare out the window. “Why don’t we do what we came to do and get it over with?”

Marcia slipped out of bed. and came over to stand beside him. She took his broad hand in hers and held it against her smooth, naked hip. “Indulge me in this, my Roy, and I will make it up to you.”

He held himself tensely, not looking at her. She moved his hand across the flat of her stomach and down to the crisp bush of pubic hair. He resisted for a moment more, then surrendered and turned to face her. He whispered her name. His fingers probed between her legs and found the dampness there.

Marcia grasped his wrist and held it, keeping his hand pressed against her. “When this business is over I will make you very happy. I know I have not been a complete woman to you these past months, but I will make it right in a hundred ways. You will never regret being with me, darling.” She drew back and her eyes searched his face. “You are with me, aren’t you, my Roy?”

“You know I am.”

“Good.” She kissed him lightly on the mouth, then slipped away and began to put on her clothes. Once again she was businesslike.

“Are you sure you were seen at the shopping center?”

“Karyn saw me, all right,” he said. “Once when she rode the escalator below where I was standing, and again as I was going out. She followed me to the parking lot, but I lost her there.”

“Good. She will have much to think about, many things to remember when we take the next step.”

“And that is - “

“We kill the boy.”

Roy drew in his breath and let it out slowly. “Is that the only way?”

“It is the best way. It is the way that will hurt her the most before we finally finish with her.” Marcia fixed him with her eyes. “Do you have some objection?”

“It’s just - killing the boy - “

Marcia’s laugh clattered off the walls in the small room. “Come now, Roy. After the things you have done these past three years? The blood you have spilled? Would one more killing bother you?”

He could not meet her eye. “Remember, Marcia, I wasn’t born to this life the way you were. What I am, you made me. I am not all wolf. I still have human emotions sometimes.”

Marcia stepped close to him and touched his face. “I understand, my darling. The time will come when you will no longer be held back by remorse.

Until then you will take strength from me. I know that when the time comes to act, you will not fail.”

“When - will it be time?”

“From now on we will watch the house every night. The first time they leave the boy alone, you will kill him.”

MR. BJORKLUND SHRUGGED and spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Karyn waited for a moment for him to say something more. When he didn’t she looked down at the long wooden counter between them. There, each in its familiar pot, were her three plants. They were barely recognizable. The fern and the spider plant were yellow-brown, shriveled, and ugly, dead, ropy things that had nothing to do with the vibrant living greenery they had been. Only the tough philodendron had not given up. With the tenacity of the dying it clung to the mossy post, but its leaves were pale and sickly, splotched with brown like the hands of old people with liver spots.

“I’m afraid they’re goners,” Mr. Bjorklund said. “There was nothing I could do.”

“Thanks, anyway,” Karyn said dully.

“What have you been feeding them?”

Karyn looked up at him curiously. “I didn’t feed them anything, except what you gave me. I kept them in the soil you blended for me, and I was very careful about watering them.”

“Somebody fed them,” the nurseryman said. “They’ve been poisoned.”

Karyn stared at him.

“I ran a test on the soil in all three pots. Each one is saturated with enough herbicide to kill a Douglas fir.”

“That isn’t possible.”

Bjorklund shrugged again. “All I can tell you is what the tests showed.”

“Is there some way the herbicide could have got into the soil accidentally?”

“Nope. It was added to the soil deliberately and carefully. The concentration was heaviest right down around the roots. Then way I figure it, somebody jammed the nozzle of a plastic squeeze bottle down in there and pumped the stuff in.”

“Why would anybody want to do that?”

“You tell me.”

Karyn looked down again at the sorry shriveled things that had been her plants. “Then they’re all - dead?”

“As last winter’s corsage,” he said. “The philodendron might hang on for a while if we transplant it into some rich new soil and feed it special nutrients, but if you want my opinion, it’s a goner too. I’ll try to save it if you want me to.”

“No,” Karyn said abruptly. “No, never mind.” She turned and started for the door.

“How about replacements?” Bjorkland called after her. “I can fix you up with three nice healthy plants.”

“No, thank you.”

“What about these pots? They’re yours.”

“You keep them,” Karyn said without looking back. “I have no more use for them.”

*****

The house in Mountlake Terrace seemed painfully empty. Karyn wandered around restlessly, then stopped short as she realized she was avoiding the family room. That was where her plants had been.

For God’s sake, they were only vegetables! she reminded herself. And yet she had to admit now that they had come to mean much more to her. Far too much.

She saw the absurdity of her feelings, but seeing it did nothing to lessen her sense of loss. The plants had been hers, and hers alone, and now they were dead. Murdered, if it was accurate to say a plant had been murdered. Who would do a thing like that? And why? It had to be someone who was trying to get at. her. The someone who was in her house the other night?

She put aside the suspicions forming in her mind when David came home. She told him briefly that her plants had died, without going into details. There was no way to tell him without sounding more paranoid than ever.

David was very kind. Sensing her mood, he put an arm around her and patted her gently. “You know something, we haven’t been out together for a long time,” he said. “What do you say we have dinner tonight at Teagle’s?”

“But you have to work tomorrow.”

“So I’ll go in a little late. The business will hold together. How about it?”

“I’d like it,” Karyn said. “Very much.”

David gave her hand a squeeze. “It will be good for you to get out of the house.”

Mrs. Jensen came in and cleared her throat to get their attention. “Will you be wanting an early dinner tonight?” she said.

“We’re going out,” David told her. “Just make something for Joey.”

The housekeeper nodded and turned to leave.

“Oh, Mrs. Jensen,” David called her back.

“Yes?”

“There was a ladder left leaning up against the back of the house the other day. I had to put it away.”

Karyn looked up quickly. “A ladder?”

Mrs. Jensen made a clucking sound with her tongue. “Ah, that would have been one of Joey’s little friends. The Kelly boy.”

“I wish Joey would tell his friends to leave things in the garage alone. Or at least put them back when they’re finished.”

“I’ll speak to him about it,” said Mrs. Jensen.

It was warm in the house, but Karyn caught herself shivering as though she were caught in a cold draft.

AT FIRST THE IDEA of getting dressed and going out had seemed hardly worth the trouble to Karyn. It could not change anything. Still, it was sweet of David to make the effort to please her, so she went along with it. However, as she sat before her dressing table applying a touch of pale pink lipstick, she found she was truly looking forward to a night out. As David said, it had been a long time.

She stood up and looked herself over in the full-length mirror on the closet door. The long dress clung nicely, flattering her trim figure. Not bad, she decided, for a neurotic lady closing in on thirty. She added a final dab of perfume and went downstairs to where David was waiting.