Endless Night Page 11

  If they got me, I was a dead man.

  Not that they’d shoot me down in cold blood, nothing like that. No matter what everybody says, the LAPD doesn’t go around murdering people or beating them up for no reason. If you don’t try to fight them, they take you into custody without roughing you up at all.

  I would have to make them shoot me.

  If I shoot, they’ll shoot.

  You see, the main rule of our little group is that we do not get taken alive. There’s a simple reason for that: anyone taken into custody might squeal on the others.

  Nobody wants to get squealed on.

  So nobody gets taken alive. If we can’t escape from the cops, we’re obligated to shoot it out to the end, or commit suicide.

  There’s too much of a penalty for being taken alive.

  It’s a death penalty. You give yourself up, everybody in your family dies. Your parents, your wife, your children. Your girlfriend, if you’re not married.

  In my case, they would kill my fiancée, Lisa; my sisters, Sandy and Dora; probably their husbands, Steve and Gary; and most definitely my niece, Sue, and my two nephews, Randy and Dan.

  Sounds a bit extreme, huh?

  It’s supposed to be. It’s supposed to make us die if we have to.

  On the bright side, though, it has never been done.

  So far, the threat’s been enough.

  Because you know they’ll do it. They’ll enjoy it, too. You know damn well what they do to people and how much they enjoy it (because you’ve done it yourself), so the idea that the object of the fun might be your mother, your girlfriend, your child—is just really appalling. You would rather die, yourself, than put someone you love through anything even close to such horrors.

  Bill Peterson is the only guy who’s had to make the choice.

  It happened a few years ago, over in New Mexico. The rest of us got away clean, but Bill got caught. He was cornered in an alley, and he’d lost his weapon. So the cops just cuffed him and read him his rights. I was hiding across the street, and saw him get put into the car. It gave me a sick feeling. But it also made me hope that he wouldn’t make the sacrifice. Because if he failed, I’d get to do things to his sister, Donna. Things I’d wanted to do for a long time.

  Bill made the right choice, though. When they uncuffed him at the station to fingerprint him, he went crazy. He grabbed a cop’s gun and got himself pulverized.

  After his death, I ended up spending a lot of time with Donna. You know, comforting her. We went together for a while, and I finally got to screw her. It was no big deal, though. It never is. There has to be the rest of it, or it’s just pretty much of a bore.

  Anyway, Bill’s the only one of us who ever had to take the hard way out.

  I’ve got no intention of being number two.

  Which means I’ve got to stay clear of the cops.

  With Hillary’s Chrysler gone, things didn’t look tremendously bright for my future.

  I sat on the sofa and went over my options. Here are a few of them: I could walk away, call a taxi, or steal a neighbor’s car.

  Any of those choices, though, would expose me to a lot of risk.

  If I hiked out of the neighborhood, I’d be in public view for a long period of time. People would see me. People might even talk to me. Up close, somebody might just notice that I’m not a woman. Walking was out. Too much could go wrong.

  A taxi ride would expose me too much to the driver. The cops were sure to track him down, sooner or later, and ask him about me. Of course, I could kill him after we get where we’re going. In broad daylight in L.A.? Thanks, but no thanks.

  If I tried to hotwire a car, somebody might report me to the cops. Hotwiring wasn’t my style, anyway. No. What I would do, instead, is ring a neighbor’s doorbell, pass myself off as Hillary’s sister, get myself inside, and let some blood. Drive off properly, with a key in the ignition. Once again, though, the risk outweighed the gain. When you enter someone’s house with murder on your mind, you’re walking into a mine-field. No telling how many people might be inside, or how they might explode. Great if there’s six or eight of you. Not so great when you’re just one guy.

  When it came right down to it, I actually had no safe course of action.

  But my instincts told me to sit tight. Sooner or later, Benedict Weston would be swinging his Jaguar into the driveway, home from a hard day at the office. He’d walk into the house. I’d kill him with my knife, take his keys and drive off into the sunset.

  That was my plan.

  It’s still my plan.

  I’m still waiting.

  Once I’d made up my mind to stay, I turned my attention to matters that didn’t have anything to do with escaping. First, I searched for The Times. Couldn’t find it, though. The newspaper must’ve gone the way of Hillary’s Chrysler.

  So I made coffee, then threw together a breakfast of bacon and eggs (over medium), and English muffins. While I ate, I listened to the radio.

  News on the hour gave a report of last night’s adventure. And what a report!

  Basically, it said that two house fires, late last night, had claimed the lives of four people in the Avalon Hills section of Los Angeles. In one house, a family of three had perished. The family of six that normally lived in the other house had been vacationing at the time, so the one fatality at that place had been the elderly mother of the owner. According to the reporter, arson investigators had gone to the scene.

  Nothing about two kids surviving.

  Nothing about murder.

  Nothing about us.

  At first, I thought maybe the kids hadn’t talked. They’d talked, though. Otherwise, why would the report tell about people perishing? Without help from the kids, nobody would know anyone had been inside either of the houses last night.

  Tom and the guys did not leave any bodies behind. That just wasn’t the way we did things. Even though I hadn’t been there to see it, I knew they’d taken the bodies. So the kids had told, all right.

  Probably told everything they knew.

  And the cops must’ve decided to keep the truth to themselves.

  Maybe they figured it might start a panic if people found out a group of wildmen was breaking into homes and committing wholesale slaughter.

  Maybe they planned to hide the facts till after they caught us.

  Or maybe they hadn’t believed the kids. Would you believe a wild story about a neighborhood in L.A. getting invaded by a pack of half-naked, hairless men with knives, spears, axes and sabers? The cops might even think the kids made up the whole business to save their own hides. Maybe they thought the kids were the ones who’d burned the houses.

  If the cops had already searched through the rubble and not turned up any bodies, they might not know what to make of the whole deal.

  Then again, maybe they’d believed every word spoken by the kids, and had given the news folks a twisted version for the sake of protecting them. You don’t want to go around advertising that you’ve got eyewitnesses to a mass murder. Not when the killers are still at large. Not if you want to keep your witnesses alive.

  Who knows? All sorts of possibilities.

  To me, though, there were two really major things about the news story. First, it hadn’t alerted the whole world to be on the lookout for bald-headed maniacs. Second, it hadn’t given me the name of the girl.

  It hadn’t given her name to me, and it hadn’t given it to them, either.

  Every so often, I’ve taken breaks from taping these memoirs, and listened to different radio and television stations. Instead of expanding as more details became available (as reporters snooped), the stories shrank. Very strange. Very suspicious. For whatever reason, it looks like a lid has been clamped down on the story.

  Just a few minutes ago, the five o’clock news on KNBC said only that arson was suspected in a pair of house fires that occurred overnight in the exclusive Avalon Hills section, taking four lives.

  Thanks to the lid, there’s been no men
tion at all of the boy or girl. No mention of butchery or a gang of ruthless cut-throats.

  This is good, but also bad.

  I might still have a chance to find the girl first.

  If Benedict ever gets home from his damn job!

  I’ve decided to hang around here till nine. If he hasn’t shown up by then, too bad. It’s adios, anyway. I’ll go ahead and phone for a cab.

  In the meantime, it’s just me and Mr. Sony. That’s my brand of cassette recorder. Not my brand, theirs. The Westons’. I’ve been giving it quite a workout today with this little adventure in oral history. My memoir, my confession, the true account of my dastardly deeds.

  Why am I doing it, you might ask?

  And who are you, you that’s right now listening to this? A cop? A court reporter transcribing it for the prosecutor? Maybe you’re Tom or Mitch or all the boys at once, listening in unison in Tom’s garage. Maybe you’re me. Maybe no one will ever hear these tapes. Are you no one?

  If you’re someone—and you must be, or you wouldn’t be listening—then you might be wondering why I made these tapes at all.

  Why am I telling?

  Why oh why oh why?

  Why is Hillary’s Chrysler missing?

  Why did that fucking root trip me when the girl was in easy reach?

  Why anything?

  To be less obtuse and more to the point, however, why did my fellow Krulls drive off and abandon me?

  Ah, yes, that might be the rub right there!

  If I’m expendable, maybe they are, too.

  Maybe this is how I protect myself and my people. I hide these tapes somewhere, then let it be known that they’ll end up in the hands of the cops if any reprisals are made.

  Works in the movies all the time.

  Just for the hell of it, here goes a membership list. This is it—the Club, the Secret Society, Our Gang, the Krulls—the name of everyone who’s ever been one of us:

  Tom Baxter—our fearless leader

  Charles “Chuck” Samoff

  James “Mitch” Mitchell

  Terrance “Ranch” Watkins

  Brian “Minnow” Fisher

  Clement Calhoun

  Lawrence “Dusty” Rhodes

  Bill Peterson (the late)

  Dale Preston (the late)

  Frank “Tex” Austin (the late)

  Tony “Private” Majors (the late)

  Simon Quirt (yours truly)

  That’s us. The full complement, the roll call, the living and the dead.

  Quite a few of us have bit the dust along the way, it seems. Good fellows, all. Good and perverted.

  Uh-oh.

  I hear something.

  I hear a car!

  There is a powerful, grumbly engine on the beast.

  Sounds like the car might very well be a Jaguar.

  Hmm. Silence.

  Hear that? A car door going thud.

  . Benedict is here, I do believe.

  Just for laughs, I’ll leave the recorder going. Maybe it’ll pick up the fun and games.

  Shhh.

  I hear footsteps. A key is going into the front door.

  Stay tuned, folks.

  “Oh, hello. You must be Benedict.”

  “Uh, yes. Uh...”

  “Doris. Doris Knight. Hillary mentioned that you might be along any minute.”

  “Oh? Where is she?”

  “Oh, she’s indisposed at the moment.”

  “Indisposed?”

  “The little girl’s room. You know.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Well...”

  “I just stopped by to chat for a while. I’m so new on the block, and I said to myself, ‘Self, you ought to go around and meet your new neighbors.’ So here I am. Hillary was just telling me about her car troubles. Horrible.”

  “Yeah. The thing was supposed to be ready yester ... Hillary... she has a blouse just exactly like that one.”

  “Really? Did she buy hers at Nordstrom?”

  “That purse is just ... What’s going on here? That is her purse. Hillary! Hillary!”

  “It is her purse, Benedict. It’s her blouse, too. And her skirt. Her everything. For heaven’s sake, this is even Hillary’s hair! Catch!”

  “Ahhhhhh! Ahh! Ahhhhhh!”

  “Hey, shut up!”

  “Ahhhhh!”

  “Simon says ‘shut up.’ And so does Samuel Colt.”

  “Uh. Uh-uh.”

  “Shhhhh.”

  “Uhhh.”

  “Okay, that’s better. Now pick up the hair and bring it back over here ... Thank you. Now, get down on your knees.”

  “Puh-Pleeeze!”

  “Simon says get down on your knees.”

  “Don’t shoot me. Pleeeeze!”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t do that. Too noisy. And not much fun, really. I’ll do you with this little baby here.”

  “No. No! Put that ... Don’t! I’ll do anything. Pleee ... EEA WWW AHHHH! BLUHHAWWW! EEEEEEE! EEEEEEEEEEE! EEEUHGGUG! UH.”

  “Shit. Now I have to change my clothes.”

  Part Three

  Witness Protection

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jody woke up in her own bedroom. She wasn’t under the covers, though. She lay on top, dressed in shorts and a blouse instead of her nightshirt, warm rays of sunlight slanting across her legs. The light was golden, afloat with drifting motes.

  She knew it must be late afternoon.

  Suddenly, she remembered Evelyn getting hoisted high in the dark doorway.

  On the edge of remembering more, she sat up fast. And groaned as a legion of sharp pains and dull aches scaled her body. She hurt everywhere.

  At least I’m alive, she thought.

  With that, she fell off the edge, plunged into an abyss where images of slaughter flashed through her mind.

  To stop them, she scurried off her bed. She winced when her feet hit the floor, and realized they were bandaged beneath her white crew socks. She dropped backward onto the mattress to get the weight off her feet. And her rump sang with pain. It wasn’t a terrible pain, but a peculiar sort that gave her a lump in the throat and made her eyes water.

  When the hurting faded, she took a deep breath and wiped her eyes.

  “You must be a hell of an engineer,” the ER nurse had told her. He was a nurse, but a man. He had reminded her very much of Mr. Rogers. Fred, not Roy or Will. Fred Rogers, who always had beautiful days in his neighborhood. The nurse had the look, and also the sing-song voice.

  “A what?” she’d asked. “An engineer?”

  The nurse gave her a big smile. “Because you’re such a ramblin’ wreck.”

  “Oh,” Jody had said.

  That was somewhat later, of course. The doctor had already been in, by then, and left. There’d been nothing at all cheerful or dopey about the doctor. He’d reminded Jody of Mr. Green, her social studies teacher. He’d scowled at her chart, then scowled into her eyes, then said, “Let’s have a look at the damage, young lady.”

  Time to get naked. Dad, obligingly, made himself scarce by swaggering to the other side of the partition.

  “Let me see, now,” the doctor had said. “What have we here?” He’d then commenced to do more than simply look at the damage. He’d prodded it, stroked it and squeezed it, muttering all the while. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Hmmm. Does it hurt when I do this? Uh-huh. Yes. Hmmm.” And finally, he’d pronounced, “Well, you’ll live. I’d say you’ve got nothing more serious here than your standard, garden-variety assortment of nicks, scrapes and bruises. I’ll have a few words with your father. In the meantime, we’ll have Nurse Gumbol in here to patch you up, then you’ll be free to go.”

  Exit the doctor. Enter Nurse Gumbol, who was pretty handsome, actually, even if he did remind Jody of Mr. Rogers. Handsome and young. Enough of both so that her skin flushed red all the way down to her toes. He’d said, “Oh, please, don’t be embarrassed, deary. I’ve seen it all, if you know what I mean. Though you are my first engineer of the day. I can see just by looking that
you must be a hell of an engineer.”

  “A what? An engineer?”

  “Because you’re such a ramblin’ wreck.”

  Then he had gotten to work with antiseptic and bandages. First he’d done her front. Then she had rolled over so he could patch her back. He’d saved her feet for last. He’d never stopped talking.

  Jody couldn’t remember much of what he’d said, but did recall that it had mostly been cheerful and fairly lame. A nice guy, but gosh.

  One thing he had said was, “Next time you go up against Green Bay, wear padding.”

  In the car on the way home, she and Andy in the back seat, Dad behind the wheel, she’d asked, “Hey, what’s Green Bay?”

  “A city in Wisconsin. 1 suppose it’s on Lake Michigan.”

  “The nurse said I should wear pads when I go there. Or something like that.”

  At that, Dad had looked over his shoulder and smiled. “Back in olden times, when I was just a kid, the Green Bay Packers under Vince Lombardi was the best football team in the world. I believe the nurse was making a joke about the vast extent of your injuries.”

  “Doesn’t he know what happened to me?”

  “He knows you were fleeing assailants. That’s all we gave out about either one of you.”

  “Did you have the guy that looks like Mr. Rogers?” Andy had asked her.

  “Yeah. He was nice, wasn’t he?”

  “Yeah.” Then, as if the simple idea of someone being nice was too much for him to bear, Andy’s face had crumpled. Jody had put her arms around him and embraced him while he cried.

  He’d been asleep by the time they’d reached home. Instead of waking him, Dad had come around to the car’s back door and lifted Andy out and carried him into the house.

  Jody hadn’t planned to take a nap, herself. She’d been very tired, but what she’d really wanted was to change into normal clothes, then go to her father and be with him. Sit with him and maybe have some breakfast, and talk, and look at him, and just be close to him where it was safe.

  She must’ve stretched out on her bed, though, and shut her eyes.

  And then she must’ve slept for hours and hours.