A Face at the Window (14 page)

Marky had also told him to hit her again, but Anthony had ignored this; he wasn't sure why. Because she was going to die soon, maybe. Although hearing her sobbing was like listening to an animal suffer, so maybe he should have knocked her out.

He didn't know. Staring out the window in the fading light, he just wished it was over and done with.

"Well?" Marky snapped.

Anthony squinted at the map. "I think…okay.
Yeah,
I think this is it."

"You think, you think." Marky looked disgusted. "Lemme ask you something. Do you ever know anything, or do you just think?" But he pulled the car into the grassy turnoff, gunning it through the tall weeds until it was hidden from the road.

In the backseat, the girl sobbed harder.

"All right. Both of you get out, now." Marky stared straight ahead through the windshield at a sky full of near-sunset colors: rose, purple, and gold.

"What about you?" Anthony asked.

Marky turned slowly, the look in his eyes unreadable. His right hand reached into the left inside pocket of his jacket, and Anthony went ice cold. But it was okay.

For now. "Take this. Do what needs to be done," said Marky.

Anthony stared. "What're you, nuts?" he blurted without thinking. Because of course Marky was nuts, everyone in the whole tristate area knew that. It was his stock-in-trade, being nuts enough to do things that nobody else would.

Crack skulls, crush a guy's fingers … It was what Anthony had thought they were doing, coming up here. That a guy owed some money and wouldn't pay, so they were coming up here to collect.

"I never did anything like this," said Anthony.

The girl had stopped sobbing. He could practically feel her listening back there, wanting to know if there was hope. Anthony could have told her there wasn't.

Murder,
he thought, wondering for a wild instant if maybe the map still open on his knees had an icon for it, a tiny gun or a knife. And not even the result of a too-energetic beating on a guy who deserved it, for being a deadbeat or for some other sin.

In the backseat the girl began screaming again through the gag, kicking and struggling. Ignoring her, Marky looked serious, like back in the juvie home when one of the counselors would try explaining something to Anthony for his own good.

"Listen to me, you punk," said Marky, still holding out the gun. "This is gonna happen one of two ways. I am gonna drive out of here with you and that little kid back there, or it is gonna be just me and the kid. Because so far you have seen everything, but you ain't had to do much of anything. Get it?"

Anthony nodded, trying to come up with some way out of doing this particular thing and not finding one. Marky meant that if they got caught he didn't want Anthony rolling over on him, which he figured Anthony couldn't if Anthony pulled the trigger.

Which was probably true, but it wasn't the only true thing. Anthony thought of grabbing the gun right now and shooting Marky with it. Catching him by surprise, driving the girl home, letting her out; the kid, too. Then coming back here, maybe.

Here where it was quiet, the shadows lengthening all around and something—an owl, maybe—A
oo-
A
oo
ing in the woods nearby.

But Marky must've seen this in Anthony's eyes, or maybe he'd been expecting it. His own face relaxed into something like pity, mingled with contempt.

"You punk," Marky said softly. Kindly, almost. Reaching out, pressing the gun into Anthony Colapietro's unwilling hand.

She'd tried keeping
her head on straight, tried getting her hands untied, tried kicking the seat back and screaming and begging through the gag in her mouth, and none of it had worked.

Now the young one from the passenger seat got a handful of
her hair in his hand and hauled her out of the car. She fell down at once, partly to make it difficult for him and partly because she almost couldn't feel her own body anymore, she was so scared.

He untied the rope from around her ankles and yanked her up again, shoving her against the car. Her head banged against the window so hard she saw stars, and through them the little girl's body limp and motionless on the backseat.

Lee…
He seized Helen's collar, bunching it up in his hand so that it tightened chokingly around her throat, and with his other hand he put the gun to her head.

"Walk," he said.

The gun was like an ice-cold fingertip on the back of her neck. It was cold out here, and nearly dark. The path was a deer trail, barely visible in the gathering gloom, but if she got free she could probably outrun him, and hide.

He tightened his grip, cutting off the shuddery gasps that were all she had left for breath. "Don't even think about it."

The one in the leather jacket sat in the car waiting. Soon the two of them would drive back out of here.

With Lee. But not with Helen. It hit her, then, that this was happening to her and there was nothing she could do about it. To stop it or make it happen any differently.

Or at some other time. Tomorrow, the next day. Any time but now. That death wasn't a thing that happened only to old people, an event she wouldn't have to worry about until some unspecified time in the distant future.

That it was real. That she, Helen Ann Nevelson of Eastport, Maine, was really and truly about to die.

Suddenly the world seemed so precious and good to her, she thought she must surely get another chance just for knowing it so certainly. That it was
good
to be alive.…

Under her bare feet the grass was icy cold and she was shivering
uncontrollably, more falling forward with each step and catching herself than walking. And so afraid, more scared than she'd ever believed possible.

"Stop," the guy named Anthony said.

As if from a long distance and in slow motion she heard the trigger moving, metal sliding against metal. Then came a spring-loaded creak of the hammer and the cylinder's oiled whisper as it lined the charged projectile up between the firing pin at one end of the weapon and the barrel at the other.

Jody,
she thought, because he had taught her all this. Her stepfather, who had wanted to be her friend. But he was far away, now, back there in the life she was leaving.

In the sky, early stars hung around a round, white moon even as the last bloodred shreds of the dying day hung stubbornly on.

Through her tears, Helen gazed lovingly at them.

Thwack!
A
huge
rock smacked the windshield on the passenger side, starring it. Then the clatter of stones rose to a hammering roar as Jake sat in Helen Nevelson's car, cursing herself. The cascading gravel rose up past the windows with astonishing speed; within moments, the darkness inside the car was complete.

Damn, how stupid was this? She could've called, told someone where she was going. Right before she approached the car, even, she could have finished punching in Bob Arnold's number.

But no, she had to see for herself, first. Praying not to find Lee there, or if she was there that she was still alive. She would call the instant she knew, Jake had thought.

Well, now she did know. But she'd dropped the phone when the door slammed shut and now, in the darkness…She fumbled upward, snapped on the dome light. Searching around, she
discovered that Helen's car held every safety item and piece of emergency gear imaginable, plus some whose usefulness she could not fathom.

Jody Pierce had put it all there, no doubt. Young girls didn't think of stuff like this. Flashlight, emergency flares, an ice scraper, hat-and-gloves combo with the price tag still on it, a tire inflator, matches, a blanket, a safety-glass hammer, a sheet of plywood the same size and shape as the backseat, placed on the seat as if to reinforce it—except for the flashlight, none of it looked useful.

And still no phone. But it had to be here somewhere.…

Fool,
she berated herself. Getting in, she'd told herself it was reasonably safe. This of course had been an exaggeration, but what if Lee was inside? Jake couldn't very well just stand there ignoring the possibility that the little girl was mere feet away, perhaps in need of immediate first aid.

But then the trap had snapped shut. Someone out there waiting for her to investigate the car's interior—someone who had known she would; Campbell, probably—had started the backhoe and given the gravel mountain a shove.

Onto her, burying her here. Cross-legged in the front seat, she pressed her fingers to her lips and tried to think, turned the ignition on and ran the fan for a few minutes. Fresh air came through the vents, smelling of damp earth and tree sap from the broken branches all around and beneath her.

Stuck.
Although on the plus side, the roof hadn't collapsed. She wasn't going to suffocate or get crushed, or at any rate not soon. Not unless whoever it was turned that backhoe on again…

The thought sent fresh alarm coursing through her, but the machine's rumble, she realized suddenly, had been stopped for a little while, now. She tried listening for footsteps but couldn't hear any.

"Hey! Hey, Campbell! I know it's you.…Hey, what's the point of this?"

Because he'd said he wanted something—but there was no answer from out there now, and little sense using up her energy by shouting. Struggling to keep her thoughts ordered, she turned her mind to more immediate concerns:

The car battery wouldn't last forever so she couldn't keep the dome light on, and she didn't want to waste the flashlight's juice, either. She shut them off, along with the fan, thinking
phone, where is it, I'm going to die without that.…

But all right, now, calm down,
she instructed herself. She would find it. Also on the plus side, the more time that passed with only silence from outside, the more it seemed likely that her attacker had gone away. If he hadn't, even after she escaped this makeshift tomb she'd still be up the creek. But not quite as far, and to find out, she'd need to
achieve
that escape.…

Gravel covered the doors, holding them shut. The car was an economy model, though, so it had crank windows she could roll down. There might be several feet or more of gravel between herself and the outside, enough so she couldn't push her way out a window and basically just swim up through the stones.

But maybe there was only an inch. She couldn't tell. Enough to shove through, or enough to hammer her flat and press all the breath out of her: which? If she cranked one of the windows down a little, she might be able to tell. If she could shove her hand through, into the air…

Well, then she could try to get out. If not, she would have to think of something else; find that cell phone, probably, and call someone on it, even though not having found it so far was making her feel more uneasy with each passing instant.

Waiting for rescue didn't seem like a viable option, since the gravel pit might be visited again later tonight, first thing in the
morning, or not until next week. And even if someone did come, there'd be no way for them to know
she
was here. But that line of thought was for later.

For now…
Try. Just try something.
Sliding behind the wheel since that side of the car angled upward, suggesting that it was less buried, she sucked a few deep breaths in and switched the dome light back on. Still no phone anywhere; she shoved her hand into each upholstery crevice without success. Pale illumination flooded the car's interior with an illusion of safety. Until…

Uh-oh.
In the few minutes since she'd last seen it the whole windshield had begun bulging inward, its expanse crazed whitely with the hundreds of impacts it had suffered. If it hadn't been for the first hard smack from that big rock…

But there was no sense worrying about that, either. It had happened, popping out a small hole at the center of the starred area and weakening the windshield's structure severely. Now greenish fragments puddled from small sections that were already beginning to let go.

From underneath the car came groaning and cracking sounds; sliding across the seat had been enough to shift whatever balance the car had found, apparently. So it was moving again, and tipping.

Or sinking. Biting her lip, she reached out and carefully rolled the window down a fraction. Gravel scraped the glass as it moved, but nothing else happened; she let out the breath she hadn't known she was holding. Now all she had to do was open it a bit more, enough to shove her hand through…

With a hideous metallic groan the car settled suddenly half a foot or so, the lurching jolt forcing a squeak of fright from her and popping more glass pebbles from the sagging windshield.

A sharp pain brought her hand to her forehead. Warm and
wet; a flying glass bit must've struck her, and the glass heaps on the dashboard were a lot bigger. Also, the holes in the windshield were enlarging, their edges curved raggedly inward like punctures in a cloth tent.

At last the groaning sounds stopped. Cautiously, she turned the window crank another fraction. Ideally she needed enough room to get her arm out, all the way to the elbow. But the moment she put her hand through, a lot of gravel began pouring in around it.

And then a lot more, surging like water…hastily she rolled the window back up, holding the invading stones back with her arm as best she could, frantically poking the last few from the gap between the window and the frame with her fingers before sealing it tight.

Now what?
If she saved the car's battery tonight, tomorrow when people were likely to be around she might be able to honk the horn for a while. That might bring someone.

Or it might not. Simply starting the car and trying to drive it from beneath the gravel was an attractive thought, but it was not really an option; for one thing, it was unlikely to work, and for another, that windshield was obviously ready to fail.

A half-bottle of orange juice had been lying on the floor when she got into the car; it was still around here, somewhere. And in the glove compartment…she fumbled for it and opened it, grateful for the glow of the tiny bulb inside.