Chosen for Death (35 page)

"I told you not to move," he said, his voice shaky. "You're making me nervous. I need to think, to figure out what to do. You stay right there."

I shook off his hand and took another step sideways, glancing back in the direction of my car. There was nothing to see but rocks and fog. I was taking a risk. He might be paralyzed by fear or he might try to stop me. But I couldn't see what I had to lose by trying to get somewhere safer. This wasn't your everyday pissing contest to see who could get the upper hand, or even about whether I got a few bumps or bruises. This guy had killed once and obviously was planning to do so again. There was a shuffling of feet and then he rushed at me and shoved me down onto the ground. "You... stop... here," he said.

I landed hard, jarring my ribs on a rock and scraping my hand on some barnacles as I tried to break the fall. I rolled over into a crouch, fumbling for the can of Mace. "What did you do that for? Why do you care where we talk?" I yelled. "You stay away from me! You must be crazy."

I got up slowly, backing away from him, and brought up the can. He grabbed my arm and we swayed there, locked in our struggle for possession. I managed one squirt toward his face and heard his surprised yelp, but he was strong and determined. I couldn't twist the can enough to give him a decent squirt. My shoe slipped on some seaweed, knocking me off balance. As I swayed, struggling to regain my footing, he tore the can out of my hand and blasted me.

He wasn't the only one who was strong and determined. Despite being blinded, I struck out at him, knocking the can out of his hand, and kicked out at him, breaking his hold on me. The can clattered away into the fog. My eyes were on fire, my face stung like I'd been attacked by bees, and I couldn't breathe. I tried to crawl away and lose myself in the fog. I didn't dare stand because I couldn't see. I got only a few feet before his foot slammed down between my shoulder blades, flattening me on the sand and taking my remaining breath away. I lay there, spitting sand out of my mouth, furious and helpless as he jerked my hands roughly behind me and tied them together. I didn't make it easy for him, but he had one knee on my back and the other on the back of my neck, pressing my face down into the sand, so there wasn't much I could do. When he finally let me raise my head, my lip was bleeding. I had sand stuck to my face and in my nose and I couldn't use my hands to wipe it off.

"What was that stuff?" he said. "It hurts like hell." I didn't bother to answer. He pulled me up and tried to lead me along. I couldn't see anything through my streaming eyes and immediately fell over the nearest rock. "Hey," he said, "watch where you're going!"

"I can't see anything, you idiot, and it's your fault," I said. "What's the matter with you, anyway? You said you wanted to talk and now you're acting like a maniac." I might be bound and blinded, but I was staying on the offensive. "What are you going to do with me now?"

"I don't know," he said. "Get rid of you. Somehow. I have to think." His words came in short bursts. I could hear the fear in his voice. He'd led me here without a plan and I didn't want to give him a chance to make one. "This whole thing is so confusing," he said. "I need to tell someone about it. About everything," he said. "I have to tell you about her. About what happened."

The agony in my face was not going away and I couldn't buffer the pain by burying my face in my hands. My ribs ached, I was sure he'd left a footprint on my back, and the sand on my face was driving me wild. I wanted to scream and shriek and cry, but I was fighting for my life here. I had to stay calm. Also, little as I wanted to hear what he had to say, the longer I kept him talking, the longer I stayed alive. Right now I was helpless. If I could make it until the Mace wore off, until I could see again, I'd have a better chance of surviving. And if I kept him talking, he couldn't be thinking about what to do with me.

"That's a good idea," I said, "We'll sit down right here and you can tell me what happened," I said. I dropped down on my knees and wriggled around until I was leaning against a rock. It wasn't comfortable, but it wasn't bad, given the choices. He sat down near me on a rock.

"I had to kill her," he said, as if he expected me to understand.

"Why?" Like a pot of water coming to boil, a small bubble of anger floated up through my fear and exploded. What was wrong with the world, that someone could see killing someone else as the only possible solution? How had human life become so devalued? How could this monstrous boyman expect me to understand why he "had" to kill my sister? How absurd and macabre that he should choose me to hear his confession. But then, whom could he tell, except someone he already planned to kill? An involuntary chill went through me.

"From the first moment I saw her I was attracted to Carrie," he said. "When I saw her in the restaurant, I couldn't take my eyes off her. When she gave me that Coke, it was like a signal. So I waited for her. From that very first day, when we both discovered we loved black raspberry ice cream cones, we were kindred spirits. She was so much like me, and yet so unlike, like two sides of the same person. We liked the same things and shared the same sense of humor, but I was so cautious and controlled, and she was such a bold, free spirit."

The thick fog was turning into a steady rain. I turned my face up and let it run over me, welcoming the cool relief. My vision was slowly returning. Chris Davis was sitting beside me on a rock, a twisted version of my sister Carrie, seemingly oblivious to the rain, staring intently at his clenched hands. The cords in his neck stood out like wire cables as he spoke. His voice came out harsh and strained. "My mother and I are very close," he said. "Very close. I think you could say I'm devoted to my mother. She's a good woman; a Christian woman. An idea you probably can't understand. Carrie told me your family isn't religious. My mother is also a sad woman. I knew she wouldn't approve of my relationship with Carrie. My mother has always tried to protect me from the dangers of loose women. Always encouraged me to choose my friends from the people in our church. Now I understand why. Carrie was the devil in woman's form, sent to tempt me, like Eve in the garden."

An angry response came to my lips and it was a struggle to repress it. I wanted to shout, "Bullshit, you witless, immoral little cretin. Maybe you can't see it, but the evil one here is you!" I didn't say it because I didn't want him angry at me; I just wanted to keep him talking even though his monologue was particularly painful when I'd just heard the other side of the story from Carrie, in her diary.

"This all happened because I was willful. Because I wanted to defy them. Because I was tired of being controlled by them. I wanted a life of my own, a life they knew nothing about, so I let myself get involved with that harlot." His voice rose to an anguished cry. "And I was so weak! So weak I slept with my own sister." He tore at the skin on his arms with his fingernails, leaving long white streaks that began oozing blood. "I am cursed with this weak flesh." He lifted his face to the rain, maybe hoping for a little help from God.

"Don't kid yourself," I wanted to tell him, "God doesn't like you." I was lying on the sand near his feet, half propped up against another rock. The wet sand and rain had soaked through my jeans. My hair was plastered against my skull. Despite my leather jacket, my teeth were beginning to chatter and it felt like my bones were turning to ice—from the weather, but also from fear. I watched him warily as I considered my options. If he'd tied the rope over my jacket, I might be able to wriggle free, but I had to get him talking again. When he wasn't talking, he watched me closely, but when he talked he stared away into space and I could move safely. I tested it carefully and found some play in the rope. "How do you know she was your sister?" I asked.

"I should have known it all along," he said. "We were too much alike. Even our toes. I lied to her, you see, about my age so she wouldn't think I was too young for her. Got her to tell me how old she was first. I thought I was being pretty clever. You see where it got me. Wallowing in the mud, like swine. Now I've got to kill you, too, to protect my mother." His monologue had been delivered in sort of a wailing chant, except the last thing. He announced his intention to kill me in a normal, conversational voice, one I found much scarier than when he acted crazy.

There was no doubt in my mind that he would kill me. It was only a matter of when. I began working my way out of the rope. Luck was with me. He'd wrapped it over the sleeves of my jacket, and not too tightly, either. By pressing my arms together, I could gradually wriggle one hand free. Gripping one sleeve with the other hand, I began the slow process of wiggling my arm up the sleeve. "I don't understand," I said. "How will killing me protect your mother? Protect her from what?"

"You know perfectly well how," he said. "You just talked with her yesterday. You know how important it is to her to protect her secret. No one must ever connect my mother with Carrie."

My hand was almost free. I wriggled my arm impatiently, trying to shake it free. He noticed the movement and bent down, grabbing my shoulder and shaking me roughly. "I told you to stay still," he said. "What are you doing?"

"Just trying to rest my shoulders," I said. "It puts a lot of strain on them, being pulled back like this. Let me get into a more comfortable position and I'll try not to move again."

"No, don't move," he commanded. "You sit still."

My response was a combination of anger at him for what he was doing to me and pop psychology gleaned from articles on how to avoid being raped or mugged. Talk to your attacker, the articles say. Try to make a personal connection. Try to humanize the encounter, make your attacker realize that you are a person, too. Phooey. What I wanted to do was pound the bastard into a bloody pulp, but first I had to get the rope off, so I talked to him instead. "I have to move. It hurts. What you do to people, Chris Davis, hurts them. You hurt my sister and now you're hurting me. Do you realize that, Chris? Do you know that my ribs hurt where you knocked me into a rock and my back hurts where you stomped on me and my arms and shoulders ache because you've got me tied up like this? I'm a real, live human being and you're hurting me. And I don't care what you want, I'm moving." I hunched forward, pulled my hand free, and leaned back against the rock. As soon as I got him talking again, I'd see if I could slip the loose rope off my other wrist.

"It doesn't matter... how you feel, I mean," he said, "you're going to die soon anyway. Now stay still. It makes me nervous when you move around." He got up, came a step closer, and kicked me. "Don't make me do that again." Not so different from Charlie after all, was he? Carrie sure could pick 'em. The blow was a surprise. I'd assumed he wouldn't be gratuitously violent, at least not until he made up his mind what he was going to do.

When you're scared like I was scared, you think it can't get any worse, but hearing him say I was going to die, so casually, so callously, was like being punched in the stomach by a giant fist. "You should give yourself up," I said, struggling to keep the fear out of my voice. "Killing me isn't going to protect your mother. The police already know about her connection to Carrie. If you go to them and confess, you might be able to make some sort of deal to keep your motive out of the papers. That would do your mother a lot more good than killing again. Besides, they know I'm meeting you. If anything happens to me, you'll be the prime suspect." I didn't expect him to listen to reason, he was too wrapped up in his own vision, but I had to give it a try.

"You're lying," he said. "The police don't know. You're just trying to confuse me. Like your sister. I thought she was just a sweet girl, and then she seduced me. She took my innocence. But I didn't see it, even then. I still thought I was in love with her. Until I heard her talking to my mother."

Now I understood. Now things made sense. His mother hadn't told him about Carrie. He'd overheard. I could imagine what a shock it must have been, finding his secret girlfriend talking to his mother. And his mother hadn't known that he was there. She still didn't know what he had overheard. But she must have told him something. How else had he found me? How had he known I was Carrie's sister? Had he followed me yesterday? I'd been so oblivious, a whole army on camels could have followed and I wouldn't have noticed. I wanted to yell, "Nobody made you sleep with her, you stupid schmuck, you just followed your instincts. You aren't anything special. It wasn't fault or sin or the devil, it was just hormones."

Instead I said, "Tell me about that. What did you hear?" He took a deep breath and stared off toward the hidden sea. The waves were sucking softly at the rocks, subdued, as though they were trying not to interrupt. I pulled my other hand free and felt the rope drop off behind me. Now it was just a matter of time. This guy was not going to dispose of me without a struggle. The little bubbles of anger were gradually bringing me to a full boil as I listened to his self-serving justification for what he had done to my sister. It would have been nice to imagine that Andre was going to get my message and come galloping to my rescue, but I'm a realist. I'd seen the connection because I'd read the diaries and talked to Lorna, but Andre hadn't. He had no reason to think Carrie's brother was a threat. I felt around on the sand behind me for a rock I could use as a weapon.

"My mother didn't know I was home," he said. "I'd been up late with Carrie, fornicating, and I was too tired to pay attention, so I skipped my second class, came home, and went to bed. When I woke up, I heard two voices. I recognized one of them as Carrie's. I opened my door a crack and stayed in my room, listening. Carrie was explaining to my mother about her search, about how she'd always wanted to find her real mother, and then she said that this was where her search had led. She asked my mother to accept her."