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Authors: Ray Garton

Crucifax (29 page)

BOOK: Crucifax
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His dinner with Erin Carr had gone well, but the circumstances of their meeting had cast a definite shadow over the evening. Although he was very uncomfortable with her dishonesty with Jeff and Mallory, she was a strong and admirable woman who had worked hard to rise above the difficulties of being a divorced and unskilled woman with two kids to support. Sitting across from her in the small Chinese restaurant where they'd eaten made J.R. realize how long it had been since he'd been out with a woman. It was easy to admit to himself that he found Erin Carr very attractive; but when she became upset again and began to fight back tears, he tried not to think about her proud and beautiful eyes and how good her hand felt in his.

Things got worse fast when they returned to the apartment and found Jeff alone and silently crying in front of the television. He explained what had happened while they were out, showed them the hole in Mallory's closet, told them everything she'd said. He spoke quietly, moved very slowly with his shoulders slumped; he looked defeated, beaten down, ashamed.

Erin was upset herself, frightened by Jeff's account of the creatures that had ushered Mallory out of the apartment.

"Mice," she'd breathed, putting a trembling hand on J.R.'s arm. "I've been hearing them in the walls, but I thought they were just mice. They sound like… Jesus, rats, we've got rats, do you know what kinds of diseases rats carry?"

Jeff started to protest, insisting that they weren't rats, but the phone rang. It was Lily saying she would be over soon. Erin had a couple drinks and calmed down, and later, as Jeff and Lily talked quietly at the table, J.R. assured her he would do all he could to get Mallory back home.

"Do you have any children?" She'd asked, her eyes heavy from the liquor.

"No, but I've… well, let's say I've got some idea of what you're going through."

Shaking her head, she'd muttered, half to herself, "I've blown it. Big. Soon as I saw things getting bad between us, I should have put a stop to it, should've sat down and had a long talk, straightened it out. But no, I was too… busy. Figured it would straighten itself out, I guess."

She was about to cry, and J.R. didn't want her to do that, didn't think he could bear her tears on top of everything else, so he gave her a big smile, squeezed her hand, and said, "You can do that as soon as she gets back."

On his desk, J.R. found a confidential memo informing him that one of his students, Kevin Donahue, was in the Laurel Teen Center for "extended counseling" and would be out of school indefinitely.

Just as Mallory had told Jeff the night before, Kevin's parents had "put him away."

J.R. looked through his schedule for the day. He had two appointments in the morning, some paperwork to take care of, an assembly to attend in the afternoon, and another appointment at the end of the day. He could get out of the assembly; that would give him enough time to go see Kevin. He called the Laurel Teen Center to arrange a visit….

Jeff rode to school with Lily that morning. She picked him up at seven-thirty, and when he got into her car, she leaned over and cautiously kissed his cheek.

When Lily arrived at the apartment the previous night, they'd seated themselves at the table, and Jeff had recounted for her the events of the evening. When he was finished, she'd taken his hand and whispered, "Jeff, remember the last weekend before school started? That Saturday night? What were you doing? Do you remember?"

He remembered but only nodded in reply.

"Something weird happened, didn't it?" she'd asked. "Something you couldn't, like, put your finger on, right?
Right?
"

Another nod.

"Me, too. I mean, I was with some friends in the Galaxy Arcade on Lankershim, and all of a sudden—I don't know exactly what time it was—there was like a—I don't know, a power drain, or something. The pinball machines tilted, and all the video screens kind of, you know, went wonky. I looked around at my friends, and everybody looked like they'd just gotten the worst news of their lives. And—this is gonna sound stupid, but all of us, we all looked up at the same time, and the fluorescent lights—y'know, those tubes? —they were all dimming just a little, and we all hurried outside—I don't know why—and just stood on the sidewalk like everybody else, I mean
everybody else
was just standing there like they'd just been hit in the head or something. And we looked up, but… there was nothing there. Nothing to see, anyway. But… well, I
felt
like I'd seen something. I don't know
what,
because there was nothing there, but I had this feeling…. Then it was gone, and we were all walking along like nothing happened. We went out for ice cream and never talked about it. I'm not even sure they'd
remember
it." She shook her head. "But ever since then—you're gonna think I'm so zoned, I swear, but ever since then, things haven't been quite… right. I haven't slept well since then, and my dad has been—this is really unlike him—he's been more worried about me than usual. He's, like, always asking me if everything's okay at school, stuff like that."

Lily sat there and looked at him for a long time, waiting for a reply, but Jeff said nothing. Not because he thought she was crazy, but because she was right. She was right, and he knew it, and it scared him.

"It isn't just you," she whispered. "I mean, your family, your sister—it's not just you, it's everybody. Nikki, Kevin … You know, I'd heard about this guy Mace before, I just had no idea who or what he was. I still don't, but I know enough to be scared of him. Last week I sat in the cafeteria and heard four different people talking about him like he was a goddamned circus clown and they were little kids or something. It's not just us, Jeff, it's just that he hasn't sucked us in yet. Not like he has everybody else."

"So what can we do?" he'd asked.

"Warn the others, the ones like us who haven't fallen for whatever Mace offers."

Nodding, he'd said, "Yeah, but that won't get my sister back."

As he lay awake in bed that night his insides felt cold and empty. His imagination took off with the speed of a runaway train, taking him into a future without his sister, a future in which he would have to live beneath a weight of guilt for having let her walk away again.

He thought about what Lily had said and wondered how many others thought Mace was their friend, how many would go to Fantazm on Wednesday night to hear Mace and his band play….

Lily looked tired as she drove, and neither of them said much for a while. Traffic was backed up on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, and it only took them a few moments to realize they would be late for school. As they waited for traffic to move Jeff said, "What are you doing Wednesday night?"

"Nothing. Why?"

"Mace is playing with his band at Fantazm."

"You think we should go?"

"I don't know. I'm supposed to go to a birthday party that night. Maybe we should wait and see."

"Wait and see what?"

"See who else is going. Let's do some asking around at school the next couple days, try to find out exactly how popular this guy is."

"Why? I mean, what good will it do?"

"I don't know, but it's a start."

The wipers swept monotonously over the windshield, and the traffic clotted like blood in a corpse….

The radio played loudly in the living room as Erin sipped her fourth cup of coffee. The traffic reporter was rambling on about a mudslide on Laurel Pass that had backed up traffic on Laurel Canyon Boulevard all the way to Burbank Boulevard; it was getting worse, and there was no sign of improvement for at least several hours. That meant surface street traffic would be chaotic for miles around Erin's apartment.

She had been sitting at the table for nearly two hours trying to make a list of possible jobs to look into. So far, she'd come up with waitress and housecleaning. Neither would pay as much as dancing in strip bars, and she would have to get a smaller, less expensive apartment in what would probably be an undesirable neighborhood. If she waited tables during the day and got a job cleaning in a hotel or hospital at night, she might be able to swing it, but then she would have no life. Her time would be spent working and sleeping, and she would have none left to spend with the kids.

Erin pushed the list away, not wanting to look at it anymore. She reached for the crumpled pack of cigarettes on the table removed one, and lit up. She'd stopped smoking a little over a year ago but awoke with a craving for a cigarette that morning. She'd found the pack buried in the back of her top nightstand drawer, and the cigarettes tasted as old and stale as she felt.

After J.R. had left the night before, she'd bid Jeff and his friend Lily goodnight and had gone to bed but didn't sleep. She tossed most of the night with an invisible steel band wrapping tighter and tighter around her chest; images of Mallory as a little girl, as a baby, as a lump in her belly went around and around in her head as she tried desperately to figure out where she'd gone wrong.

Erin was thankful for J.R.'s presence last night; it had helped a lot to have someone outside the family show so much concern. It didn't bring Mallory back, though.

Something he had said kept repeating itself over and over in her head:
If you keep hiding it from them…
if you keep hiding it from them…

She dreaded telling them, but she couldn't keep it from them any longer.

It's nothing to be ashamed of
she thought as she sipped her coffee.
It's just a job, nothing more; it keeps a roof over their heads, they'll understand that.

But she wasn't so sure Mallory would understand that, especially after what she'd heard Thursday. Mallory and Jeff were very close, and if she wanted to, Mallory could strongly influence Jeff's way of accepting Erin's news….

The steel band returned around her chest, tightening more and more.

The voice on the radio said, smilingly, "Well, kids, Mother Nature isn't being very nice to us, and according to our meteorologist, her mood isn't gonna change very soon, so I guess we're just gonna have to grin and bear it, huh?"

J.R. was made uncomfortable by the sterility of the Laurel Teen Center as he was led down a long corridor with cream-colored walls and fluorescent lighting. Other than a few bulletin boards and fire extinguishers on the walls, there was nothing to break up the monotony, just door after door.

He was led down the corridor by a beefy man with a smirklike smile and a name tag that read luke on the breast pocket of his thin white coat. He'd introduced himself as the supervisor, whatever that meant.

"We're usually careful about allowing visitors," Luke said pleasantly, leading J.R. into a well-furnished room with three shelves of paperback books against one wall and a big-screen television against another. "Mostly we just allow parents and siblings once a week. But we've never gotten a visitation request from a teacher or school counselor before. We'd like to get more. It's a show of concern. Lets us know we're not alone in this. Okay," he said, slapping J.R. on the back twice, "just have a seat right here, and I'll bring him in."

There were four others in the room, obviously patients (or inmates, whatever they called them at such a place): two boys and two girls.

Outside the room and some distance down the corridor shouting broke out. The voices were unintelligible at first, then one rose above the others, clearly crying, "I hate
daddies,
did you hear me, I said I hate
daddiiieees!
"

J.R. winced at the voice as he seated himself in a chair.

A few minutes later, Luke ushered Kevin into the room and seated him across a round table from J.R. There was an unfinished jigsaw puzzle spread over the table, and Kevin began toying with some of the pieces, his eyes avoiding J.R.

"There's a group meeting in here in about twenty minutes," Luke said, "so we'll have to clear the room out then." Slapping Kevin on the back, he left.

"We've never actually met, Kevin," J.R. said, "but I'm your counselor at school. My name's J.R. Haskell, but please call me J.R."

Kevin looked bored as he picked at the puzzle, still not looking up. He wore jeans and a plain white T-shirt.

"When I found out you were in here, I… well, I thought you might like to talk."

Kevin shook his head.

"Well,
I'd
like to talk."

Kevin looked up then, and J.R. realized his face was battered, bruised, one eye swollen. There were stitches in his chin.

"God, what happened to you?" J.R. asked.

"A fight. That's how I got here. A bunch of guys jumped me outside Mickey D.'s, the cops came, everybody ran away but me. My parents… they decided I should be here."

"That's crazy. For a fight?"

He shrugged and turned his attention back to the puzzle.

"Kevin, if you tell me who it was, those guys who did this to you, maybe I can help you. I'll talk to your parents—"

"Won't do any good. That wasn't the only reason…."

"Oh?"

"I hadn't been home for a while. What difference does it make, man?" He suddenly began talking fast, scowling at J.R. "What difference does it make, huh? They've been looking for a reason to put me here for a long time. They searched my room, took my door off—you believe that? They took my fucking bedroom door off! They would've had me in here sooner or later anyway."

"Where have you been?"

"None of your fucking business, man."

"With Mace?"

Kevin looked at him, surprised, and, for a moment, seemed about to smile.

"You know Mace?"

"I know of him, Kevin, and what I know…" He leaned forward, moving closer to Kevin. "Who is Mace? Where is he from?"

Kevin glanced over J.R.'s shoulder at the window, and a hint of a smile crossed his lips.

"I… don't know," he said after a long pause. "But that doesn't matter."

"Why not?"

"Because he… when we met, I was suspicious of him, but not anymore. He offered to help me with my band—I've got this band, y'know—and he gave us a place to practice, music to play, good music—he's taught us a lot. And he's our friend."

BOOK: Crucifax
10.92Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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