Mortal Crimes: 7 Novels of Suspense (136 page)

The old lady asked the same questions she’d asked in every house he’d shown them. The old gentleman tapped the walls with the knobby head of his cane, bobbing his feeble head. Riccardi figured it was going to be a long day.

When they reached the dim hallway, the woman, in the middle of one of her repetitive questions, stopped first, the others followed suit.

“My goodness, what’s that pile of messy rags doing in the house?” she said, stepping forward curiously.

Riccardi felt a jolt, as if someone had smartly whacked him on the back. He grabbed her bony wrist and pulled her back. “Outside,” his raw throat cracked. “Everyone outside.”

“What the heck—?” The old man peered past the real estate agent, who had turned and was trying to usher them out.

“Gotta call the police,” Riccardi whispered.

That was when the old man collapsed, taking the old woman down with him.

________

From the crowded parking lot of the First Interstate Bank, he watched the brick office building of the Silver State Women’s Center across the street. He waited, no longer patient. He was in a state of extreme agitation, the rage swelling, growing insanely, burning and eating at him like the wound in his side. He had only one goal now, and that was to find her. Nothing else mattered.

After leaving the vacant house in the wee hours of the morning, he had returned to the river condo with its dark windows. Reynolds’s space in the parking garage remained unoccupied. They had run. Both of them.

But someone inside that brick building knew where she was. A fantasy of savagery played out in his head, exciting him.

At seven-thirty P.M. a woman in her late fifties exited the building, walked around to the west side and climbed into a ‘74 Chevrolet BelAir. He remembered her from the TV interview. She pulled out and drove away, the faulty muffler loudly heralding her departure. Eckker followed.

________

Sophie prayed the car would come through again.
Oh, sweet girl, just get me home and I won’t ask for nothing more.
But she always did. The V-8 ran on six cylinders and a prayer. It coughed, sputtered, and wheezed. At every stoplight she shifted to neutral and pumped the gas, a cloud of black, oily exhaust enveloped everything behind her.

A quarter mile more, sweet-talking all the way, she pulled into the alley at the back of her two-bedroom house on Walnut Street. The car backfired, then died.

She patted the steering wheel affectionately. “You’re beautiful.”

Sophie was in her house only a few minutes when the phone rang and she was summoned on a crisis call. She grabbed her purse and dashed out the door to the old Chevy. “Please, please, ol’ girl,” she whispered reverently, “just get me there and back and I won’t ask for nothing more.” The engine caught immediately. The muffler roared. A black fog billowing out from the exhaust pipe obscured the massive form that passed behind the car and moved toward her backyard.

By the time Sophie had picked up the battered wife and her two kids and settled them in at the shelter, it was dark. This time the car took her to within a half block from home before it stalled out. She slammed the hood with a fist, called it a “piece of shit,” then walked home.

Inside the house it was hot, stuffy. In the rooms in front she moved from window to window, opening each several inches, hoping to catch a bit of the cool westerly breeze.

At the open door of the refrigerator she munched impassively on a roll of summer sausage and sipped from a jar of Clamato juice as she absently stared inside. She rolled the cold jar over her cheek, the condensation and sweat mingling. It was too hot and she had no appetite. She’d take a tepid shower and eat later.

In the bathroom, as she adjusted the shower curtain, she heard a creaking somewhere in the house. From one of the back rooms. She paused, listened. It sounded like the creaky hinge on the door to her bedroom.

She slowly came to her feet. Pinpoints of fear pricked at her skin. Just that afternoon the police had warned the staff at the center that a killer was on the loose and anyone connected with Roberta Paxton was to exercise extreme caution.

The creak again.

Sophie’s heart banged like cymbals in her chest. In the mirror above the sink she saw herself, eyes wide, fearful, her face a shiny, slick mask of perspiration.

Sophie tried to remember what Robbi had told her about the man in her vision. He was a giant. Shrewd, determined. A killer. He wanted Roberta.
Roberta was Sophie’s best friend.

Another creak was followed by a loud pounding. Sophie cried out, slammed shut the bathroom door, and locked it.

The pounding went on at the front door. A male voice called out.

“Mrs. Bennett, Detective Avondale from the Reno police. I’d like to talk with you a minute, please.”

Cautiously, she opened the bathroom door, looked out, then seeing no impending danger, no looming hulk, she hurried to the front door, parted the curtains, and looked out to see the man who had come out to the center to talk to Robbi the day of the dinner dance.

She opened the door, gave him a shaky smile.

Standing just inside, Avondale told Sophie about the killing of the decoy. He advised her to be on her guard.

“Does Robbi know about this?” Sophie asked.

“Not yet. I was going to tell her, but I’ve decided to drive up tomorrow and have a talk with the two of them in person.”

“Poor Robbi. What a nightmare.”

He turned to leave, then turned back. “You live alone here?”

She nodded.

He looked around in contemplation.

She shivered. “Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Just before you knocked, I was working myself into a nifty case of the heebie-jeebies.”

“This guy could scare anybody.” He stepped out, “Lock up, ma’am.”

She closed and locked the door, then turned and started back to the bathroom.

Creak.

“Whadda’ya, crazy or something?” she whispered aloud to herself. Turning, she grabbed her purse, unlocked the door, and yanked it open.

“Hold it a sec,” she called out to the detective as he was getting into his car. She stepped out, pulled the door closed behind her. “You know, I don’t think I want to stay here alone tonight. I have this friend, Val, who lives close by. How about giving me a lift?”

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

At midmorning Robbi and Jake reclined in lounge chairs on the deck of the Tahoe house. Roberta stared at the hardy bromeliads clinging to a bowl-shaped piece of driftwood that sat on the deck’s railing. Beyond the plant she could see the clear blue lake. She thought of Ronnie. Could she ever look at driftwood or a body of water without thinking of her brother?

“Penny for your thoughts,” Jake asked softly, caressing her arm.

“I collected driftwood when I was a kid. I was thinking about how, in midsummer, when the water was low, my brother and I would go to the river to gather up special pieces for my collection.”

They sat quietly for several moments.

“A nickel for your thoughts,” Jake prompted.

She placed her hand over his and squeezed. “Don’t you get tired of listening to other people’s problems?”

“You’re not other people. Tell me about your brother.”

“He drowned.”

“How old?”

“Eight. We were twins.” She felt the pressure of Jake’s hand. Again the ache in her chest. Such an old wound. How was it possible it could still be so raw?

She glanced at Jake, looked away, cleared her throat, then began to talk. Tentatively at first, then to her utter amazement, the words spilled out.

She and Ronnie were so close, practically inseparable. Her brother was sweet, funny, caring, and because she was such a tomboy, able to compete with him in everything, he allowed her to tag along wherever he went.

Roberta began to tell Jake about the day her brother died.

On a bright spring day in April, scarcely a week before their ninth birthday, Ronnie left the house before Roberta arose without a word to her or anyone in the family.

At breakfast, as Roberta sullenly toyed with her Cheerios, an image of fast-moving water flashed across her mind. She squeezed her eyes shut, opened them. The image vanished.

At midday, when Ron failed to appear, Roberta began to worry, along with her parents. Fleeting images of a raging river, swollen from the spring melt-off of snow on the mountain, plagued her all day.

At dusk her father called the police. Two uniformed policemen came to the house. They asked endless questions, took the photograph of Ron from the mantel, and left. Dinner that night was solemn, tense.

Roberta was sent to bed early, and after what seemed an eternity, she fell into a fitful sleep. She dreamed about Ronnie. In the dream he was walking along the edge of the riverbank, his arms laden with driftwood. He spotted a twisted piece of wood wedged in the crevice of a boulder several feet from the bank. He took hold of a tree branch, bright with new green leaves, and leaned out over a stretch of rapid water. The limb broke, dropping him into the freezing water.

Within seconds he was swept downstream, tossed and tumbled over slick boulders. After several minutes he managed to grab hold of a bush on the opposite shore. The relentless raging water continued to pull at him. He called out, his cries feeble, ineffectual over the roar of the white water. He hung on for some time, then, too exhausted to keep his head above water, he let go. The river took him.

In those few moments Roberta had shared his anguish, hopelessness, and, ultimately, his peace.

She woke up screaming. Her mother held her as she sobbed out her dream.

“He’s … he’s dead,” she wailed.

Her mother shushed her.

The doorbell rang and her mother hurried to answer it. For several endless moments her father stood silent at the foot of her bed, a strangeness in his eyes. Then he turned and left the room.

Roberta followed. In the hall, squatting on her heels, her arms hugging her legs, she peered around the doorjamb at the front door. The policemen stood stiffly, hats in hand. Her mother sobbed. A word now and then drifted to her. River. Body. Bridge.

Roberta crept back to bed, her own tears swallowed by the large, lonely room. Ronnie was dead. She’d seen him die. Her brother had sneaked off to the river to gather driftwood for her collection and had died for it.

The night of the funeral Roberta lay sobbing in her room. Her mother sat on the bed and held her. “Mama, it was my fault. I knew where he was. He didn’t tell me, but I knew. I saw it in my head. The river. I kept seeing the river.”

“Hush, Roberta. Don’t you ever let your father hear you say that. He’ll have you put away with those other poor children at the institution. Not a word to anyone,” her mother said harshly. “That’s crazy talk. You don’t want people to think you’re crazy, do you?”

________

Robbi felt Jake’s comforting embrace and leaned into him.

“He started drinking after that.”

“Your father?”

“Yes. He blames me for Ron’s death.”

“Why you?”

“Because Ron wouldn’t have gone off to the river alone if not for me. Because he thought I knew where Ron was but chose to keep quiet. Because I should have been the one to die and not his only son.” She buried her face in her hands. “I just don’t know. All I know is that he’s a mean, rotten sonofabitch.”

“To you alone?”

She shook her head. “To my mother, my sister, everyone. But it’s because of me.”

“Honey, you’ve carried this tremendous burden, this guilt, for over twenty years. I think it’s time you finally let it go. It’s probably too late for him. But it’s not too late for you.”

They were interrupted by the loud popping of pine cones crunching under tires, announcing a visitor.

They exchanged wary glances as Detective Avondale, his face a stoic mask, strode across the sandy yard to the wooden steps. He stopped, stared up at them.

“What’s happened?” Jake asked.

“I was hoping Miss Paxton could tell me,” Avondale said evenly.

Robbi looked from Avondale to Jake, then back to Avondale. “Tell you what?”