Possession (15 page)

There was some living presence in the room with her, and she forced herself to turn slowly to face it.

The goose eyes reflected a slice of moonlight, and even as she recognized Billy Carter, she couldn't stop the scream that rose in her throat. The gander's wings flared wide and he waddled toward the door hissing indignantly. She slammed it behind him and slid the bolt across, realizing that if the scream had been for real no one would have heard her.

Duane had been about to hang up when she answered, and she sounded just as he thought she would—soft, frightened. It was all he could do not to speak to her. He waited, letting her repeat "Hello . . . Hello ..." a few times before he pushed the lever down gently, breaking this first link between them.

Later. Just a little while longer, Joanne.

As he turned, he saw them walking into the coffee shop. Lindstrom and the old guy, sauntering into their territory, straddling stools and leaning forward on their elbows as the waitress fluttered over. He took his time. He added the notes: "10:27 P.M.— Heard Joanne. 10:31

P.M.—D.L. and—(he squinted to read the name pinned over the old guy's shirtpocket)—Sam Clinton, coffee break at hotel." The fucking waitress was falling all over herself, laughing when the old guy kidded her, bringing them slices of pie,

103

filling their cups. The dumber the broad, the more impressed by a uniform.

He left a buck-seventy-five on the bar and moved closer to] the counter, but he couldn't hear what they were saying. He] was close enough to see the triangles of sweat under their arms, close enough to smell them. Close enough to grab their skulls in two strides and slam them together, or to slip! the .38's out of the holsters where they dangled and pull the! triggers before they got their noses out of their banana cream pie. Blood and brains on the polished glass. . . .

He forced his rage inside. He had not come so far after so long to lose it. The husband was big enough but not as big as! he was, and the cop was smug. You didn't see a hell of a lot of cops sitting with their backs exposed to a window. The' old guy was clearly a country hick, over the hill. Duane had beaten a lot better. A lot better.

Sit there and slop up your pie, Danny. I'm gonna have your wife and teach her things you never thought of.

Her voice had turned him on; his groin still throbl with the soft looseness he'd heard in her. She already belonged to him. She would do all the things the other women had balked at. When they were alone. When they were alone, he wanted her naked all the time so he could touch her heavy breasts and the secret, moist folds of whenever he wanted, rub himself all over her and make her beg for it. And he would give it to her until she was so sore she couldn't walk. She'd waited long enough for him, and would make it up to her.

The cops had finished their pie. The old guy slipped a buck into the waitress's apron and Duane heard her gi| They ambled out the back door, toothpicks sticking out their mouths. He watched them drive away before he took a stool at the counter.

"Miss?" She wasn't a "Miss"; she was well over forty, the old ones loved being mistaken for young meat.

She smiled at him and bent lower, showing the wrinkles between her breasts. "What's yours?"

"I'll have what old Danny had. Looks like great pie."

104

"Oh, it is. Fresh every day:" She set a conspicuously large portion in front of him. "Real whipped cream."

He ate a mouthful of the sweet mess, and signaled to her with thumb and forefinger.

"You like it, huh?" He'd got her with the first grin; she was going to watch him eat every sticky crumb of it.

"Always eat where the cops eat. Some people say truck-drivers, but it's really policemen who know where it's at." He smiled again, and let his eyes drift down the front of her as if he was hungry for her too. She liked that. "You a cop?"

"Me?" He laughed modestly. "No such luck. I'm blind in my left eye. Vietnam. Old Danny and Sam though, they've got it made." He could see her study his eyes to see if she could tell the difference.

"They work hard though," she offered. "You're probably better off. You a salesman?"

He shook his head slightly and gave no direct answer. "Dangerous too. They take a lot of chances, but I still envy them." She bit. Spilled her guts, trying to keep his attention. "Danny's gonna take some time off. Old Sam talked him into it. You know how they are. Danny looks up to him, takes his advice, kind of like father and son." The news wasn't what he wanted to hear, and he had to keep his voice calm so she wouldn't pick up on it. "Take time off?"

"You know Danny—usually just goes elk hunting in November with the guys, but he's gonna take his wife on a vacation. Old second honeymoon treatment and all."

His voice was O.K., but his pulse was spinning free. "Vacation, huh?

Labor Day and all? Seems like that's their busy season." She shrugged. "Women like Joanne—they get what they want out of men. Never have to work and go home with sore feet like I do. She wants a vacation; she gets a vacation. You aren't eating your pie. Is it really O.K.?"

105

He forced down two more bites and smiled at her. "The best. What time do you go home?"

"Three A.M. Pretty late, huh?"

He looked her up and down again. They all went for that; you could practically see them get wet. "For tonight. I have] an appointment—business stuff. Where's Danny taking offj to?"

"Didn't say. Sweetie, I wouldn't care where it was if somebody offered me a trip, you know? I'd go to Tacoma ojj Humptulips or wherever. . . ."

"Somebody told me you and Sam were pretty tight, him to take you."

"Who said that?"

"Gee, I can't remember, but all I can say is he's a luc man. You sure you two aren't engaged or something?"

She was still chuckling to herself, and trying to figure out] what the old deputy could have said about her when he walked away.

In the lot behind the hotel, he slammed his fist into the Harley's leather seat. Take her away. Damn them! Never,j He would not allow it, not now, not ever. He would watch her every minute of every day, and if they tried to take her, he would ... He sat down on the old, scarred bike and closed his eyes. In a few moments the tension drained out of] him and his mind was clear again.

Run, Danny. Take her and run as far as you want, but when you stop, I'll be right there.

Joanne dreaded the sound of the phone late at night when '• Danny was on duty. The voiceless presence could not have been Sonia; she and Walt were on their way to bed when she left. When Danny called her, they had a signal. Two rings, hang up, and then call again so she'd know it was he who called. Maybe the first two rings had sounded as she ran from the car; maybe she hadn't heard them. She dialed the office and Fletch assured her that everything was all right, S that Danny and Sam had just gone back on the air after'! their coffee break. She called her mother, woke her, and heard the familiar impatient little sigh as she apologized.

106

Joanne told herself, that she was quite safe; nothing real had been taken from her. She was alone, but she was inside the farmhouse with her doors bolted. Her anxiety was familiar; she shouldn't be afraid for herself—only for Danny, riding somewhere out there in the dark, circling the county. He was a target, not she. Her rooms were safe behind drawn curtains and locked doors.

Joanne uncapped her vial of Librium, counted that their were sixteen tablets left, and allowed herself one—the first in a week. Maybe the phone call had just been a mistake.

In bed, with the drug already beginning to soften the sharpest points of worry, she drifted into a half-sleep but it was marred with echoes of Danny's words, the words cut off when Sam knocked at the back door.

"Let me breathe, Joanne. . . . Sometimes I can't breathe without you wanting to know why. ... I can't breathe. . . . You're so scared, you're making me scared."

Something—wind in the trees outside, a tapping against the house—roused her slightly and she turned over, looking for sleep on the other side of the wide bed. And remembered that she had sent him away again, puzzled and frustrated by her sullenness. A branch cracked and she heard it as a shot. She saw Danny falling dead. Again and again, his hand held out to ward off a bullet, a last agonized look on his face as he fell. She closed her eyes tight to strike the image, and another rushed in. She heard the impact as his squad car crashed and saw the brown-and-white unit reduced to crushed metal trapping her dead Danny. Now Danny wasn't dead. He was only injured, and she was being rushed to the hospital to be with him. She would bring him back through her love and tender care. She would not leave his bedside; she would will him to be whole again and warm his skin back to life with her own. She thought she could actually smell the hospital odor, and Danny's muscular arms were dark brown against the bandage and bedsheet white. Lying there like that, he seemed very sexy, and she felt a tickling beat in her crotch, an insistent heat there.

107

She was not asleep and not awake, but aware enough to glance toward the shade and see that it was not flush with the bottom of the window. She sighed and switched off the little light by the bed and then got up and pulled the shade all the way down and checked to see that the bedroom door was locked.

She lay back in bed and pictured the scene again. Danny, injured but alive, and herself sitting beside him, his hand clutching hers, holding onto her as if he would fall away forever if he lost touch. She could smell the bandages and iodine again, see his arms flex, and then, slowly, a small tent rising from the sheets where his erection pushed.

She leaned across to stroke his shoulder, and she felt his] mouth nuzzling blindly against her breasts. She opened her blouse and put his mouth on her tingling nipple, cradling him as she let him suckle, knowing that she was keeping him alive.

Her fingers tugged and circled her nipple's rubbery hardness as Danny nursed at her in her mind, and she let one hand fall lightly between her legs, feeling how warm and moist she was. It wasn't bad if she didn't let her hand move; it was only daydreaming.

Danny's eyes were still closed, but his penis poked at her, fighting to get free of the knitted sheet. Still suckling his eager mouth, she pulled the cover away and saw his huge and dark hard-on trembling beneath his hospital gown, the eye of it wanting her mouth. Outside their white room, nurses and doctors were walking back and forth; they could come in any minute. She didn't care. She massaged his penis and he groaned and whimpered against her breast. She let him suck on her finger as she moved down in the bed. He tasted quite sweet where she licked him and drew the silken head into her mouth.

She wanted him so much that she felt swollen, and she couldn't stop. She mounted him, letting herself slide over his straining cock, feeling it push up. And then she rode him wildly, letting her breasts whip back and forth across his face, letting her own hand move fiercely over the pink nub between her legs.

108

She saw the shocked faces at the doorway, saw them raise their hands to warn her away from Danny, and still she bucked on top of him triumphantly. When the feeling grew to bursting, the lover who had been dead beneath her except for his mouth and his cock threw back his head and shouted, and his voice shimmered up through her belly and down her thighs in waves that made her legs shake.

Joanne lay back and sobbed, horrified at what she had done, and still knowing at last what had been waiting at the top of the hill she'd never managed to climb. She walked shakily to the bathroom and bent over the sink, scrubbing her hand in the dark.

Duane padded around outside the farmhouse in the dark. He knew she was in there because he heard rustles of sound—a door slamming, the floorboards or maybe the bed creaking, and, finally, a sound as if someone inside wept. Maybe. It was hard to hear through the walls. He tried each window, quietly so that no one could possibly hear him, and found them all locked. He'd expected that the doors would be and they were. He could break in, shatter the glass to get to her. But that was risky; she might have enough time to get to the phone. He couldn't cut the line; it came down from the pole and entered near the roof, too high over even his head.

He wanted to smash and force his way in, but his common sense prevailed. Tomorrow, he could find her along the road, alone, with no walls between them at all. He would have to sleep outside in a close watching place to be sure he didn't miss her—or them, if the husband took her away. His sleeping bag was already on the back of the bike, and his saddlebags were packed now and ready. He didn't even have to go back to the crummy room.

He could see into the kitchen with its single dim light glowing, but no matter how he tried, he could not see into the room where he believed she slept. Reluctantly, he turned to leave and his foot pressed against the soft feathered body.

He took the bird with him, its fractured neck flopping 109

crazily over the saddlebags as he coasted down the long driveway.

He tossed it into the ditch below, and saw it disappear beneath the long grasses there.

She slept so soundly that she heard no sounds at all outside her window.

Part 2

September 4, 1981

no

The Lady of the Lake, broad-bowed and gleaming, bumped impatiently against the long, narrow dock and tugged at her lines. Beneath and around her, Lake Chelan mirrored the blue of the sky, so calm and flat that it seemed painted, the thick wash of it brilliant against the umber hills.

By 8:15 A.M., Joanne and Danny waited in line with a hundred other tourists behind the chain blocking the gangplank. Joanne saw the tension in the set of Danny's shoulders. He didn't really want to be here, and it had been Sam who'd convinced him to go, hurrying them both through immediate departure, as if their chance to leave would vanish if they didn't seize it. She'd packed in one day, wondering now what she'd forgotten to bring.

Joanne thought about the nights on the trails ahead, where she and Danny would curve around each other like spoons to shut out the cold, and was glad they had somehow managed this trip. She hooked her arm through Danny's and leaned over the rail to watch the sinuous forms in the shallows below them. Fish slid darkly beneath the surface and duck families circled, their necks craned expectantly for crumbs from above. They made her think of Billy Carter's disappearance, but she didn't want to bring that up again.