She Walks in Beauty (2 page)

Covington. Yes, that’d do it. She’d settle into a nice old house with a center hall and a veranda and oaks draped with Spanish moss and write her book while the ghost of Walker Percy, who’d lived near the village until his death, prowled around the neighborhood. She’d have oyster po’boys for lunch with the St. Tammany Parish courthouse gang in that old café where Harry had once taken her—where time had stopped in about 1950, and they talked about the Longs, Huey and Uncle Earl, as if they’d dropped by yesterday. Now,
that
ought to furnish her with some material.

Harry could come visit on weekends.

But wasn’t that what he was complaining about now—weekends? And wait until she told him about Hoke putting the kibosh on their plans for Labor Day.

Well, she couldn’t think about that anymore right now. She had to concentrate on changing lanes if she was ever going to make the turn onto Ponce de Leon. She signaled, tried to pull out, got cut off, honked at, and flipped off. Hey, maybe it
was
time to move to a little town out in the middle of nowhere. The traffic in Atlanta was growing more snarly by the day, the influence, no doubt, of all those carpetbagging Yankees.

Now Miss Patsy had finished singing about her sweet dreams, and Sam, sitting at a red light one block away from Mary Mac’s, popped in one of Harry’s tapes. Strumming his guitar, he was singing the first song he’d written for her.
I thought I knew how angels flew till you stepped off the plane.

Oh, Harry. The boy had a sweet baritone—and lots of other sweet things. What to do? What to do? Sam sighed and answered her car phone.

It was Charlie. Something had come up. Something he thought she ought to know about. Yeah. Uh-huh. Charlie always managed a doozie when he was late—which was almost every time they had a date. She listened to him with one ear.

Then she heard what he was saying. Skeeter Bosarge had escaped.

“What?”

“He’s been on the run about eight hours. Now, we don’t know where he’s headed. No reason to think it’s this way.”

“Great. No reason to think it’s not, either, is there?”

No, there wasn’t. And just in case, he didn’t want to frighten her, but maybe she ought to swing back and pick him up at headquarters. They could have a little chat about precautionary measures.

Indeed. He didn’t need to remind her that Skeeter was stark raving crazy. The rapist/murderer had killed three women in Atlanta before Sam’s series on him in the paper pushed enough victims who had lived, but hadn’t told the tale, to come forward. Like most madmen, Skeeter needed someone to blame. He’d picked Sam.

“I’ll get you, you bitch!” he’d screamed at her as they dragged him out of the courtroom after his sentencing.

“Melodramatic, don’t you think?” Sam had flapped her lips at Charlie, hoping her nonchalance would hide their trembling.

“Serious as death,” Charlie had said then. Now he asked, “You got your .38?”

Sam reached over and patted the glove compartment as if Charlie could see her.

He couldn’t.

But Skeeter Bosarge could. Rising from the back seat behind her, he could see her clear as day.

*

“Let’s go have us some fun, pretty lady,” Skeeter whispered as he slipped one big rough hand around her neck.

Sam froze. She’d never forget his filthy voice as long as she lived—however long that was.

She’d already hung up the phone. Charlie couldn’t help her now. No one could. Not even her trusty friends Smith & Wesson, so near—just about 12 inches from her fingertips if she could only reach out and touch them—yet so far away.

“It’s just you and me, baby.” Skeeter ran his other hand down her chest. She could see the blue letters HATE tattooed between his fingers and thumb by someone who didn’t have very good handwriting.

Her mind stepped off and looked back. Here she was thinking about some needle artist in stir who hadn’t learned the Palmer Method when she ought to be concentrating on getting loose from this maniac.

Well, it was easier than thinking about the realities. The possibilities. Skeeter Bosarge’s particular brand of savagery.

She didn’t want to die chopped into little pieces in puddles of blood. She was too young. Well, almost young. She’d been obsessing recently about the cellulite on her thighs, the little lines at the corners of her eyes. But 40 was looking perkier by the minute.

Now what she had to do was concentrate, stop her stomach from doing loop-de-loops, deter the blood from coagulating in her veins. Maybe she and Skeeter could talk about this.

She eased into it. “How you doing, Skeeter?”

His answering laugh was filled with slimy crawly things. It made her want to take a bath.

Then he pinched her breast between his right thumb and forefinger, his left hand still around her neck. She resisted the temptation to reach up and slap his face.

“You been dreaming about me?” he crooned.

Only in my nightmares, you ugly sucker.
She didn’t say that. But he was ugly, with dank, greasy hair, a lowering forehead, too-long arms, dim, dumb eyes. He shuffled. Skeeter the Neanderthal.

Then his right hand moved. Up, back, and she felt the cool, smooth blade against her throat. Oh, God. Oh, Jesus. She was almost deafened by her heart’s pounding.

Skeeter growled, “Just in case you get any funny ideas about running a red light, blowing a stop sign, you try anything, you die.”

He was preaching to the choir. She was a believer. She’d seen his handiwork. Skeeter liked to cut and carve and maim. He’d started with an old girlfriend, raped her, then cut her heart out and ate it. He liked to tell reporters he’d developed a taste for blood right on the spot. Yeah, Skeeter was one hell of an interview.

“Now, what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna have a little drink, then you get over to Monroe Drive, take that down to I-20, head east.” His hairy fingers poked an open pint of bourbon against her lips.

Sam shied at the smell, then smiled her
No, thanks, Skeeter,
trotting out her most polite party manners as if he’d offered her petit fours on a silver tray at a debutante tea.

He smashed the bottle into her teeth. Her blood tasted of salt and rust. She ran her tongue gingerly across her front teeth.

“Drink!” he screamed.

She screamed back: “I don’t drink!”

She didn’t. Not for almost thirteen years. Before that, she’d drunk for a bad long time. Oh, she was a juicer, all right. The kind who threw her shoes out of the car while it was weaving from side to side on the freeway. Who thought she was having a high old time stripping down to her skivvies in the middle of dinner, dancing nude on the tabletops for dessert. Who was all too familiar with the snout of the pig who rooted her awake at four in the morning when her blood sugar dropped, the porker who wore a name tag that read Remorse, who dug out all her transgressions, every last disgusting one, and spread them before her like truffles to be gorged, regurgitated, and scarfed up again.

Skeeter laughed his nasty old laugh. “I know you don’t, baby. I learned a lot about you, what with all the spare time I had down in Reidsville. Talking to a couple other guys you helped put away. We used to make up stories about what we’d like to do if we got hold of you.” Three beats passed while she thought about that. “Now, ain’t life funny?” he crooned.

Sure, sure. She was about to counter with something chatty about what a small world it is, when he peeled away an inch-wide strip of the soft white flesh of her throat just like he was peeling an onion.

It burned like hell. But she didn’t scream. He was far too close to the jugular. She didn’t know how much time she had before the smell of her fear shoved him over the edge into something she didn’t even want to imagine.

“Now.” He tapped her mouth with the pint again. “You wanta drink?”

She drank. Again, he insisted. Again. Again. Again. Until the bottle was almost empty. Then he was pushing pills into her mouth. Chew, he screamed. The last of the bourbon seared her empty gut along with the ’ludes. Then they all joined hands and do-si-doed around her brain, where a drumbeat of secret longing for sweet release had been poised a dozen dry years.

Sock it to me, Devil Daddy. Give it to me, Mr. Booze. Ooooooh, Daddy. I been pining for you. Waiting to run to you. Hide with you. Shuck the straight life, give it up to you. I want to lap you up, suck you up, savor you.

The car lurched. Skeeter slapped her so hard her head snapped. “Open your eyes, you lush. You’re gonna kill us.”

So why didn’t he think of that before? But she wouldn’t do that, would she? Naaawh. It was too much fun drunk-driving this cute little car that handled just like a roller coaster.

They passed a few blocks east of Martin Luther King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, then close by Oakland Cemetery. Confederate General Hood had followed the Battle of Atlanta from the old graveyard’s promontory. Margaret Mitchell rested there, as did Bobby Jones, the golfer. Sam’s mother and father lay near them in a marble tomb. She would too, sooner or later.

Today it looked like sooner.

At that, her parents’ faces zoomed into close focus, pretty people dead all too young, falling out of the sky when their airplane did bad rollovers near Paris. Tears tracked down her cheeks, almost thirty years later.

The pills and the booze had pushed her over into easy sentimentality, teetering on the edge of maudlin. She
hated
that.

“You like cemeteries?” Skeeter asked as if he were talking about the weather. “I can’t stand ’em. Daddy made us go weed Mama’s grave every Sunday. It was creepy.”

Sam snuffled. Poor Skeeter. She knew just how he felt, losing his mama. She and Skeeter Bosarge, the rapist/murderer, had something in common. They could talk.

And, in fact, she knew just what to say to him. “Why don’t you let me go, Skeeter? I’ll make sure they cut you a deal.”

The choice of words was unfortunate.

“Cut me
nothing
!”
the madman screamed. “Cut
you,
bitch!” The silvery knife skittered against her neck.

OK, it was time to get the hell out of there. Cars zipped by them on the interstate. What was
with
these people? Were they so snug in their air-cooled wraparound sound they couldn’t see a woman with a knife at her throat?

“Take the Panthersville Road exit and don’t try anything cute.”

They were
there
already? It hadn’t taken long, fifteen minutes from the time he’d grabbed her. Now everywhere she looked there were thick stands of trees, remnants of the forests that had once covered these rolling hills. Dark, deep woods, where nobody could find her.

Houses grew few and far between. They drove through stands of oak, pine, sweet gum, sprinkled with wild dogwood and azalea. Would they find her corpse just about the time they crowned the new Miss Dogwood next spring?

Left,
Skeeter barked. Left, then left again. The blade snicked her throat with each word. How much blood had she lost? The street sign at the last turn read Hanging Tree Lane.

“’D’jew see that?” he giggled.

Cute. Skeeter was always cute. One of his trademarks had been the little poems he’d left at the crime scenes. They had always rhymed, and they were always obscene. Moon, June, bloody bazooms. Nice, twice, tit slice. Yep, Skeeter had a way with words all right.

“Out of the car,” he barked, loosening his hold.

A commotion of motion. Her Big Chance. She lurched for the glove compartment and the .38, didn’t even get close. He smashed her seat forward, bashing her head—already pounding with the booze and the ‘ludes.’ Now he was out of the car, dragging her with him through gravel and grass. Skeeter was huge, and two years of weight lifting in Reidsville had made him even more formidable.

The woods were lovely, dark and deep on the way to Grandmother’s house, and the Big Bad Wolf had very big teeth. He bared them at her now, then slugged her with his fist. Stars twinkled, and her nose scrinched. She’d never known anything could hurt like this.

And she rather liked her delicate, arrow-straight nose. Vanity, vanity. Where does it get you?

To Grandmother’s house? Before them stood a little cabin in the woods. Was this a fairy tale? A figment of her drunken imagining?

If not, maybe Grandma was home. Maybe she had a telephone. Maybe she’d call for help.

No such luck. They danced around to the back of the tarpaper shanty, this peculiar couple. Her fanny to his crotch, his arm crooked in a chokehold, his legs kicking her along like a recalcitrant partner who just couldn’t keep the beat.

“Ain’t nobody here,” he grunted, shoving her toward a stand of pines that grew right up to the back door. “Belongs to my old man, still down at Reidsville. You know what an old man is, sweetheart?”

She did. His sugar daddy, his boyfriend—undoubtedly even bigger and meaner and uglier than Skeeter—who’d faced off other inmates, hit ’em with the dead eyes, said
Back off! This ‘un’s mine.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve had a woman,
Miss
Adams.”