The Twisted Window (2 page)

"Thanks, I'll keep that in mind," Brad said. He turned to Tracy. "How about you? Are you the only Lloyds in the phone book?"

"My uncle's name isn't Lloyd," said Tracy.

The tone of her voice had changed in some subtle manner, and Brad experienced a chill of sudden apprehension. Had he made some stupid blunder that had given him away? He hurriedly reviewed their conversation but could come up with nothing that should have aroused suspicion. Except for her own disclosure that she had lost her mother, there had been nothing said by any one of them that had been anything other than casual and impersonal.

It was obvious, though, that she was not encouraging him to phone her. Was it possible that she already had a steady boyfriend? In the short time Brad had been observing her, there had been no such indication. On several occasions, in fact, he had seen her cold-shoulder boys who were obviously trying to strike up a conversation with her. Perhaps she was going with somebody who attended another high school or was away at college.

By now the cafeteria had almost emptied out. Both Tracy and Gina had already deposited their plates and trays in the appropriate receptacles and were headed for the door.

Struggling to hide his disappointment, Brad added his own tray to the pile by the entrance to the kitchen and followed the girls out of the cafeteria into the hall. The corridor was filled with students involved in an attempt to get from one class to another within a five-minute time span, and the reverberating clang of locker doors made normal conversation all but impossible.

With a parting nod and smile, Gina plunged into the river of moving bodies and was promptly swept off in one direction, while Tracy disappeared in another. A wave of students who were headed for C lunch almost bowled Brad over as he fought his way against the current to the center of the hallway.

I'll have to find somebody else, that's all, he told himself. There are plenty of girls at this school who can do the job for me.

But Tracy had seemed so right, so exactly what he needed. Time was racing by so quickly. It was Tuesday already. There were only five days left before spring break would be over back in Albuquerque, five days before his mother would report him missing. The prospect of starting over at this point, of finding another appropriate girl, of getting to know her well enough to talk her into helping him, seemed overwhelming.

Then, just as he was trying to psych himself up to plunge back into the search, miraculously there was Tracy, standing in front of him.

"It's Stevenson," she told him, raising her voice so that it would carry over the noise in the hallway. "My uncle and aunt are named Gory and Irene Stevenson."

"They're in the phone book?"

"Yes—it's Stevenson, spelled with a V."

"I'll call you tonight," Brad said. "Will that be okay?"

She hesitated and then nodded, and he was filled with a sudden rush of euphoria.

It was an omen! His plan was destined to work!

CHAPTER 2

From the first day she had registered at Winfield High School, Tracy had taken the same route home every afternoon—two blocks east along Third Street, one block south on Rosemont, and a diagonal cut across Lamar Park to Cotton Road. Her aunt and uncle's home, at which she still felt more like a visitor than a resident, was located on South Cotton, in a neighborhood of manicured lawns and neatly shaped shrubbery. It was populated primarily by middle-aged working couples, and on weekday afternoons there was an air of emptiness about it, like a movie set on a day when there was no filming.

Except for several weeks last September, when the mid-afternoon sun had been so intense that she had arrived home dizzy with heat and drenched with perspiration, Tracy had never minded the walk to and from school. Since there were few families with teenagers living on South Cotton, there was no one she felt obligated to walk with, and the solitary twenty minutes at either end of the school day had quickly become one of the few real pleasures in her current life. Her aunt, a real estate agent, worked irregular hours, and all too often, Tracy arrived home from school to find Aunt Rene already there waiting for her, eager to visit and "have a nice chat" about the events of the day. Because of this, Tracy usually tried to prolong her walk as much as possible.

Generally she used this time alone for emotional unwinding. Today, however, she had some heavy thinking to do. She had done something on impulse that had not only been stupid but possibly even dangerous, and she did not know why she had done it or what she ought to do next.

She should never have encouraged Brad Johnson to get in touch with her. It had been a crazy thing to do, and at the time she had sensed that. It was not even as if the invitation had come tumbling out in an accidental manner during the course of their lunchtime conversation. She had been even more brazen than Gina, whose line about being "the only Scarpellis in the phone book" was a standing joke at school. Gina, at least, had tried to sound philanthropic—"If you get desperate for human companionship" was the way she had put it. In Tracy's case, there had been no such pretense. She had left the cafeteria and, once she was safely away, had deliberately turned back to hand herself over to a stranger who, even then, she had had good reason to believe was a fraud.

Why had she done such a thing? she asked herself. Was it because of his extreme good looks? Yes, if she were to be honest, she would have to admit that that had certainly been part of it. Although slight in build, the boy who called himself Brad Johnson had a face that was almost too handsome to be believed. The perfect features; the heavy-lashed eyes and the wide, sensitive mouth gave him a look of ethereal beauty that was very different from the burly cloddishness that she had come to associate with the "Winfield rednecks."

When Gina had first pointed him out to her—"Mr. Gorgeous over there by the water fountain is checking us out!"—Tracy had glanced across with no more than idle curiosity and surprised herself with her immediate positive reaction. She had not had the slightest interest in dating since she had arrived in Winfield, but the sight of this particular boy had had a strange effect on her. He looked like the type of young man she was used to seeing at the theaters and museums and art galleries she had attended with her mother. When she had seen him again at noon in the cafeteria, it had been hard to pretend to be listening to Gina's chatter. She had known even before he got up from his seat that he was going to come over to their table, and she had known, too, that she wanted him to do just that.

It was not until later that she had come to realize that he was not what he was pretending to be.

Now, shifting her load of books from one arm to the other, Tracy left the sidewalk and crossed Rosemont Street to the northwest corner of Lamar Park. Rows of trees flanked the park's entrance, and almost as soon as she stepped onto the gravel pathway the afternoon sunlight was blocked by leafy branches, and shade settled onto her shoulders with weighted coolness.

The park was laid out as a rectangle and arbitrarily divided into sections, each of which was unofficially designated for a particular use. The northern end, screened off by a golden wall of forsythia, was a romantic haven for lovers. There, on spring and summer evenings, young people lay entwined in each other's arms like pink and white islands dotting a grass green sea. The center of the park was wide and open and provided an unobstructed area for dog walking, ball playing, or frisbee tossing. The southeast corner, bordering on Cotton Road, was the playground area, and contained swings, slides, and a set of monkey bars. Benches were positioned at strategic points along the edges of the playground so mothers could sit and visit with each other while remaining alert, on call to rescue children who got stuck on the bars or clobbered by swings.

The park was always liveliest in the early mornings. That was when the joggers were out, dressed in bright sweat suits, chugging clockwise around the park's perimeter like center-ring ponies in a circus. The dog walkers were active then, too, clinging to leashes and carrying their pooper scoopers, enthusiastically greeting each other like members of some elite fraternity. When she cut through the park in the mornings on her way to school, Tracy often felt as though she were crashing a private party.

In the afternoons usually only the playground was occupied. Today, as she walked past the beds of pansies beside the fountain, she could see, framed in a gap between two bushes, several young women chatting together at the park's south end, while a group of small children chased each other up and down the slides.

It was then that she suddenly realized that she was being watched.

There was no specific reason for the awareness, but it was as undeniable as the feeling she had experienced at lunchtime when she had felt Brad Johnson staring at her. On that occasion she had been disconcerted yet flattered; there was nothing sinister about being the object of someone's attention in a school cafeteria. What she was feeling now, however, was something quite different, because the person who was watching her was keeping himself hidden.

She was alone in that section of the park—or, at least, she had assumed she was. Tracy glanced surreptitiously about her, hoping to find that she had been mistaken. Even a child, stretched out on the grass behind the fountain, would provide an innocent explanation for what she was feeling.

A hasty perusal confirmed the fact that no such person existed. To all appearances, she was alone, as she had thought she was. And yet she felt certain this was not true. Her skin was starting to prickle, and her scalp was getting a tingling sensation, as though an icy wind were blowing against the back of her neck.

The first thought that flashed into her mind was that she was being staked out for a mugging. With effort she fought the temptation to break into a run. If she ran it would alert her pursuer that she was aware of his existence, and the last thing she wanted to do was trigger an attack. She began to walk slightly faster to get away from the trees, the most likely shelter for someone who wanted to conceal himself. She did not permit herself to glance back over her shoulder but kept her ears tuned for the telltale sound of crackling bushes or a sudden burst of footsteps rushing up behind her.

A scream lay formed and ready at the back of her throat. If she released it, the mothers at the playground would be sure to hear her, but the bushes would block their view of what was happening. How they would react to a disembodied scream was hard to anticipate. For all she knew, their whole concern might be for their children. Instead of rushing to her assistance they might grab their youngsters and run the other way.

Never before had the northern end of the park seemed so vast and empty. She was by now well past the fountain, but the hedge of forsythia seemed to stretch on indefinitely, cutting her off from any human contact. She could hear the sound of her own breathing, as ragged and rasping as though she had just run a marathon, and the muscles in her legs were cramping with the effort it was taking her to hold them in check.

Walk, don't run, she counseled herself. Steady and fast will get you there. You've made a lot of progress during the past few minutes. Anybody hiding back behind the trees will have a lot of distance to cover before he can get at you now.

If he was still back behind the trees. But what if he wasn't? What if he had left his station there and was closing the distance between them, while the pounding of her heart drowned out his footsteps?

Pull yourself together, Tracy commanded. There isn't any reason to panic. This is a little town in Texas, not New York City. It's the middle of the afternoon, not two in the morning.

Besides, even if she was correct about the fact that someone was observing her, that did not necessarily mean he was out to molest her. No halfway intelligent mugger would risk a daylight attack on a schoolgirl who was obviously good for nothing but an armload of textbooks.

The hedge extended only several more yards before it ended at the edge of the softball field. If she did run now, she told herself, she would be certain to reach the clearing before anyone pursuing her could overtake her.

With that realization, Tracy found her legs taking over for her brain. Without having made a conscious decision to do so, she started to run. Sprinting to the end of the hedgerow, she hurled herself around the last of the bushes and burst out into the open section of the park.

The relief that swept over her drained all strength from her body and left her light-headed and gasping like a half drowned swimmer. The world around her shimmied as though distorted by heat waves, and her legs felt loose-jointed and rubbery.

Then, as moments passed and her heartrate gradually returned to normal, she deliberately turned and peered back at the empty expanse of grass that stretched innocently to the flower-encircled fountain. No one was there, of course. Nobody had been chasing her.

For a fleeting moment she contemplated the possibility that she might also have been wrong about being watched. Then, as if to lay that doubt to rest, she heard a car door slam and an engine start up beyond the trees and shrubbery that blocked her view of Rosemont. It was the first car engine she had been aware of since she had entered the park. Rosemont was a small residential street where there was little traffic, except in the early morning, when its residents left for work, and from five to six o'clock in the evening, when they returned home.

The rumble of the engine leapt to a roar, and a squeal of tires pierced the afternoon quiet like a shriek of pain. Too surprised to react, Tracy stood frozen for an instant too long. By the time she had thought to drop her books and run back along the path to the street, the throb of the motor had already been softened by distance.