The Woman (3 page)

My god, he kicked the man in the balls.

Her holder released her, his hands instinctively cupping his groin as if he were holding a fledgling fallen from a bird’s nest.

Kick him
again. She screamed inside her head.
No, hold him and let me kick ‘im. I’ll drive his dick up behind his eyes.

In a flash, her helper slammed a brick down onto the man’s spine. Then he kneed her assailant in the face, and his head slammed back against the brick wall. His tattooed arms flopped like a gate with a broken hinge. He went down. Flat. His face in the gutter trough where Linda’s had stood only a moment earlier.

Linda staggered back until her shoulders thumped that same brick wall.

As the shock of surprise wore off, the taller one on the other side of the alley brought his foot down from the wall. He reached inside his jacket. In that same moment, the third man hurled the brick he still held, striking the taller man in the shoulder. His hand inside his coat paused. In that split second, the third man drove his fist into the other man’s gluttony, followed by two quick blows to his face. The taller man collapsed, a circus tent dropping to the dust of a deserted fairground.

Her helper wore a full-head stocking mask. In the shadows, she hadn’t noticed. He stepped toward her. He grasped her arm and pulled her close, then touched the bottom of her chin.

Her head came up, fear occupied her face.

His warm whisper touched her ear. “You’re okay.” The scent of his light cologne found her nose. “Go home,” he said. “Do not call the police. They cannot be trusted.”

He got her walking toward the street, out of the alley. On the way she scooped up her purse, the strap seeming to reach up for the hand it knew. Ten yards from the sidewalk, he let go of her arm, turned and, betrayed only by the fading sound of his footfalls, retreated into the swallow of the darkness.

Linda spoke into that darkness. “But—”

“No buts,” his voice returned from seemingly nowhere, “go straight home.”

When Linda reached the sidewalk, she began walking briskly, nearly jogging, her gaze often backward. The police station was on Main Street at the corner of Oak. Three blocks. She could make three blocks. She had to make three blocks.

At the station she grasped the door handle, pulling it part way open, and then stopped. She stood there. Then let go.

He did save me. He must have had a reason for telling me not to go to the police.

After walking to the next corner, feeling unsafe in the town where she had always felt safe, she got into a taxi, giving the driver her home address.

The hack spoke without turning his head. “Are you all right, Miss?”

The voice was louder, less of a whisper, but it sounded much like the man who saved her in the alley. She decided to find out. “If not for you,” she said, “I would likely have died tonight.”

“If you had, in that last moment, what is the one thing you would have missed having in your life?”

“The right relationship with a man, maybe even a family of my own.”

“But you have been married.”

“How do you know that?”

“Not important.”

After a minute or two of silence, she spoke again. “I thought my husband was the right man. . . . My hormones keep telling me he was. . . . Then, eventually, I just knew . . .”

“Then what?”

“I blamed the man. All my girlfriends told me I was right to leave him. I was sure at the time.”

Sudden squeals and pops from the taxi’s tires fighting for footing startled Linda as the cab drove off the blacktop onto the graveled roadside. “You’re home,” the hack said without turning his head.

“Who are you?” Linda asked.

“I teach high school social studies. I’m on vacation.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“I also teach P.E.”

“I’m not going to get an honest answer, am I?”

“You were smart not to go into the police station. The authorities cannot be trusted.”

“But I have to do something?”

“Yes, you do. Go inside. Take a warm shower and go to bed. You will sleep. Don’t worry. I got your back.”

Chapter 3

Linda awoke to the patter of windblown rain striking the window, and the crescendo of the breaking surf a hundred yards from her deck. God, she loved these raw natural sounds. They allowed her to live alone without feeling isolated. She lingered, her head nested in her pillow. After a while, the rain stopped and she could hear the calls of the gulls taking flight, soaring and swooping down to skim the surface of the sea.

As always, she had left the Venetian blinds open on a slant, the morning sun and the waves acting as a gentle alarm. She parted the blinds and peered outside. Everything had that fresh look, the sky brightening wherever the sun reached through seams in the billowy clouds. A hummingbird furiously worked the airspace above her deck, thrusting its rapier-like beak in and out of the orange blossoms of a honeysuckle flourishing in one of her patio pots.

The shards of last night’s terror began worming back into her mind. She poked the power button on her bedside radio, turned the volume up to cover the bathroom noises, turned on the light over the sink and opened the faucet to let the water heat. Her morning routine, everyone had one.

She had not as yet decided what, if anything, she would tell Cynthia about last night. She didn’t want to worry her older friend, but she just had to tell someone, and there was no one else close enough for such a sharing. She also needed to find out why last night, on the phone, her normally upbeat friend Cynthia had sounded so melancholy.

The local radio station she habitually played each morning told of the theft of one of Sea Crest’s two taxis. Then, the announcer said the thief had abandoned the cab on a side street.

Linda went still. She had ridden in that cab. As she reasoned the events, the taxi had been stolen, at least borrowed, by the man who helped her and then drove her home. He had certainly not been a cabbie for he had not asked for a fare.

I hadn’t realized that until right now. And why did I tell him all that stuff about myself. Things I’ve never told anyone but Cynthia. Why did I do that?

Her body went rigid, the hair dryer poised above her head, warming only the air. The radio had gone on to report that two men had been found dead—murdered, the announcer said, two strangers. Police Chief Benjamin McIlhenny reported having found no identification on their bodies. They had been found in the alley behind Sea Crest Donuts. Both shot in the head.

Linda’s windowless bathroom shrank, cramped. The sensation of a belt tightened around her chest made her fight for the next breath, just as she had in the alley. The dead men had to be the two who attacked her. There were two men. Found in the same alley. They had been killed that same night. They had to be. Who else could they be?

She recalled the touch of the repulsive man who’d held her close. He had rough hands. And sour breath. She shuddered. Then her mind saw the cruel face of the second man, his sagging stomach.

The radio station described these killings as the first local murders ever, according to the Sea Crest Gazette, the town’s twice-a-week newspaper: Wednesday and Saturday mornings. The station went on to inform its listeners that no one knew exactly which year the Gazette had issued its first edition. Old man Jory, now retired, whose family had once run the ice house just outside of town, called in to say his pa had once said the Gazette began publishing in October 1881. The paper’s first lead story had been the shootout between the Earps and the Clantons at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. Since then, the Gazette had reported many murders, but none in their own quiet hamlet. That had changed this morning. The tone of the announcement almost seemed proud. Like Sea Crest had finally made the big time, had qualified to be on the map.

Such nonsense.

Her next thought struck like a claw hammer.

My mysterious helper must have killed them. . . . Who else? I have to tell Chief McIlhenny. No. First I want to talk with Cynthia.

Linda left her condo at eleven-fifteen so she could arrive at O’Malley’s Bistro in time to get their regular table by the front window. The establishment had a side wall of stainless steel equipment that kept things cold and a back wall behind the bar crowded with more stainless equipment that kept other stuff hot. Other than the ubiquitous well-known fast food mainstays, O’Malley’s Bistro along with Millie’s Sea Grog comprised everything about food and drink for those who called Sea Crest home.

From the table at the front window, Linda always saw Cynthia come out of her job across the street at SMITH & CO. At sixty-two, Cynthia was twenty-five years older than Linda, at least seventy-five pounds heavier, and had weak ankles. Linda always opened the door to O’Malley’s from the inside and helped Cynthia to their usual table.

SMITH & CO.
occupied a plain brick, standalone building with no windows and only a small sign: SMITH & CO., CONSULTING. No glass door. No sign welcoming visitors. In fact, the building, framed by alleys on its north and south sides, projected an image that said: not welcome. Cynthia had never invited Linda to stop at the office, and had always deflected inquiries about her place of employment.

As usual, Clark Ryerson came to Linda’s table. He always waited on her, trading tables with other staff when necessary. Rumor was that Clark had come to town after being hired to provide security for the marijuana growers. Then one day Clark rode his Harley into town with a horrible cut on his side, blood steadily dripping from the bottom of one pant leg of his Levi’s. He told Dr. Mulvihill he’d foolishly backed into a cutting machine. The story seemed suspicious, but nothing else suggested trouble in the growers’ nearly autonomous region a few miles to the east. Mulvihill stitched Clark’s wound, but the man had lost a great deal of blood and needed a transfusion. Clark told the doctor to forget it. His blood was Bombay Phenotype. The state’s blood banks had none. The U.S. Army had trouble getting Bombay. Only one person in every quarter-million was Bombay, and their bodies rejected blood of any other type. To Clark’s surprise, the doc had one other patient with that type. Linda Darby.

The doc had called Linda at home. “You share or the odds say this fella dies.” She donated what the doctor needed.

After that Clark stayed in town. He got a job waiting tables for O’Malley who ordered Clark to get rid of his earring, cut his hair above his shoulders, and work clean shaven.

Everyone had expected Clark would tell O’Malley to stick his job where the sun didn’t shine and put the coastal dwellers in the rearview mirror of his hog. Everyone was wrong. Other than drinking with some of the growers when they came to town, and letting them crash at his place when they were too drunk to drive back over Pot Ridge, Clark had apparently walked away from that part of his life. He had become a coastal dweller, a quiet citizen of Sea Crest. On more than one occasion, Linda had considered surrendering to Clark’s persistence. He stood about six feet, had a well-muscled torso and a melt-you-inside smile, but he didn’t fit Linda’s first criteria, no locals. No relationships.

Linda drank an ice tea and a refill Clark brought, without seeing Cynthia as usual, struggling while stepping off the curb on her side of Main Street. There were never many pedestrians in Sea Crest, and those few were mostly regulars. But now and again she saw a stranger, including one passing right now, a camera case slung over his shoulder. Cynthia had recently told her about a new man in town who always carried a camera. Maybe he was that man. Cynthia, having already pitched Linda on behalf of all the eligible men she knew, had moved on to promoting men she had only observed. “After all, honey, it’s the visceral stuff that rings your chimes.”

The stranger had dressed to blend in. Dark shoes with soft soles, khaki pants and a windbreaker pinned down by the strap of his camera. His head covered by a dark baseball cap, nothing embroidered on its front. Linda enjoyed watching people and over the years, while waiting for Cynthia, had watched hundreds walk by SMITH & CO
.
Never before had anyone paid any real attention to that brick building. It had been built in the age when contractors didn’t trowel off the mortar protruding between bricks. But this man had paused at the alleys on each side of the building. His pauses were nearly imperceptible, but clearly he had paused to study the unwindowed sides as if the building was a lingerie shop, and he had x-ray vision.

The man tugged his cap lower, and then suddenly faced in Linda’s direction. Instinctively, she turned away. Then, realizing her reaction had been unnecessary, she looked back, taking note of a cleft in his chin, his small waist and broad shoulders.

When the man turned at the corner, Linda stared for a moment at the last space he had occupied, then went back to sipping her ice tea and watching two elderly men near the bar playing checkers, each nursing a draft beer.

When Cynthia was thirty minutes late, Linda asked Clark to bring her a Cobb salad with honey-mustard on the side, and a croissant. That is, after rejecting Clark’s latest request to take her out to dinner. She said no politely, without explanation, and Clark respected her answer. While waiting for her salad, she checked her cell phone to be sure it was on and operating. It was and it held no messages.