Nightcrawlers

16

TAMARA

The interior of Lemoyne’s SUV was like a prison cell.

No, not like one-it was a prison cell. Not much larger than the closet in his basement room, not much smaller than the room itself. He’d taken out the rear seats, fixed the hatchback door so it couldn’t be opened from inside, walled off the rear compartment from the front seat with a thick sheet of tinted plastic bolted to the frame. Windows were all tinted; you could see out-everything outside had a faint grayish tinge, the way they said things did for cats-but nobody could see in.

Lauren wasn’t the first little girl he’d kidnapped. For damn sure now.

The floor in there was carpeted and he’d unrolled a couple of cheap, thin futons over it. Real thoughtful. Wasn’t anything else in the cell except her and Lauren and the big white-faced, pink-dressed doll he’d made Lauren take along; she still wouldn’t have anything to do with it, kicked at it whenever it rolled over her way. No matter how much Tamara tried to keep herself and Lauren braced, the two of them kept sliding around like the doll on those skinny futons. She kept a tight hold on the kid so she wouldn’t hurt herself banging into metal and glass whenever the SUV swerved or hit a bump.

Where were they now? Still on Highway 80, somewhere up around Sacramento. She’d been up here a few times with the folks and once with Horace, but not recently; had to keep checking road signs to pinpoint their location. City girl, San Francisco girl. Scared girl.

So far Lemoyne hadn’t hurt her. Thought he was going to when he ripped open that closet door last night, but all he’d done was shake her a few times, get in her face, and yell questions at her. How’d she find out about him? Who else knew about him and Angie? That damn printout in her purse. Stupid not to’ve left it in the office. One more stupid thing she’d done or hadn’t done.

She’d ’fessed up the truth about seeing him bring the girl home with him Monday night. No gain in lying about that. Rest of what she threw at him was pure lie: she’d told her partner all about it, if she turned up missing he’d go straight to the cops and the cops’d come straight to 1109 Willard. Lemoyne hadn’t bought it. “If your partner knew about this, he wouldn’t’ve let you come back here alone. Nobody knows but you.” Sick bastard, but a smart sick bastard.

He calmed down some after that. Hadn’t even shoved her back in the closet when he was done ragging on her. “You spend the night in here with Angie. Take care of her, I don’t want her crying or wetting herself anymore.”

“Then what?”

“We’re leaving in the morning, early, the three of us.”

“Where’re we going?”

“You’ll find out when we get there.”

“Trailer in the woods?”

That almost set him off again. “How’d you find out about that? What do you know about that?”

“Lauren… Angie told me. Said you were taking her up there to show her a big surprise, have some fun.”

“Angie and me’ll have fun. Not you.”

“What you gonna do to me?”

“I don’t know yet. I haven’t made up my mind.”

This morning, when he came down to get them-six-fifteen by her watch, still dark outside-he hadn’t looked in the closet. She’d shut the door, but worried the whole time she was awake that he’d think to look in there. If he had… But he hadn’t. Just took them out at gunpoint and locked them in this rolling prison cell and headed out. Small hope anyway. One of the other small hopes she’d had was already dead: before he’d shoved them into the SUV, she had a look at the street and the Toyota wasn’t there anymore, he must’ve moved it out of the neighborhood sometime during the night. The small hopes that were left wouldn’t fit in a gnat’s eye. But any hope was something to hang on to, like a lifeline.

The SUV lurched again and Lauren grabbed hold of her blouse, pressed tight against her the way she had on the bed last night. Couldn’t get close enough. Funny how that little girl made her feel. She’d never thought much about kids, beyond a vague notion that if she and Horace ever got married, maybe they’d have one or two someday, like maybe after she was thirty-five. Too much ambition, too many plans, to dive into motherhood before then. But last night, today, holding Lauren, trying to comfort her… it’d unleashed maternal feelings she hadn’t thought she owned. Now she understood how Bill felt about Emily. Really understood, for the first time, how Ma and Pop felt about her.

Amazing thing was, her mothering instincts must be true because Lauren trusted her, took strength from her even though she was a stranger. Hadn’t wet the bed or thrown up or cried much in the dark hours; hadn’t cried at all the whole time they were on the road. Just sat there quiet, hanging on and now and then looking up at her with those big trusting eyes. Didn’t look too good now, though. Kind of sweaty and splotchy. Carsick? The way they kept bouncing around in here, it was a wonder she wasn’t carsick herself.

Surrogate mama, that’s me, Tamara thought, and tightened her arm around the girl, felt little shivers rippling across the thin shoulders. Anger crawled into her again, bleak and black.

He’s not gonna mess with her if I can help it. Word. He’ll have to kill me first.

Freeway signs slid past, gray-green in gray-tinged sunlight. Reno. Highway 80. Downtown Sacramento. They kept riding 80. Cars whizzed by in the other lanes, people just a few feet away. Yo, in here! Help, call the cops, kidnap victims locked up in here! But there was too much traffic noise for shouting to do any good, and no other way to signal through those tinted windows.

How about when he stopped for gas? He’d have to do it sooner or later, these big-boat SUVs were gas hogs. But he’d warned her about making any noise back here. Somebody’d get hurt if she did, he said. Meant it, all right-you could see it in his hard, light-skinned half-and-half face. Like that psycho last Christmas. Not as far off the hook, pretty much in control, but capable of using that gun of his if push came to shove. Wasn’t worth the risk, not with Lauren in the line of fire. Take care of my little girl. Yeah, well, that was just what she would do.

The kid made a little whimpering sound. Tamara put her face down close, smoothed sweat-damp strands of hair off her forehead. “You doing okay, honey?”

“I feel sick.”

“Sick to your stomach?”

“Uh-huh. I hate throwing up.”

“You won’t. Take deep breaths and hold on. We’ll be stopping pretty soon.”

A short silence. Then, “Tamara?”

“Yes, honey?”

“I’m so scared. Are you scared?”

“Some. Don’t you fret. We’ll be all right.”

“Am I gonna see my mama and daddy again?”

“Sure you will. Sure.”

“Promise?”

She said, “Promise,” and bit her tongue and added a little silent prayer: Don’t you make a liar out of me.

Miles unrolling under them. More signs: Roseville. Rocklin. Places she’d heard of but never been to. Whole lot of places she’d never been, places she wanted to go someday. Whole lot of life ahead of her, ahead of Lauren Pay attention to the signs.

Another one: Auburn. Highway 49, Grass Valley.

Lemoyne slowed down, swung out of the fast lane and on over into the exit lane. Auburn-Grass Valley exit. Tamara shifted position on the futon, sat up straighter. Some little town near Grass Valley was where Lemoyne’s second wife was from. Did she still live there, her and his real daughter? Like maybe in a trailer in the woods? Going there to see them for some off-the-hook reason, introduce Angie to Angie? Dude was so weird, he was capable of just about anything.

Off the freeway now, onto a busy side road. And into a Chevron station. For some reason she registered the gas prices’ sign: $2.39 a gallon for regular. Goddamn oil companies, still screwing Bay Area drivers left, right, and back door.

They stopped alongside a row of pumps. Lemoyne hadn’t said a word since they’d left San Leandro, but now she heard his voice, the words muffled by the plastic partition, “You keep quiet back there, Dark Chocolate. You know what’ll happen if you don’t.”

Dark Chocolate. Second or third time he’d called her that. One of those half-and-halfs that hated the fact they were mixed race, wished they were all black or all white and wound up resenting both. Your equal opportunity racist.

She said, “Angie’s feeling sick to her stomach.”

“That’s too bad.” As if he meant it.

“Let me take her to the bathroom.”

“No.”

“You want her to throw up on herself?”

“We don’t have much farther to go. Another hour or so.”

“I don’t know if she can make it that long.”

“You better see she does or you’ll clean her up when we get there. Clean up back there, too. I hate the smell of puke.”

He opened the door on the last few words, slid out quickly, and shut the door behind him.

Lauren started to cry.

Outskirts of Auburn on 49. Broad avenue lined with shopping malls and business parks and car dealerships and fast-food places. Heavy traffic, endless string of stoplights. Then the lights got farther and farther apart, and the road narrowed into two lanes and climbed steadily into the foothills.

Lauren was quiet again. Still taking deep breaths to keep her gorge down, her face scrunched up with the effort it took. Afraid to throw up, afraid of what he might do. Good little girl. Smart, sweet-tempered. What’d she ever do to have a thing like this happen to her?

What’d I ever do? What’s deserving it have to do with shit happening to you?

Still climbing, still a lot of traffic. Pine woods-they were in the foothills now.

More signs: Grass Valley. Nevada City. Highway 20-Marysville.

Exit lane again. Swinging off onto Highway 20.

Pretty soon they were heading down a long, steep grade. Day was clear and warm, sunlight hitting the windows and making it muggy inside the prison cell. Air was bad, too, from the goddamn cigarettes Lemoyne kept smoking. She called to him to turn on the air conditioner, they were suffocating back here. He ignored her.

At the bottom of the grade the freeway ended at a stoplight and another sign. Left: Penn Valley. Right: Rough and Ready. Rough and Ready-that was the name of the town Lemoyne’s ex-wife was from. He turned right at the intersection, onto a narrow secondary road that climbed and twisted through thick forestland.

She tried to remember exactly where Rough and Ready was, how isolated. No use. Must’ve looked at a California map two or three hundred times the past five years, but always for specific counties, cities, roads; you just didn’t notice all the other names, the hundreds of small towns and secondary roads that covered the state. Not if you were a confirmed urbanite, you didn’t.

The constant flicker of sunlight and shadow hurt her eyes. The sharp twists and turns bounced her and Lauren around even more. Seemed to go on a long time like that, but it couldn’t’ve been much more than five minutes before Lemoyne slowed down and Tamara saw they were in Rough and Ready. Old-fashioned little place, must’ve been a Gold Rush town-they passed an ancient building that said Blacksmith Shop on the front of it. Then they were out of the village and Lemoyne picked up speed again.

But not for long. Less than a mile. Another slowdown, then a left turn past a country store onto a lane hemmed in by woods, then a right turn onto another lane with an uneven surface that rattled her teeth and shook a few more whimpers out of the child.

One more twist, and they were onto an unpaved surface-driveway, also hemmed in by trees-and finally, after maybe a hundred jolting yards, the SUV bucked to a stop. Tamara lifted up onto one knee so she could see better through the side window, out front through the partition.

Appalachia.

That was her first thought. Meadowlike clearing surrounded by forest, a creek or something running through on the right side. And a trailer at the far end. Junky and about half a century old, one of those silver jobs that looked like giant sow bugs-all spotted with rust and half-buried in weeds and grass, dry pine needles and cones from a tree behind it spread over its top like dead hair. Fifty or sixty yards to the left was an old barn in better shape than the trailer, the corpse of a car angled in alongside. Off to the right, sitting in more weeds, was one of those molded plastic kids’ playsets, slide and teeter-totter and climbing bars; the colors on it were bright, as if it’d been repainted not too long ago. A narrow shed leaned sideways in that direction, too, ready to fall down. Or maybe it was an outhouse. Didn’t have a half-moon in the door, but it sure looked like one. An outhouse!

Wasn’t anybody around, not now and not for a long time. Lemoyne’s ex-wife and daughter didn’t live here, if they ever had. Only one who came here was that sick bastard when he was in a mood to have fun.

Her skin began to prickle and crawl, the last of her small hopes to crumble away. Middle of nowhere. Nobody was going to find them in a primitive hole like this, not soon, probably not ever. If she couldn’t find a way to save Lauren and herself, they weren’t gonna be saved. Not in this life.

Lemoyne was out of the SUV, unlocking the hatchback. In spite of herself she jerked when he threw the hatch up. The Saturday night special was in his hand again; he waved it at her. “All right, come out of there. You first, and be careful with my little girl.”

She obeyed, scooting out on one hip and leg, lifting the child when she was on her feet. Lauren whimpered and clung to her, blinking in the sunlight. He patted the kid on the head with his free hand, smiling down at her almost tenderly.

“Here we are, Angie,” he said. “Home.”

Now what?