With an Extreme Burning

TWENTY-THREE

It was raining on the Oregon coast.

There had been overcast and scattered showers in the Portland area, more of the same on the drive west on Highway 6 in the rented Datsun. The heavy rain started near Tillamook and hammered them in gusty streamers as they headed south on Highway 101. The storm had a wintry feel; its chill penetrated the car, even with the heater on, and numbed Cecca's feet. Neither she nor Dix had thought to check the Oregon weather before leaving Los Alegres, and they were both dressed according to California conditions. The suede jacket and thin sweater and slacks she wore weren't nearly adequate.

They hadn't said much since leaving the airport motel shortly before nine. There was nothing left to say; they'd picked and probed at it last night on the drive to SFO and throughout the flight, until they had reduced it to raw, bleeding tissue like a wound with the scab torn off.

The digital dashboard clock read ten-forty when they passed through Neskowin, the little village north of Pelican Bay. The sea was close on their right here, partially obscured by low-hanging clouds and mist: slate-gray, heavy-swelled, the waves throwing up dirty white spume when they battered against the rocky shore. Visibility was poor; most of the daylight had been consumed by the storm, and what light there was had a dusky, nebulous quality. Dix had long ago turned on the headlights, but the beams seemed to deflect off the wall of wetness ahead rather than penetrate it.

Cecca said, “This is the way it was that night.”

“Raining like this?”

“Yes. Clouds down low over the road.”

“Miserable driving conditions, especially after dark.”

She nodded. “Even if he'd had his headlights on …”

“Katy might not have seen them. But the accident would still have been his fault for driving too fast. How much farther to Pelican Point?”

“It can't be more than a few miles now.”

It was about four miles. The Crabpot restaurant's big blue and white neon sign, unlit at this early hour, swam up out of the mist ahead; Cecca sat forward as soon as she saw it. “There,” she said, but Dix had seen it, too, and was already tapping the brakes.

The restaurant and its front and side parking lots looked the same to her as they had four years earlier. The turnout across the highway also looked the same, except that the new guardrail rimming the cliffs edge was larger, sturdier. Slowly, Dix swung in off the highway. The turnout was empty except for them, a flat expanse of rain-puddled gravel glistening blackly where the headlight beams traced over it. He pulled up near the guardrail, at an angle to it. Left the engine running and the lights on, but set the hand brake.

“I'm getting out for a minute,” he said.

“Why?”

He shook his head, as if he wasn't sure himself. Through the rain-streaked glass Cecca watched him walk to the guardrail, lean forward cautiously to peer down the cliff wall. Without making a conscious decision she opened her door and joined him. The wind was abrasively cold, the rain it flung into her face as stinging as thrown sand. She had to squint and shield her eyes to see what lay below.

The ocean seemed to be boiling. Surf lashed over huge offshore rocks coated with seaweed, over the base of the curving promontory to the south, sliming them all with white froth; inundated smaller inshore rocks and a tiny rind of beach. Jets of spray burst fifteen, twenty feet into the air when big waves surged in. The violence of it made Cecca cringe inside. She shivered and backed up a step.

Dix put his arm around her shoulders, said something that the wind tore away from her ears. She tugged at his jacket to draw him back to the car. Inside, she turned the heater up as high as it would go; sat hugging her breasts, her hands tucked inside her jacket and under her arms to try to warm them.

“You should have stayed in the car,” Dix said.

“I wish I had. What did you say out there?”

“I said it must be more than a hundred-foot drop. It's a miracle the father wasn't killed, too.”

She shivered again. “Miracle?” she said.

He was waiting when Amy came out through Hallam's rear entrance. Sitting on the passenger seat of her car: She must have forgotten to lock that door.

As soon as he saw her he got out quickly and came toward her, smiling. His car wasn't anywhere around; he must have walked over. There was nobody else in the alley, just the two of them. She almost turned back inside. Instead, she stood nibbling her lower lip, waiting for him. She was glad to see him and yet she wasn't. No matter how desperately she wanted to believe in his innocence, he scared her now almost as much as he attracted her.

“Hi,” he said. “I was beginning to think old man Hallam was working you overtime.”

“Um … overtime?”

“It's quarter past one. Half day on Saturdays, right?”

“Right. I had some things to finish up.”

“Well, now you're free for the rest of the weekend. Any plans?”

“No. No plans.”

“Not going anywhere with your mom?”

“No.”

“Where is she, anyway?”

“At home, I guess. Or at Better Lands. I don't know.”

“She isn't either place. Dix Mallory's nowhere to be found either. They go someplace together?”

“Beats me.”

“Come on now, Amy. You can tell me.”

“I really don't know.”

Which was the truth. Mom had kept her promise to call last night, but she wouldn't say much about Pelican Bay or what she and Dix had decided to do. She'd sounded distracted and in a hurry; she hadn't even mentioned the condoms. “I won't be here tomorrow”—that was all she'd said. It didn't take a genius to figure out they'd gone up to Oregon, to Pelican Bay. Amy was still pissed at being left out, but not pissed enough to do something defiant.

He said, “You've been staying with your grandparents the past few nights. Why is that, Amy?”

“They wanted me to,” she lied.

“It wasn't your mom's idea? So she could be with Dix?”

“No.”

He watched her silently. It was like the other day: She couldn't quite meet his eyes. She looked at his mouth instead. His smile had a little quirk in it and she could see the tip of his tongue in one comer.

When she started to imagine his tongue in her mouth she shook herself and said, “Well, I guess I'd better get going …”

“Are you in a hurry?”

“Um, I've got some errands to run.”

“Errands aren't urgent. How about going for a ride first?”

“A ride? With you?”

He laughed. “Of course with me.”

“Your car's not here.”

“You don't mind driving, do you?”

“No, but— Where?”

“Not far and not long. We'll be back inside of half an hour.”

She wanted to; she didn't want to. It was like being pulled from two sides at once, as if she were a rope in a tug-of-war game. She made herself say, “I'd better not.”

He touched her cheek, stroked it with his knuckles. “Come on, honey,” he said. “Just a short ride. What do you say?”

Honey. That and his touch almost made her give in. She took a breath and said, “No, I really can't,” and tried to move past him to her car.

He stopped her with his body and tight fingers on her arm. He was still smiling, but now it was just a mouth smile. His eyes … they'd changed. They'd gotten cold and hard.

Oh no, she thought, oh no!

“Give me your keys, Amy. Then get in the car on the passenger side. I'll drive.”

Sudden fear held her rooted. Behind him Water Street was still empty—there was never anybody around back there. She could hear the hum of traffic on the cross streets, somebody talking loud in one of the adjacent stores, but it was as if the two of them were alone in the middle of a wilderness.

“Let me go,” she said. “I'll scream,” she said.

“No you won't,” He unbuttoned the front of his suit coat, pulled one flap aside. “You won't scream and you won't argue.”

She stared at the gun tucked into the waistband of his slacks.

“Give me your keys and then get in the car,” he said. “Now there's a good girl.”

Pelican Bay was like most Oregon coastal towns, loaded with picturesque cottages and beachfront condos and motels and seafood restaurants and native craft shops. The inlet that gave it its name extended under an arched highway bridge, forming a sheltered harbor for a fleet of fishing boats and a handful of weathered fish-processing companies. In the height of the summer season, with the sun shining and tourists swarming around, it probably had a certain charm. Now, seen through the bleak curtain of rain, its streets empty and some of its shops already closed, it had a remote and unwelcoming aspect.

Dix pulled into a service station and spoke briefly to the attendant on duty. Pelican Bay was too small to have a library, the man said; the nearest one was in Lincoln City, down the coast a few miles. That was where the nearest newspaper was published, too—the weekly Lincoln City News Guard.

Back in the car, he relayed this information to Cecca, who sat huddled against the passenger door. Then he asked her, “Want to get some coffee before we go on? Warm up a little?”

“No. Let's just get it over with.”

The rain was easing a little when they reached Lincoln City. This was the center of the north-coast resort area, an exceptionally long, narrow town—actually a collection of tiny hamlets strung together—that spread out for several miles along Highway 101. Dix stopped at another service station there to ask directions. Driftwood Library was only a few blocks away, as it turned out. And it was open, Dix saw with relief as he pulled up in front. In these hard times you never knew about library hours.

They had a microfilm file of issues of the News Guard dating back several years. A librarian showed them to the microfilm room, brought the tapes containing the issues for June and July of 1989, and left them alone.

Dix threaded June into the magnifier, cranked it rapidly through to the issue for Wednesday, June 25. The accident was bound to have been front-page news, but there was nothing in that issue about it. “It must have been that Wednesday night that it happened,” Cecca said. She was right. The following week's issue had the account.

Three-column headline and photo on the lower half of the front page. The photo was of a crane lifting a wrecked and fire-ravaged van up the side of the cliff at Pelican Point; two uniformed highway patrol officers stood in the foreground, and visible in the background was a splintered section of guardrail. The headline read:

FIERY CRASH CLAIMS 3 LIVES

The screen on the magnifier was scratched and the newsprint on the accompanying story was small and smeary. Dix worked the focus knob to sharpen the image.

A fiery highway accident last Wednesday evening claimed the lives of three members of a prominent Pelican Bay family. Cheryl Cotter, 36, and her two children, Angela, 5, and Donald, 6, of 289 Barksfield Road, died instantly when the van in which they were riding plunged 120 feet to the rocks at Pelican Point and burst into flames. The driver, Gordon Cotter, a tax accountant with offices in Lincoln City, was thrown clear. He suffered a broken leg and minor injuries and is listed in stable condition at North Lincoln Hospital.

According to highway patrol officer Edmund Deane, Cotter was driving southbound on Highway 101 shortly past nightfall, at an excessive speed and without headlights. He swerved to avoid a rear-end collision with a car that had just exited the parking lot at the Crabpot restaurant, and lost control on the rain-slick highway. The driver of the other car, Kathleen Mallory, of Los Alegres, California, stated that rain and darkness prevented her from seeing the oncoming van. Several witnesses corroborated her account. She was not cited.

There was more, continued on an inside page. Gordon Cotter was a native of McMinnville, had met and married his wife in Pelican Bay, and had lived there for nine years. He belonged to civic and social groups in Pelican Bay and Lincoln City; the head of the Lincoln City Lions Club was quoted as saying, “It's a terrible tragedy. Gordon was totally devoted to his family.” There were no photographs of any of the victims.

A thin excitement pulsed in Dix. They were on the right track; he was convinced of it now. Cecca's expression said that she felt the same way.

He cranked ahead to the next week's issue. One small follow-up story giving funeral information and stating that Gordon Cotter was soon to be released from the hospital. That was all.

Cecca said, “Why didn't they publish a photo of him?”

“Local policy, maybe.”

“Would the McMinnville paper have run one?”

“It's possible. We'll see if the library keeps a McMinnville file.”

But the library didn't.

He kept talking at her. Talking, talking. Amy didn't hear it all; she didn't want to listen. She sat slumped on the seat beside him, the seat belt tight around her—he'd made sure she put it on and kept it on—and told herself over and over to stay cool. He hadn't hurt her yet and he wasn't going to, not if she could help it.

“… Didn't want to do it this way, Amy, I really didn't. I wanted so much for us to get to know each other first, to be close. But you're not ready and there isn't enough time to wait. I thought there'd be, but there isn't. Your mother and Dix … I wish I knew where they went. You really don't know, do you? No. I don't think they suspect me yet, but they may be getting close. Now I'll have to hurry with them, too.…”

Him him him! All the time she'd been fooling herself; all the time it was him. Katy Mallory, Mr. Harrell, Bobby … he'd killed them. What if she'd actually let him have sex with her? She felt awful enough as it was, sick and shamed, but if she'd let him do it to her, she'd have hated herself for the rest of her life.

How could she have thought he loved her?

How could she have thought she loved him?

How could she have been so stupid!

“… Pick you up like that, with a gun in broad daylight. Somebody might have seen us together. I don't think anybody did, but what other choice did I have? I've got to finish it. That's the only thing that matters. Why couldn't you have made it easy for me? Making me use a gun … I don't like guns any more than your mom does. This one isn't mine, I'd never own a gun. It belonged to Louise Kanvitz. I didn't want to hurt her, but she forced me with her gun and her demands. Greedy bitch. Her fault, not mine. Hers and Katy's. Katy shouldn't have let it slip about us. I warned her to be careful. Didn't I warn her? They never listen, they never listen …”

Why?

Amy still didn't know that. He had hardly stopped talking since they'd left Hallam's ten or fifteen minutes earlier, but he hadn't said—she couldn't remember him saying—anything about why.

“Why?” The word just popped out of her.

At first she didn't think he'd heard. Then his head jerked toward her and he said, “Why what?”

“Why are you doing this? Why do you want to hurt Mom, me, everybody we know?”

“Not everybody, Amy. Just the ones who deserve it.”

“I never did anything to you. Neither did Mom.”

“Yes, she did. She hurt me worse than you could ever know. Her and Katy and Eileen.”

“What did they do?”

“They killed me,” he said. “They destroyed my life.”

“That doesn't make any sense …”

“Never mind now. I don't want to talk about that now. We'll have a nice long talk when we get there. There'll be a little time for us to get to know each other better.”

“Get where? Where're you taking me?”

“Don't you know, Amy? Haven't you guessed?”

She hadn't been paying attention to where they were. She peered through the windshield, saw that they'd left town, were traveling through rolling brown farmland. Familiar landmarks told her they were on outer Bodega Avenue. Heading west, toward the coast.

She knew then, even before he said it.

“Up to your dad's cottage. Up to the Dunes.”

Barksfield Road was on the northeast side of Pelican Bay, a snaky street that extended inland through pine woods. The houses that lined it were a mix of old and new architectural styles on large lots, well built and well maintained. Number 289 turned out to be a newish ranch-style home, ell-shaped, at least four bedrooms, with a detached garage. It was nearly one o'clock and raining heavily again when Dix pulled into the driveway. No cars were visible on the property and no lights showed in any of the facing windows.

“Nobody home,” he said.

“Now what?”

“We'll try the neighbors.”

The nearest was across the road, a hundred yards away—a big frame house with firelight dancing behind its partially draped front window. Dix swung the car in along a crushed-rock drive, stopped next to a deep porch. The wind was gusting, driving the rain in near-horizontal sheets; they ran from the car onto the porch.

The man who answered the bell was in his seventies, stooped but sharp-eyed, wearing a heavy wool sweater over baggy trousers. He frowned when he saw that they were strangers, but it wasn't a frown of displeasure; if anything, he seemed glad to be having unexpected visitors. He cocked the left side of his head toward them. Behind his ear on that side was a flesh-toned hearing aid.

“Do something for you folks?”

“We're looking for Gordon Cotter,” Dix said.

“Cotter, did you say?”

“Gordon Cotter, yes. We understand that he—”

“Wait a minute. Can't hear you with that rain rattling down. Damn hearing aid don't work good in weather like this. Come in so I can shut the door.”

It was warm in the house, smoky from a blazing wood fire. The old man said his name was Delaney, Martin Delaney, and invited them to sit down.

Dix said, “We can't stay, Mr. Delaney. We'd just like to know about Gordon Cotter, if he still owns the house across the road.”

“Not anymore. Family named Elroy owns it now. Baptists, holy rollers. You friends of his?”

“Cotter's? No. We have business with him.”

“What kind of business?”

“It's personal.”

“None of my business, eh?” Delaney laughed; his false teeth made a clacking sound. “You know what happened to his family?”

“Yes, we know.”

“His fault. Driving too fast in the rain, didn't have his headlights on. He always did drive too fast and loose. But he wouldn't admit it.”

“Wouldn't admit the accident was his fault?”

“That's right. Talked to him once, after he come home from the hospital. He said it was the people in the other car's fault, the one that pulled out from the restaurant.”

Dix glanced at Cecca. She moved closer to him, either for warmth or support.

“Oh, he took it hard,” Delaney said. “Real hard. One thing you can say for Cotter, he loved his wife and those two kids. Cute kids, too. My wife was alive then—she used to say they were a perfect family. Blessed, she said. Terrible thing to lose them like that, all at once. Just the opposite of blessed.”

Cecca asked, “How long ago did he sell the house, Mr. Delaney?”

“Three, four months after it happened. Sat over there all that time, didn't go to work, wouldn't hardly leave the house. Grieved longer and harder than any man I ever knew. Then one morning he was gone and the place was up for sale. Just up and left.”

“Do you know where he went?”

“No idea,” Delaney said. “Haven't seen nor heard from him since. Nobody around here has. Didn't take his furniture, wherever he went. Left it all right there in the house. Sold the house with the furniture included. Hell of a deal for the holy rollers.”

“Would you please tell us what he looks like?”

“Looks like? I thought you knew him.”

“We think we know him,” Dix said. “We need to be sure.”

“Well, I'm not too good at that sort of thing …”

“Please try.”

“Gordon Cotter, eh? Man about forty, now. Tall, good shape—played a lot of tennis and golf. Blond hair, blue eyes like mine used to be—real bright blue. Handsome. Handsome as the devil.”

Jerry.

Jerry Whittington was Gordon Cotter.

And Gordon Cotter was the tormentor.