B004XTKFZ4 EBOK (19 page)

Finally we lay back down together, holding hands. Slowly, wordlessly, we somehow turned to face-to-face, wrapped our arms around each other, the full length of our bodies pressing together. The feeling of another person’s skin on mine was strange, thrilling. I found myself looking at her breasts, her hips, awestruck at the idea that, if she wanted to, she could have a baby. And that I would be like that too, soon, even if I couldn’t imagine it.

There were several light scars on Lucy’s chest, including one across her right breast that ran straight down through the nipple. She saw me looking at it.

“Fran…is it ugly?”

“Lucy, you could never be ugly.”

“Honestly?”

Somehow, here, our eyelashes and lips nearly touching, it was okay to say it, to murmur it to her: “I think you’re beautiful.”

“Aw,” she said, “you’re a retard.”

I found myself touching the scar on her breast, tracing the line gingerly down to her nipple with my index finger, my blood-sister finger.

“Does it hurt?”

“Nah.”

“Do you mind my touching it?”

“Nah.”

Then I astonished myself. Instinctively, without thinking at all—I never could have done it if I’d thought about it—I leaned down and touched my lips to the top of her breast, where the scar began. Her skin tasted of salt.

She hugged me tightly then. The sensation of her palms on my back, my waist, my thighs sent tiny electric jolts all through me, making me shiver and tingle. Our hands moved. Mine didn’t seem under my control at all. We touched each other’s faces slowly, gently. I studied her little freckles, the cracked places on her lips. I stroked her shoulders, cupped her breasts in my hands, touched her pubic hair lightly, curiously. Her fingers brushed my chest, my belly, briefly traced over the place between my legs that no one, absolutely no one had ever touched, or, for many years, would again.

“Lucy?” I whispered.

“Hm.”

“Lucy, are—are we having sex?”

She snickered. “Franny, you’re such a spaz.” But then, immediately: “No, I didn’t mean that. You’re not a spaz at all.”

I giggled. Our hands settled again, grew still. Her arm was under my head, the perfect pillow: in my ear I could feel her pulse slowly beating, beating. I sensed that there was something else I should say to her, something more, but in this place, this moment, sleepiness began to overtake me. I could hear the ocean and her heartbeat and after a while there was a light pattering of rain on the roof of the van. Lucy and the sea were all I knew. I drifted away, knowing beyond doubt that the two of us would stay here together forever, even as I knew beyond doubt that they would be coming for us soon. Very soon.

—Eleven—

I DROVE ALL night.

Hey, Mike, how ya doin’?

Well, hey, lovely lady. What brings you here?

Said you’d teach me how to play pool. How ’bout it?

Why, sure, sure! C’mon in!

Where’s the pool table?

It’s downstairs. C’mon, right through here. Be careful on the steps.

No: it probably didn’t happen that way. Lucy would have had no reason to ride her bike out to Mike McCoy’s shack that night. She had other plans. But the fact was, no one ever really knew how it
did
happen. McCoy never said, at least not publicly. He never uttered a word during the trial. Apparently he never said anything to his own lawyers. Crucial facts in the timeline of all three cases remained a mystery…Except that they weren’t really
crucial facts
. The crucial facts were in that basement. The crucial facts were strewn around the riverbed in pieces.

Hey, lovely lady, whatcha doin’ here this time of night?

Hopin’ you’ll give me a piece of that licorice, Mike.

You bet. Shouldn’t you be home, though, this hour?

Nah. It’s okay. I got a light on my bike.

Not much business this late. Ain’t seen a car come by in an hour. ’Bout to close up.

That’s okay.

Hey…if you got nothin’ to do, we could shoot some pool.

Really?

Sure.

At your house?

Sure.

No: if it had happened like this, Lucy would have known enough to be suspicious of such an invitation. It must have come from her.

Not much business this late. Ain’t seen a car come by in an hour. ’Bout to close up.

That’s okay. Hey, maybe we could play pool.

Why, now, that’s an idea. Sure. Your mom know where you are, lovely lady?

Nah. I go out like this all the time. She doesn’t care.

Well, then, sure. Why don’t we toss that bike of yours in the back of my truck?

The bike would be found in the riverbed later.

It was still difficult for me to picture. Would Lucy have been so naïve as to go out to McCoy’s isolated shack in the middle of the night—at the very time two girls had been found dead nearby?

Hi, lovely lady.

Mike. Hey, you scared me. Don’t sneak up on people like that.

Didn’t mean to. Sorry.  Whatcha doin’ out at this hour of the night?

Nothin’. Thinking about stuff.

Right here on the street corner? This late?

Yeah, well. I dunno.

Better be careful. Pretty girl like you hangin’ out on a street corner in the middle of the night…Some guys might get ideas.

What kind of ideas?

You know. Don’t tell me you don’t know.

Well, maybe I do, maybe I don’t.

You do. Pretty girl like you knows a lot, don’t you? You know all about things like that.

Hey, Mike, you’re acting kind of weird.

Think so?

Yeah.

Well, maybe I’m weird.

Mike, what are you doing?

Don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talkin’ about, lovely lady.

Mike, hey, c’mon. Let go.

How did he get her in the truck? Did he threaten her? Hit her? Did he knock her unconscious? And the bike: he must have thrown it in the back. What a chance he must have taken, that someone would see it right there in the truck bed. But then they could have seen Lucy, too, in the passenger seat. Unless she was unconscious and shoved down under the line of the window.

I wanted to believe it. I wanted to believe that everything ended for Lucy Sparrow on a street corner in Quiet late one night, ended with a single blow that she never even felt, a blow so hard that her lights went out instantly and forever. I knew she hadn’t been dead: she was alive in that basement. That much was known. Alive, yes: but unconscious: blacked-out, unaware. Please, God.

And yet I didn’t believe it.

Where are you taking me?

To my house. Remember? I promised we’d shoot some pool together.

Really? That’s what we’re going to do? Play pool?

Sure. C’mon, lovely lady, relax. We’re gonna have us some fun.

It’s just that—it’s kinda late, you know? Maybe I should just go home.

Nah, c’mon, it’s early. Shank of the evenin’.

No, it’s late, Mike. My mom will wonder where I am.

It won’t take long. Then I’ll drive you right back. I’ll take you right to your front door.

You promise?

Sure, I promise.

Would she have known then, or suspected? If so, why didn’t she jump out of the truck? But it was the middle of the night. The road to his house was a dirt path in the middle of nothingness. And he was an adult, an adult she knew and liked, telling her that she was fine, calling her a lovely lady, assuring her that everything was okay. She was twelve years old; she may even have believed him. After all, despite the warnings we’d heard from the grown-ups in our lives, the story of the recent killings hadn’t really permeated our minds; they seemed to have happened in another world, a world of older girls in high school whom we didn’t know and who had nothing to do with us.

Sure is dark out here.

Don’t worry about it. Nothin’ to be afraid of out here.

I’m not afraid of the dark, Mike. I’ve never been afraid of the dark.

She’d seen the house before; we’d ridden past it on one of our lengthier Saturday-afternoon jaunts. How different it must have looked at night.

C’mon in.

Hey, crazy place you got here, Mike. This is messier than my room.

I’m not much of a housekeeper. Need me a woman to do that. Maybe you could.

Nah. I’m terrible at cleaning things up. I’m the one who makes the messes, not the one who cleans ’em up.

Yeah? I’ve made a few messes in my life.

I can see, yeah. So where’s that pool table?

It’s downstairs. Right through here. Careful on the steps.

When would she have realized?

Hey, Mike, it’s dark in here.

Well, I’ll turn the light on.

Why’d you close the door?

Here’s the light switch. Take a look. It’s a special place.

I don’t see a pool table.

Well, head down the stairs. I’ll show you.

What’s all this stuff, anyway?

Just some toys I got. Let’s play a game.

Mike, I think I’d better leave.

What’s your hurry?

What is this thing? This isn’t a pool table.

It’s a dissecting table. Know what that is? It’s where they cut up dead bodies.

Mike, I’ve got to go. Really. I have to leave. My mom—

Let’s play a game, lovely lady.

Mike, the door’s locked. Why is the door locked? I have to go home.

C’mere, lovely lady.

I have to go home, Mike.

She would have fought him. He would have been surprised at her strength. Maybe he even complimented her on it.

Wow, you’re a tough one! You got some muscles, lovely lady!

She would have tried punching him just as she’d punched Melissa Deaver. She would have clawed at the door. Maybe she screamed; maybe she never had a chance to. What would she have thought as he tore at her clothes, as he hit her again and again so that he could push her up onto the table, strap her down? What did
he
think when he beheld all her scars?

Looks like somebody’s been workin’ on you already.

Let me go. Please let me go. I won’t tell anybody. Really. I promise.

Who did this to you, lovely lady?

Really. I—

I said, who did this to you?

My dad did.

Even Mike McCoy would have been surprised to hear that. Did he hesitate then, even for an instant? Did he think that perhaps he’d chosen the wrong girl? Or did her scars only make her seem that much more right?

They make you look like shit. I thought you were a lovely lady. But you look like shit.

No. Perhaps:

Your dad must be a terrible person, to do something like that to his own daughter. I think that’s just awful. But don’t worry, kiddo. You’re still a lovely lady to me. Really.

Then, even then, would a small part of her have been encouraged by the compliment, would she have sensed a softening in him, had a moment’s hope that his sympathy would lead him to release her, apologize, help her with her clothes, drive her back to her house, say gently as she got out of his truck,
Now remember, you promised—this is our little secret, right?

Sure, Mike. I promise.

When he began his preliminary work with his knives and sharpened screwdrivers, did he carefully avoid her scars? Or did he deliberately seek out each one, open the old wound again, watch it bleed?

Stop. Please stop. It hurts, Mike.

You’re a lovely lady. Lovely lady…

It hurts. It hurts, Mike. Oh my God.

But God wasn’t listening to Lucy Sparrow that night.

Or perhaps He was.

She’d said to me:
There are just some people that God hates
.

I drove all night.

—Twelve—

MY CHEEK WAS against Lucy’s back when I woke, sometime before dawn. She’d turned over in the night and I was behind her, spooning her, our bodies smoothly interlocked. I peeked out behind one of the van’s curtains and saw a deep brown color beginning to glow at the horizon, far off. It was still dark but the sun was coming, I knew. We had to decide what we were going to do, where we would go. And I had a fierce need to go to the bathroom.

I shook her gently. “Lucy?”

“Go ’way,” she muttered.

“Lucy, wake up.”

“Mmm…why?”

“Because the sun is coming up soon. We can’t just stay here.”