Edge of Midnight (5 page)

“A friend fell and broke her leg,” Amelia said cheerfully. “I'm going to go take care of her until she can cope with things.”

“A friend of mine was always having accidents.” Out the window, the sun was shining.

Amelia peered over her glasses.

Cary rubbed her right wrist, the one he'd broken. It still ached sometimes, in painful memory. I should have fought back, told him I wanted to keep my job, what does it matter if the laundry isn't done today, I'll do it tomorrow. “And afterwards her husband was so sweet and brought flowers and candy.”

“They're like that, these men, bring flowers, but useless in the sick room.” Under Amelia's hands, the knitting grew as the bus rolled back the way Cary had come.

For the ten-minute wait in Oakland, Cary was terrified, frozen still, watching, waiting, expecting a cop to board the bus and haul her away. Relief when they were moving made her babble. “And she tried, my friend—well, she quit her job. And then she—”
I changed, I started to lie and say what I thought he wanted, to keep from being hit.

Words spilled on and on, about her job and about her friend, sounding like she actually was talking about someone else, and making it seem like that other person was dead. She clenched her fist, digging her nails into her palms to make herself stop.

The needles made a soft clicking sound and Amelia looked at her with interest. Cary felt a jolt of fear. She was talking too much. Mitch always said she talked too much.
Be careful
. If Mitch found Amelia … If he questioned her … Her fingertips felt icy. From now on, no talking, not to anybody, and for God's sake, don't yak about a battered friend. Might as well wear a sign.

Amelia stopped knitting and peered closely at Cary's face. Cary shrank back, afraid Amelia was seeing the bruises under the makeup. “You seem nervous. You're too young to be so tense. How old are you, twenty-two or something?”

“More like thirty-two.”

“So old as that.” Amelia smiled, gathered up the skein of yarn and plopped it in Cary's lap. She handed her the needles with the long inches of knitting attached. “Here. It'll keep you relaxed. It works kind of like Prozac but doesn't cost as much.”

“Oh no, no. Thank you, but I don't know how.”

“I'll show you. There's nothing to it. Pick it up. Come on.”

Cary did as she was told.

“Put the tip of the needle through the stitch and bring the yarn around and then slip the tip back. Good. Now again. Great. You're a natural. That's all there is to it.”

Awkwardly holding the yarn close to her face and moving it around to find the best spot with her limited sight, Cary did a stitch, and then another. They looked sloppy and loose, not neat and tight as Amelia's, but she felt enormously proud of herself.

“What is this going to be?”

“A scarf. You just keep going until it's as long as you want it, and then cast off.”

“I have no idea what that means, and no idea how to do it.”

“That's all right. You ask somebody. If you can't find anybody to ask, go to a yarn shop and somebody there will show you.”

Oh. Yes, of course. She could do that. In her amateurish way, she added several rows to the scarf. When her eyes got tired, she closed them.

When the bus slowed, she woke with a start and blinked at the darkness out the window. On the horizon, a pale moon was riding the top of a cloud. She wanted to laugh, she wanted to tell Amelia she was going someplace new, someplace she'd never been, someplace no one knew her, someplace she could hide.

“My stop.” Amelia dug cookies and chips from her tote and stashed them in a plastic bag as the bus pulled into Reno, Nevada. She thrust the bag at Cary.

“But I can't—”

“Course you can. Take it.” She patted Cary's arm and struggled from the seat. “Good luck, child. I hope you enjoy the place you're going.”

With fifty minutes to kill, Cary shuffled after the rest of the departing passengers, and watched as Amelia hailed a young woman, engulfed her in a hug. Her watch said six-thirty-five. The bus left at seven-twenty-five. Panic trapped the air in her lungs.

I can't do this. I'll never see any of my friends again. Not Arlette or Georgia or Marsha whose husband left and who sometimes joined me and Arlette for coffee. I'll never go out for lunch or shopping or a movie with any of them.

And what was she going to do when her pitiful little pile of twenty-dollar bills was gone? No way to get a job. She couldn't use her Social Security number or her driver's license. How could she eat? Where would she live? She couldn't stay with Kelby Oliver forever.

She should just call Mitch. There was a pay phone right there. She could just walk over and pick it up. As though the phone pulled her like a magnet, she swayed toward it. Only about five hours had passed. He'd be off work. She pictured him coming home, finding no dinner on the table, and going through the empty house calling her name. Would he know immediately that she'd run?

Nausea tickled her throat with its furry fingers. She ran for the door and burst outside where she took deep gulps of air. It was getting dark, and the bus depot wasn't in the best area of town. Clutching her plastic bag of snacks, she walked up one block, turned, walked down the other side. She was afraid to go far, in case she got lost and couldn't find her way back. The shops were closed, many of them barred. She peered into darkened interiors with a light on here or there to discourage burglars.

A tree, stunted by exhaust fumes, struggled to grow in a small square of dirt in the midst of concrete and asphalt, the square was littered with fast-food wrappers, used condoms, and cigarette butts. In the gutter, a paper cup rolled a semicircle, moved by a tired breeze, and then rolled back in defeat, as though it realized the uselessness of the struggle.

She met him when she was riding her bicycle in Tilden Park. An elderly man driving a pickup clipped her rear wheel. She got tossed end over end and landed on her head. Mitch spoke softly and told her not to move, help was on the way, everything was going to be all right. He asked her name and she couldn't remember it. Frenzied panic scattered through her mind. Two weeks later he called, shy and hesitant. They went for coffee and little sparks sizzled around them like fireflies flashing in the dark. At the wedding, she floated on romance and happiness. They danced. He whispered in her ear that he loved her, would love her forever.

She looked down at the litter surrounding the sickly tree and imagined his arms around her, smelled the clean soap smell of him, felt his solid strength. At this very moment he waited at home, her home, the walls she'd painted, the sofa she'd picked out, her geraniums in the pretty blue pot. Close, it was all so close, just a bus ride away and she could be home. Her throat tightened, she had difficulty swallowing.

Cars zipped past, buses pulled in and out, belched and groaned like tired old beasts. She crept up the block, moving in inches like a patient recently recovered from serious illness, and went back inside the depot. The bank of phones was right there. She lifted a receiver and fumbled coins from her purse. Mitch would pick up the phone in the living room, or maybe the kitchen. Maybe he was heating lasagna from the freezer. Taking the foil from the flat glass pan and sliding it in the oven. As the noodles warmed and the cheese melted, the kitchen would smell of rich, garlicky tomato sauce.

She hadn't put away her nightgown, it was hanging over the hook on the bathroom door. Would he hold it and smell the lingering scent of her perfume? Put his face in it and think he'd lost her? Would tears come to his eyes, those deep brown eyes that could look so warm? Coins were thumbed into the slot without conscious decision. The dial tone buzzed in her ear. She punched in the numbers for home. The impulses traveled through miles of wires and made the black phone on the kitchen cabinet ring.

He would snatch the receiver. He'd yell. Where the hell are you! Her hand squeezed the receiver.
He'd send somebody. Oh my God, he'd call the police department. Tell them to send a patrol car. Cops could be here in minutes.
She slammed the receiver back on the hook, fingered the coins from the little box. Her head ached as she walked away from the phone and over to the row of seats. A tired man looked at her and looked away.

She couldn't afford to buy anything to eat and she wanted to save her peanut butter sandwiches until she needed them more, but she did have Amelia's snacks. Isolating two chocolate-chip cookies, she nibbled off small bites and chewed slowly. With a deep intake of air, she pulled out the fiery red-and-orange yarn. Holding it close, with a fierce frown of concentration, she poked the tip of the needle through a loop of yarn.

After several rows she stretched it across her knee to examine it and was quite pleased with herself. As the minutes went by, sleep beckoned and she longed to close her eyes, stretch out on a bench like the nearby kid in ragged jeans and grimy denim shirt. She didn't dare even blink slowly, afraid she might miss the bus, or miss seeing a tall man in a uniform coming toward her. Raising her head to glance at the clock, she clamped her teeth against a gasp. Tall man in a uniform! Stupid, stupid, stupid to sit so far from the door. She'd never reach it before he caught her.

The man walked through the room, looking casually around. When he got closer, she saw no gun, just a radio and a cell phone. Then she saw the emblem on his shirt sleeve. Security. She nearly fainted with relief. Not a cop looking for her, simply a bus depot security man. For the rest of her wait, she stood by the door and watched the clock tick away the minutes, scrutinized the people who drifted in and out, watched a man sweep up discarded paper cups and empty French fry containers.

She longed for a cup of coffee, not only for the liquid that would coat her dry throat, but for the caffeine that might ease the headache scrabbling at her temples. What did it matter if she spent two dollars? Would two dollars keep her alive? Get her further away? She dug out a twenty and went to the snack bar. The wilted-looking sandwiches didn't even tempt her, though she was starving; she felt slightly sick. She asked for coffee, took the hot cup and added cream and sugar. Holding it with both hands, she sipped cautiously to keep from scalding her lips. Bitter coffee that had probably been simmering all day. She took another sip, bigger, and let the hot liquid burn her throat. The price of freedom.

When her bus departure was announced, she climbed aboard with stiff legs, found a seat midway back and dropped into it. A youngish man with brown hair plopped beside her and stowed a canvas bag under the seat. The bus rolled. The miles flattened out behind her, each one carried her farther and farther away. The band of fear clamped around her chest kept her awake for hour after hour, but finally she put her hands under her cheek and closed her eyes.

 

5

Running, running.

Joe had to wake up. The only way out was to wake up.

The ground was spongy, layers of rotted leaves. They slipped and slithered as he struggled to keep his balance. If he fell, he'd never make it. She would die.

The leaves had a sweet, sickly smell. He knew that smell, the smell of decay, of death.

It was waiting for him. Danger. He would die.

Lungs on fire, breath coming hard. His ankle twisted. He fell, rolled. The smell was stronger. Blood. He rolled in it. Palm prints, dripping blood appeared on his white shirt. The blood ran and swirled into letters, red dripping letters that spelled her name.

 

6

“Look, Mommy, the horsey's wearing shoes.” Four-year-old Bethie, seated with her mommy at the square table for grownups, watched as the horsey with shoes was led past the window outside.

“Most horses wear shoes, Bethie, it protects their feet.” Ignoring her daughter's hand tugging at her sleeve, Trudy studied the menu. Honestly, the child never shut up. From the moment she said her first da-da, she was off and running. Running off at the mouth, that is. Ha ha.

Trudy would never say a negative word about her child, never, but Bethie was just the teeniest bit chatty and her voice was a teeny bit high, and sometimes, like now after a long day, Trudy got the least bit—uh, weary. She touched fingertips to her temple. Her head was beginning to hurt, just a teeny bit. She'd thought taking Beth out for dinner would be something to occupy the child, but all she did was talk, and maybe it wasn't such a good idea.

“The horsey has shoes just like mine.”

“No darling, horses wear shoes made of…” What the hell were horseshoes made of?

“Mommy! Mommy! Look! Look!”

Trudy lowered the menu just in time to see an irate manager rush over to a woman leading the tiniest pony she'd ever seen, with tiny white sneakers even smaller than Bethie's, into the restaurant.

*   *   *

As the clock ticked around past six, Susan shuffled papers from one side of her desk to the other. If she got out of here right now while everything was quiet, she might make an escape and be able to keep her dinner date with Fran. Yawning, she rolled her shoulders to work out the kinks. What she really wanted was a hot bath and to go to bed with a good book. Why was she so tired lately? Nothing more worrisome on the job than the usual. Being top cop meant there was always something to worry about.

Get on with it and slink out of here before a crisis arises. Susan signed on the appropriate line, tossed the pen on her still-cluttered desk, and pushed back her chair. Before she could propel herself upright, her phone rang. She eyed it balefully, got up, took in an irritated breath, and picked up the receiver.

“Hazel, I just left.”

Hazel, the dispatcher and general all-around keeper of the flame, was laughing. “Well, I don't think this is anything that will bring you back. I just thought you might want to know that someone is trying to bring a pony into The Hyperbole.”