After Midnight

26
HOME AT LAST

You might find this hard to believe, but I made it back to Serena and Charlie’s house without any trouble at all. I saw nobody. Every road I traveled was empty. I could hardly believe my luck, especially figuring how lousy most things had gone that night.
The night was still dark, but starting to get pale in the east by the time I swung into the driveway.
I checked the front lawn on the way by, but couldn’t see much. So I drove ahead, stopped in front of the garage, and climbed out of the car. Standing there, I scanned the rear of the house, the pool area and lawn, and the dark border of the woods.
Everything looked fine.
No sign of my prowler.
The truth is, he didn’t worry me.
For one thing, I figured he was probably long gone by then. I’d made him think I was on the phone with the cops, so this was probably the last place where he wanted to be.
For another thing, I was too worn out to care.
Also, I’d killed Milo the Monster, so what did I have to fear from a nice, clean-cut pervert like my prowler?
Just let him come, I thought.
Over by the side of the garage door, I tapped the code number into the key pad of the remote control box. The motor hummed and the door started its noisy rise.
I returned to Judy’s car. When the garage door was all the way up, I drove inside and parked in the empty space beside my own car.
The space was where Serena and Charlie sometimes parked their Land Rover. Not often, though. They rarely bothered to put it in the garage. Usually, they parked on the driveway so they’d be close to the house.
But they were gone for a week, and so was their Land Rover.
Nobody would have any reason to open the garage door and find a stranger’s car inside.
I killed the headlights and engine, removed the key from the ignition and shoved the key case into my pocket. Leaving the windows down and the doors unlocked, I climbed out. I glimpsed Judy’s purse on the floor, but didn’t touch it.
The garage door was still open. Nervous about that, I hurried over and thumbed the button to start it shutting. As it rumbled down, I returned to Judy’s car and closed the driver’s door. Then I went to the side door of the garage and let myself out.
With that door locked behind me, I gazed up the stairway to my room.
And wanted to climb it.
Go in and clean myself up and fall in bed and not get up for hours and hours.
But I had a few matters to take care of, first.
Such as the saber.
I found it in front of the house, hidden in the bushes. Leaving it encased in the denim legs of Tony’s jeans, I carried it to the front door. The door was locked, of course. In my key case, though, I kept a full set of house keys. It took me a minute to find the right one, but then I unlocked the door, let myself in, and set the sword down on the foyer floor.
Then I went out again to look around. The sky was slightly lighter than before. It looked like dusk—the way things are in the evening a while after sundown and just before night takes over. Not the greatest for trying to see. I would need to inspect the area again in daylight. But I had to do it right away, even in such mediocre light, just in case there might be something nasty in plain sight.
A finger, for instance.
An ear.
Whatever.
First, I inspected the driveway between the house and the road. Then I walked back and forth a couple of times on the road in front of the house.
Everything looked fine.
So I returned to the front lawn and started traipsing over it, head down, studying the grass. This search paid off. I found a few small pieces of Tony. Some skin and muscle, I guess. Nothing anyone would be likely to recognize as human, but I picked them up, anyway. You can’t be too careful about such things.
The left front pocket of my cut-offs had nothing important in it—just a bandana and hanky, so I stuffed the pieces in. Better than carrying them around in my hand, I figured. But they didn’t feel very pleasant. There was nothing between them and me except a thin, wet layer of cloth. They sort of rested against my thigh, soft and gooshy. I tried to tell myself this was no worse than wandering around with some raw chicken in my pocket. It didn’t help much, though. For one thing, I’ve never roamed around with raw chicken in my pocket. I mean, who does? I really couldn’t trick myself into thinking it wasn’t Tony.
I felt pretty disgusted and crummy.
This was the sort of thing you’d find Milo doing.
With the stuff in my pocket, I couldn’t concentrate too well on my search anymore. So I decided to quit and try again later.
Before going back into the house, I sat on the stoop and checked the bottoms of my bare feet. They were wet. Bits of grass and leaves clung to them. I didn’t see any blood, though.
I took off my shirt and used it to clean my feet. Then I went inside, carrying it.
In the kitchen, I turned on the light and made sure the curtains were all shut. Then I draped the shirt over the back of a chair. Stepping up to the sink, I dug into my pocket and pulled out the Tony parts. They were slimy. They also had some ants crawling on them, which didn’t make me feel too great about hauling them around in my pocket. I stuffed them down the garbage disposal. With water running, I switched on the disposal to grind them up.
Then I washed my hands very quickly, snatched my shirt off the chair and rushed over to the laundry room, which was just off the kitchen.
I tossed the shirt into the washing machine, then whipped off my belt. My cut-offs dropped to the floor. I stepped out of them. Standing there bare naked, I checked myself for ants. I was feeling itchy, but couldn’t find any critters. So I picked up the cut-offs and emptied the pockets. The shorts, hanky and bandana went in with the shirt.
I set the keys aside, added detergent to the wash, and started the machine. While it was filling, I hurried to the foyer and slipped the saber out of the denim legs. Sword in one hand, legs swinging in the other, I returned to the laundry room. I tossed the legs into the machine with the other stuff.
Back in the kitchen, I stood at the sink and washed the saber. It looked clean even before I started. I must’ve done a pretty good job on it with the hose. But I scoured the thing with a rag and liquid soap, being especially careful to get at the crevices where the blade joined the handle.
You can never get rid of all the blood. That’s what I’d read, anyway. Police investigators would take the sword apart and find traces, no matter what I might do.
I wasn’t doing this for the police.
I was cleaning it so Charlie or little Debbie wouldn’t notice blood on the saber next time they took it down to play “charge” or “Peter Pan” or something.
With a dish towel, I wiped every bit of water off the sword. Then I dried my own bare front, which had gotten splashed.
On my way into the living room, I changed my mind about hanging up the weapon right away. What if some water or blood was trapped inside the handle, and leaked on the wall?
Besides, I sort of liked having it handy.
So I took it with me.
In the den, I set it down and turned on a lamp. Right away, I looked toward the sliding glass door where my prowler had been. I couldn’t see it, though. The curtains were shut.
Thank God.
What I didn’t need to see, on top of everything else, was the mess my prowler had left behind.
With a feeling of relief—and a touch of nausea just from thinking about what he’d done—I turned my attention to the answering machine. It blinked a tiny red light to let me know we had a message.
I poked the “new message” button.
The quiet hiss of rewinding tape seemed to last a long time. When it stopped, Tony said, “Ah, you finally got yourself an answering machine. Hope it’s not because of me. But it probably is, huh?”
Listening to him, I felt strange.
So much had happened in the hours since he’d made that call. Especially to him.
But my own life would never be the same, either. Nor would Judy’s.
Or Milo’s, for that matter.
All because Tony had dialed a wrong number.
He’d probably only been one digit off, or reversed something.
And WHAM!
Just goes to show what can happen because of a little mistake.
“The thing is,” he was saying, “I’m not going to call again.”
How right you are, I thought.
But I didn’t laugh, I wrinkled my nose.
And kept listening.
He sounded like a pretty nice guy.
When he started in about moving to a new place, I pulled open a drawer of the telephone stand and hunted for something to write with. There were plenty of ballpoints and pads of paper. And some miniature tape cassettes. I snatched up a pen and note pad just as he started to give his new phone number.
While I was busy writing, his call ended.
That’s because I had picked up and blurted, “Tony!”
My voice wasn’t there. Nothing else was there. The tape stopped, and the machine made a few beeps to let me know there were no more messages.
I frowned at Tony’s phone number for a few moments, not sure why I’d bothered to copy it down.
Maybe it would come in handy for something.
But probably not.
It was only on paper, though. I could burn it easily enough, later on—along with the rest of the note pad, so nobody would ever be able to discover the imprint of Tony’s number.
For now, though, I had another matter to deal with.
I opened the answering machine, pulled out the tape, and replaced it with a spare cassette from the drawer.
Then I stood there, staring at the machine and wondering what to do next.
Get everything together.
Seemed like a good idea. With the note pad and cassette in one hand, I picked up the saber. Then I headed for the laundry room. Along the way, I noticed my favorite blue silk robe draped over a chair in the living room, where I’d put it such a long time ago. It had pockets and I needed pockets. But I was awfully hot and sweaty and dirty, so I decided to save the robe for later.
I walked on through the kitchen and entered the laundry room. The washing machine was still going, of course. My belt lay on the floor, and the two sets of keys were on a shelf beside the washer.
Except for Judy’s car and the odds and ends in the washer, that was everything.
I wanted to keep it all with me.
But I left it in the laundry room for a couple of minutes while I rushed into the kitchen. Serena keeps a drawer full of small bags. I grabbed one, returned with it, and loaded it up with the two sets of keys, the tape cassette and note pad. I wound up the belt and stuffed it inside, too.
Leaving the washer to finish its business, I carried the saber and bag into the living room. There, I grabbed Charlie’s robe.
In the hallway, I stopped just long enough to flick the air conditioner on. Then I went to the end of the hall and entered Serena and Charlie’s bedroom. It was dark with the curtains shut. I didn’t turn any lights on, though. I just walked straight through to the master bathroom.
I swung the door shut with my elbow, bumped it with my rump to make it latch, then elbowed the light switch. I needed a hand, though, to lock the door. So I held the sword between my legs and thumbed down the lock button.
After that, I hung the robe on a hook. I set my bag on a counter near the sink and took the saber with me to the sunken bath tub.
I set it down on the tile floor beside the tub.
Not that I’m paranoid, or anything. I just wanted to be safe. And what good is a weapon if it’s out of reach when you need it?
While the tub was filling, I used the toilet. Then I stood in front of a full-length mirror and looked at myself.
What a wreck.
My hair, dark and clinging to my scalp, looked as if I hadn’t shampooed it in a month. Everywhere, my skin looked greasy. I must’ve had about two dozen scratches on my front and back. Several of them had bled. I didn’t have much blood on me, probably thanks to spending time in the creek. But some of the scratches looked like bright red threads across my skin. I had plenty of welts and bruises, too.
The grand-daddy of all my injuries was my stomach, where I’d walked into that broken branch. It had rammed me and gouged me raw. Skin was ruffled up around the edges of the wound, and I had a bruise the size of a grapefruit.
Nothing looked bad enough to require medical attention, though.
I’d gotten off lucky.
At least compared to a few other people I could think of, such as Tony, Milo, the gal in Milo’s tent, and even Judy.
Three out of four needed a coroner, not a doctor.
I wondered how Judy was doing.
Probably still hanging there. Her wrists had been tied together very well. She might not be able to get loose at all. Not without help, anyway.
Watching myself in the mirror, I raised my arms high and crossed my wrists. I stood as Judy had been standing, probably still was. It made my breasts lift and my belly sink in. I’ve got a terrific build, but I looked even better that way.
Anybody would, I guess.
Maybe that’s why guys like to string up their victims by the wrists.
No. It might be one of the reasons, but not the main one. I’d spent enough time with Judy to know the truth about that. I sure did like how she looked so stretched and taut, but more important was that her whole body was right there dangling in the open. Nothing was hidden.
You had total access.
You could swing her. You could spin her. You could wander around her, look at any part of her. You could pick up her legs and spread them apart. Touch any part of her. Hurt any part of her.
I turned around slowly, staring at my reflection in the mirror.
And wished I could see Judy again.