On a couple of occasions in the past, he had waited in his Accord for Annabel to come out that door and join him in his car so they could talk. If he had his cell phone, he could call and she would come immediately—he knew she would—and surely she would have the answers he needed. She would help him now just as he had helped her. But all he could do was kneel and wait. Eventually she would step outside for a break from the noise and strobing light, the smells of beer and desperation. Only three weeks ago, though it seemed months past to Huston, she had done just that. “I’m going to take a breather in a few minutes,” she had said. “How about if we continue this conversation out in your car?”
Tonight, there had been only seven cars in the lot when he’d arrived, but four more had pulled up in the last thirty minutes, one with two males, one a single male, and two cars each occupied by a dancer. He wished he could have called out to one of the girls, asked her to tell Annabel he needed to talk to her, but he could not take that chance. After his first visit, the word had quickly spread that he was a mere spectator, that except for his single private dance each night, he was there only to observe, and that if he wanted anything else, he would smile and nod his head and a girl would come to his table. So now it would not be safe for him to speak to anyone but Annabel. He would have to wait.
He thought that maybe Annabel would let him go home with her when Whispers closed, let him have a shower and shave, feel like a human again, at least on the surface. She would have information for him, answers, an explanation. Maybe a weapon of some kind. She seemed like the type of woman who would keep a gun at home.
He shivered and waited. From time to time he looked up at the stars.
It happened sooner than he expected. He thought he might have to wait until midnight for her breather, but suddenly the door opened and she was there, standing in the yellow light, peering out into the darkness. At first he could not believe it had happened so soon, and he stared for a moment as if she were an apparition. Then he pressed a hand to the tree trunk and pulled himself to his feet. He had not thought about how to best approach her at this moment, how to make her aware of his presence without frightening her. He blew air through his teeth, just wanted to catch her attention. “Sssss!”
But it wasn’t loud enough. She remained in the doorway, kept scanning the parking lot. He took a step forward, felt a thorny branch against his neck, put out a hand to push it away.
Then a car door opened, the dome light dark. “Over here,” the man inside said, and blinked a flashlight on and off. He was sitting in a light-brown Bonneville, one of the seven cars that had already been in the lot when Huston arrived.
Annabel strode toward the man’s open door. Huston thought she appeared angry, walking with an adamant stride, leaning forward. But before she reached the car, the man pulled his door shut, then the passenger door popped open. Annabel altered her path, crossed in front of the car, bent down beside the open door. Huston heard her say, “All right, so what’s this about?”
The man’s response was muted and indecipherable. Annabel straightened, looked back toward Whispers, stood motionless for a few seconds. “This is bullshit,” she said. Then she faced the car again, climbed inside, and shut the door.
Huston retreated a bit deeper into the trees. He watched the car but could see only the silhouettes of their heads and shoulders. She did not move close to the driver, nor he to her. Over the next fifteen minutes, bits of their conversation were loud enough to reach Huston but only as dull intonations, mere sounds. He had no idea what was transpiring inside that car. More importantly, no idea about what to do when Annabel emerged from the car. If he revealed himself so as to catch her attention, the man in the car would see him too, would see a hooded figure calling out from the edge of the woods. But if he did not, Annabel would return to Whispers, in which case he would probably have to wait until the club closed for her to come back outside.
In the end, he decided that the best course of action was to wait. At two a.m. the customers would all leave, then the employees. So he should wait. He would sit and tremble and wait.
Annabel remained in the man’s car for approximately twenty minutes. Then suddenly the rear door of Whispers sprang open. The rectangle of yellow light was filled by the figure of a large man, his shoulders nearly as wide as the doorframe, arms thick with muscle. In his right hand, he held a baseball bat against his leg.
Now the driver’s door on the car in the lot popped open. His dome light did not come on. Huston looked back and forth from the two men, one standing and enveloped in light, the other seated in darkness. The man in the car said, “You need to go back inside, pardner.”
The man in the doorway started forward. The baseball bat swung back and forth beside his leg.
The man in the car slid out and stood up, turned on a powerful flashlight, and aimed it directly into the other man’s eyes. “This is state police business,” the man said. “And I am telling you to go back inside. Now.”