No Legal Grounds (25 page)

Linda put down the hot chocolate on the coffee table in the living room. One of them had a healthy dollop of whipped cream, the way Max liked it. They were going to watch a Wallace & Gromit DVD, but Max’s observation brought her up short.

“You think he’s scared?”
“Is he?”
“I don’t think so. Concerned.”
“Because of that guy?” There was fear in Max’s voice. “Yes. But he’s taking care of it. He knows what to do.” “I don’t want him to get hurt.”
Linda put her arm around her son’s shoulders. “He won’t be.” “How do you know? You can’t know.”
“Of course, but — ”
“I don’t like him being gone.”
“Max, God will watch over him.”
Max shook his head. “Todd’s dad died. God let him.” Joe Faulk, the father of Max’s friend Todd, had been a member

of Solid Rock. He was a robust, outgoing man. He was diagnosed with a virulent form of cancer and died in six months, at the age of forty-five.

“God knows,” was all Linda could come up with. Lame. But what more was there? Did theologians trained in the Bible have any better explanation, when you got right down to it? Didn’t their faith depend on believing God really did know, really did have the good of his people in mind?
But would that satisfy a twelve-year-old afraid for his father? “What I mean is that we have to keep praying and believing,”

Linda said.
“Does that really work?”
“Yes, of course it does.”
“How do you know? Todd prayed for his dad.”
“Max, we don’t know everything about God; we can’t. He’s too

big. We don’t know why he does some things the way he does. But we do know he tells us to pray and believe that he’s good. Can you do that?”

He shrugged.
“Can you at least try?”
He shrugged again. “I wish I could do something else.” “Like what?”
“Help Dad.”
“You help him all the time, Max, just by being you.” He looked at her. “I mean really help him. I don’t like it when

Linda pulled him close, searching for the right words to say to comfort and reassure, but nothing came to her. Not a word. Old answers seemed like dust on the floor. Holding Max, for the moment at least, would have to do.

“Talk nice,” Lundquist said. “Didn’t your mother teach you how to be polite?”
“Just let me go to the bathroom.”
“What’s the magic word?”
Heather glared at his fat stomach. She didn’t want to look at his face. “The magic word is you’re a sick, stinking — ”
He wagged his finger at her. “My, my, such a mouth. You know, it ought to be washed out with Dutch cleanser.”
Dutch cleanser? What was that?
She had to go now. “Please.”
“That’s much better. Now say it like you mean it.”
“Please.”
“We’re gonna have a wonderful life together, you and me.” He circled around her chair so he was behind her. She couldn’t see him. All she could look at was the creepy poster of the bike-riding skeleton. The skull was smiling toothily. When she looked away from it she had the odd feeling the skull moved. Her mind was going. Had to be it.
Fight.
She felt his hands on her neck and jolted. The ropes held her. What was he doing?
Caressing her. Oh, sick. Sick sick sick.
“Yeah,” he whispered as his hands worked their way into her hair. “You and me, babe.”
His hands left her. She turned her head, trying to see. Then, suddenly, a rope around her neck. Pulled snug. A noose.
No, a leash.
“I’m gonna be right behind you, honey. You just keep on being a nice girl, and everything will be fine.”
She wanted to cry, cry her eyes out like she was five years old, and have her dad lift her up and rock her on his shoulder. She remembered when he did that, when she’d fallen off a bike and scraped her knee real bad. If she cried hard, she knew he’d come to her.
But she wasn’t five and she was not going to cry in front of this sicko.
“Untie my hands, will you?”
“Sorry,” he said. “You’ll just have to make do. Hey, that’s a joke. I crack myself up.”
He let her into the bathroom but held the rope at the door.
“Close it, will you?”
“I want to watch.”
“What shoe did you get scraped off of?”
He jerked the rope around her neck. It bit into her skin. “Not a nice mouth you have. Now do your business.”
Humiliated, she couldn’t wait another moment. Someday he would pay for this. Someday, some way.
She heard a phone ring. And saw a moment of confusion on his face. Or maybe disappointment.
“Do your thing,” he said. “But don’t get cutesy.”
He slammed the door closed on the leash. She didn’t know if he still had the rope in his hand or not.
Sweet relief.
She heard him, clearly, talking outside the door. “Okay. Use the address I gave you. You’ll get the other five hundred tomorrow. Guarantee it, cupcake. Stick with me.”
And then she heard him whistling. It was the worst sound she’d heard in a long time.

“I’m really sorry you don’t like women,” Nicky said. “I spent a long time picking out the right one for you.”
“Where’s my daughter?”
“Haven’t you ever heard the one about looking a gift horse in the mouth?”
“Where is she?”
“Don’t try to trace this call, Sam. I use a disposable. I’ll be very upset if you waste time on that. Remember, I’m always one step ahead of you.”
“What do you want from me?”
“You shouldn’t have harassed my mother, Sammy. That was a very not nice thing to do.”
Sam waited, not wanting to say anything that would nudge Nicky even further off the edge of reality.
“You went too far when you did that, Sammy. Now you’re going to have to do what I say.”
“Then say it.”
“Not now. I’m going to give you some time to think, to think about how you’ve treated one of your old friends. Keep your phone handy. I’ll let you know what to do.”
“Let me talk to my — ”
But the connection was dead.
As dead as Sam’s hopes that he would be getting Heather out of her terror.

Nicky had Heather by the rope again and was leading her through the house. She kept looking for a way to break free, but with her hands tied behind her back she wouldn’t even be able to open a door. “That’s a laugh, coming from you,” she said.

He laughed. “What do you know about life, sugar? You’re still so young.” He stopped and patted her cheek. She wanted to spit at him but thought she’d better not. Not yet.

He pulled on the rope, choking off her words, and led her to the stairs. “Come along,” he said. “Like a good girl.”
She didn’t want him pulling her upstairs by the neck, so she complied. She looked around. It was a strange house, this. All unfinished wood. No decorations. As if it had been designed and framed, then abandoned. Was this a place he himself had built? Or maybe, her imagination conjured, he’d found a couple in here and murdered them and taken it over.
She noticed some rather obtrusive wiring along the seam where the wall met the ceiling. Even in the muted light it stuck out like a creeping vine in a haunted house. What was
that
all about?
And how alone were they?
There had to be some other houses around, but she had the sense that they were pretty well isolated. Like everything else about him, this place didn’t have the right feel to it. It was a deviant growth, like a cancer.
He kept on leading her, up the stairs, then down the dimly lit corridor to the end. Through an open door. He flicked on a light and another bare bulb illuminated the room.
Which had nothing but a bed in it. A queen-sized bed with two ugly iron bedposts.
“Our honeymoon chamber,” he said. “You like it?”
She couldn’t speak. She looked at the bed, then his smiling face.
“I know it’s not the Ritz,” Nicky said, “but it’ll have to do for now.”
Heather shook her head as he pulled her forward.
“Lie down.”
She didn’t. No way was she going to allow him to . . .
With one hand he pushed her, hard. She fell backward onto the bed, heard springs squeaking.
Don’t let him do this, she thought. Whatever else happens, don’t let him.
“What do you have against my dad?” If she could keep him talking, maybe . . .
“Come on now, you’re not ready for — ”
“You afraid to tell me?”
He smiled. “You think you can play head games with me? Please.”
“Then why don’t you?”
“I hate women who complain! Have to hear your screeching voices — ”
“You’re afraid of something.”
“You want me to tape your mouth shut?”
“What did my dad ever do to you? He’s worth ten of you. A hundred.”
That set off something in him. “You think your daddy’s something, is that what you really think? Because I don’t think you do. The way you talked to me about him, remember those times? You hate your father. And you’re right to — ”
“I don’t hate him.”
“Oh yes, you do. You know you do. Because he’s one of those fake guys. A phony. You ever read
Catcher in the Rye
?”
She tried to remember it. She’d read it in tenth grade. It made her sad.
“It’s the greatest book ever written,” Nicky said. “Salinger is a god. He had vision like nobody else. That was the point of the book.”
Good. Keep him talking. “It was about a kid who got sick, right?”
“No! You missed the whole deal! Holden doesn’t want to live in a world with phonies. He sees them everywhere, because they
are
everywhere. So what happens to him? He ends up in a nuthouse. Because that’s where the phonies put you when you call them on it.”
He was talking not just to her, she sensed, but to some unseen audience.
“And they want you to fold up and die in there, give up, but I wasn’t going to ever give them that satisfaction. You have to prove you’re strong in the end, you have to have the will to power. And then you have to show them, you have to shove it back in their faces. Your daddy is going to get it shoved in his face.”
“Psycho,” she said.
His face flushed. She could see it even in the dim light. He moved over to her and put his hand on her throat.
“You’re a phony too,” he said.
She couldn’t speak. And now she couldn’t breathe. She could only look into his eyes. They were two dark orbs, cavernous. Maybe once there had been light in them, small fires of humanity. Now they were empty caves.
As he kept the pressure on, she was sure he was going to kill her. She began to flail — as much as she could with her hands behind her. She kicked out with her legs.
He crawled on top of her, keeping his hand on her throat, but using his lower body to hold her legs down.
He put his face closer to hers.
She smelled his breath. Stale mustard and tuna fish.
She gagged.
Star clusters flickered behind her eyes. Then faded. Blackness started to overtake them.
His eyes got wider, round and eager.
Forgive me, Daddy. Forgive me, God.

Sam felt like he was walking through the land of the living dead. It was morning and he hadn’t slept. He couldn’t stay in his hotel
room. It was a cage. He was a lab rat and Nicky Oberlin the mad
scientist. The woman he’d sent was one of his creations. He had to
get out before another experiment went awry.
So he walked a couple of blocks to a street that ran under a
metallic awning. Like a tube. In the tube were casinos and street
vendors. And a sign announcing the Fremont Street Experience. Some experience. Dominating one side of the street was a club
with a jumbo screen outside, showing videos of winking vixens in
bathing suits. The banner sign hanging below the screens promised
Free Topless Parties Every Evening.
People wandered along this “experience,” going in and out of
casinos as if it were nighttime. Nighttime was when the zombies
should be out in force. Not in the morning light like this. But it was twenty-four/seven here in this gaudy wasteland. He knew there was a land of real people all around this collection of garish lights and signage. People with families who went to
church and baseball games, picnics and school plays.
What an odd mix. Beauty and the Beast, only this Beast would
never transform.
He walked and walked, keeping one hand in his pocket over his
cell phone. All he could do was wait. It was the waiting that killed
him.
He fought with himself about calling Linda. If he did, she’d hear
his voice. And she’d know there was bad trouble. She always knew
him.
He decided not to call. He kept on walking, dead to everything
but the hope that Nicky Oberlin would call him soon and he’d get