The Dells (30 page)

Janey knew she should be pissed with Shoe for bailing on her. She wanted to be pissed with him. She even tried to talk herself into being pissed with him, recalling the look he'd given her as he'd left the bar and Fred and Barney — she couldn't remember their real names, if they'd even told her their real names, which was doubtful — had invited themselves to join her. But no matter how much she wanted to be, or tried to be, she just couldn't be pissed with him. And that worried her; it usually didn't take much for men to piss her off.

Take Fred and Barney. Please. They pissed her off plenty. Fred — or maybe it was Barney — kept putting his hand on her thigh and trying to reach under her skirt. Barney — or Fred — just stared at her tits and practically drooled. Like this was supposed to do something for her, for Christ's sake. She'd finally had enough and, on the pretext of seeing a friend at the bar, excused herself and left them sitting there, with stupid looks on their faces
and their dicks in their hands, which must have really spoiled their evening. Like she gave a shit.

Maybe the guy at the bar thought he'd died and gone to heaven when she squeezed into the space beside him and pressed her tits against his arm, or maybe not, but he was keen enough to play along when she told him she was being hassled by a couple of drunks and would he be a sport, pretend to be her friend, and buy her a drink. He was a bit on the geeky side, but nice enough, in an eager-to-please, doggy kind of way, and he smelled okay, so she showed her gratitude later in his car, letting him rub her through her panties while she gave him the tug job of his life, using the lubricating jelly she carried in her athletic bag. She didn't get off, of course, and she briefly considered inviting him to her place so he could do a proper job of it, but she had a rule about taking first dates home: she didn't. She let him drive her to the gym to pick up her car, though, where she kissed him on the cheek, and told him she'd see him around. As she got into her beat-up old Firebird, she made a mental note to wait a few weeks before going to that pub again.

She'd had a little more than usual to drink, but for some reason wasn't feeling it. When she got home to the downstairs apartment in her stepbrother's house — she thought of it as Dougie's house even though they owned it jointly — she stuck a Lean Cuisine in the microwave, stripped, and took another shower. Afterwards, she ate the Lean Cuisine straight from the plastic tray, sitting at the kitchen table in her panties and T-shirt with the air conditioning on full blast. As she was rinsing the tray at the sink, there was a knock on the door at the bottom of the stairs to the apartment.

“Shit,” she swore under her breath. Louder, she called, “What do you want, Dougie?”

“Open the door.”

“I'm tired, Dougie. I just want to go to bed.”

“Open the goddamned door,” he said. “I'm out of beer.”

She sighed. He wasn't going to go away and he'd kicked the door in the last time she'd refused to open it for him. “Just a minute,” she said.

She went into her bedroom and put on jeans and an old none-too-clean sweatshirt, then went back into the kitchen. When she opened the door, he pushed past her into the kitchen and yanked open the refrigerator door. He took out two bottles of beer and slammed the door shut.

“I don't know how you can drink this microbrew piss,” he said, twisting the cap from a bottle and upending it. He guzzled down half the bottle.

“You seem to manage all right,” she said.

“It's still beer.” He guzzled down the rest of the first bottle, then opened the second.

Janey opened the fridge and took out two more bottles. She handed them to him. “Here, take them with you. I was just getting ready for bed.”

“The night's still young. Have a beer with me.” He went into the living room, dropped onto the sofa, and propped his feet on the edge of her coffee table.

“Dougie, please,” she said, knowing the futility of pleading with him. “I'm tired.”

“What's the matter, Janey? You used to be a real party girl. You slowin' down in your old age or what?”

“I guess that's it,” she said.

“Well, have a beer. That'll get your motor running.”

He finished his second beer and opened a third. Where does he put it? Janey wondered. He'd undoubtedly had a few already. More than a few. She'd seen him consume a dozen or more before settling down for some serious drinking. She didn't like being around him when he was drunk. She didn't much like being around him anytime.

“I'm going to bed,” she said. “Don't forget to turn out the lights.” She started toward the bedroom.

He snapped his legs straight, propelling the coffee table into the middle of the living room, almost knocking her down. When she sidestepped around it, he reached out and grabbed her wrist. “I said have a fucking beer.” With a force that almost dislocated her shoulder, he hauled her down onto the sofa.

“All right, Dougie,” she said, trying to sit up, to move away from him, but he would not let go of her arm. She knew better than to struggle, to try to get away. “All right,” she said. “I'll have a beer with you.”

“That's better,” he said. To her profound relief, he let her go. He twisted open a bottle and handed it to her. He knocked his bottle against hers. “That's my party girl.”

She took a mouthful. Fear made it taste sour on the back of her tongue, as if it had gone bad. She drank it anyway. Better that than make Dougie angry. Dougie drunk was one thing. Dougie drunk and angry was another thing altogether.

“How come you're not out partying with your boyfriend tonight?” he said.

“Which boyfriend would that be?” she said casually, although she knew who he meant.

“That prick Schumacher,” he said. “Who the fuck d'you think? I saw you talkin' to him yesterday in the park, practically shoving your rack in his face. What's the matter? You losing your touch?”

“I guess so.”

“Or maybe he's turned into a fag.”

“Maybe.” It was always safer to agree with whatever he said, otherwise he might just go off on her.

“Figures,” he said, with a satisfied belch. “Fags never fight fair.”

She thought about telling Dougie that Shoe had been looking for him that afternoon, but decided it would be
better to get off the subject of Shoe. Even after thirty-five years, it still pissed Dougie off to remember that every time he and Shoe had squared off, he'd come out the worse for it.

“I've got an early class tomorrow, Dougie,” she said.

“You don't think I can take him?” Dougie said. She didn't, but she wasn't crazy enough to say so. “Next time I'll be ready for his tricks,” he said.

Sure you will
, she thought.

Dougie drained the beer and tossed the empty bottle toward the other end of the sofa. “Get me another one,” he ordered. She got up and started toward the kitchen. “And while you're at it, get the money you keep in that coffee can in your fridge.”

She went to the fridge, got the last beer, opened it, and took it to him. “I don't do that any more, Dougie,” she said, handing it to him. “Not since someone” — Guess who? — “broke in last year.”

He grabbed her wrist. The beer bottle fell to the floor, rolling across the carpet, spewing foam. He heaved himself to his feet, still holding her wrist. With his free hand, he took a handful of her hair. He forced her to her knees and unzipped his jeans.

She'd been eleven the first time her stepfather had raped her. When he was done, he'd whipped her for not being a virgin. “Who you been with?” She told him. Then he beat Dougie, who'd been raping her since she was ten, for depriving him of what he regarded as his prerogative to deflower her. They'd both continued to abuse her on a regular basis until she was sixteen, when Freddy lost interest in her, transferring his attention to a young Korean girl Janey's mother had brought home to help with the housekeeping chores. When the Korean girl disappeared after a few months, Janey was afraid Freddy would start coming to her room again, but he didn't.
She was too old and no longer attractive to him. Dougie continued to force himself on her until a few months after Janey's nineteenth birthday, when Freddy and her mother had been found in the trunk of their burnt-out car, wrists wired together and shot in the head. Janey told Dougie that she'd got one of her biker friends to kill them. He hadn't believed her, of course, but hadn't touched her since. She'd sworn to herself then that if he ever did, she'd kill him.

“Goddamnit, Dougie,” she said, turning her face away from his erect penis. “I'll bite your fucking dick — ”

She cried out as he jerked her to her feet by the hair. “I got a better idea,” he said.

Taking her by the arm, he dragged her into the kitchen alcove and began rummaging through the cupboards. He took down a bottle of olive oil.

Oh, god
, she thought.

“I swear, Dougie,” she said. “If you don't leave me alone, I'm going to sneak into your bedroom some night, handcuff you to your bed, and set you on fire. I might cut your balls off first. Don't think I — ”

He backhanded her across the face, knocking her over the kitchen table. She tasted blood in her throat. He came round the table and lifted her by the neck, fingers and thumb behind the hinges of her jawbone, like the jaws of a steel trap. He squeezed and her breath locked in her throat.

“I could kill you as easy as this,” he growled, breath hot in her face. He squeezed harder. “Pop your head right off your fucking neck. Stop wriggling!” he commanded.

She forced herself to go limp and he relaxed the pressure on her throat. She sucked in a ragged breath.

“Drop your jeans,” he said. When she didn't comply immediately, he gave her neck a brief squeeze. “Do it!”

“No, Dougie,” she croaked, but she unsnapped her
jeans and let them fall. “Don't. I — I'm HIV-positive.” She wasn't, but she was terrified Dougie might be.

“Bullshit,” Dougie said, turning her over, pushing her face down across the table. “Only fags get AIDS.” With one hand clamped to the back of her neck, he tore off her panties as though they were made of paper.

She tried to do what she'd done before, whenever Freddy or Dougie had raped her, go somewhere else in her head until it was over, pretend that it was happening to someone else, not her. It hadn't always worked then, and it wasn't working now. Nor would it do any good to put up a fight, she knew; he'd just beat her half to death and rape her anyway. So she went limp, enduring the searing pain by imagining herself sneaking up the stairs to his bedroom with a knife and a can of gasoline.

“Are you sure it was Ruth?” Shoe asked. He, Rachel, their parents, Harvey Wiseman, and Maureen sat around the picnic table in the backyard. Hal was still missing in action. During a dinner of salad and cold cuts, Rachel described her encounter with Ruth Braithwaite and her subsequent conversation with Flora Zaminski.

“I think so,” she said. “She seemed pretty, um, well, nuts, though, talked as if her parents were still alive in Africa. She remembered you. She told me her father chastised her for running away from you in the woods, then punished her for being in the woods in the first place. She also said that Marvin Cartwright was writing a book about Africa.”

“Claudia Hahn told me he wrote historical adventures and romances,” Shoe said. “Perhaps he was researching a book with Ruth's parents.”

“I think she used to sneak out and meet him in the woods,” Rachel said. “Until her father complained to the
police about him. She said her father made him go away, but that he came back. She still seems terrified her father will punish her for going into the woods. Maybe she met Marvin in the woods on Thursday night and killed him because, I dunno, she was afraid her father would find out and punish her.”

“Whoa,” Shoe said, reining her in. “Slow down. Cartwright was beaten to death with a blunt object, most likely a tree limb. Do you think the woman you spoke to was capable of that kind of violence?”

“I don't know. I didn't get a good look at her, but she didn't seem especially frail. Still, he was an old man and you said Joey told you he was sick. He might not have been able to put up much of a fight.”

“My grandmother was quite frail toward the end,” Maureen said. “But her Alzheimer's made her paranoid and very physically aggressive. She gave my mother a black eye once and another time broke an orderly's finger. She had to be restrained for much of the last year of her life.”

“Ruth certainly seemed paranoid enough,” Rachel said.

“On the other hand,” Wiseman said, “to the best of anyone's knowledge, Ruth hasn't set foot outside of that house in thirty years. I doubt Marvin Cartwright simply knocked on her door and said, ‘Hello, Ruth. Long time no see. Would you like to go for a walk in the woods?' Even if he did, is it likely she'd go, especially given that she still evidently believes her father would punish her for doing so?”

Rachel slumped. “Okay, I admit, I'd make a lousy detective.”

“On the contrary, m'dear,” Wiseman said, beaming theatrically. “You may have cracked the case. What do you think, Shoe? Was it the handyman in the garage with the plumber's helper?”

“I'm not sure I'd go that far,” Shoe said. “It might be worth looking into, though.”

“What little I know of Dougie Hallam is mostly hearsay,” Maureen said, “but it's hard to imagine him as the neighbourhood Mr. Fix-It.”

“Some Mr. Fix-It,” Rachel said. “The house looks like it's about to fall down.”

“Someone must do some maintenance for them,” Wiseman said. “I don't imagine Ruth or her sisters are the handy types. Mrs. Zed told you he sneaks into the house at night? What sort of maintenance is he doing then?”