The Impaler (10 page)

Tall and thin with jet-black hair and full, round lips, Cindy Smith thought herself an attractive woman, yes, but nothing special really. She’d had only one boyfriend in high school and dated him all through her freshmen year at Har-riot—until she found out he was cheating on her with a sorority girl because, as he said, “she wasn’t giving him enough attention.”

Now didn’t that just scream of fucking irony!

In the end, however, she was happy to break it off. She knew deep down that they had little in common, him being a
jock and her being a “theatre dork.” And although a year and a half later she was self-aware enough to see the cliché in it all, the betrayal still hurt enough for her to keep the young men in the department at arm’s length—especially the egomaniac playing Macbeth.

The prick’s name was Bradley Cox, a second-year senior who wouldn’t be graduating any time soon, and who only got the lead because the competition among the men was so slim. “Big Fish, Small Pond Syndrome,” her mother called it.

Cindy thought Bradley Cox was a cliché just like her ex-boyfriend—the big-man-on-campus type who prided himself on banging every girl in the department. The kind of guy who had it easy in college, but whose lack of talent and overall mediocrity would hit him hard in the real world. Would probably end up working for his father’s construction firm, Cindy was willing to bet. Bradley had asked Cindy out at the beginning of the fall semester—told her she looked like Angelina Jolie and said he’d like to make her dinner at his apartment. Cindy politely declined, then did so a second time a week later at a cast party, upon which an inebriated Cox called her a “stuck-up whore” and said he wouldn’t fuck her with George Kiernan’s dick.

He left her alone after that, hardly said two words to her all year. However, she
did
catch him sneering at one of his buddies during the first read-through of
Macbeth,
to which Cindy had come with all her lines memorized. She got her revenge two weeks later, secretly, when Kiernan pulled her aside and said, “You know, Cindy, the title of the play is
Macbeth,
but yours is the performance people are going to remember.”

She had really appreciated that, but at the same time didn’t like the special treatment she always got from Kiernan.

Like her private little note session tonight.

Cindy flicked on her bedside light, and when her eyes ad-
justed, she tiptoed over to her desk, making sure to avoid the creaky floorboard at the corner of the bed so as not to wake her mother downstairs.

Cindy was born and raised in Greenville and still lived at home. She wasn’t proud of it—living with her mother, that is—but knew that it would all pay off when she moved to New York City to pursue her acting career. She’d already saved up almost four thousand dollars in her three years of working at Chili’s. She paid for school through scholarships and her work-study job in the box office and hadn’t had to ask for a dime from her asshole father, either. She hadn’t even
talked
to the son of a bitch since Christmas, now that she thought of it; and although the piece-of-junk Pontiac Sunfire he’d thrown her on her sixteenth birthday was about to shit the bed, she’d rather walk to school than be the first to call.

Cindy’s father, an auto mechanic, ended up marrying the woman with whom he’d been cheating on Cindy’s mother and bought a house out in neighboring Winterville. Still not far enough away, Cindy thought—shit, even California wouldn’t be far enough away. The divorce went down when Cindy was in junior high school, when one day her mother came home from work crying and started throwing her father’s things out on the front lawn. Then her father came home and smacked his wife a couple of good ones for embarrassing him in front of the neighbors. Didn’t matter if he was guilty or not, he said; a good wife don’t go selling out her husband no matter what he done.

Cindy saw it all, and the ensuing divorce hit her as hard as if her father had smacked her a couple of good ones, too. But like everything else, Cindy quickly learned to see the bigger picture. That was one of her “gifts,” her mother always said; her maturity, her ability to rise above things. Cindy could tell that her mother was happier without the son of a bitch—had to admit that she was happier without him
hanging around, too—and decided that it was best if she had as little to do with her father as possible.

Besides, he’d never shown much interest in her anyway.

Cindy turned on her computer—an old eMachine that took forever and made a weird clicking sound when it booted—and once she was on the Internet, out of habit she first checked her Facebook page. It was the usual stuff: a message from her best friend (who, unfortunately, went to State) and a couple of drunken posts along the lines of,
“Whassup, you egocentric bitch?”
from friends who had just returned from partying downtown. But only after Cindy minimized her Facebook page and saw the Google search results was she willing to admit to herself the real reason why she’d gotten out of bed.

She had googled the name “Edmund Lambert”—only a few thousand hits, most of which were links to general ancestry or genealogy pages. Nothing that Cindy could tie directly to the handsome ex-soldier who kept to himself in the scene shop.

Yeah, all the girls in the theatre department kind of had a thing for Lambert. But at the same time they were intimidated by him, and thought it strange how he didn’t smile back when they batted their eyelashes and flashed their pearly whites at him. And really, only that slut Amy Pratt had made a play for him—came right out and said she’d give him a blow job in the light booth, to which Lambert replied, “No thank you, Amy.” Amy told the girls about it in the dressing room the previous semester; said Lambert didn’t even blush, didn’t even flinch, but just looked her straight in the eye until she walked away. “Guy’s weird,” she said. “Looks you dead in the eye, all blank and creepy like he’s looking through you. Fucking Hitchcock movie, if you ask me.”

Lambert had looked at Cindy that way, too. But unlike Amy Pratt, Cindy actually liked it; liked the way he held her gaze to the point where she thought she could feel his steel-
blue eyes licking the back of her retinas. Oh yeah, looks wise, Edmund Lambert was
beyond
dreamy—tall and muscular with dark brown hair and straight white teeth. But more than that, Cindy liked him because she could tell he was a thinker, could tell he had depth—the most genuine, no-bullshit guy in the department. Wouldn’t even give a chick like Amy Pratt the time of day.

Cindy maximized her Facebook page and did a search there, too—came up empty, not a single Edmund Lambert on the entire site.

“
Nyet
,” she said to herself in the Russian accent she was working on for her dialects class. “You don’t seem like the
Fess-book
type,
Meester Lem-behrt
.”

She did a search for herself on Facebook—five hundred-plus hits.

“More than five hundred of me to vuhn of you,” she said in her best
La Femme Nikita
voice. “
Da
. You cannot resist me,
Meester Lem-behrt.”

Cindy opened another Web page, and after a few clicks was in the Harriot Campus Directory—did a search for Edmund Lambert and found what she was looking for.

“So, you’re a Wilson boy,” she said. “Makes sense. Bit of a commute—why you never come out to socialize. But now I have you right vehre I vahnt you.”

She giggled and typed “Cindy Lambert” into the Face-book search field—again, over five hundred hits. “Five hundred to one,” she said. “Yeah, I’ll take those odds.”

Cindy smiled and turned off her computer—was back in bed and fast asleep in five minutes without saying
“Out, out, damn spot!”
to herself even once.

It was Saturday night, and Hank Biehn was worried he smelled like booze. He could never smell it on himself. But then again, Hank Biehn hadn’t been able to smell anything since about 1980 or so. All that snorting coke really did a number on the old factory nerves or whatever you called them; fucked with your balance, too, he thought as he walked along the side of Route 301. The dark didn’t help any either—couldn’t focus on nothing except random lights up ahead or the road in front of you; had to keep your head down more than when walking during the day. That’s where the old factory nerves became a problem. Head down and fucked-up sense of balance. Not a good combination.

He supposed he was a bit rusty, too. Used be a pro at walking—or “drifting” as his asshole boss at the diner used to call it. “I ain’t in the habit of hiring drifters,” he’d said, but Hank had talked him into it. Hank Biehn had always been able to talk a good game. That’d been over two years ago now; the longest stretch he’d stayed domestic since he was paroled back in ninety-eight. Fifteen years for armed rob-
bery after he moved from coke to the needle. Boy, that smack was a high-maintenance bitch!

But Hank Biehn had been clean since he got out, didn’t even crave the methadone anymore. Besides, he’d found a new love—would
always
be married to the bottle—but he’d learned to keep her in line. Odd jobs here and there, day-laboring when you could get it was all she required. Short-order cook was a good gig, too, if you played it right. And Hank Biehn certainly thought he’d been playing this last one right, that’s for sure. Stayed sober for the most part during the day and paid his rent on time.

Until he got fired.

And for what? Slapping that spic busboy in the mouth cuz he dropped them dishes on his foot?
Naw, boss, I ain’t been drinking! Okay, okay, I admit I had little nip on my break—just a little one—but that fucking Chihuahua did it on purpose! Kind of talk? Whaddya mean you don’t go for that kind of talk? How’s a good, hardworking white man supposed to get by when them wetbacks is taking all our jobs?

That had been the beginning of the end of his good run in Lucama, North Carolina. Same shit, different day. First you get canned; then you gotta weigh your options. And there hadn’t been
any
options in shit-bowl Lucama. Small-town politics, word of mouth, bad rep now and rent due soon. Been there done that. Better to say fuck it and get outta Dodge before the money runs out and the landlady sics the sheriff on you. If he left now he’d have enough money to get by—more than he usually did when he cut bait—plus he’d be able to stretch it somewhere different until something else came along. And something would come along.

Something always did.

Besides, what was he going to do now anyway? Go back to the kind of life he had before he went in? He was fifty-two years old and didn’t have them kind of reflexes no more. Being married to the bottle had seen to that; fucked with
your muscles, too. But the bottle was a good girl—made you smarter, at least. Didn’t make you do stupid things like he did when he was riding the needle. Boy, that smack was a high-priced whore! Was her who made him shoot that convenience store clerk in Durham—popped him one right above the left eye and killed him instantly, he saw on the news the next day. Never thought he woulda been capable of a thing like that, but, boy oh boy, the things we do for love! Luckily, they never pinned
that
one on him—stuck it on some other chump and then picked him up a year later on the armed-robbery rap in Raleigh. Yeah, Hank Biehn was smart enough to know that you only get one freebie in life, and he’d already used up his.

“Fuck it,” he said, spitting into the underbrush. “Not my fault the kid didn’t just give me the money.”

And Hank Biehn walked on.

His plan was to make it to downtown Smithfield by Sunday morning—would check into a cheap motel and spend the rest of the day in his room drinking beer. Beer didn’t stick in your pores the next day like the hard stuff, and so he’d be clean and ready to work come Monday morning. Spring was here, and they’d be hiring day laborers outside this little storefront near where Route 301 intersected with the center of town. Or at least he
hoped
they’d be hiring; he’d worked out of there before the gig in Lucama, and as far as he knew, nothing had changed in the last two years. Well, there’d be a different bunch of fucking Mexicans he’d have to work with, but as long as he kept his mouth shut and didn’t smell like booze he should be fine. If they weren’t hiring, well, something else would come along.

Something always did.

Back in the days when he was a professional walker, Hank Biehn learned very quickly that folks didn’t like giving him a ride. Well, once he got inside and could talk his game they came around. It was just the getting-inside part
that was the problem. He’d never been a looker, that’s for sure. Kids used to call him “Weasel” back in the day, enough said. But that wasn’t it. No, things were different now than before he went in. People nowadays were too uptight; fucked-up world, people paranoid, no one wanting to give a guy a break. Sad really, but simple as that.

And so Hank Biehn figured if he was going to have to walk, why not walk at night when it was cooler? Tomorrow was a Sunday to boot, and another thing Hank Biehn had learned since his parole was that Sundays were the worst days to try and hitch. Cops more likely to fuck with you on a Sunday, too. You’d think it’d be the opposite—people closer to God and whatnot—but for some reason that wasn’t the case. Hank Biehn had never figured out why.

He shifted the duffel bag on his back and spit once more into the brush. He figured he had about four or five miles left on Route 301 before it crossed I-95, which meant at least another hour and a half of walking before he’d rest a spell with a nip by the highway. No use getting on the Interstate, though; would be around 2 a.m. at that point, and the chances of hitching a ride were slim anyway. Better if he stuck to 301 the whole way; probably another fifteen miles from there, which meant he’d make it into town for breakfast. Then he’d find a room, a case of beer (have to buy it after noon on a Sunday, fucking North Carolina!) and then a good night’s sleep. Sounds like a plan.