Chapter Thirteen
Mitch’s right hand was swollen; clumsy and jumpy, he had pushed the red sports car out of the barn to get more light on the work but still the shadows beneath the dash conspired against him. He lay on his back like a contortionist, both legs hanging out the open door, the small of his back painfully braced against the ridge of the doorsill. His arms, lifted above his head, kept tiring quickly and he had to lower them to his chest and rest them. He had positioned the car so that by raising his head he could look past his knees at the porch of the abandoned store across the street; thus, at quick intervals, he kept surveillance on both the girls. He had let Terry keep the knife; it seemed to discourage Billie Jean from thoughts of assault.
He didn’t know what he wanted to do. Vague plans, half-formed, flitted through his mind. Maybe slip into some half-sized town in the Pacific Northwest, pick a common sort of name, slowly accumulate documentation for it and keep out of trouble so they wouldn’t have cause to fingerprint him.
Sudden agony bolted him out of the car. Terry came off the porch and walked toward him. He watched her: every move she made was vital and alive. Laced with hurts, he arched his back.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’ve got a goddamn charley horse.”
“I’m sorry — can I do anything?”
He straightened slowly and stared at her. “Look, I’m the kidnaper, you’re the kidnapee remember?”
She said, “I don’t think I’m afraid of you any more. If I ever was. What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
“You’ll take the car and run, of course. Leave me here. But I don’t want to be left here with her.” She gave Billie Jean, across the street pouting, a slantwise look.
“Okay, maybe I’ll take her with me a ways, put her off the bus someplace else.”
“That wouldn’t be too smart, would it?”
“Why not?”
“She’ll be found if you leave her alone on some desert road. She’ll be arrested and she hasn’t got the brains to keep quiet. She’ll tell them everything.”
“I guess so. What choice have I got? Kill her?”
“Could you?”
“No,” he said, not even hesitating. He made a face and got back down under the steering wheel and poked his knife up among the wires. Sooner or later he would have to hit the right combination; there were only so many wires leading into the ignition switch. He had cut them all, stripped the insulation with the pocket knife and twisted wires together until they began to break with metal fatigue. Sweat was sticky in the small of his back, in his palms, in his crotch, on his lips and throat. He talked in exasperated bursts while he worked. “I keep feeling Floyd like a weight on me. A goddamn ghost or something. I knew he wouldn’t come back — as soon as Georgie died I knew it but I didn’t have the guts to do anything. The bastard can’t live unless he makes everything dead around him.”
He lowered his arms to rest and lifted his head. She was still there when he twisted his face to locate her. It was no good: his muscles were cramping again, he had to stand up. He sat up on the doorsill and tugged up his baggy socks and got to his feet. “I don’t feel too great about leaving you here, either.”
A piece of a smile shaped her mouth. “I’m sorry. You sort of got stuck with me, didn’t you? Like a blind date.”
Mitch was sweat-drenched; he felt greenish and sick. “Floyd figured it out real good. I can’t even turn myself in to the cops. The cops believe facts — and the facts about this are as phony as a three-dollar bill. Two people dead and a kidnaping and a missing half million dollars. They’d throw me in hock and throw away the key.”
“You talk like somebody jumping out a window. It’s not the end of the world, Mitch. Don’t throw in the towel.”
“All suggestions,” he said acidly, “gratefully welcomed.” He got in the car on his back and reached for the wires again. His fingers trembled wildly. The merciless orange sun beat down vengefully.
Terry’s smoky voice came down to him, low but hard. “Let’s not just mope around and bleed about it, Mitch. What’s important is to keep a grip on yourself. Look — the thing to do is go after Floyd and get the money away from him. He doesn’t deserve it.”
He sat up, banging his head on the steering column; he emerged and stared. “What are you talking about?”
“Go after him, Mitch. You know where he went, don’t you?”
“Floyd? He’s a barracuda — he’d swallow me whole.”
“I’ll go with you. I’ll help.”
“You’ll what?”
“I’ll go with you. Let me go with you.”
He gaped at her.
Her face hardened; she lowered her eyes. “I want my father to go on thinking I’m dead, for a little while at least.”
He blinked at her, dumbfounded; she said earnestly, “I can’t explain it all in a sentence, Mitch. But I want to teach him a lesson he’ll never forget. I want to punish him for... for a lot of things, I suppose. If you were a psychiatrist you could find all kinds of names for it. Maybe it’s bitchy and mean and neurotic and sick. But I want him to think I’m dead. I want him to cry!”
She turned away from him until he couldn’t see her face. He took a step forward but her back registered his advance; he stopped and opened his mouth, and closed it.
Terry said in a small voice, “If we run fast the world can’t catch us, Mitch. We can get the money from Floyd and disappear somewhere, together.”
He swallowed. For want of anything more coherent to say he mumbled, “I wouldn’t take that money on a Christmas tree if it’s got Floyd attached to it. He’d grind us up into hamburgers.”
“No he won’t. You can figure something out.”
“I’m not that long on brains. Floyd can think circles around me.”
“No.” She turned to face him. “You’re good, Mitch. Better than you think you are.”
“Am I?”
“You know you are. You just needed to have someone tell you.”
He wondered if he would ever emerge from this nightmare. Her voice pounded at him: “Go after him, Mitch. What else can you do? There’s nothing else. Go after him — and I’ll come with you.”
He shook his head slowly, not ready to catch up with the speed of her resolution. “Hell — what about her?”
“We’ll take her with us, at least as far as the border. He did go to Mexico, didn’t he?”
“Yah.” He turned and brooded at Billie Jean’s squat shape across the road. “Do you really think we can do it?”
“I think we have to try.”
Fastening his mind onto it, he got back down into the car and pushed wires together — and the starter popped and spun. Startled, he jerked back. He touched the wires again and the starter whirred. He grinned insanely and bent his head against the accelerator pedal and touched the wires again. The engine started with a rattle and began to hum. Disregarding the low-amperage current that tingled in his fingers, he pulled the starter wire away, marking in his mind that it was the red one, and sat up. He banged his head again.
“Did you hurt yourself?”
“I always do.” He held one hand to his head, climbed to his feet and said, “What the hell. We might as well.”
She looked almost amused; she knew she had shamed him into it. If she was game for it, how could he refuse? Easy, he thought — I could use my head. But when he looked at her he suddenly knew he couldn’t.
He called Billie Jean. Hands impudently on hips, she took her insolent time, walking slowly forward with writhing buttocks. Her dress, wrinkled and creased and filthy, was stretched tight across her fullnesses; she came up and flicked her body at him.