Babysitter, page 9
The story was brief, describing the attempt by police to reclaim a woman who had killed her abusive husband and her daughter who had been taken credit for the crime. The language was so terse, it read like a police blotter.
He stuffed this paper, along with a few samples of the want ads, into his back pocket. He went back into the kitchenette area.
From a garbage sack next to a bulbous old Admiral refrigerator, he lifted the foil top of a TV dinner. He ran his finger over the foil. Tomato paste, he surmised, and at most two days old.
The girl, or somebody, had been here within the past forty-eight hours.
He opened the refrigerator. No interior light went on.
In the tiny freezer compartment, swollen with ice -and badly in need of defrosting, he found two more Swanson TV dinners, one a beef patty and french fries, the other chicken with dressing.
Off of the living room, there was a small vestibule and off of that a bathroom and single bedroom. David made for the bedroom, his brain trying to wrap itself around the scattered bits of information he had found. He knew exactly what he was looking for. He hoped he wouldn’t find it.
The bedroom was dark, save for a tiny shaft of light that spilled in from the living room window. It was enough that he could find the bed, however, and he went straight to it.
In this case, the bed was a small, metal framed affair, looking for all the world as though it had been hauled home from the dump. The mattress had several large stains of ill repute and David had to ignore these in order to do what he needed to do.
He grabbed one side of the bed by the metal frame and flung it as hard as he could to the other side of the room. It landed with a miserable clang and a thud but David paid it no mind. His eyes were riveted to the floor where the bed had just stood.
The warped floor boards were in a state of neglect. Long past the point of sanding and refinishing, they were two tones darker than the maker had intended and coated in a layer of dust. David pulled out his trusty Bic lighter and clicked it several times before the flame took.
There on the floor, drawn carefully in some dark substance, was the same symbol he had seen in the newspaper article of long ago. David suddenly felt sick to his stomach as he let out a breath he hadn’t been aware that he was holding. Then he turned and hurried to the hall door.
He closed the door and went back into the living room. He picked up the phone and dialed Jody’s number.
Her anxious hello told him one of the answers he’d wanted. Jenny had not been found.
“They’re still looking,” she explained, sounding miserable.
“How’s Sam?”
“The pill worked. She’s really out. Where are you?”
“It would take too long to explain right now, but I’d like you to do me a favor.”
“All right.”
“Who was the woman who gave Sam the babysitter’s name?”
“Uh, Iris.”
“Iris. Right. Would you call her back and ask her a question? It’s pretty important.”
“What question?”
“Ask her to think very carefully. Ask her if she ever called a number for this babysitter and got her. Or if the babysitter always called her.”
“That’s a really weird question, David. Aren’t you even going to give me a hint?”
He looked around the big room. Down the hall the stereo had been turned up again. Hellish light would be spilling from the door. The toothless old man with his fading tattoos would be swigging from the quart bottle of Hamms. He was so pale his flesh seemed to glow.
“To tell you the truth, I’d like to get out of here. This place is starting to give me the creeps.”
“What place?”
He laughed. “You’re persistent, aren’t you? I’m at the babysitter’s apartment. Or at least a place she seems to come occasionally for some reason I don’t quite understand.”
“Why wouldn’t she go to her apartment?”
“Because it was gutted three years ago in a fire.”
“And she lives there?”
“I’m not sure if she lives here. But she visits here for some reason.” He paused, thinking of the papers in his back pocket, and thinking of what the old man had said about her periodic visits. “Something brings her back here. At this point I don’t know what.”
“Have you talked with anybody who knows her?”
“Sort of. An old man who probably isn’t the most reliable witness in the world.”
“God,” Jody said. “I just wonder what Jenny’s got to do with all this.”
“So do I.”
“I just keep thinking of her, out there in the night somewhere and—”
He let her cry.
She went three minutes, maybe four, embarrassed sometimes, but sometimes just letting herself go. It was a process similar to bleeding yourself of poison.
At the end, she started to say, “I’m sorry,” but he stopped her.
“I thought we were friends.”
“Well.”
“Why would friends apologize to each other for crying?”
“Well.”
“I know this sounds stupid, but I wish you’d relax.”
This time, she laughed. “Actually, you’re right. It does sound kind of stupid.”
“Thanks.”
Her voice softened. “God, David, I couldn’t make it through this without you. I really appreciate—”
“Words you don’t need to say. I’d like to think you’d do the same for me if I were in the same situation.”
“You know I would.”
“Good.” He touched the papers in his back pocket. “Well, I’ll see you in a while.”
“Awhile? You’re not coming back here now?” There was an edge of panic in her tone.
“No. There’s a story I want to check out.”
“A story?”
“Yes, one of the things I found up here was a newspaper from 1967. I’m not sure why, but I think it may have some bearing on the babysitter. I’m going over to the police station and ask if I can look through their old records.”
“Do you think they’ll let you?”
“Probably. Part of my town history devotes a whole section to the police. Winthrop has always been lucky. We’ve had good cops from day one. Anyway, they’ve been very cooperative and I’ve become friends with several of them. I’m sure, under these circumstances, that they’ll let me check it out.”
“Then you’re coming back here?”
“Yes. Then I’m coming back there. In the meantime—”
“I know,” she said ironically. “All I need to do is sit back and relax.”
“Right,” he said. “See you soon.”
He had been so engrossed in his conversation that he hadn’t been aware that the apartment door had opened and that the old man had come in.
When David turned around and faced him, he nearly jumped.
“What the hell are you doing here?” David snapped.
The old man grinned. Even from here you could smell his breath. He carried his quart in his left hand. “My name’s Rooney,” the old man said. David backed away a foot or so.
“I might ask you the same thing,” the old man said, grinning again. Then, “You got any more of them fives on you?”
“Maybe. Why?”
“Because I got something else you’re gonna want.”
“Such as what?”
“Huh-uh,” the old man said with melodramatic craftiness. He put out his steady hand, palm up as usual. “First I get two more fives, and then I give you what I got.”
Sighing, feeling as if he’d become an automatic teller machine for this pathetic old man, David pulled his wallet out and extracted a ten. He was out of fives.
He laid the crisp ten flat across the old man’s palm and said, “Now, what are you going to give me?”
“This,” the old man said. He reached in his own pocket and brought out a small card. “One time about five years ago there was this fairy who lived here. He said he was an artist, but he mostly kept himself alive by getting checks from his mother. Anyway, he made a habit of drawing everybody in this apartment house. One night he came over to my place, pretty hysterical. He said he’d been going to go over and see the girl who lived here, the babysitter you been askin’ about, and how she didn’t answer when he knocked. But her door was open so he went in and called her name. Then he said he couldn’t believe what he saw.”
“What did he see?”
The old man handed him a folded piece of paper. It was heavy and rough, the stock artists use for pen and ink sketching and water colors.
David opened it up and looked at it. “This guy take drugs or what?”
“Smoked a little pot. That was about all, far as I can tell.”
“He doesn’t live here anymore?”
“Nope,” the old man said. His grin was back. This time there was more than mischief in the grin. This time there was real malice. “Ain’t you gonna ask me what happened to him?”
David sighed. “All right. What happened to him?”
“Fell down. Or so the story goes.”
“Fell down?”
“Yeah. The basement stairs leadin’ to the washer and dryer. Brain concussion, they said.”
“Obviously, you don’t believe that?”
“He died about twenty minutes after he gimme that sketch there.” He paused, delighting in the effect his words would have. “He told me the babysitter was gonna kill him.”
“You didn’t tell the police all this?”
“You think the police’d listen to some old drunk bastard like me?” He shook his head. His flesh flapped, skin the white of fish bellies, faded tattoos like blood poisoning. “I just held on to that drawing. I figured someday it would be worth somethin’.” He held up another quart. “I buy me generic beer, all this money you gimme tonight’s gonna keep me goin’ for three more weeks.” He cackled.
“The babysitter.”
“Yeah?” the old man said.
“She didn’t know he’d made this sketch?”
“Apparently not.”
“She never asked you any questions about the artist?”
“Nope. Far as she knew, I hated fairies just like everybody else.”
“So you really think she killed him?”
“You bet your ass, pardner. You bet your ass.” He tapped his head. “She ain’t right. You look at her in the light sometime and you can tell that easy enough. She ain’t right at all.”
“And she doesn’t show up here on any particular schedule?”
“None that I can see. Just sometimes late at night I hear her—or somebody—comin’ up the stairs and comin’ into this room.”
For the first time, the old man shuddered. He looked as if he were getting caught up in his own tale. He turned, starting out of the room. Then he paused and looked back at David. “You take care of yourself, pardner.” He waved the ten at David. “You’re too valuable to lose.”
With that he was gone, leaving David to take the sketch over to the spill light through the smashed window and examine it more carefully.
He wondered what it could possibly mean, this drawing of a woman with a knife in her throat, a skull, and the symbol he had found on the floor?
Chapter Four
1
Jenny had cut herself pretty badly by falling on the gravel road and taking a chunk of flesh the size of a silver dollar from her left knee. There was gravel dust in the cut and the scabbing, and while she had learned in Personal Hygiene that infection could cause blood poisoning and that blood poisoning could ultimately cause a leg or an arm to be amputated if it wasn’t cleaned properly—still, she paid no attention.
She just kept walking down a narrow moonlit gravel road, scrub pine and elm trees standing sentry-like on either side of the road, and the hot night alive with bloodthirsty insects with prehistoric appetites for blood.
The insects didn’t bother her, either, though. In fact, nothing bothered her. There was a buzzing in her ears that had at first given her a headache. But after a few minutes she’d gotten used to it and right now that buzzing was her only reality.
She had no idea how long she had been walking. She had no idea where she was going. She had only the dimmest memory of being asleep in her bed in the rental house and the buzzing starting, and then she slipped out the back door while Grandma Jody and Mom were in the living room.
But she was not worried.
The buzzing would take care of her.
She wore her Nikes, she wore her Calvin Kleins, she wore her white tube socks with the red bands, she wore her white blouse with the hand-stitched rose on the right collar flap. She even wore her tiny pink barrette. She had put all these on when the buzzing started in earnest, dressing there in the dusk of her bedroom, trying to avoid making any sound so Grandma Jody and Mom wouldn’t hear her.
She didn’t know why, but for some reason it was important that neither Grandma Jody nor Mom find out where she was going.
But where was she going?
There were dogs in the night, and cows settling down under metal-roofed shelters, and pigs making sucking noises as they rolled around in the mud of their pens. There was the sound of cars on the two-lane highway and the sound of barn owls closer by. There was breeze trapped in trees and the sound of leaves sighing in the breeze.
She walked on.
In a half hour, she came to a roller coaster crest on the gravel road.
With instinctive certainty, she turned off the road and began a tortuous passage through thick bramble that began to cut at her with the ferocity of sharp little teeth. By now all this exertion had caused her to sweat a great deal. Her clothes were soaked, and vaguely (she felt very little) her eyes stung with perspiration.
Where am I going?
After a time, the bramble gave way to waist-high wild grass sloping down to a valley. She sneezed. She was a girl with many allergies, the one to milkweed being a particular nuisance. Moonlight shone on a patch of milkweed nearby.
She was halfway down the hill before she saw the cabin below. Actually, it was more of a shack than a cabin. Even from here she could see that it was a patchwork of rusted metal slabs and crumbling wood. Once, with her mother in the South, she’d seen many such shacks, her mother pointing out sadly that this was where black people lived.
She stumbled again, falling on her wounded knee, gashing it open even more. Fresh blood began trickling through the soft membrane of scabbing.
The starry night seemed so vast suddenly, the sky seemingly enormous, the woods next to the cabin as dark and immense as those in the fairy tales her mother used to read her, filled no doubt with mythic creatures meant to frighten eight-year-old girls.
When the ground leveled out, she smelled the stench from the cabin, the mingled odors of cooking and filth and—something she could not define, but something that gagged her.
For the first time, she paused in her single-minded journey. Did she really want to approach the cabin?
While one part of her mind pushed her forward, another part now began to hold her back.
Images of Mom and Grandma Jody formed in her mind.
She wanted to see them.
She wanted to be with them.
As she stood there, a hundred feet from the shack’s door, door springs creaked and a woman appeared.
At first, in the shadows of the slab of wood used as a porch roof, it was impossible to see the woman clearly.
Jenny had the impression the woman was staring at her. Examining her.
Behind the cabin was a shallow creek. Frogs croaked in the silence now. Fish splashed.
The woman came out into the moonlight.
She was enormous, almost mannish, dressed in a ragged and faded house dress that only added to her massive size. Her iron gray hair was pulled back into a bun and her heavy arms were folded sternly across her chest. She said, quite clearly above the frogs and the splashing fish and the distant dogs and the hooting barn owls, “She’s been waiting for you.”
Jenny knew better than to ask who she was. The little girl just stood in the small clearing, still divided between wanting to run to the shack and wanting to run back home.
When the woman took her hands from her chest, Jenny saw that in her right hand the woman held a small pistol. The woman said, “Don’t be afraid.”
It seemed a strange thing for somebody holding a gun to say.
Jenny, almost unaware of her own voice, said, “I think I’d better be getting back home.”
“You know she won’t let you do that.”
“I’m scared,” Jenny said.
The woman cast a glance back over her shoulder, into the cabin. “There’s no need to be scared of her.”
“Why do you have a gun?”
Her wan face parted into a smile. Jenny thought she had never seen a woman more imposing or frightening. “It isn’t for you, if that’s what you’re worried about.” She nodded back to the shack. “It’s just that she—she don’t want uninvited guests. Sometimes we get hunters or fishermen cutting across here and I have to have this in case they want to hassle us or something.
Jenny’s head tilted backwards. She looked up the sloping hill. Why did I come here? Can I get away?
“She wants to see you, kid. It won’t do no good to run. I’d just catch you, anyway.” The woman paused. “Besides, she was the one who brought you here.”
The woman took two steps forward and held out her hand again. This time it was the hand without the gun.
“We don’t want to keep her waitin’,” the woman said.
Once more, Jenny glanced back up the grassy, dusty hill. She contemplated bolting, taking her chances that the woman could not catch her.
Then the buzzing, which had abated ever since the appearance of the woman, began again.
Her entire body seemed to twitch with the buzzing. The woman took several more steps forward.
