"The Stake" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laymon Richard)

Going for It

Seven

“Happy trails to you,” Dad said, and swatted her butt as she stepped out the door.

She smirked back at him.

“Say hi to Roy and Dale,” he added.

“You should look so good,” Lane said, then turned away and hurried toward the car. The red Mustang gleamed in the early morning sunlight. She stepped around to the driver’s side, feeling fresh and eager in her new clothes: the mottled pink and blue T-shirt; the tie-dyed blue denim jumper with its white lace trim and pink flowerbud decorations on the bib, straps, and hem; and the white, fringed boots.

Dad was always poking fun at her clothes. She supposed this outfit didmake her look like a cowgirl.

One hot, radical cowgirl, she thought, and grinned as she climbed into the car.

At least he hadn’t made any remarks about the length of the skirt. Sitting down, she could feel the seat upholstery high on the backs of her legs. As she waited for the engine to warm up, she leaned close to the steering wheel and looked down. The skirt was short, all right. Any shorter might be embarrassing.

This was just right.

Sexy, but not outrageous.

She especially liked the lace around the hem of the skirt, the way its long points lay like frilly spearheads against her thighs.

I’m going to drive Jim nuts when he sees me in this.

As if he needs any help along those lines.

Laughing softly, trembling just a little with the anticipation of being at school on such a fine day in such a grand outfit, Lane backed out of the driveway. She turned the car radio to “86.2 A.M., all the best in Country twenty-four hours a day!” Randy Travis was on. She turned the volume high and poked her elbow into the warm stream of air rushing past her window.

God, she felt great.

Seemed almost criminal to feel this great.

She leaned her shoulder against the door, tipped her head and felt the wind caress her face, tug at her hair.

To think that she’d put up such a fuss about leaving Los Angeles. She must’ve been crazy, wanting to stay in that lousy apartment in a city full of filthy air and creeps. But she’d grown up there. She was used to it. She’d known she would miss her friends and the beaches and Disneyland. This was so much better, though. She’d made new friends, she loved the river, and the clean, open spaces gave her a constant sense of freedom that made each day seem rich with promise.

Best of all, she supposed, was the release from fear. In L.A. you had to be so careful. The place was crawling with rapists and killers. Not a day went by when the TV news didn’t broadcast stories of such horror and brutality that you dreaded stepping outside. Kids missing. Their bodies usually found days later, nude and mutilated and sexually abused. Not only kids, either. The same thing happened to teenagers, and even adults. If you weren’t kidnapped and tortured, you might be gunned down at a restaurant or movie theater or shopping mall. And hiding at home was no guarantee of safety, either. There were plenty of nuts who simply drove around town, shooting into the windows of houses and apartment buildings.

Nowhere was safe.

Lane’s joy slipped away as she suddenly remembered the chopping crashes of gunfire in the night. They had been home in their ground-level apartment in Los Angeles, sitting close together on the sofa, watching Dallason TV Lane had a tub of popcorn on her lap. Mom sat on one side, Dad on the other. All three were reaching in, hands sometimes colliding. The first blast made her jump so hard that the tub flew up, flinging popcorn everywhere. Then the night exploded as if someone on the street had opened up with a machine gun. Mom had screamed. Dad had shouted “Get down!” but didn’t give Lane even an instant to respond before he grabbed the back of her neck and nearly broke her in half as he rammed her forward. The edge of the coffee table skinned the top of her head. She wept and held her head and shuddered as the roar pounded her ears. Then all she heard was a ringing. The gunfire had stopped. Dad still clutched her neck. “Jean?” he’d asked in a high, strange voice. Mom didn’t answer. “Jean!” True panic. Then Mom had said, “Is it over?”

They stayed on the floor.

Then came sirens and the loud whap-whap-whap of a police helicopter low overhead. The front draperies were bright with flashes of red and blue. Dad had crawled to the window and looked out. “Holy Jesus,” he said, “there must be twenty cop cars out there.”

It turned out that the shots had been fired at a family in a duplex across the street. Both parents, and three children, had been killed by automatic fire from an Uzi. Only an infant had survived the shooting.

Lane hadn’t known the family. That was another thing about L.A. — even most of your neighbors were strangers. But the fact that they’d been gunned down, right across the street, was shocking.

Just too damn close.

Dad had reminded them about a family gunned down by mistake a few years earlier. It was a drug hit. The killers had gone to the wrong house, the one next door to the residence of their intended victims.

“We’re getting out of here,” Dad had said, even while the street outside was still jammed with police cars.

Two weeks later they were on the way to Mulehead Bend.

They knew the town from having vacationed there just a month before the shooting. They’d spent a night in a motel, followed by a week in a houseboat on the river. They’d all enjoyed the area, it was fresh in their minds, and it seemed like a good place to find sanctuary from the mad, crowded hunting grounds of Los Angeles.

Sometimes the wind and heat were enough to drive you crazy. You had to watch out for scorpions and black widow spiders and several varieties of poisonous snakes. But the chances of catching a bullet in the head or getting abducted by a pervert were mighty slim.

Lane looked upon L.A. as a prison from which she and her family had escaped. The freedom was glorious.

She swung her car onto the dust and gravel in front of Betty’s place and beeped the horn once. Betty lived in a mobile home, as did the majority of Mulehead Bend’s population. It was firmly planted on a foundation. A porch and an extra room had been added on. It looked pretty much like a normal house from the outside, though the interior always seemed narrow and cramped when Lane visited.

Betty trudged down the porch stair as if laboring under the burden of her weight — which was considerable. She managed to raise her head and nod a greeting.

Leaning across the passenger seat, Lane opened the door for her. Betty swung her book bag into the backseat. The fabric of her tan shirt was already dark under the armpits. The car rocked slightly as she climbed in. She shut the door so hard that Lane winced.

“Well, look at you,” Betty said, her voice as slow and somber as always. “What’d you do, mug Dolly Parton?”

“Who’d youmug, Indiana Jones?”

“Yucka yucka,” she muttered.

Lane steered onto the road. “We picking up Henry?”

“Only if you want to.”

“Well, is he expecting us?”

“I suppose.”

“You two aren’t fighting again, are you?”

“Just the usual grief about my culinary preferences. I told him he’s no prize himself, and if he thinks he can do better, he should go ahead and try, and good riddance.”

“True love,” Lane said.

She swung around a bend and accelerated up the road to Henry’s house. He was out in front, sitting on a small, white-painted boulder next to the driveway, reading a paperback. When he saw them coming, he slipped the book into his leather briefcase. He stood up, ran a hand over the top of his crew cut, and stuck out his thumb as if hoping to hitch a ride with strangers.

“What a dork,” Betty muttered.

“Oh, he’s cute,” Lane said.

“He’s a nerd.”

That was a fact, Lane supposed. In his running shoes, old blue jeans, plaid shirt, and sunglasses, he could almost pass for a regular guy. But the briefcase gave him away. So did the rather dopey, cheerful look on his lean face. And the way his head preceded the rest of his body made him look, to Lane, like an adventurous turtle.

He was a nerd, no doubt about it. But Lane liked him.

“Good morning, sports fans!”

“Yo!” Lane greeted him.

Betty climbed out, shoved the seat back forward, and ducked into the backseat. Henry got in after her. Hanging over the seat, he managed to pull the door shut. Then his head swiveled toward Lane. “Foxy outfit there, lady.”

“Thanks.”

“ ‘She had a body like a mountain road,’ ” he said. “ ‘Full of curves and places you’d like to stop for a picnic’ ”

“Mike Hammer?” Lane asked.

“Mack Donovan, Dead Low Tide.” He dropped backward, or was yanked by Betty.

“You never talk to me that way,” the girl grumbled.

He whispered something that Lane couldn’t hear over Ronnie Milsap. She turned the radio down, and heard a giggly squeal from Betty. Making a U-turn, she headed down the hill.

“So, you have a big weekend?” Henry asked after a while.

“Okay,” Lane said. “Nothing special. I went shopping yesterday.”

“No dream date with Jim Dandy, King of the Studs?”

“He had to go out of town with his parents.”

“Toobad. And I bet he didn’t even have the courtesy to leave you his biceps.”

“Nope, I had to go without.”

“Rotten luck. Should’ve come to the drive-in with us. Saw a couple of dynamite films. Trashedand Attack of the S.S. Zombie Queens.”

“Sorry I missed them.”

“Sorry Isaw them,” Betty said.

“Well, you didn’t see much of them, that’s for sure. Between your forays to the snack bar and the John...”

“Hush up.”

“We think she got a bad hot dog,” he explained.

“Henry!” she whined.

“On the other hand, could’ve been a bad burrito or cheeseburger.”

“Lane doesn’t want to hear all the gruesome details.”

“What’s going on with your dad?” Henry asked, leaning forward and folding his arms over the seat back. “Have they started filming The Beast?”

“Not yet. They just renewed the option, though.”

“Terrific. Man, I can’t wait to see that one. I’ve got rubber bands holding that book together. Read it five, six times. It’s a classic.”

“I would’ve liked it better,” Lane said, “if it hadn’t been written by my father.”

“Ah, he’s cool.”

“And apparently somewhat demented,” Lane added.

Henry laughed.

At the bottom of the hill Lane turned onto Shoreline Drive. Most of the shops along the road weren’t open yet, and the traffic was light. The station wagon ahead of her was filled with children on their way to the elementary school, which was across the road from Buford High at the south end of town. Quite a few older kids were on the sidewalks, hiking in that direction.

Henry, still resting on the seat back, swung his arm toward the passenger window. “Isn’t that Jessica?”

Lane spotted the girl on the sidewalk ahead. Jessica, all right. Even from behind there was no mistaking her. The spiked hair, dyed bright orange, was enough to give her away.

Her left arm was in a cast.

“Wonder what happened,” Lane muttered. “Anyone mind if I offer her a lift?”

“Yeah, do it,” Henry said.

“Terrific,” Betty muttered.

Lane swung the car to the curb, not far behind the swaggering girl, and leaned across the passenger seat. “How about a ride?” she called.

Jessica turned around.

Lane winced at the sight of her.

“God,” Henry muttered.

Jessica was generally considered the foxiest gal in the junior class, maybe in the entire high school.

Not so foxy now, Lane thought.

From the looks of her now, she might’ve gone ten rounds over the weekend with the heavyweight champ.

The left side of her face was swollen and purple. Her cracked lips bulged like sausages. She had a flesh-colored bandage on her chin, another over her left eyebrow. Lane guessed that the pink-framed sunglasses concealed shiners. The girl usually wore huge, dangling rings in her pierced ears. Today the lobes of both ears were bandaged. The low neckline of her tank top revealed bruises on her chest. Others showed around her shoulder straps. Even her thighs were smudged with purple bruises below the frayed edges of her cutoff jeans.

“How about it?” Lane called to her.

She shrugged, and Lane heard a quiet intake of breath from Henry — likely at the way the gesture made Jessica’s breast move under the tight, thin fabric of her top. Only one showed. The other was discretely hidden under the cloth sling that supported her broken arm. The visible one jiggled as she stepped toward the car.

Maybe she got herself gang-banged.

Nice, Lane. Real nice.

Would’ve been her own damn fault.

Cut it out.

Leaning across the passenger seat, she unlatched the door and swung it open.

“Thanks,” Jessica said.

Henry dropped away from the seat back — no doubt with Betty’s help — and lost his chance to watch the girl climb in. Too bad, Lane thought. He would’ve enjoyed seeing Jessica’s leg come out through the slit side of her jeans. The bruises might’ve dampened his enthusiasm, but not by much.

She pulled the door shut. Lane checked the side mirror, waited for a Volkswagen to pass, then swung out.

“Are you sure you want to be going to school?” she asked.

“Shit. Would you, ib you looked like this?”

“I guess I’d probably call in sick.”

“Yeah,” Jessica replied through her split and swollen lips. “Well, better than habbing by old lady in by face all day. She’s such a bain.”

Lane rubbed her lips together, licked them. Listening to Jessica was almost enough to make them ache.

From the backseat came Betty’s voice. “So, you going to let us in on it, or do we have to guess?”

Scowling, Jessica peered over her shoulder.

“It’s none of our business,” Lane said.

“Yeah. Well, I got trashed.”

“Who did it to you?” Henry asked.

“Who the buck knows? A couple guys. Real asswibes. Beat the shit outa be and stole by burse.”

“Where’d it happen?”

“Ober backa the Quick Stob.”

“Behind the Quick Stop?” Betty asked. “What were you doing there?”

“They dragged be there. Saturday night. I went in bor cigarettes, and they got be when I cabe out.”

“Bad news,” Henry muttered.

“Yeah, I’ll say.” With one hand she opened a canvas satchel and took out a pack of Camels. She shook it, raised the pack to her mouth, and caught a cigarette between her fat, scabby lips. She lit it with a Bic, inhaled deeply, and sighed.

“Did they catch the guys who did it?” Lane asked.

Jessica shook her head.

“I didn’t think stuff like that happened around here.”

“It habbens, all right.”

Lane pulled into the student parking lot, found an empty space, and shut off the car.

“Thanks a lot bor the ride,” Jessica said.

“Glad to help. I’m awfully sorry you got messed up.”

“Be too. So long.” She climbed out and headed away.

“Wouldn’t you just die to know what reallyhappened?” Betty said.

“You think she lied?” Lane asked.

“Let’s put it this way. Yes.”

Henry shoved the seat back forward. “Why would she lie about a thing like that?”

“Why wouldn’t she?”