I said out loud, “What’s he want here, man like that?”
John C. Faith, Los Angeles. Phony name if I ever heard one.
What in hell could he want in a half-dead backwater like Pomo?
Zenna Wilson
He scared me half to death. And not just because he startled me, sneaking up as quiet as an Indian or a thief. My flesh went cold when I saw him looming there. He was a sight to give any decent soul the shudders even in broad daylight.
I was in the hardware store talking to Ken Treynor. I’d just bought a package of coffee filters, about the only thing I ever buy in the hardware store, really, because Howard gave me a Braun two Christmases ago and Braun coffeemakers take a special filter and Safeway doesn’t stock them even though I’ve asked the manager half a dozen times to put them in so I can pick up a package when I do my regular shopping. It’s frustrating and annoying, is what it is, when stores refuse to do simple things to accommodate good customers. Anyhow, I was telling Ken about Stephanie and her school project, the cute little animal faces she was making out of papier-mâché and how lifelike they were. My Stephanie is very talented that way, very artistic. I was describing the giraffe with its one eye closed, as if it were winking, when all of a sudden Ken’s head jerked and his eyes opened wide and he wasn’t looking at me any longer but at something behind me. So I turned around and there he was, the sneaky stranger.
I guess I uttered a sound and recoiled a bit, because he threw me a look of pure loathing. It made my scalp crawl. When I was a little girl about Stephanie’s age, my older brother, Tom, used to terrify me with stories about a bogeyman who hid in dark places waiting for unsuspecting children to come along, and then he’d jump out and grab them and carry them off to his dark lair and bite their heads off. This man looked like he was capable of doing just that, biting someone’s head off. Big and fearsome, with huge hands and a mouth full of sharp teeth. Bogey was the right word for the likes of him, all right.
Ken was also staring at him. He said, “Can I... was there something?”
“I can wait until you’re finished with the lady.” Voice to match his size, deep and rumbly, like thunder before a storm. And the way he said “lady” made it sound like a dirty word.
“Already finished,” Ken told him.
“Battery for an Eveready utility lantern. Six-volt.”
“Aisle three, halfway back.”
I watched him walk into the aisle; I couldn’t seem to take my eyes off him. Treynor’s Hardware is in an old building, and he walked hard enough to make the wood floor shake. Above the items stacked on the top shelves I could see the crown of his head moving — that’s how tall he was. His hair was long and dirty brown, and in the lights it looked greasy, like matted animal fur.
It didn’t take him long to find what he wanted. He came back to the counter and paid Ken in cash — a fifty-dollar bill. Then, “There a bank in town that stays open this late?”
“First Northern, three blocks down Main.”
“Thanks.” He picked up his purchase and walked out, one side of his mouth bent upward in a ghastly sort of smile that wasn’t a smile at all.
I blew out my breath and said to Ken, “My God! Did you ever see such a wicked-looking man?”
“No, and I hope I never see him again.”
“Amen to that. You don’t suppose he’ll be here long?”
“Probably just passing through.”
“Lord, I hope so.”
I stayed there with Ken for another five minutes or so. I wanted to be certain the bogey was gone before I went out to the car. In my mind’s eye I could still see him, that scarred face and those awful eyes and enormous hands. Animal paws that could crush the life out of a person, that may well have blood on them already for all I know.
Up to the devil’s work, I thought, whoever he is and wherever he goes. If he stays in Pomo long enough, something terrible will happen.
I wished Howard wasn’t away traveling for his job until tomorrow night. With a man like that one in town, a woman and her little girl weren’t safe alone in their own home.
Richard Novak
I might not’ve even noticed the old red Porsche being illegally parked on the southeast corner of Main and Fifth if it hadn’t been for the fact that Storm’s silver-gray BMW was curbed in the legal space just behind. The BMW, like Storm herself, would have stood out in a crowd of a thousand and, like her, it had a magnetic attraction for my eye. Still carrying the torch after all these months. Not as large and hot a torch as the one for Eva, but still a long ways from burning itself out.
Ninety-nine times out of a hundred I would’ve let the violation go unchallenged. For one thing, it was minor, and the way things were, the Porsche’s driver wasn’t really at fault. For another, the car was unfamiliar and the city council has a general go-easy policy where visitors are concerned. And for a third, this sort of routine parking matter wasn’t part of the police chief’s duties, particularly when he happened to be tired and on his way home for the day. But I didn’t let it slide, and I’m not sure why. To get Storm off my mind, maybe. Or maybe because this hadn’t been much of a day and on off days I’m more inclined to enforce the strict letter of the law.
In any case, I swung the cruiser around onto Fifth and got out. The Porsche’s driver was coming up onto the sidewalk when he saw me approaching; he stopped and stood waiting. I’m not small at six feet and two hundred pounds, but I felt dwarfed in this one’s massive shadow. Rough-looking, too, with a hammered-down face and hard, bunched features. But there was nothing furtive or suspicious about him, nothing to put me on my guard.
He said in a flat, neutral voice, “Something wrong, Officer?”
“You can’t park there.”
“No? Why is that?”
“No-parking zone. Trucks have to swing too wide to get around the corner with another vehicle at the curb.”
“Curb’s not marked. No sign, either.”
“The curb is marked, you just have to look closely to spot it this time of day. White paint and lettering are mostly worn off — long overdue for remarking. There was a sign, too, up until a couple of weeks ago when a drunk driver knocked it down; we’re still waiting for a replacement. You can see what’s left of the pole there.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Things don’t get done as fast as they should sometimes.” Rule of thumb in Pomo County nowadays, it seemed, no matter what needed doing or what had been requisitioned or how much prodding and cajoling public servants like myself were forced to indulge in. “You know how it is.”
“Oh yeah, I know how it is. Do I get a ticket?”
“Not if you move your car to a legal space.”
One corner of his mouth lifted. If it was a smile, it had little humor and a bitter edge. He could tell from my uniform and badge what my rank was, and he thought he was being hassled. A man used to hassles, I thought. The official kind and probably the personal kind, too.
“You don’t have a problem with that, do you?” I asked him.
“No problem at all.”
“Good. We appreciate cooperation.”
He went around the Porsche and opened the driver’s door. “You have a nice evening now, Officer,” he said, not quite snottily, and folded himself inside before I could answer. I stayed put until he’d pulled out onto Main, driving neither fast nor slow. He was maneuvering into a legal space halfway into the next block when I returned to the cruiser.