Maybe Roy wouldn’t be dumb enough to run off with Gin, but he’d sure put a lot of silly notions in the kid’s head if they were here very long. They couldn’t stay here. She had to figure some way to get Roy away from here before he hurt somebody.
On the broad front seat of the convertible, she flicked on the dash lights, snapped open the glove compartment. She fished through a litter of maps and old gasoline and service station receipts, found an unopened package of cigarettes. She opened the pack, stuck a cigarette in her mouth and lit it. She inhaled deeply and tossed the cigarettes back into the compartment, and then something caught her eye. She held her breath as she pulled out a crumpled wad of handkerchief covered with lipstick smears.
It was a big handkerchief, she saw. The fine linen told her that it was one of Roy’s, and his initial in the corner removed all doubt. Held close to the dash light, the bright orange color of the lipstick told Laurie that it had come from Gin’s young mouth.
She sat there stunned for a moment, twisting the soiled handkerchief between her clenched fists. The ride this afternoon. The way Gin looked when they came back. Roy’s decision to stay here at least a month. It told the whole rotten story. Roy had moved fast. Snap-judgment, cocksure Roy. Move-right-in Roy.
She heard, then, the soft sound of the screen door shutting. There was the whisper of footsteps across the grass and somebody loomed in the dark beside the car.
The door opened and Roy shoved into the seat beside her. He had put on a pair of slacks over his pajamas. He wore shoes but no socks. He was carrying a small armful of clothes which he set down on the seat between them. He didn’t look as though he’d just awakened. Roy never did. His eyes were clear, his whole handsome face alert looking.
“You’re making an insomniac out of me too, baby,” he said, chuckling. “You see how I love you? You get up out of bed and I wake up, too. I got to come looking for you.”
Laurie closed her hand over the handkerchief. She stared at him, trying to hide the loathing in her eyes. She looked at his mouth and thought about that mouth kissing Gin, telling Gin things — lying, hypnotic things that made a girl forget everything else.
She said, “Why did you bring some of my clothes out here?” She pushed her hand through the little pile of clothing. There was a pair of slacks and a sweater and a pair of slippers.
“For you to put on, silly,” he said. “Get into them, Laurie. We’re going to take a little ride.”
Something cold seemed to slither through her stomach. “Are you crazy, Roy? At this time of night?”
“Sure, Laurie. Why not? We’ll find a juke joint open somewhere on the highway. We’ll have a couple of bottles of beer and talk a little. I want to talk to you. I don’t like the way you’ve been acting lately. I want to thrash things out.”
“What things? Why can’t we talk right here?”
He gestured toward the house. “Do you want to wake your family? Get those clothes on, take the car out of gear and release the handbrake. We can roll out of the driveway and down the road a little before you start the motor.”
She looked fearfully toward the house. He was right. A lot of talk might awaken one of them in there. She couldn’t stand that now.
And they did have something to talk about, something that Roy wasn’t expecting. She would straighten him out on the situation with Gin fast, before it had a chance to go any farther. She’d tell him that if he went near the kid again, she’d go to the police and tell them about the fat man and the hell with what happened to little Laurie.
Automatically she slipped into the slacks, pulled the sweater over her pajamas. She eased the car back the slight slope of the driveway, got it onto the dirt road and rolled down a few yards away from the house before she gunned the motor.
She drove in silence along the red clay road until they reached a narrow, rickety wooden bridge that crossed a small creek. Some boards were loose in the middle of the bridge, and Laurie slowed the ear so they wouldn’t hit the bridge at too high speed. But about fifty feet from the bridge, Roy suddenly reached out and switched off the ignition. He grabbed the handbrake and eased it up slowly but steadily, stopping the car close to the bridge. At the same time he put one hand on the wheel, forcing the car to the side of the road.
“Why are we stopping here?” Laurie’s voice sounded shrill.
“This is where we’re going to talk,” Roy said. “I don’t think we want any beer.”
Frozenly, she watched Roy open the glove compartment, run his hand through it, bring it out empty. He grinned at her, showing all of his beautiful, even white teeth.
“Your sister is a beautiful kid,” he said gently. “You don’t think that if I cared about you finding that handkerchief, I’d have put it in the compartment, do you?”
She called him a name, the worst she could think of. It didn’t bother Roy. His smile didn’t change.
“She hit me like a load of brick, Laurie. I made up my mind about her this afternoon. She’s young, just dumb enough to be pliable, just smart enough to grab at what she wants.”
“No, Roy!” The words seemed to choke in the back of her throat. “You’re not going to do it, Roy. You’re going to leave her alone — or you’re going to face the law about what happened in the hotel. I swear to that, Roy.”
He ignored the threat. “Gin talked a lot this afternoon. We parked for awhile by this bridge and she told me about this creek. You go swimming here on hot summer days. Good swimming, too. The water runs fast, and it’s deep, cold and deep. Very deep, Laurie.”
She edged along the seat away from him, her eyes on him, fascinated. She touched the door and her hand fumbled for the handle, shaking, panicky. Before her fingers found it, Roy reached across her and grabbed her wrist. With his other he grabbed her hair. He slammed her head forward with all of his might against the metal of the dashboard.
There was an explosion of flashing lights in Laurie’s eyes. She started to scream but she didn’t make it. Roy’s fingers tangled in her hair, whacked her head forward again.
This time the dazzling lights were fewer. Thoughts skittered through her brain like frightened chipmunks. Roy was way ahead of her. It would be a terrible tragedy. An accident. The car plunging off of the creek bridge. Everybody would feel sorry for poor Roy. They’d insist that he stay on at the farm and after a proper length of time he and Gin...
Dimly she became aware of Roy’s voice. “All rigged nicely, Laurie. Remember the night in Sea City when you woke up and left me a thoughtful little note saying that you’d gone out to get some cigarettes? I saved that note, Laurie. There was no date on it. They’ll find it—”
Her head was slammed against the dashboard again, and pain burst like a rocket inside her skull. Then all the flashing lights went out. The darkness was thick and wet, syrupy...
A few miles above the road the creek was swelled by freshets and cold springs. The water was icy. It shocked Laurie back to consciousness in a matter of seconds. Her lungs were bursting for air and she instinctively tried to swim toward the surface. She couldn’t move. One foot was caught in something and her ankle was torn with pain.
She reached down and felt the floor-board of the car. She fumbled down to her ankle and found that it was pinned beneath the brake pedal. She wrenched at the pedal but it didn’t budge. Nothing happened. She thought: The hell with it. What’s the use? They say drowning isn’t so bad...