Deeny took her shotgun back from Gerald, who still didn’t move any closer to Rachel.
“Well, when Deeny here got off work tonight, she happened to remember that she made the mistake of telling somebody about this place. You do see that was a mistake now, don’t you, Deeny?”
She didn’t answer.
“I’m a fellow that just can’t rest when something like that stirs me up. I decided we might need to come by and take a look,” he said. “Just check on things. We drove past the street and saw a familiar car sittin‘ over there. Just what made you decide to pay a call, darling?” he asked.
“Looking for a car,” she said, and I was gratified to see both of them widen their eyes. After a slight pause, Rachel added, “But I don’t see the El Camino here. Where is it?”
Their relief was visible. She sent them straight back into hell.
“We have some excellent photos of it, of course. Taken on the day Travis’s camper had a little problem with its remote key. Plate numbers, everything. And I suspect that a good police lab could do wonders with the image of the driver. Lord knows how many people have copies of Mr. Richmond’s photos.”
“Richmond!” Deeny said scornfully. “As if we need to worry about that has-been. I’ll buy him a couple of drinks at the Wharf and he’ll hand the negatives over to me.”
“That’s enough, Deeny!” Gerald said sharply. “Damn it, I’m going to put a gag in your mouth in another minute.”
Deeny gave him a mulish look, then went back to emptying Rachel’s pockets. “Here’s her ID,” she said. I was afraid it would be Rachel’s investigator’s license, but as Deeny held it up, I could see it was only her driver’s license.
“What’s her name?” Gerald asked, then laughed at the look of fury Deeny gave him. “All right, all right. Bring it to me.”
He glanced at it and said, “Rachel-holy shit, some kind of a dago name even J can’t read.” A sound in the distance made him suddenly look around. “No use standing out here where God and everybody might come by-you cover her while I get the boy inside.”
I tried not to think about the sounds I was hearing as Spanning took Travis inside the house. Despite little gestures from Rachel, meant to calm me, my nerves were rubbed raw by the time I heard Gerald speak again.
“Okay, give me the shotgun,” he said to Deeny. “I’ll take her in. You gather up all this shit you took out of her pockets and lock it up in the garage, and while you’re there, make sure she hasn’t already been in there.”
She began to argue with him, apparently unwilling to let him be alone with Rachel.
“What, after you’ve been boning Richmond?” he said.
“I have not!” she screeched.
He slapped her. “Keep your voice down.”
She held a hand up to her face where he had hit her, and gave him a sullen look, but said nothing more to him. I wanted to hide, knowing she was about to come into the garage. At the same time, I didn’t dare move yet; if I bumped into something in the dark, I’d be shouting out my presence.
Gerald and Rachel went in the house. Deeny stood with arms crossed, watching them. She added to her rebellion by taking out a pack of cigarettes, lighting one up.
I risked the narrow beam of the flashlight, holding it low and taking a path back toward the door. I moved to the workbench, avoided touching the bent and bloodied bumper, searched quickly and found something that would help me create a distraction-a red china marker. I said a little prayer of thanks and made my way to the passenger side of the Camry. I marked the window with three red, slanting slash marks, then stood near the door.
It seemed to me as if I waited a long time, but I know it could not have been more than a few minutes before I heard Deeny cussing at the lock as she tried to open it. It took her longer with a key than it had taken Rachel to pick the lock. I finally heard it give, and quickly moved farther back behind the door. She seemed to take a long time with the knob lock as well, but finally, the door opened slightly.
She fumbled for the light switch and snapped it on; after the darkness, the single overhead bulb seemed to make the room very bright. I had a sudden sensation of being visible to her, even though the door was between us. But as she stepped farther into the garage, her arms full of Rachel’s tools and other paraphernalia, I saw that her attention had been caught by exactly what I had hoped would catch it: the hobo sign on the Camry window. She moved closer to it.
Carefully closing the door enough to block the view from the house, I stepped forward with one lunging step, like a batter meeting a ball and-trying not to shut my eyes as I did it-swung the back end of my flashlight and the weight of all those D cells down on the back of her head. My D cells won out over her brain cells, and I caught at her as she pitched forward, not able to keep her from falling, but slowing it, and guiding her away from the most dangerous objects she might have struck on her way down. I quickly turned and shut the door all the way, hoping Gerald had been too busy to notice the noise made when her armload of Rachel’s tools went clattering to the floor with her.
I locked the knob, and after assuring myself that I hadn’t killed her outright, went back to the workbench. I found a roll of duct tape, pulled out my Swiss Army knife and went to work. Within a few minutes, I had tied the gag in her back pocket over her mouth, then bound her wrists and ankles with the duct tape.
It would have been nice to feel a sense of triumph at that point, but I didn’t. Her face already swelling from the place where Gerald struck her, pale from the blow I had given her, she seemed more a pathetic foolish girl than a vanquished worthy adversary.
Then I thought of the sounds I had heard Travis making, remembered that Ulkins had been tortured, and decided I would have to indulge in sympathy for Deeny some other time.
I wondered where I could leave her that would not be too close to sharp objects; ones she might use to free herself. I searched her pockets, found her pack of cigarettes and a book of matches from the Wharf on one side, a pair of shotgun shells in the other. I took both of these objects. I searched the items on the floor and found her keys. I found the Camry key, unlocked the car and opened the passenger door. I lowered the seat back and-with some effort-dragged her into the car. I rolled the windows down a little, locked the doors and took the keys with me.
I quickly studied Rachel’s tools, didn’t see anything of much interest to anyone who wasn’t breaking into a building. I didn’t know how to use them, so I left them there.
Time was running out, I knew. Sooner or later, Gerald would notice that Deeny had been absent too long. She had made things worse by stalling. I looked around the garage, gathered together a few pieces of wood, a canister of oily rags, five cans of spray paint and a can of charcoal lighter fluid. Nothing like your average garage when you’re on the hunt for a good set of fire hazards.
I turned out the light, waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, then crept outside with my hands as full as Deeny’s had been coming into the garage. I forced myself to overcome a paralyzing certainty that Gerald was watching my every move, shotgun in hand. Crouching low, I made my way toward the old bathtub on the back lawn. I set all the combustible materials-save the matches and the cartridges-into the tub, trying to stack the wood up so that it would burn well. I opened the can of lighter fluid, sprinkled a goodly amount of it over the wood, tossed my now flammable latex gloves on top it of all, then moved as quietly as possible toward the house.
Gerald had turned a light on in what I soon realized was the living room. I moved from window to window until I found one with a blind that didn’t reach the bottom of the sill. Once again I found myself looking through a narrow, slotted view, this one horizontal. What I saw made me wish I had waited a little longer to take a look.