Kendra bowed her head and watched her hands as she buttoned up her shirt. She did not reply.
“Did you? Because if you did, it’s going to be the last time. I’ll ask around. I will. And if I find out you’re wandering around this park half-naked, you’ll never be allowed to stay here by yourself, do you understand?” Anna was very firm, and even sounded a little angry. She wanted Kendra to take her seriously. She was being very serious. With Kendra’s body, she couldn’t afford to be going around scantily-clad like that. She was too innocent, too trusting of people. It was a good way to get herself raped. The very thought of Kendra walking down to the mailbox with that shirt unbuttoned and that bikini top on underneath – it made Anna’s stomach twist into knots.
She went to her bedroom and changed into jeans, a red tank top, and red sneakers.
“Ready to go?” she said, back in the living room. She got her purse from the table.
“Yeah.”
They got in the car and Anna drove them out of the trailer park.
Sixteen
He found the Carey residence. It was off Happy Valley Road, on the opposite side of the road from him, at the end of a long driveway, like so many houses on that road. They appeared to live in a pleasant-looking, medium-size, ranch-style house with a green yard and lots of trees shading the house. He found a turnout a couple hundred yards up the road and made a U-turn into it, parked, and waited.
It was six-twenty. He would not have the cover of night for another three hours, so he had to hope she didn’t notice him parked down here when she left.
Carey had said she drove a white Hyundai. Reznick saw it parked in the open two-car garage at the end of the driveway. Parked in the other side was a dark pickup truck.
He waited and watched. He turned on the radio and listened to talk radio for a few minutes before it started to give him a headache. There were no jazz stations in the Redding area, but there was a “smooth jazz” station – the elevator music of jazz. He found that on FM. Couldn’t take that for very long, either. Instead of putting in a CD, he chose to wait in silence. Hot, miserable silence.
He’d changed into a blue T-shirt and a pair of denim cutoffs, sneakers on his sockless feet.
He rolled down all the windows and even the hot breeze felt cool against his sweaty neck. The driveway that led to the Carey house was flanked by a field full of green shrubbery. Farther out, the shrubbery leveled out, and he saw some cows lazily grazing on the weeds and grass.
At twelve minutes before seven he heard voices. No words, just a female voice, then a male voice. Then a car door slammed and an engine started up.
Reznick wondered if that was his mark. Sure enough, several seconds later, a white Hyundai – it was a white car, he assumed it was a Hyundai because he knew that was the kind of car she drove, but he wouldn’t have known a Hyundai from a Roman chariot – bounced and bobbed over the rough driveway on its way out.
Reznick started his car. The white car turned right and headed for Anderson. It was a long straight stretch for a while, and she had a perfect view of him behind her. He waited, hoping to be less conspicuous.
Finally, he pulled out of the turnout and headed after Alicia Carey.
Steven Regent pulled his SUV into the driveway of his partner’s house in the Enterprise district of Redding at six past eight that evening. Shadows were stretched out into long, nightmarish caricatures, but the temperature did not drop. It was a muggy heat that seemed to get muggier as the evening drew on.
Regent got out of the SUV, walked into the open garage, past Josh Garner’s cherry-red classic Corvette. He went to the side door of the house and went through it into the laundry room, through there into the kitchen. It felt good to step out of that miserable heat and into Regent’s place – he always kept the air conditioner on high and the temperature low.
It was a nice house. Each bedroom in this house was a studio for a different website, decorated appropriately. Garner stayed here only occasionally. He had a much nicer house just north of town, out toward the lake. He and Regent both had other homes. Garner had an apartment in San Francisco, Regent had a house in Lake Tahoe, they shared a condo in Park City, Utah. The websites had been exceptionally good to them.
“Hey, anybody home?” he called.
“Be right there,” Garner replied from somewhere in the house.
There was an open bag of Laura Scudders Maui Sweet Onion Potato Chips on the counter, and Regent went to it, picked it up, plunged a hand in. He leaned his hips back on the edge of the tile counter, put one of the chips in his mouth, tasted it, and nodded with approval.
Garner walked in wearing a bathrobe, his hair wet.
“Where do you get all these weird potato chips?” Regent said. “I come over here and you’ve always got these weird, exotic potato chips. You shop someplace funny?”
“You just have to look for them, they’re everywhere,” Garner said.
“Have you seen the pictures of Kendra I sent you?”
Garner rolled his eyes and whistled. “I’ve seen them. She’s… fanfuckingtastic. There’s only one problem, and it’s a big one.”
Regent frowned. A problem? A big one?
“How are you gonna top that?” Garner said as he opened the refrigerator. He took a bottle of beer from it and twisted the cap off, took a swig. “She’s untoppable. After her, it’s all downhill. You’re gonna open the site with her, and then everything after her is anticlimactic.” He searched the shelves for something.
“You think she’s that good?”
Garner turned to him with wide eyes. “She’s incredible. I got wood before she even took her clothes off. But you need more of her, Steven, more, a lot more.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.”
“You want one of these?” Garner said.
“Yeah.”
He handed a beer to Regent, then closed the refrigerator door.
“What were you looking for?” Regent said.
“I don’t know. Something to eat. I’m kinda hungry. Ish. But nothing sounds good.”
“Want me to order pizza?”
“Hm, pizza. Sure, go ahead.”
“What’s up tonight, anyway?” Regent said as he went to the phone.
“Change that. I don’t want pizza. I want Chinese food. Where’s the menu from Oriental Express?”
“You’re asking me? You live here.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Garner got up and went to the pockets of old mail and scribbled messages and jotted phone numbers that hung on the wall beside the phone, three of them in a vertical row. He rifled through them and found the pink menu folded up in the second pocket. He opened it up and looked it over. “What do you like, Steven?”
“Chow mein, sweet-and-sour prawns, broccoli beef, I’m easy to please,” Regent said.
Garner called the number at the top of the menu and ordered several different dishes, along with some rice and an order of crab puffs.
“That’s a big order,” Regent said. “I take it we’ve got company coming?”
“Yep. Alicia.”
Regent nearly spit up his beer. He gulped it down, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as he laughed. “You’re kidding. She has got to like it, man. I mean, she must really want it, she keeps coming back so much.”
“You’re just figuring that out? She gets off on it – on doing it, and on people seeing it on the Internet. Especially on people seeing it. It gets her off. Which is why she keeps coming back for more. The money’s gravy, far as she’s concerned. She’d probably do it if there was no money involved.”