Kiss of Death

THERE IS NOTHING “belle” about Belle Valley, Ohio, and it isn’t in a valley. It is a depressed—and depressing—town strewn carelessly across a dusty plain. From the deteriorating cluster of buildings I saw behind a sagging chain-link fence, the town had once been host to a large manufacturing plant, but the factory had been boarded up and abandoned. Belle Valley is nearly as dead.

I thought about what I’d learned when I Googled Belle Valley, Ohio, from the library computer. Land area: 1.9 square miles. Population as of two years ago: 4,759. That was down 17.2 percent from the previous census. Twelve percent were unemployed. Median annual household income: $19,390. Median house value: $41,100.

The crime stats were especially interesting to me. During the past three years, there had been no murders in Belle Valley, but there had been 20 rapes, 198 assaults, 71 burglaries, and 409 auto thefts. My conclusion was that it was relatively safe to walk through this town at night, but that it was dangerous to leave a car unattended.

I drove slowly around Belle Valley’s outer limits, and then along streets dotted with fast-food stops, mini-markets, and liquor stores.

Driving in an ever-shrinking square grid, I noticed small houses with yellowing lawns, a few kids on skateboards, tired-looking men and women coming home from work. On the patchy athletic field next to Belle Valley High School, boys were playing baseball while girls, giggling together, watched from one section of the old bleachers.

As the afternoon waned and shadows deepened, I slowly passed number 404 Webster Street, and observed that Bobby’s use of the word “house” had been an exaggeration. The monster’s place was little more than a shack. There was no vehicle parked in front of it or in the oil-stained, cracked concrete driveway on the left side.

On my second turn around the block, I stopped in front of number 404. While pretending to consult a map, I studied as much as I could see of the structure.

Single story. Constructed of concrete blocks visible through a layer of stucco that had flaked off in large chunks. Concrete was a good material for my purposes; it contained sound better than did wood.

A pair of windows bracketed the front door. The one on the right was boarded up with plywood. On the left, the view inside was hidden behind a shade pulled down to an inch above the sill. No light shone through that crack. Between the lack of a vehicle near the place, and no interior lights turned on, it didn’t seem that Ray Wilson was at home.

As far as I was concerned, this hovel did have one very attractive feature: a hatchlike door on the left side, just aboveground. I guessed that it led down into a cellar. There was a window just above it. No light was coming from that portal, either.

If I could get into the house through the cellar, it would eliminate the risk of using the lock pick on one of the doors, where I might more easily be spotted.

Not wanting to call attention to myself by sitting in the car any longer, and possibly raising the suspicions of someone who lived in a nearby house, I folded the map and drove away.

It wasn’t very far to the edge of town, where earlier I had passed a diner called the Blue Fox. There was a faded painting of a fox—red, not blue—on the sign outside. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast and needed nourishment. On the drive from New York I had only stopped for coffee.

The small lot in front of the Blue Fox Diner was half full when I pulled into it at fifteen minutes after six P.M. I pushed open the door and entered a brightly lighted rectangle with a twelve-seat counter and eight booths. Elvis Presley’s voice singing “Are You Lonesome Tonight” flowed from a jukebox.

The booths nearest the entrance were occupied, as were three of the counter seats. The booths were upholstered in yellow vinyl, torn over the years in many places. Rips in the fabric had been repaired using black masking tape.

As soon as I took the first breath inside, I was assailed by the smell of hamburgers grilling. Normally, it’s an odor that alerts my salivary glands to be ready for action, but this evening it made me feel a little nauseated. I wondered if it was the power of suggestion, because I was disguised as a pregnant woman.

A teenage waitress with short, curly black hair and a name tag that said “Violet” must have seen some indication of distress because she came over to me with a concerned frown on her face.

Looking at my protruding tummy, she nodded. “I know what that’s like. When I was pregnant with my first, the smell of eggs cooking made me puke!”

When she was pregnant? Her first? Up close, she seemed to be about fifteen, but she had to be older than she looked.

Violet led me to the farthest table from the kitchen. It was empty, but still had dirty dishes on it from the previous occupant.

I maneuvered into the booth, with a couple of inches to spare. Mercifully, I couldn’t smell the grill from here.

She deposited the dishes at the end of the counter, returned, and wiped the surface of the table clean with a damp cloth. “What can you eat, without going upchuck?”

Violet returned a few minutes later with a glass the size of a flower vase; she used both hands to carry it. A straw was sticking up from the middle of her chocolate concoction. It resembled a flagpole anchored in cement.

“This is thick!” I said. Too thick, it turned out, to suck through the straw. I ate her delicious ice cream and milk creation with a spoon.

After consuming the world’s thickest shake and paying the bill, with a generous tip added, I again drove slowly past 404 Webster Street.

The first thing I saw were the flickering lights from a television set, visible through the inch of space below the window shade. Someone was home.

The next thing I noticed struck me like a blow to the stomach. Parked in the driveway was a van. Old and dirty, like the one the monster had when Walter found me. That van of my nightmares had been light gray; this one was a dark color, had patches of primer paint on the back, and one rear tire was missing its hubcap. Worse than the familiar silhouette was the fact that in this vehicle, too, the windows were blacked out.

For a moment I thought I might heave up everything I’d swallowed for the last six months, but I fought down the urge to retch and drove on.

You’re a grown-up now, I told myself. Tonight you will have a 9-mm automatic—and the element of surprise.

Breathing deeply to calm my racing pulse, I steered the car around the corner to Franklin and up to Cook Street, which ran parallel to Webster, on the north. In my earlier reconnoitering, I’d noticed a motel on Cook that had a VACANCY sign. It was in the block just beyond 404 Webster.

Two cars were parked in front of the line of ten cabins that comprised the Happy Hours Motel. A rusting marquee advertised cable TV. The T in TV was missing.

In the motel’s tiny office, I registered as Charlotte Brown and paid in cash for two nights, even though I had no intention of staying that long.

The motel manager was a thin, elderly man. Nearly toothless. What little hair he had shot upward from his mottled scalp in odd little outcroppings.

I said, “I don’t like to park next to other people. They always seem to bang their doors into mine and chip the paint, so I’d like the cabin at the end of the row.”

The manager shrugged, shot a stream of dark liquid from his mouth into a metal basket behind the desk, and wordlessly handed me the key to room number 10.

THE MOTEL HAD been dark for more than an hour, and I didn’t hear any sounds coming from the two other occupied cabins. Without turning on the light, I dressed again in my black slacks and navy blue safari jacket and fastened the money belt around my waist. In the deep left side pocket of the jacket I put the lock pick, the roll of duct tape, and the needle-nose pliers. The flashlight was stuck in the waistband of my slacks. In my pants pocket, my cell phone was set on vibrate.

The Glock rested in the right-hand pocket of my jacket, loaded with a full fifteen-round clip. It felt comforting, there against my hip.