YOU CAN FOCUS on an idea, even an idea as big and momentous as other people dying, just so long before it numbs your mind and you run out of things to think and say about it.
The names of the other girls who had been killed were Mandie Peyser and Marybeth Nichols, Diana told us. Mandie’s body had been found at the drive-in theater, behind the screen, and Beth’s at the old lumberyard. Both of them had been naked, just like the girl L.A. and I found. I couldn’t remember any news about either of the first two at the time, but a lot happens in a city as big as Dallas and not every murder makes the front page, which I had to admit was about all I usually read if you didn’t count the comics and the sports section. And it was possible I had heard of the murders in a background kind of way, but because at that point I still hadn’t really gotten it through my head how much death actually had to do with me, maybe they didn’t get my attention above the general roar of school and everything else that was going on in my life.
None of us really knew either of the other girls, but Diana was pretty sure she’d seen Mandie around school back in sixth grade and thought maybe she’d moved over to the Catholic school the next year. We talked about the two of them for a while, little by little letting go of the unspoken assumption that dying was for the old and infirm, not people our age. For a while we kept coming back to the things you say, like how rotten it was for them to die that way, and asking what kind of lunatic would do such a thing, but it wasn’t long before the conversation began to lose steam.
I still couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone about my night visitor, secretly suspecting she was a sign of insanity and, whether that was true or not, being sure nobody was going to have any answers for me anyway. When in doubt, saying nothing is nearly always the best policy. Silence can sometimes be repaired after the fact if need be, but not the wrong words. You can’t unring a bell.
“It’s just so ugly and sad,” said Diana. “Who could do a thing like that?”
L.A. shrugged. Dee looked at her with an expression I couldn’t read.
“Somebody who’s nuts,” I ventured, still locked on to the idea of insanity.
“More like evil,” said Diana.
And that pretty much covered what we knew and thought. Gram, who had walked into the room during the conversation, tsked one last time, warned us against lurking fiends and strangers at the door, grabbed her purse and left to go sit with Dr. Kepler. Diana and Dee, who’d been hanging out with L.A. and me for the afternoon, stuck around to play gin rummy. The murdered girls stayed in my mind, but not, as far as I could see, in Diana’s, so here was another item on the long list of things that didn’t worry her excessively.
Of course, there was never any telling what Dee or L.A. were thinking, but L.A. had now become the picture of deadly concentration. We were playing our third hand, and after my draw she carefully studied my eyes for a couple of seconds, discarded and said, “I’m knocking.” She spread her cards, everything in runs and sets except a red deuce and the spade seven she knew I needed. Nine points.
I laid out my hand for Diana to count. There was no occasion for drama; as usual L.A. had looked straight into my defenseless brain, seen all the points I was holding and busted me. When she was on like this, she was insuperable. Generally my only hope against her was the fantastic lucky streaks I occasionally had, when for a while I’d somehow know with perfect clarity what to hold and what to toss and sometimes even what card was coming up. Fortunately I could usually feel these hot streaks coming and play them for all they were worth when they did, otherwise the opposition would’ve had no respect for me at all.
Of course, today L.A. had softened me up ahead of time, offering me a swig of peppermint schnapps from a half-pint bottle while Gram was in the bathroom and before Dee and Diana arrived.
“Where’d you get it?” I said.
“The schnapps bunny. Try it.”
I took a taste before handing the flask back to L.A., not liking it much. She tipped it up and swallowed, then recapped it.
Dee and Diana were usually pretty bored when we played gin and always won or lost according to the fall of the cards instead of by skill or concentration. And you couldn’t really get them interested in competing with anybody, which pretty much ruled them out as spades partners too. But Diana was our scorer for everything because her head worked like a calculator, and Dee was our referee of choice because when he rendered a judgment it somehow settled the issue cleanly and conclusively, with no leftover doubt or malice.
“My deal,” I said. “So watch out.”
I was on a losing streak, big surprise. I grabbed the cards and started shuffling. When Dee went to put some music on Diana yawned and took a sip from her Dr Pepper, then got up and wandered over to the cabinet where Gram kept the crackers and chips.
“Simon & Garfunkel or Diana Ross?” said Dee.
“Three Dog Night,” I said, ignoring the look Dee shot me.
Diana found a bag of corn chips and came back munching. When she sat down at the table L.A. reached across, took a chip from the bag and gave it to Jazzy. Diana gave her another one, saying, “Here you go, Muttkin, have a party.”
As I dealt the cards the opening bars of “I Can’t Stop Loving You” by Ray Charles drifted in from the front room. When Dee came back into the kitchen Diana gave him a thumbs-up.
“Women and children take cover,” I said, squaring what was left of the deck and flipping the top card over to start a discard pile.
“You’re already down a million points,” said L.A. “You’re gonna be doing my dishes for a year.”
“Make him do your algebra this fall,” said Dee.
“Too easy.”
“Does he do hair?” wondered Diana.
“Hey,” I said. “Pick up your cards. I’m fixin’ to get hot here.”
“Saints preserve,” said L.A.
Dee looked at his hand and gave a little sigh that told me he had nothing to work with, but I could tell by the way L.A. sorted her hand that she’d locked up six cards on the deal. Diana ate another chip and glanced out the window, instantly grabbing my attention.
“What’d you see?” I said.
She shrugged. “Bird, maybe. I don’t know.”
L.A.’s eyes caught mine for a second, which caused Dee to stare curiously at me, and suddenly it was a moment. I got up and went to look out the window. It wasn’t quite dark yet and I could see down the driveway and across to the yard next door. There didn’t seem to be anything there. I went out the door and looked around, feeling the hair on the back of my neck stand up, but I still didn’t see anything. When I came back in I locked the door behind me, noticing that Jazzy was calm, her attention on where the next corn chip was going as Diana brought it out of the bag. I watched her for a while to be sure.
Okay, I finally decided, false alarm. I rechecked all the locks and went back to the table.
“Good that we’ve got a scout,” said Diana as I sat down.
L.A. glanced at me and I shook my head slightly. I picked up my hand. “Come on, play,” I said. Dee watched me for a second longer, then picked up his cards.
After two draws L.A. knocked again, this time for only three points. The situation was getting out of hand.
“Okay, here’s what,” I said to L.A. “Side bet: just you and me—first winner takes it.”
“What’re you putting up?” said L.A.
Diana glanced at her, then tossed a chip to Jazzy.
“My room, against kitchen detail until football starts,” I said.
L.A. looked at me, fully understanding the weight of my words. The room was mine by right of seniority and it was definitely the best one next to Gram’s, which actually had its own bathroom. Mine was at the front corner of the house and was a little bigger than L.A.’s, with an air conditioner in the window that worked most of the time. Hers was at the back, quite a bit farther from the hall bathroom.
The tricky part was, L.A. could get weird about her room and her stuff, and you couldn’t always predict her reactions. There was her thing about pillows, for instance. Along with the one that Gram gave her when she came to live with us, she’d scrounged up several others around the house and even bought a few more at the five-and-dime one time when we’d had a really good bottle day. Even on hot nights she’d pile them around and over herself until you could just see her eyes, or sometimes none of her at all. A lot of nights she still did. Then after making up her bed in the morning she’d stack all the pillows just so, always knowing the exact way she left them, so that when she went in to go to bed that night she could tell if they’d been tampered with. Next to sneaking up behind her or touching her when she wasn’t looking, messing with L.A.’s pillows was the quickest way I knew to get in trouble with her.
She was skeptical about the bet. “You’re gonna cheat,” she said.
“Hell no,” I said. “Nothing but the luck of the draw. That and my demonic skill. Not chickenshit, are you?” I clucked a couple of times.
“Hah! Deal the cards.”
We played to gin this time, L.A. slapping her hand down when I still needed another keeper, and just like that I’d lost my room.
“Ho-hum,” said Diana, finishing off her Dr Pepper.
Dee gave a crooked little smile.
“Chinaman’s luck,” I said, folding my hand. “Hey, why don’t we do it all in one fool swoop right now? Move our stuff before Gram gets home and surprise her?”
But the way it worked out, Gram came home early. She caught Dee and me carrying L.A.’s fish tank with her six neon tetras down the hall past L.A. and Diana, who were coming the other way with my radio and the last of my shirts, the worried Jazzy hustling along right at L.A.’s heels. I’d left L.A. my second-best Louisville Slugger as a housewarming present, holding my breath until I was sure she didn’t see anything suspicious about this.
“Goodness,” Gram said. “Why are you imps burgling each other?”
“Biscuit gambled his room away,” said Diana helpfully.
We set the tank where L.A. wanted it and I came back to tell my story. I tried to keep my thoughts arranged correctly, for fear of Gram’s mind-reading.
“No big deal,” I said. “It’s really L.A.’s turn in the good room anyway. This way I can play my radio a little louder.”
Gram walked into the kitchen and turned the fire on under her teakettle, then looked at me over the top of her reading glasses. “Chivalry does begin at home, I suppose,” she said.
So that was okay.
But that night I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about the morning of the day before. Jazzy had been at the vet’s to get her dewclaws removed and L.A. and I had gone with Gram to pick her up. Arriving home, I carried Jazzy up the walk and opened the door as L.A. parked the Buick. With her front paws wrapped in cotton and gauze, Jazzy had seemed kind of limp and discouraged all the way home, but at the door she started trembling and growling in my arms and finally threw back her head and let loose a miniature howl. When I set her down she scooted away on three legs, holding one front paw and then the other up as she rounded the camellia bush toward the garage.
“Now, what on earth can that be about?” Gram said as she came up behind me.
In a minute L.A. came around the camellia from the garage, carrying Jazzy in her arms. After I told L.A. what had happened we went inside and looked in all the rooms and closets without finding anything.
But later that day, while L.A. was at Diana’s house, I had seen Jazzy sniffing around the bottom of the window in L.A.’s bedroom, growling to herself. I looked all around the window myself without seeing anything, then walked outside and around back to where L.A.’s room was. The grass under her window was kind of flattened down, and there were marks on the windowsill.
I sat down on the gas meter to think, my stomach unsteady and my hands shaking, trying to think as clearly as possible. My first idea was to get Gram to call Don Chamfort and arrange for police protection. But then what would happen? All I could visualize was a couple of TV-style cops sitting in their car day and night in the alley behind the house, drinking bad coffee out of paper cups and watching L.A.’s window. Then for a second my thoughts went off on a crazy jag, the way they sometimes did in times of stress, and I had a mental picture of the cops sitting there day after day like zombies, their hair getting shaggier and their beards growing out, or possibly abandoning their car for a tent in the back yard, sleeping with their guns clutched in their hands, maybe eventually reverting to the wild, holding out here forever like Jap soldiers in their island caves.
But I didn’t think police protection was going to help us at all, in spite of my confidence in Don. Most likely a couple of cops would come, look at the grass and at what I’d seen on the windowsill, scribble a line or two in their notebooks, tell us to be careful, tip their hats and leave, and that would be the end of it.
And the other possibilities I thought of were even worse: some social worker deciding L.A. should be in foster care where she would be safer, maybe even both of us having to go. Or Gram, old as she was, taking some kind of spell from all the worry and dying.
Then, without a single good idea to show for my efforts, I’d stood up and gone back to look at the marks on the sill of L.A.’s window again—a neat half circle of deep indentations in the painted wood. As I stared at them I could feel my heartbeat shaking my body. No matter how much I wanted to find one, there was no harmless explanation for what I was seeing, no way around what the marks were and what they meant.
They were the imprints of human teeth.