39

WAYNE’S HANDSOME FACE WAS pale under his tan and his eyes were burning blue.

“I’m going to kill him,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it when he said Trish had called him and he’d gone down to Portland to get her. Why didn’t she call me?”

“Calm down,” I said. “You’ll wake her.”

His eyes darted anxiously to the loft. “Is that where she is? Are you sure she’s all right?”

“She’s fine—now,” I said. “It looks like Karl just left her here to freeze to death. I don’t know where he is. I hope he’s not lurking around outside somewhere.”

“Oh my god.” Wayne sank down on a chair and buried his face in his hands. “If you knew what I’d been through tonight.”

“How did you find out Karl had brought her here?”

“It occurred to me eventually. I’d given Karl the key to the place once and he must have made a copy. He didn’t tell me when he called around seven. He was taunting me. Said he had Trish and wasn’t going to tell me where. Said he was going to kill her. I was terrified. I’d taken Trish down to Portland to get her away from him. I knew he’d do the same thing to her as he’d done to Rosalie.”

“So Karl killed Rosalie then?” Somehow it was all fitting together. “Only he didn’t know it was Rosalie, he only knew her as Abby. Had she ripped him off somehow, muscled into his drug dealing?”

Wayne nodded, head still in his hands. He looked young and very vulnerable. It’s such a fucking long story,” he said. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

“Start a year and a half ago, when you met him.”

“I didn’t know anything about him then,” Wayne said in a low voice. “He was an artist from New York. I was impressed. But he had this big thing about how artists couldn’t make any money through art. It was impossible. So he was going to deal coke, like he had in New York. He needed money to get started though. That’s where Trish and I came in.”

“So he was pimping both of you?”

“I’m not gay,” Wayne murmured. “Not really. But it didn’t seem so bad at first. We needed money. I never told Trish what I was doing. But after a while it seemed like it was really girls who could make more money. I was getting too old anyway. And Trish didn’t seem to mind.”

“Because she was hooked on you. She wanted to break away but she couldn’t.”

“That’s not true! We really cared about each other!” Wayne raised his head. “You’ve got to believe that. I would never do anything to hurt her. I’ve always tried to help her. Karl would have run her into the ground. I tried to protect her as much as I could.”

“So you recruited other girls to help. Was that how Rosalie came into the picture?”

Wayne nodded. “But she had other ideas. She didn’t want to hook. She wanted in on the drug action. Finally Karl agreed. He set her up with some cash. She was supposed to give him fifty percent of the sale. The first few times it went okay. Then he found out she was holding back on him. He didn’t tell me what he was going to do, but he arranged to meet Rosalie at that apartment building near the airport. What he didn’t know was that Rosalie had asked Trish to come too, for protection. But somehow Trish didn’t get there in time and… you know the rest.”

“But Trish didn’t actually see him.”

“No. It was just me who figured out it was Karl. I didn’t dare ask him if he’d seen Trish. I just wanted to get her out of Seattle. So when she called and said she was at your place I went and got her.”

“And you never told her you thought Karl had killed Rosalie.”

“No. I didn’t want to scare her.”

“Why didn’t you tell the police?”

“And have my whole connection to Karl dragged out? My dad could maybe understand about the drugs, but not that Karl was gay, not me going with men for money. I couldn’t take him knowing that!”

Wayne bent his head almost to his knees and rocked back and forth, making a low, anguished sound.

I couldn’t help it, I felt sorry for him. In spite of everything he’d done to Trish, in spite of his screwing me around for days. I went over to him and put my hand on his shoulder.

“It’s all right,” I said. “It’s going to be all right.”

There was a silence broken only by his strangled moans, then, from the loft above, came the small cracked whisper, “He’s lying.”

Afterwards, like all victims, I went over and over the events, looking for things I should or shouldn’t have done. I shouldn’t have opened the door, not to anyone except June. I shouldn’t have believed anything he said. I should have fought back harder. I shouldn’t have let it happen to me. I was stupid, I could have gotten away if I’d really tried. I was weak and cowardly and a woman. I deserved it.

He picked up the ski pole and said, “I’ll stab you if you struggle.” He lunged for me and pinned me down on the floor, tied my hands with rope from his pocket and gagged me with a kitchen towel.

I couldn’t believe it was happening. Even though I knew now what he had done to Trish and Rosalie, a part of me kept seeing the tanned, smiling young artist in the Hawaiian shirt, the vulnerable little boy. He wasn’t smiling now, he wasn’t crying either; his eyes were dry and the once caressing playboy gaze was cold and hard and full of hatred.

“You never fooled me,” he said. “Not with your Jane Eyre or your coke deal. You never bought coke in your life. You were just spying on me. And I hate spies.”

He slapped my face and brought tears to my eyes.

“I should have known you’d come following Trish up here. You fucking dyke. She told me about you. Told me you’d tried to get her to stay with you. And then you followed her down to Portland and got the cops involved. She wasn’t going to say anything about Rosalie until you put the idea in her head. Now I can’t trust her.”

He slapped me again, so hard my head jerked back. All I could think was, June, please come soon, please.

“Yeah, I killed Rosalie. You want to know why? The bitch wanted Trish off the streets; she said she and Trish should get a piece of the action. Like Trish belonged to her or something, the fucking nigger whore. Trish belongs to me.” Wayne’s lips tightened to a streak of white and he picked up the ski pole and swung it towards me, missing my forehead by about an inch. “That’s what she thought. I found out where she was holing up in somebody’s apartment on the strip. I didn’t know she and Trish were supposed to be meeting that night. I got out the side window but not before I saw Trish. I didn’t think she’d seen me, but I knew, even if she had, she wouldn’t tell.” He swung the ski pole in my face again and I closed my eyes. “It was you who put that idea into her head, so I couldn’t trust her. And now you’re going to end up just like Rosalie. A lesson to Trish. You hear that bitch?” he called up the ladder. “If you ever try to get away from me again you’ll be next.”

Wayne was almost starting to enjoy himself now. He put down the ski pole, took off his down jacket and removed a syringe and a tourniquet and a baggie of coke from his pocket. He mixed the coke with water in a spoon and heated it over the wood stove. Then he tied off his arm and shot himself up. And all the while he was talking.

“I can’t believe you suspected Karl. Karl couldn’t do shit. He’s just a drunk. The only thing I was afraid of was he’d tell you I was in Portland. Yeah, I took her there, and I picked her up too, when she called me. She didn’t know who else to call. She can’t do anything without me. Can you, bitch?” he shouted up at the loft.

Then he turned to me. “I’ve thought about this for a long time,” he said. “When you came with that game of buying the coke. If you hadn’t had your friend with you I would have. But this is going to be even better. By the time I get done with you you’re going to be sorry you were ever born.”

He raped me. With a punishing violence that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with rage and hatred. My vagina was as dry as my mouth and every pounding blow stabbed through my body like a sword dipped in fire. It was like surgery without anesthesia, like nothing I’d ever felt. I almost blanked out; my whole being reduced to a tiny pinprick that cried out no.

“Bitch, cunt, lezzie, pervert, whore, how do you like this, you fucking dyke.” The cocaine and his fury made him demonic; he slapped my face over and over and thrust into me again and again. It seemed endless; a world of pain spread through my back, down my legs. I felt that whatever made Pam a person, whatever I knew or had known about myself was being crushed out of me, was spinning into fragments like a planet smashed by meteors.

Then June burst through the door; she picked up the ski pole and struck at him, on the back, on the arms. If the State Patrol officers, right behind her, hadn’t stopped her, she would have killed him. I’m sure of that.