Slaughter - Lutz John - Страница 16

She half stumbled—or pretended to—and found herself leaning against him. He might be a small man but he was hard and muscular. She could feel strength emanating from him like a field of electricity. Did he do sports? Did he work out at a gym? After a few more steps they were holding hands.

They talked baseball for a few minutes and then walked silently until they came to her building. She didn’t say anything as they stood by the elevator. The Gremlin glanced around, saw that they were alone.

The elevator arrived, and as the doors opened he saw that it was empty. He kissed Margaret on the cheek. “I’d better go up with you, see you inside so I know you’re safe.”

She didn’t discourage him.

They kissed again in the elevator.

As the elevator door opened on her floor, he heard another door open and close somewhere beneath them. Then descending footsteps. Luck held. Still, no one had seen them.

He waited while she fished her keys from her purse and worked two dead-bolt locks.

The apartment door opened to darkness.

“You mind waiting while I turn on a light?” Margaret asked.

“Of course not. I’ll be right here.”

As soon as the darkness swallowed her, he crossed the threshold.

She heard him enter and turned, feeling a tingle of alarm.

But when the light came on he was staring at the clock on the table just inside the door. It was an anniversary clock. Its mechanism was beneath a glass dome and revolved a gold filigreed decoration back and forth in a regular circle and a half.

“Does that thing really never need winding?” he asked.

“Once a year,” she lied.

“How do they manage that?”

“They?”

“The people who manufacture the clock.”

Margaret shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s got some kind of perpetual motion.”

But he knew that was impossible.

Should be impossible.

She was amused by his rapt concentration as he studied the timepiece beneath the small glass dome. He was like a child encountering a new game or puzzle.

“Real gold?” he asked.

“Hardly.”

“Gold plated?”

“Not even that.”

“It doesn’t tick or make a bit of noise, yet it has the correct time. Mind if I look at it closer? See if I can make out how it works?”

She moved farther inside and laid her small brown purse on the sofa.

“Maybe when we get back,” she said.

He turned away from the clock, toward her. “Haven’t you noticed?” he asked. “We are back.”

Margaret ran regularly and worked out religiously at the gym. She was in shape. She’d taken a course in tae kwon do and knew how to hip-toss a man nearly twice her size. No one had taught her how to deal with being fixated by a stare, mesmerized by the glint of a knife blade.

No one had taught her how fear could freeze her insides and make movement impossible.

No one had taught her that she was prey.

17

Iowa, 1991

They sat at their usual assigned places. Jason Kray at the head of the table, next to him, Kent, next to Kent, Jordan. On the other long side of the table, Nora sat next to her mother.

It had been report card day. Even five-year-old Nora, who had recently started kindergarten, had come home after school with a report card. All passing marks, of course. Jordan thought he might be the only one at the table who knew the rest of Nora’s class got the same passing marks. His own grades hadn’t been so good. Not like his brother Kent’s.

Kent had gotten straight A’s in his classes, and a note from his adviser saying that he was a pleasure in class. He also earned straight A’s for good behavior. Taller than Jordan, but still of average height, he was also going to be a starter on the school basketball team.

His mother had raved when he’d shown up after school and handed the report card to her. She’d passed it to Kent’s father, Jason, who merely grunted and took in another glob of collard greens and vinegar on his fork.

“What about your dipshit little brother?” Jason asked.

Kent said nothing. He squirmed in his chair, looked at Jordan, and then looked away. He knew what would happen if he decided to defend Jordan. His father would see that it would never happen again.

Jordan was well aware of his failures as a scholar. It wasn’t that he was dumb. He knew that. He simply didn’t like studying anything he wasn’t interested in. He was curious about how things worked, which seemed to him to have nothing to do with when famous people were born or died, or who was king or queen during what era. How things worked, their inner secrets—that’s where the world’s real knowledge was to be found. The dates of ancient battles, won or lost, had little to do with it.

“He did the best he could,” he heard his mother say. She didn’t sound as if she really meant it.

His father grunted again. “Some lessons need learnin’ the hard way.”

Jordan knew what the hard way was. His mother would wield the whip while his father watched.

Then his father would—

“See that the tractor’s in the barn and gassed up,” his father was saying. “You got tilling to do tomorrow.”

“He’s got school,” Alice Kray said.

“What’s the point? He ain’t learnin’ anything anyway.”

“Still an’ all . . .”

“You’ll till after school tomorrow,” Jason Kray said to Jordan with finality. “That soil needs breaking.”

“I can till,” Kent said confidentially.

“You got your homework,” his mother said. It was a given that Kent was going to college, either because of his grades or his athletic prowess. He could already run high hurdles in near record time and throw a baseball a mile, and now he was concentrating on basketball.

He should easily be in the Olympics, his family figured. If not that, the major leagues, or professional football, after a great college career. Maybe even pro basketball, if he got much taller. One way or another, his assignment was to make the family rich.

“I don’t mind tilling,” Kent said. He actually liked driving the tractor, listening to the engine roar and watching how the oversized back tires dug into the bare earth while the tiller blades laid open the soil for planting.

“You got other after-school chores tomorrow,” his mother said.

All through this conversation, Jordan’s mind was elsewhere. He liked to learn; he just didn’t like school. And for sure he couldn’t run track, or throw a baseball half as far as Kent. But why should he be able to do those things? He was smaller than Kent. His arms were skinny and his legs were bony. He wasn’t built to be an athlete, even though he lifted weights in the barn.

It wasn’t that he was weak.

He didn’t want them to know how strong he was. It seemed to him that if they did know, they’d figure out a way to use it against him.

Nora spilled her juice and began to cry. Strained peas dribbled from her mouth.

“Shut up the rug rat,” Jason Kray said. He shoved his chair back so hard it turned over as he stood up and strode into the living room. Jordan and Kent’s little sister, Nora, didn’t quiet down that easily. She’d have to learn, and was almost old enough to be taught.

Hard lessons, not easily forgotten. That’s what this family was about. What all families should be about. Hard lessons, and weathering storms inside and out.

Kent followed his father into the living room. They would sit on opposite ends of the couch and watch a replay of last night’s baseball game between the Red Sox and Cleveland Indians.

Jordan, still seated in the kitchen, didn’t have to be told to help his mother clear the table. Women’s work, according to his father.

As Jordan worked, he became fascinated by the magnifying glass his mother used instead of glasses to help her read. She had magnifiers all over the house, but the biggest one was on the kitchen windowsill, where it was handy for her to use while reading food labels or recipes. She watched her calories and carbohydrates. Jason had told her what would happen if she let herself get fat.