Writing on the Wall Read online

  “Okay,” she finally said, her voice soft and even. She pulled out her notebook. “So, I’ll check it out, if you want. I think I’d like to, okay? Just in case it’s more than some random thing?”

  She waited for Lola’s nod before continuing.

  “I’d like you to work with a sketch artist down at the station. Can you do that?”

  Again, she waited for the nod.

  “And I’ll talk to the people at the coffee shop. Maybe some of the neighbors. See if they saw anything. And the clerk at the drugstore. See if they have a camera outside.” She was writing as she spoke. “Um, I’ll need your agent’s number. Anybody threaten you since the book came out?”

  Lola shook her head.

  “Is there anyone from your past who might want to hurt you?”

  Lola’s eyes clouded over and then cleared. “No.”

  Hmm. Del wasn’t sure if she believed that. Lola seemed like a pretty terrible liar. Del could almost believe she didn’t know her attacker. Maybe. But was that just because she’d rather think Lola hadn’t lied to her?

  “Okay,” Del said, resolving to dig into that later. “I’ll check in with you every day, just in case. Odds are, this was a random nutcase thing, but let’s err on the side of caution. Sound good?”

  Lola nodded. “Thank you so much, Del. I really appreciate your taking the time to check this out. I don’t want to make a big deal out of it, you know, but I don’t want to have to look over my shoulder, either.”

  She sat back, as though talking had worn her out. Del had more questions but decided they could wait. She needed to give Lola time to trust her. There might be more to this story that she wasn’t yet ready to share. And she needed to give herself time to calm down. She was too fired up, and sitting here staring at Lola’s bruises wasn’t helping. She needed to step back from the situation and assess things more calmly. She took a long, slow breath and relaxed her shoulders.

  Lola was as guarded as Del had expected, but she occasionally showed a sharp mind and a surprising directness. Del wondered what Lola’s story was. The expensive house, the cheap car, the new clothes, the new hair—the seemingly disparate aspects of her personality all served to whet Del’s appetite. The woman was a puzzle, and Del had always found puzzles irresistible.

  Chapter Eight

  Lola closed the door on Del with a mixture of dismay and relief. As she tried to rub some of the chill from her arms, she wondered if the chain of events that had led to her new life hadn’t also led the attacker to her. For the first time, she was able to feel the measure of how safe and comfortable she’d begun to feel, because that safe, comfortable feeling was gone. She might as well be back in Orrin’s house.

  When she first woke early one morning and sensed Orrin’s absence, she wasn’t alarmed. He often woke early to work in his home office, which she knew actually meant watch pornography on the computer. She pretended not to know this, of course.

  She waited until the alarm on her bedside clock buzzed to rise, make the bed with perfect hospital corners, and head to the kitchen to make Orrin’s breakfast: two eggs, hardboiled, a neatly cut half of a grapefruit, and exactly six ounces of tomato juice, with no splatters of tomato juice on the sides of the glass.

  She stood at the stove with her head down and rolled her shoulders, wishing for coffee. But Orrin didn’t allow it. She tried to think of a time when she had been in charge of her life and didn’t realize she was crying until a teardrop fell into the gurgling egg pot.

  Recalling herself, she wiped her eyes and went back to watching the timer. When Orrin heard it go off, he would time how long it took her to turn off the stove. How he heard the little snap of the plastic dial as it went to the off position, she would never know. As she watched the eggs dance in the warming water, Orrin barked her name. She hesitated a moment. Should she turn off the eggs and start them again later, or should she hope she could get back before the timer went off? She glanced at the clock. If she turned them off and then on again later, she wouldn’t have his breakfast ready by seven. Orrin snapped his fingers, and the decision was made. Eggs, off.

  She hurried to the office, smoothing her hair into a tidier bun. What had she done wrong? She’d dusted and vacuumed the office the day before. Maybe she’d made a mistake. The carved legs on his desk took forever to dust, and he could smell if she used too much furniture polish as a shortcut for getting the dust out of the little crevices, which she usually did.

  She held her breath and knocked. The door flew open, and she tried not to recoil as he reached for her. He was mad, he was so mad, and she shut down.

  He yanked her past his huge mahogany desk in the center of the room, and she banged her thigh into a corner of it. Where were they going? To the sewing table in the corner. To his old computer, the one she’d started to think of as her own. Orrin grabbed her by the hair and pushed her to her knees. He shoved her forward until her face was smashed onto the keyboard. She held in a cry of pain. It would only excite him.

  “Read it!” He was screaming. “Read it to me!”

  But she couldn’t see the screen. He seemed to realize that and pulled her back and up by her hair. There on the screen, her words stared back at her in giant black clarity. He’d enlarged the text, because his eyesight was worsening. Lola opened her mouth but couldn’t read the words to him as he’d commanded. She mouthed them: “She looked into Tanya’s eyes and knew that they would kiss.”

  Her breath caught in her throat. She was paralyzed by panic. She’d hidden the love story in a file called “Laundry Tips” for the last three years. Why would he look in there? Had she done something to make him suspicious? She had been thinking more and more about finding some way to escape, and she must have given something away.

  Orrin was pulling her again, trying to make her go somewhere, but she wasn’t sure where. Why was she thinking about stupid things right now? It didn’t matter why or how, the important thing was that he had found it, and now she was in big trouble. She could almost see the letters marching like a parade in front of her: BIG TROUBLE!

  What would he do? What would he do? She tried to speak and couldn’t, tried to get up and couldn’t. She couldn’t look at him and curled up on the carpet. He was screaming at her, pulling on her, but she couldn’t make out the words, couldn’t move when he tried to make her, couldn’t think. Then her legs were burning. He was dragging her toward the hallway. She didn’t think. In her panic, she grabbed for the doorframe as they passed it.

  Even as her fingers curled around the wood, she knew this was a mistake. Defiance only made him much, much angrier. She tried to unglue her fingers, but they acted as if of their own accord to claw at the white painted edge that was sharp and slick—she’d cleaned it the day before. Using more polish than necessary, of course, because that made it faster and easier and left her more time for writing. A helpless laugh escaped her and turned into a sob. The letters marching in front of her eyes changed: OH, NO! SHE’S DONE IT NOW!

  Orrin hesitated only a moment. He sputtered like Porky Pig, so surprised was he by her defiance, and this made her moan—she couldn’t say if she was laughing or crying or something else—in helpless despair. The letters screamed: OH, YOU BAD GIRL! She thought she might pee her pants, but if it got on the carpet, oh, there’d be hell to pay. HELL TO PAY! She gaped up at him. What would he do?

  She wished he had a gun. Then he could just shoot her and be done with it. Maybe he did. Maybe he had a gun in his den. She wasn’t allowed in there, not even to clean, so he could have anything in there, and she’d never know it. This seemed absurd, all of a sudden. He was gone for hours every day. She’d never once considered violating the sanctity of his den.

  She heard a voice ask, “What about my sanctity? What about that, Orrin? What about my sanctity?” Was that her own voice? It hardly seemed likely, but it wasn’t Orrin’s. She swallowed hard. This was getting so bad it almost felt unreal.

  That was defiant move number two—strike two, folks
: She’s Oooouuuutt! Because Orrin had the home field advantage, he always had the home field advantage, and that meant strike one, and you’re out, Lola, you’re always out, haven’t you been out for nineteen years?

  Then she remembered that being “out” meant being openly homosexual, and she burst into a sob that shook her whole body and forced her bladder to let go. She felt the warm, then cold, wetness spread under her, and she could only say, “Oh!”

  Orrin actually let go of her for a minute, more flummoxed—or, perhaps, disgusted—than angry, and he looked down at her as though she were some strange and repulsive new species of insect. Then he howled in fury and slammed her head into the doorframe. It didn’t hurt that much. It was just a sharp knock to the side of her head and a stinging in her ear. She gaped at him. That was just a warm-up.

  Orrin’s fist drew back and paused and came looming toward her and smashed into her nose. She saw it coming, but then it was flying at her, into her, through her. There was a long moment when she couldn’t process anything, and when she could think, she wondered if he’d punched a hole through her head, like a doughnut. Maybe, she thought, with a thrill of hope, she would get lucky, and he would kill her.

  Blood flooded her throat, and she couldn’t see or get any air, and she vomited blood for several seconds. It wasn’t ever going to stop, and then it did, and she could breathe, and Orrin was gone.

  What would he come back with? He kept his hurting things in his den. Did he go to the den? She couldn’t see now, there was too much blood to see, but she could hear him coming again. What was that sound? Was he slapping a belt against the wall? Was it only a belt, or something worse? She hiccupped and felt blood run into her mouth. She went away then, slid into the dark, quiet hole in her mind where she was safe.

  She came to as she was being pushed out the door, and by then the sun was high overhead and hurt her eyes. He gave her the keys to the car he’d bought for her sixteenth birthday, a heavy suitcase, and what he explained was three thousand dollars in an envelope. It wasn’t until later that she wondered why he’d had that much cash on hand, and how he’d arrived at that particular figure. Almost twenty years, and he felt she should get a used car, a suitcase of rags and three thousand dollars?

  She was wearing clothes that she didn’t remember putting on, but she could walk and see and move, so she figured she must not be hurt. There were sunglasses on her face, too, and they hurt. They were huge and heavy. They weren’t hers. She wasn’t allowed to have sunglasses. Whose were they? Why had he put them on her? Then she remembered that her face must be a mess. She started to take the sunglasses off, but Orrin started to step forward, and she stopped.

  He pointed at the car, parked at the curb, and she didn’t resist. She plodded in a daze to her car, the suitcase banging against her legs. It was hard to see. Her eyes wouldn’t open all the way, and the sunglasses sat funny on her face. Was it because she wasn’t used to sunglasses? She was scared to drive without being able to see very well and scared to stay still and make him angry. She finally started the car and drove blindly for a few blocks and pulled over and sat in the idling car, trying to figure out what to do. Was it a trick? It had to be, didn’t it? Would he come and find her and be angry? Sometimes he liked to test her. Was this a test? What was she supposed to do? She couldn’t think. She wished she could think.

  Finally, she started driving again and found a cheap motel a few miles from the house in nearby Rancho Cordova. She checked in, paying cash for one night, and walked up the stairs to the dim, musty room. She sat on the bed for a couple of hours and waited for Orrin to come and tell her what to do. Was this right? Was this what he wanted her to do? She couldn’t be sure. What if she’d already done things wrong? What if she was already in trouble? What if, dear God, what if he meant it?

  Hope was too risky. It was probably what he was counting on. He would let her think she was free until she seemed to believe it, and then he would come and get her. It would hurt ten times more if she let herself hope that she was free for real. Her chest hurt. She needed something to do. It was getting hard to breathe and to see. Ice. There was an ice machine on the ground floor. She put the sunglasses on and took the trash can with her. It took about ten minutes, but finally there was a sizable mound of cloudy cubes to take back up to the room. She wrapped a pillowcase around the ice and lay on her side, inching the makeshift ice pack toward her face. She wouldn’t be able to see or drive at all, if she didn’t get the swelling down.

  She fell asleep for a while. When she woke up, she was wet. The ice had melted. She went to look at her reflection in the bathroom mirror but didn’t recognize herself and turned away.

  She didn’t want to believe. She knew better. She knew that this was a test. What else could it be? Still, no matter how much she tried to fight it, as night began to fall her hope grew. She held herself very still. Maybe if she stayed very still, it would be real. She got more ice and filled the bathroom sink and eased her face down into it. It hurt, but she needed to be able to drive. A plan had formed itself while she’d been sleeping.

  The next morning, she was parked down the street from Orrin’s house, wearing the oversized sunglasses and feeling silly and scared. She’d given in. She would behave as though he were really letting her go. She couldn’t stop trying to believe it. If he killed her, so be it. If he didn’t kill her and didn’t let her go, she would kill herself. Whether it was a sin or not was no longer something she needed to worry about. Hell couldn’t be any worse than life with Orrin. It would all be over soon. That thought was such a relief that she repeated it to herself over and over: “It’ll all be over soon. It’ll all be over soon. It’ll all be over soon.” After a while, the words didn’t mean anything at all.

  At exactly eight, Orrin emerged from the garage in his giant black SUV, making the engine roar and the tires squeak, and sped off toward his office. He would be gone until six, at least, if he followed his usual routine. And if there was one thing she knew about Orrin, it was that he liked to follow his routine.

  Lola scurried up the front walk and let herself in. As she’d suspected, Orrin hadn’t bothered to change the lock. She wasted no time, heading straight to the office. She disconnected the computer she’d used, the slow one that Orrin had discarded when he got his fancy new desktop with the giant screen (for porn, she’d noted silently at the time) and carried the heavy load with all its wires and accessories clumsily to the car. She snuck back in one more time and headed for the master bedroom.

  She reached into the top drawer of her nightstand. In it was the music box Orrin had given her on her sixteenth birthday. She rubbed it for luck, the way she used to, and had to fight a sob. She stuffed it into her giant purse and headed out. She hesitated at the door. What if this was the test? What if he caught her coming out? She felt like a child stuck on a bed because the boogeyman might be hiding in the closet or under the bed. She shook the thought away. Now was not the time for woolgathering.

  Taking a last deep breath, Lola pulled the door shut and looked around, half certain that Orrin was right there, waiting to catch her. But he was nowhere in sight, and she tried to believe in that. She knuckled her mouth and scurried, head down, out to her car. She didn’t look back at the house she’d lived in for nineteen years. It never occurred to her to do so.

  Could he find her? She’d used cash and a fake name to check into the hotel. She had no credit card for him to trace. She had no cell phone for him to call. She thought that maybe, maybe, she was safe. Still, she found herself glancing around like a criminal as she took a circuitous route back to Rancho Cordova.

  She stopped on the way and bought her very first cup of Starbucks coffee and loaded it up with sugar and milk. She took off the sunglasses in the store, unable to see the signs with them on. The strange looks she got reminded her of the state of her face, and she hurried enough to spill both milk and sugar all over the counter.

  One of the employees, a young woman, told her not to worry abou
t it and stood a few feet off, waving a rag as if in surrender. Lola nodded and ducked her head, too embarrassed to offer thanks or apologies. She slunk out of the store and waited until she was in the hotel room to drink the coffee. Even if it hurt to open her mouth to drink it, even if it had been humiliating to be stared at like that, the coffee was the best thing she’d ever tasted.

  She whispered to herself, “I am not a criminal. I am not a child. I am a grown woman. He doesn’t own me. He does not own me. He never did! I have rights, don’t I? I should get the rest of my things.” There were books she wanted, and a thick, warm sweater that she loved.

  She tried to talk herself into going back to Orrin’s house and stood at the motel room door with her keys in her hand for nearly an hour. In the end, she couldn’t make herself do it. She went to bed, chilled and sickened. She felt like a coward and a weakling. It was two blurry days later that she finally crawled out of bed and took a shower. I’ll go back tomorrow, she decided.

  She was hungry, but it was too late to go anywhere, and she was too restless to sleep. She finally turned on the television. A local news show was on, and the anchor was excited as he announced the latest scandal: local physician, Orrin Beckett, had been killed in a tragic car accident.

  Lola stood in front of the television with her mouth hanging open. She couldn’t process this information. Had she imagined the news story? She must have, right? Her ears didn’t work for a moment, and she shook her head to clear it. Orrin, dead? It couldn’t be! Could it?

  She jumped from station to station, trying to glean more details. The crash had occurred late the night before, and there had been someone else in the car with him, a woman. The car had careened into a tree for some reason and had caught on fire. Because the crash had been on an isolated road, the scene hadn’t been discovered until sometime during the day. There appeared to be no survivors.