The three-star motor inn was nothing fancy, but it was clean and comfortable. As he carried his luggage into his room and again as he filled a plastic ice bucket in the vending machine alcove, he sensed that he was under observation.
No one else was on the open-air promenade, and the cars in the immediate parking area all appeared unoccupied.
After the interview with Ronny Jessup, he felt filthy, as he always did post-Folsom. He mixed a drink in one of the motel’s plastic glasses and drank half before he took a long, hot shower.
He was toweling off when he thought he heard someone in the other room. He was certain that he had locked the outer door.
He pulled on a pair of briefs and went into the bedroom. The sliding, mirrored closet door stood open, but he had left it that way.
The deadbolt on the exterior door was locked. He believed that he had engaged the security chain, as well, but it hung loose from the jamb plate.
He was exhausted and jumpy. The most logical explanation was that he had forgotten the chain. If anyone had entered with ill intent, the intruder would have come at him when he stepped out of the bathroom, if not before.
He slipped the security-chain slide bolt into the door plate. Anyway, the chain didn’t provide much protection; the deadbolt was the true barrier.
After he pulled on pajamas and finished his first drink, he added ice to the glass and mixed a second vodka and Coke.
As he ate at a small table by the only window, he tried not to think about the horror that awaited him in the foothills of the San Rafael Mountains, under the house where Ronny Jessup had for twenty years ruled his demonic kingdom.
| 69 |
The oblivion that David sought in vodka proved to be imperfect. For years, his sleep had been tortured by vivid dreams that were saturated with horror and guilt, but none had been half as strange as the one in which he became mired in that Santa Barbara motel room.
As never before, he appeared only briefly in his own nightmare, and for the most part watched helplessly from within the mind and body of Emily, on that hateful night of rain and ruin. And unlike other dreams, this one unspooled with eerie and terrible coherence, as if it must be the truth that he would be condemned to relive again and again through eternity.
The windshield wipers fling gouts of water off the glass, but the night gives it back in greater volume. She drives at a reduced speed, wary of the poor visibility. When a noisy knocking arises from under the hood, the true risk proves to be not a collision, but a mechanical breakdown. Seconds later, the Buick starts to shimmy, the steering wheel twitches, the car surges and shudders, surges and shudders. Oh, shit. Now what, Carlino? Do you have your degree in American literature handy? What the hell were you thinking? Why not a trade-school course in auto mechanics?
Worried that she might be stranded in traffic and vulnerable to a high-speed back-ending, she pilots the Buick another quarter of a mile, which seems like forever, until she sees the viewpoint lay-by and pulls off the road. No sooner has she braked to a stop than the engine fails. Simultaneously, the battery dies or a mechanical failure doesn’t allow what juice it contains to be distributed to the lights and heater.
The wind gusts with such fury that it rocks the Buick. Torrents shatter on the roof, spill down all sides of the car, and the rain-drizzled windows present a night distorted. The lights of passing traffic reveal nothing, but instead add to the sense of a formless and chaotic landscape.
When she tries to use her cell phone to call the AAA emergency number, she discovers there is no service, either because of the horrendous weather or because this section of the coast is rather remote. Beam me up, Scotty.
She feels foolish for setting out so late, in expectation of a milder rain. She could have waited for tomorrow. But she has been away from home for four days, and she misses their little bungalow in Corona del Mar. And David. God, she misses David. Their life is blessed. Sometimes she marvels at how she has become so domestic that she cares little for nightlife or lengthy travel, preferring the quaint pleasures of home. Lately, she’s been thinking about kids, too. Her mom prods her about it from time to time. Mom wants grandkids. Two, maybe three. “I’m blind, Emily, and I took the risk anyway, wound up with you, but maybe you’ll luck into a kid who’s better behaved.” Ha, ha, ha. You keep needling me, Mommy dearest, and I will give you a noogie you’ll never forget. So Nina’s cancer scare has proved to be just that, a scare, and she’ll be well. But the trip hasn’t been for nothing; an act of friendship is never for nothing. Nonetheless, Emily’s been too eager to get home, and now she must deal with the inconvenience of being broken down at night in a storm.