Dreams of the Dead Read online

  Kicking her shoes toward the closet, she thought about the young boy Sandy had dubbed Burglar Boy. He lived as she had in her youth, without consciousness, hurtling forward, too busy snatching at opportunities to give a thought or a damn about consequences. Hence Bob, the precious outcome of the most important mistake she had ever made, falling for Kurt that summer so long ago.

  After her shower, she turned on her night-light and studied Burglar Boy’s paperwork. Yeah. The probation office was recommending time served. The judge wouldn’t go against that. The sentencing hearing would go smoothly. She plotted out her moves to get the kid off, hoping he would do good, not bad, in the future. That was out of her hands, however. Her job had been to earn him a second chance to be the innocent they all wanted him to be.

  Eyes drooping, she ticked off her blessings.

  Bob. Brother, Matt. His wife, Andrea. Their kids, Troy and Brianna.

  Sandy and her family.

  Her job. Her good health.

  She pictured Kurt. Where did he fit in?

  Angel or demon? Or both?

  Paul? Same questions.

  Nina clicked off the light and closed her eyes. Imprinted on the inside of her eyelids was an image: Jim Strong, murderer. He had killed her husband and come after her and Bob. Some nights you never forget. The image of a handsome, empty, resurrected face disturbed her dreams.

  He was dead. He had to be.

  CHAPTER 5

  She called at ten on Tuesday morning while I was at work. “How about a quickie?”

  Crude but effective; she was gorgeous. I was in love, and her roughness excited me. I laughed. “When?”

  “Noon. Room 102. Ground floor of the new building. You can park practically at the door from the back parking lot.”

  “You have until one?”

  “I’ll make it feel like longer. Can you get away?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah, you’re coming?”

  “Yeah.”

  As I drove into the half-full parking lot, I noticed only a couple of tour buses—there used to be a hundred. In April, when the skiing gets messy and a few boats are starting to come out on the lake, the doldrums come and the tourists do stay away, but this had been a remarkably poor season. The mountains behind me looked pristine from far away, but a closer look would show the runs had gone to slush. Dark clouds bellied in from Nevada, a hopeful sign. We could use one more blizzard before the skis schussed off for good.

  I felt vulnerable, which was unusual for me. With ten minutes to wait, I didn’t want to stand at the door of the room and have people who might know me see me. I’m not great with words, so as I locked up and leaned against the truck and pulled my baseball cap down low against the bite of the wind, I did some rehearsing.

  I’d had shit for a life and a ton of disappointment. Now I needed to talk to her again about my plans. I was pretty sure this time she’d go along with everything, but then again, it’s hard to tell with women like her, who haven’t had it easy either, who don’t always live by the rules of the straight world.

  Cyndi, I said to her in my mind, in my fucked-up life, nobody else has come close; that’s the truth. I love you. I want to give you the life you deserve. You didn’t understand last time when I tried to explain, but today you’ll change your mind.

  Saying these things to myself, I felt touched enough to wipe my eyes. I could hardly believe I had it in me to fall this hard for anyone. I’ve never been in love before, though I’ve had plenty of women. It took a lifetime to learn that there’s a chasm between loving someone and being in love. Being in love is an uncanny thing.

  I watched her walk from the main hotel in tall leather boots, all streaming hair and blowing coat. She saw me. We met at the door. I didn’t say anything or touch her while she inserted the card into the lock and swung the door open, because anybody in the lot could see us. We both took a long look in.

  Everything as it should be: bed unmade, bottle stuck in the wastebasket with the cardboard remains of last night’s Thai takeout, lamp and heat left blowing energy. On the little table next to the window, a $20 bill for Housekeeping awaited plucking.

  We rushed in together, shoulder to shoulder, and I kicked the door shut. Cyndi smiled, her mouth mischievous. She held up a finger. One hour until she had to be back at her job at the desk. One clear hour before the maid would come to clean the room. Cyndi would know that. Meantime, for this short space of time, the room was a free zone.

  Cyndi threw off her coat, stuck out her tongue at me, ran into the bathroom, and slammed the door. I stripped, laying my clothes on the chair, then pulled up the cover and stretched out right on top. I put my hands behind my head and thought about her, and, man, I started heating up. She came out wearing a blue bra and black tights, swinging and grinning. “What a beauty!” she said, looking at me, before she jumped on and straddled me. And we went at it.

  Limber as a gymnast, she was light and sweet to taste and it went on and on, all kinds of moves. Not shy, Cyndi was an expert; she had danced with a lot of poles in her career. She liked a lot of energy from her partner and I gave it to her.

  I gave it to her good.

  A couple of my women I had loved with that respectful, law-abiding love that meant you couldn’t totally forget yourself in bed. Most I had slept with without feeling any connection. You have to keep a guard up; you have to calculate things, make sure she has equal time, fake things, lie. During my year with Cyndi, though, I had given her complete power over me and my lonely heart. She could make me cry. We didn’t ever have quickies. That was just her little joke.

  She was the one.

  Finished, we lay on our sides, me pressing against her back. I ran my hands up and down her, slow and calm, enjoying that dancer body, the curvy stomach of a woman who’d had kids.

  “I could use a drink,” she murmured in a sleepy voice.

  I handed her the half-pint of Martell cognac I had brought. She downed a good slug and handed it back. I powered down the rest.

  She turned to face me, stroking fingers on my chest. “You are mine.”

  “I am.”

  She took another long minute or two to kiss me again. Then she breathed, “I’m sorry. I better—” She began to get up.

  “Wait a minute.” I held on to her. “We need to talk.”

  “Better spit it out then, sweet one.” She put a bare leg over me and got into a position where she could see the clock radio on the bedstand. “I have to go.”

  “Do you love me, Cyndi?” That broke an unwritten rule because we only said that when we were right in the middle of it. “I need to know you do.”

  “Ah, c’mon. You’re my sweetie, bad boy. Let’s not get technical,” she teased.

  “I can show you how much I love you if you let me, but I need to know first. What are you willing to do to be with me?”

  After a long silence, she sat on the side of the bed, hair hanging over her eyes so I couldn’t see them. “We had this discussion. You promised me you wouldn’t bring it up again.”

  “Yes, but I don’t think you thought it through. We could live together in a beautiful, warm country in a beach house with a pool, a staff, a view of the world, a soft bed, privacy at last.”

  “I told you, no.”

  I came up behind her, pressed against her back, wound my legs around her body. “Listen one more time.” I held her close and told her about it again, laid it out a different way, sure I could convince her this was the only way, and it was the right way.

  When I finished, she turned sideways, her body against me, almost melting in the heat between us. “Forget it. I won’t commit a crime. I won’t go to prison. You should never have told me any of this.”

  “There’s no risk.”

  “Right. Sure.” Her body tensed. “My friend who went to the Nevada State Penitentiary for selling drugs? He died there.”

  I suppose my nerves and the time pressure got the better of me. “We’ll be rich and free. We can live
our lives like we deserve to, not in a hellhole limbo like this. I need more time to explain all this, that damn second hand moving around is all you see—”

  “Because I have to go!” Cyndi struggled to stand up and leave.

  I tightened my hold.

  “Let me go. It’s twelve forty-five, and the maid could come in anytime after one. I have another life and it’s time to get back to it.”

  “Fuck your other life! You love me, I love you, I’m trying to talk about our future together and you’re—”

  “Let me go!”

  I felt my heart beat against her back. I felt her sweat on me, smelled perfume mixed with her body.

  After another minute, she quit fighting me. She turned her head away and closed her eyes, speaking so softly I had to work to hear her.

  “Should have known. Get close to somebody. Fall in love. It’s never enough. I should know by now, crazy shit every time.” Her eyes opened and she stared at me coldly. Her voice rose but held steady. “You need to let me get up now and put on my clothes. Then I’ll go back to work and you forget about me. We’re done. I mean that. Okay? I won’t tell anyone about your plans. I won’t do anything to stop you. But leave me out of it.”

  She meant it. I could hear it. She had detached herself right then with no return possible. I knew because I’d done it myself. She might as well have taken an ax and chopped right through my brain. I felt pops, storms. All thinking ceased. Memories attacked. I thought of the day I met her. I thought about how I have failed so many people and how life has failed me.

  “I told you from the start,” Cyndi said, shaking, pushing. “I won’t leave my kids. I won’t run with you. I won’t go to prison because you’ve got another set of cheap dreams. Fucking fool. Jesus.” She managed to pull away from me, but I jumped up and pushed her back down against the bed. I could see her sneaking furtive looks at the clock, the clock that read five minutes to one.

  “You’re gonna listen, and you’re gonna say yes.”

  “You’re hurting me, asshole!”

  She’s small but strong. She made a fist and right-hooked me in the side of the jaw. The pain made me lose it for a second. I hit her with the palm of my hand hard on the side of the head—a reflex, that’s all it was—and she went limp for a second, so I laid her on her back on the bed. Her mouth opened and kept getting wider and wider and she took in a breath as she got herself ready to let out a shriek that was going to bring witnesses and ruin. Her face went red, snotty, and nasty, transforming her into a new person who didn’t love me after all, who’d played me for gifts and thrills.

  I put my left hand over her mouth and held her down with my other hand, trying to keep her quiet, saying, “Cyndi, Cyndi,” in a soft chant, but she squirmed like a python, a big snake who had turned against me forever, vicious and out of control. Some small part of my rational mind arrowed its way through the chaos of my emotions to one clear thought: She would tell. If I let her go, she would call the police about my plans.

  As if reading my thoughts, she bit me suddenly on the arm, a deep bite, as if she were trying to eat me. The clock, the one she had watched so avidly, flashed one o’clock.

  This time reflex played no part. I hauled off and hit her hard again, connecting with her chin, knocking her head back to the pillow. She didn’t move. I rubbed my forearm, groaning. White teeth marks, no blood yet, purpling under the skin. I looked at her. Silence, for now.

  In emergencies I go cold. Time slows down. In the middle of one now, hardly any blood around, I noted that I hadn’t even sat in a chair. Other people slept here every night. The room was full of prints. I had touched almost nothing. Cyndi had even handled the key.

  She stirred.

  Her black nylons lay on the rug beside the bed in easy reach. I picked them up and wrapped them around her neck. I don’t believe at that moment I really meant to kill her, but when she started fighting me, everything snapped into place. The thought had entered my brain, the possibility. I fought back. I held my position even though she struggled through every dying second.

  Finally, she stopped. I held tight long enough to look at her pretty hair, her body, anywhere but her face. I wrapped and stretched the black material tighter, muscles straining, encountering no more resistance.

  The clock’s second hand moved. Round and around it ticked forward as I waited, holding the cloth against her neck. Three times around. Three minutes of hell past one. I had to be sure.

  I let go.

  Eyes open, she looked dreamily at the ceiling as if she had spotted something interesting there, face now a mottled, swollen gray, fog-colored. I felt a mental storm coming on, not a storm of rage and self-preservation this time, but a storm that would soon lead to decompensation.

  I had never killed anyone before. She had forced the situation, put me in serious danger.

  I checked the room, ears wide-open for the clank of a cart. I dressed quickly, looking around for signs of my presence. Ten past one. I maneuvered her into bra and panties, unwound the black material from around her throat, and settled her on the bed, wondering at the changes. She looked removed. Distant. Spent. This was the sum total of her life, one stupid mistake.

  I had no time, but still I arranged her tangled hair.

  Did she think of her children and her husband, in those last moments, when she gasped and I became a maniac?

  Her hair felt silky, alive, twisting between my fingers.

  Was she sorry? Had there still been a chance?

  Her mouth dropped open. I closed it. It dropped open again. I closed her eyes. They opened. She was still fighting me. Her skin moved between life and death in front of me, changing from an interim dusky color to something like salt, inert.

  Time to go.

  I had the door open and was ready to leave when I realized I didn’t have my wallet.

  Leaving the door ajar, I crept back inside to look for it. I was so screwed up from the liquor and pain and the rest of it that my eyes couldn’t focus anymore. Nothing on the rug, nothing on the bedside table. Seventeen past one in the afternoon. Brilliant sunshine. Fucking Tahoe clarity.

  I found my wallet under the bed nestling near a used condom, not mine. I grabbed it, stuffed it into my pocket, and left, pulling my cap down low. I hit my hand on a cart full of towels on the way out. No blood, just another scream in my head. What I had done to Cyndi barreled around my mind like a bad dream. I felt like someone slugged by a piece of king-hell bad luck.

  As I hustled out, a maid leaned against the building. She looked my way from about a hundred feet, long-haired, gray-rooted, a good ol’ girl. I ran out to the lot; at least the car keys had stayed in my pocket as they should. I took off, but I wasn’t relieved to turn onto the highway. My skin had gone cold and my hands on the wheel shook.

  What had the maid seen?

  See you shortly, honey, I thought, and strength came back, resolve came back, fury came back. Women trying to ruin my life, what I had left of it, trying to destroy the one chance I had left. I wouldn’t allow that.

  CHAPTER 6

  Brenda Bee had been yawning all day because her new husband, Ronnie, husband number three, took Cialis and wouldn’t give her any peace all night. She was fifty-five and sex was pleasurable, but have a heart, baby. Don’t make it so hard to sit down the next day.

  Right now, she was eating lunch at the restaurant on the gaming floor. Employees of Prize’s got food at a discount, and since casino buffets cost practically nothing, she could have loaded up on starch, beef, and rich desserts, but she chose wisely, going for lettuce, soggy fruit, and two cups of hot black coffee. At her age, you had to make a choice, sex or food, and she chose sex.

  She watched the gamblers’ numbing routine. Not long ago you put in quarters and pulled a lever, watched the rows roll for a while, watched them clack clack clack one by one. These days, you inserted a money card and punched a button. The machine gave a digital approximation of sevens rolling along for about two seconds, then lights
insisted on another punch, preferably of three quarters, not one. Bells used to blare when even a small pot hit. These days the casinos played it cool and quiet.

  Of course, back then you could hardly see the machines for the ciggie smoke, and nowadays the gaming floors were well ventilated. Win some, lose some.

  She watched a girl with bleached-blond hair almost faint as three sevens lined up on her machine. A newbie, now hooked on winning, destined to lose her fun money, and it wouldn’t take long. Three sevens weren’t worth what they had once been. Inflation had hit the world of slot machines in this way, too. Good. More money for Prize’s, and that meant better job security for her. How much had the girl won? She couldn’t see the jackpot amount on the machine, though it was only a few feet away. The girl wasn’t squealing anymore, so it wasn’t worth getting up.

  Ronnie had been nagging her for ages to get glasses. She couldn’t imagine wearing them, the weight on her nose, the ugliness. He said, “Brenda, are you saying female pride won’t let you get glasses, even though you’re blind without them?”

  Pride? No. This was a survival technique, the way she saw it. As soon as she could, she would get LASIK surgery. She hated being nearsighted, had spent her whole life fighting it. If only she had the money. Of course, then she wouldn’t be able to see as well up close, but that would be fine, she would welcome drugstore magnifiers for reading. They cost like what, ten bucks? Plus, she didn’t read all that much, and Ronnie could read her the menus.

  Up here in the mountains, working at a place where showgirls reigned, a girl needed to look her best. That required intervention and vigilance. She had beauty tricks Ronnie would never know about. She had recently had her lips permanently tattooed with color. Lips got pale in middle age. She remembered how perplexed Ronnie had been when she wouldn’t let him kiss her for a week after because her lips, swollen and a little crusty, hurt so much. Then, her breasts had shrunk when she lost weight. They hung like her grandma’s until she got the lift and implants. She made him wait again until everything healed and she could appreciate his appreciation.