Full Dark, No Stars

The cabbie rol ed his toothpick back to its starting point. It was his only reply.

“I’l pay you an extra ten dol ars to wait until I come out,” Tess said, nodding at the roadhouse. “I want to make sure my car starts.”

“No problem-o,” the cabbie said.

And if I scream because he’s in there, waiting for me, come on the run, okay?

But she wouldn’t have said that even if she could have done so without sounding absolutely bonkers. The cabdriver was fat, fifty, and wheezy. He’d be no match for the giant if this was a setup… which

in a horror movie, it would be.

Lured back, Tess thought dismal y. Lured back by a phone call from the giant’s girlfriend, who’s just as crazy as he is.

Foolish, paranoid idea, but the walk to The Stagger Inn’s door seemed long, and the hard-packed dirt made her walking shoes seem very loud: clump-clud-clump. The parking lot that had been a

sea of cars last night was now deserted save for four automotive islands, one of which was her Expedition. It was at the very back of the lot—sure, he would not have wanted to be observed putting it there

—and she could see the left front tire. It was a plain old blackwal that didn’t match the other three, but otherwise it looked fine. He had changed her tire. Of course he had. How else could he have moved it away from his… his…

His recreational facility. His kill-zone. He drove it down here, parked, walked back to the deserted store, and then off he went in his old F-150. Good thing I didn’t come to sooner; he’d have foundme wandering around in a daze and I wouldn’t be here now.

She looked back over her shoulder. In one of the movies she now could not stop thinking about, she surely would have seen the cab speeding away ( leaving me to my fate), but it was stil right there.

She lifted a hand to the driver, and he lifted his in return. She was fine. Her car was here and the giant wasn’t. The giant was at his house (his lair), quite possibly stil sleeping off the previous evening’s exertions.

The sign on the door said WE ARE CLOSED. Tess knocked and got no response. She tried the knob and when it turned, sinister movie plots returned to her mind. The real y stupid plots where the

knob always turns and the heroine cal s out (in a tremulous voice), “Is anybody there?” Everyone knows she’s crazy to go in, but she does anyway.

Tess looked back at the cab again, saw it was stil right there, reminded herself that she was carrying a loaded gun in her spare purse, and went in anyway.

- 24 -

She entered a foyer that ran the length of the building on the parking lot side. The wal s were decorated with publicity stil s: bands in leather, bands in jeans, an al -girl band in miniskirts. An auxiliary bar stretched out beyond the coatracks; no stools, just a rail where you could have a drink while you waited for someone or because the bar inside was too packed. A single red sign glowed above the

ranked bottles: BUDWEISER.

You like Bud, Bud likes you, Tess thought.

She took off her dark glasses so she could walk without stumbling into something and crossed the foyer to peep into the main room. It was vast and redolent of beer. There was a disco bal , now dark

and stil . The wooden floor reminded her of the rol er-skating rink where she and her girlfriends had al but lived during the summer between eighth grade and high school. The instruments were stil up on the bandstand, suggesting that The Zombie Bakers would be back tonight for another heaping bowl of rock n rol .

“Hel o?” Her voice echoed.

“I’m right here,” a voice replied softly from behind her.

- 25 -

If it had been a man’s voice, Tess would have shrieked. She managed to avoid that, but she stil whirled around so quickly that she stumbled a little. The woman standing in the coat alcove—a skinny

breath of a thing, no more than five feet three—blinked in surprise and took a step back. “Whoa, easy.”

“You startled me,” Tess said.

“I see I did.” The woman’s tiny, perfect oval of a face was surrounded by a cloud of teased black hair. A pencil peeked from it. She had piquant blue eyes that didn’t quite match. A Picasso girl, Tess thought. “I was in the office. Are you the Expedition lady or the Honda lady?”

“Expedition.”

“Have ID?”

“Yes, two pieces, but only one with my picture on it. My passport. The other stuff was in my purse. My other purse. I thought that was what you might have.”