Full Dark, No Stars

“Just home, Tommy-boy,” she said, and pul ed out of the parking lot, very aware she was riding on a tire that had been mounted by the man who had almost kil ed her. Al Something-Polish. A truck-

driving son of a gun. “One stop on the way.”

“I don’t know what you’re thinking, Tess, but you should be careful.”

If she had been home instead of in her car, Fritzy would have been the one to say this, and Tess would have been equal y unsurprised. She had been making up voices and conversations since

childhood, although at the age of eight or nine, she’d quit doing it around other people, unless it was for comic effect.

“I don’t know what I’m thinking, either,” she said, but this was not quite true.

Up ahead was the US 47 intersection, and the Gas & Dash. She signaled, turned in, and parked with the Expedition’s nose centered between the two pay phones on the side of the building. She saw

the number for Royal Limousine on the dusty cinder block between them. The numbers were crooked, straggling, written by a finger that hadn’t been able to stay steady. A chil shivered its way up her

back, and she wrapped her arms around herself, hugging hard. Then she got out and went to the pay phone that stil worked.

The instruction card had been defaced, maybe by a drunk with a car key, but she could stil read the salient information: no charge for 911 cal s, just lift the handset and punch in the numbers. Easy-as-can-beezy.

She punched 9, hesitated, punched 1, then hesitated again. She visualized a piñata, and a woman poised to hit it with a stick. Soon everything inside would come tumbling out. Her friends and

associates would know she had been raped. Patsy McClain would know the story about stumbling over Fritzy in the dark was a shame-driven lie… and that Tess hadn’t trusted her enough to tel the truth.

But real y, those weren’t the main things. She supposed she could stand up to a little public scrutiny, especial y if it kept the man Betsy Neal had cal ed Big Driver from raping and kil ing another woman.

Tess realized that she might even be perceived as a heroine, a thing that had been impossible to even consider last night, when urinating hurt enough to make her cry and her mind kept returning to the

image of her stolen panties in the center pocket of the giant’s bib overal s.

Only…

“What’s in it for me?” she asked again. She spoke very quietly, while looking at the telephone number she’d written in the dust. “What’s in that for me?”

And thought: I have a gun and I know how to use it.

She hung up the phone and went back to her car. She looked at Tom’s screen, which was showing the intersection of Stagg Road and Route 47. “I need to think about this some more,” she said.

“What’s to think about?” Tom asked. “If you were to kil him and then get caught, you’d go to jail. Raped or not.”

“That’s what I need to think about,” she said, and turned onto US 47, which would take her to I-84.

Traffic on the big highway was Saturday-morning light, and being behind the wheel of her Expedition was good. Soothing. Normal. Tom was quiet until she passed the sign reading EXIT 9 STOKE

VILLAGE 2 MILES. Then he said, “Are you sure it was an accident?”

“What?” Tess jumped, startled. She had heard Tom’s words coming out of her mouth, spoken in the deeper voice she always used for the make-believe half of her make-believe conversations (it was

a voice very little like Tom the Tomtom’s actual robo-voice), but it didn’t feel like her thought. “Are you saying the bastard raped me by accident?”

“No,” Tom replied. “I’m saying that if it had been up to you, you would have gone back the way you came. This way. I-84. But somebody had a better idea, didn’t they? Somebody knew a shortcut.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “Ramona Norvil e did.” She considered it, then shook her head. “That’s pretty far-fetched, my friend.”

To this Tom made no reply.

- 27 -

Leaving the Gas & Dash, she had planned to go online and see if she could locate a trucking company, maybe a smal independent, that operated out of Colewich or one of the surrounding towns. A

company with a bird name, probably hawk or eagle. It was what the Wil ow Grove ladies would have done; they loved their computers and were always texting each other like teenagers. Other considerations aside, it would be interesting to see if her version of amateur sleuthing worked in real life.

Driving up the I-84 exit ramp a mile and a half from her house, she decided that she would do a little research on Ramona Norvil e first. Who knew, she might discover that, besides presiding over

Books & Brown Baggers, Ramona was president of the Chicopee Rape Prevention Society. It was even plausible. Tess’s hostess had pretty clearly been not just a lesbian but a dyke lesbian, and women of that persuasion were often not fond of men who were non -rapists.

“Many arsonists belong to their local volunteer fire departments,” Tom observed as she turned onto her street.