P. Parrish - South Of Hell

As she unzipped his pants, she wondered if Jean had ever knelt on this same floor and done this same thing.

And she wondered if she had enough courage tonight to do what she needed to do. She didn’t want that little girl to die. And she didn’t want to die herself in this horrible place.

She didn’t want that gypsy woman to be right.

He didn’t fall asleep until after one a.m. Snoring and sated and naked from the waist down, he passed out on the old mattress in the dining room.

It was easy to rifle his pockets for the keys to the Gremlin and easy to slip out the kitchen door and lose herself in the darkness. It wasn’t so easy to keep driving through the swirl of rain, the tiny car slipping and sliding on the muddy road and her head filled with guilt and fear and just about everything else a woman could feel when she was about to betray the man she loved.

She couldn’t use the pay phone outside the closed Texaco, because she only had dollar bills, so she had to drive all the way into town. A couple of lights glowed in the murkiness, but as she pulled into a parking lot, she saw the stores were closed. The only thing open was the tavern.

Two bearlike guys sat at the bar, hunched over their beers. They gave her a quick once-over, and seeing her battered face and dripping hair, they looked away. She wondered if either of them or the bartender knew who she was and what she was doing. Men like Owen had pals all over. Would one of these guys quietly slip away and drive out to the farm to tell Owen she was here?

She got four dollars’ worth of quarters from the bartender and quickly left the tavern for the phone booth outside. The light was burned out, and she had to use five matches to get enough light to read the phone number she had written in ink on the back of her hand.

She dropped in the quarters and dialed. As the phone rang on the other end, Margi looked out at the darkness and shivered. A sick feeling filled her belly, and she shut her eyes.

A man’s deep voice broke the monotonous ringing. “Hello?”

“Detective Shockey?” she asked.

“Yeah… who’s this?”

“This is Margi,” she said.

“Margi who?”

“Margi,” she said, glancing around. “Owen’s woman.”

She heard a crash and a bump on the other end of the phone. Then the detective’s voice came back, stronger and wide awake.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“I’m in Hell.”

“What’s going on?”

One of the bear-men came out of the tavern and hurried toward a semi parked under a floodlight. He stopped at the cab’s door and squinted at her.

“Margi, what’s going on?” Shockey asked.

“Owen’s got a knife, and he’s going to come there and kill you and take the girl,” she whispered. “He said he’d kill everyone else, too. That woman and that black guy and anyone who tried to stop him.”

“Where is he now?” Shockey asked.

“Passed out,” Margi said. “He won’t come there till morning.”

“He said he wants Amy? Why?”

The bear-man was sitting in his truck, watching her. She turned her back to him and lowered her voice again. “He thinks the girl saw him kill Jean,” Margi said. “He thinks that lady doctor is trying to get her to remember it all. I’m telling you, he’s just crazy now, Detective, walking around all night looking for a dead woman and talking to himself.”

“Take a breath, Margi.”

She did, but it didn’t help calm down her hammering heart.

“All right, look,” Shockey said. “I want you to come here to me. If you’re willing to say he beat you up and threatened people, we can put him back in jail. You understand that?”

“Put him back in jail?” she said. “Owen can’t go back to jail. He’ll kill himself if he has to go back.”

“He’ll kill you if he doesn’t,” Shockey said. “Can’t you see that? You want to die out there like Jean did?”

Margi closed her eyes against the burn of tears. “No, but…”

“You’ve come this far,” Shockey said. “You’ve taken the first step. You can’t go back now.”

She ran a hand under her nose and looked at the parking lot. The man in the semi was gone, and the light on the tavern roof was out. There was nothing to see but darkness.

“Come to me now,” Shockey said. “I’ll give you directions to my apartment. You got a pen or something?”

“No, but I can remember,” she said. “If I get lost, I’ll call again.”

“Okay. You know how to get to I-94?”

“I think so.”

“Good.” He gave her directions to his apartment in Ann Arbor and made her repeat them back three times. “South State Street. It’s the blue apartment building just before the sports museum. You can’t miss it. Building two, apartment two upstairs. I’ll have the balcony light on.”

Margi shut her eyes again. Her chest hurt, and it was hard to breathe.

“Repeat the directions back to me again,” Shockey said.

She did, surprised that she remembered any of it.

“You’re going to come, right?” he asked.

“Yes…”

“Promise me, Margi,” he said. “Promise me right now you’ll get in that car and start this way. Don’t you go back to that farm for nothing. You hear me? Nothing.”

“I promise, Detective.”

“Okay,” he said. “You’re doing the right thing. I’m proud of you.”

She was quiet. A police detective. Proud of her.

“Go,” Shockey said. “I’ll see you in about a half-hour. Okay?”

“Okay.”

She hung up the phone and pushed open the door to the phone booth. She heard the rumble of another semi pulling in, and a second later, its headlights washed over her. She froze in the glare.

The squeal of brakes, the hard thud of a door. She brought up a hand to shield her eyes as a fuzzy silhouette got out of the passenger side of the truck and advanced toward her. She recognized his walk immediately.

“Who did you call, bitch?”

Arelease of air brakes and the growl of an engine. The semi’s headlights moved away, and for a second, Margi couldn’t see anything in the engulfing darkness. The truck rumbled down the highway, leaving them alone.

A bolt of lightning split the blackness, illuminating Brandt’s face for a second.

“Who did you call?” he asked again.

“No one.”

He was just standing there staring at her, water dripping down his face. She focused on his fists, clenching and unclenching. Why wasn’t he screaming at her? Why wasn’t he already hitting her?

“Give me the keys,” he said calmly.

She dug the keys from her jacket and held them out to him. He took them and pointed to the Gremlin.

“Get in the car,” he said.

The puddles were deep, the rain on her face like icy pin pricks. Brandt followed her around to the passenger side, pushed her inside, and slammed the door.

When he got in on his side, the car filled up with the stink of whiskey. She closed her eyes as shivers rattled through her bones.

“I’m going to ask you one more time. Who the fuck did you call?”

“No one,” she whispered.

He grabbed her by the hair and jerked her head to his. His other hand pinched her cheeks. He leaned close. In a flash of lightning, his eyes were filmed with that same sick look he got when he talked about Jean.

“I… I called that cop,” she said. “I wanted-”

“You did what?”

“I called him to warn him,” she said. “I was trying to keep you from doing something stupid, Owen! I was trying to save you. Don’t you understand that?”

He smacked her. Her head hit the window, and for a second, she couldn’t see anything except a spin of darkness. Then he jerked her back to him.