Bad Men

It was Karen Meyer who told her the young man’s name, after Maria

“You took a risk coming here, a risk to both of us.”

“No, I didn’t. He followed me for two days. He didn’t know I’d spotted him, and I gave him no indication that I knew. I behaved like an angel, and I know that’s what he told Edward.”

Karen relaxed a little.

“Who is he?” asked Maria

“His name is Willard. I don’t know anything more than that about him. He just looks pretty. There’s something wrong with him, though, real deep down. Look in his eyes and you’ll find yourself dying in a thousand different ways, with his hands on you right to the end. You see him coming for you again and you take off, you hear me? You take off and you never look back. We’ll come up with another way to get the stuff to you, but you see Willard coming up your garden path and he’s only going to be coming for one reason. He might drop by to check up on you again before then, so act naturally over the next few days. Don’t give them any cause to suspect.”

And that was what she had done, walking calmly, ignoring the presence of the man her husband might be pla

But she had never forgotten Willard, or the potential threat that her husband, even incarcerated, might pose to her. It could have been merely a coincidence, of course, that Willard was now up north, far from home, but she didn’t think so. No, they were here, and they were coming for her, for if they were in Portland, then they knew she was on the island, and soon they would arrive on it. As she walked away from Willard-not too fast, not too slow-she tried to retrace their steps, figuring out how they had found her. Only two people could have told.

Karen.

And her sister.

Maria

He was heading straight for her.

Willard didn’t talk much. He guessed that a lot of folks considered him dumb, seeing as how he had never been much for school, and maybe they thought he was afraid to open his mouth because people might laugh at what came out. But Willard wasn’t afraid of anyone, and those who might have felt the urge to laugh at him would quickly have suppressed it as soon as they looked in Willard’s eyes. Sure, Willard had trouble with reading, and he wasn’t so good with figures, but he had the instincts and intelligence of a natural hunter, combined with a curiosity about the nature of pain and hurt when applied to others.

He had sensed something from the woman when she had looked at him. It was more than the natural fear that he frequently recognized in women: the care they took not to get themselves trapped alone with a stranger; the grip with which they held on to their purses; the casual look around the smarter ones took as they prepared to open their car door in the parking lot. No, this was different, keener. Separated, thought Willard, with a husband who isn’t taking it too well; or maybe trying to avoid a boyfriend who doesn’t want to split from her, because then he’ll have to find someone else to beat on. Willard’s nostrils were almost twitching as she stood before him. He liked the scent of her. It aroused the predator in him.

He wasn’t so sure about her hair, though. She’d dyed it some dowdy color that didn’t suit her, streaking it more than altering it entirely. He couldn’t figure out why she’d do something like that, except he’d heard on TV that it was kind of the fashionable thing to do a few years ago. If so, this woman needed to get back on the fashion train, because it was surely leaving the station without her.

Willard watched her walk away. She had slim legs, and a nice ass beneath her coat. He could see the shape of it as she pulled the coat against herself. On another occasion, he might have followed her, learned more about her, just in case he decided to visit her at some point in the future, but Moloch had warned him after the incident with the woman in the bedroom. Willard hadn’t liked the way Moloch spoke to him. Neither had he appreciated the look that had passed between Moloch and Dexter afterward, like a principal and a teacher agreeing on the unspoken decision to expel an errant student from school.

Willard saw the woman try to hail a cab. She looked anxious. Strange, he thought. She walks to the movie theater from the mall, and now she suddenly has to get a cab? He rubbed his foot across the still-smoldering cigarette butt, crushing it into the sidewalk. And then there was that hair: it was shitty, almost as if it was designed to make her look more common than she was. There was a good-looking woman under there, but she seemed to be deliberately trying to hide her presence. A mental picture flashed: a woman standing beside Moloch at the state fair, the woman smiling uneasily. Willard tried setting the image of the woman with the dyed hair beside Moloch’s wife.

Shit.

Maria

“Commercial,” said Maria

The cabdriver glanced in the rearview as he got ready to pull out, and spotted Willard.

“Hey,” he said, “you know this guy?”

Maria

“A guy I once dated,” she said. “I really don’t want to talk to him. There’s ten bucks in it for you.’

“For an extra ten, I’ll date him myself,” said the cabdriver. He swung out and shot away from the curb. Maria

Willard stood on the curb, watching the cab head off toward Portland. Had the lights at the mall entrance gone red, then he might have caught up with them, but the cab had a free run to the main intersection. Willard took a deep breath and debated whether or not he should tell Moloch what had occurred. He might have been wrong about the woman, of course, but the look on her face as she had seen him approach through the back window of the cab told him that his suspicions were correct. It was her. She knew who he was, and if she knew that, then she must also know that they had come for her at last. The shock on her face told him one more thing: she didn’t know that Moloch was free, otherwise she wouldn’t have been trying to pass an idle evening with some shitty movie.