2.
On the door frame of the bathroom was a switch that in the dark glowed like a squared-off fluorescent nipple. Turned on, the overhead light showed white walls and a cement-colored tile floor. A plate-glass mirror was attached above the sink by five plastic glass-clamps screwed into the wall. The sixth had fallen out. Its exposed screw hole looked like a motionless dark bug.
The washbowl was set in a synthetic-walnut top. Along this top, two glasses wrapped in cellophane carried the logo of Holiday Inn, and two small cakes of soap in the Holiday Inn wrappers were placed next to a small tent-shaped piece of yellow cardboard that read, "Welcome to Holiday Inn." There was also a notice that the liquor store would be open from 10 A.M. to 10 P.M. These pieces of paper were damp. The rounded surfaces of the washbowl acted like a centrifuge when you turned on the tap and threw water out of the sink onto the floor.
A strip of white paper was looped around the seat of the toilet bowl to certify that no one had sat there since the strip was placed in position. The toilet paper from the toilet-paper holder in the wall to the left of the toilet seat was soft and very absorbent, and would stick to the anus.
3.
"April," Gary said, "are you going to tear that strip off the toilet, or do I have to?" She glowered at him, and threw the paper at the wastebasket.
"The world makes you work," she said, "because of the rich. Every organization is rich, you see."
"Man, you sure can talk," said Gary. He walked over and gave her a kiss. She said, "Sissy. Sissy wouldn't like this." He walked away from her and took out a stick of pot. "I want some," said April. He laughed and held it out of her reach. "Give us a kiss," he said.
"I can't kiss you because of Sissy," she said. "Sissy has vampires."
Gary lit the stick, and took a puff. "A toke?" he asked. But when she came near, he held it out of her reach again.
Walking around the room she started taking off clothes. She felt as if they were congesting her. First her peasant blouse, then her Levi's. Walking around in her bra and her panties, she felt better.
"Did you ever get up at four in the morning, Gary, and make cookies?" He was lying on the bed and taking his time on the marijuana.
He just waved a hand. Then he sat up and burped. A look of pain came over his face, and he reached for the milk and took a swig.
"Hey, kid, let's unwind," he said. "I'll give you a massage and you give me one."
"The FBI," she said, "look in on houses to see if people are committing any crimes. They do it through the TV, you know." She lay back on the bed and the room was spinning. It was like a motel room she had gone to with a rich man. She had felt so alive that night because the plastic was so dead.
"Gary," she said, "give me a toke. I'm kind of messed up." He passed her the stick and she sucked in. She must have taken a trip because there was Gary kissing her face, waking her up. "Leave me alone," she cried. When he gave her another kiss, she said, "Gary, you and Nicole were meant for each other,"
"Nicole can get fucked."
She started to walk around, remembering the night in Hawaii when she was walking around and Bobby and Warren were massaging her and dancing with her, and then Gary was sort of giving her a massage, walking behind her, right behind her, his legs locked with hers as if they were in prison lockstep, and they walked around the room that way with his thumbs massaging her shoulders and the back of her neck. After a little while she began to feel very close to him and whispered, "It isn't very good for us to do that. Sissy wouldn't think that was very good." She decided to turn on her mind and listen to Paul McCartney. "Open the door and let them in," went the music in her head, and it got to be a carnival. Gary would smack her from behind, or finger her panties, then he would growl in her ear like a lion. She'd think of rich men in motels and knock off his hand with her elbow. "Fuck you," she said. "Let me go to bed."
"We're sleeping standing up," he replied.
They were a king and a queen and she began to get pleased at the thought of them sleeping each in a separate bed, but she knew she would go down into a sleep that gave a very heavy feeling, like pictures she had seen in the Bible of demons coming out of dark space to torment people on this planet and really tear us apart limb from limb. She could picture thousands in the sky coming down like eagles on mice.
All the while he was crawling on her, giving her a back massage.
When she closed her eyes, she saw a man flapping his arms. He had about eight limbs on each side and was flapping them, an evil force, bringing disease and everything else like Satan, the strongest, to earth.
Now she knew there was something wrong with the back massage. Gary had changed his personality. Gary, who was always so manly around her, more manly even than her father, had turned female and was crawling on her from behind with this back massage.
If she would turn around and look at his face, she would see a woman. He was feeling her in order to feel his own breasts, his own belly. April could feel a woman behind her. That turned her off cold, man.
"Let's go to sleep," she said. He didn't fight. He got into his bed and she got into hers, and he turned out the lights and she lay down in the dark and looked up at the ceiling. The spackled plaster had sparkles of glass embedded to look like a thousand stars. She couldn't stand the smell in the room and turned on the lights. On the wall just back of her was a landscape running all over the wallpaper of palm trees and the ruin of a stone arch, and on a hill, an old Italian house.
Long skinny people wearing capes were walking around that countryside. Gary said, "Turn off the light. I need my sleep."
She lay there some more, and he came over to her bed in the dark and tried to make her. She didn't know if he was serious or not. They just scuffled in the dark and he tore her underwear but she held the pieces together, and said, "No." She said, "Gary, I don't feel like doing this." She said, "Gary, you're losing your mind." She said "Sissy. Sissy. Sissy wouldn't think this is very good." At last he gave up and she lay there in the dark. The room started coming back to her. She saw the room very clearly like she was looking through a magnifying glass. "It's just one more night in a prison cell," she said to herself, "and I've been in prison all my life."
Out in the foyer, as they left, was a small rubber pad on the wall. It kept the knob of the door to 212 from denting the plaster. She didn't know why but it reminded her of the cord to the TV set that was all coiled up and tied neatly by a white plastic wire. In her head that was like a snake strangling another snake.
4.
Deep down in sleep, the first thing Colleen knew was that somebody was knocking lightly on her door. It left her startled. She didn't know what time it was until she got up and passed the kitchen clock and saw it was two in the morning and Max was still away. Then she turned on the porch light and looked out the little window that was set in the door. What she saw made her very scared.
Outside the window were five men, and the first of them was President Kanin of her Stake.
He put his arm around her shoulder, "Colleen," he said, "Max won't be home tonight."
She received a feeling that Max might never be home again.
"Is he dead?" she asked.
All five nodded.
She cried for a minute. It wasn't real to her.
At this point, one of the two men she didn't know, said to President Kanin, "Will she be okay with you?" When the answer was yes, these two strangers left. She realized they were plainclothes police men.
President Kanin helped her dial home. No one answered. She remembered her parents were camping and had left that morning, so she dialed Max's parents. The lady who answered said Mr. and Mrs. Jensen had also gone camping, but she would get in touch with them. President Kanin now asked if there was somebody else one could call and Colleen thought of her cousins who lived across the street from her parents in Clearfield. They were home and said they'd drive right over. That would take an hour and a half.
President Kanin now asked her if there was somebody who could stay with her until the cousins arrived. She said there was a girl in the Ward who lived two trailers down. They called and she came over. The three men left.
The girl stayed nearly two hours. They lay down beside each other on the bed and talked. Monica stayed asleep and Colleen was numb. She had no desire to see where they had taken Max's body.
She did not feel like saying "Let me go to him." She just sat and talked to her neighbor and it all seemed unreal. They would talk for a while, and then it would come back. It was a quarter to five when her relatives knocked on the door.
April had taken out her earring, and in the dark she was using it to stick herself. She had this dream that one day she was going to take an injection and end it all. She wanted to know what it felt like. So she kept trying the point of the earring post against her neck.
In the morning while it was still kind of dark, Gary moved over to her bed again, and tried one more time. Not that hard. Then he drank more milk. It certainly was love he needed more than sex, but April knew she could not let Sissy down cause Sissy still loved him.
By 6:30 when Monica awoke in the dawn, Colleen was saying to herself that she was still alive, and her baby was still alive, and the baby had to be nursed. It would be terrible to totally upset the baby.
So she went in and greeted Monica with "Good morning" and picked her up and loved her and gave her a bath and got her ready for the day.
When the light came through the window, April and Gary dressed and he drove her home. As he dropped her off, he said, "April, whatever last night was like, I want you to remember that you'll always be my friend and I'll always care about you."
She went in the house and nobody was there. Kathryne was off driving Mike to work and April started sweeping the floor. Right in the middle of it she said out loud, "I'll never get married, never."
Kathryne had stayed up all night waiting for Gary and April. By five, she must have fallen asleep, and then the alarm went off not long after. She had to take her son Mike up the Canyon every morning to where he worked for the Forest Service, a twenty-mile trip up twisting roads, and after a day and night of cigarette smoke, the fear in her lungs felt ready to whistle up a storm with every breath. Then she came back down the Canyon to her house, walked in the door and there was April enthroned like a zombie in the kitchen chair.
"Where in the hell have you been?" April did not answer. She just sat and stared. "Were you," Kathryne asked, "with that dirty crumb all night?" For all the easing of her fear, there was still no relief. She just felt sick. My God, April was in a trance. "Damn it," Kathryne shouted, "Did you stay with Gary all night?"
Suddenly April screamed. "Leave me alone! Can't you leave me alone? I know nothing." She ran in the bedroom. "You're nosey," she cried from the other side of the door.
"I can't do anything about it," Kathryne said to herself. She was just thankful the child was home. It was one more wall Kathryne was holding up with her life.
Chapter 15.
DEBBIE AND BEN.
Debbie was feeling a little off one day and Ben kept wanting to take her to the doctor. She was pregnant, after all. But there were eleven kids over from the Busy Bee Day-Care Center, and Debbie didn't have the time. Ben finally raised his voice a little. At which point she told him he bugged her. That was the worst fight they ever had.
They were proud that was the worst fight. They saw marriage as a constant goal of making each other happy. It was the opposite of that song, "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden." They kind of promised each other. They weren't going to be like other marriages.
Debbie was five feet tall and didn't weigh a lot more than a hundred pounds. Ben was six-five and weighed one hundred and ninety when they were married. Two years later, he weighed two-ninety, and looked big and fat and fine to Debbie. He was always going on a diet or splurging. He would lift barbells to try to keep in shape. He was always going on a diet or splurging. He would lift barbells to try to keep in shape.
For a young Mormon couple, they lived well. They had steaks in the freezer, and loved to go out and get pizzas. They learned to make even better pizzas at home. Ben would cover every square inch with meat and cheese. They also dressed well and they managed to meet a $I00 payment each month on their Pinto. Ben could have been the huge man who gets out of the little Pinto in the TV commercial.
They worked hard, however. Ben kept trying to get back to his courses in business management at BYU, but it took two to three jobs a day, plus Debbie managing the day-care center, in order to keep abreast with what they spent living happily with each other. So they hardly needed friends. They had their baby, Benjamin, who was their first priority, and they had each other. That was all of it. It was enough.
Debbie didn't know about matters outside the house. She knew a lot about plastic pants and disposable diapers and just about anything to do with children in the day-care center. She was terrific with kids and would rather mop her kitchen floor than read.
Since she didn't have a driving license, however, she couldn't go to the grocery store, the laundromat, or anywhere without Ben.
She also didn't know their bank accounts nor their debts. She lived in a world of two-year-olds and four-year-olds and took wonderful care of Ben and Benjamin, and their house, and they went out to eat five nights a week. Except when Ben was on a diet, that was their entertainment. They would share one of those deluxe eight-dollar pizzas.
Ben always had to carry two or three jobs. Before Benjamin was born, there was one stretch when Ben used to get up at four in the morning and drop Debbie at the day-care center at five. She would get play materials ready for the children who would start coming in at seven, and by then, Ben would have driven to Salt Lake where he managed a quick-food restaurant. That work began at 6 A.M., and he wouldn't get home until eight at night. Then he got another job where he didn't have to drop her off at the day-care center till 10 A.M., but had to go to Salt Lake for a stint that began at noon in a chain called Arctic Circle. (It later changed its name to Dandy Burgers.) He would get home at 2 A.M. In the winter it was rough when the roads were icy. Ben began to get a bad feeling about doing that forty-five-mile drive in each direction day and night.
Of course, he had other sources of income. He would work at BYU on the maintenance crew, plus whatever cleaning jobs he picked up. In turn, Debbie kept Benjamin with her at the Busy Bee and even had a crib in the office. Sundays, and whatever spare time Ben found, he would work as a home teacher for Bishop Christensen.
If a widow needed some electrical work or handyman plumbing, if her walk required shoveling, or her windows cleaned, why, Ben would do it. He must have checked on the needs of five or six such families a month.
When the position of Manager at the City Center Motel came open, Ben leaped to take it. The job paid a minimum of $150 a week plus an apartment, but the business might be there for him to build.
It was not a large new motel, and not on a highway, but at capacity, he could end up drawing as much as $600 a week. In addition, they could have all the time they wanted together.
Their clientele was mostly tourists, or parents coming up to visit their kids at BYU. Most people who stayed at the motel were quiet. If occasionally a couple looked like they weren't married, Debbie didn't exactly approve of it, and tried to give them a nice, noisy, dirty room.
The busiest time was at 9:00, getting the maids out to work.
They used to keep four chambermaids who each had a certain number of rooms to do in a given time. If it took six hours but should have taken two, they got paid for two. When they began, Ben and Debbie did a little such work together to learn how long it took.
While a lot of other motels paid girls by the hour, Ben did it by the room. Of course, if there was an extra mess, Ben made an adjustment.
He was always fair.
After a while, Debbie began to enjoy motel work more than she'd expected. There was lots of time together. Nothing much would happen after the morning rush until evening when the majority of people checked in. Ben began to talk of going back to school.
The work, however, was a little confining. They couldn't, for instance, leave the motel together unless they made arrangements in advance. That interfered with going out to a restaurant. It also rushed their dinner hour. Sometimes they had to eat a little too early.
They never felt any need to mix with other people, and time went by well. Ben got what social life he needed by going around town to drum up business. He wanted to get the name of the City Center Motel well known, so he worked out special arrangements with a few of the larger motels. He had an understanding where the clerk would receive a dollar for each overflow guest sent Ben's way.
City Center was always the first small motel to put out a NO VACANCY.
Nor were they ever afraid of being robbed. Once in a great while, they talked about what they would do if they had to face a gun, and Ben would shrug. He said that a little bit of money wasn't worth, you know, risking your life for. He would do what the robber asked.
2.
Craig Taylor heard about the service station murder on the radio next morning while driving to work. His first thought was that Gary had done it. Then he thought he heard the announcer say Jensen had been killed with a .32. That gave him hope. The Browning Automatic was a .22.
At work, Gary seemed normal. It wasn't that he was relaxed, but he had been on edge since the day he broke up with Nicole. This morning he was just normally on edge.
Later that morning, Spencer McGrath got a call from a lady who said she had an apartment in Provo for Gilmore. If he was going to take the place, he had better come by around noon and give a deposit. Spencer felt that if there was any chance left for the guy, it was to get out of Spanish Fork and learn to live by himself. So he told Gary to take the afternoon off. It was the sad truth, Spencer decided, that he was happier when Gary wasn't around.
Craig didn't have a chance to talk about anything until right before the lunch break. But as they were slowing down about a quarter to twelve, Gary said, "Want to pitch pennies?" With that, he pulled out a handful of change. It sat there in his palm, a mountain of change. After Gary left, Craig couldn't help but wonder if that was money from the service station murder.
Gary stopped at Val Conlin's to thank Rusty Christiansen. She had pretended to be the landlady with an apartment for Gary. Val took the opportunity to remind him that he had to get the money for the truck.
Gary went by Vern and Ida's to ask if he could take a shower. Ida and Vern, however, were just leaving the house, and Ida wanted to be able to lock up. It got complicated. Gary had a funny wild-eyed look, and so Vern suggested they lock the house and let Gary take his shower in the basement, which had a separate exit. Gary agreed but looked a little hurt that they were shutting doors on him.
Soon after lunch, Val Conlin got a call. Gary had lost the keys to the truck. He was down at the University Mall, and needed somebody to come over and take his stuff, since he couldn't lock the cab.
Val sent Rusty Christiansen. When she pulled up in the parking lot, Gary was sitting there grinning. "Got the boss's car?" he asked.
Rusty didn't like Gilmore's assumptions. She was driving her own blue Thunderbird and it wasn't all that new. Still Gilmore tried to make up for the bad start. He got almost too gallant opening car doors for her.