A Fistful of Rain Read online

  “You come with me now,” he hissed into my ear. “Or I’ll blow you away.”

  The only coherent thought I had then was that I was going to die, probably horribly, and that it wasn’t fair because I wasn’t even supposed to be here, I was supposed to be in New York City, and if Van hadn’t handed me my walking papers I would be, and then I wouldn’t have to be raped and murdered on the steps of my own home.

  “Please don’t do this,” I said softly, and it didn’t sound pathetic to me, just sincere.

  His answer was to pull me away from my door and off my porch. He turned me, walked me down the path from my house to the street, between the big apple trees in the front yard, to the sidewalk. Every house was dark, and there was no motion but us and the trees that shivered in the falling rain.

  It seemed to me that I could probably scream for help once before he killed me, and that didn’t seem like a very good option at all.

  Cars were parked along the curb, neighbor vehicles, and he walked me across the street, past a beat-up Chevy to a big Ford truck. The truck had a hardtop over the bed, something to keep it closed and dry, and he told me to open it, and then he told me to climb inside.

  “Please don’t do this,” I said again. “You really don’t want to do this.”

  “You don’t know what I want,” he said. “You better just hope I don’t want all of it. Get in, all the way to the back, then turn around.”

  I had to go on hands and knees to get inside. The bed was lined with a hard black plastic, and the sound of the rain hitting the hardtop was loud. When I reached the far end I turned, watched as he moved his gun into a pocket, keeping his hand on the grip. He looked away from me, back across the street, as if checking on my house, and I could see he was trying to work something out, and I figured that was probably good for me, because if he already had a plan, I wasn’t going to have a chance at all. Not to say I had a chance to begin with, but to tell the truth, my fear had begun to ebb, as if it couldn’t keep up with the bizarreness of it all.

  I wondered if I’d really sobered up, or if I was still drunk.

  The man returned his attention to me, and when he spoke, the fear came back in a cascade.

  “Give me your clothes.”

  “They’re not your size,” I said, meekly.

  His sweatshirt stretched around the barrel of the gun as he thrust it farther in my direction. “You think I’m joking? You think this is some fucking joke, you split-ass bitch? Get out of your fucking clothes.”

  I just stared at him. I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

  “You want me to hurt you? You want me to hurt you and do it myself?”

  I shook my head. The muscles in my jaw were starting to tremble.

  “Do it. Now.”

  It took effort, and it took me finding a justification, it took me telling myself that this couldn’t be what I thought, that he wouldn’t do this here, not in the back of his truck parked two doors down from my own home, that there had to be something else he was after. Something more than his power and my humiliation.

  He wouldn’t do this here.

  Even so, my fingers copied my jaw the whole way, numb and clumsy as I fought my boots, my belt, my buttons and zippers. I struggled out of my clothes, and I thought he would leave me my underwear, but he wanted that, too. The hardtop trapped the cold, seemed to increase it, and it made me shiver.

  When I was naked, he reached in and took my clothes.

  “Lie down and don’t move,” he said, and then he slammed the gate on the truck.

  I heard the driver’s door open and close, felt the vibration run through my skin. The engine started, the smell of exhaust in the trapped space. We lurched into motion.

  I closed my eyes, and wished I was home.

  It was dark and still raining when the truck stopped and the engine died. I heard the driver’s door open again, heard the footsteps splashing around to the back of the vehicle, then the key scraping the lock. The gate came down.

  “Get dressed and get out,” the man said, and threw my clothes at me.

  Surprise didn’t stop me. I dressed, fast, not bothering to tie my boots, just getting covered and then sliding along the bed. I dropped off the gate, onto the street, looking around, and as soon as I was out, the engine started again. I could see the man behind the wheel as he pulled away, and he wasn’t looking back.

  It seemed like all of me was shaking, and for a moment, I was sure I would fall, that my legs wouldn’t hold me. I felt the rain on my face, and I searched the darkness, trying to find some sense of where I was.

  I was right where I’d started.

  CHAPTER 3

  My front door was unlocked, and I blew through it, slammed it shut behind me, throwing the locks and switching on the hall light. The alarm panel on the wall said that the system was in reset, and I stabbed at it, desperate to get it to arm, but it refused to change its message. My guitar case and duffel were both in the front hall, and my keys were on the table beside the door. I didn’t understand, and I didn’t try.

  The phone in the kitchen gave me a dial tone, and I called 911, and tried to be coherent. I said things like “gun,” and “naked,” and “truck.” The dispatcher told me someone was on the way, and told me to stay on the line, and I thought that was fine and dandy, because the phone was cordless, and that meant I could get a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the pantry and put some of the drink into me.

  That helped, but not much.

  The white cop’s name was Dunn and the Asian cop’s name was Watanabe, and they were the ones I spoke to, because they were the first to arrive, coming in two different cars and reaching my door within thirty seconds of each other. They were by no means the last, and within ten minutes of the call, I had seven officers of the Portland Police Department swarming in and around my house, moving throughout the neighborhood.

  Dunn sat me in the kitchen and asked me to tell him exactly what had happened, and I did, I told him all of it, as best as I could, as coherently as I could. When they’d arrived, both he and Watanabe had worn looks of earnest concern, even excitement.

  When I was finished, the looks were gone.

  “Were you hurt?”

  “No, not . . . not really. Scared out of my mind, but not . . . you know, not hurt.”

  “He didn’t assault you?” Watanabe asked.

  “No. He made me give him my clothes, but that was all.”

  “If we took you to the hospital, would you consent to a doctor running a rape kit?”

  “No, what? Why? He didn’t rape me, he didn’t touch me. He never touched me after he put me in his truck.”

  “He put you in his truck, he made you strip, he drove you around, and he took you back here?”

  “Yes, that’s what I’m saying, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  Dunn asked, “Can you describe the truck?”

  “It was a Ford, a big one.”

  “What color?”

  “Blue, maybe green? It was dark.”

  “You didn’t see the license?”

  “It was an Oregon plate, that’s all I know.”

  Dunn spoke on his radio to someone, telling them that they were looking for a big Ford truck, blue, maybe green. I didn’t hear the response he got.

  “And you say your things were inside when you got back?” Watanabe asked. “Is anything missing?”

  “No, not that I can tell. I haven’t had a chance to look.”

  “But it doesn’t look like anything’s missing?”

  “No, but I haven’t had a chance to look.”

  “I understand that.” He glanced around the kitchen. “It doesn’t look like there was a break-in.”

  “It happened outside!”

  Dunn and Watanabe nodded.

  “When was your last drink?” Dunn asked.

  “I had a drink, I had a drink when I was on the phone with the dispatcher person.”

  “Before that?”

  “I told you,” I said
, and I really did try not to sound shrill, but I was seriously starting to fray. “I’d just gotten home, I’d been on tour. I just got back from Australia.”

  “You were drinking on the flight?”

  “That was hours ago!”

  “How long have you been on tour, Miss Bracca?” Dunn asked.

  “A year, almost exactly.”

  “And this house has been empty all that time?”

  “No, I’ve been home a couple times, and I had my brother checking on the place.”

  “What’s his name?”

  I hesitated, then figured if my brother had done something so bad they knew who he was, they’d certainly already know his name.

  “Mikel,” I told them. “With a k and not a c and an h. But I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

  “We’re just trying to be thorough.”

  “My brother didn’t force me to strip in the back of a pickup truck!”

  “We’re not saying he did.”

  “You’re saying you think I’m making this whole thing up.”

  “There’s no physical evidence here, Miss Bracca,” Dunn said. “There’s nothing missing, you don’t appear to have been injured; in fact, you maintain you weren’t. We’ve got cars out in the neighborhood, they’re looking around, but all we’ve got right now is you, and frankly, it just doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

  “I’m not making this up,” I said, more to myself than anyone else.

  “You’re describing a kidnapping, that’s serious stuff. And then what looks like the start of a sexual assault. But it doesn’t track, it doesn’t execute.”

  I stared at the cops opposite me. “Why would I make this up?”

  “We’re not saying you’re making this up.”

  “There was a man with a gun, he made me take off my clothes—” But Watanabe interrupted me, holding up his hands, trying to soothe. “Miss Bracca, we’re taking a report, and we’ll put out a description for this guy, have a car stay in the area. But this doesn’t really sound like a stalker, or even a break-in. It sounds like maybe, just maybe, this was a guy thinking he had a mugging or something, and then he realized who you were, and he realized how far over his head he’d gotten.”

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “We certainly believe that you believe something happened,” Dunn said.

  “So that’s it?” I asked after a second.

  “We’ll file a report,” Dunn said, and from his tone I could tell he was moving into wrapping-up mode. “Keep an eye out, and there’ll be a patrol in the area. You should have some detectives calling you to follow up tomorrow.”

  “And that’s all?”

  “Miss Bracca, I understand your frustration. But there’s really no evidence of any crime having been committed.”

  I nodded, not because I agreed. It wasn’t enough to say that I’d been terrified and humiliated, and trying to convince either of them that it hadn’t been just some mugging gone wrong, that it had been a stalker, seemed suddenly like a very egotistical claim to make.

  And I was tired and out of cigarettes and still feeling a little hungover. The clock on the VCR was telling me it was four minutes to five in the morning. That just made it all seem even more surreal.

  They were on their feet, and I realized they’d already said good-bye. I got up and shook each of their hands at the door, and they gave me new smiles, not professional now, and they each told me it had been a pleasure to meet me.

  “Love the new song,” Watanabe said. “ ‘Queen of Swords,’ I just love that song.”

  “It’s a great tune,” Dunn added.

  I was too drained to be angry, or even annoyed. Cops come to my house to take a report, they turn it into a fan event.

  “Thanks,” I said, and smiled right back at them, the way I always do when the people I meet stop being people, and turn into fans. “Thanks a lot.”

  They left me alone, real happy to have met a rock star.

  CHAPTER 4

  For a minute after the cops pulled away, I just kept watching the street from the living room window. Rain was still falling lightly, my apple trees drooping from the weight of the water. Not much more to see beyond that. Silhouettes of parked cars in front of houses still sleeping, and a darkness that was heavy and wide. Irvington has few streetlamps.

  The house creaked, then went silent again. It was a new noise to me, and I had to think it through before deciding that it was nothing to be alarmed about. My home had been built in 1923 in what was called locally the Portland craft style, and which I supposed up in Seattle was referred to as the Seattle craft style. It was barely two stories, a portion of the attic having been converted into the master bedroom with a bath. There was another full bath on the ground floor, near the guest room, and then the kitchen and the living room, some pantry space. The basement had been finished when I purchased the place, and I’d left detailed instructions on how I wanted the space converted into a music room, but I didn’t know if the contractors had done as asked. I didn’t feel much like finding out.

  I’d closed on the house only two weeks before the tour had begun, and since then had been home only three times, the longest for a stretch of seventy hours back in July. We’d returned for a show out at the Gorge, about ninety miles east of Portland, one of those multiband, all-day affairs hosted by the local alternarock station. The gig had sucked, but those radio-hosted megashows always do—too many bands all vying for the limelight, and never a chance to get a decent sound check, so you never know what you’re going to be stepping into. When you play live and loud, there are monitors set up on the stage—essentially small speakers—positioned so the musicians can hear themselves. Kinda crucial.

  That day the monitor mix had been awful, and after the sixth song the jackass on the board still couldn’t get it right, and we had no idea how we were sounding, but each of us was pretty certain “awful” might come close. Van finally stormed off the stage after “Broken Nails,” giving the finger to everyone in the audience.

  The crowd had loved us anyway. They’d have loved a mechanical monkey clapping cymbals.

  But that had been almost four months ago, and between travel, setup, and the show, I’d been in my home only long enough to sleep and do laundry, and even that had been difficult, because the contractor and the electrician and the plumber all wanted to talk to me about the work I was having them do. I’d barely even seen my brother, spending most of my remaining time with Joan and Steven.

  Which was what made me remember that Steven was dead. Not remember, really; more, bring back the reality of it, solidify the fact. Claimed by that modern classic, complications brought about by cancer of the throat and mouth.

  I felt supersize guilt. I hadn’t talked to Joan since the day after he’d died, since I’d told her I wouldn’t make it to the funeral. I’d have to see her. I’d have to explain myself.

  I already knew that I wouldn’t be able to.

  The headache was still with me, though now I didn’t know if it was from the drunk, the lack of sleep, the pure terror of the truck ride, the frustration of the police, or all of the above.

  The house creaked again.

  Maybe it hadn’t been a big deal, maybe the cops were right, it was just a mugging gotten out of control, a criminal biting off more than he could chew, then not knowing what to do with the leftovers. A mistake, nothing more. Maybe the thought that I would be stalked at all was ludicrous. I wasn’t the one pouting and preening onstage, I wasn’t the public face of Tailhook. That was Van, always was, always would be. If anyone was looking to sniff a pair of panties, they’d go after hers, not mine.

  I didn’t want to be alone.

  I let the curtains drop back over the window and grabbed my coat off the bag still in the hall. It took me a minute to search the drawers in the kitchen before I located my car keys in the back of the knickknack drawer, along with my garage opener. I couldn’t remember where anything was, and that only made me feel all the m
ore disconnected with the space, all the more anxious to get out.

  The garage was off the side of the house, pushed back about twenty feet from the street, freestanding, and my Jeep was where I’d last left it. Mikel might have used it, but he had his own car, so I figured he’d left mine alone. I climbed in and tried the engine, and the battery was weak on the ignition, but it caught after a long crank. The tank read just below half. I backed down the drive, switched on wipers and lights, closed the garage door after me, and headed the twelve blocks to the Plaid Pantry on Broadway, telling myself I would get some cigarettes and that was all.

  The lot was illuminated and mostly empty, and I parked right out front. The clerk behind the counter looked up at me from his reading as I came inside, eyes on me all the way to the wall of refrigeration. I spotted the beer and pulled at the handle, but the door didn’t budge, locked.

  “Not until seven,” the clerk said.

  I glared back at him and he shrugged and resumed his reading, and I gave the door another protest tug, then got myself a can of Coke, instead. Portland goes dry from two-thirty until seven in the morning, no alcohol can be sold, and trying to convince the clerk to make an exception wouldn’t work, no matter who I was. Portland PD is serious about its alcohol enforcement, if not about its stalker laws.

  Paid for the soda and two packs of Spirits, and it took the clerk until he was handing me my change before he raised an eyebrow and asked if he knew me.

  “Where’d you go to high school?” I asked.

  “Grant. You go to Grant?”

  “No, I was over in Hawthorne.”

  “Huh.”

  “Oh, well,” I said, and went back out to my car. I opened one of the packs of smokes and lit a cigarette, then decided I still wasn’t going to go home, so I got out of the car again and went to the pay phone next to the entrance, trying to decide who I should call. Joan was pretty much straight out. Foster mother dispensation would get me a lot, but the guilt payback would be brutal, and I couldn’t do that to her.