Читать книгу Midnight Rain - Arlette Lees - Страница 4

PROLOGUE

SAGUARO CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION

FOR DELINQUENT GIRLS,

MOHAVE DESERT, CA

Penelope Hanover steps from her bungalow beyond the main complex and breathes in the chilly April air. Three miles distant, backlit by an overblown moon, the boulder-strewn Alamillo Escarpment, with its volcanic chimneys and sharp pinnacles, rolls for twenty miles toward the Nevada border.

Once used as a hideout by outlaws, more people have ventured into the Escarpment than have returned. An old wagon trail accommodates a car for a short distance, but it’s not recorded on any map. Treasure hunters unearth Spanish coins, arrowheads, pottery and broken wagon wheels… even the occasional human bone. For Penny, who’s always lived in the city, Saguaro is a great adventure.

Ignoring warnings about tarantulas and scorpions, Penny walks down the moon-silvered path beneath a sky of cartwheeling constellations. It’s a lovely night to spread her wings and enjoy her newfound freedom.

Penelope’s mother didn’t want her working with delinquents, especially since she’d been offered a respectable teaching position close to home. “Why bother with bad girls who will only end up in Tehachapi in a year or two?” she’d said, Tehachapi being the Correctional Institution for Women. But, getting out from beneath her mother’s oppressive thumb was the whole point of moving this far from home.

Last year she’d moved from the family home into her first apartment, but when she caught Mom inspecting her sheets for evidence of male guests, it was the last straw. She had nothing to hide, but she was tired of being scrutinized like a bug under glass.

Penny hears conversation coming from the bungalow of the girl from payable/receivables and wonders who she’s talking with at this hour. Her name is Hedy and although she’s brilliant with numbers, she’s cool and aloof, like she thinks she’s better than everyone else. Penny and the other teachers on the staff, who were once welcoming to the outsider, have given up trying to befriend her.

Curious as a cat she creeps to the open window. She stands on tiptoe and sees Hedy sitting at what appears to be a short wave radio, something Penny has only seen in news reels from the Great War. A man’s voice breaks through the incessant static… “Lebens born…Bundesrepublik Deuchland…Geheimer Staatspolizei…Blut…Reinheit…Mangel,” each word as hard and heavy as a wooden shoe. Hedy replies in the same guttural tongue.

When Hedy shifts in her chair, Penny drops to a crouch below the window sill. She hears the names of three young inmates who’d gone missing from Saguaro: Patty Gregson, Velma Becker, Sarah Levin. The man on the shortwave says: “Gut, gut, gut!”

Penny’s back cramps. She adjusts her position and a rock crunches beneath her heel. The conversation inside the room terminates abruptly. A chair scrapes across the floor and Penny’s heart jolts in her chest. She jumps to her feet and makes a reckless dash for her bungalow …crunch…crunch…crunch… locks herself inside and leans breathlessly against the closed door, her knees trembling so bad they barely support her weight. She listens until she’s certain she hasn’t been followed, then giggles nervously like a pickpocket who’s made a clean getaway.

She can’t believe she’s done such a stupid, childish thing. Her mother always said that eavesdroppers deserve what they hear, but Penny isn’t sure what she’d heard or what it means. Late into the night she lay awake wondering why the man on the other end of the short wave thinks there’s something gut…gut…gut…about three missing girls. Although they were different ages and attended different classes, it was assumed the girls ran off together. Sarah, a quiet studious girl, had been a student in Penny’s English class, but she didn’t know the other two, had never heard their names until they’d vanished.

Saguaro Correctional lies in the Mohave Desert in southeastern California and takes its name from the giant candelabra cacti that abound in the area. No high walls or barbed wire surround the premises because the desert itself is more effective than steel bars. Its daytime temperatures often exceed 120 degrees and drop to near-freezing at night. Even if an inmate escaped, where would they go? There’s no town for fifty miles in any direction…no food…no water… no gas…only rattlesnakes, coyotes and black, ragged-winged vultures.

A car would be the likely means of escape, but none had gone missing the night the girls vanished. There’s a lightly traveled highway on the far horizon that flies straight as an arrow across the state line, but even if they reached it, who’d pick up three girls in institutional uniforms, unless of course, they were up to no good?

The following morning Penny pins her lacy cameo broach to the collar of her white blouse and slips her garnet class ring on what will one day be her wedding ring finger. She goes straight to the library and pulls out the German/English dictionary, not ready to dismiss the events of the previous night without further investigation. The Great War is behind them, but in its wake is a xenophobic uneasiness that’s hard to shake.

Sleep has washed away the long complicated words she’s tried so hard to remember. As she runs a finger down a list of foreign words a shadow falls over her shoulder. Wouldn’t you know? It’s Hedy, the number-cruncher. She tries to appear composed, but there’s nothing she can do about the flush that colors her cheeks.

“So, you will be teaching German?” says Hedy. “Better you should stick with English, no?” Hedy has worked hard to lose her accent, to keep from pronouncing w’s like v’s, but her syntax gives her away.

Hedy smiles and walks away, but it’s not a friendly smile. Despite her embarrassment at being found out, Penny stubbornly flips through the pages of the book, recalling a few of the shorter words she’d heard.

Blut. Reinheit. Mangel.

Blood. Purity. Defect.

Taken out of context, the words are meaningless. Disappointed, she slaps the book shut, returns it to the shelf and goes upstairs to teach her English class.