Once she told him that Arthur was at her window looking in; another time she told him that Arthur was back in his room, crying. She swore she heard him. Each time Gerald scooped her off the floor of their bedroom and practically threw her back into her own bed. He smacked her hard on the buttocks and warned her not to come out of the room again until morning.
But she heard him go to Arthur’s room; she heard that. Why would he go there if he didn’t think she was telling the truth? He didn’t come back and tell her she was lying. He sauntered back to his own room and went back to sleep. She pulled the covers up to her ears to shut out the sound of Arthur whispering in the hallway.
Right now Irene had the covers up to her chin. She remained on her back, her arms at her sides, staring up into the darkness. Shirley could see her eyes illuminated by the weak light that spilled in from the hallway. After a few minutes, she turned; she could feel Shirley staring at her.
“Why don’t you go to sleep?”
“I’m not tired now,” Shirley said.
“You have to be tired now. Look at Donna,” Irene said. Tami had curled herself into a fetal position and was sucking her thumb. Her eyelids were shut like curtains. “She’s being a good girl. Why can’t you?”
“I’m good.”
“Then go to sleep,” Irene said as she turned her back to her. Shirley stared at her a moment and then looked at Tami.
Without any warning, Shirley leaned over and took Tami’s right earlobe between her teeth, biting down hard and fast. Tami screamed and Irene spun around.
But Shirley had her eyes closed and was lying back on the pillow. She pretended to be just as shocked by Tami’s outburst.
“What is it?” Irene asked.
“Maybe she had a bad dream,” Shirley put in quickly.
Tami rubbed her ear but said nothing.
“Get on the other side of me,” Irene commanded. Tami didn’t move. “I said get on this side,” she repeated. Shirley nudged her hard and Tami fell off the side of the bed. Shirley burst into laughter and Irene sat up. “Donna!” she shouted.
Tami got up slowly and walked around the bed, eyeing the doorway as she did so. Somewhere out there her mother waited, though her mother’s scream clearly indicating that something terrible had happened to her. Tami could do nothing to help her. Thinking only tormented her. All she could picture was the gleaming blade of Shirley’s cleaver as it fell inches from her soft hand.
Tami crawled into the bed as Irene lifted the blanket for her. Irene enfolded her under her left arm, clasping her so close she felt suffocated. Irene’s body was hard and bony. Tami sensed none of her mother’s softness or pleasing scent. Irene smelled like something stale and rancid, and Tami felt trapped against her. She was afraid to move a muscle.
Shirley saw the way Irene had embraced Tami. She stared for a while, vaguely recalling a time when Irene had held her like that. Jealousy began to swell.
“She’s a crybaby,” she said.
“Shh,” Irene said. “You’ll wake Arthur.”
Tami opened her eyes. Arthur? Was he in the house? She pressed her hands against her face protectively and waited.
“Sooey-face,” Shirley whispered.
The house creaked ominously and shadows slid down the walls. If her mother couldn’t help her and her father wasn’t here to help her, who would? Suddenly she remembered when her father explained to her what it meant to pray.
“It’s all right to ask God for things,” he told her, “as long as they’re not bad things. But you can’t always ask for things only for yourself. That’s selfish and it’s not fair.”
“Will God give things to you?”
“If they’re good things and you’ve been good.”
Her mother had told her something similar, but Tami had never really experimented before.
Now she struggled to remember what her father had said about God not liking people who ask for things only for themselves.
She didn’t know exactly how to phrase the prayer, so she closed her eyes and thought.
“Help Mommy.” She mouthed the words. “If you help Mommy, Mommy can help me.”
She opened her eyes and waited. Never before in her life had Tami wanted to see the morning light as much.
12
Gerald was disappointed after he got into bed with the woman. Despite her show of aggressiveness and energy, she was now acting the way Irene did after Arthur’s death. There was no reaction, not even any resistance. He fondled and stroked her body. He brought his lips to her shoulders and neck, but she just lay there staring up into the darkness. Her eyes were unmoving. Even after he raised himself over her and straddled her, looking right into her face, her eyes did not blink.
As far as he was concerned, she was actually worse than Irene. At least Irene made little puppylike sounds; at least he knew she felt something, even though she didn’t share in the erotic pleasure. Making love to this woman was like making love to a warm corpse. It checked his excitement, and the rush of lust and desire that had come over him began to retreat.
This angered him. He realized that through her passivity, she would steal away the excitement and spoil the moment. It had been her resistance that had stirred him so. He couldn’t let this happen. He tried kissing and stroking her harder, hoping the increased activity would bring her around. It didn’t.
Nevertheless, he drove himself at her, not making love to her so much as he was making love to a fantasy. He pulled and turned her, molding her like clay. Her body was softer, fuller, and firmer than Irene’s was now. He used it to bring back the pitch of excitement he had felt before. She was no longer just a vulnerable woman entirely dependent on his mercy; she was truly his playmate, as malleable as one of Shirley’s dolls and conscripted doll-like friends.
Gerald sought much more from his sexual release than simple bodily pleasure. All the anger, all the depression, all the frustrations had built themselves to such heights in him that he was close to an explosion. He hoped it would pour out of him and leave his body uninfected by the poisons.
He thought he heard the woman groan. Her eyes were closed now and she was so limp in his hands he was sure she had passed completely into unconsciousness. Nevertheless, he was determined to drive her back into awareness. He imagined her waking with little cries of pleasure.
She never did as he drove on. Finally, after some time, he heard the sound of something crash to the floor in the basement. He couldn’t imagine what it was. He knew that everyone was upstairs; he listened keenly. The silence that followed was suspicious.
He pulled himself together, slipped from the bed, and went to the doorway to listen. There was nothing coming from Irene’s room. The children and she were still in bed. The woman was lying naked in the position he left her, the covers pooled around her ankles. He moved down the hallway and listened again at the top of the stairs. Still not satisfied, he lumbered down the stairs, turned on the light below, and went to the basement door.
At the bottom of the staircase, he squinted and studied the playroom, an uncomfortable feeling washing over him. He saw and heard nothing, but he was a man who had come to trust his instincts as much if not more than he trusted his five senses. Sometimes, in the fields or in the woods, his sixth sense would stir to life and he’d know that some wild animal roamed there, an animal that hid itself from his eyes and ears. Usually, if he studied the landscape long enough, he would spot a bobcat staring at him from behind some tree.
He felt the same way now. He turned about slowly and studied every corner, every cranny of the basement. Nothing moved; nothing looked touched or out of place. Yet there was something…something. He snapped off the playroom light and walked to the Bad Box.
For a few moments he stood there thinking about the way he had wrapped Arthur’s coffin in his blanket and lowered him into the earth. He couldn’t forget how holy, how cleansed he felt to rebury his son, near Irene, near the family. Away from the old man. So different from the way Marlene and Don
na had been dispatched. He’d used the well in their cases, dumping a layer of dirt over each to hide their bodies. The well used to be fifty feet deep. Now it was about half that. The man there now would require another five feet of earth or so. A morbid thought swept over him. As things were going, the entire well would eventually be filled in. A glint of humor appeared in his eyes.
Gerald pressed the palms of his hands against his cheekbones and pushed so hard his arms began to ache. He couldn’t stand the images; he had to get them out of his mind. Finally he started slowly back upstairs. He paused to listen again and then put the light out and closed the basement door. When he went back up to the bedrooms, he found Irene standing in their doorway.
“What are you doing?” she asked in a loud whisper.
“I thought I heard a noise downstairs.”
“I thought you had put her in the Bad Box.”
He would have laughed, but that idea had passed through his mind when he had first found her trying to escape. Then her violent resistance excited him and he thought more about chaining her to the bed and making use of her greater helplessness.
“I just checked something. Go back to sleep.”
“The children fell asleep again.”
“Good.”
“You’re going to sleep in their bed, aren’t you?” she asked. Had she heard him before? he wondered.
“Of course.” She didn’t move so he started for Shirley’s bedroom. “Go to sleep,” he commanded. She nodded and went back to bed. He looked at the other bedroom and thought about the woman. The moment had been broken; his climb toward a much needed breath of fresher air had been interrupted just as he’d been soaring.
There’s always tomorrow, he thought. And tomorrow and tomorrow. The sense of power and control encouraged him. He went to Shirley’s bed and slipped under the covers. For a few minutes, he lay there listening.
The house was too quiet. It was as though it were holding its breath. His blood and this house pulsed in unison. Built by his great-grandfather, the structure had been modified by subsequent generations. All the repairs, all the maintenance had been conducted by him, making the house as much a part of who and what he was as any child or wife could be. Indeed, he had always thought of it as a living thing. The ghosts of his family lived within its walls. Every creak at night was the moan of some ancestor’s spirit. He had come to believe that nothing bad could happen to him if he never strayed too far. The house itself wouldn’t permit it.
Something wasn’t quite right. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he was confident he eventually would. That confidence permitted him to close his eyes and seek sleep. After all, Irene and the children were secure in his bedroom. The woman could not attempt another escape, and the intruder was at the bottom of the well.
In the morning he would clean up the loose ends and, for a while at least, they would be safe and happy. He pictured Irene in bed with the two children beside her, her arms wrapped around both of them and both of them turned into her, seeking warmth and protection from her.
Poor Arthur, he thought. Toward the end he didn’t know where Irene was; he couldn’t even turn to her. He was so alone beside his darkening shadow. He must have known, Gerald thought; he didn’t offer any resistance, not even spontaneously, not even instinctively.
Arthur was grateful. Grateful Gerald had put an end to his life, gently, using nothing more than a pillow. It was like pinching out a weak flame. He doesn’t hate me, he assured himself. He listened to the more familiar sounds that seeped from the walls of the old house. Now they served as a lullaby, the sounds accompanying him as he cascaded back, falling through the bedlam of his conscious thoughts and seeking the quiet of a deep sleep.
Almost as soon as the rays of the morning sunlight slipped in between the curtains of the bedroom and splashed across his face, Chicky Ross pried open his eyes. He didn’t want to wake this early, but it was as if an alarm had gone off in his head. He pressed his eyelids together to force the return of sleep, but he failed. He wasn’t ready to admit it to himself, but he knew why.
Whenever he was on an unsolved case, the facts and the circumstances loitered around the corners of his mind, teasing him with their presence and refusing to let him rest. In the middle of a conversation with Maggie, his eyes would go glassy, taking on that faraway look. She usually knew just when she had lost him, but sometimes she would ignore it and talk on as though he was paying strict attention.
At the end of what had become her monologue, she would stop and ask, “Where are you now, Chicky?”
He’d swear he was listening. She knew he wasn’t, but she was too merciful to grill him about what she had just finished saying. That was his way; that was who he was, she thought. Toleration, she concluded, was the foundation for a successful marriage.
Chicky’s first conscious thoughts in the morning centered on the Oberman affair. Despite the early hour, he had to know if the young man had returned to his hotel. He stepped as quietly and as softly as he could, sliding out from under the blanket and tiptoeing out of the bedroom.
“Let me know if he’s there,” Maggie said just as he reached the doorway.
“Shit.”
She turned over in the bed. He shook his head and went to the phone in the kitchen. After dialing the hotel and getting the switchboard, he waited for the phone to ring in David Oberman’s room. It rang nearly ten times before he decided to hang up.
The evening had gone by and the man hadn’t returned. Chicky weighed the possibilities. David could have returned to his home to wait there. Or perhaps he had done away with his wife and then skipped town. Chicky stalked back to the bedroom and ran through his pants pockets until he found the slip of paper on which Oberman’s home number was scrawled. Then he strode back to the kitchen and dialed. He let the phone ring close to ten times again before hanging up.
The man isn’t home and he isn’t back at the hotel. Did he dare chance a call to the station? He might set off an alarm before he had confirmed the possibility that David had fled town. Krammer wouldn’t be there this early, he thought, and others would keep hushed until Chicky signaled trouble. Tina Sandow answered his call. He had forgotten that she was working the early morning shift. He and the forty-five-year-old woman didn’t get along ever since he found her in the back of Tug Cotter’s patrol car. Tug was married with four children, and she was married with two. Chicky never said anything about it, but just the fact that she knew he knew was enough for her to despise him.
“I’m checking in on a case,” he said in the most officious tone he could muster. “Missing person. Oberman. Any calls?”
“Not since I’ve been on duty.”
“Okay,” he said quickly. “Thanks.” If she knew the case, or knew how Krammer felt about him working on it, she’d tell the chief immediately. He thanked his lucky stars. He felt some responsibility to protect David until his worst fear was confirmed.
Maggie opened her eyes when he reentered the bedroom.
“Nothing,” he said.
“This is your day off, Chicky.”
“I know.”
“I was hoping we’d go shopping for a new couch.”
“I know.”
“But you’re not going to do that, are you?”
“Well, I do have to have work done on the car.”
“You’re not going to get work done on the car. You weren’t kidding last night. You’re going to cruise Willow Road, wherever the hell that is.”
He didn’t answer. He wrestled on his pants and went to the closet for a shirt. She sat up in bed and ran her fingers through her hair. He avoided looking at her. When he went into the bathroom, she got up, looked at the clock, and cursed. She headed for the kitchen.
“I can grab something on the road,” he called from the other room, but she ignored him and started to put on the coffee. “Listen,” he said, coming out, “I’m just going to make one pass down this road and see what I can find.”
“Naturally, you wi
ll see something the state police couldn’t see.”
“You can’t expect them to be as involved in this as I am.”
A crease formed between her usually serene eyes. “Are you the only policeman in New York State who is sufficiently involved with his cases this morning, Chicky?”
“You just don’t know,” he said. “I kept thinking about Debra and Joe. If Debra was missing like this and Joe went off looking for her and disappeared himself…the police would assume double-dealing. I want to give this guy a chance.”
“That’s dirty pool, Charles Sanford Ross.” For a moment they just looked at each other. Then she laughed. “At least you’ll have a good breakfast,” she said, reaching for the refrigerator door to get the eggs.
Afterward, when he started the car to leave, the exhaust pipe rattled so badly he thought it would fall off before he could leave the driveway. Even so, he never considered taking Maggie’s car. He was superstitious about these things. Nothing serious had ever happened to him since he owned this car; he and it had become part of one another. He couldn’t discard the old boy now and drive around in a comfortable, late model automobile. It just didn’t seem right; in a strange way, it also didn’t seem safe.
Feelings, first impressions, hunches always played a major role in his life. He recognized that there was nothing scientific about it, but he believed in a sixth sense just the same. For him there was some mystical value in experience. He had met his share of criminals, degenerates, and liars. Some people were better at hiding the truth, while others gave everything away. Sometimes they did it with an unguarded glint in their eyes; sometimes they did it through a tone in their voices or their choice of words. Even a seemingly inconsequential gesture could flag a well-schooled detective.
Chicky didn’t think of himself in terms of a super sleuth; he wasn’t a Philip Marlowe or even a Columbo, despite his habitual disheveled look. Whenever he pictured himself as others might see him, he imagined a plodder, a mechanic of sorts, someone who followed a standard set of procedures. There was nothing romantic or even that fascinating about his work most of the time. In fact, he was so nonchalant about what he did that he often had difficulty conjuring up any sense of danger from it.
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