The Lost

by Jack Ketchum

  His hair was cut short and neatly parted on the right.

  Without the boots and what Tim now knew was inside the boots he was shockingly small.

  A little guy in a suit. How could he be capable of all this death?

  The district attorney was taking no chances. He’d given both Tim and Jennifer immunity in exchange for their testimony and was trying Ray first on Steiner/Hanlon, then late next month on the seven counts of murder, five counts of kidnapping and three counts of assault with a deadly weapon for his August killing spree. Outside the courtroom the November wind howled. Snow would be coming early this year. Inside the courtroom it was warm and quiet but for the shuffling of papers on the desks of the attorneys, the occasional cleared throat and the shuffling of feet.

  The judge read the jury’s verdict.

  Guilty on two counts of murder.

  Ray smiled and shrugged as they led him out. Like to him it was no big deal.

  Not once, not even when he was testifying against him, had Ray even looked at Tim. It was like Tim didn’t matter, finally. He wasn’t there. Even as Tim ratted him out on the stand. He didn’t look at him now either. Though he must have known he’d be there.

  Tim stood, his father beside him and saw Lieutenant Schilling rise a few rows back. Schilling and another, shorter and thinner man with dark circles under his eyes were helping a heavyset woman to her feet. The woman looked stricken, not relieved. Though he knew this to be Elise Hanlon’s mother. He glanced quickly away from her so as not to meet her eyes.

  He noticed that once again Ray’s father was not in attendance.

  He and his own father made their way out among the others amid murmured voices and he kept his head down staring at the trousers and shoes ahead of him because he knew that they were talking about him, some of these people and so did his father. His father had never accused him of anything nor had his mother, they had stood by him throughout. But the way they looked at him accused him. His and Jennifer’s deal for immunity did not allow him immunity from that.

  He would have to get out of there soon, out of the house and out of town. Go somewhere on his own and do something with his life.

  The question was what.

  He was trained for nothing.

  He was alone.

  Jennifer wouldn’t speak to him. He didn’t know if she blamed him because Mr. Griffith was dead or if she was just too busy taking care of Mrs. Griffith, paralyzed from the waist down the moment Ray’s bullet nicked her spine. Or maybe Tim just reminded her of Ray and she didn’t want to be reminded of Ray. She wouldn’t explain. But the reason didn’t matter much in the long run anyway. It wasn’t going to change. Their speaking days were over. She’d been very clear about that.

  So Tim was alone.

  That was what he had to show for all his years with Ray.

  That was the price he was paying for a moment’s protection from a bully in a schoolyard.

  For keeping his mouth shut about those girls.

  There was nothing to hold him here.

  Maybe San Francisco, he thought. Tune in. Turn on. Drop out.

  Maybe the Haight. The Summer of Flowers had come and gone but maybe there was still a scene there. He didn’t know.

  He walked out into the parking lot with his silent father and buttoned his jacket against the gusting wind.

  On December 9 in the town of Independence, California, at four o’clock P.M., Charles Milles Manson, aka Jesus Christ, a thirty-five-year-old transient self-described musician five feet six inches tall was charged with the murders of Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Voytek Frykowski, Steven Earl Parent and Rosemary and Leno LaBianca.

  Ray heard about it in his cell.

  Christmas was only two weeks away when Jennifer took the stand to talk about that August night.

  Her first day on the stand was hard because even though she’d gone through everything with the prosecutor Mr. Rothert and before that with his assistants it was still hard to talk about parts of it. Talking about it she kept seeing it. It wasn’t just words. It was Elizabeth Wellman’s butchered body lying at her feet. It was Kenneth Wellman tying her to the chair. It was Ray with the rifle at her house and Mr. and Mrs. Griffith shot right in front of her. The words flattened these images so that they were more like pictures on a screen than actual events but didn’t erase them, they were crystal clear on the screen and sometimes wouldn’t flatten at all and she’d feel the fear as fresh and present as though it were happening in real time all over again.

  So the first day was hard. But the second day was harder.

  It was like Ray’s attorney Patrick Farley was trying to make it her fault.

  “You were in love with Raymond Pye, weren’t you?”

  “Once, yes.”

  “But not that night.”

  “Not that night.”

  “Because you were angry with him over the ring.”

  “That was part of it. It was a lot of things.”

  “And he almost hit you out there in the parking lot, didn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “And his mother came to your rescue.”

  “Yes.”

  “And his mother Ray subsequently shot.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you were angry with him because he was cheating on you, is that right? With Sally Richmond.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who Ray also subsequently shot. Were you angry over Katherine Wallace too?”

  “Not at that time, no.”

  “But you were once.”

  “Not really. A little. Once.”

  “Seems your anger has had its consequences, Ms. Fitch.”

  “Objection!”

  “Sustained.”

  And then later, standing behind his desk, rattling his papers.

  “Would you say you loved the Griffiths?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did Ray know about that? Did he know you loved them?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. I guess so. I guess he did.”

  “But he shot them anyway.”

  “Yes.”

  “Shot them right in front of you.”

  “Yes.”

  “To get back at you, would you say?”

  “Objection. Witness cannot know the defendant’s state of mind, your honor.”

  “Sustained.”

  And still later.

  “This affair you had with Tim Bess . . .”

  “It wasn’t an affair. We just slept together. It was only that one time.”

  “All right, just the one time. But Ray found out about that, didn’t he.”

  “Yes.”

  “And Tim was Ray’s best friend.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Excuse me?”

  “Yes. Tim was Ray’s best friend.”

  “Why did you sleep with Ray’s best Mend, Ms. Fitch? To get back at Ray?”

  “I guess.”

  “You were angry With him again, am I right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Tim was Ray’s best Mend. They’d been Mends for years, hadn’t they.”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you think Ray should have responded to that? To your sleeping with Tim? In your opinion.”

  “He should have understood, I think. I mean, he should have understood where I was coming from.”

  “He should have understood? And not been angry?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you were angry when he slept with Katherine Wallace, weren’t you?”

  “I wasn’t that angry. Not enough to kill somebody, Mr. Farley.”

  “But you’re not Raymond Pye, are you?”

  “Objection.”

  “No further questions for this witness, your honor.”

  She knew what Patrick Farley was doing. He was claiming diminished capacity. Insanity. Ray’s anger that night had driven him temporarily insane. Well, maybe it was true and maybe it wasn’t but she had nothing to do with it either way. It wasn’t fair to bla
me her, was it? Or Tim or anybody else. In front of a whole courtroom full of people he was blaming her. It was so unfair.

  She was only glad that the judge said that their part in the killings of Lisa Steiner and Elise Hanlon was inadmissable in this second trial. Prejudicial, was what he said. Robert had been furious. But she was glad.

  She didn’t need to have that come out again.

  She still had to live in this town. For a while at least.

  Mrs. Griffith didn’t know it yet but she was talking to people at a state clinic who said they thought they’d be able to take her once they had an opening. She felt sorry for Mrs. Griffith, having to go to a place like that, with strangers all around and everything. But she wasn’t spending the rest of her life taking care of a cripple either.

  She was reasonably good-looking. She was young. Men liked her.

  As soon as she got Mrs. Griffith into the clinic she was out of here.

  She was gone.

  Jim “Jumma” Cole didn’t think life was so damn bad at Rahway State Prison, no way near as bad as he heard. Some ways, shit, it was better than the street was. You didn’t have to put up with some honky pig busting up your action, some Newark PD muthafuck busting the brothers’ heads for no good reason except you’re black and you’re big and you give them the look. Didn’t have to watch the neighbors’ dirty kids starve. Didn’t have to smell the garbage rot all summer. Shit, a lot of ways the joint was better than that.

  Here’s what Jumma didn’t have.

  He didn’t have his ax, his conga. And he sure did miss that, he did miss his music. He didn’t have Loreen and he missed her big black ass in his hands but not much more than that. He sure didn’t miss the mouth on her. Bitch could skin you alive with the mouth on her. He didn’t have his Pontiac Firebird and he didn’t have much daylight and he didn’t have his threads and he didn’t have the street. And he didn’t have his scag. He missed his scag. Missed his crib. Even missed the party thing, sharing the spoon and the matches and the needles with the brothers, all comfy and communal-like.

  Okay. So here was what he did have.

  Plenty of other good shit to take up slack from the scag. Black beauties, bennies, ’ludes, dope, hash. Take you up or take you down, you name it. He missed the needle’s big long beautiful rush but he could live with that awhile till he found some source he trusted. He had three squares a day he didn’t have to work up a sweat for. Plenty of Camels. Had a color TV in the dayroom with a twenty-one-inch screen.

  He was one big mean nigger and he was in for murder two, so he had his respect and his safety in the yard and he had his bitch.

  He remembered the day the bitch comes struttin’ in. Little fella with an attitude. Face kinda fucked up but still pretty. Hoots and hollers from the brothers. Doesn’t seem to bother him one bit. Walks into his cell like he owns the place which Jumma finds out later on, he does. This bitch ain’t going nowhere. Seven fucking counts of murder, to run consecutively. Which is why the dumb bitch has got all the attitude. He’s heard that in the joint the big thing’s murder. You kill somebody you get left alone. Like you’re this muthafucking animal or something. What he don’t understand is that word gets around among the population exacdy who you kill. And in the bitch’s case it’s four little teenage girls and a pregnant lady, only two full-grown men one of them this old fuck, and dien the bitch’s fucking mother. The dumb crazy shit has killed his own fucking mother!

  Plus he’s this little guy. Real young meat. In pretty good shape for a white fella.

  Smooth skin. Kinda pretty.

  He’s prime.

  He hadn’t given Jumma any trouble for a real long time. Few good whuppings did him down to the bottom of his soul.

  He’d bled some at first.

  But his asshole was nice and wide now.

  So life wasn’t so bad in Rahway Prison. Only thing bothered him was, he wasn’t one hundred percent these days. Goddamn flu or something. Probably caught it on the yard, but the fucker wouldn’t go away. The doc’s antibiotics just weren’t making it. Jumma felt tired lot of the time, a little sick to the stomach, had the shits off and on, night sweats, swollen glands—both sides of his neck—the whole fucking thing. He could tell he was losing some weight too.

  The bitch said he was worried. Didn’t want to catch the flu.

  Fuck him. He caught it, he caught it.

  And then three days ago he gets these funny little bumps, notices them in the shower, bluish purple, one on his left thigh just above his knee, the other right next to his left nipple. Didn’t hurt or nothing but having them there, man, they bothered him. Marred his otherwise perfect beauty. The bitch hadn’t noticed the spots yet. The bitch was too busy riding his dick.

  The bitch was always faced in the other direction.

  He wondered if these funny little bumps of his had anything to do with the goddamn flu, popped a bennie and a tetracycline and figured he’d ask the doctor.

  It was late April of 1970 before Ed Anderson was able to get what he wanted for the house and begin the process of packing, going through the attic and basement and garage, through all the memorabilia of his years with Evelyn, a sometimes painful process but necessary because the house in Tom’s River was much smaller, with no basement and besides, these were the times for such activities, the sorting out of the important from the merely nostalgic, the strong true memories from the frailer ones.

  In the attic he found her high-school diploma and all her report cards stacked and bound with twine, read them through for what was probably the first time as far as he could remember and was unsurprised to find her a fine student, much better than he’d ever been, all A’s and B’ s, with not a C in sight. He read them and threw them away. In the same box he found her birth certificate and their marriage license and these he kept. He found her favorite bookmark, a two-inch-wide length of ribbon, crimson edged with gold. He resolved to use it himself from now on. Each time he opened a book he’d have a little glimpse of Evelyn.

  On the day before he was to leave, the first Thursday in May, he was around back in the garden planting it one last time. The new owners, he had a feeling, would appreciate the flowers. Zinnia, petunia, pansy, larkspur, Sweet William. He was slightly late with the pansies but that had happened before and they did just fine. He was down on his hands and knees in the rich-smelling earth beside the garage when he heard a car pull in and saw it was Charlie Schilling.

  Over here he said, and Schilling walked around to him and laughed and shook his head.

  “You’re relentless,” Schilling said.

  “Yeah. You should talk.”

  And it was a measure of the degree to which the man had healed the past few months that Schilling didn’t flinch at that one.

  “I got to wish you weren’t doing this, Ed.”

  “What? Gardening?”

  “Moving, asshole. What am I gonna do Happy Hour at Panik’s joint without your ugly mug in there?”

  “Just what you’re doing now. Coke with a wedge of lime.”

  He leaned into the dirt, patting it gently the way Evelyn had taught him.

  The cat whose name was Gimp now approached from behind the garage, the cat still listing to the right as the vet had said she probably always would from here on in and attempted to take a bite of larkspur.

  “Don’t even think it,” Anderson said and spritzed her lightly with the watering can.

  The cat raced for the safety of open lawn and sat back on her haunches and watched him.

  “Be honest with me. It’s Bill and June Richmond, right?”

  “Sure, partly it is. Town this size, I keep tripping over them. Bill especially. I’m never especially happy when I do. I don’t need the reminder. Neither does he. But you know what, Charlie?”

  “What?”

  He sat back and brushed off his hands on his khakis.

  “It’s not the Richmonds. Hell, it’s not even that the whole town knows about what happened. I think Sally really taught me not to
worry too much about that kind of thing. Fact is, I’m just a goddamn dinosaur. This town’s just growing too fast for me. Too many tourists every summer and too much building to accommodate them going on all year ’round. Tom’s River’s just a quiet little place. A little deep-sea fishing, not much else. The place I’ve got, Gimp won’t even have to worry about traffic. Will ya, babe? So I won’t have to worry about Gimp.”

  At the sound of her name the cat walked over stepping gingerly into the turned earth. Anderson reached over and picked her up and stroked her back and scratched her head and the thick ruff of fur at her neck and Schilling could hear the cat’s loud purr stir the open air even from where he was standing. The cat had quite a motor.

  “Me and Gimp, we’re a couple of survivors. But we like our peace and quiet. My cousin’s happy down the shore. I think I will be too. How about you, old buddy? You figure yourself for a survivor?”

  Schilling looked at him, then nodded.

  “Yeah, I think so, Ed. I think that I must be.”

  “Good,” he said. “You come visit us then. You’d like the fishing.”

  The cat’s eyes blinked and shut.

  Ed and Charlie talked awhile and Ed continued stroking.