The Fate of Katherine Carr

by Thomas H. Cook

  "Duckworth told the police the same story he told you," Arlo said.

  "Was he in the hospital when Katherine disappeared?" I asked.

  "Yeah, he was," Arlo answered. "So he couldn't have had anything to do with Katherine's disappearance."

  "Any idea who attacked him?"

  Arlo laughed. "Nobody attacked him."

  "Nobody? But he says he was beaten to a pulp."

  Arlo waved his hand. "Nobody laid a hand on Ronald Duckworth. He was traumatized, that's for sure. But there were no actual injuries. No cuts. No bruises."

  "So where did that story come from? It's pretty detailed."

  "Who knows? Probably some drugged-up hallucination."

  "But he seems to believe it," I pointed out. "Believe that it actually happened."

  Arlo glanced out into the town's peaceful streets. "Well, one thing's for sure: He never bothered anybody again." He laughed. "It was like he imagined his own ... punishment."

  "Punishment for what?" I asked.

  "For whatever he was planning to do that night," Arlo said.

  "Which was?"

  "Something unpleasant, that's for sure," Arlo said. "Because when he got picked up the next morning, he had a knife and masking tape with him. You don't carry that around after work unless you're headed for a very bad place."

  "Where was he picked up?" I asked.

  "He was in the alley behind O'Shea's." Arlo laughed grimly. "With all the other rats."

  The blue of evening had settled in by the time I took my stroll from the back of O'Shea's, where the alley began, toward Gilmore Street, where it ended. I didn't know the exact spot of the attack, but Duckworth had mentioned being thrown against a cement wall, so when I saw that wall, now nearly completely concealed by vines, I knew that I had found the actual location of where he claimed to have been assaulted.

  Duckworth had left O'Shea's at closing time, he'd said, so that it must have been around two in the morning when he'd made his way down the alley. He had been headed home, he'd told me, but the location of the attack made it clear that in fact he had turned north, the opposite of where he'd lived, toward the other end of Gilmore Street.

  Toward Katherine, I thought with an eerie chill, toward where she lived alone in a little house no more than a hundred yards away from where the attack had occurred. So close, so near to her, that by stepping backward and peering to the north, I could actually see the house Katherine had occupied at the time.

  What, I wondered, would Alice make of that?

  The Gladwell Hospice was a large Victorian house, painted dark green with white shutters. Potted plants lined the walkway that led from the street to the front door. Inside, there were more plants, along with a couple of idly strolling cats.

  "I'm here to see Alice Barrows," I told the man who sat in the building's small foyer. "She was admitted today."

  "Yes, Alice," the man said. "She's in Room 12."

  "She said she was allowed to go out," I added. "So I thought I'd take her to the park."

  "She is allowed to do whatever she likes," the man said quietly. "She'll need a wheelchair. There's one in her room."

  "Thanks."

  He smiled. "Enjoy the park."

  She had fallen asleep over her laptop when I arrived, her hairless pate glowing softly in the eerie blue light of its small screen. A notebook lay open beside her, and her wrinkled hand still held a red felt-tipped pen.

  "Alice," I said gently.

  She didn't move.

  "Alice."

  She stirred slightly, and with that stirring, released a small moan.

  I moved to her bedside and touched her shoulder. "It's George."

  She lifted her head, and squinted. Then a spark lit her eyes and she seemed to urge herself back to life. "Are we going to the river?" she asked.

  "Of course," I said. "But I have something to tell you first."

  With that I told her about going to the alley that led from O'Shea's to Gilmore Street, how Duckworth had clearly not turned toward his home the night he'd been attacked, how it seemed to me that he had been headed for Katherine's house, no doubt with evil intent, since the cops had found a knife and masking tape on him when he'd been picked up the next morning.

  It was an intriguing little sidebar I expected to add an element of interest, but Alice seemed hardly to take note of it.

  "I found out that sometimes they work in teams." With those words, she made a few taps on her keyboard, then turned the screen toward me. The heading read Evil Pairs.

  The photographs were arranged in malignant couples, with a trickle of blood luridly connecting one picture to another: Leopold and Loeb; the Moors Murderers, Hindley and Brady; the Hillside Stranglers, Bianchi and Buono; the Bunker Killers, Ng and Lake.

  "Sometimes it takes two people," Alice explained. "They make one personality. Alone, neither of them would do anything really bad. But together, they can do anything."

  This was nothing new, but neither did it seem relevant to anything in Katherine's story. Nor was it a subject I felt the inclination to pursue.

  "Okay, let's go to the river," I said. I drew a flashlight from my jacket pocket. "I brought this so we could read."

  We were in my car only a few minutes later, Alice a tiny figure on the passenger side. The cool of evening had settled over Winthrop, and since she was easily chilled, she'd bundled up in a heavy turtleneck sweater and pulled a purple woolen cap down over her ears.

  At the river, I took her wheelchair from the backseat, brought it to the passenger side of the car, then lifted her from the seat and lowered her into the chair.

  "Okay?" I asked.

  She shifted about a little, then, once settled, peered down Main Street.

  "Katherine would have come down that way." I pointed toward Gilmore.

  Alice looked in the direction I indicated, but said nothing.

  "And there's the grotto," I added, now pointing in the opposite direction, to where it rested near the river.

  "Let's go there," Alice said.

  I pushed her forward, along the winding sidewalk that led to the grotto. On the way, we passed a large family, all of whom stared at her as she passed, a curiosity Alice pretended not to notice.

  "It's better not to stare back," she said when we reached the grotto. "It makes them feel strange." She looked out toward the river, and I expected her to say something about Katherine's story, but instead she asked, "What did Teddy look like? There's a picture on the Internet. But it's in black and white, so I don't know the color of his hair or—"

  "He was blond," I said, hoping to end the discussion there.

  "How tall was he?"

  "A little over four feet."

  "What did he weigh?"

  "Seventy pounds." I shook my head. "Alice, I really don't want to..."

  "Did he like to read?" Alice asked.

  "He was dyslexic, so it was hard for him to read. But he liked to be read to." I looked out over the river into which some forever-unknown man had sunk the body of my little boy. "And he liked to play ball. He played in the Little League."

  Alice released a slow breath, and seemed to feel that some secret goal had been reached. "You can read to me now," she said.

  NOW

  The Chief releases a labored breath. "All right, let us continue."

  Maldrow smiles quietly. Years have passed since they first met, but he has no trouble remembering the dreary town where the Chief found him, the muddy street he'd seemed to drift across, drift weightlessly through a pelting rain to where Maldrow leaned against a wooden post. As if no time at all had passed, he heard again the Chief's first words to him: "Sorry about your little girl."

  Maldrow hears the spatter of rain on the muddy streets, then feels the warm fire inside the saloon where the Chief later led him, hears again the old man's quiet voice: Do you recognize this? A little gold cross glows from the Chief's pale palm. He didn't get away with it The pale fingers curl back around the cross. So many like her.
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  Now Maldrow sees Sasha led into the thickening undergrowth, yanked across a small bridge and into a makeshift shed where she sits, terrified, in a rusty metal chair. Then he is with Yenna in the aftermath, Yenna wrapped in her dark shawl, deep green eyes peering toward the indifferent wood, across the icy stream, to the tar-roofed shed. After Yenna, the others come to him in a riot of grief-stricken faces: mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, husbands and wives, eyes locked in frantic search of the unknown man who arrived in an instant, stayed but an instant, yet never really left.

  Then a world of malignant beings crowds his mind. He sees Countess Bäthory with her exquisite tortures, the poisons of Marie de Brinvilliers. He sees Kürten primly dressed for a stroll through Düsseldorf, Vladimir lonosyan selecting just the right cobbler's bodkin for his evening out. How long have these been his sole companions? Gein and Haarmann and Haigh stand briefly before him, then vanish, leaving him with nothing but the cold vision of their bloody acts, the broken lives they left behind. He has shared every meal with them, every moment of enforced leisure. They trail behind him in a leering throng, rippers and night stalkers. Their signs crowd the night sky with tridents and zodiacs. Their scrawled notes are his literature, words written in blood or pieced together crudely from magazine cutouts. For him, Bach is the final gurgling of a strangled child, Renoir what murderers splatter on mirrors, walls, and doors.

  The Chief sees the horror show that plays continually in Maldrow's mind. "We must finish with Katherine," he says.

  Maldrow sees Yenna disappearing into the darkened alleyway where Stanovich waits in an even-darker corner, waits for she who had been chosen, and was well prepared to face her fate. Now he thinks of Katherine: how she is made of the same stark fabric. He recalls the way she'd approached the blood-splattered apron, known with a terrible exactitude the nature of the man, all the women who'd lie whimpering on their backs, a man towering over them in his muddy boots. Nothing but death would stop her.

  "Do you want Katherine to live forever?" the Chief asks pointedly.

  Maldrow lowers his head before what he knows is inevitable now.

  "Then you must carry out the plan."

  I glanced up and saw the look in Alice's eyes, as if she were watching a dark scenario unfold within her mind.

  "Do you want to talk about this section?" I asked.

  She shook her head. "No, just read the next one."

  THEN

  Maldrow got out of the car and stared about with a wistfulness that seemed mournful, like a soldier peering toward the beach he is about to storm, taking his last look at the gently swaying palms, the tumbling surf, the circling birds.

  "This is what I wanted to show you," he said.

  It was a tiny, nondescript house, on a dirt road that ran off Route 34, where the old slaughterhouse had once stood and which still gave off a wave of intense suffering, dazed creatures going to their doom, though the terrible squealing that had once rung through the adjoining fields was now silent.

  "This is where he lives," Maldrow said.

  The house itself was covered in aluminum siding and had a roof in need of repair, a house which, despite the bright morning sun, gave off a terrible gloom. A badly cracked cement walkway led through a weedy yard to a small porch. On the porch, an empty swing rocked slowly, as if in response to a ghostly push. The windows of the house were dark and unlighted, and the adjoining dirt driveway was empty.

  Maldrow stepped toward the house, then looked back when I didn't follow him.

  "We're going in?" I asked.

  "Yes," Maldrow said. "I want you to see his bed and his toilet, how physical he is."

  With that, he turned and headed for the house, walking in full view, at a slow pace, utterly indifferent to the old man who rocked on the porch of the neighboring house or the teenage boy who worked on his car in the driveway next door. Neither of them glanced toward us as we made our way toward the door.

  At the threshold of the house, I stopped suddenly. "Do I have to do this?"

  I was trembling now, fear at once ice and fire, a deeper terror than the thing itself, the terror of a terror yet to come.

  "It's required of you," Maldrow said.

  With no further word he opened the door and stepped aside, so that I was the first to enter the cramped living room, feel the stenchlike aura of the place, the corruption of its air.

  "Through here," Maldrow said.

  I followed him down a narrow corridor, where we stopped at a closed door.

  "He sleeps in this room," Maldrow said. He opened the door and stepped away, leaving me to face the room's grim details alone: a mattress on the floor, its bedding spilled over the edge; a single pillow, folded in the middle and squeezed together, as if by invisible thighs. There were scores of photographs strewn about the bed, ripped from magazines: women tied to beds, strapped to posts, hung from ropes, women cut and bleeding from the wounds in their arms and legs.

  For a moment, I labored to imagine the man sprawled across the disordered mattress, his hairy legs wound in the bedding, dirty feet protruding from the sheets, but hard as I tried to envision him, I saw only the empty bed, the gloomy light. And so I finally turned and walked back into the living room, where Maldrow awaited me.

  "We can go now," Maldrow said.

  He turned and led me toward the door, where I saw a long white apron that was covered in the pinkish stain of washed-out blood hanging from a wooden peg.

  I felt all my courage drain away, and with it, my knees buckled and I swooned, staggering as I swooned, so that I would have collapsed onto the floor had not Maldrow reached for me and pulled me into his arms.

  "Enough," he said. "For now."

  I stopped and looked up from the manuscript.

  The light in Alice's eyes faded briefly, then brightened, like a candle briefly snuffed, then relighted. "Why is Maldrow doing this to her?" she asked.

  "Doing what?" I asked.

  "Putting Katherine through these steps. Making her go places, relive things."

  "I don't know," I answered.

  Alice remained silent for a moment, then said, "Katherine is going to die soon, and she knows it."

  "But she couldn't have known that, could she?"

  "Maybe not," Alice said. "At least, not the way I know I'm going to."

  She had said this matter-of-factly, but I fled the cold reality of it by glancing away from her out toward the river, a gesture Alice clearly saw, but chose to avoid.

  "We can go now," she said. "It's getting dark and cold."

  Back in her bed, Alice tried to retrieve her laptop, but it was too heavy. I took it from her shaky hands and put it on her lap.

  "Thanks, George. I'd like the pages, please." I gave them to her, then watched as she tapped at the keyboard.

  "Countess Báthory was a niece of the King of Poland," she said after a moment, holding her gaze firmly to the screen. "She was born in 1560."

  From there she went on to give the other details that shone from the screen, how the Countess had married at fifteen, a man who was often absent, and in whose absence, the Countess's behavior became more and more erratic. Eventually she'd taken up the practice of torturing servant girls for sport, she told me, and this inevitably had ended in murder.

  She tapped in another name, waited briefly, still careful not to look at me.

  "Marie de Brinvilliers was a poisoner," she said after a moment. "She murdered invalids, along with a few relatives and friends."

  From there, she proceeded down the list of the other names we'd just read about in Katherine's story: Vladimir Ionosyan, Carl Panzram and Peter Kürten, all serial murderers, as were Fritz Haarmann, John Haigh, and Ed Gein.

  When she'd finished with the last of these, she looked up from the screen, her eyelids drooping slightly, a clear sign that her strength was ebbing.

  "We'll start again tomorrow," she said.

  "Okay." I rose. "I'll be back tomorrow night."

  She smiled softly. "No
hurry, George," she said softly, as if to reassure me that she would still be here. "I have plenty of time."

  But I knew there wasn't plenty of time for Alice. There was no assurance that we would even be able to finish Katherine's story together. For as I also knew, the end often came suddenly to such children, each breath won against steadily building odds.

  It was perhaps the feeling that Alice's time had grown as abruptly short as the sections of Katherine's story I'd read to her that same night that sent me back to work rather than to bed that evening. I don't know exactly what I was looking for, nor even how to proceed, save that I recalled the one name, other than Yenna's, that had often been repeated: Stanovich.

  I had no idea if this particular character might later prove important, or even if he had the slightest significance to Katherine's story, but in some way—and this I did know—I felt that in returning to this research, I was at least continuing to fulfill my promise to Alice, playing a somber Archie Goodwin to her dying Nero Wolfe, two amateur sleuths following the trail of an elusive mystery.

  And so, for the next few minutes, I delved into the comfort of work, digging up whatever facts I could locate about Andrei Stanovich. The information I found was exactly what anyone would expect to find in any criminal biography. Stanovich had been a man in his mid-forties when, in the fall of 1956, he'd first begun to kill. By then he'd secured a job as a railway inspector, and so had no doubt been seen hundreds of times by passengers in trains and waiting rooms throughout the Ukraine. Over the years he'd killed again and again, but his job—the way he rode the rails from one village to the next—had provided a highly effective cover. Added to this, his features had been so ordinary and indistinct he'd seemed hidden within the folds of Everyman.

  As to Stanovich's crimes, they were hideous: his victims found with their eyes gouged out, tongues cut off, disemboweled, these outrages inflicted upon some of them—as later became apparent—while they were still alive.