When I snapped out of the my man is so wonderful trance, I noticed that William was maneuvering his little sports car into a parking space that seemed too tight; but he made it. My head went from left to right. There were so many bright lights surrounding and defining everything. Then I saw the nightclubs. I looked up at the stunning marquis. SEXY GIRLS…..TOPLESS GIRLS…
What?
We were on Broadway and Broadway was reaching into William’s car. I went deep inside my head for a moment and struggled to keep my thoughts to myself. I was wondering—why are we in this part of town? I had noticed that once William made it across the Bay Bridge, he seemed to get really quiet again. I asked him if he was okay and he just nodded affirmatively.
“You ready?” William shot the words to me.
“Am I ready for what?”
I closed my eyes to see if I had captured William’s physical essence in my mind. Yes. His height was 5’8’’; just right for me at 5’3”. Golden brown and flawless skin. Perfect lips, a blend of ebony and burgundy on the rim and pale roses in the center. Straight teeth. Soft curly hair, no naps. Eyes set closer than most black folks and with an Asian slant. Long, straight lashes and he had an unusual but very dignified little bump on his nose, like Barbra Streisand—cute. Medium sculpted body; not too thin, not too thick, but muscular, especially his arms. William had magnificent hands and perfectly squared-off nails.
Then my mind proposed the juxtaposition of William’s appearance to the unseemly sight outside the car. Done. Too weird for me. Something is wrong with the picture.
Before I could answer William’s question about my readiness to get out of the car, he was reaching behind his seat to grab my coat. I looked at him again. His face was gentle and straightforward, hiding nothing, not even the glow of enthusiasm. Again, something new. I wondered what he could be excited about since we seemed to be settled in the middle of porn town. The area reminded me of a somewhat cleaned up and lit up version of 7th Street, the prostitute heaven of West Oakland.
…
“COME ON IN AND SEE THE SEXY LADIES…GET YOUR TICKETS AT THE BOOTH…”
The words plowed into my ears like rubber spears. It was a man’s voice. I was suddenly and strikingly confused because William was standing right next to me acting like life and the moment that we were in, couldn’t have been more normal. What is he thinking?
There was a paste-faced white man with greasy hair dressed in a well-worn tuxedo standing less than two feet from us. He was beckoning to the people passing by the club; he was standing erect and slouchy at the same time. It was like he owned the purpose of the club in his heart. Ewe… William had my hand and he kept inching forward. I felt completely within his control. But I had said to him— ‘You’re the boss.’ Had he taken it too literally?
He squeezed my hand. “Why are you looking scared, girl?”
“I’m not scared. I just…” But before I could finish the sentence that would explain my real feelings, William tugged on my hand and then darted into one of the clubs we had nearly passed up.
I was a rag doll.
My head began to spin and my heart was racing.
“…yes, that’s thirty for two with a two drink minimum.” The second hawker with greasy hair collected the money from William before I could say anything.
The “buts” started popping up in my head. But, we’re not 21, but I don’t want to see naked people, but, what are we going to be doing? But…
I jerked my hand back from William. “We can’t stay in here!”
“Yes, we can,” William whispered as he grabbed my hand back. “I know what I’m doing girl. I come here all the time!”
What?!
A waitress, wearing something smaller than a halter top, ushered William and me to a table that looked like it would only give us room to sit and nothing more. I was in a daze. He ordered rum and coke for the both of us. William’s first glass went down in a few gulps. I let my drink sit. I was reluctant to tell William that I had only drank alcohol one time in my life and that I almost barfed up a lung after consuming a whole bottle of Brass Monkey. I swore I would never drink again.
Again, I went into a semi-daze. I remember seeing a naked woman dancing on stage and topless women moving from table to table of nothing but men. I wanted them out of my view and out of my head. When I heard William giggling and felt him touch my hand, I looked up again.
“Look to your left,” he instructed me. His eyes were on fire with glee.
“Why?” I wanted to know.
“JUST DO IT!” His smile was so wide that it ate away the rest of his features.
It seemed that hours had passed since we were in the club. William had been silent. I was trying to dig myself a mental tunnel out of the smoky room we were in. I wondered what made William suddenly begin talking. What did he want me to look at?
“LOOK!” He said it again. He pointed this time. He had this childish grin thing going.
I turned my head towards a huge puff of smoke that billowed over a table of old men. I saw another pasty-looking white man. He looked too old to be… Then my head went down towards the movement going on in the man’s lap. I wanted to turn my head, but I felt compelled by a curiosity I couldn’t control. Faster and faster the man’s hand went until he started grunting and breathing like he was going to die an overly pleasurable death in his chair. I didn’t need a translator. That man was jacking off in public. What in the hell!
William stared intently at my expression.
I COULD FEEL HIM.
HE WAS AMUSED.
I FELT BETRAYED.
It was close to two o’clock in the morning when we left. I barely moved an inch the whole sleazy time we were inside the building. I was the reluctant college student. The mama’s girl. I was Alice in a Lustland scarytale. Oh- my- God!
…
We didn’t talk the whole drive back across the bay.
I couldn’t stop my thoughts. Any “normal” young man wouldn’t subject his girlfriend to the experience that William led me into like it was the thing to do. There was no preparation, no discussion, and no vetting of the sensitivities that might have been an intricate part of my personality. Nothing! I revolted inside my head against the menacing power of the obscene elements of the strip club, both animate and inanimate, but quietly so. I did not know how to approach William. I was so young and inexperienced with men.
And of all the signs that I could ever look retrospectively at to discern when William’s journey into sadistic behaviors began, it would have been on the trip to the strip club. If he wasn’t intent on torturing me in some obscure way, then what was his purpose? Surely, he didn’t imagine that I would just fall in line with his unseemly agenda.
Note: [I suspect that the young William took some sick pleasure in spoiling and infecting my innocence and then watching for his own amusement. It still hurts for me to believe that I could be right about this particular moment in my life with the person I hoped would love me truly. And even if his intent was just to shock me, that was not cool either; it was sinister. PERIOD!]
It was 1973 then— but I now know that William was taking baby steps towards becoming a full grown monster. And in spite of the apparent signs that should have pushed me away from William, there was an incredible magnet that wouldn’t just let me kick him out of my life. More than six months passed before I saw him again. I wrote and hoped things would be different the next time we saw each other. But in between our separation, William sent me a brown and white fluffy rabbit jacket. It was a beautiful material distraction. But only one of so many more to come.
11
The Mystery of Fort Ord–1974
Something told me to run away from William as fast as I could. But I didn’t.
IT WAS SUMMERTIME AGAIN AND IF THE “LIVING WASN’T EASY,” I DIDN’T WANT TO KNOW ABOUT it. I was enjoying college, loving the freedom of adulthood, but I was STILL trying to make an emotional connection with William. Why, oh why, oh why? It’s the
truth; I REALLY COULDN’T understand why I bothered to keep trying. I felt like an accessory to him, one that he lavished with gifts and an occasional expression of nominal affection. I wanted so much more with the boy from a “good family”.
Almost like clockwork, William arrived at my mother’s home no sooner than I got off the plane for summer recess.
“WANT TO TAKE A RIDE WITH ME?” William spoke softly but assertively and he asked the exact same question as the summer earlier.
How weird is that? “Where to?” I just had to ask. Hummm…
He looked and acted like he had seen me everyday for the past 100 days. I was almost afraid to ask where we were going; I remembered the last time he thought he was surprising me; WE ENDED UP IN A STRIP CLUB.
William smiled, opened my door like a gentleman and then he went from first to fifth gear in less than thirty seconds. If I would have known where we were going for sure, I might have screamed, yiiiiipeee! I would have been excited because I was beginning my summer break and because the man who I had longed for, my distant lover, was sitting next to me. But the sensation of feeling excited was silently extinguished, because for all I knew, my day could have turned into something very ugly.
My thoughts were punching at the front of my head. Why am I giving this man another chance? Hasn’t he already shown a callous disregard for my peace? He is so unpredictable.
BUT— William had been on his best behavior when I came home for Spring break of 1974. The time we had was in stark contrast to the summer of 1973, and yet it remained fresh in my mind, a memory preserved in mental Tupperware. We had so much fun in a week’s time. We went to the beach and had our own personal little picnics here and there. A couple of times, we hung out at People’s park in Berkeley. And one day we crashed it at his grandmother’s house. We had takeout and listened to music that he had recorded on the reel to reel he purchased with the money he had saved up. We even managed to go to a concert while I was home. William paid attention to doing the things he had to do to be “cool”. That was my impression.
Still, still, still, I couldn’t shake off the strip club and the old man who was…
ANYWAY, we were on the freeway before I could demand an answer about our destination.
Damn, not again.
We were heading south, towards San Jose. The direction carried more possibilities than I cared to put on my muse track. Where is this man taking me this time? I kept my thoughts quiet as I could.
The sky was clear and I fixed my eyes on the sheet of baby blue in front of us. But my mental picture of that last surprise ride to San Francisco dirtied everything up. If only I had known then how to trust my gut instincts, I would have declined William’s invitation. But what did I know? I was young and hadn’t learned how to listen to the voice inside my head that was there to warn me and to protect me from harm.
WE HAD ALMOST ARRIVED AT FORT ORD. William was stationed there. He had half-promised to give me a tour after I expressed some interest in seeing where he worked. I made the request when I came home for my 1974 spring break. So when William announced our destination after about twenty minutes on the road with no clue as to where I might end up, I hoped and prayed that he was trying to bring me closer to him and inside his world that he was so quiet about. But I wanted it to be a clean world.
WE ARRIVED.
William drove onto a large and barren piece of land. [An awkward silence moved in between me and my chauffeur.]
Then, out of seemingly nowhere, the quiet man who hadn’t spoke fifty words to me during the two hour drive, started talking about PROSTITUTES. He said they hung around places near the base.
What?
“THEY ARE MY FRIENDS.” William looked like a cartoon when he spoke. There was an eerie smirk on his face.
When he said those words, he owned them like the hawker in S.F owned the words of adulation for the strip club. WOW! All the quietness about William disappeared. I had to say something, but what? I got it! I turned William’s declaration into a question. “HOW ARE THEY YOUR FRIENDS?” My eyes squinted. My heart sped up.
William was silent. He just sat there like he didn’t hear me. I waited and the words I had just spoken to him made a nasty brain stew in my head. I tried to usher the words away from my head. They responded defiantly by anchoring themselves like Velcro to the tiny blood vessels in my brain. William’s words frightened me more than I probably cared to acknowledge. I thought about the prostitutes on 7th Street. The picture in my head gave breath to William’s words: PROSTITUTES, FRIENDS.
“…and what’s wrong with having friends?” He shot back at me as though I was the one that should have been in the hot seat.
“Huh! I mean…” I found myself stuttering like an idiot. “WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY ARE YOUR FRIENDS?” I needed clarification.
“…I just…I don’t know.” William stopped like he was trying to pull his thoughts out of a tight place. “You wouldn’t understand,” he continued— almost angrily and then stopped again.
“WHAT IS THERE TO UNDERSTAND?” I could feel myself getting warm on the inside.
“I mean…sometimes I just need someone to talk to…what—”
I cut him off. “So, YOU talk to PROSTITUTES?” I pushed myself as deep as I could into my seat so that I could take a good look at William— a real good look.
“Yeah,” he answered without deliberation. His innocence came through.
What the hell—didn’t he have a clue that he was offending me?
I tried to pull myself together inside. I took a deep breath. “What do you talk about with these…PROSTITUTES?” I paused. “You don’t even know them!”
William looked at me like he wished he had never brought me into his little private domain. He cleared his throat. “We talk …we talk about different things.” William answered, almost excitedly. “THEY’RE NICE.” A devilish smile came on his face.
Then—some minutes passed.
I went into a smooth kind of denial. It’s not as serious as I’m making it out to be. It is, after all, the 70s. So what if my boyfriend is talking to prostitutes. Talking is not harmful. Maybe it is lonely out here for the soldiers. I tried to waylay my concerns as William’s words fermented in my head.
Then I saw another sign, FORT ORD. It was bigger that the last.
William stopped his car abruptly in front of what was supposed to be his living quarters at the base. I felt my nerves curling underneath my skin. I looked around the car and felt trapped. I looked outside the window again because at that point, it was too hard to look at William. There were so many dead-looking square buildings all around. They matched the sky that suddenly turned wickedly dark when I blinked. Signs of life were hard to detect. Where was everybody?
There was a low riding fog that descended, covering almost everything as far as I could see. I watched it moved slowly towards us from the early darkness. I became hypnotized for a moment and then dizzy for a few more. Felt like my whole body had been captured by the fog and I was moving with it.
William got so quiet. I almost forgot that I was in his car. I was wrapped inside a surreal block of time (once again) and I didn’t know what to expect. What now? I prayed. I thought that once William started to talk to me again after the long ride, I would feel better. But I began to feel uneasy and regretted that I asked to know where he worked. I wished I could take it all back.
“I’m going to go up to get something,” William announced. His voice was shaky.
I rustled in my seat to reach back and get my sweater.
“Ah…you don’t have to come with me.” William looked directly at me.
“What…? I WANT TO COME!”
“No. You- can’t,” he laughed. “You don’t have any clearance. I’ll be right back.”
For some reason, I did not feel any assurance in William’s voice. “You want ME to wait in the car?” I looked straight at him and pointed my finger towards my chest so that he would have a clear vision of my confusion.
&nb
sp; “Yeah, you stay in the car. You’ll be safe here.”
“By…BY MYSELF?”
“…this is a military base and there are no civilians allowed,” William assured me.
“Then why did you bring me here?”
“BECAUSE YOU ASKED!”
He wasn’t making sense. To drive all that way just to make me sit in the car…
William walked away and I stayed in the car like a frightened child. It was such a mysterious kind of day. The fog all around me seemed to smother William’s small car. Perhaps it was just a metaphor for the state of my mind. I was confused, hurt and I felt I had just been invited to be a real part of William’s life, only to be left on the outside. There were to be no explanations. William just disappeared into the light darkness and was gone for nearly two trepidacious and lonely hours.
Note: [The issue of William’s disappearance on that day frightens me, but my real fear came more than thirty years later. What was he really up to? He HAS been sentenced to death for the capital murders of three alleged prostitutes. There has to be some sort of a connection. I wondered whether there was a victim in Fort Ord during the 70s. Did William bring me along as an alibi in case he became a suspect? Was he checking on a body he had already dumped? What kind of gun did he have access to back then?]
…
Of course I can wonder now. William’s capital murder trial gave me a cause to wonder about a lot of things, especially our sex life.
12
It Was Never About “Making Love?
When WILLIAM’S ATTORNEYS FIRST CONTACTED ME…I BELIEVE IT WAS late 2007 or early 2008, they were primarily interested in learning about what my life was like with him. By this time, I had already been contacted by the San Joaquin County Coroner’s Office. They were investigating several cold case murders and William, my former spouse, was a suspect. THAT WAS A SHOCKER. But as more facts about the crimes William was charged with, merged with the light of my discernment, I accepted that he might have done something heinous and evil. But to talk about it in depth when it wasn’t my business— was another issue altogether.
Conquering Darkness Memoir of the Serial Killer's Wife Page 6