by SM Reine
She didn’t say anything, no doubt thinking of Amanda and her murder and the pain and horror her sister had gone though before dying. I know I was thinking that right then. Poor Amanda.
“Nana must have been messing in darker stuff than I realized,” she said, bringing her coffee cup halfway up to her lips and then setting it back down, glancing around frantically. The world around us was almost impossibly normal, raucous, young people on the make, all cares dashed with dancing and drinking.
I polished off my drink and was about to flag down the waitress again when Tabby slapped down my arm. My elbow thunked the table hard enough to hurt.
“You’ve got to keep it together, Shipway. Enough.”
I noticed she only called me “Shipway” when she wanted to shape me up a little, make a man out of the weasel I was trying to be. All that ground I’d made with the “Tabby” must have gone out the window.
“All right,” I said, licking my lips as Tattoo Boy drank straight from a pitcher like the goon he was.
“We’ve got to keep moving,” Tabby said. “All this stalling isn’t finding Petey, and, besides, Nana’s curse is still on you.”
I jerked my feet from the floor, imagining all sorts of little creatures squirming out from under the booths. I’d been so dazed by seeing Richter, and maybe downing a few drinks, that I had forgotten all about the curse. Temporary amnesia had been all too temporary.
But I figured the mice wouldn’t attack me here in public. It just didn’t seem to work like that. Nana’s curse had been with my “greatest fear,” and my fear hadn’t occurred in a packed bar, the scene of my finest accomplishments in life.
“All right,” I said. “What next?”
I was hoping I could buy a few minutes of plotting strategy, and maybe buy one more drink along with them, before I had to venture out in the cool, dark streets.
Tabby helped by asking something that only a woman would think of, much less bring up under such circumstances. “Why did you marry her, knowing she was damaged goods? Somebody like that is not likely to bake cookies and ferry kids around to soccer games, or whatever it is normal women do.”
Women who aren’t cops. “Gerda forgot everything the instant she saw it, apparently. A case of self-induced amnesia that helped her survive. What the shrinks called ‘a coping mechanism.’”
“I could imagine.”
I had to be careful about this next bit, because I didn’t want to seem like I was disrespecting Amanda. “She was a sweet co-ed when I met her, a psychology major of all things. We clicked pretty easily, and when Thanksgiving came around and I said, ‘So, do we go to my family or yours?,’ she got this faraway look as if I’d just reminded her she’d left clothes at the Laundromat. She told me her parents were divorced and that we should just visit my family. I pressed her, but she clammed up. It wasn’t until six months later that she told me both her parents were dead.”
“Which wasn’t true.”
“Not at the time. Her mother had vanished, presumably Victim Number One of the monster that was Max. But Max was in prison when I started dating Gerda, having finally been connected to those series of murders in the San Francisco area. I guess he’d migrated north after the cops let him off for the cult sacrifices.”
Tabby shot me a look to remind me that she was still on the other side of the blue line. “And you married her before you knew?”
I didn’t want to talk about the various talents Gerda displayed, many of which might have made me blush if I hadn’t been long past shame of any kind. One of Gerda’s talents, I’d learned in retrospect, was manipulation. All those psychology classes must have paid off, because she moved me around like a pawn on a chessboard, sometimes with her words, sometimes with her body. Maybe I was just weak enough to be the perfect man for the lunatic she turned out to be.
“The marriage was about as good as any, I guess. A year of honeymoon, and then a few cracks started showing. A little temper, a little forgetfulness, and moments of unexpected cruelty.”
“Cruelty?” Tabby pushed the cold coffee away. It had probably congealed to sludge by then.
I gave a forlorn shake of my glass, just to hear the ice tinkle.
“Once, we were behind this car that hit a dog. She was driving, and I asked her to pull over. I knew the dog was dead, but that’s what you do in those situations, you stand around wishing you could somehow undo it. But she just kept driving as if she hadn’t heard me, and I swear there was even a little smile on her face.”
The waitress plowed by like a fullback going for the end zone, and this time Tabby practically stood and flagged her down. Not bothering to yell over the crowd, she pointed at my drink and raised two fingers. The waitress understood the universal sign for “probable big tip,” nodded, and hurried on.
Tabby looked at me. “You get one more drink, Shipway. Make it last.” She sat and huddled closer than she had since we’d taken the booth. “How many years in?”
“Well, because her parents were dead—or so I thought—I was probably a lot more forgiving and protective than I would have been otherwise. I probably overlooked some signs.”
The word “signs” now seemed loaded, given the circumstances.
“But when I married her, I made a commitment—”
“Stuff it, Shipway. Now you’re losing sympathy points.”
“Okay, okay. In truth, she was starting to worry me a little, but my career was taking off. You know how the insurance racket is.”
“No. No, I don’t.”
Nobody did. Everyone thinks you just send in your payments and hope nothing ever goes wrong, but the claims side of things is big business with lots of opportunity for growth.
“We just grew apart, the way people do. But one night we were sitting there like a good husband and wife, ignoring each other, when the Richter case came on one of those investigative TV shows. ‘Cold Case’ or ‘Most Wanted’ or something. I’m sure you watch those?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Does a butcher watch another butcher cut meat on his day off? Do you sit around channel surfing for all those insurance-adjuster shows on cable?”
There was, of course, no insurance-adjuster shows, but I got her point. The drinks came and I hit mine like a camel losing its hump. So much for making it last. She sipped and sighed, though I couldn’t hear it over Tattoo Boy’s drunken yelling. I continued before I lost my nerve.
“When that mug shot of Richter flashed across the screen, I glanced up from my newspaper and saw his name beneath his big, ugly face. ‘Richter, just like your maiden name,’ I said, trying to tease and inject some much-needed humor into our relationship. ‘Maybe you’re related.’
“She went stiff, her eyes open and glazed over. I called out again but she didn’t respond, and it wasn’t until I went over and removed the remote from her clutches that she said anything. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘That was mean.’ She forgave me, and I thought that was that.”
“And then you found out?”
“She’d been seeing a shrink, like practically every housewife in Southern California does. But then she started mumbling about memories, and the damage, and I could never get a straight story, and you know how shrinks are. They blabber about doctor-patient privilege while all hell freezes over. But one day three years ago Gerda cracked and told me everything, how she’d been forced to watch the murders, and her father even made her hand over the sacrificial blades during the killings.”
It was odd but Gerda had told me over drinks at a bar, and here I was telling Tabitha. Or maybe it wasn’t odd at all. Maybe it just meant I spent most of my time in bars, so that’s where most of the weird stuff happened to me.
“Heavy,” Tabitha said. “That should have gone in the case file. They trimmed that sucker even more than I thought.”
“He was dead by then. But the body count was left hanging. The police did interview Gerda a few times, but I guess they were happy to close that case and move on.”
“And leave her with the
wreckage?”
“You know how family is,” I said, noting with regret that my drink was already empty again. So was Tabby’s, but I resisted the urge to flag the waitress again. We needed to get rolling.
“Yeah.” She gazed off at the neon beer signs.
“Sorry to be so blunt, but you are very different from Amanda. She was more of the type that would tip-toe around the bush and poke at it with a twig. You use a flamethrower. God, I hope I’m not being inappropriate.”
Tabitha let a small bit of laughter escape from her mouth. “No, you’re right. I always had to stick up for her. I got into so many fights because people would pick on her. I was really a bully when it came to people treating Amanda wrong. That is why....”
“Why what?”
A vein appeared on her temple. I watched it beat like the throbbing stereo speakers that were pumping out AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long.” Tattoo Boy stood up and pumped his fist, growling in an off-key falsetto.
Tabitha raised her voice, almost shouting in anger. “That is why I would very much like to know who...fucking killed her. I would like very much to have a few minutes alone with the bitch that murdered my sister.”
She trembled with rage, shook and gritted her teeth, and I thought the vein in her head was going to explode.
She bent the fork that her hand had seemingly grasped on its own accord. The fork now looked like a piece of surreal art. Dali, perhaps. I figured we’d better get out of there before “Hell’s Bells” started.
The waitress dodged past Tattoo Boy and his screaming, drunken back-up band and asked if we needed anything else. I told her no and she dropped off the new and improved bill, then left before I could change my mind.
“Roll?” I suggested to Tabby.
She nodded, tight-lipped.
16
“My place?” I said, once we were outside under the skein of smog that veiled the dim stars.
I hoped it didn’t sound like a corny come-on line. They say death did weird things to the emotions, and I wouldn’t put it past me to try and seduce my dead lover’s beautiful sister before we’d even had a chance to plan the funeral.
But Tabby was all business, and her business was solving crimes. She glossed right over any innuendo, and I am ashamed to say I was a little disappointed.
“We have to find out where Gerda is now, and if there’s any evidence linking her to Amanda. You’ve been separated for, what, nearly eleven months?”
“Ten, but who’s counting?”
“So within a few weeks you went from two women to none? Poor lonely boy.”
Sarcasm wasn’t cute in a grown woman. It probably wasn’t cute in anybody. But I deserved it and worse.
The faster I could shift the subject from my questionable morals, the better. And I had plenty of material for that.
“There’s got to be a link between Nana and Gerda’s father,” I said, trying to remember where I’d left off the bar story. “It was three years ago that Gerda started recovering those memories, with the help of her therapist. But she also had a medical emergency, some lumps that showed up during a gynecological exam. The scans showed some mysterious shadows and the doctors didn’t want to take any chances, so they spooked her into having an apparently unnecessary hysterectomy.”
“Unnecessary?”
“Well, they couldn’t find any sign of abnormal cellular growth. And a uterus is not something where you can say ‘Oopsie’ and just put it back in. We started a malpractice suit but it will probably stay tied up in court for years.”
“Great, I can just see you guys in court, trying to look like the grieving couple.”
“Hey, that was back before she was a murder suspect and I was being cursed. Her hormones were going nuts because of the hysterectomy and she was also unable to bear children. She slipped into a deep, at-times-suicidal depression. She took drugs to raise and then lower her hormonal intake, and drugs for her mood, and then all those memories started purging themselves from the buried vaults of her childhood.”
“Damn, Al, you’re almost making me feel sorry for her. Don’t.”
“No, I’m just trying to explain—”
Movement in the scraggly shrubs outside the bar stopped me. Would mice get me out here? Or had Nana put another curse on me, maybe something bigger? Rats, raccoons, maybe coyotes?
Tabby didn’t seem to notice, busy trying different pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. “If she couldn’t have a child of her own, that might make her flip when she found out you went off and made a baby with someone else.”
“She was already flipped. That’s what I’m trying to tell you here. She found out she was the child of a serial cult killer. There wasn’t a whole lot of hope for ‘normal life’ after that. It was a miracle she’d been able to bury it all those years.”
Whatever had been moving in the shrubs must have gone about its business, because everything seemed normal again: a little traffic, an occasional couple passing on the sidewalk, music and laughter spilling out the bar door every time it opened.
“Once she came after me with a knife,” I said. “And we got her some help—”
“That wasn’t in the police report. Did you not file charges?”
“Of course not. I loved her. You know how hard it is for mentally ill prisoners.”
“Yeah,” Tabby said, and I could tell she was getting impatient. But we couldn’t talk on the bike, and I wanted this out before we made it to my place and I had to start rummaging through bad memories of my own.
“It was only with the help of an independent psychologist working for a Catholic research center that Gerda was able to delve into the real heart of her depression. The psychologist was able to detect massive gaps in her childhood and an unnatural fear of hostile men. And then the memories came with a vengeance, and our marriage went to hell on a roller coaster. She remembered murder after murder committed by her father, remembered them with amazingly accurate detail, remembered the victims’ names. She even remembered where her father buried some of the bodies.”
Tabitha was simply staring, her eyes wide in disbelief. “And you didn’t tell the cops? Don’t you think those families deserve closure? Whose decision was that?”
“The counselor’s,” I said, defensively. True, it had been the counselor’s idea to protect Gerda from further exposure and harm, but secretly I didn’t want to damage my career. I figured if we could keep a lid on it, the medicine would eventually help, and we’d get back to some semblance of a normal marriage. I’ve always been a dreamer like that, or maybe I live in a California-sized state of denial.
“Well, if she was a kid when all this happened, she probably wouldn’t have been able to identify the locations again,” Tabitha said.
“Yeah,” I agreed, a little too quickly. “Kids usually don’t pay attention to road names and that kind of thing.”
In truth, the counselor told me Gerda’s memories were crystal clear. Under the phenomenon of her repression, the memories that emerged were as if she had just experienced them, vivid, painful, and full of details. It’s like hitting the “pause” button on a tape recording. All the information’s there; you just have to hit the button to access it. Her therapist insisted that she had never fully matured, that she was still a scared ten-year-old with a madman for a father. The counselor even said, in fact, that Gerda often spoke to him in a child-like voice, even though she was never hypnotized, as she relayed the events of her childhood to him.
The bar door banged open and boisterous shouts erupted, the kind of drunken chaos that hopefully scared away every furball and restless spirit for ten square miles. Tattoo Boy and his horde spilled onto the sidewalk, and it was hard not to compare them to the pack of mice that had assaulted me at my home.
“Prince Charming and his band of Merry Men,” Tabby said, mixing her folklore. Tattoo Boy had his arm around a scrawny young redhead with stringy hair, and she looked more scared than charmed. They were heading our way. I handed Tabby her helmet.
“Nice ride,” Tattoo Boy yelled, and it was obvious he had noticed us and was in the mood to show off a little. He strode up to me, dragging the scrawny woman by her wrist. His bald dome gleamed orange in the streetlights. “But you look like the rice-burner type. Not man enough for a Harley.”
He glanced at Tabby, sizing her up and leering a little. “Unless this is her bike, and you’re her bitch.”
I bit back my temper. The dwindling vestiges of alcohol screamed at me to punch the clown in the face, but we didn’t have time for a scene. Plus, the cops might show up and want to question us about the strange man who’d visited Nana, as well as all those strange books and cult regalia in the old woman’s room. Anytime cops could scare the public and politicians with “Satanism” and the like, it was sure to increase funding for law enforcement. It worked even better than the “War on Drugs,” “Gang Activity,” and other popular scare tactics.
Still, my fist itched to give Tattoo Boy some pretty red ink on his puffy cheeks.
“It’s mine,” I said, as cool as the night air. “Come on, Tabby.”
I started to throw my leg over the bike, but Tattoo Boy scooted over beside it, blocking my way. “A ride like this deserves a real man on the throttle. Give me the keys and let me take it around the block.”
I’m an affable guy in general, and under other circumstances, meeting a jolly stranger in the bar, I might have let him test it out, even with the risk of somebody driving my bike straight to a chop shop or upping my insurance rates. It’s only a possession, after all, and men who love their things too much end up being ruled by them. Me, I prefer to be ruled by Venus, the Goddess of Love. Or maybe that’s what all cheaters say.
“I believe you’ve had a little too much to drink,” I said, an understatement that caused his pack of weasels to twitter. They had gathered around eager for a show, obviously used to Tattoo Boy’s reality TV act.
“Nah, come on, man,” Tattoo Boy said, with false charm. He looked at Tabby again and actually licked his chapped lips. “Your lady friend deserves a real ride for a change. What do you say, babe? Climb aboard.”