“We don’t know exactly where she went,” Bouchard answered.
Candy got up from the chair and stumbled across the room. She opened the top drawer of a scarred oak dresser and took out a bottle of wine. She turned, waved it in the air, and asked, “Anyone care for a drink?” When no one responded, she staggered back to her seat, tripped over the edge of the torn rug and fell into the chair.
“Candy, you need to get some help,” Enright said.
Candy snorted, the bottle of cheap wine poised before her lips. “What should I do—check into the fucking morgue early? Sweetie, I’m the walking dead. The only fun I get out of life anymore is when some horny idiot loses control and doesn’t wear a rubber . . .”
Bouchard was shocked, and it showed when she said, “Surely, you’re not working in your condition?”
Candy pulled the bottle away from her lips and glared back at Bouchard. “Why shouldn’t I? Some lowlife with a hard-on gave this to me. I’m just giving it back. As they say in AA: ‘It works; pass it on’. Well, it works for me, and that’s what I’m doing—just passing it on.”
Bouchard studied Candy as she tipped her head back and gulped down a long drink of wine. Even while drinking cheap wine like a homeless wino, Candy was, to a certain degree, poised.
Candy set the bottle aside and looked into Bouchard’s eyes. When she said, “Honey, I’m a walking one-woman AIDS epidemic,” her voice was as hard as the burn at the bottom of a pot of sauce that had been left overnight on a hot burner.
Bouchard met her challenge and stared back. She made a silent vow to call the Massachusetts Board of Health as soon as she left the apartment. The authorities had to intervene and take this bitter woman out of circulation before she could jeopardize more lives. Bouchard leaned in Candy’s direction. “Tell me about Cheri.”
Candy let out a hoarse laugh. “That kid was greener than a Granny Smith apple—a real fish.”
“What do you mean exactly?” Bouchard asked.
“She didn’t know shit—and even if she had, she’d’ve probably screwed it up.”
“Okay, I know that fish is prison slang for a new inmate. But I’m surprised you’d use that phrase, Candy, considering . . .”
“Considering the weirdo in the truck?” Candy stared back at Bouchard with wide eyes.
Bouchard was immediately struck by this turn in the conversation. She recalled Houston mentioning a truck when he told her about the incident with the paranoid hooker. She leaned forward. “Weirdo?” she repeated.
Bouchard felt Enright shift on the couch but ignored her. Bouchard was now completely engrossed with Candy’s story.
Candy pulled at a strand of her stringy hair. “Yeah, that fucking lunatic—women on the street call him the Fisherman.”
A fisherman had also come up last night; now Bouchard was really interested. She leaned yet closer to Candy without caring if her attentiveness was obvious. “Have you seen him?”
“I saw him once,” Candy picked up the wine bottle and placed it against her lips.
“What can you tell us about him?” Enright asked.
Candy swallowed and then set the bottle back down on the coffee table. “Not much. Hell, I’m not dumb enough to go with a sick bastard like that.”
“There must be something you can tell us about him, right?”
Candy shrugged her shoulders. “He drives a big truck—a refrigerator unit. He hauls fish. Obviously he lives somewhere along the shore. What the hell else am I supposed to say?”
“When did you see him, Candy?” Bouchard asked.
She shrugged and her eyes drifted up to the right. “Maybe six months ago—I don’t recall exactly. I have a hard time remembering dates, but I do remember it was cold.”
Bouchard took note of how Candy unconsciously wrapped her arms about her chest before continuing, “It was one of those nights when the wind comes off the harbor and quick-freezes everything it touches. Frankly, I’d given up on getting any action, and I’d started home. What little business there was went to the young chicks.” She suddenly stopped, seemingly lost in memories.
Bouchard lowered her voice and softly asked, “Where were you, Candy?”
“What?” A startled look came to her face, as if she had just woken up in a hospital.
“Where were you when you first saw this . . . fisherman?”
She sighed. “I can’t remember.”
Bouchard reached over and patted Candy’s hand. “Take your time, the memory will be there.”
“Shit, I know that.” Candy’s face flushed with anger. “That’s the fucking problem, isn’t it?”
Bouchard pulled back her hand and slid back onto the sofa. Enright followed her lead.
Bouchard continued to watch Candy.
Candy blurted out, “I was just past the Public Garden when this truck pulled up beside me.”
Bouchard took note of the inadvertent wrinkling of her nose. “What happened then?”
“The passenger door opened, and I looked inside.”
“But you didn’t get in?” Enright asked.
Candy’s upper body shook. “The smell was awful.” She paused and then muttered. “When I saw there was no handle on the inside of the door, I got suspicious. But that isn’t what really turned me off.”
“No? Then what did?” Bouchard asked.
“It was his eyes,” Candy murmured.
“His eyes . . . what about his eyes?”
“He isn’t right.” She tapped her head with a finger as she spoke.
“What was it about his eyes, Candy?” Bouchard repeated her question.
Candy lowered her voice and bent forward. “Have you ever seen the wild look a cornered lab rat gets?”
“I don’t think I have,” Bouchard replied. From the corner of her eye she saw Enright nod in agreement; she hadn’t either.
“Well, they flash as if there’s an insane fire in them.” Candy hesitated, a dramatic pause that drove home her point. Bouchard thought it was the practice of a skilled lecturer. “That’s how he looked.”
“I see.”
Candy shook her head. “He’d have been ugly even if his head wasn’t misshapen.”
“Misshapen?” Bouchard repeated. The word surprised her. She thought that it was a word not usually in a prostitute’s vocabulary; fucked up would have been more likely.
Candy fished out another cigarette and fumbled with her lighter. Her head bobbed as she struggled to align it with her wobbly hand. Bouchard studied her, wondering if her hands shook from the chemicals in her system or if there was something particularly troubling about recalling this incident.
Bouchard was just about to ask Candy another question when Enright piped in, “How was his head misshapen? What did it look like?”
Candy turned and this time, she blew the smoke away from them. She coughed, and phlegm popped in her throat. She coughed a second time, trying to clear the obstruction, and then spat into a soiled handkerchief. She looked at her visitors, seemed embarrassed for a second, and then said, “He has a spot on the side of his head that looked like someone had smacked it with a flat object when he was a baby.”
“I see,” Bouchard said.
Candy stretched forward, and as if she were consulting with a couple of coconspirators said, “Nothing in the world could have made me get into that truck. Believe me—” She closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair. She sat with her eyes shut for several moments. When she finally opened her eyelids, she had let down the veil that kept her secure in a secret world of her own. Tears glistened in Candy’s eyes.
What is happening here? Bouchard held back, deciding it was best to let Candy offer her own explanation.
Candy shook her head, as though she tried to clear away the alcoholic fog that clouded her mind. “I understand psychopaths, sociopaths, or antisocial personalities—use whichever term you like. They’re all the same. Although, on a professional level, I think that for this one, psychopath is most appropriate.”
Bouchard’
s back stiffened. Had Candy actually spoken those words in that professional tone?
Candy ground her cigarette on one of the dirty plates that covered the end table and sprang from her chair. When she crossed the room, she walked steadier—seemed to glide rather than stumble. She stopped in front of a windowsill, leaned against it, and stared at the street.
Bouchard thought she looked as if something were sucking life from her. She also noted how thin Candy’s arms were, even though they were covered by the cylinders of faded wool that hung at either side of her shapeless body. A metamorphosis was happening—one Anne considered positive. There was a new softness and vulnerability in Candy’s sunken face.
Candy turned to her visitors and whispered in a weak and hoarse voice, “Now, I’ve got things to do.” Suddenly, the softness dropped from her face like shattered glass, and the hardness returned. As quickly as she had changed mere moments before, Candy reverted to the street-smart hooker. “There are johns to fuck—in more ways than one.” Candy let out a short laugh. To Bouchard, it did not ring true.
Candy walked to the door and opened it. Bouchard nudged Enright and slid off the couch; the interview was over. Before Bouchard could step through the open door, Candy grabbed her forearm. “There’s one other thing. I think the guy’s from Maine.”
“You’re certain?” Bouchard asked.
Candy moved her head up and down slowly. “I saw his license plate. It was a commercial plate, but it definitely said Maine.”
“Thank you,” Bouchard said. It was like she was staring at the ghost of a woman who had once been vibrant and strong.
Within seconds, Bouchard and Enright were in the hall and staring at the closed door.
“That was bizarre,” Bouchard said. “What just happened in there? I feel like I just interviewed two people.”
“You did.”
Bouchard stared at her. “Is there something you know that you haven’t told me?”
Enright looked sheepish. “Yes.”
“Out with it.”
“I didn’t say anything because I wanted you to talk with her without any preconceived biases.”
“Such as?”
“Pity, maybe even revulsion . . . I don’t know.”
“I was a cop for a long time. Believe me when I say I know better than to do that.”
“I didn’t know who was walking in here with me . . . a woman or a cop.”
Bouchard hesitated. “All right, I understand. Now tell me what you held back.”
“You met Candy the hardened, bitter prostitute, and for a moment, ever so briefly, her former self appeared.”
“What do you mean ‘her former self’?”
“Doctor Candace Littleton, professor of psychology.”
Bouchard stared at the door for a moment before she and Enright turned to go. “I’ll be damned . . .”
_________________
They sat in Enright’s car; neither seemed willing to speak. The interview with Candy still bothered Bouchard. “What could possibly happen to turn a woman with a PhD into that?”
“Love.”
“Love? Lisa, please, this is serious, and you know that sounds ridiculous.”
“Ever been in true love, Anne? The kind of love where being with someone consumes your every thought, your every action? Where you wake up thinking about that person, drift through your day lost in thoughts of him, and then in bed you stare at the empty pillow beside you and wonder why his head isn’t on it? Then, when you finally go to sleep, you dream of him.”
Bouchard thought about her relationship with Houston. They were as close as she had ever been with any man, but as much as they loved each other, their relationship certainly did not fit that description. “No, I haven’t . . .”
Enright smiled. “Well, if it helps alleviate your guilt, neither have I. However, Candace has. He was a professor, too. Unfortunately, he had a darker side. He was a very self-assured man, dominant in his field and in his personal life. When Candace fell for him, she gave over control of everything. Jeremy was not the sort to live in the shadow of a successful woman. He controlled every aspect of her life, and at first, she happily let him.”
Bouchard shook her head. She had known many women who put their lives, careers, and dreams aside for husband and family; still the concept was anathema to her. She realized how lucky she was; Houston had always treated her as equal, and in some areas—those in which he knew she excelled—acquiesced to her. “So where is this guy now?”
“He was physically abusive. Over time, he demolished Candace. She lost her self-esteem and became a shadow of what she had been.”
“You seem to know a lot about her.”
“I’ve been interested in how and why women turn to prostitution for years now. Ten years ago, when I first got out of college, she was helping me write my articles on the prostitution trade. I was looking into the psychology of the women who worked the streets. Candace really got into it. She developed a fascination with the women . . . looking back, her interest became more than just professional. It could have been a fantasy thing between her and Jeremy.”
“It sounds to me like she became a dominant man’s dream—by day a professor and by night his personal whore.”
“Something like that. I wouldn’t want to say anything definite, though. I often feel guilty for introducing her to that world.”
The afternoon had turned hot and oppressively humid; Bouchard stared out the window and watched an advancing thunderhead. “It sounds to me as if there’s more to her story. However, you still haven’t answered my question. Where is this guy now?”
“One night she realized what Jeremy was doing to her. During one of his sexual fantasies, Candace killed him.”
“Now I remember the case. I was a rookie on the force when it happened.”
“The courts absolved her by ruling the death as an accident during the throes of passion, but it was the beginning of the end for Candace. She started drinking heavily, then drugs. Eventually she lost her job and no university would consider her . . . which finally led her to the streets.”
Thunder boomed, and it began to pour. Bouchard suppressed a desire to step out into the deluge and let the rain wash away the filth of the world she lived in.
15
It was hot. So humid that the air felt as heavy as an anvil. He sat on the porch, sweat dripping from his chin, falling onto his already soaked dingy T-shirt as he watched the horizon, waiting for the cooling relief of darkness to creep across the gulf. He saw a harbor seal break the surface and cursed. He grabbed his .30-06 rifle, and in a single motion locked it into his shoulder.
The rifle barked.
The seal rolled over, diving below the surface. Several seconds later, he spied it swimming away toward the middle of the Gulf. He fired again and grunted with pleasure when he saw the seal jump in the water then roll over. “That’ll teach the goddamned thief not to eat my fish.”
He propped the rifle against the wall and picked up his beer. He glanced over his shoulder into the dark sweltering interior of the house. Must be over a hundred upstairs, he thought. Maybe I’ll go see if the little woman’s calmed down now. I might even let her come out and watch the water for a spell.
He got up and stretched. He looked at the seal’s floating corpse, smiled, and spit. Yup, he thought, it’s going to be a hot, muggy night—makes a man a bit randy.
_________________
Cheryl lay in the oppressive heat. She reached for the dipper and ladled out some of the tepid water. If she did not drink, dehydration was inevitable. On the other hand, if she did drink she would need to use the foul bucket in the far corner. She hated that thing. To compound matters, he had not emptied it in three days, and although she had become immune to it, she knew its odor permeated the room.
She sat on the edge of the bed, sweat running down her torso in rivulets. Even though she was past the agonies of physical withdrawal from the heroin that had ravaged her body, she no longer felt hum
an. Cheri was gone, and the Cheryl that remained was no longer a woman and aspiring actress—she was a woman fighting for survival, and survive she would. She was not going to be like Monique and the others who had occupied the next room over. Lord, she wondered, how long ago was it? A day—a week—two weeks even? She tensed when she heard his heavy tread on the stairs. Suddenly the door opened, and he was there.
He walked to the foot of the bed and stared at her for a moment. “You alright?”
Afraid to talk because she never knew what would trigger his insane rages, she nodded, keeping her eyes averted.
He reached over and picked up the slop bucket and left. A minute later, she heard the toilet flush and he was back. He placed the bucket in its corner. He leaned against the wall and folded his arms across his chest.
“Hot,” he said.
She nodded.
“You can speak, woman.”
“Yes, it’s hot.” Her voice was barely audible.
“What?”
She jumped. “Yes, it’s hot.”
“That’s better. If I take you outside, will you promise to be good?”
Her heart skipped. Outside! Outside meant fresh air and sunshine and maybe, just maybe, the opportunity to escape.
“Well?”
“I would like that.”
“And?”
“I promise to be good.”
He pushed away from the wall and reached into his pocket. He removed a key and opened the lock. She whimpered when the shackle pulled away, ripping her skin where scabs had formed, binding the metal to her wrist.
He snarled at the sound of her pain and cocked his arm, ready to strike her.
Cheryl grasped her injured wrist, holding it against her stomach, and bent forward, cowering, keeping her eyes lowered. She stayed like that for several moments, too afraid to look away from the floor. She tensed, bracing for the expected blow. It never came.
“Get up.”
She stood. “Can I have something to wear?”
“What you need clothes for? Ain’t nobody around to see nothing. Besides, if you’re good I may let you skinny-dip in the cove.”
She hoped she did not look too anxious. If he let her go swimming, maybe she could escape—possibly swim out to sea. If a boat did not find her and she drowned, that would still be better than being here. Either way, she could not lose.
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