“Saw a doctor,” he muttered. “Ages ago. Nothing but talk. Can’t fix anything talking. He didn’t make her come back.”
Barbara?
“It was her fault,” he went on. “She forgot about me.
All those damn—I went looking for her. Couldn’t—couldn’t—”
He turned his head slightly. In the dim earthlight, she saw that his eyes were closed.
“Forgot about me, God damn you. Whaddaya expect? Go strutting around with your tits, wagging your ass for the boys. A goddamn whore.”
Barbara?
Or me?
“Carl—”
“Shut up, bitch, I don’t want to hear it. Don’t—talk—me—grow up. Goddamn boys. I hate you, shut up.”
She almost thought she saw a tear on his cheek, but he flung himself away, his back to her again, and lay like a block of steel.
She dared not move. It might set him off. He might—He hated her.
But why? What had she done?
Unless—
Not her. But who? Barbara? Olivia? Daniella?
Daniella…
Daniella…
She stared at the ceiling. The room was pale gray, shadowy, as though the darkness was something she could touch. The fan blew across her with fingers of wind. Next to her, in his crib, Adam made a small sniffing noise as he slept.
She stared at the ceiling and wondered, What do I do now?
15
During the night she dreamed about Larry. It seemed as though she was back in that basement apartment on Bleecker Street and all that had happened afterwards was a fantasy.
She woke slowly, with Larry breathing beside her. She could feel his warmth, feel where his weight depressed the mattress. She had no thought but that it was Larry, until she opened her eyes and saw the room. Not quite right, this room. She had seen it before, but…
Her confusion lasted only a moment, then seemed to peel off and fall away. Last night came clearly back and she felt cold, although the sun was up and the day already warm.
Adam was beginning to stir. She slipped out of bed without disturbing Carl. Through the open window she could see the meadow, glistening clean in the early morning light and alive with the singing of birds.
She lifted Adam from his crib. The clock radio on the nighttable gave a little pop and began to play softly. Carl sat up. He looked at her, standing beside the bed with the baby in her arms, and gave her a wry-comic smile.
“Another day, another dime,” he said.
She managed to smile back. It’s all right, she told herself. It’s all right.
By the time she had finished feeding Adam and joined Carl downstairs, he was already eating breakfast. He made a gesture of pushing out her chair so she could sit down. Her familiar Carl. Nothing remained of last night, not even a memory. Perhaps he had only been tired. Or she had misunderstood.
That telephone call to the Lemich family. It was sweet of him.
But something still nagged at her. Something she could not identify and didn’t want to think about.
“So you want to go somewhere on my vacation?” he asked.
“It’s not important. Whatever you want.”
“Maybe a short trip. It just seems like such a hassle, with the kid.”
“It is a hassle. I was thinking of the girls. But they’re all right. Some people would consider this a vacation, out here in the country.”
“As long as they don’t have to go to school,” he agreed. “That’s vacation enough.”
He kissed her good-bye when he left. Tonight? she wanted to ask, but kept her silence.
She was loading the dishwasher when Sheila called.
“Got a minute?”
“Special for you,” said Joyce. “Otherwise I don’t ‘got a minute.’ What are you doing up so early?”
“You mean what am I doing on the telephone so early. I’m always up. It’s about tonight. We’re having this meeting and I have to call about a thousand people, starting with you.”
A sort of town meeting, she went on to explain. With the police.
“To talk about this thing. The police are really getting it rough. You know, if you don’t pick up a lead, you don’t, but the whole village is on their backs. Well, you’d think they could come up with something. Look, now I’m doing
it myself, and I know what they’re going through. But I know what the rest of us are going through, too.”
“So you want me to come.”
“Don’t you want to? Don’t you care about getting at this thing before it gets us?”
“I—guess so.”
“What I hate is not being able to do anything,” Sheila went on. “At least this is something. And the police are going to give us some tips on keeping safe. Do you want Foster and me to pick you up? Around seven-thirty? It starts at eight.”
Again that odd, overdone heartbeat. She did not know why. Some premonition. She didn’t want to leave her home.
“I don’t know. The children—”
“For God’s sake, leave them with Carl. Unless he wants to go, too. You could bring them all over here. I think June is old enough, and Denise and Mary Ellen, as long as they bolt all the doors.”
“I really don’t think Carl would be interested. And he’s not—I mean—sometimes he has to work late.”
“Why don’t you call him? Find out if he’ll be home. Bring the kids over here and we can all go together.”
“Okay, I’ll let you know.”
She was relieved to have put it off. Maybe she could think of something. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to help. It was—She didn’t know. The children, perhaps. She didn’t even want to leave them with Carl. She wanted them where she could see them.
And what difference would it make whether she did or did not go to the meeting? She couldn’t help them. The police were doing all they could. Sooner or later they would break through. It had happened with those other freaks, the Son of Sam, the Boston Strangler, Charlie Chopoff…
Crazy people. All of them. Really out of it, at least some of the time.
Yet someone must have known. Someone close to them must have known how crazy they were, but perhaps they thought…
Well, you just wouldn’t ever think it, when it’s someone you know. It doesn’t seem possible.
No, she thought, I don’t mean that. Not about me. Just because a person had a childhood trauma. And not even a serious one at that.
She refused to think about it. It was ridiculous. She would know, if there was anything worth thinking about.
She did not call Carl. He disliked being bothered at the office, and when he came home she was glad she hadn’t. He was in one of his silent moods.
“Dinner’s all ready, so don’t be long,” she told him as he started upstairs. “I have to go to a meeting.”
He grunted an answer. The phone rang and it was Sheila, wanting to know what her plans were. She felt as though Sheila were trapping her. She really wanted to stay home with her children.
“I don’t know. I have sort of a headache.”
“Take an aspirin. This is important. We’ll be there at seven-thirty.”
“Wait a minute, let me ask Carl.”
He had just gone into the bathroom, but not yet turned on the shower. Quickly she explained about the meeting. Would he want to go, or would he look after the kids?
Instantly Gail came out of her room, her face stricken with anxiety. Mary Ellen looked up from the floor of her own room, where she lay writing another letter.
“Hell, no,” Carl replied. “I’ve had a full day already. Think I want to go and listen to a bunch of idiots shooting off their mouths? Leave the kids, leave the dishes. The kids’ll take care of everything.”
“You hope.”
She finished her phone call and served the dinner. As they took their places at the table, Mary Ellen, with a quick glance at her father, asked, “Why can’t I go to that meeting?”
Gail looked up hopefully. “Me, too
.”
“It’s for grown-ups,” said Joyce. “It can’t last more than a couple of hours. And you’ll be having a lovely time with the dishes.”
Feeling uneasy, she sat down in the chair Carl pulled out for her. His manners were impeccable. But the girls—why were they so eager to go?
Maybe they thought it would be an adventure. She might have considered taking them—certainly they had a stake in it, too—except for what the meeting could disclose. There might be details they shouldn’t hear.
“You’re not eating,” said Carl. “I thought you were in a big hurry.”
“I am.” She picked up her fork, but she wasn’t really hungry.
She had changed her clothes before dinner. Adam was fed and sleeping. She was ready before the Farands came for her, and helped the girls clear the table, to distract herself from the odd feeling in her stomach. A feeling of nervous dread. She could not understand it.
“They’re here, Mommy,” Gail told her.
Both girls stood at the kitchen door to wave her off. She might have been leaving for Siberia, for the size of the pang she felt.
“Do you always get a send-off like that?” Sheila asked.
“I don’t usually go away like this. I guess it’s a pretty big event.”
The meeting was to be held in the high school auditorium. As they drew into the already crowded parking lot, she forgot her private panic, whatever the cause of it, and began to appreciate the community feeling all around her. There had never been anything like this in the big sprawling city. Or if there was, she had not had time for it.
They joined the throngs that swarmed into the auditorium. Not long after they arrived, all the seats became filled and latecomers had to stand.
On the stage was a row of chairs and a lectern with a microphone. At ten minutes past eight, five men and three women filed out to the chairs. She recognized Chief D’Amico. One of the men looked at his watch, stood up, and approached the lectern.
It was stuffy in the large room, even with the windows open and several large fans blowing from the wall.
Again for a moment she saw the two girls waving good-bye.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the first speaker began, “we have come here tonight for a very unpleasant reason, and I can see it’s touched a lot of you. I have to admit, we never expected this much turnout.”
A murmur went around the audience.
The man talked on, summarizing the crimes, and then introduced the mayor of Cedarville.
The mayor spoke even more emphatically about the horrors that gripped his village, and repeated the media phrase “reign of terror.”
The first man rose again and introduced the Chief of Police, Frank D’Amico.
D’Amico spoke more concretely.
“The police can’t be everywhere at one time, ladies and gentlemen. We’re only a sixteen-man force and we’re already working around the clock on this investigation.” He held up his hand at the growls of protest.
“Mind you, I’m not trying to excuse the fact that we haven’t found the perpetrator yet. All I’m saying is we can’t put a guard on every young girl and woman in the area.
It’s got to be up to the girls themselves and the parents to try to keep ‘em safe.
“It’s got to be emphasized to these girls,” he continued, “that it’s never safe to hitch a ride or go with somebody they don’t know, or don’t know well. It’s only an elementary precaution never to go with a stranger, no matter what excuses, reasons, or even force he might use.”
A woman shouted from the third row, “What if it isn’t a stranger?”
“We’ve thought of that, too,” D’Amico replied. “In a small community like this, it could very well be somebody they recognize. Only thing you can do is avoid going with anybody that’s not your family. Not at a time like this.”
The same woman shouted again, “What if he has a gun?”
“I was coming to that.” D’Amico looked around the auditorium. “You know, ladies and gentlemen, we all get this picture of a guy stepping out, pointing a gun, and forcing a young lady into his car or whatever at gunpoint. If somebody pointed a gun at you, you’d probably do what he said, right? Now take another look at it. There’s a lot of circumstances when that would be exactly the wrong thing to do.
“My advice to the girls, or anybody else in this situation, is, RUN. Sounds crazy, but that way you’ve at least got a chance.
“If you run, you’re a moving target. It’s not so easy to hit a moving target, especially with a small weapon like a handgun. There’s a pretty good chance he’s not an expert marksman. It’s a terror weapon, for the most part. Chances are, he won’t even fire. If he does, he probably can’t hit you, or at least not fatally. Think about it.”
D’Amico paused. Except for a few indignant murmurs, the auditorium was silent. He resumed his speech, concluding with instructions to remain in populated, well-lit areas, to be suspicious of any and everybody, and to report any untoward incidents to the police.
After pausing again to let it all sink in, he introduced the next speaker. “Dr. Ronald Ballard, who’s going to give us some tips on what kind of a guy in all probability we’re looking for. That’s not to say we limit our search to this person, it only gives us a few guidelines. Ron?”
Dr. Ballard was a tall man with graying hair and a handlebar mustache. He began by repeating what D’Amico had just said: that his psychiatric profile was not intended to exclude other possibilities.
“We’re dealing,” he told the audience, “with a very clever person. A man with real cunning. If not, he’d have been caught by now. He could be a man with a very big contempt for society. He could be a man who’s enjoying the publicity his crimes are getting, even if he has to remain anonymous.
“Or the whole thing could be a cry for help. With every crime he could be calling out, ‘Catch me, catch me. Help me.’ “
Joyce’s throat began to ache with tension. She forced herself to relax, muscle by muscle, as she listened to what the psychiatrist had to say. It was not a very specific profile. It covered just about every possibility there was.
“His cleverness,” Dr. Ballard continued, “suggests that our man is probably intelligent and educated. He’s probably quite a presentable person, the way he can lure these girls to go with him. The fact that he seems to be an area resident makes it fairly likely he’s a family man. He may even appear to have a good sexual adjustment, but underneath it all, there’s something very wrong.”
Very wrong … very wrong … It was wrong that it had to be someone like that, and not Mr. Lattimer, who would be so easy to detect. Maybe the psychiatrist was very wrong.
She heard phrases about hostility toward women. “His mother may have abandoned him in some way,” Dr. Ballard said, “or may have seemed to abandon him.”
But why take it out on innocent people? He’d have to
be crazy to begin with, wouldn’t he, for it to affect him like that?
She was barely aware that she had raised her hand, until the doctor nodded in her direction. For a moment she stared at him, amazed at being recognized, and then stood up.
“But why,” she asked, “would he take it out by killing innocent people? It doesn’t make sense. Wouldn’t he have to be crazy to begin with, to react like that? In the newspaper you said his mother might have remarried. Lots of mothers remarry, and their children don’t end up killing people.”
The doctor smiled patiently. “I said she may have seemed to abandon him,” he explained. “It’s how the child perceives a thing that determines his response to it. We don’t know what led up to his individual perception of the problem. But to react so violently—yes, undoubtedly he’s someone with a weak ego. A poor ability to adjust. That, too, may have been acquired through childhood influences. Or, just as some people haven’t a normal amount of physical stamina, and succumb more easily to physical illness, some haven’t a normal amount of emotional stamina.”
“But wh
y?” she asked.
“We don’t know. It could be that sometime in the future we’ll be able to detect and help these people in time to avert this kind of tragedy.”
“But why all of a sudden? Why would he blow up all of a sudden, right now?” She did not want to let him go. She wanted to ask so much, but was not quite sure just what it was she wanted to know.
“In a case like this,” the doctor replied, “there’s likely to be some event that triggers the explosion. It could be an event that seems very unimportant to anybody else, but it makes some kind of meaningful connection in the killer’s own mind.”
Gradually Joyce melted back into her seat, while the doctor went on talking.
“The actions of a psychotic murderer may seem random and senseless to the rest of us, but for him they make sense, in terms of how he perceives things. Later he may wonder why he did it. Or he may not actually see himself as the one who did it. He may even be begging for help, as I said before, but what he does is the only thing he can do at that time.”
Sheila was shaking her head. Joyce whispered, “I can’t understand it, either. I just can’t understand somebody being so out of control.”
A man rose and asked, “Could it be a person with some kind of fetish, like for dark hair or something?”
“No,” shouted another voice, “the first girl was blond.”
D’Amico, joining Dr. Ballard at the lectern, said, “I don’t think there’s any point in speculating on that sort of thing. I think there’s only one factor that governed his selection of victims, and I think that factor is opportunity. The guy had to kill, he had to go through his gruesome ritual, and he happened to pick whoever he could find.”
Gruesome ritual, Joyce repeated to herself as the questions and answers swirled about her. The only crazy person around was Mr. Lattimer. She could imagine him living a life of rituals, there in his shack with the summer fires and the junk-filled yard.
And Anita, that time she tried to drown Gail.
She turned her head so that she could just see Foster Farand on the other side of Sheila. His gray eyes looked out from behind steel-rimmed glasses, and his mouth was pursed attentively and rather engagingly as he listened. It couldn’t be gentle Foster.
(2001) The Girls Are Missing Page 10