by Robyn Carr
Tom smiled. “Very good. You should get certified.”
“What if you’re so brutally abused that the only safe place is inside your head and survival means being smarter than your captors? Don’t you ever wonder if he went back to the farm and killed them? His parents?”
“Yeah,” said Tom. “Hell, I wanted to go kill them.”
“What did you ever find out about Devalian’s childhood?”
“Devalian was a psychopath; irresponsible, lack of remorse or shame, liar and convincingly so, compulsive criminal and antisocial behavior. He said he was in a gang; he left his family at a young age. I’m certain he was abused; I never ran into a sociopath or psychopath from a nurturing family. Thing is, they can’t help it. Can’t.”
It was midnight before he was talked out. I indulged in only one glass of wine and then drank cranberry juice for my imaginary bladder infection. I calmed so much in listening to him; his stories were compelling and his delivery of them filled with feeling and compassion. I had begun the evening feeling tense. As he was leaving, he said he had noticed my nervousness and I admitted that I might be feeling pressured into a relationship.
“I wish you wouldn’t be so suspicious of me, Jackie. It’s such fun to have an intelligent woman to talk to.”
“I want to live here a long time; I don’t want to rush into a relationship without being sure and then break up, go through all the humiliation of being considered fickle and the embarrassment of looking like a woman on the make. Let’s be friends for a while. No expectations.”
“Okay by me. Will I be in trouble if I admit I liked the other night? I wouldn’t mind more nights like that.”
“I’m flattered. But that was too impetuous; I’d rather nights like that come after more nights like this, when our friendship is established and solid.”
“Then you leave me a message when you want me to call. I don’t want you to think I’m pushing you. I don’t want anyone who doesn’t want me.”
“Okay.” I said. “I’ll give you a call.”
When he was gone I cleaned up the kitchen and decided, for the twentieth time, that I had been ridiculous. There was nothing about him that should bother me. The idea that something had been happening in my house drifted far from my mind. I slept soundly and awoke rested.
***
Sunday morning I had coffee, turned on the stereo, read the Sunday paper for hours. It was noon before I noticed, as I passed the open dining-room doors, that there was something on the table. I walked closer and had a start.
A wineglass lay on its side and a bright red stain soiled the white linen tablecloth. Closer inspection told me it was cranberry juice. And the back-door dead bolt was open.
That’s when Sweeny became my roommate.
9
Lathrop Munroe Sweeny, sheriff’s deputy, is a six-foot-four-inch, strapping, twenty-eight year old boy who doesn’t seem, at first, to be overly smart. One of my first thoughts upon meeting him was that I might be safer with just about anyone else. He was frowny, made do with grunting in lieu of talking, and he had those dark, hooded eyes that when brooding look mean.
It was Sunday noon when I called Bodge at home. A small female voice answered the phone and I asked for him. I told him what had happened and he asked me to drive over to his house and sit down for a talk.
Coleman has a downtown district, about eight blocks’ worth, and residential streets around the town. From Wet Mountain Valley, in which the town is set, one can see foothills rising behind the populated streets that stretch for about four blocks each way. I lived on one of those streets. The houses resemble miniature Victorians, sixty or eighty years old. The sidewalks are cracked and the front yards are small. Huge elm, ash, and aspen line the narrow, potholed streets in town; Coleman looks, except for the hilly contours, like Mayberry.
Many of the residents of Coleman took advantage, as Tom and Bodge did, of larger acreage outside the town. The sheriff’s office was in Pleasure, and Bodge had a place off the county road that led to his office. When I drove up I noticed a kind of bedraggled country look: A cyclone fence surrounded a side yard; the driveway was dirt; the lawn was sparse and had gone yellow. Behind the house was a garage or minibarn or large shed and there were three old cars that seemed to have been abandoned in the midst of restoration or repair. There were a swing set that had rusted and a couple of old oil drums; the lawnmower was sitting out and had a dog lead hanging over the handle; and there was what seemed to be a pyramid stack of coffee cans plus stray cans all over the place.
It looked like Bodge; tired and sloppy. I was unprepared for the rest.
The door was opened by a small, bleached-blond, and attractive woman who looked years younger than Bodge. She could have passed for thirty-five and I wondered if she was a second wife. Her makeup was heavy and impeccable, her hair was teased around her crown and long in the back, and her nails were long and bright red. She had a tiny, compact figure; narrow waist, full bosom, round but not fat hips. She wore her jeans too tight; her sweater came exactly to her waist. She looked like sex appeal was her motive. But I was about to become acquainted with a woman who was not overtly sexy.
“Hi, Miss Sheppard,” she said, smiling. “I’m Sue Scully. Come on in; Bodge told me about you.”
I stepped inside the front door onto polished oak floors. To the immediate left was an immaculate, beautifully furnished living room, done in French provincial, on a thick cream-colored carpet. To the right, a shining formal dining room. I followed her into a spacious kitchen done in doorless cupboards with bright blue hanging pots. Fragile plates and cups and crystal — hard to picture in Bodge’s big ham-fist — decorated these shelves. There was a breakfast bar separating the kitchen from the family room and a table in front of the bay window. The curtains, white and blue, were fresh and crisp-looking. The family room was more masculine; a patterned rug covered the beautiful floors. The TV was crackling some sporting event and Bodge flipped it off with his remote. He hoisted himself out of a leather recliner. “Hi, Jackie. How ya doin’?”
“This is beautiful, Bodge. I thought you said you were building?”
“His game room,” Sue said. “Our room is that way” — she pointed to the right —”and the kids’ rooms are that way, and he’s been building a game room on their side, off their hall, for six or seven years now.”
“Because Sue’s on their case every second that they can’t mess up the family room, so I been working on a game room.”
“Except they’ll all be gone before there’s a game room.”
“For the grandkids, then,” he said.
She grinned at me and shook her head. “We have two grandkids already and only Raymond and Trisha still live at home. Trisha’s a sophomore this year... so it isn’t going to be long. ‘Course, I may never shed Raymond.”
The family-room fireplace mantel was covered with many years of family pictures. I was astonished; Sue was obviously the mother of all four kids, two of whom were adults, and she looked young enough to be Bodge’s daughter. Or Bodge looked old enough to be her father. In any case, I never would have put the two of them together.
“Coffee?” she asked me. “I’m doing some ironing.”
She had her ironing board set up and a bunch of sheriffs shirts hanging from the doorway molding. I accepted the coffee and had a flash of pity for her. As immaculate and impeccable as she was, as crisp and perfect as those ironed shirts looked, it must kill her to have her husband look so much like an unmade bed all the time.
“I been talking to Sue about this, Jackie...”
“Oh, Bodge, you promised...”
“Promises don’t include Sue,” he said, not the least remorseful.
“He tells me most things, and be glad,” she said. “First, everybody has to have someone they can talk to, and second, I’m smart in some of the things that Bodge isn’t. When it has to do with women and kids, you want me on his staff. And third, you can be sure it isn’t Bodge who’s giving you th
e go-around.”
“Anyway, Sue thinks maybe you ought to have someone stay with you for a while.”
“Who?”
“Sweeny,” Sue said, giving the shirt she was working on a squirt of spray starch. “Lathrop Munroe Sweeny.” She laughed. “Only a person who doesn’t know Sweeny would come within a mile of you with him there. Bodge was telling me that whoever has been in your house isn’t doing anything except leaving clues he’s been there. Or she, who knows? You live next door to Mrs. Wright, and I’ve always thought she’s dotty.”
“You know Mrs. Wright?”
“Sure. I used to walk to school past her house. She doesn’t keep things up much anymore. She used to have flower beds that she was digging in all the time and she gave the kids hell for getting near them. I swear, she hollered at ‘em when they were across the street. I don’t know where the ‘Mrs.’ comes from; I never knew a man ever to go near there and that’s gotta be thirty-five years ago I walked past her house. She doesn’t talk to anybody; she yells at dogs and kids. She’s an old bitty.” Sue made a face and lowered her voice. “I bet she’s an old spinster.”
“She must be seventy-five or more,” I said. “Maybe she was married young and her husband died and she never remarried.”
“My mother can’t remember any husband, either. Back to you — you ought to have Sweeny stay with you a few nights, now that this bozo is going in your house while you’re there. It’s one thing for you to come home and find someone’s been there, but while you’re sleeping? That’s too much.”
“I don’t think whoever this is means any real harm,” Bodge said.
“That’s what you know,” his wife told him. Then she looked at me. “We haven’t ever had anything like this before. It sounds dangerous to me. I can’t figure it out. It’s not the usual pervert stuff; it’s a kind of psychological terrorism. I asked Bodge if he thought you were maybe trying to get some attention, but —”
“Sue!”
“Well, it’s a reasonable question and has to be asked. But he said —”
“I’m not, Mrs. Scully; I could find a lot of better ways to get attention and sleep better at night.”
“ ‘Course you’re not, Jackie. Can I call you Jackie? And you call me Sue. No, Bodge says that he and Roberta, too, figure something is going on. You’re new in town, living alone, and someone has decided to get a charge out of scaring you. You know, like obscene phone callers like to do.”
“When did Bodge tell you about it?”
“Oh... I don’t know. Right away, I guess.”
“So what do you think about Tom? I cooked Tom dinner last night. He’s almost the extent of my social life.”
She shrugged. “I thought about Tom. Seems like this would have started happening right after you met him. That’s when he was in your house all the time fixing, what was it, shelves and a bathroom? Well, why would he all of a sudden start creeping into your house after he’s got an invitation to come? I don’t know Tom that well, but it doesn’t seem very logical.”
“Does any of this seem logical?”
“Oh, sure, Jackie,” she said. “Not to Bodge, because he sees things in black and white; it’s legal or it’s a crime. The logic in this is the same logic as in phone calls, exhibitionism, that sort of thing. Somebody likes the power of working you up. Pervert.”
“Sue tells me that I don’t understand crimes that victimize women; crimes like she said — obscene phone calls and flashers.” Bodge shrugged and went to the coffee pot. “She’s mostly right — I don’t get the point. There must be a point because we sure get more of that stuff than regular old bank robberies. I can’t figure out the payoff.”
“Bodge doesn’t have a perverted bone in his body,” Sue explained. “The payoff is you get to live on the edge for a while, sneaking around and doing something bad, the danger of getting caught versus getting away with it sends off a shot of adrenaline. There’s control — you get to watch someone run away or hear them gasp and hang up. You get to picture them not being able to sleep or pick up the phone without being nervous or scared.” She stared at me and lifted one slim, light-brown eyebrow. “Power,” she said.
“Like what’s-his-name, remember, Bodge? That crossing guard who used to accidentally leave his pecker hanging out of his pants till they fired him?”
A bubble of laughter came out of me. “Who?”
“Aw, he’s long gone. That was a long time ago,” Bodge said, annoyed.
“Right here in Coleman?”
“Honey, Coleman isn’t that much different than anywhere else except maybe people are more careful because it’s easier to get found out in a place where everyone knows everyone... and their truck. We had a guy who stole undies off people’s clotheslines. He’s still right here — in church every Sunday, which is why I won’t name him.”
“What’d you do?” I asked Bodge.
“I told him if he didn’t knock it off, he’d be wearing undies on his head. There are advantages to being a cop in a small town,” he said, sipping his coffee. “Sometimes you get to make up the law, not just enforce it.”
I looked back at Sue. “You almost sound like a psychologist,” I said.
“Just a cop’s wife,” she said. “And I read magazines and novels. I listen to Bodge, read, and listen to Bodge some more.”
“We don’t have serious crime around here,” Bodge said. “Haven’t had a rape around here in... jeez, a long, long time.”
“Yes we have,” Sue argued. “Date rape, marital rape, and miscellaneous rape. Now that it’s been on Oprah, a lot of women are realizing —”
“Let’s not get on that,” Bodge told his wife. “Here’s what I’d like to do, Jackie. I want to print the glass at your house and send Sweeny over to sleep on your couch this week. Because I don’t understand this, which means there could be more to it than I think. Sweeny is a big boy,’and he isn’t married so he won’t be putting anyone out.”
“I’d go stay with you myself,” Sue said, “but Raymond and Bodge would turn this house into a hovel.”
“I wouldn’t want to put you in a dangerous situation,” I said. “And you’re smaller than I am.”
“Believe you me,” Sue said, “I may not look big, but honey, nobody gets through me unless invited.”
“I don’t think you’re in a dangerous situation, Jackie,” Bodge said, shaking his head. “I don’t, I mean that. I’m curious as hell about why you’re getting this attention. I sure wouldn’t mind catching someone.”
“This time you’re not suggesting that Tom be invited to protect me,” I pointed out.
“Not because I have any notion that Tom’s doing this to you, because I can’t imagine why he’d do something as strange as that. It’s because you don’t seem too comfortable about it, so I gotta hear that. And Sweeny is just an idea — maybe nothing will happen while he’s there... I’m going to have him go over in his truck and park it down the block.”
“If Jackie doesn’t feel right about Tom Wahl, Bodge, you ought to have a closer look at him. There is nothing better than a woman’s instinct.”
I felt grateful and ashamed all at once. I felt validated by having someone support my instincts, and I felt guilty about drawing negative attention to a man who might be innocent of any wrongdoing. I smiled at Sue. “Thanks, Sue. Bodge is probably right; there’s no reason to suspect Tom other than the fact that he’s the only man I’ve dated. And I don’t plan to date him anymore.”
“Why?” she asked.
“This phantom stuff hasn’t made me feel comfortable about dating anyone. When I think about it, though, that’s not the reason. He’s interesting; he’s friendly and accommodating. And I don’t like him.” I shrugged. “I kept thinking I should. I don’t. That’s it.”
“That’s enough,” she said.
I had a second cup of coffee and talked with Sue and Bodge for a while longer — blissfully, not about the crazy stuff going on in my house. I learned Sue was a housewife and had ra
ised four children. Her oldest daughter, twenty-six, had two tiny children and lived in Aurora. Her second child, a twenty-three year old son, had just graduated from college, had gone into police work like his father, and lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Raymond, eighteen, worked on cars and nothing more. Trisha was fifteen and in a perpetual state of PMS, but a smart cookie, a cheerleader, and spoiled.
Sue Scully was active, intuitive, and down-to-earth. She was busy every minute; when the ironing was done she began chopping vegetables; she couldn’t sit still. Getting to know her, finding I liked and admired her, was beneficial because I found a potential friend. The greater advantage was that I now trusted Bodge completely. I decided it would be impossible for him to be anything but a straight-arrow with a wife like Sue.
We said our good-byes and promised to stay in touch and Bodge followed me home. He had a fingerprint kit with him, but it was futile. There were no prints on the glass or the jug of cranberry juice. I threw out the cranberry juice. I was tempted to throw out everything in the refrigerator. The rest of my day was uneventful until eight p.m., when I met my roommate.
He held his ball cap in one hand and a large grocery bag in the other. He stood an easy and graceful six-foot-four, had unruly black hair, wore jeans, boots, and a plaid shirt. “Miss Sheppard?”
“Yes. Lathrop?”
“Sweeny, ma’am. Nobody calls me Lathrop.”
“Okay, Sweeny. Come on in.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I appreciate this. Sweeny. I know it’s an inconvenience, to camp out in someone’s house ...”
“Yes, ma’am. Can I borrow your refrigerator, ma’am?” he asked.
“Certainly,” I said, and watched him unload a bag of groceries into it. He had hot dogs, cheese, buns, chips, frozen pizza, ice cream, a six-pack of soda, and a twelve-pack of little cakes, the kind you put in school lunches.
“I like a snack at night — if I’m careful not to make a big mess, do you mind? I could borrow the microwave?”