by Fault lines
I measured the distance with my eye. He was too far away from her. He wasn't crowding her. That was the other thing that would make her go, if he crowded her.
There must be something that would draw him closer— something that would make Willy take a chance. What could I sell him that he'd want to buy enough to come closer without kneecapping me first? He already had everything he wanted: the setting, the control, the victim.
I held out my wrists handcuff distance apart. "I don't think you can do it, Willy," I said. "Shoot someone that you know from a distance maybe. But up close and personal? Put the handcuffs on my wrists and hurt me? You and I have talked for years. We've been friends of a sort. You wouldn't be human if you could ignore all that."
Willy practically sputtered. "My dear child. Surely you don't believe what you're saying. You can't be some airheaded Pollyanna who thinks I'm just a kindhearted, misunderstood soul?"
"I'm willing to bet my life on it, Willy. If you're right, you don't have to bother with kneecapping me: I'm willing to let you cuff me. But if you're wrong and you can't do it, then you go out and face the music for what you've done playing games with Camille. Deal?"
Willy hesitated. If good-hearted folk frequently don't know what to make of people who are bitter-hearted evil, then vice versa is also true. Willy wouldn't know whether to believe me or not. But he wanted to. He wanted to because betraying a trust was more exciting to him than winning a fight. Willy would get an erection just thinking about the look in my eyes when I realized he was going to do exactly what he said.
I glanced down again quickly. Keeter hadn't moved a muscle. She looked like she would wait in that crouched position forever. I looked up and saw the handcuffs flying toward me. "You put them on," he said.
I caught them and threw them back. "Not on your life. Easy to stand over there and give orders. No, you have to come close enough to see the look in my eyes. That's what you're avoiding, isn't it, Willy?"
Willy was salivating by now. He hesitated a moment longer and then moved forward slowly. "No tricks," he said.
"Well, you've got the gun and the knife and you outweigh me by about a hundred pounds. I'm not sure what more you want. But if it makes you feel better ..." I slowly lifted my hands in the air. I was hoping that might mean something to Keeter. I wished I knew something about how she was trained.
Willy paused and then kept moving forward slowly. He was focusing intently on me, looking, no doubt, for a kick or a hidden weapon. I shut up. I didn't want to confuse Keeter with friendly sounding conversation. Willy was eight feet away, maybe seven—how far was Keeter's territory? When was he too close?
He stopped again. Willy had decided he had come close enough. And goddamn it, Keeter hadn't. What was the distance between where he was and where she felt crowded? Was I going to get shot over a couple of feet? Why was he so goddamn leery of me, anyway; I have an honest face.
I held out my hands again. Willy was way too far to reach them. "You can't do it, Willy, so let's just go. Deep down, I've always had faith in you. I've always known there was something decent in you despite all the rotten stuff you've done. Maybe it was no accident you chose a church to listen from."
Willy couldn't help himself. The thought of destroying the trusting look I held up to him was too much. He took one more step, and I saw a blur move to my left, a completely soundless blur, moving through the air toward Willy, heading for throat-height. For a second I saw the stunned look on Willy's face, and then I heard the gun go off. In the next instance Willy was down with Keeter on top of him.
This time I didn't hesitate. I flew through the door and down the stairs. I hit the front of the church door on the run and tore across the street without looking. I burst into my office and grabbed the keys for the trunk. Camille was sitting at the desk with the phone in her hand. She was shaking, but she was still functioning. "Dial 911," was all I said, and turned to leave.
"Where's Keeter?" Camille called after me. I looked down, and there was blood on my shirt. It had to be Keeter's.
'T'll be back," I said, and headed out the door. I threw open the trunk and grabbed my fanny pack. I didn't even put it on. I just started running across the street and pulled the gun out on the way.
I got back upstairs before the sirens started. Willy was still down. Keeter had missed his throat but had caught his shoulder blade. From the looks of it she had crushed the bone and then bit him a few more times for luck before she got too weak.
Willy was sweating and crying, and his shoulder was bleeding pretty freely. Keeter had him pinned under her. She was bleeding too —how badly was hard to say without moving her. Her eyes were shut, and her body wasn't moving. Willy was in too much pain to try to get her off— she weighed easily over a hundred pounds. "Keeter?" I said, but she gave no response.
"Get her off," Willy said. Beads of sweat were popping out on his forehead, and he looked like he might be going into shock, which, oddly enough, didn't bother me in the slightest.
I was just sorry she missed his throat. I didn't bother to answer him, but headed back down the stairs, this time to get Camille. She was probably the only person who could do anything for Keeter.
I didn't even think about doing anything for Willy except calling the police. I personally wasn't in the mood to help Willy at all. On the contrary, I thought after we got Keeter off his chest, we ought to drive a stake through his heart.
23
The sirens came closer as I took off my blouse. I didn't care about standing around in my underwear; Keeter was bleeding badly. Camille and I tried to bind up her side as best we could to try and stop it. Then we tried to push her off Willy, but it wasn't easy. Camille said she weighed almost one twenty, and there was so much blood on the floor that Camille and I were slipping around in it. We worked as gently as we could.
Keeter was semiconscious but determined not to let Willy up, so mostly she wasn't cooperating. Whenever she was awake enough to recognize Camille, she'd listen to her and let us move her a little. We finally got her off Willy just as we heard footsteps on the stairs. Moments later Adam burst around the corner with two officers. He took a glance at Willy and asked, "Have you called an ambulance?"
"No," I said. Actually, I hadn't even thought of it. He pulled out his walkie-talkie and spoke into it, then knelt down beside Willy. Willy's eyes were closed, and his color didn't look good. Adam pulled back his eyelids to look at his eyes, then took his pulse. Willy's breathing was rapid and shallow, and I'd be willing to bet his pulse was fluttering. "He's in shock," he said and pulled off his jacket and covered him up with it. Then he started trying to bind up the wound.
In the distance we heard sirens again. "Go downstairs," he said to one of the officers who just seemed to be standing around, "and direct the ambulance."
It was very odd seeing somebody in as much trouble as Willy was and having no impulse to help him. It was worse than that; I was hoping he'd die. I'd felt the same way about Ted Bundy. I thought he had forfeited his right to be among us, and, for my money, so had Willy.
I found myself resenting Adam trying to save him, but I kept my mouth shut. People who've been exposed to torture kits aren't objective; they aren't even rational. And Adam wouldn't stop doing his job no matter what I said.
We had done all we could for Keeter. Now we needed to get her to a vet. I looked up at the one officer who was still standing around. "We need some help," I said. "We need to get her to a vet."
"You," Adam said firmly, "are not going anywhere. Officer Barrett will help your friend get the dog to the vet."
I started to argue, but then stopped. Camille was functioning better than I'd ever seen her. Maybe it was a good thing for her to go deal with the vet on her own. "Call on the way," was all I said. "Let them know what they've got coming in."
Luckily Officer Barrett looked like he was one of those weight-lifting-type cops. He picked up Keeter easily and headed off with Camille.
The ambulance crew arrived a few minute
s later, and after a period of scrambling and IVs and shots, Willy was put on a stretcher and the medics took off rushing down the stairs, leaving Adam and I standing around in the dim room. We were both covered with blood from our knees down from kneeing in the stuff.
Adam said to the one officer left, "Secure this scene and call for the state crime lab to come out. I'm going to take Dr. Stone's statement." He was not exactly warm. He was more like totally and completely pissed off, and my guess was, at me.
"Can we go to my office?" I said. I just wanted to get out of there and away from all memories of how close I'd come to losing my kneecaps and God knows what else.
"No," Adam said formally, "I want to keep an eye on things here. But," he added, seeming to relent slightly, "we can go to another room."
We found another room to talk in, and as the blood dried on our pants, I came clean with the story of Willy. It wasn't a pretty story. All Adam had asked of me was that I tell him if Willy contacted me, and I had not only not done that, I had bald-faced lied to him. Even last night I hadn't told him the whole story.
The more I talked about Willy and what he'd been up to, the more Adam's jaw set and the more his lips got thin and tight. He didn't say anything though. He just wrote down what I said and asked some questions, but he had a layer of ice around him that would have sunk the Titanic. I hadn't been very hopeful for my relationship with Adam before. I was pretty sure I knew where it stood now.
I started to tell him I was planning on coming clean that afternoon, but I didn't. It just sounded too weak. Too little, too late.
Besides, the truth was I didn't really know why involving Adam had been so hard for me. Disjointed images came to mind: swimming alone at night at fifteen on the inland waterway, where running into snakes wasn't even all that uncommon. Driving cars at 120 miles an hour at sixteen and waiting on every curve to see whether fate took a shot or not. I always seemed to have to walk up right to the edge of something, and I could never take anybody with me. The only honest thing I could have said to Adam was, "I don't know what this is all about, Adam, but it's old."
I didn't say it. I just kept plowing through the story. I finally got through all of it, but I was getting very cold and very tired. The adrenaline was long gone, and I felt like I'd been dropped off a cliff. Adam finally seemed to notice I wasn't doing well, and he stood up. "That's it for now," he said. "There're going to be some problems with this, but now isn't the time to talk about them."
I didn't know what he meant, but I was too tired to care. It was still morning, but I felt like it was midnight and I'd crossed the Sahara before dawn.
I started to get up when he said, "Give me a minute. I'll be right back." He went away, and when he returned he said, "Carlotta's on her way over. I'd like you to wait here until she comes." He didn't sound quite as stiff as before.
I started to protest. I get a knee-jerk reaction when people tell me what to do, but then I realized it didn't sound so bad. I was beat. "Okay," I said, and Adam raised his eyebrows. I think he realized, then, just how wiped I was.
He looked at me a minute longer, and I had the feeling maybe some part of him wanted to put his arms around me. Maybe some part of me wanted to put my arms around him. But he didn't and I didn't. I was feeling like a shit for lying to him, and I didn't even know why I did it.
And Adam? I don't know what he was feeling. He just shook his head and said, "Jesus, Michael, you're a work of art," and then he was gone. I guess that meant he was still mad.
24
I was out of it the rest of the day, and that night I slept for twelve million years. I stayed at Carlotta's and had some of the worst nightmares of my life —all to do with pliers and scalpels and handcuffs. Nonetheless I kept sleeping, and when I woke up, it was eleven o'clock the next day and Carlotta was there with coffee. "Don't you work, anymore?" I said. I had gotten some of my testiness back overnight.
"You're better," she said, relieved. "Adam said you were cooperative, so I knew you were in trouble."
"Bitch, bitch, bitch," I said. "Shut up and eat your porridge." It was a revisionist version of the three bears, and Carlotta knew the joke. She laughed.
"Adam called. He wants you to stop by the station at your earliest convenience."
"Why?" I said cynically. "Has some fool set bail for Willy?" I sat bolt upright. "How is Keeter? Is she all right?"
"Adam said she was."
I slumped down, relieved. "That is one smart dog," I said, "and one tough dog. I suppose Willy's alive too?"
"I'm afraid so," Carlotta said. "I'm not going to ask you about it now," she went on. "I think Adam's going to put you through enough, but someday I'd like to know what utter and complete stupidity you've been involved in."
"Deal," I replied, just relieved not to be on the hot seat again.
I finally made it down to see Adam, although I didn't rush. It was mid-afternoon before I started out, and he had called again. I didn't want to see Adam. I hate to see people who are right to be mad at me. How can you get righteously indignant with a friend to whom you lied through your teeth?
On the other hand, what was I supposed to do about it — grovel? Probably, he was expecting an apology. Well, fuck that. It wouldn't do any good, anyway. If it happened again, I'd probably play it the same way, and Adam knew that. I muttered all the way to the station and walked in like a sullen adolescent. I was in the wrong and resentful as hell that I was feeling guilty.
Adam looked less furious than the day before and more resigned. "Well," he said without preamble after he had shut the door to his office, "what do you want him charged with?"
"What do I want him charged with? Try kidnapping and attempted murder."
"I can do that," he said slowly, "but you have to realize the implications."
"What implications?"
"You're going to have to bring out what Willy was doing in that room and what you were doing there. I don't know how comfortable you're going to be with putting in the paper that Willy has been listening in on your therapy sessions."
I was silent. I hadn't thought about that. I'd made up my mind last night I was going to have to tell all my clients a sadistic sex offender might have listened in on their therapy sessions and just might know their most intimate secrets, but it hadn't occurred to me that it would also get put in the newspaper. "Did you get a search warrant for his house?" I asked.
"Yep!" he said.
"Was he taping?"
"Yep," he said.
"How many are there?"
"I don't know whether there are multiple sessions on the tapes, but there are a dozen or more tapes. He was working as a janitor at the church, and he had plenty of access."
"Oh, Jesus," I said. "Will they get admitted into evidence?"
"I would think so," Adam said. "The prosecution would certainly want them —they're proof positive why he was there —and the search was legal: z's dotted and t's crossed. Even if you talked them out of it, the defense would probably try to get them admitted. Anything that would embarrass local folk would put pressure on the prosecution to settle the case. I'm assuming there're some things on the tapes you don't want made public?"
"You might say that," I said. I had affairs and alcohol problems and people who hated their spouses and people who were in love with their friends' husbands. I had spouses of batterers who were making secret plans to leave them, and I had people who were gay and their own spouses didn't know it.
"I don't think my clients would want their business made public," I said slowly. "Not to mention that there is a big question about whether it was ethical for me to keep my practice open once I even had a hint somebody might be listening in on the sessions. If those tapes are admitted into evidence, I have a feeling I'll be looking at lawsuits and ethics charges."
"Uh-huh," Adam said, and I realized he had thought of this already.
"So what am I supposed to do? Let Willy walk? What about the stuff with Camille?"
"Criminal threatening,
breaking and entering," Adam said. "That's the worst we can throw at him. It won't keep him in very long. Although there is one thing. ..."
"What?" I said. Why is nothing ever simple?
"Camille said last night that he was the one who kidnapped her before."
"You sound skeptical," I said, not mentioning that I was too.
"I am," he said. "It's too much of a coincidence. I'm willing to buy—well, he obviously tried to play on her fears for who knows what sick reasons—but for somebody he kidnapped years ago when he didn't even live in her part of the country to end up as your client—I'm having trouble with it, although it's true he wasn't in prison then, so I suppose it's possible."
I had a whole lot of trouble with it, and I had even more reason. Camille had described her kidnapper to me. Like Willy, he had been into rape and torture, but the physical description she'd given me hadn't fit Willy at all. She had described him as young and slight—which Willy hadn't been for decades.
"I talked to the police again who handled her case in Boston," Adam went on. "She refused to have an internal exam at the time, so they couldn't get evidence for DNA testing. But they did get DNA testing on the murder they had later. I'm sending Willy's DNA in for testing, but I'd be willing to bet there isn't going to be a match.
"There's a thing called suggestibility, Michael. Now don't get upset. You know it and I know it. I know you think it's misused about 90 percent of the time in child sexual abuse cases, but on the other hand —a woman as posttraumatic as Camille Robbins with Willy's voice being piped into her bedroom night after night describing rape and torture and claiming he's the kidnapper. I have to ask: What are the chances she's gotten the two confused?"
Pretty good, I thought, but I didn't say so.
"On the other hand, Michael, I've got a case that's hard to ignore. We've got his tapes from her house. There's no issue of a search warrant. It was Camille's house, and she gave permission. We've got other similar tapes in our perfectly legal search of his premises. He's clearly been emotionally torturing her, and she swears up and down that he's the same man who kidnapped and tortured her before. He says so himself on the tapes.