9 More Killer Thrillers

by Russell Blake

  In a culture where so many men, and now women, relied on an array of prescription drugs to replenish desire that had disappeared, been destroyed, or was pushed down so deep they were afraid to find out what was inhibiting it, the raw and real appetites of these women was mesmerizing.

  What was different about them that allowed for a suspension of social mores? Wanting to be part of a couple regardless of how unfulfilling it may be, so many women I’ve worked with have chosen a life of compromises over the alternative. They deny, even in the privacy of their minds, their most creative fantasies, choosing instead to borrow from the sex scenes they read in soft-focus fiction. They are afraid to search the twisting tunnels of their own ids to discover what would be arousing—be it talking out loud, role playing or pursuing pain.

  And yet this group had overcome all inhibition to indulge in their cravings. To create a solution despite how unconventional it was. Was what they craved unusual? Yes. Was it dysfunctional? It might be for some of them and not for others. Judging them wouldn’t help me to understand how they could be in touch with the darkest and most private parts of their sexual selves. But I could wonder at it. Especially here, in my own home, watching them act out their fantasies for one another to see.

  On the monitor, the naked man walked off the stage and toward the woman, whose back was still to the camera. The camera pushed past her pale gray gown, angled down and zoomed in for a close-up of her manicured fingers reaching out and testing the heft of Tim’s testicles. Then she wrapped her hand around his cock, holding it as if it was a leash, and led him out past the all-female audience.

  The video cut to a darkened bedroom. Tim’s bare back filled the frame and the woman’s now-naked legs were visible on either side of his body. Her toenails were painted a deep blood red.

  “Don’t go fast,” her disembodied voice demanded. “Take your time.” Her fingers clutched at his back, pressing into his flesh, leaving deep, moon-shaped marks.

  Soft, ambient light gleamed off his back as he moved in a slow-motion dance.

  “You understand this is not for your pleasure. I don’t want you to have any release. Not now. Not at all. Do you think that you can hold back?” Her words weren’t just instructions; she was excited hearing herself speak. “Can you stay hard for me? For as long as I need it?”

  “Yes.” His voice was thick and low. Obedient. Without any trace of theatrics. He seemed sincerely respectful.

  The only sound for the next few seconds was the stinging noise of his skin slapping against hers.

  “Tell me how you can hold off. Doesn’t it feel good?” She whispered so softly I had to lean forward to hear. I could see the sweat on his shoulder blades now, and the way his buttocks flexed, relaxed, and then tensed again.

  “It does. It feels too good. But I want to please you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want my reward.”

  “The longer you can wait, the more you can give me without giving anything to yourself, the more I’ll reward you. Is that what you want?”

  “Yes,” he answered. “Please.”

  “Won’t it make you crazy when I start to buck under you? When I start to come? And you can’t?”

  “Yes, it will.”

  “But you’ll be able to hold off?”

  “Yes.”

  I sucked in my breath.

  “How will you hold yourself back from coming, from spewing out, from shooting into me?” She was lost in her own sex play, speaking now not for him at all, but to heighten her own delight.

  “Because it’s what you want me to do.”

  As her breath came faster, she made small sounds of delight. His breaths were shallow. The muscles in his back were tensed and delineated. The effort was obviously painful.

  Meanwhile, the camera held, motionless.

  The man moved in rhythm to the woman’s moans and sighed softly. She shouted out, “No. No. Do you hear me?”

  I held my breath.

  “Yes,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you sure you can do this?” Her voice sounded urgent.

  “Yes.”

  A long, slow arc of sound escaped from her and, before it was over, the scene changed and we were back in the library. Tim was on the stage again. Still erect. With his head bowed.

  “Now that Tim has passed his first test, let’s get the bidding started.”

  I was in an erotic fog, but before I could understand why, I was overwhelmed by a wave of sadness. There was no one I could expend my energy on. No one I could even confess to about how watching a group of women assess a man and test his prowess had gripped me with a want completely unfamiliar to me.

  No. That wasn’t why I was melancholy.

  There was someone. Even though I’d been with him only once, I was certain—even in that very hazy moment—that Noah Jordain would have understood what I was experiencing. That if it were possible for me to tell him about the video and my reaction to it, he would give me his slow smile that looked the way his voice sounded, take his hand, put it on the side of my face, look right at me, and tell me that he’d play a game with me if that was what I wanted. Any game I wanted to try. That yes, he’d even be happy to stand in front of me naked and do my bidding.

  Like a burst of unwanted morning light when you are craving more sleep and darkness, I saw Noah, not in my daydream, but standing in front of that wall of hideous pictures at the station house. All the feelings stirring and swirling through my body and brain were wiped out with one sudden realization.

  The man I’d just been watching on the tape, who had stripped down, made himself hard, preformed on command, and then allowed himself to be auctioned off, was the second victim of the killer Noah was hunting.

  Tim. Of course. Timothy. Timothy Wheaton. Healthy, bronzed and almost unrecognizable as the gray corpse in the photos at the police station.

  With a shaking hand, I pressed the rewind button on the remote, listened to the whir of the tape spinning backward, hit Stop, and then Play. I’d overshot the section so fast-forwarded, all the while watching the sensual footage running by too quickly like bad slapstick.

  Finally, I found the section I was searching for.

  Tim, standing bare-chested in his jeans, posing for the hungry women.

  Tim taking off his pants, and after that his underwear.

  Tim showing off his erection, leaving the room with the unidentified woman.

  I shut my eyes to recall, as clearly as I could, the photographs on Jordain’s wall. I pictured the face of the man in the shots the newspaper had not run. He was pale, naked and without any life in him, but he was absolutely the same man who was on the tape.

  It had been terrifying that one man who had been connected to the Scarlet Society had been killed.

  But two men?

  That could not be a coincidence.

  Two men had to be a pattern.

  Twenty-Eight

  It was still light when I left the apartment and headed downtown for the parents’ meeting at the rehearsal studio. As I walked from Madison to Lexington to get on the subway, I watched the sky deepen. The twilight was thick and colorless that night and the skyscrapers blended into the gray of the evening, their tips disappearing in the cloud cover and ensuing darkness. The autumnal gold and red leaves were like bursts of fire against the dusky evening.

  On the ride, I obsessed over the video, but as I walked into the lobby I forced myself to let go of Dr. Snow’s problems and just be Dulcie’s mom.

  Young stars and parents alike sat on metal chairs in the makeshift auditorium, sipping soda, bad coffee, or even worse wine, listening to the director talk about the upcoming out-of-town preview. He handed out schedules that included the name of the hotel the theater company had commandeered for the weekend, the directions, the times of the performances and other pertinent travel arrangements. Then he talked about the kind of stress the kids were all facing and what we could do to help our children as they approached this
momentous performance.

  Dulcie sat between my ex-husband and me and shifted in her seat, unable to find a position to hold for more than a minute or two. Her glance never left the director’s face, and several times I noticed she was chewing the inside of her cheek, something I hadn’t seen her do in years. Her nervousness was escalating.

  Afterward, the three of us had dinner at the Time Out café, an easygoing but trendy restaurant two blocks from the rehearsal studio. She had a soda; Mitch and I both had wine. It was much better than what had been offered at the meeting.

  We got along well, this man whom I’d been married to for almost half my life, and I. After all, we had a common goal—to be the best parents we could be to our daughter. Dissolving a union is never easy, but our experience was sad as opposed to brutal, and neither of us felt animosity toward the other. We’d managed to stay friends through the proceedings, which I credit entirely to Mitch. He was generous and thoughtful.

  If I am going to be truthful, I will say that part of my reason for being so reasonable was because Mitch and Dulcie have a very special relationship. They are more alike than she and I are. They share the same love of theater and film, of books and of physical activities such as skiing and mountain climbing. They have the same tall, lanky frame, the same near-sightedness, and the same taste in food, preferring their meals less spicy than I do.

  I have, at times, been jealous of the bond they share, forgetting that Dulcie and I are also close. But having lost my mother so young, I worked too hard at connecting to my daughter and sometimes, in a moment of clarity, knew it did more to push us apart than bring us together.

  We were on dessert. Well, Mitch and Dulcie were, each of them working on a slice of cheesecake. I was making do with an espresso. I’d been watching Dulcie all night, waiting to see the nerves relax even a little. But they hadn’t. Something was up.

  “You okay?” I asked my daughter.

  She nodded and then looked at Mitch.

  I knew that look. I’d been seeing it for years. My daughter’s way of working out her problems never changed: she went to Mitch first and after that the two of them brought the dilemma to me.

  When I’d talked it over with Nina years ago, she’d told me that it wasn’t unusual for the child of a therapist to be wary of that parent’s insight. That bringing in the nonpsychologist parent first gave the child a ballast and a buffer. Nina had helped me to accept the alliance, but that didn’t mean it made me happy.

  “Morgan, it’s about the trip to Boston,” Mitch said, translating Dulcie’s look.

  “Okay. Spill,” I said to her, trying for a lighthearted tone, hoping I could signal that I would just listen first and not react. But inside I was instantly worried. Instantly afraid. Some of this was my own projection about what she was going through, but more of it was coming from Dulcie.

  Since she was a tiny baby, I had always picked up on her pain, both physical and emotional. Often, I’d be doing something miles away from her and get a sudden pain in my throat, or stomach, or hand, only to find out when I arrived home that she’d gotten sick or cut herself.

  Other times, I’d felt a pang of homesickness or fear and found out that while she was on her sleepover or at camp she’d missed us and wanted to come back, or that in school some other kid had been mean to her.

  Earlier that night, I’d felt nervous. I’d written off the feeling as what I’d assumed was her normal stage fright.

  “I’d like Daddy to come with me to Boston.”

  I felt relieved. “Of course he can come, honey. We’re both coming. You don’t even have to ask. Does she, Mitch?”

  My ex-husband returned my gaze, warning me with his expression that I wasn’t hearing what Dulcie was saying.

  “That’s not it, is it?” I asked her.

  She was holding her lips pressed together, not wanting to explain, leaving it to me to do the work for her. It was easy enough. “You want me to stay home?”

  She nodded and rushed into an explanation. “It’s not that I don’t want you to come. I just don’t want you to see the mistakes. I want to get all that out of the way first. I don’t want you to see the play till we open in New York.

  Till it’s right. Till it’s perfect.”

  I nodded. Something that had been bothering me was suddenly making sense. “Hon, is that why you usually tell me to pick you up at one time, only for me to get there and realize I’m about ten or fifteen minutes later than the other parents? You don’t want me to see the rehearsals?”

  She bit her bottom lip. “I just want you to see the play. On opening night. All perfect.”

  There was something else she wasn’t saying, but I knew from the way her blue eyes had clouded over that she wasn’t going to tell me any more than that. She had inherited some of Mitch’s negative traits, too. That stubborn shutting down being one of them.

  I picked up my glass of wine and took a long sip and tried to separate my hurt from a real clinical assessment of what my daughter was doing and why. But all I could think was what had I done to my daughter to make her think that I wanted—or needed—her to be perfect?

  Putting my hand on hers, I leaned toward her. “Sweetheart, I don’t need your performances to be perfect. I’m not judging you.”

  Tears came too quickly. “If I can’t do it right, you won’t let me keep doing it.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  No words now, just a shaky shrug of her shoulders,

  “I love you, Dulcie, whether you get up there and belt out the songs like Judy Garland or flub your lines, or sing off-key. As for you continuing with acting, that’s a family decision. One that we’ll all make together when the run of this play is over. We’ll look at your schoolwork and what kind of stress you’re feeling and we’ll decide together.”

  She nodded, but I didn’t know if I’d convinced her. Later, when I was alone, I’d deal with everything I was thinking. Right now all that mattered was saying something that would alleviate my daughter’s distress.

  “I promise I am not going to stop you from pursuing this if it’s what you really want. You believe that, don’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “What about Boston?” she said with a slight catch in her voice. “Can Dad go with me? Can you wait to see me till it’s the final show?”

  “If it matters to you that much …” I let the rest of the sentence drift off.

  “It does. The rehearsals always go bad. Lots of the other kids have convinced their parents not to come watch.”

  I glanced at Mitch. There were no answers in his eyes.

  Twenty-Nine

  I waited until after we got home. And then I waited until after Dulcie had done her homework. I waited until after we sat and watched an episode of Seinfeld together, both of us laughing even though we knew all the jokes ahead of time. And finally I waited until after she got undressed and into bed and fell asleep.

  Still I didn’t do anything. I put a pot of water on to boil. Waited for a cup of tea to brew. Waited for a teaspoon of honey to melt. And then there wasn’t any excuse I could give myself to wait anymore. Even though I didn’t have any solid information that I could give him. Even though I couldn’t break any confidence.

  I could tell him that one thing I’d noticed in the photographs at the station house that hadn’t made sense at that time did make sense now, couldn’t I?

  Didn’t I need to?

  No one in the Scarlet Society group had told me anything about it. Shelby hadn’t mentioned it when we’d talked in private. It was something I had noticed on my own.

  I picked up the phone.

  And then hung up.

  What if my talking to Jordain would make a difference to his investigation? What if the information I had dovetailed with facts he’d found out but hadn’t quite fit into place? I went over the argument again in my mind. Going to the police with information that had to do with any patients wasn’t something you just did. There was nothing more sacred in o
ur business than the confidentiality between me and the people who came to me to help them.

  I fell asleep after lying in bed for what seemed like hours, going over both sides of the argument, trying to tackle it with logic, without coming to a solution. The apartment was quiet except for the occasional sound of a car on the street five stories below. Where was he? The man who had killed Philip Maur and Timothy Wheaton. Was he on the videotape that Shelby had given me? Had any of the women I was working with in the group had sex with him? What was his connection to the Scarlet Society? And what was my responsibility?

  I got up, throwing off the sheets, and walked barefoot through the dark hallway to Dulcie’s room. The door was open halfway and my eyes had adjusted to the gloom while I lay in my bed, restless and worried.

  My daughter was lying on her back, one arm under the sheets, the other thrown across her chest. Her face was smooth and peaceful. I couldn’t see the shadows under her eyes that I’d noticed that night at dinner. All I wanted to do was keep her safe. Keep her happy.

  Somewhere beyond these walls was a man who had already killed twice. I didn’t know why. And I didn’t know what I could do about it. But I knew that the men he had killed had children who would miss them, whose lives would never be the same again.

  Lost girls. Lost boys.

  Could I really keep what I knew from Noah Jordain?

  Thirty

  At lunchtime the next day, Nina asked if I wanted to take a walk.

  “Yes, if you’ll come with me to run an errand. I have to go to Tiffany to pick up a present for Dulcie.”

  She nodded. “I’ll get my jacket.”

  The temperature still hadn’t dropped; it was a sunny sixty degrees out. The walk should have been delightful but I was preoccupied and tired, and she knew it.

  “What’s bothering you?” she asked as soon as we were out on the street.

  I didn’t deny that I was troubled. Nina had known me too long and too well.