by Ralph Dennis
Her father had a hard time finding himself after that. He went from job to job, hopeful at the beginning of each one and bitter when that job fell apart. She attended public school and she was a proper little girl. About the time she reached high school, he gave up on ever getting rich or finding the path to the good life. He settled into a final job as a leasing agent for a company that handled hundreds of apartments in the city and at the beach. He prospered to a degree and when Diane was ready for college, he could afford to send her to Coker.
“A liberal education?”
She smiled. “Of course. No typing, no shorthand. Just those courses that educate and prepare a young girl for a future as a wife and a mother.”
Wilt sipped his weak drink. “That ought to take you up to when you’re twenty-one or so and graduate cum laude.”
“If we go too fast, we might miss something,” Diane said.
“Like what?”
“We’d miss Jimmy Mills, the first man in my life. I met him when I was a senior. He was a senior at Davison. Girls from Coker were bussed to a dance at Davison. I met Jimmy at a mixer one Friday night.”
“And?”
“He took my poor and worthless virginity one month later in a motel in Charlotte.”
“Why was it poor and worthless?”
“You had to be there,” she said. She waited, a finger tapping on the tabletop. “Aren’t you going to ask me about it, Wilton?”
“What am I supposed to ask?”
“Did I enjoy it? That’s one good question.”
“Did you?” It was her game, her rules.
“Not very much,” she said. “It was all mixed up and awkward and for all his big talk Jimmy didn’t know much more about it than I did.”
“So, you married Jimmy because you didn’t enjoy it?”
“Exactly. And because I’d just about finished my course of study and I hadn’t learned anything that would help me earn a living. And maybe because he asked me. And maybe because I thought you were only supposed to go to bed with someone you intended to marry. I’d been to bed with him, hadn’t I? That had to mean I intended to marry him.”
“It’s a twisted kind of logic,” he said.
“Isn’t it?”
They’d married that June. Both graduated and the marriage took place about two weeks later. Her family approved of Jimmy because he seemed to have a future. His family approved of her because she was so completely a lady.
“So you marched off to face the world and you lived happily ever after.”
“Something like that.”
Jimmy was accepted into the M.B.A. program at Chapel Hill and they lived there for the two years it took to complete the program. “That’s how I know so much about the Tarfoots.”
She got her first job there, as a teller in one of the banks. With that income supplementing what his father furnished, they lived well and Jimmy worked hard and finished near the top of his class. The M.B.A. from the University of North Carolina didn’t carry the weight the Harvard program did but he got a lot of good offers and he accepted one with a stockbrokerage firm in Charlotte. They did quite well socially, thank you, and Jimmy was a so successful that he moved on after three years to a better position with a firm in Raleigh.
“That’s too much about Jimmy,” Wilt said. “What about you?”
“I made a comfortable home for us and we joined the country club and a tennis and racquet club. I sharpened my tennis and he played racquetball because that’s the sport all the young executive enjoyed. Life went on. And on. And on.”
“And on.”
“I declare,” she said mockingly, “I do believe you know about marriage.”
“I have a few unsubstantiated clues,” he said. “Children?”
“We were waiting for him to make his first million. We were waiting until we tired of the social life. Until we thought we were mature enough to take on the responsibility of raising a child.”
Except for the part about the first million, her story matched the way it had been with him and with Mary Ellen. That was the surface. His secret reasons, the ones he never discussed, were more realistic. As a career officer, the time it took him away from home, he wasn’t certain he’d be around a child long enough to be a good father. And the longer he lived with Mary Ellen, the less hope he had for the marriage.
“Let me make a guess. One day you looked around at your life, the way it was defined by all this social shit, and you bugged out.”
“Not exactly.” A brief shake of her head. “I didn’t leave until I was fairly certain he felt the same way about me that I felt about him.”
“Which was?”
“Bored, disinterested.”
“He tell you that he was bored and disinterested?”
“Not in so many words. He demonstrated it. He did that by sleeping with his secretaries and even some of his women clients.”
“He hurt your pride?”
“No, I was past that. I felt relief. So we split the blanket.”
“I haven’t heard that since I was a mountain man.”
“In this case, it carried a lot more meaning. I asked for a big share of what we had in assets. You might even say I used a touch of blackmail to get the largest piece of the blanket. The merest mention of the names of some of the women clients he’d been sleeping with was enough to make him very generous.”
“And then?”
“With that money, I bought myself a bar.”
The thought stunned him. “The Blue Lagoon?”
“That surprises you?”
“A little.” A thought pushed at him. “But you dance there.”
“For two good reasons. I want to show the girls that I’m not too goody-goody to do what they do. And you have to admit, from the way it fooled you, that it is very good cover for me.”
“It’s a good cover. You fooled this farm boy.”
“According to the books, the license, the club is owned by a corporation. I just happen to own ninety percent of the stock.”
“And Kyle and the bikers?”
“Security. Hired help except for Kyle who owns the other ten percent in the corporation. You’d be surprised how much attention someone pays to the details when he owns part of the stock.”
“That doesn’t explain the drug sales, the after-hours alcohol sales, the women who sell their ass there.”
“Not proven,” Diane said. “There are no drug sales in the club. Nobody involved with the club, who works there, deals. That’s my iron rule.”
“Alcohol sales?”
“That’s the first I’ve heard of it. I’ll check and doublecheck. The club’s no good without a valid license.”
“The girls?”
“I can’t control their private lives. But no selling is done on the premises. And no dates made for later. That is my other iron rule.”
“That doesn’t explain Rachel.”
“What?”
“You said Kyle could send her to me.”
“I think I knew you better than that. It was the insult you took it for. Though to tell the truth, many places the law is just one more item on the overhead.”
“You have a talent for rubbing fur against the grain.”
“It’s a learned talent. And you’ll admit you haven’t been the perfect gentleman caller.”
Wilt checked his watch. By the time he drove back to the Station, his hour would be over. “You didn’t tell me about the tattoo.”
“I’m not sure I know you well enough.”
“I think you know me well enough,” he said. “I think you like to keep a bit a mystery about yourself.”
Wilt carried his drink to the sink and poured out what remained. She followed him to the living room and waited while he put on his heavy coat.
“You’re a complex one yourself.”
“What you see is what I am.”
“That’s too easy. Too obvious.”
He opened the door and stood there while he seated his cap
. “See you again?”
“If I said no, would that change anything?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. If you’d said no, I’d have to believe you were lying to me.”
He backed into the hallway and pulled the door closed behind him.
CHAPTER TWENTY
He arrived in Chapel Hill by nine o’clock, an hour before his appointment at North Carolina Memorial Hospital. He parked his cruiser in the city lot on the corner of North Columbia and Rosemary. It was his first trip to Chapel Hill in years and he decided that a walk around the short main street, Franklin Street, and a look at the campus might stir some of the good memories that he had once had for the University.
The town had changed. Most of the places he’d known as a student were gone now. The block between Columbia and the post office now appeared to be home for a series of banks and other businesses that could afford the increased rents. The Goody Shop was gone. So were the cafeterias. Jeff’s, Sutton’s Drug Store and the Carolina Coffee Shop and a couple of clothing stores were the only ones that had outlasted the onslaught of record shops, electronic shops and the Carolina souvenir shops.
Saddened by the change, he put the town behind him and crossed to the old part of the campus. Silent Sam, the Confederate monument, was still there and near the back of this quad, Davie Poplar, and beyond that The Old Well and South Building. New brickwork paths had been laid everywhere. That was one change he’d always liked. As soon as the students wore a path in the grass, brick workers stepped in and made a permanent pathway of it. From a bird’s eye view, the irregular design of the walks had to look like the web of a drugged spider.
Doctor Philip Rhyson was a pudgy man in his early fifties. His hair was long and had a reddish glint to it. His full mustache, on the other hand, was gray and brittle as straw. His eyes were flat black stones behind stainless steel rims.
After a handshake, Rhyson motioned Wilt to a chair and lifted a bulldog pipe from the edge of an ashtray. “You can smoke if you like,” he said. It took Rhyson a couple of minutes to find his tobacco pouch.
Wilt lit a Chesterfield. Rhyson pushed the single ashtray to the center of the desk so they could share it. “How’s my friend, Simpson?”
“Overworked.”
“I thought Edgefield would have little need for a medical examiner. Small town life, the country, peace and quiet, all those are supposed to improve the quality of life.”
“There’s been too much growth too fast.”
Rhyson got his pipe lit. The tobacco was dark and harsh and rank. “Simpson didn’t tell me much about your case but I understand it concerns a killer-child molester.”
Wilt talked.
Rhyson head back, eyes closed, sucked on his pipe and listened. At intervals, the Doctor lowered his head and asked a brief question. At the end of it, Wilt wasn’t certain that he’d told all the important parts of it or what the important parts really were.
Wilt lit another Chesterfield and watched as Rhyson leaned forward and tapped the dottle from his pipe. He placed the pipe on the edge of the ashtray and clasped his hands together.
“First, I’d like to say that I wish I could furnish you with some facts, an outline of some kind. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Every man involved in this kind of crime starts from some point entirely different from the point where another man with the same compulsions begins. What I can do is hazard a few guesses, what might be common elements in the profile of a man who preys on children.”
Wilt opened his notebook and placed it on the side of the desk. He uncapped a pen.
“One element that is fairly common with these men is that, in seventy to eighty cases out of a hundred, this man as a child was also abused.”
Wilt made a mark. “Sexually?”
“Not always. In some instances, they were battered children, children mistreated by their parents. And two. These men have low self-esteem. In the area of sex, this means that while the man may have a normal sex drive, he displays an inability to approach a woman. A mature woman presents problems that a child doesn’t. A child is trusting. And the child is not judgmental about his performance as a man. That’s the key. The abuse they took has made them, as adults, think of themselves as guilty and unworthy. A mature woman might sense this and use it against him. A child isn’t that perceptive.”
“Maybe they’re ugly,” Wilt said.
“If they’re not, they certainly believe they are.”
“Pock-marked skin?”
“That would certainly affect how they saw themselves.” Rhyson motioned toward Wilt’s cigarette package. “May I try one of yours. I’m trying to give them up … but a pipe … well, a pipe doesn’t seem to make a good substitute.”
Wilt pushed the package toward him and watched while Rhyson got a smoke going. He drew the unfiltered smoke deep into his lungs and coughed. “Often, with these men, there’s a fear of being sexually inadequate. That leads to children.”
“A girl child thinks what happens is what’s supposed to happen?”
“Exactly.”
“What kind of job would a man like this have? Would he take a job that would put him in close touch with young children?”
“Not always. In fact, in the case you’ve described, it’s unlikely. Otherwise, the man would have made his approach to one of the children he has constant contact with. He would not be in the risky position of having to grab children off the streets.”
“Why kill them?”
“The standard reason, of course. That he’s afraid the child will identify him. Also, maybe in a way, it is rage and anger against her for what she has made him do. For the man who uses his position as a friend of a family to molest a child, it’s quite different. He’s established a relationship with the child. And after he molests him or her, he swears the child to secrecy. Often the child keeps this dark secret for years. In your case, the man has no relationship and he has no way to assure himself that the child won’t incriminate him if he releases her. His safety demands that he kill the child.”
“And the panties?”
“The women’s underpants that are left with the body? Until you catch this man, until he’s seated where you’re sitting now, anything I say really applies to a hypothetical case. Nothing else.”
“Give it your best guess, Doctor.”
“It has the earmarks of an extremely powerful fantasy. In some twisted way, these women’s underpants, and the way they appear to be substituted for the child’s underwear, I’d say this is his way of convincing himself that the child is really a woman, that he’s not molesting a child but making violent love to a grown woman.”
“Jesus.” Wilt closed his eyes and shook his head.
“I hope I’ve been some help,” Rhyson said.
Wilt wasn’t really sure he had. “Either you’ve cleared the water or muddied it, one or the other.”
“I believe I know what you mean. So many factors have brought this man to the point where he is now. Ten different men and there are probably ten different roads that have brought them to murder and child molestation. I wish I could be more concrete, but …”
Wilt stood. He turned for the door. “I think I understand the problem.”
“Once you catch him, I’d like to examine him, Sheriff. If that’s possible.”
“Fine with me,” Wilt said, “if he’s still alive.”
“That sounds …”
Wilt interrupted him. “I know how it sounds. It’s not what I mean. But I have to be honest. If we find him, if he tries to escape, he might have to outrun a bullet.”
“No matter how you say it, it has the sound of lynch law.”
“If it comes to a crunch, if it’s the choice between letting him get away and putting him down, I’ll put him down. If I don’t put him down, if he molests and kills another little girl, I’ll have to live with the guilt. If he’s in the hospital with a couple of slugs in him, if he’s dead, I don’t have to worry about him anymore. Hell, I’d run over him in a truck
if that’s the only way I had to stop him.”
“What we’re talking about is a mentally disturbed man who might be treatable.”
“That won’t hunt. No excuse in the world makes it with me. Not after what he did to those children. He might be crazy, mentally disturbed, but he’s alive and those two little girls are very, very dead after he inflicted terrible pain and suffering on them. But if he gives up, I’ll go along with the courts. I’ll choke and swallow the puke when the court sends him off for treatment. Until he’s well enough to go back on our streets. I’ll swallow that whole mess but I’ll be damned if I’ll call it justice.”
“An eye for an eye, Sheriff?”
“Whenever possible,” Wilt said.
There was nothing more to say. By lunchtime he was back in Edgefield.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
“I had an idea while you were gone.”
“You do that often?” Wilt was behind his desk. Joe was just back from lunch. A toothpick was lodged in his mouth and he swirled it as he talked.
“I went by to see Doc Simpson.” Joe reached into his jacket and brought out a pair of woman’s underpants in an evidence baggie. “This is the one that were found with Dana Moore. I compared it the one that were under the head of the Dobbs girl. They’re both the same size and the same brand. Doc said I could borrow this one.”
“For what?”
“To find where they were bought. To see if anybody remembers selling them to a man who fits our description.”
Wilt extended a hand and took the panties. He read the label in the waistband. Seabreeze Fashions. He folded the underwear carefully and returned them. “My guess is that they’re made in some place like South Korea. You’ll find these are sold at any of a dozen discount stores.”
“That’s what Susie said.”
“Susie’s an expert on women’s underwear?”
“Well, she’s a woman and I couldn’t just go on the street and stop some woman and ask her.”
“Okay, try it. But I’ll tell you right now this won’t catch our boy for us. This is the ass-backwards way. If we catch him, this might be a nail in his coffin, proof that he bought this underwear. Catching him is the real business and we won’t catch him this way.”