The Edge of Sleep

by Wiltse, David

  And finally, Becker knew it just didn’t work that way. Serial killing, like any passion, was a matter of the heart. Men do not fall in love randomly; they respond again and again to a template implanted early in life, perhaps by the mother, perhaps the first love, the nanny, the nurse. The objects of their passion could appear very different to others, but all shared some elements of the original intaglio. Often a mystery to the world, the traces of the pattern still shone brightly in the lover’s heart.

  However tortured and buckled the original template, or however tormented and bizarre life had made the killer’s perception of it, the process was the same. Like any man in the throes of passion, the killer responded to those messages of the old pattern.

  Becker rode the escalator to the ground floor, letting his eyes play over the youth around him. So many of them, so free, wandering alone and with others of their age, money in their pockets, no fear in their heads. Kids who once hung out on street corners or played kick the can on deserted evening suburban streets now congregated in the malls. It was not a new phenomenon, but one that Becker had heretofore paid no attention to.

  Some of the children were with their parents, but even they drifted apart as each followed his own interests. Do you know where your children are? he thought. Precisely where they are? In the other end of the store? Just around the corner looking in the window of the neighboring shop? How far away do you think danger lies? How long do you think it takes? He wanted to scream at them, protect your children, for God’s sake! There are monsters loose!

  Becker stopped beside a boy peering wide-eyed through plate glass at a display of telescopes. Come with me, he thought. How do I get you to come with me?

  Could he drug the boy? A swift but guarded jab with a hypodermic needle to send sodium pentothal pulsing through his veins, loosening his brain to a hyper-sensitive jelly. And the crucial seconds until the drug took effect? And the long walk out of the mall with a boy whose legs were as wobbly as his brain?

  Becker rejected the idea. The killer Roger Dyce had drugged his victims, but always alone and late at night. He had missed Becker himself with the needle by the thickness of the cloth on his shirt before Becker had captured him. The method would never work in daylight in public.

  Becker peered down at the boy. It had been so long since he had talked to children. What could he possibly say to induce the kid to walk away with him? What fantasy, what Pied Piper tune would tempt a boy to step into danger? And if the man next to him was the giant with enough strength to toss the boy’s frame across his body while driving a car? How luring a melody would he have to pipe then?

  The boy noticed Becker looking at him and eased away, sensing something creepy. Becker walked away. I hate this fucking job, he thought.

  The men’s room was on the ground floor around a corner from the third ice cream/frozen yogurt stand that Becker had noticed in the building. There was a brief hallway, then the tiled foyer, then the rest room itself. The cookie boutique that Steinholz had managed was two floors away. If Steinholz had worked at the ice-cream stand he might conceivably have seen the boy of his preference enter the bathroom and then reacted instinctively. But not from two floors away. If he took them from bathrooms, he would have to do as Becker was doing, enter and loiter and wait.

  Becker stood in front of a sink, using the mirror to study those who entered the men’s room. It was here that the victims could select themselves for Lamont. Unlike girls, boys did not necessarily go to the bathroom in groups.

  Some would come in singly, separating themselves from the crowd, and Lamont would have them alone to himself for however long he needed. There had been cases of professionals kidnapping babies and infants who had acted in this way. Working in teams, they had wheeled away strollers from behind the backs of distracted mothers, dyed the children’s hair in the sink, and changed their clothes in less than a minute while a confederate kept people out of the rest room. When the kidnappers and their victim emerged into the mall proper minutes later, security guards—if they had even been alerted yet—were looking for a different-colored snowsuit, long blonde curls now shorn and blackened.

  But that was with children too young to cry for help, children small enough to wheel or carry and to quiet with a rubber pacifier. It wouldn’t work with ten-year-old boys. Becker stood at the sink, washing his hands again and again, trying to time the effort. If he took the boy next to him right now, slapped a sign on the door saying “Closed,” how long would it be before a hurried stranger pushed his way into the room, ignoring the sign? How long before an employee came in to see what was wrong? It was impossible to predict, but he knew it wouldn’t be long. Certainly not dependably long enough. And what would he be doing to the boys in the meantime? How did you get a ten-year-old to shut up and not call for help? Put a gun to his head? Maybe, it was possible, but seemed unlikely to Becker.

  Lamont knew something about children he himself did not, Becker concluded. He left the mall feeling slightly soiled and seamy after the day’s work. It seemed that he had accomplished little other than to make a good case that what had been done was not doable.

  Sitting behind the wheel of his car in the parking lot, he looked over the cement ramparts at the city below. Dusk was settling; he had been in the mall for hours, avoiding the real work he would have to do now. He had tried the easy way first because the hard way was so painful.

  Becker rested his head against the steering wheel, his eyes fixed sightlessly on the control panel of the car. There was no escaping it. If he was to help beyond the marginal assistance he had already given, he would have to step into the problem completely. He could no longer feel it around the edges, trying to gauge its size and shape and substance from the fringe, like the blind man limning the elephant from the heft of its tail or trunk alone. He must embrace the problem, fully. Worse, he must step inside it and learn how its heart beat. It was a task he dreaded, a task he knew Karen Crist fully expected him to take on. He was good at the other process, the basic police work that solved most cases. He was as good at it as anyone, better than most. But it was not his genius.

  If Becker was to help, if he was to have any chance of stopping Lamont before he killed another boy, he would have to live with the photographs of the dead victims. Becker quailed at the prospect. The price was always too damned high.

  The photographs of the dead boys were spread across the floor like so many miniature corpses, as if Becker’s living room had become the scene of a slaughter. Before laying out the pictures, Becker had turned on every light in the room and positioned his favorite chair so his back was against the wall. He was used to fear, but he did not welcome it. It had become a frequent visitor, but never a friend and, when possible, he did all he could to diminish its effects. Horror films caused him to react with the fright of a young child, and he restricted his reading to the nonviolent safety of nonfiction and history. Becker needed no goads to his imagination; it was already filled with real-life horrors. Where others delighted in the vicarious theater thrills of being safely terrified by madmen with axes stalking baby-sitters. Becker winced and looked away. He knew it was all too true and possible.

  With the room brilliantly lighted, the colors of the wounds stood out starkly against the pallor of the boys’ bodies. The original lividity of the contusions had waned after death, but the difference in color that remained was enough to show the relative age of the bruises. The older ones had begun to fade; the latest, the ones caused by blows administered on the day of death, were still intense against the surrounding flesh. The boys had been beaten over a period of time. The scientifically dry forensic report had estimated the floggings took place over a relatively short period of time, perhaps three weeks. A short period of time, Becker thought derisively. Twenty-one days of torment were a lifetime in themselves.

  He stared at the photographs for a long time, forcing himself to see every detail, to let the pain the boys had felt reach out and engulf him. Then, forcing himself to move again
st his own dread, he crossed the room and one by one turned out the lights.

  Becker sat on the floor, surrounded by the pictures, and let the demons come. He was at home, but he was no longer in the safety of his own living room. His mind was once more in the pitch-black cellar of his youth.

  He felt again the density of the darkness, an envelope heavy with menace that moved across his shoulders and down his back like a malevolent, living thing. It seemed to ripple over him like a giant serpent, and even though the muscles in his back twitched with warning for him to move he knew that to turn was worse, for he might have to see the creature face to face, its eyes glowing like fire in the dark.

  He did not know how long he had been banished to the cellar; there was no time there, no way to mark the minutes except to count the terrified throbbing of the blood in his veins. Nor did he understand what he had done to deserve the punishment of which the cellar was only the prelude. He thought wildly, trying to remember what childish indiscretion had doomed him, what offense had merited this retribution. It was only much later in life that he would realize it was his punishment that mattered, not the crime.

  They always left him alone in the dark so very long. Shivering with fright, fearing abandonment as much as he feared the creatures that peopled his imagination in the blackness, he would be almost relieved to hear the door open at last. So alone and so scared that he almost welcomed the appearance of his tormentor.

  And finally there he stood, the object of Becker’s love and loathing all at once. The heavy tread upon the stairs. The sour smell of beer on his breath. The matter-of-fact tone that only gradually rose to anger.

  The beatings often began as nothing more than a chore, dutifully but wearily tended to.

  “I hope you’ve had a chance to think about your behavior,” he would say.

  Or, “Your mother tells me you were a bad boy.”

  Or, “Anything to say for yourself?” in a voice of such reason, as if there was room for discussion, a chance for repeal or pardon. It was often the cruelest hoax, giving young Becker the flash of hope, as if a chance to explain himself or plead for mercy would lessen his sentence by as much as a single blow.

  Only later would the voice drop its veil of civilization. Then it would be “bastard” and “little son of a bitch” as the rain of blows grew into a torrent.

  The boy Becker would cry, of course, and clutch his father’s legs and promise to be good and promise to try harder and promise and promise and promise. As if anyone was listening. As if there were some way to avoid punishment at the hands of parents who took their delight from it. As if there was any offense so vile that a child would warrant such beatings at the hands of his loved ones.

  Over time it was the “loved ones” part of the equation that injured him the most. The body could recover and grow strong. But the shock, the continually stunning revelation that his abusers, the ones to whose whim his body was held constant hostage, were the people he loved most in the world, was the part that hurt most of all and did the deepest damage.

  For it was not always this way. There were times, many times, when they seemed to love him. There were times when his father would ruffle his hair with the same huge hand that delivered the blows, when the voice that growled abuse would cheer him for his athletic skills. Moments when they would laugh at the dinner table at young Becker’s antics or congratulate him on his academic grades. There were times when his mother would caress him with her warm and gentle hands, soothe him with her smile, whisper in her urgent voice to “never tell.” Never. Anyone. To tell was to risk the loss of his family’s love. To risk the loss of the very family itself. Young Becker learned the value of secrets and the deeper truth that everyone possessed them.

  There were also other moments when his father’s furies would overtake him so swiftly that he would send the boy sprawling across the floor with a cuff or a kick. But these impromptu beatings were rare and quickly over. They seemed to frighten both his mother and father with their volatility and caprice.

  His father, Becker knew, prided himself on being a rational man, a reasonable man, a man in control of himself. Spontaneous violence was contrary to his self-image. Both parents preferred ordered, predetermined, “rational” justice. They liked to have him beaten in a way that was in keeping with their middle-class persona.

  Now in the darkness of his living room the adult Becker shrunk once more from the abrupt and shocking sting of the blows, clutched his father’s leg, whined and moaned and cried and promised—and divined his own version of the truth of human nature—and his own. As he had over the years several decades earlier, Becker formed his own template of a starkly different kind than most. But not all.

  He knew he was not alone in his vision of the world, or in the bent and ugly pattern of passion that had gouged a space in his heart. There were others out there. He could recognize them. He wondered if they could recognize him before it was too late.

  Chapter 6

  IF IT HAD BEEN HIS CHOICE, Edgar Rappaport would not have reported his incident with Dee to the police because he was afraid that word of it would get back to his wife. He could explain his broken nose to her in a number of ways. The multiple bruises could have been the result of a mugging. Mimi would probably accept even being locked in his own car as the cruel whim of thieves, although by the time he got home there would be no way for her to know about his hours in the trunk curled atop his sportswear samples. He had bled on two golf shirts and crushed and wrinkled a peach-and-cream-colored tennis skirt almost beyond recognition.

  The police wouldn’t accept a story of mugging, however; not after they had been summoned by the motel owner, who had finally responded to his muffled cries for help and found him in full possession of his wallet, credit cards, and cash. Edgar had no choice but to tell them the full story—or a slightly edited version that omitted his striking Dee in the face and allowed for a more spirited self-defense against Ash, of whom Edgar offered the speculation that he was probably a jealous husband.

  Since the motel was located more than two miles outside of the city limits of Saugerties, New York, the state police answered the motel owner’s call. They dutifully took notes, wrote down the descriptions given by both Edgar and the owner, photographed the room and the blood stains. The owner, who had been paid a week’s rent in advance, had come to like Dee, a bright, bouncy woman, but she was definitely uncomfortable around the man, a hulking brute whose name she never knew. However, since stains in her carpet were nothing new and she had three extra days of unearned rent in her pocket, the owner was indifferent to Dee’s apprehension. After a time, when Edgar had made it clear that he would not press assault charges, the police released him.

  One week following Edgar Rappaport’s interview with the New York state police. Dee and Ash were in Connecticut.

  Director Lewis tapped Dee’s letters, sucking in his upper lip. He was a fat, sallow man who lived his life steeped in hypocrisy and exercised it without thought or hesitation.

  “These certainly appear to be in order,” he said, referring to the letters. “Naturally I’ll have to check them out.”

  “Of course,” said Dee. They both knew that he wouldn’t check her references at all. It was hard enough to find anyone to do this work, much less a trained professional. The whole industry was chronically short of workers; she had the job when she entered the building, and both she and the Director knew it.

  “Perhaps I should speak to you again when you’ve checked my references,” she said, deliberately tweaking him. It was one of the few times she would have any power over him, so she might as well enjoy it. The truth was she needed the job as much as the man needed her. After a week living in the car, her cash was gone. Savings were impossible, she owned little of value. She needed work now.

  “Well. I don’t see any reason you couldn’t start working first,” the Director said. “I’m sure everything will be fine. How would tomorrow suit you?”

  Dee smiled.

&n
bsp; “Tomorrow would be fine,” she said. “I have a little shopping to do first.”

  “Of course, of course,” said the Director. He rose with some difficulty because of his weight. “If there’s any way I can be of assistance ...” He tried to suggest the wide range of assistance he would be willing to offer her without giving offense. Women were so touchy these days. But she looked like she’d be a hot number, there was something in the eyes that suggested abandon. The husband is probably a drunk, he thought. That was what usually brought them to this place—family problems, general unemployability, desperation. This one didn’t look desperate, however. Nor unemployable. Which usually meant troubles at home, a recent separation. A woman like that was frequently amenable to extracurricular comforts, of course. The Director wanted to let her know he had a very understanding nature.

  “There is something,” Dee said.

  “Yes?”

  “I wonder if there are any shopping malls close by,” she said.

  “These days, there’s always a mall close by,” he said, and then he told her how to find it.

  With her purchases in a bag on her lap. Dee settled into a chair at the food pavilion. Her feet hurt and she had a mild headache. The day had been taxing but filled with optimism. The first days of a new leaf always were. She would behave herself this time, she would devote herself to her work and to Ash and really sink some roots. Most of all, she would stay on her medicine.

  She took a pill from her purse and lifted her coffee to wash it down. There was a twinge inside her as something leaped up. It felt like the first bubble of something just beginning to simmer. Dee savored the feeling; she knew the pill would kill it. She waited to see if it was still there, the pill and coffee both suspended before her mouth.