Chill Waters

by Hovey, Joan Hall

  What the hell was he talking about?

  “As I say, it’s an old case. He was a boy then.”

  “Who, Doctor Whittaker? Who was a boy?”

  “Oh, sorry. Charlie. Charlie Morley, the brother. There’s a certain irony that he would use my name in connectionbut, perhaps not so strange if you think about it. The bottom line is, Captain, I think you have a murderer in your midst.”

  He knew that much. Sorrel switched off the game. “I’m listening.” It hit him now Whittaker. The phantom doctor.

  “Divulging a patient’s confidence is not something I do lightly, sir, but in this case I believe it’s warranted. From what I’ve been reading in the papers, coupled with this correspondence from Ms. Brandt, I believe it’s highly possible Charlie Morley is the man you’re looking for in connection with the murder of Heather Myers. And possibly other young women whose untimely deaths have gone unsolved.”

  “So how come he’s out, Doctor? Why is this animal still walking the streets if you know he’s a killer? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  He heard the quick intake of breath, followed by a sigh. “Sometimes terrible mistakes are made.”

  “Yeah,” the captain conceded, thinking of Tommy Prichard. “I’ve been known to make a mistake or two myself.” Detective Mason recovered Iris Brandt’s radio in a pawn shop today. The owner identified Derek Chesley and two of his toadys as the ones who’d brought it in. The stolen radio had netted them all of three bucks. “You mentioned, Doctor, that the killer and the victim had the same last nameMorley?”

  “Well, I don’t know for a fact that he’s your killer. I’m suggesting it’s possible. But that was observant of you, Captain. Yes. She was his sister, though not his blood-sister. Charlie was adopted, you see. You’ve heard of the love/hate syndrome I’m sure, pop psychiatry being what it is. “Well, this relationship was far more complex then simply perversion.”

  “How so?”

  “It’s a long, sad story, Captain.”

  “His momma didn’t like him, right?”

  “Something like that.”

  He huddled on the closet floor in the darkness, surrounded by her scent, breathing it in like life-sustaining air. A different perfume from that which she’d worn on the night of the prom. That perfume had come from a blue bottle that always sat on Ruth’s dresser. Ruth had dabbed it on Marie’s inner wrists and behind her ears, the two of them laughing, close, loving, shutting him out like always. The door was open a crack and he could see them.

  A lighter scent, this perfume. Like shampoo. If he turned his head just so, her clothes would brush against his face. Soft as a caress, making his head swim.

  Waiting there for her return, Charlie’s eyes began to grow heavy, as if weights were attached to his eyelids. In a little while, his eyes closed and he was soon asleep.

  The old dream that was not a dream at all, came rushing in, an old enemy skilled at catching him off-guard.

  His father standing in the doorway holding the pink bundle in his arms, smiling, bending low so that Charlie could better see his new little sister. “Her name is Marie,” he said. A tiny hand emerged from the pink cocoon. He glimpsed a thatch of black hair, a doll-like face, and something like joy and wonder rose in his chest like a balloon lifting into the sky.

  His own thin arms reached out to her. Suddenly, his mother’s hand came out of nowhere, striking him across the face, snapping his head back. He staggered backwards and fell, cracking his head against the edge of baseboard. “Don’t you ever touch her,” she shrieked at him. “Don’t you ever let me catch you touching her again.”

  He woke with a start, hands covering his face as though to ward off the next blow. He was sweating, his eyes wet with tears.

  Suddenly, Charlie’s head jerked up at a sound. His body tensed with animal alertness. The dream faded, as it always did.

  Someone was out there. Not part of the dream, Charlie. He rose awkwardly to his feet, legs stiff and cramped from sitting so long, and listened. What had he heard? Had she come home? What time was it? He couldn’t have slept all that time, could he?

  The sound came again—like sleet pelting against a window. Charlie opened the closet door. When he was satisfied he was alone, he crossed the room. He reached the window just as the rattling came again.

  Not sleet at all. Someone was throwing handfuls of pebbles up at the window.

  Keeping back so as not to be seen, he observed a man in a dark overcoat standing down below. Collar upturned, he was stomping his feet on the ground for warmth. His breath was visible in the cold, night air. Charlie felt confused at first. Surely not a salesman at this time of night. Then, he saw that the stranger had come bearing flowers. Another rival? Someone else come to court his fair lady, who, as it turned out, was not so fair after all? Unknowingly, he cradled his throbbing hand against his chest. Earlier, in a rage, he’d struck his fist against a tree; blood still seeped from his wounded knuckles.

  Charlie watched the man walk up the porch steps and disappear onto the porch. His eye moved to the Mustang parked behind Rachael’s car. Then the doorbell rang, echoed throughout the house, jangling his nerves. Getting no answer, the stranger came back into view. He was looking up at the window again. Then searching on the ground for more stones. Straightening, he tossed these too up at the window.

  Charlie settled into an icy calm. He watched the man stomp around for another five minutes or so before getting back into his car. He didn’t appear to he leaving though. After a pause, a cigarette winked at Charlie from behind the windshield.

  He’s decided to wait for her.

  The darkness was all around him now, and in him. He turned from the window.

  Her nightgown lay folded at the foot of the bed. He gathered it in his hands, pressed the silky fabric to his face, breathing in her essence, understanding at some level that this was a kind of ritual he was performing. At last he let the nightie fall away and stood up. The void of aloneness opened inside him like a huge maw that threatened to consume him. As he had always done before, he filled it now with the comfort of his hatred, and descended the stairs.

  In the kitchen, he retrieved the butcher’s knifethe one he’d used to impale the seagull on her cutting board, from the back of the drawer; he’d put it there himself after washing the blood off.

  Quietly, he slipped the bolt on the back door and went outside.

  Why doesn’t she answer the door? Greg wondered. I know she’s home. Her car is here. Then Greg remembered that that old Cavalier had been falling apart for years. Probably broke down, and she probably took a cab wherever she went. He'd buy her a new car. Even let her pick it out herself.

  He glanced at the roses lying across the passenger seat. Maybe she knows I’m out here and is deliberately ignoring me. Hoping I’ll go away? No. That wasn’t like Rachael. Rachael wouldn’t do that to him.

  He needed her. He always had. He just didn’t know how much. He’d got bored sitting behind a desk, that was all. And Lisa became a fever in him. A fever broken, Thank God. He was used to the road, to the freedom. So he’d picked up a few women in the towns he’d traveled through; he’d handled it, hadn’t he? He never brought trouble home. It was all innocent. Didn’t mean anything.

  I’ll beg her on my hands and knees if I have to. And maybe my kids will start speaking to me again.

  Especially Susan. He and Jeff didn’t hit it off that great, anyway. Seeing you coming out of that hotel in Dayton with the blonde, whose name Greg couldn’t even remember, (if he ever knew it) didn’t help. Lousy timing, he thought, crushing his cigarette out in the ashtray. He shivered inside the overcoat; the car was cooling.

  How was I to know Jeff was in Dayton on a computer course? He’d felt hot shame looking into his son’s eyes that morning. No point in trying to bluff it out, either. Jeff knew. He’d kept on walking, pretending not to know his father. At home, he never spoke about it, but it was always there, between them.

  And now he’s goi
ng to make me a grandfather. Great. Knowing Rachael, she probably thinks it’s cool. Maybe the idea would grow on him. Never mind that she had told him on the phone not to come here, or even call her again. It didn’t matter. He’d make her change her mind. Wasn’t he the best-damned salesman in town? She’d said so herself. Yeah, his wife was a class act.

  From the moment he laid eyes on her, sitting behind the typewriter, long dark hair fallen forward as she typed a mile a minutehe knew she was special. The new girl. She didn’t come on to him like the others. Always helpful, though. Sweet. A little on the shy side. He liked that about her.

  A light tapping at his window scattered his reveries like a flock of sparrows from a gunshot. He turned to see a stranger’s face smiling in at him, motioning him to open the window. Curious, apprehensive, Greg pressed the button. The window sighed open. Did she send him out here to give me the bum’s rush? “Greg Timmins,” he said in his best salesman’s voice. “I’m here to see my wife.” She’s still legally married to me. The divorce isn’t final yet. Was she living with this guy? Jealousy twisted hot in his gut. But he wouldn’t be smiling, would he, if that was the deal? He’d be ticked that I was here. No, Rachael wouldn’t shack up with anyone. She had principle. His wife believed in the sanctity of marriage.

  Catching a sudden, horrifying glimpse of shiny, moving metal, Greg’s heart lurched, as if it was trying to escape his body in pursuit of the sparrows that had taken flight.

  Adrenaline flooding his veins, he dove away from the blade being thrust through the open window at him. But you could only go so far in the front seat of the car, and the knife’s blade, though intended for his throat, slipped between his ribs instead, with the ease of a knife through cheese.

  At first, Greg felt nothing at all, and then a slow, sharp burning started up in his side, quickly escalating into a scalding pain that spread and deepened. Warm blood spilled from his wound, soaking his new shirt and jacket.

  He must be more ticked off then I figured, was his final thought before darkness enveloped him.

  Scurrying around to the other side of the car, Charlie dragged the dead weight of his newest victim into the passenger seat. Propping him up, he fastened the seat-belt around him. Breathing hard from the exertion, he slid into Greg Timmin’s place behind the wheel.

  The key was in the ignition; Charlie turned it. The engine revved to life.

  As he drove with his mute passenger beside him, Charlie thought, for some reason, of Ruth. How he’d gone back and smoothed down the wisps of hair so that her death would not look suspicious, only a heart attack, not unexpected. He’d been about to leave again when he noticed that bewitched was on, credits still rolling. He knew it was one of her favorite sitcoms. He liked the rightness of that, the way events had come full circle. Sort of like in those Greek tragedies Doctor Whittaker used to tell him about. He’d likened Charlie’s own life to a Greek tragedy. Charlie couldn’t recall which one.

  “When did you first begin to look at Marie in a sexual way, Charlie?”

  Twelve. Around twelve when he began to notice her small round breasts under the pajama tops when she came down to breakfast. And her child-woman shape in the leotards and short skirts she wore to her dance class.

  But she became happy again, didn’t she, Charlie. Like a puppy starved for her big brother’s attentions. She adored you, Charlie. Until you…

  “Shut up,” Charlie shouted, twisting around in the seat as if expecting to see the doctor sitting in the back. But only the man beside him, whose head lolled to one side, shared the space with him.

  No Doctor Whittaker with his mild, interested eyes, his hand holding the yellow pencil, tap, tap, tapping on his green blotter. Just the tires humming softly over the snow-covered pavement.

  Thirty-Five

  Charlie banged the receiver into its cradle, checked his watch in the light of the phone booth. After midnight and she still wasn’t home. He waited another ten minutes then tried again, letting the phone ring a dozen times before hanging up.

  His heart was a block of concrete in his chest. He’d go back to the house and wait for her. She had to come home sooner or later. And when she did… He turned to leave and there stood the grinning fool who could easily have been cast in a key role in Deliverance. The guy who owned the welding shop. He’d been hitting the sauce, stank of it.

  “We gotta stop meetin’ like this,” Nate laughed, a phlegmy, disgusting sound that made Charlie’s want to puke. “Someone else gettin’ it with the little piece tonight, ole pal?” He grinned drunkenly.

  Too bleary-eyed to see the danger that surfaced in Charlie’s eyes, Nate slapped him good-old-boy like on the back. “The hell with her. They’re all tramps, ya know. Can’t trust ‘em far as you can throw ‘em.” He gave Charlie a sly wink, which seemed to suggest he knew things.

  What? What did he know?

  “Don’t know what you’re up to, exactly, buddy, and don’t much care either. Ain’t no skin off my hide what you do. But I do know that guy you left in the car back there ain’t goin’ to be doing no blabbing, either. If you get my drift.”

  “Not sure I do,” Charlie said softly, having to work hard at keeping his voice even.

  “Hey, don’t try to con a con, pal. I passed you in my truck not five, ten minutes ago.” Nate’s voice grew quieter now, steady, almost sober. “You was headed in this direction, walking. I knew I seen you before. Thought you was a gimp. You ain’t though, are you? Yeah, I knew you looked familiar. It was right after I passed that Mustang parked on the shoulder of the road.” He grinned, licked wet lips, as if already tasting the spoils of his victory.

  Charlie knew now where this was going.

  “I says to myself, ‘Now what’s that fellow doin’ walking along this road at night, without even a flashlight. Gonna get hisself killed.’ Then I see your face, and I remember. But I don’t see no cane, no limp. Something not right here, says I. So I do a u-ee, go back to check out the car. Just a hunch, you know? Just a funny feeling I had. I kept telling myself on the way there that I was prob’ly way off base and the driver just pulled off the road for a little shut-eye. That’s until I look in and see all that blood. And the friggin’ knife-handle sticking out of him.”

  He was clearly enjoying himself. Charlie let him rave. Charlie was thinking.

  “Now, Nate Prichard ain’t a greedy man, but maybe we can do each other a favor, you and me, work something out.”

  “Maybe. What have you got in mind, Nate?”

  “Look, maybe the guy was hittin’ on your woman, and you did him. Good riddance as far as I’m concerned. And I sure as hell ain’t got no love for the cops. So why don’t you and me head on over to the shop for a few drinks and a little dealin'’. I got me some real good whiskey stashed."

  “Sounds fair enough,” Charlie smiled. He draped an arm around his newfound friend’s shoulders. “Lead the way.”

  Rachael and Peter had been sitting in her drive for the past ten minutes, talking and enjoying one another’s company, reluctant to end what had been a perfect evening. “I want you to know,” Peter said, “that I had a terrific time tonight, Rachael. And it’s because of you. It’s been a while since I’ve danced orwell…”

  “I know,” she said softly. “Me too.” Despite his losses Peter Gardner exuded life. She knew that his mother (Iris’ sister) and father were killed in a tour bus crash when he was twelve, which was when he’d come to live with Iris. And then to lose his young wife of cancer. Yet there seemed no bitterness in him. Or at least it didn’t show. “It must have been very hard for you after your wife died.”