by John Gault
“I know,” he said, unable to think of anything to the contrary and not really trying to. “Well, take care of yourself. I’ll try to drop around tomorrow. Okay.”
“Yes, David, that would be very nice.”
C H A P T E R
22
By the time Jamie arrived home, Sandy had read and reread the newspaper and, out of a vague sense of obligation, was hauling out the vacuum cleaner as the first step toward presenting the Benjamins with a clean house on their return. The events of the past few days were, at least for the moment, not quite digested. All those missing people in such a short time with no clues whatsoever, was a fact she just couldn’t fully acknowledge, let alone come to terms with.
At lunch, shortly after the policewoman had left, she’d asked Jamie questions about the Hoekstra boy and the Wagoner girl. What were they like, did he know them very well, that sort of thing. Jamie had given nothing answers, but he had seemed properly sober and reflective about it all. When she mentioned Miss Oliphant, he had replied that sure, she’d been pretty mean to him and everything and had gotten his bicycle taken away, but he hoped she’d be okay anyway because she was old and blind and had to be in that wheelchair, and it probably wasn’t really her fault that she was so mean. Sandy’d asked if he was scared, and he’d said that he was, maybe a little bit, but that with all the cops running around everywhere, he didn’t think anything else was going to happen.
In some ways, that conversation had reassured her a little about Jamie; there was certainly nothing out of place in his attitude, and his concern for Miss Oliphant and the two kids seemed, at least on the surface, quite genuine. That made her feel a little better, and by doing the cleaning-up, she began to believe she might even finish this job on some kind of positive note. Which was better, healthier, than the attitude she’d started it with.
After Jamie greeted her that afternoon, he went directly to his room. A few minutes later he came back down to the living room, where she was polishing the glass-topped end table, rummaged silently through the wicker magazine rack, selected a copy of something-or-other, greeted her again and went back upstairs.
“I don’t know,” Teddy said. “Isn’t it taking a bit of a chance?”
“Don’t worry,” Jamie replied, not looking up from the page. He ran the X-acto knife along each line, searching for the letter combinations that would require the least cutting. He found an “ail” and neatly excised it, transferring it to the clean sheet of white paper on the desk beside him.
“Jamie,” Teddy said, a touch of pleading in his voice now, “we’ve made it so far, but we can’t get careless, not with only a few more days to go here. It’s not worth it, Jamie.”
The boy reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a much-folded, scruffy-looking piece of paper. He opened it carefully and lifted out the contents, a couple of dozen red hairs still attached to a small, dried-bloody piece of human scalp. He held it up for Teddy to see and pointed excitedly. “This, Teddy, look at this! It’s just too good to waste.”
“Okay, Jamie,” the bear sighed. “I guess it’s all your show now anyway.”
“Oh, Teddy, please don’t talk that way.” He put down the knife and went over to the bed; he lifted Teddy up and held him close, speaking soothingly and rocking a little from side to side on his feet. “It’s okay, Teddy, don’t be afraid, I’ll . . .” Then he stopped and held the bear at arm’s length, and a funny little grin crossed his face. “Why, Teddy,” he said, almost derisively, “I know what your trouble is! It’s Miss Livingstone, isn’t it? You still love Miss Livingstone?”
Teddy didn’t answer.
“Well, do you?” Jamie teased.
“No,” Teddy said in a very small voice. “You just do what you have to do, okay? And if you need me, if you need my help some time, don’t worry, I’ll be here.”
“I’m going to fuck Sandy tonight,” Jamie said, out of nowhere.
Teddy’s button eyes brightened a little. “Best of luck,” he said.
The housework combined with everything else had just about exhausted her. Well, at least the downstairs was done, and she could do the rest in the morning when Jamie was at school. Besides, she had begun to smell herself, and she stank. She lifted her arm and sniffed tentatively, then made a disgusted face. “Uggh,” she muttered, “you better hope that Allan doesn’t show up now.” She put away the vacuum, the polishes, and the soft cloths, and dragged herself upstairs to the bathroom. She started the shower, adjusted for the temperature she preferred, and then peeled off the sticky T-shirt and bra. She started to unzip the fly of her jeans, then stopped and went over to the door. No, it was just her imagination. She pressed her ear against it for a few more seconds, then straightened, more reassured now. But, just as a precaution, she pushed in the little button in the middle of the door knob and gave it a quarter turn.
She stepped out of her jeans, rolled down her panties, took one more look at the locked door and stepped into the hard, warm spray. She did not hear, because she could not hear, the little click as the lock on the door sprung open. When the light went out, her first reaction was a mumbled “Shit.” But then, almost instantly, she knew she was not alone in the pitch-darkness of the windowless bathroom.
“Jamie?” she choked, fumbling for the faucets with fingers that just didn’t seem to be working. “Jamie, is that you?” Suddenly a hand was sliding down her belly, into her pubic hairs, grabbing. Oh, my God, oh my God in heaven! It was squeezing hard in her vulva, hurting. Blindly, she slapped at the hand once, twice, three times. But it wouldn’t let go, and the pain was so great she thought she was going to pass out. With the last of her strength, she got a two-handed grip on the arm, and dug in with her nails, twisting at the same time. There was a little yelp, and she was free, falling, slipping, grabbing madly for whatever might be there to grab. Her left hand found the shower curtain, but couldn’t keep it, and she went down hard, hitting the base of her spine, then her head.
Then he was on top of her again, his hands on her breasts, finding the nipples, pinching, and his hard little penis was poking into her belly, probing clumsily for her vagina. Oh, noooo! Somehow she was still conscious, close to the edge but still aware of the horrible, terrible, unspeakable thing that was happening to her. She got her arms up somehow, and found his throat with an elbow. Then she slipped her knees up under his stomach. With what she knew was the last of her strength, she heaved, and Jamie was flying through the air, crashing down hard on the floor. No, thank God, it was not the last of her strength. She rose and told herself where the door and the light switch were located.
She found the switch and flicked it—just as a powerful hand gripped her right ankle and brought her sliding down the door. But she managed to turn and kick out, and again Jamie went flying. She could see him now, see that once-beautiful face, teeth all bared and blue eyes full of hate and evil. And she wanted to kill him.
For a few seconds they sat there on the floor, breathing in gasps. She was propped up against the door and he was against the opposite wall by the sink. She didn’t know if she could fight again. If he got up first, if he came for her, she didn’t know if she could stop him this time. Everything hurt so much, her head, her back, her vagina, her breasts. Oh please, God, make him stop. Jamie stirred, and she braced herself for what she knew would be his final assault. Then, slowly, his expression changed, and she found herself looking into the bewildered face of a little boy again.
“Sandy?” he said hesitantly as if he wasn’t sure it really was her, “Sandy, what happened?”
What happened! Oh Jesus Christ! Didn’t he know? Did he expect her to believe he didn’t know? She couldn’t speak. Instead she got to her feet, swayed unsteadily for a lew seconds, and then, aware for the first time that she was totally naked, reached for a towel and wrapped it around herself. Jamie stayed where he was blinking uncomprehendingly. “I love you, Sandy, “he whispered, “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just don’t know what happened, honest, Sandy.�
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“Love me? Love me? Are you crazy, Jamie, I . . .” My God, he was crazy!
“Sandy,” he was crying now, “what are you going to do? Please don’t tell anybody, please don’t tell Barbara and Tom. Please, Sandy, it won’t happen again, I know it won’t. Please, oh please!”
What should she do? Call the police? Take him to the hospital? What? Tie him up and wait for his parents to come home? This couldn’t happen, none of it. It wasn’t possible, it just simply wasn’t fucking possible.
“Sandy,” he said, his voice a little stronger now, “if you don’t tell, I’ll do something for you, I promise I will.” He crossed his heart. “And hope to die.”
“Oh Jamie, Jamie!” What could she do?
“I’ll take you to Allan,” he said.
“What! You know where Allan is? Where is he? Is he all right?” Suddenly the game had changed and the rules with it. Jamie was pulling himself up, holding onto the sink, when she lunged for him, the towel dropping away. But she didn’t care about that. Clothed or naked, it made no difference. She had Jamie by the throat with both hands and was lifting him off the floor, banging his head against the wall.
“Where is he, you rotten fucking little bastard? Tell me or I’ll kill you right now!” Then she relaxed her grip, and her arms fell loosely to her sides. She could not kill this child, no matter what he’d done. A few minutes ago, when she was fighting him for her life, she might have. But not now. “Where, Jamie?” she pleaded softly, “tell me where.”
“I’ll have to show you,” he said, rubbing absently at his throat. “We’ll have to get dressed.”
She made him stay there while she struggled into the jeans and t-shirt she’d been wearing. Then she followed him back into his room and watched his every move while he also put on the same clothes he’d worn earlier in the day. When they left the house, looking for all the world like a big sister and little brother out for a stroll down to McDonald’s or Baskin-Robbins or the Colonel’s for a treat, the evening sky was going to purple.
“Jamie,” she asked as they turned the first corner, “Do you really know where Allan is?”
“Yes,” he said.
“How do you know?”
“On Saturday, when you were still in bed . . . Well, he came down to the kitchen and we talked and I told him our secret and . . .”
“Oh my God, Jamie, did you take Allan into those woods.” She knew from the newspapers that there was a hole, and her mind flashed on Allan, down on the bottom, hurt—maybe hurt really bad—for two, almost three whole days.
“Did he fall, Jamie? Did you push him in?” How could she be asking so calmly, as if they were talking about nothing more important than something that had happened in school that day? Because, Sandy, no matter what, no matter how bad it is, you have to be calm. You have to get him out, and you have to . . . “Jamie, is he still alive?”
“Yes, he’s okay.”
“My God, Jamie, why didn’t you tell me, why didn’t you tell somebody? What kind of little boy are you?”
“I . . . I heard you and him doing it that night, Sandy. I was . . . I was jealous, I guess. I hated him. I wanted to hurt him. Then when I got the chance . . . I would have told you, honest. I was going to tell you tonight. I went every day. I even brought him some food. It was going to be okay, Sandy, honest it was.”
There was no question, the boy was completely and totally insane. Sandy knew in the back of her mind that she should be terrified, she should run away screaming to the nearest house and pound on the door and beg whoever was there to phone the police. But no, not yet. What mattered now was finding Allan.
“Here we are,” Jamie said.
She followed him into the forest.
“Hold onto my belt,” he said, “I know the way.”
Given no other choice, or at least feeling as if she had none, she did as she was told. A couple of minutes later they emerged into the clearing, and stood side by side. In the waning light, she saw a field covered with odd little grass-covered mounds, like bubbles almost.
“Over there,” Jamie pointed. She squinted in that direction, but saw nothing more unusual than what she’d already observed in this nasty, funny-smelling place.
With increasing reluctance, she followed the boy and drew alongside him at what appeared to be the largest of the mounds. She could see an opening in the top, and, forgetful of Jamie, she leaned over it, calling Allan’s name.
Something thudded against her back, and her call became a scream. She was sliding down the side of the hole, reaching, as she had in the darkened bathroom, for anything that might save her. Her body had shifted and her legs were dangling down into the hole. The long grass came out in her hands, but she grabbed and grabbed and scrambled, driving her fingers madly into the soft earth, only to have it crumble away, then driving in again. But slowly, inexorably, she was losing ground. Then—oh, thank God—a tree root. One hand on, then the second. She looked up, but all she could see was sky. It was two or three feet to the top, and there was just no way she’d ever make it, unless . . .
“Jamie, for God’s sake! Help me out of here. Don’t do this, Jamie! Jesus, Jamie, what do you want? I’ll do anything you ask.” She saw the head appear, but she couldn’t quite make out the expression on his face. Then he spoke, and she knew what that face looked like. She could visualize the exposed teeth and the cold, evil eyes that had stared across at her as they lay on the bathroom floor.
“Anything, Sandy?” the deep, terrible voice asked mockingly. “Anything, you say? Well, my sweet young Sandy O’Reilly, maybe you should have thought about that before. Before you fucked your “good friend” Allan. You want to be with him? Okay. Great.”
The root was pulling loose, and Sandy fought frantically for another, better grip, but with a growing, now almost full, understanding that further struggle was pointless. “Oh My God, I am heartily sorry,” she prayed, “for having offended Thee, and I detest my sins most sincerely, not only because . . .” The root broke away and she was falling. “. . . I have lost all right to heaven, and deserve the everlasting torments of hell . . .”
They were there, waiting. She couldn’t see them, but she knew they were there. The hideous, fetid smell came first, then something jagged and sharp touched her face and she just closed her eyes and drifted quickly and gently away.
C H A P T E R
23
Jamie left the house again just after midnight. He had neatly packed Sandy’s clothes and cosmetics and books in the single, soft leather bag she’d arrived with the week before. Not satisfied that the late hour would protect him from observation, especially with the police cars prowling so constantly—the state cops were in town now too, he’d noticed earlier—he stuck to the backyards and hedge breaks and bike paths he knew so well. He left the suitcase, carefully covered over by flattened cardboard boxes and other rubbish, in the big open garbage bin behind the A&P and retraced his steps.
Just a couple more things to do before he could sleep.
Abergail’s house was still dark. He got the rubber gloves and pulled them on. Then he took the letter from where he’d left it on the kitchen counter and went out again, closing the door silently. He slipped across the street and behind the neighbors’ houses until he was once more at Miss Livingstone’s place. He could no longer think of it as hers and Abergail’s.
He edged along the side of the house, slid over the verandah railing, ducked under the window, just in case, and found the mail slot on the door. He pushed the envelope through, then returned home the way he’d come.
“Well,” Teddy greeted him as he entered his own room, “I guess that pretty well wraps it up, eh Jamie?”
“Not quite,” Jamie replied. “But we have to get up early in the morning. I’ve got a couple of things I want to do before school. It’s the last day, you know.”
After nearly an hour of sitting around outside Becker Torrey’s closed door, awaiting his turn to be questioned by the three FBI agents who
’d arrived in town sometime earlier in the evening, David was fantasizing ways to exhume the body of J. Edgar Hoover and kill him all over again. He could have used that useless hour waiting for the agents—and a dozen more, for that matter—to just begin to catch up on lost sleep. But the phone had jangled him awake shortly after one A.M., and Beck had told him that he was sorry, but David had better get dressed and get back down to the station, ’cause the feds were on the job, all shiny faced and full of their own self-made myths.
Refusal, of course, had been out of the question; but David was able, at least, to stage a minor rebellion, helped along by the fact that all of his uniforms, save the one locked up at the dry cleaners, were lying in smelly heaps around the bedroom. He wore his favorite, ass-patched jeans, a pair of torn sneakers, and the cleanest of his University of Wisconsin T-shirts. And, not to be forgotten, he buckled on his shiny gunbelt complete with the big .357 Smith & Wesson, sitting butt-forward on his right hip—the FBI guys wouldn’t like that, which pleased him. He had showered, mostly so that he could stand his own company, but had refused to shave off his three-day growth of beard.
The muffled voices from Torrey’s office, in company with his own exhaustion, had just about succeeded in lulling him to sleep in the chair, when all at once a hand was on his shoulder, and he looked up into the grave—more grave than usual—face of Norm Fleischer. “David,” Fleischer half-whispered, “I’d like to talk to you in private for a few minutes. Care to take a short walk?” Without waiting for an answer he went to the door and opened it, motioning David through. If the night was any cooler than the previous day had been, it wasn’t measurable without instruments, and David’s lungs had to fight hard to extract what air there was from the heavy humidity. He followed Fleischer down the steps and out into the parking lot, where the sergeant stopped, lit the remains of a fat cigar, and leaned against David’s Camaro.