It was the blinding light that first caught his attention; the blinding, brilliant light which struck down Paul—Saul, as he was called before his conversion. The blinding light—like the light which burst from the door when the Witch attacked him. After the Witch attacks he would lie on the closet floor, beaten, sometimes bleeding, and he could see nothing until his eyes adjusted once again to the dark closet, and the porcelain face of the Angel would slowly form, hovering above him, nothing else visible; alone, head and hands, head and hands, serene, compassionate, loving, listening, touching...
Then came the day of his own conversion. And the transubstantiation of the Witch.
The blinding light that led to his own conversion was the direct summer sun that exploded into the dark closet when the Witch threw open the door. He had been in a special new place with the Angel, a place based on a picture he saw on a gift card at Ralph’s. The picture was a crude, tiny reproduction of a Corot pastoral, featuring a lone woman seated near a shallow slough in which three cows meandered under a thumbnail moon. He pictured himself at the water’s edge, in the arms of his Angel, and then the light struck him blind and the Witch found him there, naked, tumescence in his moving hand, gazing at the Angel.
He turned away from the light and the assault he knew was coming, but all he heard were vulgar words and then—horribly—the sound of shattering porcelain, and he knew right away what the Witch had done.
He knew, even before he turned and saw the shards of pure white porcelain, head and hands, now shattered on the floor near him, and the Witch began to kick him with the sharp heels of her knee-high boots.
The next thing he heard was a shriek—not from the Witch, but from his own throat. A strange new sound; part deep and guttural, part a small boy’s scream, as he lunged from the closet and toppled her and sat atop her and beat her with his fists until she lay motionless.
And yet he beat her still.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I startle awake with the unmistakable sense that there has been a loud noise in my bedroom. I lie still in the dark for a moment. I can’t remember the sound, but I have the inexplicable conviction that it was loud and very close. I lie listening to the soft tick of the clock on my nightstand. A faint wind rises, brushing the branches of a pine against my bedroom window.
I get up and head down the hall. I leave the lights off, remembering Lt. Foley, a retired NYPD detective who once told me in his thick Bronx snarl, the humid scent of scotch on his breath, “The last thing you wanna do is turn the lights on if there’s an intruder. You know your place—they don’t. The dark gives you an advantage.”
I think a raccoon on the roof is more likely than an intruder, but nevertheless I go to my office and grab The Dangerous Summer from the top shelf of the bookcase by the door. I pull the book cover off the small wooden box I built in my woodshed. Inside the small pine box is the stainless steel Smith & Wesson .45 with the rubber grip that I keep there. I bought the gun after encountering a bear one night while I was taking out the trash. The guy at the gun shop suggested a shotgun but I want nothing to do with shotguns. So I bought the .45, which my cop pals tell me will kill pretty much anything if used with the proper ammunition, decent aim, and a persistent lack of empathy. I have hollow-cavity rounds, my aim is decent, and if it’s between me and the bear, the bear’s going down.
I grab the gun and head back down the hall. No bears in the living room. I peer out the window at the trash containers outside. Sealed shut and upright. No animals. I look at the clock on the fireplace mantle: 4:45. I debate putting on coffee and starting work, but I’m still too tired. I head back to bed and I’m about to put the gun back in the bookcase when the floorboard under my foot pops loudly.
That was it.
That was the sound that woke me. No question. I stand there for a moment.
Relax. The cabin was freezing. You turned the furnace on and the floorboards expanded with the heat and made a noise. Nothing mysterious.
Thank you, Mr. Science.
I half-smile at myself and decide to forget about it. I head back to bed, but stick the gun under the mattress where I can reach it. Just in case.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Six hours later I wake from a series of disconnected dreams. I sense there was something important about them so I try to remember but the harder I chase them the faster they slip away.
I get up, see that it’s almost eleven, and go make coffee. Frost covers the cabin windows. I can see only that it’s dim and gray outside. I turn the phones on and check the voicemail. Nicki Feldman’s office has called twice. I call her back and leave a message, then hang up and pull a large Circulon skillet from the cabinet beneath the phone. I turn the flame on low under the skillet, then drop a dollop of butter into it. As the butter melts, I crack four eggs into the skillet, splash in a little milk, and sprinkle in some shaved cheddar cheese. I turn the heat up and scramble the eggs while they cook.
Sara had disdained my scrambled eggs method, although she liked the results. She thought I should mix the eggs and milk in a bowl, then dump the contents into a pre-heated skillet. We had an old Teflon skillet which had begun to peel, and she didn’t like the idea of the eggs sloshing around in it too long, absorbing exotic polymers. She was probably right.
“I just like doing it this way,” I say as I stir the eggs, which are beginning to form tiny islands of solid mass in the Circulon skillet.
When I moved to the cabin, after I had bought my hardware, I had everything for the outside of the cabin, but the inside was as empty as a church on Saturday night. I didn’t even have a fork. So I drove to Burlington, went to Macy’s at the mall, and at the housewares desk I found a young man tying a ribbon on a box for a woman. He had neat, short brown hair, with a cowlick that was faintly frosted blonde. He wore a pale blue Brooks Brothers shirt, dark wool slacks, and black Kenneth Cole loafers. His socks and belt were exactly the same shade of dark cerulean. He finished the ribbon and turned to me.
“Hi, I just moved here and I need some things,” I said, and handed him a two-page list of items on yellow legal paper. He stared at the list. His nametag said “Jonathan.”
“You need all this?” he said, his eyebrows raised.
“Yes,” I said. “Do you carry all of it?”
“I’m pretty sure we do…” Jonathan said, scanning the list. “I’ll have to check furnishings for the bed and the sofa and the rugs. They’ll have to be delivered if they’re not in stock.”
“That’s fine.”
“Okay, well…guess we’d better get started,” Jonathan said, then came around from behind he cash register.
“If you don’t mind, you can go ahead and pick it all out and ring it up. I’ll be in electronics,” I said.
Jonathan blinked at me. “You want me to pick out all your stuff?”
“If that’s okay.”
“It’s fine with me, but what if I pick out something you don’t like?”
“I’m sure whatever you pick out will be fine. It’s a pine cabin. The floors and walls are pine, with a medium brown finish. The kitchen is modern with stainless steel appliances and brown granite countertops. The bathroom tile is white with navy trim.”
“What about price?”
“Just use your best judgment. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
“…Okay,” Jonathan said, then started writing down my description of the cabin.
I went to the electronics section and sat down and watched the Oakland Raiders hammer the Kansas City Chiefs 32-0. When the game was over I returned to housewares and found Jonathan running the cash register, which was spitting out a paper receipt that spilled onto the floor like Rapunzel’s hair. Jonathan was surrounded by boxes of merchandise.
“Perfect timing,” he said. “Just finished.”
I gave him my Amex but he insisted on at least showing me the items he chose. They were all perfect. He rang it up, I pulled my truck around to the loading dock, then drove my new household home, won
dering why the Chiefs hadn’t had a consistent offense since Joe Montana.
When the eggs are done, I spoon them onto a Macy’s Cellar dinner plate. The plate is white with a navy border that perfectly compliments the brown granite countertop. I grab a Macy’s Cellar dinner fork from the silverware drawer, and I am savoring the first bite when the phone rings. I pick it up and Nicki says “Good morning.”
“Morning,” I say.
“Get some sleep?” she asks.
“Yes, thank you.” I take another bite of scrambled eggs.
“Turns out LAPD was less than forthcoming with you,” Nicki says. “Temescal Canyon Park was renovated in the summer of 2001. They started construction a week after Beverly Grace was reported missing. The park was closed for two months and a security guard was posted there while the heavy equipment was on site. A fence was put up with a locked gate and it was inaccessible all summer. Which means they’ve pinpointed the week she was killed. It had to have been just before they started construction.”
“Why didn’t they just say so?” I ask.
“Because they wanted to see how much you would tell them.”
“Okay,” I realize she’s right. “But how do they know she wasn’t killed and buried after the construction?”
“According to the forensic bug guys, she was buried in the spring. They can tell from the decay of the maggot eggs in her—” Nicki stops herself. “Just take my word for it, okay? I’m eating lunch at my desk. What it boils down to now is we have to account for your whereabouts during the last week of April, 2001 and once we do that we’re in the clear. Any thoughts?”
“Not a one. Like I told you, I don’t remember a thing after Sara died until I sobered up fifteen months later.”
“Nothing at all? For fifteen months?”
“I remember being at her funeral and waking up the next day on someone’s couch. After that it’s only vague impressions….random, nonsensical things.”
“Would you be willing to talk to a forensic psychiatrist about that? He’s an expert in memory recovery. He’s helped me out more than once with witnesses who had fuzzy memories.”
I take another bite of breakfast.
“Let me think about it,” I say.
“It might be important later, if we can’t find any other way to account for your whereabouts.”
“I understand,” I say. “It’s just not a period in my life that I relish looking at very hard.”
“Okay, but I think you should consider it,” she says.
“So does this mean we’re telling them about the hair clip?” I ask, to change the subject.
“Enough with the hair clip. Let’s find out first where you were that last week of April ‘01. Unless you want to tell them about the hair clip so you can get extradited back to L.A. on a murder charge.”
“Not really on my agenda,” I say.
“Don’t blame you. Okay, I’m going to need as much from you as I can get: credit card, ATM, phones, anything that might show a record of your whereabouts.”
“It’s not like I have much in the way of records from then. I was drunk pretty much all the time.”
“Would you sign a release for the bank and the phone company to authorize my access to your information?”
“Sure.”
“While we’re on the subject of your bank we might as well talk about my fee. I have one investigator on this full-time already, as well as me. It could get expensive real fast.”
“I understand.”
“I need twenty thousand just to start.”
“Just let Joel know. He can arrange whatever you need with my accountant.”
“So it’s not about the money, then,” she says.
“What isn’t?”
“Your reluctance to talk to my forensic shrink.”
“No, it’s not about the money. I just don’t want to go there unless I have to.”
“You may have to.”
“Let me know when that time comes,” I say.
“It may come sooner than later, unless we get lucky. By the way, does the name Gregory Dontis mean anything to you?”
“No. Who is he?”
“He was your editor’s assistant when Arnie Brandt first sent your manuscript to Terrapin Publishing.”
“What about him?”
“He’s the only one who read your original manuscript that we haven’t located. He’s also the only one with a criminal record.”
“What’d he do?”
“Assault with a deadly weapon, six years ago.”
“Sounds pretty serious.”
“It could mean he threatened somebody with a cocktail umbrella, for all we know. The case was pleaded down to a misdemeanor. We’re waiting on the paperwork.”
“You work fast,” I say, impressed. “That’s a lot of information in a day and a half.”
“You should see me during a trial,” she says.
“I hope I never do.”
After I hang up I pour myself a cup of coffee and sit at the kitchen table and wonder why I don’t want to talk to the shrink. I think of the low voice I heard at Temescal Canyon and wonder if it’s because I’m afraid that I am going crazy.
No, not crazy. I don’t want to talk to the shrink because I don’t want to remember anything. People always talk about how hard it can be to remember things—where they left their keys, or the name of an acquaintance—but no one ever talks about how much effort we put into forgetting. I am exhausted from the effort to forget. To forget the sunny afternoon in San Gabriel, of course, but it’s more than that. The thought of sitting with a shrink, delving into my childhood memories, of which there are virtually none, fills me with dread. Who knows what would be dredged up? There are things that have to be forgotten if you want to go on living.
My coffee is cool enough to drink now and I take a sip. I feel a chill in the room and I turn and see that the kitchen door is standing wide open.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I can understand forgetting to lock the back door, but forgetting to close it? Especially since I don’t remember checking it last night before going to bed. Which means the last time I checked the door would have been before I left for Los Angeles. And I certainly wouldn’t have left it standing wide open when I was on my way out of town.
Would I?
It was awfully cold in here when I got home last night…
I examine the door. Nothing broken or scratched. The lock works, and it doesn’t have any of the telltale tiny scratches around the keyhole from being picked. But I’m not a locksmith, what the hell do I know?
Do crazy people know it when they start to go crazy?
Of course not, that’s what makes them crazy.
Right?
Enough of this bullshit. I close the kitchen door and lock the deadbolt and drink my coffee and rinse the dishes and put them in the dishwasher. I go put on a pair of jeans which are stained with tiny spots of oil I put in my two-stroke chainsaw engine. I pull on a Cal State sweatshirt that is so old the lettering has flaked off completely, leaving it far more comfortable. Then I put on wool socks and a pair of Vans and now I can go to work. Work will solve everything. And work goes better if you put on pants and a shirt. And shoes make all the difference. Show me a barefoot writer and I’ll show you a rank amateur.
Ten minutes later I’m at my desk, waiting for my computer to boot. My screen comes to life and I open the file that contains the fourth book, which I have titled Killer Unmasked.
Arnie and the people at Terrapin loved the concept and the title for the fourth book, in which we finally reveal the identity of Killer and he meets Katherine Kendall face to face. Only “we” are having a bit of trouble with that revelation. I have managed to keep Killer’s identity obscured from readers—and from my very smart editors—for one good reason: I don’t know myself.
Actually, that’s not completely true. It’s not that I don’t know who he is, the truth is I’m reluctant to reveal him because the gimmick of keeping Kil
ler’s identity hidden has served me well. Whenever there was a shaky story point or an implausible scene that I wanted for dramatic purposes I would simply chalk it up to Killer’s mystique. We don’t know how he does certain things, Katherine Kendall can only surmise. And alas, even the intrepid Katherine is not always right.
But after three books the gimmick is starting to feel tired and it is time to progress the series and unmask the monster to my heroine and I am hesitating. From here on it will be harder. It may even mean the series is drawing to a close. And it’s too late to back out now. Terrapin has already leaked word that the soon-to-be-published Killer Unmasked will “reveal the true identity of Killer once and for all!” as the advance promotion has promised. The waiting lists for the book are double what they usually are.
So I have stuck myself with a problem and now I must solve it. I have put it off until the end of the book and now, of course, anything will seem anticlimactic. I sit staring at the screen and I realize I have been asking the wrong question. It’s not a matter of how to reveal him—the real question is, Does it matter?
The most terrifying thing on earth is the human imagination. Consult the horrors of history and you will trace each horror back to the Big Idea someone thought up and then put into action. And when you conjure a monster for a book, it is not only your imagination at work, it is the reader’s imagination that will focus the finest details of your monster. If the reader wants to picture the killer as their eighth-grade math teacher or their ex-husband it’s best to let them—they’ll do it anyway. But if you spend chapter after chapter detailing every single aspect of your monster’s appearance and personality you run the risk of drowning the reader’s images with yours, and you will wind up with a list of characteristics instead of a character. But now I am rationalizing and I know it.
I pick up a pencil and roll it between my palms, thinking. How do I have my cake and eat it too? Until now I have enjoyed the luxury of writing a human monster with as few details as possible, leaving Killer as a nameless free-floating malevolence bedeviling Katherine Kendall. But now the piper must be paid.
Killer: A Novel Page 6