“That’s not it!” Charlie was almost screaming, hauling on his wrist bonds. He wanted to pound Nick into silence, to stop those false words. Words from his waking nightmares, from those moments afterward when he felt like the filth of the earth. “I love her! And she loves me! Don’t you understand?”
“No, I don’t,” said Nick obstinately. “She desperately wanted to see the movie, that was clear. She was trying not to hurt your feelings. But she wouldn’t agree to come with you until you promised to leave her alone.”
Charlie’s heart felt like a stone. “You—heard that?”
“I’ve been watching you for hours.”
“Damn! And you waited until—”
“Hell, I was hoping that she was your niece, maybe, and that you’d have a nice platonic afternoon at Star Wars. But she was so upset when you touched her—”
“No, she wasn’t! Damn it, you don’t understand! She just likes to act a little coy sometimes.”
“Coy! Christ!” exploded Nick, thumping the wheel with the heel of his hand. He scowled out at the green countryside that sloped from the highway down to the distant lake.
Charlie looked down at his knees. He’d hoped that something in Nick’s experience might have helped him understand. He’d seemed sympathetic. But he was as blind as the others. Charlie said stiffly, “You’re taking me to be arrested, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry you don’t believe me.”
“Oh, I believe that you believe it,” said Nick. “Christ!” But then in a moment he added more gently, “It must be hard for you to know that your little prodigies grow up so soon.”
Charlie glanced at him warily. “Yes.”
“And you’d have no record of them. Maybe snapshots, that’s all.”
“Oh, no! I’ve got records. A beautiful collection!”
“A collection?”
“Photos, little gifts they’ve given me, even a couple of short films. But you wouldn’t understand,” he added belatedly. He shouldn’t talk about his secret collection, treasures sacred to his dearest memories. Melanie’s sock and Deanna’s little panties were far more precious than Judy Garland’s pinafore.
“I understand wanting to remember.” But Nick’s voice was tight.
Anger surged through Charlie again. “I don’t abuse children! How many times do I have to say it? I protect them, for God’s sake! But if I can, I help someone special achieve her potential!”
“Yeah, I know, and if the poor kid is lonely enough and confused enough not to scream, you talk yourself into believing that she’s one of your so-called prodigies, that she likes it.”
“You don’t understand!”
“I do understand. You find a lonely little girl starved for affection. And you offer her affection, and Star Wars tickets, and popcorn. But if she accepts, she finds that the price of affection is soul-destroying.”
“Not true! It’s fulfilling for her! She loves to please me!”
“Most kids love to please adults. But not that way! Didn’t you see her run away, for God’s sake? A kid doesn’t skip out on Star Wars and tear off like that unless she’s running for her life. To save her very self.”
“I told you, she likes to be coy!”
“Christ.” Nick sounded weary. He glanced at Charlie as they turned off the highway onto the road that led to College Avenue. “Professor Fielding, expert on reading and on misreading. I’m told you believe that many misreadings occur because the reader has a strong hypothesis about what word is coming next, and doesn’t check to see what the letters really are.”
“Yes.”
“Yet you don’t see that your wrong hypothesis about these children is blinding you to their real needs. The expert Professor Fielding can’t tell when he himself is misreading a child.”
Misreading? Ridiculous. Charlie’s nightmares writhed beneath his mental protests, but he fought them down. He was no filthy child molester. He wasn’t! He hadn’t misread Deanna, she just enjoyed playing hard-to-get. He could tell. And he hadn’t misread sweet Melanie. No. Nor downy Janine. Nor Wendy, back when he’d been in high school. Nor Ellie… Nick just didn’t understand.
They were crossing the College Avenue bridge. Charlie wriggled his wrists and asked uneasily, “Where are we going?”
“To your office, Charlie.”
“But why?”
“To decide what to do next.”
Nick said nothing more as they turned into the largely deserted parking lot and found a place near Charlie’s end of the building. Nick undid the rope from the seat back but didn’t remove the wrist bonds. He hauled Charlie from the car, locked the door, pocketed Charlie’s keys, and marched him into Van Brunt and up the steps to the first floor.
The office door was slightly ajar and voices came from within.
“What the hell is going on?” Charlie demanded, halting at this further violation.
Nick pressed him roughly through the door and closed it behind them.
Cindy Phelps and Anne Chandler were sitting in two of the chairs. Maggie was perched on the edge of Charlie’s desk, threading film into his projector. “Hi, Nick. Charlie, I see you’ve met my husband. You’re just in time for our screening. Cute little film we unearthed in a videotape container here.”
Charlie’s unwilling eyes found the plastic box on the desk.
It was one of the containers his blundering assistant had almost taken yesterday.
Nick pushed Charlie down into the third chair and remained standing behind him, one hand on his shoulder. At a nod from Maggie he reached across to the wall switch next to the door and killed the lights. The screen had been set up across the room, above the television, so the image was small but clear.
Establishing shot of a pretty beach. Blue sky. Then throbbing music and pink letters spelling out BABY JAWS. Cut to a pair of chubby legs splashing in the water, a happy giggle. Then waves, a child’s shrieks, a red stain in the water. A little body on the sand, ketchup on arm and face, and most horribly, a blue eyeball lying near his head.
“My God,” said Cindy, “that’s Eric’s eye.”
“Eric?” asked Nick.
“The take-apart head on the office shelf. I’d recognize that blank stare anywhere.”
Anne Chandler said in a strained voice, “Is that the little Hammond boy?”
They fell silent as a new image filled the screen: back view of a paunchy, muscular man in an official-looking tan uniform. “I’ll catch that shark,” he said, with a clumsy theatrical clenching of his fists. “I’ll catch that child-eating shark! But—I need bait!”
Cut to a lovely blonde, blue-eyed girl. She was dressed in pink jeans and a lighter pink T-shirt. Anne Chandler gasped, “Jill! That’s Jill Baker!” She scooted to the front edge of her chair, eyes intent on the scene.
Jill was frowning. “I don’t like this,” she mumbled. Then, more clearly, “I want to go home.”
Nick murmured, “That’s not acting. She meant that.”
“Use whatever they give you, right, Charlie?” Maggie’s voice was like vinegar.
The official tan shirt was putting on a dark slicker, careful not to show his face. “You and me against the world,” he was saying. Cut to the exterior of a boat. Then to Jill, still protesting, saying she didn’t like sharks. Charlie looked at his shoes. He was ashamed. Jill was not special, she was an ordinary child, she didn’t like it. He should have tried harder to keep her out of it. But damn it, he’d done all he could. And he’d saved her from some of the scenes they’d asked for….
Jill was in the boat now. “I want to go home,” she repeated. On the sound track a song faded in, “Show Me the Way to Go Home.” The man, face still hidden, explained to Jill that she must sacrifice her clothes to serve as shark bait.
Nick’s hand tightened on Charlie’s shoulder at the next shot. Jill huddled naked in the bottom of the boat. Then a shot of the water, the slicker-clad arm swishing pink clothing through the waves. Then purposely
murky shots of the shark, violent amidst foam and shadows, intercut with lingering views of Jill stretching to peer through a porthole. “I know that shark!” Maggie said. “It’s plastic and it’s sitting on your living room shelf.”
Nick said, “She doesn’t seem aware of the camera.”
“We shot through a one-way mirror,” said Charlie. “She never knew I was there.”
“All she knew was that no one would ever believe she was telling the truth,” said Maggie.
A hasty shot of the muscular man firing a gun. The shark thrashed in red water. Then there were bubbles, then calm. A voice-over explained that the girl was grateful to her hero. Too bad they’d had to use the voice-over, Charlie thought clinically, but the damn kid hadn’t given them much that was usable. But they’d got her to do the main scene, anyway. Here came the shots of her groveling in the boat, glancing up fearfully at the porthole, and crying out the obscenity they had taught her.
“What the hell!” exploded Anne Chandler. “She wouldn’t say that!”
“The magic word,” said Maggie bitterly. “Remember she told us there was a magic word to make the shark go away?”
“Good God,” growled Anne.
The voice-over explained the girl’s gratitude, and the footage was repeated in case anyone had missed it. Cut to the man, removing the slicker to reveal his muscular back. As he tossed it aside the light caught the back of his upper arm. “What was that?” Maggie asked. No one answered.
The rest of the film had no dialogue, just their few usable shots of Jill respliced in various combinations with occasional views of the man’s bare back. Damn fool was an exhibitionist. Didn’t really care about kids. It was all done against the sound track “Show Me the Way to Go Home.” They all watched in silence until Charlie cleared his throat and said, “He, uh, he never actually touched her.”
“Great,” snapped Maggie. “You must be real proud.” She switched off the projector light and began rewinding the reel.
“Look,” Charlie said, eager to explain, “I didn’t want to upset her, so—”
“Didn’t want to upset her?” Maggie exploded.
Nick flicked on the room lights, and the sudden brilliance caught Charlie full in the face. Anne Chandler and Cindy shifted their chairs around to face him. Maggie dropped the Baby Jaws reel into her briefcase and walked around his chair to stand in front of the screen. In her navy blue shirt, shoulders hunched vulturelike, arms crossed, she reminded Charlie of the Disney sorcerer returning to annihilate his cringing apprentice. In memory the fly crawled across Aunt Babs’s face.
Charlie pulled himself together and faced the blue glare of Maggie’s eyes. “I didn’t upset Jill! I helped every way I could because she was just a kid… couldn’t understand.”
“God, Charlie. You really believe that, don’t you?” He was surprised to hear pity in her voice.
Cindy said, “Charlie, tell me, did your wife find out about Melanie? Is that why she left?”
“No. No, not really.”
“She found a little white sock. And a copy of Screw he’d hidden, with an ad with a Laconia box number,” said Nick.
“Damn that ad—” Charlie suddenly realized what Nick had said. “Lorraine told you that? Lorraine sent you?”
“No, no. I was coming anyway. So I stopped by to see her, to ask if she knew of any reason someone might be trying to frame you. First she said she knew nothing. But I pointed out someone was after you and anything she knew would help. She got very upset. She said she’d left you years ago and you hadn’t told her a thing. She’d talked you into research with adults, she said, and she’d been sure her suspicions were wrong, and she didn’t want to know anything more, but if I did maybe I should look at Screw. By then she was crying so I left her alone.”
“Damn. You sent me that Screw?”
Maggie said, “We thought you’d try to destroy evidence and lead us to it, or at least you’d try to contact any partners you might have. Well, you must have covered your traces at the post office pretty well, since you turned it right over to the police. You looked innocent as pie. I almost thought we were on the wrong track. But since then I’ve learned that Walensky was probably already blackmailing you. Right? And Nick lifted the film when he delivered a box here yesterday. I squinted at enough of it last night to know we’d better keep an eye on you. And then Nick caught you with Deanna.”
Charlie asked miserably, “Why couldn’t you leave it to the police?”
Anne snorted. “They aren’t very gentle with children. Tell me, are you the one who hit the little Hammond boy and broke his legs? That was him lying on the beach with the plastic eye, right?”
“Yeah, but he wasn’t hurt then!” Charlie shuddered. “That all went wrong! See, the kid wasn’t hurt at all in that scene, but he didn’t like the ketchup, and—well, no, I didn’t hit him.”
“Whether you did or not, we’d better decide what to do with you, Charlie,” Maggie said briskly.
“I—look, I never wanted to make those films anyway. I stood up for the kids, didn’t let him touch them. Really!” he insisted as Nick’s hand tightened. “He just wanted the money, wanted to show off a little. He didn’t touch them!”
“That’s real nifty,” Maggie said, “but we’ll get to that in a few minutes. You see, somebody did touch Deanna and Melanie. That has to stop.”
“All right. It’s not the way you think it is, but I’ll stop.”
“You said that before!” said Cindy, her voice dark with scorn. “You promised me the same thing years ago. It’s time to lock you up.”
Stupid woman. Charlie shot back, “If I go to jail, Cindy, so do you!”
Fear flashed in Cindy’s eyes, but she tossed her head and said, “I doubt it. The money’s back and I’ve been clear for years. So I’m ready to risk it if it means getting you behind bars.”
“Stupid move, Cindy. You’ll be out of a job too.”
“Hey, Charlie, you know I’m a gambler. If you get locked up, it looks like a win to me.”
There was no reasoning with her. The point of despair deep in his ribcage was growing, sending out spidery arms to chill his bones. Then he remembered what had worried Cindy most years before. He said, “It’s no favor to Melanie to bring it up again!”
But it was Maggie who answered. “Glad you see it that way,” she said genially. “We agree, courtrooms are pretty brutal places for victims. I know, I’ve been there. Now Jill might be strong enough to testify if she gets some solid counseling. But even there I’d hate to make her go through it.”
“Yeah!” He turned eagerly to Maggie. “You do understand! So, well, I’ll stay away from little girls.”
“Even the special ones?” asked Nick.
Charlie hesitated.
Maggie shook her head hopelessly. “God, Charlie, you still think it’s okay sometimes! I wish we knew how to reach you, but—Look, you’re abusing children, it’s as simple as that. We’ve got to stop the damage. The only answer I can see is to lock you up.”
“You’d hurt the children? Dragging them into court?”
“No, no. We’re going to lock you up for murdering Tal Chandler.”
19
It took a moment for her words to register. Then Charlie squawked, “Me? For murdering Tal Chandler?” He looked wildly at the others. They were shocked too.
“But he didn’t!” Anne exclaimed. “Because—”
“Hush!” Maggie raised a palm to interrupt her. “Think about the children, Anne! Let me explain how he did it, okay? Look at his motive first. We know how long he’s been working on this research project. How important it is to his career. And suddenly this emeritus professor, retired and then some, is writing a paper that cuts at the root assumptions of the project.”
Charlie shook his head. “Impossible! No one will believe that a professor would—”
“Quiet!” snapped Anne Chandler. “Let her finish.”
“You see, Charlie,” Maggie went on, “we’ve remem
bered some interesting facts. Cindy and Anne both remember how Tal said his new study might hurt your work. Right?”
Cindy and Anne nodded.
“I can report that statistically, the effect you’re basing your theory on is very weak, and in fact there’s evidence for Tal’s theory in your studies too. So it’s obvious that if you were going to get your stuff published, Tal’s findings would have to be kept quiet. But he was going to report them at the MPA meeting next month.”
Nick was leaning against the closed door, arms crossed. “Why didn’t he just destroy Tal’s research instead of murdering him?” he asked. Charlie looked at him gratefully.
But Maggie had an answer. “Because that would point directly to Charlie. By staging another crime and leaving evidence that threw suspicion on others in the department, he hoped to deflect interest from his own motives.”
“And his Chaplin memo book?” asked Anne.
“That could have fallen out of his jacket pocket, just as he’s been saying all along. Probably when he pulled out Nora’s gun from the same pocket. Cindy, don’t you remember this morning, the bulge in his jacket pocket? It clunked against the door frame when he came into the office.”
Cindy looked coolly into Charlie’s eyes. “By golly, I do remember. Clunk.”
“Right,” said Maggie. “On the other hand, Bart and Nora won’t remember anything in his pocket in the restaurant. By then he’d left it in the gorge.”
“In the gorge? But—” Charlie began.
Nick cut him off. “When did he have time to go into the gorge?”
Maggie smiled apologetically. “Well, you see, I thought I’d only been in the post office for a minute or two. But now I remember that I paused to leaf through a little newspaper that they had on the table. A summer supplement, exhibits and parks and theatre, you know. The Syracuse Farm Theatre was listed, I remember. Could have been twenty minutes before I met him again.”
“God!” Charlie stumbled to his feet. “This is unbelievable! You’re saying that—Maggie, for God’s sake, you were with me, you know it wasn’t that long! You know I didn’t kill Tal!”
Maggie’s restraining hand on his arm was gentle. “I know you’re damaged, Charlie. I don’t know how you got that way but don’t you see? You’ll hurt one child after another all your life! We have to protect the children!”
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