The Third Victim

by Collin Wilcox

  The cardboard box was open. Magically, the box had opened. The corrugated edges were unbloodied. Ripped. Slashed. But still unbloodied. He moved the interior packing aside, tearing at the paper, exposing a bright blue ceramic lamp base nestled in the paper tatters.

  He straightened, blinked—stood staring down at the lamp base. Where had he seen it before? Certainly, somewhere he’d seen it—touched it, even. In the past, long remembered.

  At home. In the narrow, dark living room, he’d seen it—touched it—lived with it. In the sour-smelling apartment, lying on a lumpy sofa, he’d seen himself reflected in his mother’s bright blue lamp. But he’d never seen his mother; he’d seen only himself. Outside, while he’d stared at himself, children had shouted, playing. But he’d never played their games. They’d all been monsters—small, shrunken monsters, pack-shrieking, baboon-gibbering.

  A nearby door was opening—the salesroom door. Two voices: a man’s voice and a woman’s. Glancing aside, he recognized Howard Goss and Florence Klein, both assistant buyers, one from carpets, one from housewares. Intellectuals. Snobs. Lovers, some said. Sometimes, secretly watching them, he’d imagined the obscenity of their coupling. They clawed at each other. Tore each other’s flesh, panted, slavered. They were unclean. Like them all, unclean.

  He could feel their eyes on him as he bent over the bright blue lamp base. He’d placed his right palm on one side of the carton, his left palm on the other side. With elbows locked, his body was inclined over the carton, head bent, eyes down, staring at the table. He might be praying. It could be a church, this large, cluttered storeroom. The gurgle of the coffee machine could be a water font, close beside the entry. The cigarette smell could be candles, two for a quarter.

  “Why don’t you try it without sugar?” Howard Goss was saying. “Mortify the flesh.”

  “Because I’m not interested in mortifying the flesh,” came the prompt, brittle-voiced reply. “I’m interested in gratifying the flesh.”

  “Hey. Great. When?”

  She seemed to snort. Spoons were clinking against china. Something metal snapped: Howard’s cigarette lighter. A Zippo—a small oblong fire machine, gleaming in Howard Goss’s hair-mottled hand. On each of Howard’s long fingers were two tufts of coarse black hair. Ten fingers. Twenty tufts. Or was the thumb a…

  “Did you see that letter in the paper today?” It was Howard Goss’s voice, pitched to a low, intimate note. Unclean—unclean.

  “God, yes. When’re they going to catch him, anyhow? It gives me the creeps. It really does.”

  “Maybe never. You never know. Nuts can be almost impossible to catch.”

  “Why do you say that?” Her tone was aggressive. She was from New York—a quick-speaking, eye-blinking Jewish girl with a moustache beginning on her upper lip. They were hairy-together, she and Howard Goss. And together they bickered, constantly. With words, they tore at each other. Words, and their genitalia. Hairy—hairy.

  “Because nuts don’t have a motive,” came Howard Goss’s prompt reply, taking up her challenge. “Or at least no rational motive. And since policemen are rational human beings, more or less, they can’t cope with—”

  “Most murderers, though, are insane. I mean, it’s a simple matter of definition. Sane people, you know, don’t go around—”

  “As it happens, lover, you’re wrong. It just so happens that I’m a criminology buff, of sorts. And the facts are—the statistics—that most murderers are ordinary people who get drunk and have an argument with someone in their family. So they go to the dresser drawer and get the family revolver, and they wipe out their spouse, or whoever. That’s how the average murder is committed. Most murderers are actually married to their vic—”

  “But we aren’t talking about that kind of a murderer, Howard. We’re talking about Tarot. And I’m saying that he’s got to be insane. All you’ve got to do is read those letters, and you know that he’s—”

  “I’m not disputing that. What I’m telling you—the way the discussion began, if you’ll remember—is that homicidal maniacs are difficult to apprehend, simply because they aren’t rational. They select their victims at random. It’s a—a lottery.”

  “Yes, but their M.O., so called, is the same.”

  “Ah. Yes.” The man’s voice was elaborately patronizing. “There you have it. And that’s what’s so interesting about this Tarot. I mean, you’re right. Their M.O.s don’t change. So then we come to Tarot. And we discover that he’s committed two different murders, both times out.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean that the first time he strangles his victim. The next time he slashes her.”

  “So?”

  “So—” Howard Goss’s voice paused superciliously. “So it’s possible that there are actually two Tarots—the original and a copycat. That happens all the time, you know. I mean, imitation is a very big factor in—”

  “Oh, come on, Howard.” Her voice flattened, elaborately sarcastic. “You’re stretching it.”

  “All right, lover. Wait and see. When they find him—if they find him—he might be ‘they.’ Believe it.” The water faucet suddenly spouted a stream sound. A cup banged down on the sink counter. “Come on. We’d better get back. Technically, I’m not even supposed to be here.”

  “Well, technically, I am supposed to be here. And I want to finish my cigarette.”

  “See you later then.” The door opened, then closed. Howard Goss was gone.

  His arms ached, still spread elbow-locked astride the carton. He was still staring down at the lamp base. He could see himself. But how old was this blue reflection? How old was this face, staring up from the paper tatters? Where were the shrieking children-voices?

  He might be “they.”

  How many believed it?

  Did she believe it? Florence Klein—with her shrew’s sharp voice and the moustache-down staining her upper lip. Did she believe it?

  He must turn—face her—find out. If she believed it, then their crime was robbery. Bleat-blustering at each other, sipping their coffee and smoking their cigarettes, they’d cut him in two, sliced him top-to-bottom, left him a “they.”

  He was turning toward her. He moved slowly, carefully. She stood with a cigarette smoldering between her blood-red lips, staring at him across the storeroom. One of her hands held a coffee cup. Another hand was reaching toward the gray-smoking shape of the white cigarette, still imbedded in bright red flesh. As the fingers snatched the cigarette free, the painted lips parted, forming words:

  “Hello, Leonard. How are you?”

  But her eyes touched him only once, then moved indifferently around the room, returning to the coffee cup gripped in her stumpy hands. Her fingernails, too, were blood-painted. Fingernails and lips. Had she gnawed at her lips, bitten her fingertips? If she had, then the paint bottle would be useless, spattering the floor.

  Useless…

  Spattering the floor.

  And the walls, too. Even the walls. Red-spattered liquid, alive in the moonlight. The liquid had moved across the floor, spreading. And sagging on the wall, down-dripping blood.

  How many believed it?

  Now her eyes were once more watching him. The dark, hairy brows were gathered, frowning. Muscles were slowly contracting around shrewd, unfriendly eyes. Puzzlement. Danger. Alarm. The room was shifting unsteadily as his body turned. He was once more staring down at the safe blue lamp. Just in time. He—

  “Leonard?”

  It was a different voice. Hers, but different. This new voice demanded a stock clerk’s answer to an assistant buyer’s question.

  He was turning. Facing her. Waiting. Inside himself, he could hear distant voices, screaming. But they heard nothing, neither one. Neither he nor Florence Klein.

  Neither—nor. Either—or. A school lesson, faithfully remembered. Ipso.

  “Did you take those bookends up for sketching? To Advertising?”

  “N—n—” He saw the frown once more pucker-gathering. B
ut now he couldn’t turn away. He must wait for the words to come. His words. He and Florence Klein. They both must wait.

  “N—no. Not yet.”

  “Well—” The frown was clearing. The cigarette was glowing. The blood-red lips were sucking. Unclean. Unclean. “Well, don’t forget them. After lunch, be sure and do it. You know the ones, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  Good. The single word was echoing. Reechoing. Its pitch was rising inside, screaming up toward his head, sound-flooding his brain. But she didn’t know. She couldn’t hear. Watching him, her eyes were dead.

  He was turned away again—safely, secretly turned away. Behind him he heard the sound of water running. She was rinsing her cup. Soon—in moments—she would leave. But moments could be hours.

  To Advertising

  The door was closing behind Florence Klein. He was alone with the words: To Advertising. Carefully bracing himself against the low packing table, he allowed his eyes to close. Step by step, foot by foot, he began imagining his passage up to her small, cluttered cubicle.

  Tuesday Afternoon

  USING THE TIP OF her little finger, Joanna wiped mayonnaise from the corners of her mouth, then transferred the stain to a paper napkin. With luck, she wouldn’t have to re-do her lipstick, therefore effecting a small but significant savings in the day’s cosmetic expense—and partially offsetting the dollar thirty she’d just spent for lunch.

  How many more savings could she make? Already, in just two months, she’d almost drained their small savings account. Soon—very soon—she must call a lawyer. All of her friends—her numerous divorced friends—had told her that she must begin divorce proceedings. She must force Kevin to help support them. When he’d left, Kevin had told her to take their savings. But since then they hadn’t talked of money. Somehow she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Yet the car, last month, had taken more than a hundred dollars in repairs—just the car. Today’s trouble could cost another hundred. She’d be smart, a mechanic had said, to trade the car in, while it was still running.

  But a new car meant payments—more expense, not less. Actually, she’d be better off without a car. There would be fewer expenses—more money.

  Yet, without the car, Josh would have to change day-care centers. After only two months, he’d have to adjust to a new group of children, make new friends—fight new battles.

  She slowly folded the napkin into a small paper hat. It was a trick she’d learned as a girl, and had never forgotten. At odd times in her life, in odd places, she’d found herself folding something into the shape of a child’s paper party hat. It was doubtless a form of regression—a retreat into the simpler, happier time of childhood.

  Had those days really been happier?

  At the time, she hadn’t thought so. With parents divorced—often forced to change neighborhoods and schools as her mother moved—she’d finally found refuge in the fantasy world of painting. She’d created a separate reality in charcoal and chalk and oils.

  If only she could stay home now, and paint.

  She could save on clothes and cosmetics and carfare and food and baby-sitting. If Kevin would give her even a hundred dollars a month, she could quit her job and get unemployment insurance. She could paint full time. It was a dream that almost never came true—the impossible dream.

  Could she make it come true?

  Could she support the two of them, painting?

  She could probably get food stamps. A twenty-dollar investment in paints and canvas might finally get her started. Driven by pure necessity, she could paint two or three pictures a week: commercial pictures—flower arrangements, landscapes, seascapes, city scenes. Josh could come home after school—to his own home, to milk and cookies waiting on the kitchen table. He could play with the children in the neighborhood, as he’d always done. He’d be happier. He wouldn’t cry out in his sleep so often—wouldn’t cry for his daddy.

  Others had done it—painted for money, and supported themselves. She could sign with a commercial gallery in Los Angeles—one of the tourist traps, so called. Legitimate artists disdained the tourist traps. If you showed in a commercial gallery and the word got around, the museums discriminated against your work. They’d never admit it, but they did. Yet artists had expenses too. Commercial success wasn’t shameful. Dickens, Balzac, Dostoevsky—they’d all written day to day, bundling their manuscripts off to the popular magazines, desperately waiting for the money in return.

  She glanced at her watch. The time was ten after one. In twenty minutes, she must be back at her drawing board, painstakingly inking in the last of the chafing dish. The deadline was coming closer.

  Still, she was entitled to an hour’s lunch. And her coffee cup was still half filled. The lunch-hour crowd was thinning. She could sit. Relax. Retreat. She could think—decide.

  But decide what?

  By what effort of will could she change the future? How many tears would it take?

  How many tears…

  It could be a film title. Not one of Kevin’s, of course. How Many Tears? would be a commercial film. And as long as she’d known him, Kevin had disdained commercialism. When she’d taken the job at Gorlick’s—begged for the job at Gorlick’s—Kevin had protested. Once tainted, he’d said, never again pure. It was bad enough that, out of necessity, he’d become tainted. Perhaps they should go back to San Francisco, he’d said, where he still had “connections.” They could even go back to New York—all the way back. In both cities he’d taught filmmaking, but only part time. Yet, somehow, they’d always managed. Until they’d made the move to Santa Barbara, they’d always managed. But Santa Barbara had sunk them—Santa Barbara and the recession and the flu bug. First the filmmaking company Kevin had come to join had suddenly gone bankrupt. Then they’d all gotten the flu—one, two, three. Kevin had finally found a part-time job writing continuity for local sustaining TV shows. The salary was only seventy-five dollars a week, sometimes less. At the end of three horrible months, deeply in debt to doctors and druggists and grocers and the landlord, they’d finally asked her father for a thousand dollars. A loan, not a gift.

  And they still owed that thousand. All but eighty dollars, paid back during the first few months she’d been working.

  Had her father borrowed that thousand too—as he’d borrowed the first thousand, to send her to New York? She’d never asked. She didn’t want to know.

  What would have happened, she’d often wondered, if there’d never been that first thousand dollars? Her life would have been different. She’d never have been at the Thompsons’ party that New Year’s Eve. She’d never have been standing in the middle of that huge converted loft, rapt with wonderment—staring around like a skyscraper-struck tourist. Finally she was in New York. She was part of it all. She would make it. She’d been sure of it.

  Kevin had materialized at her side, a whole head and a half taller, smiling down at her. She knew that, whatever happened to her, she’d never forget that first moment. He’d had a beard then, and she’d thought that he looked a little like a pirate—a slim, raffish, good-looking pirate with a style all his own. Even then—even at age twenty three—his smile had twisted sardonically. His quick brown eyes had been bold and knowing. And when Kevin talked, people listened. Because, at age twenty-three, Kevin was a success. While he was in college, he’d written a three-act play that had been produced by the college repertory company. The year after he’d graduated, a small off-Broadway group had staged the play. Kevin’s total royalties had come to less than five hundred dollars, but the play had gotten good reviews. Plainly, a brilliant career had been launched. Kevin was a winner.

  When he’d taken her to his tiny apartment after the Thompsons’ party, she’d felt almost suffocated by excitement and anticipation. It had been more than simply a sexual quickening—more than merely an ego trip, leaving the party with its star performer. She’d somehow felt that Kevin was part of her future—someone she’d been expecting. That n
ight, for the first time in her life, she’d pretended nothing—no maidenly misgivings, no coyness. Caressing her, Kevin’s hands had moved deftly and confidently, yet subtly. His whispers had had the cadence of poetry. His body, aroused, had quickly grown taut and urgent against hers. As she’d responded, caressing him in return, she’d followed her own sense of headlong fulfillment, no questions asked.

  They’d slept together that night. The next morning, she’d made him breakfast. Almost shyly, they’d exchanged their dreams. He would make films—serious, low-budget art films. She would paint, of course. Success seemed very near—very precious. The prospect had humbled them.

  Joanna glanced down at her cup. Surprisingly, the cup was empty. Less than five minutes remained before she was due back at the store. She got quickly to her feet, slipped a dime and six-odd pennies under her saucer, and left the restaurant. Gorlick’s was just around the corner.

  Walking fast, she covered the distance quickly. She debated climbing the stairs to the third floor, for the exercise, but finally decided to take the elevator. She pressed the button, then stood back, letting the customers crowd ahead. The second-floor radio-and-TV department was having a summer sale. So the elevator, when it came, left without her.

  She walked a few steps away, then stood surveying the first floor. The customer count, she knew, was low. In the furniture and housewares section, July was a slow month.

  Her idly roving gaze encountered the slight, sandy-haired figure of Leonard Talbot, the new smallwares stockboy. He’d been looking at her. But instantly his eyes fell. Plainly confused, he was fussing at a display of table settings. She stood motionless for a moment, studying him thoughtfully. He was turned half away, still fidgeting. Something in Leonard’s delicate profile and nervously prominent Adam’s apple touched a distant glint of memory. Had she known him in some other town, some other place?