The Devil's Menagerie

by Louis Charbonneau

  She picked up the living room with a kind of frantic energy. Stacked the morning dishes in the dishwasher. Started a load of clothes in the washer. Walked back through the house and found herself peering out the front windows toward the street. Looking for what? No need to answer.

  She went up the stairs, her hand absently caressing the polished banister. She loved her old house, the cornices and woodwork, the stairway, the details that couldn’t be found in new construction. Too expensive, everyone said, even while finish carpenters were begging for work. But this morning the house felt different. Emptier. Quieter. She caught herself listening to every creak and crack. A scraping on the roof made her nerves vibrate. A branch of the huge old jacaranda in the backyard touched the roof, and Dave had been promising to trim it back. He wanted to do it himself. Tree surgeons in Southern California were tree butchers, he said, creators of stunted skeletons. With its lavender petals the jacaranda was gorgeous in bloom, and neither of them wanted to see it butchered.

  The house felt colder. In part that could be attributed to the gray, sunless autumn day, but Glenda knew it was more than that. The house had always felt warm, sheltered, secure, even in winter.

  Everything had changed in the instant a stricken Richie had turned toward her, holding the phone in a trembling hand.

  “Damn you!” she said aloud. “Damn you, Ralph, how could you do that?”

  Even as she voiced the question she knew that it was exactly the kind of thing Ralph Beringer would do.

  Why had he come back now? What did he want?

  She stood at the front bedroom windows and stared out again at the quiet street, as if expecting to see Beringer standing there, returning her gaze with mocking nonchalance. Even after eight years she would know him at a glance. And she was afraid.

  Ralph Beringer was the reason her home felt cold, vulnerable, no longer safe.

  Dave made her feel secure and happy—God, how happy he had made her! In her eyes he had only one serious fault: his unwillingness to believe the worst of people. Glenda had looked into the pit of man’s potential for unimaginable cruelty and lived with the knowledge of its awful presence; Dave didn’t even know the pit was there.

  Even Friday night, right after Beringer’s call, and again Saturday morning he had been infuriating. Listening to his patient attempts to explain or justify Ralph’s callous action, she had fought back a scream. My God, how can you be so blind? Don’t you know what’s out there?

  “Maybe he wants to try to make it up to Richie—not being there for him all these years,” Dave had reasoned. “It’s not surprising he doesn’t know how to go about it.”

  He doesn’t want forgiveness! He wants to destroy us!

  “Has it occurred to you that he might not even call again? He could just have been passing through Los Angeles.”

  He’s not just passing through. He’s not going away, Dave … not until he does what he came for. I know him.

  “Honey, we’re going to have to help Richie work his way through this. We can’t ignore it. If Beringer calls again, I want to meet him.”

  He’s not a reasonable man. You can’t talk to him. Aren’t you listening to me? He’s evil, Dave! He’s never forgiven me for divorcing him and remarrying.

  But Dave hadn’t heard any of her cries because she had been silent, numbed by reawakened terror. And Dave didn’t know about the beatings, the black eyes and broken rib, the dislocated shoulder, the bruises she had hidden from friends, the crippled spirit. He didn’t know because she had never told him. Sparing him that kind of truth—and sparing herself having to relive those terrors—she had kept the memories buried deep, private, an ugly secret she was both afraid and ashamed to bring out into the light, fearing that it would somehow make Dave think less of her.

  Nor had she told him about Ralph and Richie …

  She could show Dave Ralph’s cryptic response to her Dear John letter, she thought. Perversely, in spite of her fear and loathing, she had never destroyed the note. Like the buried memories of her aborted marriage, it was hidden away in the spare room closet, concealed inside a cardboard box containing other mementoes and old photographs. In the beginning she had taken it out of the box frequently, rereading the terse threat (what else could it be?) as if she might find hidden meaning in it. Gradually, as time went by and her fear ebbed, she looked at it only rarely, as if to remind herself that her newly found happiness, her joy in her family, her feeling of safety were all an illusion, erected on a foundation that could be swept away in an instant, like the hopes and dreams of those people whose homes were destroyed in the recent hillside fire near San Carlos.

  She thought of Dave out there in the hills confronting a wall of flames, an irresistible force that engulfed everything in its path. Ralph Beringer in a rage was like that fire, a force of nature as pitiless as the devouring flames.

  Glenda still lived with the terror that had enveloped her when she read Ralph’s message for the first time. But would Dave comprehend her fear? “He was angry when he wrote that,” Dave would say, oh so reasonably. “There’s acrimony in a lot of divorces. It doesn’t mean anything now.”

  Glenda knew better. She knew, for instance, that Ralph had sent the toy nutcracker to Richie on that long-ago Christmas as another way of unnerving her. Selecting a toy that depicted a man gripping an ax had been calculated.

  Dave would scoff at seeing anything sinister in a wooden toy. But it wasn’t paranoid if it was true, Glenda thought bitterly. She knew Ralph had been playing mind games with her. I’m not through with you, the toy was intended to say. It’s not over, bitch!

  And now Ralph Beringer was here in San Carlos. God in heaven, what was she going to do?

  Alone in the house, listening to every whisper of wind or creaking board, she understood that there was one thing she had to do. She had to tell Dave everything, all that she had dreaded to reveal. He had to know the truth.

  Nine

  RALPH BERINGER HAD followed Lindstrom’s car at a safe distance on its trip to the beach. He chuckled at the irony of passing the crime scene on the highway near the bird sanctuary. To see the black-and-white standing beside the road, uniforms waving traffic on, the yellow police crime scene tape winding down on both sides of the bridge, was a kick in the gut. He drove on, grinning. Look up here, boys! Here I am!

  During the next two hours his good humor turned to silent, seething rage.

  At first from his car, and later from a distance on the beach, Beringer watched the tall, lean man and the chunky kid stroll along the strand, watched them stop to talk or to inspect broken shells, watched them take off their shoes and walk barefoot along the edge of the waves washing up on shore. They seemed to be having a great time, not a care in the world. Hadn’t they learned anything from his message Friday night? Didn’t they get it?

  That’s my son, Beringer fumed. Not yours, Professor—mine.

  Once, while the pair were far off along the beach, sitting side by side and staring out to sea, idly tossing pebbles as they talked, Beringer inspected the teacher’s car. He spotted a yellow Nomex jacket on the back seat of the car and some soot-blackened work-boots on the floor. Obviously Lindstrom hadn’t got around to cleaning and stashing them since his latest volunteer fire duty. The inside of the Nissan must smell like old ashes.

  Later, following the man and the boy back to San Carlos, Beringer kept thinking about that yellow jacket. Possibilities nibbled at the corners of his mind, like suspicious fish poking at bait. Never mind, he would work it out.

  He had the rough sequence of the coming days worked out. He had had eight years to plan it all. It was like the game plans conceived by that former coach of the San Francisco 49ers, Bill Walsh. He was the first who actually preprogrammed the first twelve or fifteen plays in a game, then ran them as planned. Of course, once the game started, there was always the unexpected, the quarterback checking off at the line of scrimmage or being flushed out of the pocket and having to improvise. Beringer had always und
erstood that, once his planned sequence started, unexpected obstacles might surface and he would have to adapt to them. New twists and turns would have to be found.

  That yellow fireman’s jacket was something he knew he could use. He didn’t know how, not yet, but he would figure it out.

  Something else occurred to him. Pretty, sexy Edie Foster had been having it on with an older man, someone not unlike Lindstrom, possibly another San Carlos College teacher. She had admitted it to him, mouth taped, all the arrogance gone from those lovely eyes, nodding her head vigorously when Beringer asked the question, as if she hoped that confession might absolve her sin and save her. Could he use that information in some way, fitting it into his game plan? Thinking about it as he drove, Beringer decided it was almost too good to be true.

  When Lindstrom and Beringer’s son approached the old neighborhood where they lived, Beringer turned away. Too much chance of being noticed if he followed them there on a Sunday afternoon when everyone was at home, cutting lawns or planting bulbs. He had already taken more risks than he had intended.

  Thinking about the hours he had had with Edie brought a rush that left his stomach muscles clenched, his hands shaking on the steering wheel, sweat breaking out on his forehead. That was one of the unexpected twists. He had planned his hits in cold rage, seeing each as a repetition of the first one in Germany eight years ago, a quick hard strike, taking what he wanted, meting out the punishment they all deserved. In and out fast, so fast the cops would be dizzy trying to keep up, taking no chances.

  Edie Foster had derailed the game plan.

  He had had sexy Edie to himself in the motel room for four hours, helpless, terrified. So much better to take his time, draw it out, let her see what was happening to her at every stage. By the end of that time she wasn’t much, admittedly, he might as well have been banging a sack of grain, but before that …

  Dangerous, though. For a time he had been out of control, caution to the winds and all that, and he couldn’t let that happen again. It had been so long, that was the problem, he had been waiting for these moments so long, who wouldn’t get carried away at first?

  All the same, taking her to his motel room had been a definite risk. The girl herself had presented no problems, still unconscious when he hustled her from the car to his room. And it had been late, past midnight, his room down at the end and out of the way. He had used all that to rationalize the risk, but he had been conning himself. He had jeopardized everything for a quick fix.

  Beringer wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve, then jerked the Ford Taurus over to the curb and stared across the road. What the hell was he doing?

  The motel where he had spent half the night with Edie Foster was directly across the way, appearing a lot more drab and cheerless by day than it did at night. He had driven here without conscious intent, drawn by the electric charge of memory. What was that line about a murderer returning to the scene of his crime? You think that stuff is all bullshit, but here he was. Stupid!

  Beringer had stayed in the motel only one night, of course, before moving on. The chances of anyone having seen him with Edie, and linking her with the murdered San Carlos College coed, were infinitesimal. The way he had worked it out long before coming here was, motels were filled with transients and they were too easy for police to check. They provided a name, sometimes a license plate, from the registration card, and if you stayed too long, the next thing you knew a cop was tapping you on the shoulder. The Travel-Ease Motel had been only a preliminary stop for Beringer while he looked San Carlos over and let the happy couple know he was in town. It had never been part of the agenda to take anyone to the motel, but once he had Edie in the car with him she proved to be just too perfect to enjoy for only a few fleeting moments.

  Images from those hours with her flashed in his memory like neon flares. Edie when she still had some fight in her, even with her hands and feet and later her mouth taped, her eyes so big and round, all of her emotions playing themselves out for him in those eyes, the anger and outrage and fear, the anguish when her body responded in spite of her resistance, the pain and shock of disbelief, and then the terror gradually taking over as the knowledge dawned on her that the worst was still to come, that there was to be no reprieve, that this was all there was, end of the line, the last of her life a silent scream.

  A black-and-white San Carlos police car cruised by. One of the uniformed cops glanced toward him, casual but curious all the same. What was he doing there, sitting in a car by himself? Beringer put the Taurus in gear and eased away from the curb, a half block behind the black-and-white. He drove slowly, eyes locked on the police car, not even glancing toward the motel.

  Crazy coming back here even to look, but no real harm done.

  He drove across San Carlos and stopped for dinner at a Denny’s on the north side. It was at the far end of town from the college, so there were few students inside, mostly senior citizens and weekend travelers catching the nearby freeway off-ramp upon spotting a familiar coffee shop’s sign.

  Beringer was hardly aware of what he ate, couldn’t even remember afterward. His brain churned with those neon flashes of Edie spread-eagled on the bed with the plastic painter’s dropcloth under her, no blood on the sheets; those images interlaced with the anger toward Lindstrom hippity-hopping along the beach with the kid—Beringer’s son Richie. And that cop giving him the eye, the sidelong glance lingering, a hint of suspicion there, that hard-ass look all cops had, got it from practicing in front of the mirror.

  He had to calm down. He was still riding the high Edie had given him, and it was time to settle down.

  Leaving Denny’s, he consulted a San Carlos street map on the seat beside him and located Washington Boulevard, the town’s main drag that cut all the way across town. Out here near the city limits was the big shopping mall, flanked on its southern wing by San Anselmo Drive, Beringer’s destination.

  He took Avenida del Sol to Washington, turned right and moments later came to San Anselmo Drive—several blocks of large apartment and condominium complexes on the flatland west of the San Carlos foothills, this one in Spanish motif with pink walls and tiled roof, the next an imitation New England village, the next all palms and South Seas decor.

  Beringer had sublet a unit in a modern building. The owners, an older couple, were traveling to Europe for a three-month vacation. Beringer had answered their ad because he liked the sound of it, and he had lucked out. The old man had been in the Air Force in World War II, stationed in England. He and Beringer had been able to swap war stories. The old geezer had been so taken with Beringer that he hadn’t bothered about references or credit checks or honorable discharge papers, any one of which would have presented a problem. When the old lady tried to ask some questions her husband shushed her up, winking at Beringer as if they were old Air Force buddies. He handed Beringer a set of keys to the house and another set for the blue Buick LeSabre in the garage.

  The condominium complex had underground parking with a remote-controlled security gate. A stairway and elevator were nearby, offering quick and private access to the individual units under most circumstances. Not that Beringer intended to bring any of the others back where he was staying. That was a one-shot deal at the motel, a mistake really, a self-indulgence he had gotten away with. He couldn’t risk a second time. There were too many unpredictable possibilities for disaster.

  He had signed the sublease on Thursday. The old couple were scheduled to be on a United Airlines flight out of John Wayne International Airport in Orange County that Sunday morning. Beringer used his remote control to gain entrance to the underground parking and slipped the Taurus into the vacant slot next to the Buick. Too impatient to wait for the slow-moving elevator, he took the stairs two at a time. He held his breath when he turned the key in the front door and stepped into the cool interior of the apartment. He half expected to hear the shrill, querulous voice of the old woman saying, “I told you so! I told you he had shifty eyes!”

 
; But the stillness of the apartment was total, as if it had been abandoned much longer than half a day.

  Beringer walked through the silent rooms, turning on lights. There were mini-blinds everywhere and he closed them carefully. He checked out the master bedroom, a smaller room the old man evidently used as a den, the kitchen, the small dining area and, finally, the living room. He felt out of place amongst all the down-filled floral upholstery, the big La-Z-Boy facing a Sony big screen television set, crystal and knickknacks covering every surface, not an ashtray in sight. Beringer had spent much of his adult life in and out of various military barracks and the spartan lodgings available to enlisted men at military bases, along with a couple of hitches in the even more spartan surroundings of the brig. No sofas covered in cabbage roses, no La-Z-Boy to kick back in, no forty-inch TV.

  He found a cold beer in the refrigerator, plopped himself down in the oversize recliner, stacked his heels on the glass-topped coffee table and grinned with satisfaction.

  He was invisible now, right here in Glenda’s college town, no way anyone could trace him, no paper trail, a phony name on the sublease he had signed for the trusting old soldier.

  Where the hell was the remote?

  DETECTIVE TIM BRADEN caught his first break on the Jane Doe murder Sunday evening when a coed at San Carlos College reported her roommate missing to the campus security office. After learning that the girl had gone out on a date Friday night and had not been seen for forty-eight hours, the security officer on duty, Ken Wood-ell, filed a missing persons report with the San Carlos Police Department.

  Braden had asked to be notified immediately of any such report pertaining to a young woman. He was sitting out on the balcony of his San Carlos Beach apartment in the dark when his phone rang. The apartment wasn’t much to look at, part of a 1940s development of small frame cottages and duplexes, but Braden liked the proximity to the beach, the lack of pretension, the funky bars and Mexican restaurants and surfer shops. The furnishings, with the exception of a comfortable leather couch, were garage sale utilitarian—a legacy from Braden’s divorce three years ago. He had been too tired to fight over who got what. The apartment suited him for the little time he was there, and it was only fifteen minutes from the police station in San Carlos.