Finally he had gone out. Iris was his surprise—for Richie, a delightful one. Maybe his father would be in a better mood now, Richie hoped. Maybe they could have a good time together.
The waitress was very animated, talking in a voice that was higher pitched than Richie remembered, and giggling a lot, as if she were excited to be with them. They went out to Denny’s to eat, Iris talking all through the meal while Richie stared admiringly at her, the waitress saying what a treat it was to be taken out to dinner, usually she was the one doing the serving and all. She joked about having to remind herself not to jump up and grab the coffeepot. Beringer said little. After a while Richie realized that Iris was more nervous than he was—that was why she talked and laughed so much. Her nervousness showed in little sidelong glances at Ralph Beringer. She also touched him often, putting her hand on his arm, or letting her fingertips brush his shoulder. Beringer didn’t seem to notice.
It was dark when they returned to the apartment. Beringer had been silent in the car, but as soon as they were inside, the front door locked behind them, he told Richie, “Why don’t you go on into the bedroom, kid.”
“Uh … it’s early, uh, Dad. I mean—”
“Do what you’re told.”
HE’S A GOOD kid, I think you upset him,” Iris said when they were alone. Her lips pouted in mock rebuke. “We could have waited a little bit,” she added coquettishly.
“You think I give a shit what you think?” Ralph Beringer said.
He was in an ugly mood. He had been that way since the debacle Friday night with Nancy, his mood not improved by the circumstance that, for the next forty-eight hours, he had been stuck with the kid. It was one thing to tighten the screws on Glenda and her professor; it was another thing entirely to spend two days with a ten-year-old who didn’t know when to shut up and who, if you said boo to him, acted like a girl.
The experience with Nancy—so keenly anticipated—had gone badly. First the whimpering in his car like a little girl, the same way Richie acted—that was all she was, really, a little girl in this big, overblown, beautiful woman’s body. Then the sudden collapse that left Beringer frustrated, screaming with rage.
Once he had her in the car he had driven swiftly into the hills, knowing exactly where he was going. The girl blubbered and talked to herself, as if she were praying. Beringer realized she was talking to her parents. It was pathetic.
The regional park had been dark and deserted at that hour. Braking angrily in the empty parking area beneath the arms of a huge oak tree, Beringer had said, “Did you tell mommy and daddy how you were acting with your lover boy?”
Nancy went silent, her mouth open, eyes huge behind long wet lashes.
“You know what I’m talking about. Did you tell them about dressing like a whore, making sure everyone could see those big tits?”
“I … I don’t know what you mean.”
It was over in an instant.
When Beringer hit her she went slack, mushy, as if this big lovely girl was nothing more than an envelope of skin, an inflated doll he had accidentally punctured.
Enraged by the lack of resistance, he didn’t stop until his arms felt leaden, too heavy to lift. He went through his ritual, all of it, but there was none of the familiar, red-minded joy. He was left empty and disgusted, his rage unvented, still churning like a sickness in his belly.
It was like beating off alone in the dark all those years ago, while in the next room she howled and shrieked to climax with one of her transient friends …
“I’m out of here,” Iris said, staring at him as if she had never seen him before.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
“Who says? You?” Her bark of laughter was derisive.
Beringer regarded her quietly, unmoved. He was between her and the door. “Go on in there. The kid’s waiting.”
Iris stared at him in disbelief. “You’ve gotta be kidding!”
“He likes you, you like him. It’ll be good for him.”
“Does he know about this?” She was incredulous.
“Don’t worry, he’ll get the idea quick enough if you show him. He’s my son.”
“You’re sick!”
She tried to walk past him. Beringer grabbed her arm in the famous Beringer Pincer’s Bite. Her bicep was surprisingly hard. His brain recorded the fact with a flicker of surprise but without alarm.
“You’re goin’ in there, one way or another. Why not the easy way?
“Go fuck yourself!” Iris shouted, twisting free.
He hit her once, with an open palm rather than his fist, but not holding back. The blow rocked her on her heels, her eyes momentarily glassy. It also sent her a very clear message, which was what he intended.
His smile was cold, chilling her. “It’s not like it’s your first time. Just do it. Leave the door open,” he added. “I’ll be listening, so don’t try to fake it.”
TWENTY MINUTES LATER Iris stormed out of the bedroom, flinging the door behind her so hard it bounced off the wall. “I hope you’re satisfied, you sick bastard!”
Behind her, shattered and in tears, the humiliated boy would not meet Beringer’s eyes.
“Hey, how’d it go?” he questioned Richie.
“What do you care?” Richie rushed past him into the bathroom, slamming the door.
Beringer turned angrily on Iris. “What went on in there? I told you—”
“He couldn’t handle it. For God’s sake, what kind of a father are you? He’s not ready! And neither am I—not for that kind of shit!” Iris shoved past him, heading into the living room. “You’re no father, you’re sick—and I’m out of here!”
Moving smoothly and without unnecessary haste, he caught her before she reached the small entryway. His fingers on her shoulders were like metal clamps. “You’ll go when I say so.”
“What the hell do you mean?” She was furious, almost as humiliated as the boy. She felt used and dirty. Iris had a healthy sexual appetite and few inhibitions, but this man had succeeded in turning joyful pleasure into something shameful and demeaning.
“Hey, calm down,” Beringer said, easing his grip while his tone became more reasonable. “I brought you here, I’m taking you back, and that’s it.”
He was smiling now, but there was something in his eyes that frightened Iris and silenced her. They were like two small, deep, dark wells, with something swimming around down there that she suddenly did not wish to see more clearly. For the first time she felt something other than anger and disgust: a tickle at the back of her neck that caused hairs to rise.
“Don’t move,” he ordered her.
Richie was emerging from the bathroom. When he saw Beringer he tried to bolt past him. Beringer grabbed the boy, spun him around and held him easily while he struggled. “Get back in there, you little wimp. You’re not going anywhere.”
“I hate you!”
“Yeah, well, you’re no prize yourself. You’re staying here—I’m taking Iris back.”
“I won’t be here!”
Beringer smiled. Then he cuffed Richie across the mouth, splitting his lip and knocking him backward into the bathroom. Richie slipped on the tile floor and banged his hip against the counter of the sink. Tears sprang into his eyes. And in that instant, as his father’s face swam before his eyes, blurred by the blow, he seemed to float outside of himself. He seemed to be up near the ceiling, staring down at a muscular man in a khaki uniform with stripes on his sleeve—at a soldier and a child. Richie watched in wide-eyed terror as the man’s arm rose and fell, lashing again and again, each blow cutting across the child’s screams like a scratch in a recording.
The bathroom door had a keyed lock. Beringer slammed the door shut. Richie heard the key turn and withdraw.
Then Beringer’s voice, clear and harsh: “You touch that door, bitch, and I’ll break your arm!”
After that there was only silence.
Thirty-Three
THE PHONE RANG as Karen Younger was coming throu
gh the door to her motel room. Expecting to hear Buddy Cochrane’s voice—or someone on the line from Quantico—she ran to scoop it up.
“Younger?” Braden’s voice, no preamble.
“I’m here. What’s up?”
“We have another body. I’ll pick you up. Ten minutes.”
“I’ll be out front.”
In the car Braden said, “I tried to call you earlier.”
“I was out for a walk. This weather is so unbelievable for October, it’s hard to stay indoors,” she explained, instantly guilty. “Is it the same pattern?”
“It’s him, all right. Same slaughterhouse mentality with his fists. Same cutting. It’s the girl who was reported missing Friday night.”
“Nancy,” Karen said, putting the letters together: L-E-N-N. Various combinations of the letters shed no new light. She frowned, thinking that her hunch had been wrong.
“This time there are some differences. For one, he wrapped her in a yellow fireman’s coat that’s been used recently. You can still smell the smoke and ashes.” Braden did not look at her, concentrating on his driving as he cut in and out of traffic, his expression stony. “Second thing, Doc says this time he raped and cut her after she was dead. Definitely postmortem.”
After a moment Karen said, “Those Nomex jackets should take prints.” Her foot instinctively braced against the floorboards as Braden tapped the brake, found an opening and shot through an intersection.
“Prints are all over the coat, and I’ve a pretty good idea whose they are.”
“David Lindstrom’s,” she guessed. “He’s making a public announcement that he did it?”
His glance flicked toward her, searching for sarcasm. “Lindstrom reported the coat stolen from his car on campus last week.”
“Then he’s in the clear.”
“Or he’s thumbing his nose at us. That could be a slick way to deflect attention from himself—report losing something potentially incriminating ahead of time because you know you’re going to use it.”
“You don’t give up easy, do you, Detective?”
“I don’t like the coat any more than you do. It sucks. But I also don’t like the way Lindstrom keeps popping up in each of these cases. I don’t like coincidences at all, and I especially don’t like three coincidences with three bodies.”
“Have you wondered why the killer would steal Lindstrom’s coat and then use it like this … if it wasn’t Lindstrom himself?”
“I can’t think of a reason that makes sense.”
He ran a red light, siren whooping, and a driver in a Camaro approaching the intersection from the right was too busy talking on his car phone to hear the warning. At the last second the Camaro braked, fishtailing out of control. Braden swerved sharply left, gunned the Chevrolet’s big engine and shot past the startled civilian. “Asshole,” Braden muttered. “What’s he think a siren is, the all-clear signal?”
“Unless someone had a grudge against Lindstrom,” Karen persisted.
Braden shot her a startled glance.
“I came across a report in the file late last night about the Lindstroms’ domestic problems.”
“Yeah. His kid’s missing. The parents were in the station Saturday morning. Seems the wife’s ex-husband is making trouble. He called and told ’em the kid was with him—claimed he came on his own. Trouble is, that’s not a crime. He’s the boy’s father.”
He did not say that he could see no connection between a custody quarrel, however bitter, and the serial killer they were after, but Karen knew what he was thinking. She had asked herself the same question.
Speeding along a dark canyon beyond the city’s edge, Braden swung sharply onto a two-lane road that climbed through blackened hills and ruined trees, legacy of the recent fire. Suddenly the terrain opened into a long narrow valley with green meadows, old shade oaks and, along a small creek, weeping willows trailing fingers in the water. Karen had a glimpse of picnic tables and barbecue pits.
“The regional park,” Braden said as the Chevrolet rocked to a stop. Its headlights slashed across an expanse of asphalt toward the familiar sight of police cars, an ambulance and the medical examiner’s van. This time, however, there were many other unofficial cars parked every which way as if there had been a massive pileup. Karen saw the call letters of one local TV station on the side of a van.
Pulling Karen along in his wake, Braden brushed past reporters who hurried toward them. “Coincidence number four,” he muttered as soon as they were clear of the newspeople. “Keep them back!” he barked at a uniform.
“What do you mean?”
“This was the staging area for the firefighters a couple weeks ago. Which means Lindstrom was here.”
A cluster of police and sheriff’s deputies were grouped around the entrance to a concrete block public toilet facility. The sign over the entrance where they stood said MEN. Approaching the open doorway, Karen felt her stomach lurch. She fished a nasal spray from her purse and used it quickly. Law enforcement officials commonly exposed to the sight and stench of violent death resorted to various means of stemming nausea; the spray was hers. It didn’t always work.
Nancy Showalter had been propped against a stained tile wall inside the restroom. She was a big girl, Karen saw, no more than eighteen or nineteen. The yellow slicker had been wrapped loosely around her shoulders, falling open at the front. She was naked under the coat.
As Karen stared down at her, the confluence of urinal smells and the sickly sweet odor of death caused her already queasy stomach to knot. She forced herself to take the time to examine closely what had been done to the girl—the battered features, the signature cuts, the indications of sexual assault. Then she pushed her way outside, where she stood leaning against the concrete block wall of the building, sucking in great gulps of cool night air. She shivered with nausea and shook with silent rage.
When Braden joined her outside, she asked, “How long has she been here?”
“Doc figures the best part of two days. That means the perp grabbed her at the powwow on campus Friday night and drove straight here. For whatever reason, the scene went bad on him. Doc’s guess is he hit her too hard the first time and her heart stopped. Or she was scared to death.”
Karen shuddered.
“Yeah,” Braden said quietly. “As you can see, he was really pissed off.”
Karen tried to erase the graphic images, lifting her face toward the purple night sky, taking deep breaths. When she trusted her voice she said, “He’s unraveling, Braden. He’s not sane anymore. God knows what he’ll do next.”
ON THE WAY to the beach Beringer drove past the Bright Spot without slowing. He saw Iris react, her hand reaching out in the direction of the diner as if in protest. “Let me out—stop this car!”
“Don’t be in such a hurry.”
Ignoring the fact that the Buick was speeding at fifty miles per hour along the coastal road, Iris grabbed at the door handle. Beringer backhanded her across the face, mashing her lips against her teeth. The car rocked back and forth as, steering with one hand, he grabbed Iris’s nest of blond hair with the other and slammed her head against the seat’s headrest.
Iris twisted her head and bit the heel of his palm.
Beringer roared. He released her, dug into his pocket jacket for the leather sleeve of steel balls. As he jerked it out, the end of the sleeve caught. The stitching, which had loosened without his noticing, opened up. Steel balls rolled onto the car seat, the floor, into Iris’s lap. She grabbed one of the balls and threw it into his face.
His brain a haze of red, Beringer grabbed her hair and smashed her head forward against the dashboard—padded, dammit—jerked it back against the headrest, forward, back, over and over, the blood on the dash lost in the red mist of the night, not stopping until he felt her go limp. He pushed her head down and forward between her legs. She slumped sideways against the passenger door.
Beringer drove on to the beach, cursing and banging the steering wheel with the palm
of his hand, ignoring the sting from his bite, the smear of blood on the wheel. Because of the unseasonally warm weather the beach had drawn huge crowds during the day, many of whom still lingered or, heading home, helped to create gridlock on the highway. The choicest parking lots within walking distance of the San Carlos Pier were still too full for comfort, and Beringer had to drive for more than a mile along the beachfront before he found a deserted lot. He pulled in, drove to the far end of the strip and parked.
He stared back along the parking area and the wide expanse of beach. Darkness pooled between widely spaced lights along the paved strip, and the beach itself was illuminated only by the pale light of a quarter moon. Some strollers far down the strand passed through the slant of a car’s headlights. Closer, a jogger padded along the edge of the surf, keeping to the wet, packed sand, but he was moving in the opposite direction. A restroom near where Beringer had parked, which resembled a military bunker, appeared to be deserted. Beringer watched it for several minutes without seeing any sign of activity.
The cloudless sky created a nightscape not as black as Beringer would have liked, but the beach area he had chosen was dark enough for his purposes. The restroom reminded him of the final resting place he had found for the last coed, Nancy. Good enough for her, good enough for Iris.
The waitress had not stirred or made a sound in some time. With a start of alarm, Beringer checked her pulse. It was strong and steady. Good! This, the prelude to the final act in the drama he had orchestrated, deserved his best efforts. After his disappointing adventure with Nancy, a living, vital Iris, awakening to terror, was essential.
Climbing out of the Buick, he tuned his senses to the night, watching and listening. Subdued brush of cars along the highway, but between those pulses, stillness all around.
He walked around the car, opened the front passenger door and caught Iris when she tumbled sideways toward him. He heard a soft moan. Lifting her clear of the door, he rested her dead weight across the front fender and hood.
As he turned to elbow the door shut with his free arm, Iris twisted out of his loose, one-handed grip, pushed off the vehicle and spun away.
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