by Ed Gorman
'Laughing?'
'Uh-huh.'
'Well, maybe I should stop by more often. It'll give you a lot more to laugh at.'
'How about one kiss?'
'My pleasure.'
'But not open-mouthed.'
'What kind of guy do you take me for anyway? I've got more self-respect than that.'
They kissed.
No open mouths.
It made her dizzy.
She pulled away. 'Maybe we shouldn't have done that.'
'Yeah, maybe we should have waited for the full fifteen minutes. I think we still had fourteen to go.'
'I want to hate you.'
'Well now, that's a nice neighborly thing to say.'
'You really hurt me.'
He didn't say anything for a long time, just stared at the TV screen without seeing anything and finally said, 'I'm sorry, Jill.'
'That's the terrible thing.'
'What is?'
'I believe you. That you're sorry. And I don't want to believe you.'
He turned on the couch and took her slowly in his arms. 'You should believe me, Jill. You really should.'
***
After they had finished making love, they snuggled beneath the covers and listened to the wet chill wind slap against the windows.
She couldn't get enough of his touch, or the familiar way he felt pressed against her, the smell of his hair, the gruff feel of his chin. He was one of those men who needed to shave twice a day. At this moment, he was lover, friend, brother and confidant and she loved all of them equally.
They were going to get married and love each other forever more. There might be children, and there would certainly be a rambling rustic house as idyllic as those she always saw in the romantic movies of the thirties and fortiesa true retreat from the wickedness and pain of the world, a place where sunsets were unspeakably beautiful, and lasted for days at a time, a kingdom where the crystal blue lakes remained untouched by industrial pollution. She closed her eyes and imagined such a realm, with herself as the princess and Mitch, of course, as her prince. The only trouble was, reality always intruded. Here was this handsome fairytale princewho was always in need of a shave.
'I don't think he believed me,' she said.
'Who?'
'Lieutenant Sievers.'
'About what?'
'The girl who came into Eric's office. I think he thinks I made her up.'
'This is all a formality, honest.'
'He didn't sound like it was a formality.'
'He's just trying to scare you. That's second nature to cops.'
'Remind me not to buy any tickets to the policemen's ball next year.'
'You won't have to.'
'Why not?'
'Because by then you'll be married to a policeman. And you'll get your tickets free.'
'I'm getting scared again.'
'Of Sievers?'
'Ummm. Of Sievers. And you. And us.'
'It's going to work this time, Jill. Honest.'
'Will you come visit me in prison?'
'Don't talk like that. That isn't funny.' Pause. 'In fact, don't talk at all.'
Before they made love a second time, he simply held her there in the darkness. And eventually she started feeling better, not scared, and safe. Definitely safe.
Holding Mitch was even better than holding her Lone Ranger mug.
CHAPTER 43
At home, Rick went to the dry bar, had two quick drinks of JB Scotch, and then decided to go back to Adam's room and look through the drawers. This time, he wouldn't let anything interrupt him.
But as he reached the hallway, he wondered if he should do it. No matter how hard he tried to leave things just as they were, he knew how angry Adam would be if he found out.
But no, dammit. He knew very little about Adam and now the man's background had begun to interest him a great deal. Who was Adam Morrow, anyway?
He walked to the bedroom door.
Clicked on the light.
Adam really was such a slob.
Rick went in.
Straight to the bureau.
But he couldn't help it. He felt guilty. A naughty little boy, that's what he felt like.
He bent down to the third drawer. That's where he'd left off, right? The third drawer.
He opened it and saw handkerchiefs and cufflinks and tie bars and mementos of weddings and mementos of birthday parties and mementos of New Year's Eves and so on. A junk drawer, that's what the third drawer was.
He sifted through everything but, as he'd suspected, the contents were of no interest, except for what they revealed about Adam. A pack rat, that was Adam. Not major league but minor league at least.
There was one more drawer.
He wasn't expecting much.
All these months, he'd thought of how neat it would be to sneak into Adam's room and go through his drawers and find
Engraved swizzle sticks? Paper accordion-fold party hats? Gag napkins with dirty jokes on them?
God, he hoped there was something worth looking at in the fourth drawer.
He opened it and pulled it right out. Except for one small white envelope tucked in the far corner, the drawer was empty. Wow. All this room and just this one teeny-tiny envelope.
Wonder what's in it?
Either it's so important that it deserves its own draweror it's so unimportant that Adam just tossed the envelope in here and forgot about it.
He lifted the envelope up.
Surprisingly heavy.
Rubber band around it.
Took off the rubber band.
Looked inside.
And foundphotographs.
All the photographs showed the same boy at various ages.
A handsome boy. Bright-looking.
Many of the pictures showed the boy playing in the grounds of a fantastic mansion.
Rick realized how little he knew of Adam's background.
He turned some of the photos over, to see if there was any kind of identification on them.
Peter Tappley.
This was written on six or seven of the photos.
A few of them were also dated.
And then, darknessa cold sweat breaking out across his face and under his arms. Blackout…
He groped frantically for the bureau. Supported himself while the darkness moved through him like a terrible disease.
Then, slowly, he was able to stand erect. Able to see clearly again. Able to stop shaking.
Slowly, he went back to examining the pictures. He went through each and every one of the photographs, occasionally checking for names and dates on the back.
Following the very last photo, he found a newspaper clipping.
He unfolded it.
***
HEIR TO TAPPLEY FORTUNE DIES IN ELECTRIC CHAIR
Peter Tappley, one of two heirs to one of America's greatest fortunes, was put to death in the electric chair last night, after both the Supreme Court and the Governor refused to grant any more stays of execution. Witnesses say that the execution went off without any problems. Coroner J. K. Whitsone pronounced Tappley dead at 12:14 a.m., CST.
***
There was more but Rick didn't read it.
He put the pictures back in the envelope and the envelope back in the drawer. The newspaper clipping the slipped into his pocket.
He left the room, turning off the light.
***
Rick took great pride in the way he had soundproofed the basement. He had brought his CD player down here and turned on a Sousa march until the speakers began to wobble from the fury of the music. Then he'd gone outside to see if he could hear it andnothing. Perfect.
The utility room he walked through was big and cold and pretty much empty; some appliances, the furnace, and a stack of cardboard boxes were its only furnishings. At the far end was a door leading to a storage room.
He looked at the door, then walked down to it.
He opened the door, groped around and found the light swi
tch, and flipped it on.
Hard as he'd tried, he hadn't been able to clean all the blood from the concrete floor and walls. Lots of faint red splashes remained.
Fortunately, he had spent a lot of time fixing up the drainage system, altering the soil stack that emptied into the main drain beneath the house. In three years, he'd killed seven women in this basement room. While he'd carted most of the body parts away, pieces of meat and organs were inevitably carried down the drain to the main drainage system. He'd had some problems at first, but once the soil stack had been rigged differently, they were solved.
The axe stood in the corner. It was a thing of beauty, at least to Rickthe equivalent of Excalibur. Dried blood lovingly streaked the 36-inch-long handle as well as the 5-inch cutting face. At night, watching TV, he often filed the head of the axe then used a whetstone on it. It was always sharp, always ready for use.
He went over and picked it up, stroked the long silken handle with obscene pleasure. He had a pretty good idea of who he'd be using this on, and soon.
He angled the inside of his thumb against the edge of the blade, his own blood mixing now with the blood of his victims. That's what we all came down to in the end, anyway. Blood and bone and meat and shit and come, all sinking into the oblivion of the ground.
He was aroused, then, and unexpectedly, the way he used to get as a teenager.
His need overwhelmed him and he hurried upstairs.
He kept the small black box of videotape velcro'd to the bottom of his mattress. It would take somebody a long time to find it. A long, long time.
He went swiftly to the living room, put the tape into the VCR, switched on the TV and then turned off all the other lights.
He knelt in front of the TV, as the images and then the screams struggled to grainy life on the home video.
He'd done this many times before.
He filled his hand with his sex and began pleasing himself.
The video had been taken in the basement with this skinny red-haired waitress he'd dragged all the way back from Wisconsin in the trunk of his car. He'd sedated her for the trip.
But he revived her when they got back here because he wanted to get it all on video. And her fear was a big part of the pleasure.
He'd mounted the camera on the tripod and then set to work.
She lay in the middle of the floor, right by the drain, naked and all trussed up. She had spunk, he had to give her that, the way she rolled left then right and then tried to kick her feet out. She had to know she didn't have a chance.
The camera got some good sexy angles of her as she rolled around naked like that. They were so good he always thought he was going to faint from pure pleasure when he saw them. She had a great little rump.
Then this guy came in. All in black. Right down to a black executioner's mask. Very dramatic. Freaky.
But what you really noticed about the guy was not his clothes but the axe.
Long, curved handle; blood-splashed head.
Rick and his axe.
She screamed so much the video microphone started woofing: it couldn't handle all that shrillness. She knew just what was about to happen…
He knelt in front of his TV now, pleasing himself more and more, faster and faster, as the axe descended and took her head off.
He watched it roll down the slanting floor toward the drain…
And then the man in the black executioner's maskthat's how he thought of it, like the guy in black wasn't really him but an actor, like, say, Warren Beatty or somebodywent to work on the rest of her…
And now, as the late-October wind tore at trees and shrieked into attic windows… now Rick knelt before his TV, his breath coming in gasps, as he watched the executioner finish the job.
The darkened living room was filled with shifting beams of light as the screen bloomed with various colors… and as Rick Corday cried out in ecstasy.
CHAPTER 44
Adam Morrow lay awake in his hotel room listening to the muffled sounds of the Manhattan midnight thirty stories below him.
He was being silly, paranoid.
Everything would be fine.
He had had several stern talks with his friend Rick Corday about taking crazy risks.
The worst Rick would do was go get drunk somewhere and come on to some guy. And most likely the guy would say no, for there was something disturbing about Rick; something that had initially excited Adam but that now gave him pause, greater and greater pause, actuallyand then Rick would insult him and storm out.
Then he'd go home and get even drunker by himself.
Good old Rick.
Getting time to dump him, actually.
Sleep came to Adam, then, as he assured himself for a final time that he had cured Rick of his impulsive and insane risk-taking…
Sleep…
CHAPTER 45
Following the death of her husband, Evelyn Daye Tappley had erected in her room a canopied bed of such proportion and craft that even a queen in a medieval kingdom would have been envious. In the manner of the ancient Egyptians, Evelyn had had her bedposts carved with intricate figures of myth such as unicorns and satyrs, and the bed itself hung with velvet and silk from the Orient.
It was here, when she did not wish to address mere mortals, including her daughter, that Evelyn Daye Tappley spent long hours in pajamas of the finest silk, sipping wine imported from French vineyards so celebrated that even international movie stars had a difficult time getting on the preferred customer list, and looking at photo album after photo album of her beloved second son Peter.
She was here how.
Doris knocked.
'I'll speak to you in the morning,' Evelyn said from the other side of the door.
'We need to talk now, Mother.'
'I'm in bed. Don't you have any respect for that?'
'I'm coming in, Mother.'
'Damn you, you have no right to treat me this way!'
But Doris waited no longer. Could wait no longer. If her suspicions were correct, her mother had done something that was both vile and exceedingly stupid.
The only light in the large shadowy room came from within the interior of the canopy itself, a light appended to the headboard of the vast bed.
Doris walked over and said, 'I want you to tell me about this Mr Runyon.'
Evelyn's dark eyes blazed. 'So you were listening on the extension.'
'Mr Runyon, Mother. I want you to tell me about him. And I want you to tell me what Arthur Halliwell has to do with all of this.'
Even this late in her life, Evelyn Daye Tappley had a firm and shapely body. In the dainty silk pajamas, the body looked thirty years younger than its owner.
On Evelyn's lap was a photo albumall color photos, of courseof Peter's ninth and tenth summers. Evelyn had been an inveterate documenter of her children's young years.
'He was a handsome boy, wasn't he?' she said dreamily.
'Yes, he was. Now tell me about Runyon.'
'You know, his birthday is coming up. Peter's, I mean.'
'I know.'
'I assume you'll go to the mausoleum with me.'
'Perhaps, Mother. But first'
Her mother glared up at Doris. 'You know what? The older I get, the more I wonder if you weren't jealous of Peter. I wonder if you weren't jealous all these years and I didn't understand it until recently.'
'You're changing the subject, Mother.'
'If you weren't jealous, you'd go to the mausoleum with me.'
'There's paying respectand then there's morbidity.'
'And I'm morbid?'
'You're there every day, aren't you?'
'And that's morbid?'
'Of course it is.'
Doris did not realize until it was too late what her mother had just done. There was a button on the side of the bed for summoning a servant. She had just pressed it. Martha would be here soon. Evelyn would have Martha stay with her so Doris couldn't ask any questions.
'You're very clever, Mother.'
Evelyn smiled. 'I like to think so, anyway, dear.'
'We're going to talk about Runyon.'
'Are we?'
'Jill doesn't deserve this.'
'You know what I just said about you being jealous of your brother?'
'Don't be ridiculous.'
'If you weren't jealous then you'd agree with me that that little bitch should be punished.'
'She's a decent woman. She did everything she could to save her marriage.'
Evelyn smirked. 'Oh yes, Jill Coffeya veritable saint, isn't she?' But she was angry now and could no longer control it. Her eyes grew wild again. 'Don't ask me about Runyon. Runyon is entirely my business, not yours. And I don't want you snooping around in my desk anymore, either.'
'I just can't believe that Mr Halliwell would have anything to do with this.'
'You're naive about people, Doris, and you always have been.'
A soft knock. Martha came in.
Evelyn said, 'Why don't you fluff my pillows and straighten the blankets and help me get ready for bed?'
'Yes, ma'am.'
Evelyn smiled at Doris. 'I'm sorry, dear, but with Martha here, I'm afraid we can't talk.'
Doris and Martha glanced at each other. Martha was wise in the ways of Evelyn Daye Tappley.
'I'll talk to you in the morning, then, Mother,' Doris said, and turned away from the bed.
As Doris left the room, Martha gave her a weary little smile.
CHAPTER 46
Jill heard the noise about 2 a.m. She eased herself out of bed so as not to wake Mitch, and went to the window. In the alley that ran along the side of her house, she saw the darkened shape of a police cruiser. No headlights. Two uniformed officers with long flashlights. Walking to the dumpster. Opening the lid. Aiming the beams inside. One of the officers pulling on a latex glove. Reaching down into the dumpster. Feeling around like a kid searching a treasure box at a grade-school ice-cream socialfeeling around blind for the best prize.
While the one officer, a woman, held the beam, the other, a man spent the next few minutes rummaging through the dumpster. Not a job Jill would want. The officers made faces at each other sometimes, indicating that the dumpster did not exactly smell of Chanel No. 5.