by John Farrow
Andy was right to have wanted Cinq-Mars out of the way.
She was scrubbing up in the kitchen and yelling at her daughter to turn down the volume on the television when she reached out and punched the play button on her answering machine. Just one call. She froze with her hands under the taps. Then she spun the taps off, yelled furiously at Carole once more, and replayed the message from the beginning. There was no end to it. Charlie never hung up. She tried her phone and there was no dial tone. Was she still connected to Charlie’s house? She said his name. Suddenly she was in a flurry again.
“Carole! Get dressed! We’re going out.”
“Mommy, I’m watching TV.”
“Get dressed!”
Her tone scared the girl, and Carole, whimpering, complaining incessantly but only to herself, put her winter clothes back on. Camille dressed as well and held open the front door for Carole to scamper past.
Storming violently through the suburban streets, she hit the highway on the fly. Charlie’s house was normally fifteen minutes away, but she was there in less than eight, fishtailing on the slippery slope that ran up between apple orchards. Both Charlie’s own car and his squad car were in the circular drive. No lights were on in the house. She drove onto the lawn where snow had been cleared for the purpose, and parked.
Camille turned to her daughter. “Stay here. You stay put! If you step out of the car, young lady, I’ll paddle your bare bottom until it bleeds. Do you hear me?”
“Mommy! Don’t say that!”
“Shut up and listen to me! Stay in the car!”
“Okay!” She slumped back in her seat, pouting, on the verge of tears. Her curls fell in a cascade along the top of her forehead under her multicoloured wool hat, and she reached across and clutched her favourite raggedy doll. The doll had often been patched over the years, and its lips were sewn shut to keep its stuffing in.
As though to emphasize her command, Camille slammed the door shut getting out. She stomped up to the house and rang the bell, but when she tried the outer storm door, which was usually kept locked, it swung open. The inner door opened as well, and Camille moved cautiously inside.
“Charlie?”
Everything was in darkness. She flicked the pair of light switches by the door. One was for the porch light behind her, the other, for a standing lamp along the wall on her right. The lamp came on, and Camille gave a start, for it lay on the floor.
The beam shone across the carpet, creating spooky designs on the ceiling and walls, and at first Camille noticed only the chaos. She stepped over and around debris carefully.
“Charlie!”
Then she saw him—or a body, anyway—behind the end of the sofa. He was lying on his stomach, one hand on the telephone receiver, his head facing away from her. She moved closer, tripping slightly over a belt of some kind.
Camille moved forward with baby steps, as if the floor might suddenly give way. Closer, she could see a dark pool of blood around his head, and more smashed objects in the room. She pulled the coffee table out of her path, leaned closer, and confirmed that it was him.
Camille backed off and stood still, five feet away from him, panting, fighting her surprise, and trying to think.
Suddenly, she stepped quickly toward the kitchen. She turned on the light there and glanced at the room, then came out and went down the corridor to the bedrooms. She turned on lights, and when she came back she switched on a wall lamp at the edge of the living room. She was alone. Whoever had done this was gone. Camille assumed that Charlie was dead.
She moved closer to him then, and knelt down a few feet from the top of his head. She heard a faint gurgling sound. Blood clogged his throat but he was still breathing and Camille flew into a tantrum. She stood up and spun around. She wanted to get her hands on the man who had done this. “I didn’t want him beaten up!” she railed. “I wanted him dead!”
She needed to cry. This was too much torment. She had hoped to get Charlie out of the picture and had assumed that Jacques was going to take care of that for her. She had told him that Charlie had killed Andy—shouldn’t Charlie’s death be the logical outcome? Now what? Had he talked? Had Jacques told him what she’d said? This was serious. She’d wanted him dead but now that he was both beaten and alive she was worse off, and Charlie was more dangerous to her. What did he know? What had he told Cinq-Mars? What did Cinq-Mars know? Damn!
Camille spotted the pistol lying on the sofa. At her feet was Charlie’s gun-belt and holster, the one she had tripped over earlier.
Camille went to the front window. She could see Carole rambunctious behind the steering wheel of the Mazda, pretending to drive, as usual.
“Charlie,” she said, and her voice was stern, filling the room. “Charlie. You’re pathetic.” She moved back into the room and sat properly, primly, in the armchair across from him. “Do you really think I loved you? Do you? Do you really think I cared? You’re a cop, Charlie. You’re a cop. Let me tell you something about cops. Are you listening to me, Charlie? Maybe there’s something you should know.”
Camille slumped back into the chair, her legs wide now, her body sprawling. She closed her eyes and touched the tip of her mouth with her index finger, while the other arm dangled across the armrest. “Aw, Charlie,” she said, “aw, Charlie,” and she was beseeching him, moaning, as a lover in the throes of passion might do.
“Andy knew,” she told him. “He knew something. I don’tknowwhat. Andyknewsomething, buthe couldn’t know it all. Nobody knows it all but me.” She brought her hands behind her neck, as though massaging a tension there. “My dad, he said I had to kiss my brother’s lips. He watched me do it. My brother was in his coffin, and I leaned over him, and I saw that his lips were sewn together. I kissed him and I could feel the threads. His throat, too, was all sewn up. I saw it. I didn’t like that at all. When everybody was gone, when the visitation was over, my dad asked the funeral director for some quiet time alone with Paul. He took me in there. Dad did. He whispered to me. My dad whispered. He said—real quietly, Charlie, I could hardly hear him, you know? He said, ‘You killed him you kiss him you killed him.’”
Camille began to toss her head and she flapped her arms in a vague fashion. “Well!” she said. “Well, Charlie!” She stood up, and made several full turns, her arms flapping as if she were trying to shake off a swarm of bees. “I was upset! I know I sent my brother to buy me drugs, but I didn’t pull the trigger! Charlie! It was a goddamned accident! I didn’t kill my brother Paul. I loved my brother Paul. I loved my dad, too, but he said it to me again. He said it to me, ‘You killed him you kiss him you killed him.’ And my daddy, my daddy pulled me over to the coffin again and he was saying, ‘Kiss him, kiss him again,’ and I was screaming, Charlie, I was begging him, Charlie, I was saying, ‘No no no, Daddy, nooooo!’ And he was pulling me over and pulling my hair and he said, ‘Kiss him, kiss him, kiss him again. You killed him, you kiss him.’ And I don’t know why he did that, Charlie, but he made me kiss him again. I kissed Paul, and my daddy, he pushed my head down and he held me down and I could smell the awful makeup on Paul and I could see his sewn neck under his collar and my lips were on his lips and his lips were all sewn together. Oh, Charlie! It was terrible, you know? Aw, Charlie.”
Camille stared at the ceiling for a few moments and then removed her winter coat. Charlie had a small corner table which had been undisturbed in the melee, and she placed her coat across it. She was wearing an ankle-length, floral print dress and she pulled it over her head. She was now in her flesh-coloured bra and panties, her short black winter boots and almost knee-high socks.
“Aw, Charlie,” she said. “I never loved you. I just noticed you, you know? I thought it would be nice if Carole had somebody to look after her once in awhile. A decent kind of guy. I figured you might be a decent kind of guy in that uniform. I thought it would be nice to have an ordinary guy in my life for a change. You know? Somebody to go to the movies with. You must know yourself it wasn’t working out. We w
ere just playing house, eh, Charlie? Me and you? Until something better came along? One thing about you, you got that paralysed mouth. Know what? That attracted me, Charlie. What do you think about that? I was attracted by your freaky mouth. Ah, Charlie, maybe things could’ve been different, but you were a cop, you know? You know? You were a goddamned cop, Charlie.”
In her underclothes, she sat on the armrest this time, placing her hands on her upper thighs. “Everything’s gone nuts, you know? It wasn’t supposed to work out like this. Aw, shit, Charlie. It’s all a big mistake. One giant fuck-up.”
She started to breathe heavily, as though she might be on the verge of retching, as though something was moving against her ribcage from within. The speed of her breathing increased, and she cried out once, twice, a pain overcoming her. Tears broke, she wiped them off her cheeks, and somehow that release seemed to restore her somewhat.
“A couple of days after we buried Paul,” she told him quietly, “my daddy came home early. He took me into my room. Told me sit down. I sat down. He said I used to be a good student. He said I was going to be a good student again. He told me that some men had talked to him. They were sorry, they said, about what happened to Paul. They wanted to show their sympathy, my daddy said. They were going to pay for my education. So long as I was in school, so long as I didn’t quit or flunk out, they were going to pay for my education. They’d tell the press, too. Public relations. You know, Charlie? I had to go to school. I had to be a good student. It was like a prison sentence. When I got older I had to go to university. The men were paying my daddy. I got some of the money for that and he got the rest. He smacked me over the head if I didn’t do so good. One time, when he was really drunk and mad at me, he said he’d kill me if I quit, and I believed him. You know? I believed him. He said I had to do it for Paul. I had to go to school, Charlie. Do you understand? I had to go school and live off my brother’s blood money so my father could live off my brother’s blood money, too. Do you understand me?”
Camille stood and removed her bra. Her breasts were small and the nipples dark against the stark white of her skin. She carried the bra over to the desk with her other clothes and tossed it on the pile. Then she kicked off her boots and peeled off her socks and panties. Naked, she walked back to Charles Painchaud.
“Let me tell you about the cops, Charlie. They were fucking useless. They never caught the guys who shot my brother. One guy smiled at me and he said that life was tough sometimes. Well, what the fuck did he know about it? What the fuck did he know? You listening to me? Do you understand me now? Charlie? Life was tough? That’s all he had to say? Cops! Charlie!”
She walked around him and down the hall to the bathroom and her heart was pounding now. This was different. She had made love to this man. She had kissed him and held him in her arms. This didn’t feel so good. But some things had to be done. She was always telling Honigwachs that. Some things had to be done. She had to make it look like the men who had beaten him had killed him also. Nobody would be surprised by that. Bad guys shoot people.
She’d do it the right way. She’d shoot Charlie with his own gun.
In the bathroom she retrieved a washcloth. She would pick the gun up with it to conceal her fingerprints. She had to think of everything. That was always her job. She had to be meticulous with details.
This was so good. Nobody would ever think for a second that she could have inflicted the beating on Charlie, even if he was a pipsqueak. Everybody would assume the gunshot was the final act of the beating. In a million years, nobody would think that this had anything to do with her.
She slowed down now. She liked this part. What had been so good about New York and New Jersey was that she could take her time. She could talk to her victims. She could prolong the pleasure. Camille was not terribly surprised that she had killed two men herself in the States. What an opportunity! That’s all she had ever desired, what she been longing to do for years. All she had needed was opportunity, and the dying AIDS patients had given her that. Weak men. Unable to resist her. She could go slow and enjoy the moment and she was free of the fear of being caught. From the beginning, from the time she had first pushed Werner Honigwachs to do the drug-testing in the States, she had expected the opportunity. To kill the dying. To snuff out the weak. To expel her rage. To sew the lips of each victim and then give his corpse a final kiss.
Camille returned to the living room. With the washcloth in her hand, she picked up the pistol and crooked two fingers around the trigger. Next, she positioned a cushion from the sofa against her biceps, and another against her forearm, and held both in place with her other hand and arm. The cushions would muffle the sound. The technique made her awkward, and she had to stoop over Charlie’s body with care, anxious not to pick up any trace of blood. She looked at his pulverized face. The closed eye. The blackened cheeks. The blood dribbling from his mouth and nose, and seeping through holes in his puffy lips where teeth had come through.
“He touched my ass, Charlie. He did. I’m not making that up. I’m sure I remember that now. It’s hard to remember some things. I try. I try. He was rubbing my ass. My daddy. I didn’t want to remember that, I didn’t want to think about it. He made me bend over Paul and kiss him and his lips were threaded and I had to kiss him and I went on kissing him because my daddy held my head down and he rubbed his other hand all over my ass. You see? You see, Charlie? How it goes?”
Camille asked him that question, then she shot him just above his bad eye.
The body convulsed and a small fountain of blood poured up for a second, then diminished, and blood ran down from his temple across his face onto the floor.
The shot had thrown Camille off balance. Her legs buckled, and a knee touched blood. She lost control of the cushions and one fell onto Charlie, while the other landed off to one side. There was blood on her ankles and Camille did turns again as if she had to catch something in flight behind her, catch a movement, or a presence that was stalking her. She spun in circles the other way, looking to put the gun down, wash herself, scream, do something. She kicked his foot. Then she kicked it again. “Stop it!” she hollered. “Stop it!” Meaning, perhaps, herself, or the invisible hand on her ass, the hand on her neck holding her down. She wanted to stop the eroticism and the horror of that kiss, the excitement and terror she had felt kissing the dead, her beloved brother, his lips sewn shut, which meant that he would never tell. Nobody would tell. Nobody would know. “Stop it!” She dropped the gun and it hit the coffee table and fell onto the floor, and Camille ran around Charlie into the bathroom to wash off the blood and clean up.
The washcloth seemed fine, there was no blood spatter that she could see. She rinsed it thoroughly under the hot water tap and wrung it partially dry, then dropped it into the laundry hamper after shifting a few clothes around to conceal it from view. She didn’t imagine that the bad guys would’ve used a washcloth, so she wanted it hidden.
Better. You’re doing better.
Camille used toilet paper to clean blood off her ankles and the tops of her feet. She noticed herself in the mirror. She stared back into her own eyes. I can do this. She’d been so strong when Honigwachs had shot Andy, this was no different than that. Both men were almost dead at the time. She had been merciful, putting them out of their misery. The same with the AIDS patients, they were half dead, too, she’d just been putting all of them out of their misery. Giving them a kiss. Dispatching them to the other side of life. She hadn’t done anything so wrong.
The gun, the gun had been the shock. The force of it exploding in her hand. So that’s what Honigwachs had experienced out on the ice. The gun. The power of it. The thrill. All she had done was squeeze a trigger. Big deal. But she felt strangely, oddly now, thrilled.
She bolted to the living room.
Watch where you step! Watch where you step, Camille! Don’t leave a woman’s footprints in blood!
She carefully checked the floor to see if she had done that, and was soon satisfied that she was
in the clear. She put her clothes back on, facing Charlie and making sure that her panties went on the right way around, pausing once to notice that the pool of blood was still growing across the floor.
Run, Camille! Leave now! Get out of here!
She hesitated.
Camille stepped into the kitchen. She knew where to go. She wanted to escape this ritual but already knew that she would not, could not. She knew where Charlie kept needles and thread, and she brought out the box of goodies, sat down at the table, and calmly threaded a needle.
No need to hurry. She took her time.
This is what she had to do. Make this her own doing.
The bad guys wouldn’t do this, Camille!
How do you know? How do you know that? How does anybody know that?
She put the box back and returned to Painchaud’s corpse.
Maybe if his lips hadn’t been pummelled by the beating, if they weren’t cut and damaged, she could think only of her own safety and do what was necessary—run, escape. But she had to stay awhile longer. She had to pierce her needle along the edges of his cuts and draw the thread through. Camille did so. He didn’t bleed as she sewed his wounds tenderly, lovingly. She sutured his mouth shut, a kind of commemoration.
As she was running out of thread she leaned over the dead man to cut what remained from the needle in her teeth, and knotted the last stitch.
Then she leaned forward and tenderly, tenderly, kissed him.
She pulled her lips away. Tasting his blood. Licking Charlie’s blood off her lips. She had loved the kiss, and wished it could never end. The others didn’t mean anything to me, Charlie. I wasn’t cheating on you, honest. They were just a glorious opportunity. Who could resist? You, Charlie, I want you to know, you’re special. You’re the best yet.