Elizabeth had been aware that most of the girls in her class had already tasted the sweetmeat of sex. She was human; she had the same appetites, but told herself that hers were motivated by love for the shy, thin, black-haired mathematics teacher who drank cherry coke each evening before trudging home to his wife. To Liza, hearing a man complain of his wife’s sexual shortcomings was something new. She wasn’t sure what a wife should do, but was sure she could do it better. The sex-mags showed clearly what positions men and women got into when they found themselves naked in bed (oral stimulation was an exciting new idea at the time, at least in the Midwest) but offered meagre clues on how to get a man into that situation. One would think that when one person desired another as intensely as she did Vernon, some magnetic force would pull them together, click! But the currents of the late fifties worked against bringing a married teacher into sexual union with a teenage soda jerk whose father was also on the school board. Only one brief twilight hour each day offered a chance for solitude; this was after her dad had closed the pharmacy section and gone to eat supper at the cafe, and before Vernon shuffled home to his Mary Ellen.
For years afterward Liza had equated sex with the smell of chemicals in the storage room, lysol and aspirin powder. The damn ladder was on wheels, one of the steps gouged the back of her neck and the other cut into the small of her back. (The next time she took a baby blanket out of stock and spread it over excelsior packing.) What she recalled most about their first time was Vernon’s clumsy hurriedness; she was sorry she hadn’t loaned him some sex manuals. But Vernon improved his technique—inevitably, since they made love almost every day during that bleak February—and Liza lived at an emotional level so intense it was like a physical illness: stomach upset, nails chewed to the quick, sleepless nights while her body tossed and turned. The whole sex thing seemed unbalanced. Twenty-four hours of agony and uncertainty, leading up to a few minutes of ecstasy. What kind of trade-off was that? It didn’t make sense logically—yet she spent hours in the bathroom grooming her body, clipping hairs, rubbing oils and chemicals on her skin, popping out blackheads and cysts, combing her hair and keeping herself in clean underwear in case a sudden opportunity arose to take it off. Of course she expected to be discovered—each evening it was a few minutes later when Vernon dragged himself home. (She visualized the door to the store room opening suddenly, and Mary Ellen standing there, eyes wide in shock and dismay. Vernon would rise and stand beside her and say, ‘I’m sorry dear, I have made my choice, Liza is my beloved.’)
When it finally ended there had been no discovery, no dramatic crisis such as Liza hoped for; only whisperings, averted eyes and a special meeting of the school board. And instead of her lover standing large and proud beside her, she saw a weak-chinned pedagogue sweating over his tenure and begging her to deny there had ever been anything between them. And at that moment she realized that there never had been, that she had used him as an armature upon which she molded her fantasies …
She didn’t like to make the same mistake twice. For a long period she lost herself in books and lectures, trying to understand men through what they said about themselves. Noel was the opposite of Vernon—decisive, quick to act, blonde, clean featured, strong, handsome, sure of himself. She was still choosing her lovers from the education field. Noel taught visual arts, journalism, and served as a non-playing coach. At the time she had an economic motive for a merger of households; she was working on her doctorate, and drugstore profits had dwindled as her father eased into retirement. The fact that Noel spent his evenings with students was fine as long as she had studying to do— welcome, in fact. But later, when she wanted some kind of home life, it got a bit heavy, playing den mother to a bunch of teenage boys. So what if their parents were divorced, separated, or busy doing their own thing? She wanted her own thing too, yet always when they got ready to go out, Noel would say: “Don’t forget, we’ve got to pick up Jerry, or Joe, or Pete, Mike or Harry.” Rumors started floating in; Noel was gay. She didn’t let herself think about it at first. Noel always held evening confabs in the den after she’d gone to sleep. Supposedly they were talking sports and screening replays. She went in one night and discovered that movies were indeed being shown. On the screen flickered the image of a blonde with her lips around the largest cock Liza had ever seen. In the couch the same scene was repeated, except that it was Noel who had his mouth full. She told herself: I must see the humor in this. But she felt cheated, and contemptuous of Noel for not having the courage to tell her.
Later he had tried to convince her that the urge only hit him when he drank. But it couldn’t work; when he was sober his approaches were hesitant and self-defeating. When he drank his lurching aggressiveness turned her off; she couldn’t help thinking he would have preferred one of the boys. She said he would destroy himself if he kept trying to please her, and told him she’d decided on a divorce. He wept, he blamed his parents, his grandmother, his sisters, society. She had heard the words so often they merely bored her. He said she was domineering and self-centered, the essence of the castrating female, “You’ll get a divorce and a dog and there’ll be no change, except that the dog doesn’t shave in the morning.”
Those had been the last words she heard him speak. The door had slammed behind him, and two hours later the call had come from the state highway patrol. Noel was dead; the boy riding with him had a crushed spine and would never walk again …
So what does it mean? she asked herself. Am I drawn to losers, or do I have a talent for picking winners and turning them into losers? And where will Dan Bollinger fit into this?
She was called to the stand on the fourth day.
The defense attorney had a thick shock of dark-red hair which he kept brushing back with his hand. He was tall and loose-jointed, his wide tie was undone, and he seemed to work very hard toward no particular purpose—as if, Liza thought, he wanted to be able to say when it was over: Well I tried my damndest.
After leading her through some dull background about her education and present duties, he asked her to pick out the defendant in the crowded courtroom.
Danny sat with his hands clasped on the witness table in front of him. He wore no tie, but his white shirt was clean and pressed. With his face clean shaven, his features had a masklike regularity. The planes of his face met in perfect angles, the eyes were level, the nose straight. She glanced at his right hand and saw the sheen of scar tissue on his knuckles. It reminded her that two months had passed since she’d escorted him to the staffing. Since then there had been no words between them, only nightmares and waiting …
She lifted her arm and pointed. The lawyer asked: “Did you see a lot of him at the hospital?”
“I saw him frequently. Not every day.”
“Did he strike you as a violent person?”
“Not particularly.”
“The kind of person who would kill?”
She hesitated a moment, aware that Danny was looking at her with an odd, glittering intensity. She felt a tautness in the air; the green-filtered daylight came through the window and struck the right side of his face,-leaving the other half in shadow. She saw the line running down the center of his nose, dividing his lips and sinking into the cleft of his chin. One side was glowing, radiant, angelic. The other side was sunk deep in shadow; it seemed to be leering at her, fiendishly. She wanted to shudder and turn away, the courtroom seemed suddenly to be only a transparent membrane stretched over a vast darkness, and out of the darkness came the sound of people shouting and whistles blowing …
The lawyer’s voice jarred her. “Would you like me to repeat the question?”
“No,” she said. “He doesn’t look like the kind of person who would kill.”
“Objection!”
The prosecutor rose from the table and came forward; he was in his early thirties but he looked younger, with a baby-fat face and mouse-colored hair falling straight across his wide forehead. His tone was clipped and supercilious:
“Your h
onor, this woman is supposed to be an expert witness. Yet she is giving a personal opinion.”
The judge tapped his gavel. “Sustained. Counselor, try rephrasing your question.”
The defense attorney flushed, shoved his shirt under his belt, pulled at his chin a couple of times, then asked: “Ah … while he was under your care, did you conduct any tests on him?”
“Yes.”
“What was the nature of those tests?”
“The Rorschach. The Stanford-Binet. The Rapaport Word Association.”
“And … could you summarize the results?”
“He was intelligent, above average. I thought there were signs of a manic-depressive psychosis.”
“Oh?” The attorney blinked at her. “Would this cause him to kill?”
“It is not normally associated with aggressive violence, no.”
He stood still a minute, nodding his head while uncertainty played on his face. Then he murmured, “Thank you” and walked quickly back to his table. Liza had the feeling she was performing in a play and had been given the wrong script.
The cherub-faced prosecutor lifted his finger and started shuffling papers on the table. Liza raised her eyes and gazed around the courtroom. The maple-paneled chamber was no larger than the average classroom. A broad center aisle divided it into two sections about ten chairs wide, sloping up toward the back. She saw the sheriff standing just inside the double doors with his hands clasped behind him, his heavy shoulders hunched forward. The corridor outside was thronged with people; clouds of blue smoke swirled in the air above their heads.
She was surprised to note that three-fourths of those inside were women. Of course, she reminded herself, it was women who’d been killed. And most of the spectators appeared to be locals—housewives, probably, killing a slow afternoon. Many were fanning themselves with folded newspapers. For the first time Liza became aware of the stifling, brassy heat which hung in the courtroom. She glimpsed a pair of octagon-framed dark glasses at the end of the back row. From where Debra sat, she could have reached out and snatched the gun which rode the sheriff’s hip. Where did that thought come from? Somehow Liza’s gaze looped through the stagnant air of the courtroom and penetrated the curving shield of the dark glasses. The look in Debra’s eyes seemed accusing. What the hell have I done wrong? Liza wondered. Why did you hire such a nudnik lawyer?
The prosecutor rose and stepped forward. “Tell me, Doctor Bodac, just what are the duties of a staff psychiatrist?”
She felt annoyed by his sly, insinuating manner, but kept her voice cool and distant. “We see to the patients’ care and observe them under a variety of conditions.”
“Who does the diagnosis?”
“The staff does that.”
“And the staff is composed of—?”
“The staff psychiatrist, the administrator, the social worker, others who have had contact with the patient …”
“Who has the final word?”
“I suppose, if anyone, the chief psychiatrist.”
“That would be Dr. Jeffrey Kossuth.”
“Yes.”
“Then the diagnosis you gave just a minute ago could not be taken as an official opinion, but rather as a personal opinion.”
“I was not presenting it as a diagnosis—”
“May I refer to the record? You said there were indications of a manic-depressive psychosis.”
“Of course, that was only tentative.”
“Very well. Let’s go on. Were you consulted about the patient before his return to the circuit court?”
“I was present at the staffing.”
“And did you present those views there?”
“No.”
“Why didn’t you?”
With an effort, she kept from gnashing her teeth. “Because they were premature. There were a lot of data I didn’t have. Interviews with his friends, his relatives, his teachers …”
“In other words, you didn’t present this view because you weren’t sure of it. Can we say that? I’m asking for myself and the members of the jury. We don’t understand these scientific terms. You would say then that you weren’t sure.”
Liza glanced at the twelve people sitting in the jury box. The forewoman was a thin woman with ruffles of white lace around the top of a lavender dress. At the swearing-in she had revealed herself as chief billing clerk for the telephone company. The heavy-set bald man in a shiny sports jacket and white tee-shirt was a tv repairman. Others included a lab technician, an office secretary, two housewives, a janitor, a bank teller. Mr. and Mrs. America. What could you say to them?
“All right. Say I wasn’t sure.”
“Now tell me—are you familiar with the term paranoid schizophrenic?”
Only since I was twelve years old, you imbecile. “Yes.”
“Explain it briefly.”
“One imagines that people are plotting against one.”
“Did the patient suffer these delusions?”
“No.”
He blinked, stared at her for a few seconds. “You’re sure of that?”
“I saw no indication of it.”
“Let’s return to the staffing. Did the defendant express a suspicion that everybody there was against him?”
“He might have said something like that, but—”
“Why do you think he said it?”
“Objection!” The defense attorney was on his feet, waving his arms. “He is leading the witness.”
“I withdraw the question. Did he voice any paranoid suspicions about the girls who visited him?”
“No. Except that they were hanging him up.”
“Can you think of any circumstance where his delusional pattern might cause him to kill?”
“I don’t think he had a delusional pattern. I stated that just a few seconds ago.” You little prick.
“I’m sorry. I stand corrected. You don’t think he had a delusional pattern. Let me put it this way, can you think of any circumstance where he might be motivated to kill—”
“This is ridiculous!” She glared at him. “What am I expected to do, make up a fictionalized chain of events at the end of which he commits murder? If you have an assassin’s hand around your throat, you’re going to defend yourself. If it takes killing, that’s what you’re going to do.”
“In other words, you think he killed them in self-defense?”
“I do not think he killed them in self-defense. I do not think he killed them at all, since you seem to be asking my personal opinion—though I wonder who did. I also wonder why the sheriff devoted all his time to gathering evidence against Dan Bollinger and ignored the fact that others used the cabin—”
“That’s all, Doctor Bodac. You’re excused.”
As Elizabeth stood up, her eyes slid over to Dan, then leaped back to Debra. For a moment everyone else fuzzed out of focus, like dress extras in a movie set, and she and Debra and Danny seemed to be the only real persons present in the courtroom. An invisible line of force linked the three of them—yet it was somehow clear to Liza that they were not all three on the same level. She was the novice, the one being examined, while Dan and Debra were the examiners who would study her performance and give her a rating …
Elizabeth sat in the restaurant booth and sipped watery coffee from a thick china mug. The close of the trial had been anticlimatic; everyone had wanted to see Dan take the stand, but his attorney had risen after her testimony and announced: “The defense rests.” The sudden silence had been broken by a swelling murmur of surprise and bewilderment.
And I’m more than a little puzzled myself, she thought She watched two farmers come in, their red faces white at the temples where they had received fresh haircuts. They wore levis, engineer’s boots, and denim jackets. They stared at her a minute, then moved around to a side booth where they could watch her without being seen. She had no interest in them and wanted to turn around and tell them so. That’s insane, Liza. Yes, I know.
She watched Jeff’s plum-co
lored Mercedes spin around the courthouse square with rain runneling off its polished top. He parked in front of the cafe and stepped out, pushing his fingers through his thick hair. He wore a white linen suit, white bucks, a blue shirt, wide tie of raw silk. She felt a strange mingling of dread and admiration as he strode toward her table. He was everything most women desired: a skilled, handsome lover with a high-pay high-prestige job—and she had a feeling she was reminding herself of this too often.
He slid into a chair and aimed his eyes at her like dagger points. “Thanks a lot, dear, for letting me handle everything.”
“I merely said he was sane. I think he is.”
He sighed heavily through his nose. “Ah, truth. If we lived in a sane world, we would need nothing more. Liza, look around you. There are the kind of people who served on that jury. Do you have any doubt that they’ll find him guilty?”
“They don’t have much choice, do they? There was no defense.”
“That’s true. And why do you suppose that was?”
“Don’t tell me it was because he was guilty. Surely you could see that the sheriff presented nothing but circumstantial evidence.”
“Well sure—circumstantial in the sense that nobody actually saw him do anything. But, Liza, it isn’t necessary for every crime to be witnessed. My God, if it were, then any murderer who wanted to get off would simply drag his victim behind a bush or into a dark closet. The evidence showed that four of the girls were last seen alive with Danny, and were then found buried on the property. What the hell would you do if you were on the jury?”
“I wouldn’t be on the jury in the first place because I’d be disqualified for knowing the defendant. And that’s what I based my testimony on.”
He nodded slowly, looking at her. “Manic depressive, eh?”
She shrugged. “He asked for a word, I gave him one. You think yours will hold up—paranoid schizophrenic?”
“I really don’t know. Probably not. In many ways he’s like the famous multiple murderers of the last century—who were unfortunately never studied. Jack the Ripper chose prostitutes who slept in doss-houses and had no relatives. Henri Landru—Bluebeard—chose middle-aged spinsters, lonely and childless widows. Fritz Haarman killed runaway boys during the chaotic years after the first world war. And Dan Bollinger chose homeless rootless girls who had cut loose from their friends and families. He’d have gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for the rain …”
Kiss The Girls and Make Them Die Page 12