"As I said, that was early May. Just before my eighteenth birthday." She paused and wiped the palms of her hands on her knees. "Could I have a drink? Yes, that would be fine. Thank you.
"Early May. In mid-May Mrs. Brand called and asked me to babysit. She was a neighbor I'd worked for before. Some of my regulars didn't ask me much that spring—word gets around in a small town, and I wasn't exactly discreet. Well, this was their anniversary, and I think my aunt reassured her that I was okay. I needed the money, so I took my paint box and went along at about eight o'clock.
"They had two kids, a boy of fifteen, who had some kind of a play rehearsal at school that night, so he couldn't babysit, and yes, a little brown-haired girl, aged six. Jemima, but we all called her Jemma. She was in bed when I got there, but I went in to let her know I was there, and when I checked again at eight-thirty she was asleep.
"The son came in a bit before ten, had something to eat, and flirted a little, or tried to, but I was deeply into this piece that was going so well, the first solid, honest thing in a long time. I nodded my head a few times until he took the hint and went off to bed. The parents got home a few minutes before midnight, and I started packing away my box. When the mother went in to check on the kids, the girl was dead. Lying on the floor. Strangled. Naked."
Vaun looked curiously at her hands, which were trembling. "I haven't told anyone this story in fifteen years.
"I just stood there in the corner of the kitchen for the next hour, totally stunned. The doctor and police came, then more police, detectives, and then somebody thought to look at my painting.
"Have you ever had a leech on you? No? It's the most desperately revolting feeling, to find this horrible, slimy, slow-moving thing attached to your skin, sucking away at you. That's exactly how the policemen looked at me after seeing the canvas. I saw that look a lot in the next few months.
"That painting convicted me. Oh, there were a lot of other things, of course, from my history of psychiatric treatment to my use of LSD and what I'd done in March, which came out early on. But the painting clinched it. If I'd had a decent lawyer I might have tried to plead insanity, but as it was, the painting stood there for all to see, evidence that I was a coldhearted and ruthless murderer, a mad, artistic, murdering cuckoo in their nest.
"You see, what I'd been working on was a picture of Jemma as I'd actually seen her the week before. I had been out walking, thinking about what I wanted to do for the scholarship portfolio, when Jemma appeared. She didn't see me. She'd obviously been down in the pond catching pollywogs, which she wasn't supposed to do, and had her dress and underpants off so she wouldn't get mud on them, and she looked so amazing, like some pale wood sprite, totally at ease with her nakedness. She spotted a butterfly and dropped her clothes to go racing up the hill after it, and at the top of the hill the new green grass was so soft looking, you could just see her decide to roll in it. I knew I'd have to tell her that she mustn't do that any more, for her own protection, but for a few minutes I just enjoyed the sight of this nature child. At the end of it she just lay there, all alone in the universe, head back in the grass, looking at the clouds, and I knew I had my main piece for the portfolio. The colors were perfect, the position technically challenging, and there was this subtle innocent exuberance that I knew I could capture. And I did. It was a good, solid painting, one of the best I'd ever done, and it sent me to prison for ten years because she was found in exactly that position, arms sprawled, head back, and naked.
"I know now that the whole trial was a farce. There wasn't enough money for a proper lawyer, so I had a public defender, who was a total incompetent, but what did I know? I couldn't imagine those twelve people would actually believe the prosecuter's accusations, they seemed so utterly absurd. Once when he was going on and on about Timothy Leary and the hippie movement being anti-Church and the painting being a crucifixion scene because Jemma's father was a deacon in the local church, I actually laughed, it was so ridiculous. That was a big mistake, I realized later, but by then the verdict was in.
"The first few months in prison were pretty hellish, but after that things calmed down. They let me paint for a few hours every day, and my aunt sent endless supplies of pastels and Conte crayons and paper. I learned to walk very quietly around certain inmates, and I made a lot of flattering drawings. That was my first taste of prostitution." Her smile was gentle, and ugly.
"I had been in for just short of three years when there was a riot at some low-security prison in the Midwest, and all of a sudden the press was full of stories about how prisoners were being coddled instead of punished, and the law-and-order people grabbed onto us. Our prison had a reputation of being more humane than some, which I suppose was why I was sent there, because of my age. Some newspaper decided to run an expose of the place, as an example, and the powers-that-be were forced to crack down on us. I learned all that afterwards. The first thing I knew about it was when my painting privileges were taken away. Two days later there was a sweep through the cells and all my supplies disappeared. It was like when I was seven, only now I had no parents who I knew, underneath the confusion, loved me. Now I had nothing.
"And you know the funny thing? The relief was tremendous. I had carried the burden of this gift since I was two years old, and it had ruined my whole world. Now it was all over, it had been taken away from me, and I had no control any more, none whatsoever. I felt as if I were floating, and I could let go. So I did. At first they thought I was, as they called it, 'being difficult,' instigating a hunger strike I suppose, and they slapped me into solitary confinement. When they came to get me out, I was catatonic.
"The rest of it you've seen in my records, I'm sure. I used to wonder what would have happened to me if Gerry Bruckner hadn't decided to volunteer one afternoon a week at the prison, or if he'd been an ignoramus about art, or if the prison's warden and governing board had been less cooperative. What if, what if… So many opportunities for that little game in a life like mine, aren't there? What if he hadn't thought to put a crayon in my hand, and what if two years later he hadn't had a good friend with a gallery in New York, and what if the pieces hadn't sold so well, and what if he hadn't been willing to fight for me…
"I owe him my life. I dedicated the show to him, last year, the one you saw." She drained the glass, her third, and set it carefully on the table. "He is the only person I've ever fully, wholeheartedly loved. And I've never even slept with him." She smiled at Kate, a crooked smile that touched her eyes. "Except, I suppose, that night at the hospital last week. God, I'm so tired. Will I ever feel rested again? And now I'm half drunk as well. I think I'll take my dreary self off to bed before I begin to weep crocodile tears on this nice sofa."
"May I ask you something?" Kate interrupted.
"Only one thing? Must be something of a record for a detective, only one question."
"Two somethings, then, but one of them I have no business asking, and you're welcome to tell me that."
"All right."
"Why didn't you make an appeal?"
"I—I didn't think there'd be much point. The jury was only out for a few hours before they returned the verdict, and the lawyer—"
"Come on," Kate chided. "You're far from stupid, and you certainly had plenty of time to think about it. Why didn't you appeal?"
Vaun sighed and looked faintly embarrassed.
"Because by then I wasn't sure that I hadn't done it. I only took acid twice, but it's strange stuff, like stirring your brains with a spoon. Even after the first time I had half a dozen flashbacks. Like hiccoughs of the brain. Things would shift, somehow, and go unreal for a few seconds, or minutes. And the second time, after I'd tried to strangle two or three people… Well, even during the trial I began to wonder if maybe I actually had done it while I was having a flashback or hiccough or whatever you want to call it, and it scared me. The whole thing scared me, the thought of having to go through all those leech-looks all over again. I crawled into prison and pulled it around me like a
shell, and I found that it wasn't as awful as I'd thought it would be. When my uncle came to visit me he offered to begin an appeal, but I could see what it would do to him, and I think he was relieved when I told him that I couldn't see much point. It was easier to forget it, to just get on and deal with what was in front of me. That sounds so feeble now, so stupid, but—in some ways I was a very young eighteen."
Kate looked dubious, Lee waited, and Vaun fiddled with a small seashell from the table while something struggled to push its way to the surface. She opened her mouth, changed her mind, started again, and the third time got it out.
"And I… There was also the fact that I was guilty, if not of killing Jemma then of enough other things to make me feel that prison was the place for me. I know," she said, though Lee had not actually spoken, "Gerry and I spent a lot of time on free-floating guilt complexes. At the time, though, it seemed… appropriate, that I should be locked away from society." She put down the shell and seemed to push the subject away. "What was your other question?"
"You don't have to tell me—"
"I didn't have to tell you the other one either."
"True. And I'm glad to see that your ego has recovered." She grinned at Vaun, who grinned back. "It's curiosity. Why Andy Lewis? What did you see in him?"
"A lot of things. He was very attractive, sexy, dark and dangerous, aloof. He exuded an aura of secret power. And he was an outsider, but by choice, rather than being left out. That was a feeling I craved, that self-assurance. Together we could look down on everyone else. I felt chosen, powerful, unafraid—even pretty, for those few months. With Andy, the whole mess of my life made a kind of sense."
"But it didn't last."
"No, it didn't last. I couldn't paint, with Andy. There was no room for it around him, I couldn't pull away from him far enough to paint. It was tearing me apart, and when I realized that my work was becoming crap because of it, I had to choose, and I chose my brushes."
"What did he do when you told him?"
"That was frightening. It was a Saturday, and Red and Becky had taken the kids to town. I was in my studio trying to sketch in a canvas when he came by. I was preoccupied with what I was doing and disturbed by my realization that I had five months of garbage to make up for, and so I was abrupt with him—I just told him I couldn't go on, it was over, and went on sketching. When I turned around a minute later, he was still sitting on the bed, but he was so angry, so furious, it stunned me. His eyes… And he seemed to fill the whole room. I thought—I knew—that he was going to get up and come over and hit me, beat me up, but I couldn't move. I just waited for I don't know how long, and then all of a sudden his face changed and he started to smile, and it was like the smile he had when he was going to take me to bed but different— horrible, cruel. And he stood up, and I knew he was going to kill me, and he came over to me and he kissed me, with his teeth, and he said, 'If that's the way you want it, babe,' and he went out and got on his motorcycle and roared off. And every time I saw him after that he smiled that same way, like some brutish little boy pulling wings off a fly."
"How long before you began to think he'd had something to do with Jemma Brand's death?"
"I wondered, even during the trial, because of a look he gave me the first day—a satisfied, 'I told you so' kind of look.
But I decided it had to be my imagination. I couldn't believe Andy would do something so, so—pathological. He was very good to me; he could be gentle when he wanted. How could I imagine him doing such a thing? I still find it difficult." Sagging now with fatigue she looked at Kate. "Have I answered your questions?"
"Yes, thank you," said Kate, and she thought, which still leaves a hundred others, but not tonight.
Vaun rose like an old woman, and stood studying them.
"It occurs to me that I haven't thanked you for all that you've done for me. Not that any thanks could be adequate."
"It has been a great joy," said Lee simply.
"I agree," said Kate. "I'll be sorry when it's over, though I won't be sorry when it ends." She listened to her words, and scratched her head. "I think I need some coffee. Want some?"
"No thanks," said Vaun. "I just want to crawl into bed."
"Lee?"
"Yes, thanks. Make a whole pot, why don't you. Jon, my client, will probably want a cup. Maybe I should turn on the lights in the front rooms—he'll be here in a few minutes." She moved off down the hallway and Kate turned toward the kitchen. Vaun started up the stairs, and then stopped and turned back to follow Kate.
"All that talking," she explained as she reached for a glass. "I'm thirsty." She scooped some ice cubes into the glass, the bottle of spring water gurgled, and she drank gratefully.
Kate measured the beans into the grinder and switched it on just as the doorbell sounded. She turned off the grinder.
"I'll get it," Lee called. She sounded distracted, and Kate wondered how closely she would listen to the problems of Jon Samson, né Schwartz. Kate turned back to the coffee, and a sudden anxiety struck her. She moved quickly past Vaun towards the door.
"Don't forget to—" she started to warn Lee, but she was too late, and it was too late, for when she reached the hall Lee's hand had already released the bolt, and in the slow motion of horror Kate saw the door explode inward, sending Lee staggering back against the wall, and the figure that stepped in looked for an instant like Lee's client with his snug trousers and neatly clipped moustache, but it was not Jon Samson, it was Andy Lewis, Andy Lewis with a .45 automatic in his right hand, Andy Lewis with the eyes and stance of a pit bull zeroing in on his victim, Andy Lewis looking past Kate to where Vaun stood waiting.
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Kate's first frozen thought was that he was smaller than she remembered, shorter perhaps than Vaun, certainly more compact and concentrated than the hairy mountain man she had seen at Vaun's door.
His eyes and the gun stayed rock steady on Vaun where she stood behind Kate's right shoulder, not moving a millimeter as his left hand pushed the door shut, found the bolt, slid it home. For the space of five heartbeats nobody moved, or breathed, until finally his lips curled.
"Hello, Vaunie."
The quiet, sure menace in his voice washed like ice through Kate's veins and sent her mind yammering like a mad monkey against the bars of its cage, screaming at her to run, fly, dive for cover, leap for the drawer three feet away and get her hands on the gun there because that is the voice of a goddamned poisonous snake of a crazy man, Kate! But other than one all-over jerk of her muscles she stayed quite still and watched the hand on the gun.
At his words Lee, staring horrified from where she had fetched up against the wall, shifted her gaze from the gun to his face, but Vaun seemed not to see the gun or hear the menace. Neither of them made a move to touch the forgotten alarm buttons they wore. At his greeting she seemed to relax, and Kate heard her exhale in what sounded like a happy little sigh.
"Hello, Andy." Her voice was calm, even warm, a simple greeting at the mildly surprising appearance of an old friend. His smile deepened and Kate saw the face that Vaun had described when he walked out of her studio three weeks before Jemma Brand had died—amused, cruel, and utterly sure of himself.
"Good of you all to wait up for me like this. Damn stupid time for an appointment with a shrink, but I couldn't very well change it, could I?"
"What—" Lee shrank back under the stab of his eyes, but the gun did not waver, and she pushed the words out. "What happened to Jon?"
To Kate's surprise he laughed, a hearty sound, full of amusement, incongruous from a tidy man with murder in his eyes.
"I used some of his own toys on him. He'll be all right, unless he struggles too much. In fact, he's probably having a fine time, all trussed up like a pig. And speaking of which," he said, and looked at Kate, all his humor instantly gone, "you'll have a gun. Where is it?"
"Upstairs," she lied automatically. There was a chance that in moving them around he would leave him
self vulnerable for an instant. He studied her, eyes narrowed, and seemed to hear her thoughts, for he smiled again, as if at the feeble efforts of a child.
"No, it isn't. Well it doesn't matter, so long as it's not on you." He ran his eyes over her T-shirt and jeans, which could hardly conceal a penknife, much less a police revolver. "Still, I'd better have a check. Vaun, you come on out into the hall. That's right, by that table. And you, next to her." He nodded curtly to Lee, who obeyed. "Now you, come here, hands against the wall. Get your feet further back. That's better." Kate felt a sudden sharp pressure against her spine, and he spoke past her. "Now, if you two don't want your cop friend to have a big hole in her, you'll stay very still."
Kate braced herself, but the search was impersonal, if thorough. In a minute he stood back, satisfied, and looked down the hallway toward the opening and the expanse of drapery.
"That's the living room?" he asked Vaun, and she nodded. "Right. You first, Vaunie, then you. Now you, cop."
Vaun turned smoothly to the door, the glass of ice water still tinkling gently in her hand. Lee followed with a curiously old-maidish stance, her hands clasped together between her breasts, hunched over in feeble defense or fear or cold. Kate moved down the hall, feeling the tingle in her back where the cold metal of the gun had pressed, and took great care not to stumble. She did not glance at what Lewis had referred to as a table, a decorative Indian apothecary's chest with a telephone and address book on top and her own familiar gun yearning from the top right-hand drawer, as useless to her as if it were on the bottom of the Bay. With a wrench she pulled her mind off the gun and off regrets and demanded that it get to work.
In the living room she moved directly to the first sofa and sat with her back to the dining area. Lewis hesitated, his instincts against allowing her any choice or independent move, but he studied the room and realized that there was no place she could have hidden a gun and that her position would put him with his back in the corner, away from the room's only internal entrance, the long windows, tightly draped, and two small, high windows that obviously looked into nothing but the neighbor's trees. He subsided, told Lee to take the other sofa and sat Vaun in the chair between them, facing the fireplace. Good, thought Kate. Now to get him talking.
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