Mother's day

by MacDonald, Patricia J

  “But…” He tried to reach for her forearm, as if it were a life preserver.

  “Are you having problems here, babe?” A burly, red-faced customer approached the stool where Greg was sitting, his glowering eyes on Greg, who averted his face, fearful of being recognized.

  “Get out of here,” said Yvonne. “Beat it.”

  Greg slid off the stool. It was useless to try to pressure her. She didn’t owe him anything. She wasn’t about to change her mind. And it was definitely not a good idea to draw attention to himself this way. He had to think, and he couldn’t think here.

  “Okay,” he mumbled. “Thanks for talking to me. Sorry.” He kept his eyes lowered as he hurried toward the door, anxious to get out of range of the suspicious gaze of Yvonne’s pot-bellied knight in shining armor.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Walter cautiously circled the parking lot of the giant Cape Shore Mall in Phyllis’s gray Volvo and finally chose a space in the middle, toward the front. He didn’t want an outlying space. Some bored employee might stare at it long enough and realize the car hadn’t moved for days. Here, where it was busy, nobody kept track of which cars came and went. It could be weeks before anyone noticed the car. And time was important. He needed time.

  The rain was a lucky factor for him. Not even teenagers were idling in the parking lot in this weather. He got out of the car, with his hat pulled down and his collar up, and walked quickly into the main entrance of the mall, just in case anyone had watched him pull in. It would look strange for someone to park a car at a mall and then walk away from the mall. He went up and down two aisles of the indoor maze and then headed back out into the night. He kept his head down and walked quickly to the bus stop. There was a smaller mall within a few miles of his house, one he could have walked home from, but he knew how conspicuous he would look walking along in the rain. He couldn’t take the chance that someone might recognize him, might offer him a ride. No, he had chosen the Cape Shore Mall because it was new and huge and out of the way. To bring in the maximum business, the store owners supported a bus service to all the surrounding towns Walter had plenty of company on the bus on this rainy night. He took a seat near the back. People were trying to keep their distance from one another to avoid wet coats and umbrellas. He looked out into the darkness and saw his own face reflected in the window, raindrops sliding like tears down the glass.

  It was a plain, normal face, except for that dent over the eyebrow made by the hammer. There was nothing about his face that suggested he had beaten a woman to death an hour earlier. Walter folded his gloved hands in his lap, and as the bus bumped along, he went over his plans in his mind.

  Before he left the house, he had moved Phyllis’s body down to the basement. The basement door gave out onto the driveway, and his car was right beside it. Later tonight he would be able to load the body quickly into his trunk and take off. No one in the neighborhood thought anything of his coming and going at all hours. It was part of his job. As far as where he would take the body, he had given that a lot of thought.

  He had considered stuffing Phyllis into the trunk of her own car and leaving her, and her car, at the mall. But, after examining the options, he decided it would be best if it looked as if she had been abducted from the mall. That would make it seem random. He wanted to dump the body where it wouldn’t be found for months, so that it could decompose. The less that was left of her, the less evidence there would be. Every cop knew that. He had been lucky with Rachel Dobbs, the girl they all called Amber. Even he thought of her as Amber by now. He had not been so lucky with Linda.

  The Dumpster had seemed like a good idea for Linda’s body. If only that couple had not been tossing out their trash illegally, Linda would have been hauled off to the nearest landfill without incident. He could not help but feel that things were beginning to turn against him. A frown crossed his face, causing the pale-skinned scar on his forehead to pucker. He had never set out to kill anyone. He was not that sort of person. The thing with Amber had really been an accident. It was really unfair for anyone to blame him for that.

  A heavyset woman cleared her throat and glared at Walter. He looked up to see her eyeing his umbrella disapprovingly. He moved it off the seat beside him. The woman made an ostentatious show of wiping off the seat with a shredding tissue, and then she wriggled into it. Walter pressed himself up against the side of the bus.

  He found most adult women rather repulsive. For as long as he could remember he had a preference for young teenage girls. His sexual fantasies all involved bondage and discipline, B & D, as the vice cops called it. But they were just fantasies, for years. He’d had a taste of the real thing in Vietnam, where teenage prostitutes were commonplace. He’d even broken a girl’s nose, but some American dollars had smoothed it over with the madam of the brothel. When he came home to the States, he just told himself that he would have to be satisfied with fantasies. And he probably would have been. But then fate stepped in.

  It started when he was investigating an armed robbery, doing his usual thorough job, and by chance he came across that information about Randolph Summers. And he knew he recognized that face. It took him a while to figure it out. It was ironic—the answer had actually come to him in church. He was in a pew behind Jack Emery and his family. He was not paying attention to the sermon, just sitting beside Emily, staring at the beautiful young girl in front of him, imagining what her budding body looked like under the flower-printed dress she was wearing. She had a white lace mantilla resting on her dark, shiny hair, and her father would squeeze her hand now and then and smile at her. One of those times, it came to him in a flash. Walter suddenly realized where he had seen Randolph Summers’s face before. It was Jack Emery. If they had been on the street, he might have collared the man then and there. But they were in church. He couldn’t very well jump up and rip the rosary out of the man’s hand and haul him in. So he sat quietly, waiting for the mass to end. And it was while he was sitting there, preparing to arrest the man, that the idea came to him about Jack Emery’s daughter.

  “What street is this?” asked the woman beside him.

  Walter started and peered out the window. He had lost track of time, remembering. “Congress Street,” he muttered.

  The woman hoisted herself up off the seat and started toward the door. Walter exhaled, glad to be rid of her.

  His mind returned to Linda. She had been his to command, for several years. He had acted out every fantasy, enjoyed every release. It had worked out better than he had ever dreamed. And then she ran away. For a long time he had stifled his impulses, made do with pornography, and dreamed of his retirement, when he could return to Asia. He had used all his self-control, knowing he would never come across a situation as perfect as the one with Linda Emery. And then, off duty one day, he had caught Rachel Dobbs in the act of shoplifting a Walkman in a tape and CD store. He’d followed her outside and accosted her. She’d turned out to be a runaway from Seattle. She had no one to vouch for her. She was scared and willing to do anything. And he couldn’t resist.

  But it had been a mistake. He didn’t have the same kind of grip on her that he had on Linda. She started to threaten him, and his temper got the best of him. Something about the way she defied him was infuriating, and that hammer in the toolbox was close at hand. Walter shifted uneasily on his seat. Suddenly the lights in the bus seemed uncomfortably bright.

  “Bayland,” the bus driver called out.

  Walter squinted out at the street signs. He would wait for a few blocks, get off at the main street. It was only a short walk from there. He pulled the cord overhead and waited until the last moment to step up to the back doors and climb down onto the curb. It was good to be back in the darkness.

  He opened his umbrella, put his head down, and started the few blocks toward the house. He had gotten rid of the car. That was one big job out of the way. Now he had to dispose of the body. Luckily his police training helped him to avoid costly mistakes, leaving telltale evidence an
d so on. He had thought it over carefully and decided that the best place to put her was a summer house that would not be in use this year because the people were going to Europe and had decided not to rent it out. He knew this for a fact because the police were supposed to check on the place every week. But they would not be checking in the two-car garage. There was no reason to. No one would open those doors for six months, maybe a year.

  Walter glanced up and could see his own house in the near distance. In the daylight you could see the peeling paint, the broken shingles, but in the darkness it still looked imposing. Walter’s father, Henry Ference, had been a famous attorney, and Walter sometimes felt as if he had inherited his cleverness. He often thought he could have been just as successful as his father. It was just that circumstances had gone against him. There was no money for the Ivy League education by the time Walter grew up. He had settled for the police force, but things still seemed to go wrong for him.

  Like this business with Phyllis. She had come up with that hypnosis idea, and she would never let go of it. She was like a dog with a bone. And Walter knew that when the engineer remembered the face of the man who pushed Eddie McHugh, the face would be Walter’s.

  This whole thing was having a ripple effect. He had never intended to do another killing after Amber. That had terrified him when it happened. But then Linda had come around with her threats. She was going to expose him. Some nonsense about DNA testing, to prove that Jenny Newhall was his child. Only it wasn’t nonsense. She could ruin him. He didn’t know, at the time, that she’d also told Greg Newhall that he was the child’s father. All he knew was that killing her had been necessary—no choice. But once he had put her in the Dumpster, he had to go back to her room, to make sure she had kept nothing that might implicate him. What he didn’t realize was that Eddie McHugh had been waiting for her light to go on, ready to peep at her. And he’d seen Walter instead, searching through her things. Eddie let that information drop when Walter was questioning him at the police station. He thought it would get him off of the peeping charge with Phyllis. He’d realized his mistake as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Eddie got a lot more than he bargained for. Walter hated to admit it, even to himself, but pushing Eddie in front of that train had not been that difficult. He had always heard it said, especially by the guys who worked in the prison system, that when a man killed once, it got easier and easier to kill again. He’d always thought of that sort of person as an animal. He was not like that. He was civilized. The only reason he had killed these people was because it was absolutely necessary. It wasn’t something he liked doing. But he had to admit that it did get easier.

  Walter reached the front steps of his house and bounded up them the normal way. There was no use worrying about it. He was almost in the clear. He just had to concentrate on what needed to be done. He would have a hot cup of tea to take the chill off and then get on with moving the body. He slammed the front door behind him, relocked it, and stared down the gloomy hall. Suddenly a figure appeared in the dark before him.

  “Jesus Christ,” Walter cried.

  “It’s me, Walter,” said Emily.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded furiously.

  Emily looked apologetic. “I couldn’t stand it. I checked myself out. I took a cab home. Please don’t be mad at me.”

  Walter just stared at her.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  “What happened to the picture?” Emily asked timidly, pouring her husband a cup of tea.

  Walter glanced at the hole in the plaster, the light spot on the wallpaper where the picture had been. He had swept the picture off the table and into a trash bag in his hasty clean-up before he left the house with Phyllis’s car. It was automatic. He wanted to rid the room of anything that connoted a struggle, even though the picture had fallen before Phyllis ever arrived. “It fell,” he said shortly.

  “Did the glass break?”

  Walter hesitated. “Yes. I threw it out.”

  Emily nodded and pressed her lips together. “I’ll have to get something to put there,” she said.

  “Yeah,” said Walter, staring out over his teacup. They both knew she never would.

  There was silence in the kitchen, except for the loud gulping sound Emily made as she drank a ginger ale. She placed the glass down on the table, then picked it up and wiped the table beneath it carefully with a napkin. “I know you’re mad that I came home,” she said tentatively.

  “No, I’m not mad.”

  “I just felt so uncomfortable there,” she said. “All the personal questions. I didn’t mind the withdrawal so much. Honestly. I mean it was bad, but I guess I deserved that. It was more the groups and all the psychologizing. I just hated it. They kept wanting me to talk about…you know, the past. They aren’t happy unless you’re telling them everything. And there’s…I just…I believe some things are between a person and God.”

  Walter nodded.

  “But I really think I’m going to be okay this time. I really do.”

  “That’s good,” said Walter, taking another sip from his cup.

  Emily sat back and felt the old familiar heaviness settling onto her heart. He wouldn’t criticize her. He never did. He never got mad at her or objected to what she did. There was no reason to explain any of it to him. He was the perfect husband, she thought, and she felt that void inside of her again that had temporarily been relieved in the hospital. She knew what other people thought—they thought she should be grateful. Most men would have thrown her out long ago or beat her up or something. Walter never lost his temper with her.

  Tears rose to her eyes. She wiped them away. He did not seem to notice.

  The ringing of the phone startled them both. Emily looked at her husband fearfully. “That might be Sylvia,” she said.

  “I don’t want to talk to her,” said Walter.

  “She’ll wonder why I’m home,” said Emily worriedly.

  “It’s none of her business,” said Walter.

  Emily could see that he wasn’t going to answer the phone. She wished she was one of those people who could just sit by a phone and let it ring, but it made her feel too guilty. If someone was calling her, it was her duty to answer. Slowly she felt her insides shrivel at the prospect of hearing Sylvia’s voice on the other end, critical and shrill. She licked her lips and whispered, “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Ference?” asked an unfamiliar voice.

  “Yes,” Emily agreed uneasily.

  “My name is Karen Newhall. I know it’s late and I’m sorry to bother you and your husband at home, but I need to speak to Detective Ference.”

  Emily’s heart filled with relief. She knew it wouldn’t last. Sylvia would find out before long—but at least for now she was safe. She held out the phone to Walter. “It’s for you,” she said.

  Walter pushed back his chair, walked over, and took the phone. “Yes,” he said.

  Emily took their cups and saucers and rinsed them in the sink. Then she began to dry them.

  “What kind of information?” Walter asked suspiciously, his voice low. He turned his back to his wife.

  “Well, you did the right thing to call me,” said Walter. “But listen, there’s no need for you to come down to the station. I’ll come to your house. I’m sure you’ve seen enough of that place already… Okay. Okay. I’ll see you then.” Walter hung up the phone.

  “I need to go out,” he said.

  Emily nodded. “That’s okay. I’ll be fine,” she said, although he hadn’t asked. “I’ll go to bed early.” She knew better than to inquire about the call. Walter never liked to discuss such matters at home.

  “You might have trouble sleeping,” he said. “Maybe you should take something. I have some sleeping pills.”

  “No,” said Emily. “No pills. They’re as bad as alcohol. I learned that at the counseling. They call that substituting one dependency for another. No, if I can’t sleep, I’ll just watch TV or clean out a closet or something,” she said, forcing a
smile.

  Walter sighed and gazed at the cellar door, which was across the kitchen. It was unlikely that she would go down into the cellar. She was afraid of the dark, the cobwebs. It was a chance in a million, but still, there was that chance. And there was no use locking the door. It would only make her curious if she tried it, and besides, it only locked from the outside upstairs anyway. He watched his wife, moving around the kitchen, tidying up, her hands still shaking from the alcohol withdrawal.

  No, he thought, there was only one way to guarantee she would be in no condition to go into the cellar, or anywhere else, for a while. He needed to be sure she would be incapacitated tonight. He walked out into the hallway and opened the door to the antique lowboy. He removed a bottle of vodka from where she had hidden it behind the good china in the back. He set the bottle carefully on top between a vase of dried flowers and a framed photograph of his mother. Then he opened the door to the hall closet and called out to Emily.

  “Have you seen my other raincoat? It’s still raining out there, and this one is wet.”

  Emily came shuffling innocently out of the kitchen. She had put on her bedroom slippers as soon as she came home. “I’m sure it’s in there,” she said. “It’s probably jammed between two coats.”

  Walter nodded to the vodka bottle on the lowboy. “By the way, I found that. You’ll probably want to pour it down the sink or something.”

  Emily’s gaze rested with fear and longing on the bottle. “Yes, I will,” she said.

  Walter continued to rummage in the closet and made a display of finding the missing coat. “Oh, you’re right,” he said. “Here it is.” Then he looked down at something on the closet floor as if surprised. “Look at these,” he said, reaching back into the closet and holding up a pair of dusty, black tooled cowboy boots. “Now this is the closet to clean if you’re in the mood for cleaning tonight,” he said. He shook his head and gazed fondly at the boots. “I must have been sixteen when I got these.”