Shame

by Alan Russell

  “We don’t know that.”

  “I think we do.”

  “Let’s assume you’re right. What are we supposed to do? Unless he contacts us, we can’t do anything. He has all my numbers.”

  Elizabeth suddenly frowned.

  “What is it?”

  “Someone else has one of my numbers. I was duped today by a message left for me. The caller spoke in a whisper and identified himself as Caleb. I wanted to hear from Caleb so much that I believed him.”

  “He knew your weakness.”

  “Weakness?”

  “The caller. The killer. He knew how to push your buttons. It’s possible he knows you.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “The way he manipulated you. And his having your telephone number.”

  “I keep thinking there was something familiar about him,” said Elizabeth, “something in his voice. Maybe Caleb’s right. Maybe the answer is in my old Shame files, in the past.”

  “But whose past?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Remember my map. It’s all in the way you look at things. Caleb might not be the only target here.”

  “You’re not very reassuring.”

  “Don’t blame the messenger.”

  They both put down their forks, hungry no more.

  “Let’s go look for Caleb tonight,” said Lola.

  “Look for him where?”

  “He doesn’t have a car. He has to be hiding somewhere near that sorority.”

  “I hope he has a good hiding place then, because half the police department is out there. Patrol cars are everywhere. And short of using a bullhorn, I don’t know how we’d signal him.”

  Lola reluctantly nodded. “I better go home then. Maybe he’s trying to call me right now. I’m going to borrow a friend’s phone, and I’m going to go sit by it. But if tomorrow comes, and I haven’t heard from him, then bright and early I’m going out on a manhunt.”

  27

  JUNIOR HAD SURPRISED him. For the moment, Feral couldn’t lay any more stones on him. But just for the moment. The pressing would continue. In America’s history, only one man had ever been pressed to death. That was a pity. Feral couldn’t understand why pressing had never grown more popular in the States. On the Continent, it had commonly been used to torture and kill. What Feral liked was its simplicity. Pressing was easy. You just piled stones on a person’s chest, one atop another. As the weight grew heavier, breathing became more difficult. It was the rare person who didn’t break down, who didn’t capitulate with whatever the presser wanted.

  Junior had shown surprising mettle. Feral had thought him an unworthy son before. Weak. Afraid of his own shadow. A simpering cuckold. But the way Junior had managed to avoid capture, and the way he had even figured out one of Feral’s schemes, showed he was at least a resourceful coward. In a moment of weakness, Feral had even been tempted to end Junior’s life on that road, but that wouldn’t have served his plans. There was still a stone or two he needed to lay on Junior’s chest. Heavy stones. Headstones.

  Feral was sure Junior wouldn’t prove to be any Giles Cory. He wished he could have been present at Cory’s pressing in 1692. Who said that the Pilgrims didn’t have any fun? Cory was the only colonist ever pressed to death. He had refused to plead either guilty or innocent to the charges brought against him. There was a reason for his silence. Because he refused to plea, his possessions couldn’t be confiscated by the state. Though the stones had piled up on his breast, they hadn’t broken Cory’s spirit. Feral suspected that was the presser’s fault. He was confident he had just the right straw for the camel’s back.

  Pressing. The thought invigorated him.

  Feral thought of other stones and found himself getting excited.

  As she had been getting out of her car, he had sneaked up behind her and said, “Do you know what Charles de la Roi said to the warden the day before he was sentenced to die in the gas chamber?”

  She had jumped, and then she had seen who it was standing there, and her expression had become disdainful. She had said his name, had announced it as if it were some pitiful thing, but she never came up with an answer.

  “He said, ‘Warden, I’d like a little bicarbonate, because I’m afraid I’m going to have gas tomorrow.’”

  She was used to his morbid histories, but she wasn’t ready for what followed. He had laughed, and she had seen something in him and heard something in his laugh. She became aware of Feral for the first time. Then she had spotted the large rock in his hand and knew that the wilding was about to take place.

  “No,” she had said. “Don’t.”

  Her last words were not at all original, not at all.

  It was a happy memory. Pity today didn’t go as well, thought Feral. To use a tiresome cliché, he’d been so close, yet so far. It annoyed him to have done so much planning for such an unsatisfactory climax. He had been twice denied. But that’s what contingency plans were for.

  Patience, he told himself, patience. His inner sermonizing reminded him of one of his favorite cartoons. The picture showed one very annoyed vulture telling another vulture, “Patience, my ass. I’m going to kill someone.”

  Feral understood that kind of killing hunger. Like the vulture, he was tired of waiting. But he wasn’t a carrion feeder. He was a hunter grown impatient.

  “Patience, my ass,” Feral said aloud. “I’m going to kill someone.” And soon.

  It was time to get back to work. He referred to his notebook, picked up a pen, and dialed a number.

  “Yes, can you please connect me with Ann Dickens’s room?”

  Feral had methodically entered the name and telephone number of every San Diego area hotel and motel into his notebook. The private dick had documented that Queenie invariably registered under any one of six names. The detective was good. He had worked for Feral on several occasions until he’d had his untimely accident.

  “Ann’s not there?” Feral did his best to sound surprised. “She was supposed to be traveling with Angel Lake. Can you check and see if she’s registered there? Yes, the last name is Lake.”

  The night auditor sounded none too happy being bothered in the middle of the night. Feral hoped the cretin was being methodical.

  “She’s not there either? Hmmm. Well, thank you.”

  He wrote down the names and the time of his call. It wouldn’t do to call back the same hotel for several hours.

  Another name, another hotel.

  “Yes, could you please connect me with Vera Macauley’s room?”

  Feral checked the other name he would be asking for. Jean Keys. Where did Queenie come up with her names? Maybe he would ask her that the next time his hands were around her neck.

  Suddenly, the line started ringing. He had been connected to Vera Macauley’s room. Feral listened for a moment, made sure there wasn’t some mistake, and then hung up.

  Time to check in, he thought.

  Aloud, he announced, “Patience, my ass. I’m going to kill someone.”

  28

  TOO MUCH COLD, too much pain.

  As Caleb shifted, the branches creaked—but not as much as his bones. He hurt everywhere and was so thirsty he’d taken to licking leaves for their moisture. Lapping up the dew made him feel like a dog. He was afraid that at any moment he might start baying at the moon.

  Maybe he already had. His mind kept drifting. In a way that was a blessing, for time passed that he wasn’t even aware of, but it was also scary. Only minutes earlier he had awakened to the sound of other voices, or at least thought he had until he’d recognized those voices were his own.

  He had gone through several spells of trembling, each worse than the last. Caleb wished he had brought along a coat and water, but of course he hadn’t planned to be up a tree. Now, with all the patrol cars going by, leaving his perch wasn’t an option.

  There was little to do but stare up into the sky and think. It was a cloudless night, and the stars were tantalizingly near. Caleb wi
shed he could name the constellations. Another regret. He wondered if you could wish upon stars whose names you didn’t know, or whether that voided the whole process. He made his wish anyway. “Wish I may,” he whispered, “wish I might, wish my family’s well tonight.”

  If I survive this, he vowed, I’ll take my family on a special vacation. And this time I won’t take along the same baggage I’ve carried for so long. It had weighed everyone down on their last trip. They had traveled up the coast to San Francisco, their first vacation in over a year. Caleb had known his marriage was in trouble, and he had thought a getaway might help it. They had gone on an outing to Fisherman’s Wharf, and there the children had been seduced by the flashing lights of the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Museum.

  “Let’s go to the wax museum! Let’s go to the wax museum!”

  Janet started the chant, and then James joined in. Their exhortations grew louder.

  Laughing, Anna surrendered to their demands. Though they entered the museum as a family, the kids quickly ran ahead. “I better stay with them,” Anna said.

  “I’ll do it.”

  “No, let me. Take your time.”

  Both he and Anna were reading from the same overly polite “you first” page. What Caleb should have said was, “Let’s all stay together.” But that thought came too late. Anna had already gone ahead.

  He could have run after her, but he didn’t. Alone, he made his way through the exhibits. There was a mazelike feel to the museum, the twists and turns opening up to the displays of the bizarre, strange, and morbid. The exhibits were realistic, making for a sideshow feel, but no carnival barker was needed. Many of the wax figures were triggered by motion detectors, voicing their incredible stories to all passersby.

  At times Caleb closed in on his family, hearing his children’s excited laughter two or three displays ahead. Their reactions offered him previews of what he was going to see. But he wasn’t forewarned, at least not enough.

  When Caleb walked into the Hall of Shame, it lived up to its name—literally. They were all there, gathered together like fraternity brothers: Bluebeard, Attila, Bundy, Speck, Gacy, Hitler, Dahmer, Manson, and Amin.

  And Shame.

  His father was standing center stage and smiling. In his hands was a book of poems—Whitman. His father was by far the handsomest man in the group. He also looked the most self-assured.

  Caleb’s presence set off his recording: “Seventeen women, a dozen of them college students, died by my hands,” he announced. “I strangled them and left my signature on the naked body of each. Not Gray Parker, the name I was born with, but the name I came to be associated with: Shame.

  “My killing spree lasted for three years. I left behind bodies in five states. I was described as having the looks of an angel and the heart of the devil.

  “Before being executed for my crimes in the state of Florida, I was asked if I had any last words. And I told the world, ‘Shame on you. Shame on you.’”

  The laughter started and went on for ten seconds before it abruptly cut off. Caleb stepped back. He didn’t want to start the recording again.

  That’s not his voice, Caleb told himself. Some actor had spoken those lines, someone with a dramatic voice and laugh. It wasn’t even close to his father’s voice. Even after all those years, Caleb remembered exactly what that sounded like. Of late, he’d been hearing it all too often in his head.

  All the old feelings returned: his embarrassment, his fears. For so long he had tried to bury those emotions, but now they overwhelmed him. It was as if every good thing in his life had been stripped away and the only thing that was real was his past.

  Caleb hurried out of the Hall of Shame, but before leaving the room, he threw a quick glance back. What he saw made him all the more afraid. His father’s eyes were following him, not like the Mona Lisa’s, but like those of the devil himself. Even when he was outside the hall, Caleb had the distinct feeling that his father was still watching him and that no matter where he went, no matter how fast he ran, he wouldn’t be able to escape those eyes.

  The encounter had ruined the vacation. He had pretended that all was well, but the more he’d made believe that everything was fine, the more tension he’d created. Even after returning home Caleb wasn’t able to shake the pall of the Hall of Shame. His everyday life had felt futile, as if he knew the tide was eventually going to go out and pull him with it. That’s why his encountering Teresa Sanders’s body hadn’t really surprised him. It was just the other foot dropping on him.

  God, he was hot. Caleb felt his forehead. He was burning. Some people were talking nearby. Didn’t they know how late it was?

  I’m so tired of all this.

  A hero is someone who somehow hangs on just a little longer.

  Is that what you think you are, some kind of hero?

  No.

  Then why are you hanging on? Everyone knows about your father now. Your dirty secret’s out. Even if you convince some people that you didn’t kill anyone, they’ll still never look at you the same way again.

  I’m not my father.

  When are you going to learn that doesn’t matter? Remember when you were young and you tried so hard to be perfect? You brought home perfect report cards, and you put on your mask that you called a brave face, and you let the townsfolk spit on you, and the boys beat you up, and you never retaliated. But no matter how good you were, it never helped your situation. No one forgave you for being Shame’s son. And that’s what you are again. That’s what you are always going to be.

  I can be more than that.

  Or less than that. You’re a victim of the proverb “What you’re afraid of overtakes you.” It has. It did. And the person you might have been, we’ll never know.

  No.

  Oh, yes.

  The conversation gave way to chattering teeth. Only moments before Caleb had been so hot, and now he was freezing. He was aware enough to know he was out of control but not aware enough to do anything about it. It felt as if he was on a roller coaster, and it was all he could do to hang on.

  Her legs opened. She wanted him. He saw Earlene reaching for him. And then she was offering up her neck and telling him to squeeze it.

  Earlene’s head changed, became raptor-like, a harpy’s, then her sharp beak was driving into him, savaging his chest and pulling out his heart.

  And his father was laughing, but it wasn’t his father’s laugh. It was the mechanical laugh from the museum.

  “Go away,” said Elizabeth Line, but she wasn’t saying it to him, she was waving off the harpy and trying to stuff his heart back into his chest.

  “Mine was taken in almost the same way,” she told him, and then she shook her head in great sadness.

  “I know,” Caleb said.

  Elizabeth’s face changed, became Lola’s. She stared at him. He could see her compassion. For the first time he noticed how pretty she was. She looked like a woman, a beautiful woman, and he reached out to touch her hair, but as he did her hair changed into a headdress of feathers, and he pricked his finger. Lola had changed. She was still Lola, but she was a brave now.

  “My name is Osh-Tisch,” she said.

  “You’re different.”

  “No. I just had to dress for battle.”

  “You gave up your makeup for war paint.”

  “Yes.”

  Caleb wanted to reach out and touch the designs, but he remembered his bloody index finger.

  His bloody index finger. That was real. It throbbed. He must have cut it on the tree. He focused on the finger. It was something tangible. He used it as a reality check, a way out of the kaleidoscope. An awareness filtered through: he could see his finger. There was now enough light for him to examine it. Daylight had finally arrived.

  Caleb lifted his head, fought off the dizziness. Nearby he heard voices. Hallucinating again, he thought. He clenched his teeth together, but unless Caleb was a ventriloquist he wasn’t responsible for the verbalizing. The loud voice was familiar to
him. It projected, as if playing to an audience, and came across as equal parts playful, saucy, and enticing.

  “I’m looking for my pussy. You haven’t seen her, have you? I have a description of her right here. She answers to the name of Precious. She’s a real purr-box, black and soft and gentle.”

  Lola.

  Impossible, of course. His mind had to be playing tricks. But he could even see her on the street. She was only about fifty yards away, as the hallucination flies. She was wearing a form-fitting red bathrobe that had little underneath it and walking around in slippers.

  But this delusion was different from the others, wasn’t so dreamlike and frenzied. And the fantasy didn’t shift or disappear. Lola kept talking about her missing cat. Strange hallucination, Caleb thought. He knew that Lola didn’t have a cat.

  “You sure you haven’t seen her? Can’t keep that pussy at home. No, sir.”

  The young man appeared very sympathetic. Phantasmagoria, Caleb thought, pulling the word from somewhere in his head. But that certain knowledge didn’t vanquish the images. He could still hear them and see them.

  “Well, thank you anyway,” said Lola. “Keep your eyes open for me.”

  The student looked more than happy to accommodate her request. In fact, she needn’t even have asked. His eyes were all over her, but it wasn’t the young man’s fault. Lola was acting the coquette.

  You’re not even a real woman, Caleb almost yelled. But he didn’t, because he was suddenly certain she was real.

  Lola finished with the student. When he got into his car, there was a big smile on his face. The smile was still there as he drove past Caleb’s tree.

  “Lola.” His voice was weak. Even Caleb could barely hear it. “Lola.” Louder this time, but hardly a shout.

  It stopped her, though. She looked around.

  “Up here.”

  She scrutinized the tree until she picked him out. “There you are, sugar,” she said, as if she had expected to find him there. “You just stay put while I get the car.”

  She turned around, made a left at the corner, and was lost from sight. In her absence, Caleb began to doubt what he’d seen. He was so lightheaded that focusing was difficult. His lips were dry and cracked, and his throat ached from being so parched. His clearest thoughts revolved around water.