Reinhold began to putter about with a bag of coffee beans and a grinder, and Peter decided to go with the little dog into the living room. After all, there was no rush. It was still dark, and it might be fun to talk to Reinhold for a while, like playing with a fish before you landed it and smashed its head in.
The living room was as fussily furnished and absurdly neat, Peter thought, as his grandmother's house. On the dust free surface of the coffee table were current copies of The New Yorker, Entertainment Weekly, The Atlantic, and Scientific American piled atop each other so that he could read their titles. Fabric sleeves covered the arms of the sofa and chairs, and throw rugs were placed carefully in front of them.
The walls were covered with built-in bookcases, except for one area that held a sound system flanked by sets of Broadway shows and operas, both on CD and records. Mounted on the brick wall behind the sofa was the only masculine touch in the room, a pair of decorative crossed swords.
Peter sat on the sofa and scratched the dog's ears until the stump of a tail whacked the thick carpet. "Aren't you a nice boy then," Peter crooned.
"Be just a minute till it's ready," said Reinhold as he entered the room. He sat down in a chair next to the sofa. "So tell me," he said, "what's caused this breach in your faith."
Peter talked, made things up, said what he had heard some of the less devout students say in group discussions and late night bull sessions. Reinhold seemed to eat it up, nodding and giving supportive comments.
Finally he stood up, the coffee forgotten, walked over to Peter, and sat down next to him on the sofa. "May I speak to you like a father? Or maybe a brother." He chuckled. "After all, I'm not that old. You see, Peter, you're at a point now in your life where you're going to be making some very important decisions about a lot of things -- the values by which you'll live your life, what things are really important to you...and relationships too, friendships that can last the rest of your life. There are people who might try to exploit those friendships for their own selfish ends. But there are other people who will be sincere, who will really care about you in ways that you might not have even imagined up until now. Do you see what I mean?"
Peter saw all right, all too well. But he only smiled gently and nodded.
"I always admired you in school. You had spirit. You weren't afraid to say what you thought. That means something to a teacher to have a student like that. I thought about you quite a bit. And it's so strange now that we should meet again like this. Don't you think so?"
Then Reinhold put out his hand and rested it on Peter's knee. It might have been a manly, comradely gesture, but Peter knew what it really meant. The hand burned like fire on his leg. Keeping his soft smile on his face, he slowly stood up, keeping the knife pressed against him, and moved around to the back of the sofa.
"Am I...going too fast for you?" Reinhold said, and Peter heard the old irony creeping back into his voice.
"Maybe just a little," Peter answered. He was behind Reinhold now, and wanted to stay there. So he put his hand on the man's shoulders and squeezed gently.
Reinhold's head went back, and he closed his eyes. "That feels good," he said.
"You like that?"
"Yes, very much."
"Then you'll love this."
The man's flesh beneath his hands made him forget all about the knife. It fell from under his jacket onto the floor as he wrapped his strong fingers around Reinhold's thin neck.
He squeezed with all the might of his weight-trained arms, and was astonished as the man's legs shot out in front of him and scrabbled for a footing as if trying to run away. Reinhold's body was nearly horizontal to the floor, but Peter only squeezed all the harder, and in less than a minute, the frenzied motion had ceased, and a terrible smell of emptying bowels filled the room.
All this time, the little dog had done nothing but stand against the opposite wall of the room, to which he had run when his master began to thrash about. His head moved back and forth, as though he were trying to figure out exactly what new game his master was playing with his friend. But he did not bark, as Peter feared he would. He only whimpered when the smell of Reinhold's feces fouled the air, and then ran upstairs without another sound.
Even after the dog had gone and Reinhold was still, Peter did not release his grip upon the ruined neck. He stood, breathing heavily, feeling the tightness in his fingers, and another tightness in the crotch of his pants. When he became aware of his arousal he was both shamed and excited by it. He released Reinhold then, and came around the front of the couch to look at his handiwork.
The man's eyes were nearly closed, but his tongue protruded fatly from his mouth, and Peter thought about all the other things that must have been in Reinhold's mouth over the years. The goddamned faggot, making advances to him like that. It would have been worth killing him for that, let alone the terrible moral confusion in which he had put his students. Peter realized that's what he was probably doing out at the truck stop, trying to pick up truckers and bring them home with him to do all those horrible things that faggots did to each other.
Well, maybe he just picked the wrong one tonight.
The more Peter thought about it, the more sense it made. Reinhold picked the wrong guy, somebody who liked his games a little rough, a little bloody, and maybe that wasn't the way Reinhold liked it, and maybe he tried to stop it, but by that time it was too late.
And then Peter's gaze fell upon the twin swords hanging on the wall.
It would make it look good, wouldn't it? And it would give that faggot what he had really wanted.
He took one of the swords down from the wall, pushed Reinhold to the floor, undid the belt, and tugged the stinking pants and underwear down around the man's knees. Then Peter Hurst became a little boy again, but now the gray plastic sword of righteousness was sharp steel, and the smooth, undivided buttocks of the six-inch tall Goliath was flesh.
Even while he was doing it, he thought of it as abomination. When he was finished, he left the sword where it was, but remembered to take his mother's knife along home with him.
Chapter 49
The next day Paul Blair had an appointment for his annual physical with his doctor at 1:00 in the afternoon. The doctor was late, however, and when Paul finally saw him at 2:00, he apologized, telling Paul that he had been called out in his capacity as assistant coroner.
"Murder," he said, as he poked and prodded Paul. "Really ugly one too."
"Anybody I'd know?" Paul asked.
"A teacher," the doctor said. "You'll see it on the news anyway. Channel Nine swarmed in like flies on a carcass. A teacher at the high school. Bob Reinhold. Seems the guy was gay, he'd bring men home that he picked up, one night stand kind of things. Only last night he brought home a killer."
"Reinhold. Isn't he the one some of the parents were making a fuss about?"
"Yep. Teaching such arcane and esoteric subjects as evolution in his biology classes," the doctor said sarcastically.
"I've heard about him," Paul said. And with a chill, he realized from whom he had heard about Robert Reinhold.
Peter had told him about the man just a week or two before. He had sounded bitter about him, but had seemed to acquiesce when Paul suggested that they leave him to the fate of the school board and the angry parents.
But maybe Peter had decided to take things into his own hands.
"How was he...killed?" Paul asked.
The doctor made a face. "Strangled. Then mutilated."
"Horrible."
"Mmm. With a sword. Now be quiet a minute and take some deep breaths." The doctor listened to Paul's back, then brought his stethoscope around to the front of his chest. "Breathe normally." He listened again. "Breathe normally, Paul, you're breathing too fast. Are you nervous or something?"
It was silly to worry, he told himself as he drove from his doctor's office to the store. It was only three o'clock, and they didn't close until five. Peter should still be there. Maybe he could find out by the way the
boy acted if he had...
Had what? Killed again? But no, he would not believe that. It was only the barest of circumstantial evidence that connected Peter to Reinhold at all.
But it was enough, he found as he walked into the store, to raise the suspicions of Lieutenant Feldman. She was sitting in his office waiting for him.
~ * ~
She had been waiting for a half hour. When she had examined Robert Reinhold's body and seen how he had died, she had thought that the killer might be just what he looked like, a gay man who had been rougher than Reinhold had hoped for. But there was no semen at the scene, which puzzled her.
And when she had learned about Reinhold's infamy among the religious set, it didn't take long for her to imagine that this murder could be the work of the crusading fanatic who had been doing his bloody work for so long. True, there was no telltale .38 caliber bullet, but a pistol would hardly be a wise weapon to use in a thin-walled town house. And the post-mortem placement of the sword had been the kind of act that a raving homophobe would have been more likely to perpetrate than a gay man, no matter how rough his tastes.
So her path led once more to Paul Blair, whom she had looked on with suspicion ever since that luncheon months ago when she thought she had seen what really lay beneath his pious surface.
He looked nervous when he entered. That might only be natural, she thought, at discovering a detective waiting for you. But it might be something else. It might even be guilt.
They shook hands and both sat down. His "What can I do for you?" struck her as peremptory, as though he already knew.
"There was a murder last night...early this morning," she corrected herself. "A Robert Reinhold was killed in his home. Have you ever heard of him?"
Paul Blair shook his head. "No."
She could tell that he was lying. There had been that instant click of recognition when she had said the name. "The reason I thought you might have is because he seems to have been a cause celebre among some church people. They didn't like what he was teaching their children in school."
"So you think the church went out and killed him because of it?" The bravado was forced. She was sure that he knew far more than he was saying.
"I don't think it was the church, but there is the possibility of it being someone from the church. You see, there was an aspect of punishment to the murder. A signature, if you will. We have a pretty good idea that the victim was gay, as if there weren't already enough sins on his soul, speaking from a zealot's point of view. But after he was murdered, the killer took a sword off the wall and stuck it up his rectum as far as it could go. And then farther."
He looked away from her. Why? Disgust? Nausea?
Or knowledge?
"Do you know anyone like that, anyone who might be capable of such a thing? Someone who might be striking back...because of what he feels is wrong..." She thought about that night so long ago, the man turning pale in the doorway at the news his wife was dead. "Because of something that once happened to him."
Paul Blair looked up then, and she saw pain in his eyes. "That's not fair," he said. "You can't accuse him of this."
Him? She didn't understand. "What do you -- "
Suddenly the door to the office opened, and Peter Hurst stood there. When he saw Olivia, he looked shocked, then angry. "Sorry," he said, and closed the door.
"He didn't look glad to see me," Olivia said.
"And at the risking of being rude, neither am I," said Paul. "I really have nothing to say about this. If you have anything specific to say to me, then say it. Otherwise, I wish you'd leave."
Olivia stood up. She had seen Paul Blair's reaction. It was what she had come for, and she was not disappointed. "Thank you for your time. I'm sorry if I upset you. But things can get pretty ugly when you're dealing with police work."
On her way out, she looked for Peter Hurst, but did not see him. Now at least she knew what Paul Blair meant -- and who he meant.
Peter Hurst had been brutally sodomized as a child, an act that certainly put a permanent scar on the boy's psyche. But was the scar deep and wide enough to make him kill a gay man and then penetrate his anus with a sword in revenge for what had happened to him all those years ago?
Or, she wondered almost instantaneously, is that what Paul Blair wanted her to think?
Chapter 50
"What did she want?" Peter blurted out when he had gone back into Paul's office. "What was she doing here?"
"Close the door," Paul said, struggling to keep his voice under control, "and sit down." Peter did as he was directed. His mouth was partly open, and his breathing was ragged. "That teacher you told me about -- Reinhold? He's dead. Murdered."
Peter measured Paul with his gaze. "And?"
"You're not surprised."
Peter's smile was thin and hard. "No. Just grateful that God's poured out his grace on the children of this community by ridding them of a pestilence."
"Did you kill him, Peter?" Paul felt sick to his stomach. He was afraid he might throw up any minute.
"He deserved to die, Paul. If you'd known everything he'd done, if you'd known what kind of man he was, you'd have killed him yourself."
"Oh, Peter..."
"I tried to tell you about him, remember? But you didn't want to hear it. You've gotten soft, Paul. You can't do that. Not with so much depending on you. What we do -- what you did -- saves people, Paul. Not just lives, but souls. Now what was that woman doing in here?"
"She was here about the murder, what do you think? She suspects you, Peter. That sword...oh dear Lord, why did you ever do that?"
"He deserved it, Paul. He was a homosexual, a sodomite. And I thought that if I did it they would think it was another one of their filthy breed, don't you see? What did she say? What did she say exactly?"
Paul told him everything he could recall.
"That doesn't mean anything," Peter said. "I was home in bed. If they ask my parents, they'll tell them I was home in bed all night. Nobody saw me, nobody could have seen me. But why were you talking to her, Paul? I mean, are you friends with her or what?"
"No, no, she just came here."
"But you and she went out once, didn't you? Out to lunch?"
"Just once -- I wanted to see how much she knew, that was all."
"But there's a murder and she comes running right to you? You didn't tell her anything, did you?"
Paul shook his head. "No, no, I didn't say anything, Peter."
"But she's an attractive woman, Paul. I can see how you'd want to be with her, I can see that."
"Peter, listen -- "
"But don't trust her. She's probably using you. Women do that, they use you and lie to you to get what they want. You can't trust them, I don't think you can trust any of them. Don't trust her, Paul, whatever you do. She'll betray you." Peter stood up. "Don't trust her, Paul. And don't see her again." He nodded several times. "All right. All right, I'm going home now, is that okay? I just feel like...like I need to go home, okay?"
Paul nodded back. "Yes. You go on home. Go ahead."
The boy turned and left, leaving Paul alone with his despair. As he sat there, turning over everything in his mind, he felt as though the walls were closing in on him. He had done all this, he had been responsible for Peter becoming what he had.
The air was stifling, and he could think of nothing but the need to get out of the building, get away somewhere, to a place where he could just hit something over and over and over again until all his rage, frustration, and fear was expunged. He didn't tell anyone he was going. He simply went down to his car and drove home, railing at the frequent red lights that slowed him down, slowed him from doing he knew not what.
It was only when he got home that he knew what he had to see, had to do. He went to his guns, and looked at them, and thought that here was where it had all started. He picked up the .38 that had brought death, hefted it, tried to see his victims in his sights once again, and choked at the memory when it came. He pulled the trigger
, dry firing the pistol with a loud click, and longed to feel more, to sense it exploding in his hand and hear its thunder, as if its voice would speak to his guilt, assure him of the damnation he had found instead of the salvation he had sought.
The need to hear it and feel it was so great that he jammed the gun into a leather case, grabbed a box of 50 wadcutters, and ran to his car. Most of the members of the gun club would have gone home for dinner, and he would have the indoor range to himself.
As he had suspected, the door was locked when he arrived, and he opened it with his key. Someone had not removed their used and riddled target, but Paul wasn't shooting to score tonight. It was a more primal reason, the reason that most men take up guns, though they would be reluctant to admit it. So he loaded the pistol with six shots instead of the usual five, and fired into the ripped target. He wore no ear protection, for he wanted to hear the shots, wanted them to deafen him. Every shot drained something from him, made him feel less tense and panicked, though he could still not get Peter and what he had done out of his mind.
He continued to load and fire, load and fire, until his ears rang and the black center of the target was shredded away, revealing the backstop that caught the bullets. He had only two cartridges left from the box of fifty, and he put them into the chambers, set it so the first would fall under the hammer, and closed it.
Just as he cocked the gun and brought it down to aim, he heard a voice behind him.
"You'll never read a score off that target."
He whipped his head around and pointed the gun up at the ceiling. Olivia Feldman leaned against the back wall, a small gun box at her feet.
"What are you doing here?" Paul said, barely hearing his own voice over the ringing in his ears.
"I liked it so much I joined. And Saturday night is usually empty here unless there's a tournament."
Paul picked up his pistol case and started to put his gun away.
"You're leaving already?" Olivia asked.
"Out of bullets."
"There are two in the cylinder. Might as well try and finish blowing that target to bits."
Defenders of the Faith Page 25
