A Death Before Dying (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries)

by Collin Wilcox

  The balm of calm …

  This phrase, at least, rhymed.

  He fitted his key to the lock, entered the chamber, closed the door, secured it. Here, soft lights always glowed, controlled by the console placed beside the chair. Delicately his fingers caressed the console, lowered the lights, switched on the tape: Danse Macabre. Earlier in the day he’d loaded the VCR, allowing him now simply to touch a switch.

  Tonight there was more than simple erotic indulgence. The cassette would run about twenty minutes, exploring the intricacies of Saturday night’s encounter. During that time he would make his decision. When the ending approached, he with his fingers at her throat, the decision would be inevitable—one step beyond, the last step, the final step.

  11:20 P.M. As he brushed his teeth, Hastings surveyed the bathroom, still perfumed from Ann’s shower, still steamy. A single sweat sock was draped over the open clothes hamper. Behind the toilet he saw a single sneaker. The sock and the sneaker were Bill’s, the razor beside the basin was Dan’s. At age seventeen, Dan was shaving regularly—once a week, primarily the upper lip.

  When he and Ann had decided to live together, most of their misgivings had centered on her sons. Ann’s concern had been that the two boys would be reluctant to accept a “dominant male,” as she’d once expressed it. Hastings’s concern had been mostly a matter of geography. Ann’s bottom-floor Victorian flat was huge, with three sizable bedrooms. But there was only a bath and a half. Thus the sock and the sneaker and the razor. As she always did, Ann refused to pick up after the boys. If the sock and the sneaker and the razor were still there at breakfast time, Ann would lay down the law. As always, Hastings would remain silent. But his expression, a concerned frown, would put him firmly on Ann’s side.

  He rinsed the toothbrush, rinsed his mouth, placed the toothpaste in the cabinet and the toothbrush in the rack, and switched off the light.

  11:55 P.M. Hastings settled himself more comfortably in the bed, sighed, glanced at the clock. The time was almost twelve. When he’d first come to bed, sliding beneath the covers, turning toward Ann, kissing her, the pattern of their caress had acknowledged that, tonight, by mutual consent, it was too late to make love. The conclusion was companionable, and after he’d returned to his side of the bed they’d begun to talk of the day’s events. Ann had described the ongoing sexual adventures of Eva Jane West, her good friend and fellow teacher at Lick Elementary. Then, after Ann had playfully commiserated with him in his “midlife bifocal slump,” he’d described his meeting with Meredith Powell, at 450 Sutter. Once having started the story, he realized, too late, that he had a choice: either tell Ann he’d invited Meredith to lunch or else lie about it. A change of subject hadn’t worked; Meredith’s story had aroused Ann’s sympathy, and she asked for more details. When Hastings had finally mentioned the lunch, he’d sensed that his timing was wrong, out of its natural spontaneous sequence. But, to his fine-tuned interrogator’s ear, Ann’s response rang true, unclouded by pique, as she said: “We should have her to dinner, Frank. It sounds like she’s in trouble.”

  In the bedroom darkness he smiled. “Maybe we should have her with Eva Jane. We could make it a counseling session.”

  “Secretly,” she answered starchily, “Eva Jane enjoys her problems. This is something else. This is incest. For a woman, there’s nothing worse. Rape is bad enough. But incest—” Lying on her back, Ann shook her head. “She never had a chance. That’s the hell of it.”

  “I know …” He yawned, settled more comfortably.

  “But you don’t know. I don’t mean you. I mean men.” In her voice he could clearly hear the beginning of a polemic. “A man simply can’t know the effect on a woman when she’s raped. They experience sex differently.”

  “How true.” Feeling his way, he spoke humorously.

  “Men externalize, women internalize. Men conquer, women submit, that’s the folklore. But if women don’t submit with love, then they’re violated. And a girl’s who’s raped, she’s never the same. And if it’s her father—” Outraged, she let it go unfinished.

  “Hmmm …”

  “You’re going to sleep.”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  “Oh—” She dug her elbow sharply into his ribs.

  Reluctantly he roused himself. “I feel very, very sorry for Meredith Powell. I think I have some idea what happened to her—what her father did to her. But you have to remember that I’ve never believed in taking the office home with me. It makes things worse, not better.”

  “She’s your friend, though. She’s—” Ann hesitated, searching for the phrase. “She’s part of your past.”

  “You’re right. Altogether, I maybe said a hundred words to Meredith Powell as long as I knew her. I never liked her father, and I wasn’t crazy about her brother, either. But, still, you’re right. The old neighborhood—childhood—” He sighed, lapsed into silence.

  “You said you think she’s in danger.”

  “I didn’t say ‘danger.’ I said ‘trouble.’”

  Another silence followed. Then he felt her move closer, felt her fingers lightly brush his cheek.

  “Okay,” she said, “close your eyes. But you’ve got to promise we’ll have her to dinner.”

  “Mmmm. …”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 14

  8:15 A.M. ALL NIGHT, sometimes asleep, sometimes wakeful, he had seen the images flicker and flare. His mother had worn a black witch’s hat, his aunt stood in the docket with blood-gushing stumps instead of hands, arms resting on the courtroom’s wooden railing. The images of the railing constantly reappeared; its thick wooden spokes were the bars of a cage. The cage, too, reappeared; from outside, sometimes, he saw himself imprisoned. The women’s faces flickered and flared, some of them flesh, some of them pigment, all of them goblin faces within, models’ faces without, smooth porcelain masks.

  But there were no eyes, nothing but empty sockets.

  Only she had eyes, his first duchess, a literary allusion. Her eyes were wide open forever, risen from the dead.

  He was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling. It was Wednesday, February 14.

  The day she must die.

  St. Valentine’s Day. He smiled. Yes, Valentine’s Day.

  10:30 A.M. Naked, Charles stood before the mirror. In his blue period, Picasso had done three paintings that had always reminded him of himself: pale, slim youths with long legs, a spare torso, a narrow, deftly rendered head. It was an altogether pleasingly proportioned male body, no muscles bunched, no self-consciously struck poses.

  Last night, in the vernacular, he’d scored. She’d come to the party dressed in a white nylon jumpsuit, with a neck-to-crotch zipper, a large brass ring attached. As the party progressed, the zipper dropped lower, exposing more and more of her breasts. When he arrived, she’d already been high: a raw, lusty twenty-year-old, beautifully built, literally a refugee from a Fresno farm, milk fed, come to San Francisco for the action. All she needed was a change of jumpsuit, spare underpants, a diaphragm, and a loud laugh. Last night had been her first time out at a party where anything was available, the farm girl’s fantasy. Her sheer animal energy had quickly become the party’s focus. All evening, each in their own way, touching and feeling, taunting, patronizing, they’d all used her, fresh new meat. In another year, two parties a week, she’d be drugged out, used up.

  All night, shrilly, senselessly, she’d caromed from man to man—woman to woman. But he knew he’d take her home—her place, not his place, never his place. She’d tumbled onto the sofa. He’d drawn down the zipper. He’d done it slowly, a celebration of sensation, a ceremony within a ceremony. Then he’d roused her, the first necessity. And then he’d begun: quick, deft, decisive manipulations. At first she’d been insensate. Then, roused, she’d begun her resistance, the first imperative. He’d—

  From the bedroom, the telephone was ringing.

  Yes—at ten-thirty, the ti
ming was predictable. Utterly predictable.

  10:33 A.M. He replaced the telephone in its cradle and sat silently for a moment, eyes downcast, staring at the telephone.

  In less than a minute, one short, cryptic conversation, the commitment had been made, the decision taken. Already he was conscious of a quickening, a tightening.

  So much of life, someone had written, was anticipation. Sex began in the imagination. A woman’s body, naked, was never as erotic as that same body imagined beneath the clothing. An orgasm was always incomplete; only the next orgasm promised perfection—and the next—and the next. Drugs promised visions that never materialized: sketches in black and white, colors left to harden on the palette. The pleasure principle would always promise more than it delivered. It was simple logic.

  Leaving pain, the eternal constant.

  Pain never promised more than it delivered; the equation always balanced out.

  But pain, like pleasure, was transitory. The sharper the pain, the quicker it ended.

  Leaving only death.

  Sometimes he wrote it out: those five magic letters. He’d first done it, first dared to do it, when he was sixteen. Realizing that the inscription would be magical, his subconscious had guided him. He’d just learned that Carmody had been expelled. Hardly aware of his own movements, he’d gone to his room and locked the door. He’d gone to his desk and sat down. The time had been one o’clock; he’d been due at his American Government class. He’d been aware that reality was shifting; somehow he existed apart from himself. He could visualize himself as he sat at the desk, head slightly bowed, staring at nothing. The scene seemed to glow, everything incandescent. No, not everything. Just himself, the outline of his body.

  And as he sat there, existing in a different dimension, he allowed himself to remember the scene. Carmody had made the arrangements. Carmody had found the woman and rented the room. Cleverly, Carmody had gone to the best hotel in town, saying that his parents were coming for an end-of-the-semester visit. And Carmody had gotten the liquor, too: Dewar’s Scotch, the whiskey his father drank.

  They’d paid her fifty dollars. Almost forty years ago, it was a princely sum, for which she’d promised to do them both. “Satisfaction guaranteed,” she said, drinking from the bottle. Then, at Carmody’s request, she’d turned out the lights. He’d gone first, an artless, ineffectual stab, over before it began. Carmody, the experienced one, had taken longer, doubtless done it better. The whiskey bottle had remained on the bedside table. He could remember the sound she made, greedily swallowing the whiskey. Today whores used heroin, two-hundred-dollar-a-day habits. Forty years ago—thirty-seven years ago, actually—a bottle of liquor had sufficed.

  When the bottle was drained, she’d announced that she was going. He could remember the careless sound of her voice, casually contemptuous. Drunkenly Carmody had argued with her. She’d promised to stay with them, do them again, Carmody said. She said something obscene. Carmody pushed her; she slapped him. Instantly the three of them were fighting, the half-naked woman wearing black panties and a black bra. She’d fought like a man, viciously, fists closed, head down, cursing them. He’d struck out at her, felt his fist sink into the soft, yielding flesh of her breast. He’d struck her again. She began to scream. Carmody was on the floor, both hands clutching his crotch. “Stop her,” he’d gasped, his voice hoarse, rattling in his throat. “Shut her up.”

  He’d thrown himself on her, fingers locked at her throat. As they struggled, her body wild against his, he’d come to climax. Then consciousness had faded. He’d heard Carmody’s voice only faintly: “You’ll kill her. For God’s sake, let go. You’ll kill her.”

  Sitting at his schoolboy’s desk, thirty-seven years ago, he’d recalled the scene in reverse, beginning with Carmody’s voice, ending when the whore had knocked on the hotel room door. Then, fixing the episode forever, a permanent part of his consciousness, he began again, first to last. He’d remained motionless at the desk for more than an hour, oblivious to the passage of time.

  No, not quite oblivious. And not quite motionless, either. Because, unconsciously, he’d written the word DEATH on a slip of paper. The word had been spelled out in capital letters, the letters unevenly spaced.

  Just as now, unconsciously, he’d printed DEATH on the scratch pad beside the telephone. In capital letters. Unevenly spaced.

  10:45 A.M. “A croissant, please. And coffee. French roast, please.”

  Behind the glass showcase, the clerk remained motionless for a moment, simply staring at her. His round, muscular arms were spread wide on the counter. He was in his early twenties. Dark complexion. Black, insolent eyes. A go-to-hell mouth. Thick black hair, medium long, custom cut. Arabic, perhaps, or Italian, or Mexican. His expression was indolent: the Latin stud, strutting his stuff, making his macho moves. Meredith had seen this same face in a dozen countries, on countless piazzas. And, yes, her response had always been the same: involuntary sexual attraction, tempered by bitter experience.

  “A croissant, did you say?”

  “Yes. And French roast.”

  He wore a plain white T-shirt that showed off his weight-lifter’s torso. Without looking, she knew he would be wearing weathered blue jeans, tight at the crotch and buttocks. Flexing a bulging bicep, he gestured. “Sit down. I’ll bring it over.”

  “That’s all right. I’ll wait.”

  “No—come on—” He started a slow, sensual smile, gestured to the table. The dominant male, asserting himself. “Sit down.”

  Was it dominance? Or narcissism? Unless she went to bed with him, she’d never know.

  “Thank you—” Meredith went to an oak table beside the plate-glass window. The small Italian-style café served only pastries and sandwiches and closed in late afternoon. Most of the patrons were local and differed according to the time of day. In the mornings young mothers with their babies came in, usually for a quick, often-harassed cup of coffee on their way to a nearby park or playground. Because the neighborhood was Russian Hill, and the prices were therefore expensive, almost all of the café’s patrons spoke with the accents of the privileged: voices refined in good eastern colleges, voices that were accustomed to dealing with inferiors. She’d been coming here regularly for more than a year. During that time, growing one year older, her envy of the mothers and their babies had grown acute, a self-inflicted wound that never healed.

  Today, because of the dark sullen clouds and the light rain that had begun to fall, there was only one other customer in the café, an older man with a lean, aristocratic face. His eyes were a clear, vivid blue: eyes in constant motion, unclouded by age or defeat. He wore a small white military-style mustache, carefully clipped. This was a face, young or old, that a woman would never forget.

  She was aware that the waiter—was that the word?—was making his approach. Standing very close to her, his thigh within an inch of her arm, he placed the croissant and coffee on the table. Now he stepped back and stood looking down at her.

  “Anything else?” He spoke softly, his voice an insistent caress.

  Some women were defined by their careers, or their clothes, or their husbands, or their children. Her life was defined by men like this hot-eyed youth with his bulging biceps and bulging private parts and his thighs big beneath his jeans.

  “No, thank you.” As she said it, she deliberately turned her gaze to the window. The café was on Hyde Street, a block beneath the crest of Russian Hill. A cable car was approaching from the south, rattling and clanging. Because the weather was bad, only a handful of tourists clung to the outside stairs.

  “If you want anything else, you’ll be sure and tell me, won’t you?

  Some women, she knew, would respond curtly, sending him on his way. Others would insult him with a withering look. She chose merely to break off a corner of the croissant and begin nibbling as she watched the cable car pass. And, a reprieve, two young matrons came in, both of them dressed in trendy foul-weather gear. When the women moved expectantly to the gla
ss display case, the waiter had no choice but to resume his post.

  Yesterday at this time she’d been at 450 Sutter, with Dr. Price. How much was she risking, seeing him? Was the risk worth the reward?

  She’d told him about her father on her second visit. She hadn’t intended to tell him. She hadn’t done it under a deep trance; she hadn’t even been lying on the psychiatrist’s couch, that tired cliché. She’d simply been talking, telling Price how it felt when she’d realized that she had to get out of her marriage. Why? Price had asked. What was it about Gary that she found objectionable?

  “Objectionable,” she’d said, snorting derisively. Then, hardly aware that she was doing it, she’d told him about Gary—about the endless ways he abused her, sometimes without ever touching her. It had all come out in a blind rush, a torrent of words with their own momentum—words and phrases she hadn’t realized she even possessed, a revelation. As she talked, she’d begun to cry; softly at first, then hopelessly, without pride: deep, wracking sobs. For a time Dr. Price had sat silently, his face expressionless. Then, calmly, he’d taken a box of tissues from a drawer and handed the box to her. He’d waited for her to blow her nose and wipe her eyes. Then, still calmly, he’d said that her father and her husband were similar personalities: men who got off abusing people.

  Something in the way he said it, so dispassionately, so matter-of-factly, had made her tell him. And in seconds—in the time it took to say a half-dozen words—she’d told him about her father.

  And then yesterday, again without forethought, in a single blind, blundering rush of words, she’d told Frank.