Precipice

by Tom Savage

  She got the suitcase from the closet, extracted the scrap-book, the black gown, and the wig and laid them out on the bed. She took the box of dye from the vanity-table drawer into the bathroom, turned on the faucets, and wet her hair. The job was quick: she was now something of an expert.

  While she waited for the color to set, she carefully removed the tinted contact lenses from her eyes and stored them in their little case. She walked back into the bedroom and laid out the pale-blue stationery and the envelope on the desk. She checked her watch: ten minutes to one.

  Finally, she reached once more into the suitcase and pulled out the knife. She stood in the center of the little bedroom in the quiet house on the cliff, staring down at the beautiful Greek dagger, feeling the weight of it in her trembling hands.

  The young man behind the desk at the car-rental agency looked up and smiled. “Good morning. Welcome to St. Thomas. May I help you?”

  “Yes,” said the dark, bearded gentleman in the rather loud flower-print shirt and reflective sunglasses. “I believe y’all have a reservation fuh me. Petrillo.”

  He showed the young man a boarding pass from LIAT Airlines, with the name written across it in magic marker. Then he handed him the rental agency’s receipt, stamped PAID IN FULL.

  “Right,” said the young man, glancing down at his list. “Your car is waiting in the lot outside. Just show the attendant this.” He handed the tall, obviously Southern gentleman a claim chit. “Thank you for using our service, Mr. Petrillo, and remember: we try harder. Have a nice day.”

  “Why, thank ya! Yall have a nahce day, too.”

  At that moment, a boisterous family of four headed by a heavyset, obnoxiously strident woman with a look of grim determination on her face pushed their way up to the counter. With a sigh, the young man turned his attention to them.

  Much later, when he was informed of his small part in the drama, he would barely remember Mr. Petrillo. He would not even be able to come up with a useful description of him. Not that it mattered: by then it was too late to do anything about it anyway.

  She put down the blow-dryer and inspected her hair in the mirror. Yes, it was good. Not quite the original shade, but close enough.

  She picked up the long, flowing black robe and put it on. Yes; this was good, too. Antigone, in such attire, had faced her tormentors.

  Then she piled her hair on top of her head and fitted the wig into place. The final touch. Good. . . .

  At last she took the scrapbook from the bed and placed it on the vanity table. She sat down, reached for the stationery with the somewhat odd-looking name engraved at the top, picked up a pen, and began to write.

  Adam drove across the island, keeping to the hills and back roads, being careful to avoid the waterfront highway, which would be packed even on this national holiday. There were four cruise ships in port today, and resort towns could not afford to shut down for Labor Day. In St. Thomas, it was business as usual.

  Kauai, ten years ago, had been the same: cruise ships and tourists. Fortunately for him, Darlene’s beach house, like Cliffhanger, had been far removed from all activity. No one had seen or heard anything. And Islip, not being a resort, had been a snap. The little Long Island town had slept that night twenty years ago, unaware of what was happening in the darkness around them.

  He smiled. Islip; Kauai; St. Thomas. Such colorful places, so very, very far from Farnsworth, Minnesota.

  He had left that place far behind him. There had been nothing to hold him there anyway. His father had wandered off somewhere with some woman, never to be seen again, when he was a baby. His mother, heartsick and silent, had managed for the two of them as best she could. That was what everyone had thought, at any rate: no one had been around to see the abuse, the beatings, or the harness that kept the child a literal prisoner in the house while she went off to work every day.

  After she began to drink, she didn’t always come home regularly, leaving him bound to the bedpost for days, sometimes, while she was out with one of the evergrowing legion of “uncles.” He always knew when there was a new “uncle” around: his mother would cover her blond hair with a bright-red wig and begin behaving in a strange, exciting, overtly sexual manner. Then she would disappear, often for as long as a week.

  He would lie on the bedroom floor, wet and stinking from his own urine and excrement, tired and hungry, listening to the sounds of the birds that skimmed the lake behind the house. Birds: those ultimate free spirits. They went where they wanted, when they wanted, with no chains, no harnesses. That, the child on the bedroom floor told himself, was God. No chains, no harnesses. Freedom. From places, from people, from emotions of any kind.

  When he was thirteen, he figured out how to get out of the harness when she left and back into it before she returned. Thus he was able to wander about the house, and thus he ultimately found the box in the corner of the attic containing the few possessions his father had left behind. The books with the beautiful pictures of sailboats in them; the pink shirt with the little monogram, AP for Arvil Pederssen, on the pocket; and the knife. The gorgeous Greek dagger. The Kouronos. He would hold it in his hand for hours, feeling its power.

  It was the knife that had given him the idea.

  He’d started with the birds. He wasn’t sure why—not now, anyway. Because they were free, maybe, as he was not. Because they could fly. Because they sang outside the window, sang in the sunlight as only those beloved of God could sing. Because God loved the birds and did not love him. For whatever reason, he’d started there: spreading kernels of popcorn along the windowsill and sitting, silent and unmoving, waiting. He would wait for hours sometimes before one of them swept down from the sky or from the branches of a nearby tree. One would always start it, creeping warily toward him, pecking nervously at the corn; and other always followed. When one of them cast aside its natural fear and came close to him, he would reach out—gently, gently—with his trembling hand. He would hold it firmly, staring down at its little face, studying the wide-eyed fear, and feeling the useless flapping of now-helpless wings against his fingers. He would watch, transported, filled with a power he never understood and could not begin to describe. For as exquisitely long as he possibly could, he would hold its life in his hands.

  Then he would use his father’s knife.

  He’d started with the birds, always imagining they were his mother in her red wig. He’d buried them in the disused flowerbed that ran along one side of the house, heaping dirt over their bodies, waiting for the day.

  He’d waited for years, planning carefully, dreaming of it, watching in breathless anticipation for one rare moment when his mother was alone in the house with him, with no “uncles” around.

  That opportunity had arrived on Labor Day, exactly thirty years ago. By then there were more than two hundred birds in the flowerbed.

  He would never, ever forget the day. He would never forget the thrill of it, that wonderful, helpless expression of shock on his mother’s face when she whirled around to see him standing there in the kitchen behind her, the Kouronos in his hand.

  He had hesitated, watching her, feeling the power as she stared at her husband’s ski mask, the one he’d found at the bottom of the box in the attic. He’d suspended the moment for as long as he possibly could; then, just before she could scream, he had meted out his justice. He had proved his majesty. That glorious experience had been—

  Excellent.

  Perfect.

  God.

  Nobody in Farnsworth had been the wiser. How awful, they’d said afterward. The robbery and the murder, and that poor seventeen-year-old knocked unconscious, bound to the bed, unable to remember anything about the intruder except that he wore gloves and a black ski mask.

  He smiled now, turning onto the last road, the one that would lead him past Bolongo toward Cliffhanger. The beautiful house on the cliff overlooking the sea, so different from the house by the lake in Minnesota. On his eighteenth birthday, three months after burying his mother,
he’d left that place behind for the Merchant Marines and New York, with nothing but his astonishing good looks and his desire. To be rich, to be free, to be a bird on the ocean.

  To be God.

  Money was his ticket to freedom, and he had no trouble finding rich women to supply it. Madeleine Barclay had allowed him to be God. So had Darlene Bishop.

  And now, he thought, turning in through the stone portal with the brass plaques gleaming in the sun, it’s Kay Belden’s turn. It’s time to be God again.

  She placed the pages in the envelope, sealed it, and carefully wrote the name on the front. Then she set the letter on top of the scrapbook on the vanity table, picked up the knife, and left the bedroom.

  At the bottom of the stairs, she turned and went across to the foyer. She knelt for a moment and did what had to be done, then straightened up and turned around. As she walked toward the sliding doors, she noticed the glare of the sunlight on the glass. Almost two o’clock. . . .

  It was fitting, somehow; the perfect time for it. She’d always imagined that it was at this time of day that Antigone had taken her honor and her fate into her own hands. The harsh Greek sun would have poured down on her, glinting on the shackles that bound her hands. She would have felt the warmth permeating her skin as she walked, erect and defiant, to her courageous destiny.

  She strode out onto the sundeck, into the light, and over to the edge. Gripping the railing with her outstretched hands, she stared out at the glistening surface of the sea, not seeing it. Instead she saw the glistening eyes of a hundred sorrowful, black-robed women. She listened: above the roar of the surf, she could hear them as they filled the sky with their lamentation.

  Thus attended she stood, erect and defiant, awaiting the entrance of the king.

  He stood under the tamarind tree, preparing himself for his entrance. The house was silent, still—almost too still. He thought about that. Kay would be in there, he thought, waiting for his call. The dog, if Diana had been successful, would be asleep somewhere.

  He smiled. If Diana had been successful: as if he had any doubt of that! She was such a remarkable creature. Every step of the way, he had deferred to her excellent suggestions. Where had she been twenty years ago? Ten years ago? He’d been on his own then. Karen and Kimberly had been such idiots, such dull accomplices. They’d both managed to look bewildered and upset and to babble just the right things to the authorities, but that had been the extent of their usefulness. As for Charlie and Stephen, well . . . Stephen had been an excellent stand-in on the burning yacht in Kauai. And he’d gotten him to meet him there that day in the same way he’d gotten all the others to do his bidding.

  There had been no body on the Madeleine twenty years ago, but only because Charlie, for all his love, had been too decent, too conventional in his thinking. So Charlie had not been let in on it; only Karen Lawrence had known, and she and Charlie had never known about each other. Karen had been disposed of, but his lover in the Merchant Marines had been spared. The mental picture he had of Charlie weeping at the memorial service, with Margaret Barclay and that goddamned brat beside him, never failed to amuse him.

  Charlie and his daughter. His only living victims.

  His daughter.

  He should have killed her. He thought he’d struck her hard enough, but he obviously hadn’t. His worst moment in the first operation had come when the doctors told him and the sobbing Margaret that the child was out of danger, would live. He’d fallen to his knees and loudly thanked God, while inside he had cursed himself for making such a stupid, costly mistake. When he disappeared, six months later, he’d only been able to take half of Madeleine’s fortune with him. The rest had gone to the child. He often wondered where the brat was now, and cursed her existence as he did every day of his life.

  He would not make the same mistake with Lisa.

  Yes, he thought now, watching the quiet facade of Cliffhanger, there had been several mistakes in the first operation. But not in the second. Kimberly had played her part, as had Stephen, and he’d sat tight for three years, the grieving widower. Then the explosion on the Darlene—Stephen had arrived on cue for a lovers’ tryst with him—and shortly afterward he’d seen to Kimberly and her little girl. Another brat. And he’d managed to get away with all of Darlene’s money.

  He’d perfected his art with the second operation. But this time, ten years later, he’d begun to wonder just how he’d go about getting rid of Kay. Greg was of no use to him: he wasn’t even homosexual, much less in his thrall. And there didn’t seem to be an appropriate girl. . . .

  Then he’d met Selena, and everything had fallen into place. Greg knew about Selena, which signed his death warrant. The disposal of Greg at sea had gone without a hitch, and he’d cast his eye around for just the right new mate. He’d found him in Kyle, the handsome young hippie that Jack and Nancy had introduced him to at a party at the yacht club. Kyle was interested, sexually speaking. That interest had soon become love: Adam had seen to that. A fire on the Kay, with Kyle as stand-in . . . yes, perfect. Kyle knew nothing of the plan, nor would he. He would merely be held in reserve—for another two or three years, maybe—until his charred remains could be useful in the fiery climax of this latest endeavor.

  As for Selena, well . . .

  She was disposable, too. They all were. She’d gone the longest of any of them without succumbing to his sexual charms, but that would change after today. It was her abstention, he knew—her refusal to do precisely as he wanted—that made her so exciting to him. But she, too, would come around. They always did.

  And after that, when he’d tired of her, she would die.

  Now. Now was the time. He looked up at the clear, sunny sky beyond the branches of the tamarind and smiled. The energy filled him as it always had, always would: the keen anticipation of proving, once again, his ultimate, unquestionable power.

  He reached up and gently pulled the goatee from his chin. Then he dug in his pockets for the gloves and the ski mask. He pulled the gloves on slowly, savoring the feeling of excitement, trying to make it last as long as possible. With a soft moan of pleasure, he pulled the mask down over his head. Then he walked steadily, carefully across the drive and up to the front door. A gentle turn, a gentle push, and he was in the house.

  She had decided not to kill him. If she killed him, she would surely go to prison. If by some friendly chance she was acquitted, it wouldn’t really matter. She would merely be in another kind of jail; marked, singled out, ostracized. She would be that woman, the one who murdered her father, expelled forever from the company of men.

  Car was dead. Juana, with the erring Carlos and her child for distraction, had no time for friendship. Bob Taylor—in the hospital bed she’d put him in—was lost to her, as was any man who made the terrible mistake of loving her.

  And Margaret, her last, best hope, would be gone. When she learned that her niece had committed the ultimate outrage, she would cast her out. From her house and from her life. There would be no one, no one in the world, who cared.

  She very nearly smiled then, looking out over the blue Caribbean. The irony of it: Greek tragedy indeed.

  He should have killed me, she thought. I’ve known it all along, and I have finally come to accept the judgment of the gods. On that night, twenty years ago today, my father murdered my mother and tried to murder me. He should have finished the job.

  Now, all these years later, the gods would finally be appeased. There was no way he could make this look like a random act of violence. They would find her here or on the rocks below, and they would find the scrapbook and the letter to Margaret confessing everything, and someone—that little old police chief, perhaps—would put it all together.

  Then, at long last, they would have him. And then, at long last, Madeleine Barclay Petersen would sleep.

  She gripped the rail and listened to her weeping chorus and waited for the cold, swift plunge of the knife into her back.

  He stood just inside the doorway, assessing th
e situation. The living room was hushed, silent, waiting. A church, he thought. A holy place, awaiting the blessing that I, and I alone, can bring to it. He grinned as he looked slowly around him.

  Then he saw her. She was standing at the railing on the sundeck, her back to him, gazing out to sea.

  Excellent.

  He reached down into the pot of the spider palm next to him and dug around in the loose dirt until he felt it. He straightened, raising the knife up before him.

  And stared.

  The shock coursed through him as he brought it closer to his face and peered at its shiny, familiar form. A Kouronos. An exact duplicate. . . .

  Then he smiled again. Selena really is on my wavelength, he thought. Right down to this, the instrument of my justice. What a remarkable woman she is: I may actually be sad to see her go. And I must remember to call her Diana now.

  He clutched the knife in his outstretched left hand, feeling its power as an extension of his own. Kay had not moved. She stood at the railing, oblivious, her long black robe and curly red hair moving ever so slightly in the soft tropical breeze.

  Perfect.

  The sharp, indescribable thrill suffused him as he walked slowly forward across the room, toward the sliding glass doors. He paused in the doorway, watching. The roar of the sea against the rocks below; the cries of the birds outside the bedroom window; his mother standing at the sink in her bright red wig, looking out across the lake.

  God.

  He stepped silently out onto the redwood platform and moved across it, closing the gap between them. Now, at last, he stood just behind her, looking down. He had to see her eyes: that was part of it. The most important part. He had to see that she understood, that she knew what was happening to her.

  He held the Kouronos up above her in his left hand, prepared to strike. With his right hand he reached out, grasped his mother by the shoulder, and whirled her around to face him.