The Cradle Robber

by E. Joan Sims

  “Sure,” he laughed. “I can understand that. I go hunting sometimes. I love it when I’m out in the woods smelling like my prey, but I’m always ready to get back to the niceties of civilized life.”

  The guy was weird. There’s always something wrong with them, I thought sadly. This one looks like a dreamboat, but he’s a putz. He acts like I’ve been on safari. I dismissed his country club looks and gave up being dismayed because of my own sorry condition.

  “You said you had more water? I’ll get it,” I offered, raising up to lean over in back for the cooler. His hand looked soft, but closed over my wrist with the strength of a steel band. He stopped the car and pulled me deliberately back around to the front.

  “Let me,” he insisted with an edge to his soft voice. “I wouldn’t want you to strain yourself.” He reached back and handed me a bottle, then placed one more in the seat between us. “Just in case,” he said with another winning smile.

  A toothpaste ad, I mused. He’s a walking, talking, breathing, toothpaste ad.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Newton put a Frank Sinatra tape in the cassette player. Pretty soon “Old Blue Eyes” was asking Joe to “set ’em up,” at top volume in my ears.

  “GREAT SOUND, HUM?” yelled Newton. “JUST HAD THESE NEW SPEAKERS INSTALLED. TERRIFIC BASS, DON’T YOU THINK?”

  I nodded and smiled weakly. The sound pierced my brain with a numbing effect. I tried to think of a polite way to ask him to turn it off, or at least down a bit, but he was, after all, rescuing me.

  I leaned my head against the window and surreptitiously stuck my finger in my right ear. That was when I noticed we were going in the wrong direction. Newton had never turned around—he was headed back towards the trailer.

  “You’re going the wrong way,” I told him.

  “HOW’S THAT?” he yelled with a smile, as he directed Frankie’s back-up singers with his free hand.

  “THE WRONG WAY!” I shouted. “ROWAN SPRINGS IS BACK THAT WAY.”

  “OH…RIGHT YOU ARE! I’LL JUST TURN AROUND UP HERE IN THE DRIVEWAY. WOULDN’T WANT TO HURT THE UNDER CARRIAGE OF THIS LITTLE BABY.” He gave the polished wood dash a fond pat, and grinned amicably. His white teeth flashed in the sunlight. I didn’t smile back. I was tired of smiling.

  I pressed my head back against the leather headrest and tried to block out the music. I had never particularly liked Frankie—he was too skinny when he was young, and too jaded when he was old. Kenny Rogers—now there was a man who could age gracefully. And Toby Keith—he had a sense of humor as well as…

  Something Newton said finally penetrated my thoughts. How did he know about a driveway up ahead where he could turn around? And he said he tried to call Mother when he first saw me on the road, but he didn’t know for certain who I was until he asked, “Are you Paisley Sterling?”

  Don’t be a dummy, I thought to myself. It was a pretty damned good guess that the bedraggled, dirty woman he found stumbling down a country road was the woman he had been looking for; but what about his knowing where the driveway was?

  I closed my eyes and pretended to be resting, but my mind was going a hundred miles an hour. Newton was Judge Hershey’s assistant. Andy Joiner told me that when he came out to the farm with the injunction. He had even hinted that it was Newton who signed the order and not the Judge. What the hell was going on?

  The blast of music stopped with a mind-lurching abruptness as Newton turned off the tape player.

  “You’ve figured it out, haven’t you?” he asked quietly.

  I opened my eyes and turned to face him. I smiled as innocently as I could. “What do you mean, figured it out? Figured what out?”

  “Good thing you didn’t go in for theater. And forget about playing poker. Those big green eyes will give you away every time.”

  I grabbed the door handle. We weren’t going that fast. Maybe I could throw myself out of the car and come up running. The edge of the woods wasn’t so very far off the road. Maybe I could make it to the trees before he could stop the car and come after me.

  “Don’t try to open the door—handy little thing, child locks—I’ve got all the buttons I need over here to keep you all to myself.”

  “What the hell?”

  “Now, now, mustn’t curse,” he chided. “It’s so unattractive in a woman. American women know nothing about femininity. You could learn a lot from the fair sex in my country.”

  “And just what country is that?” I asked with a pounding heart. As long as I was a captive audience, I might as well get my money’s worth. “Cassie said you counted in Spanish…”

  “Ah, yes! The lovely girl with the coffee. That was a silly little slip-up on my part. She quite took my breath away. You must be very proud of her—so tall and slim— such lovely breasts. I shall have to console her after all of this is over and she is grieving over the loss of her mother.”

  “You scum sucking pig!”

  “Oh, my! Ruby said you had a very ordinary vocabulary. Frankly, I was hoping she was making that up. Poor Ruby,” he mused. “She did have a tendency to stretch the truth. That was her undoing,” he sighed. “Just like yours is stubborn curiosity. If only you had left well enough alone, neither of us would be out here in this neck of the woods looking for a good place to hide your body.”

  I turned to lunge at him, but stopped short at the sight of a wicked looking Saturday night special.

  “Don’t make me ruin this beautiful interior,” he begged. “I had to wait an extra month to get this color scheme. And please take me seriously. No one ever seems to believe that I really will blow their brains out until I actually pull the trigger.”

  “Why do you have to kill me? I don’t know anything,” I added as persuasively as I could.

  “True. You don’t know very much, even though you may think you do. But you’re creative, and sooner or later you would come up with all the answers. This way, I’ll have a head start. By the time they find your body, if they ever do, I’ll be well on my way to establishing a new identity in another state. I won’t make the same mistakes I made here. Believe it or not, after the thrill of the first few times, this killing business gets kind of old. I don’t look forward to it like I used to. I much prefer little sessions like I had with that little whore last night.”

  “You beat Clementina up? I thought that was Judge Hershey!”

  Newton laughed so hard he almost dropped the gun. “Hershey? That old fool? What made you think it was him?” he gasped.

  “Clementina, and the other girls…they said the judge stole their babies. You mean he didn’t…he isn’t?”

  “I’m the judge, you silly bitch! To them anyway. I was a judge in Mexico—the Districto Federale. They had all heard of me—heard horror tales of the judge who steals babies. It wasn’t really true, but my countrymen can spin as good a yarn as you, probably better. Actually, I simply took babies from mothers who were prostitutes, mothers who already had too many children, and young unmarried girls who were foolish enough to get pregnant. I arranged for the children to have good homes in the United States—comfortable homes with rich parents who could afford to give them everything, parents who could afford to make me rich, as well. What’s the harm in that, I ask you?”

  “Well, nothing, I suppose, unless you’re a mother whose baby was torn out of your arms.”

  “My, my! Such hyperbole! Do you really make a living writing books?”

  I ignored the question and asked one of mine instead. “So, what’s a renowned baby-stealing judge from Mexico City doing in Rowan Springs? Run out of children in Mexico?” He started to grin and I couldn’t help myself. I had to wipe that smile off his face. “Or did they run you out?” I added wickedly.

  The blow took me by surprise. Stars burst behind my eyelids, and I slumped forward, barely conscious and unable to move. I don’t remember how much farther Newton drove, but he passed the trailer and pulled up in front of an old tobacco barn. I was totally unable to fight back or even resist when h
e dragged me out of the car and into the building.

  Half of the shingles on the barn roof were missing. The missing shingles allowed the early morning sun to shine brightly on the lifeless body tied to one of the center support columns. Ruby Dawn Coleman’s wrists were tied together over her head and her arms were almost pulled out of their sockets where she had tried to get free before she died. Her face was swollen and purple, and her tongue flopped over her lower lip where she had nearly bitten it in half. Ants were swarming over her face, eating the blood and mucus. Soon, they would be eating her flesh.

  The first movement I made was automatic. I retched and vomited all the bottled water Newton had given me. I got immense pleasure out of the fact that he didn’t move quickly enough and I managed to splash it on his expensive loafers.

  “Bitch!” he yelled, slamming me hard against the second support column. He snapped the handcuffs back on my left wrist, and then tied my hands together just like Ruby Dawn’s. He made me stand on tiptoe while he hooked the rope and the chain over a big nail. One more length of rope went around my middle and held me close to the beam. Now, Ruby Dawn and I were like bookends. Only one thing kept us from matching: I wasn’t dead yet.

  Newton found an old burlap sack in the corner and wiped off his shoes, then he sauntered back over and faced me. “I let Ruby off easy, because of our little relationship. I didn’t even hurt her. I just left her alone to die. But you, Paisley Sterling—you have been nothing but trouble from the very beginning. I’ll have to think of something special for you.”

  “How can you say that?” I gasped. “I never even met you until forty minutes ago?”

  “Oh, you’ve met me, you just didn’t know it. That day you came driving back to the airport through the field…”

  “You were the one who shot at me? Why on earth?”

  “You were getting too close to Ramon Valdez. If you had seen his body before I got to him, you would have told the police he was already dead before I slit his throat — that he died when I forced him to jump from my Cessna. Since I was the only one who landed at the airport that afternoon, they would have known it was me who killed him. I couldn’t have that. I wasn’t ready to leave Rowan Springs, yet—too many loose ends, and one more baby to sell.”

  His words chilled my blood. I forgot the pins and needles shooting through my arms and the cramps in my calves from standing on the balls of my feet. All I could think of was the certain knowledge that this man would make me feel more pain than I had ever felt before I died.

  I took a deep breath and tried to find some anger. Anger would get rid of the fear and give me strength. I remembered Clementina’s battered face and the terror on the faces of the other young girls. Anger would see me safely through this ordeal. I had to save Clementina, and I couldn’t forget that he had threatened to “console” Cassie after I was gone. I had to make sure I didn’t “go” anywhere.

  “Was Ramon Valdez part of Rudolfo’s posse? Is that why you killed him?” I asked, trying to put some muscle in my voice. “Was he a Texas Ranger, or a Mexican Federale?”

  Newton smiled broadly as he took a long cigar from a case in his pocket. “See what I mean about creative thinking? Somehow you figured out I killed Rudolfo and the portly Texan. Maybe I should read one of your books. You’re a smart lady.”

  “I really appreciate the fan mail, but you haven’t answered my questions.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Why not?” He took a moment to snip the end off his cigar—his expensive Cuban cigar. The fear came rushing back as I saw the little domed end fall at his feet. Now I knew who had killed Wanda.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” he told me politely. “I might as well enlighten you.”

  He brushed off the top of an old wooden barrel and sat down carefully, extending his long legs casually in front of him. The shine on his shoes was only a little dimmed by my watery vomit, and I marveled at the way he could look so much like an ad man’s dream while speaking of death.

  “Ramon Valdez was a hired killer. He brutally murdered my entire family—my wife and two children.”

  I stared at him, the surprise evident in my face, but still I wasn’t ready to sympathize with this monster.

  “Oh, don’t feel sorry for me,” he laughed, his voice imbued with arrogance. “Isabel was a pious whining cow! I couldn’t stand the sight of her—on her knees day and night begging God to forgive me for my pleasures—for my love of other, more beautiful women, and for the vast amount of money I received from powerful men willing to pay me for my silence.” He lit the cigar with a slim gold lighter and politely turned away to keep the smoke from getting in my eyes. Under the circumstances, his good manners made me want to vomit again.

  “I’m glad she’s dead. Sooner or later I might have killed her myself,” he admitted calmly.“She bored me beyond belief.”

  “And what about your children? Did you want to see them dead, too?”

  He took off his dark sunglasses and stuck them through the neckline of his shirt. Beautiful, dark—almost feminine—lashes framed his cold amber eyes. The depth of loathing in them was evil incarnate.

  “They were just like her. Always whining and begging for a piece of my life.” His voice was flat and unemotional when he added, “I found them unpleasant and disappointing. I shall not miss them.”

  He took a long puff from his cigar, obviously relishing the taste. “I am glad they are dead,” he continued. “But the killing—that was an insult to me. That was an attack on my family honor—pundehonor. You know what that means? It means I had to avenge the assault on my family name—to find the one responsible and make him pay for what he did. Not to mention the fact that he also interrupted a very lucrative business enterprise, and my very special relationship with a lovely lady named Carmencita.

  It took three years, but with the help of some people I know, I finally found him

  and flew him back here under the pretext of hiring him to assassinate someone else. Just before we touched down, I revealed my identity and gave him the choice of jumping from my plane as it landed, and possibly surviving the fall as a cripple, or getting a bullet through the heart. The stupid fool chose to jump—exactly as I knew he would. The memory of the fear on his face will give me pleasure for a very long time.”

  “Man, you are some piece of work! What do you do for fun?”

  He turned and looked at me, then he began to laugh heartily, almost uncontrollably. “Believe me,” he said wiping the tears from his eyes, “you do not want to know.” His feral smile chilled me to the bone.

  He stretched his legs and re-crossed them at the ankles, then resumed his self- congratulatory litany. “Thanks to my own creative initiative, I was able to resume my business operations here in Rowan Springs. I hated living in this miserable little town, but it served my purpose. With the money I made, I will be able to move to a bigger community and live more to my own taste.

  I love your country, Paisley Sterling. Life here is so comfortable, and one is always innocent until proven guilty. And that seems to be quite difficult to do. More often than not, the victim is under more suspicion than the perpetrator. Yes, justice is indeed blind here, especially if the one dispensing it is your golfing partner.”

  “Judge Hershey?”

  “He leaned closer. The cigar had a sweet strong smell. Amazing enough it made me think of Rafe. Newton had Rafe’s dark good looks, and as he talked, his voice took on the rhythm and structure of his native language.

  “Believe it, Chiquita, because in about one hour I will be playing golf with him and you will be food for the ants like poor Ruby over there.”

  I had to keep him talking. I was Scharazade, only in this case, the caliph was telling the tales. As long as he wanted an audience, I lived. It wasn’t difficult. I had a lot of questions.

  “How come you speak English so well? You have no accent at all. And you don’t look…”

  “Like a wetback?” he sneered. “I know what stereotypes people ha
ve about Mexicans. I’ve even used them to my own advantage. But to answer your question—my mother was una norteamericana—a silly little flower child who fulfilled her destiny and became a Tijuana whore. She taught me every dirty thing there is to know about life. I even acted as her pimp until she got too old and flabby to bring home money.”

  “I guess the concept of family honor didn’t come up until you married Isabel. What was she, very rich, with influential parents?”

  Newton’s smile was slow and lazy. “As a matter of fact, my dear wife paid my way through law school. And she bought my seat on the bench, although she didn’t know it at the time.”

  “Why did you leave Mexico? Wouldn’t a judge have a better chance of avenging his family’s honor than a man on the run trying to hide his identity?”

  “Ah, but you don’t know one very important fact. The night of the killings my houseman, Manuel, came to Isabel’s aid. The killer destroyed his face, poor man. He was, perhaps, the only one for whom I felt pity. He was mute, you see, and could not cry out. Manuel often wore my cast-off clothing, and therefore his dead body was mistaken for my own. I had spent that night in the arms of my mistress, and did not hear the news until the next morning. I immediately decided it was prudent to play dead until I could determine who the killer was. You might not imagine it to be so, but I had made quite a few enemies over the years.”

  “Oh,” I scoffed, “I don’t have much trouble imagining that at all. You’re a real prince, you are.”

  The blow came out of nowhere. He moved faster than I had thought possible. The pain brought tears to my eyes and filled me with dread of more to come.

  Newton ran his hand through my hair and pulled my drooping head up. “Don’t try that again, literary lady. As you may have guessed, I don’t enjoy being insulted.” He let go of my hair and tried to pull his hand back, but the heavy gold ring on his little finger was caught in my hair. He yanked out part of a tangled red curl, swearing softly as he checked to see if any of the diamonds were loose.