The Girls He Adored elp-1

by Jonathan Nasaw

  Suddenly her body stiffens; she raises her head.

  “Hush,” she says, though the dogs aren't making any noise. Soon there's no mistaking the sound of an engine: a vehicle is climbing the blacktop driveway that zigzags up the eastern side of the ridge. The dogs rush into the sally port, prepared to greet their master or silently ambush an intruder. A headlight beam snakes through the trees, pointing this way, then that, as the road doubles back on itself. The woman crouches behind the kennel as the Cadillac pulls into view, stops in front of the sally port. The driver's door opens; Ulysses steps out. Relief-wild, manic joy-surges through the woman. In her mind she rushes into the sally port to open the gate for him and throw herself into his arms.

  Then in the space of a heartbeat the relief gives way to fury. “How dare you!” she says under her breath, still crouched behind the kennel, as he walks around to the back of the car and helps a slender, unsteady woman out of the trunk. “How dare you leave me alone here while you go gallivanting around the countryside with some floozy.”

  And as he helps the floozy around to the front seat of the car, the woman in the silk mask sees that she has blond hair. Frosted blond hair, not even close to strawberry blond.

  “How dare you!” she whispers again, outraged beyond outrage. Her injured hands, in some atavistic reflex, try to clench themselves into fists, but feebly curled claws is all they can manage.

  48

  The office of the Sleep-Tite was empty, but Pender could hear voices in the back room. He rang the push-bell on the counter, and Wong bustled out.

  “FBI, hunh?” He waggled his finger. “You no tell Wong truth.”

  “Mr. Wong, why do I have the feeling that you speak English better than I do?”

  “Ha ha, very funny, wha' c'I do fah you now, you wan' money back? I give you money back fah room.”

  “Keep it-I need to speak with Mr. Ng.”

  “Don' know, never heard.” But although Wong's eyes hadn't flickered, his body shifted almost imperceptibly toward the door he'd just come through.

  “Big Nig, I believe you call him,” said Pender, strolling around the counter and heading for the back room.

  “Not me, I don' call him that.” Wong hurried in front of Pender, not to block him but to precede him. Dropping in unexpectedly to Wong's nightly pai gow game was a good way to get yourself killed. “You bettah not either, you know what's good fah you.”

  The door opened, Pender followed Wong inside. His first impression was one of disorientation, dislocation-it was not the sort of gathering Pender had expected to stumble upon in Dallas, Texas. He didn't know there were any Chinese in Dallas.

  And the six Chinese gentlemen seated around the green baize poker table seemed equally surprised to see Pender materializing in the smoky haze. A seventh man, a mountainous, dark-skinned Afro-Asian in a jungle-print Hawaiian shirt, who'd been slouching on a stool in the back of the room, sprang up and was reaching behind him for his weapon when Wong gave him the chill-out sign, pushing down with his palms on an invisible table.

  Pender waited in the doorway while Wong and Ng conferred, then Wong went back to his game while Ng followed Pender into the office, where Pender showed him Casey's mug shot.

  Ng, who was nearly as tall and broad as Pender, shrugged. “Don't know him.”

  Pender sighed. “Very good. I'll be sure to pass the word along to my numerous underworld contacts that Ng is a real stand-up guy. Now tell me everything you know about this murdering sack of shit before I open up a can of soup on you.”

  Not exactly your textbook affective interview, but Pender's head was starting to throb again.

  “Soup? What're you talking about, soup?”

  “Alphabet soup. You know: FBI, ATF, DEA, IRS, INS…”

  Ng weighed his options. It didn't take him long-the Fed seemed serious as a heart attack, and the murdering sack of shit was only a one-time casual acquaintance. “He said his name was Lee. He gave one of our gir-He gave a friend of mine a hard time. I kicked his ass. We had a drink, talked about martial arts. I don't remember much-it was like a year ago.”

  “I already know you didn't kick his ass,” said Pender. “He kicked yours. Next thing you tell me that doesn't jibe with everything else I already know, you're going to find out how much trouble an FBI man with a hard-on can make for you.”

  The roll of muscle above Ng's massive supraorbital ridge lowered in concentration. “I asked him how he whipped me. He said speed plus surprise equals power.”

  “What else?”

  “Said he coulda had a black belt only he wouldn't kiss the sensei 's ass.”

  “Black belt where? In what?”

  “Karate. Said he also wrestled in high school, boxed in Juvie.”

  Juvie, thought Pender. Juvenile Hall. An institutional past-pure gold. “Where? Did he say where?”

  “I don't… Wait, hold on,… Someplace in Oregon? Yeah, that's it-Oregon. I remember he said it like ‘Organ.’ a ranch. Said he learned a move there. He even pulled it on me, this move. We're sitting at the bar. He says, tell me when you're ready, I'm gonna bust a move on you and you won't be able to stop me, even if you know it's coming.

  “So I'm looking right at him, no way somebody's gonna get to me, I'm ready for him. But sure 'nough, next thing I know- shoop!” Ng's hand, stiff as a trowel, shot toward Pender's throat, stopped just short of his Adam's apple.

  Pender's head jerked back ineffectually-he understood that if Ng had meant to kill him, he'd be drowning in his own blood by now.

  “He wouldn't tell me how he did it. Said this kid called Buckley taught him in Juvie.”

  Oh-ho, thought Pender. “Buckley-would that be a first name or a last name?”

  “Dunno. Only reason I remember, back in school I used to date a sistah named Chaniqua Buckley.”

  It didn't matter, for Pender's purposes. Databases could be searched either way. First thing in the morning, he decided, he'd put a call in to Thom Davies, the database whiz. Then he remembered that tomorrow would be Sunday. Not that it made any difference-he'd just have to wake up early enough to catch Thom before he left for the golf course.

  49

  The parlor wallpaper was patterned with delicately scrolled dark green vines on a pale pink background the color of flesh. A brass floor lamp with a rosy stained glass shade provided a cozy light. In the corner near the stone fireplace a grandfather clock that had traveled westward from Philadelphia by covered wagon ticked off the seconds; a handmade myrtlewood rocking chair creaked at regular intervals.

  After all those hours in Maybelline's trunk, Irene found herself enjoying the gentle, reliable motion of the rocking chair-at least it was under her control. Still she couldn't get Maxwell's words out of her head. Welcome to your new home, Irene.

  He'd left her alone in the parlor half an hour earlier, with a chillingly understated admonition: “Stay here, make yourself comfortable. I have some business to take care of, but if you leave this parlor, I'll know.”

  So here she sat, though she'd clearly heard the front door slam when he left the house. It was partly because she was afraid of him that she obeyed him, and partly because she was exhausted physically and worn out emotionally, but there was also an element of wanting to please her captor, or at least to avoid displeasing him. Stockholm syndrome, early stages, she told herself-how strange to be able to put a name to one's behavior, to diagnose it clinically, and yet to be unable to alter it.

  So she rocked, and waited, and when she heard someone moving around in the kitchen down the hall, Irene congratulated herself on her restraint. Somehow he'd been able to sneak back into the house without her hearing him, she decided. If she had left the parlor, he'd have caught her for sure.

  Unless of course it wasn't him. Oh lord. Irene quickly braked the rocking chair with her feet, intent on the sounds coming from the kitchen, though her heart was pounding so violently that the pulse in her ears nearly drowned them out.

  Someone was moving around in ther
e, all right. Whisking eggs in a glass or ceramic bowl, boiling water in a whistling kettle, sizzling up some bacon-now she could smell it. Soon she heard footsteps, light, shuffling footsteps, leaving the kitchen, coming down the hall toward the parlor. Irene's chair faced the fireplace. She sensed a presence behind her, heard raspy, tortured breathing in the doorway, but would not, could not, turn around.

  Then she heard a silken rustle. Irene kept her eyes fixed resolutely on the round hooked rug at her feet. The skirt of a floorlength black dress entered her field of vision, then a pair of fleshless claws covered with a taut mottled patchwork of shiny pink scar tissue and smooth white grafted skin lowered a supper tray onto the chess table next to the rocker.

  And Irene knew somehow, as she steeled herself to look, that the woman was steeling herself to be looked at.

  “I thought you might be hungry.” The diction was overprecise, the voice thin and muffled behind a black silk surgical mask cut from the same cloth as the woman's high-necked dress. It was impossible to read her age: the flesh around the edges of the mask resembled melted candle wax, all drips and ridges and runnels, mottled ivory in color, but streaked with blue-black soot, while her eyelids had evidently been surgically repaired, and her glorious strawberry blond hair, though glossy and abundant and apparently made of human hair, was obviously a wig.

  You're a doctor, Irene reminded herself, struggling to keep the horror she was feeling from showing on her face. You've seen disfigurements before. “Thank you. I'm Irene Cogan.”

  Instead of introducing herself in return, the woman extended one of her gruesome claws as if for a handshake. But when Irene reached out to take it, she snatched it away, grabbed a lock of Irene's frosted blond hair between her skeletal thumb and forefinger, and yanked.

  “Ow!” Irene yelped and drew back. “What did you do that for?”

  The woman ignored her. “A clever boy, that Ulysses,” she muttered aloud, calmly examining Irene's roots by the rosy light of the stained-glass lamp. “Wicked, but clever. Now finish your supper, and I'll show you to your room.”

  Welcome to your new home, thought Irene, scalp stinging, sudden tears blurring her vision.

  50

  In rooms 15 and 19 of the Sleep-Tite Motel, the whores and johns came and went. In room 17, Pender stuffed his thirty-twodecibel-proof foam plugs into his ears and began mapping out the initial computer search in his head.

  Step one: Juvenile records were sometimes expunged, but not if the juvenile went on to become an adult criminal. Assume that was the case with Buckley-a statistically supportable assumption. Then look for hits on criminals with a first or second name of Buckley who'd done time in juvenile facilities anywhere in Oregon between-Casey looked to be in his late twenties-between '82 and '92…

  Step two: hope to hell step one came up with a manageable number of hits. Because that was about as far as the search could be narrowed on computer: step three would require a face-to-face interview with every Buckley on the list, in the hope that one of them just might recognize the boy whose name was Max or Christy or Lyssy or Lee from the adult Casey's mug shot.

  All that would take time, manpower, and luck, Pender knew, and even if he managed to find out who Casey was, he would still be faced with the daunting task of tracking him down without the considerable resources of the bureau behind him. The sense of exhilaration he'd felt after interviewing Ng suddenly drained away. In its place, exhaustion, discouragement, and a wicked headache.

  I'm too old for this shit, thought Pender. He went into the bathroom, washed down two Vicodins with a cupped handful of tepid water scooped out from under the tap (the plastic glass did not claim to have been sanitized for his protection), then brought his bound shadow copy of the Casey file back to bed with him, and while waiting for the medication to kick in, opened it at random like a born-again Christian seeking inspiration in a Bible.

  A photocopy of Dolores Moon's eight-by-ten glossy stared up at Pender. Impish grin, curly strawberry blond hair. Tiny little thing with a great big voice. Born Huntington, Long Island, 2/12/69. Last seen, Sandusky, Ohio, 4/17/97. In between, a career playing itself out just below the show-biz radar line-her last role was Snoopy in a Sandusky dinner theater production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown.

  Pender flipped backward a few pages. Tammy Brown. Born Pikeville, Kentucky, 9/22/78, last seen Pikeville, 7/3/96. Kentucky collegiate heavyweight power-lifting champion out of (where else?) Pikeville College. Not one of your buffed, ripped, steroid powerlifters, however, but rather a shy, fat, good-natured, drug-free Christian with a round, multiple-chinned face right out of a Botero painting. The polar opposite of Dolores Moon: heavyset, introverted, by all accounts virginal. The two women had nothing in common but strawberry blond hair and bad luck.

  The Vicodins were starting to kick in. Pender closed his eyes, saw the vision that in one form or another had been haunting him, driving him on, for the last several years. This time it was Dolores and Tammy staring up at him through the darkness. Waiting. Waiting for him. His eyelids fluttered open again, and he forced himself to turn to the back of the file, to Casey's last victim but one-two if you counted Dr. Cogan.

  Donna Hughes. Born Sanford, Florida, 12/20/56. Last seen, Plano, Texas, 6/17/98. Casey did most of his hunting in the spring or summer months, leading the investigators to speculate that he lived in a climate where the winters were not conducive to travel. Pender wondered if Pastor knew that. It might help narrow the search.

  “I should be there,” he said aloud, his voice sounding strange and distant with the earplugs in. “I should be there-they'll never catch him without me.”

  But he wasn't there, he had to remind himself. Instead he was here. In Dallas. Which was right next door to Plano. And suddenly, though he was by now so wrecked on the painkillers that he could scarcely think, Ed Pender understood to a stone certainty exactly what his next move had to be.

  51

  Anger. Denial. Despair. Bargaining. Acceptance. These were the stages the human mind passed through when faced with the prospect of its own demise. Irene Cogan had been going back and forth between anger, denial-or at least dissociation-and despair for thirty-six hours. Now, alone in what under other circumstances she would have considered a charming little third-floor guest bedroom with an antique brass bed, big maple bureau, night table, escritoire, and adjoining bathroom, she had reached the bargaining stage.

  She began by apologizing to the Virgin Mary for the things she'd said about Her Son and His Father after Frank died, and for not having been to mass since then, but pointed out that she had tried to live a good life, hadn't sinned much, at least in deed, and had helped quite a few souls in need, professionally (although she had to admit she had been well paid for it). She promised Mary that if She did intercede on Irene's behalf, she would go to mass every Sunday and volunteer her services at one of the free clinics in Seaside, Watsonville, or Salinas.

  That was how Irene bargained in her head after the woman had locked the bedroom door behind her. It brought her little if any peace. Then she went through the contents of the bureau and the closet and slipped into deeper despair. For in the top drawer of the bureau she found underwear in a variety of styles and sizes, bras ranging from 32C to 40DD, barely-there bikini panties and capacious bloomers, bobby socks, knee socks, pantyhose, all showing signs of wear. Similar range of sizes for the neatly folded T-shirts, jerseys, and blouses in the second drawer-smaller sizes to the left, larger ones to the right-and for the sweaters, slacks, and jeans in the bottom drawer.

  Inside the deep, narrow closet were skirts, dresses, coats, sizes 6 through 16. On the closet floor were shoes, sneakers, sandals of varying sizes, all previously worn. Irene slammed the closet door and backed away, then sat down heavily on the bed. How many women had contributed to this collection? she wondered. Dear God, how many women?

  She dropped to her knees and began to pray in earnest, not with her head this time but with her heart. Dear Jesus I'm so frightened. He
lp me Mother Mary, I can't do this alone. Holy Spirit, give me strength. Give me wings. Help me our Father in heaven hallowed be thy name I'll believe in You with all my heart I'll never forsake You again. And even if You can't save me, even if it's part of Your plan that I die here, please, please, please be with me. Don't leave me alone here. Jesus. Please.

  She didn't realize she was crying until the first teardrops hit the hardwood floor. But by then the worst of the despair had passed. Irene tried to tell herself that Jesus had answered her, but she couldn't help thinking about something one of her professors once said on the subject. The comforts of religion don't actually require the existence of a deity, he'd informed the class-only a belief in one.

  “Thanks anyway,” she said aloud, climbing to her feet and wiping away her tears. Then, with bravado, only half-joking: “I'll take it from here.”

  Normally-previously-Irene hadn't been much of a believer in what the New Agers call affirmations. Saying, “I am a radiant being,” into the mirror every morning, that sort of thing. As a psychiatrist, she knew too much about the subconscious for that, knew that every time you say, “I am a radiant being,” your subconscious replies, “Are not.” A hundred affirmations a day, a hundred are nots — a person would be lucky to break even.

  But desperate times require desperate measures. She made up an affirmation on the spot: “I will stay alive. Everything else is secondary. I will stay alive.”

  And it helped. She was nowhere near the acceptance stage, but at least she felt able to function. She opened the closet door again. Hanging from a hook on the inside of the door was a floor-length cotton nightgown the color of marigolds. As she reached for it, something nagged at the back of her mind-something about the clothes. So after undressing and slipping the nightgown on over her head, Irene did a little detective work, forcing herself to go through the bureau drawers again, taking a closer look at the dresses in the wardrobe. Different sizes, yes; different styles, too. Small women and large, younger women and older, chic women and women with no taste whatsoever.