The Girls He Adored elp-1

by Jonathan Nasaw

  “Maybe we can work something out.”

  “I hope so.”

  Kinch tiptoed to the foot of the bed, watched impassively for a few seconds as Kronk's hairy ass rose and fell, rose and fell. He couldn't see Miss Miller at all. Then she shifted her legs and the covers slipped down, revealing her fine slim legs wrapped around Kronk, her pale thighs spraddled out obscenely, her hard little heels drumming against that hairy, blubbery ass as it pumped away and pumped away and pumped away until Kinch couldn't stand it any longer. He jumped on top of that gross, hairy back, his nostrils recoiling from the man-scent, and drove the ice pick between Kronk's shoulder blades.

  The big man roared, and tried to buck him off. Again and again, Kinch drove the ice pick into that meaty back with enough force to penetrate through the meat, through the back ribs and the spine, into the heart and lungs. And he kept stabbing long after Kronk had ceased to struggle, kept stabbing until, after achieving the briefest and limpest erection compatible with ejaculation, he had climaxed. Then he was Max again, and at last Miss Miller's faint smothered cries reached his ears-he realized that she was being crushed beneath the combined weight of their bodies.

  Max rolled Kronk's corpse off her, dislodging the ice pick. “It's okay, Miss Miller,” he told her. “I'll take care of you now. I'll always take care of you. You don't need Kronk-you never needed Kronk.”

  But she wasn't listening. She pushed him away and threw herself across the body of her fiance, weeping hysterically, trying to give Kronk mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, her face smeared with the bloody froth he'd breathed out at the last. Max, angered and disgusted, dragged her off the body, threw her on the floor. She pulled herself up and fell across the body again, began kissing Kronk's bloody lips, making no pretense at resuscitation.

  This time Max threw her halfway across the room, hard enough to stun her. But she would not be denied-she began crawling toward the bed. Infuriated, he snatched up one of the candles on the bedside table and began setting fire to the sheets, while Miss Miller grabbed at his ankles, trying to pull him away.

  When the flames started leaping around Kronk's body, Max grabbed Miss Miller by the wrists and tugged her out into the hall. With desperate strength she fought free of him and raced back into the bedroom, snatched the satiny polyester comforter off the floor, and tried to beat the fire out with it. Seconds later the comforter was a sheet of flame draped over her head, clinging to her flesh.

  She staggered backward, arms flailing. Max threw her to the floor and tried to pull the comforter away, but the polyester had melted to her skin from the top of her scalp to her knees; flesh and fabric were inextricably merged. Max beat the flames out with his hands.

  A violet hush had crept over the forest. Irene couldn't bring herself to speak. She leaned forward and placed her hand on Maxwell's left shoulder. He reached back to pat her hand; she turned his hand over to look at the scars. Again she marveled at the smoothness of his palm-no life line, no love line, nothing there to show a palmist how many children he'd have.

  “It must have been painful,” she said.

  “I was glad for the pain. It kept my mind off the guilt.”

  “Do you still feel the guilt?”

  “Only every fucking day of my life.”

  “And the woman I met this morning-the woman with those terrible scars? That was Miss Miller?”

  Max nodded. “What a world, what a world,” he said in a high-pitched, cackly voice.

  The words of the Wicked Witch hung in the still forest air.

  “Sounds like a good place to start our next session,” said Irene encouragingly.

  “You're the doctor,” replied Max, smiling weakly.

  59

  Pender had to put on his drugstore half-glasses to review the fax Davies had sent him. There was no background, no narrative, just names, dates, descriptions, convictions, incarcerations. Davies had highlighted the names of the five strong-arm criminals who were either in custody or on parole-the highlighter showed up as a gray bar on the fax.

  Of these, one of the parolees in particular caught Pender's attention, perhaps because of the unusual first name. Cazimir. Cazimir Buckley, aka Bucky, aka Caz. African-American, six-two, hundred and eighty pounds, born Los Angeles, 1970. The closer Pender studied the tiny print, the better this Buckley looked. String of assaults going back to age twelve. Did three stretches in the Umpqua County Juvenile Facility. In a year, out a month, in a year, out a month, in a year, and on to the penitentiary. Pender read between the lines: little problem with managing your anger there, Caz? Probably not easy being black in Umpqua County. Wherever that was.

  When Buckley was eighteen, they put him in with the big boys after a conviction for aggravated assault. The assault must have been aggravated as hell-they'd given him the going rate for manslaughter in Oregon. Perhaps he learned anger management in the state pen, though-Pender noted that he was paroled only six years later, so he must have earned all his good time.

  Cazimir Buckley was currently under the jurisdiction of the Umpqua County Parole Board. Seemed like as good a place as any to start. Pender got the area code for Umpqua County from the operator, got the number for the parole board from directory assistance, then gave himself the rest of the night off and went back down to the bar, where he washed down two Vicodins with the help of his old friend Jim Beam-his head was absolutely killing him.

  Jim and the Vicodins proved to be a potent combination. The big bald man in the plaid sport coat, head bandages, and crumpled, bloodstained hat finished the evening perched on the end of the piano bench, singing Everly Brothers duets with the piano player. Pender took Phil Everly's parts, his sweet tenor handling the high harmonies with surprising ease. “Bye Bye Love,” “Hey Birddog,” “Wake Up, Little Suzy”-he even remembered the entire recitativo of “Ebony Eyes.”

  They finished up with “All I Have to Do Is Dream,” then Pender stuffed a twenty into the tip jar and staggered back to his room. Umpqua County, he thought, as he collapsed into bed. Where the hell is Umpqua County?

  60

  Irene had expected to be dining with Maxwell and Miss Miller that evening; instead he brought a covered tray up to her room. A tiny chicken, hardly bigger than a Cornish hen, baked potato, snap beans, and a bottle of Jo'berg Riesling. He and Miss Miller needed to spend some time together, he explained. So if she wouldn't mind staying in her room until tomorrow morning…

  The antique escritoire was in the corner of the room. Irene pulled it over to the window and watched the sun setting behind the next ridge while she dined. Living on the shore of Monterey Bay, Irene was no pushover when it came to sunsets. But this one was a keeper-it set the sky on fire and burnished the green meadow grass gold. Her heart filled, then emptied with a rush that left her breathless and despairing. She'd never known homesickness before. She missed her house, her friends. She prayed Barbara was all right. Old Bill and Bernadette, too. She wondered if she'd ever see her father and brothers again. She even missed her young stepmother.

  She also worried about her patients. Lily DeVries-they still hadn't followed up on her last breakthrough. The girl would be bound to see it as yet another abandonment, another betrayal.

  Hang in there, Lily, she thought, raising her head and looking out at the fiery sunset. As she did so, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window.

  “You too,” she told the reflection. “You hang in there too, Irene.” And though she was not particularly hungry, she forced herself to finish the meal, washing every other mouthful down with a swig of wine as it turned to ashes in her mouth.

  There were no books or magazines in her room, no television. Feeling restless, unable to concentrate on her notes from the day's sessions with Max, she decided to try her hand at a haiku. She'd gone through a haiku phase in college. Frank had illustrated some of them with his pastels-what delicate, feathery strokes his big hands were capable of. She and Frank told themselves that someday they'd publish a book of her haiku and his drawin
gs, but of course it never happened-life, then death, had intervened.

  Irene poured herself another glass of wine, turned the notebook to a blank page, began doodling green curlicues around the margins. First line, five syllables. She looked out through the window and the pen began to move. That two-horned mountain. Second line, seven syllables: Black, jagged, it hides the sun. Third line, five syllables: And the creek runs cold.

  Quality time with Miss Miller. Supper in the dining room, with the good silver, the good china, the candelabra on the white tablecloth. Miss Miller, with effort, dissects her chicken with a knife and fork and insists that Ulysses do the same.

  To eat, she unties the bottom string of her green silk surgical mask and shoves the food under. She wears only silk-she can't bear any coarser fabric rubbing against the scar tissue. After dinner, they do the washing up together-she washes, he dries-then walk hand in scarred hand to the chicken coop at the edge of the forest.

  Freddie Mercury has already led his harem from the outer yard into the inner coop. Miss Miller locks the gate while Max checks the wire surrounding the yard for breaches, and examines the ground outside the fence for holes.

  Reassured that the flock is safe from raccoons and foxes for another night, the master and mistress of Scorned Ridge return to the house, and Miss Miller selects a video from their extensive collection. Casablanca — they watch it together at least once a year. The original version, not the colorized. During the last scene, Miss Miller speaks Ilsa's lines along with her; Max does Rick and, at the very end, Renaud as well.

  The act of retiring to bed is an intricately choreographed ballet-a pas de trois, though if Max and Peter execute the switch successfully, as they have for the past several years, Miss Miller will never know it.

  They go upstairs together, each to his or her own room. Max showers, gives Miss Miller time to wash up, then crosses the hall to her bedroom. She's already lying on her stomach with the hem of her nightgown hiked up to the small of her back. He sits on the side of the bed and injects her in the left buttock with one ampoule of pharmaceutical morphine sulfate, and in the right buttock with another.

  While they wait for the morphine to come on, Max pulls the blinds, closes the shutters, draws the blackout curtains, and stuffs a towel under the door so no light leaks in from the hallway. Miss Miller insists on the room being pitch-black.

  Now comes the tricky part. Standing by the door, Max checks the floor to be sure there are no obstacles lying around, then turns his back to the room and orients himself precisely, right hand on the doorknob, left hand on the light switch, before executing an alter switch. Exit Max, to voluntary darkness; enter Peter, to darkness on the physical plane.

  Peter was one of the last alters to be created. His was a difficult birth-almost an act of will on Max's part. Peter shares little memory with the other alters, none of it visual. Born full-grown, eighteen years old and destined to remain so, Peter has been blind from birth. He's never seen a woman-never seen a human being-and only touched one. Only met one. Miss Miller. He knows this room intimately; once he has his bearings he can negotiate it like a sighted person.

  Blind Peter finds his way back to the bed, helps Miss Miller roll over, and taking great care not to cause her pain, undresses her. She is woozy, quietly euphoric from the double dose of morphine. Her senses dulled, she finds his gentle, feathery caresses bearable, even welcome, as much for the emotional enjoyment as the erotic.

  After considerable foreplay, Miss Miller rolls on her side, facing away from Peter, and he achieves penetration from a horizontal rear-entry position. The morphine often prevents Miss Miller from reaching orgasm, but tonight it only postpones, then prolongs her climax. Afterward he strokes her long soft hair, taking care not to dislodge it, until she falls asleep.

  Then he falls asleep. In Peter's case, though, it's not sleep as the rest of us know it, but only a descent into a warmer, welcoming darkness. And as he fades off, without any visible signs of switching, Max awakens, feeling every bit as high on post-orgasmic endorphins as if he'd just finished making love himself. He hears Miss Miller's raspy, steady breathing and slips out of bed. He's halfway across the room when her voice freezes him in his tracks.

  “Did you enjoy that, sweetness and light?”

  Max winces in the dark. “Of course.”

  “Sweetness and light” is an endearment she only uses sarcastically. He's already feeling guilty- he just doesn't know about what. Maybe she wants to be appreciated. “It was wonderful.”

  But that wasn't it-her tone is still biting. “Would you like to do it again some night? Ever again?”

  “Of course.” Get to it, damn it-I can't stand the suspense.

  “Enjoying your sessions with your therapist?”

  So that's it. “I'm finding them very helpful.”

  “So much so that you've completely forgotten that you have over five weeks of housework to catch up on?”

  Oh. “No, ma'am.”

  “Why do I always get the shit jobs?” muttered Alicea rhetorically as she hauled the heavy Kirby back down to the basement.

  Of course, Alicea knew perfectly well why she got the shit jobsexcept for the old woman, Alicea was the only female of the household. Fortunately she was strong for a girl-she could lift the Kirby with one hand. And tireless-she had already started a load of laundry, vacuumed the first and second floors, and scrubbed the downstairs bathroom. Now she shifted the wet laundry from the washer into the dryer, rotated each of the bottles in the wine rack, and dusted the glass-fronted display case and its contents.

  While performing this last chore, she caught sight of herself in the glass. She admired her torso under the too-tight T-shirt, and found herself wishing there were somebody around to appreciate it.

  Fat chance of that, though-after the Cortes debacle, Max would probably never again let her out when men were around. Alicea wondered whether Dr. Cogan had any interest in other women-any port in a storm, as Max always said.

  After dusting the display case, Alicea decided she'd earned a break, and ascended to the kitchen to make a cup of herbal tea. While she was waiting for the tea to steep, though, she put her head down on the kitchen table for a rest, and soon felt herself slipping back into darkness.

  The experience was similar for most of the alters. Slipping into the darkness was like going to sleep. You didn't dream, but when you awoke, either because Max had summoned you or because the system was under extreme stress, you remembered what had happened while you were sleeping as if it had been a dream. And sometimes when you awoke you were in the body, but most times you were still in the darkness. In the latter event, you could always try to force your way back into the body, but usually Max was too strong.

  For Max, the experience was different. He only visited the darkness voluntarily, or on the rare occasions when one of the others seized consciousness against his will. And he alone never slept in the darkness. No need: Max was the alter who slept for real, Max was the alter who dreamed.

  Another difference: Max was capable of monitoring the others visually from the darkness. He rarely exercised the power, however, as the experience was both dizzying and uncomfortable, like watching life through the viewfinder of a handheld camera, or riding in a car being driven too fast by someone you didn't quite trust.

  And when Max raised his head to find himself sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of chamomile tea (which he despised), he recalled everything that had happened while Alicea was in control of the body, not as if he'd dreamed it, or as if he'd experienced it, but rather as if it had occurred in a movie he'd seen recently.

  Max's bedroom was directly below Irene's on the second floor. As he undressed for bed, he could hear her moving around overhead. He imagined her undressing up there, showering, climbing into bed, and found himself growing sexually excited-he was even sporting a very un-Maxlike erection.

  “So now you want her?” he said disgustedly, giving his penis a backhand slap and watching it bobble. �
�Where the hell were you yesterday afternoon, when I needed you?”

  61

  In the old days, FBI agents had to leave at least three telephone numbers so they could be reached at all times. With the advent of sky pagers and cell phones the rigid call-in procedures had been relaxed-only Thom Davies knew that Pender was staying at the Holiday Inn in Plano. So it came as a surprise when the phone in Pender's room began ringing just as he emerged from the bathroom after his shower on Monday morning, still wearing the plastic Holiday Inn shower cap to protect his injured scalp.

  “Pender here.”

  “Pender, this is Steve Maheu. I'm calling for Mr. McDougal.”

  “He's not here,” said Pender, just to mess with Maheu, a nondrinking, nonsmoking, crew-cut Mormon. For Pender, one of the benefits of having known McDougal since their academy days was not having to go through Steve Too to get to Steve One.

  “You know perfectly well what I mean. I'm calling on his behalf, at his request. You really tore it this time, Pender-Steve specifically asked me to tell you that he's not going to pull your ashes out of the fire.”

  “What fire?”

  “Did you interview a Mr. Horton Hughes yesterday?”

  “We had a pleasant poolside chat.”

  “Apparently Mr. Hughes didn't find it all that pleasant. And apparently Mr. Hughes is also a close personal friend, not to mention a generous supporter, of a senator from Texas who shall be nameless. Can you see where this is going, Ed?”

  “Nowhere, Maheu. Absolutely nowhere. I conducted an interview, the subject was not forthcoming, I-”

  “Subject? You were interviewing the relative of a victim.”

  “In my best judgment at the time, I also had to consider him a possible suspect. He was screwing his wife's best friend before she disappeared, and his wife's best friend's daughter afterward. I had to elimin-”