The Violated

by Bill Pronzini

  “Sure. Now I get it. You really think it’ll work?”

  “If Kells and Ortiz keep on failing, it will.”

  Craig drank some of his red wine. Brewery owner drinking wine in public instead of his own product. I’d talked to him about that before, how it looked to people, but it hadn’t sunk in. Wine was his tipple, he said, he didn’t even like beer. My God, why couldn’t Katherine have picked a husband who wasn’t “narrow between the ears,” as my father used to say. Craig’s only saving grace was that he was malleable.

  “I guess you’re right, Hugh,” he said. “But it seems like a pretty unpleasant thing to hope for.”

  “What does?”

  “The rapist not being caught, Torrey’s murderer not being caught.”

  “There won’t be any more rapes,” I said. “The murderer solved that problem.”

  “You sound like you wouldn’t mind if he got away with it.”

  “That’s not so. You know I don’t condone vigilante violence.”

  And I didn’t, naturally, though a reasonable case could be made that Torrey’s killer had done us all a favor last Friday night and ought not to be prosecuted for it. Not that I would ever make such a claim, of course, to anyone other than myself.

  ROBERT ORTIZ

  I could not get that missing key out of my mind.

  No one seemed to be aware of its existence except me, much less to know what had happened to it or what the red dot signified. Al Bennett thought it might not even exist. “You could be misremembering where you saw the red-dot key,” he said. “Or the number of keys on Torrey’s ring.” But I was not misremembering. There had been four keys three weeks ago, now there were only two. And one of those missing had the dot.

  The other missing key definitely had been for the Soderholm delivery van Torrey had driven. I checked with the brewery and verified that it had been reclaimed when he was fired. Since none of his family apparently had any idea what the red-dot key unlocked, it was logical to assume that it opened something that belonged only to Torrey, private property known only to him.

  That it had disappeared seemed to have no relevance to the homicide. Yet I had the feeling that there was some sort of connection. And that it was connected to the assaults, too. We had found no sign of the serial’s tools—ski mask, gloves, knife—or the stolen handgun anywhere on the Torrey property or among his possessions. If I was right about him, he would have stashed them where he could lay hands on them easily and quickly, some place safe from accidental discovery.

  But where? Keys opened or operated hundreds of different kinds of things. Padlocks, cabinets, doors, windows, strongboxes, lockers, vehicles … the list was endless. A rapist’s Pandora’s box could be anything, anywhere, within the city limits.

  The missing key was yet another in the string of puzzling elements about the homicide. I had made a list of them and the questions they raised:

  The location of the shooting. Why Echo Park, a place regularly patrolled at night? There were other, much more isolated places along the river, in the farmland across it to the north, in the nearby hills.

  The location of the Camry. Why abandon it in an industrial section five miles from the scene of the crime?

  The position of the body. Why arrange it in that blasphemous posture after death?

  And the key. No matter what it opened, why had it been removed from Torrey’s key ring?

  None of it seemed to make much sense, individually or collectively. Yet I was convinced, and Griff Kells agreed, that there was a pattern here. Answer one of the questions and the other answers would follow, the pattern emerge. Then we would know who had shot Torrey and why.

  I was studying the list again for the dozenth time, and still getting nowhere, when Griff called me into his office late Tuesday afternoon. “I just got off the phone with Ed Braverman,” he said. “The autopsy’s finally done and he’s narrowed down the time of death for us. Torrey died sometime between nine and ten Friday night.”

  “Braverman is sure?”

  “As sure as he can be from all the test results. That lets out Jack Spivey. Whatever he was doing after he left the bowling alley, it wasn’t murdering Martin Torrey.”

  IONE SPIVEY

  We were out of beer and Jack likes one or two when he gets home from work, so I went to the store around five to buy a couple of six-packs of Bud Light. His pickup was in the driveway when I got back. He and Timmy were in his man cave—I could hear them talking as I came into the kitchen. They must not have heard me because whatever they were chattering about went on without pause. I opened a can of beer, put the rest in the fridge, and carried the open one back to the den.

  The door wasn’t quite shut so I pushed it open and walked in. And got such a shock that I stopped dead still, my eyes opening wide and my heart skipping two or three beats.

  Timmy was standing there holding and pointing the biggest, ugliest gun I’d ever seen in my life. And Jack was right beside him, grinning in a proud kind of way.

  “Timmy! What on earth are you—Put that thing down!”

  He didn’t, he just kept pointing it, squinting down the long barrel. It was so heavy he had to stand with his legs braced wide to hold it steady. He didn’t even look at me.

  “Don’t worry,” Jack said, “it’s not loaded.”

  “Make him put it down.”

  “Don’t give me orders.” Jack’s grin was upside down now. “You’re not supposed to come barging in here without knocking, you know that.”

  “I didn’t barge in, I only—”

  “Never mind. I was just showing Timmy how to hold the piece, that’s all. No big deal. Here, kid, let me have it.”

  Timmy didn’t want to let go. His face was a little flushed and his eyes were bright, shiny, like a bird’s eyes. Jack had to practically pull the gun out of his hands.

  “What is that thing?”

  “It’s not a thing,” Timmy said, “it’s a Robinson XCR-L assault weapon. The kind soldiers and cops use. Cool, man! The coolest.”

  “Assault weapon. That’s illegal in California.”

  “Stupid frigging law.” Jack laid it down on the table next to his chair. “You can buy and own a piece like this in other states, so why not here?”

  “Where on earth did you get it?”

  “Bought it off a guy I know. Hell of a good price, too.”

  “How much?”

  “Never mind how much. Not more than we can afford.”

  “When? How long have you had it?”

  “Since Friday night. I went to the guy’s house after bowling to close the deal.”

  “It’s gas-piston fired,” Timmy said, “chambered for five-point-five-six NATO ammo. Fires hundreds of rounds a minute, right, Dad?”

  “Right.”

  “My God,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Timmy said. “Wow. Whole bunch of guys coming at you, you just squint down those tactical sights and cut ’em all in half before they know what hit ’em.”

  My stomach was all clenched up. I tasted bile in the back of my throat. “Jack, what do you want with a … a combat weapon like this?”

  “Protection, what else.”

  “Protection against what? An invasion?”

  “Could happen. Who the hell knows these days?”

  “Dad’s thinking of buying a couple more pieces like this,” Timmy said. “Maybe three or four.”

  “What?” I said. “For God’s sake, Jack—”

  “Thinking about it, that’s right,” he said. “More of these babies you own, the safer you are.”

  “That’s crazy—”

  “Like hell it is. You just let me decide what’s best for this family.”

  “Any dude ever comes in here and tries to hurt you again, Ma,” Timmy said, “we wouldn’t even have to blow him away. Just show him this, the sumbitch’d crap in his pants and run like a rabbit with a firecracker up his ass.”

  “Watch your mouth,” I said automatically.

  “Sure,
” he said, but he wasn’t paying attention to me. His eyes, still wide and shiny, were all over the rifle. He moved to the table and ran his fingers over the short barrel, the long middle section, the pistol grip. “Wow,” he said again.

  “You’re not going to keep this in here,” I said to Jack. “I won’t have it in the house.”

  “You don’t have nothing to say about it. I’ve got a safe place all picked out.”

  “What safe place?”

  “Never mind. You don’t need to know.”

  “It won’t be loaded?”

  “Damn right it will.”

  “Each box magazine holds thirty rounds,” Timmy said. “Bam, bam, bam, bam!”

  “Jack …” My voice cracked a little, I couldn’t help it. “You’re not thinking of letting Timmy fire it?”

  “Why not? He’s old enough to learn.”

  “At what, for God’s sake?”

  “Same thing I’m going to practice on. Targets.”

  “But it’s against the law—”

  “Screw the law. The guy I bought it from knows another collector who owns a big ranch where you can shoot as many rounds as you want, no worries about the cops.”

  “Bam, bam, bam, bam,” Timmy said again. “Bam bam bam bam!”

  Jack didn’t seem to notice the way Timmy kept touching the ugly gun, looking at it in that hot-eyed awestruck way. No, it was worse than just awestruck. It was unnatural, worshipful, almost … sexual. Oh my Lord! Ten years old and getting off on that thing. As if he were imagining firing it, cutting somebody in half with it.

  It scared me. It made me as afraid as I’d been while I was being beaten and raped.

  COURTNEY REEVES

  Jason went out again tonight and didn’t come home until late again. Real late. The bedside clock said it was almost two o’clock when I heard him. I was still awake. I couldn’t sleep when he stayed out late like this. I kept worrying about where he’d gone, what he’d been doing.

  Ladybug was curled up next to me. Jason doesn’t like her sleeping on the bed when we’re together, but I let her come up when I’m alone. She’s a comfort, like the big floppy-eared teddy bear I’d had when I was a kid. She started to whimper a little when she heard Jason. I put my hand around her muzzle to keep her quiet. I didn’t want him to know I’d been lying awake worrying, so I’d pretend to be asleep when he came into the bedroom.

  But he didn’t come in. I heard him doing something in the kitchen, not being too quiet about it, then moving around in the living room, then nothing at all. It got so quiet I could hear Ladybug’s tummy rumbling.

  I lay there waiting a long time, almost half an hour. Then I couldn’t wait anymore. I got up and put on my robe and slippers and went out into the living room, shutting the bedroom door so Ladybug couldn’t follow me. Jason hadn’t turned on any lights, but he had the TV going with the sound muted. He was sitting there in the dark drinking a bottle of beer and staring at some people shooting each other in black and white on the screen.

  “Jason?”

  He hadn’t heard me come in. He jerked forward on the couch, twisting around toward me. “Christ. What’s the idea sneaking up like that?”

  “I wasn’t sneaking.”

  “You walk like a freakin’ cat sometimes.”

  “I’m sorry. I couldn’t sleep and I heard you out here—”

  “Go back to bed.”

  “Why are you sitting in the dark with the TV on?”

  “Because I feel like it, that’s why.”

  There was enough flickery light from the screen so I could see him reach up and rub at his cheek and then grimace like he was in pain.

  “What’s the matter, honey?”

  “Nothing’s the matter.” He took a long swallow of beer.

  “It’s after two. How come you were out so late?”

  “Don’t start ragging on me, goddamn it.”

  “I’m not ragging—”

  “Go back to bed, leave me alone.”

  He sounded funny in a way that made my skin prickle and crawl. Oh God, I thought, he’s stoned. And not on weed. “You promised me,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You promised you wouldn’t do that shit anymore.”

  “What shit? What the hell you talking about?”

  “Go out partying, get cranked up.”

  “Who says I’m cranked up? Huh?” He reached up to rub his cheek again. “Go on, get outta here.”

  Instead I stepped over to the end table and switched on the lamp. I couldn’t help doing it, I had to see him in the light. Oh! Oh! He was high on meth, all right, I could see it in his eyes and the way he was kind of shivering—that’s one of the things about meth, it can make you feel chilled when you’re starting to come down. But that wasn’t all. He had a bruise on his cheekbone, a cut crusty with dried blood under his eye.

  “Shut that fucking light off!”

  I didn’t; I went and sat down next to him—I couldn’t help doing that, either. “Jason, what happened to your face? It looks like you were in a fight.”

  No answer. I leaned close, close enough to hear how fast his heart was beating. Too close. He shoved me away, hard enough so I almost fell off the couch. He glared at me, and then all of a sudden he threw the beer bottle at the TV. It just missed the screen, hit the stand instead, and spewed beer and foam all over the carpet. Then he got up and went around me and almost knocked the lamp off the table switching it off.

  “Pooch,” I said. “That son of a bitch Pooch.”

  “… All right. Yeah, Pooch, so what? I felt like partying tonight. So what?”

  I had a feeling in my stomach like I wanted to throw up. Pooch. Fat, ugly Pooch with his greasy ponytail and bad breath. Cooking and selling meth on that run-down farm of his across the river, getting girls hooked because it was the only way he could get one to go to bed with him. The one time I’d made the mistake of going over there with Jason and letting him talk me into trying some crystal, Pooch had tried to hit on me with his mouth and his blubbery hands. Pig!

  “Is he the one you had the fight with?”

  “I don’t fight with my friends.”

  He’s not your friend! But I didn’t say it. I said, “Then who?”

  Jason didn’t answer at first and I thought he wasn’t going to. But then he said, “Shouldn’t sell to pricks that turn mean when they’re cranked up.”

  “What prick?”

  “Roy, that’s what prick.”

  “Who’s Roy?”

  “You don’t know him. Better believe I gave him worse than he gave me.” Jason rubbed at the bruise again. “Why’re you still here? Go to bed, no more talking tonight.”

  “Jason …”

  “Go to bed!”

  He stomped into the kitchen and opened the fridge and yanked out another beer. The light from inside made him look big and mean himself, not like Jason at all, like somebody I didn’t know or want to know. I made myself walk slow to the bedroom door. Once I was inside, I had this crazy impulse to lock it. But if I did that and he wanted to come in, as messed up as he was, he might kick the door down. So I didn’t.

  Ladybug whimpered and licked my face when I got back into bed. She always knows when I’m feeling bad, and she tries to comfort me the best way she knows how. I hadn’t felt this bad since I was raped. I couldn’t feel much worse right now.

  Jason hadn’t just been partying with Pooch and whoever Roy was. There’d been girls there, too. Sex as well as meth. When I was close to him out there on the couch, I could smell it on him. He couldn’t wait until I was ready to make love again, he just had to go screw somebody else. Be unfaithful, something I’d never do to him. For the first time?

  I didn’t want to know. Yes, I did. No, I didn’t.

  I hugged Ladybug tight, real tight, and cried myself to sleep.

  GRIFFIN KELLS

  Thursday morning, and we were still stymied. No witnesses, no leads, no suspects. It made me feel like a squirrel in a cage, runni
ng around and around and getting nowhere fast.

  Robert and his IU team had finished working their way through the list of individuals who might have had a revenge motive for the Torrey homicide, and except for Jack Spivey, now eliminated, none of the interrogations had raised a red flag. I’d put Karl Simms in charge of interviewing members of the neighborhood watch patrols—groups of that sort have a vigilante mind-set, usually benign and law-abiding, sometimes not; they’ve been known to attract individuals angry enough and disturbed enough to take the law into their own hands. He hadn’t come up with anything, either.

  Little we could do now except go back over old ground and wait and hope and pray for a break.

  ANGELA LOWENSTEIN

  Tony wanted me to stay the night with him. He asked while we were walking across the Valley JC campus after the end of our Thursday-evening business admin class.

  “I wish I could,” I said, “but I can’t. Not tonight.”

  “Why not?”

  “Work at the Clarion tomorrow. I have to be there early.”

  “Why? The Friday edition will already be out.”

  “Daddy’s request. There’s some bookkeeping he needs me to do.”

  “You could drive up early in the morning.”

  “Uh-uh. I’d have to get up at the crack of dawn and go to my apartment first to put on clean clothes.”

  “Okay, then how about just coming to my place for an hour or so now?”

  “Uh-uh to that, too. An hour with you always turns into two or more. And I’m tired and I need to get some sleep. If I go into the office looking bedraggled, Daddy’s liable to guess why.”

  “Well, he must have some idea we’ve been sleeping together.”

  “I don’t think so. He still thinks of me as his little girl. And he’s kind of old-fashioned when it comes to sex.”

  “Good thing his daughter isn’t.”

  “Hah,” I said, and when I leaned up to kiss him, I yanked his ear.

  We made a date for Saturday night. I could stay over at Tony’s apartment then and spend most of Sunday with him. Sunday is Daddy’s one day of rest; we have a pact that if I don’t bother him then, he won’t bother me.