By Reason of Insanity

by Shane Stevens

  On the way they spoke of this and that. He was in the import business and had a shop in Florida, mostly stocked with items from Central America. He had been a heavy drinker for a few years, finally deciding that was not for him. AA had saved his life. He had taken two months off to see the country but liked Las Vegas so much he didn’t want to leave. For her part, she had come from Los Angeles as a child. Her husband and children were dead. She had turned to alcohol but it was two years now and not a drop. AA had also saved her life. She lived alone and had no close relatives, spending all her time at her work. She was in real estate.

  At her fashionable apartment house he asked if he could see her again. He was a stranger in town and knew no one, and of course he didn’t want to get too near the night life, where liquor flowed freely. At least not alone. It hadn’t been that long since— He let the thought hang.

  She smiled demurely, or so she hoped. To him she looked like a giant bat ready to fly, her eyelids flapping like wings. But he held his innocent expression, his hopeful air of expectancy. She looked directly at him, saw his boyish face, his clear manly eyes, his incorruptible honesty. He was so much the image of someone she once might have known if only she had been born pretty. Yes, she nodded shyly. Yes. Perhaps dinner tomorrow evening? he asked breathlessly. Again she told him yes.

  Bishop walked home believing his problem had been solved. She lived well and was in real estate. That meant she had money. She lived alone and had no attachments. That meant she was safe. His final thought before falling asleep was that she had come from Los Angeles. In California.

  The next evening they dined at the Sahara on the Strip. He was good company and she enjoyed herself, especially whenever she looked at him sitting across from her. She felt like a young girl again. They had dinner together every night after that. He never pushed and she never resisted. On the fourth night she invited him up for coffee. Afterward he kissed her on the cheek and left. On the fifth night she put on soft music before the coffee. Then she sat next to him on the sofa. They talked a bit, she held his hand. Soon he kissed her on the mouth, a long, loving kiss. She almost swooned in ecstasy. When he got up to leave she was disappointed but she did not want him to feel she was seducing him.

  The following evening she showed him the view from her windows. The bedroom faced the Strip. Neon lighted the sky, holding the desert blackness at bay. He said it looked very pretty, almost as pretty as she. Standing by him, she quietly drew her arm around his waist. He turned to her, kissed her again and again. When he placed his palm over her slight breast she murmured yes, and as he gently led her toward the bed her eyes, her body, her lips were saying yes, yes. Yes.

  In the morning she called her office to report she was taking the day off. She packed a lunch for them to eat in the desert. They showered and left in her car.

  Margot Rule was thirty-eight years old and had never known love, not real love, not the real love she had just experienced. Now she saw that she had been virginal all her life, now she understood what sex was meant to be, what it should always have been. She could not believe the depth of her emotions or how the young man sitting next to her had made her feel. She stole a glance at him. She loved him, more than she had ever loved her husband, God forgive her, more even than the faraway boys of her girlhood. In her woman’s heart she knew this was the love she was meant to have, this was the way she was meant to feel. If there was a god in heaven she would have this love, no matter what the cost, no matter whom it would hurt. Without it she knew she would not want to live, and with it she would live forever.

  Bishop sat quietly in the car knowing that he had played his part well, She was starved for love and hungry for the sex that goes with love, passionate and prolonged, the kind of sex that gave all and demanded nothing, that was receptive to her every unspoken wish, that made her feel like the most desirable woman who had ever lived. For this kind of love-making, tenderly physical yet tied to the female’s emotional need for constant reassurance and eternal allegiance, a woman would do anything, go anywhere. His judgment had been correct, his timing superb. He had not gone to a prostitute or even masturbated in a week. He had given her a night of verbal and sexual love that she would remember forever. He smiled at the word. Forever was often not so very long, and he intended that for her forever would not be long at all.

  During the next week they saw each other as much as her work would permit. He no longer went to her apartment, wanting, so he told her, to protect her reputation. Nor did he allow her to go to his hotel, which he changed every week so no one would recognize him, for the same reason. She thought this very loving and considerate of him. Instead they ended each evening at out-of-the-way motels where there was little chance of being seen. She would sit in the car while he registered, feeling like a wicked schoolgirl and enjoying every moment of it.

  The nights were absolute heaven for her, beyond anything she had ever imagined in her masturbatory fantasies. On their third such night together he asked her to put his penis in her mouth. She had never done this before, not for her husband, not for anybody, but she did it gladly for him, without thought, without reservation. He kneeled over her and gently showed her what to do. When the sperm spurted into her mouth she took it greedily, savoring it on her tongue, swallowing it slowly, lovingly, as coming from him. She liked the sensation and quickly came to believe that she was even closer to him at such moments. Every night thereafter she would take his penis in her mouth, working her taut lips over the crown, waiting, wanting the sweet swallow and declaration of his love, hearing his whispers in the last moments, needing to hear his whispered words, waiting with widened eyes watching waiting for final feeling flowing into welcome mouthful melting into loving leaving all ahhhh …

  By the end of that week he had learned that she possessed $26,000, which she kept in the Nevada State Bank. He decided he could survive on that for years.

  On the last day of August Bishop told his beloved that he wanted to marry her and to live with her for the rest of his life. He had never loved before, not really, and he would never love again. But he could not marry her because he was a hunted man. Killers were after him. He owed $22,000 to the wrong people in Florida, which was why he was traveling and why he changed his hotel and his name every week. His real name was David Rogers. He was telling her only because he loved her so very much. If she loved him, if she wanted to be with him forever, she could save his life by lending him the money to pay off his gambling debt. She knew what those people were like; one day soon they would find him and he would then be dead. They already had his store in Florida, now they wanted his life. He asked her to go with him to Florida. They would pay the money and get married and honeymoon there or anywhere she desired. They would be free to return to Las Vegas and to love and make love forever more. If not—he shrugged in fatalistic acceptance—he would soon be dead.

  Margot did not want him dead. She loved him beyond all reasoning, needed him inside of her, in every part of her. Life without him would be meaningless, would not be worth living, and suddenly she wanted very much to live. She thought of the money. She had lost three times that much in drinking and gambling and now had nothing to show for it. At least by paying off David’s debt she would have him. And she could easily make back the money now that her work was going well.

  The very next day she withdrew $22,000 from her business account and $2,000 from her personal savings account for their expenses. The money, 240 one-hundred-dollar bills, was placed in a bank-deposit bag for her. Being a meticulous woman, she put a note in her safedeposit box stating that she had taken $24,000 for expenses and was going to marry David Rogers of Florida.

  The plan, at her insistence, was to marry in Las Vegas and then fly to Miami, stay there a few days, and return. She needed no long honeymoon since they would always be together. The time of departure was three days hence, September 4.

  Bishop readily agreed to everything, asking only that she wait until the last day for flight reservations so no
one would know. He realized it was just paranoia, he said sheepishly, but why take chances?

  Margot knew David loved her. He was thirty, though he looked much younger. The eight-year age difference didn’t worry her. She would always keep him as happy and contented as he was right now.

  On September 3, 1973, the loving couple went into the desert they liked so much for a final outing before their marriage the following day. Again pleading paranoia, he told her the money should not be left in the house, where it could be stolen while they were gone. Blind with love, she did as he suggested and took the money with her. It was now in a small black zippered case,

  In his rented car they rode up US 95 to Lathrop Wells, then turned left onto Nevada 29 toward Death Valley Junction. A few miles inside the California border he pulled the car off the road and drove on packed ground until they could not be seen.

  She had never been in this part of the desert before. It was bleak and impossibly lonely. They had not passed a car or any sign of life since the cutoff about twelve miles back. She was happy to be with him but a bit frightened by the utter desolation. He reassured her and got out a blanket, which he spread on the ground some distance from the car. She brought the food over and they ate lunch and talked about their coming life together and the joys they would share. Then he got the idea.

  They would take off all their clothes and make love right there under the sky. Unfettered and free, they would feel deliciously sinful. She laughed at the thought. Suppose somebody should come? But nobody was within miles of them. No, it was too ridiculous—she was a grown woman, wasn’t she? Then they’d be kids again for a little while. What about the sun? Didn’t he realize they would burn terribly?

  He went to the car and soon returned with a tarpaulin and two wood stakes. In minutes he had constructed a lean-to, with welcome shade underneath. She chided him for having such things in his car and asked him how many other young women he had lured into the desert. Both laughed merrily at the very idea, it was so preposterous.

  She was pleased with his suggestion. She had never done anything like that, and the sheer impropriety of it all made the whole thing seem delicious to her. Why not? she asked herself. She was once again a young girl and she had the love of the handsomest, kindest and most wonderful young man in the world. At that moment she felt like the fairy princess in all the fantasies of her life. She could do anything she wanted.

  They undressed in front of each other, unashamed, no longer embarrassed, her eyes on his body, the body she had come to know so well in so short a time. Naked, they lay down together on the blanket. The air felt good on her skin, the shade soothing. He moved over her with the deft motion now so familiar to her. Slowly, capably, he began her on her rhythmic journey, and as her dance grew ever more frenzied she sensed this time was somehow different, different even from the other times with him. The open air, the sky, the sensation that they were alone in the universe, all heightened her awareness. She soon felt her senses rushing together, she couldn’t believe what was happening as every nerve in her body fused with every other nerve, sending shock after shock shooting through her until finally she exploded into orgasmic spasms.

  Even as her shudders shook the sky Margot Rule knew that she would remember these moments beyond all others for the rest of her life. No matter what else ever happened to her, this would be the supreme thrill of her existence.

  After a long while she took David’s penis between her lips and lovingly brought him to climax, and as his love gushed into her waiting body Bishop’s hands clasped round her throat and choked her to death.

  Suddenly, swiftly, without sign or signal, she who had been life, given life, held life, was now lifeless. For her, forevermore, in the spirit sphere beyond the stars, the sun would rise in the west and set in the east, and she with it.

  Bishop worked quickly. He removed a watch and two rings from the body. He put the lean-to back in the car, the clothes on the front seat, to be dumped somewhere on the way home. Her lunch basket and pocketbook, stripped of all identification, would also be disposed of along the way.

  From the trunk he scooped out a shovel and a five-gallon can of gasoline which he had filled that morning. He poured gasoline over the body and struck the match. Flames shot up, and he watched the fire slowly blacken the body into burning ash. Several times he poured more gasoline onto the reddish flames.

  When little was left but bone and sickening slime, he dragged the remains of the blanket some fifty yards to soft sand. Here he dug a grave, small but deep, into which he shoveled the human debris. Afterward he smoothed out the sand back to the picnic spot, where he brushed away any sand and dirt on his body and hurriedly dressed.

  In the car again, shovel and can once more in the trunk, he drove to the road, then walked back to the area with a branch trailing on the ground, wiping away the tire tracks.

  On the return to Las Vegas he made numerous stops by the side of the road, flinging things he no longer wanted, including the shovel and empty gas can, into the desert. He also brushed out the car, removing all traces of human occupancy.

  He kept the money case close to him.

  In his hotel room he counted out the 240 hundred-dollar bills. He folded ten in his pocket and returned the rest to the black zippered bag, which he hid in the toilet tank after flushing the water and plugging the spout, still another trick learned from TV. He then burned the paper contents of the pocketbook in the bathroom sink. Other items such as keys and comb and mirror and makeup kit had already been discarded separately, as had the watch and rings. He kept only a picture of the woman. She was wearing a severe dress that made her look quite matronly.

  That night he exchanged the big bills in his pocket for tens and twenties at a casino on the Strip, then walked out. He felt a sudden contempt for the people around him. He didn’t gamble or drink or smoke. He was a moral young man in all things.

  Home again, he put most of the bills with the others and placed his few possessions in the flight bag. He was ready to leave Las Vegas. He was glad.

  The next morning he returned the car to the rental office, paying his bill with some of the tens and twenties. He didn’t pay by credit card because he wanted no record of charges going back to California. Also he needed the card to remain valid in case of emergency. Again he wore the dark sunglasses and false beard he had bought in Los Angeles. Wearing them, it was impossible to get an accurate description of his face. He could as easily be Vincent Mungo as Thomas Bishop or Daniel Long or almost anyone else.

  With the flight bag slung over his shoulder, the zippered money case tightly gripped in his right hand, Bishop boarded the noon bus bound for Phoenix. He was leaving Las Vegas on his wedding day. And leaving behind his intended bride.

  She too would be missing.

  Seven

  DEREK LAVERY just sat there scowling. No one was in his huge penthouse office on the sixth floor of the Newstime building in Los Angeles. Not yet anyway. The carpeted living and dining space, the large work area at the room’s other end, the enormous middle ground where Lavery sat behind his mammoth oak desk: all were empty. But Lavery pushed the scowl wider by the minute. He didn’t like it, not a bit of it. Whenever those sons of bitches called from New York there was trouble and this time was no exception. Not that he minded trouble; on the contrary, he sought it, lived with it, needed it. Without it, he often felt he would just shrivel up and disappear in a puff of smoke. But this was different. This kind of trouble he didn’t need. And he didn’t at all appreciate the fact that those bastards in the East had ultimate veto power just because they had financial control of the magazine. He had built up the West Coast edition almost from scratch, built it to a peak of performance. And prosperity too. Those bastards knew that! Knew they were dealing with the best man in the organization. Since all they could read intelligently was a balance sheet, they mostly left him alone to work his money miracles.

  Lavery lit the second cigar of the morning. He glanced at his watch, August 15, 8
:50 A.M. He pressed a button on the telephone console but no one answered. Naturally, she wasn’t in yet. In his mind’s eye he pictured his secretary’s long slim legs, her heavy breasts as she leaned over the desk. They were always firmly encased in a bra, reminded him of the old line the salesman gave the slight young thing shopping in the bra department: Let’s not make a mountain out of a molehill, dear. Christ, she was goddam Mount Everest! He was sure she wore nothing at night, just flopped around her apartment getting all the phallic symbols hot. He thought again of the breasts, must be at least ten-pounders. They reminded him of his daughter, she had big ones too. And long slim legs. But she almost never wore a bra. Half the time they were falling out of her shirts and blouses. When she took a dip in the pool all she wore was a strip covering the nipples, he could see almost everything. Twenty years old with a body like that. Jesus! She would ruin a dozen good men before she was through.

  A few minutes later the buzzer sounded. He pressed the button. “Coffee,” he snapped. The hell with her. Who did she think she was? He could get a hundred like her. He wondered if she was any good in bed.

  Soon she brought in his coffee, a pewter cup on a silver tray. Leaning over the desk, she placed the tray in front of him. Lavery interested her. She would have liked to look at his penis; one of the girls in promotion had sworn it was the biggest she had ever seen. That interested her too. She would hold it rigid with both hands, her long thin fingers wrapped tightly around it, slowly pulling the skin back. She liked to do that to her men. Little by little she moved her hands faster until she was masturbating them. She knelt between their legs on the bed and watched their faces until they came. That excited her more than anything, to watch their faces. They looked like animals for those few moments, total crazed-out lovely animals that belonged in zoos, or in trees a million years ago. There was a sense of danger and excitement about them at those times, something she found primitive and wild and very masculine. That turned her on more than anything else, when she was on top of a wild animal grunting and groaning underneath her. It drove her crazy with desire, and when they finally came she would watch it shoot out of them, and she would usually come herself as she put her head down and wiped the sperm all over her face, her eyes, her breasts. For those few moments she was an animal too, and when it was over she would lie down, sperm running down her face, and let them do whatever they wanted to her.