Every Wickedness

by Cathy Vasas-Brown

  “William was always difficult,” Nora said when she had composed herself. “Even his birth was difficult. Three days in labour, can you imagine? I prayed for death, you know, the pain was so terrible, then finally William was born. No mother loved a baby more.”

  Love? Until moments ago, there had been so many layers of frost covering the woman, an ice pick couldn’t have penetrated. Now she was talking about love. Kearns wondered how Nora would define the word.

  It was clear to Kearns that Nora Prescott didn’t have a friend to call her own. With him here, ready to listen, Nora would spill her guts. He could already see her relieved expression, the tracing of lines around her eyes and mouth softening.

  He pressed on. “And William’s father?”

  Nora smiled slightly. “The age-old story. I was eighteen. William’s father didn’t want anything to do with me or his son. Prescott is my maiden name. I never saw the need to pretend.”

  “You never took the surnames of any of your husbands?”

  “No. I didn’t expect my marriages to last. There seemed no point bouncing from name to name.”

  Marriage to Kearns was a sacrament, not some kind of hobby that could just be discarded when it got boring.

  Nora seemed to read his thoughts. “You don’t understand,” she sighed.

  “I’d like to try. Help me out.”

  “William, even from an early age, was a very demanding child. Very possessive. I had to hold him in my lap constantly, when I was on the phone, watching television, reading the paper. I had to lock the bathroom door for privacy.”

  Was William Prescott more demanding than any other kid, or was he simply reaching out for a cold-hearted mother’s affections? Kearns wondered.

  “Three times I brought orphaned kittens home, hoping William would eventually transfer some of his affections to his pets, learn to give rather than take.”

  “Didn’t work?”

  “None of the kittens stayed with us long. They ran away.”

  “Cats are funny creatures,” Kearns said. “Maybe William would have been better off with a dog.”

  “It wouldn’t have mattered.” Nora sighed. “It was me he wanted. All the time. He even hated it when I went to work, but I finally managed to secure a secretarial position. William threw tantrums every morning.”

  “What did his teachers say?”

  “William was a bully from kindergarten on. I was forever calling in sick to work so I could run to the school and deal with some catastrophe he had caused on the playground.”

  “Didn’t he make friends with kids his own age?”

  “There were boys who used to come over to play, but after a few visits, they never came back. Attracting playmates came easily to William. Keeping them as friends, however, was a different story.

  “My absences from work were becoming chronic and finally, my boss questioned me. I told him everything about William, and he was wonderful, even offering to act as a surrogate parent to my son.”

  “Kind of an unselfish thing for a boss to do. This man wasn’t single, by any chance?”

  Nora pursed her lips. “Yes, Gregory was single and fond of me. Our times together were the sanest of my life. We took William everywhere, and he seemed happy.” She paused. “As long as Gregory maintained a respectable physical distance from me.”

  “You couldn’t demonstrate affection as a couple?”

  “Not with William around. No hand holding, no hugging or kissing. William always found a way to come between us.”

  “So William had trouble seeing Mommy as a romantic, sensual woman,” Kearns said. “You and this Gregory trod gently until the boy could cope.”

  “It all sounds quite reasonable, doesn’t it? I didn’t realize until much later how I was being manipulated by my own son.”

  “What went wrong?”

  Nora heaved a sigh. “You have no idea how painful this is. I’d buried these memories …”

  Kearns bit his lip. He didn’t give a shit about this woman’s alleged pain. This woman had only memories to bury. What about the Mowatts, the Gormans, the families who had to bury precious loved ones? Swallowing his anger, he said, “Please, Mrs. Prescott.”

  “The three of us had spent the day at Candlestick Park, then we had supper in Chinatown. William had eaten like a horse all day. Not surprisingly, he was exhausted and complaining of a stomach ache, so at home he went straight to bed.

  “It was a gorgeous summer night, and Gregory and I were alone so seldom —”

  Kearns held up his hand. “You don’t have to paint me a picture. One thing led to another —”

  “Afterward, we drifted off to sleep. I awoke hours later. There was a crackling noise. The bed-skirt around us was ablaze. Gregory and I were frantic, screaming and swatting at the flames with pillows, running to the bathroom for water. We put out the fire ourselves.”

  “You’re not saying —”

  “Gregory left, and I went into William’s room. He was feigning sleep, as if anyone could sleep with all the racket we’d been making. I saw my son’s eyelids flutter, then he opened his eyes and gave me that sleepy, helpless look that children have first thing in the morning. I can still remember him saying ‘Mommy, I don’t feel so good. Will you sleep in my bed?’”

  “You think William set the fire?”

  “Sergeant Kearns, when that little boy rolled over in bed to cuddle, I knew. It was his hands. They smelled like butane.”

  45

  He had been pumped for days, running on nervous energy and caffeine. Even without the pots of coffee, he would have stayed wide-awake, wired on his fantasies of Beth, imagining what he would do and say when they were together. He played the details repeatedly in his mind until he got the scenario perfect. She would be different from the others. She was no dummy. She wouldn’t resort to the feminine tactics the others had tried. Beth Wells would use her brains, try to outwit him, which would make their time together so interesting. He would feel her power, rob her of it slowly, watch it drain from her as it flowed toward him.

  He had all his gear ready. And of course, the superwarfarin. He was careful when he purchased it, driving to Pasadena, Sacramento, Mendocino, altering his appearance, using the same line about his pesky rat problem. Superwarfarin, a long-acting anticoagulant, was invented for use on rats that resisted the ordinary strength of warfarin. It was one hundred times more powerful. Combined with his other goodies, the drug turned human blood the consistency of red wine. One slice along the radial artery and blood shot out like Old Faithful, pulsating with the rhythm of the heartbeat. The other cuts, the round arc forming the P and the X across the stem, were strictly decorative.

  Each of the women had exsanguinated quickly. The model had taken the longest. He’d found oral contraceptives in her purse and knew birth control pills antagonized the action of blood thinners. But they’d all lain there, pleading, getting weaker, some watching the blood spurt from their wrists, others looking away.

  He’d done his research. Probably knew as much about serial killers as that ass Kearns. The aura phase, the trolling phase, the wooing phase. Ted Bundy had been adept at that, with his plaster cast and helpless victim routine. But Bundy wasn’t worthy of the publicity he’d received. The bludgeoning — a sign of a man out of control. Where was the art in that?

  He thought about Beth Wells again and decided not to make the Chi Rho symbol this time. Though the Christograms had served him well, they were getting old. Nothing like a change in method to keep the juices flowing and the cops guessing.

  One thing that damn school had instilled in him was a love of reading. Books, like his fantasies, could transport him at a moment’s notice. He didn’t particularly care what he read; there was something to be learned on every page. He recalled reading somewhere about methods of torture, fascinated by the death from one thousand cuts.

  A medical textbook he happened upon highlighted an interesting case. An infant had accidentally received a high dosage of warfarin
, a powerful anticoagulant, through an umbilical catheter. The baby, in spite of emergency treatment, bled through the umbilical stump and intravenous punctures.

  The crazy 90s had been chock full of displaced Californians trying to figure out who they were, running from therapist to therapist, embracing every fad and mania in order to soothe their dispirited souls. Each decade had its share of quacks, healers and weirdoes, and the new millennium would be no different. Reflexology, biofeedback, aromatherapy, all designed to slow the hectic pace, to transport a person to another, better place. He could do that at will. He didn’t need anyone prodding the soles of his feet to get him to relax. His methods suited him just fine.

  He wondered about the tension in Beth Wells’s life, how running a successful business must take its toll on her well-being. Once, he had followed her to a massage therapist’s on Fillmore, sat in his car imagining her being rubbed and oiled, the knots worked out of her shoulders and neck. Still, there was a better way to relieve stress, headache, the ills of everyday living, and he knew it would be effective on Beth Wells.

  Acupuncture.

  46

  Kearns shook his head, not only in disbelief but also to make sure there were still a few brain cells functioning inside his thick skull. William Prescott was now responsible for the deaths of six women, and he had begun his career early, setting his mother’s bedroom afire. He wondered if Nora actually believed that her son’s three kittens had run away.

  “At the time of the fire, how old was William?”

  Nora poured more tea and added milk and sugar to her cup. Kearns was ready to throttle the woman, infuriated with her calm demeanour and her apparent desire to pace the conversation at tortoise speed. She clearly was not going to upset herself or go into hysterics. Just as he was ready to rip the teaspoon from the woman’s hand, Nora replied, “William was eight.”

  Kearns fought to remain expressionless though his insides churned. He wished Nora’s teapot was full of scotch. “You didn’t report the fire, I take it.” He already knew the answer.

  “I decided to send William to parochial school,” she replied. “A week later, he was enrolled at the School of the Good Shepherd. I believed the all-male environment and the strict regimentation would be good for him.”

  Who was she kidding? This woman had no interest in what would be good for her son or anyone else for that matter. Her priorities revolved in a tiny orbit, with her as the axis. Knowing her son was a killer, she had calmly burned his latest trophy and was prepared to sacrifice human life so she could remain — what? A member of respectable society?

  Kearns had long ago declared a moratorium on the endless debate among his task force about whether serial killers were born or created. He had seen too many homicide cops get hot under the collar and damn near come to blows over a discussion that had no resolution. Now, after listening to Nora Prescott and watching her conduct her cozy tea party in the midst of discussing murder, Kearns realized that this woman had not only spawned evil but also casually excused it. William Prescott, for whatever recessive gene he might possess, had been created by another kind of monster, a woman who cast off men like yesterday’s underwear, a woman who treated disaster as a trifling inconvenience.

  Nora’s silence was William’s ticket to carte blanche murder.

  Within days, William Prescott would capture another victim, and Nora would have let it happen.

  He forced a civil tone. “What became of your boss?”

  “Gregory took pity on me, of course. He kindly paid William’s tuition, called it a loan, but we both knew I could never repay him. Relationships can’t survive on kindness and pity, and soon it became uncomfortable seeing Gregory at the office every day. I quit my job, found another through one of Gregory’s business associates —”

  “Husband number one?”

  Nora nodded. “William’s tuition was not inexpensive, and a secretary’s salary didn’t stretch far —”

  Kearns held up his hand. “Wait a minute. Parochial school isn’t Harvard. In those days, what would it have cost to keep William at the school, a few thousand a year?”

  “I made several —” she cleared her throat “— charitable donations to the school. Later on, William needed other things, a car, clothes —”

  Then Kearns saw it. “You paid the school off. To keep your son there. They were going to kick him out, weren’t they?”

  “Several times. Father Francis Xavier called almost monthly to report some mischief or other. He said William was undisciplined, unrepentent, a bad influence on the others.”

  “But with a handsome cheque now and then, the staff could overlook William’s behaviour. What kind of trouble was he in?”

  “They told me William smuggled liquor into the residence. Pornographic literature, drugs. The priests were at their wits’ end. I knew the feeling.”

  “I can understand that those offenses might seem serious, Mrs. Prescott, particularly to members of the clergy. I’m a Catholic myself, but detentions, withdrawal of privileges, getting booted off a sports team—the teachers at the school would have had some kind of leverage, something they could hold over your son’s head.”

  “They tried all those things. Nothing seemed to have any effect. It was, as Father Francis told me, as though William was laughing at them.”

  “And counselling?”

  Nora waved away the notion. “Completely useless. He had a few sessions with a young priest. They amounted to nothing. The psych. ed. reports stated that William had potential, was highly intelligent but often distracted.”

  Father Daniel’s words? Kearns wondered.

  “I told the school officials to do what they had to do,” Nora continued, “but begged them to keep William there. I was afraid of him, you see. I suppose I’ve always been afraid of him.”

  It was not lost on Kearns that Nora continually shifted the conversation away from William and neatly onto herself. He would ride this conversation out and be the listener she so obviously needed. Eventually, he’d get to where he wanted to go. “Mrs. Prescott, Father Daniel Fortescue telephoned me this evening. He told me about Father Francis’s death, and the death of another priest, Father Anthony Benedetto. There had been a fire at the school. A dog was hung. Did anyone from the school ever contact you about these things, express any suspicions about your son?”

  “No,” she said. “I read about the priests’ deaths in the paper, and the fire was reported in the monthly bulletin the school sent to the parents. But no one called me.”

  He wasn’t surprised. What good would it have done? Nora had washed her hands of her son, figuring that money not only talked, but also kept people quiet, too.

  “Mrs. Prescott, there’s no point in my being subtle. You’re engaged to Phillip Rossner, a very wealthy man. Your son must be how old — in his mid-thirties? Earning his own living. Why the marriage to Rossner?”

  Nora Prescott looked around the room as though the answer should be obvious, then heaved a resigned sigh. “Phillip is an ass, of course. A ridiculous, silly ass. But what does it matter? I give him what he wants, and he gives me what I want. I still support my son financially, Sergeant Kearns. I’m sure he has some kind of job, though what, I don’t know. But I pay him, and pay him well, to stay away from me. And there was one other condition.”

  “What was that?”

  “He had to change his name. I wanted nothing to do with him.”

  Kearns had come to the moment he’d been waiting for since he arrived at Russian Hill nearly an hour ago. “Mrs. Prescott, what is your son’s name now, and where is he?”

  She looked about to reach for the teapot again, then withdrew her hand, placing it calmly in her lap. She looked at Kearns. “I haven’t the vaguest idea.”

  He wondered if Nora would look this unruffled if he took the silk sash from around her waist and choked her with it. “You pay him,” he stated, his voice carefully modulated. “Where do you send the cheques?”

  “I give him cas
h. When he asks for it. William writes to me, a different postmark each time, and encloses typewritten instructions specifying where I should leave the money. It’s all a game to him. Once, he made me leave it in a dark alley between two strip clubs in the Tenderloin. Can you imagine? Another time, it was at a gas station in the desert, in the men’s washroom. I’ve sent money to post office boxes in Europe, flown to Denver … All these years and he’s still tormenting me. Then the gifts started.” She lowered her gaze. “I’m his prisoner, just like I’ve always been.”

  That did it. The sight of Nora Prescott cowering on her fancy sofa in her fancy clothes, making like she was the true victim ignited Kearns’s fuse. He sprang to his feet and snatched the pink zipper from the silver tray, the charred toggle a pathetic remnant of Patricia Mowatt’s too-brief life. He thrust it toward the woman. “Six young women have been slaughtered in your place, and you think you’re the victim?” He spat the words. “Well, here’s a news flash for you. One, you’re gonna bring me every gift sonny boy has ever sent you, and two, you’d better start searching your memory for anything, and I mean anything, that will help me find him.”

  The trophies materialized quickly, the Cartier watch the last item to drop into Kearns’s hands.

  “I don’t know where my son is, Sergeant,” Nora repeated, her manner indignant once again. “I can’t even tell you what he looks like now.”

  “No photos?”

  Her look seemed to suggest that Kearns had lost his mind, and for the third time, he wanted to strangle her.

  Kearns needed to get the hell out, to find a place where he could breathe clean air. He knew the longest, hottest shower wouldn’t cleanse his pores of the infestation he’d been exposed to here in this elegant parlour. His parting shot as he opened the heavy front door gave him a modicum of satisfaction. “Lady, with the trouble you’re in, the very least you can do is start addressing me as Lieutenant Kearns.”

  47