My social conditioning enabled me to respond politely if automatically, “Um, I’ve got nothing against her personally. She’s okay.”
“Damn straight she’s okay. She’s the best fuck ever was. She taught me everything I know. I don’t mess with no boys or children”—upholding standards of morality, He punctuated the air with Pandora for emphasis—“but girls, oh, yeah, all I gotta do is whistle. As soon as they’re ready to bleed, they come running to me.”
Ready to bleed? Was He referring to menstruation?
I was a coward. No way was I going to ask what He meant by that. My mind thrashed like a drowning person in dark water, grasping for the right question to keep Him talking.
I blurted, “Have you kept track of your, um, your conquests?”
“Oh, yes. I mean not every single piece of tail, hell no, but the Candies, you bet I keep track of the Candies.”
I’d known. Somehow I’d known He would want to keep a scrapbook or something. Something deep and dark in me knew far too much about Him.
* * *
“Blake plus Appletree, Ohio . . .”
Slumped over the computer keyboard, Fulcrum Borough police officer Sissy Chappell straightened to attention as NCIC spit back a response.
UNLAWFUL FLIGHT TO AVOID CONFINEMENT—RAPE, CRIMINAL HOMICIDE, AGGRAVATED STALKING
BLAKE RANDALL ROMAN
ALIASES
Randall Romano, Roman Black, Romeo Black, Troy R. Black, Troy R. Blakely, “Blake the Knife”
DESCRIPTION
Date of Birth: June 26, 1976
Hair: Brown
Place of Birth: Cassandra, NC
Eyes: Brown
Height: 5'10"
Complexion: Light
Weight: 180 pounds
Sex: Male
Build: Medium
Race: White
Distinguishing Scars or Marks: Tattoo upper left arm, “CANDY” on heart in open mouth as signified by parted lips. Multiple knife scars inner arms and wrists. Nose shows disalignment of having been broken.
Remarks: Habitually wears black, carries and displays a large hunting knife. Attracted to people with physical disabilities, may seek employment at physical therapy facilities. Has resided in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota.
CAUTION
BLAKE RANDALL ROMAN IS WANTED FOR QUESTIONING IN CONNECTION WITH THE ABDUCTION, RAPE, MUTILATION, AND MURDER OF A 16-YEAR-OLD GIRL IN 2008 IN SOUTH BEND, INDIANA
CONSIDERED ARMED AND EXTREMELY DANGEROUS
Too bad the NCIC didn’t supply handwriting samples, but the “CANDY” tattoo made Sissy feel almost certain she had found her man: the one who had written the love notes that Dorrie White had kept hidden under her mattress. She wanted to yell “Wahoo!” but she was just too tired.
“Blake Roman,” she murmured.
Average height, average weight, average build. Clicking on the link for more info, Sissy discovered that he had served time in Wisconsin for statutory rape, in Michigan for stalking and sexual assault, and in both states plus Ohio for aggravated assault. He was wanted in all three states for parole violations as well as being a suspect in the South Bend rape/homicide. When in prison he had not been a troublemaker, and he didn’t seem to associate with career criminals. But “on the outside” he broke parole at once simply by disappearing, moving on. He appeared to be a drifter and a loner.
Maybe his parents had been some sort of drifters too. Born in North Carolina, how had Blake Roman landed in Appletree, Ohio? Sissy didn’t know, but she saw he had attended public school there, and also that he had been in Ohio foster care starting at age fifteen.
Foster care meant that something had gone seriously wrong at home.
But that didn’t have to mean a criminal rap sheet.
Blake Roman. A could-have-been-nice middle-American boy from the small town—a very small town indeed—where Dorrie White’s car had been found.
Blake Roman. A guy with a history of sexual predation.
There had to be a connection with Juliet Phillips and Dorrie White. There just had to. This Blake Roman had to be the Factor X, the unknown subject, the abductor Dorrie White had seen at the mall. . . .
But officially, the Fulcrum PD did not believe Dorrie White had actually seen an abductor at the mall. Nor did the FBI, apparently. Or anyone except Dorrie’s devoted husband.
Sissy blinked at the computer screen, self-doubt trying to set in because she was so, so tired and should have been asleep hours ago. But the next moment she mentally kicked both doubt and weariness aside. Both reasoning and gut instinct told her that Dorrie White was no perp. Dorrie deserved a voice in the wilderness crying that she had told the truth. There was an abductor. Blake Roman might be the one. At the very least he needed to be recognized as a piece of the puzzle.
Sitting up straight and flexing her shoulders, Sissy pulled up a blank document in order to start writing a report.
* * *
Our cordial host/captor reached behind Him and opened a refrigerator. The original library lounge had included a fridge, so I suppose He needed to have one, but He wasn’t using it to refrigerate. Rather, it seemed to be for closeting things, or maybe concealing them. I saw a few items of clothing in there, and some shoe boxes, and—were those guns?
Black handguns in a rank like soldiers where brown-bag lunches were supposed to go.
I felt Juliet slump trembling on the sofa beside me, but I couldn’t comfort her or even look at her. I didn’t dare to look away as He—
Scornfully turning His back on us again, He pulled a shoe box from the fridge and set it on the table. The librarians’ lounge had featured an oval wooden table, so there had to be one, I suppose, although this table was somebody’s kitchen reject, rectangular, aluminum and laminate with aluminum-and-vinyl chairs.
He sat at the table with the shoe box in front of Him, facing us across the table’s unlovely width. His wooden expression lightened marginally as He opened the shoe box and tossed the lid aside. Still cradling His knife, aka Pandora, in His right hand, He explored the shoe box with His left, then pulled out something red and held it up. It hung limp from His fingers like an animal He’d shot.
“Atlantic City,” He announced, His tone eager, almost happy. “Saw her on the beach. That was back before I started hunting on the Internet. It was just dumb luck, and right away, like hitting hot on the slots, I knew she was a Candy. She just had that look, like a gazelle. I followed her. Turned out she worked at one of the casinos.”
The limp red thing, I realized, was a thong panty. My stomach lurched.
“I caught up to her after work,” He went on. “I showed her possibilities she never knew before. We did everything. Everything. I ain’t telling you where I hid the body.” He sounded so normal, His tone so light I wanted to believe He was joking about hiding a corpse. Denial is our protection against extreme shock, and I still couldn’t believe . . . I mean, He sounded like an emcee, or somebody hosting a party.
I felt Juliet pressing against me from shoulders to hips, quivering, but I kept my eyes on our host.
He dipped into the box again and held up a delicate gold bracelet. “Oh, yeah. Grand Rapids. A nice Candy. Hey, you want something to eat?” He sounded almost affable, and serious in the offer. “I could get you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Candy?” His tone turned sugar sweet as He spoke to Juliet. “Something to eat?”
I felt her trembling stop suddenly, ominously, and I joggled her with my elbow before she could say anything. “Yes, thank you,” I replied brightly. “Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches would be wonderful.” I had never felt less like eating.
He opened a rusty old Coca-Cola machine—yes, there had been a Coke machine in the old librarians’ lounge, so there had to be one now. He pulled bread and peanut butter and grape jelly out
of it. Apparently He enjoyed using things for the wrong purposes, guns in the fridge, bread in the vending machine. And beer. He grabbed two cans of beer, tossing them to us left-handed from across the room. “Catch!”
It was as He lobbed the beers that I noticed the scars.
Not the scars on His face. Those were just from fighting. But now I saw significant scars on His wrist. Knife scars.
On both wrists.
More than once He had attempted suicide and failed.
I watched, sickened and fascinated, as He made the PB&Js with His vicious-looking knife, flourishing it with evident pleasure. “Pandora always loved peanut butter and jelly.”
Because I was looking for scars now, I saw more. A crooked latticework of scars ran up the inside of both arms.
Not a fighter’s scars. From self-mutilation?
Pandora scars?
Finished making sandwiches, He wiped the knife on His T-shirt, first one side of the blade, then the other, as if He were caressing Himself with Pandora. He tossed the sandwiches to us, or at us, the way He had thrown the beer cans. Both of us managed to catch the PB&Js before they fell into gooey sections, and He showed His teeth in a grin of sorts. “Eat up.”
I forced down a bite of PB&J. Juliet held hers in both slack hands.
“I said, eat up!”
“This girl in Grand Rapids,” I prompted, “you located her by using the Internet?”
“Yeah, that was after I got smart. I never had my own computer, but you can always use one in a public library. And I’ve always liked public libraries.” I pretended I saw no innuendo in His chilly grin. “Even so, even on Facebook, Candies are hard to find, like unicorns, you know? But I check the Girl Scouts too, and the high school Web pages. Juliet, here, the most perfect Candy I’ve found so far, I traced her Facebook links to her high school band and her daddy’s political campaign. Then I busted my ass to Fulcrum all the way from Wyoming—”
And He had been stalking Juliet at the same time I was—unbearable, to think of myself as a stalker. I cringed almost as much as I felt Juliet cringing. “The Grand Rapids one,” I cut in to divert Him from Fulcrum. “The Grand Rapids Candy came first.”
“Oh. Yeah, she was tasty.” He sat at His table with His own PB&J, a beer, and His box of souvenirs, telling us about the Grand Rapids “Candy” graphically and at some length. I felt faint, then sick, then numb, as I smiled and nodded and occasionally managed to swallow a bite of sandwich, knowing I would need it for strength. The beer I only pretended to sip. Covertly I spilled some of it down the sofa. I was thirsty, but I had never tried beer or any drink with alcohol in it, and I wasn’t sure how it would affect me on top of a severe lupus flare, and an empty stomach, and skipped medicine. I longed for a glass of water, but didn’t dare to ask for one.
Talking, gesturing with both hands, our captor had laid His knife on the table. As I was thinking about the glass of water, He gave the knife one of His wooden looks, then poured a little beer on the blade. “Drink up, Pandora.” He nodded at me robotically. “Pandora gets thirsty.”
“I’m sure she does.”
“Now, here’s something interesting.” He reached into the shoe box again. “This ring. See the two silver hands clasped over the little gold heart? Very romantic. I got it off an Irish Candy in, let’s see, bunghole town in Wyoming—Ten Sleep. Weird Indian name. Ten Sleep. And that’s what I did. I slept with her exactly ten times. . . .”
He kept talking more and more eagerly, almost compulsively. I barely needed to murmur encouragement at intervals as He relived His adventures almost minute by minute, showing us His souvenirs—a black lace bra, a pink plastic rosary, a coin purse in the shape of a goldfish, a coil of braided brunette hair. . . . All that mattered was to let Him talk, not hurt us. From time to time He would get up, give us a warning glare, and stalk to the peephole for a moment, keeping an eye out for pigs. My exhausted mind envisioned herds of marauding peccaries in the parking lot. But none materialized. Sitting down, He would once again preside as if hosting a dinner party, laying His knife on the table to gesture with both hands. Words spewed out of Him, telling us the things He’d done. He needed to tell His story. We all did. And I doubt He had ever told His before. He’d never encountered anyone so willing to listen before. Interested, nonjudgmental. Female, fat, middle-aged, nonthreatening. Utterly safe, actually, since He would dispose of me when He was finished off-loading His burdensome memories on me. First, seductions. Later, rapes.
And more recently, murder.
Murder. Three girls, two of whom had never been found.
As He told us all about it except exact locations, Juliet slipped her untouched sandwich and her unopened beer into the pockets of my old tan coat, still wrapped around her. Pulling it close, she leaned against me. After a while she laid her head on my shoulder. From time to time I felt her relax and heard her breathing slow down as she dozed. Exhausted. And wise, to shut away tonight’s terror with sleep, even if only for a few moments.
Our host seemed not to notice. After His sandwich and His second beer, He said, “Come on, Pandora,” took the knife, stood up, turned His back to me, opened the fridge, pulled out one of the vegetable crisper drawers, and urinated in it. That is to say, I heard Him unzip, saw the back of His straddle stance, and heard Him whiz. Then He shook the drops off His favorite body part, zipped up, slid the crisper drawer back into place, and closed the fridge. He got Himself another beer out of the cola machine, sat down at the table again, laid down His knife, returned His focus to me, and kept talking. I smiled. I nodded. Inwardly I screamed and screamed, promising myself globs of chocolate ice cream and psychotherapy when this was all over, if I lived through it.
After His third beer, our captor’s tone had turned downright affable, although His expression remained as flat as ever. “So that’s ten, eleven, twelve Candies so far,” He was saying as He sorted through the pile of baubles, lingerie, and miscellaneous show-and-tell on the table. “An even dozen.”
Evidently the shoe box was empty. But I had to keep Him talking. “Um, and you brought them all here?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But this is where you live, isn’t it?” I thought of Sam, the way he’d make complimentary small talk whenever he entered anyone’s home. He was good at that, observant, friendly, genuinely interested. A good salesman, a good businessman, a good manager, and even a good husband in his way, just not . . . exciting. Poor Sam. I wondered whether he’d called the police yet. I wondered whether he was getting any sleep. I wished I had told him I loved him very much, as I suddenly realized I did.
But I couldn’t start wishing I’d said things and regretting I hadn’t, or I wouldn’t be able to focus on what I was doing. Wrenching my mind away from Sam, I told this other, nightmare man, “Very nice.” I scanned the basement room, nodding seriously. “Very nice indeed. You have electricity—”
“I spliced into the neighbor’s line.” He leaned back in His chair, mellow, bragging. “They’ll never know why their bill’s so high. They don’t even know I’m here. Nobody knows. I made sure the room’s lightproof.” For no apparent reason He reached out and picked up His knife. Pandora. Her stiletto tip, pointed toward the ceiling, glinted sharp and nasty, like evil in someone’s eyes, as our host asked, “Are you scared of the dark, Marie baby?”
Apparently it was a rhetorical question, because He didn’t wait for me to answer. The light went out.
I could see nothing but blackness. That room was as dark as my mother’s heart. I gasped, just barely holding back a scream. Juliet, drowsing on my shoulder, squeaked as she woke up.
Before I could think, move, take advantage, the light blazed back on.
I sat blinking like emergency flashers. He sat at the table. He hadn’t touched the light switch by the door, about eight feet away from Him. Come to think of it, He hadn’t used
the light switch when we’d walked in here either. The light had come on as we had all stood in the center of the room.
“Sounded like somebody’s scared of the dark,” He remarked, and the light went out again.
Darkness tangible coffined us. My heart pounded; I felt as if I’d been buried alive. I heard His chair scrape back as He stood up. I heard His footsteps. In the utter blackness, I felt Juliet grab for my hand. I squeezed hers, and her need for me made me react almost calmly. “How’d you do that?”
I heard Him give a kind of low bark, almost a laugh, and zap, the light was back, making my eyes wince. He stood at the peephole, but facing us.
“I’ll be damned,” He remarked. “It’s morning. Daylight.”
“How can you tell?” I pretended stupidity, wanting to know how that peephole worked.
Instead of answering, He tossed His knife toward the ceiling. It spun in the air. He caught it by the handle, flung it upward again, caught it, did it again. And again. I watched Him, my mind so blurred with fatigue that I felt hypnotized.
“Psychokinesis,” He said.
“Huh?”
“Psychokinesis.” Holding the knife, He sat at the table again. “You didn’t think I knew any big words, did you, bitch?”
Actually, I knew all too well how intelligent He was. “You’re smart,” I said humbly. “Did you go to college?”
“Hell, no. I never finished high school.”
“Then how did you learn to do all these thing? Lightproofing, electric heat, and”—I tried not to look as if I needed to know—“I wouldn’t be surprised if you have running water in here too.”
He remained unsuspicious. “Sure. No problem. Cistern on the roof. People forget these old buildings have cisterns built in.”
“What was this building originally?” I asked. “Some kind of factory?”
I was just making conversation, stalling for time. But His face flattened, and His stony eyes went extra cold. “Dumb-ass slut, you think I’m stupid? You think I’m gonna tell you where you are?”
Dark Lie (9781101607084) Page 13
