WIDOW

by Billie Sue Mosiman

  Then the vision faded away and Shadow understood something she had never known about herself. She had not consciously known that scene from her childhood existed. It was a revelation, since her father was gone before she was really old enough to remember him well, and her mother had never mentioned those times when he must have beaten her.

  “Oh, mama.”

  Why didn't she miss her mother now? Why hadn't she called her since her release from the hospital?

  She thought she might know the answers. She just hadn't thought of them before. Her mother had never been strong or dependable. She wasn't good in a crisis. She had never been a fighter. She let men and life and disaster roll over her and wear her down smooth as a stone in a creek bed. That's why Shadow left home early and married. Her mother by that time was . . . a shadow.

  True! She lost substance as Kay grew, moving into the background of life like a ghost seeking corners. She hardly spoke. She didn't have a hobby or care about herself, about her daughter, about anything enough to make a fuss or an effort.

  Why would Kay think to call her for help or to even let her know she was free from the hospital?

  But wait . . .

  Shadow leaned over, feeling a cramp in her chest like a fist wadding her lungs into crumpled balls. She sucked in little sips of air until the cramp passed.

  Her mother was dead.

  She had died during her daughter's first marriage and before the divorce. Kay had been at the funeral, paid for by her husband, and she'd seen her mother put into the ground.

  How could she have forgotten an event as important as the death of her own mother? Was she truly losing her mind? Or just her memory? And why?

  She heard the door opening and turned from the dead man on the bed. Charlene stood in the doorway, light from the hall showing through her long gown.

  “Shadow, you can't do this. I told you before, you can't do this.”

  Shadow glanced at the dead man and back at her friend. “He hurt a baby.” Her voice cracked. “He admitted it. He had sexually abused children, Charlene. What should I have done?”

  Charlene sighed and stepped into the room. “I don't know,” she said. “I don't know nothing anymore. I don't know if I ever did know anything.”

  She came to the bed and helped Shadow finish untying the limp body from the iron rails. “At least he's not fat,” she said, rolling the bloody sheets over him, and taking the man's torso into her arms to help carry him through the darkened mansion and down to the pier where the boat was moored.

  ~*~

  The phosphorous light from the computer screen bathed Son's face in a pale blue glow. He was not working on a detective novel. He was thinking.

  Earlier in the evening, the local television news had reported a man found out in the Gulf between the island of Galveston and the mainland. It did not appear he had drowned and no one had reported a man missing from a boat. Cause of death unknown at this time.

  Son knew it was victim number three. He was sure the man had not drowned. He had been murdered.

  It was time for Son to make a visit to his old friend who worked in the morgue. He needed more information than he was able to glean from the papers and the TV news. What, for instance, did the victims have in common? Where did they come from? How were they murdered?

  He turned off the computer and went to his bedroom. His mother had been asleep for hours.

  He lay in the dark with his hands behind his head, thinking.

  The next morning after breakfast he told his mother he had to go to the library to do research. He left her with a pitcher of iced water and made sure she did her business in the bathroom before he left.

  Once downtown, he parked and walked two blocks to the hospital. The city morgue was housed underground. He took an elevator down, wrinkling his nose at the smell of antiseptic filtering through even into the elevator's carpeted floor and walls.

  Stanley worked days as a morgue attendant. He logged them in and, after he acquired his degree, would assist in autopsies. Son found him idle in a little back office eating pastries and drinking coffee. “Hey, there. How the hell are you?” he said as Son poked his head around the door. “Come on in and have a bear claw.”

  Son ambled in, hands in his pockets. He sat down on a metal folding chair facing the desk. “I hadn't seen you in a while, and I'm working on a new book. Thought I'd come down for a chat.”

  “Sure, anytime. I was wondering how you were getting on. I loved your last book, man. That was a good one. I didn't know the killer until the very last page.”

  Son smiled. “That's kind of you to say, Stanley. A writer never can tell if he's really getting it right without his readers.”

  “When's the new one due out?” Stanley held out the tray of pastries to Son then set it down again when Son shook his head.

  “Not until the middle of next year. I haven't quite finished it yet.”

  “God, I wish you wrote faster! I need a good book to read.”

  “I just can't crank them out fast enough, huh? I'll try to do better. Listen, what I'm here for is to see if you might help me with an idea for my next proposal.”

  Stanley grew animated, his hands moving in the air as he talked. “Whadda ya want to know? We have plenty of stiffs to pick from.”

  “I keep hearing on the news about bodies brought in from out of the bay. You get them?”

  “Yeah, we got ‘em. New one just today, fact is. They're kind of chewed up. Fish, man, they seem to love man meat.” He stared at a raspberry jelly donut and grunted.

  “What do you think killed them?”

  “ME says the first one was stabbed. These last two, though, they've been poisoned.”

  Son looked startled then quickly covered his surprise. “Now that's a tasty method.” He knew Stanley would never release this information to the press guys. He trusted Son to use it in a novel and that didn't matter. Fiction never mattered. And since Stanley's boss never found out, who could it hurt?

  “What kind of poison, you know yet?”

  “Rat poison probably. Victims have a high concentration of Warfarin in their organs. You know how bad that shit tastes? I don't know how someone got these guys to swallow it, but there's traces of it in the membranes of their mouths and plenty of it in the stomach lining. They drank it, all right. Real weird.”

  “Can't be suicides, I guess?” Son said.

  “No way, man. There's lots better ways to check out than drinking rat-fucking-poison. Might as well be drinking shit. And two men poisoned isn't a coincidence, it's premeditated. Nah, somebody killed them, that's for sure.”

  “Any leads as to who might be doing it?”

  “Nope. Any fingerprints forensic might have wanted to lift from their skin got rubbed off in the salt water. Or eaten by the fish. They float in butt-naked. Now there's a detail you could use, huh?” He laughed. “Won't be any stained clothes to check on these dudes. Whoever's doing it is taking ‘em out in a boat, we guess, and dropping ‘em over the side. Might be killing them on land. It's gonna be tough for the cops to crack this one.”

  “You expect there will be more?”

  Stanley contemplated his Styrofoam coffee cup. “I'm no expert, but since we have three, two of them poisoned, I'd say we'll get more.”

  “Serial killer then,” Son said.

  “Looks to be.”

  “These guys, the victims, they have anything in common?”

  Stanley held out his hands in a helpless gesture. “Now this is completely confidential, you know? Ah, well, I guess I don't have to tell you that. But if the press boys got it, hoo doggie!”

  Son scooted forward on the metal chair. “What is it? C'mon, this is great stuff for a book, Stan, absolutely great.”

  Stan's voice dropped to a whisper. “Well, see, I overheard a homicide dick say this newbie, this new floater, he's the second one that had been hanging out in the titty clubs. Down there in Montrose, you know, those places, naked girls and all?”

  “
Wow.”

  “Maybe it's a woman doing it. Feature that for a minute if you want your balls to go into hiding. Some bull-dyke hates men or something. Or some chick got a grudge against the whole male gender, you know what I mean? Gives me the fucking creeps. I always knew women would make good killers. Now I'm sure of it.”

  “The cop say it was a woman doing it?”

  Stan shook his head. “He didn't say it, I just worked it out.” He laughed, slapping his hand down on the desk top. “I'm starting to do plots like a writer, ain't I? Kee-rist.”

  Son stood. “Well, it sounds promising.”

  “Think you can use it?”

  “It might work out. I haven't used poison in a book yet. And the literature does say poison is the favored method of murder for women. I think you may be onto something. Maybe you ought to tell that cop what you suspect when he comes back.”

  “You think I should?” He stared off into the middle distance. “Yeah, I should do that, shouldn't I? Meanwhile, I'll keep an eye on this one for you. You be back if we get another one and I might know more to help you out.”

  Son put out his hand to shake. Stanley stood and took it. “I appreciate the hell out of this, Stan.”

  “Hey, my pleasure. I feel like a real consultant, you know?”

  “I'll have to put you in one of my dedications soon.”

  “You'd do that? God, that'd be terrific. My mom would love it.”

  Son left the building thinking about the nakedness of the victims found in the waters off the coast. Somebody was stripping them before dumping them in the bay. Why? It sure as hell cut down on the clues. Just making identification was a bitch. And he wondered if Stan was right, that it could be a female killer. That would be a real switch for him to copy a female. A challenge. A perfect game.

  How many female serial killers had there been in history? Precious few. The last had been that woman down in Florida—let men pick her up hitchhiking, then offed them in repayment. Geraldo had interviewed her from prison. Spooky woman. Cold hard eyes.

  This killer wouldn't be caught anytime soon, even he could tell the police that—if they didn't know it already. This was one smart person. One thing Son hated worse than anything was coming along behind a stupid killer and trying to imitate his crimes. It took real intelligence to do it, but it was time-consuming, too. And not nearly as much fun.

  He drove home whistling an old Doris Day tune, “Que Sera Sera.” Whatever will be, will be.

  Twenty-One

  Shadow sat alone at a table in the Blue Boa sipping a Coke. Her set had ended and she wasn't yet ready to leave for the long drive home. Besides, she needed a little more money to make the night profitable and worth the long drive in from Seabrook.

  The way most of the girls made money was table dancing, dancing one dance on a customer's table, or sitting at a table between sets of dances just talking to the customer, letting him buy drinks. He was supposed to pay for a dancer's time whether she table danced or whether he simply sat at the table with her, making conversation.

  Sometimes a man peeled off bills as the girl talked with him, handing them over every five minutes or so. The girl accepted the money, stuffing it in her bra without missing a beat. Often, “talking” at the table with a customer escalated into the man touching the girl while they talked. And during a table dance, though the man wasn't supposed to, he often touched the girl, leaning in close as she danced, smothering his face in her crotch or touching her breasts when she leaned over him.

  For these reasons, Shadow never table danced. She did, however, agree to sit at a table and talk with customers as long as they paid for her time and as long as they did not touch her. When men tried touching, she always stood from the table, and said, “I'm not what you're looking for. I'll call another girl for you.” She rather liked talking to the customers; how else could she decide if a man deserved to continue living or not?

  She had a mission. Without that mission, she thought she might disappear, vanish, her personality desert her.

  None of the girls ever gave out true information about themselves. They gave false names, false addresses, or parts of town where they lived. The truth wasn't what the man was buying, and if he thought he was, he didn't have brains. The whole situation was a fraud, a manipulation, an illusion. Just a game played between men and women, one not that much removed from the games they played in office settings, at singles' bars, or apartment parties.

  Regular customers learned which girls allowed flesh pressing and which didn't. In the Blue Boa, Shadow was the only dancer who kept herself so pristine. Most of the girls needed the extra money and didn't mind a little grabbing now and then.

  Just as at the former club, at the Blue Boa Shadow was known among the dancers as the “Ice Queen.” At the strip clubs up and down the street, the girls were beginning to hear about her. She wasn't really into the game, they said. She made nearly the same amount as the other girls, but she did it without allowing her person to be manhandled. It did not make her popular, but Shadow let it be known she didn't give a rat's ass about popularity.

  “Familiarity breeds contempt,” she told the girls. “Why don't we just keep it businesslike, what do you say? I'm not interested in finding a girlfriend. I'm here to make a living, okay?”

  As she drank her Coke that night, she saw a man angling across the room toward her. She sat up straighter and self-consciously adjusted the lace jacket she wore over the black French-cut bra. The jacket hid very little, but it made her feel less naked all the same.

  The man looked respectable enough. He wasn't dressed expensively, but his clothes were pressed and clean. He wore Wrangler jeans and a plain vanilla-white shirt. He was a little overweight, but he had a nice, clean shaven face. And he did not look drunk.

  “Hello,” she said, smiling as he hesitated next to her table. “Would you like to sit down?”

  “Yes, thank you.” He sat across from her. Some of them tried to sit next to her and she didn't like that. Usually she left. “I'm sorry,” he looked around at the other tables. ”I’m new to the club scene. Do I . . . uh . . . pay you to sit with me?”

  “That would be nice,” she said. “Whatever you think you can afford. And we just talk, nothing else, okay? Save the hanky-panky for the other girls. What's your name?”

  “My name's Frank. And listen, I wouldn't think of . . . you know . . .” He let the sentence go unfinished. She thought he might have blushed and she felt a kindling in her heart for him. He wasn't much older than she, but he seemed younger and certainly less experienced. He was the first man she'd met in the clubs who didn't put her on guard and make her want to ask him the list of questions she now had memorized. Though she probably would. If he came back to sit with her more than this one time. A man should never push his luck with her.

  She gestured to the waitress. “I'm drinking Cokes,” she said to him. “It'll cost you the same as a mixed drink, but I don't drink the hard stuff. I never saw the point in lying to a customer.”

  “I don't mind the money.” He drew out his wallet. “I'll have a Coors Light,” he told the waitress. “Another Coke for the lady.”

  He withdrew a twenty and handed it to Shadow, then when the drinks came, he paid for those rather than running a tab.

  “How long have you been dancing?” he asked.

  “Almost a year now.”

  “I haven't seen you before. You look . . .”

  “Like I don't belong here?” She laughed. “I'm sorry, I hear that line so often it just makes me laugh every time now. The thing is, I do belong here. If I didn't, I'd be in an office somewhere typing insurance forms.”

  He looked down shyly at his hands clasped around the bottle of beer. “I'm sorry. I said I was new at this.”

  “You might want to put your wallet on the table. Or at least have some money stacked to the side. The going rate for ‘talk’ is about a dollar a minute.” She wondered if that would scare him away and realized that for the first time since doing
this job, she hoped that it wouldn't. It wasn't that she was attracted to him physically. He was a bland-looking sort of man and not at all interesting in a sexual way, but he seemed so fresh, so . . . vulnerable. She hadn't realized she was that tired of the old hands with their lines of bullshit.

  He dutifully withdrew his wallet again and took some money out—a few twenties, she saw—and lay it in the middle of the table. “That should cover an hour or more.”

  She smiled. “Looks about right to me.” She took the money and put it into the left cup of her bra. He didn't watch as she did this. God, he was a shy one. The men usually leered when the girls did that.

  As they talked, he had to keep leaning in toward her to hear what she said as the music volume was turned up for one of the dancers on stage. She saw he never looked at the girl. He seemed to drink in her words instead. He had three Coors, they discussed the Astros and why they never won the championship; the Oilers and why they never won the Super Bowl; the cost of air conditioning in the summer in Houston; other clubs in Montrose; how some dancers were good enough to be onstage in Vegas if they wanted; and just any subject that seemed to fall between them.

  She found out he liked to read Travis McGee novels and she had him explain to her what they were. He liked sports, of course, rooted for the local teams. He liked music, all kinds of music, and even listened to the lyrics. When the DJ played a song by Queen, he knew all the words, and offered the opinion that the lyrics were more poetic than one would expect from a rock group.