WIDOW

by Billie Sue Mosiman

  Where was her cat? Shadow had bought her a cat. Where was it? Who had taken her cat?

  The voices echoed all her words, mirrored them back inside her brain so that they doubled, so that reality shimmered, and still she hunted and she called and she began to cry, silently, wondering what might have happened to her little cat, her Blackie.

  How she needed her!

  It was a while before she heard the knocking at the door. When finally she did—a steady rap-rap —she hurried through the house to the sound. Someone might have found her cat and brought it home. Oh please let it be that.

  When she reached the bottom of the stair landing and faced the front door, she could see, through the beveled and clear glass and iron bars, that a man stood there. She rushed to the doorknob and turned it, opening the door wide, and said breathlessly, “You brought my kitty?”

  The man stood with his arm still raised as if about to knock again. His eyes opened wide and his arm lowered slowly, as if to move faster would frighten her.

  “Well, did you? Where is she? Where is my cat?” In her brain the words echoed endlessly. Where is. My. Cat. Whereismycat. Whereismycat.

  “I'm sorry, I don't have your cat, ma'am. I just came to see the property for sale. Have I come at a bad time?”

  “Bad time? You don't have my cat?” Charlene spun, slamming the door in his face. She ran up the stairs again, hurrying down the hall to the bedrooms. “Bad time” echoed. Badtime. Badtime. Whereismycat? Kittykittykitty.

  She found it in Shadow's room. Lying on the dresser near the silver tray with the two crystal high-ball glasses and the decanter of whiskey. The cat must have batted it during play and the decanter had tipped over, spilling the contents. A puddle of the poisoned liquor lay in the base of the silver tray like a still lake, amber in sunshine.

  Charlene slumped onto her knees, clutching the dresser edge with her fingers. “Kitty, kitty?”

  A new word echoed in her head. Dead. Dead. Dead.

  She could not bear to touch it. She crawled from the bedroom on her hands and knees, found a closet door in the hall, and crept inside, shutting the door firmly behind her.

  Maybe in the closet, in the stuffy darkness, the voices would stop.

  Maybe they would.

  Maybe.

  ~*~

  Son drove down the circle drive, away from the mansion. The woman was completely out of her mind. Stone cold crazy. Where was her cat?

  She was crazy, that's all there was to it. It was a pitiful thing to see. Hair all bedraggled and hanging in her face, those eyes wild with despair and skittish, just waiting for terrible news, her hands trembling. Why, she hadn't even dressed properly. She had on wrinkled baggy shorts, a tee shirt half in and half out of the waistband, and a ratty gray sweater—in the middle of a heat wave!—buttoned up all wrong so the sweater hung askew.

  Who was she? What was she doing there? He had seen Shadow leave for work and he had wanted to find out if anyone else lived with her He wanted to know what the situation was in the house. He never expected to be met at the door by a raving lunatic.

  He shook his head, perplexed. He leaned down and beat at the front dash, hoping he'd rattle something inside so the air conditioning would work better. He was sweating like a pig. The whole front of his shirt dripped wetly.

  At least the crazy woman hadn't attacked him. He would have had to do something to her if she had tried. She needed something done to her. Something permanent. A person had no right walking around raving mad. It was like happening upon a mad dog, you put it out of its misery, that's what you had to do.

  He had had a cat once. Pretty tabby. Sweet and loving, rubbing his legs all the time when he came home from school, lying across his books when he did his homework. Everything was fine until the cat grew up. When it was an adult, it hardly ever came near him. He'd try to pick it up to pet and it would hiss.

  One time he was lying on the floor in the living room doing a page of math and the cat came over, curled itself in a ball near his arm. Without thinking, he reached out to stroke its fur. The cat leapt straight into the air screeching, and when it landed, it had its sharp teeth imbedded in his arm. He jumped to his feet and flung his arm down to rid himself of the terrible burning pain there. The cat maintained the tenacious grip. He screamed for Mother and again flung his arm as hard as he could. The cat was thrown across the room, hit the wall, and landed on its feet, scampering away.

  After Mother doctored his wounds—and they were deep ugly gashes—Son went in search of the cat. He had a knife and meant to make short work of it.

  He found it cowering in his room behind the bed. He stabbed it five times before it stopped trying to bite him. He didn't even bother to bury it. He walked out into the yard and heaved its carcass over the fence into an empty overgrown lot.

  Son hated cats after that. And hated people who loved them. Like the crazy babbling woman in the seashore mansion.

  How could Shadow stand it? What was the deal between those two anyway? Was the woman her sister? A relative of some kind? You couldn't put up with a crazy person unless you loved her and you had to. Even then it was bad.

  Son took an exit that led to downtown. It was after ten at night now. She would be on stage, dancing her first dance.

  He wanted to see again the face of the pretty woman who lived in a big rambling monstrosity of a house with a nutty fool. It was obvious the lunatic wasn't killing the men. Lunatics couldn't think straight enough to button their sweaters properly, much less commit murder without being immediately detected. He really had to see the dancer and try to understand.

  Living with a burden made him think of his mother. She had not said a word about him being gone so much from the house lately. She had such forbearance. Such grace under duress. She would be all right, she would be fine, she said, go on, go ahead. And he went, guilt trailing out the door, hanging onto his coattail like a string attached to a kite.

  Well, fuck. Maybe everyone had a burden. Shadow did. He did. Everyone had someone who weighed him down and anchored him to Earth so he couldn't fly, he couldn't breathe, he couldn't live.

  He parked and sat looking across the street at the neon sign of the Blue Boa. He had to go in easy and check for the cop first. He prayed he wasn't there. He really wanted to see the woman who might be the city's next big serial murderer. There was something special about her, he knew that, felt some kinship with whatever it was that was special, but he couldn't put a name to it. Except that they both carried someone else on their backs, he didn't know what the connection was.

  Unless it was murder. He hoped it was murder. He couldn't wait to try his hand at poison. Stan said the victims had Warfarin in their stomachs. Luckily Son had a box of it at home for the disposal of rats.

  How convenient.

  ~*~

  Shadow discovered Charlene after frantically searching the house, calling for her. It was early morning and she was tired, and at first she thought Charlene had wandered from the house, or she had been abducted or something. But then she found the cat dead on the dresser, and she knew her friend had freaked.

  Shadow opened the closet door and there Charlene sat, eyes wide, staring. “C'mon, come out of there, Charlene. Let me help you.” She reached down and took the other woman's hand to lift her from the floor. She pulled and Charlene came to her feet.

  “I couldn't find my cat,” Charlene said in a small voice.

  “I'm sorry about the cat. I should have closed the door to my room when I left.”

  She guided Charlene down the hall to her bedroom and had her sit on the bed. She went to her knees and removed her friend's cotton slippers. “Aren't you hot in that sweater? Let me take it off you.” She removed the garment and dropped it on the floor. Charlene smelled of fear-sweat. How long had she been hiding in the closet? “No need to get into a gown tonight. Just lie back on the bed, get under the sheet.”

  “Voices,” Charlene said. “Repeating stuff in my head.” She touched her forehead and
closed her eyes.

  Shadow looked down at her, sad, tired, worried that things were getting worse and there was nothing she could do about it. “Try to rest,” she said.

  “I can't. The voices won't let me.”

  Shadow sighed. She sat on the bed and took Charlene's hand. “Look, I'll get another kitten. It's going to be all right.”

  Charlene's eyes opened and her gaze fastened on Shadow. “I don't want another kitty,” she said. “They die. They just die.”

  “Why don't I call the hospital tomorrow and see if the doctor will prescribe something for you?”

  Charlene turned her head aside on the pillow. She stared at the wall. “I don't care.”

  “You're alone too much. Maybe I'll stop working so many nights. We don't need the money. I'll stay with you more, would you like that?”

  “I don't care.”

  “Oh, Charlene. Please try to fight off these spells. Please? I'm doing my best to take care of us. I don't know what else to do to help you.”

  “I used to hear everyone's story,” Charlene said, veering into the landscape inside her mind. “I used to remember everything so if a woman had shock treatment, I could tell her about her life. Now I can't remember things. I can't remember things.”

  “Did you take those Valium I got for you from work?”

  Charlene nodded. “I can't remember.”

  Did she or didn't she, Shadow wondered. “If you'd take those, they'd help you.”

  “Those men . . .”

  Shadow waited, holding her breath. She didn't really want to talk about the men. She didn't know how to stop her friend from thinking about them. As for herself, all thoughts of them left when they slipped beneath the bay water.

  “. . . they talk to me . . .”

  Shadow shut her eyes now. She heard that click-click-click of the bicycle chain slipping, slipping gears, slipping her away.

  “. . . they are very angry with you . . .”

  There was a time when I was happy.

  “. . . they talk all the time and say how wrong it is they had to die . . .”

  There was a time when my children were babies. Snuggly, warm, held close to my chest while I rocked them. There were times . . .

  “. . . I wish they hadn't died too. If they were alive. . .”

  . . . when life was sane and real and average. When I shopped at the supermarket for the week's groceries, when I sat on the floor and read from books to the boys . . .

  “. . . I wouldn't hear them in my head now . . .”

  . . . and their laughter, when I bathed them, the two of them splashing the bath water above their heads, holding a washcloth in little hands, wetting it and then slapping it on their hair, pretending to wash . . .

  Charlene was asleep. Her hand limp, fingers splayed, in Shadow's hand. The moonlight snaked a path across the foot of her bed, to lie across bare feet. A water pipe gurgled somewhere in the house, in the walls.

  Shadow slipped back and found herself still sitting on Charlene's bed in the dark of the night. She stood, feeling disoriented, and left the room. She needed to sleep. She needed to forget about Charlene's troubles and forget about . . . about . . . everything. It would all look brighter in the morning. It always did.

  Twenty-Seven

  Samson worked the streets after the sun set. He showed around the photos of the victims, but no one remembered seeing them. Or if they did, they wouldn't say.

  Samson knew there had to be a connection between the killings and the Montrose area. He found Big Mac in McDonald's and sat in the booth opposite her. He ordered a large coffee, wishing there was some whiskey in it.

  “I'm hitting dead ends,” he said.

  “New case?” She bit into a Big Mac, squirting the special sauce all over her hands.

  “Yeah, what might be some serial killings.”

  “Down here?” She spoke around a mouthful of hamburger.

  “They didn't happen down here, at least we don't think so. The bodies were dumped in Galveston Bay and they keep coming in around Seabrook and Kemah. The channel down there, or shrimpers, hauls them in.”

  “But you're looking here, in Montrose, for something?”

  “The victims, all men, were known to habituate this part of town. Some of them liked the club scene.”

  “Habituate? Is that Harvard talk for ‘hung around?’”

  Samson grinned. “Yeah. They hung around down here. But no one remembers seeing them.”

  “Show me the pictures.” She took the last bite of the hamburger and fastidiously wiped the fingers of both hands on a napkin.

  Samson pulled the photos from inside his sports-jacket pocket. He tossed them on the table. They spread out across the varnished wood. Mac pulled them with a forefinger one at a time toward her, checking the faces. “I don't remember them either. You sure they hung out here?”

  “Relatives and acquaintances said they were last heard of when they headed this way.”

  “That don't mean they hung out. Means they visited, maybe just that one time. Sounds funny, though.”

  Samson thought it over. “You may be right. Maybe they didn't make a big habit of coming to the clubs. Maybe each one of them happened to come here the night they died. That would explain why the street doesn't remember them.”

  “Now this one . . .” Mac stabbed her finger at one of the pictures. She had casually perused all the photos and then drew one off by itself.

  “Yeah?” Samson leaned over the table to see which victim she meant. It was the first poison victim. “You saw him?”

  “Can't be sure. This guy's fat? Hefty, big in the shoulders?”

  “Yeah, he was.”

  “Was. Right. Food for worms now. Anyway, I'm not real sure, but something about how big he is, I remember. It's been a while.”

  “Think, Mac. Where were you when you think you might have seen him?”

  “Hell, it was during the time I was coming down hard with that pneumonia. I was feverish. But still . . .” She studied the picture. “He sure looks familiar. I might've just seen him walking along the sidewalk . . .”

  “Where, Mac? Near what club?”

  Mac grabbed her drink and sucked on the straw. Samson didn't want to push her, the memory might retreat. He waited, sipping his coffee.

  A gay couple took a table next to them. They held hands across the table and stared dreamily into one another's eyes. Samson thought one of them was downright pretty—thick black lashes, dark eyes, smooth jaw. The thought didn't disturb him. Some men's attractiveness crossed gender and could be appealing to male and female alike, not that he ever talked about things like that to the guys at the station. He brought his attention back to Mac, who slurped the drink down to the ice.

  “Chez Tigress?” she said.

  “You're not sure.”

  “I can't be sure. It was a while ago, I told you, and I was sick.”

  Samson noted the victim's name and the club name next to it on his notepad. “What about now, how are you feeling? Looks like your appetite is back.”

  She smiled a little, showing a missing incisor. “I took all my medicine. I feel like a hundred bucks.”

  Samson smiled. “I'm glad to hear that. Think anymore about my offer?”

  “What, move in with you? I'm old enough to be your mother. Our sex life would be dull donkey droppings.”

  Now he laughed and the gay couple looked over. “The offer was for housing, not a love affair, Mac.”

  She methodically picked up all the litter from the table and arranged it on the tray. “I'm okay,” she said. “I'm fine now.”

  “But this heat . . .”

  “I wander ‘round the Kroger's when I get too hot. They got the best air conditioning in town. And they also got cheese and cracker samples sometimes. Great snacks for a light lunch.” She stood with the tray. Samson pocketed the photographs and stood with her, coffee in hand.

  “If you change your mind . . .”

  “I know how to reach you
, yeah, I know. Now get outta my way, I'm a busy woman.” She shouldered past him, dumped the tray, and put the empty in a stack. He followed her out the door and onto the street. The heat, even at night, was oppressive. It enclosed the body like a sheet directly from the clothes dryer. Mac went around back of the restaurant, heading for the dumpster where she had left the shopping cart.

  Samson strolled down the sidewalk to the Chez Tigress. He had to show the photos around some more. Then later he might catch Shadow at the Blue Boa. If he didn't stop thinking about her, he'd never get this case on its feet. She dominated his thoughts too much. Or else he was too goddamn horny. Or both.

  Probably both.

  ~*~

  Son befriended the bum at the same time Samson and Mac shared a table at McDonald's no more than five blocks away.

  “What's your angle, mister?” the bum wanted to know. Son had offered to give him a bottle of wine he had stashed in his car.

  “Since when would you want to be suspicious of free booze? I just thought since you answered some of the research questions for my book, I'd repay you. It's good wine. Not that cheap shit you've been drinking.” Actually, it really wasn't bad wine. He had found some strong red wine from the California vineyards, took it home from the liquor store, carefully removed the cork, and added enough rat poison to gag a maggot. It meant he had had to pour some of the good wine out down the kitchen drain, but it was all for a good cause.