WIDOW

by Billie Sue Mosiman

  Was this a conservatory? An indoor greenhouse or arboretum? His feet sank into soft loam. A spider, a daddy-long-legs, walked up his forearm, and he swatted it off. He stood on tiptoe and peered through the glass. He smelled mildew on the brick siding. Light spilled from both ends of the glassed-in section inside. Starlight and moonlight shone in from overhead. He saw nearest him a brick maze, a marvelously strange configuration of paths weaving through brick that would have been higher than his waist if he had been inside it. On the other side he saw a glittering blue-green swimming pool. Between and high up he could see the metal catwalk connecting the front and back of the building. There he saw the two women struggling to transport the . . .

  body

  . . . heavy burden.

  He watched with shining eyes, startled, but thrilled. The dancer killed the floaters they kept finding in the bay. He had proof. He knew now for certain.

  Was that why the cop hung around her? Did he suspect too? Oh God, he hoped not. The game was just beginning. He didn't want her caught yet. He had only had one turn and if she were caught soon, he would have no time to commit another murder. The thought seized and held him, taking away his breath.

  They were at the far end of the catwalk, having dropped . . .

  the body

  . . . what they were carrying, several times before getting it across. When they disappeared into that end of the house, he pushed from the side and started toward the back to see where they exited into the moonlight.

  It took them a long time to get the body down the steps and across the short lawn to the dock, then down the dock, and into a small boat with an outboard motor. Shadow continued cursing and the crazy woman cried, while Son sat in the shadows, hidden by weeds, contemplating and relishing the scene of the crime.

  A peace that he had not experienced in many years descended over him. He felt a kinship with the woman called Shadow and suddenly it occurred to him how perfectly matched were their nicknames, how fateful—she was the shadow and he the sun (son!). They were the two elements that ruled the world—the light and the dark, the Yin and the Yang, the day and the night. They performed the duties others were too afraid and too weak to perform. They owned the lives of others and took them at will. She led him and he followed, sun chasing shadow.

  He smiled at the coincidence, but sobered when he thought that perhaps there was no such thing as coincidence in the world. It was destined, perhaps preordained, that they meet and become partners, dancing together, leading the band at Death's cotillion ball.

  He had to stop this. Stop thinking in metaphors, like a stupid novelist. This was a deadly serious business, his main business. To wrap it in literary gauze and bury it deep in flowery language was to separate it from the real world where he knew what he was about and what the world really needed. He could not afford to pretend this was anything other than willful and premeditated murder, death of the first order, and that he needed all his wits to deal with it.

  He stayed, growing damp with dew and bitten by mosquitoes, while the crazy woman re-entered the house, and Shadow took the small boat out into the waters. He waited until she returned, her great burden discarded. Watched while she wearily made her way up the pier, head hanging, arms limp at her side, and then on into the house.

  He left tired, but replete, just as dawn broke with slow stealth, golden and rosy over Southeast Texas.

  Thirty-One

  On the day his mother died, Son killed his second victim.

  He met the man in a bar across from the Blue Boa. He was as unlike the bum in the alley as the man in the moon. Young, clean-cut, earnest, and sober, he presented the ultimate challenge.

  They sat at a back booth together talking football. Son faced the entrance to watch for the patrolling detective who worked the dives.

  The young man, Clive Winnows by name, proved to be obsessive about the Dallas Cowboys. Son didn't give a shit about NFL teams, didn't really care about sports at all, but to keep the conversation lively he pretended to be a rabid Houston Oilers fan. In Texas, Cowboy fans disagreed vehemently with Oiler fans, and vice versa. The subject was always good grist for a heated debate.

  “Moon should be replaced, man. He loses all the games for you.” Clive was not without intelligence. Son knew enough about football to know that the Oilers' quarterback, Warren Moon, was one of the best players in the league, but it appeared his age was telling on him. Maybe they'd trade him soon.

  “I suppose some would say when Moon's hot, he's unbeatable, but like any other quarterback, when he's off his feed, there goes the ball game.” Son, working to get Clive's trust, would not deliberately alienate him, especially not about something as frivolous as sport.

  They talked late into the night, the conversation spinning on first this sport subject and then that one. The bar was just a bar, a neighborhood place to hang out, not a strip club. They were not disturbed by loud music or agitated by naked women parading on a stage. The draft beer was cheap and cold.

  Son sized Clive up as sexually straight, but kinky as hell about football. He could not get his fill of showing off what esoteric knowledge he possessed on the sport. He must have made a study of it for a number of years, judging by the way he wouldn't let it go. He even professed to have decorated his house in Cowboy trinkets, from Cowboy mugs and glasses in his cupboard to Cowboy clocks, rugs, and throw covers. The man was certifiable.

  Son wore a disguise. He wasn't about to be seen spending hours in a bar with a man who would turn up in Gulf waters tomorrow or the next day. On his head he wore a black gimmee cap with a tractor-dealer insignia. Baggy clothes stuffed in strategic places so that he seemed to weigh a good fifty pounds more than he actually did made him look older and more vulnerable. He wore lifts in his shoes. He had even brought out an old mustache from his collection in the bedroom closet—one left over from use in encounters with other victims—and, using theater glue, had attached it to his face. He looked undistinguished and as ordinary as mud.

  When Clive left with him, an hour before the bar closed, accepting Son's offer to walk down the street for hamburgers before heading home, Son led him first to his car. It was parked in the shadows on a side street.

  During their hours of conversation Clive offered the information that he was an automobile-repair technician, an expert, if you will, with any electrical problems on nearly any make or model of car.

  Son sadly reported that his car lights kept blinking out on the way downtown. He didn't know if he could drive home.

  Clive good-naturedly offered to check it out.

  Once inside the car, with Clive in the driver's seat bent down under the wheel feeling for the wiring harness, Son tapped him hard just once behind the ear with the business end of a hammer. He pulled the body toward him until it was on the passenger side of the car, got out, and circled to the driver's side so that he might drive them from the area.

  It was not until he had the unconscious Clive at Seabrook that Son parked, propped the man against the window, and poured a can of Coke laced with rat poison down his throat. Clive coughed and woke. He fought, but he was much smaller than Son, much weaker from the wound to his head, and he succumbed without too much trouble.

  Son had to hurry to get him from the car before he vomited the blood.

  After undressing and disposing of the body in the bay, Son wondered what he should do about the mess on the rocky ground. He found the short-handled camping shovel in the trunk and made fast work of lifting the offensive and incriminating dirt, shovelful by shovelful, and carrying it over to the bulkhead to drop into the water. When he was sure he had gotten it all, he scuffed the area with his shoes so it would not be noticed as a place where soil had been extracted.

  On the way home he sang with the Beatles on the radio about yellow submarines. We all want one, he thought. That's what we want, a yellow submarine.

  The moment he walked into the house, he knew something was wrong. The silence was as vast and as deep as in an empty midnight c
athedral. No radio from his mother's room. No sounds at all, nothing.

  He let out a strangled groan and rushed down the hall without turning on the lights. He slipped on the hall rug that had worked loose from the carpet tacks, caught himself on the wall, and kept going, calling, “Mother, Mother . . .”

  She lay on the bed as he had left her earlier. She lay perfectly at peace, her hands crossed on her chest.

  He knew she was dead. Even in the dark, without seeing her up close, without feeling for a pulse, he knew. She would have heard him enter the front door, heard him call her, awakened long before he slammed open her closed bedroom door.

  She was dead and the paralyzation would not let him go across the room to her. He stood immobile until the grief rose up like a great beast from her bed, stalked the distance to where he stood, and smote him between the eyes.

  He cried out.

  He fell to his knees and covered his face with his hands.

  ~*~

  Bruce, the manager of the Blue Boa, told her there was a phone call and she should know personal phone calls were verboten while at work, but go answer it, damnit, and get off quick, this was no kind of place to gab on the phone.

  Shadow raised the receiver to her ear, perplexed, wondering if something might be wrong at home with Charlene. She drew in her breath and said, “Hello?”

  “You're all I have left,” he said.

  His voice was unfamiliar and hushed and something else that she did not readily identify. Was it a little British?

  “Who is this?”

  “There are just the two of us now,” he said, “and I have to tell you something.”

  “You obviously have the wrong person. I don't know what you're talking about.” It must be a freak calling her. Who else knew her stage name and could ask for her at the Blue Boa besides Charlene, Mitch, and the clientele?

  “No, no.” Breathy. “You're the one, Shadow. My other side.”

  “Listen, I have to go . . .”

  “I killed another one tonight for you,” he said, rapidly now, tripping over the confession before she hung up on him.

  She gripped the phone until her hand hurt. She pressed it closer to her ear. “Who are you?” she whispered, turning her back to the hallway where other girls came and went behind the curtains.

  “I'm Son,” he said.

  “Sun?”

  “Male child of darkness and death. Also, Sun, bright as an avenging angel. And you are my Shadow.”

  “I'm hanging up now.”

  “That's all right. I'll be in touch.”

  The dial tone buzzed in her ear and she stood listening to it another few seconds to buy time to think, to rearrange her features before she turned to face anyone in the club.

  Sun? The opposite of shadow? The copycat killer? He knew about her, that she . . .

  He'd called her!

  A trembling bout overtook her limbs so that she had some difficulty hanging the black payphone receiver into the metal slot. Her legs threatened to wobble out from beneath and give up her weight to the floor. She held onto the wall, then turned.

  No one looked at her. No one knew she was alive.

  She stumbled down the hall to the dressing room and made it to her locker. She couldn't turn the tumblers on the lock. She pressed her forehead against the cool metal and shut her eyes.

  A toilet flushed. The stall door opened with a squeak from the hinges, and Mom said, “Whassa matter, girl, you feel faint?”

  Arms came around her and led her to the bench in front of the long mirror. She was lowered and steadied by big soft hands. “Want I should call Bruce or maybe a doctor?”

  She managed to shake her head. “No.” Small protest. Her control over everything, for walking, for talking, for coping with this new world, had deserted her.

  Sun? Child of . . . Son! Did he fancy himself son of Satan or something with that “child of darkness” remark? How did he know about her? Had he followed her, watched while . . . ?

  I killed another one tonight for you.

  Her mind clicked over and went far away. When she returned, Mom was on her knees staring up into her face. Mom's eyes were distressed. Deeply etched lines described the flesh around her mouth. “I think you ought to go on home, if you can drive yourself,” she said.

  “I'll be all right in a minute. I'm . . . sorry. I must be getting a . . . bug or something. I'll be able to drive. Will you tell Bruce for me?”

  All the way across the city the man's voice haunted and tormented her. She had to do something, but what?

  When she arrived home Charlene was in the kitchen, scrambling eggs. Shadow made her put the pan aside and sit with her at the kitchen table. “You look white as a sheet. What happened?”

  “He called me at the club tonight. That man.”

  “Who called you? What man?”

  Shadow raised her gaze until she stared into Charlene's frightened eyes. She'd debated telling her, but she had to. This would affect them both, she couldn't go on ignorant of the situation. “The copycat killer. He said he killed another one tonight.”

  “Oh God. Oh God!”

  “He knows I can't tell anyone, I can't ask for help. I don't know what he wants, Charlene. He talked to me like . . . a lover or something. Or like we're partners.”

  Charlene balled her fists on the table top. She began hitting the table with them, one at a time, taking turns with each fist. Shadow tried to reach out and stop the nerve-wracking noise, but Charlene jerked away and continued using her fists, now on her own knees.

  “We will go to jail forever or they'll put us to death,” Charlene said.

  “No we won't. I'll do something. I'll think of something . . .”

  “He knows who you are. He knows where you are. He probably even knows this place.”

  We don't know what he knows yet . . .”

  “He probably watches us through the windows, sees everything we do.”

  She continued pounding at her knees to punctuate her words. Shadow scooted her chair closer and grabbed the other woman's wrists, held them rigid. “Look at me.”

  Charlene looked and grew calmer. She stopped trying to free her hands.

  “I don't know yet what this means. I'll find a way out. You believe me, don't you?”

  Charlene began to nod her head, halted.

  “You have to believe in me or everything falls apart. I don't want to go to prison or back to a mental hospital. Neither do you. We wouldn't survive it. Not again. You know that, don't you?”

  Charlene nodded this time, tentatively.

  “He's like one of those men I killed. A sick pervert, a diseased sick crazy bastard with . . .”

  Charlene tore her gaze away and hung her head in a posture of one dropped into a great depression.

  “Charlene? You have to be strong to help me out of this.”

  “Will you stop?” Charlene asked. “Now, will you stop?”

  She knew she must. That what she'd done was insane, that it had jeopardized not only her freedom, her life, but her friend's life and freedom as well. She didn't have the right to bring Charlene into her mad zealous project when it meant possible incarceration or the death sentence. What had she done? Had her own unthinking madness been jolted from her by the madness of Son?

  “What have I done?” she asked.

  “Terrible things,” Charlene said, her voice as soft as a dove cooing. “Crazy things.”

  “Yes,” Shadow said, though not sure she believed it, any of it. She had been so sure, so strong in her resolve, so pure in her motives. Hadn't those despicable men needed to die? Hadn't they virtually asked for it? She remembered the rapist, the pedophile, the murderous racist . . .

  “I'm going to lie down now,” Charlene said, gently shaking loose her wrists from her friend's firm grasp.

  “Yes. All right. Of course. Get some rest.”

  Shadow sat in the kitchen all alone, listening to the air conditioning's low uniform growl venting from overhead, breathing
in the scent of forgotten scrambled eggs cooling on the stove, and thought, I have to find him.

  I have to find him before he leads the police here.

  Thirty-Two

  Samson let a handful of dirt and pea-sized gravel sift through his forgers. He looked up at one of the crime scene team and said, “There was blood here.”

  He twisted around on his haunches to look toward the bulkhead. “He must have dumped the stained dirt in the water, trying to get rid of it. He used something to scoop it up.”

  They had found the body, the tire tracks, and striations in the dirt near those tire tracks. The removal of the dirt could mean the killer didn't want them to know the murder had taken place here. None of the others had as far as they knew.

  “Check this and I think you'll find some drops of blood he missed. It'll most likely belong to the victim, but we have to make sure. He stood, scuffed his hands together to clean them, and ambled toward where the body lay in an open body bag on a gurney ready for conveyance to the morgue. A cordon of police kept the media types at bay behind a crime scene rope. They wanted pictures of this.