“Some people here would like to be disabled in reality?” Helen kept her voice low.
“Absolutely.” Blake had no compunctions about discussing his condition. “Being disabled or being with handicapped people frees us to be who we really are.” He rubbed at a pimple on the side of his jaw. “Although most of us aren’t ready to make the ultimate commitment. It’s hard to do it safely. That’s why we are so concerned about that girl in Pittock. She must have been one of us.”
Helen nodded toward Chuck. “So he’s going to make himself a quadriplegic. How?”
Blake shook his head. “He doesn’t know. There are doctors in other countries who will do it sometimes, but it’s difficult. You have to find the right person. Even in Third World countries, it can be expensive.”
The meeting was starting. The room had filled with fifteen people.
“Can I talk to your group?” Helen asked.
Somewhat reluctantly, Blake introduced her.
“Wait a second.” A girl with dyed black hair and a black polyester dress spoke. “You said we wouldn’t have any media here. No cops and shit.”
Next to her sat a young man in jeans and a white t–shirt. Half his left arm was missing. On his other side, a pretty woman in a business suit cradled the stump in her hand.
“Yeah, who are you?” the business woman asked. “How do we know you’re safe?”
“Blake contacted me,” Helen said. “He told me about Cutter and asked for my help. Then he hung up on me.” She raised her eyebrow in Blake’s direction. “It would be irresponsible for me not to follow up. If your fears are correct, my students are in danger. I’m here for them. I’m not here to out you or threaten you.”
“How do we know that?” a woman in leg braces asked.
Helen shrugged. “How do you know anyone is safe? You don’t. But you’re going to have to trust me if you want my help.”
Beside Helen, a man in an embroidered tunic sat cross–legged on his chair. “I trust her,” he said in a dreamy voice. “She has a strong aura.”
To Helen’s surprise, this seemed to satisfy the devotees.
Blake said, “Why don’t we go around the room and say our names. Then we can talk to Helen about the website.” He began the introduction, placing a hand over his heart. “I’m Blake. I’m a devotee.”
As soon as the introductions were made, Chuck, the C5, spoke. “What are you going to do about this guy?”
“We’re not safe as long as this asshole is on the loose,” the girl in black added. “What if that girl didn’t want to do it? What if she wasn’t ready?”
Blake spoke with the somber tone of a public service announcement. “Because so many of us are closeted, we often turn to the first person we can talk to. They’re not always from a supportive group like this. Sometimes it’s just a pervert, a creep, like this guy. That poor girl probably thought she had no options.”
Helen looked at their worried faces.
“What are you going to do?” Chuck demanded again.
“I don’t know,” Helen said. I don’t know. I don’t know. “I’ve urged the police to look into this. It’s hard. People are allowed to post in public forums. They can post awful things. That, in itself, is not a crime.”
“That forum is our lifeline,” the woman in the business suit said, still clutching the stump of her companion’s arm. “Wren and I talked on the forum for six months before he came to his first meeting.”
The man next to her nodded.
“He would never have had the courage otherwise, and he would never have realized what this group is about. We can’t let someone like Cutter ruin this group. For some of us, it’s all we’ve got.”
Blake added, “A lot of amputees are reluctant to contact devotee groups because they think we’re a bunch of fetishists, who just want to handle their stumps or worse. A person like Cutter sends all the wrong messages.”
“A devotee is…?” Helen asked.
“Someone who loves amputees,” Blake said.
“Sexually,” the Goth girl added.
Blake shot her a disapproving look.
“Well, it is! We are fetishists in a way. I love women with above the knee amputations, but society says that’s wrong. Other people have fetishes for hard abs or big breasts or blonde hair. We’re told not to look at handicapped people like that. I am a fetishist, but it’s an innocent fetish. I would never hurt anyone.”
“I’ve been an artist for over ten years,” the man in the green tunic said. Everyone turned to face him. “At first, it started as an aesthetic challenge. How do I paint someone whose body doesn’t conform to our expectations? Either I hide or objectify, but neither choice is right. The amputee does not avoid her arm, nor does she make it the focus of her identity. I wanted to make the viewer as comfortable with the different body as the amputee herself.”
He touched the tips of his fingers to his thumbs and rested them on his knees.
“It all came together when I went to China and met Bao Yu Lee. She was starting a chapter of the Foot and Mouth Painters International in China, and I was a graduate student visiting her university. She had been born without arms. She was so elegant in her cheongsam, I didn’t notice that she was armless nor did I not notice. She did in real life what I had wanted to do in my paintings; she let her reality stand without comparison to other people. She simply was. Once I realized that all that grace came along with a double loss, I was in love.” He smiled and closed his eyes. “Of course she was a beautiful married woman, and I was a silly American trying out my few phrases of Mandarin. She made me a devotee.”
There was a ripple of agreement among the gathering.
The women in leg braces spoke. “This guy, Cutter, he’s different. He’s a predator.”
“I read the emails Blake forwarded me,” Helen assured her.
“He’s still at it,” Blake added.
“Send me any new messages you receive, and send them to the police too.” Helen felt helpless. “I’ll do what I can.”
For a while there was silence. Helen wondered if the meeting had an agenda that would begin now.
“Poor, Carrie,” the Goth girl said, readjusting her stiff, black gown. “I feel like I know her. I know what it’s like to have these desires and not be able to tell anyone. She could have been my friend.”
“What did you say?” Helen asked, suddenly alert.
“She could have been my friend.”
“What did you call her?”
“Carrie.”
“Why Carrie?”
“I’ve been helping Blake monitor the forum. In the last couple of messages, Cutter called the girl Carrie. I don’t know if that’s her real name, but I keep thinking of her as Carrie. You know, she was probably just another girl. Like me. Like anyone. She probably grew up in the suburbs. Then she got mixed up with this asshole.”
Carrie. Helen’s mind raced. Had the name Carrie been in the news?
“You know, she was pregnant,” the girl added. “I think that had something to do with what happened. She was going to tell her guy, but she was nervous about what he would say. No.” The girl stopped. “Not nervous. Scared.”
Chapter Thirty-four
On the street outside, Helen called Terri.
“Long time, no hear,” he said amiably. “How’s our latest PR crisis?”
“I need your help, Terri.”
Terri’s voice grew serious. “What is it?”
“I need to know if any media source mentioned the name Carrie or Carrie Brown along with the Pittock legs.”
“I’ll get someone on it right away. What are you thinking?”
Helen stepped off the sidewalk. In the narrow space between the church and the next building was an old cemetery. She stepped through its wrought–iron gates and looked for a bench.
“I just met with the Devotees of Boston. It’s an amputee fetish group. Don’t ask. They’ve got a web forum, and some guy named Cutter has been flaming them. They say he me
ntioned a girl named Carrie.”
“That’s the one your professor was worried about.”
“Yes. Carrie Brown. If it was in the media, it doesn’t mean anything. Some creep heard the name and used it. But the police didn’t take Wilson seriously, and if no one publicized the name ‘Carrie,’ then there’s a good chance the guy who’s posting to the forum knows about the Pittock legs.”
“And your crazy professor isn’t so crazy.”
Or crazier than we can imagine. Helen felt the holster of Wilson’s gun pressed against her ribcage.
“Wilson is worried about Ricky Drummond. He dated Carrie. Then Carrie transferred to UMass, where they have 25,000 students and no official record of who goes to class. Apparently, she’s living off campus.”
At her feet, a weathered headstone read Jonathan Broen 1879—1921. Beside it rested his “beloved wife” and “loving son.”
“There’s something else,” Helen said. “My tires were slashed.”
“Oh hell.” Terri was animated.
“Someone saw the culprit drive away in a bright yellow Jeep. That’s the kind of car Ricky Drummond drives.”
“What did the police say?”
Helen kicked a dry clod of dirt at her feet, sending particles skittering across a flat tombstone. “I didn’t tell them.”
“What?”
“I was at a hotel.” Helen paused. “I’ve done something stupid.”
“I’m listening.”
“I slept with someone I shouldn’t have.” Helen glanced around as she spoke, but the cemetery was empty. Only the cicadas and the sound of traffic broke the silence. The grass grew in long tufts between the tombstones. Whoever tended the cemetery had neglected it for some time.
“A student?” Terri asked. He was no stranger to college scandal.
“Give me some credit.”
“It’s been done. Was it a minor?”
Terri was a man of integrity, but his job required that he handle the shady side of life, and he did this with aplomb.
“A professor,” Helen said reluctantly.
“Consensual?” Terri sounded like he was going down a checklist: PR questions for lascivious administrators.
“Not exactly,” Helen said.
Terri’s voice was urgent. “Did he attack you, Helen?”
“Nothing like that. It’s just I didn’t know…she was a professor at the time.”
“A woman, eh?”
Helen could almost hear Terri lower his hackles.
“Yes.”
“That’s hardly scandalous anymore. If you’re trying to shock me, you’re going to have to do better. What does she teach?”
Helen leaned her elbows on her knees, cupping her phone to her ear. She stared down at the dry ground.
“It was Adair Wilson. And there’s more. She has a history of discrediting administrators with allegations of sexual misconduct. According to Marshal, she has a history of blackmail.”
Terri was listening closely. “Tell me more.”
“Marshal says she got her first teaching position by blackmailing her thesis advisor. Then she tried to get Drummond fired with some trumped–up sexual harassment charges made by a janitor who didn’t speak English. He says Wilson wanted to sleep with this woman, and when she couldn’t woo her the ordinary way, she helped with her harassment case. I can’t believe I did this, Terri. I can’t believe it.”
****
There was always a moment of realization when the woman he was making grasped what she was to become. In those seconds, he was her god, and she was clay in his hands. It was glorious, and for Helen Ivers, that moment would go on and on.
Slowly, reverently, he placed the box from Generations Medical Supply on the basement workbench. He smiled and picked up his box cutter. The blade flicked out like a snake’s tongue. He slit the clear membrane of tape from one end of the box to the other. He could have ripped it open, but he wanted to practice. The tape was like skin. Inside, a card told him that Operator 436 had reviewed his order and packed his supplies. They rested in a nest of Styrofoam peanuts: gauze, rubber tubing, absorbable gut sutures. Nothing that would raise police suspicion. The bone saw would have to come from the asylum.
A single, narrow window cast a bit of dusty sunlight. He thought about filling in the brick–lined shaft that allowed it to reach the basement. Then he could bury the window. He could make Ivers here, in the same basement where Father had tortured him while, above their heads, Mother drifted from room to room in her oyster–gray evening dress. It would be appropriate. Poetic even. Everything coming full circle.
He wrapped the rubber tubing around his hand, to feel what Ivers would, then pulled the tubing tighter. He wanted her here. Now. But he had to wait and prepare.
The next step would not be as exciting as inventorying his equipment. He had to rent Ivers an apartment, and, for that, he would go onto campus. In the unlikely event that someone got suspicious, there could be no link between his computer and Ivers’s well–appointed but isolated rental.
****
UMass was halfway between Boston and Pittock. Helen expected the visit to take only a few minutes. As it turned out, traffic on the narrow rural highway was backed up bumper to bumper. When she finally got to Amherst, she realized that the address for Carrie Brown was one town away, in Hadley. There, she found a large, white, clapboard house converted into six apartments. On one of the mailboxes, the name “Carrie Brown” was written in cursive script.
She climbed a rickety exterior staircase to Unit 4 and knocked. There was no answer. The Venetian blinds were drawn. She knocked again. The heat of the day was stifling. Below the staircase, several trashcans exuded a rank odor. She knocked again. On the other end of the porch, the door opened to Unit 5. A woman in a housedress waddled out.
“Excuse me,” Helen said. “Have you seen Carrie Brown?”
“Don’t know no Carrie Brown,” the woman said. She jerked a thumb in the direction of the door on which Helen had knocked. “But if you’re looking for him, you ain’t gonna find him here.”
“Him?”
“Him. Her. Don’t know.” The woman lifted both hands, as though the issue exhausted her. “Must be a vampire or something. I never see anyone come or go. Quiet neighbors. I’ll tell you that. These walls are paper–thin. I don’t think anyone shits in that apartment. I’ve never heard the john flush.”
“Do you know who pays the rent?”
The woman pushed a cat back into her apartment and closed the screen door behind it. “You the police?”
“No. I’m just looking for a student who might be in trouble.”
“Hmm,” the woman grunted. “No student lives there. I know if they’re students. Students always loud. I don’t care if they say they’re studying. They breathe loud.”
****
The neighbor was not the only person to whom Carrie Brown was a mystery. Helen was leaving her car in the Pittock parking lot when Terri called.
“I put my best people on it,” Terri said. “I don’t see the name Carrie anywhere. It’s possible it turned up in private forums, blogs, Facebook, but I doubt it. Anyway, if it did show up behind a password that would still mean the flamer you’re looking for is someone close to the campus community. That doesn’t mean the guy killed her, but he’s interested. I read the emails. He’s scary.”
Chapter Thirty-five
He watched her get out of her car. He knew her silhouette. Assertive but worried. He wanted her to relax, to lie back and be his. Though she might not realize it yet, she wanted that too. He could see it in the weary way she pulled her hair into a band when she thought no one was looking. As though she was getting ready for some unpleasant task, scrubbing the floors or cleaning a tub. A woman of quality should never have to do that.
When the Pittock Asylum was founded, doctors believed that too much exercise or intellectual stimulation would drive women mad, Father had told him. Doctors prescribed more time with infants, less conversation,
and more needlepoint. When the asylums went public, women from the factories lined up, complaining that physical work and their husbands’ abuse made them ill.
“It was the downfall of the asylum,” Father had said. “Now we have this.” He had gestured toward the occupational therapy room, where several schizophrenics were performing their agonized dance. Stand up. Shuffle. Sit down. Stand up. The nurse was trying to get them to make clay pinch pots.
He would bring back the old asylum. The place of peace. Once he made her, she would not have to rush across campus in those high heels. She would never have to bind her hair behind her head. She would never have to rise. In some ways, even the pain would be gift. She could not think with that much pain. She would just be. His. Made.
He carried the straitjacket in a leather briefcase at his side. Tonight was a good night to leave it for her, a promise of what was to come.
****
Back at the Pittock House, Helen poured a glass of vodka. She had just lifted the drink to her lips when a knock at the door startled her. She retraced her steps and opened the door. An electric thrill ran down her spine. Wilson leaned against one of the porch columns, her clothes clinging to her body with casual grace, her pale eyes set off by her soft tan. Helen could not look at Wilson without remembering the orgasm shuddering through her body. She also felt a sudden and uncomfortable certainty: Wilson had been watching her door, waiting for her to come home.
Helen stepped onto the porch and closed the door halfway behind her.
“What can I do for you, Dr. Wilson?”
“I need to talk to you.” Wilson appeared to deliberate for a moment, then she said, “Some of my students got into Carrie’s room last night.”
“Got in?”
“Broke in.” Wilson’s shrug was just a ripple in her silken t–shirt. “They’re old buildings. It doesn’t take much.”
The Admirer Page 17
