Serial (12 page)

Jefferson City, Missouri, 1991

Vincent Salas’s appointed attorney, Jack Murray, had never before defended a rapist. Alleged rapist. The wily old prosecutor, Maurice Givens, was having fun with the young attorney.

Murray, an affable fellow and not without persuasive powers, had been able to get a change of venue on the grounds that everyone in Hogart and the surrounding county wanted to torture and kill Salas. The jury not only might have been biased, they might have been hard to hold back.

Even with the Jefferson City jury, the trial was going poorly for Murray—and of course for his client, Vincent Salas.

Not that Salas was helping his cause. He’d refused to get a haircut and shave off his beard, and Murray couldn’t talk him into wearing a coat and tie. For some reason Salas had rejected the simple strategy of looking unlike a motorcycle thug who would rape a young housewife.

Salas wore a blue work shirt, a clean pair of Levi’s, and his black engineer’s boots. He’d at least shined the boots. Murray was a little bit proud of having talked him into that.

“Of course,” said Givens in his smooth southern Missouri glide, “the defendant’s real problem is that
aaall
the evidence points to his guilt.”

Murray was a skinny young blond man with untamable short hair. He leaped to his feet to protest. He seemed to leap when he did everything. Even before his objection, he got a weary “Sustained” from the judge, but the jury had heard. And Murray had to admit, Givens was right about the evidence being a mountain under which Vincent Salas was all but buried.

Now Givens got to the point. He turned to Beth Brannigan, who was dressed in an ankle-length pleated skirt and high-necked white blouse with ruffled trim.

“My dear Mrs. Brannigan,” he said at slightly higher volume, “is the man who raped you present today in this courtroom?”

Beth was so nervous she had to consciously force the words from where they’d stuck in her throat. “Yes, sir. He is.”

“And would you point to him, please.”

Beth’s arm snapped up even though her hand and the finger that pointed were trembling. She was pointing at Vincent Salas, who stared back at her with the mock deadpan expression of a man who knew the deck was stacked, and that he’d had a losing hand even before the cards were dealt.

“Let the record show…” Givens was intoning.

Jack Murray had known from the beginning that the case was hopeless. There had been his client, sleeping and drunk, a few miles from where the victim had been raped, and a few feet from empty beer cans of the brand that had been stolen from her when he’d fled the scene. There was his motorcycle parked nearby, a Harley-Davidson, just as the witness who’d seen him flee had described. There was Murray’s client, dressed as his victim had described. There were scratches on his face, and his victim had described how she’d scratched him.

Now there he was in court, with his dark hair and dark beard, as his victim had described. And the prosecution’s expert witness had already testified how Salas’s blood type was the same as that found at the scene of the rape. From the scratches on his face, no doubt. The ones Salas claimed had been made by a feral cat.

“Ah, the feral-cat defense,” Givens had muttered, barely loud enough for the jury to overhear.

Salas had even figured out a way to make things worse for him. He’d run from the law.

Not just from the law, but from Sheriff Wayne Westerley, who was a hero in the county and had won reelection to his office by a landslide two years ago. Murray had cross-examined Westerley yesterday. The sheriff, a handsome man to begin with, appeared in court wearing his tailored uniform, looking like a movie star, making Murray feel like the paparazzi. Westerley had sat there calmly while the flustered Murray leaped around as if electrified. The contrast wasn’t lost on the jury. When Murray had sneaked a peek at them, he had the distinct impression they thought he was needlessly badgering Westerley, who was merely stating the facts.

At least when Westerley was finished with his devastating testimony and walked past the jury on his way out, no one had asked for his autograph.

What I should have done, Murray thought, was go to engineering school. Built bridges or something. Or maybe done stand-up comedy. A couple of times he’d managed to make the jury laugh.

It helped some that after the guilty verdict, Maurice Givens had taken him aside out in front of the courthouse and told him not to worry, this had been his first murder trial; Murray was young and had the makings of a top-notch trial lawyer.

The next week, after sentencing, Givens again approached Murray outside the courthouse and slapped him on the back. “If the scumbag had anybody else for a lawyer—but me, of course—he’d have gotten fifty-five to sixty.”

Salas had been sentenced to thirty-five years in the state penitentiary in Jefferson City. If he managed to survive, it would seem like an eternity. Murray didn’t feel good about it.

“Don’t be downcast,” Givens had told him in parting. “We both know the bastard’s guilty.”

If Salas was downcast, it was difficult to know it. When he’d been sentenced, he’d worn the same stoic expression he’d displayed when found guilty, almost as if he were bored. Even when Murray visited him later in the lockup and they discussed the appeals process, Salas seemed disinterested. Both men knew where that short road would lead.

Murray told himself that what Givens had related to him outside the courthouse was true. Not just about him having the stuff to become a top-notch trial lawyer, but about Salas’s obvious guilt. The evidence had certainly been there. And Salas had certainly acted like a guilty man. Now it was time simply to go through the process of appeal. Automatic motions that would mean nothing.

Time to chalk this one up to experience and think ahead, Murray told himself. And not just to this evening, when he had a date with a sexy court stenographer.

In two weeks he was going to defend in court some members of an organization called Humane Commandoes, who’d blown up a chicken coop, chickens and all, for no apparent reason. The ACLU wouldn’t touch that one. The commandoes would have Murray as their lawyer.

It had been a small coop. Only a few chickens had died.

Murray figured maybe he had a chance.

New York, the present

Candice Culligan knew immediately upon entering the apartment that she wasn’t alone. Her senses informed her of what her mind didn’t yet know. Subtle movement in the air, a scent, a geometry unlike the one she’d left when she’d gone to work this morning, slight sounds of a frequency felt rather than heard.

After seeing what
might
have been the impression of a man on the duvet on her bed, Candice had become more cautious in everything she did. It was amazing what fear could do. The go-getter woman of supreme confidence had been replaced by someone meeker and milder. She’d come more and more to see her apartment as a refuge, a sanctuary from fear.

So powerful was the sum of these sensations that she actually turned to leave.

Her hand was reaching for the doorknob when she heard a man’s voice say, “You’re here now. You might as well stay for a while.”

For the rest of your life.

She was still frozen by fear when he moved in close to her. His breath was warm on the back of her neck. She hadn’t even had time to whirl and see who’d spoken.

He turned her around slowly, using only the tips of his fingers on one hand to guide her, almost as if they were dance partners. With the slight movement she felt some of her fear slip away.

Candice had shifted her attaché case to her left hand to unlock and open her apartment door. Now, as she turned, she moved it to her right. It was leather, stuffed with legal briefs, heavy and with brass corners. A weapon. She drew her breath, planning to continue revolving her body, moving away from her assailant, coming up and around with the attaché case. Fast. Hard.
Visualize it and you can do it.

Make it count!

As she coiled her body and made the beginning of her turn, her eyes snapped to the knife he held before her face. It had a knobby wooden handle and a short, wide blade that curved in on itself and ended in a sharp point.

Visualize it.

What she found herself visualizing was the knife parting her flesh, loosing torrents of scarlet blood.

If it hadn’t been for the knife she might have made the initial moves of resistance. At least put up a struggle. But her resolution wilted within her and she heard herself whimper as she let her arm holding the attaché case drop. She couldn’t make out her assailant’s features through her fear and tears, but she could see that he was smiling. He was smiling and she was paralyzed.

Goddamn him, he was smiling!

Her willpower seemed to flow from her in exact proportion to his sadistic amusement.

That’s all I am to him—something amusing.

He encircled her wrist with a powerful hand, squeezed, and she heard rather than felt her attaché case drop to the floor.

“I brought a case of goodies, too,” he said. “It’s in the bedroom. Let’s go there and I’ll show you.”

He marched her slowly but steadily toward the short hall leading to her bedroom, guiding her by her aching wrist, the cool knife blade now resting against her throat.

She glanced back and got a glimpse at his face. He didn’t look like the man she’d mistakenly identified as her rapist years ago. Or, as far as she could tell, like the man who actually had raped her. And yet…

The mind could play such tricks.

His fingers dug into her arm and she whimpered again, and at the same time felt a hot coal of anger deep inside her. She wouldn’t let herself be led like this, like a goddamned lamb to slaughter.

I know tae kwan do. Took the concentrated course in self-defense. I can beat this bastard in a fair fight.

But there was the odd little knife, and at that moment all she really knew was terror. One abrupt motion of his arm and her blood would flow.

The ember of anger refused to become flame. She would do what he said. It was her only chance of survival. And she clung to the belief that she
did
have a chance. That she’d be talking about this at the law office tomorrow, that she might even be testifying against this man in court.

She tried to tell him he was ruining his own life by what he was about to do, but the words wouldn’t come. And what
was
he about to do? What crime
was
he about to commit?

Rape? Murder? Both?

Maybe he knows the risk he’s taking, and is willing because this isn’t the first time. Maybe he’s done this before.

Maybe he’s that killer.

The Skinner!

She struggled to speak, to plead with him, but her throat was so dry that she could only croak. Which made him smile again. It was the smile that struck her numb and dumb, that controlled her.
Control.
That was what he wanted. What all the assholes of the world wanted. That was why she’d become an attorney. She was the one who was supposed to be in control. The law controlled everyone. It was fair, or at least logical. She was a representative of the law.

And the person who had her was a representative of the devil. There was a force emanating from him that seemed supernatural, that dwarfed her own feeble efforts and made them meaningless.

He sat her down on the bed, pushed her back. The killer attorney might as well have been a humanlike doll in the hands of this real killer. His plaything. On the bed was the attaché case he’d mentioned, not so unlike her own. Except for the contents, which were visible because the case was opened so he could get what he needed in a hurry.

With quick, practiced motions, he deftly ripped off long strips of silver duct tape and bound her ankles, then turned her onto her stomach and taped her wrists behind her back. Rolled her over again so she was lying on her back, staring up at the ceiling.

He disappeared from her view for a moment and her strength and courage began to clear away some of her terror. She could do more than croak now. She could scream. She could scream loud!

She drew in her breath and tried, but merely whined.

She heard him laugh.

He was back, but she still had a chance to scream. She saw that he’d been to her closet and had one of her stiletto-heeled red pumps. As she stretched her jaws wide to shriek, he jammed the shoe’s pointed toe deep into her mouth, pinching her lower lip against her teeth. The shoe’s dirty, gritty sole lay hard against her tongue, its toe touching the back of her throat. The sound she made was more like a gargle than a scream.

Still pushing the leather toe down her throat, he bent the rest of the shoe upward, so it was shaped as if it were on the rear foot of someone taking a gigantic stride. The shoe’s curved back rim dug into her forehead just above the bridge of her nose, while her nose was in the shoe itself. She could barely breathe, and the sole of the shoe was exerting leverage and forcing her lower jaw down so far it felt as if it might become unhinged.

Quickly he wound duct tape around the shoe and her head so that everything was firmly in place as one piece and the pressure forcing her mouth wide was constant.

He stood back with his arms folded and surveyed his work. The firmly taped shoe was immovable, its stiletto heel protruding from the center of her forehead like the horn of a unicorn. She could barely see beyond each side of the shoe.

He smiled as he thought that was what she’d look like if he applied more tape—a mummified unicorn.

But as it was, she closely enough resembled a goat.

He drew from his pocket a long silver chain with a silver letter
S
dangling from it. He held the chain before her so she could see it around the shoe, and then looped it over her taped head. It lay on her bare neck and chest like ice.

Then, seemingly ignoring her, he began to undress.

When he was nude, he used the knife to cut away her clothes. It took a while, and her clothes were ripped as much as cut cleanly. While this was occurring she closed her eyes and her mind and sent herself away. This wasn’t happening to her, simply because it couldn’t be. Somebody else. It was somebody else in this bed.

My bed!

Candice felt her bladder release. The warmth of her urine between her thighs and beneath her was strangely comforting.

But when he held the knife before her eyes, her horror made everything dark, darker, and she welcomed losing consciousness. She wanted nothing more in this world than to slip into nothingness.

Almost instantly she was choking, gagging. The stench of ammonia made her nauseated.

She saw the small bottle in his hand, with the tight cotton wad stuffed in its neck, and knew immediately what he’d done. She could imagine him holding the bottle beneath her nose, near the deformed shoe.

He brought me back! Damn him! He brought me back!

“I don’t want you to miss anything,” he said, reading her mind. He gave her a smile that was eerily beatific. “Aren’t you sorry now for what you did?”

Keeping the ammonia at the ready on the nightstand, he began to work with the knife.

He was quick, deft, engrossed.

Even as the pain roared through her blood she recalled a case where a woman’s throat had been slit but not deeply enough to kill her. The victim’s blood had coagulated faster and thicker than usual and she’d survived.

It
could
happen.

That was the one slender hope she clung to as she slipped into, and was yanked back from, unconsciousness. Again and again. Journeys in and out of pain.

And again.

Very calmly, he drew a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one. Like a character in an old movie, he let the cigarette dangle from where it was stuck on his lower lip, so that it waggled when he talked. The scent of burning tobacco mingled with the smell of ammonia.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” she heard him say. “We both want the same thing now. For you to stay alive as long as possible.”

She moaned.

He giggled. “Well, I didn’t mean funny
ha-ha
.”

He held up the bloody knife so she could see it grasped in his rubber-gloved hand.

“Aren’t you sorry now for what you did?”

But she observed the dreaded knife only briefly.

During those times when she was conscious, she could not look away from his eyes.