Shame (28 page)

“I brought you a little present,” Elizabeth said, holding out a scarf for Dana.

The girl stopped clutching herself. With her right hand she reached for the scarf, and then she extended both of her hands to Elizabeth.

“We’re a member of a club neither one of us wanted to join,” said Elizabeth, “a club we should make sure gets no more members. I want to know if the same man attacked us. Will you talk with me about what happened?”

“Yes,” said Dana.

They shared a similar hoarseness as well.

“Was this man familiar to you in any way?”

She shook her head very carefully.

“Did he use your name or seem to know anything about you?”

Another shake of the head.

“Did he talk to you?”

A half nod. “He said he only wanted my valuables, and that’s when I let him tie my wrists and ankles.”

Elizabeth felt her hands tighten on hers. Dana was angry that she had allowed herself to be trussed up without a fight. Good. She’d need her anger.

“He told me he needed his drug fix, but the way he talked made me suspicious.”

“Why is that?”

“He talked like some professor.”

“Professor?”

Dana took a second to find the right answer. “It was the way he spoke, like he was lecturing or something, and the things he said. It didn’t sound like he was just there to steal.”

“What was he lecturing about?”

“About men that had been executed.”

“Do you remember any of their names?”

Dana started to shake her head, but then stopped. “One of them was named Appel,” she said.

“Good. How did you remember that?”

“Because of the story he told me. He said that before he was electrocuted Appel told everyone that when they finished with him he’d be a baked apple.”

“Do you remember any other names?”

She shook her head, albeit gingerly and with a little wince. “But I remember him saying something about this other criminal who arranged to have his body donated to some college because that way he said he’d get a good education.”

More capital punishment references. Elizabeth had been offered a name as well. While gasping for air, as her life was slipping away, he had told her that John C. Woods always slept like a baby. She had whispered that name to the detectives, and later they had come back and told her that Woods had been the busiest hangman in American history, having hanged 347 men.

The translation, Elizabeth thought, was that her death wouldn’t bother him in the least.

“Did he say anything else? Ask you any questions?”

Dana tentatively shook her head. “No. He mostly kept trying to calm me, kept shushing me.”

She shuddered. The motion seemed to jar her memory. “He asked me whether I liked poetry,” she said, suddenly remembering.

Elizabeth opened her mouth to ask a question, but her throat tightened, her stomach did flip-flops, and the words wouldn’t come out.

“He said something about Whitman. I don’t really remember what.”

“Try.” The word sounded like a croak.

“He was going to recite some poem to me.”

“Which?”

Dana felt Elizabeth’s imploring in the squeezing of her hands.

“I don’t...I was just so frightened.” A moment’s pause, and then: “He told me the title. It was something about felons.”

Your Felons on Trial in Court,
she thought. Gray had once told her it explained his epiphany and his evil.

“Why?” she asked.

He looked at her, showed his large white teeth. “Fellow I know said there was this philosophy professor who once asked that question on a final exam. Three-hour final it was, and all the students were scribbling furiously, taking up all that time to answer that question, all except one fellow who wrote: “Why not?”

“Why?” Elizabeth asked again.

“People are going to tell you it was my childhood and my mother. But I don’t believe that.”

“Do you feel things?”

“Finish your sentence, E-Liz-a-Beth.”

His exaggerated way of saying her name always made her smile. It succeeded again. “What do you mean?”

“‘Do you feel things,’ you asked. But the unsaid part was, ‘like a normal human being?’ And my answer to you is that I feel things even more than a so-called normal human being.”

“Then why?”

“Because hell’s tides continually run through me. Whitman. If I weren’t so set on being cremated, I’d probably ask for the last few lines of his poem to be chiseled into my tombstone.”

“I’d like to hear them.”

“Is it that you want to hear the words or that you want to be able to write, ‘On Tuesday the eighth, Shame recited another one of Whitman’s poems to me’? People seem to be all excited about the fact that I read books and enjoy poetry.”

“Most murderers don’t like poetry. Most murderers don’t have an IQ of one sixty-three.”

“You didn’t answer my question. You’re not going to try to make me into something other than what I am, are you? I’m no tragic figure, and I’m not anything special. Your book’s going to be a failure if it paints me as anything other than what I am.”

“And what are you?”

“I’m the exact opposite of a tree.”

“What do you mean?”

“I never set roots, I never gave the world shade, I never warmed a room, I never filled a table with fruit or nuts, and I never stretched for the sky. Instead of nurturing nests, I destroyed them.”

“So the exact opposite of a tree is death?”

“No. The exact opposite of a tree is worse than death.”

“Do you like being an enigma?”

“What I don’t like is being given a nobility I don’t have. I knew someone who knew someone who served with that Birdman of Alcatraz. Burt Lancaster made him seem all noble in that movie, but the truth of the matter is, he was a horrible human being who just happened to like birds. And just because he cared for his birds, people wanted to believe there was some deeper humanity in him. It’s like you trying to make something out of this poetry thing.”

“What are the words that will never be on your tombstone?”

The air came out of his nose, an amused exhale. He shook his head, but Elizabeth knew it was show. She waited on his words. He acted as if he had all the time in the world, and yet he was due to die in less than a week. As he started reciting, his voice became softer, almost wistful.

“Inside these breast-bones I lie smutch’d and choked,

Beneath this face that appears so impassive hell’s tides continually run,

Lusts and wickedness are acceptable to me, I walk with delinquents with passionate love,

I feel I am of them—I belong to those convicts and prostitutes myself,

And henceforth I will not deny them—for how can I deny myself?”

She awoke to the past and the present both clinging to her. It took her a moment to realize the vibration was coming from her cell phone.

“Excuse me,” Elizabeth said, letting go of Dana’s hands and reaching for her cell phone.

She looked at the number, then said, “I have to leave.”

The exact same words, Elizabeth remembered, that she’d said to Gray Parker after he had finished reciting that poem to her.

H
ALF THE TABLES
at Jimmy Sun’s Red Dragon were occupied, something Elizabeth didn’t expect at two in the morning, but with the bars just closed, she suspected the restaurant had acquired unofficial after-hours club status. Voices were loud, the volume fueled by the offerings of the recent last call. The crowd was mostly young. Judging by all the tantalizing smells coming from the kitchen, they were also hungry.

There were no singles sitting in the restaurant, no sign of Sue.

“Just one?”

The accented voice made Elizabeth jump. Her close call with death had her on edge. An older Chinese woman with thick glasses hustled out from behind the maître d’ stand.

“No. Someone will be joining me.”

The woman impatiently motioned for Elizabeth to follow her. At the first vacant table she dropped the two menus. “Enjoy your meal,” she said, her parting words sounding more like a command than a pleasantry. The table was too exposed for Elizabeth’s liking and too near an exuberant party. She moved herself over to a booth.

A busboy brought a pot of tea. Elizabeth poured herself a cup. Blowing on the steaming tea, she took a few grateful sips. She cradled her hands around the cup, glad for its warmth. On
the wall nearest her were pictures of celebrities who had apparently dined at the Red Dragon. Elizabeth tried to put names to the familiar faces but found she could match very few of them. Something had to be wrong with her life, she decided. She was more familiar with the FBI’s Top Ten list than she was with Hollywood’s.

A face came between Elizabeth and one of the pictures, a pretty face, dark and sensuous. “Ms. Line?”

“Sue?”

They shook hands, and the woman took a seat. She looked flustered. “Confession’s supposed to be good for the soul, isn’t it?” she asked.

Elizabeth barely had time to nod before the woman continued. “My name’s not Sue, Ms. Line. I gave you a fake name. Caleb didn’t want me to give my real name. I figured that since I’m part Sioux Indian, it would be clever of me to call myself Sue, though I’m not feeling very clever right now.”

“Maybe we should reintroduce ourselves. I’m Elizabeth Line.”

“Lola Guidry.”

They shook again. “I don’t exactly know how to start this conversation,” Lola said, “but I suppose we should begin at our impasse. Earlier tonight you wouldn’t tell me whether or not Caleb attacked you. You said you had reservations.”

“I still do. I don’t know you.”

“I’m Caleb’s voice while he’s in hiding.”

“So you say.”

“I know things he would have only told a confidante. I know that the two of you talked on several occasions. I know that the murdered girl left at the Presidio was the same girl that worked at the counter of the doughnut shop where the two of you talked. I know that you gave Caleb one of your
Shame
books and audio-books on an MP3 player. I know you were supposed to be looking through your files to try and figure out who from the past
might be committing the murders. And I also know you made a promise to help Caleb’s wife and children. But what I don’t know is whether he was the one who tried to kill you.”

“Your knowing all these things,” Elizabeth said cautiously, “still begs the question of why Caleb isn’t the one talking with me.”

“I’ll be glad to tell you why, but first you’re going to have to meet me halfway.”

Elizabeth thought about her options for a moment, then relented. “He didn’t attack me.”

Lola sighed in relief. “But why...?”

“I didn’t want to drive my attacker into hiding. I thought it possible that he was
the
murderer. After what happened tonight, I’m all but convinced of it.”

“What happened tonight?”

“What happened to give and take?”

Lola raised her hands, signaling for patience with her long, artistic fingers. “When we first talked,” she said, “you asked me why Caleb wasn’t the one questioning you, and I told you that he was afraid to go out in public.”

Elizabeth remembered. That had contributed to her own reluctance to be forthcoming. Sue’s answer had rung as true as the name she had given.

“The truth is that Caleb was tied up—literally. When I heard those reports that he had attacked you, I didn’t know what to do. So he volunteered to be tied up until I talked with you.”

“Is he still tied up?”

Lola shook her head. “I came home and found him gone. It looked like a tornado had gone through my place. There was blood everywhere, and I lost it when I saw the bloody knife. I screamed. Luckily, my neighbors weren’t home. Because it suddenly occurred to me that the whole mess wasn’t the sign of some struggle but just Caleb’s trying to get free.”

“You think the blood was all his?”

“I’m sure of it. He had to cut through duct tape, and I guess his pound of flesh as well. I discovered more blood in my bathroom. It was all over my medicine cabinet and all over the bloodied bandage wrappers he left behind. There were also bloodstains on my closet doors.”

“How long was he left alone?”

“I was out of my house from half past eight until one.”

Elizabeth nodded, pursing her lips in thought.

“The way everything was strewn about makes me think he was in some big rush.”

The Asian woman who had seated Elizabeth suddenly appeared in front of them. Without wasting time for pleasantries she asked, “What you want?”

Lola didn’t need to look at the menu. “Cashew chicken,” she said.

Elizabeth opened the menu, looked for something that could be swallowed easily, and decided on wonton soup. The server grabbed the menus and ran off.

“What happened tonight?” asked Lola.

“There was another attack.”

“Did he kill again?”

“No, thank God.” Elizabeth fingered her scarf. “He was interrupted for a second time today. But I’m afraid he’s not the kind that gets easily discouraged.”

“Did anyone see him?”

“Not well enough to make an ID. He got into a sorority house, but it was too dark for the woman he attacked to get a good look at him.”