Shame (29 page)

Lola started to fill her teacup. “What sorority?”

“Kappa Omega.”

Lola stopped in midpour. “What is it?” Elizabeth asked.

“There was a telephone book in my kitchen. Caleb had to have left it on the table. It was opened to the
Ks
.”

Both of them played with their teacups, neither one looking at the other. “No,” Elizabeth said, breaking their uneasy silence.
“This was a planned attack. The killer wouldn’t have been looking up the sorority’s address at the last minute.”

“You said the attack was interrupted. How?”

“Someone deliberately set a fire and then set off the sorority’s alarm.”

Lola offered a word, a hope: “Caleb.”

“How would he have known?”

“He’s intuitive. He wouldn’t agree, of course, but he is. He probably saw or heard something that prompted some association. I know he’s been listening to your book. I also know how bothered he was by it. He played some parts over and over again.”

“What parts?”

“I don’t know. This morning he was all involved in listening to your book, and I think what he heard upset him. He could hardly sit still while I was dyeing his hair.”

“You dyed his hair?”

“He looks like a natural blond now.”

“You must be a good friend.”

Lola smiled, as if enjoying a joke. “I must be.”

“How long have you known one another?”

“A little over a day.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “You barely know this man, and yet you sheltered him, disguised him, bound him, and claim to know the workings of his psyche?”

“I forgot to tell you about our Las Vegas wedding.”

Elizabeth tried not to laugh, but she couldn’t help herself.

“Not that it was love at first sight,” said Lola. “The first thing I had to do was get over how much he looks like his daddy. I knew Shame’s face from studying his pictures in your book. I read your book over and over when I was growing up. It was like a rite of passage for me. It taught me how I couldn’t let shame rule my life.”

“I’m glad.”

“’Course, knowing Gray Parker from pictures isn’t the same thing as knowing him in the flesh and blood. Maybe to you he and Caleb don’t look all that much alike.”

“No. They do.”

“Did you have a problem with that?”

Elizabeth nodded. “It brought up a lot of old feelings. I couldn’t look at Caleb. It gave me vertigo.”

“I think I had the opposite problem. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of him. And it wasn’t his good looks that kept me looking but this sadness I sensed in him. I know my helping him must seem crazy, but I didn’t have it in me to turn my back on him. From the moment he walked into my club, it was like I knew we were meant to connect.”

“What club?”

“Randy Randi’s. It’s where I perform.”

“What do you do?”

“I like to call it cabaret, but the public seems to prefer the term
female impersonation
.”

Elizabeth did a double take. The sudden appearance of their food allowed her a chance to pick up her chin from the table.

“Who got chicken?”

“Here,” Lola said.

Their server hurriedly placed their food in front of them, put down a pot of steamed rice, and then left the bill on a plate beneath two fortune cookies. Lola breathed in appreciatively, then looked up and smiled. Elizabeth averted her glance. She hoped she wasn’t blushing but knew she was. With her fair skin and red hair it always showed. She could never tell a lie without her body giving her away. “Pinocchio syndrome,” she called it. Being honest hadn’t been an option in life but a necessity.

Her tone terse, Elizabeth said, “I thought you were a woman.”

“It’s a mistake I often make myself.”

“I don’t know who I’m angrier at, you or me. You should have told me.”

“I’m sorry that I didn’t, but if we get to know each other better, and I hope we will, you’ll see that this wasn’t some guest appearance by my feminine anima. What you see is who I am.”

Elizabeth said nothing.

“I can understand your being angry with me,” said Lola. “But why be mad at yourself?”

“For not noticing. I pride myself on my powers of observation.”

“Sometimes pride gets in the way of seeing. You think you already know the answers. Maybe you needed to encounter a heyoka.”

“A what?”

“It’s a Lakota word and sensibility. In my culture, a heyoka was someone who often did things backward or the opposite of what was expected. A heyoka makes people think.”

“Is that why you dress like a woman?”

“No. I do it because it’s right for me. ‘I yam what I yam.’”

“I didn’t expect it,” said Elizabeth. There was less frost in her voice.

“Without the unexpected, we wouldn’t have nearly as many insights. At my home I have this map of the world. Everything is reversed in it, or at least the opposite as we’re used to seeing it. South America is on top of the world, North America on the bottom, and so forth. It’s all geographically accurate, but the map bothers some people. They don’t like their world changed.”

“That’s understandable. Most people don’t like being told that down is up.”

“But that’s not what the map represents. It only shows a picture of the world in another way.”

“It’s not as simple as that. I once interviewed a concentration-camp survivor. She told me she was haunted by one particular war picture. In my mind’s eye I expected the photo to be some horrible scene of carnage, but it wasn’t that at all: the picture was of Hitler happily playing with his dogs. As far as this woman was concerned, Hitler was the devil, and playing with dogs wasn’t something the
devil did. She had a hard time reconciling the happy, smiling face in the picture with all the atrocities Hitler perpetrated.”

Gray Parker’s picture often bothered Elizabeth in the same way, but she never admitted that. Maybe she was attracted to contradictions. Most of her books had centered on such: the Eagle Scout driven to murder; the beauty queen becoming as ugly inside as she was pretty outside. Milton had shown the way: fallen angels always made for a compelling read.

They both turned to their food. Elizabeth took small sips of her soup. Though swallowing still hurt, the pleasure of eating was worth the pain.

Lola noticed the exacting way she was eating. “Did you think you were going to die?” she asked.

Elizabeth touched her scarf. Lola wasn’t the only one in disguise. “Yes.”

“And did your life pass before your eyes?”

“Yes and no. I remember some fleeting images, and I remember feeling some regrets, but mostly what I felt was anger and terror. I wasn’t as brave as I would have liked. But I was stubborn. I just didn’t want to die like that.”

“How do you want to die?”

“Not prematurely.”

“Maybe you picked the wrong line of work.”

“I’ve considered that.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Regarding what?”

“Caleb. We have to find a way to help him.”

“At this point I hope he’ll help himself by surrendering to the police.”

“He’s not going to do that. He doesn’t trust the police. And he doesn’t expect anything better than a lynch-mob mentality from the public.”

“If he contacts me, I can’t encourage him to continue being a fugitive. He’s deluding himself if he thinks he can get to the bottom of all this by himself.”

“He managed to save a girl’s life tonight.”

“We don’t know that.”

“I think we do.”

“Let’s assume you’re right. What are we supposed to do? Unless he contacts us, we can’t do anything. He has all my numbers.”

Elizabeth suddenly frowned.

“What is it?”

“Someone else has one of my numbers. I was duped today by a message left for me. The caller spoke in a whisper and identified himself as Caleb. I wanted to hear from Caleb so much that I believed him.”

“He knew your weakness.”

“Weakness?”

“The caller. The killer. He knew how to push your buttons. It’s possible he knows you.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The way he manipulated you. And his having your telephone number.”

“I keep thinking there was something familiar about him,” said Elizabeth, “something in his voice. Maybe Caleb’s right. Maybe the answer is in my old Shame files, in the past.”

“But whose past?”

“What do you mean?”

“Remember my map. It’s all in the way you look at things. Caleb might not be the only target here.”

“You’re not very reassuring.”

“Don’t blame the messenger.”

They both put down their forks, hungry no more.

“Let’s go look for Caleb tonight,” said Lola.

“Look for him where?”

“He doesn’t have a car. He has to be hiding somewhere near that sorority.”

“I hope he has a good hiding place then, because half the police department is out there. Patrol cars are everywhere. And short of using a bullhorn, I don’t know how we’d signal him.”

Lola reluctantly nodded. “I better go home then. Maybe he’s trying to call me right now. I’m going to borrow a friend’s phone, and I’m going to go sit by it. But if tomorrow comes, and I haven’t heard from him, then bright and early I’m going out on a manhunt.”

J
UNIOR HAD SURPRISED
him. For the moment, Feral couldn’t lay any more stones on him. But just for the moment. The pressing would continue. In America’s history, only one man had ever been pressed to death. That was a pity. Feral couldn’t understand why pressing had never grown more popular in the States. On the Continent, it had commonly been used to torture and kill. What Feral liked was its simplicity. Pressing was easy. You just piled stones on a person’s chest, one atop another. As the weight grew heavier, breathing became more difficult. It was the rare person who didn’t break down, who didn’t capitulate with whatever the presser wanted.

Junior had shown surprising mettle. Feral had thought him an unworthy son before. Weak. Afraid of his own shadow. A simpering cuckold. But the way Junior had managed to avoid capture, and the way he had even figured out one of Feral’s schemes, showed he was at least a resourceful coward. In a moment of weakness, Feral had even been tempted to end Junior’s life on that road, but that wouldn’t have served his plans. There was still a stone or two he needed to lay on Junior’s chest. Heavy stones. Headstones.

Feral was sure Junior wouldn’t prove to be any Giles Cory. He wished he could have been present at Cory’s pressing in 1692.
Who said that the Pilgrims didn’t have any fun? Cory was the only colonist ever pressed to death. He had refused to plead either guilty or innocent to the charges brought against him. There was a reason for his silence. Because he refused to plea, his possessions couldn’t be confiscated by the state. Though the stones had piled up on his breast, they hadn’t broken Cory’s spirit. Feral suspected that was the presser’s fault. He was confident he had just the right straw for the camel’s back.

Pressing. The thought invigorated him.

Feral thought of other stones and found himself getting excited.

As she had been getting out of her car, he had sneaked up behind her and said, “Do you know what Charles de la Roi said to the warden the day before he was sentenced to die in the gas chamber?”

She had jumped, and then she had seen who it was standing there, and her expression had become disdainful. She had said his name, had announced it as if it were some pitiful thing, but she never came up with an answer.

“He said, ‘Warden, I’d like a little bicarbonate, because I’m afraid I’m going to have gas tomorrow.’”

She was used to his morbid histories, but she wasn’t ready for what followed. He had laughed, and she had seen something in him and heard something in his laugh. She became aware of Feral for the first time. Then she had spotted the large rock in his hand and knew that the wilding was about to take place.

“No,” she had said. “Don’t.”

Her last words were not at all original, not at all.

It was a happy memory. Pity today didn’t go as well, thought Feral. To use a tiresome cliché, he’d been so close, yet so far. It annoyed him to have done so much planning for such an unsatisfactory climax. He had been twice denied. But that’s what contingency plans were for.

Patience, he told himself, patience. His inner sermonizing reminded him of one of his favorite cartoons. The picture showed one very annoyed vulture telling another vulture, “Patience, my ass. I’m going to kill someone.”

Feral understood that kind of killing hunger. Like the vulture, he was tired of waiting. But he wasn’t a carrion feeder. He was a hunter grown impatient.

“Patience, my ass,” Feral said aloud. “I’m going to kill someone.” And soon.

It was time to get back to work. He referred to his notebook, picked up a pen, and dialed a number.

“Yes, can you please connect me with Ann Dickens’s room?”

Feral had methodically entered the name and telephone number of every San Diego area hotel and motel into his notebook. The private dick had documented that Queenie invariably registered under any one of six names. The detective was good. He had worked for Feral on several occasions until he’d had his untimely accident.

“Ann’s not there?” Feral did his best to sound surprised. “She was supposed to be traveling with Angel Lake. Can you check and see if she’s registered there? Yes, the last name is Lake.”