SUSPENSE THRILLERS-A Boxed Set (12 page)

She did not think it through or consider whether her employer would want her to do it or not. She only knew it was for the best.

After making sure all of Willie’s things were in his room, she went to the kitchen and made a strong pot of tea. To keep busy she took out a skillet, margarine, and bread, and fried three pieces of toast. Willie hated toast from the toaster. It was too crusty and dry and hard. He liked the southern style toast fried to a slight crisp, smeared with plenty of margarine. Fried toast had become his favorite snack.

When it was finished, she sat at the table with the teapot, an old chipped cup and saucer she had brought from her home, and the toast. She sipped at the sweetened tea and stared forlornly at the toast. She was not hungry. What had she been thinking, frying the bread? Who was there to eat it? Who in this household would ever eat fried toast again? In all her fifty-six years she had only given way to her emotions once--when her elderly father had died sitting in the porch swing while she shelled peas, unaware he had died.

But as she looked at the fried toast all the hurt, grief, and anger poured out once again. She ran upstairs to the young boy’s room.

Kneeling at Willie’s bed, burying her head in his covers, Betty Lawrence wept as if she would never stop.

#

Clouds from the Gulf obscured what warmth the one o’clock sun promised.

Jack felt cold, so cold his teeth chattered as Sam led him to the porch. The six double Scotches had not warmed him. He carried another bottle in his arms, cradling it carefully because he knew he was not walking straight and it would make a mess if he dropped it.

Mrs. Lawrence heard them entering the front hall, but stayed at the table listening. She had dried her tears on Willie’s pillow and had no more to give. From the muttered sounds and the shuffling of feet through the house, she could tell Jack was drunk. It was no less than she expected. She heard Sam’s voice gently placating and prodding the young father toward his bedroom. Betty closed her eyes and waited. There must be something she was needed for.

Coming into the kitchen for a glass, Sam was startled to see her. "Mrs. Lawrence. How did you find out?" he asked.

She opened her eyes. "It was on the radio news."

"I’m sorry you had to hear it that way. I know you were fond of the boy."

"I loved him. He was a good boy." It was the first time she had used the past tense. She felt a catch in her throat and swallowed hard.

Sam waved the clean glass he took from the cupboard at her. "Jack had to make the identification. We’ve been at Danny’s Bar. He wants to drink himself to death right now, but he’ll make it. Someway."

"Yes," she echoed softly. "He’ll make it. I have a good mind to drink with him, but I’m fighting it since this is the Lord’s day." She snorted and looked down at her hands in her lap. "The Lord’s day," she repeated as if it were a joke.

Sam stayed behind the closed door of Jack’s room for an hour. Then he went to the breakfast alcove. He took Mrs. Lawrence’s hands and sat across from her.

"Tell me everything you know," she demanded. "I’ve been waiting.” Sam told her the whole story in a halting voice that kept veering off into sudden silences. He spared her none of the details because he knew her strength. If she was to console Jack, she had to know everything.

When he finished, Mrs. Lawrence withdrew her hands and pressed down her skirt into neat folds along her thighs. She had rushed the images of the boy’s killing from her mind as quickly as she could. No sense dwelling on it, she thought, because it will kill me. "I’ll make you a sandwich," she said, rising stiffly. "You must be hungry."

"I’m not hungry. I’ve got Scotch in my veins."

"Scotch is for the young cop!" she said with such vehemence that Sam jerked his head up at the sound of her voice. "The boy’s father can swig all he wants ’cause that’s his privilege, he needs it now. But you’re an old man. I hear you’re the smartest policeman this rotten dirty city's ever had."

When Sam started shaking his head in denial, she hurried on. "Don’t think I’m just a dumb nigger woman, Mr. Bartholomew. I've done my checking up on you. You got a reputation and some folks say you’re washed up. But I don’t believe that trashy talk. I lived in this town when you were the one in all the papers over that bunch of murders happened to those poor boys down in Pasadena. They only called in the best, and when they looked to Houston, they looked to you."

"That was a long time ago, Mrs. Lawrence," Sam said sorrowfully. "I’m retired now. I’m old. You said so yourself."

"Old’s nothing! Don’t mean nothing. You sat there and told me you think Willie’s killer is a...a..."

"Psychopath," Sam said.

"Right. You know all about that kind of crazy man. I don’t know why you ain’t already looking for him. You that’s got all the experience and know-how. And you tell me you don’t want to eat. No, you want to swill whiskey and throw up your hands!"

Sam stared at the black woman in surprise. He had never heard her speak more than a half-dozen words in his presence. She had been reticent bordering on subservient. Suddenly he smiled at her. It seemed to him he had not smiled for a year. "I like ham and cheese, hold the mayo," he said. "You might be able to talk me into a cup of that witch’s brew in your teapot if you’re nice about it."

Mrs. Lawrence adjusted the twin poodle pin on her bodice. The old geezer had some sense left, after all, she thought. Nobody could bring Willie back to them, but if anybody was going to pay for it, they all needed Sam Bartholomew out there trying to find a killer. "Cream and sugar or lemon?" she asked.

"Lemon."

"Coming up, Mr. Bartholomew. Just let me catch my wits. I swear they’ve run away from me." Placing a copper kettle on the stove, she stared at the flames. "I think I like him just fine," she said to herself.

SUNDAY NIGHT was a dead night in Houston. After evening church services children were bathed and bedded. Husbands napped during the ten o’clock news and wives put away dinner dishes. Sunday nights brought an end to the listless weekend blues.

In the DeShane residence Betty Lawrence kept vigil. Jack had vomited twice, his knees on each side of the toilet bowl, his hands holding tightly to the white rim. He kept drinking. Oblivion was preferable to the ghostly images inside his head.

In Maggie Richler’s house Sam had a bad few minutes when it was obvious he could not perform in bed.

Maggie had thought sexual release would ease his tension. When she could not arouse her lover, she snuggled into the crook of his arm and fell asleep. Sam stared into the bedroom darkness and saw a madman’s face--a face that would not let him sleep.

Eileen McKenna canceled her evening appointment and went to bed by herself with Tobias, the cat, in her arms. She wished she held Jack instead.

And on the southwest side of Houston a man moved restlessly.

He knew it was too soon after the first kill, but he could not help himself. Not that he had not tried to control himself. After the Saturday night drive to Bloomington, he was exhausted and had slept late on Sunday. He was still exhausted, his body sluggish and his thoughts distorted. He felt as bloated and lazy as a dog tick. It was too soon.

So why was he in the unfamiliar section of the city with a keening in his ears and the garrote down his shirtfront? There was no answer.

He wore black. In the moonlight and the reflection of neon lights, he knew the bloodstains could not be detected. Blood in the night was black, its true color. He remembered the child’s blood running over his hands like streams of thick oil. He smiled.

#

"I’m going to scare the wits out of you tonight after the movie," Joe Northumberland said to his wife, Sherry. He gave a low guttural growl and leaned close.

"Oh Joe, stop it now. I won’t go if you start that."

Marjorie Sider smiled over her glass of wine at her friends. It almost made her wish she were married.

"Know what she did after seeing
Halloween
?" Joe asked.

“You’re poking fun, Joe," his wife said.

"She slept with the sheet over her head and clutched my arm all night. This is a grown woman?"

"I did no such thing." Sherry tried to look indignant.

"She did too. She’s a little ‘fraidy cat."

"Marge, he laughs at me, but it’s his fault I get so scared. On the way home from that movie he started telling me about haunted houses in South Carolina when he was a kid. He knows gobs of ghost stories."

"What about you?" Joe asked Marjorie. "Are you frightened of the bogeyman too?"

"I never thought about it much," she admitted. "I haven't been to a horror show in years. I saw some Vincent Price movies when I was a kid, and that cured me."

"I've seen some of those rerun on TV," Joe said. "Pretty spooky flicks. That pendulum swinging...that wax museum made of real people..." He finger-walked up his wife’s arm.

Sherry ignored him. "Wait until you see the movie tonight." She began to clear the dinner table. "It’s about a woman living on a lake alone and this creature comes out of the woods..."

"Don’t tell the whole story, Sherry," her husband warned.

Marjorie offered to help with the dishes, but Sherry waved her away.

"Take your glass to the living room. I’ll be finished here quick as a flash. We have to make that nine o’clock showing."

The Cinema II Theater was three blocks from the Northumberland’s apartment and five blocks from Marjorie’s place. The three friends walked the short distance enjoying the mild winter night.

The movie was one of Hollywood’s B-rated attempts at horror fantasy. It was so badly made that every time the creature was shown, it was obviously only a heavyset, hairy man with a large paunch crawling over props on a sound stage. The heroine was half-crazy, as usual, and the entire movie was her fearful childhood memories returning to haunt her.

Marjorie yawned through most of the film. Sherry munched popcorn throughout the splatter scenes. Joe was the one who paid careful attention to the story. He was silent during the entire hour and a half and repeatedly refused the popcorn and candy his wife kept offering him.

When the last scene faded from the screen. Marjorie was more than ready to leave the theater for the fresh night air.

"What did you think, huh?" Sherry asked on the way up the aisle as the lights were raised. "Wasn’t that scary?"

"I guess so. Although I think John Wayne’s old westerns have this kind of thing beat all out."

"John Wayne!" Joe pretended he was wounded, clutching his chest. "God, John Wayne movies suck humpbacked turtles.This stuff is camp, Marge. You get to use your imagination."

"It was graphic enough without imaging anything."

Joe had fallen behind the two women without their noticing. Suddenly he ran to his wife from behind with a grrrr sound. They turned to see him on his toes, his arms spread to grab them. "I’m gonna get you! I’m gonna eat ’em up, eat ’em up," he said.

Sherry skipped away and giggled. She pointed an accusing finger at her husband. "I’ll sleep under the bed tonight if you don’t quit."

Joe came down into a flat-footed lope, his brow in knitted thought. "Hey, you know what? I just thought of something really horrible."

"What?" Sherry took his arm and smiled over at Marjorie.

"We’ve got a real live creature of our own somewhere in this city. That’s freakier than any movie."

"You mean the headhunter?" Sherry asked. Her smile turned into a grimace.

"The what?" Marjorie was thoroughly confused.

"Didn’t you hear it on the news today?" Joe asked.

"No, I didn’t. What do you mean ‘headhunter’?"

"You mean you haven’t heard about that little boy near the South Loop who was found with his head missing?" Sherry asked.

"Missing?" Marjorie’s voice turned cold. She did not like the turn the conversation had taken. .

"Yeah, missing," Sherry said. "'They couldn’t
find
it."

Marjorie shivered. Movies were one thing, real atrocities were another. `

"There never was anything like it here before," Sherry continued, mistaking her friend’s silence for interest.

“Can you imagine how nutty the guy must be? Hell, I’m scaring myself again."

"Sherry calls him the headhunter," Joe explained. He glanced at Marjorie and smiled. "We shouldn’t be talking about this tonight. "

"I agree wholeheartedly," Marjorie said. "You’ll have me hiding under the bed."

After the good nights and thank yous were said, Marjorie Sider locked her apartment door with a relieved sigh. She slipped off her shoes and padded across the carpet, across the cool kitchen tile, and opened the refrigerator door. Looking at the milk carton, she thought about cholesterol, and chose the quart bottle of orange juice instead. She needed a lift, not clogged arteries.

After draining the glass, she rinsed it out, turned it upside down in the sink dish drainer, and started for the bedroom. The next day was a workday and Sherry was picking her up early. They were both fighting their way up from the secretarial pool, and at Brown and Root Engineering you had to be bright and eager to succeed.

In the bedroom, Marjorie avoided her image in the mirror as she undressed and put on a long pink nylon gown. With a quick motion she set the alarm and moved it closer to her pillow. It was only eleven, not too late to interfere with her upward mobility plans on the job.

Once in bed, with the lights out, Marjorie heard a tick. It was the silly clock on the kitchen stove. Because of some odd mechanical quirk, the tick came at irregular intervals, and it was so loud it carried through the apartment. Tick. Marjorie listened, letting the ticks lull her to sleep.
Tick
. Five seconds passed.
Tick.
How many ticks in a minute? She could not count them for that long. But the sound was a presence of sorts. Off center and unpredictable, but a presence nevertheless. It was not unbearable.
Tick...tick...

Marjorie drifted off and dreamed of a June wedding.

#

The figure on the street was alone. He walked hunched forward, his hands in pockets, his jaw thrust forward. He might have been coming from a friend’s house or from an errand at an al1night store, but something about the way he carried himself showed he was not coming. He was going. He walked without glancing to either side. Every block or so he glared up at the night sky.