The Anatomy of Violence (6 page)

“You’re here. Richard’s in jail.”

“Hold on, Laurie.” His voice took on a false heartiness. “I’m only here because your dad was worried. We worked together on a lot of station robberies and I know he ain’t a guy that sees things under the bed. But now … who did what—that’s been out of my jurisdiction since they took me off the Eileen case last year.”

I looked down and curled my toes on the step. “Koch said he wouldn’t need a statement from me. Now he’ll beat a confession out of Richard.”

“Now, Laurie …” He patted my knee then jerked back his hand as my robe fell away. I drew it over my knees again.

“You mind?” He was unscrewing the cap again. “I wouldn’t touch it except it calms my nerves.”

When I didn’t answer, he drank and sighed. “Laurie, I ran this force long enough to learn a rape is like no other kind of case. First you get a girl who’s a hysterical witness and she’s a liability in court. You don’t seem like the type, Laurie, but maybe Koch don’t know you like I do. Most of them don’t know black from white.

“And not only the girls get hysterical. I remember one case …”

As he talked of his old cases, an idea grew in my mind. Captain Riemann knew the routine of crime detection. His pride had been hurt when Koch replaced him. And I needed help.

“Haven’t you noticed that my case is a lot like Eileen’s?” I asked.

“Eileen? But that was murder. Wait! She was raped, too.”

“Yes.”

“And she was Miss Stella exactly a year ago.”

I waited.

“Let’s see, the M.O. She was strangled. Ah, he tried to strangle you, too.”

“Yes.”

He chuckled. “You wonder how I could tell that? Your voice is hoarse, like it hurt you to talk.” He fell silent, looking out over the back yard. “You know, if they’d given me a couple more weeks—”

“They said Koch was brought in because you couldn’t solve it.”

“
They said that?”
He was indignant, then moody again. “Koch’ll never solve it. His theory is it was somebody just passing through and we’ll just have to wait until he does it again in some other town. Far as Koch is concerned, the Eileen case is dead as Eileen.”

This time his silence lasted several minutes, and I found it hard to wait. He stood up and began pacing in front of me. Then he stopped, put his foot on the step, and leaned forward. “Did he tie you up?”

“Tape.”

“That’s it!” He straightened and smashed his fist into his palm. “That’s why the hair on her wrists was pulled out by the roots. By God! The same man!”

The soft, beery wheeze was gone from his voice when he leaned forward again. “How long did you know Eileen?”

“All my life. We moved onto her block when I was five. She was six. Ann, Eileen and I were friends just about all of our lives.”

He nodded. “Sometime, then you and Eileen might of got mixed up with the same man.”

A lot of them, Captain. I’ve been trying to think …”

He sat down. “Can you think of anything that happened in the months before she was murdered that might be important?”

I told Riemann everything that I could remember.

Shortly before she was murdered, Eileen had stopped by my house in a new convertible. It was a bright blue with a shine to match her eyes. “Like it?” she said. “It’s mine.”

“Nice. How’d you get it?” I had asked her.

“From a man.” She pushed a button. “See? Power shift.” She pressed another button and a window went up. “Power windows.” She bounced on the seat and her laughter bubbled. “Power seats, everything!”

“Yes. How’d he happen to give it to you?”

She smiled a slow smile that made her eyes go narrow. “Call it gratitude.”

“You could call it something else.”

“Do I look like a whore?” Here eyes were wide and innocent, and her oval face, faintly freckled across the bridge of her nose, was that of a sixteen-year-old. “Laurie, it happens that men own the world. I just want my share, that’s all.”

We split up over the car. She wanted me to keep it for her; I told her I couldn’t conceal the source any better than she could. She took it to another town and sold it, and I heard no more from her until a while later when she called and we got together.

A few weeks after we’d resumed our friendship, Eileen asked me to stay out of the Miss Stella contest for that year. If I did, she’d have a chance to win, then she’d wait and help me win the next year. I promised in the warm glow of reestablished friendship.

Later I was sorry I’d promised, but Eileen didn’t let me forget it. She called the morning of the contest and asked me to help her get ready.

She was wearing the dress when I got there: feather-soft lace, icy blue against the warm, golden tan of her shoulders. “Eileen, you’re beautiful,” I had said.

“It’s imported,” she said, looking in the mirror. “Two hundred and fifty bucks.”

“Who gave it to you?”

Her lips pouted a moment, then she brightened. “Laurie, after today, when I go to New York, I can do it your way.”

“Will you?” I didn’t believe her. “We should put some net over the front.”

“No, look.” She bent at the waist, put her palms on the floor, and rocked her shoulders. “See? They don’t fall out. Two hundred and fifty bucks, Laurie.”

“It isn’t that. Here.” With a finger I touched the skin where the sun had drawn out speckles of pigment, like dark confetti sprinkled between her breasts. “A little net will hide them.”

We put the net on and tucked it in her cummerbund.

“You should have something of mine—for luck.” I said.

“I have.” She raised her dress and showed me the panties; sheer light blue with the word
Saturday
stitched in bright blue. “That’s part of the set you gave me last year.”

“Well …” I took a gold chain off my ankle and fastened it around hers. “This’ll make certain.”

At the club that night, Eileen joined Rich and me. She was alone. She seemed hysterically gay, and danced several times with Richard. Then, while they were dancing, she left him on the floor, came back to the table and picked up her purse. She didn’t speak to me, just walked out with her fingers tight on her purse.

I asked Rich what she’d said when she left him. He shrugged and looked puzzled. “Said, ‘Right now is a good time to stop it.’ I thought she meant me, but she walked away.”

Eileen didn’t come back. Once I looked out and saw rain pounding on the sidewalk. Later, Rich and I went to look at the pool Jules Curtright had given the city. They hadn’t filled it yet. Walking around it in the poor light, I saw something on the bottom. Rich ran to find the floodlights while I waited.

The lights came on, and the picture burned into my mind like an overexposed photograph. Eileen’s face was dark now, her blue shoes awash in two inches of rain water. The gold chain I’d given her still gleamed around her right ankle. The blue dress was ripped down to her waist. Below the sharp line of tan, her breasts looked like snow in the harsh light. And the net—I screamed when I saw it rolled into a narrow band, still tight around her throat.

Telling it had made it real, and I could almost smell again the rainwashed concrete and hear my own distant scream.

“Her hair wasn’t wet,” said Captain Riemann. “I figure he killed her somewhere then dumped her in the pool after the rain.”

“Footprints?”

“A couple. A guy makes a pretty deep print with a body on his back.” His face was set hard in the cloudy, colorless dawn. “She never told you where she got the car and dress?”

“She was good at changing the subject.”

“Yeah, but what ties you two together? Did you take any guys for—” He stopped and shook his head. “No. Eileen either tried to cut him off, or he got tired of paying off.”

“Would he rape her then?”

“Might … if he was a little crazy.” He stood suddenly, knocking over the half-full bottle. He grabbed it and threw it. I heard it smash in Gwen’s rock garden. “Laurie, I am going to the ball park and get some plaster casts before the footprints—” He stopped and snapped his fingers. “Damn! I promised your dad I’d stick close to you.”

I thought of the gun. “I can protect myself, Captain.”

“Well, don’t you take chances. I’ll do all the detective work.”

“If you find out who he is, Captain, will you tell me first?”

He looked down at me and rubbed his chin. “I always wondered what would happen if Ben had a boy, and he’d turn up with his daddy’s brains and his momma’s will power. Never thought I’d see it in a girl.” He laughed. “All right, Laurie, I’ll tell you first. But I ain’t saying I’ll let you get to him.”

H
EAT WRAPPED
me in a stifling blanket as I left the doctor’s air-conditioned home. It was noon. My nose felt musty from too little sleep. An ache throbbed in my left buttock as I walked.

Hip, the nurse had called it. “Don’t want to get sick, do we, honey? Roll over and I’ll give you a shot where it won’t show.”

Doctor Field had been sympathetic. He’d said after the examination, “Internally, Laurie, there’s no serious damage. You’ll have some pain, but that’s normal.”

Then I’d asked him about a baby. “I suggest, Laurie, we take up that problem if and when it arrives. Come back if anything develops. Your attitude may change.”

Like hell.
I shifted the purse, heavy with the gun, and looked behind me. The street lay empty beneath the tall elms. But I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched; the same crawly sensation I’d felt beneath the bleachers.

That memory was disappearing though, like water spilled on sand. I’d asked the doctor about that, too. “Not too rare, Laurie. You thought you were dying; the shock could cause other incidents to fade. You wouldn’t necessarily realize you’d forgotten something if the memory seemed continuous—no more than you’d know where wallpaper joined if the pattern matched.”

So I might have known who it was, then forgotten. I’d been probing my memory since then, but nothing had turned up. Now I opened the Sunday
Clarion
I’d borrowed from his doorstep. The headline slapped me across the eyes:
BEAUTY QUEEN ASSAULTED.

As I read it, I remembered Richard’s formula for a front page story: sex, violence, a pretty girl—and a slow day on the wire.

The
Clarion
had rated me a “dark, lovely coed,” even though I’d already graduated from our junior college. Most of the story had come from Koch. He didn’t think my case and Eileen’s were connected. (Here the paper devoted a half-column to Eileen’s murder, but didn’t mention the man’s attempt to kill me.) A number of suspects had been rounded up. Those who couldn’t account for their whereabouts were being closely questioned and Koch expected an early arrest. (Who was covering for Richard, I wondered, Koch or the paper?) Captain Riemann, said the story as it dwindled into a sea of detail, had taken an indefinite leave for his health and couldn’t be reached for comment. (What was he doing now?) The girl’s father had no comment. The girl could not see reporters. Daddy must have said that.

I was walking up our sidewalk when I heard a car stop on the street. I turned to see a man and a woman watching me from the car. The man wore a suit, the woman wore a straw hat; they looked as though they’d just come from church. They saw me watching and the man started to drive on.

“Looking for someone?” I asked.

“Just … driving by. Is this the Crewes residence?”

Sightseers.
“It was. They moved to Mexico this morning.”

At the door I turned and watched them drive away slowly. The woman watched me through the rear window.

The house was empty. I found Gwen out back working in shorts and halter. “Where’s daddy?”

She finished rooting up a clump of crabgrass, then straightened and squinted over the freckles that sprinkled the bridge of her nose from one high cheekbone to the other. “Police station.”

“I’ll go down.”

“No. He wants you to stay away unless he calls.” Her tanned stomach wrinkled as she stooped to dig at a sickly rosebush, her heavy breasts swinging inside the red halter. “He was upset because you left without telling him.”

“Worried?”

“Just upset. He wasn’t worried because he figured Captain Riemann was with you.” She looked up sharply. “Was he?”

Without answering, I slumped into a tree-shaded lawn chair. So many things to do—find Riemann, try to see Richard … Now I was tied to the house by a chance of news from daddy.

“You had company,” said Gwen.

“Who?”

Slowly Gwen picked up the rosebush and carried it to another hole with one gloved hand holding the dirt to the roots. Then she crumbled black dirt into the hole from a basket. There was no hurrying Gwen. For ten years she’d been at war with the back yard, moving the withering plants from one spot to another, where they continued to wither.

“Reporters,” she said finally. She stripped off her gloves and came toward me, pulling a plastic cigaret case from her pocket. Sweat stood in droplets on her stomach and legs. She was losing one war, I noticed. Her calves had thinned and the flesh had begun to ripple on the inner side of her thighs. Soon she’d be thirty-five.

“Could I have a cigaret?” She shook one out, lit it, then lit her own. The cigaret gave me something to do. If the tension didn’t ease off soon, I’d get the habit. “I hope those reporters don’t come back.”

“I told one of them not to.” Gwen sat on the arm of my chair and swung her leg. “He asked me if I was your mother.”

I started up as the phone rang inside. Gwen put her hand on my shoulder. “Wait.”

“But it might be daddy.”

“If it is he’ll let it ring. He was here when we started geting nuisance calls.”

The ringing stopped and I started to lean back. Suddenly a barb of pain twisted deep in my abdomen, doubling me over.

“Hurt?” I felt her strong, stubby fingers kneading the small of my back. “If I remember that far back, it’s that way the first time.”

I rested my cheek on my knee and felt the knot of pain slowly uncoil. “Then why do it?”

“It’s like beer. You cultivate a taste for it.”

“I tasted enough.” I heard the phone ring, then stop. “Reporters … detectives … tourists. I’d have had more privacy on the courthouse steps.”

“My fault, Laurie. Have you thought of leaving town now, instead of next Saturday?”

“I can’t leave until I know who did it.”

“I’m not sure Ben will understand that, but I can.” She stopped kneading suddenly. “If you’re looking for Ben, Mister Curtright, he’s not—”

“I didn’t come to see Ben,” said a liquid voice.

I twisted my head and looked up at Jules Curtright. Black hair curled from the open neck of his knit shirt. His tanned neck gleamed with sweat. “I tried to call but couldn’t get through,” he said. “Are you ready?”

“Ready?” I realized I was still doubled over and straightened. “You haven’t heard … anything?”

He spread his fingers over his forehead. “I went to the State Line Club after you left. I just got up an hour ago.”

Gwen had begun spraying the lawn with gentle, silent mist a few feet away. I stood up. “Come in the house, Jules.”

Walking into the air-conditioned living room was like entering a cool lake. Jules folded himself onto the sofa and looked at me. “Now, what haven’t I heard?”

I felt silly to ask, but I had to assure myself. “You said you went to the State Line Club after I left. Could you … prove it?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Well, I’m sure the bartender—” His eyes widened. “My God! What happened to your jaw?”

A knot of tension uncoiled inside me. Only a skilled actor could have faked surprise so well. “Right after I left the club I … was raped, Jules.”

His expression didn’t change for a moment, then his eyes narrowed and seemed to grow darker. “Who was it, Laurie?”

“I can’t remember—but the doctor said I might later. It happened under—”

“I’ll get the story from someone else, Laurie. Just promise me one thing.” He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and stroked his heavy forearm. Behind his hand, the black curly hair sprang into place over corded muscle. “When you remember, tell me first.”

The phone started ringing then and didn’t stop. I stood up. “That’s probably daddy.”

But it was a high adolescent voice quavering with held-in laughter. “Laurie?”

“Who’s this?”

“An admirer.” I heard a boy giggle in the background. “I’ve got something for you.” I heard a different giggle, and pictured a large group jammed into the phone booth. “Something I know you’ll like. It’s big and—”

I dropped the phone onto its cradle. My face must have showed disgust because Jules said: “Have the telephone company give you an unlisted number. No, I’ll do it—tonight.” He stood up and walked to the door. “Anything else I can do?”

“Yes.” I picked up the heavy purse. “Take me for that drive now—if you don’t mind a couple of stops.”

His grin broke out like the sun coming from behind a cloud. He waved me through the door. “My car is yours.”

His car was long and black and he put the top down. I tied a ribbon around my hair and let the breeze caress my neck while Jules threaded through elm-shaded streets, then stopped in front of the police station. “Be right back,” I said, getting out.

Inside, I leaned against the waist-high counter separating visitors from the office area. It contained a desk, a radio, and five policemen. “I’m Laura Crewes. Is my father here?”

Four policemen turned and looked without speaking. The fifth man spoke without turning from the set. “Your poppa’s busy in the back room, little lady. They’re interrogating people. You can’t go in.”

Good.
I’d asked only to make sure he wouldn’t find me here. “I want to see Richard Farham.”

He stood up and walked over, leaning his elbows on the counter. It was the sergeant I’d seen last night—a thin, bald man. “Farham!” He twisted his mouth and scratched his cheek. “The name doesn’t ring a bell.”

“You arrested him this morning.”

He walked to a door and opened it a crack. “Hey, Lieutenant, we holding anyone named Farham? Richard Farham?”

“Who’s there?” The door opened and Koch filled it, hiding the room behind. His right eye was black and a strip of tape adorned his upper lip. “You?” He drew in his chin, pushing out a roll of fat below it. “We don’t have Farham.”

“Then let me look in that room.” I moved down the counter and fumbled for the latch on the gate.

Koch closed the door until only his good eye glared through at me. “Get her out of here, Johnson.” The door clicked shut.

I found the lock and opened the gate, but the sergeant came through, pushing me gently backwards. “Little lady,” he said in a fatherly tone, “go home. You got enough trouble without taking on Koch.”

I stiffened. “I know Richard’s here some place. Captain Riemann saw him brought in.”

The sergeant scratched his chin and smiled. “Riemann saw him? Last week old Riemann saw a mess of spiders crawling out of his telephone. Yelled they were coming through the cable. That’s why he’s in a sanitarium right now.”

“Where?”

“Didn’t say.” He took my elbow. “You better go home now, little lady. I’ll take you.”

I jerked loose and walked out. I couldn’t make a scene with daddy there. And I wasn’t sure now that Riemann’s story hadn’t come out of his bottle.

I climbed into the car. “To the
Clarion.”

The
Clarion
city room looked like a disaster area waiting for the Red Cross. Yellow copy paper and smudged page proofs littered the floor. At a desk sat a boy reading a comic book.

He was in charge, he said, until the night man arrived. Yes, he knew Richard. A nice guy when he wanted to be—but he wasn’t with them any more. He showed me the mark through Richard’s name on the assignment sheet. No, there’d been no cops around looking for him.

Back in the car, I directed Jules to the tourist camp and Rich’s peeling red trailer. The door was unlocked. As I opened it, his retriever, Goldie, met me. She was vibrating all over. I saw his card table lying on its side in front of a stuffed seat piled with books. Papers lay on the floor beside an overturned portable typewriter.

Goldie was standing over her bowl beside the sink making little whining sounds. I emptied a can of dog food into it and filled another pan with water. Rich had left unwillingly, otherwise he’d have provided for Goldie.

I set the card table on its feet and picked up the typewriter. A sheet of paper was in it:

That was all. For some reason, his apology about the lousy evening made me want to cry. I folded the letter, stuck it in my purse, and returned to the car. If the police weren’t looking for Rich, it must mean they already knew where he was. But where did that leave me?

“I don’t mind watching you chew off your lipstick,” said Jules. “But you could do it as well en route. What’s the next stop?”

Jules might be able to influence Koch, I thought, but I wasn’t quite ready to put myself in his hands. “Could we go out of town, Jules?”

“That,” he said, pulling out of the court, “was my original idea.”

A minute later we were rolling past the fast, rock-walled graveyard. I looked for Eileen’s grave, but the little flat stone was lost among acres of spires and granite blocks.

“Time to choose,” said Jules. “I can offer a speedboat on the lake, a quiet, secluded drink at the State Line Club, or an equally secluded picnic.”

“Here.” I opened the purse and showed him the gun lying along with my lipstick, tissues and coin purse. “I want to practice.”

“Oh.” His eyes clouded a moment, then he grinned and the car shot forward. “I know a place.”

I leaned back, listening to the tires whine on the asphalt causeway.

Jules turned off and stopped before an iron gate with the name
CURTRIGHT
wrought into the pattern. An eight-foot rock wall stretched a quarter-mile in each direction. Above it I could see the roof of the Curtright mansion studded with a dozen windows. They had a glassy, empty look.

“Nobody here but rats since Grandmam died,” said Jules, grunting as he forced open the iron gate. “You can fire at will.”

Weeds scraped against the car as we drove inside, past the jumble of blackened concrete that had been the servants’ quarters, skirting the cocklebur jungle around the stables. Beyond the buildings the drive wound past ragged shrubs and flowerbeds that had spread and spoiled their neat patterns. We crackled through a wooded area matted with thick underbrush, and stopped beside a vine-crusted summerhouse.