WIDOW (43 page)

It was not long before Son had conned the victim to follow him to his car where they could be afforded a little privacy for the sexual act, the resultant fee having been mutually agreed upon.

Son had never indulged in a homosexual experience. On the way to the car, he wondered what it might be like. No one would know, what was the difference? If he didn't like it, he could always call a stop at any point during the transaction, couldn't he?

In slang terms, they called it the “kneel and bob,” but in this instance it could have been called the “bend and knock your head—bang, bang—on the steering wheel.” It was horribly uncomfortable and a distinct turnoff. Son's member was as wilted and shrunken as a dead peony. An idea came into his head before things were underway too seriously.

“Let's get out of here and go to my place.”

The other man, going by the improbable name of Cato, rose from where he had his head buried in Son's lap and said, “Oh, God, am I glad you said that. This furtive shit in cars gives me a real pain in the neck. Literally.”

Son grinned, zipped his pants, and started the car. On the way to the house, he talked about being a writer just to pass the time.

“Really? I never met a real published writer before. One of my friends, well, actually he was my former lover, but anyway, he's been working on a book . . .”

Son tuned out. He had heard that a million times. My friend, lover, ex-wife, parent, cousin, grandfather, child is writing a book. Yeah, right. Half the world was writing a book, hear tell it. The sad thing was, they really were. The whole goddamn nation had turned into a land of scribblers. Tell-all books, histories, memoirs, confessions, and a plethora of imaginative novels penned by those who thought they actually knew something to write about. Not that he was any better. Cribbing from the dead didn't exactly make him into a Nobel winner of literature.

What would Cato say if he told him he plagiarized everything?

“So what do you write, westerns, or horror maybe, like Stephen King?”

“More like John D. MacDonald,” Son said, slowing for a light.

Son sighed. “I write mystery. Have you seen the movie Cape Fear? That came from a book by MacDonald called The Executioners.”

“Oh, right! De Niro, man, he's ace, isn't he? I love movies. I've always been a film buff. Any of your books been made into movies?”

Son shook his head. “Hollywood's not that interested in whodunits. They like more gore and sex than you can find in a mystery, The Executioners notwithstanding.”

They discussed movies, good, bad, indifferent, until Son turned into his driveway. He had never brought a victim to his house. His neighbors were abed and asleep by this time of night, but still, it was risky to walk in with someone and then carry him back out again.

What the hell.

He wanted Cato to meet his mother.

After Cato had finished going down on him, Son decided that the old kneel and bob wasn't as great as banging away at Sherilee, but it would do in a pinch. Now he could see why homosexuality had its adherents. Not that he would switch over permanently, but it wasn't as disgusting as he'd thought before he tried it.

Lying back on the sofa, Cato between his knees panting, Son said, “Want to see where I work?”

Cato rose to his feet. “You got anything to drink first?” He took a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his moist lips.

“Sure. Have a seat, I'll go find something.” In the kitchen he pulled out another bottle of the California wine, poured half a glass into a water tumbler. He found the rat poison in the pantry and put an even teaspoon of it into the glass, then stirred the concoction vigorously. He sniffed the wine. Didn't smell too bad. There wasn't enough poison in it to kill Cato, but it would certainly serve to debilitate him so that Son could pour some stronger stuff down him later.

“Here,” he said, offering the glass to his guest. “I'm sorry it's not chilled.”

“Burgundy? You don't have any white wine, do you?”

“No, sorry.” White wine. Of course. How stereotypical.

“You're not drinking?”

“I don't drink. Go ahead without me. When you're done, I'll show you my office.”

“Great!” Cato lifted the glass to his lips, tipped forward the blood-red liquid, took a big, lusty swallow. He grimaced, rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth.

“What's the matter? The liquor store told me this was the best wine they had from California vineyards.”

“Well, hey, you won't catch me disputing a liquor clerk.” He smiled at the weak joke.

Son shrugged. “I don't know a thing about wines.”

Cato tried another swallow, obviously out of courtesy. He then set the glass on the coffee table. “You know, maybe the clerk was pulling your leg. I'm afraid what we have here is some bad-tasting fermentation. No offense, of course.”

“None taken. C'mon, my office is down this way.”

Cato made appreciative sounds while looking at Son's computer, the stack of typed pages neatly piled to the right of the machine, the walls of books, the odd looking little bust of Edgar Allan Poe. “Nice,” he said. “It must be wonderful to work at home and not have to put up with a boss.”

“Listen, my mother's usually awake most of the night. How would you like to meet her?”

“Your mother! You live here with your mother? Jesus, she could have walked in on us.”

“No chance. She's an invalid. I should have told you she was here, I guess. I just take it for granted and didn't think about it. She's a swell old lady, you'll like her.” Son moved from the office into the hallway. Behind him, Cato followed, protesting.

“I really think we ought not disturb her. I should be getting back to the club, you know, find my friends, be getting home . . .”

“This won't take long. Mother would never forgive me if I didn't introduce my company.”

Son didn't know quite what he was doing taking the stranger down the hall to the closed bedroom door. He wanted him to be shocked, yes, he wanted to note his reaction to a dead woman lying on a bed. The man would never have the chance to report it, but was it wise? It meant more things could go wrong.

Son acknowledged he was taking all kinds of new risks he had never chanced before. A pinnacle of excitement, though, climbed so high inside him he thought he might burst out into song. This was better than any kind of sex, any day.

He opened the door, crossed to his mother's night table, and did not hesitate to flip on the lamp switch. The body emerged into view, bathed in a soft pink glow. She looked so peaceful. Even naked, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on. If it wasn't for the smell emanating from her decaying flesh, she might be an aged goddess, an elderly Sleeping Beauty awaiting the kiss from her prince while reclining against the hand-crocheted pillows.

He turned to watch Cato's face. “Cato, meet my mother. Mother, this is Cato, a little friend of mine.”

“Oh good Christ.” The man was frozen in place, a rictus of horror holding his features in thrall.

“I'll tell you something else about me, Cato. A secret even Mother didn't know. I love to copy, to mimic, duplicate, reproduce, imitate. I've been doing it for years. Maybe since I was a kid. I copy books, movie scenes and plots.

“For instance, this scene you now witness is very similar to the one in the movie Psycho, don't you think? Did you ever see Psycho? You said you were a movie buff. That famous movie came from a Robert Bloch book, you know, not from the scriptwriter and not from the mind of Alfred Hitchcock. The best movies come from books, from authors.

“Remember Norman Bates in the movie? Anthony Perkins? How he had his mother stuffed and sitting in the rocking chair in the cellar? Don't you think I've done a good job with the materials I had to work with? I don't have a cellar, you understand.

“But I do have a dead mother, the poor old dear.”

During Son's recital, Cato went from frozen terror to sudden frenzied action. He swiveled, knocking a doily from the back of the easy chair, bumped into the door facing, staggered into the hall, gained control of his feet and, like a sprinter in a race, hunkered down to dash for the side door leading outside, to where Son had parked the car.

Son took his time in pursuit. No hurry. The door was locked. By the time Cato discovered how to unlock it, he would be restrained.

Son walked right up to him, wrapped an arm around his neck, hauled him off his feet, and dragged him, his scream a mangled gurgle, to the living room. He threw him onto the sofa, onto his back. He climbed on top, to straddle him with his knees, effectively pinning him to the cushions.

There he proceeded to choke him unconscious while murmuring into his horrified face, “There . . . there . . . shhhh . . . hush now . . . there . . . isn't that better?”

 

Thirty-Five

 

It was a feeding frenzy. Mitchell Samson presided over a room where eight detectives sat talking nonstop. Outside the door marked “private” waited a gang from the press corps, including three reporters from the local television stations with all their gear and cameramen. Samson hoped the lieutenant was giving them the promised statement right now, otherwise they'd still be out there waiting to descend on him and his men once the meeting was over.

Finding nothing else at hand to use for rapping the table, Samson balled his fist and hit the scarred wood with his knuckles. “Quiet down,” he said. “Quiet.”

The room fell into uneasy silence. They shuffled their butts, most of them broadened from sitting in chairs at desks for too many hours a day, and shoe leather scraped at the tile floor. Samson cleared his throat, looked down at his notes, realized they weren't going to be of much use, and glanced up again.

“The ratio of time periods between the crimes has escalated. We're getting a new stiff every other day, at least for the last four days. If that continues we can expect another victim tomorrow.”

Samson turned to the man at his left. “John here is going to put you into two-man units. I'll let him and you decide who works with who.”

“Whom.”

Samson shifted his gaze to Detective Gonzalez in the back of the room where he stood leaning against the wall, his arms folded. “Whom, then. That's what we need right now, a grammar professor on this fucking case. Or should that be grammarian?”

The men chuckled and Gonzalez dipped his head to accept the slight reprimand.

“Now, no use going into what trouble we have on our hands. You all know the ropes when we have to make up a task force. So far, thanks to Detective Holly and some volunteers from this division, canvassing the bay area all the way from LaPorte to Texas City has turned up nothing. No suspicious characters. No witnesses. No physical evidence. Nada. I've been working the street people down in Montrose and I didn't come up with much from that either.

“I want one unit backing me up down there. Twist arms if you have to. Call in all your IOUs from the snitches. Put them to work sniffing out the word on the street.

“I want another unit here in the station doing background checks on the victims, in-depth checks. Making calls to family and friends, trying to find more connections. I want to know where these guys worked, and if they didn't work, where they got their money, what they ate for supper, who they screwed, how much they loved their women, and who those women were.

“A third unit goes downtown to question the ME. I want names of commercial products that have the poison in it . . .” He looked down now at the notes.

“Warfarin. We know it's used in rat poison. See if it's in anything else easily available on the market. That same unit then starts checking outlets that sell it. Start with ones in Montrose, go on to ones around the bay area.”

Again Gonzalez interrupted. “You mean Clear Lake and Channelview and everything?”

“That's right. Every conceivable outlet.”

Groans rose and fell into silence again. Samson raised his eyebrows; no one wanted that detail. “We want Dod's killer, don't we? Or do we? It's up to you.”

He stared his men down then went on, clicking off how he wanted the teams split up to deal with every aspect of the series of crimes. He ended the meeting with, “I'll talk to our psychologist again, see if he can add anything to the profile the feds sent us. Also, you want me, you can see me down in Montrose. I do my best work on the street.”

When the men were dismissed, John Borden shook his hand, “I'll put them to work within an hour.”

Samson ran fingers through his hair in an unconscious gesture of fatigue. He had been up most of the night going over the papers in Dod's case file. “Good, the faster we . . .”

“I'll see to it,” John said, breaking for the door. Samson gave a bemused smile. John was a workaholic with three bad marriages behind him and four kids to support. He moved like a coon dog let off the leash.

Outside, Samson heard the fading voices of the detectives discussing what detail they'd like to be included on. Some of them were querulous, others sounded resigned. Most of them had been called onto serial-killer task forces before. They had no illusions. These were not the happy-bullshit throwers aching for a promotion the way Dod had been. They were neither young nor old, but all were tried-and-true veterans of the hunt, some with specific talents helpful on a task force. Gonzalez, with the mouth, had been instrumental in cracking the last round of serial killings that petrified the city. He might speak up more than he should, but there wasn't a better Hispanic detective on HPD, and Samson was lucky to have him.

It was rumored Gonzalez was making noises about quitting the force and entering politics, trying for a city council seat representing the Hispanic block struggling in the brown ghettos ringing Houston. Samson sighed thinking of how he kept losing his best minds to the political wheel of fortune.