The Barrens & Others (25 page)

I watched until Wyatt ran up. He pulled his pistol and just stood there, his eyes captured by the pink-tipped whiteness of Bonnie's breasts. I knew though that as soon as she covered herself, Wyatt would be on Dr. Elliot like a lynch mob. He wasn't going to take at all kindly to someone going after Bonnie Porter before he'd had firsts.

Poor Dr. Elliot. Couldn't control his hands. Such a shame.

As I turned away I felt a twinge behind my sternum. I began to cough. I'd never coughed like this before in my life. Spasms racked my chest. I pulled out my handkerchief and buried my face in it, trying to muffle the coughs, perhaps suppress them by trapping them inside. Suddenly I felt something tear free in my chest and fill my throat. I gagged it out.

Blood stained my handkerchief.

Hemoptysis – a bloody cough. A sure sign of consumption, or what they were now calling tuberculosis.

But how could I have tuberculosis? I hadn't been visiting anyone in a sanitarium, and the only people in these parts who had any tuberculosis were...

...Indians.

Squaw Jones had coughed in my face, but only once, and that had been just a few hours ago. I couldn't have developed tuberculosis in that short time. It was impossible.

I glanced out the window again. Wyatt was leading Dr. Elliot off toward the jail, and being none too gentle about it. In the crowd that had gathered, all heads were turned to watch them go. All except one. Squaw Jones was there, staring directly at me.

I coughed again.

foreword to "Slasher"

This one's for Joe Lansdale.

Mainly because I borrowed one of the plot elements from his novel,
Cold in July
. If you've never read
Cold in July
, do so immediately. It's a bloody, funny, sad, scary moral pretzel of a novel that will keep you flipping pages until three in the morning. As soon as I finished reading it I called Joe to tell him what a great job he'd done. The only thing I wanted to know was where all the exclamation points had gone. I couldn't find a single one in the entire book. Joe said they're not necessary in a properly written scene. I begged to differ.

Thus began the ongoing Wilson Lansdale Exclamation Point Debate. I admit I've used too many in the past, and as a result of the debate I've cut way back. I've got them under control now. [But Joe...a character screaming at the top of his lungs in red faced rage deserves at least one (!), don't you think?]

Next he'll be dumping question marks.

But back to "Slasher." I liked
Cold in July
so much that when Ed Gorman and Marty Greenberg requested a story for
Stalkers
II (eventually published as
Predators
), I borrowed a piece of the
Cold in July
set up – the idea of a killer being kept in protective custody because he's a witness in an important case – and took off from there.

"Slasher" is a twisted little piece of fiction without the slightest hint of the supernatural. As such it wound up in
The Year's 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories
.

The perfect kind of story to dedicate to Joe R. Lansdale.

SLASHER

I saved the rage.

I let them bury my grief with Jessica. It cocooned her in her coffin, cushioned her, pillowed her head. There it would stay, doing what little it could to protect her from the cold, the damp, the conqueror worm.

But I saved the rage. I nurtured it. I honed it until its edge was fine and tough and sharp. Sharp enough to one day cut through the darkness encrusting my soul.

Martha was on the far side of the grave, supported by her mother and father and two brothers – Jessie's grandparents and uncles. I stood alone on my side. A few friends from the office were there, standing behind me, but they weren't really with me. I was alone, in every sense of the word.

I stared at the top of the tiny coffin that had remained closed during the wake and the funeral mass because of the mutilated state of the little body within. I watched it disappear by tiny increments beneath a growing tangle of color as sobbing mourners each took a turn at tossing a flower on it. Jessica, my Jessica. Only five years old, cut to ribbons by some filthy rotten stinking lousy–

"
Bastard!
"

The grating voice wrenched my gaze away from the coffin. I knew that voice. Oh, how I knew that voice. I looked up and met Martha's hate-filled eyes. Her face was pale and drawn, her cheeks were black with eyeliner that had flowed with her tears. Her blond hair was masked by her black hat and veil.

"It's your fault! She's dead because of you! You had her only every other weekend and you couldn't even pay attention to her! It should be
you
in there!"

"Easy, Martha," one of her brothers told her in a low voice. "You'll only upset yourself more."

But I could see it in his eyes, too – in everybody's eyes. They all agreed with her. Even I agreed with her.

"
No!
" she screamed, shaking off her brother's hand and pointing at me. "You were a lousy husband and a lousier father. And now Jessie's dead because of you!
You!
"

Then she broke down into uncontrollable sobbing and was led off by her parents and brothers. Embarrassed, the rest of the mourners began to drift away, leaving me alone with my dead Jessie. Alone with my rage. Alone with my guilt.

I hadn't been the best father in the world. But who could be? Either you don't give them enough love or you over-indulge them. You can't seem to win. But I do admit that there were too many times when something else seemed more important than being with Jessie, some deal, some account that needed attention right away, so Jessie could wait. I'd make it up to her later – that was the promise. I'd play catch-up next week. But there wouldn't be any later. No more next weeks for Jessica Santos. No catching up on the hugs and the playing and the I-love-yous.

If only...

If only I hadn't left her on the curb to go get her that goddam ice cream cone.

We'd been watching the Fourth of July fireworks down at the harborfront. Jessie was thrilled and fascinated by the bright flashes blooming and booming in the sky. She'd wanted an ice cream, and being a divorced daddy who didn't get to see her very often, I couldn't say no. So I carried her back to the push cart vendor near the entrance to Crosby's Marina. She couldn't see the fireworks from the end of the line so I let her stand back by the curb to watch while I queued up. While she kept her eyes on the sky, I kept an eye on her all the time I was on line. I wasn't worried about someone grabbing her – the thought never entered my mind. I just didn't want her wandering into the street for an even better view. The only time I looked away was when I placed the order and paid the guy.

When I turned around, a cone in each hand, Jessie was gone.

No one had seen anything. For two days the police and a horde of volunteers combed all of Monroe and most of northern Nassau county. They found her – what was left of her – on the edge of old man Haskins' marshes.

A manhunt was still on for the killer, but with each passing day, the trail got colder.

So now I stood by my Jessica's grave under the obscenely bright sun, sweating in my dark suit as I fought my guilt and nurtured my hate, praying for the day they caught the scum who had slashed my Jessica to ribbons. I renewed the vow I had made before – the guy was never going to get to trial. I would find a way to get to him while he was out on bail, or even in jail, if it came to that, and I would do to him what he'd done to my Jessica. And then I would dare the courts to find a jury that would convict me.

When everyone was gone, I said my final good-bye to Jessie. I'd wanted to erect a huge angelic monument to her, but Tall Oaks didn't allow that sort of thing. A little plaque would have to suffice. It didn't seem right.

As I turned to go, I noticed a man leaning against a tree a hundred feet or so away. He was watching me. As I started down the grassy slope, he began walking, too. Our paths intersected at my car.

"Mr. Santos?" he said.

I turned. He was a big man, six-two at least, mid-forties, maybe two-fifty, with most of it settled around his gut. He wore a white shirt under a rumpled gray suit. His thinning brown hair was slick with sweat. I looked at him but said nothing. If he was another reporter–

"I'm Gerald Caskie, FBI. Can we talk a minute?"

"You found him?" I said, my spirits readying for a leap. I stepped closer and grabbed two fistfuls of his suit jacket. "You've got him?"

He pulled his jacket free of my grasp.

"We can talk in my car. It's cooler."

I followed about fifty yards along the curving asphalt path to where a monotone Ford two-door sedan waited in the shade of one of the cemetery's eponymous trees. The motor was running. He indicated the passenger side. I joined him in the front seat of the Ford. The air conditioner was blasting. It was freezing inside.

"That's better," he said, adjusting one of the vents to blow directly on his face.

"All right," I said, unable to contain my impatience any longer. "We're here. Tell me: Do you have him?"

He looked at me with basset hound brown eyes.

"What I'm about to tell you is off the record, agreed?"

"What are you–?"

"Agreed? You must never reveal what I'm about to tell you. Do I have your word as a man that what I tell you will never go beyond this car?"

"No. I have to know what it's about, first."

He shifted in his seat and put the Ford in gear.

"Forget it. I'll drive you back to your car.

"No. Wait. All right. I promise. But enough with the games, already."

He threw the gearshift back into Park.

"This isn't a game, Mr. Santos. I could lose my job, even be brought up on criminal charges for what I'm going to tell you. And if you do try to spill it, I'll deny we've ever met."

"What is it, goddam it?"

"We know who killed your daughter."

The words hit me like a sledge to the gut. I felt almost sick with relief.

"Have you got him? Have you arrested him?"

"No. And we won't be. Not for some time to come."

It took a while for the words to sink in, probably because my mind didn't want to accept them. But when it did, I was ready to go for his throat. I reined in my fury, however. I didn't want to get hit with assault and battery on a Federal officer. At least not yet.

"You'd better explain that," I said in a voice that was barely above a whisper.

"The killer is presently a protected witness in an immensely important federal trial. Can't be touched until all the testimony is in and we get our conviction."

"Why the hell not? My daughter's death has nothing to do with your trial!"

"The killer's a psycho – that's obvious. Think how a child-killing charge will taint the testimony. The jury will throw it out. We've got to wait."

"How long?"

"Less than a year if we lose the case. If we get a conviction, we'll have to wait out all the appeals. So we could be looking at five years, maybe more."

Cool as it was in the car, I felt a different kind of cold seep through me.

"Who is he?"

"Forget it. I can't tell you that."

I couldn't help it – I went for his throat.

"Tell me, goddam it!"

He pushed me off. He was a lot bigger than I – I'm just a bantam weight accountant, one-fifty soaking wet.

"Back off, Santos! No way I'm going to give you a name. You'll have it in all the papers within hours."

I folded. I crumpled. I turned away and pressed my head against the cool of the side window. I thought I was going to cry, but I didn't. I'd left all my tears with Jessie.

"Why did you tell me any of this if you're not going to tell me his name?"

"Because I know you're hurting," he said in a soft voice. "I saw what you did to that reporter on TV."

Right. The reporter. Mel Padner. My claim to fame. As I walked out of the morgue after identifying Jessica's tattered body, I was greeted by an array of cameras and reporters. Most of them kept a respectful distance, but not Padner. He stuck a mike in my face and asked me how I felt about my daughter's death. I had the microphone halfway down his throat before they pulled me off him. His own station never ran the footage, but all the others did, including CNN. I was still getting cards and telegrams telling me how I should have shoved it up Padner's other end instead.

"And this is supposed to make me feel better?" I said to Caskie.

"I thought it would. Because otherwise the weeks and months would go on and on with no one finding the killer, and you'd sink deeper and deeper into depression. At least I know I would. I've got a daughter myself, and if anything ever happened to her like...well, if anything happened to her, that's the way I'd feel. I just thought I'd try to give you some peace of mind. I thought you'd be able to hang in there better knowing that we already have the killer in a custody of sorts, and that, as one father to another, justice will be done."