Deaths of Jocasta (35 page)

I stayed there until almost one in the morning, hoping they might return, but they didn’t. I called O’Connor every few hours, but he had nothing to report.

Weariness finally forced me home. That and the hope she might try to call me. But all that met me when I got home was a hungry cat. No phone messages. I picked up my phone and brought it into my bedroom, setting it beside my bed.

I set my alarm clock for early in the morning and collapsed onto my bed, turning away from the green 3:16 staring at me from the clock face.

Just as I was starting to doze, the phone rang. I grabbed it before the first ring had finished.

“Micky, I’m sorry to call you so late.” It was Betty.

“Where are you? Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine. I wanted to make sure you weren’t hurt. Bill shouldn’t have pushed you like he did. He’s…” she paused.

“He’s what?”

“He feels that the slaughter must be stopped,” she continued, her voice quieter, as if she were afraid someone might hear her. “And that justifies anything.”

“Abortion? Is that the slaughter?”

“Yes. They, those children, are beings, with every hope and dream we’ve grown to know, waiting for them. Killed for a woman’s ease and convenience.”

“It’s not that simple. Sometimes it is every hope and dream a woman’s ever had that gets taken from her.”

“Women have choice. These children don’t. They die because she won’t pay for her mistakes.”

“What a perfect world you live in.” Suddenly I felt an anger I couldn’t stop. Betty had answered her questions with clichés of black and white, no room for the relentlessly gray world I found myself caught in. “Choice, huh? Do you know what the word ‘rape’ means, Betty?”

“Yes, I do. Most pregnant women didn’t get that way from rape. Most women said yes.”

“I don’t know most women. And I don’t know what they said. To be honest, I don’t remember what I said. It wouldn’t have made a goddamned bit of difference. I was thirteen and he was eighteen. My cousin. Babysitting me. Choice?” I spat the word. “I didn’t get pregnant only because he preferred sticking his dick in my mouth instead of my cunt.”

“Dear God,” Betty whispered, shaken by my blunt fury. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know…”

“No, of course not. Doesn’t fit into your precious little scheme of selfish women having abortions just to avoid some slight inconvenience. What do you think of suicide? Against your religion, too? Because if that piece of shit had gotten me pregnant, I would have killed myself.”

“You say that…”

“I would have killed myself,” I repeated. “It would have been my only choice.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Betty softly replied.

“Don’t say anything. I don’t want to hear any more of your goddamned clichés.”

She was silent for a moment. I half expected her to just hang up on me. “Miss Knight…Micky, I haven’t just…I know the answers aren’t simple and easy. I can look at my life and know what an unintended pregnancy and child would mean. I’m not a man who asks a sacrifice I can’t make.”

“Your sister. Did you offer to raise her child?”

“I…oh, God.” She was silent for a moment, searching for an answer, it seemed. “No,…no, I didn’t think she would go through with it. I didn’t think…to offer.” She was fumbling for words. “It wasn’t my place. I…have known desire. But I have resisted. I didn’t put myself in that situation.”

“Her kid, her problem, right?”

“You bear the consequences of your actions. It isn’t fair to force them on others.”

“An unwanted child is a punishment to be born, not a life to be saved? You didn’t believe in the sanctity of life enough to make the sacrifice you demanded of her?”

“Oh, dear God, forgive me,” she said, starting to cry, deep sobs that let me know I had hit an irreparable hurt.

I just let her cry. As she had no words for my pain, I found none for hers.

“Micky,” she finally said, her voice cracked and broken.

“I’m here.”

“It has to stop. You must help me.”

“Help you how?”

She caught a breath, steadying her voice. “I’m not God to judge. Dear Lord, forgive me for what I might have done.”

“What have you done?” I asked gently.

“Cordelia performs abortions. I know that.”

“She didn’t perform the abortions that killed those women.”

“I wasn’t sure. I…thought perhaps she had, perhaps she had…made a mistake. But when you told me their names, I knew Victoria Williams wasn’t a patient at the clinic. I remember reading about her murder in the paper. Cordelia couldn’t have been responsible for her death.”

“Did you leave her file for the police to find?”

“No. I got Cordelia to sign a few blank forms. And…I wasn’t always careful where my keys to the clinic were. And I didn’t ask the right questions. I won’t let that happen again. I will take whatever consequences come my way. But I can’t allow…”

“What can I do to help you?”

“I wanted to believe that it was God’s will that those women died. ‘An eye for an eye.’ For killing their children.”

“Fay Zimmer, the last woman, a fifteen-year-old girl, wasn’t pregnant,” I told her.

For a moment Betty didn’t say anything, then very softly, “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“The thought is horrible. It wasn’t God who killed them,” she said very slowly.

“Who did kill them?” I asked.

Betty hesitated before replying. “I don’t know. Not for sure. And I must be sure before I do anything else. I could be making another horrible mistake.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Pray. Pray that this will soon be over. When I know for certain, then I will need your help. Will you help me?”

“Of course, I will. But, Betty, I don’t like this. Could the man who pushed me down the stairs be the murderer?”

“It’s…not a thought I like.”

“Nor I. Are you with him now?”

She didn’t say anything for a moment, then a quiet, “Yes.”

“You’re in danger. Call the police.”

“I can’t call the police. Not yet.”

“I’ll come and get you. If he’s already murdered four women, you’re in—”

“I’m in no danger,” she cut me off. “I don’t know that he’s killed anyone. And…and if he has, it was only those who he thought had already murdered.”

“Like Faye Zimmer,” I reminded her.

“I don’t condone it. Some part of me deeply believes that he didn’t, couldn’t have hurt those women, no matter what he suspected them to be guilty of.”

“Let the police work it out,” I argued.

“Atonement. We all deserve a chance for it. I will call you soon.”

“Twenty-four hours. If I don’t hear from you in…”

“I’ll call you by then.”

“Tell me where you are.”

“In twenty-four hours.”

“Okay, in twenty-four hours, I want to know where you are and that you’re all right. Leave a message on my machine if I’m not here. Is that a deal?”

“Yes. I’ll tell you everything then. Good-bye, Micky.” The phone clicked off.

I stared for a long time at the green minutes ticking off on my clock before I finally fell asleep.

I was awakened by the dissonance of the phone ringing and a cat meowing. Somehow I had slept through the alarm clock. Or woken up just enough to turn it off (always a possibility).

I jumped up and went for the phone.

“Hello?” I mumbled, too sleepy to enunciate properly.

“Do you have a pair of black fuck-me pumps?” Torbin asked.

“Me?” I started to laugh at the ludicrousness of the question.

“Then we are going shopping,” Torbin sternly informed me. “How you survive without the necessities of life is beyond me.”

“I am not spending my hard-earned money on torturous feminine devices.”

“Just tortuous feminist devices,” he shot back. “I didn’t expect that you would. However, I could not forgive myself if I sent you out on a gala evening improperly dressed. My reputation is at stake.”

Torbin could not be put off. We finally agreed on a meeting time and hung up.

Then I called O’Connor, but it being Saturday, he wasn’t around. The person I talked to couldn’t tell me much. No sign of Betty or Frankenstein. She still hadn’t called me. Twenty-four hours seemed like a very long stretch of time.

I drove back out to her place. Still the same. No car, the rooms as I had spied them the day before. No one had come back here last night. I scanned the lot, no one was about. Taking one last look, I circled behind the cottage. There were two windows in back, facing into a dense tangle of trees and the remains of a dilapidated wooden fence. I pushed on both the windows, hoping that one of them might be unlocked. No such luck. I should have known Betty Peterson would have been too careful for that. The front door, of course, had a dead bolt on it. I could see that from here. I glanced again at the neat interior. Was it worth breaking a window over?

Doing nothing but waiting for her call was wearing on me. I could probably pick the lock if I went back to my car and got my lock picks. Of course, lock picking is not best practiced in broad daylight at a door visible to any car or passerby on the block. I looked back at the windows.

That she could be in danger decided me. I’d pay for the window later, when Betty was safely back home.

I took off my shoe, using it to shield my hand. Selecting a corner of the pane just under the window lock, I tapped it experimentally. Then I gave it a good solid whack, shattering half of the pane. I put my shoe back on, then carefully slide my hand through to the lock. The window easily slid open. How like Betty to keep her windows well oiled. I quickly, though gracelessly, pulled myself into her living room. It was a compact one-bedroom with a kitchenette in one corner of the living room. Everything was neat and tidy, bed made, dishes done. Garbage, unfortunately, taken out. I borrowed her kitchen gloves to do a search, and, also carefully wiped off the window lock. Micky Knight’s fingerprints had no business being here.

The neatness carried through, her drawers carefully organized, her few magazines meticulously stacked by date, everything in her freezer labeled. Only the crumpled nurse’s uniform in her laundry basket hinted that someone actually lived a daily life here.

She had an inexpensive answering machine next to her bed. There were no messages on it. I couldn’t get it to run back old messages. I took the tape out to a small cassette player Betty had in her living room.

The first message was from her dentist reminding her of an appointment. The second was Millie asking about trading a Thursday evening for a Saturday morning, a hang-up, then tape hiss.

I started to rewind it, but Betty’s voice came on, “Sometimes, Bill, you seem so young. The other one bothers me. He has such an odd voice. I’ve only spoken…” then her voice was recorded over by one of those annoying telephone ads. There was nothing else of interest on the tape.

If I picked up my phone while someone was leaving a message, the answering machine would record our conversation. Betty’s obviously worked the same way.

I wondered who Betty had been talking to.

Bill. She had referred to the man she was with earlier as Bill. He didn’t strike me as “so young.” I also wondered who the “other one” was. And if that brief snatch of conversation had anything to do with this.

I rewound the tape and put it back in her answering machine. I looked at my watch. It was time to go.

But instead of turning to leave, I picked up the Bible that she kept next to her bed.

And found it. Tucked neatly in Revelations, it was a partially filled-out insurance form, the ink blotted and smeared on part of the address line. It was signed by Dr. C. James and the patient’s name was Victoria Williams.

I tucked it back into its Bible home. I couldn’t take it. There was no way of explaining how I got it. Particularly to O’Connor. Betty would have to turn it over to the police herself.

They had messed up one of their fake insurance forms. It troubled me that Betty didn’t seem to know how damming this piece of evidence was. I wouldn’t be asking questions of anyone who left this sort of evidence about.

I had promised Betty twenty-four hours. But that was all I was going to give her. If she wasn’t on her way to the police at the end of those twenty-four hours, O’Connor was going to get a call from me, strongly suggesting he search Betty’s cottage.

I taped old newspaper over the broken window, then exited. I peered around the cottage before heading to where my car was parked.

The old lady who had first directed me to Betty’s cottage was sitting on her stoop talking to a young man. They seemed in no hurry to finish their conversation. The young man gave her a friendly wave and then started walking in my direction. I didn’t think he’d seen me yet, but if he got close enough he would. I started slowly backing into the bushes. He was going to Betty’s cottage, I realized. Then he got close enough for me to recognize him. He had been one of the people picketing Cordelia’s clinic, the one who had asked me if I was going to get an abortion. He pulled a key out of his pocket and headed up Betty’s steps.