Genesis of Evil (8 page)

He saw nothing but a red blur. The girl, the bed, the room had all disappeared into this weird red fog. But he knew where she lay. He could still feel her. Right there beneath him. Moaning and rolling back and forth as if she was actually enjoying herself. But he knew better. And he would teach this trollop a thing or two. He chuckled deep in his belly and reached behind him for the cutlass. Suddenly he stopped pumping and stood straight up above the spot where he knew she lay. He raised the cutlass over his head with both hands.

“Right, me lass. This is for all the boyos you’ve fucked over since you first spread your legs for the likes of one of us buccaneers!”

The red fog was suddenly blown away by the force of a frantic scream. Captain Blacketer froze with his arms in midair above his head.

“Manning, you motherfucker!” Sheila Hicks yelled. “Stop! What the hell is wrong with you? Untie me, you prick, and put down that sword. Have you lost your rabbit-assed mind?”

Manning Richards shook his head slowly back and forth, then looked down at Sheila where she lay beneath him. All the blood had drained from her face. She was so white Richards thought he could see through her skin to the skull beneath. She had drawn herself so tightly together that she was suspended between the four corners of the bed like a fiddle string. Richards tossed the cutlass to the floor and leaped from the bed.

“Did you hear me, you moron? Cut me loose! I don’t know why I agreed to meet you in this damn boatel in the first place. You’re nothing but a big, fat asshole.”

Richards hastened to release the frightened woman. “I’m sorry, Sheila, I don’t know what came over me. You know I wouldn’t hurt you. Honest.”

“Honest, my ass, you cocksucker.” She sat up and started massaging her wrists and ankles. “That’s the last time anybody ties me to anything. Nuts! You gotta be fucking nuts! Don’t bother me anymore. You’re crazier than a shit-house rat!”

Sheila Hicks pulled on her clothes and stormed from the room, leaving a muddled Manning Richards sitting in the middle of the floor wondering what had come over him.

Gerhart parked his car at the curb, walked up the short flight of stairs and punched the doorbell. He could hear a vacuum cleaner running somewhere in the house. Receiving no response he concluded that the doorbell didn’t work and hammered on the door. Still nothing. Gerhart leaned out over a flowerbed and looked through the living room window. Roberta Valentine was sitting at a desk working with a computer terminal. As he reached out to tap on the glass the vacuum cleaner rolled slowly past the window. Startled, Gerhart almost lost his balance but managed to save himself from falling face first into the geraniums. He regained his equilibrium, squeezed his eyes closed for a moment then looked once more through the window.

The woman continued to work at the desk as the vacuum rolled smoothly about the room, apparently of its own volition. Puzzled, Gerhart drew himself back onto the porch and hammered on the solid oak door. A moment later the machine was switched off. Roberta Valentine swung the door open and smiled at him through the screen.

“Good morning, Chief. Won’t you come in?”

She pushed the screen open and swung herself away from the door to allow him room to pass. Gerhart stepped across the threshold and fished the complaint form from a pocket.

“Morning, Miss Valentine. I just dropped by to get your signature on this.” He waved the form in the air. “I forgot to have you sign it yesterday.”

She pointed a crutch at the couch. “Have a seat. How about a cup of coffee? Guaranteed to be as bad, if not worse, than the one I had with you yesterday.”

Gerhart laughed. “Why not? I don’t think anybody’s going to hold up the mail train for the next fifteen or twenty minutes.”

She grinned and went through a door next to her desk. Gerhart heard a cabinet open, then the sound of water running into something. He wondered if the now-silent vacuum cleaner was some sort of new, self-propelled model.

“What did I forget to sign yesterday?” Roberta asked from the kitchen.

“Just a rider on the complaint form stating that you’re dropping the charges against your purse-snatcher. No big deal.”

He stood and walked across the room to the vacuum, unable to shake his curiosity. He lifted one side of the machine and gently turned a rear wheel. If the vacuum was self-propelled, he reasoned, there should be resistance when the wheel was turned. There was none. He put the vacuum back on the floor, returned to the couch, sat down and looked about the room. In addition to the couch and the desk where Roberta worked, the room contained two filing cabinets against one wall, a filled bookcase in the center of another and a television set in one corner. On top of the bookcase stood two trophies of some sort, each nearly a foot tall.

Roberta came into the room pushing a teacart and balancing on one crutch. On the cart were two cups of coffee, a sugar bowl, a small pitcher of milk and a plate of assorted cookies. “I hope you don’t mind instant coffee; my pot died yesterday. That’s the reason I went to the mall. How do you drink it?”

“Black, thanks.” He took a sip of the coffee and briefly considered asking about the vacuum cleaner but decided against it. “If you don’t mind my asking, where did you learn to defend yourself with those crutches?”

“I used to live in Gary, Indiana. It’s not a nice town. I met a guy who was into martial arts. He introduced me to one of his friends who was an instructor. The guy took one look at me and said I was carrying two of the best weapons an unarmed woman could have. He taught me a lot.”

“Apparently,” Gerhart said with a grin. “You said you were a headhunter. Are you independent?”

“Yeah. I got tired of doing all the work and getting only a percentage of the commission. So I took the contacts I made and went into business for myself. It’s a lot more satisfying, not to mention lucrative.” She sipped coffee and selected a chocolate chip cookie from the plate. “Are you a native of Trinidad?”

The conversation bounced from one subject to another so effortlessly that Gerhart was shocked when he glanced at his watch. He had been in Roberta’s living room for nearly an hour. The cookie plate was empty and he had polished off two cups of coffee. He smiled apologetically and stood up. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize how much of your time I’ve wasted.”

Roberta smiled up at him. “Don’t be silly. I’ve enjoyed talking to you. I don’t get a lot of company.”

“I’ve enjoyed it, too,” he replied. “Oh, here.” He handed her the complaint form and showed her where to sign. Then she stood and swung herself along behind him to the door.

“Thanks for the coffee,” he said. “By the way, you lied to me. Yours is better than the stuff at the station, even if it is instant.”

Roberta Valentine stood in the doorway and waved as Gerhart drove off. He was quite a guy. He was bright, witty and interesting. She had the impression that he could be gentle when he wanted to be, even if he was a cop. She hoped he wasn’t married. She hadn’t seen a ring, but a lot of men didn’t wear one. She wondered if she would see him again. She looked down at her legs and drew her mouth into a straight line.

“Yeah, right,” she said to herself and closed the door.

As Gerhart drove off he wondered what was wrong with Roberta’s legs. He wondered what had made the vacuum cleaner run around the room by itself. But most of all, he wondered if he would see her again. Once you started talking to her, he thought, you just forgot that her legs weren’t quite right. It wasn’t important. He smiled and almost ran a stop sign.

Roberta Valentine was four years old before she understood that she wasn’t like everybody else. The rest of the world was a lot taller than she. Of course, at four years of age, that wasn’t unusual, except for the fact that even other four year olds were taller than Roberta. Everybody else could stand up, she realized, but she was relegated to dragging herself around the floor with her hands. When Mama took her out it was always in the stroller. Roberta was so big she stuck out all over, but it was the only way she could go anywhere. When she asked Mama about her condition, Mama just told her it was God’s will. Roberta couldn’t picture God, much less his will. That explanation didn’t help much.

When Henry and Margaret Valentine realized that Roberta wasn’t going to be able to walk, they took their problem to the Church. After several counseling sessions, Henry reached a conclusion. The child wasn’t his. As he had never done anything illegal or immoral in his life, there was no other possibility. He never mentioned it to Margaret, but she knew something had happened to distance her husband from her and spent a lot of her free time wondering what it was.

Money wasn’t easy to come by and both Henry and Margaret had to work to provide three meals and a roof that didn’t leak. Roberta was left with a neighbor—at ten dollars a week—and since the neighbor’s kids were physically normal she was left pretty much to her own devices. Besides, the neighbor liked beer. Roberta sat still a lot, watched television and wished she could be like the other children.

One morning, the children were out in the back yard playing in the sandbox and the neighbor had fallen asleep on the couch before remembering to turn on the TV. Roberta was bored stiff. As she leaned against the wall in a corner of the living room she noticed a toy fire engine beneath the couch. It suddenly became very important for her to hold that fire engine in her hand. Although she could have worked her way across the floor and retrieved the toy, she started wishing it would come to her instead. She reached out a hand and pointed at the fire engine, wishing it to roll from the huge, overstuffed garage. Incredibly, it moved a bit. Roberta eyes widened. She held out both hands and concentrated on the toy with every fiber of her tiny being.

The little fire truck rolled slowly out from under the couch and across the floor to come to a stop within reach of her right hand. Roberta picked it up and smiled.

Practice made perfect.

When Roberta asked once more, at the age of eight, why the doctors couldn’t fix her hips, Mama explained about their religion, Church of Christ, Scientist, and how it is based on the idea that disease, sin, death and so on are caused by mental error and don’t really exist. Because of this fact, Mama explained, there is no need for doctors or hospitals. Furthermore, she went on, if Roberta really wanted to, she could cure her hips by herself, by thinking hard about it and repenting her sins. And there the matter rested.

Roberta was glad she had never mentioned how she was able to move things by thinking about it. She was bright enough to know how a talent like that would play in the Church of Christ, Scientist.

When Roberta finally became confident enough to strike out on her own, the crutches were merely another extension of her body. On the odd occasion, she wished in passing that she could dance or ice skate, or perhaps jog, but she pushed those thoughts aside. She found a profession she enjoyed and set out to learn all there was to know about helping corporations find the people they needed, as well as helping people find their place in life—at least as far as their jobs went.

There were simply more important things to worry about than a pair of defective hips.

Lester Mede checked his watch and snapped to attention. He turned his head smartly to the left and gazed with narrowed eyes down the row of troops, making certain that the ranks were precisely in line as required. Deciding that all was in order in that quadrant, he turned his attention to the armored cavalry behind him. He performed a perfect about-face in order to survey the rows of tanks and cannon. Satisfied that they, too, were arranged as required, he checked his watch once more.

It was time.

Lester Mede stepped quickly off to his right, lifted the mop from the bucket, wrung it out exactly as he had been instructed and commenced cleaning the floor in the northeast corner of the food court. He allowed himself exactly fifteen minutes for each quadrant. No more. Any Field Marshal worth his salt could mop one fourth of this area in fifteen minutes. And Lester Mede was a first rate Field Marshal.

Lester Mede had been a perfectly normal boy until three weeks before his ninth birthday when he, his brothers William and George and two of their friends went out into the woods to play. They were having trouble deciding whether to play Cowboys and Indians or Tarzan and the Headhunters when they wandered into a grove of abandoned pecan trees and decided on the latter. It was Lester’s turn to be Tarzan so he picked the tallest tree he could find and scampered up it almost as easily as the Ape Man himself. The boys all agreed that when it came to climbing trees Lester had no competition. The boys swung joyfully from branch to branch for almost half an hour. Then Lester made a grab for the next perch and missed by a hair.

He hurtled toward the ground at what seemed to be a hundred miles an hour, bouncing from limb to limb as he descended. He had survived falls of the same height several times and would have again had it not been for part of a long forgotten farm implement that lay half buried at the base of the tree.

The last branch he struck spun him half around and he landed head first on a rusty steel plate. The other boys had laughed when he missed the handhold, having done the same thing hundreds of times themselves. They scampered down the tree, stopped next to Lester and laughed at him, waiting for him to get up. But when he continued to lie silently where he had landed they became worried. When six or seven minutes passed without Lester responding to any stimulus, William, who was the oldest, ran for help.