Primal Fear (17 page)

She kissed his chin, his throat, traced his earlobes with her tongue while her hands swept over his stomach, touched him and stroked him and his hands searched her soft down, felt her grow hard and wet under his fingertips, trembling as she rose to his touch. They stroked each other, their moans and whimpers became a rhapsody, time and place dissolved in seizures of ecstasy, until she rolled over on top of him, straddled him, staring into his eyes and crying out as she guided him into her. He stared up at her and she leaned forward on stiffened arms, arched her back, pressed herself against him, her hair whisking his face, and they moved faster and faster, racing, holding back, racing, holding back, until finally they surrendered in frenzied rapture.

She collapsed on top of him, lay there for several minutes until her breathing was almost normal and finally lifted herself off him and lay beside him on her stomach, her head nestled against his shoulder, her breath still unsettled.

“Oh God,” she murmured in his ear. “How glorious to want something that badly. I mean, to be attracted to you that way.
It hasn’t happened in a very long time. It was so good … just to … to
want
something again.”

“Are you that lonely?”

“Crazed.” She giggled. “I knew I wanted you the minute you came in the school today and said that—you know, about learning something? I thought, my God, a man with a sense of humor—a real sense of humor, one that doesn’t involve some kind of body function.”

He stroked her back with one hand, soothing her, feeling her pulse—in sync with his—return to normal. She lifted herself on her elbows and kissed him softly and rolled over on her back.

“Wouldn’t a cigarette be just grand now?” she said softly. He lit one and handed it to her.

She smoked for a while, then reached over and laid her free hand on his arm, stroked it, then leaned very close to him. “Spend the night with me,” she said softly in his ear. “I want to feel you beside me when I wake up in the morning. I want to smell you before I open my eyes. You can make breakfast and I’ll be late for school. In twelve years, I’ve never been late for school.”

“They’re liable to descend on us, tattoo an
A
on your forehead.”

“Then I’ll change my name to Abigail,” she said.

He raised up on one elbow and stared down at her.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked.

“I told you. I was attracted to—”

“No, not with me.” He laughed. “I mean, here? What are you doing in Crikside-damn-Kentucky?”

She did not answer for a minute or two.

“I guess I’m hiding,” she said plaintively.

“From what?”

“From what the world’s become,” she answered. “Maybe… I’m afraid to go back out there.”

“Don’t you ever miss it?”

“I miss a laughing man. I miss caring… strong arms around me. It’s funny but I always did like the smell of after-shave lotion. Oh, at first I missed the museums, hearing good music, things like that. But you get over it. I even learned to play the fiddle. I can play a very wicked reel. And I like my independence. I don’t work for KC&M, I work for the county. KC&M doesn’t own the land, I bought it from the county ’cause nobody wanted it. This house came in a kit. You know, like an airplane
model? It was in an ad in the Sunday paper. I tutored for two years, trading out with carpenters and plumbers and electricians to help me put it up.”

“Aren’t you ever going to leave?”

She stared at the ceiling for a while and then said, “No, I guess not.”

“Can I ask you something very personal?”

“It’s about Aaron, isn’t it?”

“Yes. That’s why I came to Crikside, remember?”

“All right, ask it,” she said with resignation.

“It occurred to me because of what you said—about his father lacing him. The marks on his backside?”

“Yes?”

“Did you see them?”

She didn’t answer.

“Did you sleep with Aaron?”

He watched her expression taper from irritated to cold to inquisitive to curious. And then back to resignation—or acceptance.

“Why would I do that?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” Goodman said. “It was a question, okay? Just say no.”

“I can’t,” she said.

He didn’t say anything, just waited.

“Yes,” she said truculently, lying on her back with her eyes closed. “From the time he was fourteen until he left.”

“Fourteen?” he said.

She nodded. “It was like a ritual. We made love two, three times a week. Except for about four months when he went with Mary. Then again after she died.”

“Mary?”

“Mary Lafferty.”

“The girl who was with his brother …”

She nodded. “She was Aaron’s first crush, right after he started in high school over at Lordsville. She was from Morgan’s Creek and they dated for about four months and—you know, it’s really strange—even though they weren’t making it, Aaron had this funny sense of—not loyalty, exactly—more like monogamy. He stopped sleeping with me during that time. Sam was a year ahead of Aaron. He was on the football team and I guess Mary found him more desirable. Aaron’s first heartbreak. We all go through it.”

“Did it shake him up, the way it happened?”

“Not really. When he first found out about it, he just … erased them from his mind. He could do that. If somebody hurt him, he could just, you know, X them out.”

“A fourteen-year-old kid?”

“If you’ve never lived in a place like this, you wouldn’t understand.”

“Give me a try.”

She drew deeply on her cigarette and blew the smoke out in a slow, steady stream, never looking at him.

“I was attracted by his passion,” she said. “He was a very passionate young man, even before his teens. Passion is a rare quality here.”

“Just passion?”

She stared at him scornfully. “Is this part of your investigation?”

“Yes,” he said, although somewhat uncertainly.

“Hmph.” She stared at the ceiling as she spoke, stopping between sentences, dragging on her cigarette.

“I told you, he was very bright. And smart … We could talk about things, things nobody else here would understand. I remember once, we laid in bed for two, three hours talking about the composition in Ansel Adams’s photographs and how we… the feelings we got from each picture. Things like that…

She was sitting cross-legged on the floor and he was facing her, reading to her from Sherwood Anderson’s
Winesburg, Ohio,
which was one of his favorite books. He was at the end of the story called “Mother,” a bittersweet story about rites of passage and the inability of mother and son to reveal joy or sorrow or elation to each other. When he read, it was without accent. The quaint contractions of the valley vanished, replaced by orderly vowels and concise consonants and by the beauty of words spun into masterful narration.

“‘He fumbled with the doorknob,’” he read. “‘In the room, the silence became unbearable to the woman. She wanted to cry out with joy because of the words that had come from me lips of her son, but the expression of joy had become impossible to her…’”

He stopped reading half a paragraph from the end and looked up at Rebecca and there was a time, it seemed interminable, when he sat there with his breath coming in short gasps and
looked at her with a question in his eyes she had seen there many times before. She knew it was inevitable, for she had seen, through the years, the fabrication of his desire, look upon look, thought upon thought.

“Kin I touch you?” he said fearfully.

“Don’t say ‘kin,’ say ‘can.’”

“Can. Can, can, can…” he repeated, closing his eyes for a second, his breath coming harder, as if he had been running.

She gazed back at him and saw the fever in his eyes. It was a moment she had dreaded, anticipated, fantasized about and ultimately longed for, but had never encouraged. It was past time for denial. Past time to consider conscience or custom. Her skin was electrified, humming with desire. She unbuttoned her blouse slowly but did not spread it open and she sat adrenalized, her heart throbbing in her temples and her mouth dry. He stared at her, short of breath, licked his dry lips, and reached out with trembling hands. His fingertips barely touched her skin in the small gap of the open shirt. He drew the hand down—lingering, uncertainly, not probing but sensing her, as if he could perceive every molecule. Then just as slowly he spread the shirt open and gazed in awe at her breasts. He moved his hands back up but stopped and pulled them away and held them out in front of him, an inch away from her nipples.

“It’s all right,” she said in a whisper. She felt her bust swell, and reaching out, she took his hands in hers and placed them on her and felt her nipples harden under his palms. And he continued his delicate exploration with fingers as soft as feathers.

“I’m not ashamed of it, y’know,” she said. “I didn’t seduce him. It happened over a long period of time. I guess starting when he was … I don’t know … about twelve. It was a very gradual thing. When it happened it was because we both wanted it to.”

“Like you said, people get married here when they’re fourteen. A little chancy though, wasn’t it? I mean, seems to me that could be a lynching offense in Crikside.”

“Maybe that was part of it.”

“Did you love him?”

She thought about that for a long time, trying to blow smoke rings at the ceiling, but they fell apart very quickly.

“I felt sorry for him,” she said finally. Then she closed her eyes and after a minute added, “No, I felt sorry for both of us.”

She suddenly turned away from Goodman, lay on her side for a moment, then sat on the side of the bed, her fair skin hidden behind the cascade of fiery hair.

“It was just part of it,” she said with neither rancor nor embarrassment. “Why not? I taught him everything else.”

SEVENTEEN

When Naomi Chance arrived at the office at 8:30
A.M.
, Vail was already at work. Unshaven, his shirt as rumpled as a wad of paper, he was staring at the photographs and taking more notes, as he had been doing the night before when she left the office. A half-eaten meal was on the desk beside the legal pad. Steam rose from his coffee cup. He was so deeply concentrated he did not hear her come in. She was accustomed to that. Vail called it “diving”—for it was like going under water. It was a different world, one without sound, one in which all the data and faces of the case were jumbled together and he sought to categorize them, to rearrange them into a logical chronology until they formed a picture that made sense to him. Like a legal jigsaw puzzle, the picture occasionally would become clear even though some of the pieces were missing. She ignored him and went about her daily routine. Twenty minutes later he was in her doorway.

“What time is it?” Vail, who never wore a watch in the office, asked.

“Almost nine.”

“Tommy’s back. He and the Judge will be in before noon.”

“Strategy meeting?”

Vail nodded. “I’m anxious to hear Tommy’s report.”

“I doubt that even Tommy could find out much in a town called Crikside.” She laughed. “How about the doctor?”

“Coming in for the day,” he said. “I want her to hear what Tommy has to say, too.”

At about the same time, across town, Lieutenant Stenner had gathered his task force in his office, a large, barren room totally
devoid of personality or warmth. His large desk contained two telephones, a Rolodex and two stacks of field reports—incoming on the left, outgoing on the right. His chair, rigid, straight-backed, without padding, looked about as comfortable as a rack. There were no photographs in this stark chamber, no books, no awards or citations on its walls, only two large corkboards, one containing the photographs of the Rushman murder and photocopies of several reports, the other a catalog of all active cases and their current status. It was obvious that Stenner was a man so totally devoted to his duty that anything remotely personal was barred from the premises.

The task force consisted of Dr. Bill Danielson, the county medical examiner; Harvey Woodside, the obese and asthmatic coroner; and a team of six detectives headed by his personal assistant, Sergeant Lou Turner. They were all handpicked veterans, a force of efficient experts, each of whom had earned citations and departmental awards for his competence and expertise. Jane Venable observed from an uncomfortable chair near the door.

Stenner removed his jacket, draped it over his chair and stood in the front of the room, bright red suspenders—the only color in the room except for the blood in the coroner’s photographs—supporting his dark blue pants. He carefully adjusted his wire-rim glasses over his ears and rubbed his hands together.

“We are a week into this investigation,” he began in his flat, formal, no-nonsense voice. “Let’s see what we’ve got. Mr. Danielson, will you please lead off?”

“Yes, sir.”

Danielson, a man in his late forties, was a devout fisherman with leathery, sun-stained skin and hard biceps which strained the sleeves of a pale blue shirt. His collar was open and his tie was pulled down. He was originally from the South, and his deep voice was a resonant composite of flat Midwest and soft Georgia accents. He took a pencil from his shirt pocket and walked to the board of photographs. Stenner sat to one side and everyone in the room was poised with pens and clipboards, ready to take notes. Before he started, Danielson took out a cigar and started to peel off the cellophane wrapper.

“I’d prefer you don’t smoke,” Stenner said. “Stinks up my office for days.”

Danielson stared at him for a moment. “It’s your office,
Abel,” he said, and began to speak, emphasizing his remarks by pointing at appropriate photos with his unlit stag.

“The victim, Bishop Rushman, experienced a total of seventy-seven different wounds. At least nine, possibly as many as twelve, of these wounds were fatal. Death could also have been caused by extreme exsanguination—that’s bleeding to death—traumatic shock or sudden cardiac collapse, all due to the extensive damage of the wounds. An antemortem incision or a stab wound of the body that severs a large artery or vein or a highly vascular organ will produce profuse hemorrhaging, shock, and death within a short period of time—certainly the circumstance here.

“Wounds due to pointed and edged weapons are divided into four categories: stab wounds, incised wounds and cuts, chops, and therapeutic/diagnostic wounds, which are the type usually made by a physician or surgeon. This victim suffered stabs, incised cuts, chops—and possibly one therapeutic wound. In stab wounds, the most common weapon is the knife, in this case a kitchen knife of the carving variety with a twelve-inch blade, four inches in width at maximum. We can attribute all of the wounds in Bishop Rushman’s body to that single weapon.

“Now in stabs, the length of the wound in the body exceeds its width on the surface of the skin, and the edges of the wound are sharp, without abrasions or contusions. The size and shape of the stab wound in the skin is dependent on the configuration of the weapon, the direction of the thrust, the movement of the blade in the wound, the movement of the individual stabbed, and the state of relaxation or tension of the skin.” He pointed to several punctures in the photographs. “The victim experienced thirty-six separate and distinct stab wounds. Fourteen to the chest and upper torso, seven of which pierced either the heart or lungs, four to the left forearm and three to the right, three in his left palm, one in his right, eight to the abdomen and three to the right leg. The arm and palm wounds most likely were caused when the victim attempted to protect himself—”

“Excuse me, Bill,” Stenner said. “But I think we can save the technical descriptions for the trial. Right now I think we’re interested in the number of wounds and cause of death, okay?”

“Right,” Danielson said. “Incised wounds are those in which the instrument is inserted into the skin, then drawn along the body. We had twelve incised wounds, the most serious of which was to the throat. This wound almost severed the head. Incised
wounds of the neck are frequently extremely deep and often extend completely to the vertebral column. Fact is, the spinal column is probably the only thing that prevented this victim from bein’ beheaded. It’s difficult to tell which of these wounds were administered first but my educated guess is that the throat wound was the first and was sufficient to cause almost instant death. It’s interesting that normally a throat wound this deep and complete would be performed from the back of the victim. This wound was administered from the front. Death from incised wounds of the neck may be due not only to exsanguination but to massive air embolus. Our X ray of the chest for detection of air in the heart and venous system indicates this was the case.”

“So he probably saw it coming,” said Turner.

“I should think so,” Danielson answered. “Frequently in throat wounds this massive, there is also cadaveric spasm—that’s instant rigor mortis—but I don’t believe that was true here.”

“Why not?” Venable asked.

“Because of the wounds to his forearms and particularly the palms. Obviously he was trying to protect himself.”

“Okay. Sorry to interrupt,” she said.

“Other incised wounds were to the face, scalp, chest, and abdomen and on each leg. None of these was sufficient in itself to cause death.

“Finally we had cuts. Seventeen in all, most of which were superficial compared to the traumatic wounds. And then we had the removal of the genitalia, which were placed in the victim’s mouth. Incidentally, this amputation was performed with some degree of surgical skill, particularly when you consider it was done with a carvin’ knife. That’s the cut I believe approached diagnostic skill.”

“You think the perpetrator had some medical background?” Stenner asked.

“Possibly. Certainly he had some acquaintance with these procedures.”

“Humph,” Stenner responded.

“The bleeding was profound,” Danielson, whose train of thought stayed remarkably on course despite the interruptions, went on. “The cadaver contained less than a pint of blood when we did the postmortem. That’s rare. Usually bleeding slows down when the organs stop functioning, particularly when the heart stops pumping. After that you get seepage. I believe that
despite the severity of this attack, the victim may have survived longer than might normally be expected.”

Stenner asked, “Did he put up much of a fight?”

“Judging from the wounds in the forearms and palms, I would say yes. But not for long. This man died very quickly.”

“How about pain?” Woodside asked.

“Intense while it lasted.”

“How long do you think that was?” asked Stenner.

“The length of time it takes to die following an incised wound of the neck depends on whether the venous or arterial systems are severed and whether there is aeroembolism. In this case there was both. But judging from the wounds in his arms and palms, he could have survived for as long as a minute, minute and a half. If the throat wound was the first cut, I don’t see how he could have been conscious for any longer than that—but it’s possible he managed to fight for a minute or so.”

“How about that picture on the right? The back of his head. What is that?” one of the detectives asked.

“I was coming to that,” Danielson said. “I have no explanation for this. Notice this photograph here, which was shot during the P.M.” He pointed to a shot of the back of Rushman’s head. Just below the hairline, “B32.156” was written in blood. “I can’t explain the numbers,” he concluded. “But they were definitely printed with the bishop’s blood, as were the numbers 666 on his stomach—an obvious reference to the devil.”

“Any other conclusions?” Stenner asked.

“Just that there was a certain amount of surgical skill in this job,” Danielson answered. “Several of these wounds were very accurate, as far as hitting vital organs, causing trauma, what have you. And others were just random butchery. I also believe the killer was left-handed.”

“Thank you,” Stenner said, and Danielson returned to his chair.

“Ms. Venable?” Stenner asked, looking at the prosecutor.

“Nothing at this point,” she answered.

“Lou, what’ve you got for us?”

Turner went to the board and pinned a diagram of the murder scene on it.

“We have the three interviews which are not admissible but do establish his story. He claims he came in through the front door here, heard something upstairs in the bishop’s apartment and went upstairs. He says he went into the bishop’s bedroom
and that’s where it gets crazy. Stampler says there was someone else in the room, someone he is afraid of, that he—Stampler—blacked out, and the next thing he remembers is leaving the bedroom. Claims he heard someone downstairs, panicked, ran down the hall here, out the back door and down the stairs, then saw a police car here in the alley so he ducked back into the church, ran down this corridor, and hid in the confessional where he was found.”

“What do you think?” Stenner asked.

“Pure, unadulterated bullshit. Excuse me, ma’am.”

Venable smiled. “I’ve heard the word before, Sergeant. And I tend to agree with you.”

“We searched his stander but it had been ransacked before we got there,” he went on.

“By whom?” Venable asked.

“Other … uh, residents … of me Hollows. I doubt mere was very much to take. We are also trying to locate his girlfriend—” he checked his notes “—Linda. So far no luck on her, apparently she left about three weeks ago. There’s no record of last names at Savior House but we did get a possible fix on her. We think she’s from someplace in Ohio, possibly Akron or Dayton. I can’t blame her much for leaving, nobody could stand the Hollows for long.

“Our interrogations of his friends at the house and the staff at the church haven’t turned up much of anything. They all tend to back up his contention that he and the bishop were very close. This Stampler’s a very smart kid, probably has an IQ in the 130s, 140s. He’s from Crikside”—there was laughter in the room—“that’s right,
Crikside,
Kentucky, population about two-fifty,” he said with a chuckle. “Not too many phones in Crikside but we talked to several people there who know him. No record of any kind of abnormal behavior there, no arrests.

“Apparently he was an independent kid. Father died of black lung, brother was killed in a car wreck. The mother died last year—about a year after he left home. She apparently suffered some mental disorder before she died but her doctor never diagnosed it; According to him, she was—and I quote—’lonely-crazed.’”

“‘Lonely-crazed’?” Woodside echoed.

“‘Lonely-crazed,’” Turner repeated. “Moving along, he was an excellent student in grammar and high school and we’re still missing a few months between the time he left there and
showed up here in the city so we’ve still got homework to do on background, Lieutenant.”

“Any police record here, any record of any trouble before this?” Venable asked.

“Nothing so far,” Turner answered. “He worked as an orderly at the hospital for a few months. Gets good marks from the staff there, but he quit, and then got a job cleaning up at the library, also good references from his supervisor there. He was taking extension courses at City College but we haven’t pulled his transcript yet. That’s about it so far.”

“Like to take a stab at the numbers on the back of his head?” Danielson asked.

“Not a chance,” Turner said with a smile. “Anybody else?”

The other detectives all shook their heads.

“Thanks, Lou,” Stenner said. “Dr. Woodside, you’re up.”

Woodside hefted his enormous bulk from his chair and waddled to the front of the room.

“Without boring you with a lot of technical ying-yang—I’ll save that for the big show—here’s what we can prove,” he gasped with a rather smug smile. “The knife taken from the perpetrator at the time of arrest is definitely the murder weapon. Blood on the perp’s clothes and body is that of the victim. There was also some bits of the victim’s flesh on the weapon
and
on Mr. Stampler’s clothing. Fingerprints on the doorjambs, walls and on the murder weapon match those of the perp. We also have fibers in his clothing that match fibers from the carpeting and we can track him from the scene of the crime to the kitchen by the bloodstains on the carpeting. We also can show he left through the kitchen door and went down the back stairs, then reentered the church through the back door and made his way through the corridor to the church and the confessional where he was found hiding.”