Revenant (27 page)

She closed the album and stood up. “I don't think I should talk to you anymore. Please leave.”

A
fter Mrs. Williams closed the door behind me, she locked it. I went to the truck and used my cell phone to call the paper. I got a terse Hank.

“Brandon is pissed,” he said. “He's still waiting for you.”

“When he sells the paper, I don't have a job anyway. Can you give me Mitch Rayburn's old address? When he lived with his parents.” Disbelief had given way to dread. I remembered Mitch's face on the dock, staring at Pamela Sparks's dead body, the veil fluttering in the wind. His face had registered shock and horror. He'd never mentioned that he recognized the veil.

“Carson, you have to tell me what you're up to.” Hank's demanding voice tugged me back to the present.

“I will, when I have something solid. I'm not going to have anything for Tuesday's paper, but if this pans out, I could have a big story for Wednesday. Just get me that address.”

Hank put me on hold while he looked up the address in an old city directory.

“It's 135 Pelican Lane. The house is gone, though. I don't think anything was ever built there. The property is listed as still belonging to Mitch.”

“Thanks, Hank.” I hung up before he could ask any more questions. My cell phone battery was running low, but I called Jack at the hospital. He answered in a muffled voice, and I winced as I remembered his broken teeth.

“Jack, what do you recall about Harry Rayburn?”

“Carson, what are you up to?”

“Did you ever hear rumors that Rayburn was abusive to his boys?”

There was a pause long enough for me to travel two blocks in rather heavy traffic. School had let out, and I'd miscalculated my route, ending up in a slow crawl by an elementary school.

“Harry Rayburn was a bigger-than-life man. I never cared for him. He was always full of himself, the kind of guy who didn't bother to acknowledge the little people. When he died in that fire, I heard talk.”

“What kind of talk?”

“That he beat the boys and wasn't shy about slapping his wife around. It was just talk. Nothing conclusive.”

“Thanks, Jack. I'll be in touch.” I broke the connection and put my cell phone down on the seat as I saw a break in the traffic and aimed the truck toward freedom.

The Pelican Lane address was nothing but an empty lot. All remnants of the fire had been erased by time. Trees and brush had grown up around the foundation of the house. I walked through the tall grass and found a few bricks and what had once been a walkway. Nature had done her work on the rest.

The neighborhood was an older one with solid houses and mature oak trees lining the road. I walked next door and knocked at a neat clapboard house that was flanked with blooming flower beds. A woman about ten years older than myself answered my knock.

Her name was Nan Baker, and she'd grown up on the street. Her mother had lived in the house until she died. Nan had moved back into it ten years before, when she'd divorced. She was talkative and seemed glad for the company. She invited me in and put on a kettle for tea.

“I remember the Rayburn family,” she said as she arranged cups and saucers on her kitchen table. They were a fine old china pattern. Nan looked out the window at the empty lot where the Rayburn house once stood not twenty yards away. “I'm glad to see Mitch has done well. He was always a good kid. I felt sorry for him.”

“Why was that?”

“Mr. Rayburn was a cruel man. An evil man, I'd say.” She poured the tea and offered sugar and lemon.

“That's pretty harsh.”

“He beat those boys. There were times when Jeffrey would come over here with black-and-purple bruises on his face. One time, Mom saw his back. He'd been savagely beaten. He said he got the bruises and welts playing ball, but I know differently. Mitch was in middle school then, and he'd show up with the same kinds of marks.”

“Were you friends with the two boys?”

“I was older than both of them, so we weren't close friends, but I'd talk to them. They came over to the house after school almost every day. Mom would have cookies and treats for them. They didn't want to go home.” She shook her head. “Jeffrey played the role of the daddy. He looked after Mitch, and several of their conversations led me to believe that Jeffrey took beatings for him.”

“Didn't anyone call the police?”

“Once. My mother did. All it resulted in was Jeffrey coming over here and begging Mom not to do it again. Harry paid us a visit, too. He said he would sue us. That same night Marilyn Rayburn was rushed to the hospital.”

“Did she press charges?”

“Marilyn Rayburn was extraordinarily clumsy.” Her look was sarcastic. “She had broken arms, broken ribs, broken fingers. She ran into a door at least once a month for a black eye. It was tragic. Mom would watch for her, and if Marilyn didn't come out of the house for a few days, Mom would go over when Mr. Rayburn was at work. Just to make sure Marilyn wasn't dead. As I said, Harry Rayburn was evil. He abused his family on a regular basis.”

“Surely the schools—”

“Wouldn't have touched it with a ten-foot pole. Harry Rayburn was a powerful man.”

I thought about what life was like then. June Tierce's father had been murdered and it had been ruled a suicide. It wasn't inconceivable that a man of political power could beat his wife and children and never pay the price.

“Are you okay?” Nan asked. Her kind brown eyes showed concern.

“I'm fine.” But I wasn't.

“Why is a newspaper reporter so interested in something that happened so long ago?”

“Do you recall the date your mother reported the abuse?”

“No, not specifically. But it was in the winter before the house burned. I was in college then, so I wasn't around. Mom said the most bizarre part of it was that she never heard arguing or screaming and yelling. Whatever went on in that house was done in total silence.”

I pushed back my half-finished tea. “Thanks for your time.” I had a few more facts to check and the day was drawing to a close.

“I hope I was helpful,” she said. “If you talk to Mitch, please tell him I said hi. I'd love for him to come by for a visit.”

I didn't say anything to that as I hurried past her bright beds of tulips and the sweet, sad smell of the blooming hyacinths.

It was four-thirty when I pulled up at the Biloxi Police Department. My request was routine, and I was shown to a small room until the desk sergeant found the records. Nan's mother had filed her report of suspected abuse in February 1974. The house fire that had killed Harry and Marilyn Rayburn had occurred in April 1974.

A cool sweat broke out on my forehead, and nausea knotted my stomach. I sat in the uncomfortable metal chair and tried to stop the buildup of saliva in my mouth. I didn't want to be sick in the police station.

I walked down the hall to the water fountain and drank. There were police officers all around me, young men who ignored me. They all knew Mitch. I wondered if they realized that he'd killed his parents and seven women, maybe more.

 

Miss Vesta was having one of her rare moments of docility. She sat, eyes half-closed, in my lap as I got Dr. Richard Jennings's phone number from information. An empty martini glass was beside the telephone cradle. The option of automatic dialing seemed nice, so I waited for the phone company to make the connection. As I suspected, the psychiatrist wasn't in, but his cell phone number was on his answering machine message. I had to dial that one myself.

Night had fallen, and I turned on a lamp as I counted the rings. I was about to hang up when Dr. Jennings answered.

He was surprised to hear from me, but when I explained what I needed, he agreed to talk.

“This is all hypothetical,” I said, effectively letting him off the hook. “Say there were two brothers, both of whom were horribly abused by their father, a man who could never be satisfied with anything they did. The mother was abused also. Then the parents were killed in a house fire. Would—?”

“An accidental fire?” he asked.

“It was ruled accidental, but I'm not so sure, based on things I've learned now.” The only piece I couldn't make fit was how a teenage boy could have set such a fire. It was possible Mitch had never been at Scout camp. There weren't records of such things. The picture I was getting of Jeffrey was a brother who would lie or do anything to protect his younger sibling. A younger brother who might possibly be a cold-blooded killer.

“Both parents died?” Richard asked.

“Yes.”

“It would be more common for one of the boys to kill the father. Then again, the Menendez case comes to mind where the mother was allegedly killed because she failed to protect her children from the father. How old were the boys when the house burned?”

“One would have been around thirteen or fourteen and the other eighteen. Both had alibis.”

“If the fire was deliberately set by one or both of the boys, then it indicates there was blame placed on the mother, as well as the father. What type of abuse are we talking about?”

“Beatings, that kind of thing. The only strange element is that there was never any arguing. At least not that the neighbors heard. No screaming or ranting.”

“Could be a control issue on the part of the abuser. To keep his victims from making noise as he abused them would be ultimate control.”

The picture Dr. Jennings was painting of Harry Rayburn was an ugly one. What he'd possibly turned one of his children into was even uglier.

“What type of person do you think these boys would grow up to be?” I asked.

“They'd probably go one of two ways, either become very successful, a classic overachiever, or else start abusing drugs and/or alcohol, and perhaps become a recluse or homeless person. Understand we're talking hypothetically here. Real life is seldom this clear-cut.”

“Hypothetically, could one of the boys become a serial killer?”

“It's possible for the victim to become the offender. It's not unheard of.”

“If one of these boys is our serial killer, can you tell me why he kills?” An even better question was why he'd stopped for twenty-four years, but I'd get around to that.

“Well, based on what I know of these killings, I'd say the murders reflect hatred toward the mother for her failure to protect the boys. It could even be as twisted as the mother somehow caused her sons to be beaten, either to save herself from a beating or because that was the only power she had in the family.”

“And the girls, the victims?”

“All girls of marriageable age. But there had to be some way he selected them. Engagement announcements in the newspaper or something. I'd say the killer has a terribly conflicted view of women—he doesn't have a problem with them until they become brides, or wives. Once they cross that threshold, they change from desirable to dangerous. He has to kill them before that transformation takes place.”

“We're back to the twenty-four-year hiatus.” My fingers stroked Miss Vesta's hair, finding comfort in the contact with the purring cat.

“Something happened to stop the killings. Something traumatic. And I'd have to say that the recovery of the five bodies was likely what prompted the killings to start again.”

“The death of his brother might be traumatic enough to stop the killings,” I said it more to myself than Richard Jennings.

“What did you say?” he asked.

“What if the incident that stopped the killings was the death of his brother?”

“That would do it,” the psychiatrist said. “Did the younger brother die?”

“No, the older one. He drowned while on the sailboat of the younger brother. The older brother and his new bride both drowned during a storm.”

“That might possibly explain the gap in the killings,” Richard said. “The younger brother might see the death of his older brother as some sort of retribution. You say he drowned with his new bride?”

“That's correct.”

“An act of God somehow, a final vengeance. God took his brother away because of his sins. Now that the bodies have been uncovered, the killer might believe it's another sign from God to continue killing. Or is it possible that he killed his brother and sister-in-law?”

Mitch's handsome face filled my mind. He was a good D.A., a man with a moral conscience. A man who talked of his dead brother with such love.

I contrasted the man I knew with the man who could slit a woman's throat and leave her to bleed out, dressed in the accoutrements of a bride. It didn't seem possible that in the dead of night Mitch Rayburn turned into a monster, a murderer of young women.

“I don't know the answer to that question. Dr. Jennings, would it be possible for the killer to be unaware of his actions?”

“A psychotic split?”

I heard the incredulity in his voice. “Something like that. I don't know the psychiatric term. But this man maintains a prominent public image. He's involved in the investigations of the murders. I've seen him at the crime scenes, and he seems disturbed by the killings.”