Shame (30 page)

The night auditor sounded none too happy being bothered in the middle of the night. Feral hoped the cretin was being methodical.

“She’s not there either? Hmmm. Well, thank you.”

He wrote down the names and the time of his call. It wouldn’t do to call back the same hotel for several hours.

Another name, another hotel.

“Yes, could you please connect me with Vera Macauley’s room?”

Feral checked the other name he would be asking for. Jean Keys. Where did Queenie come up with her names? Maybe he would ask her that the next time his hands were around her neck.

Suddenly, the line started ringing. He had been connected to Vera Macauley’s room. Feral listened for a moment, made sure there wasn’t some mistake, and then hung up.

Time to check in, he thought.

Aloud, he announced, “Patience, my ass. I’m going to kill someone.”

T
OO MUCH COLD,
too much pain.

As Caleb shifted, the branches creaked—but not as much as his bones. He hurt everywhere and was so thirsty he’d taken to licking leaves for their moisture. Lapping up the dew made him feel like a dog. He was afraid that at any moment he might start baying at the moon.

Maybe he already had. His mind kept drifting. In a way that was a blessing, for time passed that he wasn’t even aware of, but it was also scary. Only minutes earlier he had awakened to the sound of other voices, or at least thought he had until he’d recognized those voices were his own.

He had gone through several spells of trembling, each worse than the last. Caleb wished he had brought along a coat and water, but of course he hadn’t planned to be up a tree. Now, with all the patrol cars going by, leaving his perch wasn’t an option.

There was little to do but stare up into the sky and think. It was a cloudless night, and the stars were tantalizingly near. Caleb wished he could name the constellations. Another regret. He wondered if you could wish upon stars whose names you didn’t know, or whether that voided the whole process. He made his wish anyway. “Wish I may,” he whispered, “wish I might, wish my family’s well tonight.”

If I survive this, he vowed, I’ll take my family on a special vacation. And this time I won’t take along the same baggage I’ve carried for so long. It had weighed everyone down on their last trip. They had traveled up the coast to San Francisco, their first vacation in over a year. Caleb had known his marriage was in trouble, and he had thought a getaway might help it. They had gone on an outing to Fisherman’s Wharf, and there the children had been seduced by the flashing lights of the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Museum.

“Let’s go to the wax museum! Let’s go to the wax museum!”

Janet started the chant, and then James joined in. Their exhortations grew louder.

Laughing, Anna surrendered to their demands. Though they entered the museum as a family, the kids quickly ran ahead. “I better stay with them,” Anna said.

“I’ll do it.”

“No, let me. Take your time.”

Both he and Anna were reading from the same overly polite “you first” page. What Caleb should have said was, “Let’s all stay together.” But that thought came too late. Anna had already gone ahead.

He could have run after her, but he didn’t. Alone, he made his way through the exhibits. There was a mazelike feel to the museum, the twists and turns opening up to the displays of the bizarre, strange, and morbid. The exhibits were realistic, making for a sideshow feel, but no carnival barker was needed. Many of the wax figures were triggered by motion detectors, voicing their incredible stories to all passersby.

At times Caleb closed in on his family, hearing his children’s excited laughter two or three displays ahead. Their reactions offered him previews of what he was going to see. But he wasn’t forewarned, at least not enough.

When Caleb walked into the Hall of Shame, it lived up to its name—literally. They were all there, gathered together like
fraternity brothers: Bluebeard, Attila, Bundy, Speck, Gacy, Hitler, Dahmer, Manson, and Amin.

And Shame.

His father was standing center stage and smiling. In his hands was a book of poems—Whitman. His father was by far the handsomest man in the group. He also looked the most self-assured.

Caleb’s presence set off his recording: “Seventeen women, a dozen of them college students, died by my hands,” he announced. “I strangled them and left my signature on the naked body of each. Not Gray Parker, the name I was born with, but the name I came to be associated with: Shame.

“My killing spree lasted for three years. I left behind bodies in five states. I was described as having the looks of an angel and the heart of the devil.

“Before being executed for my crimes in the state of Florida, I was asked if I had any last words. And I told the world, ‘Shame on you. Shame on you.’”

The laughter started and went on for ten seconds before it abruptly cut off. Caleb stepped back. He didn’t want to start the recording again.

That’s not his voice, Caleb told himself. Some actor had spoken those lines, someone with a dramatic voice and laugh. It wasn’t even close to his father’s voice. Even after all those years, Caleb remembered exactly what that sounded like. Of late, he’d been hearing it all too often in his head.

All the old feelings returned: his embarrassment, his fears. For so long he had tried to bury those emotions, but now they overwhelmed him. It was as if every good thing in his life had been stripped away and the only thing that was real was his past.

Caleb hurried out of the Hall of Shame, but before leaving the room, he threw a quick glance back. What he saw made him all the more afraid. His father’s eyes were following him, not like the Mona Lisa’s, but like those of the devil himself. Even when he
was outside the hall, Caleb had the distinct feeling that his father was still watching him and that no matter where he went, no matter how fast he ran, he wouldn’t be able to escape those eyes.

The encounter had ruined the vacation. He had pretended that all was well, but the more he’d made believe that everything was fine, the more tension he’d created. Even after returning home Caleb wasn’t able to shake the pall of the Hall of Shame. His everyday life had felt futile, as if he knew the tide was eventually going to go out and pull him with it. That’s why his encountering Teresa Sanders’s body hadn’t really surprised him. It was just the other foot dropping on him.

God, he was hot. Caleb felt his forehead. He was burning. Some people were talking nearby. Didn’t they know how late it was?

I’m so tired of all this.

A hero is someone who somehow hangs on just a little longer.

Is that what you think you are, some kind of hero?

No.

Then why are you hanging on? Everyone knows about your father now. Your dirty secret’s out. Even if you convince some people that you didn’t kill anyone, they’ll still never look at you the same way again.

I’m not my father.

When are you going to learn that doesn’t matter? Remember when you were young and you tried so hard to be perfect? You brought home perfect report cards, and you put on your mask that you called a brave face, and you let the townsfolk spit on you, and the boys beat you up, and you never retaliated. But no matter how good you were, it never helped your situation. No one forgave you for being Shame’s son. And that’s what you are again. That’s what you are always going to be.

I can be more than that.

Or less than that. You’re a victim of the proverb “What you’re afraid of overtakes you.” It has. It did. And the person you might have been, we’ll never know.

No.

Oh, yes.

The conversation gave way to chattering teeth. Only moments before Caleb had been so hot, and now he was freezing. He was aware enough to know he was out of control but not aware enough to do anything about it. It felt as if he was on a roller coaster, and it was all he could do to hang on.

Her legs opened. She wanted him. He saw Earlene reaching for him. And then she was offering up her neck and telling him to squeeze it.

Earlene’s head changed, became raptor-like, a harpy’s, then her sharp beak was driving into him, savaging his chest and pulling out his heart.

And his father was laughing, but it wasn’t his father’s laugh. It was the mechanical laugh from the museum.

“Go away,” said Elizabeth Line, but she wasn’t saying it to him, she was waving off the harpy and trying to stuff his heart back into his chest.

“Mine was taken in almost the same way,” she told him, and then she shook her head in great sadness.

“I know,” Caleb said.

Elizabeth’s face changed, became Lola’s. She stared at him. He could see her compassion. For the first time he noticed how pretty she was. She looked like a woman, a beautiful woman, and he reached out to touch her hair, but as he did her hair changed into a headdress of feathers, and he pricked his finger. Lola had changed. She was still Lola, but she was a brave now.

“My name is Osh-Tisch,” she said.

“You’re different.”

“No. I just had to dress for battle.”

“You gave up your makeup for war paint.”

“Yes.”

Caleb wanted to reach out and touch the designs, but he remembered his bloody index finger.

His bloody index finger. That was real. It throbbed. He must have cut it on the tree. He focused on the finger. It was something tangible. He used it as a reality check, a way out of the kaleidoscope. An awareness filtered through: he could see his finger. There was now enough light for him to examine it. Daylight had finally arrived.

Caleb lifted his head, fought off the dizziness. Nearby he heard voices. Hallucinating again, he thought. He clenched his teeth together, but unless Caleb was a ventriloquist he wasn’t responsible for the verbalizing. The loud voice was familiar to him. It projected, as if playing to an audience, and came across as equal parts playful, saucy, and enticing.

“I’m looking for my pussy. You haven’t seen her, have you? I have a description of her right here. She answers to the name of Precious. She’s a real purr-box, black and soft and gentle.”

Lola.

Impossible, of course. His mind had to be playing tricks. But he could even see her on the street. She was only about fifty yards away, as the hallucination flies. She was wearing a form-fitting red bathrobe that had little underneath it and walking around in slippers.

But this delusion was different from the others, wasn’t so dreamlike and frenzied. And the fantasy didn’t shift or disappear. Lola kept talking about her missing cat. Strange hallucination, Caleb thought. He knew that Lola didn’t have a cat.

“You sure you haven’t seen her? Can’t keep that pussy at home. No, sir.”

The young man appeared very sympathetic. Phantasmagoria, Caleb thought, pulling the word from somewhere in his head. But that certain knowledge didn’t vanquish the images. He could still hear them and see them.

“Well, thank you anyway,” said Lola. “Keep your eyes open for me.”

The student looked more than happy to accommodate her request. In fact, she needn’t even have asked. His eyes were all
over her, but it wasn’t the young man’s fault. Lola was acting the coquette.

You’re not even a real woman, Caleb almost yelled. But he didn’t, because he was suddenly certain she was real.

Lola finished with the student. When he got into his car, there was a big smile on his face. The smile was still there as he drove past Caleb’s tree.

“Lola.” His voice was weak. Even Caleb could barely hear it. “Lola.” Louder this time, but hardly a shout.

It stopped her, though. She looked around.

“Up here.”

She scrutinized the tree until she picked him out. “There you are, sugar,” she said, as if she had expected to find him there. “You just stay put while I get the car.”

She turned around, made a left at the corner, and was lost from sight. In her absence, Caleb began to doubt what he’d seen. He was so lightheaded that focusing was difficult. His lips were dry and cracked, and his throat ached from being so parched. His clearest thoughts revolved around water.

“Come on down.”

Her voice again. Below, he could see her motioning for him to climb down. Caleb loosened his hold on the branches, but getting down wasn’t easy. Everything hurt. Moving just reopened wounds. He felt as if he were being killed by inches. He thought of letting go and dropping to the ground, but he still had enough awareness to not want to break any bones. Lola talked him down.

“That’s it, honey. You’re almost there. Just a little more. I can see it hurts, but relief’s only a few feet away. That’s it.”

She reached up to ease his descent, and he ended up in her arms. Together, with Caleb leaning heavily on her, they made their way over to the Mustang.

“You’re hot,” she said, then felt his forehead with the back of her hand. “Oh, Jesus. You’re burning up. I got some Evian in my
workout bag. Now don’t you go collapsing on me. I can’t carry you. Come on, just a little farther.”

Once in the car, Caleb sat unmoving, his eyes closed, but he revived at the sound of a water bottle being uncapped. His eyes remained closed even as he upended the bottle and started drinking. Lola thought he looked like a newborn animal in the zoo nursery. Sometimes she went there just to see them, little ones too young to open their eyes but old enough to hold on to their bottles for dear life.