What circumstances or combination of circumstances can cause a decent, ordinary, attractive young male like Stanley Scott into a kidnapper, a rapist, a captor of female flesh, a killer?
The four women came out of the snow to Stan's isolated home, lost, helpless, appealing, their car stuck in a ditch. Without conscious plan or motive, he imprisoned them in a secret room, prepared to take his pleasure of them one by one at the point of a gun.
By the time he began to question his behavior, to consider its almost inevitable consequences, it was too late to undo his crime. One member of his unhappy harem was dead, another raped, the remaining two filled with passionate hatred, thinking only of escape and vengeance.
Why had he done it?
CHAPTER ONE
The snow fell in large wet flakes and clung to the tree branches. Yesterday it had been fine and dry. Strong winds had piled drifts three and four feet deep and all the lesser roads to Trenton were blocked. He had moved the cot beside the window and for some hours now he had lain quietly, smoking cigarettes and staring upward at the falling flakes. They had a hypnotic, soothing effect. There were millions of them and they seemed to rush downward at his face like tiny white vehicles, at the last moment colliding harmlessly against the windowpane and settling to the ground beyond his angle of vision.
For days there had been no sound. The soft silence had lulled him into a relaxed state of detachment he had never-known before. He felt totally refreshed, totally at ease, capable of almost anything and then, out of the soft silence, came the bell-chimes of feminine voices-an incongruous sound in the days of silence and aloneness and falling snow.
He crushed his cigarette in the ashtray on the floor, slid from the cot and walked to the other side of the room. Lifting one of the venetian-blind slats, he saw them coming toward the house-not down the path because the path had been covered with snow and they didn't know where it was. Instead, they were coming across the side yard, stumbling and plowing through the snow. Four of them-four women.
The wet snow clung to their shoulders and their hair. He saw one of them walk directly toward the gully-and he knew she could not know it was there. The snow had drifted over it almost completely, leaving only a slight shallow in the snow. One of the women looked toward the house and instinctively he lowered the venetian-blind slat to a fraction of an inch.
The woman fell into the gully and screamed. The others turned to look at her and one of them went to help her. The one in the gully had sunk to her hips in the snow. She wore a bright red coat and, when she climbed out of the gully with the help of the other woman, she emerged with an awkward wide-legged maneuver.
The fall in the snow had pushed her coat and skirt high around her thighs, and he glimpsed the full length of shapely nyloned legs, the black stretches of garter straps, the pink of underclothing. Her thighs were round and smooth where they disappeared from view at the edge of the pink underclothing sand he felt a tightening in his loins. His heart beat faster and he stared intently until the woman smoothed her skirt and coat down to her knees.
He lowered the Venetian blind and went to the door. Their voices came closer, until he knew they were just outside the door.
"Looks deserted."
"Oh, God, no!"
"There's smoke in the chimney."
"Didn't you see it."
"Where?"
When they knocked on the door, he opened it so fast he startled them. One of the girls stood before him, her fist still upraised, her blue eyes widening. Her lips spread into a bright red O to display twin rows of perfect white teeth.
"Oh!"
"Come in."
He held the door while they came into the room, then closed it gently behind them. They stood in a group, looking at him and at the room. He regretted that he hadn't cleaned the room in over a week. It was sloppy and dirty and he read faint disapproval on one of the girl's faces.
"Do you have a phone?" one of the girls asked.
"No."
"Oh!" It was a cry of dismay from at least three of them. , "We thought there would be a phone here. We thought we could phone a garage and get someone to tow us out of the ditch."
"What do we do now?" The question was asked by the youngest of the four, a small girl with brown hair and brown eyes.
"Now we give up," the one in the red coat said. "Now we give up."
"You can take off your coats and rest for a while," he said, "and have some coffee, if you want."
He waited while they all looked at each other as if each waited for the other to give some approval to his suggestion.
"That sounds wonderful. I could certainly use some coffee."
"Let me take your coats." He took the garments as they slipped from them. When he came closer he smelled the sweetness of their perfumes and again he felt his loins tighten with desire. He held the coats in front of him to hide the evidence of his desire and when he had all four coats he carried them to the closet. He took a long time in hanging them in the closet, until the tightening in his loins subsided. When he closed the closet door to face them, they were standing in the same small group.
"Have a seat." He smiled at them, wanting to make them feel comfortable. He noticed the one that had worn the red coat, the one that had fallen in the gully was wearing a snug pearl-gray dress. Her breasts were erect and large, stabbing at the fabric of the dress as if wishing to burst free of their confinement. He wondered how her breasts would feel in his hands and realized it had been a long time since he'd had a woman. A hell of a long time.
Three of the girls selected chairs. Since there was no fourth chair, the fourth girl sat on the edge of the cot. It was the young one, the one with the brown hair and the brown eyes.
"Coffee?" he asked.
"Thank you."
"If it isn't too much trouble."
He went into the kitchen and cleaned the coffee pot as fast as possible. He reached for the can of coffee and then decided it would be too slow to make a pot of percolated coffee. Better give them instant coffee. He went to the sink, ran water into the pot and set it on the stove.
As he got cups and saucers from the cabinet, he heard them talking in the other room. It was good to hear feminine voices. Just hearing their sound made his loins tighten. He needed a piece. He needed it bad. Their voices were a babble, a maze of giggling and exclamations and endless chatter.
When he carried the tray into the room, he saw they had made themselves still more comfortable. They had taken off their boots and some of them had lighted cigarettes. One of them had dug out a tube of lipstick and was carefully applying it, studying herself in a small round mirror. When he came into the room, she hurried to put the lipstick and mirror in her pocketbook. She was the largest of the four, a tall dark-haired woman with full, sensuous lips.
He walked around the room and handed each of them a cup and asked them if they wanted cream or sugar. When he finished, he sat on the cot-but not too close to the small girl with the brown hair and brown eyes.
"How close is the nearest phone?"
"About ten miles," he answered.
"Ten miles!"
"Jess Parker's house," he explained. "Jess Parker owns the forest and the farm."
"Do you have a car, Mister...? "
It was the young one with the brown hair and brown eyes. She had turned to face him, frowning slightly as she asked the question, and now she was faltering because she did not know his name.
"Scott," he said. "Stanley Scott."
"That was stupid of us. We should have introduced ourselves." The one speaking was the one that had worn the red coat, she nodded toward the girl sitting on the cot beside him and said, "Janie Joyce." She nodded toward the tall dark-haired woman and said, "Ellen Porter." Toward the plump woman beside her and said, "Emma McCall." Pressed a forefinger against her chest to indicate herself, said, "Irene Hughes."
During the silence that followed, he sipped his coffee. As it was still too hot to drink, he turned toward the small brown-haired girl on the cot beside him, the one he now knew as Janie.
"I have a car," he explained, "but I'm sure it wouldn't be any good. All the roads are blocked. How did you get this far off the main road?"
Irene answered. "We were going to Trenton along Route 882. The snowplows had cleared it but during the night some of the snow must have frozen. It was like a sheet of ice. When we came to Miller's Hill, the road was blocked by cars that couldn't get up the hill. Emma said she knew a short cut around Miller's Hill.
"I tried it but it turned out to be the wrong road. We kept going for miles and miles, hoping to find a way to the main road. Most of the road was clear-I guess the wind had blown it clear. We kept looking for a place to turn around and finally I saw a place that looked wide enough. I tried to turn around and we went into a ditch."
"It's all my fault," Emma said suddenly. "If I hadn't suggested..." Stanley turned to look at the plump woman named Emma and saw that her eyes were misty as if she were about to burst into tears.
"It isn't important whose fault it is," Irene said. "The important thing is that we get our car out of that ditch. You say this Jess Parker has a farm?"
"Yes."
"Would he have a tractor he could use to pull our car out of the ditch."
"He has a tractor."
"We'd be willing to pay him. Could you ask him to pull our car out of the ditch?"
"I'll ask him." He finished his coffee and glanced at them. They were all watching him with that air of expectancy so common to many women. They wanted him to help them. That was all they wanted from him. They wanted him to help them and they wanted him to help them now.
He went to the closet and took out his black rubber boots. He slipped into his coat and selected his cap with the earflaps. He walked to the door and tried to think of something to say. There was nothing. At the door he placed his hand on the knob and turned to look at them. They all sat quietly, some sipping their coffee, some smoking cigarettes. Some had crossed their legs. They were watching him.
He felt a premonition-a sensation similar to what he had felt when he lay on the cot by the window and watched the falling snow and felt the sensation of being able to accomplish almost anything. Looking at them, he knew he would have them. All four of them-one by one. He would rape them and then he would kill them and then he would bury them.
It would be easy. They were in his house. He had the gun in his bureau in the bedroom. With that gun he could make them do anything. He had the hidden room that no one knew about. He could force them into that room and with the threat of the gun he could rape them.
"Can I have the keys to your car? I might be able to get it out of the ditch without a tractor."
Irene reached in the pocket of her red coat and brought out a cluster of keys. She held them in the palm of her hand, extended toward him. He walked to her chair, took the keys and went out into the falling snow.
CHAPTER TWO
He found the bright blue Ford. Studying the tire tracks in the snow he saw Irene had narrowly missed hitting a tree when she tried to turn around. The road was wide enough to turn around in if she had done it properly, but she had swung too wide and gone into the ditch. He unlocked the door on the driver's side, slid behind the wheel and fumbled with the keys until he found the ignition key. He put the key into the ignition slot but then he waited, glancing around the car.
It had the new-car scent, the scent of new leather, the peculiar blend of scents that only a new car can have. He could smell faint traces of their perfume and imagined he could smell traces of the woman-odors of their bodies, a faintly sweet, musky odor. The ashtray was filled with lip stick painted cigarette butts, there was a box of tissues on the dashboard. The glove compartment was empty except for a pair of long white gloves and a gaily colored scarf.
When he turned the ignition key, the engine roared into life instantly. He put the gearshift in reverse and pressed against the accelerator. In a few minutes, by rocking the car back and forth, by shifting rapidly from first gear to reverse, he maneuvered the car out of the ditch.
He laughed. It had been so easy. Irene had been driving and, like many women, not knowing exactly how to handle a car in snow, she must have simply stepped on the gas, burrowing one of the tires deeper and deeper into the ditch.
He lit a cigarette and drove slowly toward his house. Before he came within sight of it, he turned the car around until it faced in the other direction and then parked on the side of the road. The snow had stopped falling and he stared at the black-and-white world, wondering what he should do next.
He glanced at his wrist watch and saw it was seven o'clock. They-Irene, Janie, Emma, Ellen-must have left their offices at five. They must have driven toward Trenton and got the car in the ditch around five-thirty. They had reached his house shortly after six. Irene said they had been driving toward Trenton, so that meant they had jobs on the outskirts of Trenton. They must have formed the car pool as a means of convenience and saving money.
They had blundered into his life and now he had to act quickly. Their husbands would expect them to be late because of the condition of the roads, but around eight or nine o'clock, they'd begin to suspect something had happened. One or all of them would notify the police. He had to take care of all the details before the police were called in.
He had parked the car only a short distance from his house. When he reached the door, he stood for a moment, pressing his ear against the wooden panel. He could hear their voices-soft, whispery emanations through the wooden panel. He could hear some words distinctly, some indistinctly as their voices rose and fell in volume. He couldn't hear entire sentences, but he could hear fragments of their conversation:
"-and it'll probably be midnight before we get home."
"My husband will be-"
"We should have asked him to-"
"-house looks old and drafty and-"
"And filthy."
"obviously he isn't married. A man wouldn't clean as much as-"
"Obviously he isn't married! With a face like that!"
Laughter.
"Did you see the way he looked at Ellen."
"-and positively drooling."
"Dear, you should really-" More laughter.
He opened the door and the voices and laughter stopped abruptly. They looked at him expectantly but he only glanced at them, hurrying to his bedroom. He had to get the Luger out of his bureau. He had to be quick.
"Is the car out of the ditch?"
He left the bedroom door open and answered while he fumbled in the top drawer of the bureau. "No."
"What happened?"
He found the Luger. Irene stood in the bedroom doorway and he pointed the pistol at her as he turned. Her eyes widened, her large breasts rose and fell rapidly. He walked toward her and she backed into the living room ahead of him. When the others saw the gun in his hand, the plump one fainted-the one named Emma, he remembered. She took one look at the gun, clutched at her neck, toppled, slid to the floor with the effortless boneless roll of a baby. Her coffee cup fell with her and shattered.
The small one with the brown hair and the brown eyes jumped from the cot and screamed, a high piercing scream that ended as quickly as it came. She stared at the gun and although she stopped screaming, she began to tremble so much her skirt rustled around her knees.
The one named Ellen was the calmest. She rose from her chair with only a slight paleness of her face. She did not seem to be breathing faster, and she did not seem alarmed.
He waved the gun to indicate the direction he wanted them to walk.
"Through that door," he said. When they hesitated, beginning to protest and plead and cry, he stalked toward them as if about to hit them with the gun. He shouted and they scurried through the door he had indicated.
After they crowded into the storage room, he gestured for them to move against the far wall. Holding the gun aimed at them, he kicked at the cardboard boxes that had been piled in front of the hidden door. After he cleared the area by kicking the boxes to one side, he pushed a finger through the small knot hole and pulled the door open.
He stood aside and nodded for them to go through the doorway. They did not move. "In there," he ordered.
They still did not move. He studied them for a moment and realized they were like female animals. Three frightened female animals, paralyzed by fear. The small one, the one named Janie, looked as if she would faint. The one named Irene was now breathing so rapidly, her large pointed breasts rising and falling so rapidly, that if the circumstances had been different, he would have been completely aroused. Ellen's face had drained of color still more but she remained the calmest of the group.
Janie stood with her legs slightly apart and he carefully aimed the Luger at her skirt between her knees. The bark of the bullet and Janie's scream seemed simultaneous. She stared at the bullet hole in her skirt, screamed and ran toward the door he had indicated. Irene and Ellen followed, the three of them shoving against each other in their haste.
In the damp passageway that smelled of earth and decaying wood, he told them, "There's a door at the end. Go through it."
They did as he ordered and when they were inside, he closed the door and locked it. He hurried back to the front room, fearing for a moment that Emma might have regained consciousness and run from the house.
She was still there on the floor-had not moved an inch. He laid the Luger on the table and pulled his handkerchief from his pocket to wipe at the sweat on his face. His heart was pounding and he tried to calm it by sheer concentration. It had worked. Now he had them-all four of them. Now he could rape them whenever he wanted.
He would keep them alive for awhile, rape them one by one and then kill them one by one. He would spend some time deciding which to take first. He would devise little sex-games for the five of them and they would have to play his games. They had no choice. They belonged to him.
He slipped the Luger into a pocket and knelt on the floor beside Emma. He turned her on her back. Her head rolled lifelessly back and forth on the linoleum. He fingered her wrist but could feel no pulse. He groped beneath her breasts and felt the pounding of her heart and knew she was alive. He tried to feel for a pulse in her wrist again, could not find one and decided he was either doing it improperly or else her pulse was too weak to detect.
He tried to lift her from the floor by sliding one arm under her legs and another under her back. He managed to lift her but his legs were straining with the effort and he knew she was too heavy to carry. He'd have to drag her. He lowered her to the floor but at the last moment he lost his balance and her head clunked on the floor.
Her skirt was now up, around her thighs and he could see the soft whiteness of her thighs crisscrossed with the tops of her nylons and garter-straps. He felt a burst of new desire and knew he could rape her. Now there would be nothing to stop him. He pulled her skirt up and found she was wearing a girdle with a zipper down the front. He unzipped the girdle and discovered her pink panties beneath that.
He tried to pull her panties off but found he had to unsnap the ends of the garter-straps and, after some time spent struggling with the unfamiliar items of clothing, he managed to slide her panties down the length of her legs. He rose and stood for a moment with the aching in his loins. Emma was plump, he saw-so plump she wore a girdle to compress some of the plumpness, but she was not what he thought of as fat.
He removed his pants and shorts, knelt on the floor, sliding her legs apart. He knelt for a moment, staring at the black triangle beneath him, the soft vulnerable flesh. He touched her, exploring intimately with the tips of his fingers, and then, as suddenly as he had felt the desire to rape her, he decided not to. Not then. Later, when there was time to do it more slowly and enjoy every detail....
For now there were too many things to be done. He had to get her into the cellar. He had to get rid of their car. It was possible one of their husbands had already alerted the police. If the police found their car near his house....
He zipped the girdle together, snapped the garter-straps to the tops of her stockings. He pulled her dress down to her knees, grabbed her beneath her arms and dragged her across the floor. While he was dragging her he saw the pink panties on the floor but decided to get rid of them later. When he reached the cellar door he unlocked it and, as he opened it, he heard one of the women crying.
They hadn't found the light switch-the room was still dark. He reached inside and flipped on the switch. They blinked in the sudden glare and when their eyes had grown accustomed to the light, he pointed at the unconscious woman on the floor.
"Drag her inside."
"You can't do this!" Irene shouted. Her face had reddened now, suddenly, she seemed more angry than frightened.
"Why are you keeping us in here?" Janie asked. "Why? Why?" She began to cry again and fell across the bed, her body shaking with convulsive sobs.
"Drag her in there," Stan said mechanically. Oddly, he felt no emotion at all. Their fear had no effect on him. He had made his decision, he had thought the plan through and he was executing it. Their fear meant nothing. They belonged to him. He would get rid of their car and then he would rape them one by one.
With the help of the gun and perhaps a whip if necessary, he would play with them all the little sex-games he had ever read about or dreamed of. When he became tired of them, or when it became too risky to keep them prisoners any longer, he would kill them one by one.
Disposing of their bodies would be no problem at all. He could take up the floor boards in the cellar and dig their graves in the dirt beneath the floor. He could bury them there and then replace the floor boards and no one would ever know what he'd done.
He watched as Irene and Ellen dragged the unconscious Emma into the room. Janie rose from the bed, still crying, and Irene and Ellen lifted Emma onto the bed, grunting with the effort.
Emma began to stir on the bed, moaning softly. She raised her knees and her skirt fell around her hips-fell far enough so that her naked loins could be seen.
Irene turned toward the doorway. "What did you do to her? You filthy..." She rose from beside the bed and walked rapidly toward him. "Did you rape her? Did you rape her?"
She looked angry enough to slap his face or scratch him or hit him with her fists despite the danger of the gun. He slammed the door and locked it.
He had to get rid of their car.
Then, when everything was safe, there would be plenty of time to enjoy them.
CHAPTER THREE
He opened his eyes. It had begun to snow again and for a moment this morning seemed no different than any other morning of all the previous days and weeks of snow and silence and loneliness. He looked at the flakes of snow and suddenly he was aware of the aching in his legs. He remembered. Irene, Janie, Emma, Ellen. He lit a cigarette and looked around the room, trying to remember everything that had happened.
They were locked in the cellar. He had got rid of the car-he remembered driving the blue Ford toward Trenton and parking it near Sellers' Park, north of Trenton.
He smiled. Unwittingly they had given him exactly the information he needed-in the first few minutes after they came in the house. They'd said they were driving toward Trenton. By driving the car still further toward Trenton and parking at the bottom of a hill, it would look as if they had been unable to drive up the hill because of the icy road. It would look as if they had parked at the side of the road.
There had been cars parked everywhere along the side of the road and the police would have no reason to think they had turned off 882 south of Miller's Hill. The beauty of the plan was the police would have no reason at all to search the woods around Jess Parker's farm.
If they searched anywhere, they would search Sellers' Park near the hill where he'd parked the car. The park was sizable and would keep the police busy for several days if they suspected the girls had been murdered. They would search for bodies but they would find no bodies and no single clue.
If he was lucky, Jarrell might ask him to help in the search. During the search for the Renslow girl, Jarrell had asked him to help. If Jarrell asked him to help in this search, maybe he could take something to plant in the park further to mislead the police-something like a pair of panties or their car-keys.
He could carry them in his pocket and drop them somewhere when he was sure no one was watching. He could let someone else find them and then, with the planted clues, the police would be even less-likely to suspect the woods around Jess Parker's farm.
He crushed out his cigarette in the ashtray beside the cot. Strange-these last weeks he'd gotten in the habit of sleeping on the cot instead of on his bed in the bedroom.
The cigarettes....
Looking down at his fingers as he crushed the cigarette in the ashtray, he saw the lip stick painted butts in the ashtray and realized that even a factor that small could ruin his entire plan. All he needed was to have someone visit him-Jess Parker, or Bob Jarrell-someone to see the cigarettes with the lipstick and start thinking. It would be hard to explain.
He went about the room and collected all the ashtrays, carrying them outside and dumping them in the garbage can beside the house. When he returned and replaced the ashtrays, he noticed Emma's panties almost hidden under a chair. Before, when he had been about to rape her, he had thrown them aside, but he hadn't thrown them that far. When he left the house on his way to get rid of their car he must have brushed a foot against them and accidentally kicked them further under the chair.
He picked up the panties and was about to take them outside to put in the garbage can when he noticed the two pocketbooks. He carried the panties outside, opening a bag of garbage he had carried out the day before and stuffing them inside, carefully closing the bag again. The garbage man would come tomorrow and, sometime tomorrow, the cigarettes with the lipstick and the panties would be in a pile of refuse miles away from the house.
When he went back in the house he carried the two pocketbooks into the kitchen and placed them on the table. After he scrambled some eggs and ate them, after he made a fresh pot of coffee and poured a cup, waiting for it to cool, he opened one of the pocketbooks.
He found a wallet and, unsnapping it, saw the identification card with the name Jane Joyce. Janie. The small one with the brown hair and the brown eyes.
There were four one-dollar bills. He un-snapped the photograph compartment and saw a photograph of an elderly man and woman-probably her parents. A photograph of another girl-probably a girlfriend. Six pictures of young handsome men not photographs. Studying them more closely, he decided they had been cut from a movie magazine.
They all had a Hollywood look, a calculated poise, a polished handsomeness, but none of them was familiar. Maybe they'd all starred in the teenage flicks. I was a Teenage Werewolf ... The Teenage Monster From Outer Space. Hollywood had made a thousand such movies aimed directly at teenagers. He had never seen any of the type, but the handsome young men in the clippings were probably Janie's idols.
In the change section of the wallet was sixty-three cents-two quarters, a dime, three pennies. In the bottom of the pocketbook a handkerchief, lipstick, a comb, a compact. Replacing all the contents of Janie's pocketbook, he spilled the other onto the table. Emma's. The contents were much the same as Janie's except there were a driver's license, a social security card, a charge-account identification card. He counted the money-two hundred fifty dollars and twenty cents.
He decided to rape one of them.
Now....
* * *
In the storage room, before he opened the hidden door, he paused and stood with the Luger in his hand, listening. He could hear no sound except the sound of his own breathing.
When he opened the hidden door and stepped into the passageway, he began to hear faint noises. When he reached the cellar and pressed an ear to the door he could hear them. One shouted, "Help! Help!" in rhythm with an insistent sharp banging. He tried to identify the sound and decided one of them was banging a shoe against the door.
He smiled.
They didn't know all the details about the cellar. There was no way anyone would ever hear their shouts for help, the cellar was a perfect prison.
He had always thought of it as a cellar because it was underground, although it was unlike most cellars since it was not beneath the house. He had been eight years old when his father built it. At the time he had not understood exactly why his father built it and then hid the entrance, but he did understand some of the reasons.
His father had worked for old Sam Parker, Jess Parker's father. His father had worked on the farm and old Sam Parker had given him the land to build the house. Sam Parker had given him a deed so the land would always be his, but, when Stanley was eight years old, his father had wanted to add another room. His father had said it would be his room-Stanley's-and the thought of having his own bedroom had pleased him.
At eight he could not remember his mother-she had died when he was much younger. His only memories were of living with his father in the three room house. He had always slept in the same bed with his father, but eventually his father had complained that he snored and kept him awake.
He remembered his father studying the deed and the map and he remembered his father measuring their land. There was a steep hill close behind the house, so close that, when a storage room had been added, it had been necessary to excavate part of the hill. The back wall of the storage room was almost entirely hidden in the hill.
His father had intended to add the second bedroom at the side of the house, but, studying the map, he found there was not enough space to add a decently sized room. Their land was just barely large enough to contain the house itself.
The storage room extended two feet onto Sam Parker's property.
He remembered the hot summer day they drove to Sam Parker's farm. He remembered watching the chickens while his father and Sam Parker talked, he remembered hearing their angry voices. He never did learn how the argument began but he remembered very clearly the ride back to their house, his father stiff behind the steering wheel, his arms and hands as rigid as steel, his jaw working fiercely as if he were mad enough to bite nails.
"That cheap sonofabitch!" his father said. "Won't give us ten feet. That cheap sonofabitch! Him with more land than he can..."
"Does that mean I can't have my own room, Dad?"
His father had looked at him. "You're going to have your own room, Stan. By Jesus, you're going to have your own room!"
They had begun that summer to tear down the back wall of the storage room. The boards on the side that faced in toward it were painted and smooth, but on the side that lay pressed against the earth of the hill the boards were rotted and filled with worms. He had helped to carry bucketsful of earth to the stream on the other side of the hill, dumping the earth into the stream. It had taken them a year, working a few hours at a time, to dig a large enough cave into the hill.
The passageway to the cellar had been necessary since the storage room was only five feet tall at the back wall. Directly above the passageway the hill was not steep enough to allow a room of normal height, but at the end of the passageway they had been able to build a room seven feet tall and ten by ten. His father had made the walls of cinder blocks and the ceiling of heavy creosoted lumber. For the floor he had bought bags of pre-mixed concrete for which it was necessary only to add water.
At the end of the second year of construction, his father had installed the door to the cellar-building the door from two-by-fours edge to edge and covered on each side with a layer of plywood. His father had installed the doorknob, but installed it backward with the key slot facing the inside of the room, the releasing mechanism facing the passageway. His father had installed the hidden door in the storage room-there was no lock or doorknob for it, simply pieces of planking nailed together and hinged to swing into the storage room.
It had taken them two years to build and he was ten when he finally had his own room. He slept there and spent many hours reading in the absolute silence there. He did his school homework there, and his father said the room had paid off because now he could sleep better without Stan waking him up a dozen times during the night with his snoring.
They had both taken great pleasure in the secret room although it had filled two years with hard work. It had pleased them to play the "joke" on old Sam Parker, to add another room onto the house without his knowledge and on his property.
His father had warned him never to tell anyone about the room and it was only in later years that he understood the real reason. His father had worked on Sam Parker's farm for several years, until Jess Parker was old enough to work in the fields and then his father had worked as a carpenter in the new housing developments scattered around Trenton.
At the time, he had not thought it strange when his father brought a few cinder blocks home every night in the trunk of his car. And, at the time, he had not thought it strange when his father borrowed a pickup truck and, around midnight, they had gone to a housing development thick with the skeletons of new houses, where his father had given the night watchman a bottle and some money and then loaded the truck with heavy lumber and cans of creosote.
In later years, remembering the incidents, the truth was obvious. His father had stolen the cinder blocks and the lumber and the creosote. They could tell no one about the secret cellar, not only because it extended onto Parker property but also because the materials had been stolen.
When Stanley was twelve, old Sam Parker died, and when Stanley was fifteen, his own father died. He had lived with his Aunt Geraldine in Trenton until he was twenty-two and then he had returned to look at the small house. There were broken windows, all the paint had faded or peeled, the floors were covered with a layer of dirt and dust, a tree had fallen from the steep hill behind the house and smashed in a section of the room, but he had decided to make all the necessary repairs and live there. It was his property, the papers said so. It would be cheaper than paying rent to Aunt Geraldine, easier than living with her constant nagging.
He reached for the doorknob, felt his heart beat faster and tried to decide which one to rape first.
CHAPTER FOUR
Ellen Porter had tried to sleep several times and had finally abandoned all hope of slumber. She sat in a corner of the room with her legs curled beneath her, her arms folded beneath her breasts, her head lowered, her chin resting on her chest. She was a tall woman with wide hips and long sturdy legs. When she moved, she usually moved with the feline grace of a lioness and now, resting, she rested with the semi-awareness of a lioness at rest in a jungle-all her muscles totally lax, her eyes closed, her breathing smooth and unhurried, her mind turned off except for an instinctive part that listened for a wrong sound.
Janie and Emma were on the bed and made odd noises that Ellen had gradually become accustomed to, odd noises that were somewhere between a moan and a sob. Jane and Emma had kept her awake all night. They had cried and screamed and although Irene and she had tried to calm them, their efforts had had little effect. Eventually it had been physical fatigue that had calmed them to something less than hysteria.
Irene had spent the night pacing the floor and pounding on the door. To Ellen it seemed that Irene was not exactly frightened-she was, more precisely, indignant. Irene had come from a wealthy family and was a private secretary for the president of the Advance Electronics Corporation. Ellen knew Irene, knew enough about her to understand that Irene's indignation would turn to fear only later, perhaps moments before Stanley Scott began to rape them.
Ellen drifted in a world of half-sleep and half-conscious thoughts. She had abandoned all hope of escaping from the room. There were no windows. The one door was too solid to break. The hinges were on the other side or else she could have showed the other girls how to remove the hinge pins.
She had seen her mother do it one time when she was a small girl-one time when a wind had slammed a door and they had been locked in a bedroom on a third floor. The room was small, no more than ten by ten. There was nothing in it except the bed-no object of any size that could be used to fight Stanley Scott.
The air had become heavy and almost suffocating, permeated with the heat and odor of their bodies. They could suffocate, she realized.
Perhaps there was fresh air entering from the slender cracks at the bottom and the top of the door, but perhaps, after all the fresh air in the room had been consumed, the air would not be replenished as quickly as it was consumed. If they suffocated, it would be a slow and painful process. And wouldn't that surprise Mr. Stanley Scott? He'd open the door and find four beautiful corpses..
She thought of her husband. Poor Frank! He would be a nervous wreck by now. Frank would surely think she had been raped, tortured and killed. Frank's mother might not be so upset. Maybe she would be glad Ellen was gone.
Would Stanley Scott rape them? Remembering the way he'd looked at their legs, it seemed-likely he would. He certainly didn't want their money. If he'd wanted their money he could have easily taken it.
She tried to imagine how it would feel to be raped by Stanley Scott. She couldn't imagine, but the very thought warmed her loins and quickened her breath. The idea didn't frighten her. She had been raped at the age of fifteen by two boys only slightly older than herself. The attack had left her with only a small amount of pain but a large amount of curiosity concerning sex. She'd had lovers and then, five years ago, she'd married Frank Porter.
Marriage to Frank had become a kind of torture, a kind of numbing dullness. Frank was attractive physically, but in every other way he was the dullest man she'd ever encountered. He was a CPA for one of the largest accounting firms in Delaware. Quite frequently his work took him away from home for days at a time, but there was little difference between the times he was home and the times he wasn't. His hobby was television. He could sit for hours every evening, staring at the black-and-white figures as they moved across the twenty-one-inch screen.
When he made love, it was a mechanical thing, so mechanical she'd never had a climax in all the five years they'd been married. She'd had climaxes before-in the arms of her lovers during the years before she met and married Frank. They lived with his invalid mother in an old house north of Trenton. Someday she'd divorce Frank, she knew. Someday, when the dullness and the monotony became too crushing. Someday....
She heard the door open. Irene had been banging on it with one of her shoes and she stepped back as Stanley Scott came into the room.
Ellen Porter looked up at her captor and found him looking directly at her. She could tell from the expression on his face that she had been chosen to be the first. He pointed the gun at her and she knew he would take her to some other part of the house and use her body....
* * *
"Take off your clothes."
He had locked both doors to the house. If she managed to run out of the bedroom, she wouldn't be able to run outside. He knew that before he raped her he'd have to put the gun somewhere he could get it in a hurry if he needed it. She might struggle-or scream-or try to escape. If she did, he'd need the gun and need it in a hurry. He'd have to be careful about the gun-be sure she didn't grab it when he was off-guard.
He watched as Ellen Porter undressed. She seemed calm, a lot calmer than he'd expected. She looked around the bedroom as she unbuttoned her blouse and he noticed her hands were not shaking. For a moment her fingers hesitated on a button of her blouse as she studied the room.
In a way he felt ashamed of the room. It was too small, too poorly furnished. It contained only the bed and the bureau and the chair. Although they had been painted, it must be obvious to her that they had not been purchased in a store. His father had made them from scraps of wood and now, suddenly, they appeared crude. The window drapes were of a heavy material with a floral design that had long since faded almost beyond recognition. The linoleum on the floor had dried and cracked in places.
The most modern item in the room was the lamp on the bureau-Stan had bought it two years ago on one of his rare trips to Trenton. But although it looked modern, it was plastic and had a cheap gaudy appearance. He had built bookcases that entirely covered two walls from floor to ceiling. The bookcases were filled with the hundreds of books he had read, but he had never painted the shelves and they too had a crude appearance. The books were covered with a layer of dust and in places there were cobwebs.
With her back toward him, Ellen removed her blouse and her skirt. She removed her half-slip and then her bra. When she was entirely naked she went to the bed and lay down. He removed his clothes, placed the gun on the floor by the bed where he could easily reach it and then climbed on the bed.
She was a tall woman, as tall as himself. Her legs were strong but well-shaped, her thighs were thick white columns that melted into wide hips. Her stomach was flat above her loins, rising smoothly and softly to the bottom of the rib cage. Her breasts were twin peaks of soft coral-tipped flesh that stabbed upward toward the ceiling. There was no flabbiness about her, no weakness to her body. When she stirred on the bed, muscles rippled beneath the soft flesh. He smelled the musky woman-odor of her and slid above her.
She spread her legs. Her arms were at her sides, her eyes closed, her long dark hair splayed across the pillow. Her breasts rose and fell rapidly but-she had spread her legs to welcome him.
It all seemed too easy ... too damned easy. He had expected her to fight, to scream, to offer some sort of struggle, but she was letting him take her without any resistance.
He lowered himself against her. He fought the impulse to kiss her lips and her breasts, the impulse to massage her body. He moved between her thighs, felt the warm soft depth of her and then moved with a quick and purposeful rhythm.
She was good-better than any woman he'd ever had before-a sweet soft tight tunnel. But she did not move, or show any emotion. Her body was a vessel. Because he had the gun, because she was trapped in his house, she was allowing him to use the vessel without a fight. He felt cheated.
Once he had made love to a girl on the back seat of a car, a tiny wisp of a girl who had writhed and moaned, scratched his back and bit his ear. She had shuddered while he made love to her-shuddered as if he had given her the greatest joy in the world. Now, when he finished with the body of Ellen Porter, when he felt the flooding release of his lust, when he stopped moving and saw that Ellen Porter had felt no emotion at all-he felt cheated.
He dressed again and watched from the corners of his eyes as Ellen dressed.
"I have to go to the bathroom," she said.
He had the gun in his hand. He waved it toward the door and followed her. While she was in the bathroom, he kept the door slightly ajar and stood just outside. When she came out, she said, "Can I have something to eat?"
Her lips were a firm line, her eyes still cold and emotionless.
"Okay."
"The others will need something to eat. And they'll have to go to the bathroom."
"They can go to the bathroom-one at a time-after we fix something for them to eat."
As they went to the kitchen, as he followed her and held the Luger aimed at a point between her shoulder blades, he began to feel foolish. He had planned to rape them. At the time of the planning, it had all been stimulating, the thought of raping them sending a surge of excitement through his loins.
Now-he had raped one of them and it had been disappointing, less exciting, than girls he'd made love to in the past. Now-he would have the task of feeding them, the task of allowing them to go to the bathroom....
Later-they'd probably want to take baths....
And what else?
When they reached the kitchen, Ellen stood by the table as if wondering what she should do next. Stanley sat in the chair next to the table and, when Ellen turned to face him, he held the gun aimed at her head. She looked at the gun, frowning.
"Can I have a cigarette?" she asked.
He took his pack of cigarettes and his lighter, and slid them across the table toward her. When she lit her cigarette he noticed her hand did not shake.
"What are you smiling at?" she asked. She replaced the pack of cigarettes and the lighter on the table.
"You. You're so goddamned calm!"
"What did you expect? Did you expect me to fight and scream? Did I disappoint you? I can tell you one thing ... the others won't be as calm as me. If you try to rape Irene, you'll have a hell of a fight on your hands. Shall I get something for us to eat? I can probably do it faster."
Without waiting for an answer, she went to the refrigerator and opened it, studying its contents. In a few moments she carried a carton of eggs to the stove and searched in one of the cabinets until she found a frying pan. He watched as she moved about the kitchen-soon she began to move with an air of efficiency as if she had been in the kitchen all her life. She did not look at him and did not speak to him. When she finished her cigarette, she went to the kitchen sink and ran water over it, tossing the butt in the trash-can by the stove.
He watched as she scrambled eggs and fried strips of bacon. She heated the pot of coffee and poured four cups. When the eggs and the strips of bacon were done, she divided them into equal portions on four plates.
"How are we going to carry them?" she asked.
He got the metal tray from the cabinet beneath the sink and gave it to her. She carefully placed the four plates and the four cups of coffee on the tray. At the last moment before they left the kitchen, with him walking behind her and still holding the gun aimed at her back, she glanced over her shoulder.
"You have a lot of dirty dishes and your kitchen is like a pig-pen. Later, if you'll let me out of that little rat-hole, I'll wash the dishes and clean up some."
He could think of no answer. He spent the next half hour walking back and forth to the bathroom-once with Emma, once with Irene, and once with Janie. His nerves drew taut-he hadn't keep the Luger aimed at each one constantly, and he knew, if one of them tried to escape or tried to attack him, it would be enough to send his finger jerking against the trigger. A wrong move and he would kill.
He would have to kill any one of them who made a try at escaping. He had committed the crime of kidnapping. He had not demanded a ransom and he had held them prisoners for less than a day, but he had still committed the crime of kidnapping. It would be enough to send him to prison for the rest of his life. Killing one of them would be easier than spending the rest of his life in prison.
He realized he would have to change his daily routines. He would have to allow them to go to the bathroom at least twice a day. He would have to feed them-and already he was faced with the task of buying more food. The refrigerator was almost empty.
CHAPTER FIVE
He had left the house and driven to the closest grocery store, buying his usual amount of weekly supplies. He had returned and Ellen had prepared another meal for the girls and herself. After the meal she washed and dried the dishes. She swept the kitchen and cleaned the cabinets and rearranged the contents of the cabinets and the refrigerator.
He had watched her as she worked, watching her deftness and calmness. When she finished, he brought the bottle of whisky and a bottle of coca cola to the kitchen table. She took two glasses from one of the cabinets and a tray of ice from the refrigerator. She prepared a drink for herself with only one ice cube and a small amount of coca cola.
"Do you want ice in your drink?" she asked. "Two."
She dropped two ice cubes in his glass and carried the tray back to the refrigerator. He watched the flash of her strong shapely legs beneath her skirt, the movement of her buttocks beneath her skirt. After she had replaced the ice-tray, she bent to rearrange something in a lower section of the refrigerator, and he noticed the way her breasts hung and strained against her blouse. She wasn't wearing a bra. The thought excited him and he remembered how she had been when he made love to her earlier in the day. He could do it again. Maybe this second time would be better.
She sat on the other side of the table and studied him as she sipped her drink.
"Is this my reward?" she asked.
"Thanks for cooking the meal. I'm sure the others appreciate it. And thanks for washing the dishes." It was an odd situation, he realized. She didn't have to cook the meals, she didn't have to wash the dishes, she didn't have to do anything. She had volunteered and it was hard to understand why she had volunteered.
"Thanks for saying thanks. Can I have a cigarette?"
He gave her a cigarette. After he lit it for her, she inhaled deeply, sipped her drink and frowned at him.
"You're doing it again," she said. "Doing what?"
"Looking at me in that peculiar way. And smiling."
"I'm sorry. You're so calm ... I didn't expect you to be so calm. I didn't expect any of the girls to be as calm as you are."
She finished her drink and refilled her glass, this time with more whisky and less coca cola.
"I told you this morning-the others won't be so calm. Janie is so young-a virgin, I'm sure the idea of being raped frightens her. Irene would be indignant if you raped her."
"Indignant!" he laughed.
"You don't know Irene. She's from what you might call high society. She's a snob, a real snob, she's had money all her life. Money and servants ... I don't think anyone in her whole life has ever done anything to her ... anything she didn't want done."
For a moment he considered the idea of raping Irene. He would-eventually-just to see what she was like.
"Is she married?" he asked.
"She's married-to another snob. Her husband owns a real-estate company. Irene had a job with the Advance Electronics Corporation, but I think she works there just to keep from being bored. She has a good job and it gives her a special kind of prestige."
"What kind of job?"
"She's private secretary to the president of the company."
He finished his drink. "What kind of job do you have, Ellen?"
"I'm a typist for the Ideal Plastics Company."
He mixed another drink and watched as Ellen mixed another for herself. She finished it before he drank half of his. Her third. She drank easily, but her face had become flushed and now there was a vague look about her eyes.
They sat in silence for almost half an hour until the bottle was finished. He kept the Luger on his lap, out of sight, but within easy reach. He had locked both the doors and he knew there was no chance that Ellen could escape. Before she could get out of the kitchen, he'd be able to stop her with a bullet. He didn't like the idea of killing her-he wanted to make love to her-but he knew he would kill her if he had to.
He rose from his chair and held the Luger aimed at her chest. They went to his bedroom and this time she undressed without being ordered to. He placed the Luger on one of the bookshelves, where he could reach it easily, and watched her as she undressed. The first time she had undressed with her back toward him. Now she undressed facing him, occasionally looking at him, a slight smile on her lips.
She was wearing only the blouse and her skirt and she finished undressing while he was still unbuttoning his shirt. She stood near the bed, naked, her legs apart, swaying slightly, watching him while he undressed. When he removed the last of his clothing, her smile broadened. When he reached her, she slid her arms around his back.
She was so tall he didn't have to bend to kiss her and he found himself kissing her without really intending to. Her lips were soft and warm and as he felt their responsive pressure, he felt her hands caressing his back. She was enjoying it!
She pressed her naked body against him and he moved his hands to the small of her back to thrust her thighs and loins against him. With one of her hands she guided their union, gasping as they slid together and then leaning forward until her breasts were against his chest. She moved back and forth, toward him until he felt the warm flat softness of her stomach and away from him, until they were almost entirely separated.
She moved back and forth, back and forth, moaning softly, until he could wait no longer and shoved her across the bed. They fell together, still joined, and she writhed beneath him, thrusting her body at him. As he held her in his arms, he felt her tremble violently. Then for a moment she was still, but then she began to move again until he finished.
They lay side by side on the bed. He could hear the wind outside and he wondered if it had begun to snow again. A cool breeze swept across his legs and he resisted the impulse to slide under the blankets. It would be easy for the two of them to lie under the blankets, where he could press against the warmth of her soft naked body and fall asleep.
But if he fell asleep, she might kill him with the Luger. If she didn't kill him, she could certainly get the Luger and keep him at a safe distance while she freed the other girls. No-he couldn't fall asleep. He had to stay awake. It could be a part of a plan she had to throw him off-guard.
He turned on his side to look at her. Still naked, she remained on her back. She had crossed her legs, her arms at her sides. Her breasts rose and fell with her regular breathing. He thought she had fallen asleep, but suddenly her lips twisted in a smile and she giggled.
"That wasn't rape, was it?"
It had been half-question, half-statement.
"No," he said. "It definitely wasn't rape."
She spoke softly with her eyes closed, "I can tell you the truth. It doesn't matter. I know you won't tell anyone else. You can't tell anyone else because you can't let anyone else know you've kidnapped us."
Her breathing quickened. He waited for her to continue and when it seemed she would not continue, asked, "Tell me what?"
"The truth. You see, I'm not like Irene or Emma or Janie. I've...."
He heard a car. He tensed, waiting for the sound of the car to pass by the house. Sometimes cars passed by-when someone turned onto the road by mistake-but the road was too far off the main routes for any regular traffic.
The car stopped.
He jumped from the bed and struggled into his clothes. Ellen stared at him. "What.....? "
He grabbed the Luger, aimed it at her. He took her clothes, threw them at her. "Get in your clothes!"
Her eyes widened and she scrambled from the bed, pulling on her skirt and stepping into her shoes. She started to slip into her blouse, but he heard the knocking on the door and pushed her across the bedroom. He had to get her back to the cellar-fast!
She ran ahead of him out of the bedroom, through the living room, through the storage room, through the passageway. He unlocked the door and shoved her inside. By the time he had locked the door and hidden the Luger in the storage room, and run to the front door of the house, the knocking had stopped.
He opened the door.
A man had turned to walk toward a car parked at the side of the road. Stan hesitated, trying to identify him. The sky had darkened and thick clouds hid the moon. The man was only a dark shadow against the pale whiteness of the snow but there was something familiar about the broad shoulders, the swaggering walk.
"Bob!
Bob Jarrell turned and walked back to the house. When they were inside, Stan apologized. "Sorry, Bob. I was sleeping. I didn't hear you."
"You must be a heavy sleeper, buddy. I almost broke my knuckles. I knew you were here. I saw your car."
Stan fumbled for a cigarette. His fingers were trembling and he prayed Bob wouldn't notice.
"What brings you out here this time of night?"
Bob was a tall broad-shouldered man in his early thirties. In school he had been a good athlete and a poor student. Stan had known him since they were both eight years old and, because of the scarcely populated area in which they lived, Bob had been his only close friend.
Bob had joined the State Police when he quit college during the first year. He had been with the constabulary for more than ten years, had reached the rank of sergeant, but his sandy hair and boyish features gave him the appearance of a rookie.
"Remember the time you helped in the search for Cathy Renslow?" Bob asked.
"You have another case like that?"
"Not exactly. There's four of them-four women. We found their car on 882 near Sellers' Park. We made a search today but tomorrow we want to make a more thorough search."
Bob hesitated and Stan wondered how he should react.
"Four women did you say? Do you think they were kidnapped?"
"We don't think they were kidnapped. It'd be hard to kidnap four women and keep them prisoners. It's just a hunch, but we think some maniac has killed them."
"You think they're dead?"
"There's four of 'em. None of the four has showed up. If they hadn't been killed, one of them would have showed up by now. We're going to make a more thorough search tomorrow. We could use your help if you have the time."
"I have the time."
"Still trying to find a job?"
"But not trying too hard." He grinned and winked.
"You're a lazy sonofabitch."
"And you're a jealous sonofabitch. What time is the search going to start tomorrow?"
"Everybody will meet on 882 at five-thirty. We'll start as soon as the sun comes up."
"On 882 near Sellers' Park?"
"Right."
"I'll be there."
"We should be finished by noon. Stop by and have lunch with us."
CHAPTER SIX
After Bob had left, after the sound of the car had faded away in the distance, Stan stood alone in the silence of the room, finished his cigarette and crushed it in an ashtray.
Bob has said, "You're a lazy sonofabitch."
He'd said it half-jokingly, but was it the truth?
In the past few years he'd had at least half a dozen jobs. There had always been something to end every one of them. His last job, as a laborer with the Ajax Chemical Company, had lasted less than a year. The work had been hard and mostly outside-freezing in the winter and sweating in the summer.
When they'd laid him off because of a curtailment due to lack of sales, he'd tried only halfheartedly to find another job. This was a bad time of the year to find' employment and he'd been without work for two months. Most of those two months he'd spent in the house, simply reading, eating, sleeping or lying in the cot by the window and watching the snow fall. Was he lazy?
Maybe. But maybe he had a reason to be lazy. He wasn't like Bob-he didn't have a wife and four kids to support. He didn't have a mortgage and he didn't have car payments. The house had been built by his father, so there never had been a mortgage on it.
His car-five years old, but still in good condition-had been paid for in cash. He didn't need many clothes and his largest expenditure was the food he ate. He had calculated recently-he had enough money in the bank to buy enough food to last four months.
Was he lazy? Maybe. But maybe it was because he had the opportunity to be lazy. Most men didn't.
He wandered into the kitchen and saw the two glasses on the table. Ellen's glass had lipstick on the rim. In the ashtray her stubbed cigarettes had lipstick....
Something like that could have sent him to prison for the rest of his life. If Bob had wandered into the kitchen and seen that glass with the lipstick, the cigarettes with the lipstick....
He dumped the ashtray into the trashcan, carried Ellen's glass to the sink and carefully washed away the lipstick. He remembered Irene's keys. They were still in his pocket-another item that could have sent him to prison for the rest of his life.
If Bob had seen the lipstick on the glass and the cigarettes, if Bob had decided the lipstick could have come from only one source, if Bob had searched him, the keys would have clinched the case. Bob, a life-long friend but still a policeman, would have got help and they would have torn the house apart until they found the secret room.
He went to the storage room and got the Luger from the box of old clothes where he'd stuffed it, went to the cellar and unlocked the door.
Ellen and Emma were asleep on the bed. Janie sat against one wall, her legs askew. For a moment he saw an expanse of her young thighs and then, noticing him, she quickly drew her knees together and pulled her skirt down. Irene had been standing near the bed, studying her face in a small mirror and combing her hair. When she saw him, she dropped mirror and comb in a red pocketbook near her feet and walked toward him.
She frowned and Stan decided Ellen's estimation of her character had been accurate. She didn't look frightened, she didn't look angry. More than anything else, she looked indignant.
"May I go to the bathroom?"
He stood to one side and allowed her to walk past him. He locked the door and followed her to the bathroom. When she came out, he studied her and tried to imagine how she would feel beneath him when he raped her.
She was tall, but not quite as tall as Ellen. She was slender, large-breasted, slim-waisted, with long, tapering legs. There was no strength in her hands, no strength in her arms or her legs. Her arms looked as devoid of muscle as the arms of a child, her hands smooth and soft as the hands of an infant.
She wore lizard-skinned shoes of a fiery red and he remembered the red coat she had worn, the red pocketbook she had been using. In her pearl-gray dress, with silver earrings and a silver bracelet, she looked expensive and sleek and poised. Her cheeks were slightly sunken and as he studied her closer, he saw the slight mounds of her hips against her dress. Naked, he guessed, her stomach would be more than flat-it would be slightly sunken so the edges of her hips would protrude ... a little.
"Can I talk to you for a minute?" she asked.
"Go ahead. Talk."
"How long are you going to keep us here."
"I don't know."
She moved closer. "Perhaps we could ... make some kind of agreement. If you keep us here, you'll be caught sooner or later. I'm sure they're searching for us now. Kidnapping is a serious charge. You could spend a number of years in prison. But, if you agree to let us leave, we could agree not to tell you held us here."
"What would you tell the police?"
"We'd tell them we were lost in the forest near here. We could tell them we were-"
"It wouldn't work," he interrupted.
"It would!"
"I couldn't trust you-or the others. If you were free, you wouldn't have any reason to keep any promise you might make."
He remembered he would participate in the search for their bodies tomorrow-and would have a good opportunity to mislead the police. He raised the barrel of the gun until it pointed directly at her face, until he knew she could look into the black pit of the bore.
"Take off your panties," he ordered.
Her face paled. "Are you...? "
"No. I'm not going to hurt you. I just want your panties."
"But-why...? "
He decided not to tell her the special use he had for them. He said, "I have a reason."
She stared at him, her face turning crimson. She started to move toward the bathroom.
"No. Take them off here!"
She turned her back to him and raised her dress. As she removed the undergarment, he had a brief glimpse of the backs of her thighs and the lower portion of her buttocks. The undergarment fell around her ankles, she stepped out of it and let her dress fall back in place.
After he had returned Irene to the cellar, locked the door, and walked back to the areaway near the bathroom, he picked up the panties and held them in the palm of his hand. They were black lace and he could still feel the warmth of her body in them....
* * *
A glow on the horizon became the sun and the sun became a round ball of fire. The world changed from stark black and white to subtler shadings of gray, and here and there were colors.
They had lined along the shoulder of Route 882, facing Sellers' Park and waiting for the signal to begin the search. They had been instructed to maintain a distance of at least three yards between each two men but, Stanley noticed, some of the men had clustered in twos and threes and larger groups. There were state police, Trenton City Police, and dozens of men such as himself.
He wondered how the men had been sleeted. Were they all friends of police officers as he was a friend of Bob's-had the invitation been extended to all of them as casually as Bob had asked him?-or had there been some sort of official request for volunteers? As he looked up and down the road, he saw three or four women in the line and wondered why a woman would participate in such a search.
Supposedly the bodies of Irene, Emma, Janie and Ellen were somewhere in the park. Last year, when they searched the forests south of Trenton, they'd found little Cathy Renslow's naked mutilated body in a clump of bushes. He remembered now-two or three women had been in that search also.
Irene's panties and keys were in his left pocket. He would have to be careful when he hid them. If anyone saw him....
When the search began, there was a sensation of unreality as there had been the night he walked home after leaving Irene's car near the park. The men walked slowly, heads bowed and eyes alert for a footprint, an article of clothing, a bloodstain. There were no conversations, no sound except the sound of footsteps, the occasional sharp cracking of a broken twig.
When he looked to his left and right, he saw some men had lit cigarettes. There was an atmosphere of anticipation, but there was no tenseness in the group. A few reporters were busy with their cameras. They moved faster than the searchers, running at times to get in the right position at the right time to take the exact photograph they wanted.
They photographed the searchers, running here, running there and, Stan realized, watching them it was easy to understand how the term "newshounds" had originated. They were like hounds. If the searchers stumbled across a corpse, they would probably be little concerned about the fact itself, but very concerned about the photographing and reporting of the fact. Some of the reporters would probably be elated if the searchers found a corpse. It would sell more newspapers.
In a few hours his legs began to ache and the line of searchers became more and more uneven. He slowed and, when he was sure the line of men were ahead of him, he pulled the panties from his pocket, stooped and thrust them beneath the snow. He regained his position before anyone noticed and, later, when he passed through a cluster of bushes where there was no danger anyone would see him, he pulled Irene's keys from his pocket and dropped them in the snow.
When the searchers reached the Brandywine
River, they turned and retraced their path through the park, toward the road. He maneuvered until he passed a considerable distance from the spots where he had hidden the keys and panties, then waited for the shout that would mean someone had discovered them.
There was no shout of discovery. The searchers reached the road again and he knew his plan had failed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Amy Jarrell tried not to stare at Stan. She sat across the kitchen table from Bob, with Stan sitting at her left. She looked at Stan whenever Bob's attention was diverted in another direction. She was obviously afraid Bob would see something in her eyes if he caught her looking at Stan. Stan had always affected her that way whenever she looked at him. It was like warm bells ringing inside her, and it was something hard to hide.
They had finished lunch, she had cleared away the dishes and poured the cups of coffee and now they were drinking the coffee and smoking. Stan seemed in a hurry to leave. He had even wanted to skip the coffee. She wondered why he should be in such a hurry to leave. They hadn't seen him for almost a year. "'
She was glad Bob had asked him over for lunch. It was almost like it had been when Bob and she were first married, when the three of them sat in the kitchen and drank beer.
She remembered ... Stan had saved her marriage in a way. She had met Bob in college and had fallen in love with him. Bob had quit college and joined the state police and asked her to quit college and marry him. That was when she began to suspect she was pregnant. She'd missed one period. Not proof of pregnancy but enough to start the little itchings of panic.
She'd been going with three different boys in college and doing it with all three of them, alternating between them, doing it with one boy a night. She'd tried to be careful and, in addition, they had tried to be careful, but someone had slipped. College had been boring except for the boys she'd met and so, with the idea she might be pregnant, she had agreed to marry Bob.
When it became obvious she was pregnant, Bob had been happy, as happy as any man in the world. She had felt a kind of sorrow that was sickening, a kind of sorrow she could never tell anyone. The baby wouldn't be Bob's. It belonged to one of the three boys she'd made love with while in college and she didn't even know which boy!
The baby had been born at "seven months" and did not look like a premature baby. It didn't remotely resemble Bob.
That was when their marriage had begun to go bad. Although Bob never accused her, she knew he'd suspected the baby wasn't his. The big clincher was that she'd never had a premarital relationship with Bob and, on their wedding night, Bob had discovered she wasn't a virgin. She had covered that with a story about having an accident when she was a little girl, but with the seven-month baby, Bob must have begun to suspect.
To make it worse she had always felt those warm bells ringing inside her whenever she looked at Stan. She felt attracted toward him-sexually, physically, emotionally, in every way possible. One night-when Stan was at their house, shortly after the first baby was born after they had all drunk too much beer, they had put some records on the phonograph and danced.
She had danced with Stan a few times-holding him close, too close, pressing her breasts hard against his chest, brushing her thighs and stomach against him. After Stan left that night Bob had struck her for the first and only time in their marriage.
He had noticed the way she'd been dancing with Stan, the way she'd looked at Stan. The way she felt toward him must have shown in her eyes-that was why she had to be so careful now. She still felt the same way-and she didn't want Bob to know she still felt the same way.
After that night, Bob went to live in a hotel in Trenton. Their marriage would have broken completely because Bob was determined to get a divorce, but Stan had talked with Bob and persuaded him not to get a divorce. Stan had stopped at the house after talking with Bob and told her he'd talked Bob out of getting a divorce. Stan had tried, in subtle ways, to prepare her for Bob's return....
Lost in her own thoughts, she hadn't paid attention to the conversation. She brought herself back from the past with effort and heard Bob say, "The chief is convinced there must be some kind of evidence in Sellers' Park. He wants another search when the snow melts."
"Oh?" She glanced at Stan and noticed he seemed strangely happy there would be another search.
"I think it's awful," she said quickly, realizing she should get into the conversation. "Four innocent girls ... some maniac comes along and rapes them and kills them. I keep thinking about that poor little girl. Cathy Renslow was her name, wasn't it? I keep thinking about how they found her. I'm always afraid to read the newspapers, afraid I'll see the story about how some maniac has-"
"It might not be a maniac," Bob interrupted.
"What do you mean might not be a maniac? Any man who'll attack and kill four girls has to be a maniac!"
"We don't know they're dead. So far all we've found is their car."
She sipped her coffee and lit another cigarette.
"They must be dead," she insisted. "If they weren't dead, they would have been found by now."
Bob nodded. "They might be dead. I'm just saying we don't know they're dead. And I wouldn't compare this case with the Renslow case. Cathy Renslow was a child ... six years old, I think. These girls-you call them girls but they're women. And not bad-looking." He winked at Stan.
"Not bad-looking is putting it mild," Stan said. "Ellen Porter and Irene Hughes have shapes...."
He hesitated. Bob frowned. "I didn't know the papers published anything other than photographs of their faces. I've seen pictures of them-their husbands gave us every picture they had, but-"
"I saw some photographs in the Philadelphia papers."
"I wouldn't doubt it," Amy laughed. "Those Philadelphia papers print pictures of every woman in a bathing suit. Doesn't make any difference what they've done-anything from being murdered to getting a parking ticket."
"Sex sells newspapers."
"Sex sells a lot of things."
Stan chuckled and rose from the table. "If you two are going to start talking about sex, I'll leave. This is no place for a single man."
Amy felt her heart sink. "Did you finish your coffee? Do you have to leave so soon?"
Bob glanced at his wristwatch. "I have to get back to the station."
As Stan slipped into his overcoat, Amy stood close, so close that he had to be careful not to brush against her breasts.
She smiled. "Still not married?"
"Not yet."
"You wait. Some lucky girl will get you. How would you like a blind date?"
Bob had been in another room. When he came into the hallway, she stepped back from Stan and turned toward him. "Bob, why don't we fix Stan with a blind date with Betty Borden? We could make it a double date."
"Maybe Stan doesn't want anyone playing cupid. Maybe he wants to do his own looking."
"Maybe I do."
They walked out to the driveway. Bob's car was facing the main road and he kissed Amy goodbye, climbed into the car and pulled out onto the main road while Stan turned his car around in the back yard.
When he drove by where Amy was standing, she motioned for him to stop.
He rolled down the window and she leaned forward until their faces were inches apart. She was shivering, hugging her arms across her breasts to keep warm, her breath spurting from her mouth in white puffs.
"Come back again soon, Stan. Please!"
"I will, Amy."
He felt the old, old attraction for her. She was cute. A cute little bug with jet-black hair and liquid black eyes. She always wore deep red lipstick and her lips had always looked incredibly soft-softer than Ellen's or Irene's or Emma's or Janie's. Softer than the lips of any woman he'd ever known. He'd only kissed her once, he remembered. That had been at a New Year's Eve party and he'd been so drunk he could hardly remember it. He could remember she had clung to him, jabbing her body against him.
"Please, Stan. I'd like to see you again. It gets-awfully lonely out here."
"I will, Amy."
He eased his foot off the brake and the car drifted down the driveway toward the main road. He smiled and her smile in return sent a strange sensation along the length of his spine.
When he was on the main road and the big white house was a small image in the rear-view mirror, he knew what that smile meant.
It was something he had never really wanted to admit to himself.
Amy wanted him. Years before when they'd seen a lot more of each other-when Bob and he were closer friends-he'd suspected she wanted him but he'd always carefully shoved the thought into the back of his mind, classifying it as hopeful imagination.
It wasn't imagination.
He could remember the way she had always looked at him. There had been a certain something in her expression, in those liquid black eyes, whenever she looked at him. Whenever they danced together-whenever she thought Bob wouldn't notice-she had always pressed close ... very close....
A few minutes ago she'd said "please." And that damned smile ... that damned smile had been almost a plea!
His fingers were cold and he reached with his right hand to turn on the heater. When he brought the hand back to the steering wheel, he realized he'd left his gloves behind, left them on the telephone stand by the front door.
Good! It would give him a reason for going back.
He realized suddenly he wanted to go back, wanted to make love to Amy. Ten years ago he wouldn't have dreamed of making love to his best friend's wife. But now, he knew, something had changed him.
He knew also ... he'd blundered. Saying that about Ellen and Irene having good shapes. A blunder like that could kill him!
CHAPTER EIGHT
Emma McCall glanced at her wrist-watch and noticed it was past one o'clock. There seemed to be a vast emptiness in her stomach and with it a hunger that made her almost nauseated. Something was wrong. She knew something was wrong.
The man named Scott usually had Ellen prepare their breakfast around seven o'clock in the morning and he usually had Ellen prepare their lunch around noon. Today they'd had neither breakfast or lunch. The others were worried, too. She could tell they were worried although they didn't talk about it.
Something had to be wrong. Could it be that Scott had decided to let them starve to death? The thought made her dizzy with fear.
She closed her eyes, waited for the dizziness to pass. She listened to the music and tried to concentrate on it. Janie sat with her ear almost against the radio. Before-in the morning-Janie had turned it on so loud she'd asked Janie to turn down the volume and now she wished she hadn't complained.
Ellen and Irene were playing cards. They seemed to play cards endlessly. A strange pair. It was easy to see they didn't like each other. Maybe they hated each other. But still they played cards hour after hour. It was a way of passing time. She had tried to play cards with them but they had become irritated because she was so slow. She couldn't concentrate on the cards-she had found herself sitting and staring at them without really seeing them. It was hard not to think about Franklin and how worried he would be. It was hard not to think about how Scott had taken her panties.
She hadn't noticed it at first. She had fainted and regained consciousness on the bed. It had been almost an hour before she felt the strangeness beneath her skirt and-by carefully pressing the tips of her fingers against herself-was absolutely certain that Scott had removed her panties. Her first thought was that he had raped her but then, by careful analysis of how she felt, she knew he hadn't raped her.
She had been afraid to mention it to the other girls. It would have been awkward. She could have said, He took my parities. And then what? The other girls would have been puzzled, as puzzled as herself. It felt awkward being without the undergarment. She felt unclothed and vaguely indecent.
It was impossible to understand why he'd taken her panties. Unless he'd molested her while she was unconscious. Unless his mind was somehow warped and he enjoyed that kind of thing. Last night he'd made Irene give him her panties. Maybe that proved his mind was warped. Why else would he want women's undergarments?
She tried to stop thinking about the panties and tried to think about Franklin. They had a good marriage. And without a lot of sex, too. She let Franklin have a sexual relationship with her at least once a week. Four times a month. Other than that-whenever he wanted to do it, she managed to elude him somehow.
The bit about having a headache-people always joked about a woman saying she had a headache when she didn't want to do it-but it was an effective way of putting a damper on things. Saying you had a headache or complaining about not feeling too well. There was that certain period of the month that always stopped it, too.
Then she had developed a technique of discussing an unpleasant subject after they were in bed-on those nights when she could tell from the look in his eye that he wanted her. She hated to do that-but then, she hated to let him do it to her more than once a week.
During their courtship, there had been no talk of sex. There had been kisses, of course. There had to be kisses during a courtship, but other than that there had been no sex or talk of sex.
Franklin had never got familiar with his hands, had never said anything at all off-color.
During their first months of marriage, she had tried to explain to Franklin her concept of sex. She had told him she felt that sex was a necessary evil-a way of maintaining and increasing the human race. A way of relieving physical tensions. Perhaps even a thing to be enjoyed-in the sense that it relieved physical tensions.
She had tried to explain what Mamma had taught her-that the body was a Temple and that sex could be a way of destroying the Temple. If sexual relationships became too important-enjoyed too often and too much-then sex became an evil. If it was held to a definite pattern such as once a week, then it wasn't an evil, then it was relieving a physical need, the way the pattern of eating three times a day relieved the physical need for food.
Franklin didn't quite agree with her. And she could understand why he didn't. She had trouble with her appetite! Food was her demon. She could understand how a thing like sex could be another person's demon.
Franklin didn't quite agree with her views, but over the years she had won the battle. At times he seemed unsatisfied with their "sex life" but mostly he had reconciled himself to it and seemed happy otherwise.
He had his hobbies. She had gone back to work to earn extra money so they could afford the Florida vacation every year. Maybe hobbies and a Florida vacation weren't a perfect substitute, but they were the only ones available and in every way other than sex, she had always given in to his wishes. She tried to be a good wife.
She rolled on the bed until her face was against the pillow, pressed the palm of a hand against her stomach.
Hungry.
Where is Stanley Scott?
She wondered if Scott would rape her. He had raped Ellen. Two or three times Ellen had returned to the room with her clothes wrinkled, her lipstick smeared, her hair disarrayed. Irene had asked Ellen if Scott had raped her, Ellen had hesitated and then, almost defiantly, answered Yes.
But-strangely-Ellen didn't seem to be disturbed at being raped. In fact, sometimes, when she returned to the cellar and thought no one was looking, you could see a sort of half-smile on her lips as if she enjoyed being raped. Maybe she did. But if she enjoyed it, then it wasn't rape.
Maybe Ellen did enjoy it. Emma hoped Ellen did. Maybe that would lessen the chances of Scott raping her.
It didn't seem-likely Scott would want to rape her. Not since he had Ellen ... and Irene. Irene was prettier than Ellen or herself or Janie. And Scott had Janie, too. Janie was a cute little girl....
She twisted on the bed and tried to repress a moan. With a sudden hot starkness she had visualized how it would feel if Scott raped her-in one vivid moment felt imaginary male flesh pressed tight against her....
She sobbed and tried to cover the sound by pretending to cough. She buried her face deeper into the pillow and tried to blank all thoughts from her mind. Impossible!
What would she do if Scott tried to attack her?
She would probably faint. She knew she wouldn't fight him-she would be too frightened to fight. He was too strong and could beat her or kill her if he wanted.
What would she do after Scott attacked her?
With a coldness in her heart she realized she would probably kill herself. The horror of it would be too much to live with. She had kept the Temple of her body clean in every way. She had been a virgin when Franklin married her and during all their married life she had never touched another man.
At times, she admitted, she had thought of making love to other men, especially when some of the really handsome men in the office stood so close to her desk. Sometimes, too, when they looked at her in that special way, sometimes when they brushed against her in the crowded elevators.
But thoughts could not always be stopped. Mamma had said that thoughts like that were the devil speaking to you and trying to get you to defile the Temple of your body. There was no disgrace in the devil tempting you. The disgrace came when you gave in to temptation.
If Scott raped her, she would probably kill herself. It would be too much, too horrible. It would be impossible to live with the knowledge that a man other than Franklin had possessed her.
It would be a stain, a stain that could never be washed away.
She heard the thud. She turned and saw Janie lifting the radio from the floor, holding it gently as if it were a fragile treasure. She turned the dials, held it to her ear, shook it gently. Her eyes were moist.
"I dropped it," she said. "It's broken!"
Emma turned toward the wall again and in a few minutes she heard Janie sobbing-sobbing as if the radio were the most important thing in the world....
* * *
Ellen had prepared a lunch and together they had carried it to the cellar for Irene, Emma and Janie. He ate his lunch in the kitchen with Ellen. Strangely, he wanted to be near her, wanted to talk to her, see her.
"Janie has volunteered to wash the dishes," Ellen said when she finished her lunch and had sipped her coffee. "Since I'm cooking the meals, she feels she should do something. I think Emma will cook some of the meals later. She mentioned it. I suggested we could take turns cooking them. One day she could cook them, the next day I could cook them. But she isn't ready yet."
"How do you mean 'ready?' "
Ellen sipped her coffee again and, holding the cup near her mouth, grinned at him. "She's afraid to be alone with you ... afraid you'll rape her."
Stan grunted. Emma had good reason to be afraid he'd rape her. He intended to rape her-and Irene and Janie.
"Has Irene volunteered to do anything ... anything like helping with the meals or the dishes?"
Ellen shrugged. "No. She wouldn't volunteer to do anything. She's upset right now-because you made her give you her panties."
She set her cup on the table, folded her arms across her chest and looked at him steadily. "Now ... just why did you want her panties?"
"The police searched Sellers' Park this morning. I had parked the car near there and they were looking for bodies or some sort of evidence. I left Irene's panties and her keys in Sellers' Park. If somebody finds them, it'll draw the attention away from this area."
Ellen nodded. "Clever. I'll have to explain that to Irene." She laughed. "I wish I could have been there when you made her take them off. I'd like to have seen that!" She laughed again, a deep throaty laugh.
He offered her a cigarette, lit it for her. She inhaled deeply, turned in her chair and crossed her legs. "Stan, I know we're in no position to ask for anything ... We're prisoners, but ...
"But what?"
"We've spent two nights in that cellar. There's only the one bed there and only two of us can sleep on it at one time. The first night none of us did much sleeping. We were too scared to sleep. But last night Irene and Emma took the bed and Janie and I had to sleep on the floor."
"I hadn't thought about it. There's a cot in the living room. I could move it in there." He realized the cot wasn't needed in the living room. He had moved it near the window in the living room because, during the weeks without a job, it had been an ideal place to lie and read or nap.
"That would help. But one of us would still have to sleep on the floor. The cot isn't big enough for two."
"I have a sleeping bag. Do you think that would be all right?"
"If it's all you have, it'll have to be all right. It'll be better than sleeping on the floor."
They were in a strange situation. The girls were his prisoners, entirely at his mercy, but there was no reason why he shouldn't try to make them as comfortable as possible. He was lucky Ellen had volunteered to cook the meals, and now, Janie had volunteered to wash the dishes.
He was damned lucky. A lot of women, held prisoner at the point of a gun and locked in a one-room cell, wouldn't have volunteered to do anything. In that case, he would have been forced to prepare meals every day for five people.
"There's one more thing...."
"What's that?"
"Janie dropped her radio and broke it." She paused, reached into her skirt pocket. "I brought it with me so you can look at it. Do you think you can fix it?"
The radio was a bright orange-colored plastic, half the size of a pack of cigarettes. On the front there was a small emblem of a golden dragon, the word Royal and beneath that the smaller words, Nine Transistors. On the back plate he read
Made in Japan and used his thumbnail to pry the plate away. He studied the miniaturized components and then snapped the plate in place again.
"I can't fix it. It has a printed circuit board. It's broken. It would take someone with experience to fix it."
"Could you take it somewhere and have it repaired? It means a lot to Janie. She listens to it all the time."
"How much did she pay for it?"
"I asked her because I'd been thinking about buying one myself and I'd been wondering how much they cost. Ten dollars."
"It would cost more than ten dollars to have it repaired."
"Oh. Well, there are a few more things I'd like to ask about. Do you have a small table or something that could be moved into the cellar? Irene and I have been playing cards but...."
"I have a folding card table you can have."
"Good! And ... just one more thing. I told the others about all the books you have in your bedroom. Irene and Janie seemed interested in taking some of the books to read. Would that be all right?"
He nodded. She took the small radio and placed it in her skirt pocket.
He remembered that Ellen had started to tell him something the previous night. They had been interrupted when Bob Jarrell knocked on the door.
"Ellen, what was it you started to tell me last night? You said something about telling me the 'truth.' "
"It wasn't important."
"Okay, it wasn't important. But what was it?"
She rose abruptly. "I started to tell you something because I'd been drinking. I'm sober now ... and I don't think I have the nerve to tell you. Shall we get the cot and the sleeping bag and the card table and take them to the cellar? Then you can let Janie out for awhile and she'll wash the dishes."
After he had locked Ellen in the cellar with Irene and Emma, he sat in the kitchen while Janie washed and dried the dishes. Janie did not speak to him and, watching her, he decided she was nervous about being alone with him. Probably like Emma, she was afraid he would rape her.
After Janie had washed the dishes and he had locked her in the cellar again, he drove to Ken-nett Square. It was a long drive, but he wanted a town where no one knew him. In a supermarket he bought what he estimated would be enough food for the four women and himself for at least a week.
He had always bought food only once every two weeks but now, he realized, he'd have to buy food at least weekly. The refrigerator could only hold so much. He'd have to buy heavy on canned foods, heavier than ever before. The cans could be kept in the storage room.
There would come a time when the money ran out. That would be a problem-a big problem. That meant he'd have to find a job. A job would mean he'd have to leave the women alone in the house, locked in the cellar, for more than eight hours a day for at least five days a week. It would be hard on them.
What kind of job could he find? Almost any job he found wouldn't pay enough to feed four women and himself. If he did manage to feed all of them somehow, there wouldn't be much money left for anything else.
He found an electrical appliance store, bought an automatic coffee percolator and an AM-FM transistor radio. He used some of the money he had taken from the pocketbooks, and tried to think of something else he could buy to make their imprisonment more comfortable.
As he drove toward his house, he noticed the day had warmed considerably, the snow had started to melt.
CHAPTER NINE
As Janie washed the supper dishes, she was as silent as she had been earlier in the day. He made various attempts to get her into a conversation, without success until finally she seemed to relax.
"Do you like the radio?" he asked.
She answered without turning from the sink. "It's nice. A lot better than the one I had."
"Is there anything else I can get for you?"
She turned to face him. "Ellen said you have a lot of books. Could I borrow something to read?"
"Sure."
During the brief interval that she turned toward him, he saw there was no fear in her face.
Emma had been the most frightened. When he saw her earlier in the day she still appeared frightened. Janie had also been frightened when he first kidnapped them-less frightened than Emma, but more than Ellen and Irene. Now there was no fear in her-at least temporarily. She had adjusted.
She finished drying the dishes. When they were in the bedroom, while she looked through the shelves of books, he stood so close to her he could smell the flower-like fragrance of her perfume. Her breasts were small round bulges against her pink blouse. He glanced down over the short length of her body to the smooth curving lengths of her legs and she turned toward him while he was still staring at her legs.
As if she could read his thoughts, her face paled. Her eyes widened, her gaze seemed to fasten on the bed in a wild horror. She had selected two books and, when she turned toward him again, the books slid from her fingers to the floor. She seemed not to notice.
"You-you won't hurt me, will you?" Her voice was small and frightened, a small girl's voice, pleading.
"I won't hurt you." He moved closer to her. It would be easy now, he realized. She expected it. And she was too frightened to fight.
He saw her falling and rushed to catch her, but she struck the floor before he could reach her. When he carried her to the bed, he noticed the bruise on her forehead.
Gently he laid her on the bed and sat beside her. He checked her pulse, placed the gun on the floor and studied her.
The brown eyes were covered now. The small round breasts rose and fell in an irregular pattern against the pink blouse as if she were asleep and having a nightmare. She had a round, sweet face, a cute, pointed, pixy nose.
Her mouth was small, her lips without lipstick were pale and tender. He saw the even rows of small white teeth, the moistness of her mouth, the pink tip of a tongue. Her legs were spread in a wide V, her skirt resting between them, outlining clearly the contours of her loins.
He began to feel sweaty and a hot excitement burst in his loins. It would be so easy ... so damned easy! Her legs were short and soft and smooth and curving. It would be so easy to take off his pants, pull up her skirt, jerk off her panties and plunge into her while she was still unconscious. So damned easy...!
If he were quick enough, he could do it before she could struggle. When she regained consciousness it would all be over....
He looked at her arms. They were the arms of a girl, without the length and strength of Ellen's arms. They had never done much work, and the hands were like the soft hands of a child....
The brown eyes were suddenly wide, fluttering, then staring at him.
"W-What happened?"
"You fainted."
She moaned and one small hand flew to her forehead. She felt the bruise and moaned again. Her lips began to quiver, her eyes grew moist, suddenly there were tears trickling down the smoothness of her cheeks.
He lowered his head and pressed his lips against the tender, quivering mouth. For a moment her lips were still as if in surprise at the kiss and he tasted the warm sweet softness of her mouth. He took the gun from the floor and stepped away from the bed. "Okay. Let's go."....
* * *
After he locked Janie in the cellar, he went to the kitchen and poured a glass of whisky. He sipped the whisky and stared at a point in space.
He was a hell of a kidnapper and a hell of a rapist. He'd had the golden opportunity-a young virgin stretched across his bed, unconscious, helpless.
What had he done? He'd kissed her! What the hell was the matter with him? Did he expect Janie to ask him to screw her?
He finished the glass of whisky and realized the hot excitement had not left his loins. It would stay there until he relieved it and right now the easiest way to relieve it would be Ellen
When he brought her out of the cellar, when he closed the storage room door, she turned and smiled at him.
"Romeo," she said.
"She told you?"
"She told us. She couldn't understand why you didn't rape her."
He had intended to take Ellen directly to his bedroom, to make love to her and then return her to the cellar. Now he said, "Let's go to the kitchen."
When they reached it, Ellen saw the bottle of whisky and the glass on the table. Without hesitation she went to the refrigerator and got a bottle of Coca Cola, then went to the cabinet for another glass. She sat at the table across from him and poured some of the Coca Cola into her glass.
He placed the gun on his lap and watched her as he mixed her drink. He reminded himself he would have to be careful with her, that there was no guarantee that she wouldn't try to escape. She had been friendly, the only one of the four that was friendly, but it could be an elaborate act to make him become careless. She could be waiting for a chance....
"All right, Romeo. What happened?"
He shrugged. "She's a kid."
"But you wanted her, didn't you?"
He poured another glass of whisky. "I wanted her. I changed my mind."
"You changed your mind because you decided she's too young?"
"She's just a kid. She's so damned young!"
"She's not too young."
He looked up at her. Something had happened. There was a partially hidden meaning behind her words and he wasn't sure he had read it exactly right.
He said carefully, "You sound like you're sorry I didn't rape her."
"I didn't say that."
"You're sure as hell implying it."
She sipped her drink. Her dark eyes flashed at him. "Maybe I am implying it. You're too obvious, Stan. You wanted Janie. She fainted and you didn't have the nerve to rape her. You take her back to the cellar. Then you have a drink and then you come and get me. You're too goddamned obvious."
"You had the hots for Janie but you didn't have the guts to go through with it. So then you come and get old faithful Ellen. You know you can screw me and get rid of your hots. You know I won't fight or give you any trouble. Why me? If you need one of us, why don't you take Irene or Emma for a change? Why is it always me?"
She gulped the rest of her drink. She poured another one, this time with less Coca Cola. She gulped it and coughed. They sat in silence. He watched her but she stared at her glass and did not look at him.
"Why you?" he repeated. "Maybe I came and got you instead of Irene or Emma because I like you better than Irene or Emma."
"You like me better because you know I won't fight you?"
"It isn't that simple." He knew it wasn't that simple. He had always felt attracted toward her-more toward her than any of the others. She was tall and strong but when she was in his arms, when he made love to her, she was feminine and yielding, soft and warm. In her love-making she was uninhibited, fiery. She was what he had always wanted in a woman.
She studied him, her dark eyes narrowing. Slowly-her eyes seemed to relax and the firm lines around her mouth softened. She seemed to go limp all over, to settle in the chair. "I guess you're right," she said softly. "It isn't simple. I like you. I don't know why I do, but I do."
He gulped his glass of whisky. It burned his throat and when it hit his stomach it seemed to explode there.
She leaned over the table, resting her weight on her elbows. Her breasts strained against her blouse and he could see the outline of her hardened nipples.
"I think I drank too fast," she said. "I feel ... almost drunk. Can a person get drunk that fast?" Her voice was husky and her dark eyes were heavy-lidded. "You're right, Stan. I won't fight. I know what you want and I'm willing to give it. Why shouldn't I?"
She unbuttoned her blouse and her breasts fell free-two pink-tipped pendulums of flesh. She placed his hand against one of her breasts and held it there. While he massaged her breasts and felt the nipples grow still harder, she rocked back and forth in the chair.
She was drunk. The whisky had hit her faster than he'd expected.
He watched as she shoved her chair away from the table and shrugged her blouse from her shoulders. When she rose from the chair, she turned her back to him, but from her movements he knew she was raising her skirt in front and taking off her panties. In a few moments she lowered her skirt and he saw her panties sliding down her legs to the floor. She stepped out of them.
"Have you ... ever ... done ... it ... this way?" She raised her skirt above her hips and sat on the edge of the table. She sat on the far side, with her back toward him. He put the Luger on the floor. He walked around the table, unbuckling his belt as he walked. When he stood in front of her, she helped him with his clothes and laughed. When he was ready, she spread her legs and raised her arms.
He walked to her and into moist enveloping flesh. Her thighs and knees clamped against him. She found a slight resting place for her heels in the hollows of his knees and her arms pressed against his back. In a few moments, as if not satisfied, as if wanting to feel his naked body, she slid her hands up beneath his shirt.
Her fingertips traced a pattern across his back while he made love to her. She rocked, grunting with her efforts. Her eyes were glazed and as they worked at the task of the rhythm of their half-naked bodies, he smelled the acrid odor of her sweat.
When she leaned suddenly against him, he felt the tremors rippling through her body-tremors that shook in the soft mounds of her breasts, that quivered in the clamp of her thighs and knees. A gasp was torn from her lips and in a few seconds he moved with a speed that blurred his senses. A hot explosion engulfed him.
CHAPTER TEN
As soon as he awoke, he decided he would see Amy Jarrell that morning. After breakfast he would drive to her house and say he'd forgotten his gloves and had returned for them. A good excuse. And he would make love to her. The way she'd acted, the expression in her eyes was unmistakable. She wanted him.
She'd wanted him a long time ago but then things had been different. Ten years ago he wouldn't have made love to his best friend's wife. Now making love to Amy Jarrell would seem relatively unimportant. He would do it because he wanted to do it and for no better reason.
He ate breakfast and showered and shaved. He stood in the living room for several minutes in his bathrobe, smoking a cigarette and staring at the melting snow in the side yard.
The snow would melt. Bob had said the police would make another search when the snow melted. Then they'd find the keys and the panties.
He dressed and went to the cellar and unlocked the door. He said, "Good morning," cheerfully, and then, as his gaze swept about the room, his blood turned to ice.
Irene and Janie sat on the bed. Irene seemed composed, but Janie had been crying, her eyes still reddened and moist, traces of tears evident on her cheeks. Ellen came toward him-her face white, her lips stretched taut across her teeth.
Emma McCall lay in the center of the room. They had spread a sheet over her and it covered her entirely, so that only the contours of her body were visible.
"She killed herself," Ellen said. "She did it while we were all asleep. Janie was the first to find her ... this morning."
"How did she...? "
He had been holding the Luger aimed at them as he always did when he entered the cellar. He was vaguely aware that he had allowed his arm to drop to his side. The gun seemed suddenly a tremendous weight at the end of his arm and his fingers were numb.
"She hung herself. She must have been ... very quiet. She moved a chair to the center of the room. She used a sheet and twisted it until it was like a rope. She threw one end over that crossbar in the ceiling. She tied one end around her neck and then knocked the chair out from under herself.
"I remember, last night, I kept waking up. Not fully awake ... but half-awake. Once, during the night, I heard a sort of choking sound. I thought it was one of the other girls coughing in her sleep. If only I had...."
Ellen pivoted abruptly, turning her back toward him. With a great deal of effort he managed to take his gaze from the corpse in the center of the room to look at Ellen. Her back trembled and she covered her face with her hands, but there was no sound as she cried.
He wanted to go to her and comfort her. He wanted to put his arms around her and he moved forward, but then he hesitated. It would be an empty gesture. Emma McCall had died. There was nothing he could do to bring her back to life and there was nothing he could do to comfort Ellen....
"Get her out of here."
Irene glanced from the corpse to him and back at the corpse.
He put the gun in his pocket. He moved across the room until he reached the corpse and then, moving slowly and carefully, started to slide his arms beneath her legs and beneath her head. In his efforts the sheet slid from above her legs and Janie gasped, turning away.
He remembered the previous time when he had tried to carry Emma and found her too heavy.
"I can't carry her. She's too heavy. I tried to carry her once before and couldn't. Ellen..." Ellen had stopped crying. She turned toward him and he saw her eyes were moist. Color had drained from her face and her lips quivered as if with silent tears. Without answering, she came across the room. He moved so he could grasp Emma's weight by her arms. Ellen bent, reached to grasp Emma by the legs and then straightened. She rubbed her hands against her hips.
"I can't-touch her. I can't touch her!"
He remembered the cot was an old type used by the army, a type that could be converted easily into a stretcher. While he knelt and adjusted the cot, he saw movement from the corner of an eye-red shoes and tapered nyloned legs.
He whipped the gun from his pocket and squeezed the trigger while his arm still swung in the arc. The bullet struck the door near Irene's waist and when she stopped he aimed the gun at her head. His finger tightened on the trigger....
He concentrated on lessening the pressure of his finger and slowly lowered the gun to his side. He grabbed her arm and pulled with so much force that he sent her in an awkward trot across the room until her knees struck the bed. For a moment she almost fell across it, but then she regained her balance and turned toward him.
Her eyes were blank with fear and he knew he had almost killed her-he had wanted to send a bullet plowing into her forehead and he had squeezed the trigger. Something had stopped him-within the microsecond it takes to squeeze a trigger. She had come near death-a mere microsecond away.
When Irene sat on the edge of the bed in the same position she had maintained a few moments before, he wedged the gun beneath his belt. He changed his position so that while he worked on the cot he was facing her and he watched from the corners of his eyes for the slightest movement.
With Ellen's help, he managed to carry Emma to his bedroom, locking the cellar door again as soon as they were inside the corridor. They had to make frequent stops while Ellen pleaded to rest. When they finally reached the bedroom, they left the stretcher near the bed and he guided Ellen out of the room, closing the door behind them.
Ellen started toward the cellar.
"Don't go back yet, Ellen. I want you to tell me what happened."
They went into the kitchen. He poured a glass of whisky for her but she only sat and stared at the glass.
"Did she say anything about suicide? I mean, did she ever mention it or talk about it?"
"No. But she was afraid you'd rape her. She ... talked about that a lot. I guess we were all afraid about what you might do to us but she was more afraid than Irene or Janie ... or myself. I guess she kept thinking and worrying about it until she couldn't stand it any longer."
"You said Janie found her?"
"Janie was the first to wake up this morning. I heard Janie scream-the most horrible sound I've ever heard. Somehow we managed to get Emma down to the floor. Janie wouldn't stop screaming. I covered Emma with the sheet but that didn't seem to make any difference. Janie kept on screaming and screaming. I used a chair to beat against the door. I hoped you'd hear the noise."
"I didn't tell you before. That cellar is soundproof. When I'm in this part of the house I can't hear anything going on in there."
She frowned as if puzzled by his statement but then, in a few moments, she stared at the glass of whisky again. "Janie stopped screaming. I think it's the first time she ever saw a-dead person. And someone who's died by strangulation . . , " She paused, looking up at him. "Have you ever seen someone who's died by strangulation?"
He shook his head. He had never seen, but he had read descriptions of men and women who had died by strangulation.
"After that, there was nothing to do except wait for you to come."
"How did Irene react?"
"She didn't seem to react at all. I guess she was-surprised. But she didn't scream or anything. While Janie and I were trying to get Emma down from the ceiling, Irene sat on the bed. She watched us as if Emma wasn't a person. She watched us as if she didn't care that Emma had died ... as if...."
Ellen trembled suddenly. With shaking fingers she raised the glass of whisky to her lips, closed her eyes and drank rapidly. When she lowered the glass, it was empty.
"I want to go back now," she said.
"You don't have to go back so soon. You can sit here for awhile and-"
"I want to go back. I want to see how Janie is. It upset her so much. I want to be certain she doesn't start screaming again. If she starts screaming again, I don't think she'll ever stop."
Stan watched as Ellen started toward the door. He rose and followed her and when they were in the corridor by the cellar door she said, "I think you should buy some tranquilizers and some sleeping pills. Janie needs the tranquilizers. I think I'll need the sleeping pills."
He opened the door. When she stepped inside he closed and locked it. He went to the kitchen and prepared a breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon. After he carried the tray of food to the cellar, he drove to Kennett Square. He stopped in one drug store and purchased a bottle of tranquilizers. In another drug store he purchased a bottle of sleeping pills.
When he returned to the house he filled some glasses with water and carried the glasses and the bottles to the cellar. Ellen accepted the glasses and the bottles without speaking to him. He asked if there was anything else he could do and Ellen shook her head.
He noticed Janie lay asleep on the bed, her brown hair tumbled across the pillow. She looked like a small lifeless doll that had been tossed there and he wondered if she had screamed again-if she had screamed herself into exhaustion.
He went to the living room and sat in a chair by a window. Time fleeted by. He glanced at his watch and it was ten o'clock. He glanced at his watch again and it was eleven o'clock. He glanced at his watch again and it was twelve o'clock. He couldn't remember thinking anything during the two hours and he wondered what was happening to him.
He prepared lunch and carried it to the cellar.
This time he had to escort each of them to the bathroom-Janie, Irene, Ellen. The endless routine of unlocking the cellar door, locking it again, walking with each to the bathroom and waiting outside the door, holding the Luger ready to kill any one of them if they tried to escape....
When the tedious routines were finished, he returned to the same chair. He glanced at his watch and saw it was one-thirty. He glanced at it again and saw it was two-forty-five. Again he was conscious of the fact he had sat there without a thought in his mind and he wondered how he could sit so long and not think anything-his mind filled only with a great vague uneasiness that was almost a numb horror.
Slowly and ponderously, as if it were a rusty hulk of a machine that had to start slowly and gather momentum, he began to think of the problem and of possible ways to solve the problem. He had to do something with Emma's body. There were only two possibilities. Bury her ... carry her somewhere.
He didn't like the idea of burying her. The ground would be hard as rock. It would take hours to dig a shallow grave-days to dig a deep grave. The ground would be so hard it would have to be dug with a pickaxe.
The snow could melt (He rose up in the chair to glance out the window and saw the snow was melting) but the ground would take days or weeks to thaw. Another freezing period and the ground would never thaw ... not until spring.
If he buried Emma in the yard, the grass would be killed and he'd have to plant fresh grass above her grave. The grass would be greener and probably thicker than the older grass, it would clearly mark the grave and, worse, when he shoveled the earth on Emma after he placed her in the grave, the earth wouldn't go back in the hole as tightly as it had come out. He groaned.
If the earth didn't go back in the hole as tightly as it had come out, that meant the ground would sink as it thawed in the spring. It would sink and leave a depression ... a depression covered with new grass.
No.
He couldn't bury Emma....
* * *
He prepared supper for his three prisoners. He noticed Janie and Ellen seemed strangely calm, decided they had taken tranquilizers. Irene seemed no different-in fact, studying her, he thought she seemed almost cheerful. When he returned to the cellar for the dishes after allowing enough time for them to eat, Irene said she had to go to the bathroom again. When she came out of the bathroom, she stood with her arms folded across her chest, smiling at him.
"I think you should let us leave here," she said. "Emma's death has changed everything."
"Nothing has changed."
"Everything has changed. Emma's death gives us something to bargain with. I've been talking to Janie and Ellen and they agree with what I'm going to tell you." She paused, inhaling deeply in a way that thrust her large breasts toward him.
"You can't keep us here indefinitely. If you keep us here too long, someone will find us eventually. It really was foolish of you to think you could kidnap us and keep us here without someone finding us. Someone will find us if you keep us here.
"If you let us leave here today, we'll tell how Emma committed suicide. If you keep us here any longer than today, we'll say you killed Emma. That will change the charge against you from kidnapping to kidnapping and murder. There's considerable difference between-"
He stepped forward and, with his left hand, he grabbed her throat. She backed away until she struck the wall. He pressed against her, keeping his left hand around her throat and bringing his face so close he could feel the warmth of her breath. He brought the Luger up and jabbed the barrel into the softness of her breasts. She yelped with pain, her eyes widened until the pupils were surrounded by the whites. Her fingernails scratched against the wall as if she wanted to burrow into the plaster to escape.
"Let me tell you something, Irene. I think, if you make that kind of threat again, I'll screw you just for the hell of it and then I'll shoot you through your left tit."
For emphasis he jabbed the barrel harder against her breast. She yelped again and when he stepped backward, releasing her, she scurried toward the cellar. He followed her and unlocked the door. After she ran inside and before he closed and locked the door, he noticed she had started to cry, rubbing the injured breast ...
He studied maps of the area and found that the Brandywine River flowed through Sellers' Park, almost directly into the Delaware River.
When it became dark enough, he backed his car to the side of the house. Using the stretcher and without removing the sheet, he managed to drag Emma out of the house and to the rear of the car. He lifted her from the ground and rolled her into the trunk. Her legs hung over the bumper and the sheet fell to the ground. Careful not to look at her face, he bent her legs and shoved until she was completely in the trunk and then he closed the trunk lid.
He found an empty garbage-can and placed the sheet inside, setting fire to it with his cigarette lighter. When the sheet had burned, he placed the lid on the garbage-can and drove to Port Perm.
He had chosen Port Penn because it was deserted in most places. There were no street lights and it was an area the police did not bother to patrol. He drove along a winding dirt road until he reached the river, then swung the car so the trunk faced the river. He backed the car until the rear wheels were almost in the water.
He lit a cigarette, turned off the ignition and the headlights. He opened the car window and listened for a sound-any sound. If he heard voices, if he heard a car coming down the dirt road, he'd have to leave.
Crisp night air drifted into the car. The moon hid behind a cluster of clouds and only the stars cast a faint glow on the marsh around him. There were no sounds-no sounds of crickets or frogs-and he remembered another night he had parked on a road very similar to this.
Then the air had been warm and heavy and still. The moon had been a faint sun that cast a strange half-sunlight and the night had been filled with the sounds of crickets and frogs and-from a radio in a house only hundreds of feet away-the sound of Jack Benny's voice, the laughter of his audience....
Mosquitoes had come in swarms to feast upon his sweating back and buttocks, to feast upon Mary Ann's naked breasts and legs. Somewhere in his teens, on the back seat of his car, with Mary Ann slapping mosquitoes on her legs, he had made love for the first time in his life.
Mary Ann had chewed gum the entire time and somehow had managed to gyrate her hips in rhythm with the munch of her jaws on the chewing gum. They had seen a movie, he had felt her body and then, with a nonchalance as if he had made love to a dozen girls before her, he'd suggested they drive to Port Penn where they could make love.
Mary Ann was an easy conquest. All his friends had had her. She could be had for the price of a movie or a dance ticket and it was something she discussed openly with any boy who asked her. She wouldn't go on a date with any boy unless he took her to a movie or a dance and he had the use of her body afterwards.
She was not a pretty girl-but she was not ugly and had a body far in advance of her years. He had chosen her to share his first sexual experience because she was easy, because-for the first time--he didn't want a girl who hadn't done it before, a girl who might get pregnant or be frightened.
He remembered the dusty smell of the back seat of that old car. He remembered Mary Ann's soft-warm body, the brush of her hair, the rasp of her fingernails when she wasn't busy swatting mosquitoes. At the crucial moment, at the shattering instant of release when he seemed to burst in a hot flood, a goddamned mosquitoe had bit into his buttock with the teeth of a tiger and driven him to bear down against Mary Ann with a force that made her gasp and remark, "Wild, ain't you? Man!"
Afterward they drank cool cans of beer and Mary Ann scrambled across the marsh to get a cattail. She said she'd always wanted a cattail to plant and see if she could make it grow.
When he drove her home she told jokes she'd heard in school....
His fingers burned. He jerked his hand and threw the cigarette out the window.
He opened the car door and walked to the trunk. He opened the trunk and, being careful not to look at her face, he gripped Emma beneath the arms and dragged her to the water.
She didn't float.
She sank in the mud beneath the shallow water and the incoming tide washed her skirt up around her waist. Her face was beneath the surface, her legs out of the water....
He had to get her deeper ... he had to get her so far out the tide would carry her down the river ... away from here, because here there would be tire tracks, footprints....
He waded into the freezing oily river and when the water reached his chest, he saw he had carried her far enough. He waded back to the beach and watched the dark form as the tide carried it away.
It was hard to tell where she would land, he realized. The tide could carry her for miles.
He went to the car and climbed behind the steering wheel. He turned on the heater and sat for a moment until he could stop shivering.
It was something he had had to do.
I had to do it.
I had to get rid of her body and this was the best way. I didn't kill her. She killed herself.
He sat for a long time, remembering Mary Ann and the mosquitoes. When he started the long drive home his flesh felt numb. He began to shiver with a violence that made his teeth chatter and he noticed his clothes smelled of the dank river mud.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Days passed and he was only vaguely aware of their passing and of the events within them. The meals for his prisoners seemed endless, the washing and drying of dishes seemed endless until, at last, Ellen announced she would prepare the meals again. A few days later, Janie began to wash and dry the dishes as she had done before.
During the gray period that remained so vague in his mind he developed a temperature and knew he was dangerously close to pneumonia. He fought the illness by resting as much as possible. When his temperature became worse he went to a doctor in Trenton. The doctor administered a shot of penicillin and gave him a prescription for some pills.
One day Ellen told him they had heard over the radio that Irene's keys and underclothing had been found in Sellers' Park. The news made him feel better. His plan to mislead the police had succeeded. Now they would assume that Irene, Emma, Ellen and Janie had been kidnapped near Sellers' Park.
The next day Ellen told him they heard over the radio that Emma's body had been discovered in the Delaware River. Again the police assumed that Emma had been kidnapped near Sellers' Park, her body carried through Sellers' Park and dumped into the Brandywine River-from that point floating down to the Delaware.
One day, after Ellen had prepared lunch, she turned toward him and said suddenly, "You blame yourself, don't you?"
The question caught him off-guard. "Blame myself for what?"
"You blame yourself for Emma's death."
"No. She killed herself."
Ellen sat on the other side of the kitchen table. "You do. It shows in your face. You shouldn't blame yourself. It wasn't your fault."
"If I hadn't kidnapped her, she wouldn't have killed herself."
Ellen shrugged her shoulders. "You didn't actually do anything to her. You didn't hurt her in any way. You really didn't give her any reason to kill herself."
He could think of no answer. They sat in silence until Ellen looked up at him again. She reached across the table and touched his arm. "Why did you kidnap us? You aren't the type of person who kidnaps women. You aren't the type of person who rapes women. You aren't the type of person who-"
"I must be the type," he interrupted. "I did it." He spoke quickly and laughed. But she had aroused in his mind the question he'd asked himself over and over again. Why? There were no full answers-only partial ones. He knew that part of the reason was that he'd been without a job for weeks and had sat around the house, only sleeping, reading, eating.
The boredom of his life had driven him to a near-madness. He'd had women before-he'd made love to at least a dozen women. None of them had been beautiful, only a few had been attractive, some of them had been prostitutes and he'd paid for their services. In the days before Irene, Emma, Janie and Ellen stopped at his house, he'd felt a strong building desire for a woman-any woman.
Maybe these were the reasons-the maddening boredom and mounting desire for a woman. They were a bad combination and then, abruptly, four attractive women had walked into his house. He had kidnapped them without really thinking about the consequences.
Four women-and he had controlled all the necessary elements to kidnap them and rape them. It was like almost starving to death and suddenly finding yourself alone in a room with a million dollars. Maybe some things were irresistible.
After he locked Ellen in the cellar, he went outside and started the car, sitting in the front seat and letting the motor race. He knew he should run the car at least once a day to keep the battery charged. Once last year he'd let it run down and been forced to walk to the nearest gas station to get someone to come and recharge it.
It was a long walk to the nearest gas station, and he knew he should have one of three things-a phone installed so he could call a gas station whenever he had a dead battery, an extra battery or one of those gadgets that could be plugged into a house-circuit to charge a battery.
When he went back into the house, he walked aimlessly from room to room. He drank a cup of coffee, poured another cup of coffee and carried it to the living room. Sipping the coffee, he thought of Ellen and realized he hadn't touched her since Emma's death. How many days? Three? Four? Five? It was hard to remember.
He knew he could go to the cellar and point the Luger at her and force her to the bedroom. Or he could take Janie or Irene. They would have to do what he wanted-or he could kill them.
He thought of how it might feel to take either Janie or Irene and the thought brought a swell of desire to his loins. He toyed with the idea of raping either of them and then he remembered Amy Jarrell.
Amy had invited him to visit her and he had been too busy to accept the invitation. Maybe this was a good time to see what she had to offer....
* * *
When Amy opened the door, Stan saw her mother in the hallway struggling with one of the children. Amy's mother was a white-haired, round-faced woman with kindly blue eyes, rosy cheeks, rimless glasses. She looked as if she could have stepped right out of a Norman Rockwell painting of a Thanksgiving dinner. She typified the American mother in all ways.
Stan had seen her only twice before but he would never forget her. When he first saw her at Amy's and Bob's wedding, the thought had passed through his mind that if there was such a thing as choosing your own Mother, he would have chosen Amy's.
He couldn't remember his own mother-he had been too young when she died. He could recall only a vague shadow of a mother and often, in his teens, when he'd felt a strange kind of loss, he'd sat by the hour and studied her pictures in the old photograph album.
"Hello, Mrs. Greene."
For the moment, seeing her, he forgot about Amy. Amy stood in the doorway before him, smiling, but for the moment he couldn't take his attention from Mrs. Greene. She seemed to be struggling to slip a coat onto one of Amy's boys. The boy was no more than five and was resisting her efforts fiercely.
"I don't wanna watch television. I don't wanna!"
"Oh, hello, Stanley. How are you, Stanley?" And in an instant she had turned her attention to the young boy again and succeeded in slipping the coat onto him, buttoning it and smiling all the while. "Of course, you want to watch Grandma's nice television. Of course you do! I'll bet you don't remember all the ice cream you had last time, do you? I'll bet you don't remember!"
The youngster seemed to waver and a flicker of a smile crossed his lips.
Mrs. Greene rose and counted the young faces around her. "Now ... where's Emily? Where did she go?"
"I think she went upstairs to get her doll, Mom."
In a sudden silence-for no apparent reason-everyone seemed to be looking at him. Mrs. Greene, Amy, the three children-and then, as Emily came bouncing down the stairs clutching a battered doll in a torn dress, Emily, too, seemed to have all her attention focused upon him.
"I left my gloves, Amy."
"Here they are, Stan. I thought they must be yours. You must need them in this weather. You should have come sooner."
The gloves were pressed into one of his hands. He slipped into the gloves and backed toward the door. "Thanks, Amy."
"I have to go to the bathroom!" The announcement came from Tommy.
Amy rolled her eyes heavenward and smiled weakly at Stan, but Stan noticed, when he glanced at Mrs. Greene, that the older woman had taken the announcement in stride, still smiling but with a firm grip on the young arm, she was guiding Tommy down the hallway toward the bathroom.
"Let's go, Tommy. We don't want to miss Cinderella, do we? We'll have to hurry. Nice to have seen you again, Stanley."
Stan reached for the doorknob. Mrs. Greene and Tommy had disappeared from sight, but three of the Jarrell children stood near him, studying him intently. Emily, clutching her doll, seemed to regard him with suspicion.
He opened the door and heard Amy whisper, "You children stay here."
As he stepped onto the front porch, Amy followed, closing the door and still holding her hand on the knob.
"My mother takes the children to her house once a week. They'll be gone in a few minutes. I ... wanted to talk to you, Stan. Could you ... come back in fifteen minutes?"
Stan nodded.
He drove a half mile down 882, turned onto a side road, went a quarter of a mile and then headed back toward 882. At the last minute before he reached the main road, he realized he hadn't allowed enough time for Mrs. Greene's departure. He pulled off to the curb of the side road and parked. He lit a cigarette and waited.
Expectancy throbbed through his veins and warmed his loins. He tried to imagine how Amy would be when he made love to her, tried to imagine how long it would take them to find their way to a bed or a couch, how many lies they would tell each other. In the final moment, would she be passive and yielding while he took her, or would she be aggressive and bold?
Amy wanted him. She'd wanted him a long time ago. She had told him that by the expression on her face whenever she looked at him, by the way she held him whenever she danced with him, by the way a few days ago, she had told him she wanted him when she stood by the side of his car, shivering from the coldness.
Come back again soon, Stan. Please!
Later, she'd said, Please, Stan. I'd like to see you again. It gets ... awfully lonely way out here.
She couldn't have made it any clearer unless she'd sent him an engraved invitation to make love to her.
A beige Buck came down 882. He could see it only vaguely through the cluster of skeleton bushes at the edge of the road, but he recognized it as the Buick that had been parked in front of Amy's house. When he was sure he had allowed enough time for the Buick to be entirely out of sight, he drove to Amy's house and parked in the back yard, where the car would be hidden from the road.
He started to go around to the front of the house and enter through the front door, but Amy called from the kitchen door for him as he passed by the steps. When he entered the kitchen, Amy was at one of the counters, busy with glasses and bottles of beer. He couldn't see her face-she kept her back toward him-and he wanted to end all the pretension by walking directly to her, spinning her around, kissing her, using his hands on her body.
"Mother takes the children at least once a week. She has a color television set now and the kids usually love it except, today, Carl didn't want to go. I'm glad mother talked him into it. Sometimes one kid can be as bad as twenty. I don't know what I'd do if it wasn't for this oasis of peace every week. I love the kids, but they sure are noisy."
He removed his coat and put it on the back of a chair. He stuffed his gloves in one of the coat pockets and sat at the table.
"No. Let's go in the living room, Stan. I'm sick of the kitchen. Meals, meals, meals-dishes, dishes, dishes! I spend half my life in here."
She had two glasses of beer and turned from the counter, facing him and smiling. He noticed she had put on fresh lipstick, the deep red kind that made her lips look incredibly soft. She had combed her hair but there were stray wisps that fluttered around her cheeks.
He followed her into the living room and they sat side by side on the sofa. She placed the glasses on the coffee table before them. He noticed she wore no stockings. Her slippers were a red that had faded to a faint pink. Her dress was clean but frayed in places-obviously a dress she used only when she did housework.
He'd caught her off-guard.
"I'm glad you came, Stan. It gets so lonely around here it drives me crazy. The kids ... they're noisy, but they're not the same thing as adult companionship. Since Bob's had the job with the liquor store-"
"Bob has a part-time job? I didn't know that."
She shrugged her shoulders. "Maybe he was too embarrassed to tell you. It costs so much to live. He's been a clerk at the liquor store for almost a year now. The money is wonderful but it sure knocks hell out of everything else."
She raised her glass and sipped the beer.
"Sorry I can't offer you bourbon or scotch or champagne."
"I like beer." He took his pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, offered her one, lit it for her. While he lit his own cigarette, he watched her as she walked across the room to get an ashtray. When she placed the ashtray on the coffee table in front of them, she sat on the couch but this time, he noticed, she sat closer to him.
"I've been talking about myself so much, Stan. But why don't you tell me all the news about yourself?"
She turned on the sofa and slid her legs beneath her. Her knee faced him, almost touching him, her legs slightly apart so that her skirt drew taut. He could see a brief expanse of soft white thighs and suddenly he wanted to slide his hand beneath her skirt, between her thighs. Her position would give him a soft tunnel walled by her flesh and her skirt, and to fight the temptation he placed his arm on the back of the sofa.
"Nothing to tell, Amy."
"Are you still working at Ajax Chemical."
"No. They laid off a lot of men. Lack of sales. Lack of work."
"Still not married."
"No."
"Girlfriend."
"No."
She laughed. "If I didn't know you better, I'd think you were queer or something. But ... I know you. You're just shy, that's all." She smiled. This time, when she smiled, there were warmth and tenderness in the liquid black eyes.
"I'm shy," he admitted.
She sipped her glass of beer, placed it on the coffee table again and blew at a wisp of hair that had drifted before her mouth. "My hair's a mess. You'll have to excuse it. I really need a permanent. Maybe next week...."
"I like your hair."
His hand on the back of the sofa was near her head. He touched her hair and ran his fingers through it. The soft blackness of it flowed through his fingers and without planning the movement, he pressed them against the side of her head. He exerted slight pressure and she leaned forward until their mouths met. At the last moment he noticed she had closed her eyes and when they kissed, her arms were raised to encircle his shoulders.
After the kiss she remained passive while he explored her body. She continued to lean against him, her arms around his shoulders, her eyes closed. He unbuttoned her blouse and discovered she was wearing a bra. For awhile, when he kissed her again, he explored the size and shape of her breasts through the fabric of the bra. Then, when the kiss ended, he removed the bra and explored the contours of her naked breasts. When he kissed her again, he explored beneath her skirt until her lips parted with a gasp. She slid from the sofa and, hand in hand, they went to the bedroom on the second floor.
In the bedroom she closed the curtains and in the stillness of the room, he could hear the rustle of her clothing. He undressed with his back toward her and when he finished he turned toward the bed. She waited there and, when he joined her, they kissed again.
They pressed together, lost in the act of kissing and-when their bodies joined-it seemd a wholly natural thing, the meeting of two lovers, the meeting of two bodies destined to meet. She shuddered, clinging to him with all the strength of her arms and legs.
After he finished, she curled against him, carefully maintaining the union of their bodies. She buried her face against his chest and when he looked down he could see only the darkness of her hair. He ran his fingers through its soft darkness and wondered if there was anything he should say.
Amy, I've always wanted you.
Amy, I've always loved you.
Amy, this had to be.
Amy ... dearest.
From where he lay, he could see most of the bedroom and his gaze wandered while he held her in his arms. He saw near the bureau a rusted truck, a bright red whistle, a miniature airplane with a broken wing. Toys ... the children had left them there.
Near the window, between the bureau and the wall, there was a black-and-red bowling ball bag ... Bob's. The closet door was ajar and he could see on the back of the door a tie-rack filled with ties ... Bob's. In the closet on metal and wooden hangers hung Bob's pants and shirts and coats. On the floor in the closet lay Bob's shoes. On the bureau a statuette of a man bowling, a trophy ... Bob's.
He closed his eyes and drew Bob Jarrell's wife tighter against him....
* * *
He awoke. He wondered how long he had been asleep but his left arm was beneath Amy, his wristwatch out of sight behind her back. His arm ached and he wanted to see his watch. He tugged on his arm in an effort to get his wrist where he could see the time, but the movement awakened Amy.
She stirred sleepily, her eyes fluttering. Her deep red lips parted in a smile, she kissed him on his lips, tracing her mouth across his cheek to his ears, where she nibbled gently.
"Ummm. Stan, we should have done that ten years ago."
"We should have." He moved a hand down the length of her body, to her stomach and lower to discover they had fallen asleep with their bodies joined.
"Ummmm. I missed a lot." She began to squirm. She wiggled her hips and pulsated against him until he felt new passion arise within his flesh. She laughed softly when she sensed his arousal and rolled on her back, pulling him above her.
He responded and this time they made love with more abandon, Amy twisting and gyrating beneath him. The first time she had kept her eyes closed but now she looked up at him as he performed the act of love. When they were finished, she curled against him again, twisting until they were lying on their sides.
"I wish it could last forever," she whispered.
"I don't think I could last forever, Amy. Maybe once more-if you give me a chance to rest."
He squeezed one of her breasts and she laughed. The laugh died in her throat and became a gurgling sound. Voices had entered the house. Young voices. They called, "Mom? Mom?" Footsteps clattered on the stairs.
Amy stiffened beside him and suddenly, beneath his fingers, her breast felt as cold as ice.
"Oh God!" She turned on the bed and stared at the clock, her eyes uncomprehending. "How long did we sleep? Oh God!"
She pulled away from him, rolling off the bed and running naked across the room. She reached the door as someone from the other side started to open it. She slammed the door and locked it. A tiny fist pounded against the door.
"Mom!"
"I'll be there in a minute, honey. I-have to get dressed. Did Grandma leave yet?"
"No."
Stan dressed as fast as he could, watching Amy. She finished long before he did and stood there, biting her lip, watching him with impatience. She had slipped into her dress and shoes, ignoring all her underclothing. When he finished dressing, they went down the stairs together. He tried frantically to think of some explanation for his presence.
His mind refused to function and he wondered if Amy would be able to come up with any reasonable explanation for his presence. His heart pounded. He told it to stop pounding but it refused all commands. His mouth felt dry and he realized this was the first time in his life he'd ever been caught with another man's wife. He was caught. There was no escape.
Mrs. Greene sat in the living room, in a huge upholstered chair that made her seem small by comparison. She sat facing the opposite wall and did not turn to look in their direction as he and Amy passed through the hallway by the door. Although he could see only her profile, he knew Mrs. Greene knew he was there, knew what he had done. He had made no sound, spoken not a single word since her arrival, but somehow she knew.
Amy walked onto the porch with him. "What can I tell her, Stan? What can I tell her?"
"I don't know. I can't think of any excuse for being here."
"She must have seen your car. Nobody could see it from the main road, but she parked her car in the driveway. She must have seen it. Anybody could see it from the driveway."
"This is a hell of a mess. Do you think she'll tell Bob?"
"I don't know. Oh, God, I hope not! Bob would kill you!"
He started down the steps. There was nothing else to say. When he reached the bottom of the steps, Amy whispered after him in a voice he could hardly hear, "Call me tomorrow, Stan. One o'clock."
CHAPTER TWELVE
Janie Joyce sat on the bed with her back against the wall and held the radio close to her ear. She had turned down the volume until she was sure the music wouldn't bother Ellen or Irene and she remembered the time that Emma had asked her to turn the volume down. Poor Emma! Emma was gone now, gone to a place from where she could never return.
It didn't bother her now. Now she could think about Emma's death without feeling so awfully sick inside. It was funny how you could adjust to things like that. When it happened-that horrible morning-she thought she'd never forget Emma's face up near the ceiling and how her body had turned slowly around and around and around.
The song on the radio was a new one and as she listened to the beat of the music and the words she felt a warmness between her thighs, somewhere deep within her flesh. The warmness made her think of Stanley Scott and again she wondered how it would feel if he made love to her. She had thought about it recently-thought about it a lot. She had tried to stop the thoughts, but they seemed to be something that couldn't be stopped.
Stanley Scott had made love to Ellen. It was love-making, not rape. Ellen had told her, when Irene was asleep, had told her never to tell Irene the truth. It was all very strange. Ellen said Stan hadn't raped her. She was willing. Ellen had told her a lot about Stan. She'd said that Stan was a gentle man, a lonely man. She said she thought Stan had kidnapped them because he was so lonely.
Stan was handsome, Janie decided. Handsome in a rugged sort of way-not the pretty-boy clean-featured handsomeness of so many Hollywood actors, but the rugged handsomeness of a Burt Lancaster or a Kirk Douglas. Stan had been sort of sick the past few days, sneezing a lot and coughing a lot. He almost had pneumonia, Ellen said.
He'd been awfully quiet-she'd felt a strange urge to talk to him, to kiss him-just lightly on the lips. He'd looked so darn sad she'd wanted to do anything to make him feel more cheerful, but it seemed, whenever she washed and dried the dishes, his mind was miles away somewhere and as soon as she finished the dishes, he took her right back to the cellar every time.
Sometimes she almost wished he would make love to her and sometimes the way he looked at her, as if she wasn't a pretty girl at all, made her wonder if he didn't like her or wasn't interested in her for some reason.
She stretched across the bed and turned toward the wall. She placed the radio on the pillow near her ear. The next song was a sad song and it had a strange effect in her loins-a kind of aching emptiness she had felt before whenever she thought about men in a special way. Was this love? A kind of aching emptiness inside that you knew only a man could fill?
Her mother had told her how important it was to remain a virgin until she got married. She knew-if you weren't a virgin .when you got married, it could ruin your whole marriage. Most men wanted to marry virgins and if they married a girl and found out she wasn't a virgin, they felt cheated. It was funny, too, because most men wanted to have women before they got married and she had never quite understood the logic of it all-it had always seemed as if men wanted to sort of have their cake and eat it, too.
She closed her eyes and remembered her solution to the problem of remaining a virgin but still having a little fun. Bill Thatcher had been dating her that summer. Bill had lived next door ever since they were kids and she knew him better than any other boy. He was a shy kind of boy, tall and thin, not rough like most boys, and in some ways almost like a girl.
It turned out he wasn't sexually maladjusted!
Far from it! She'd always suspected he might be a little queer, the way they said some boys were, but she found out that night at the drive-in theater, he was far from a queer. He kissed her and felt her breasts and wanted to go all the way with her, right there on the front seat of the car while the movie was going on. She'd been scared.
She'd wanted to do it with him, but still, at the same time, she didn't want to do it because her mother had explained how important it was to remain a virgin until you got married. So there on the front seat of his car, while the movie flickered on the screen before them, she hadn't allowed him to go all the way, but she'd allowed him to do everything except go all the way.
She'd unbuttoned her blouse and taken off her bra. She'd let him squeeze her breasts until the nipples got real hard, and she'd let him kiss her breasts. She'd let him slide his hand beneath her skirt and beneath her panties, probing with his fingers. He seemed to know exactly what to do to a girl and did until she sort of raised up from the car seat, quivering, and then-not knowing what to expect-she'd felt the warm wet burst. It had left her sort of limp and cozy, a wonderful relaxed feeling.
Bill told her making love was like that-only much better. He'd kept pleading with her until finally she asked him to take her home. They reached her house just before midnight. The time was okay because her mother had said she could stay out until one o'clock since the double feature at the drive-in didn't end until then.
There, on the front porch of her house, hidden from the street by the deep shadows of the cedar trees, Bill had kissed her again and finally he had showed her what to do for him since she wouldn't let him make love with her. It all seemed so simple and easy-and Bill seemed to enjoy it so much.
Bill had unzipped his pants and stood facing the porch railing. She had stood in front of him but slightly to his side. He held her and kissed her and showed her what to do and then, after she did what he wanted and did it long enough, Bill sort of groaned and went limp as she had gone limp.
After that they did it often. Maybe it wasn't the same as making love, but it was a good substitute. There was no danger of getting pregnant and it was a way of remaining a virgin and still having some fun. They did it almost everywhere, she remembered-one time while walking through a park and stopping to sit on a bench for awhile. They hadn't been afraid to do it there because the park was so quiet you could hear footsteps on the concrete path two blocks away and they could have stopped if they heard anyone coming.
Once they did it in Bill's car at a drive-in, once in the balcony of a movie theater when they were way in the back and off to one side where no one could see, once in an alley in Trenton and once on the beach at Riverview, when they'd spread a blanket over themselves and there hadn't been many others on the beach.
It had been hard to do under the blanket. A man and woman had been sitting not too close, but not too far away either, some kids had been running around and playing with a ball. It had been a little difficult struggling with their tight bathing suits.
It had all ended when Bill's parents moved to another city and he'd had to move with them. After that, she'd dated other boys. Some of them had wanted to make love with her. To a few of them she'd suggested the substitute she'd learned from Bill.
One had gotten mad about it and said he wanted the real thing or nothing at all. One had suggested another way, a way she'd heard about but didn't like and she'd refused to do it that way. Two had accepted her suggestion. One of those boys didn't seem to be satisfied and stopped dating her. The other tried to climb on her at the last minute.
He'd gone sort of wild, tearing at her clothes and shoving her back on the car seat. She had struggled and then-while she struggled-it was suddenly too late. Her dress had gotten awfully messed up and she'd thrown it away. Two weeks later her mother asked her what happened to her pretty green dress and she'd had to lie about spilling ink on it.
She pressed her ear closer against the radio, listening to the music and sensing the aching emptiness in her loins until it became a hot throbbing. She wondered if she could talk to Stanley Scott and get him to kiss her. If she managed to get him to kiss her and if they could talk about it enough, she could suggest the substitute Bill Thatcher had shown her.
Maybe Stan would like the substitute too. She knew she would like it-she would love to have his fingers touch her and feel exactly how soft and warm she was. She could show him she knew how to do it. Bill Thatcher had showed her exactly how and she still remembered. The only danger in getting so intimate with Stan was he might decide to rape her. Worse than that, he might want her to do the horrible substitute the one boy had asked her to do....
* * *
When Janie finished drying the dishes, she came to his chair and stood close, looking down at him.
"Can I talk to you?" she asked.
"Sure, Janie. What is it?"
She bit her lower lip. She glanced around the kitchen. "Can we ... Can we go somewhere else?"
He nodded. He rose from his chair and led the way to the living room. He started to turn on a light, but she touched his arm. "Will you-leave the light off?"
The room was shadowy, with only a wisp of light from the kitchen. He looked down at her and wondered what she wanted to talk about. He could hardly see her-she was only a shadow before him.
"What is it you wanted to talk about, Janie?"
"I don't know exactly how to tell you."
He had been holding the Luger aimed at her stomach. He wondered if it made her feel nervous and, deciding it was safe enough, slid the gun into a pocket. She was such a small girl holding a gun aimed at her was ridiculous and he had been doing it mainly because it had become a habit. Irene could be dangerous-she was strong enough to cause trouble if she wanted to-and it was a good habit always to be ready with the gun whenever he was near the girls.
He lit a cigarette and waited. From the glow of the cigarette when he inhaled, he could see Janie's face-a small round face with large eyes that peered up at him through the darkness.
"Ellen said ... She thought you wouldn't do anything to either Irene or myself. Is that right?"
"I won't attack you, Janie. If you're worried about that. I don't intend to bother either Irene or yourself."
She hesitated before she continued. When she did continue her voice was only a whisper. She moved closer to him but her voice was so low he could only hear part of what she said. He listened as she explained how she had been afraid he would rape her, how her mother had explained how important it was to remain a virgin until she got married. He listened as she explained how, if he wanted to do anything else-anything at all-she wouldn't be upset.
She wants me to kiss her, he decided. She's just a little girl, afraid of being screwed, but she wants the thrill of being kissed. That's what she's hinting at....
Holding his cigarette carefully so he wouldn't burn her, he slipped his arms around her waist and pulled her closer. He moved slowly, gently, lowered his head until he felt his mouth brush against her lips. While they kissed, she moved closer until he felt the length of her body pressed against him.
She held her hands in an odd place, he noticed, instead of slinging her arms around his waist or his back as most girls would do, she held her hands on his hips. They kissed again and this time, while he kissed her, he became aware that her hands had moved from his hips. They were fumbling at his zipper.
"I know how to do it," she whispered.
He almost asked, Know how to do what? but he held back.
"Do you want me to do it?" she asked.
To avoid answering, he kissed her again and held her closer. Her small warm hands slid beneath his clothing, pulling at him. She grasped him and moved so she stood slightly to one side.
The cigarette burned his fingers and he dropped it, remembering suddenly the time he had burned his fingers when sitting in the car, waiting to dump Emma into the Delaware River. He pushed this thought aside and concentrated on the small soft hand that grasped him. Leaning forward slightly, his cheek brushed against her hair and he could look over her shoulder and see the cigarette burning into the floor. It seemed mightily unimportant.
She was gentle and rhythmic, and passion inside him uncoiled like a steel spring. He slid his hands down her back and grasped her buttocks. He wanted to explore the curves and softness of her body but she was so skilled in the rhythmic movement of her hand that he was paralyzed.
In a few minutes he finished and she sighed as if a pleasant task had been completed.
"Where did you learn that?" he asked. It was almost unbelievable, holding the small perfumed softness of her body. She had always seemed so young, so innocent.
She kissed him again, whispering, "It doesn't matter where I learned it."
She moved into deeper shadows of the room until she was almost invisible. He heard her movements but could not make out what she was doing. When he walked to her and could see better, he found she had raised her skirt and was sliding her panties down the length of her legs. She let the panties fall as far as her knees and then she spread her legs slightly so the garment stretched taut at her knees and could fall no further.
She wanted the favor returned.
He slid his right hand over her stomach and between her thighs. At his first touch she gasped excitedly and soon-much sooner than he'd expected-she moaned as her flesh trembled beneath his fingers.
When he walked with her to the cellar, when he looked at her before he closed and locked the door, she turned for a moment and smiled at him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
He sat on the bed and watched Ellen as she scanned the rows of books, selecting one to read. She would look at the titles and the names of the authors, she would glance at a few pages and then replace each book.
Ellen had told him she'd heard over the radio that the police had found Irene's keys and underclothing in Sellers' Park. The police had already found Emma's body in the Delaware River. The news that they had found the keys and underclothing pleased him. That meant his plan to mislead them might work. The news that they had found Emma's body still reminded him of that unpleasant night. He wondered if he would ever forget that night.
"When are you going shopping again, Stan."
"I don't know."
"Maybe you'd better go shopping again tomorrow. Everything is low. The freezer is empty. All the bacon and eggs are gone. No milk. And we've been digging into the canned food, too."
"I'll go shopping tomorrow."
She selected a book and carried it to the bed. She sat close to him on the edge of the bed, placing the book on her lap. He offered her a cigarette, lit it for her, then lit one for himself.
"When you go shopping tomorrow, will you please buy a box of sanitary napkins? Large box, regular size."
"Sanitary napkins?"
"You know what they are, don't you? Well, we're all healthy girls and we need them. The need has arisen."
"I can't buy anything like that."
She turned to look at him. She was so close that when he looked into her eyes he could see the pattern of gray and green in the iris of her eyes. He noticed for the first time she wasn't wearing lipstick. Her lips were uninviting without it.
He noticed she wasn't wearing any perfume and hadn't bothered to comb her hair. He wondered if-at this particular time of the month-she had deliberately allowed herself to be unattractive because of her physical condition.
"You can buy something like that," she said matter-of-factly. "You have to buy something like that. They sell them in all the supermarkets and you can just put a box in your cart like any faithful husband. There's no need to be embarrassed. Anybody who sees you will think you're buying them for your wife."
She turned her head away as if the discussion were ended. She inhaled on her cigarette and then opened the book on her lap. She began to read the first page and, watching her, Stan felt an insane laughter bubbling in his throat. It was crazy.
He had kidnapped four women. He had the power to rape them and use them as he wanted. And now, instead of the wild sex orgies he had dreamed of, he was engrossed in the tasks of feeding, of entertaining them and finally-of buying them sanitary napkins!
He tried to stifle the laughter, but it was too much.
"What's so amusing?" Her eyebrows arched.
"Nothing. I guess I was laughing because I don't feel like much of a kidnapper. I feel more like a ... husband."
She closed the book. She turned to face him again, and again he studied the gray-green in the iris of her eyes. "You aren't a kidnapper," she said. "You're just a lonely guy who got so lonely he couldn't stand it. I don't know what a psychiatrist would call it. Maybe a psychiatrist would have a long name for it ... or maybe he'd call it something simple like temporary insanity.
"You had a chance to kidnap four women
.....and you did. But you're not vicious. You're not an ordinary kidnapper if there is such a thing as an ordinary kidnapper. You're gentle and considerate and...."
She touched his cheek with the palm of a hand. It was an odd, tender gesture and he didn't know how to react. She withdrew the hand.
"You don't feel like much of a kidnapper. I don't feel like much of a victim. Irene and Janie know the truth. They know you haven't raped me. I guess it's as obvious as the nose on my face. They know I've been willing. I started to tell you once ... if you've ever wondered why I'm so willing and why I didn't scratch and fight and scream, it's because these past years I've been so damned bored. I've almost gone crazy.
"My husband is ... not quite a man. He's a
CPA and a good one, I guess, but when he comes home from the office he sits in front of the television like a robot. When he's in bed, he's still like a robot, except when he's sleeping.
"We-Frank and I-we live with his mother. She's an invalid. She has the bottom floor of the house because she can't get her wheel chair up or down stairs. Frank and I have the upstairs half of the house. His mother is an unpleasant woman. Maybe that's an unkind thing to say about an old lady confined to a wheel chair, but she is an unpleasant woman. She doesn't like me, I don't like her.
"To keep from being around the house all day and listening to her whining, I started working at Ideal Plastics. The pay wasn't much, but it gave me a little extra money for some of the things I wanted and it meant I wouldn't have to be around Frank's mother so much. I had to hire somebody to be with her during the day. It cut into the money a lot."
She had been staring ahead at a row of books on the wall before them, as if in a trance. She turned suddenly and looked at him but her eyes were blank as if she did not see him.
"Do you know what I was doing with the money I earned at Ideal Plastics? I saved a part of it every week. I've been hiding the money in a false bottom in my jewel box. Some weeks I'd only be able to take two or three dollars out of my pay. Some weeks as much as five, some weeks as much as ten. I ... wanted to save enough money to go to Nevada to divorce Frank."
She sighed and crushed her cigarette in the ashtray on the bed between them. He looked down at his own cigarette and found he'd forgotten about it completely while she'd been talking. A long ash had fallen on his knee. He brushed it away absently and crushed out his cigarette in the ashtray. Their hands touched accidentally.
"That's the truth I tried to tell you once before. I'm a very bored middle-aged woman. When you kidnapped us I was afraid you might kill us ... but I wasn't afraid you might rape us. I was almost hoping you would."
She tilted her head suddenly and laughed-her eyes closed and facing the ceiling. The laughter climbed toward hysteria. He watched the convulsions of her slender neck and then abruptly she lowered her head. The laughter stopped. She opened her eyes and rubbed her forehead.
"Boredom can be a horrible thing," she said. "It's a kind of death."
"I know."
She laughed again, but this time there was no hysteria. "I guess you do. Living here by yourself ... I don't know how you're able to do it. I would have gone crazy if I'd lived here by myself."
She rose and turned to face the bed. She looked at the bed, not at him. "Since we've been so honest with each other I'd like to say one more honest thing."
"What's that?"
"Could I-sleep here-in the bedroom-with you? That cellar gives me nightmares. Sometimes I wake up in the night and I almost scream. I feel like the walls are closing in."
He hesitated. The idea of sleeping with her sounded tempting. It meant they could sleep naked, together, and they would be almost like a husband and wife. It meant he could curl against her in the cold of the nights and-in the mornings-instead of awakening to face an empty room, she would be there.
"I know what you're thinking," she said.
"You're thinking I'd wait until you were asleep and then I'd-escape. But I've thought about that. You could buy a pair of handcuffs or something. You could chain me to the bed so I wouldn't be able to escape. You could probably buy a pair of handcuffs in a hardware store of a pawnshop. You could buy them tomorrow when you shop for the groceries."
She waited for his answer.
"I'll buy them. It's a good idea."
She smiled. "We'd better get Janie out of the cellar so she can wash the dishes. They'll probably think we've been making love. And ... that's funny, isn't it, because we haven't done a thing. Oh! Buy the handcuffs tomorrow when you go shopping, but maybe we can wait for the sleeping together until a few days from now. This would be a bad time of the month to start anything like that..."
* * *
From the phone booth in the parking lot at the huge Shoppers' Fair east of Kennett Square, he dialed Bob Jarrell's phone number.
Amy answered at the first ring. "Amy, this is Stan."
"Stan, I asked you to call me at one o'clock because the children are usually taking their nap then. I didn't have a chance to explain yesterday."
"I knew you had a reason. I thought maybe it was because Bob wasn't home at one."
"That, too. He comes home at noon some days to eat lunch but he always leaves before a quarter of one. Actually I put the children in bed at a quarter of twelve usually, so Bob and I can eat our lunch without them bothering us, but they usually sleep until at least one-thirty.
He closed his eyes and opened them again. He looked out upon the rows and rows of cars, the bright facades of the shopping center. He had slept late and still didn't feel fully awake. He yawned, turning his mouth away from the mouthpiece momentarily.
He wondered why Amy was telling him the family schedule and then realized it was probably her subtle way of informing him when and when not to visit her. She must expect him to visit her again, to make love to her again, and this was her way of telling him the only safe time would be between a quarter of twelve and one-thirty. Forty-five minutes. It wasn't much-but it could be done.
"Did your mother know what we...? " What we were doing? he finished mentally.
"She guessed it, Stan. She didn't mention it but she acted so nervous. She stayed almost an hour after you left. I tried to act cheerful and casual and I tried like hell to think of some excuse for you being there. Finally, the only thing I could think of was to say you'd helped me buy Bob's birthday present. His birthday is next month.
"Bob has always wanted a shotgun and I told Mother I'd asked you to buy one for me because
I didn't know anything about shotguns. I thought it might explain why you were in the house. But she didn't believe me, Stan. I know she didn't believe me."
"Do you think she'll tell Bob?"
"I don't know. I don't think she will. But she may give it away accidentally if we don't convince her you were here because you'd bought the shotgun for me. She isn't a very good actress. She started crying. I asked her why she was crying and she said it was because she'd started thinking about Father. She's like that sometimes. She'll think about Father and she'll start crying. But I know that wasn't the reason yesterday. I know it was because she guessed what happened."
"You want me to buy a shotgun so you can give it to Bob for his birthday?"
"It would help cover up. Could you buy it today? Maybe you could bring it to me tomorrow. And then, later, I can show it to Mother and maybe she'll believe that's why you were here. Could you buy it today? I'll pay you tomorrow. I've been saving some money for Bob's birthday present."
"I'll buy it today."
"Tomorrow ... Call me about ten minutes of one. The children should be asleep then. If Bob comes home for lunch he'll probably be gone by then. If he's still in the house or if someone else is here, or if there's some other reason you can't come, I'll pretend it's someone who's dialed a wrong number.
"Then you could call back about ten or fifteen minutes later. If there's still some reason you can't come, I'll pretend it's the same person with the wrong number and we can try again the day after tomorrow."
"Okay." He closed his eyes and tried to memorize all the instructions.
"Stan...? "
"Yes?"
"I want to see you again." Her voice had become husky-whispery.
"I want to see you again, Amy."
"Goodbye."
"Goodbye."
In the A&P in Kennett Square he filled a cart with groceries. The last item he bought was the sanitary napkins Ellen had asked for and he realized he should have bought them first, covering them with the other groceries. He waited in the long line before the cash register and itched for a cigarette. His face began to flush and he told himself there was no reason to feel nervous about the sanitary napkins, absolutely no reason. In the line before the next cash register, a pretty dark-haired woman glanced at him occasionally until he began to wonder if he looked as embarrassed as he felt.
The girl behind the cash register punched the prices of all the items into the machine, punching the price of the sanitary napkins between the price of three cans of beans and two loaves of bread, without hesitating in the steady rhythm of her fingers and he decided Ellen had been right. Anyone would certainly think he was buying them for his wife. There was no cause to be embarrassed.
After he had placed the bags of groceries in the trunk of the car, he remembered what Ellen had said about sleeping with him. He had to buy the handcuffs. She had seemed sincere, but there was no proof she wouldn't escape while he slept if he let her sleep in the bed. In fact, the request to sleep with him could be a part of a carefully-formed plan, a plan to throw him off-guard, a plan to make him trust her....
He tried two hardware stores and discovered handcuffs were not an ordinary item. In a pawnshop the clerk had a pair of handcuffs but said there was no key. He hadn't had a key made because he'd thought there was a possibility he might never sell them. He could send the handcuffs to a locksmith and have a key made, but it would cost extra and would probably take an hour or two.
Stan told him he wanted the handcuffs and would come back in an hour or two. He went to a sporting-goods store and selected a 20-gauge Magnum shotgun with a walnut stock and then, seeing he still had some spare time, he went into the nearest tavern and ordered a double bourbon.
After the fourth double bourbon, his mind seemed to clear and all his nervousness washed away. He realized the tension had been building in him stronger and stronger-caused by the strain of keeping the girls imprisoned, by Emma's suicide, by the affair with Amy and the discovery of the affair by Amy's mother.
But he realized, as he ordered a fifth double bourbon, there was absolutely no reason to be worried about anything.
Everything was working out great. The police would never catch him. He would continue to screw Ellen whenever he felt like it, eventually he would rape Irene. He wouldn't rape Janie-he would continue to enjoy the talent she'd learned and gradually, very gradually, he would try to seduce her. It would be amusing to see how difficult it would be.
And Amy ... he had Amy to use whenever it was convenient. Bob would never discover what they were doing because Amy's mother would never have the nerve to tell Bob and the story about the shotgun would convince her that nothing had ever happened between Amy and himself....
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Sitting in the darkness of the living room with Janie on his lap, he realized he'd drunk too many double bourbons. He didn't feel right. His ears roared in the peculiar way they always roared when he drank too much-a distant roaring like the wash of a surf on a distant beach. His skin was hot and his stomach felt like a small fire.
He couldn't remember everything. He could remember sitting in the tavern and talking to someone, he could remember glancing at his wristwatch and discovering it was almost five o'clock. He could remember running to the pawnshop, but he couldn't remember paying the clerk for the handcuffs.
He could remember sitting in the car in the A&P parking lot with the handcuffs and snapping them around his wrists and fumbling with the key to get them open again. A gray-haired lady had peered into his car, watching him and frowning.
He couldn't remember the drive to his house and he couldn't remember taking the groceries out of the trunk of the car. He could remember taking the shotgun and going to the cellar, pointing it at Irene, Janie, Ellen. He could remember the startled expressions on their faces-startled because he had a shotgun instead of the familiar Luger.
After that he could remember nothing until he was alone with Ellen in the kitchen, after they'd all eaten supper. He could remember feeling very, very clever because the shotgun wasn't! loaded and because he'd had the nerve to bluff and make them believe it was loaded. He could remember singing and placing his hands on Ellen. He had kneaded her breasts and he had said something-he couldn't remember what-and she had slapped his face.
He couldn't remember Janie washing and drying the dishes as she always did, but he could remember-just before they came into the living room and turned off the lights-that he had looked at the rack on the enameled sink ledge and seen the dishes all washed and dried and stacked. Janie never replaced the dishes in the cabinets. She'd mentioned that Ellen had said it was a waste of effort to continually be putting them in the cabinets and continually taking them out of the cabinets.
The shotgun lay on the floor near the chair. He had sobered slightly and now he knew he had taken some dangerous chances. Being drunk he'd done several things that could have proved fatal. He could never get drunk-never again. Not until all the girls were dead and buried.
Janie kissed him and moved on his lap, sliding toward his knees. Her hands pressed between his pants and his shirt, he sucked in his breath to allow more room. She couldn't reach as far as necessary and she withdrew, reaching for his belt buckle.
Before she could unbuckle his belt, he slid one of his hands beneath her skirt. Her breath came harsh and warm and sweet and excited against his cheek. In a few minutes she leaned against him, trembling, suddenly limp as if all the strength had flooded from her flesh.
He waited a while and then gently lifted her from his lap. He picked up the shotgun from the floor and went around the room, turning on the lights. Janie stood near the chair where they had been, blinking at the sudden brilliance. He walked to her and with all the light she suddenly seemed much different than she had seemed in the darkness. She was nothing more than a kid, a kid of a girl with immature breasts on a soft body not quite a woman's body. Suddenly she did not look attractive or tempting.
"Stan, don't you want...? "
"No."
"Is something wrong?"
"There's nothing wrong, Janie. Nothing at all. But I don't like your little game. It's a hell of a little game. It's a game for children. Maybe you enjoy it. I don't enjoy it. When are you going to grow up? What you do-what you did to me-and what you want me to do to you...."
He couldn't think of the words. He wanted to tell her she was only playing at the threshold of real love-making, playing a game that was stupid and dangerous. She was the worst kind of a flirt, a flirt willing and eager to go to the brink of the act, but not willing to go as far as the act itself. He couldn't think of the right words.
He finished awkwardly, "Don't you want to be a real woman? Don't you want to find out what it's really like? Are you afraid? Come on. Let's go."
He waved the shotgun. She walked before him, silently, her head bowed. Her skirt was wrinkled, he noticed, her hair messed-strands dangling before one eye, her lipstick smeared. When they went through the storage room, he saw her face clearly. She looked puzzled, thoughtful.
After he had locked the cellar door, he returned to the living room and sat in the chair again.
He thought, Stanley Scott, kidnapper, rapist. It didn't seem real. None of it seemed real. Emma had killed herself. Ellen wanted to make love to him. Janie wanted to play her little sex-game. Of the four, only Irene had reacted normally-perhaps in the way most women would react if kidnapped. If he tried to rape her, Irene would scream and fight. A normal reaction. But Emma, Ellen and Janie weren't quite normal.
He wondered, What is normality? Perhaps there was no such thing as a normal man or woman. If he had kidnapped any four women in the world ... perhaps any four would have developed much along the same lines. One suicide, one absolutely willing to make love with him, one with a warped vision of sex, and one completely "normal" woman like Irene....
He remembered Irene's words, Someone will find us if you keep us here. Maybe she was right. When he originally forced the four women into the cellar he had not contemplated the future, not contemplated it beyond the immediate desire and urgency to use their bodies.
Maybe she was right.
He raised the shotgun and turned it until it aimed directly at his head. The position was awkward but he found, if he held the gun just right, he could force the trigger back.
He pushed against the trigger and heard the click of the hammer and shuddered.
If the gun had been loaded, everything would have ended in the instant of that click.
He shuddered again.
The shotgun was too clumsy and slow to use. But the Luger would be easy and quick. He would carry it constantly. And if Irene were right ... the Luger would be an easy, quick escape route....
* * *
It had snowed again but had stopped sometime during the morning and the temperature had dropped below freezing until the snow became crisp and powdery. A bitter wind beat against his face as he waited for Amy to open the door after he knocked and he turned his back to the wind, shivering. When she opened the door he couldn't see her for an instant. The wind had brought blinding tears to his eyes.
In the hallway, as he removed his gloves and hat, as Amy helped him to remove his coat, his eyes cleared and he saw her. Before, when he'd come to make love with her, he'd caught her off-guard and she'd been wearing a frayed dress, a faded pair of slippers, her hair uncombed. This time she'd prepared for his visit.
She'd dressed in a shimmery blue sheath that hugged every curve, accentuating the tilt and points of her breasts. She'd had her hair done in a honeycomb style that made her look younger. She wore nylons, high-heeled black shoes, a flower-scented perfume. Her lips were deep red-the kind of lipstick she'd always used but it seemed thicker and, after she kissed him, he could taste the lipstick on his mouth.
"Sorry to keep you waiting, Stan. Carl asked for water and I wanted to wait and be sure he'd fallen asleep again. As they get older, it's harder and harder to get them to take a nap."
"It's cold out there."
"It's cold in here. That darn furnace isn't working right."
"Your hair looks nice."
"Thank you."
"And the dress looks nice."
"Thank you."
"New dress?"
"Old dress, new hairdo. Florence Malcom loaned me the use of her car today and took care of the children while I went to the beauty shop. How do you like that? Amy Jarrell finally escaped her prison!"
"Who's Florence Malcom?"
"I thought you knew her. She went to the University of Delaware with Bob and I. She used to come to our parties ... before she started having babies all the time. Didn't you meet her at the New Years' Eve party Bob and I gave?"
"I was here but I don't remember Florence Malcom. Maybe I was too busy looking at you." He winked. He placed his hands on her hips, moving them to her waist. Her waist was so small his fingertips almost met at her spine and his thumbs almost met at the front of her stomach. He kissed her, crushing the pliable smallness against him, passion erupting as he ran the palms of his hands over the curves of her buttocks.
"I want to tell you before I forget, Stan. Florence has an idea she and I could baby-sit for each other. That is, one day each week I'd take care of her children while she would be free to do whatever she wants to do, and one day each week she'd take care of mine while I would be free to do whatever I want to do.
"She's going crazy being stuck in the house so much. We're both going crazy from being stuck in the house so much. We started talking about it and she came up with the idea. She'd let me use her car. I'd pay for the gas. That's all. Doesn't it sound wonderful?"
"Uh huh."
She reached upward and locked her fingers at the back of his neck. "You haven't thought what that would mean, Stan. That would mean you wouldn't have to come here. It'd be a lot safer. We could go ... anywhere. I could meet you anywhere."
"Uh huh."
He wanted her, wanted her fast. She seemed in a talkative mood and he wanted to break that mood. He moved his hands from her waist, up, then stopped with his hands holding her immediately beneath her breasts. When he moved his thumbs upward, they dug into the underparts of her breasts. He playfully jiggled her breasts until she pulled his hands away.
"Ummm. Wait until I get out of this dress, Stan. Shall we go to the bedroom? Is the shotgun in that box? You can bring it to the bedroom and I'll hide it in the closet where Bob won't find it."
She hurried up the stairs and he followed, carrying the box. When he reached the bedroom, she was already slipping out of the blue dress. Clad in only her underwear, she walked across the room to get the shotgun, carried it to the closet and leaned into the closet.
Watching her while she was bent in that awkward position, naked except for the silken undergarments, he hurried to undress and stood behind her. He laughed and leaned against her, grasping her hips. She gasped and straightened, beginning to laugh with him after the surprise had faded.
She glided into his arms, and from that moment she seemed totally different from the Amy Jarrell he had always known. After she had undressed, she paraded her body before him, teased him, coaxed him, suggested all the ways they could meld their bodies together.' Boldly, giggling, laughing-she asked him to go slower or faster or to stop or to start. She squirmed and gyrated and pulsed.
At times, tangled in an intricate position and pounding his body against her, lost in the throes of his own lust, she would suddenly pull away from him and laugh and say she wanted to try another way. At times, when he could think only of that one vital warm-soft-tight area of her body, she would frown thoughtfully and adjust an arm or a leg or change the position of thighs or hips and then smile with satisfaction.
When they were exhausted and content, when they could join their bodies no more, she said he should leave. The children were due to wake up soon. While he dressed she went into the bathroom and he heard the spray of the shower. When he finished dressing, he went to the bathroom door and opened it. She had adjusted the shower so the water struck beneath her shoulders.
She pointed at the honeycomb hairdo. "Not much of a shower. But I can't get my hair wet. And my shower-cap won't fit over this."
"What will Bob say when he sees that hairdo?"
"He-likes this style. A lot of the teenagers are wearing it and I told him I was thinking about trying it just to see how I'd look. How do I look?" She turned off the water and pirouetted, her hands on her hips, her stomach pulled in, her breasts thrust outward. "Beautiful!"
"You'd better wipe off that lipstick."
Studying his face in the medicine cabinet mirror, he saw she had smeared his face. He started to use one of the towels, but she said it would look strange if Bob should notice lipstick on a towel. He used his handkerchief and when he finished he saw she had put on a robe.
In the hallway on the first floor she took his coat from the closet and gave it to him.
"I don't want to hurry you, Stan, but the children will wake up soon. Call me Wednesday. I'll have Florence's car Thursday and we can make arrangements about where to meet. Maybe I could come to your house? Would that be all right?"
He nodded.
He had put on his coat and moved toward the door.
"Wednesday is a long time to wait," he said.
"I don't want to wait that long, Stan. But we'll have to be careful ... at least until we know Bob isn't suspicious. As soon as I can, I'll show Mother the gun and tell her it's a gift for Bob. I'll tell her that was why you were here when she saw you ... because you'd bought the gun and brought it to me. That should explain everything and then we won't have to worry about her telling Bob."
He nodded again.
"Don't forget to call me."
"I won't forget."
"I'll give you a little reminder so you won't." Stepping closer, she took his right hand and removed his glove. Stuffing his glove into one of his coat pockets, she took his right hand in both of hers and guided it beneath the fold of her robe. He had to lean slightly forward until she had moved his hand exactly where she wanted to place it, and then she clamped her thighs against it-hard.
"I won't forget," he said.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
"Stan." The voice came from a great distance away, through a layer of velvet. Beneath the layer of velvet there had been peacefulness ... he had no wish to climb above. "Stan."
The voice was gentle. Something touched him. He said, "Go away," but the something moved closer and he felt rounded hard-pointed softnesses press against his chest. Something played through his hair, something brushed his lips.
He had been asleep, he realized slowly, a deep, deep sleep. He could vaguely remember the night, a strange night filled with twistings and turnings, and unfamiliar sensations, but still a pleasant night and then, finally, somewhere during the night, he had drifted into the deep, deep sleep.
He smelled perfume and he remembered Ellen. He opened his eyes and saw her face haloed by sunlight. She didn't look beautiful-not without makeup, not with her hair flying in every direction, her eyes puffed and half-closed ... but there was beauty in the way she smiled at him.
"Good morning."
"Good morning, Ellen."
"Did you sleep all right?"
"Uh huh."
She wrinkled her nose. "I didn't. You flap your arms when you sleep. You flap your arms like a big bird. You hit me in the face, you almost broke my nose. You hit me in the stomach-Wham!"
She smiled again and leaned forward until her lips were almost touching his. He moved a fraction of an inch to kiss her. There was no lust in the kiss, no arousal, no preliminary to desire and satisfaction.
"Now," she said. "Unlock these damned handcuffs. My arm is numb, I have to go to the bathroom and then I'll have to fix breakfast. We slept late."
After he unlocked the handcuff that had bound her to the bed during the night, she scurried to the bathroom. He heard her moving around the house, first in the bathroom and then in the kitchen. The sound of her feet was strangely satisfying, a sound that should have been in the house years ago.
He should have married someone years ago.
He was crazy.
If he'd married someone he wouldn't have gone crazy with boredom, he wouldn't have kidnapped Emma, Irene, Ellen and Janie.
Sleeping with Ellen and waking to find her there with him in the morning was only a small taste of what marriage would have been like. A good taste....
The day seemed to drift by without effort, without destination. He repaired the crack in the hall ceiling, chiseling it until it was wide enough to fill with plaster, then smoothing the plaster with a trowel. When the plaster had dried enough, he painted the entire hall ceiling.
He rearranged the storage room to make it neater, repaired the squeaking floorboard in the living-room floor, put a new washer in the leaking kitchen faucet and cleaned the bathroom. He noticed the toilet paper was almost gone and realized he hadn't bought any on his last shopping trip. He used the vacuum cleaner in the living room but halfway through the job he found a book under one of the chairs, a book he had been reading. He began to read again at the point where he had stopped, all cleaning forgotten.
At lunch-time, when he unlocked the cellar so Ellen could prepare the meal, she seemed cheerful, humming to herself as she cooked and making casual conversation about the news she'd heard over the radio. They had not made love during the night. He had felt exhausted and drained and had fallen asleep shortly after handcuffing one of her wrists to the bed. But he would make love with her during the coming night.
He formed a plan, decided to be very casual, gentle. He would kiss her good-night. But he wouldn't stop there. He would kiss her again and then, slowly, very, very slowly, he would arouse her. It would be different from any of the other times he'd made love with her, perhaps different from any other time in his life, perhaps the way a man might make love to his wife.
After lunch he finished cleaning the living room and returned the vacuum cleaner to the closet. He realized no one had volunteered to do any cleaning. Ellen had volunteered to prepare the meals, Janie had volunteered to wash the dishes. No one had volunteered to clean.
He finished reading the book and saw it was still hours until the evening meal when he would have to unlock the cellar again. He wandered aimlessly around the house and finally, in desperation for something to do, put on his coat and went outside to shovel the snow from the flagstone paths and the driveway.
The temperature had dropped again and his breath burst in frosty puffs as he worked. When he finished the shoveling, his back ached, his arms ached, his legs ached, every muscle in his body ached, but inwardly he felt as if the hard work had washed away all tension and fatigue. For the first day in weeks he felt totally relaxed.
After Janie had begun to wash the dishes, he sat at the kitchen table and drank a bottle of beer. He couldn't stop yawning. His eyes wanted to slide shut. He wished Janie would hurry through the dishwashing so he could return her to the cellar, so he could take Ellen to the bedroom, so they could make love in exactly the way he'd planned ... and thus end the day.
But Janie wouldn't hurry. She moved slowly-agonizingly slowly.
When she finished, she walked to the chair where he sat, looking down at him.
"Stan ... I've been thinking about what you said."
"What do you mean?" He rose from the chair. Whatever it was she wanted to tell him, he wished she'd tell him as they walked to the cellar. But as he nodded toward the cellar, she ignored the gesture.
"I've been thinking about what you said. I think you're right."
"Oh!" He remembered some of their conversation. He couldn't remember all of it-perhaps because he'd been drinking-but he could remember some of the phrases. He'd said, It's a game for children. When are you going to grow up? Don't you want to be a real woman?
He remembered how thoughtful she'd seemed afterwards. She'd thought about it. She'd decided he was right. Good! He was right. But what could he say now? I'm glad you agree. I'm glad you think I was right.
He almost yawned. He had to fight the yawn and his eyes were so heavy-lidded it took a conscious effort to keep them Open. Again he nodded toward the cellar. He thought she understood, but when they passed through the hallway, she turned into the bedroom instead of continuing on toward the cellar.
For a moment he didn't understand what she intended to do. For a moment he stood in the hallway and watched her. He walked to the bedroom doorway, saw her unbuttoning her blouse and then he understood.
She had decided he was right. It's a game for children. When are you going to grow up? Don't you want to be a real woman? She had decided he was right. She had decided to stop playing the children's game. She had decided to grow up. She had decided to become a real woman-in exactly the way he'd meant.
There was no lamp in the bedroom. Light filtered into the room from the bulb in the hallway ceiling and illuminated the room in tones of gray. He could see Janie-clearly but not as clearly as if she were standing in a well-lit room. He could see every detail of her body-stray wisps of hair across her forehead, wide brown eyes, small pixy nose....
She removed her blouse and bent forward slightly as she tried to unhook the white bra. She glanced at him occasionally and he saw there was no boldness about her decision. She wouldn't strip and fling herself before him with the wantonness of a tramp. She wasn't a tramp. She was half-frightened, half-reluctant. She removed the bra and he stared at her breasts-small large-nippled immature breasts.
"Janie, you shouldn't ... "
He walked toward her. As he moved closer, he could see the way her breasts rose and fell rapidly. Her large brown eyes were wide.
He stood a foot away from her. He wanted to reach out and make her stop. He didn't want her. He wanted Ellen. His mind chanted, I don't want you. I want Ellen, I don't want you. I want Ellen....
She removed her skirt and in another moment she had removed her panties. She stood entirely naked before him, her shoulders slightly hunched. She leaned against him and tilted her head upward, eyes closed.
"Janie...."
Her lips were parted, waiting to be kissed. A virgin waiting to be taken....
Passion exploded in his loins. He leaned down to kiss her, tasting the small wet sweetness of her mouth and his hands moved to her back, sliding down to her buttocks, cupping them briefly and then sliding on to her thighs. He explored the soft naked perfection of her body from her thighs to the large nipples of her breasts. Her nipples hardened against the palms of his hands as she swayed against him.
At the final moment when their naked bodies were locked together-at the final moment before mutual discovery when she seemed to raise upward from the bed-he felt as if a slice had been removed from time. He could remember nothing from the kiss to this moment, he could not remember undressing, he could not remember walking to the bed, he could not remember moving above her.
She had spread her legs, her small breasts heaving excitedly. One of her arms laid at her side and she held her other arm upraised, the hand curled at the back of his neck. He took one last look at the flawless virginal body and thrust downward. Her cry of pain ripped through the air.
As he felt the warm flatness of her stomach against his own stomach, the cry faded and she stiffened, her legs bending convulsively until her heels were almost against her buttocks. She moaned and her hands moved against his shoulders to push him away but there was no strength in her arms.
He couldn't stop. He moved through her moans of pain, through a tight warm sliding softness of an unbearable intensity he had never known before until at last, at the end of the journey, as if he had passed through a long dark tunnel, he reached a blinding nova of light and release.
The moans of pain became soft sobs. He held her in his arms and tried to comfort her. She wouldn't stop sobbing ... but her sobs abated slowly until he knew her pain had almost ended.
It only hurts that bad the first time, he thought. You must know that, Janie. You're old enough to know that, and if you know that, why are you crying?
He stifled a yawn.
His eyes slid to darkness.
He opened his eyes.
His eyes slid tight again, heavier.
Before he could open them he shivered and reached for the blankets. He wasn't under the blankets.
His heart hammered and he rolled off the bed. He'd fallen asleep!
He raced to the bedroom doorway and turned back again to dress hurriedly. The Luger still lay by the bed and he grabbed it, running into the hallway barefoot.
The front door was open. Wind had piled snow inside the doorway. He raced from room to room shouting, "Janie? Janie?" He went to the front door and stared out into the dark. He tried to close the door, his teeth chattering from the cold, but the snow had piled too high. With numbing hands he scraped the snow aside until he could close the door. Then he ran to the cellar.
As soon as he unlocked the door, he turned on the light.
Irene looked up from the bed, staring at him.
Ellen sat on the cot, her face white. She stared at him without speaking and he wondered if she had sat there most of the night waiting for him to come and take her to the bedroom as they had planned. What time was it now? He looked at his wristwatch and saw it was past midnight.
He'd been asleep for more than three hours!
Janie had escaped.
He slammed the door and locked it.
He turned and ran.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
In his search, he wandered in ever-widening circles away from the house. Once he found footprints in the snow and followed them for a while but then they were lost again. He couldn't stop shivering, his teeth chattered, the cold seemed to penetrate to his bones. He tried to keep the flashlight close to the ground so there would be no danger of anyone seeing the light. Whenever he crossed an open field where there was no need for the light, he turned it off.
His fingers tingled from the cold, they numbed until he could no longer manipulate the flashlight lever. He struck his hands against his legs to restore circulation but the pain rang a distant unheard alarm, his fingers remained numb and useless. Whenever he crossed a field or came near a road, he thrust the flashlight in his coat pocket to hide the light.
He wondered how low the temperature had fallen. It felt well below zero and he wondered if he could find Janie before she died from the cold. She had left the house without her coat. She hadn't gone to the cellar to get it. He'd checked the closets. She hadn't taken any of his coats. That meant she'd run from the house either in blind panic or in a frantic attempt to escape.
Without a coat, with no more protection than her skirt and blouse, the intense cold would kill her. If she didn't find help fast ... a passing car or a house. There wouldn't be any traffic on these roads. There would be traffic on 882 but that was miles away. She could freeze to death before she reached 882.
She wouldn't find any houses. Unless she found the Parker house. It was the closest, possibly the only place she could reach that would save her life. If she didn't find the Parker house, she would freeze to death before she reached any other shelter.
He cried when he thought of the sub-zero wind biting into her soft body. His tears froze and stung his eyes and cheeks. He ran when he had the strength to run and when he did not he walked. Once he stumbled and fell and crawled on his hands and knees, peering at the snow beneath him for signs of her passing. There were no footprints.
The snow had turned to white powder, the wind whipped huge billowing clouds and, when there were no clouds of snow drifting through the forest and across the fields, there remained a shifting of the surface snow that would hide any footprints almost instantly after they were made.
Skeletons of tree branches and brush lashed his face. He felt the occasional wetness of blood but only momentarily-his blood seemed to freeze as soon as it reached the surface of any wound.
He went to the Parker house. If Jane had reached there, there would be lights in the windows. If a half-dead girl stumbles into your house on a wintry night, you do not turn off the lights and go back to bed again. No. You call a doctor and then you call the police.
The doctor arrives and gives medical attention and arranges for an ambulance. The police arrive. The police ask questions. Then you are too excited to go to sleep again. Then you stay awake and drink coffee or a highball and talk about the half-dead girl.
With the idea that the Parkers might still be awake even if Janie had stumbled into their house long before, he completely circled the house. There were no lights, none. They were all sound asleep.
Janie hadn't reached the Parker house.
He headed north toward 882 with the idea that Janie might have headed that way if she had retained any sense of direction. But before he had moved more than a few yards, he heard a strange sound from the Parker house. He turned and saw the black shadow loping toward him. He quickened his pace but the black shadow loped easily, faster, shortening the distance between them.
He ran, lifting his knees high as he passed through a deep snowbank, his lungs burning with the effort, bright stars swimming before his eyes. He heard the vicious snarl and turned as the dog leaped and caught his arm. Sharp teeth tore through his coat and gouged his forearm. He fell off balance, rolling in the snow and the teeth clamped into his flesh. Needles of pain jabbed through the numbing cold and he gasped, "Trix!"
He almost struck at the dog to drive away those teeth but realized that might be fatal. "Trix! Trix!"
The needles of pain released his arm. The dog sniffed at his clothes and whimpered recognition.
Stan sat up in the snow, rubbing his arm. "It's me, Trix. Remember?"
Those summers when Jess Parker and he and Trix had hunted in the forest around the Parker house ... Jess had trained Trix to be half-watchdog, half-hunter. He remembered Trix had been vicious. He had seemed to tear rabbits apart from the sheer joy of killing.
Once a hobo had been found on a road near the Parker house. The hobo's throat hadn't been touched but his arms and legs had been torn badly. The hobo had bled to death. Jess had smoothed it with the police. A watchdog was not a killer, Jess had said, a watchdog was a protector. This was private property.
"You remember me, don't you, Trix?" He rose wearily. He stroked the dog's head, he began walking again. When he reached the top of a hill he saw Trix watching him as if wondering why he would be in the forest at this hour of the morning, then Trix loped back toward the shadowy hulk of the Parker house....
When he reached 882, he stayed off the road itself, walking through the brush a few yards from the road, close enough so he could see the random glare of headlights, close enough so he'd be able to see anyone walking on the shoulder of the road.
He couldn't lift his feet. He had to drag them through the snow. His lungs burned. His arm tingled. He wondered how badly Trix had hurt him. When he raised his arm to look at it in the moonlight, there was no blood on his glove, no blood on his wrist. No blood had soaked through his coat. Trix must have drawn blood-but not much.
He couldn't give up. He had to find Janie. She would die if he didn't find her. He thought, I can't stop. I can't stop. I can't stop.
Too late he saw the police car. It skidded onto the shoulder of the road so close he could see the policemen through the windshield. The car stopped. He heard the door slam and before he heard the shout hurled himself deeper into the forest.
They followed. He heard them as they crashed through the brush. He stumbled and fell and grayness washed over him. Beneath him the ground cracked and swayed. His feet were suddenly wet. He heard the gurgling of water and tried to rise and run again. All the strength had ebbed from his body. Slowly-with an agony of effort-he managed to turn on his side. He could see he'd fallen into a snowbank at least six feet deep.
Snowbank?
No. It was one of the narrow streams that wound through the forest. The water had frozen on the surface, the wind had piled snow on the ice. He'd fallen down a bank and landed in the stream. Partially. His feet had broken through the ice....
He tried to stop breathing. They were so close they could hear him if he breathed too loudly. He took one last look, saw that he was partially hidden by the snow he'd fallen into and closed his eyes to concentrate on silence. He closed his mouth. Breathing through his nostrils brought fresh fiery pain to his lungs. They wanted more oxygen than he could draw through his nostrils but it was quieter than breathing through his mouth.
He waited. He listened.
They crashed through the brush and it seemed they were almost walking on him. He had one advantage, he knew. The brush was so thick it would be difficult for them to spot his footprints.
"It was a man."
"With four legs?"
"I saw a man"
"It was a deer. You're jumpy. Jesus! Let's get in the car and call in. Maybe they got something new to work on. Christ, it's cold!" .
For an instant a triangle of light stabbed through the air above him, illuminating flecks of snow. The voices receded.
He thought, Cold?
It didn't seem cold any more. In his hole in the snow he felt warm and comfortable and sleepy. It would be easy to sleep he knew. A warm and comfortable soft white bed....
* * *
He began moving by degrees. First the flexing of a finger, then the flexing of a hand, then the flexing of an arm. He had rested. He had slept and, he knew, almost died. They would have found him much later. Maybe they wouldn't have found him until spring! His body would have thawed by then.
After he could move both arms, he rolled in the snow. The ice cracked again but he did not sink into the water. Carefully he burrowed through the snow, crawling until his body was flexible enough so that he could walk.
The sun had risen again. It glared at him from a ghostly gray sky. There was no warmth in it.
He staggered. He continually fell over the smallest obstacle. He couldn't raise his feet high enough. He couldn't walk right. He couldn't see right. The trees jumped and blurred. The snow wavered.
He knew what he'd do. He'd go to the house and eat and rest. But not for too long. He'd get warm again. He'd take some healthy slugs of whisky to numb the pain in his arm. Then he'd get in the car and drive over all the roads that led through the forest-every one of them, no matter how small it might be, no matter how old it might be, no matter how little-used.
He could cover a lot of territory in the car and cover it fast. Maybe he'd find Janie's footprints where she crossed a road. She must be dead, but now the main thing would be to find her body before the police found it. If the police found her body so close to his home, they'd be sure to connect her death with him.
They could fry him. First Emma, now Janie. Kidnapping and murder. He hadn't killed Emma or Janie with his own hands, but a good prosecuting attorney would make it seem as if he had. He shuddered. Kidnapping and a double murder. It wasn't one of those things where you could be on parole in ten years. It would be one of those things where they would kill you swiftly-or let you rot slowly behind the high gray walls....
* * *
Behind the glass walls of the Burger King, the men in the white uniforms moved woodenly around the stoves and ovens and counters, never seeming to hurry. Above the glass walls, the Burger King sat on a monstrous hamburger, grinning with all the idiocy of a Humpty Dumpty. Dull neon said in the center of his belly-15c.
Cars moved cautiously to and from the parking lot. Headlights blinked for service and amid the constant activity the only obvious sound was that of an occasional car door. A redhead in black stretch-pants and black wool sweater scurried from car to car, expertly balancing trays, counting change and forever smiling.
She smiled the widest when she greeted a customer upon taking his order or when she received a tip. When she went to a car to remove the tray from the window and there was no tip, the smile dwindled to a faint curvature of crimson lips, faintly dimpled cheeks.
The black stretch-pants left only a small area to the imagination-customers were treated to the flexing of her every muscle from waist to calf. When she returned to the counters behind the glass walls, her buttocks were a symphony of rippling black, her clothes were a form of nakedness.
The sky had turned gray, cloudless, marred only by a jet-stream in the stratosphere and a twinkle of sunlight on a distant helicopter. As Stan watched the jet-stream it vanished. The helicopter became a speck ... and vanished, too.
Hamburgers, french fries, a chocolate milkshake. The food and the warmth of the car had numbed his senses and dulled the barbs of pain in his body. He wished he could sit in the car forever and watch the tin-and-neon Burger King, the clear gray sky, the girl in the tight black pants.
He had driven over every road within a ten-mile radius of his house, doubling back over most of the roads. There were only two possibilities. Janie had died and her body lay somewhere hidden by the snow. Or-Janie had managed to reach help and was still alive. If she were still alive. If she were still alive, the police would find him before too long. Janie would be sure to tell them who had kidnapped her.
He remembered he had promised Amy he would phone her on Wednesday. He left the car and went to the phone booth built into one of the pastel stucco walls of the Burger King Amy answered the phone on the first ring.
"Stan?"
"What's wrong, Amy? You sound as if."
"Bob knows, Stan. Bob knows."
"Knows what?" Even as he asked the question, he knew what she meant.
"He knows about us. I told mother about the shotgun. I told her that was why you had stopped by to see me. She believed that part of it, Stan. She believed every word of it. But then...."
Amy began to cry hysterically. He waited, holding the phone a few inches from his ear. When it seemed she would never calm, he said, "Take it easy, Amy. Tell me what happened!"
"But then ... She thought that was what had brought us together. She started crying and I asked her why she was crying. She said she knew what you and I had done. I told her that was silly. I told her she had no reason to think anything like that. She told me what happened, Stan.
"Remember? We fell asleep that first day. We heard the children coming up the stairs. We thought mother had just brought them back ... She had brought them back before that. She had let them play outside and she came in the house. She called me and I didn't answer.
"She thought I had taken a nap ... so she came up to the bedroom. She saw us together on the bed while we were sleeping. She went downstairs again and when the children came in the house and wanted to see me, she tried to stop them from coming up the stairs, but they ran past her. She believed the part about the shotgun but she thinks that's what brought us together. I pleaded with her not to tell Bob.
"But she must have told Bob. He came home during his lunch hour today and got all the children dressed and took them somewhere. He didn't say where he was taking them, he just said he didn't want them to be here while he had a talk with me. He's coming back, Stan, I don't know what to do.
"He looked so mad ... He looked as if he could kill me ... I don't know why mother told him. She must be so old she doesn't understand Bob's knowing won't help anything. I don't know what to do!"
He listened for a few more minutes, holding the phone away from his ear. Amy's voice rose in volume, stretching toward hysteria, taut with fear. She cried and the crying made everything else incoherent.
"I'm sorry, Amy. I'm sorry it has to end this way."
There was no indication she heard or understood what he said. He placed the phone in its cradle and stumbled out of the phone booth. His legs felt stiff. He brushed against cars without seeing them.
When he moved between two of the cars, he almost walked into the redheaded waitress. She pressed against the fender of a Buick, juggling a tray in one hand and staring at him. He climbed into his car and swerved out of the Burger King exit, almost colliding with a truck.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Amy Jarrell sat on the bottom step of the stairway and waited. The house was too quiet without the children. She wished they were in the house again, as noisy as ever. If they were in the house again, she wouldn't tell them to be quiet like she'd always done. She'd let them make all the noise they wanted, let them turn on the television as loud as they wanted.
She heard Bob come through the kitchen door and she heard the dishes breaking. She heard a heavy sound as if he'd overturned the kitchen table, other sounds as if he'd picked up the chairs and thrown them against the wall. He came into the hallway and, without looking at her, tore the mirror off the wall and threw it against the floor.
He picked the vase of artificial flowers from its stand and threw it against the scattered fragments of the mirror and then-as if she were one more thing in the house to be picked up and broken-he came to her and slapped her across the face.
He hit her in the stomach-not with all his strength but with a force that took her breath away. She rose, clutching at her stomach, and he slapped her again, rocking her head from side to side, bringing tears of pain to her eyes, the stickiness of blood to her mouth. When she collapsed to her hands and knees, he kicked her arms from beneath her so that, without their support, she sprawled forward across the hallway rug.
She felt the tip of his shoe pressing against the nape of her neck and forcing her face against the rug. The pressure increased until sparkles of light danced before her eyes, until she thought he would break her neck, then he lifted her from the floor and held her against the wall. He shook her as if she were a rag doll and when he took his hands away, she had to lean against the wall. The hallway seemed to spin and his face blurred before her.
She waited for him to speak. She closed her eyes and in a few minutes she heard the kitchen door close. She opened them and stared at the empty hallway. Bob had left. No accusations, no threats, no discussion.
She went to the closet and got the broom and dustpan. She swept up the fragments of mirror, the fragments of the vase. She remembered they had bought the mirror as a wedding anniversary present for themselves, buying it jointly to decorate the house instead of buying separate gifts for each other. She'd forgotten....
And the vase. She remembered now. That was another wedding anniversary gift they'd bought.
She dumped the remains of the mirror and the vase into the wastepaper can in the hallway. When she went into the kitchen, she remembered they'd bought the dishes as an anniversary present one year to replace the older ones. The table had been another anniversary gift and the chairs another....
He had broken all the dishes but the table and the chairs were undamaged. She swept up all the broken dishes, straightened the table and the chairs.
She went to the hall closet and touched her coat. She leaned into the closet and buried her head in the coat, pulling it tight around her head and sobbing into the furry warmness. She wanted to put on the coat and leave.
She couldn't.
She was tied to Bob. Bob was tied to her. The children were tied to both of them. There were too many knots and they were all prisoners tied together by the knots of children and the years they'd lived together.
Maybe that was what Bob had wanted to tell her by breaking all the wedding anniversary gifts. Maybe he'd wanted to tell her they couldn't break their marriage just because she'd cheated. Maybe he'd wanted to tell her they had gone too far to get a divorce. Maybe he'd wanted to tell her he wanted to erase all that had been and start over again.
She pulled the coat tight against her ears to deaden the sound of her sobbing. She realized Bob would never ask for a divorce. She knew him. He was gentle on the surface but there was an undercurrent of violence just beneath-maybe it was that undercurrent of violence that had made him become a policeman.
She knew she had one more chance. As she had swept up the pieces of the mirror, the vase, and the dishes, now she had to sweep up the pieces of their marriage and try again. Bob would never ask for a divorce. No. She knew him.
If she ever cheated again and if Bob ever found out, he would kill her. She knew that.
She trembled with a new kind of fear.
Bob loved her. If she ever cheated again, Bob would kill her because he loved her....
* * *
When Stan heard the knock at the door, he knew it would be Bob Jarrell. He had been waiting ... sitting and studying the Luger. He had toyed with the idea of ending everything with one bullet.
And realized he had too much courage to take that abrupt end.
Suicide was a coward's way, an easy way.
He jammed the Luger behind a cushion.
He opened the door.
"Come in, Bob. I knew you were coming. I've been waiting."
He stood aside as Bob came into the room. He watched as Bob closed the door and when Bob turned toward him, he hardly saw the blur of the fist. He moved his head but his reflexes were too slow and a fire spread from the side of his jaw.
He had almost fallen. He stepped backward and rubbed his jaw.
"Bob, I want you to know it's all my fault. You can't blame Amy. She was lonely. I took advantage of-"
He couldn't breathe. He was suddenly doubled up, clutching at his stomach. He looked down at the tips of his shoes and while he watched them he felt the new burst of fire in his jaw. He heard the splintering of his teeth and he rolled backward over a chair.
He struggled to his hands and knees, shaking his head to clear the fuzziness, he saw the shoe swing under his head and up beneath his chest. The point of the shoe caught him squarely in the chest and lifted him up from the floor. Needles jabbed into his heart and lungs and he rolled across the floor.
When he stopped rolling, he came up fast and caught Bob with a long upward swing that started at the floor. He put all his weight and strength behind it as he came up, aiming for the chin but instead saw his knuckles plow squarely between Bob's eyes. He felt the cartilage of nose break and his knuckles were sprayed with blood before he could withdraw his hand.
He tried to swing again but Bob came in close, blocking the swing and jabbing at his stomach. His stomach felt brittle. Then it seemed to fall apart. He slid to his knees and, while he tried to stand up again and strike back again, he felt the punches at the base of his neck.
He collapsed to the floor and was vaguely aware that Bob had rolled him on his back, was sitting across his legs and making carefully calculated blows at his chest. His ribs creaked. Bob was a dim shape far above and it seemed he wanted to hit every rib and see if he could bend it without breaking it. When he saw Bob standing above him, his chest was a mass of agony as if every rib had been broken.
He saw Bob lean forward. Blood had streaked from the broken nose, across his lips and down his chin. Globules of blood dripped from his chin and his bloodied lips twisted into a smile.
"You should leave, Stan. You should leave this crummy shack, you should move somewhere else. If you stay here-if you stay here in this crummy shack and I know you're here I'll be tempted to visit you again."
He closed his eyes and when he opened them again he saw that Bob had left. He rose to a sitting position. The movement caused a knife of pain in his chest and he wondered if Bob had broken a rib. Breathing became difficult. He concentrated on breathing and felt the pain grow sharper when he inhaled. That could be a broken rib. He felt the spot carefully with the tips of his fingers.
The slightest touch made the pain sharper but he could not feel the outline of a broken rib. Maybe a fractured rib, he decided. Just a fractured rib. What's a fractured rib? Nothing. See a doctor, get a little tape on it, in a few days you'll be as good as new.
He went to the bathroom and washed his face. For a moment the pain crushed his chest and he couldn't breathe. He felt his legs weaken and he leaned on the sink for support. If I black out, he told himself, I'll push myself away from the sink as soon as I feel it coming. I don't want to fall down on the sink and hit my chin.
Breathing came easier. He realized he was learning to inhale shallowly and quickly, barely moving the rib cage because he wasn't expanding his lungs fully, lessening the pressure on the damaged ribs, lessening the pain.
He studied the face in the mirror and he decided Bob was right. He should move out of this house, he should move out of the state. Maybe to California. There wasn't anything here. Not any more. This is a small state with a lot of opportunities-but with a lot of men to meet every opportunity. A small pond with a lot of fish. Everything is crowded. There are a few farms, few forests, few parks. They build more and more factories, they build more and more houses. But there is nothing here. It is a wasteland of factories. Your father told you a long time ago there were better places to live. He didn't move because he was too old and when you get older it's harder to tear up all the roots and plant them somewhere else. Take Bob's advice go somewhere. California....
He wondered if Ellen would go with him and the thought startled him.
But ... why not? Maybe she would. She had been planning to divorce her husband. She had told him that. She liked him. Maybe you couldn't call it love, but she did like him. She had willingly and eagerly made love with him, she had asked if she could sleep with him.
She had no reason to stay in Trenton with a husband she hated. He could let her leave this house, he could let her return to her husband and she would, sooner or later, leave that husband. Maybe she would go with him ... to California.
He went to the cellar and unlocked the door. "Janie is dead," Ellen said. "They found her at the-"
It happened too quickly. He realized that Ellen had heard the news over the radio and although he had expected Janie to be found sooner or later, the sudden announcement stunned him. Irene had moved near the door. He saw the swing of her arm, saw the red shoe in her hand. He saw the pattern of the lizard skin and then the pattern became lost in the red blur of the shoe itself.
Pain cracked into his skull and as he brought the Luger upward and pressed it against the softness of Irene's stomach, he knew she had struck him with the heel of the shoe. He would kill her. Without hesitation. Pull the trigger. Send a bullet tearing through that soft woman-belly....
But his arm was strangely numb. The gun seemed too heavy to hold, the trigger too hard to pull....
Irene was shouting at him but the words seemed hollow and far away. He saw her arm swing again and again he saw the red of the shoe come toward his head. The shoe looked different and he knew it looked different because now there were two shades of red on the shoe-the new red was the red of his blood.
He felt the impact of the shoe against his head again and suddenly he was leaning. He leaned too far and he was falling. He felt his face against the round softness of Irene's breasts, but she stepped aside and then he was falling a great distance toward nowhere....
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
He had spent a vacation in Las Vegas and in a casino he had stood near one of the roulette wheels. He hadn't gambled himself, but he had watched. There were beautiful sleek women with bright eyes and expensive gowns. There were men in well-tailored suits, men with the look of authority and wealth and wisdom and experience.
He had noticed, watching the flow of the chips across the table, the endless whirl of the wheel, that there were two kinds of losers. Some lost their money immediately. Others-one in particular that he remembered-won for awhile before they lost.
The one he would always remember had been a tall white-haired man with a thin white moustache. A shapely young and bosomy blonde had stood close by his side, smiling and occasionally holding his arm. Sometimes he asked her to place the chips, sometimes he told her where to place them, sometimes he allowed her to use her own judgment. The man had deeply tanned skin, hard calloused hands, cold gray eyes, the look of a man who had risen to wealth by hard work and sheer determination.
For awhile everything went right for the white-haired man. A mountain of chips appeared and grew larger and larger. The young blonde drank heavily and, in a drunken, almost hysterical happiness, stood next to the man in such a way that her breasts pressed against his arm, her stomach and loins against his thigh. At times, when the croupier raked chips toward them, she squirmed erotically against the man's arm and thigh in a sensual promise.
Then there came a turning point and things began to go wrong. The mountain of chips grew smaller and smaller. The white-haired man bet more and more heavily to regain what he'd lost. Finally the chips disappeared altogether.
The white-haired man appeared dazed, unbelieving. The young blonde had disappeared. He glanced at the crowd around the table as if looking for her, then drew a small nickel-plated automatic, placing the barrel in his mouth. When he squeezed the trigger, the back of his neck burst apart. On the other side of the casino there were men and women who never knew what had happened, men and women who never stopped gambling.
He was like that white-haired man. Everything had gone right. He had reached a turning point. Everything had started to go wrong. Janie had escaped. In his search for Janie he had stumbled across Trix, policemen had seen him in the forest, Bob Jarrell had attacked him, Irene had surprised him and now Irene would kill him. His luck had run out. He'd lost all the chips.
The floor seemed tilted at an odd angle. Blood blinded one eye but from the other he could see the floor, one of his hands upon it, Irene's legs, Ellen's legs. He tried to shove himself up from the floor but his muscles were rubber. He heard Irene and Ellen shouting but he could not turn his heard to look up at their faces. He stared at their legs as they flashed before him-soft, curving, nyloned legs that danced a strange pattern.
The Luger barked, a muffled bark, the dance of nyloned legs ended. A heavy object fell across him and only one pair of legs remained in his range of vision. A woman screamed, the scream became harsh sobbing, the sobbing dwindled into silence.
He rested, then slowly and carefully slid from beneath the object that had fallen across him. He rose to a sitting position and wiped at the blood in his eye. He took the handkerchief from his pocket and wiped at the blood.
Irene had been shot through one breast, her blood a sharp red contrast to the pearl gray dress. The Luger lay beside her. Ellen leaned against the wall.
"She wanted to kill you," Ellen said. "She wanted to kill you." She began to cry again. One of her hands flew to her throat and uttered a simple piercing scream....
He had quieted her. She lay curled in his arms on the bed, kitten-soft and yielding. She remained still so long he thought she had fallen asleep but suddenly she repeated, "She wanted to kill you."
"I know. She wanted to kill me. You tried to stop her. You fought for the gun and it went off. An accident."
"No, Stan, it wasn't exactly an accident. She pointed the gun at you. I tried to get it away from her but I couldn't. I grabbed the gun and shoved it until it pointed at her shoulder. I tried again to get it away from her and when I couldn't I pulled down on her finger that was over the trigger.
"The gun was aimed at her shoulder. I thought it would just hurt her and make her drop the gun. But while I pulled down on her finger she twisted her wrist and when the gun went off it was pointed at her chest."
"It's still an accident."
"I killed her! I-" The sobbing came again. He held her closer and tried to comfort her. Again she was silent so long he thought she had fallen asleep.
"Stan what are you going to do now?"
"I've been thinking about moving to California."
"Will you take me with you?" He turned on the bed and looked at her. He remembered all the times they had made love and all the times they had talked. There was something between them. Maybe it couldn't be called love. Maybe there was no name for it. Maybe it was something that fell somewhere between love and friendship. She wasn't afraid of him-afraid of him the way Janie and Emma had been. She hadn't hated him the way Irene had hated him.
He said slowly, "Can you imagine how it will be if you go with me?"
"I can imagine. I'm sure my photograph has been sent to the police in all the nearer states. The newspapers have probably printed my photograph all over the country. I would have to disguise myself somehow. I could dye my hair. I could do a few other things like changing the style I wear my hair. I could do a few things with make-up."
"No matter how much you disguised yourself, somebody might recognize you."
"But we'd have one thing in our favor. Everybody will think that Ellen Porter is dead. Nobody will be looking for Ellen Porter to be walking around California or any other state. I think we could go to California and live there the rest of our lives without anyone ever recognizing me. If anyone did ever recognize me, it would probably be a freak kind of accident, somebody with an awfully good memory who'd seen my photograph in the newspapers."
"There would always be a chance of having that kind of accident."
"So what?" She tilted her head and looked at him, her eyes narrowing. "Are you some kind of pessimist?"
"It's the truth, it isn't pessimism. There would always be a chance of having that kind of accident. And if somebody ever did recognize you, they'd find me and they'd know I was the one who had kidnapped you ... and Irene and Janie and Emma. It would all be so goddamned obvious. You wouldn't have to say a word, they would know it as soon as they recognized you, as soon as they found out I had lived so close to the scene of the kidnapping."
"But ... if they recognized me, couldn't I claim to have amnesia or something?"
"That wouldn't help. They'd use lie-detectors or drugs to dig the truth out of you."
"Maybe it isn't important. I'll bet in a few months everybody will forget there ever was such a person as Ellen Porter or Irene Hughes or Janie Joyce or Emma McCall."
"They won't forget. Four women kidnapped and killed. The bodies of two found, but the bodies of the other two still not found-it's the kind of case they keep alive forever. I think maybe you should go back to your husband. Tell them you have amnesia, tell them anything, but give me a few days to-"
"I want to go with you, Stan."
"You wouldn't have much of a future with me. I've killed three women and when the police find me, they'll-"
"You haven't killed anybody!"
"Three women are dead because of what I did."
"It wasn't your fault! Emma killed herself. Janie was killed by the weather. I killed Irene."
"Maybe I'm not exactly a murderer, but I am a kidnapper. The police could send me to prison for a long, long time. No, you wouldn't have much of a future with me. You should...."
She buried her face against his chest and he felt the wetness of her tears at the same instant that he heard her sobbing. Her hands were like claws as she clung to him and there was an unnatural stiffness to her body.
"Take me with you, Stan. I have to go with you. I love you. Maybe it sounds stupid and crazy, but I love you. I don't know how it happened or why it happened. Who can ever explain how or why they fall in love with somebody, or who can tell you the exact moment they were actually sure they were in love? I never loved John. I told you that. I can't go back to him. It would be like going back to a kind of prison. I couldn't stand it. Take me with you!"
He held her gently, carefully, because suddenly she had become the most valuable thing in the world ... a fragile thing that would break if handled roughly. He felt a moistness in his eyes, a moistness that made the room wavery and indistinct. He felt a strange tightness in his chest, a tightness that extended to his throat, and he could not recall when he had felt exactly this way before.
He cleared his throat and said softly, "I love you, Ellen...."
* * *
He prepared the grave at the roots of a red maple, digging carefully in the hard ground to damage the tree as little as possible. The red maple had grown forty feet. With the passing years it would grow to be eighty. He had carved his initials in the trunk with the first penknife his father gave him. Over the passing years his initials had grown with the tree.
He chose it because the initials would identify the grave. He knew he'd come back again to see the grave. If he were able to come back....
He spent two days excavating, burrowing down into the ground until he formed a narrow tunnel almost directly beneath the center of the tree. He severed a few roots and forced aside all that he could. He worked tediously with the shovel and the trowel so there was no danger of killing the tree or toppling it.
He knew he could kill the maple by carelessness, by severing too many of the roots. But he knew there was no danger of toppling the tree unless he severed all the roots. He had uprooted a much smaller tree during his childhood and learned a tree's weight is distributed upon its hundreds of roots, not upon one central location.
When he finished, he carried Irene to the grave and placed her beneath and between the roots. He packed the dirt when he filled the grave, resisting the temptation to remove the blanket and take one last look at the beautiful face, the beautiful body.
He felt no emotion. Irene had wanted to kill him. She had tried to kill him while he lay helpless. He had felt regret at Emma's suicide, regret at the waste of Janie's death. Irene's death left him empty of emotion. He packed the dirt by pressing it down with the soles of his boots. When he was finished he walked a distance away and sat on a hill to smoke a cigarette and study the tree.
He could have buried her in an open stretch of earth between the trees. But then the ground would have sunk in the spring, the grass above the grave would have died, the grave would have been obvious to any searcher.
Searchers wouldn't look for a grave beneath a forty foot red maple tree. They wouldn't think of it as a possibility, they wouldn't realize such a thing could be done. The ground might sink slightly, but the sinking would not be so obvious near the base of a tree.
The grass around the trunk might not grow in the spring, but the lack of grass would not be too obvious. The grass never grew quite right around the trunks of the larger trees-the roots seemed to draw all the strength from the ground for themselves. Most often, when grass grew near the trees, it became short, downy.
He remembered Irene had liked red-she'd worn a red coat, red shoes, she'd carried a red pocketbook. Her grave would be red. In early spring, before the leaves appeared, the blunt red buds would open and clusters of red-and-orange flowers would hang from the reddish twigs. As the leaves unfolded, they would be reddish, gradually turning to green, a paler green beneath, but the veins of the leaves and the leafstalks would keep their reddish tint all summer....
