The Anatomy of Violence (4 page)

As I clicked along the weed-bordered sidewalk, the noise of the club faded. The music sounded almost good as the distance grew.

A breeze brushed my face and soothed my ragged nerves.

Richard always said to me, “You’re an emotional sponge, Laurie. You soak up the frustrations of others and think they’re yours.” Well he’d certainly filled the sponge tonight. Picking a fight with Jules. No, I admired him for that, but it was crazy. Jules owned the paper Rich worked on.

Would he lose his job? I’d talk to Jules tomorrow.

I heard a car slow behind me, then surge forward. The tail lights flared, then the car disappeared around a corner.

My mind wandered as I walked, I looked at the sky; I threw back my head and laughed at the fuzzy halo around the moon. A halo meant rain, didn’t it?
It rained when Eileen was killed, a year ago tonight.
I shook my head to clear it, but the picture of her lying in the pool of rain water remained.

My steps quickened. Here the houses thinned out; ahead they ended and the street was bracketed by the empty ballpark and an abandoned lumberyard. I crossed the dim yellow perimeter of a street light, clicked rapidly through a block-long shadow, and entered another.

My shadow loped up from behind, lay beside me for an instant, then darted forward. It raced dimly along the board fence of the ball park. I heard a rustling noise as I passed the black shadow of the entrance.

Then a hand clamped over my mouth. I heard a grunt and smelled stale tobacco. I curved my fingers and twisted, trying to face him. But his arm was a steel clamp holding me to him. Like a striking snake, his hand darted upward beneath my dress. I heard the top of my panties give with a rubbery tear, and a fingernail raked my stomach.

I jerked my head and bit on an acrid finger. I lashed backward with my foot, and heard a grunt as it struck something. Then my legs were jerked from beneath me and I fell to the sidewalk, striking my head. I strained to hold my consciousness but it slipped away.

The next thing I knew was the pain going down my legs and up my back. It had the rhythm of a headache—the constant ache, then the sharp stab of pain with each heartbeat.

I opened my eyes and saw a mottled shadow above me, barely visible against complete blackness. Each thrust of pain, I noticed, was marked by a movement of the shadow and a hiss of breath. I caught the sick-sweet smell of liquor and understood what was happening.
How long would it take?

I tried to scream, but there was something over my mouth. I tried to move my hands, but they were taped together beneath me. I dug my heels into the dirt and pushed myself backwards. Movement ceased above me and a strained, muffled voice sounded in my ear. “Please don’t move now.”

I pushed harder and twisted. His arms went under me and tightened, forcing the air from my lungs. My ribs popped, and pain laced my brain like red cobwebs. The breathing quickened.

Then the weight was gone, and the voice sounded in my ear. “Do you know who I am? Please nod your head yes or no.”

I felt his hand against my cheek. He sounded like a child, but I knew it was a man, talking in the precise spaced words of a young boy reading aloud in class. He was disguising his voice, which meant I might have recognized his real voice. I shook my head from side to side against his hand.
I don’t know you, but I will …

“Then I will turn you loose, if you promise not to tell what has happened. Do you promise?”

He thinks like a little boy, too. What good is my promise now?
I nodded against the hand Then his hand was beneath me, ripping off the tape. I lay without moving. They were nearly free when he stopped. “Maybe you plan to follow me.”

I shook my head violently from side to side.

“Yes, you would. I’m sorry, Laurie.”

I tore my hand free and clawed at his face. My fingers caught in a cloth he’d tied over his face and I ripped it off. Then something smashed against my jaw.

Half-conscious, I heard the rip of tape and felt him bind my hands against my ankles. I tried to struggle, but my muscles wouldn’t work, and I felt consciousness slipping away again.
Oh, God, he’ll do it again. And I can’t stop him, can’t stop …

Then the crushing weight returned, and his hand squeezed my throat. “I’m sorry to kill you, Laurie. I really am sorry, Laurie …”

The last words echoed down a deep well:
Sorry, Laurie, Sorrylaurie, sorilorisorilori
… It became a shrill whistle, then ended. I seemed to have floated out of the well, up to an altitude where there was no sound and no air to breathe. I thought I could hear a little boy sobbing.

I
WAS SURE
of one thing as I turned in at the house—we’d meet again. When no corpse was found and no rape reported he’d get curious and look me up. Eventually.

I’ll carry a gun in my purse and I’ll kill him.
I’d never wanted anything quite so badly. It made my career seem like a girlish whim.

Dirt prickled inside my stockings and trickled down my back as I fluffed my hair. I felt as though I’d been dragged across plowed ground against the furrow.

I left the sidewalk and called softly, “Hey, George.”

A fat Dalmation bounded from beneath a fir shrub and sniffed the hem of my dress. I rubbed his neck. “Don’t give me away, Georgie.” George waddled back and lay down beneath the shrub as I peered through the living-room window.

Gwen, the woman daddy married a year after mother died, sprawled in an armchair and watched the late late show. The screen highlighted her pretty oval face as she drank from a beer can, drew on a cigaret, then let the smoke trickle through her nostrils. Gwen was thirteen years older than I. We shared the house like two unfriendly workers assigned to the same bench.

I watched daddy through the study window as he worked on the skeleton of the Indian he’d dug up on his last vacation. His big knobby hands gripped a tiny shellac brush, and his head bent so low that a bush of iron gray hair nearly touched his shellac. I could reconstruct the evening from the adding machine and pile of sales receipts on a desk, work, then escape into the hobby-world of anthropology.

He wouldn’t even know the time. I slipped off my shoes, crept silently upstairs and undressed as I walked down the hall. I grabbed a terrycloth robe from my room and raced for the bathroom.

I stepped out of the shower ten minutes later and began toweling my hair. My fingers touched the throbbing lump where my head had struck the sidewalk. I began blotting gently, aware that my entire body ached.

Bruises … my flesh would never keep my secret; within a day each bump would look like a carbon smudge on white paper. I looked in the mirror. My right jaw already had the swollen, velvet sheen of a ripe plum. My throat was milky blue, and three dark shadows formed a triangle around the nipple of my left breast.

I stepped back for a full view. A fiery welt curved down my stomach, lost itself in black hair, then continued down the inside of my leg. I turned and looked over my shoulder. My back was clear except for pimple like blemishes where dirt had punctured the skin and a half dozen dime-sized bruises that mottled my buttocks.

Lord, he must have been insane.

Make-up would cover the jaw and throat. I didn’t plan to display the rest. I pulled on my robe and returned to my room.

Daddy came in as I was sitting down to my vanity.

“Trying to sneak in?” He laughed before he spoke to show he was joking. He folded himself onto my bed. “After this afternoon, I expected you to be carried home on the shoulders of admirers.”

I held the robe tight around my throat and turned my face so he couldn’t see the bruise. The overhead light was bright, but at least he’d left off his glasses.

“My admirers probably need to be carried home themselves, right now.” My voice sounded strange to me.

“Yes. Well, I have a consolation.” He fumbled open a long, flat box and I saw the dull gleam of pearls as he walked toward me. “These were once a source of considerable irritation to the bivalve mollusk, but you may like them. Stand up.”

I couldn’t let him see my throat. “Could we do it later?”

“Well …” I saw a flicker of disappointment in his eyes.

“I mean, shouldn’t I wear them against a dress?”

“You’ll go well with pearls all by yourself. Your mother did. Just let go of your collar—”

“Ben.” Gwen was in the doorway, standing straight and faintly belligerent, the way short people seem to do around taller people. “Ben, if it rains, I opened your study window. That stinking shellac gives me a headache.”

“All right,” said daddy.

Her bright green eyes darted around the room, then lit on me. “You should wear a bruise often, Laurie. It does things for you.”

“I … fell.”
Get out, Gwen.

“Must have been quite a fall.” Gwen’s voice was flat and toneless. “I see you tore your bra.”

I looked down. The damaged bra was on the floor beside the piled clothing. “Daddy—”

Too late. He picked it up, then the dress. Dirt sprinkled the floor as he shook it. He dropped it and asked through tight lips, “Where’s Richard?”

“I don’t know. Home, maybe.”

“I’ll find him.” His jaw muscles jumped as he started out.

“Wait. It wasn’t Rich.”

He turned.
“What
wasn’t Rich? What
happened?”

“I can’t tell you.” I felt my eyes burning.

“I’m waiting, Laurie.” His voice was low and toneless.

I put my hands on his shoulders and leaned my head against his chest, but he was rigid. “Don’t ask me, please.”

He held me away from him, and his thumbs dug into my shoulders. “Laurie, you came in with your clothes torn and your face bruised. You’ve had some trouble. I can’t just close my eyes and forget it. Tell me.”

If I didn’t tell he’d probe for weeks, or months as he did for his skeleton, unearthing a bone here and there until he had it all. “I was raped, Daddy.”

For an instant the color left his face. “Who did it?”

“I don’t know.”

His expression remained frozen. “Tell it from the beginning.”

I told the story without inflection and watched the lines deepen around his mouth. When I finished he rubbed his hand across his face and ran his fingers through his hair. Then he got up and strode out without a word.

Gwen and I found him in his room rummaging in his dresser drawer.

“What is it, Ben?” asked Gwen. “Where are you going?”

He took out the .38 pistol he used when he carried station receipts. “To the ballpark.”

“He’s gone, Daddy. I heard him drive away.”

“Which direction?”

“I don’t know.”

He lowered himself to the edge of his bed, his fingers white around the gun butt. “There must be something …”

“There’s nothing you can do, Daddy.”

Gwen spoke. “Yes, there is. You can put away that gun before it goes off.”

He looked down in surprise, then dropped it in the drawer as a man might dispose of a dead rat. I wondered if it would fit my purse.

“Do you realize, Laurie, that I was prepared to take a man’s life just then. Without a trial?” He laced his hands over his forehead and squeezed. When he looked at me again his face was smooth. “Thank God he wasn’t here. This is something for the police to handle.”

“No!” Gwen and I spoke at once. Gwen continued. “It’s done now. Why let the whole town know?”

It was the wrong thing to say. I saw his lips set and knew he’d made up his mind. “Gwen, does privacy matter now?”

“It matters to me!” Her eyes blazed. “You know what kind of law we have in this town. Did they find Eileen’s murderer? No, but her folks had to leave town to lead a decent life again. Well, this is my town and I don’t intend to leave.”

“Gwen …” He adopted the tone of an adult telling a child why he shouldn’t cross the street. “You’re complicating what is to me a simple decision. Rape is socially accepted among the Australian aborigines as part of the marriage ceremony. In our society it is a crime. Crimes must be reported to the police.” He strode out and his feet clattered on the stairs.

I caught him before he started dialing. “Daddy, let’s think about it a little more.”

He paused and looked up. “It’s a thinking man’s misfortune that he knows so many ways to do a thing, and never decides which course to follow. We haven’t much time. Do you want the man found?”

“We can find him ourselves.”

He shook his head. “We aren’t detectives, Laurie. We can’t afford to hire detectives. The police may be heavy-handed, but maybe that’s what we need. I don’t care if they rip this town open like a sack of garbage. Maybe the stink will attract this …
beast!”
He started dialing, and I saw his hand trembling.

I was getting dressed when the police came. They left again at once and took daddy with them. I lay down to wait and fatigue hit me like a sandbag dropped from the ceiling.

I awoke to a rustling noise. Gwen was stuffing my chiffon formal into a laundry bag with quick, angry thrusts. She gave me a sullen look as I stood up. “You should be doing this, not me. That detective found your panties in the ballpark and wants the rest of your clothes. He wants to see you, too.”

I rolled the sleep from my mouth with my tongue and went to the mirror. I looked terrible.

“Laurie, did you take a shower?”

“Of course I took a shower, Gwen.” I spread powder on my jaw and throat. “Why?”

“That detective said he’d get fingernail scrapings— skin, you know, and hair? Well, I said you’d taken a bath and he said it wouldn’t be any good then.” Her tone was triumphant, then penitent. “Honest to God, Laurie, I didn’t know this deal was so serious, or I’d never given you away.”

“It’s done now, Gwen.” I got up and took the laundry bag she held out. “Aren’t you coming?”

“No.” Her mouth turned down at the corners. “I’ve had all of that detective I can stand.”

Daddy met me downstairs and took the bag. He looked haggard. “I wanted to let you rest, Laurie, but Lieutenant—”

“Koch is the name,” said a voice that seemed to come from a cave. Lieutenant Koch overflowed an easy chair. His face was in shadow. “We checked on your car, Miss Crewes.” Koch leaned forward and light struck his face. Fat cheeks and a vast billowing chin threatened to inundate his oddly delicate features. “The rotor cap was missing.”

“Really?” He made the statement sound like an accusation, and I felt an urge to say I hadn’t taken it. But I had no idea what a rotor cap was. “Does that mean something?”

“A rotor cap isn’t lost accidently.” He paused to draw on a cigaret stuck in his mouth and exhaled without removing it. “You take off the distributor cap to get to it.”

I filled up another pause. “Yes?”

“
Somebody—”
he leaned on the word, “made sure you walked home.
Somebody
wanted
you.
Not just any girl.”

“I gathered that, Lieutenant. He used my name.”

He leaned back. “You’re very astute, Miss Crewes. What else did he say?”

I told him all I remembered. But there was a mental numbness around parts of it.

“So you didn’t see him,” he said.

“No.”

“And he disguised his voice.”

“Yes.”

Lieutenant Koch studied me while the ash of his cigaret grew long and dropped off. Didn’t he believe me, or was this an effect he used to make witnesses tell more than they’d planned? My toes curled inside my moccasins. Lieutenant Koch was a strong man; a smart man, I thought. He could find the man for me—if he wanted to.

“It was like a boy reciting,” I said finally. “If I heard him do that—”

“Good idea!”

He slammed his hands on the arms of the chair and levered himself erect with surprising speed. He moved toward the door and his great buttocks rolled under his trousers. The suit fit like a laundry bag. “Let’s go to the station and hear them recite.”

Daddy stood up. “You already have suspects?”

Koch edged gingerly through the front door. “I never drag out a case, Mister Crewes. We started bringing in drunks right after you called. Now we’ll haul them out of the tank for your daughter to see.”

They hauled them out and stood them in the police garage, and their sour breaths mingled with oily, dusty auto smells.

Koch told me to point out those I’d seen earlier that night. I saw the man with the postage-stamp moustache who’d grabbed me as I left the club. Now both hands were busy holding up his beltless trousers.

“Lieutenant,” he said when Koch came up, “I have a right to know why I’m being held.”

“Why, sure you do.” Koch turned to me. “Howie wants to know why he’s being held.”

“I don’t think he’s the one, Lieutenant. He’s … not big enough. And he was in the club when I left.”

We passed two men who stood with their eyes down, then a pair of bold, green eyes met mine. I saw the angry, flaring nose and the lock of waxy hair that hung on his forehead. A policeman held each arm.

“He was with Ann tonight,” I told Koch.

“Who’s Ann?”

“A girl who used to be a friend of mine.”

Koch pushed his face close to the boy’s. “Where you from, blondie? You’re not local.”

The boy knotted his jaws and didn’t speak. Koch turned to the sergeant. “Is he a tiger?”

“A rabbit, Lieutenant. Keeps wanting to run.”

“What about him, Miss Crewes?”

I saw the ridged stomach muscles through his torn tee-shirt. His hands were broad and thickly calloused on the palms; scarred and reddened on the knuckles. “Well … he wasn’t in the club when I left.”

Koch nodded. “Cuff him and bring him into the office.”

The office held a massive table and two chairs. Koch half-sat on the table and waved daddy and me to the chairs. “Maybe Miss Crewes would rather wait outside for a minute. He may be difficult.”

Daddy cleared his throat. “Yes, I think you’d better, Laurie.”

“No! I want—” I caught myself. “It’ll be simpler if I stay.”

Koch gave me a slow, heavy-lidded smile and I began to dislike him. They brought in the boy with his big hands cuffed in front of him and pushed him before Koch.

“Now listen, lad.” Koch’s voice was soft and sounded faintly amused. “You fought the police officers when they tried to put you away. All you got for your trouble was a bruise and a red nose. Now if you fight me—” He tapped his knuckles on the massive table. “You may not have a nose. Ever watch them stretch out a slab of meat and pound it to a pulp in a butcher shop?”

The boy stared straight ahead, his lips tight. Koch seemed hardly to move his hand, but I heard a sharp crack and saw the boy’s head jerk. His nose dripped blood.

“I asked,” said Koch in the same soft voice, “if you ever saw them pound meat in a butcher shop.”

“Yes.” The voice barely reached me.