Dancing with the Dead (20 page)

“You really are empathetic.” His gentleman’s voice dripped appreciation, admiration, making her think of magnolias and mint juleps, though she had no idea how a mint julep tasted. “You’re so very compliant.”

“Is that good?” The little girl in her, begging for approval.

“In some women, yes.”

Had Danielle been compliant? “If you need help again, you will call me, won’t you?”

“Of course. I can trust you, Mary.”

“You can, Rene.” It was the first time she’d called him by his first name, been that familiar. “Honestly, you can trust me.”

“When this is over, Mary . . .”

She waited in the silent stillness of her apartment, her thoughts drifting in the abyss of the long-distance line. Could wait no longer. “What?”

“If we don’t talk before then, I’ll get in touch with you after Danielle’s killer’s found.”

When she didn’t answer, he said, “I promise.”

“Good luck,” was all she could think of to say, the words choked and heavy.

She was sure he uttered her name once, softly, “Mary,” then the phone clicked and droned in her ear. The conversation had gone so quickly she hadn’t even told him about what Jake had done, and how she’d evicted him from her apartment and her life. Damn! Rene was the one person she desperately wanted to tell. But now she couldn’t. Not yet.

She let the receiver clatter into its cradle and sat staring straight ahead into an uncertain future, afraid.

What’s happening? What am I
letting
happen?

What really frightened her, what thrilled her, was feeling the tug of a dark and powerful current, strange yet familiar, and not knowing where it would carry her.

In the street below he stood in the shadows and watched her windows, waiting for a glimpse of her as she moved about her apartment.

There!

She’d crossed his line of vision, a figure so fleeting it might have been any woman who vaguely resembled her. Yet he could feel the connection between them, so intimate, the thing that linked their fates to a single profound destiny.

That one brief look at her heightened his resolve, and he stood without moving, staring and seldom blinking, until all her windows went dark.

T
RYING NOT TO THINK
about Rene, Mary concentrated with heightened intensity on her dancing. It was safe and predictable, the reassuring and protective pattern in her life.

Mel was more than pleased by her progress, no doubt assuming it was solely their conversation in the Hungry Hobo that had stoked her fire. When they danced Latin steps requiring the smoldering eye contact that would impress judges, Mary was convinced that occasionally something real and vibrant passed between them. He was learning about her; each time they tangoed he’d remind her that this dance was one of male domination, and she must convey that in her interpretation at the Ohio Star Ball. The tango had been born in Argentina, banned by government and church for its sensuality, popularized in France, and here was Mary working to impress judges in Ohio. In that context, her situation with Rene seemed not so remarkable.

A new Mel was emerging, or at least a dimension of him she hadn’t expected. The fierceness of his dedication and competitiveness surprised and awed her. She wondered what other Mels might live inside his young skin. What else might she not know about him?

It was odd, she thought, that she was the one who’d finally ended her affair with Jake. He was the only man in her life who’d never deserted
her.
Duke had left her, by drinking and dying. Her high school sweetheart, Wayne, had married his second cousin shortly after graduation. Mel? There was no denying that Mel was being paid for his attention; if she stopped writing checks to Romance Studio, the magic door to the dance floor, and to Mel, would close. Even Rene was now distant from her, though there was good reason. Other men in her life, such as Victor, didn’t count because she couldn’t care about them, sometimes couldn’t stand to be near them.

And her involvement with Jake did seem to be ended, for him as well as for her. There were no roses this time. Not even a phone call.

That was fine. That was the way Mary wanted it. She was sure she was strong enough to turn Jake away if she had to, but she didn’t want to be put to the test.

Except for her dancing, and the fact that Angie seemed better but was seeing more of Fred, Mary’s life stayed on a satisfactory level into early September.

Too satisfactory to last.

She was in the shower when Jake flung aside the plastic curtain so abruptly it tore. Some of the metal rings fixing it to the rod broke and clattered like bouncing coins over the tile floor.

Her heart jumped with fear and she heard the soap
thump!
on the bottom of the bathtub.

He was smiling at her in a way she recognized, as if she weren’t Mary, but merely an object placed on earth for his amusement, an inflatable doll with deluxe features.

Fear squeezing her words, she said, “I’ll have you arrested for rape, Jake. This isn’t a goddamn movie where the girl always swoons if only she’s pushed around enough.”

He moved closer, the shower spray splashing on his bare arm. “Isn’t it?”

She cowered back into the corner of the shower stall, staring at his hand, noticing it was trembling.
Don’t lose control, Jake. God, don’t lose control.

“Turn off the water and get in the bedroom,” he commanded in a strained voice. “It isn’t going to be flowers and sweetness this time. You’ve shown you don’t deserve it.”

And suddenly she was calm when she should have been most frightened. “You might eventually get your way, Jake, but I’m going to fight you. Then I’ll go to the police. Then I’ll go to court. I can do that, and I will, I swear. Rape means prison, Jake. I’ll sell everything I’ve got and borrow more, and I’ll hire the best lawyer in the city and I’ll see to it that rape means prison.”

He backed away a few steps, seeming more puzzled than afraid of her threats. She realized it was her lack of fear that was making him hesitate. She was supposed to be programmed to give in and then forgive. That was how he remembered her. That was Mary.

“Damned if I don’t think you mean it,” he said through a shaky smile. “Did you think I was really gonna rape you, Mary?”

She was aware of the water pounding on her, getting cold. She reached out and twisted the shower handle to Off. “I still think so, Jake.” Goose bumps were breaking out on her shoulders and arms; she hoped he wouldn’t notice.

“Let’s talk about this,” Jake said.

“Our talking days are over. Leave now or I go to the phone and call the police.” She was amazed that, despite her nudity, she’d managed to summon a degree of dignity to lend weight to the threat.

“But I haven’t even done anything.”

“You broke in here.”

“Oh no, I used my key. That’s perfectly legal. And I never even touched you.”

“Leave the key on the table on your way out.”

He stood poised for a moment, mentally and physically off balance. He’d encountered a new and unexpected strength in her and didn’t know how to react. Emotions pulled at his features. His lower lip twitched and for a terrible moment she thought he might begin to sob, beg her to take him back, but he’d merely been trying to find words to speak.

Whatever words he’d found, he couldn’t utter them intelligibly.

He backed from the bathroom, looking at her with an odd and decisive detachment, and he was gone almost as suddenly as he’d arrived.

She heard the front door slam.

She stepped from the tub and wrapped her robe around her without bothering to dry herself. Her teeth chattered until she clenched her jaw. She was shaking and cold inside the robe.

In the living room she saw Jake’s key lying next to the lamp on the end table by the sofa. She picked it up and squeezed it until its edges hurt her palm. The threat of the police had turned Jake away because he knew she’d meant it. She remembered what he’d told her about Edward G. Robinson being tough because he knew he was tough. Well, she and Jake had both known this time she was tough enough to follow through on her threat.

She wished she could talk to Rene and tell him the police were good for something after all.

Instead she went to the door and fastened the chain lock.

A
FTER THE MACABRE DANCE,
he wrestled her to the ground. That was when she gave up. Her gaze darted around and found only darkness. He’d been clever, waiting for her here. There was no one to help her, no hope.

She could feel him sense her surrender. Grinning down at her in the dim light, he raised his body slightly, keeping a tight grip on her hair, pressing her head tight against the ground. He held the knife up where she could see it, moving the blade in a lazy circular motion.

“All right,” she gasped, still out of breath from her struggle. “All right, whatever you want.” And she was sure she knew what he wanted; she’d felt his erection seconds ago as he’d brought his body down on hers.

Or did she know? The knife darted to her throat and she felt the cold kiss of the blade.

When she looked into his eyes and saw a darkness blacker than the night, she knew she was going to die.

Suddenly he moved, pulling the knife away and granting her a reprieve. Through paralyzing fear and a strange gratitude for sparing her momentarily, she felt his free hand groping beneath her skirt, yanking down her panty hose, then her panties. A fingernail scraped the back of her thigh. She was glad he was going to rape her; she’d live that much longer, anyway. And where she was, so near to death, every second of life loomed huge and of monumental importance, the difference between being and not being.

He surprised her once more, though. She realized what he was going to do when he grabbed her hair again, then adjusted his grip and moved well to the side, obviously so he wouldn’t get blood on him, and jerked her head back unbelievably far to expose her throat.

He said something she didn’t understand, his words floating to her from another universe. It didn’t matter what he’d told her. She knew she belonged to the dead, even before she felt the slash of the knife, breathed in but drew no air, and prayed for it to end soon after all.

“W
AY I SEE IT,”
Helen said, “he’s killing his mother.”

She was sitting next to Mary on the Romance Studio bench. Mary hadn’t understood her because Helen had been bending down to buckle a dance shoe as she’d spoken. When the words did fall into vague meaning in her mind, she asked who was killing whose mother.

Straightening, face still flushed and mottled from being upside down, Helen swiveled on the bench and stared at her. “You okay, Mary Mary?”

“Been a rough day since morning,” Mary said, “but I’m all right.”

“Killed his mother is what I said.”

“Who?”

“The guy that murdered the dancers in New Orleans and Seattle. That’s why the two women looked something alike. They find this guy, I betcha dollars to doughnuts it turns out his mother was the same type as his victims. He hates her but he’s scared shitless of her, so he murders other women as a sort of symbolic gesture of his contempt. Kills her over and over again. That’s the way it works.”

“Sounds like talk-show psychology,” Mary said. Her gaze shifted to the office door, waiting for Mel to emerge so her lesson could begin. Waltz music was floating from the big Bose speakers, and tall Lisa and her instructor were gliding over the floor. Lisa did an elegant
develope
, holding the count and extending her pointed foot gracefully as she slowly raised and lowered her long, long leg.

“It’s a known fact mass murderers do that kinda thing because of their mothers,” Helen explained. “Like Ted Bundy and Son of Sam.”

“I don’t remember reading about them hating their mothers.”

“Well, you gotta admit they couldn’t have had a healthy relationship with old mom, or they wouldn’t have felt the way they did about women.”

Trapped, Mary had to agree. But she said, “The police aren’t even positive the same man killed both dancers.”

“Yeah, they are,” Mary said knowledgeably, “they’re just not clueing in the public. And can you blame them? You know how the news media is—jackals with microphones and typewriters. They’d make an investigation, then a trial, impossible. Cops are smarter’n a lotta people think, and in a case like this they use something called VICAP. I read about it in a magazine just this morning, part of a list of things where America still leads the rest of the world.”

“Vicap? Sounds like a cold medicine.”

“Stands for Violent Criminal Apprehension Program,” Helen said smugly. “It’s a central storehouse of information about crimes and criminals all over the country, so a computer can pick up similarities in them and print them out and the police can know about matching M.O.s—that means Method of Operation. So when those two women were killed, the cops’ computer linked up with VICAP and showed they were both humped by the killer after they were dead. See, that’s the common denominator in the two crimes, and you can bet there’s others they’re keeping secret. Other things that were done to those poor gals.”

“Why wouldn’t the computer point out the fact both women were ballroom dancers? The police don’t seem very interested in that.”

“Probably they’re not interested because that’s not the sort of information they’d feed a computer about a murder victim in the first place, that she knew how to dance. Or that she competed. Big deal. To them the only ballroom dancing’s the kind that goes on at proms or country clubs. They wouldn’t figure it’d matter anymore’n if she played racquetball or liked sour cream on her potato. The similarity’s not in the main data bank, so the cops disregard it. Cops think like that, you know.”

Mary didn’t know, but everyone else seemed to have a handle on how the police operated.

Still sitting down, she bent forward and slipped her street high heels into her dance bag. She saw on the carpet the scuffed toes of a man’s black leather dance shoes, and looked up at Mel.

He was smiling down at her, so young, gentle, anything but threatening.