My Sister, My Love (38 page)

In fact, Skyler Rampike would never again attend any school in Fair Hills. This melancholy fact he seemed to know, on the morning of the first day of his new life.

BY
11:05
A.M. THERE HAD BEEN NO CALL FROM THE KIDNAPPER/KIDNAPPERS.
Downstairs, the pleading/begging prayers of the faithful had passed beyond abject, fawning, desperate to fatigued.

Another time the ransom note was read aloud, by Reverend Higley. “‘The Eye That “Sees.” ’ Maybe it—he—is watching this house?”

This was a new thought. This was a profound thought. This was a disturbing thought. Bix Rampike lurched to his feet declaring that he would go outside, and investigate. He would drive along Ravens Crest Drive on the lookout for “suspicious vehicles.” And so Bix Rampike left the house, driving away in the sleek new Jaguar coupe, and was gone from the prayer/phone vigil for approximately forty minutes.
*

Returning to report he had seen no one “suspicious.” The usual delivery vans, the mailman. If the kidnapper/kidnappers were watching the house, there appeared to be no way any private citizen could locate them.

“It may be that we have to call the police, after all,” Reverend Higley said. “It may be that the ‘Eye That “Watches” ’ has no serious intention of contacting us, only of torturing us.”

Just then, the phone rang.

Quickly Reverend Higley lifted the phone receiver, even as Betsey Rampike staggered to her feet, pressing a hand against her breast. Higley, hand cupped over the receiver, said in a whisper: “Betsey? It’s a friend of yours—Mrs. Chaplin.”

Mrs. Chaplin?
Trix?

After so many months of not calling? Trix Chaplin, at such a time? For a moment Betsey hesitated as if about to take the call, then drew back, frowning; saying, with dignity, though her mouth trembled: “Please tell Mrs. Chaplin that I will call her another time. This is not a good time.”

Now it was, Bix Rampike stood. Mumbled something inaudible and without a backward glance at his surprised companions made his way out of the room like a man in a dream determined to wake from the dream. “Bix? Where are you going? Bix—” Betsey called after him, unheard.

The time: 12:06
P.M.
Reverend Higley would recall.

In the old butler’s pantry off the kitchen where Bix kept reserves of liquor he paused to pour two inches of Dewar’s into a shot glass to be downed in a single swallow. So fortified, he made his way then to the back stairs,
and down the stairs to the basement—why? Bix would never be able to explain—a hunch, a premonition, a sensation like a hulking predator bird flapping its wings over his head—unerring he made his way through the ghost-Rampike-family room (never used by the Rampike family! never to be used and to be totally dismantled by the next tenants of the house) and past the (rarely used) “family fitness room” with somber stationary bicycle, treadmill, “Stair Master” and weights scattered on the floor like giant, discontinued coins, past the laundry room (in which, at this very moment, fresh-laundered bed linens and articles of Rampike clothing were tumbling gaily about in the oversized drier), past the drafty storage room (where the just-discovered broken window had been temporarily “mended”—a piece of cardboard wedged against it), and at the door to the furnace room he paused for a moment before pushing the door open and switching on the overhead light, stepping inside and this time advancing farther into the low-ceilinged room entered mostly by Valley Oil repairmen, and there, in the smutty corner behind the first-floor furnace, lay the small broken body.

“Bliss? My God.”

(Hiding from Daddy? All these hours? When they’d thought she was kidnapped? How was this possible?)

He stooped over her, where she was wedged between the furnace and the concrete wall. He saw, or must have seen, the blood smears on the wall, and the blood, coagulated, yet still glistening, on the matted blond hair. Must’ve seen the stiffened arms awkwardly forced back behind the child’s head, bound with duct tape and the badly wrinkled and stained crimson silk scarf. Must’ve seen the waxy face, the part-open opaque eyes and the duct tape over her mouth. The torn and stained nightgown, and the naked legs like stilts. Must’ve known that the child was dead but the cry erupted from him: “Bliss! Darling!” He ripped the duct tape from her mouth. He leaned close, he knelt on the sticky floor, he lifted her in his arms grunting with the effort, how strangely heavy his daughter had become, how unresponsive to his pleas, he staggered from the furnace room carrying her, staggered/stumbled/made his frantic way up the stairs and back into the family room where the others awaited him having heard his cries, and thinking he would revive her, even as the others were screaming in horror,
tenderly he lay her on the floor, not on the sofa but on the floor, on the white Bolivian goatskin carpet, and why?—haltingly he would explain
She would need artificial respiration, a floor is more practical
while upstairs in his room hearing the adults’ cries Skyler knew at once: his sister had been found.

Whatever he’d been preoccupied with, comic books, sketch pad, went flying. Lila, alarmed, tried to stop him: “Skyler, no! You must stay up here, with me. Your mother…” but already Skyler was running along the corridor, and Skyler was taking the stairs two at a time, risking another broken leg, or a replay of the original (twice) broken leg, and Skyler was panting running into the family room seeing his father crouched over something on the white fur rug, his mother wailing like a stricken cat throwing herself on whatever it was, on the white fur rug, and rudely Skyler pushed past the adults who were in his way, a sharp punch to the fat thigh of one of the white-haired church grannies who was always cooing over him, but no cooing now, no stopping Skyler now, Skyler was grabbing at his father’s shoulder, trying to see, trying to see what it was his mother was lying on as if she’d fallen from a great height delirious and moaning and now Skyler saw, it was Bliss, of course it was Bliss, had to be Bliss, and Skyler shouted, “There’s nothing wrong with her! It’s what she always does, to get attention!”

WHEN WAS THIS? A LONG TIME AGO.

If viewed through a telescope, but through the wrong end of a telescope, it would be even more distant in time. And all who’d survived would now be vanished, like Bliss.

“IT’S HIM. HAS TO BE.”

In the waning years of the twentieth century in much of affluent rural-suburban New Jersey there was perceived to be, among professionals trained in such matters, a scarcity of known sex offenders: and so, in Morris County, the townships of Basking Ridge, Bernardsville, and Fair Hills were obliged to share thirty-four-year-old Gunther Ruscha, currently unemployed elementary school teacher/resident of 29 Piper’s Lane, Fair Hills.

“Who else but Ruscha? Sad sicko pervert.”

Poor Gunther Ruscha! Each time a Sex Incident was reported to local police, no matter that Gunther’s cherished specialty was Pedophilia, a rarified sub-category of sex perversion, and no matter how greatly descriptions of the (alleged) offender differed from the description of Gunther Ruscha in police files, little time was lost before a squad car equipped with deafening siren, flashing blue light on its roof,
BASKING RIDGE POLICE, BERNARDSVILLE POLICE,
or
FAIR HILLS POLICE
emblazoned on its sides, and manned by husky police officers, shook the quiet of Piper’s Lane to pull aggressively into the Ruschas’ narrow cracked-asphalt driveway.

“Rusch-a! Gun-ther Rusch-a! Police.”

That Gestapo pounding on the door, poor Gunther recognized like an old, familiar kick to the scrotum.

And there was Mrs. Ruscha screaming at him: “Gunther, what have you done now? For shame!”

Even those neighbors on Piper’s Lane who were mostly sympathetic with, or pitying of, sixty-three-year-old Gertrude Ruscha the pedophile’s
mother, longtime resident of Piper’s Lane and newly retired from her minimum-wage job in food services at the Fair Hills Medical Center where she’d worked since the abrupt and inexplicable departure of Gunther’s father when the budding pedophile was but a toddler, could not resist a shiver of
Schadenfreude
*
while peering through their venetian blinds as the squad car pulled up to 29 Piper’s Lane another time, with increasing frequency it seemed, as Sex Incidents were being more frequently reported to local police, at the clapboard Cape Cod invariably described in the
Fair Hills Beacon
as a “modest dwelling”; observing the lanky, red-haired, incongruously boyish-looking Gunther being forcibly walked, between grim-faced police officers, to the waiting squad car where he was made to stoop as he slid into the rear of the vehicle, a police officer’s (gloved) hand pushing down on Gunther’s head in a gesture you might almost mistake as friendly, to prevent the terrified pedophile from striking his head against the car.

“That Gunther! What has he done now!”

It was observed that our pedophile’s face, unnaturally pale, with rubbery lips in a frightened smile, and stark staring glassy eyes, that more than one (female) observer believed to be “poetic”—often glistened with tears at such times. If police came for him without warning, as usually they did, Gunther was likely to be wearing nondescript clothes (khaki trousers, sweatshirt, baggy sweater) like any Fair Hills adult male, and not the “spiffy”—“show-offy”—“fag”—clothes (faux-suede, black leather, brightly colored scarf tied at his throat) in which he dressed when he left the house to drive away in his mother’s weatherworn old Datsun or pedal away on his bicycle (with what destination: public park, children’s playground, kiddie matinee, skating rink?); if police came for him in the night, a favored time, for it involved blinding spotlights illuminating the front of the Cape Cod, as on a movie set, Gunther was likely to be hauled outside in pajamas, without shoes; on the most humiliating occasion, Gunther was taken into police custody bare-chested and in white Jockey shorts: his legs were revealed as spindly and lacking muscle, like an ostrich’s legs; his white Jockey shorts might have fit the groin area of a prepubescent boy; his narrow, con
cave chest was hairless as a young boy’s, with berry-like nipples distinct against the sickly pallor of his skin. For you had only to glance at our pedophile, the pariah of Morris County, all knowledge of Gunther Ruscha’s lurid past but a
tabbouleh rosa
, and a primitive warning signal would detonate in the frontal lobe of your reptile brain: “Sex deviate!”

More subtly tuned frontal lobes would detonate: “Pedophile!”

Yet, so strangely, you might say perversely, Gunther Ruscha seemed never to become adjusted to his situation. Having served only eighteen months of a three-and-a-half-year sentence in the notorious Sex Offenders’ Unit of ghastly Rahway State Prison for Men, to which only the “most hardened” of New Jersey criminals are sent, and having lost all chance of being ever again employed as an elementary school teacher (specialty: music), as a consequence of having pleaded guilty to several counts of “sexual misconduct endangering a child,” Gunther Ruscha yet displayed surprise and hurt, at times indignation, when given harsh looks by Fair Hills residents who knew his identity. And when, at the mall, hurriedly making his way with lowered head and eyes fixed to the floor, he heard in his wake the crude chant
Pedophile! Pedophile! Sicko pervert pedophile!
he never glanced around for fear of seeing a teenager known to him from the neighborhood where of all the world he wished to feel at home.

It was believed that, newly paroled from Rahway, Gunther had gamely tried to find employment, but with no luck: for who in his right mind would hire a convicted pedophile! It was believed that Gunther was fearful of leaving the only home he’d ever known, with silly Mrs. Ruscha who must have loved him for look at how she’d been supporting him for years, defending and protecting him for years, paying for sex therapists, psychiatrists, Gunther’s short-lived effort to attend “beauty technician school” in West Orange, though Mrs. Ruscha’s meager pension and Social Security checks must have been seriously strained to pay for her son’s show-offy fag clothes. Why, observers wondered, didn’t our pedophile move away from Fair Hills and out of the dingy Cape Cod on Piper’s Lane? Out of cowardice, very likely; or, it may have been, if Gunther had tried to move into another community, anywhere in the United States including even the remote arctic wilds of Alaska, or the mossy/sultry/alligator-plagued settlements of the Florida Everglades, he’d have had to register with local police as a con
victed sex offender/pedophile; and these police wouldn’t have known Gunther as a wholly unthreatening if not pathetic sicko, requiring no more than two police officers to haul him in for questioning: no “backup” or SWAT teams or what’s called “extraordinary force.”

Female neighbors on Piper’s Lane who’d become acquainted with luckless Gertrude Ruscha over the years spoke of the woman’s “adamant” belief that her son was completely blameless of the crimes for which he’d been sent away to Rahway: poor Gunther, twenty-six at the time, had been the true victim; a group of “vicious” sixth-grade girls at Kriss Elementary where Gunther had been so happily employed for two years after graduating
summa cum laude
from the Rutgers University School of Education (Newark), had suddenly, for no reason, out of pure meanness accused their music teacher Mr. Ruscha of “saying bad things to them”—“touching them in a bad way”—showing them his “weenie” and asking “would they like to touch it?” Shameless girls shrieking with laughter over Mr. Ruscha’s “weenie”—“such a teeny weenie”—“wrinkled and ugly like a mashed mouse”—and though it had seemed like a crude, cruel, silly joke of some kind or like a small fire that grew wildly out of control it happened that the girls’ parents filed formal complaints and eventually sued the principal at Kriss Elementary, the Fair Hills public school board, and luckless Gunther Ruscha who wasn’t insured for such a claim. And, in this way, Gunther became a known sex offender:
pedophile.

Yet Gunther was continually surprised, disoriented and terrified when wakened from sleep by a pounding at the front door of his house, and shouts: “Rusch-a! Gun-ther Rusch-a! Police.” And those blinding spotlights.

Though Gunther Ruscha was at least six feet tall, angular and sinewy as an eel, as soon as he was gripped by the officers’ strong hands he seemed to shrink, and to become boneless; if you were a husky Morris County police officer you could feel little but manly contempt for the timorous/cowering/trembling/slouch-shouldered/flamey-red-haired pedophile who, shoved into the rear of the police vehicle, whimpered: “Don’t hurt me! Please don’t hurt me! I haven’t done anything! Please believe me, whatever it is
I am innocent.
”

Hauling in Morris County’s lone pedophile to police headquarters had become a routine, something of a ritual to which new police officers had to
be initiated, over the past six years; yet Gunther Ruscha continued to be taken by surprise, and greatly agitated, as if in fact he was guilty. At the police station Gunther would be “interviewed” while his accuser was brought to observe him through one-way glass: “Him? That isn’t him! I told you, the man who ‘exposed himself ’ to my daughter was short, bald, looked like somebody’s grandpa.” Or: “Him? He’s got red hair. The one I told you about has dark hair, he’s ‘swarthy-skinned’ like Hispanic, Indian—” Or: “Billy? Open your eyes, honey. The bad man can’t see you through the glass, he can’t hurt you any more I promise. Billy? Please look, honey. You don’t want that bad man to be let free, and come after you again, do you…”

Very rarely was Gunther Ruscha “arrested”: most of his impromptu visits to the police station were but opportunities for questioning and attempts at identification. When, as happened from time to time, Gunther was arrested, and charged with a crime, the politesse of “interview” was replaced by the aggressive strategies of “interrogation”; the mild-mannered pedophile, accustomed to taking his nighttime medication (Zomix, Percodan) with a glass of warm milk and cookies at 10:30
P.M.
most nights, and of being asleep in bed by 11
P.M.
, was kept awake at the police station through the night being “grilled”—as it’s said on TV—often without knowing what the crime was for which he’d been arrested; nor was it clear who his accusors were. Gunther had learned not to request a lawyer: such requests merely inflamed police officers, like protestations of innocence.

“LET ME THROUGH! LET ME THROUGH! I HAVE TO SEE HER—BLISS!
LET ME
through.
”

Even as two police officers had been dispatched to the dingy Cape Cod on Piper’s Lane to bring in, as quickly as possible, convicted sex offender/pedophile Gunther Ruscha for questioning in the apparent homicide of six-year-old Bliss Rampike, only just reported to the Fair Hills Police Department, it happened that, at 3:07
P.M.
of January 29, 1997, there came the very man—white-faced, disheveled-looking, breathless—in a battered ’93 Datsun attempting to turn onto Ravens Crest Drive that was barricaded to all but police and emergency vehicles, an ungainly floral display of white flowers on the seat beside him: “These are for Bliss! I heard the terrible
news on the radio! The little angel has been injured! I can save her! I can take her away! She is my darling! I am her special friend! These flowers are for her, officer! Please let me pass.” But the distraught flamey-red-haired youngish man with a redhead’s milky pallor and stark staring green-gray eyes was turned back by a Fair Hills patrolman who had no idea that this was Morris County’s pedophile, at that very moment being sought for questioning by Fair Hills PD; except that the driver in the Datsun had seemed “excitable”—“like he was high on some drug”—“with a big, weird bouquet of white flowers for the little dead girl.” For Gunther Ruscha was not the only party eager to turn into Ravens Crest Drive that afternoon, to be turned away by Fair Hills patrolmen.

At 12:29
P.M.
a 911 call had been placed (by Reverend Higley, stammering and nearly incoherent) summoning “emergency aid” to 93 Ravens Crest Drive; by 2
P.M.
the first of the news bulletins were broadcast on local radio and TV; through the afternoon, “word spread” through Fair Hills and vicinity in a firestorm of emotion beyond even
Schadenfreude
:
Bliss Rampike had been killed? Murdered? That little ice skater? The skating prodigy? In her own home, in her own bed? In the night, when the Rampikes were sleeping? Someone had broken into the house? Someone had tried to kidnap the little girl, and had killed her instead?

Fair Hills’s first homicide in seventy years.

In the Rampike house and vicinity was a swarm of police officers both uniformed and plainclothed, crime scene technicians, emergency medics; in the Rampike driveway and on the road, numerous police vehicles, a crime scene van, a mobile command center. An officer from the Morris County Sheriff ’s K9 Squad arrived with two-year-old German shepherd Blazes to sniff with explosive energy and high hopes outside the Rampike house and on adjoining properties, around a drainage ditch and nearby sewers, and in the township-owned property at the rear of the Rampikes’ two-acre lot, a strip of densely wooded land approximately fifty feet wide that ran parallel with Ravens Crest Drive, to block homeowners’ views of the less-than-glamorous rears of properties on Juniper Pine Lane in the next sub-division. Blazes was a handsome dog with alert, intelligent eyes, a sleek dark muzzle, burnished-looking fur, a young dog’s springy energy and a sharp bark, much admired by his handlers for his brilliant sniffing ability and indefatigable
optimism, but Blazes was picking up no crucial scent in the woods, and was about to be urged back in the direction of the Rampike house, when he began barking fiercely: for there came, stumbling through the underbrush, an individual to be described by arresting officers as a Caucasian male, early thirties, height six feet/weight 150, red-haired, “excitable” and “belligerent,” clumsily carrying a large floral display in a vase spilling water down the front of his trouser legs; commanded to stop by the police officer, as he was vigorously being barked-at by Blazes, the red-haired youngish man brazenly continued to press forward, as if, by sheer insolence, he might be able to push his way past Blazes and the police officer, in a high-pitched voice declaring: “I—am a friend of the Rampike family! I—am expected in their hour of need! I am Bliss’s secret friend! Bliss is expecting me! I demand to see her! I have been in that house many times as a trusted friend! I have been in Bliss’s room with her, as a trusted friend! I demand to see Bliss! These are calla lilies—for her. Not for
you
—” as the police officer, joined by another officer, grappled with him and the vase and calla lilies went flying, and Blazes leapt at the raving red-haired man, barking ferociously, knocking him to the ground, in underbrush glazed with particles of icy snow; though overpowered by two officers and a German shepherd weighing more than one hundred pounds, and though one of the officers was pressing his knee against his back and mashing his face against the ground, yet with maniacal desperation he continued to struggle even as his arms were wrenched behind his back, and Blazes’s sharp yellow fangs tore at his left ear: “Bliss! Bliss! I love you, Bliss! I have come to save you!”