SUSPENSE THRILLERS-A Boxed Set (23 page)

Jack stood at the threshold in the large, homey kitchen, obviously surprised. "Eileen, what are you doing here?"

Eileen felt horrible at the way he looked. His eyes had bags beneath them, and his scar, usually unnoticeable, was puffy and red. He was dressed like a poor bum and the jeans accentuated the weight loss he had experienced over the last few weeks.

"Oh, Jack, Mrs. Lawrence was right." She slowly walked to him. It took all of her willpower not to enfold him in her arms and soothe him like a child. "You’re trying to kill yourself. This has to stop."

Jack dismissed the topic with a gesture of his hand. He had been hearing the same thing every night from his housekeeper, and he did not want Eileen to worry. "I’ll be all right," he said, kissing her lightly and leading her to the table. "That’s not what brought you here, is it? If Mrs. Lawrence called you..."

"Jack, you know better than that. Mrs. Lawrence didn’t even know me before I came here tonight. Though she would have had a perfect right to call for help. You look like a scarecrow."

Wearily Jack ran a hand over his gaunt face and slid down in the dining-room chair until his head rested on its back. "No one seems to understand that I can’t sit at home waiting for the department to come up with something.” He sat up abruptly and his face was full of barely controlled fury. "This leave of absence is driving me crazy, don’t you know that? They won’t let me work on the case; they keep me in the dark when they get snippets of evidence. And they don’t have the manpower it takes to patrol the streets looking for a lead, any lead. This is the only thing I can do to help find the bastard who killed Willie. It may not be worth a damn, but at least I'll know I made an effort."

Eileen put à hand on Jack’s arm and squeezed it, offering support. "Jack, I didn’t mean to quarrel with you over what you’re trying to do. I’m just concerned about your health. Late hours, not eating, and even Mrs. Lawrence told me you’re going to parts of town where it’s dangerous to be at night. It scares me, Jack."

Her eyes filled with tears and she wanted to curse herself. The self-control she valued so highly seemed to have deserted her.

"Don’t cry, Eileen, please. It just seems so many people are against me and I get defensive. Sometimes I feel raw all over, as if my skin’s been peeled away. I catch myself blowing up at Mrs. Lawrence over nothing, and now I’ve made you cry. I’m so miserable that I make everyone around me miserable."

Eileen wiped her eyes with her hands, but still the tears welled and rushed over her lids. "Dammit, Jack, this isn’t the way it was supposed to be tonight. I came here to...I wanted to tell you..."

Jack could feel Eileen’s struggle. It was wretched of him to lash out at her, to accuse her of misunderstanding. Looking at her, her shoulders shaking, he felt a tightness in his chest. "What did you want to tell me? "

Jack brought her to her feet and wrapped his arms around her. He closed his eyes, breathing in the soap and perfume smell of her. With Eileen in his arms he could forget the horror his life had become. She represented all that was good and worthwhile. With her near, the streets vanished for a little bit, the pimps and crooks and con artists did not exist. The child he had loved so much and missed so desperately released the dead weight from Jack’s heart and he could even hope that he could love again.

His lips found Eileen’s, and he tasted the salty wetness of her tears. A lump formed in his throat so large that he could hardly speak. "Eileen, marry me, tell me that’s why you’ve come. No, don’t say anything yet." He kissed her again to silence what he was afraid to hear. "I’ve never wanted another woman the way I want you. I don’t care what you are or what I am. The past shouldn’t matter. I love you more than my own life, and that’s what matters. I’ve lost Willie--dear God, it’s so hard for me to admit I’ve lost him…"

He swallowed hard only to find the pain still deep within. "This is the first time I’ve been able to say it aloud and know that it’s true. I’ve lost a part of my life, but I’m willing to face that and go on. I can’t lose you, Eileen, don’t tell me you’ve come here tonight to tell me that."

He kissed her again, and it seemed as if his very life was draining into her, and in return, her life was surging into him. They did not have to make love and join their bodies to become one.

"Jack, Jack, listen to me," Eileen whispered. Her doubts were gone, regret was a thing of the past. She felt as if she were leaping into a dream and there was no way back. "I came here tonight to tell you I want to be your wife."

Jack burrowed his face into the velvety fragrance of her neck and sighed like a man who had just been given his life back.

"I’ve never loved anyone before," Eileen went on. "I’ve made mistakes and wasted years of my life doing such meaningless things."

"Sshh," Jack whispered. "Don’t say any more." He swept her into his arms and carried her to his bedroom and softly closed the door.

Betty Lawrence eased the crack of her own door shut and smiled to herself in the dark. She had been right.

The pretty girl was heaven sent.

"Stranger things have happened," she said as she tossed her robe across the foot of her bed. For the first time in many years she fell asleep thinking about her own youth.

#

Jack kissed Eileen tenderly and rolled away from her to feel for his cigarettes on the night table. Their lovemaking had filled him with wonder. She was sensitive to his every move, every touch. Now that he knew she would be his, she would soon be Mrs. Jack DeShane, their coupling was even more unrestrained than before. She stroked his thigh while he smoked, the tip of his cigarette glowing gently in the dark.

"I was at the bus station tonight," he said.

"Are you finding out anything, Jack?"

"Blind alleys and brick walls. I checked out a hustler last week with a reputation for turning lethal when he’s crossed, but he had an alibi for the times of the last two murders."

Jack balanced a plaid bean-bag ashtray on his stomach and tapped ashes into it. "I talked to a kid tonight who works with some kind of perverted freak I want to talk to."

"What’s he done?" Eileen asked.

"I don’t know if he’s done anything, but it’s what he says about the killings that’s pretty sick. Jesus, what was his name?" Jack held his cigarette stiffly above the ashtray trying to remember. "I knew I should have written it down. He works at Apex Burglar Alarm and his name is…Singer? No. Winger? Christ! "

"Eileen sat up and propped a pillow behind her back. "Take it easy, Jack. The name will come to you."

Jack swung his legs over the side of the bed and set the ashtray on the night table. He was about to rise and pace the floor when the correct name came to him. "Ringer! Nick Ringer, that’s it!" He sighed in relief. “The son of a bitch was in Vietnam too, and Sam told me he’s been working on a list of vets in Houston who were in Special Forces and had guerrilla training. Maybe they haven’t checked out this guy yet, and I’ll save them some time."

Eileen sat rigidly against the headboard, a look of startlement on her pale face.

"Jack..." she said very softly.

"The kid said Ringer talked about the murders all the time. He said they probably deserved what happened to them. Can you believe anyone--"

"Jack, please listen to me."

Something in Eileen’s tone made Jack turn to her. "What is it, Eileen? What’s the matter?"

"I know him," she said simply.

"You know who?"

"Nick Ringer. I know him. Or, at least I did when I was a kid."

"Are you serious?" Jack could not believe what he was hearing.

"Yes, I knew him and his brother, Daley. They lived next door to me in Bloomington. I was ten and I had a kitten..." She covered her face with her hands and shivered.

Jack took her wrists and kissed them gently. In the dark he could not see if she was crying, but he thought she was. "What happened?" he asked, knowing that the memory was painful.

"He wasn’t as pretty as Toby," Eileen said as if she was talking to herself. "His name was Shingles, a little marmalade cat with bands of yellow fur. I carried that kitten everywhere with me. I played house with it. I dressed it in doll clothes and sneaked my mom’s cans of sardines from the pantry to give it something special. It was the first pet I ever owned, and I begged and pleaded with my parents to let me have it when I found it crying in a thicket behind our house." She paused and looked at Jack. "Can I have one of your cigarettes?"

Jack automatically picked up his pack before realizing he had never seen her smoke. "Are you smoking now?"

"I am tonight."

He lit one of his Marlboros for her and handed it over. She took a shallow drag and coughed behind her hand before continuing the painful story.

"One day I made Nick angry. I called his mother a name." She laughed ironically. "The name I called her is a joke on me now. It was summer, hot, terribly hot, and Nick came over to play, but he was always bullying me, and even then I was an independent little girl. When I got mad I always talked back, something most little girls never dared to do, especially to Nick." She drew on the Marlboro and this time did not cough. She stared straight ahead as if seeing the summer day long ago being played out on the white stucco wall of Jack’s bedroom.

"Nick and I had experienced run-ins before, but this time Nick kept taunting me. He planted himself between me and the house and wouldn’t let me past. I was afraid my mom might look out the kitchen window and see us in the backyard fighting. She didn’t like me to play with the Ringer boys. None of the kids in the neighborhood were allowed to play with them. They had bad reputations--or rather, Nick had a bad reputation. Daley was like his shadow. He always followed Nick around, skulking around corners, hiding in bushes, creeping up on Nick to catch him doing something he wasn’t supposed to. Because that’s what Nick did--things kids aren’t supposed to do. Horrible things. Sadistic, dreadful things. I may have been the only kid in town who really knew what was going on. I lived next door and I was curious because the Ringers were taboo. I’m not proud of the fact now, but I was almost as bad about keeping watch on Nick as Daley was.

"He did awful..." She motioned for the ashtray, and when Jack set it on the sheets, she ground out the cigarette.

“He killed your kitten, didn’t he?" Jack said quietly.

"Yes, the morning after we had our fight I found Shingles hanging from the clothesline by a wire noose."

It took a few seconds for the word "wire" to fully sink in for Jack. When it did he nearly shouted. He wanted to grab the telephone book and look up the Ringer address. He wanted to find the man and shake him by the collar until he confessed to the murder of Willie. The only thing that stopped Jack was the insanity of it all. He had no proof. He had a twenty-year-old horror story of animal mutilation and murder plus the untrustworthy gossip of a drug-dealing kid. He had coincidences. Vietnam, wire, sadism. He had nothing, goddamn nothing, but coincidence.

"Tell me all you know about him," Jack said, shaking another cigarette from his pack. "I want to know everything you can remember about the family."

"We were all poor in that neighborhood, but the Ringers were worse than poor, they were considered white trash. His mother was a now-and-again whore, and that’s what I called her when I was mad at Nick." Eileen gave an ironic laugh. "I know that probably sounds funny coming from me, but in 1960 it was the worst slur you could make about a kid’s mom. Whoring just wasn’t a socially acceptable hobby in a little southeast Texas town. If you whored, everyone knew it, and you became an outcast."

Jack tried to picture the small town of Eileen’s childhood. He had always lived in cities, and although there were people around with small-town mentalities, it was not the same as growing up in provincial 1960 Bloomington, Texas. He felt an ache for the little girl Eileen had been. He wished he had known her with her long pigtails and quick temper.

"Nick and Daley’s father wasn’t around much. He worked at the switch yard for the railroad when he was in town, and when he was gone Nick’s mother turned tricks. Finally he left them altogether. I realize now Nick's mom had to do something to keep body and soul together, but kids can’t rationalize and they take on the prejudice of their elders. Besides, Mrs. Ringer was sluttish in other ways. She let the boys run wild and put a lot of responsibility on Daley’s shoulders even though he was two years younger than Nick. That was because Nick was a…troublemaker.

"He was into trouble all the time, most of it of his own making. And he was a strange boy--aggressive, cruel, always looking for revenge for what he felt were unfair judgments against his family. In a way I couldn’t blame him. He was pitiful and life was hard for him then, but no one made him cruel. No one made him kill Shingles."

"You’re sure he did it?" Jack asked when Eileen shuddered.

"Positive. I’d seen him kill other small animals. Frogs, snakes, birds. Then after Shingles was killed, I started watching him closer. I wanted to catch him doing something I could report to my father, something he could be punished for. By that time I hated him. He scared me, and he had taken away the first pet I’d ever loved. I wanted my own revenge.”

Eileen took another cigarette and got out of bed. As memories returned, she began to walk around the room. "So I watched. I’d run straight home from school and watch his house through the bushes from my bedroom window. I imagined I was Nancy Drew and that Nick would go to jail for all his wrongdoing. I knew--I just knew he’d do it again, kill something, and strangle it. That’s what he did, strangled small innocent things that couldn’t fight back. I guess it made him feel powerful." She shook her head slowly.

"Then one day it happened. It was a weekend, a Saturday. School had just started so it must have been September. God, it was hot. The black pavement in the streets was spotted with bubbles where the tar rose. The sun was so bright it hurt your eyes.

"I was bored and feeling hateful. I’d been watching Nick’s house from my bedroom window since early morning, and it was almost two in the afternoon. My mother thought I was sulking because I didn’t like the new school clothes she’d bought me, so she left me alone. I was sleepy and about to give up when I saw Nick through the bushes. He and Daley had been arguing all day. Daley wanted Nick to play with him or go somewhere and Nick wouldn’t do anything. Finally Daley went inside to get out of the sun and Nick came from the thicket behind our houses and passed by the bushes where I saw him.