SUSPENSE THRILLERS-A Boxed Set (24 page)

"Well, that was it. Finally I had some sleuthing to do." Eileen smiled at the memory. "I got out of the house without being seen and followed Nick across the street and through a weedy lot. It was kind of fun. I was still mad at him and he still scared me, but you have to remember it had been a long summer and school was so boring. So tracking Nick without getting caught was an adventure. At least I was doing something.

"Nick cut through yards and alleys. He crawled between stopped railroad tanker cars at the tracks. I stayed with him at a safe enough distance so I wouldn’t be seen. What I didn’t want to happen was for Nick to discover I was following him. Being around him when Daley was present was bad enough. I couldn’t imagine getting caught alone with him."

Eileen paused and stared out the window. The moon was down and nothing stirred in the house.

Jack knew he was seeing a side of Eileen she had never before revealed. The more she talked about when she was a child, the more southern inflections entered her speech.

A portrait of Nick Ringer was evolving in Jack’s mind too. He did not want to, but the more he learned about the Ringers, the more convinced the boy Eileen was describing could have grown up to commit the murders. The police academy spent very little time on the psychological aspect of an officer’s education, but it was easy to see a pattern in the disturbed boy that might have erupted in the grown man.

"There were birds singing everywhere in the woods," Eileen continued. "We were on a country road back of the railroad tracks. Nick walked down the center of the road through the hot gravel. To keep from being seen, I went into the trees that lined the road. I ran from tree to tree like a little rabbit. It was a game, a stupid kid’s game. I was Sherlock Holmes, and nothing could touch me because I was so smart. Never in a million years would I be discovered." Eileen began to tremble and Jack went to her, enfolding her in his arms.

"But I was wrong. I was fooled by a kid much smarter and craftier than me. I was a minor-league sleuth pitted against a master. You see, Nick was practiced at this. I’d forgotten he had a brother who tailed him everywhere. After a while Nick had developed a sixth sense that told him when someone was behind him or when eyes were on his every move. He’d actually known from the very beginning--from the second I leaped off my porch to trail him--that I was there. I really was the rabbit. And the fox walked ahead of me kicking gravel in the late afternoon sun.

"The woods thinned, I was scampering further and further between tree trunks trying not to be seen. There was more brush in my way and cockleburrs latched onto my socks and my clothes and tangled in my pigtails. The game was rapidly losing its thrill. I was soaking wet with sweat and my throat was dry. I was out of breath and my legs ached."

Jack heard Eileen’s breath shorten and come in quick gasps as she spoke. Her eyes closed and her fingers tightened around his hand.

"We’d come to the burial ground,” she said calmly. "It wasn’t a city graveyard or a family plot. It was a deserted piece of land where Nick came to bury the animals he killed. It was his own private reserve, a secret place full of death.

"I didn’t know that at first, of course. I was disappointed that I’d come all that way chasing after Nick to wind up on an ugly patch of scrub land in the middle of nowhere. There were a few short-needle pines that looked as if they were dying. There was a broken-down fence and a dry red ditch. When I crept closer I could see where sticks had been piled up and set on fire in the ditch. Suddenly I realized that this place meant something special to Nick. He walked on it as if it were sacred ground. I’ve seen people in cemeteries since who moved that way--slow, with their heads down as if they are communicating with those who have passed on." Eileen paused for a moment before continuing.

"Nick still hadn’t let on he knew I was there. He ambled around with his hands stuck in his pockets and stooped every now and then to pat little mounds of dirt. I couldn’t imagine what he was doing. The mounds looked a lot like red ant hills, but no one would go around patting anthills. I tried to figure out what they might be and what they meant to him, but it didn’t make sense.

"Then...” Eileen drew in her breath sharply and Jack tensed. "Then all of a sudden Nick turned right around, facing where I was hidden behind a pine and stared my way. I froze. My knees locked and I couldn’t even blink. I knew he had seen me, and I wanted to run out of the woods and onto the road away from him, but I was hypnotized. Before I had time to run he crossed the space between us, ran the last few yards, and caught hold of my arm, squeezing it tightly until I cried.

“'What do you want?’ he said. 'What do you want to know about me, Eileen?'

"I couldn’t speak. I was too shocked that he’d caught me. At that moment I could see that he hated me--really hated me.

"I tried to jerk away from him, but he held on, his fingers pinching me to the bone. I stopped struggling and tried to get mad. I knew if I could get mad enough I'd stop being scared, but it was the look on his face that made me most afraid. No one had ever looked at me that way before, and I was paralyzed.

"'I want to show you something, Eileen,’ he said, dragging me behind him into the open. ‘You followed me to learn my secrets, so I’ll show you a secret. You came here to see something so I’ll show you something worth the trip.’”

Eileen broke into a sob and buried her head in Jack’s shoulder. “Oh God, Jack, it was horrible! He dragged me to the fence line at the back of the property. It was a weedy place, but a path had been trampled through it to where the fence turned at a right angle to cross the back of the land. The weeds were brown and dead and some of them were as high as my head. I didn’t know where he was taking me or what it was he wanted to show me.

"When we got through the path and to the fence corner, Nick pushed me forward. I couldn’t see where I was going, and I stumbled across something. When I saw what it was, I started to gag."

Eileen turned her face from Jack, but not before he saw the revulsion etched on her delicate features. "It was a cat. A dead cat with a rope around its neck. I didn’t recognize it from our neighborhood so it must have been a stray he’d killed. It was stiff and dried looking. Nick pushed me down onto my knees and wrapped both of his hands in my pigtails to force me to look at it. I clenched my eyes shut, but he shook my head until my scalp hurt and I looked. That’s when I saw a small hatchet resting near the cat’s head.

“’Know what I’m gonna do now?’ he whispered in my ear. ‘I’m going to chop it into pieces. I’m going to cut off its legs and its head and then I’m going to bury it here,’ he said, pointing out to the clear space where we’d come from.

"I started screaming at him. I don’t remember what all I said, but I did tell him I was going to tell his mother. I was going to tell everyone what he was doing. Do you know what he said then? He said go ahead, tell on him, who cared? He said it was his word against mine and who cared what kids did? He asked me if I hadn’t ever wanted to see what a cat looked like all cut up into bits. Then he said that if he got into trouble and was found out, he’d make it look like I was involved too. People would believe anything bad about kids and he’d make them believe that I was just the same as he was. He’d tell them we did it together and that it was my idea, kind of an experiment, a nasty little experiment." Eileen shuddered and Jack held her close stroking her long hair.

"I never did tell," she concluded weakly. "I was afraid to tell. What he was doing was obscene and cruel, but who would believe me? It was too insane to believe. My mother would have laughed at my vivid imagination. Nick’s mom couldn’t handle him and didn’t have the power to stop him. Then there was Nick’s threat to think about. I felt guilty. Although Nick was the one doing these awful things, because I knew about it and had seen the corpse of the cat, in some crazy way I felt responsible for what he did. By following him that day I’d entangled myself in his nightmare world."

"You don’t have to feel gui1ty," Jack soothed softly. "He was a warped little kid, and it wasn’t your fault."

"I realize that now, but when I was ten I believed Nick Ringer had the power to show me up as his accomplice. I took the blame for his secrets upon myself. It terrifies me that he’s in Houston, a grown man now."

"It’s all right, Eileen, try not to think about him. I’ll never let anything happen to you." Jack slowly rocked her back and forth.

“Do you think he might be…?" Eileen’s voice trailed away.

Jack’s mind shrieked,
Yes, yes, he’s the most likely suspect I know about.
But he answered, "We can’t know yet. They have a psychological profile worked up on the killer downtown, but I haven’t seen it. I don’t know what kind of a man would kill..." His voice broke.

"With a wire," Eileen finished.

"Yes," Jack echoed, "with a wire."

NICK LOUNGED in a chair in Sidney Rubens’s office thinking about the Italian sausage sandwich he had gulped on his way to see the psychiatrist.

"How have you been sleeping?" Rubens asked.

"So, so. The Valium helps."

Rubens re-lit the cigar lying in his McDonald’s ashtray and leaned back in his chair.

"What do we have to go through to get me a refill?" Nick asked.

"Not much, Nick. A little chat, that’s all. You’re not exactly under treatment. We’re just trying to get to the root cause of your insomnia and attacks of nerves.”

"So shoot your best shot," Nick said, very composed. "You tell me why I can’t sleep."

Rubens smiled slightly before putting on his cigar. "I thought you might tell me."

Nick shrugged his shoulders and slipped down in the chair until his legs reached to the psychiatrist’s desk.

"It’s your time we’re wasting," he said sullenly. "I personally don’t think there’s any problem here.” Rubens tapped a folder next to his ashtray. "They say in Tacoma you had a problem."

"Fuck Tacoma." Nick said it very calmly.

Rubens tried another tack. “You said the killing you did in the war bothered your conscience."

Nick snorted and laced his fingers together. He twiddled his thumbs idly and refused to meet the gaze of the man behind the desk.

"Didn’t you say that, Nick?"

"I don’t want to talk about it. That was nearly three years ago. The past is dead far as I’m concerned. You shouldn’t take everything I say too literally, and for that matter, you shouldn’t take what Tacoma said without a grain of salt either. They were all a bunch of jerk-offs."

"Do you still have nightmares?" Rubens asked.

"I told you I did, but everybody has a nightmare now and then. It’s no big deal." Nick began getting more anxious as the psychiatrist continued talking about nightmares.

“Can you tell me what your nightmares are about?"

"The usual things--falling, drowning, being chased by something I can’t see, that sort of stuff." He shifted uneasily in his chair.

Rubens tapped his ashes, biding for time. Now they were getting somewhere. Nick believed it was commonplace to dream so often of being in peril.

"There’s another dream too," Nick added. He frowned in concentration and unlocked his fingers to stare at the knuckles of his right hand. "I have this one pretty often." He glanced up suspiciously. "Not that it means anything. It’s just a nightmare."

Rubens circled the stub of his cigar at Nick to gesture him to continue. Speaking at the wrong time was the mistake most listeners made.

"I’m lying on a hospital bed, all tucked in. I open my eyes and find that I can’t move. Not a muscle. I can’t even lift a finger or wiggle a toe. The only part of me that moves is my eyelids. I lift them and I see two figures beside my bed. I try to turn my head and I can’t. I try to talk and I can’t. I’m paralyzed and I panic. The figures next to me are talking. It’s Daley, my brother, and a doctor."

Rubens squinted his eyes against the smoke of his cigar. He nodded and waited to hear the rest. So far it was a classic nightmare of impotency, sexual or otherwise. Many sociopaths felt a sense of helplessness.

Nick did not realize he was repeating a dream that in ways coincided with casebook patterns of the disturbed personality.

"In the dream Daley asks the doctor isn’t there something they can do for me. The doctor says there’s nothing to be done and the best thing Daley can do is to forget me, leave me alone, and live the rest of his life without regrets for his brother.

"Meantime, I’m frozen there in that bed trying like hell to talk to Daley, to beg him not to leave me, to rescue me. My tongue’s heavy as a concrete block and it won’t lift off the bottom of my mouth. I blink my eyes, but they aren’t looking at my eyes. They’re both staring at my paralyzed body, the doctor shaking his head. Daley starts to cry and say he can’t leave me this way, like a vegetable."

Nick stood up and began pacing around his chair. "Fuck, it’s stupid. Really dumb. But I wake up from that dream in a sweat, scared stiff that I won’t be able to move."

"You were dreaming of a catatonic state," Rubens said.

"Where you can’t move or talk?"

“Yes.”

"That doesn’t mean anything. Dreams are all bullshit. I don’t know why I told you about it." He sat down again and waved his hand as if dismissing the dream.

"Are there any other recurring dreams that you remember?" the psychiatrist asked.

"No, that’s the only one I have again and again. And it’s always the same. I’m lying there screaming inside my head for Daley to help me and he finally turns away to leave so that I’m left alone, imprisoned. Abandoned."

Rubens decided to change the subject slightly. "How are you getting along with your brother lately?"

Nick grew restive again and sat up in the chair. He gripped the chair arms and stared at his shoes. “Okay, I guess."

"Arguments?" Rubens probed.

"A few, nothing serious. We used to fight over his girl friend who moved in with us, but she’s gone now…" His voice trailed away abruptly.

"Where did she go?"

"Fuck if I know!" The belligerent tone surprised Sidney Rubens and Nick noticed. "I mean," he backtracked, "she moved out. Down to Montrose somewhere is all I know. And good riddance. She was weird." For some reason he did not want to tell Rubens that Madra died. But then if he told him that, how would he explain her death?