The Third Victim (3 page)

Know no more…

The phrase had a hollow, ghostly sound—like a bell tolling in empty night. Like mists rising in darkness over the tangled branch-shapes of silent, steaming swamps.

Know no more…

If someone died, they knew no more.

The logic, therefore, was proven. Ipso, a fact. Full circle. A thought—
his
thought—created the whole. Because circles were perfect, it was perfection. Ipso.

Therefore, himself. Perfection.

He was staring at his mother, watching her wipe at her chin with coarse, thick-knuckled fingers. The fingers moved with awkward, simian stiffness. She’d finished the cereal, milk-slurping. The coffee would be next. Slurping.

Tarot…

It was a joke. Because, first, he’d imagined it all. He’d created it first deep inside his brain—secretly, like a story. Or a fairy tale. Or a lie. A long, lingering lie. He’d imagined it all—everything. Nothing could surprise him, or frighten him, or threaten him. Everything was perfection: a round, perfect circle.

Was it a piston ring?

Yes. Perfect Circle Piston Rings. He’d seen their ads in magazines.

His eyes were once more on the newspaper.

Tarot, Con’t.

What would happen if the police came? Would that, too, be perfection?

Yes. He could imagine it. Often he’d secretly pictured the scene: the two blue-uniformed policemen knocking at the door. Therefore, ipso, it would happen as he imagined it. They would ask their questions, and frown, and finally go away. Like a story—a bedtime story, told to others.

Always to others. For him, there had never been a bedtime story. Never. Only a dark, wild shrieking in the night. Like the cry of someone dying.

Tarot…

He tore a piece of dough from a sweet roll and began rolling it into a small round ball—a soft, doughy peaball, rotating between his fingers. He could flatten it, or shape it into a worm—or eat it. He realized that he was smiling—secretly, slightly smiling.

Was he smiling at the thought of eating a dirt-crusted worm wriggling down his throat?

No.

It was the first joke—the Tarot joke.

But they didn’t know it was a joke. Therefore, they couldn’t laugh.

He felt the first sudden shift of a sharp, secret snickering. He was blinking, sitting up straighter, frowning against the stomach-tugging spasm. If he laughed, they would know. The danger would begin. The ever-danger. Nothing could…

The giggle-bubble was growing—
growing.
Laughter-bursting. Across the table, her eyes blinked, her eyebrows faltered, her forehead puckered. Attention. Suspicion. Danger.

Inside his mouth, a small, secret pain-shock stabbed against the laughter-sound. He tasted the salt of blood, blinked his eyes against tears. The laughter was stifled—and the giggle-bubble. Everything. It was his secret: the knot of tooth-gnawed scar-mass, inside his mouth. When the blood came, the laughter stopped. Ipso.

The blood…

What would happen if the police came for him and talked to him and questioned him—
and then forced open his mouth?

If they saw the scar-knot, would he tell them its reason? If they asked—guessed—would he tell them?

He couldn’t decide.

If they asked, he wouldn’t know.
Couldn’t
know. Yet other things he
could
know. And the police, too. They could know. If they guessed, they could know.

“…be late, Leonard.” It was his mother’s voice, hardly audible. He dropped the tiny dough ball beside his plate. For a moment he stared at the plate smeared with remains of his breakfast. He drew a long, cautious breath, testing himself. Yes. It was safe. He could raise his eyes, look at her—even smile, without laughing. Because today she must never suspect him. Today they would all be watching. All of them. All day long. Today it was beginning. Therefore, he would smile at her—without laughing. Today he must be careful.

He
was
smiling at her. It was another sign. Mere months ago, he’d been unable to look at her without helpless revulsion. His soul had gagged at the sight of her. He’d vomited, inside. But now he could smile—
smile.

As he rose slowly to his feet, he began thinking of something to say to her. Because, before he left, he must smooth away the danger of her frown. She must again become a lump, before he could leave her.

Joanna glanced at the clock as she dipped her pen into the India ink. Four and a half hours remained until deadline—take away lunch. Three and a half hours. She slowly began inking the lightly penciled outline of the chafing dish. It would take an hour, at least, to finish the dish itself. The louvered screen and fabric swatch would take another hour, plus the background wash. With no interruptions, she’d finish in time. But interruptions were chronic. And, so far, the day had been a disaster. First there’d been the knife, lying on the hallway floor like some poisonous metallic talisman—like an obscene memento from some evil, mysterious cult. Then there’d been Tarot’s letter, warning his third victim. Finally, the last straw, there’d been the car. She’d been unable to start the car. Last night, coming home, the car had acted strangely, hesitating on hills, losing power. This morning, after she’d ground the starter forever, the motor had caught only once—then died. Finally the battery had quit. Desperate, she’d gotten her next-door neighbor, Mrs. Ferguson, to drive Josh to his day-care center. Mrs. Ferguson disapproved of divorce. Therefore, in exchange for every favor Mrs. Ferguson had rendered during the past two months, she’d extracted a frowning, pinched-nose penalty, claiming the privilege of a full five-minute lecture on modern morality and parental responsibility. So when Mrs. Ferguson, already the morning’s martyr, had offered to pick Josh up that evening, Joanna had declined. Somehow, she’d manage.

She drew back from the sketch, squinted, frowned, then began crosshatching the chafing dish’s big wooden knob. The sketch was figured for three-to-one reduction, so the crosshatching must be medium coarse. Otherwise, the details would drop out. It was slow, meticulous work—exacting, exasperating. But she was good at it. For as long as she wanted the job, the ad manager had said, she could have it. Very few retail advertising artists, he’d continued, had her background and training. Then, having already said too much, he’d caught himself, embarrassed. Because, with her training—her talent—most artists would be illustrators, not forty-hour-a-week hacks. They’d be working in four colors, selling to the magazines and the ad agencies, earning five hundred dollars a picture.

Her talent…

Yes, she had talent. And experience, too. For ten years, technically, she’d been a professional artist. She’d sold her first painting at age eighteen, ten years ago. Success had seemed certain. In Cleveland, she’d been a phenomenon: a prodigy, one of her teachers had proclaimed. By the time she was twenty, he’d assured her, she’d be ready for New York. The “main event,” he’d called it. His name had been Dunninger—Herb Dunninger. He’d been a broad-chested, aggressively virile man in his middle forties who expressed himself in athletic metaphors. But whenever Dunninger got drunk, he made bleary passes at delicate young men.

Ten years…

In Cleveland, she’d been a prodigy. Yet in the years since, she’d sold only six paintings. Total revenue, deducting gallery commissions, eight hundred dollars.

In the main event, she’d failed.

For her twenty-first birthday, her father had given her a one-way ticket to New York, and a check for a thousand dollars. She’d discovered later that he’d borrowed the money. She’d started bravely on her life’s great adventure, leaving Cleveland the day after Christmas, seven and a half years ago. Taking her mother’s advice, she’d gotten a room at the Manhattan “Y”—a private room, for fifty dollars a week. It had seemed an enormous sum, a twentieth part of her thousand dollars. She’d arrived in a blizzard, with a single suitcase and a bulging portfolio of watercolors under her arm. The oils, on canvas, had been packed separately. Her father had carefully crated the oils. He’d worked a whole weekend, he’d told her. When she’d left Cleveland, both her father and mother, with their separate spouses, had come to the airport. It had been a sad sight, somehow: four aging, ill-at-ease well-wishers, all of them strangers.

On her first full day in New York, December the twenty-seventh, she’d started making the rounds of the galleries, proudly clutching the portfolio. She’d felt very much the bright, brave young artist, about to conquer New York. She’d been—

A brisk knock sounded on the flimsy door of her cubicle. The entire door vibrated.

“Come in.” She glanced at the clock, then at the sketch. Only the wooden knob was finished.

Tom Southern was standing in the doorway, arranging his lean, graceful body in its most engaging pose.

“I’m late for a buyers’ meeting,” he said, “so I’ll have to be brief. How about dinner tomorrow night?” He was smiling easily, tugging one colorful cuff into precisely the proper prominence. Each gesture projected a posed sense of negligent self-confidence.

She frowned. “What’s tomorrow? Wednesday?” Looking at his improbably handsome face, she suddenly realized that she’d never liked Tom Southern.

“Right. Wednesday.” He moved the cuff back an inch, consulting an elaborate watch. “Come on, ducks, yes or no. We can arrange the details later. Like tomorrow. I’ve got this meeting now, then a salesman’s taking me to a martini lunch. Then there’s another meeting, for God’s sake.”

She realized that she was smiling at him. Did the smile look as false as it felt?

“All right. Fine. Tomorrow. Thanks, Tom.”

His long, playfully dolorous expression mocked her. His eyes sought hers with a smiling, quizzical intimacy. He cocked his head, as if he were appraising a so-so acting performance. “By tomorrow, ducks, I hope you can muster a little more enthusiasm. Remember—” He paused, expertly dropping his voice to a lower, sexier register. “Remember, we’re eating in—at my place.” He languidly pushed himself away from the door frame, smiled, flapped a casual hand, and left.

She sat motionless, staring at the closed door.

Remember, we’re eating in.

She picked up the pen, dipping it deliberately into India ink.

Tom was very punctual, very precise in his sexual scheduling. When they’d first gone out to dinner, he’d said that they’d “do it again, in a couple of weeks.” And tomorrow night would be precisely two weeks—their anniversary.

Remembering that night, she felt blood rising to warm her face. How long had it been since she’d blushed? Had she blushed that night, when they’d returned to her apartment?

No. She hadn’t blushed. She’d cried.

Incredibly, she’d cried.

They’d gone to Chez Pierre, where the dinner check had come to almost twenty-five dollars. Then they’d gone to Perry’s, for a nightcap, then back to her place. The moment she’d entered the hallway, with Tom close behind her, she’d felt the quickening of desire—the suddenly overwhelming awareness of a masculine presence. While she’d poured brandy into two of the outsize snifters that she and Kevin had gotten for wedding presents, Tom had paid off the baby-sitter—bringing his total investment in the evening to about forty dollars. They’d sat on the couch, making desultory small talk. Tom had said very little. Instead, he’d looked at her with long, lowering significance, dropping his dark lashes over soft brown eyes. Finally he’d leaned forward, deliberately placed the brandy snifter on the coffee table, and turned to kiss her. She’d returned the kiss, hesitated, then put her own glass on the table beside his. She was waywardly aware that it was an evocative composition: the two snifters side by side, circularly reflecting the soft amber light of a single lamp. Then she felt his hands on her shoulders, firmly drawing her back against the couch cushions. As he kissed her again, expertly, his hands began a slow, measured caress. Her body had responded with a wild, wanton will of its own, shaping itself to his, drawing taut to his touch. Finally she’d abandoned herself to the thrusting rhythms her body sought with his, stifling both memory and hope, risking it all for the moment.

Then she’d heard Josh’s voice from his bedroom, calling out in his sleep. At first it had been a dimmed, inarticulate sound, blurred by the harshness of her own breathing, and by the rustle of her clothing in urgent friction with Tom’s, and by the hackneyed accompaniment of the couch springs, creaking faster beneath them. But the small voice became clearer. Josh was having a nightmare. He was crying for his daddy.

And suddenly she’d been sobbing. Suddenly she’d realized that there was no hope—not for that night, with Tom. Not for an infinity of long, desperate nights. Her body ached for sexual release. But not with a stranger. Please God, not with a simpering stranger.

Tom had calmly arranged his clothing, lighted a cigarette, and finished his brandy. With an amused tolerance, he’d implied that her reactions were not uncommon in newly divorced women. He understood. He could wait—if she could. Next time, they’d “party” at his place. Then, tapping a yawn, he’d announced that it was late, time to go home. His goodnight kiss had been almost perfunctory. Only his hand drawn with slow, deliberate insinuation up from her flank to the swell of her breast had confirmed his newly acquired license.

She’d gone in to see Josh, tucking him in. She’d stood for a long time in the darkness, staring down at the small head on the pillow. She’d felt the sexual urgency draining forlornly away, until she’d slumped against the wall, pressing her forehead against the nursery-printed wallpaper. All she could hear was the sound of breathing—hers, and her son’s. She’d—

Another knock. Another interruption. She sighed—audibly, she hoped. “Come in.”

“How about some coffee?” Sally Mathewson stood in the doorway, balancing a bearclaw on two styrofoam cups. “Have you got any Kleenex? I forgot napkins.”

“Sure. Here—” Joanna cleared a space, spreading out a sheet of tracing paper for the bearclaw. “How much was it?”

Perched precariously on a prop stool, Sally raised a flip, ink-stained hand. Sally periodically fingered her typewriter ribbon, she’d once confided, purposely to smudge her hands. It never hurt, she said, to remind the troops that she was the store’s sole copywriter. As opposed to, say, gimlet-eyed buyers and their retinue of scurrying assistants.