Trauma (19 page)

“But you didn't actually see him do that, did you?”

Bonnie turned around on the couch and frowned at him. “What kind of a conversation is this, Ralph?”

“I'm proud of you for dealing with it, that's all.”

“I didn't do anything. I went to sleep in the evening, and when I woke up in the morning he was gone.”

“Bonnie—”

She pressed an orange-polished fingertip to his lips. “You don't have to say anything, Ralph. You don't have to say anything at all, except ‘I love you.' You're right—my life is changed now. I'm single. I'm alone. I don't have anybody. I've been thinking about this … wondering what I'd say if you called me. And I knew you'd call me. But I don't have what it takes to break up a marriage, do I? That's what you wanted to say. Well, I don't mind that. I can live with that, so long as we go on seeing each other. You can stay married to your empty suitcase, and you can keep your house and your car and all of your investments. I'll stay here alone. So long as we can meet
and make love whenever you have the time, and so long as I know that it's me you really want, and not Vanessa, then I can live with that situation, and be happy with it.”

Ralph stared at her. “Are you serious?”

“Do I sound like I'm joking?”

“I don't know what to say, Bonnie. I honestly don't.”

She kissed him on the lips. “Why don't you say nothing at all? Why don't you come to bed with me, and show me that everything's going to work out fine?”

Ralph was sweating so much that he had to wipe his forehead with his sleeve. “Bonnie … your husband's missing.… He could be dead.”

“What do you care? What do I care? He was lazy and violent and bigoted and drunk, and our son was growing up the same way.”

“That wasn't any reason to kill him, though, was it?”

Bonnie sat up straight. “What's the matter with you, Ralph?”

“I just said that wasn't any reason to kill him.”

Bonnie offered her hand. “Come into the bedroom, Ralph. Let's forget about Duke. Let's start thinking about us.”

“I—uh—I don't have the time.”

“You don't have the
time
? Of course you have the time.”

She took hold of both his hands and pulled him up off the couch. Then she led him across the living room to the bedroom door.

“Bonnie—”

“I want to show you something, Ralph. I want to
show you something really amazing. Are you ready for this?”

“Listen, Bonnie, I have a critical lunch appointment. I only came over to—”

Bonnie squeezed his hand tightly, so that he couldn't break free. She stood on tiptoe and kissed him, and smiled at him. “Come and see what's in here.”

She turned the knob and opened the door. Inside the bedroom it was almost totally dark. Bonnie kept on smiling, but Ralph hesitated and tried to tug his hand away.

“What's that noise?” he asked her.

Bonnie listened. Yes, she could hear it, too. A papery rustling noise, then a very soft, high-pitched chittering sound. Then a scraping, like knife blades being drawn across each other.

“Come and take a look,” Bonnie insisted.

“I don't think so. What is it? There's something in there, isn't there? What is it?”

“Come see for yourself.”

There was another scraping sound, and then a loud, hurried flutter, like a large moth beating desperately against a paper lampshade. That was when Ralph lost it.

“Get me out of here!” he screamed. “For Christ's sake, you guys, get me out of here!”

Bonnie slammed the bedroom door shut. “Who are you talking to?” she demanded. “Who are you talking to, Ralph? What guys?”

Ralph tried to struggle away from her, but Bonnie yanked his coat off his shoulders, and there they were: a wire and a microphone.

“You're wired,” she said, in utter disgust. “You said you loved me and you're
wired
!”

A second later, the front door burst open and Dan Munoz came in, followed by Detective Mesic and four uniformed police officers. Ralph pulled away from Bonnie and retreated to the other side of the room, looking miserable and bruised. Dan came up to Bonnie and gave her a regretful smile.

“You want to tell me what this is all about?” Bonnie asked him, still trembling with anger. “That man was supposed to be my lover.”

“I know,” said Dan, gently. “That was why he was the best choice.”

“The best choice for what? To get me to incriminate myself for a crime that hasn't even been committed yet?”

“Oh, it's been committed all right. That's why we're here. I have to admit that I was hoping for a taped confession, but there's plenty of circumstantial.”

“Like what? A knife that's cleaner than you think it ought to be? Do you want to indict me for having a spotless toilet as well?”

“We've found the bodies,” said Dan.

Bonnie went utterly cold. “You've found them? Duke and Ray? Both of them?”

Dan took hold of her elbow. “You've got a strong stomach. Come and take a look. Mesic—check the bedroom.”

“Where are they? How did they die?”

“Come on, we'll take you there. You can see for yourself.”

Detective Mesic opened the bedroom door. “Pretty dark in here. Hold on, I'll open the shutters.”

He opened the shutters and let up the blinds, and the bedroom was flooded with sunlight. Mesic opened the closets and banged them shut again and tugged out two or three dressing-table drawers. “Nothing here, sir.”

Ralph gave Bonnie the strangest look, but he didn't say anything.

Dan ushered her toward the door.

On the southeastern side of the Riverside waste facility, in the middle of a stinking mountain range of domestic garbage, they came across four patrol cars, two medical examiner's station wagons and an ambulance, all parked neatly in line, as if they were attending a sporting event. Dan pulled up alongside them.

“You found them
here
?” asked Bonnie.

“We found them here because we were looking for them here. We also had a pretty good idea of exactly when they were dumped.”

He opened the car door for her, and together they walked across flattened cereal packets, split-open diapers, compressed cans of Green Giant sweet corn. The midday smog was made even worse by the rancid
smoke that leaked out of burning piles of rubbish. Detective Mesic started to cough.

There was no real need for words. Dan took Bonnie's elbow and steered her toward the front of the little crowd of police officers and medical examiners and photographers, and there they were. Duke and Ray, side by side, like gunned-down bank robbers from the Old West propped up in their coffins.

They weren't lying in coffins, however. They were lying in ripped-open, heavily bloodstained mattresses. The mattresses from George Keighley's house, on which David Hinsey and Maria Carranza had died. They were both naked, both immensely bloated, and both teeming with maggots. Their chests had been cut wide open, and Duke had been emasculated. Between his legs he wore a codpiece of glittering blowflies.

Bonnie stood and stared at them for a long time. Dan folded his arms and waited for her, patiently.

“You told me you disposed of the mattresses
before
you drove home,” Dan reminded her. “But since you were so uncertain of your schedule, I had it checked through. I found out that you didn't actually come here to deposit these mattresses until four forty-seven P.M., not long before the facility was due to close for the day.

“You made a phone call at home to Esmeralda at three oh two P.M. I suspect that Duke and Ray were already dead by then. All you had to do was cut the mattresses open, roll their bodies inside, stitch them up roughly, and drive them down here to the dump. They could have been bulldozered over and buried here forever.”

Bonnie looked at Duke's swollen, distorted face, and at Ray's, but they didn't even look like her husband and her son anymore. “It was Itzpapalotl,” she said, very quietly. “I asked her for help. I asked her for a way out. So she came, and she set me free, free like she is, like a butterfly.”

“Bonnie … this is Howard Jacobson. You remember, you brought me that caterpillar not long ago.
Parnassius mnemonsyne
, the Clouded Apollo. You may be interested to know that the larvae were brought over in several large consignments of Mexican kale. Because of the unusual weather conditions, especially El Niño, they hatched out and prospered, and we've had reports of them as far afield as Santa Barbara and Bakersfield. They don't really have any relevance to our specialty, I'm afraid … determining the time of death … but you can't win them all, can you? Don't be a stranger, love, Howard.”

That night, Bonnie was awakened by a rustling sound. She turned over, grunting; but then she heard it again. She opened her eyes and sat up.

Standing in the darkest corner of her cell was a figure with an expressionless white face and wings with glittering edges. The figure made the softest of whirring noises, and its feet scratched on the concrete floor, as if it had claws.

“Itzpapalotl,” Bonnie whispered.

The figure came nearer and leaned over her, spreading its wings wider. She could see its eyes now, and a tongue that shone like a black-bladed knife.

“Take me with you,” said Bonnie. “Please, Itzpapalotl. Take me with you.”

They had searched her, of course—but they had reckoned without her intimate knowledge of the ingenious ways in which people can end their own lives. When they opened the cell door at 6:03 A.M. the next morning, they found her lying on her back, staring at the ceiling in the same way that she had stared at the ceiling on the day Duke disappeared, except that there was an ever-widening pool of blood spreading across the floor of her cell, and she was dead.

She had pulled one of the buttons off her mattress and burrowed into the kapok filling with her fingernails, tugging out one of the springs. Then she had used the sharp end of the spring to tear open the veins in both her wrists.

At 11:17 A.M., Lieutenant Dan Munoz came into her cell to look at her. He stood by the door for a
long time, wondering what it was that had brought her to this.

He didn't notice two butterflies with almost colorless wings, which had been perched on the steel mesh that covered the windows. After he had been standing there for a while, they fluttered out the door and along the corridor, then out through the bars to the open air, and the morning sunshine, and freedom.

Graham Masterton (born 1946, Edinburgh) is a British horror author. Originally editor of Mayfair and the British edition of Penthouse, Graham Masterton's first novel
The Manitou
was published in 1976 and adapted for the film in 1978.

Further works garnered critical acclaim, including a Special Edgar award by the Mystery Writers of America for
Charnel House
and a Silver Medal by the West Coast Review of Books for
Mirror
. He is also the only non-French winner of the prestigious Prix Julia Verlanger for his novel
Family Portrait
, an imaginative reworking of the Oscar Wilde novel
The Picture of Dorian Gray
.

Masterton's novels often contain visceral sex and horror. In addition to his novels, Masterton has written a number of sex instruction books, including
How to Drive Your Man Wild in Bed
and
Wild Sex for New Lovers
.

Discover books by Graham Masterton published by Bloomsbury Reader at

www.bloomsbury.com/GrahamMasterton

Burial

Corroboree

Feelings of Fear

Fortnight of Fear

Holy Terror

House of Bones

Lady of Fortune

Trauma

“One of the few true masters of the horror genre.”

—James Herbert

“Masterton is a crowd pleaser, filling his pages with sparky, appealing dialogue and visceral grue.”

—
Time Out
(London)

“Graham Masterton's novels are charming, dangerous, and frightening … but all based on enormous erudition.”

—
L'Express
(Paris)

“One of the most original and frightening storytellers of our time.”

—Peter James

For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been
removed from this book. The text has not been changed, and may still contain
references to missing images.

This electronic edition published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Reader

Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square,
London WC1B 3DP