shame, and pain. He decided to spare her specific enumeration. “How long did Emil Shtolz continue to force you to perform these depraved sexual activities?'
“A few weeks. I...” She shook her head slowly, eyes downcast, as she reached back for the hideous memories,
“...have no way of knowing. A month, perhaps.'
“And then what happened?'
“When he grew tired of me he took me back to the clinic. I begged him to show me my baby, to let me hold him before they killed me. I was bound and taken into the room where they performed the experiments and he showed me what had been my baby boy.” The woman started to break down again, her shoulders moving up and down as if she were having trouble breathing. She was able to stop herself somehow and managed to continue.
“He was in a case among some of the others. Some of the other babies. I wouldn't have recognized him but there was a tag on him. The babies had been operated on ... the skulls, you know—their little heads were open.'
“Miss Kaplan, you were able to escape from this clinic. How did you manage it?'
“I cut my hand very badly. I tried to break the glass case with my hand and lost a lot of blood. There was a moment while they were sewing me up that nobody was watching and I jumped through the window on the second floor of the clinic. I ran...” She shrugged. “I was found by good people who helped me to hide.'
“Are you absolutely certain the photograph you have identified for this tribunal is that of Dr. Emil Shtolz, whom you allege to be responsible for the atrocities you've just described?'
“Yes. That's him.'
22
Perhaps a quarter of a century back in time, the woman called Alma—Anna Kaplan—had shut down. To lose a child in such an unspeakable manner, to endure inconceivable depravities, to survive the nightmare of evil that was the Holocaust, what were these experiences but stepping stones to a kind of quiet madness?
Her way of coping, of surviving, was to close her doors to the world, both literally and metaphorically. Part of her that shut down was the part that once felt love for children. It was a mild enough lunacy, given the circumstances of her youth. This woman, chronologically in her sixties, but mentally and emotionally ancient, lived a barren life long since reduced to the bare essentials of existence.
Once a week she would trudge the three and a half short blocks to Bob's Discount Store, a weekly stop in her agenda that included City Grocery, Bayou City Bank and Trust, and, occasionally, the post office.
At Bob's Discount, however, there was an added hazard: children. When they were out of school, or if she timed her visit wrong and arrived during the noon hour or in late afternoon, she was face to face with noisy children. Only Bob's low-priced merchandise, such as bargain-basement toilet paper, gave her the courage to brave the perils of the store each week.
There were no kids in the store when she entered, and that was a relief. She cringed at the abrasiveness of their loud, piercing voices, the blundering oafishness of their actions. They seemed to know she felt great distaste for them and it made them hate her, she suspected.
Summer vacation, teacher's meeting days, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and of course dreaded Halloween, as they called it here, these were the times she feared and loathed the most. Noisy, awful children would be running through the streets, and if you ventured out of doors they would come very close to you, threatening to touch you, sometimes shouting things. She favored inclement weather for the reason it kept most of them out of sight and out of mind, even if it pained her old and crippled bones.
Halloween, the night of October 31, was the most feared of her personal abominations. All Hallows’ Eve was a time of devil worship, when the cruel calendar would conspire to pull the children forth in unsupervised clots, the spirit of the darkness encouraging their more sadistic impulses.
Alma Purdy would spend these nights quietly in the living room of her small frame house, all the lights off, the curtains and blinds pulled tightly shut, an ancient but trusty revolver loaded and clutched in her lap. She would sit this way for hours, fearing to make a sound, praying to her harsh gods they would not come to her door again—the loud banshee children, cloaked in their disguises—mean snickers stabbing through her as they threatened “trick or treat.'
So when she found no noisy kids clamoring in the aisles of Bob's Discount, her first sight of the man brought only gratitude. She went on about her business, an old cripple homing in on the cheap toilet tissue.
He had a purchase in his hands and was on his way toward the cash register to pay when they met, almost colliding, two ships in the same lane, between School Notebooks! Special! and Big Chief Tablets—Save!
There was a second or two of recognition, shock to her nervous system, a startled shudder through his, no doubt or question in either of their minds. She'd seen the Boy Butcher. He had been recognized. He knew it. She knew it. He was smoother, and managed a flicker of a smile. She could feel her body jerk in frightened reaction as she forced herself to keep going.
He waited until the old woman had paid and left the store, as he fought to get himself back under control. Adrenals in overdrive, heart thumping like a long-distance runner's, he stood in back of the far aisle, his back to the round security mirror. All he could see was that shocked flash of recognition in the woman's eyes. He forced himself to calm down and put a smile on his face, moving up to the counter to pay.
“That be all today, Doc?'
“Mmhm,” he said, paying. “How's the missus doing?” The man at the register began yammering about his hypochondriac wife, and Royal nodded as if he were interested in her welfare.
“Say, that older lady who just left ... was that Helene Caulfield?” He used the name of a former patient now living over sixty miles away.
“You mean Mizz Purdy? That's old Alma Purdy. She's the one shot at them trick-or-treaters that time. Everybody knows her. She's got about half her oars in the water,” he said with a wicked chuckle, pointing at his skull for emphasis. Solomon Royal anticipated the five-minute dialogue of moronic banter that would follow any anecdote about her activities.
“Oh, goodness, that reminds me,” he said quickly, pointing a preemptive finger in the clerk's direction, “I need to get Miss Caulfield on the phone.” Royal mumbled something about tests as he paid and made his way out the door. His face felt red in the air.
There was a Bayou City directory, an absurdly small booklet, chained to a pay telephone outside the store. Purdy, Alma, was listed on page twenty-four, complete with address. Three or four blocks away!
He caught himself hyperventilating and willed deep breaths. He started his car and pulled out into Main Street. The crippled woman was hobbling along less than half a block away. Plenty of time.
Royal turned at the end of the block, found the street she lived on, turned again, counting house numbers. It was a small frame dwelling on a postage-stamp lot, the house badly in need of paint. The small town street appeared empty of people, only one truck coming from the opposite direction. He saw no one in his rearview. He backed into the nearby alley, parked, killed the engine.
His heart was hammering. Too late to worry about that now, he thought, getting out of the car. No traffic, no watchers. Dr. Royal opened the trunk and looked in a small canvas carrier in the corner of the neat storage space. Removed a few items: surgical gloves, a long screwdriver, the thing he always carried for emergencies, and a small black syringe case.
He estimated about a minute to a minute and a half and old Alma Purdy—who shot at Halloween pranksters—crippled, half-demented Alma, would come dragging around the corner, see him, and scream.
But Dr. Solomon Royal would be nowhere in evidence. He was already on the way to the back of her house, moving between the Purdy house and another dingy frame dwelling. Both structures shut up tight as drums. If neighbors peered through dusty curtains they did so surreptitiously.
Doctor Royal walked up to the back door of the little house and turned the knob as if he lived there, knocking very gently as he did so. His heart still pounded in his chest and he would later recall that at that moment his hearing seemed unusually acute. He could hear several different faraway vehicle sounds, machinery noise from a
