He allowed himself to touch it, feel its wetness. It tingled on his fingers’ ends.
His dreams came back to him, the dreams that started it all. In the summer of ’88 he was plagued by dreams of dark red blood spurting like ichor from between women’s thighs, dousing him, staining his hands….
On impulse he lathered his hands with the rag, swabbing the rich scarlet elixir over his fingers and knuckles and palms. He poked inside her and his fingers came out steeped in blood. He inhaled its odor. Life in its chemical essence. The mystery of creation, the secret power of the female. Nutritive, generative, miraculous.
He knelt for a long time, hands dripping, the knife forgotten on the pavement. Finally he roused himself, aware of a brightening, the arrival of dawn.
He looked at his hands, coated in gore. A line of Shakespeare recurred to him:
Quickly he wiped his hands on her clothes, recovered his knife, and escaped from the alley, having left her body intact and undefiled.
A few blocks away he caught a Red Car trolley. He headed north, then east, changing cars more than once. In South Pasadena he got off and completed his journey on foot. The sun was up, and no doubt his wife had risen with it.
They lived in a rented house, a situation that was merely temporary. Business reversals had delayed his acquisition of a home of their own. For the moment the little bungalow with its two bedrooms and its small garden would have to do. Maddie seemed pleased with it, even if she was pleased with nothing else.
He reached the house and entered through the front door. In the kitchen he found Maddie frying eggs on the stove. She glanced at him, her face registering a mixture of regret and contempt.
“Out tomcatting again,” she said. It was not a question.
He stopped a few feet away. He stared in silent fascination until she turned.
“Yes?” she asked.
“Are you bleeding?”
“What did you say?”
“Is it your time of the month?”
“You can’t ask such a thing. It’s horrid.”
“Just tell me.”
“I certainly will not.” She turned back to her eggs on the stove. “The very idea. You must be sotted, as usual-”
He seized her from behind, as he had seized the Chinese whore, and tilted up her head so her eyes stared into his.
“
She hitched in a gasp. “Yes, if you must know.”
It was what he wanted to hear. What he had hoped for, fairly prayed for, throughout his ride home.
He threw her to the floor, straddling her, unhooking her nightgown, his fingers fumbling until in frustration he tore the damned thing off. He removed the sanitary towel she wore in lieu of a rag and cast it aside, smelling blood, the intoxicating odor of it, the scent of birth and life.
She chattered in hysteria. “My God, what are you doing,
“Taking you,” he grunted, “as my wife.”
He thrust inside, his manhood spearing her. She cried out, a sound that was very nearly a scream, and he shot his hot seed in a surge of painful pleasure that left him spent.
He pulled free. She trembled all over, dazed and scared.
“There,” he said with satisfaction. “
His toothache, he observed, had entirely disappeared.
thirty-four
Jennifer stood in a corner, her eyes closed against the bedlam around her, aware of nothing but pain.
With the building manager’s cooperation, a vacant apartment two doors down from Maura’s unit had been commandeered as a command post and now hosted a swarm of cops, uniformed and plainclothes. Forensic technicians worked the crime scene. The assistant district attorney had shown up, and a pathologist was on the way. The captain of the Pacific Area station was here, as was his overboss, the commander of Operations- West.
Arriving personnel were logged in by a patrol officer posted at the elevator. As residents drifted home from work, they were intercepted by detectives in the lobby and questioned. The tenants on Maura’s floor had been kept away from their homes for the time being.
Everything was being handled according to procedure. She might have found some reassurance in that fact. At other crime scenes, she would listen to the chatter of police radios and take comfort in the imposition of order on chaos. Death had struck, but life went on. That was what she would tell herself. She didn’t believe it now.
A memory came to her, Maura’s voice calling her “kiddo,” the word as sharp and clear as if it had been spoken in her ear.
She’d suffered other shocks and traumas, but none of them had been like this. Whatever loss she had endured, she’d always felt she could recover.
Not this time. This time she was numb to the point of catatonia. She felt as if she’d died along with Maura, and what was left of her was only a shell, a hollow vessel. She thought of the glass jars that tumbled off her mantel during the earthquake. She was like that-shattered, in pieces-and there was no one to sweep up the mess.
Distantly she told herself to get it together. She couldn’t be out of action, relegated to the sidelines while Richard’s fate was decided. The words sounded right, but she couldn’t make them real. She was worn out. She was done.
“I don’t think we want to go public yet.” That was Casey, his voice rising over the babble of conversation.
He was arguing with a man she didn’t recognize. She tuned in to the discussion and gathered that it concerned the possible release of Richard’s photo to the media. The other man wanted the photo shown on the late TV news. Maybe an alert viewer would call in a tip. Casey didn’t agree. They would have to set up a telephone hotline. They would be deluged with false sightings. It would be a waste of resources.
“The public needs to be involved,” the other man insisted.
They’re already involved, Jennifer thought. They’re getting killed.
She turned away. Two days ago the prospect of Richard’s photo on the news would have reduced her to tears. She was past all that.
She hadn’t caught him. But others would. He would be arrested, or he would die resisting arrest. Then the whole story would come out. Their family’s history. Their father’s crimes. Edward Hare. Everything.
How long before the spotlight transfixed her in its glare? Possibly she was the only person in Los Angeles who’d never wanted to be famous. Soon she would be. Nothing would ever be the same, but somehow she just didn't care.
A loud voice attracted her attention. Someone was asking how Richard had gotten inside the building when the lobby doors were locked. It was a fair question. None of the residents would have opened the door for a street person. But people were always finding ways around security doors. Maybe a tenant had failed to close it completely, or had propped it open with a rock while unloading his car.
“Fifty-one-fifty,” the loud man kept saying. “The fuckin’ guy is fifty-one-fifty.” It took her a moment to remember that 5150 was LAPD radio code for
Yes, she thought, he’s fifty-one-fifty, all right.
She stepped out of the room, into the hallway, to escape the din of voices. The hall was empty. The door to Maura’s apartment remained open, but she refused to look in that direction.
Lightning flashed at the edge of her vision. She wondered if it was raining outside. No, it wasn’t lightning, only bursts of illumination from a flashbulb-the evidence-team photographer snapping photos of the crime
