of undress. We’re talking lingerie, swimsuits, nightgowns, and half of one or the other. They pose for their boyfriends and husbands, who don’t have sense enough to develop film themselves or learn how. I bet some of the pictures were sent to amateur photo contests in skinmags like
I saved them in the Binders anyway.
I get some fetish pictures, too. There’s a surprising number of guys who go around secretly taking pictures of women’s feet. It became a game for me to see if I could guess who took what pictures, judging by the individual requirements. “Darrin McDonel,” for instance, had to have open-toed sandals and toenails painted red. “Harold Bennett” was into red high heels and pallid skin. “Jamey Fiala” only photographed women in black high heels with those thin interlaced straps.
“John Futchins” was bolder. He went for those upskirt pictures you can see all over the Internet. I didn’t realize so many women in Bernardo were into thongs (and thongs were into them).
I saved all these pictures in the Binders. It didn’t matter if customers paid for doubles or not, some of their photos were duplicated and added to my Binder. It filled up fast. So did the second, and I’m running out of room on the third. Customers have to write their address on the film envelope, and halfway through the second binder I started keeping track of who submitted each picture. It was an impulse, you know? One of those things that you do without knowing exactly why. You suspect you could figure out why, but you’re almost afraid to admit it to yourself.
Sometimes I visit their homes at night and look in the windows. Just anywhere a woman who posed for some of the pictures might live. I don’t know why. I can see more in the pictures. But I do it anyway. Not often, just sometimes. I’ve never been caught. I wish I knew the addresses for some of Futchin’s upskirt subjects.
It’s not always the women from these photographs I watch. Remember I mentioned Katy Hindley? I’ve known her since sixth grade. I’ve had a hard-on with her name on it for seven years now, which she has only experienced vicariously through her yearbook photos. She knows I exist, but I don’t think she cares. The closest we’ve ever been was a lab group for biology. We dissected earthworms, dogfish sharks, and fetal pigs together, but strangely enough, she went to Homecoming with someone else in spite of our intimate bond. That’s okay, though. If her blinds are agreeable, I have my own private “homecoming” with her on Elvin Avenue three or four times a week during the school year, and more in the summer. This has been going on much longer than the other nighttime visits.
But I was talking about the great pictures I see on the job. They’re the reason I have to go to 1201 Hodson Avenue tomorrow. I’ll explain it then . . . assuming I come back. Like I said, this is not just a record, it’s a precaution.
Okay, remember how that killer in
The other inspiration was Gary Heidnik, who kept some prostitutes hostage in his cellar. They were played against each other as he systematically tortured and killed them. Just goes to show you can never tell what’s going on in the homes around you.
Unless, of course, you develop their film.
The house on Hodson certainly didn’t look like the kind of place you’d find a lot of missing women chained up in the cellar, assuming there is a design intended to suggest this. It’s a two-story the color of earth clay with blue shutters, entirely visible from the street except for a few maple trees in the way.
The mailman stops here six days a week, never realizing. The resident probably didn’t have subscriptions to magazines like
I rang the doorbell. I’d thought about what to say all week, and this was the big moment at last. I heard footsteps and there was a long pause where I had time to think,
“Mr. Owens?”
He squinted in the light—a scrawny, skeletal man whose smile may have seemed pleasant to anyone who didn’t know his secret life. I bet it was the last thing seen by several women the police didn’t know about, and I doubted they’d describe it as “charming.”
“Yes?” he asked. The picture of innocence. I could sense the gears turning in his head; he’d seen me before, even if I hadn’t seen him. If it was at work, I generally pay little attention to the male customers anyway, especially when the females are parading around in shorts and halter-tops.
I had this elaborate story about a lost basset hound named Gloria, but I found myself saying, “You’re the one who took Cassandra Bittaker.”
If the police dropped that line on him, I don’t think he would have reacted, but this was coming from some kid he vaguely remembered seeing before. He couldn’t quite conceal his discomfort.
“Are you out of your mind?” he finally asked—which wasn’t quite the same as denial.
“Cassandra Bittaker back in May,” I said. “Jenny MacColl in June. Aurora Fenech and Mariangela Bouchet in July.”
Owens’ expression gradually changed as I named the young women who mysteriously vanished in the past four months. Initially he had the look of a claustrophobic man on an elevator where the doors don’t seem to want to open, but by the time I got to “Aurora Fenech,” he was positively beaming. Like I was describing his greatest accomplishments.
“You read the papers,” he said. “So do I. I don’t go door to door making wild accusations, though. Maybe you should stick to the funnies.”
“Maybe I should call the police,” I countered. “I think they’d be very interested in your basement. That’s where you keep them, isn’t it?”
The whole time, he kept that smile. Fight or flight was in his eyes, but the smile never faltered. It reminded me of all those pictures where the flash gave people red satanic eyes, but they smiled good-naturedly all the same.
Owens surreptitiously examined the street from right to left. I knew he was looking for potential witnesses to his next disappearing act, having realized that he wouldn’t be having this conversation with me if I’d already called the police. A SWAT team would have smashed through every window and door of the house.
“I wrote about coming here in my journal,” I lied. He didn’t have to know that I hadn’t actually gotten around to naming names or reasons. “I went from house to house on your block, too, asking about my lost dog. ‘A basset hound, long ears, sleeps about twenty hours a day, answers to Gloria.’ If I disappear, someone around here will remember me. It won’t be long before they figure out my last visit was at your house.”
Sounds convincing, doesn’t it? Wish I’d thought of it BEFORE I went through with this, and actually did it.
He looked at me like he was trying to solve an equation, and the wattage of the grin finally diminished.
“Not only that,” I went on, “but you know who I am. And I have copies of your pictures. It was pretty ingenious of you to nab all those girls without being seen, but you need to bone up on common sense.”
He didn’t look pleased with that remark at all. “Just what exactly is it that you want?” he asked, his mouth now barely a line on his face.
“Show them to me,” I said.
