“Mary, Mary…” Benson was crooning.
“You!”
Another man’s voice. From the direction of the street.
Benson released her and stepped back, staring toward the driveway.
In the shadows near the attendant’s booth, a darker shadow moved.
Benson wiped his arm across his mouth and glared down at Mary, weighing his options. His bared teeth flashed his fear, and perhaps hatred.
He said, “Fuck it!” and backed away from her. “You can goddamn walk back to the hotel.”
“Hey, buddy! Hey, you!”
“Screw you, pal!” Benson screamed, and he wheeled and ran out the back of the lot and down the dark alley. She heard his desperate footfalls long after the night had swallowed him.
The shadowy figure melted away from the wall and was moving toward her. “You okay?”
“Yes, I think so. Thanks! Thank you!”
Then she realized there was something familiar about the way the man walked.
44
“You just relax now, Miss Arlington.”
She was sure he couldn’t see her plainly in the darkness, yet he knew who she was. He must have been watching her and followed her from the hotel, then Spectrum. She knew, but she didn’t want to admit, what that meant.
His built-up shoe dragged like sandpaper as he stopped and stood crookedly in front of her. “I was watching you dance earlier,” he said. “Thought you was a sight to see. If anybody deserved a pair of my shoes, you did.”
She almost thanked him, but said nothing. She couldn’t have spoken if she’d tried. Fear had taken root in her throat and threatened to cut off her air. There were only half a dozen places that offered an adequate selection of ballroom dance shoes for sale, and they did most of their business by mail. Albert Spangle would know the names and addresses of almost every ballroom competitor in the country, and he had an obviously innocent reason for attending various competitions, setting up his vending booth and selling dance shoes. He could research and select his victims at his leisure, and the only known connection between him and them would be the legitimate one of merchant and customer, the same connection he had with hundreds of dancers. If he was a murder suspect, so were the many other merchants who sold shoes, gowns, tuxedos, and a wide range of other dance accessories. It was perfect camouflage for a killer. Something in Mary turned cold and shriveled.
“That man do harm to you?” Spangle was asking.
“No,” she managed to breathe.
“He sure tried, though.” He was grinning knowingly. “You can’t trust nobody, Miss Arlington. ’Course, you did lead him on. I seen you.”
She willed herself to back away, but fear held her fast. Her feet were embedded in the blacktop. “Lead him on? How? I only had a few drinks with him, danced a few times.”
“I mean at the competition. I seen you in your black dress, the skirt slit up the side, shaking your hips.”
“Dancing. I was only dancing.”
“Sure was. I watched you tango, how you had your cunt right up against that fella’s leg.”
Dear God, it was beginning in earnest, the verbal dance she knew would end in her death. “But that’s the way it’s done in tango.” Even as she spoke, she knew he wanted her to protest. “The other dancers were doing it, too.”
“That ain’t much of an excuse now, is it? Other people doin’ it? Hear that one all the time. Even Jesus wasn’t the only one crucified, now, was he? And them wayward of Sodom and Gomorrah thought the same, like all of them that done the devil’s dance. Delilah and witches and warlocks. Ain’t history fulla such excuses by the worst people?”
“I… guess so.” He wasn’t making sense, but could she have expected him to be rational?
“It’s the way of the wicked, to wrap themselves in the deeds of others. Sin and abortion and abomination. But the godless reap the whirlwind.” He moved closer, his grin widening and going lewd, his teeth yellow in the flickering dimness. “It comes to that, always.”
This time her legs found strength. She spun on her heel and began to run. But his arm, surprisingly strong, wound about her waist, jerking her back around to face him. Pain jolted through her bruised ribs and she gasped.
“Guess you’d dance with most anybody,” he said, still grinning, feeding on her pain. “Even somebody like me.” His body was up against hers, his breath fetid and reeking of garlic. “The wages of sin’s about to be paid.”
Something stung the base of her neck, just above her breastbone. She tucked in her chin and stared down in terror at the long knife he held to her throat. A black worm writhed across the back of his hand. Blood! Her blood! “You…”
“I what?” He sounded amused, as Benson had. Benson, where are you now?
“You killed those women!” she spat out, wishing immediately she hadn’t spoken. But it wouldn’t matter. If he was going to kill her, his mind had been made up when he’d begun following her, stalking her as he must have stalked the others.
“And you don’t think they deserved it?” he asked. “Flaunters of cunt, carriers of sin and disease that twist bodies and rot souls?”
“I–I don’t know.”
“Well, they deserved it, just like you. Unsaved and unclean, moving the way they did, displaying their bodies and inflaming men’s blood.” He shuffled forward, shoving her back, the knife still against her, his other arm clamped around her waist. A strangely dreamy expression passed over his features and he began swaying in an obscene parody of dance. He jammed his leg painfully between her thighs and up against her pelvis. A tango. God, he thought he was doing a tango. “We don’t even need no music, do we?” She was aware he had an erection. He began grinding himself against her, and they staggered like a pair of desperate, grappling drunks.
For a second he loosened his grip, and she placed her palms against his chest and tore herself free from the macabre dance.
He’d been expecting it.
Tricked her.
He laughed as she felt his hand clutch her hair and jerk her head back. Without realizing she’d fallen, she was kneeling. She felt burning pain in her knees and inanely worried about having skinned them, as when she was a small girl. Torn pantyhose this time, though. Duke would be furious.
“End of the dance, Miss Arlington. Judgment be yours in the next world! Godless slut!”
“Please!” she begged. “Do it! Do it!”
She heard her shrieking intake of air, almost a scream, then the cartilage in her throat crackled as her head was yanked back even farther, straining her neck. Above her stretched the dark blanket of night sky, a distant and uncaring universe.
The knife point bit, then the pain faded and she felt the blade slicing into her throat.
An amazing calm came over her, a detachment from what was happening, like the paralysis of jungle prey in the jaws of a predator.
Then there was shouting.
Soles shuffling on blacktop.
Grunting and ragged breathing.
She was lying flat on her stomach, feeling the warm spread of blood beneath her cheek. Still there was no pain.
And Spangle was lying beside her, also on his stomach, his arms twisted awkwardly behind him. Someone was tying his wrists together, twisting what looked like a leather belt around and around them. He was ranting incoherently and glaring madly at her, blood bubbling from his mouth.
