“Yes. Yes.”
She pulled the stocking across the head of his penis, then coiled it around the shaft. His breath caught in his throat as he felt himself about to come. And at just the moment he erupted, she pulled the stocking into a stranglehold.
He let out a cry of agony as if something inside had ruptured.
Lila stood over him, her face again the demon. “Dirty girl,” she said, and shot out of the room and slammed the door behind her.
51
Steve had that dream again.
There was no buildup, no foreplay. He was straddling the woman as she lay naked on her bed, her red hair spread under her like brushfire. Digging into his palms were the opposite ends of a black nylon that he pulled with all his might, causing the loop to cut into her neck, making her face swell grotesquely under him, her nose seeming to inflate toward his, her eyes bulging to the popping point, her mouth emitting a high, shrill, jingling sound.
The PDA ringing from his night table shocked him awake.
And he said a silent prayer that he was awake. He had begun to hate the thought of going to bed, of risking having that dream again. It made him fear for his own sanity—fear that he was the person in those nightmares. Fear that those dreams weren’t imaginings but memory.
Through the dark he could make out that the digital clock said 4:24, and his first thought was Dana: something was wrong. He was instantly alert.
“Hey, Steve,” Captain Reardon said. “Sorry to wake you at this hour, but I’ve got some bad news. Pendergast’s dead.”
“What?”
“Committed suicide. The guards found him about an hour ago. He tore off the sleeve of his shirt and wrapped it around his neck and the bed frame.”
“Christ! Where the hell was the guard?”
“He’d just finished his rounds and must have gone out for a coffee or something. The last time he had checked, he was sound asleep.”
“I don’t believe this.”
“Yeah, a tough break. But it might be his way of confessing without having to face the music and the prospect of life in prison.”
“Yeah.”
“I know you thought he was the wrong man. But the way I look at it, if he wasn’t capable of rising above the shit, he was in too deep.”
“Did he leave a note?”
“No.”
“It just doesn’t feel right.”
“Nothing does at four in the morning. But on the bright side, maybe it vindicates Neil and gets us out of the tree.”
“Yeah.”
“Unit meeting’s at nine. Go back to sleep, and when you wake up things will make sense.”
“We can only hope.”
Part II
52
SUMMER 1975
Becky was right. He had become Lila’s puppy.
But Becky didn’t know the half of it. Lila in her craziness had twisted mother love into something unrecognizable. Spread over the years she had done it with so gentle a madness that it was as addictive as it was scary. She had romanced him, brought him places he could not imagine. Made him her boy toy. As the years passed, he became certain that it was wrong, that she had betrayed a trust, leaving him confused and ashamed.
But that night with the stocking had done something to him, put some kind of hex on him. He didn’t think it was medical—a crushed urethra, ruptured organ, something physical. No, that stocking was like a tourniquet around his libido. He could still become aroused by sexual fantasies. But he could not for some time sustain the arousal to achieve pleasure. Lila had ruined that.
At the same time, she had left him with a dark and impossible longing he could do nothing about. So, he followed her around, hoping she’d snap her fingers and reverse the spell. But that wouldn’t happen. That fancy lace stocking had become a punishing noose that had left him suspended between wanting her and fearing her, loving her and loathing her. At times wishing he were dead. Wishing she were dead.
Likewise for years she had spoiled all other females for him, making herself his gold standard. As everybody said, she was a classic beauty—a woman blessed with a goddess face. As a boy growing up, he had taken her appearance for granted, never having thought of her as having or not having beauty. Young kids didn’t think in those terms. Not until his teen years did he become aware of Lila’s specialness.
It was also when he began to suspect that his father was right—that she was crazy. Her mood swings were so violent and unpredictable, her demons so tangible, her suffering so consuming, that he could only guess at whatever abuse she had grown up with. Although his father was never physically hurtful, it was an angry and unfulfilling marriage—and one that had scarred him.
But there was still hope, and it took form and substance at a wedding.
It was a big elegant affair held at the Ralph Waldo Emerson Inn in Rockport, Massachusetts. The couple, friends of his father, got married at five in the afternoon under a canopy on a grassy cliff over the ocean. After the ceremony, a full dinner reception was held in the inn’s restaurant.
He and his parents sat at a large round table that held about a dozen people. Everybody was dressed to the nines. But nobody, including the bride, was a match for Lila, who wore a sleek designer gown made of shiny black and gold markings that made him think of an exotic African cat. Her glazed copper hair was done up in twists and curls that tumbled down the sides of her head, framing her perfectly sculpted features and large sapphire blue eyes. Sporting a modest suntan, she looked like the icon of some goddess found in the tomb of an ancient pharaoh. When she moved, intoxicating eddies of Shalimar trailed her and so did all eyes.
Sitting on the other side of her was his father, who was maybe six feet tall and twenty pounds overweight. In his closely cropped hair and broad shoulders he was every bit the airline pilot—a guy who had spent four years in the Air Force and flown fighter jets in the Korean War. Dressed in a gray suit, white shirt, and dark tie, he looked more like Lila’s bodyguard than her husband.
At the rear of the room was a five-piece ensemble and a female singer. After dinner, the lights dimmed and people began to dance. His father was not a good dancer, and he sat out the slow numbers. But he liked the fast
