Chapter 10
As soon as he awoke, he decided he would see Amy Jarrell that morning. After breakfast he would drive to her house and say he'd forgotten his gloves and had returned for them. A good excuse. And he would make love to her. The way she'd acted, the expression in her eyes was unmistakable. She wanted him.
She'd wanted him a long time ago but then things had been different. Ten years ago he wouldn't have made love to his best friend's wife. Now making love to Amy Jarrell would seem relatively unimportant. He would do it because he wanted to do it and for no better reason.
He ate breakfast and showered and shaved. He stood in the living room for several minutes in his bathrobe, smoking a cigarette and staring at the melting snow in the side yard.
The snow would melt. Bob had said the police would make another search when the snow melted. Then they'd find the keys and the panties.
He dressed and went to the cellar and unlocked the door. He said, "Good morning," cheerfully, and then, as his gaze swept about the room, his blood turned to ice.
Irene and Janie sat on the bed. Irene seemed composed, but Janie had been crying, her eyes still reddened and moist, traces of tears evident on her cheeks. Ellen came toward him-her face white, her lips stretched taut across her teeth.
Emma McCall lay in the center of the room. They had spread a sheet over her and it covered her entirely, so that only the contours of her body were visible.
"She killed herself," Ellen said. "She did it while we were all asleep. Janie was the first to find her ... this morning."
"How did she...? "
He had been holding the Luger aimed at them as he always did when he entered the cellar. He was vaguely aware that he had allowed his arm to drop to his side. The gun seemed suddenly a tremendous weight at the end of his arm and his fingers were numb.
"She hung herself. She must have been ... very quiet. She moved a chair to the center of the room. She used a sheet and twisted it until it was like a rope. She threw one end over that crossbar in the ceiling. She tied one end around her neck and then knocked the chair out from under herself.
"I remember, last night, I kept waking up. Not fully awake ... but half-awake. Once, during the night, I heard a sort of choking sound. I thought it was one of the other girls coughing in her sleep. If only I had...."
Ellen pivoted abruptly, turning her back toward him. With a great deal of effort he managed to take his gaze from the corpse in the center of the room to look at Ellen. Her back trembled and she covered her face with her hands, but there was no sound as she cried.
He wanted to go to her and comfort her. He wanted to put his arms around her and he moved forward, but then he hesitated. It would be an empty gesture. Emma McCall had died. There was nothing he could do to bring her back to life and there was nothing he could do to comfort Ellen....
"Get her out of here."
Irene glanced from the corpse to him and back at the corpse.
He put the gun in his pocket. He moved across the room until he reached the corpse and then, moving slowly and carefully, started to slide his arms beneath her legs and beneath her head. In his efforts the sheet slid from above her legs and Janie gasped, turning away.
He remembered the previous time when he had tried to carry Emma and found her too heavy.
"I can't carry her. She's too heavy. I tried to carry her once before and couldn't. Ellen..." Ellen had stopped crying. She turned toward him and he saw her eyes were moist. Color had drained from her face and her lips quivered as if with silent tears. Without answering, she came across the room. He moved so he could grasp Emma's weight by her arms. Ellen bent, reached to grasp Emma by the legs and then straightened. She rubbed her hands against her hips.
"I can't-touch her. I can't touch her!"
He remembered the cot was an old type used by the army, a type that could be converted easily into a stretcher. While he knelt and adjusted the cot, he saw movement from the corner of an eye-red shoes and tapered nyloned legs.
He whipped the gun from his pocket and squeezed the trigger while his arm still swung in the arc. The bullet struck the door near Irene's waist and when she stopped he aimed the gun at her head. His finger tightened on the trigger....
He concentrated on lessening the pressure of his finger and slowly lowered the gun to his side. He grabbed her arm and pulled with so much force that he sent her in an awkward trot across the room until her knees struck the bed. For a moment she almost fell across it, but then she regained her balance and turned toward him.
Her eyes were blank with fear and he knew he had almost killed her-he had wanted to send a bullet plowing into her forehead and he had squeezed the trigger. Something had stopped him-within the microsecond it takes to squeeze a trigger. She had come near death-a mere microsecond away.
When Irene sat on the edge of the bed in the same position she had maintained a few moments before, he wedged the gun beneath his belt. He changed his position so that while he worked on the cot he was facing her and he watched from the corners of his eyes for the slightest movement.
With Ellen's help, he managed to carry Emma to his bedroom, locking the cellar door again as soon as they were inside the corridor. They had to make frequent stops while Ellen pleaded to rest. When they finally reached the bedroom, they left the stretcher near the bed and he guided Ellen out of the room, closing the door behind them.
Ellen started toward the cellar.
"Don't go back yet, Ellen. I want you to tell me what happened."
They went into the kitchen. He poured a glass of whisky for her but she only sat and stared at the glass.
"Did she say anything about suicide? I mean, did she ever mention it or talk about it?"
"No. But she was afraid you'd rape her. She ... talked about that a lot. I guess we were all afraid about what you might do to us but she was more afraid than Irene or Janie ... or myself. I guess she kept thinking and worrying about it until she couldn't stand it any longer."
"You said Janie found her?"
"Janie was the first to wake up this morning. I heard Janie scream-the most horrible sound I've ever heard. Somehow we managed to get Emma down to the floor. Janie wouldn't stop screaming. I covered Emma with the sheet but that didn't seem to make any difference. Janie kept on screaming and screaming. I used a chair to beat against the door. I hoped you'd hear the noise."
"I didn't tell you before. That cellar is soundproof. When I'm in this part of the house I can't hear anything going on in there."
She frowned as if puzzled by his statement but then, in a few moments, she stared at the glass of whisky again. "Janie stopped screaming. I think it's the first time she ever saw a-dead person. And someone who's died by strangulation . . , " She paused, looking up at him. "Have you ever seen someone who's died by strangulation?"
He shook his head. He had never seen, but he had read descriptions of men and women who had died by strangulation.
"After that, there was nothing to do except wait for you to come."
"How did Irene react?"
"She didn't seem to react at all. I guess she was-surprised. But she didn't scream or anything. While Janie and I were trying to get Emma down from the ceiling, Irene sat on the bed. She watched us as if Emma wasn't a person. She watched us as if she didn't care that Emma had died ... as if...."
Ellen trembled suddenly. With shaking fingers she raised the glass of whisky to her lips, closed her eyes and drank rapidly. When she lowered the glass, it was empty.
"I want to go back now," she said.
"You don't have to go back so soon. You can sit here for awhile and-"
"I want to go back. I want to see how Janie is. It upset her so much. I want to be certain she doesn't start screaming again. If she starts screaming again, I don't think she'll ever stop."
Stan watched as Ellen started toward the door. He rose and followed her and when they were in the corridor by the cellar door she said, "I think you should buy some tranquilizers and some sleeping pills. Janie needs the tranquilizers. I think I'll need the sleeping pills."
He opened the door. When she stepped inside he closed and locked it. He went to the kitchen and prepared a breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon. After he carried the tray of food to the cellar, he drove to Kennett Square. He stopped in one drug store and purchased a bottle of tranquilizers. In another drug store he purchased a bottle of sleeping pills.
When he returned to the house he filled some glasses with water and carried the glasses and the bottles to the cellar. Ellen accepted the glasses and the bottles without speaking to him. He asked if there was anything else he could do and Ellen shook her head.
He noticed Janie lay asleep on the bed, her brown hair tumbled across the pillow. She looked like a small lifeless doll that had been tossed there and he wondered if she had screamed again-if she had screamed herself into exhaustion.
He went to the living room and sat in a chair by a window. Time fleeted by. He glanced at his watch and it was ten o'clock. He glanced at his watch again and it was eleven o'clock. He glanced at his watch again and it was twelve o'clock. He couldn't remember thinking anything during the two hours and he wondered what was happening to him.
He prepared lunch and carried it to the cellar.
This time he had to escort each of them to the bathroom-Janie, Irene, Ellen. The endless routine of unlocking the cellar door, locking it again, walking with each to the bathroom and waiting outside the door, holding the Luger ready to kill any one of them if they tried to escape....
When the tedious routines were finished, he returned to the same chair. He glanced at his watch and saw it was one-thirty. He glanced at it again and saw it was two-forty-five. Again he was conscious of the fact he had sat there without a thought in his mind and he wondered how he could sit so long and not think anything-his mind filled only with a great vague uneasiness that was almost a numb horror.
Slowly and ponderously, as if it were a rusty hulk of a machine that had to start slowly and gather momentum, he began to think of the problem and of possible ways to solve the problem. He had to do something with Emma's body. There were only two possibilities. Bury her ... carry her somewhere.
He didn't like the idea of burying her. The ground would be hard as rock. It would take hours to dig a shallow grave-days to dig a deep grave. The ground would be so hard it would have to be dug with a pickaxe.
The snow could melt (He rose up in the chair to glance out the window and saw the snow was melting) but the ground would take days or weeks to thaw. Another freezing period and the ground would never thaw ... not until spring.
If he buried Emma in the yard, the grass would be killed and he'd have to plant fresh grass above her grave. The grass would be greener and probably thicker than the older grass, it would clearly mark the grave and, worse, when he shoveled the earth on Emma after he placed her in the grave, the earth wouldn't go back in the hole as tightly as it had come out. He groaned.
If the earth didn't go back in the hole as tightly as it had come out, that meant the ground would sink as it thawed in the spring. It would sink and leave a depression ... a depression covered with new grass.
No.
He couldn't bury Emma....
He prepared supper for his three prisoners. He noticed Janie and Ellen seemed strangely calm, decided they had taken tranquilizers. Irene seemed no different-in fact, studying her, he thought she seemed almost cheerful. When he returned to the cellar for the dishes after allowing enough time for them to eat, Irene said she had to go to the bathroom again. When she came out of the bathroom, she stood with her arms folded across her chest, smiling at him.
"I think you should let us leave here," she said. "Emma's death has changed everything."
"Nothing has changed."
"Everything has changed. Emma's death gives us something to bargain with. I've been talking to Janie and Ellen and they agree with what I'm going to tell you." She paused, inhaling deeply in a way that thrust her large breasts toward him.
"You can't keep us here indefinitely. If you keep us here too long, someone will find us eventually. It really was foolish of you to think you could kidnap us and keep us here without someone finding us. Someone will find us if you keep us here.
"If you let us leave here today, we'll tell how Emma committed suicide. If you keep us here any longer than today, we'll say you killed Emma. That will change the charge against you from kidnapping to kidnapping and murder. There's considerable difference between-"
He stepped forward and, with his left hand, he grabbed her throat. She backed away until she struck the wall. He pressed against her, keeping his left hand around her throat and bringing his face so close he could feel the warmth of her breath. He brought the Luger up and jabbed the barrel into the softness of her breasts. She yelped with pain, her eyes widened until the pupils were surrounded by the whites. Her fingernails scratched against the wall as if she wanted to burrow into the plaster to escape.
"Let me tell you something, Irene. I think, if you make that kind of threat again, I'll screw you just for the hell of it and then I'll shoot you through your left tit."
For emphasis he jabbed the barrel harder against her breast. She yelped again and when he stepped backward, releasing her, she scurried toward the cellar. He followed her and unlocked the door. After she ran inside and before he closed and locked the door, he noticed she had started to cry, rubbing the injured breast ...
He studied maps of the area and found that the Brandywine River flowed through Sellers' Park, almost directly into the Delaware River.
When it became dark enough, he backed his car to the side of the house. Using the stretcher and without removing the sheet, he managed to drag Emma out of the house and to the rear of the car. He lifted her from the ground and rolled her into the trunk. Her legs hung over the bumper and the sheet fell to the ground. Careful not to look at her face, he bent her legs and shoved until she was completely in the trunk and then he closed the trunk lid.
He found an empty garbage-can and placed the sheet inside, setting fire to it with his cigarette lighter. When the sheet had burned, he placed the lid on the garbage-can and drove to Port Perm.
He had chosen Port Penn because it was deserted in most places. There were no street lights and it was an area the police did not bother to patrol. He drove along a winding dirt road until he reached the river, then swung the car so the trunk faced the river. He backed the car until the rear wheels were almost in the water.
He lit a cigarette, turned off the ignition and the headlights. He opened the car window and listened for a sound-any sound. If he heard voices, if he heard a car coming down the dirt road, he'd have to leave.
Crisp night air drifted into the car. The moon hid behind a cluster of clouds and only the stars cast a faint glow on the marsh around him. There were no sounds-no sounds of crickets or frogs-and he remembered another night he had parked on a road very similar to this.
Then the air had been warm and heavy and still. The moon had been a faint sun that cast a strange half-sunlight and the night had been filled with the sounds of crickets and frogs and-from a radio in a house only hundreds of feet away-the sound of Jack Benny's voice, the laughter of his audience....
Mosquitoes had come in swarms to feast upon his sweating back and buttocks, to feast upon Mary Ann's naked breasts and legs. Somewhere in his teens, on the back seat of his car, with Mary Ann slapping mosquitoes on her legs, he had made love for the first time in his life.
Mary Ann had chewed gum the entire time and somehow had managed to gyrate her hips in rhythm with the munch of her jaws on the chewing gum. They had seen a movie, he had felt her body and then, with a nonchalance as if he had made love to a dozen girls before her, he'd suggested they drive to Port Penn where they could make love.
Mary Ann was an easy conquest. All his friends had had her. She could be had for the price of a movie or a dance ticket and it was something she discussed openly with any boy who asked her. She wouldn't go on a date with any boy unless he took her to a movie or a dance and he had the use of her body afterwards.
She was not a pretty girl-but she was not ugly and had a body far in advance of her years. He had chosen her to share his first sexual experience because she was easy, because-for the first time--he didn't want a girl who hadn't done it before, a girl who might get pregnant or be frightened.
He remembered the dusty smell of the back seat of that old car. He remembered Mary Ann's soft-warm body, the brush of her hair, the rasp of her fingernails when she wasn't busy swatting mosquitoes. At the crucial moment, at the shattering instant of release when he seemed to burst in a hot flood, a goddamned mosquitoe had bit into his buttock with the teeth of a tiger and driven him to bear down against Mary Ann with a force that made her gasp and remark, "Wild, ain't you? Man!"
Afterward they drank cool cans of beer and Mary Ann scrambled across the marsh to get a cattail. She said she'd always wanted a cattail to plant and see if she could make it grow.
When he drove her home she told jokes she'd heard in school....
His fingers burned. He jerked his hand and threw the cigarette out the window.
He opened the car door and walked to the trunk. He opened the trunk and, being careful not to look at her face, he gripped Emma beneath the arms and dragged her to the water.
She didn't float.
She sank in the mud beneath the shallow water and the incoming tide washed her skirt up around her waist. Her face was beneath the surface, her legs out of the water....
He had to get her deeper ... he had to get her so far out the tide would carry her down the river ... away from here, because here there would be tire tracks, footprints....
He waded into the freezing oily river and when the water reached his chest, he saw he had carried her far enough. He waded back to the beach and watched the dark form as the tide carried it away.
It was hard to tell where she would land, he realized. The tide could carry her for miles.
He went to the car and climbed behind the steering wheel. He turned on the heater and sat for a moment until he could stop shivering.
It was something he had had to do.
I had to do it.
I had to get rid of her body and this was the best way. I didn't kill her. She killed herself.
He sat for a long time, remembering Mary Ann and the mosquitoes. When he started the long drive home his flesh felt numb. He began to shiver with a violence that made his teeth chatter and he noticed his clothes smelled of the dank river mud.