Chapter 13
He sat on the bed and watched Ellen as she scanned the rows of books, selecting one to read. She would look at the titles and the names of the authors, she would glance at a few pages and then replace each book.
Ellen had told him she'd heard over the radio that the police had found Irene's keys and underclothing in Sellers' Park. The police had already found Emma's body in the Delaware River. The news that they had found the keys and underclothing pleased him. That meant his plan to mislead them might work. The news that they had found Emma's body still reminded him of that unpleasant night. He wondered if he would ever forget that night.
"When are you going shopping again, Stan."
"I don't know."
"Maybe you'd better go shopping again tomorrow. Everything is low. The freezer is empty. All the bacon and eggs are gone. No milk. And we've been digging into the canned food, too."
"I'll go shopping tomorrow."
She selected a book and carried it to the bed. She sat close to him on the edge of the bed, placing the book on her lap. He offered her a cigarette, lit it for her, then lit one for himself.
"When you go shopping tomorrow, will you please buy a box of sanitary napkins? Large box, regular size."
"Sanitary napkins?"
"You know what they are, don't you? Well, we're all healthy girls and we need them. The need has arisen."
"I can't buy anything like that."
She turned to look at him. She was so close that when he looked into her eyes he could see the pattern of gray and green in the iris of her eyes. He noticed for the first time she wasn't wearing lipstick. Her lips were uninviting without it.
He noticed she wasn't wearing any perfume and hadn't bothered to comb her hair. He wondered if-at this particular time of the month-she had deliberately allowed herself to be unattractive because of her physical condition.
"You can buy something like that," she said matter-of-factly. "You have to buy something like that. They sell them in all the supermarkets and you can just put a box in your cart like any faithful husband. There's no need to be embarrassed. Anybody who sees you will think you're buying them for your wife."
She turned her head away as if the discussion were ended. She inhaled on her cigarette and then opened the book on her lap. She began to read the first page and, watching her, Stan felt an insane laughter bubbling in his throat. It was crazy.
He had kidnapped four women. He had the power to rape them and use them as he wanted. And now, instead of the wild sex orgies he had dreamed of, he was engrossed in the tasks of feeding, of entertaining them and finally-of buying them sanitary napkins!
He tried to stifle the laughter, but it was too much.
"What's so amusing?" Her eyebrows arched.
"Nothing. I guess I was laughing because I don't feel like much of a kidnapper. I feel more like a ... husband."
She closed the book. She turned to face him again, and again he studied the gray-green in the iris of her eyes. "You aren't a kidnapper," she said. "You're just a lonely guy who got so lonely he couldn't stand it. I don't know what a psychiatrist would call it. Maybe a psychiatrist would have a long name for it ... or maybe he'd call it something simple like temporary insanity.
"You had a chance to kidnap four women
.....and you did. But you're not vicious. You're not an ordinary kidnapper if there is such a thing as an ordinary kidnapper. You're gentle and considerate and...."
She touched his cheek with the palm of a hand. It was an odd, tender gesture and he didn't know how to react. She withdrew the hand.
"You don't feel like much of a kidnapper. I don't feel like much of a victim. Irene and Janie know the truth. They know you haven't raped me. I guess it's as obvious as the nose on my face. They know I've been willing. I started to tell you once ... if you've ever wondered why I'm so willing and why I didn't scratch and fight and scream, it's because these past years I've been so damned bored. I've almost gone crazy.
"My husband is ... not quite a man. He's a
CPA and a good one, I guess, but when he comes home from the office he sits in front of the television like a robot. When he's in bed, he's still like a robot, except when he's sleeping.
"We-Frank and I-we live with his mother. She's an invalid. She has the bottom floor of the house because she can't get her wheel chair up or down stairs. Frank and I have the upstairs half of the house. His mother is an unpleasant woman. Maybe that's an unkind thing to say about an old lady confined to a wheel chair, but she is an unpleasant woman. She doesn't like me, I don't like her.
"To keep from being around the house all day and listening to her whining, I started working at Ideal Plastics. The pay wasn't much, but it gave me a little extra money for some of the things I wanted and it meant I wouldn't have to be around Frank's mother so much. I had to hire somebody to be with her during the day. It cut into the money a lot."
She had been staring ahead at a row of books on the wall before them, as if in a trance. She turned suddenly and looked at him but her eyes were blank as if she did not see him.
"Do you know what I was doing with the money I earned at Ideal Plastics? I saved a part of it every week. I've been hiding the money in a false bottom in my jewel box. Some weeks I'd only be able to take two or three dollars out of my pay. Some weeks as much as five, some weeks as much as ten. I ... wanted to save enough money to go to Nevada to divorce Frank."
She sighed and crushed her cigarette in the ashtray on the bed between them. He looked down at his own cigarette and found he'd forgotten about it completely while she'd been talking. A long ash had fallen on his knee. He brushed it away absently and crushed out his cigarette in the ashtray. Their hands touched accidentally.
"That's the truth I tried to tell you once before. I'm a very bored middle-aged woman. When you kidnapped us I was afraid you might kill us ... but I wasn't afraid you might rape us. I was almost hoping you would."
She tilted her head suddenly and laughed-her eyes closed and facing the ceiling. The laughter climbed toward hysteria. He watched the convulsions of her slender neck and then abruptly she lowered her head. The laughter stopped. She opened her eyes and rubbed her forehead.
"Boredom can be a horrible thing," she said. "It's a kind of death."
"I know."
She laughed again, but this time there was no hysteria. "I guess you do. Living here by yourself ... I don't know how you're able to do it. I would have gone crazy if I'd lived here by myself."
She rose and turned to face the bed. She looked at the bed, not at him. "Since we've been so honest with each other I'd like to say one more honest thing."
"What's that?"
"Could I-sleep here-in the bedroom-with you? That cellar gives me nightmares. Sometimes I wake up in the night and I almost scream. I feel like the walls are closing in."
He hesitated. The idea of sleeping with her sounded tempting. It meant they could sleep naked, together, and they would be almost like a husband and wife. It meant he could curl against her in the cold of the nights and-in the mornings-instead of awakening to face an empty room, she would be there.
"I know what you're thinking," she said.
"You're thinking I'd wait until you were asleep and then I'd-escape. But I've thought about that. You could buy a pair of handcuffs or something. You could chain me to the bed so I wouldn't be able to escape. You could probably buy a pair of handcuffs in a hardware store of a pawnshop. You could buy them tomorrow when you shop for the groceries."
She waited for his answer.
"I'll buy them. It's a good idea."
She smiled. "We'd better get Janie out of the cellar so she can wash the dishes. They'll probably think we've been making love. And ... that's funny, isn't it, because we haven't done a thing. Oh! Buy the handcuffs tomorrow when you go shopping, but maybe we can wait for the sleeping together until a few days from now. This would be a bad time of the month to start anything like that..."
From the phone booth in the parking lot at the huge Shoppers' Fair east of Kennett Square, he dialed Bob Jarrell's phone number.
Amy answered at the first ring. "Amy, this is Stan."
"Stan, I asked you to call me at one o'clock because the children are usually taking their nap then. I didn't have a chance to explain yesterday."
"I knew you had a reason. I thought maybe it was because Bob wasn't home at one."
"That, too. He comes home at noon some days to eat lunch but he always leaves before a quarter of one. Actually I put the children in bed at a quarter of twelve usually, so Bob and I can eat our lunch without them bothering us, but they usually sleep until at least one-thirty.
He closed his eyes and opened them again. He looked out upon the rows and rows of cars, the bright facades of the shopping center. He had slept late and still didn't feel fully awake. He yawned, turning his mouth away from the mouthpiece momentarily.
He wondered why Amy was telling him the family schedule and then realized it was probably her subtle way of informing him when and when not to visit her. She must expect him to visit her again, to make love to her again, and this was her way of telling him the only safe time would be between a quarter of twelve and one-thirty. Forty-five minutes. It wasn't much-but it could be done.
"Did your mother know what we...? " What we were doing? he finished mentally.
"She guessed it, Stan. She didn't mention it but she acted so nervous. She stayed almost an hour after you left. I tried to act cheerful and casual and I tried like hell to think of some excuse for you being there. Finally, the only thing I could think of was to say you'd helped me buy Bob's birthday present. His birthday is next month.
"Bob has always wanted a shotgun and I told Mother I'd asked you to buy one for me because
I didn't know anything about shotguns. I thought it might explain why you were in the house. But she didn't believe me, Stan. I know she didn't believe me."
"Do you think she'll tell Bob?"
"I don't know. I don't think she will. But she may give it away accidentally if we don't convince her you were here because you'd bought the shotgun for me. She isn't a very good actress. She started crying. I asked her why she was crying and she said it was because she'd started thinking about Father. She's like that sometimes. She'll think about Father and she'll start crying. But I know that wasn't the reason yesterday. I know it was because she guessed what happened."
"You want me to buy a shotgun so you can give it to Bob for his birthday?"
"It would help cover up. Could you buy it today? Maybe you could bring it to me tomorrow. And then, later, I can show it to Mother and maybe she'll believe that's why you were here. Could you buy it today? I'll pay you tomorrow. I've been saving some money for Bob's birthday present."
"I'll buy it today."
"Tomorrow ... Call me about ten minutes of one. The children should be asleep then. If Bob comes home for lunch he'll probably be gone by then. If he's still in the house or if someone else is here, or if there's some other reason you can't come, I'll pretend it's someone who's dialed a wrong number.
"Then you could call back about ten or fifteen minutes later. If there's still some reason you can't come, I'll pretend it's the same person with the wrong number and we can try again the day after tomorrow."
"Okay." He closed his eyes and tried to memorize all the instructions.
"Stan...? "
"Yes?"
"I want to see you again." Her voice had become husky-whispery.
"I want to see you again, Amy."
"Goodbye."
"Goodbye."
In the A&P in Kennett Square he filled a cart with groceries. The last item he bought was the sanitary napkins Ellen had asked for and he realized he should have bought them first, covering them with the other groceries. He waited in the long line before the cash register and itched for a cigarette. His face began to flush and he told himself there was no reason to feel nervous about the sanitary napkins, absolutely no reason. In the line before the next cash register, a pretty dark-haired woman glanced at him occasionally until he began to wonder if he looked as embarrassed as he felt.
The girl behind the cash register punched the prices of all the items into the machine, punching the price of the sanitary napkins between the price of three cans of beans and two loaves of bread, without hesitating in the steady rhythm of her fingers and he decided Ellen had been right. Anyone would certainly think he was buying them for his wife. There was no cause to be embarrassed.
After he had placed the bags of groceries in the trunk of the car, he remembered what Ellen had said about sleeping with him. He had to buy the handcuffs. She had seemed sincere, but there was no proof she wouldn't escape while he slept if he let her sleep in the bed. In fact, the request to sleep with him could be a part of a carefully-formed plan, a plan to throw him off-guard, a plan to make him trust her....
He tried two hardware stores and discovered handcuffs were not an ordinary item. In a pawnshop the clerk had a pair of handcuffs but said there was no key. He hadn't had a key made because he'd thought there was a possibility he might never sell them. He could send the handcuffs to a locksmith and have a key made, but it would cost extra and would probably take an hour or two.
Stan told him he wanted the handcuffs and would come back in an hour or two. He went to a sporting-goods store and selected a 20-gauge Magnum shotgun with a walnut stock and then, seeing he still had some spare time, he went into the nearest tavern and ordered a double bourbon.
After the fourth double bourbon, his mind seemed to clear and all his nervousness washed away. He realized the tension had been building in him stronger and stronger-caused by the strain of keeping the girls imprisoned, by Emma's suicide, by the affair with Amy and the discovery of the affair by Amy's mother.
But he realized, as he ordered a fifth double bourbon, there was absolutely no reason to be worried about anything.
Everything was working out great. The police would never catch him. He would continue to screw Ellen whenever he felt like it, eventually he would rape Irene. He wouldn't rape Janie-he would continue to enjoy the talent she'd learned and gradually, very gradually, he would try to seduce her. It would be amusing to see how difficult it would be.
And Amy ... he had Amy to use whenever it was convenient. Bob would never discover what they were doing because Amy's mother would never have the nerve to tell Bob and the story about the shotgun would convince her that nothing had ever happened between Amy and himself....