Chapter 18
He had spent a vacation in Las Vegas and in a casino he had stood near one of the roulette wheels. He hadn't gambled himself, but he had watched. There were beautiful sleek women with bright eyes and expensive gowns. There were men in well-tailored suits, men with the look of authority and wealth and wisdom and experience.
He had noticed, watching the flow of the chips across the table, the endless whirl of the wheel, that there were two kinds of losers. Some lost their money immediately. Others-one in particular that he remembered-won for awhile before they lost.
The one he would always remember had been a tall white-haired man with a thin white moustache. A shapely young and bosomy blonde had stood close by his side, smiling and occasionally holding his arm. Sometimes he asked her to place the chips, sometimes he told her where to place them, sometimes he allowed her to use her own judgment. The man had deeply tanned skin, hard calloused hands, cold gray eyes, the look of a man who had risen to wealth by hard work and sheer determination.
For awhile everything went right for the white-haired man. A mountain of chips appeared and grew larger and larger. The young blonde drank heavily and, in a drunken, almost hysterical happiness, stood next to the man in such a way that her breasts pressed against his arm, her stomach and loins against his thigh. At times, when the croupier raked chips toward them, she squirmed erotically against the man's arm and thigh in a sensual promise.
Then there came a turning point and things began to go wrong. The mountain of chips grew smaller and smaller. The white-haired man bet more and more heavily to regain what he'd lost. Finally the chips disappeared altogether.
The white-haired man appeared dazed, unbelieving. The young blonde had disappeared. He glanced at the crowd around the table as if looking for her, then drew a small nickel-plated automatic, placing the barrel in his mouth. When he squeezed the trigger, the back of his neck burst apart. On the other side of the casino there were men and women who never knew what had happened, men and women who never stopped gambling.
He was like that white-haired man. Everything had gone right. He had reached a turning point. Everything had started to go wrong. Janie had escaped. In his search for Janie he had stumbled across Trix, policemen had seen him in the forest, Bob Jarrell had attacked him, Irene had surprised him and now Irene would kill him. His luck had run out. He'd lost all the chips.
The floor seemed tilted at an odd angle. Blood blinded one eye but from the other he could see the floor, one of his hands upon it, Irene's legs, Ellen's legs. He tried to shove himself up from the floor but his muscles were rubber. He heard Irene and Ellen shouting but he could not turn his heard to look up at their faces. He stared at their legs as they flashed before him-soft, curving, nyloned legs that danced a strange pattern.
The Luger barked, a muffled bark, the dance of nyloned legs ended. A heavy object fell across him and only one pair of legs remained in his range of vision. A woman screamed, the scream became harsh sobbing, the sobbing dwindled into silence.
He rested, then slowly and carefully slid from beneath the object that had fallen across him. He rose to a sitting position and wiped at the blood in his eye. He took the handkerchief from his pocket and wiped at the blood.
Irene had been shot through one breast, her blood a sharp red contrast to the pearl gray dress. The Luger lay beside her. Ellen leaned against the wall.
"She wanted to kill you," Ellen said. "She wanted to kill you." She began to cry again. One of her hands flew to her throat and uttered a simple piercing scream....
He had quieted her. She lay curled in his arms on the bed, kitten-soft and yielding. She remained still so long he thought she had fallen asleep but suddenly she repeated, "She wanted to kill you."
"I know. She wanted to kill me. You tried to stop her. You fought for the gun and it went off. An accident."
"No, Stan, it wasn't exactly an accident. She pointed the gun at you. I tried to get it away from her but I couldn't. I grabbed the gun and shoved it until it pointed at her shoulder. I tried again to get it away from her and when I couldn't I pulled down on her finger that was over the trigger.
"The gun was aimed at her shoulder. I thought it would just hurt her and make her drop the gun. But while I pulled down on her finger she twisted her wrist and when the gun went off it was pointed at her chest."
"It's still an accident."
"I killed her! I-" The sobbing came again. He held her closer and tried to comfort her. Again she was silent so long he thought she had fallen asleep.
"Stan what are you going to do now?"
"I've been thinking about moving to California."
"Will you take me with you?" He turned on the bed and looked at her. He remembered all the times they had made love and all the times they had talked. There was something between them. Maybe it couldn't be called love. Maybe there was no name for it. Maybe it was something that fell somewhere between love and friendship. She wasn't afraid of him-afraid of him the way Janie and Emma had been. She hadn't hated him the way Irene had hated him.
He said slowly, "Can you imagine how it will be if you go with me?"
"I can imagine. I'm sure my photograph has been sent to the police in all the nearer states. The newspapers have probably printed my photograph all over the country. I would have to disguise myself somehow. I could dye my hair. I could do a few other things like changing the style I wear my hair. I could do a few things with make-up."
"No matter how much you disguised yourself, somebody might recognize you."
"But we'd have one thing in our favor. Everybody will think that Ellen Porter is dead. Nobody will be looking for Ellen Porter to be walking around California or any other state. I think we could go to California and live there the rest of our lives without anyone ever recognizing me. If anyone did ever recognize me, it would probably be a freak kind of accident, somebody with an awfully good memory who'd seen my photograph in the newspapers."
"There would always be a chance of having that kind of accident."
"So what?" She tilted her head and looked at him, her eyes narrowing. "Are you some kind of pessimist?"
"It's the truth, it isn't pessimism. There would always be a chance of having that kind of accident. And if somebody ever did recognize you, they'd find me and they'd know I was the one who had kidnapped you ... and Irene and Janie and Emma. It would all be so goddamned obvious. You wouldn't have to say a word, they would know it as soon as they recognized you, as soon as they found out I had lived so close to the scene of the kidnapping."
"But ... if they recognized me, couldn't I claim to have amnesia or something?"
"That wouldn't help. They'd use lie-detectors or drugs to dig the truth out of you."
"Maybe it isn't important. I'll bet in a few months everybody will forget there ever was such a person as Ellen Porter or Irene Hughes or Janie Joyce or Emma McCall."
"They won't forget. Four women kidnapped and killed. The bodies of two found, but the bodies of the other two still not found-it's the kind of case they keep alive forever. I think maybe you should go back to your husband. Tell them you have amnesia, tell them anything, but give me a few days to-"
"I want to go with you, Stan."
"You wouldn't have much of a future with me. I've killed three women and when the police find me, they'll-"
"You haven't killed anybody!"
"Three women are dead because of what I did."
"It wasn't your fault! Emma killed herself. Janie was killed by the weather. I killed Irene."
"Maybe I'm not exactly a murderer, but I am a kidnapper. The police could send me to prison for a long, long time. No, you wouldn't have much of a future with me. You should...."
She buried her face against his chest and he felt the wetness of her tears at the same instant that he heard her sobbing. Her hands were like claws as she clung to him and there was an unnatural stiffness to her body.
"Take me with you, Stan. I have to go with you. I love you. Maybe it sounds stupid and crazy, but I love you. I don't know how it happened or why it happened. Who can ever explain how or why they fall in love with somebody, or who can tell you the exact moment they were actually sure they were in love? I never loved John. I told you that. I can't go back to him. It would be like going back to a kind of prison. I couldn't stand it. Take me with you!"
He held her gently, carefully, because suddenly she had become the most valuable thing in the world ... a fragile thing that would break if handled roughly. He felt a moistness in his eyes, a moistness that made the room wavery and indistinct. He felt a strange tightness in his chest, a tightness that extended to his throat, and he could not recall when he had felt exactly this way before.
He cleared his throat and said softly, "I love you, Ellen...."
He prepared the grave at the roots of a red maple, digging carefully in the hard ground to damage the tree as little as possible. The red maple had grown forty feet. With the passing years it would grow to be eighty. He had carved his initials in the trunk with the first penknife his father gave him. Over the passing years his initials had grown with the tree.
He chose it because the initials would identify the grave. He knew he'd come back again to see the grave. If he were able to come back....
He spent two days excavating, burrowing down into the ground until he formed a narrow tunnel almost directly beneath the center of the tree. He severed a few roots and forced aside all that he could. He worked tediously with the shovel and the trowel so there was no danger of killing the tree or toppling it.
He knew he could kill the maple by carelessness, by severing too many of the roots. But he knew there was no danger of toppling the tree unless he severed all the roots. He had uprooted a much smaller tree during his childhood and learned a tree's weight is distributed upon its hundreds of roots, not upon one central location.
When he finished, he carried Irene to the grave and placed her beneath and between the roots. He packed the dirt when he filled the grave, resisting the temptation to remove the blanket and take one last look at the beautiful face, the beautiful body.
He felt no emotion. Irene had wanted to kill him. She had tried to kill him while he lay helpless. He had felt regret at Emma's suicide, regret at the waste of Janie's death. Irene's death left him empty of emotion. He packed the dirt by pressing it down with the soles of his boots. When he was finished he walked a distance away and sat on a hill to smoke a cigarette and study the tree.
He could have buried her in an open stretch of earth between the trees. But then the ground would have sunk in the spring, the grass above the grave would have died, the grave would have been obvious to any searcher.
Searchers wouldn't look for a grave beneath a forty foot red maple tree. They wouldn't think of it as a possibility, they wouldn't realize such a thing could be done. The ground might sink slightly, but the sinking would not be so obvious near the base of a tree.
The grass around the trunk might not grow in the spring, but the lack of grass would not be too obvious. The grass never grew quite right around the trunks of the larger trees-the roots seemed to draw all the strength from the ground for themselves. Most often, when grass grew near the trees, it became short, downy.
He remembered Irene had liked red-she'd worn a red coat, red shoes, she'd carried a red pocketbook. Her grave would be red. In early spring, before the leaves appeared, the blunt red buds would open and clusters of red-and-orange flowers would hang from the reddish twigs. As the leaves unfolded, they would be reddish, gradually turning to green, a paler green beneath, but the veins of the leaves and the leafstalks would keep their reddish tint all summer....