Frenzy (8 page)

16

 

J
eanine Carson had pedaled nine miles and gone exactly nowhere.

She was on her usual stationary bicycle in Sweat it Out, the neighborhood gym where she was a member, and where she spent every other evening. The heavy, stationary bicycle was set at an angle to the large window looking out on the sidewalk. Now and then passersby would glance in at Jeanine. Some of the men would smile.

Not that she was dressed to attract attention, in her baggy knee-length red shorts, oversized black T-shirt, and red elastic headband that kept her blond curled hair away from her perspiring face. Mostly away. Now and then her hair dangled in a curtain down one side of her face. Even so attired, and with her hair in what she considered a mess, Jeanine was still an attractive woman of forty.

Well, it
had
happened. She decided she should be thankful that in the right light she could pass for thirty. Or so she'd been told.

She pedaled harder, as if trying to outdistance her troubles.

A guy in a gray business suit, lugging an attaché case, bustled past outside the window. He glanced her way and grinned.

Jeanine couldn't help herself. She grinned back. Mostly out of appreciation. He was about her age and still handsome. In the game—maybe. Or maybe he had a wife and six kids out in Teaneck. What would it be like to be married to a man like that, to come home to him and six kids?

Jeanine let her mind roam, keeping her legs pumping on the pedals. Narrowing her focus as well as her waist.

What would it be like to come home to a man in an Upper West Side apartment, with no kids involved? Now that was more in the realm of possibility.

Her thighs were beginning to ache, and she tightened her grip on the handlebars and concentrated on her exercise, forcing the embodiment of her dreams from her thoughts.

Back to the drudgery of a regular exercise regimen. Reality and self-recrimination. If she was overweight, it was simply because she ate too much. She was the one to blame. The one in control of her fork.

Personal responsibility.

That thing about pain and gain.

Those were the sorts of thoughts that ran through Jeanine's mind now, as her body performed its repetitive assault on itself:
My fault. I don't see anyone else around here to blame. Too fat, too fat, too fat
... though she was only a hundred and twenty pounds, at five foot six. But it was a
fat
one-twenty.

The stationary bike continued its whirring clacking accompaniment:
Too fat, too fat, too fat . . .

Such were the musings of an unemployed financial consultant, some of whose problems might be easily solved if she weren't . . . too fat in some places.

She pedaled on, going nowhere, sweat rolling down her face, down her neck, tickling her—

The short clacking sound of a coin tapping on glass made her raise her head and look outside.

There he was, out on the sidewalk, grinning and staring at her through the gym window. Mr. Executive with the gray suit and attaché case. He was back.

He made a motion as if he held a knife and fork, an obvious invitation to dinner. She deliberately looked away from him, allowing herself to smile slightly, as if she couldn't help herself under the onslaught of his charm.

Jeanine knew how to play this game.

Discouragement and encouragement could look pretty much alike. It could be a challenge to figure out which was which. Some men couldn't resist a challenge.

 

 

Later that evening, Fedderman and Sal sat at their desks at Q&A and sipped bad coffee. At the far end of the room, Jerry Lido was working at his laptop, unaware for the moment that there was a world not digital. Helen the profiler sat lounging in a turned-around chair near Pearl's desk. Her long, bare arms were crossed, displaying firm biceps and forearm muscles. Fedderman wondered at times about Helen's sexuality, then figured what the hell, it was none of his business. He was befuddled anyway in what seemed a new world of sex roles. What was a bride these days? A groom? Who was what, when, where? It was all confusing to Fedderman. He'd told Penny once he wasn't sure if they were really married, the way the laws kept changing.

“Who should send who chocolates?” Fedderman unconsciously mumbled.

“What was that?” Helen asked.

Fedderman realized he'd spoken his thoughts and had been overheard. Time to back and fill.

“Penny and I had an argument,” he said. “Then after we made up, I asked her which of us should send the other chocolates, what with the new marriage laws.”

“I'll bet she was amused,” Helen said.

“And flattered,” Sal said in his growl of a voice. “I'd say her reaction was—”

“Let me guess,” Helen interrupted. “She was pissed off.”

“Well—”

At the other end of the room, Jerry Lido said, “Craig Duke.”

There was an immediate silence.

“What about him?” Fedderman asked. His own voice seemed not to carry.

Lido leaned back away from his computer. “I probed the net and learned more about him than he knows about himself. He's exactly who and what he claims to be. A paint salesman in town for a convention. And his background checks out. He's pretty average, far as out-of-town conventioneers go. Sits in on exciting paint panels, drinks too much. Brags too much. Bounces on some of the hotel slave trade. Then he catches a flight out of town and goes back and plays family man with the wife and kids.”

“Sounds like a nice life,” Fedderman said.

“Yeah,” Sal growled. “House, woman, car.”

“Maybe all a man needs,” Sal said.

Helen smiled and said, “You guys are so full of crap.”

“Whatever,” Lido said. “But I think we can cross Craig Duke off our suspect list.”

“I concur,” Sal said. “He never did seem good for it.”

“Not to me, either,” Fedderman said.

Helen shrugged.

“So whaddya think?” Sal asked her.

“ 'Bout what?”

“The paint salesman,” Fedderman said.

“Remember to forget him,” Jerry Lido reminded them.

“Remember what?” Helen asked, playing dumb.

“Who we talking about?” Sal asked.

“I dunno,” Fedderman said. “I forgot.”

 

 

Jeanine wasn't surprised when she came out of the gym forty-five minutes later, and there was Mr. gray business suit, waiting for her.

He was taller than he'd appeared through the window. And better looking. Not exactly handsome, yet there was nothing wrong with him. Search and you couldn't find a flaw. It made him kind of anonymous, yet alluring. He smiled, and it was a good one. His teeth were white and even; a movie-star mouth. This guy was ready for his close-up.

“I saw you through the window,” he said.

She'd slowed down so they were both walking, but almost in place. “I saw you seeing me.”

“Wondering what I was thinking, no doubt.”

“I think I know what you were thinking.”

“No, no,” he said. “It wasn't like that. Well, not exactly not like that. I just . . .” He searched for words, then he shrugged. “Just wanted to get to know you.”

“And here we are. You're doing that.”

“So what's your name? Where do you work?
Do
you work? Are you—my God, you're not married, are you?”

She had to laugh. “Single,” she said.

“In a relationship?”

“Not at the time.”

He feigned great relief, mopping his brow. “I didn't think so, but still, it's a relief. My little voice wasn't wrong.”

Jeanine stopped walking. “Little voice?”

He read the worry on her face and laughed. “No, no, not that kind of little voice. I'm certifiably sane. It's the kind of little voice almost all men have. It says, ‘You've got to get to know this woman.' ”

His widened smile fairly screamed
normal!
Everything about this guy was normal. Flawless.

Little voice. That was okay. She sort of had one herself.

He seemed relieved now that they were standing still. “My name's Thomas Gunn. I'm thirty-nine, divorced once, a long time ago, no children. I'm in real estate, and I'm moving to Nevada in three weeks. I'm a member of a partnership that's going to build condominiums.”

“Isn't it a bad time to be doing that?” she asked. “With the economy the way it is.”

He gave his Wheaties-box smile. “Not if you build them convenient to the casinos. Those are the kinds of buyers who'll take a chance.”

Jeanine had to admit to herself that that made perfect sense.

“I'm Jeanine Carson,” she said, “unemployed art restorer and sometimes financial consultant.”

“I'd have guessed model,” he said. “Or actress.”

“And I'd have guessed you were an actor or professional athlete.”

They simultaneously laughed and shook their heads, acknowledging without saying that each of them knew the other was full of bullshit.

Not lies, but bullshit. For Jeanine there was a critical difference. Bullshit was play. Lies were . . . something else. Lies were what damaged people. Diminished them.

In a way, bullshit was the opposite. If all parties involved knew it was a game, what was the harm?

“What's your little voice saying now?” Jeanine asked.

There was no hesitation. “That I should ask this beautiful woman to have dinner with me tonight.”

“That's all?”

He cocked his head to the side, as if listening.

“Just what I thought it would say,” he told Jeanine. “It told me anything beyond dinner is totally up to the lady.”

Jeanine flipped an errant strand of hair out of her eyes in a way she knew men liked.

Patience. Caution. At least a show of resistance. More than she'd put up so far, anyway. She knew the rules. The ancient warnings.

It was just that there was, as they say, something about this guy.

She said, “I like your little voice.”

17

 

D
wayne paused in the dark hall outside the bedroom where his father and Maude were sleeping. His heart was like a huge bird beating its wings in an attempt to escape his body.

He knew they'd be sleeping deeply now, exhausted. They'd had sex, and then sent Dwayne downstairs to get the drinks, a whiskey sour for Maude and a Jack Daniel's on the rocks for his father. Then they'd told him to return to his bedroom.

He lay there for over an hour, most of it listening to his father snore. Maude didn't snore, but Dwayne knew she would also be asleep. He knew the sleeping habits of both of them.

And he knew their plans.

In the morning Dwayne's father and soon-to-be stepmother were going to board a flight to Las Vegas. There they were going to be married and spend the weekend drinking and gambling. Dwayne had heard them talking about this as he lay exhausted beside them, keeping their voices low because they thought he was asleep and wouldn't hear.

But this was simply a confirmation. He'd learned to use the big house's air-conditioning vents as listening devices. The afternoon after Dwayne first heard of their marriage plans, Maude told Bill Phoenix about them inside the cabana.

Bill Phoenix and Maude had laid plans of their own. A month after Maude's marriage to all that money, Dwayne's father would die in a boating accident. Maude would be wealthy, and after a few months she would marry Bill Phoenix and he'd be wealthy. They would dole out money to keep Dwayne in a good boarding school, out of the way until he graduated and found employment, and then they could properly ignore him.

Maude suggested that Dwayne might be in that boating accident with his father, but Bill Phoenix said he didn't like killing a kid. Maude had said, “Whatever. We can wait a while.”

Dwayne knew he couldn't afford to wait.

So when he went downstairs to the kitchen to get the drinks, he slipped his jeans on and taped a long kitchen knife to his lower leg. And he added one extra ingredient to the drinks—some sleeping pills he'd ground up between two spoons.

Now, in the dark hall outside their bedroom, Dwayne sat cross-legged, listening, his bare back against the wall. He'd removed his jeans and was nude. Fingerprints didn't matter. After all, he still lived here.

Dwayne's father's snoring had evened out, and from Maude there was only silence. Dwayne took a deep breath, holding the long knife in his right hand and staring at it. The knife was going to solve all his problems. He was sure of it.

Gripping the knife loosely against the carpet, he crawled silently into the bedroom.

His father's snoring was louder now, and would cover just about any noise Dwayne made short of a shout. Between the sonorous rasping of his father he could hear Maude's gentle, easy breathing. The booze and pills had done their job.

Dwayne stood up and approached the bed.

His father was lying on his back with one arm up over his head. He slept nude, his hairy chest exposed and vulnerable. Maude had rolled onto her side and was facing away from him. She'd put her thin blue nightgown back on put not her panties. The sheet had slipped down to her knees, and Dwayne stood for a moment transfixed by the curve of her buttocks and hips, thinking she looked so much like some of the medieval paintings he'd seen in museums.

Careful not to disturb Maude, he leaned over his father and swiftly inserted the long blade up beneath his sternum to his heart. Dwayne leaned into the knife, twisting and pushing, feeling warm blood on his hands and wrists.

His father moved his legs around some, and stopped snoring and gave several hoarse gasps. Then he was still.

He hadn't even opened his eyes.

Dwayne was surprised to find himself thinking that his father's death had been too easy.

It wasn't going to be that way with Maude.

Dwayne went to the closet and grabbed a handful of his father's silk ties. He tied a large knot in the middle of one tie, then laid the others on the bed near Maude.

Maude opened her eyes and stared at Dwayne. Her eyes widened as her brain caught up with what was happening. When she opened her mouth to scream, Dwayne shoved the knotted tie into it. He fastened it with a tightened knot behind her neck. She reached for the tie with splayed fingers, but he slapped her hard and brought her hands back down. He rolled her onto her stomach and bound her wrists behind her with another tie, this one with a striped pattern he'd never liked on his father.

She began to kick, but Dwayne expected that and was ready for it. He held her legs together and waited for her to run out of energy. Then he sat on her legs and tied her ankles, then her legs at the knees.

Her body went into spasms and she emitted a low and frantic moan, over and over. Dwayne knew she had discovered the dead body next to her.

He rolled her so she was again lying on her back, still moaning. She was terrified to look over at Dwayne's dead father now, and kept her wide, wide eyes fixed on the ceiling. She began kicking with both legs together, so he wrapped the sheet tightly around them so she could kick in only a limited way.

Dwayne stood over Maude, knowing she was helpless. The knife was still jutting from his father's chest.

Dwayne removed the knife. It slid out easier than it had gone in. He held it where Maude had to look at it. She screamed into the knotted tie, one of his father's favorites. Dwayne was sure no one could hear her outside the room, much less outside the house. Smiling down at her, he laid the knife gently across her exposed throat. Her horrified eyes were fixed on him. She couldn't look away. Beneath the horror, she was pleading.

Dwayne couldn't get out of mind how easily his father had died. Had passed on, or over. Or descended into hell.

Maude was going to have to suffer for both of them. For what they did. For who they were. For who and what he had become.

At the end, the final moment of her life, the beginning moment of her death, they would both know that he possessed her and would possess her for all time. She'd be like an exquisite piece of art, a thing of beauty forever suspended in amber. Whatever happened to her after that, to her corporeal self, didn't matter.

Leaving the knife where it was, feeling her frantic gaze follow him, he crossed to the bureau and picked up the pack of cigarettes lying next to his father's wallet and keys. There was an expensive gold lighter there, too.

He walked back to the bed and lit a cigarette, though he didn't smoke.

They both knew he didn't smoke.

He watched her watch the cigarette as he moved closer.