The Devil's Menagerie (7 page)

Glenda had her arms folded under her breasts. Her lips were tight and there was color in her cheeks. Dave thought she looked beautiful. How many old movies had used that line?
You’re beautiful when you’re angry, kid
.

“I suppose you think I’m overreacting.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You don’t have to. I know you. Dammit, Dave, what Ralph did last night was deliberate! Calling up out of the blue, giving us no warning, then saying something to upset Richie. He
wanted
to stir things up.”

“You don’t know that, honey. Maybe he just wanted to remind Richie who he was.”

“Then why hang up? Why didn’t he have anything to say to me? Or to you, for that matter?”

“Talking to Richie probably upset him—”

“Oh my God! How can you defend him like that?”

“I’m not defending him, I’m only saying we should give him the benefit of the doubt, at least for the moment.”

She stalked over to the side of the bed and stood hipshot, glaring down at him. Her breasts jiggled under the cotton knit nightshirt when she walked. The morning chill had made her nipples erect, hard under the shirt.

“You don’t know him.”

“Well, that’s true, I never even met the guy. But he couldn’t be all that bad or you wouldn’t have married him. And he wouldn’t have fathered a kid like Richie.”

“You don’t know,” Glenda whispered.

Dave stared at her, sensing something in her that went much deeper than anger. After a moment he said, “Maybe you should tell me.

Glenda hesitated. She had never been able to bring herself to talk to Dave in any detail about Ralph. With strangers in her support group she had spilled out everything, but that was different. The people who had listened to her then were all battered women in one way or another, each with her own story to tell. There was never any need to explain.

“You’d have to know him, Dave. He can be … very cruel. He’s mean, and he doesn’t care if he hurts people—in fact, he enjoys it. What he did last night, that was to hurt me, knowing how I would react … but he didn’t care if Richie was hurt as well. And you know he was.”

“It was thoughtless,” Dave admitted. “But look, honey, he probably hasn’t been around kids much, especially his son. So if he blunders around, that’s understandable. Doesn’t make it right, but—”

Glenda shook her head sharply. “You’re not listening to me. Ralph doesn’t blunder. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s …”

Evil, she thought. Something Dave Lindstrom didn’t believe in. Dave fumbled for excuses to explain the actions of drive-by shooters, for God’s sake. Ralph Beringer was something totally alien to his experience.

Sometimes Glenda resented Dave’s seemingly idyllic youth. He had grown up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and he spoke with fondness of Jefferson High, hayrides and Halloween pranks, kolaches from Bohemitown, trips to the Amanas with his parents and summer vacations on his grandparents’ farm. He remembered it all without any warts or blemishes. On their trips back to Iowa to visit Dave’s family—the trips were less frequent now that his parents were both dead—somehow he made it all seem real. In Dave’s Cedar Rapids the Ozzie and Harriet Nelson family wouldn’t even have stood out.

Dave’s favorite Christmas movie, predictably, was
It’s a Wonderful Life
.

“He’s what?” Dave asked quietly.

Glenda shook her head again, still standing beside the bed. She shivered from the chill, glanced toward the window and the curtains stirring. Gooseflesh popped out on her arms. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Maybe I would if you’d tell me.”

How could she tell him now, after all these years? It would seem as if she had been hiding part of herself from him, as indeed she had. How could she even begin to make him understand?

She had tried to distance herself from the two and a half years she had lived with Ralph Beringer. Ralph was a career serviceman—a sergeant in the Air Force when he left the States eight years ago. She had married him when she was nineteen, overwhelmed by the sheer animal force of him, unable to resist his physical strength or the unsuspected wildness he tapped in her. She had been pregnant with Richie when they married, and after the baby was born she had endured increasingly violent abuse for two years before Ralph shipped out to Germany.

In Ralph’s absence she had started to attend meetings of a support group of servicemen’s wives, amazed to discover there were so many others like her trapped in brutal relationships. She had not dared to look for help while Ralph was there, but three thousand miles of ocean gave her the courage she needed. Four months of therapy and anguished soul-searching later, she wrote the Dear John letter she dreaded.

There was no reply. Ralph’s silence was more frightening than any angry call or letter. For weeks she dreaded each strident ring of the phone; when the day’s mail came she often sat staring at the accumulation of bills and trash mail without the courage to sort through it.

Then, three months after her letter, an envelope arrived addressed to her and bearing a German stamp and cancellation mark. Inside was a single sheet of notepaper. Across the sheet four words were scrawled in Ralph’s nearly illegible hand.

It’s not over, bitch
.

The blunt warning—as cruel in what it left unsaid as in its vicious message—nearly undid her resolve. She wouldn’t let it happen.

Glenda had left Georgia, where Beringer had last been stationed before shipping overseas. She had wanted to sever any connection with their life together, to get as far away from him as she could, moving all the way across the United States to California. She had not dared to conceal the move. She knew Ralph would find her if she tried to hide and punish both her and Richie for it. Instead she lived in terror of the day when he might complete his overseas service—or come back on leave.

That first Christmas in California there was another message. It came in an innocent guise—a present for Richie from his father in Germany. Because Richie saw the package and was excited over it, she could only watch helplessly while the boy eagerly tore at the gift paper wrapping. He squealed with delight over the brightly painted wooden toy, a foot-high nutcracker carved in the image of a woodsman with an ax.

Richie left the toy under the tree that Christmas Eve. Glenda could not tear her eyes from the ax in the woodsman’s hand, reflecting a red glow from a nearby tree light.

Divorced and alone with a small child, Glenda had tried to rebuild her life. She found a job as an assistant in the office of the Dean of Men at UCLA. She began learning to survive.

She had never expected to fall in love—really fall in love—but two summers after moving to Los Angeles she met David Lindstrom. He was taking summer courses at UCLA in filmmaking and screenwriting, working toward a doctorate in Dramatic Arts, when their paths crossed.

Glenda was having lunch by herself, sitting on a bench in the sun, when someone sat down beside her. Long skinny legs in jeans, a denim shirt, unruly hair and a nice smile. “You brought your lunch?” he commented. “I envy you. What’s that, peanut butter and jelly? My favorite, especially if it’s on cheap, squishy white bread—”

She bolted from the bench, dropping her brown paper bag that still held an apple. She ran, heedless of the shouts of the slender man who had sat down beside her.

For a week she avoided going outside on campus during her lunch hour. When she finally did, Dave Lindstrom found her. He was carrying a fresh apple in a brown paper bag.

Only much later did Glenda learn how persistently Dave had mounted a campaign to break down her resistance, gradually undercutting her fear by revealing a man of simple decency. He was gentle, good-humored, quiet, with an incredibly even temper. After six years of marriage she had yet to see him fly into an uncontrolled rage. He was attractive—handsome in her eyes—six feet tall, thin, with lean, regular features and a generous mouth always curved upward slightly at the corners. He didn’t have the animal magnetism that Ralph Beringer used like a weapon, but Dave was imaginative, playful and considerate in bed, a caring partner, a loving father to both Richie and Elli, the daughter born a year after their wedding.

She had never expected to trust a man completely again. Dave had managed the impossible, Made it so that the night sweats began to go away and the stark terror of awakening shivering at the slam of a car door. Eventually that thump in the night became an innocent sound, not the dreaded signal that
he
was home. In time she was able to go weeks without reliving the abject fear, the despair, the sense of worthlessness.

“You didn’t get any sleep,” Dave said. “Come to bed.”

She crawled under the covers beside him and crept into the circle of his arms. Thin as he was, Dave radiated heat like an oven. On chilly nights she loved snuggling against him, spooning, sheltered within that aura of warmth. Not merely a physical warmth but a haven of love, peace, safety.

But there was no safety, she thought bitterly now, her momentary calm evaporating. There would be no peace.

This morning her body slowly warmed from the touch of her husband’s, but deep within her a core of cold remained.

It’s not over, bitch
.

She shivered again.

“Hey, hey,” Dave whispered.

“I prayed he would never come back.”

“Are you so sure he has? We don’t even know where he was calling from.”

She wanted to believe him, but the frightened woman she had thought long buried knew better. Tears ran down her cheeks. Dave’s hand trailed up her arm, his touch light, and when she resisted he turned her face toward his. His lips tasted tears.

“Whatever he did, it was a long time ago,” Dave said. “No one’s going to hurt you now—you or Richie.”

Glenda didn’t answer.

O
FFICER
J
ACK
P
RITKIN
was no more than twenty-five, red hair in a brush cut, the clean-jawed look of a college halfback.

“You ever work a homicide before, Pritkin?” Braden asked him.

“No, sir.”

“Borland says you’re good with paperwork and computers. I’ll need some help there. Like with this VICAP program? You know it?”

“You get me a copy of your crime scene report and the autopsy protocol and the rest of it, Detective Braden, I’ll be logged on with Quantico the same day.”

“Good,” Braden said. Maybe this arrangement would work out after all.

He had pulled Pritkin out of the Bright Spot. Now he glanced through the water-streaked window into the diner-styled coffee shop, where Harry Malkowski sat alone in a red vinyl-covered booth.

“You talk to him at all?” he asked the deputy.

“No, sir. Sheriff Borland said I should just baby-sit him.”

“Good. You can wait in your car or I’ll see you back at the station. I don’t want to crowd this kid too much.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And don’t call me sir.”

“Yes, uh … Detective.”

“Call me Braden.”

Deputy Pritkin grinned sheepishly. Braden left him outside and went into the diner. It was warm inside, with a background of muted jazz. When the set ended Braden recognized the voice of a Long Beach
DJ
, one of those who served up vintage jazz and provided listeners with the names and personal histories of every instrumentalist.

When Braden slipped into the booth opposite Harry Malkowski, the young man jumped.

“Detective Braden,” the detective said, offering Harry a flash of his badge before returning it to his jacket pocket. “You’re Harry Malkowski?”

“Uh … yeah. That’s with an ‘l.’”

“Got it. You made that 911 call.”—Braden consulted his notes, although it wasn’t necessary—“at five-forty-two this morning.”

Malkowski licked his lips. His right leg projected into the aisle and it kept jumping up and down. Braden figured his nervousness was normal. Most people were nervous when confronted by a policeman, especially under unusual circumstances like these.

Harry Malkowski was a thin, dark-haired youth, perhaps twenty-one years old, no more than a hundred and fifty pounds, maybe five eight when he stood up straight. Narrow chest and shoulders, small hands with long, sensitive fingers. Braden couldn’t picture him lifting the girl over the guardrail of the highway bridge, but you never knew.

He couldn’t picture those hands battering the girl to death, with or without brass knuckles.

A waitress with a full head of frizzy blond hair, a short skirt, button nose and an impudent smile brought him a cup of coffee. The name tag on her bosom read Iris. Braden sipped at his hot coffee, studying Harry Malkowski in silence. Harry couldn’t hold his stare. His eyes jumped around the coffee shop as if searching for a way to escape.

“Tell me, Harry, what were you doing out on the highway at that hour of the morning?”

“I always go out early on weekends—I mean, with my bike. It’s the best time, there aren’t too many people out.”

“See anyone else out this morning?”

“Uh, no … maybe one or two in town, but not on … on the highway.”

“You nervous, Harry?”

“Uh, no … no, I’m not … it’s just that, uh, seeing her like that shook me up. The girl …”

“You were on the bike path, right?”

“Yeah, you don’t dare ride on the highway. Some of those drivers will force you off the road just for kicks.”

“Did you notice any particular cars on the road? Before you came to that bridge?”

“No … I guess there might have been a little traffic, but I wasn’t paying attention. There was hardly any, I know that. When I stopped at the bridge, you know, it was eerie, like I was completely alone out there. There wasn’t a sound except for the birds. The fog was kinda thick, swirling around. I mean, it was eerie.”

“What made you stop there?”

“I didn’t stop. I mean, uh, I just saw her out of the corner of my eye. Shit, I ran into the railing, I couldn’t stop myself. Uh … sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. Go on.”

“Well, I mean, that’s it, you know. I saw her, and I stopped. I couldn’t believe it at first. But when I looked I could see it was a girl, you know, just lying there.”