Mind Tryst

  “It appears,” Mike said, “that the victims have gone with their killer willingly. That doesn’t mean they knew him. Just about anyone would get in a car with a priest or police officer.”

  I swallowed; I might get in a car with a priest. “You’re starting to make L.A. sound good.”

  “The per capita crime rate is higher there,” he said.

  “What’s Bodge doing about this?”

  “While investigating the Porter murder and looking for links, he used the state police. When he found links, he notified them first. They notified the feds. I didn’t have the balls to ask him if Brad Krump was working on this. I figure he might be, but it’s a state operation now, with federal help. What they do is try to link up details and trail these events. All that Hollywood shit aside, it’s tough to catch one of these. They change ID, change personal appearance, stay on the move. They don’t always do this Hollywood stuff, like leaving a lipstick kiss on their victims’ foreheads. Or secretly wanting to get caught. The killer is about killing, not playing tag with the cops. Some of them can be linked to so many murders that it gets incomprehensible. Like hundreds. And the methods vary with the circumstances. Only thing is, this burying victims is unusual when there are so many. Hiding them like that takes lots of planning. Taking them far away and actually digging a hole. Mostly, victims are left where they drop if the murder is a spontaneous act.”

  “Blllkkkk.”

  “Of the eight women whose bodies were found, only two came from the same town. And that was Leadville, which isn’t far away. So, one thing Bodge is doing, is almost done doing, is checking whether these towns ever experienced any of this crazy shit like missing digits, phantom prowlers, and that stuff. He wants me to be sure to tell you that so far, nothing like that was going on. And he also wants me to tell you that he doesn’t have any reason to believe the killer is in Coleman; more than likely it’s someone from a bigger city, where he can come and go a lot, remain anonymous to his neighbors, and get his hands on a variety of different vehicles.

  “So, you don’t take rides and don’t open the house door too fast. Right?”

  “Right,” I said.

  “And... now this might seem goofy, but if you can afford it, get a cellular phone.”

  “What for?”

  “Safest invention we’ve come up with yet,” he said. “You can carry it in your purse, phone from the middle of nowhere if your car breaks down, phone from behind a locked bathroom door. You might have some trouble with reception when you get in the mountains, but it should work most of the time.”

  “You’re giving me the creeps.”

  “And don’t tell anyone you have it; get it for backup protection. Take it with you on long trips, like when you’re going home from the Denver airport and you have to do that long stretch.”

  “What are the chances I’m going to be able to make a phone call when I need to? What are you saying? That you think I’m a potential hit for this guy?”

  “Noooo, noooo, not that. Don’t be lazy or ignorant, that’s all. You’ve got good locks, you’ve got a gun... You shoot that thing lately?”

  “Not lately. It’s been a year.”

  “We’ll do that before I go. I asked Bodge where we could do that.”

  “Look, I have a strict rule about no one knowing I have a gun and you went and —”

  “Bodge said there’s a range out of town off Forty-four; plenty of people around here practice-shoot. Besides, Bodge won’t tell anyone and he taught Sue to shoot a long way back. You’d like his attitude, which is not the same as my attitude; he has no doubt Sue would unload a whole barrel into someone if she needed to. He’s glad you have one.”

  “Does Chelsea have a gun?”

  “No way. I lock up my service revolver when I’m at home. I’ve taught the girls all about it and they’re never to touch it. Not only that, it’s out of their reach at all times. I think door locks, cellular phones, yard lights, and a barking dog are the best way to stay at home and enjoy the evening.”

  I listened to all this and when he’d worn himself out, we finished the drive in silence. Finally, as we turned into town, I spoke to him again. “Now that you’ve loaded me up on advice in fending off the serial killer, you’re on your way. Right?”

  “Gotta go, kid. First, let’s shoot your gun and make sure you’re okay on that. We’ll stop by your house and pick it up.”

  “I’ve got it,” I said. I patted my purse.

  “Jesus, Jack! You carry it?”

  “Only because I wouldn’t want anyone to steal it. I used to hide it at home; now that I’ve started to get company, I keep it in my purse.”

  “Well, Jack, if you’re going to go it alone in this little town, you’re going to have to be prepared to take care of yourself. And a little better than you have been. No more unlocked upstairs windows, no more dates with funny-bunnies, and don’t take any chances. This place is not Nirvana. They get the same cross-section here that they get anywhere.” He made a couple of turns, taking us out the north end of town to a range. “Don’t be naive.”

  “I’m never naive,” I said.

  “Don’t be innocent; be cynical. Be tough.”

  “I am.”

  “Good. Let’s go shoot. Then I’m outa here.”

  Later, about an hour and a half later, I hugged him at the curb in front of my house. I became teary and sentimental. And I said, “Thanks, Mike.”

  “Hey, Jack. No problem.”

  14

  The phantom did not visit me again; within two weeks the incidents ceased altogether. With my house secured by a professional, there was only one mode of entry when I was not within, without breaking wood or glass, that is: the front door. A long time ago I’d seen a movie in which a spy arranged a hair or thread across his door so that he could tell if it had been opened in his absence. This wasn’t feasible on an outside door; I chose a small piece of tape. I experimented for a long time, trying several brands, until I found a cheap brown tape that had to be licked to stick and wouldn’t pull off wood finish or paint when removed. It wouldn’t stick again once it had been pulled off. This assured me my space hadn’t been violated while I was at work.

  In addition to that, I checked all the doors and windows when I got home; I inspected each one closely. Nothing was ever moved, changed, or adjusted. This kind of thinking will make you a little insane and your memory has to be perfect. A glass moved from one side of the sink to the other can consume far too much energy until you remember that last late-night sip of water.

  Hearing from Bodge that there had been a few more complaints gave me perverse comfort. It made me feel less exclusive — less targeted. Knowing these invasions continued after Tom’s departure from town let him off the hook, in my mind. Then even the phantom gave up. It appeared that the press coverage in our Coleman Courier and the escalated neighborhood-watch programs discouraged these peculiar acts.

  The paper also covered the murder of Kathy Porter. She was officially placed among the number of women killed by another kind of phantom. Although there were eight bodies, other women reported missing under similar mysterious circumstances had not yet been found. The articles set up a scenario of young wives and mothers vanishing from shopping malls, car pools, homes, and so on. It was never said how many women vanished; it was said that in some of these instances the women might indeed have run away. It was akin to hearing of missing children and asking if there was any custody dispute. It would be equally frightening and tragic for a mother if her ex- husband abducted their child — but it made the rest of us mothers feel safer. Such were the unanswered questions about the missing women: Was there a boyfriend? Was there abuse? Was this woman abducted and killed or did she exercise her prerogative and escape? And, I wondered, are we talking about eight women... or eighty? The stories ended when the press exhausted its information. There had been a memorial service for the departed Mrs. Porter soon after her remains were found.

  A sad piece of news regar
ded Billy. It seemed that the implement used to remove the fingers and toes from the corpse was a common yard tool, a clipper, the type that could be used on small trees. It was found among Billy’s collection of lawn equipment in his truck. Billy was never a suspect; Bodge immediately assumed that the pranksters stole Billy’s clipper and replaced it. The incident upset Billy greatly; he was seen by all of us shaking his head and crying. It was good that there would soon be snow, as he could barely do his minor chores.

  As the fall air became colder and the trees began to lose their magnificent artwork of color, Coleman became restful. The streets were quieter, we were between sets of visitors. One night I ate chili with Harry and Roberta and some others they invited to their house. I had my cellular phone, and on the way home I had a flat tire. The roads are ill traveled out Musetta way and behind me by a few minutes was good old honorable Bud.

  I was staring in frustration at my flat when he pulled up behind me. Although I had opened my trunk and looked at the tools, I had absolutely no idea what to do with them. I had always meant to back up my fierce independence with knowledge and practical experience. Ha. In Los Angeles, you wait for a highway patrol or call a towing service.

  “What luck,” he said, getting out of his car. “I’ve been praying since the day I met you that I’d find you all alone on a dark country road.”

  I jumped in my car, locked the doors, and used my phone to call Harry and Roberta. Bud was stunned. He began knocking on the window as I listened to a busy signal. I thought about dialing the sheriff. The wait for a patrol car to come out here could be long. I mouthed a few fake words into the phone, hoping to give Bud the idea I had relayed my emergency to someone. “Jackie, hey Jackie,” he kept harassing.

  Bud Wilcox is not a scary man. I was afraid nonetheless. Women die when they talk themselves out of instinctive fear, when they try to be polite and agreeable so no one gets their feelings hurt. What this brave, intelligent woman did was point a gun at a Superior Court judge and order him to change my tire.

  Yes. I did. Bud stumbled backward and muttered, “Jesus Christ, are you out of your mind?”

  “Someone around here is killing women and you’re glad to find me stranded out here,” I said, getting out of my car, phone in one hand and gun in the other. “Change the tire, Your Honor. And don’t give me any lip.”

  He did. He swore a lot. He sweated on his gold. He lost all lust for me that night. I suppose he could have had me arrested or something, I don’t know. Two weeks later in his courtroom, I approached the bench and he scowled. He granted my motion and peered at me. “And I trust you are unarmed, Miss Sheppard?”

  I felt like a fool for a long time. I don’t know what else I might have done. Someone was killing women. Bud showed up at the wrong time with the wrong choice of words. The experience did render one benefit I might not otherwise have had. When I told Roberta what I’d done, she laughed so hard that tears ran down her cheeks and she held her sides. I hadn’t seen that before and I haven’t since.

  I began to sit for a while in the cafe with the boys before taking my Danish to the office. I drove out to an orchard with Sue Scully to pick a bushel of apples and learned how to make and put up applesauce. And I hostessed a backyard barbecue for my neighbors, feeding six couples and their kids. I invited mean old Mrs. Wright, but she was a no-show, never bothered to respond. I laid a plan to plague her with friendliness until she succumbed. That was one of the many plans I was ultimately unable to carry out while in Coleman.

  Then the town changed and lost its peaceful and quiet atmosphere as the hunters arrived. October is elk season; elk are huge and beautiful beasts. Shooting them seems so horrible to me and the town is divided on the issue.

  The hunters bring revenue; they murder gorgeous elk. The hunters are having sport; they are dangerous. Schoolchildren and their parents are warned to be cautious, to stay out of hunting areas, because stray bullets and accidental shootings and fires are a fact of life in hunting season. The sheriff’s department works as hard as the fish and game division and the highway patrol; patrols are set up everywhere. Licenses are checked, rechecked. Camp sites are patrolled, alcohol consumption is closely watched.

  It’s a shocking transition for a sleepy town surrounded by the magnificent natural wonder of God’s own handiwork. Suburbans, campers, trucks, and jeeps converge on the town; men in red suits and hats, toting enormous and powerful weapons, are everywhere. The roads out of town that rise above valleys are lined with vehicles, hunters standing about with their guns ready, waiting for elk to come into a pasture or drink from a stream. My closest friends hunted or didn’t, and everyone met this season with ambivalence. Harry, Bodge, and Sweeny liked to hunt, but the last two seldom had the time as they were needed to monitor hunters. Bow-and-arrow hunting was big with others. Still others were opposed to hunting with anything other than a camera. It surprised me that the arguments were not more heated, more volatile.

  I thought of hunting season as an invasion of my town. All the people became edgy. The streets had been crowded with visitors who came to enjoy the bounty and beauty; now our visitors were arriving to kill something of ours and take it away. I found even the gentlest, handsomest, most polite of the hunters scary. I guess I’ll never grasp the pleasure factor. I’ll never understand that feeling of domination and conquest that hunters yearn to have.

  Hunting season culminated in a tragedy when, less than ten days into the season, Wharton was shot and killed. He was in his pasture at dawn, dressed in his old brown work clothes and brown baseball cap, when a stray bullet from a Winchester .270 hit him in the back of the head at one hundred yards and killed him instantly. The circumstances of the accident made it worse than a misfire or careless shot, because it was a desperately messy homicide and was never resolved in any conclusive manner.

  The gun was registered to a man named Robert Roper. He was with six other men in a large party of hunters who were camping on the eastern rim several miles from Wharton’s ranch. When they rose before dawn to begin to hunt, Robert Roper’s rifle was missing. The men looked in various sites for the gun as though it were possible that Roper had left it behind; all claimed they didn’t believe that possible, but went through the ritual anyway. That whole business of “looking” became significant when they sauntered into the sheriff’s office to make a complaint.

  Trouble was, their complaint was late, as was their luck. By the time these men made their appearance at ten a.m., Wharton’s body had been seen by other hunters and Bodge was at his ranch. From the way he lay and the appearance of his wound, the shot was deduced to have come from within a thick patch of trees. There, lying on the damp, mossy ground, was the abandoned gun.

  In the days following the death of a dear and beloved man, controversy roared. The hunters who had “lost” the gun had consumed considerable alcohol the night before. That much they would admit. How much other drinking had gone on, they would not say. They denied having drunk anything during their hunting — yet, according to Sweeny, who did not touch spirits of any kind, the men had an aroma of the brewery when they came to report the missing gun. They insisted they had not gone near the Wharton ranch during any of their hunting.

  Had they truly lost the gun? Had Roper’s gun been stolen by someone? Had Roper himself made a mistake and fired on Wharton’s cows and hit Wharton? Had Roper or any of the hunters in that party attempted to shoot game that had wandered into Wharton’s pasture despite the fact that it was a restricted area? Had they been negligent? Incompetent? Criminal?

  During the few days of debate and investigation, the seven men in the party served as seven witnesses to one another’s whereabouts — and Bodge could not cite Robert Roper with manslaughter or murder. He had to charge them or let them go, so he tagged them all on disorderly conduct, hunting while under the influence, illegal disposition of firearms, and trespassing. Seven hunting licenses were revoked. All of this he had to reach to get. There were fines, suspended sentences, and Bodge es
corted the men out of town. Once they were at the county line, he pulled over and spoke to them.

  “We don’t do business around here like you fellows like to do business. We don’t get loaded up and load up. Now get out of here and if you ever somehow manage to get another license, stay the hell out of my county.” I got this third-hand. Maybe there were more expletives; maybe not. It sounded like what Bodge would say.

  Now, the boys had a rough time with losing Wharton. In the end so did I, because seeing Lip, Bodge, Harry, George, and a few others struggle with the pain was the most excruciating thing imaginable. These were easygoing, brave, callused, rough-and-ready men. They all did difficult physical work and covered their emotions with laughter and teasing. There wasn’t a bad temper among them. They took the shooting hard.

  Bodge’s chin quivered at the graveside. He almost didn’t get through the funeral. George Stiller broke down and sobbed on his father’s shoulder, his wife holding up his other side. Lip and Nicole, along with all six children, saw Wharton off together, and poor Lip, well, he needed them all there to keep him from going to pieces. Maybe Harry had the hardest time of all. His eyes were red-rimmed and glassy; his mouth turned down at the corners and twitched. He was silent and stoic. And when they lowered the casket into the ground, Harry turned to me and with tears coursing down his cheeks, said, “Wharton, that old son of a bitch, never in his life let me do anything first.”

  I remember wishing for Harry that he’d be able to really let go and cry, but I never saw him do it.