about it any more and can be happy."
Emily was capable of expressing ideas that were, on the surface,
entirely childlike but, on reflection, seemed deeper and more mature
than anything expected from a seven-year-old. Sometimes, when he looked
into her dark eyes, Marty felt she was seven going on four hundred, and
he could hardly wait to see just how interesting and complex she was
going to be when she was all grown-up.
After their hair was brushed, the girls climbed into the twin beds, and
their mother tucked the covers around them, kissed them, and wished them
sweet dreams. "Don't let the bed bugs bite," she warned Emily because
the line always elicited a giggle.
As Paige retreated to the doorway, Marty moved a straightbacked chair
from its usual place against the wall and positioned it at the foot
of--and exactly between--the two beds. Except for a miniature
battery-powered reading lamp clipped to his open notebook and a
low-wattage Mickey Mouse luminaria plugged into a wall socket near the
floor, he switched off all the lights. He sat in the chair, held the
notebook at reading distance, and waited until the silence had acquired
that same quality of pleasurable expectation that filled a theater in
the moment when the curtain started to rise.
The mood was set.
This was the happiest part of Marty's day. Story time. No matter what
else might happen after rising to meet the morning, he could always look
forward to story time.
He wrote the tales himself in a notebook labeled Stories for Charlotte
and Emily, which he might actually publish one day. Or might not.
Every word was a gift to his daughters, so the decision to share the
stories with anyone else would be entirely theirs.
Tonight marked the beginning of a special treat, a story in verse, which
would continue through Christmas Day. Maybe it would go well enough to
help him forget the unsettling events in his office.
"Well, now Thanksgiving is safely past, more turkey eaten this year than
last--' "It rhymes!" Charlotte said with delight.
"Sssshhhhh!" Emily admonished her sister.
The rules of story time were few but important, and one of them was that
the two-girl audience could not interrupt mid-sentence or, in the case
of a poem, mid-stanza. Their feedback was valued, their reactions
cherished, but a storyteller must receive his due respect.
He began again, "Well, now Thanksgiving is safely past, more turkey
eaten this year than last, more stuffing stuffed, more yams jammed into
our mouths, and using both hands, coleslaw in slews, biscuits by twos,
all of us too fat to fit in our shoes." The girls were giggling just
where he wanted them to giggle, an Marty could barely restrain himself
from turning around in his chair to see how Paige liked it so far, as
she had heard none of it until this moment. But no one would respond to
a storyteller who couldn't wait until the end for his plaudits, an
unshakable air of confidence, whether faked or genuinely felt, was
essential to success.
So let's look ahead to the big holiday that's coming, coming, coming our
way.
I'm sure you know just what day I mean.
It's not Easter Sunday, not Halloween.
It's not a day to be sad and listless.
I ask you, young ladies, what is it--?"
"It's Christmas!" Charlotte and Emily answered in unison, and their
immediate response confirmed that he had them in his spell.
"Someday soon, we'll put up a tree.
Why only one? Maybe two, maybe three!
Deck it with tinsel and baubles bright.
It'll be an amazing and wonderful sight String colored lights out on the
roof-pray none are broken by anything's hoof Salt down the shingles to
melt the ice.
If Santa fell, it just wouldn't be nice.
He might fracture a leg or get a cut, perhaps even break his big jolly
butt."
He glanced at the girls. Their faces seemed to shine in the shadows.
Without saying a word, they told him, Don't stop, don't stop!
God, he loved this. He loved them.
If heaven existed, it was exactly like this moment, this place.
"Oh, wait! I just heard terrible news.
Hope it won't give you Christmas blues.
Santa was drugged, tied up, and gagged, blindfolded, ear-stoppled, and
bagged.
His sleigh is waiting out in the yard, and someone has stolen Santa's
bank card.
Soon his accounts will be picked clean by the use of automatic-teller
machines."
"Uh-oh," Charlotte said, snuggling deeper into her covers, "it's going
to be scary."
"Well, of course it is," Emily said. "Daddy wrote it."
"Will it be too scary?" Charlotte asked, pulling the blankets up to her
chin.
"Are you wearing socks?" Marty asked.
Charlotte usually wore socks to bed except in summer, because otherwise
her feet got cold.
"Socks?" she said. "Yeah? So?"
Marty leaned forward in his chair and lowered his voice to a spooky
whisper, "Because this story won't end until Christmas Day, and by then
it's gonna scare your socks off maybe a dozen times."
He made a wicked face.
Charlotte pulled the covers up to her nose.
Emily giggled and demanded, "Come on, Daddy, what's next?"
"Hark, the sound of silver sleigh bells echoes over the hills and the
dells.
And look reindeer high up in the sky!
Some silly goose has taught them to fly.
The drivergiggles quite like a loon-madman, goofball, a thug, and a
goon.
Something is wrong--any fool could tell.
If this is Santa, then Santa's not well.
He hoots, gibbers, chortles, and spits, and seems to be having some sort
of fits.
His mean little eyes spin just like tops.
So somebody better quick call the cops.
A closer look confirms his psychosis.
And--oh, my dears--really bad halitosis!"
"Oh, jeer," Charlotte said, pulling the covers up just below her eyes.
She professed to dislike scary stories, but she was the quickest to
complain if something frightening didn't happen in a tale sooner or
later.
"So who is it?" Emily asked. "Who tied Santa up and robbed him and ran
off in his sleigh?"
"Beware when Christmas comes this year, because there's something new to
fear.
Santa's twin--who is evil and mean-stole the sleigh, will make the
scene, pretending to be his good brother.
Guard your beloved children, mother!
Down the chimney, into your home, here comes that vile psychotic gnome!"
"Eeep!" Charlotte cried, and pulled the covers over her head.
Emily said, "What made Santa's twin so evil?"
"Maybe he had a bad childhood," Marty said.
"Maybe he was born that way," Charlotte said under her covers.
"Can people be born bad?" Emily wondered. Then she answered her own
question before Marty could respond. "Well, sure, they can.
"Cause some people are born good, like you and Mommy, so then some
people must be born bad."
Mar
ty was soaking up the girls' reactions, loving it. On one level, he
was a writer, storing away their words, the rhythms of their speech,
expressions, toward the day when he might need to use some of this for a
scene in a book. He supposed it wasn't admirable to be so constantly
aware that even his own children were material, it might be morally
repugnant, but he couldn't change. He was what he was. He was also a
father, however, and he reacted primarily on that level, mentally
preserving the moment because one day memories were all he would have of
their childhood, and he wanted to be able to recall everything, the good
and the bad, simple moments and big events, in Technicolor and Dolby
sound and with perfect clarity, because it was all too precious to him
to be lost.
Emily said, "Does Santa's evil twin have a name?"
"Yes," Marty said, "he does, but you'll have to wait until another night
to hear it. We've reached our first stopping place."
Charlotte poked her head out from beneath the covers, and both girls
insisted that he read the first part of the poem again, as he had known
they would. Even the second time through, they would be too involved to
be ready to sleep. They would demand a third reading, and he would
oblige, for then they would be familiar enough with the words to settle
down. Later, by the end of the third reading, they finally would be
either deep in sleep or on the drowsy edge of it.
As he started with the first line again, Marty heard Paige turn out of
the doorway and walk toward the stairs. She would be waiting for him in
the family room, perhaps with flames crackling in the fireplace, perhaps
with red wine and a snack of some kind, and they would curl up together
and tell each other about their day.
Any five minutes of the evening, now or later, would be more interesting
to him than a trip around the world. He was a hopeless homebody. The
charms of hearth and family had more allure than the enigmatic sands of
Egypt, the glamour of Paris, and the mystery of the Far East combined.
Winking at each of his daughters, reciting again, "Well, now
Thanksgiving is safely past," he had for the moment forgotten that
something disturbing had happened earlier in his office and that the
sanctity of his home had been violated.
In the Blue Life Lounge, a woman brushes against the killer and slides
onto the bar stool beside him. She is not as beautiful as the dancers,
but she is attractive enough for his purposes. Wearing tan jeans and a
tight red T-shirt, she could be just another customer, but she is not.
He knows her type a discount Venus with the skills of a naturalborn
accountant.
They conduct a conversation by leaning close to each other to be heard
above the band, and soon their heads are almost touching. Her name is
Heather, or so she says. She has wintermint breath.
By the time the dancers retreat and the band takes a break, Heather has
decided he isn't a vice cop on stakeout, so she grows , bolder. She
knows what he wants, she has what he wants, and she lets him know that
he is a buyer in a seller's market.
Heather tells him that across the highway from the Blue Life Lounge is a
motel where, if a girl is known to the management, rooms can be rented
by the hour. This is no surprise to him, for there are laws of lust and
economics as immutable as the laws of nature.
She pulls on her lambskin-lined jacket, and together they go out into
the chilly night, where her wintermint breath turns to steam in the
crisp air. They cross the parking lot and then the highway,
hand-in-hand as if they are high school sweethearts.
Though she knows what he wants, she does not know what he needs any more
than he does. When he gets what he wants, and when it does not quench
the hot need in him, Heather will learn the pattern of emotion that is
now so familiar to him, need fosters frustration, frustration grows into
anger, anger leads to hatred, hatred genera The sky is a massive slab of
crystal-clear ice. The trees stand leafless and sere at the end of
barren November. The wind makes a cold, mournful sound as it sweeps off
the vast surrounding prairie, through the city. And violence sometimes
soothes.
Later, having spent himself in Heather more than once, no longer in the
urgent grip of lust, he finds the shabbiness of the motel room to be an
intolerable reminder of the shallow, grubby nature of his existence.
His immediate desire is sated, but his desire for more of a life, for
direction and meaning, is undiminished.
The naked young woman, on top of whom he still lies, seems ugly now,
even disgusting. The memory of intimacy with her repels him. She can't
or won't give him what he needs. Living on the edge of society, selling
her body, she is an outcast herself, and therefore an infuriating symbol
of his own alienation.
She is taken by surprise when he punches her in the face. The blow is
hard enough to stun her. As Heather goes limp, nearly unconscious, he
slips both hands around her throat and chokes her with all the force of
which he is capable.
The struggle is quiet. The blow, followed by extreme pressure on her
windpipe and diminishment of the blood supply to her brain through the
carotid arteries, renders her incapable of resistance.
He is concerned about drawing the unwanted attention of other motel
guests. But a minimum of noise is also important because quiet murder
is more personal, more intimate, more deeply satisfying.
So quietly does she succumb that he is reminded of nature films in which
certain spiders and mantises kill their mates subsequent to a first and
final act of intercourse, always without a sound from either assailant
or victim. Heather's death is marked by a cold and solemn ritual equal
to the stylized savagery of those insects.
Minutes later, after showering and dressing, he crosses the highway from
the motel to the Blue Life Lounge and gets in his rental car.
He has business to conduct. He was not sent to Kansas City to murder a
whore named Heather. She was merely a diversion. Other victims await
him, and now he is sufficiently relaxed and focused to deal with them.
In Marty's office, by the party-colored light of the stained-glass lamp,
Paige stood beside the desk, staring at the small tape recorder,
listening to her husband chant two unsettling words in a voice that
ranged from a melancholy whisper to a low snarl of rage.
After less than two minutes, she couldn't tolerate it any longer.
His voice was simultaneously familiar and strange, which made it far
worse than if she'd been unable to recognize it at all.
She switched off the recorder.
Realizing she was still holding the glass of red wine in her right hand,
she took too large a swallow. It was a good California cabernet that
merited leisurely sipping, but suddenly she was more interested in its
effect than its taste.
Standing across the desk from her, Marty said, "There's at least five
more minutes of the same thing. Seven minutes in all. Afte
r it
happened, before you and the girls came home, I did some research."
He gestured toward the bookshelves that lined one wall. "In my medical
references."
Paige did not want to hear what he was going to tell her. The
possibility of serious illness was unthinkable. If anything happened to
Marty, the world would be a far darker and less interesting place.
She was not sure that she could deal with the loss of him. She realized
her attitude was peculiar, considering that she was a child psychologist
who, in her private practice and during the hours she donated to
child-welfare groups, had counseled dozens of children about how to
conquer grief and go on after the death of a loved one.
Coming around the desk toward her, his own wine glass already empty,
Marty said, "A fugue can be symptomatic of several things.
Early-stage Alzheimer's disease, for instance, but I believe we can rule
that out. If I've got Alzheimer's at thirty-three, I'd probably be the
youngest case on record by about a decade."
He put his glass on the desk and went to the window to stare out at the