Without Remorse

  “How did you get out?”

  “Night before ... I ... fucked them all ... so they’d like me, let me ... let me out of their sight. You understand now?”

  “You did what was necessary to escape,” Kelly replied. It required every bit of his strength to keep his voice even. “Thank God.”

  “I wouldn’t blame you if you took me back and sent me on my way. Maybe Daddy was right, what he said about me.”

  “Pam, do you remember going to church?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you remember the story that ends, ‘Go forth and sin no more’? You think that I’ve never done something wrong? Never been ashamed? Never been scared? You’re not alone, Pam. Do you have any idea how brave you’ve been to tell me all this?”

  Her voice by now was entirely devoid of emotion. “You have a right to know.”

  “And now I do, and it doesn’t change anything.” He paused for a second. “Yes, it does. You’re even gutsier than I thought you were, honey.”

  “Are you sure? What about later?”

  “The only ’later’ thing I’m worried about is those people you left behind.” Kelly said.

  “If they ever find me ... ” Emotion was coming back now. Fear. “Every time we go back to the city, they might see me.”

  “We’ll be careful about that,” Kelly said.

  “I’ll never be safe. Never.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s two ways to handle that. You can just keep running and hiding. Or you can help put them away.”

  She shook her head emphatically. “The girl they killed. They knew. They knew she was going to the cops. That’s why I can’t trust the police. Besides, you don’t know how scary these people are.”

  Sarah had been right about something else, Kelly saw. Pam was wearing her halter again, and the sun had given definition to the marks on her back. There were places which the sun didn’t darken as it did the others. Echoes of the welts and bloody marks that others had made for their pleasure. It had all started with Pierre Lamarck, or more correctly, Donald Madden, small, cowardly men who managed their relations with women through force.

  Men? Kelly asked himself.

  No.

  Kelly told her to stay in place for a minute and headed off into the machinery bunker. He returned with eight empty soda and beer cans, which he set on the ground perhaps thirty feet from their chairs.

  “Put your fingers in your ears,” Kelly told her.

  “Why?”

  “Please,” he replied. When she did, Kelly’s right hand moved in a blur, pulling a 45 Colt automatic from under his shirt. He brought it up into a two-hand hold, going left to right. One at a time, perhaps half a second apart, the cans alternatively fell over or flew a foot or two in the air to the crashing report of the pistol. Before the last was back on the ground from its brief flight, Kelly had ejected the spent magazine and was inserting another, and seven of the cans moved a little more. He checked to be sure the weapon was clear, dropped the hammer, and replaced it in his belt before sitting down next to her.

  “It doesn’t take all that much to be scary to a young girl without friends. It takes a little more to scare me. Pam, if anybody even thinks about hurting you, he has to talk to me first.”

  She looked over at the cans, then up at Kelly, who was pleased with himself and his marksmanship. The demonstration had been a useful release for him, and in the brief flurry of activity, he’d assigned a name or a face to each of the cans. But he could see she still was not convinced. It Would take a little time.

  “Anyway.” He sat down with Pam again. “Okay, you told me your story, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you still think it makes a difference to me?”

  “No. You say it doesn’t. I guess I believe you.”

  “Pam, not all the men in the world are like that—not very many, as a matter of fact. You’ve been unlucky, that’s all. There isn’t anything wrong with you. Some people get hurt in accidents or get sick. Over in Vietnam I saw men get killed from bad luck. It almost happened to me. It wasn’t because there was something wrong with them. It was just bad luck, being in the wrong place, turning left instead of right, looking the wrong way. Sarah wants you to meet some docs and talk it through. I think she’s right. We’re going to get you all fixed up.”

  “And then?” Pam Madden asked. He took a very deep breath, but it was too late to stop now.

  “Will you . . . stay with me, Pam?”

  She looked as though she’d been slapped. Kelly was stunned by her reaction. “You can’t, you’re just doing it because—”

  Kelly stood and lifted her by the arms. “Listen to me, okay? You’ve been sick. You’re getting better. You’ve taken everything that goddamned world could toss at you, and you didn’t quit. I believe in you! It’s going to take time. Everything does. But at the end of it, you will be one goddamned fine person.” He set her down on her feet and stepped back. He was shaking with rage, not only at what had happened to her, but at himself for starting to impose his will on her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. Please, Pam ... just believe in yourself a little.”

  “It’s hard. I’ve done terrible things.”

  Sarah was right. She did need professional help. He was angry at himself for not knowing exactly what to say.

  The next few days settled into a surprisingly easy routine. Whatever her other qualities, Pam was a horrible cook, which failing made her cry twice with frustration, though Kelly managed to choke down everything she prepared with a smile and a kind word. But she learned quickly, too, and by Friday she’d figured out how to make hamburger into something tastier than a piece of charcoal. Through it all, Kelly was there, encouraging her. trying hard not to be overpowering and mainly succeeding. A quiet word, a gentle touch, and a smile were his tools. She was soon aping his habit of rising before dawn. He started getting her to exercise. This came very hard indeed. Though basically healthy, she hadn’t run more than half a block in years, and so he made her walk around the island, starting with two laps, by the end of the week up to five. She spent her afternoons in the sun, and without much to wear she most often did so in her panties and bra. She acquired the beginnings of a tan, and never seemed to notice the thin, pale marks on her back that made Kelly’s blood chill with anger. She began to pay more serious attention to her appearance, showering and washing her hair at least once per day, brushing it out to a silky gloss, and Kelly was always there to comment on it. Not once did she appear to need the phenobarbital Sarah had left behind. Perhaps she struggled once or twice, but by using exercise instead of chemicals, she worked herself onto a normal wake-sleep routine. Her smiles acquired more confidence, and twice he caught her looking into the mirror with something other than pain in her eyes.

  “Pretty nice, isn’t it?” he asked Saturday evening, just after her shower.

  “Maybe,” she allowed.

  Kelly lifted a comb from the sink and started going through her wet hair. “The sun has really lightened it up for you.”

  “It took a while to get all the dirt out,” she said, relaxing to his touch.

  Kelly struggled with a tangle, careful not to pull too hard. “But it did come out, Pammy, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah, I guess so, maybe,” she told the face in the mirror.

  “How hard was that to say, honey?”

  “Pretty hard.” A smile, a real one with warmth and conviction.

  Kelly set the comb down and kissed the base of her neck, letting her watch in the mirror. Kelly got the comb back and continued his work. It struck him as very unmanly, but he loved doing this. “There, all straight, no tangles.”

  “You really ought to buy a hair-dryer.”

  Kelly shrugged. “I’ve never needed one.”

  Pam turned around and took his hands. “You will, if you still want to.”

  He was quiet for perhaps ten seconds, and when he spoke, the words didn’t quite come out as they should, for now the fear was his. “You
sure?”

  “Do you still—”

  “Yes!” It was hard lifting her with wet hair, still nude and damp from the shower, but a man had to hold his woman at a time like this. She was changing. Her ribs were less pronounced. She’d gained weight on a regular, healthy diet. But it was the person inside who had changed the most. Kelly wondered what miracle had taken place, afraid to believe that he was part of it, but knowing that it was so. He set her down after a moment, looking at the mirth in her eyes, proud that he’d helped to put it there.

  “I have my rough edges, too,” Kelly warned her, unaware of the look in his eyes.

  “I’ve seen most of them,” she assured him. Her hands started rubbing over his chest, tanned and matted with dark hair, marked with scars from combat operations in a faraway place. Her scars were inside, but so were some of his, and together each would heal the other. Pam was sure of that now. She’d begun to look at the future as more than a dark place where she could hide and forget. It was now a place of hope.

  6

  Ambush

  The rest was easy. They made a quick boat trip to Solomons, where Pam was able to buy a few simple things. A beauty shop trimmed her hair. By the end of her second week with Kelly, she’d started to run and had gained weight. Already she could wear a two-piece swimsuit without an overt display of her rib cage. Her leg muscles were toning up: what had been slack was now taut, as it ought to be on a girl her age. She still had her demons. Twice Kelly woke to find her trembling, sweating, and murmuring sounds that never quite turned into words but were easily understood. Both times his touch calmed her. but not him. Soon he was teaching her to run Springer, and whatever the defects in her schooling, she was smart enough. She quickly grasped how to do the things that most boaters never learned. He even took her swimming, surprised somehow that she’d learned the skill in the middle of Texas.

  Mainly he loved her, the sight, the sound, the smell, and most of all the feel of Pam Madden. Kelly found himself slightly anxious if he failed to see her every few minutes, as though she might somehow disappear. But she was always there, catching his eye, smiling back playfully. Most of the time. Sometimes he’d catch her with a different expression, allowing herself to look back into the darkness of her past or forward into an alternate future different from that which he had already planned. He found himself wishing that he could reach into her mind and remove the bad parts, knowing that he would have to trust others to do that. At those times, and the others, for the most part, he’d find an excuse to head her way, and let his fingertips glide over her shoulder, just to be sure she knew that he was there.

  Ten days after Sam and Sarah had left, they had a little ceremony. He let her take the boat out, tie the bottle of phenobarbital to a large rock, and dump it over the side. The splash it made seemed a fitting and final end to one of her problems. Kelly stood behind her, his strong arms about her waist, watching the other boats traveling the Bay, and he looked into a future bright with promise.

  “You were right,” she said, stroking his forearms.

  “That happens sometimes,” Kelly replied with a distant smile, only to be stunned by her next statement.

  “There are others, John, other women Henry has . . . like Helen, the one he killed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have to go back. I have to help them ... before Henry—before he kills more of them.”

  “There’s danger involved, Pammy,” Kelly said slowly.

  “I know ... but what about them?”

  It was a symptom of her recovery, Kelly knew. She had become a nomal person again, and normal people worried about others.

  “I can’t hide forever, can I?” Kelly could feel her fear, but her words defied it and he held her a little tighter.

  “No, you can’t, not really. That’s the problem. It’s too hard to hide.”

  “Are you sure you can trust your friend on the police?” she asked.

  “Yes: he knows me. He’s a lieutenant I did a job for a year ago. A gun got tossed, and I helped find it. So he owes me one. Besides, I ended up helping to train their divers, and I made some friends.” Kelly paused. “You don’t have to do it, Pam. If you just want to walk away from it, that’s okay with me. I don’t have to go back to Baltimore ever, except for the doctor stuff.”

  “All the things they did to me, they’re doing to the others. If I don’t do something, then it’ll never really be gone, will it?”

  Kelly thought about that, and his own demons. You simply could not run away from some things. He knew. He’d tried. Pam’s collection was in its way more horrible than his own, and if their relationship were to go further, those demons had to find their resting place.

  “Let me make a phone call.”

  “Lieutenant Allen,” the man said into his phone in Western District. The air conditioning wasn’t working well today, and his desk was piled with work as yet undone.

  “Frank? John Kelly,” the detective heard, bringing a smile.

  “How’s life in the middle of the Bay, fella?” Wouldn’t I like to be there.

  “Quiet and lazy. How about you?” the voice asked.

  “I wish,” Allen answered, leaning back in his swivel chair. A large man, and like most cops of his generation, a World War II veteran—in his case a Marine artillery-man —Allen had risen from foot patrol on East Monument Street to homicide. For all that, the work was not as demanding as most thought, though it did carry the burden associated with the untimely end of human life. Allen immediately noted the change in Kelly’s voice. “What can I do for you?”

  “I, uh, met somebody who might need to talk with you.”

  “How so?” the cop asked, fishing around in his shirt pocket for a cigarette and matches.

  “It’s business, Frank. Information regarding a killing.”

  The cop’s eyes narrowed a bit, while his brain changed gears. “When and where?”

  “I don’t know yet, and I don’t like doing this over a phone line.”

  “How serious?”

  “Just between us for now?”

  Allen nodded, staring out the window. “That’s fine, okay.”

  “Drug people.”

  Allen’s mind went click. Kelly had said his informant was “somebody,” not a “man.” That made the person a female, Allen figured. Kelly was smart, but not all that sophisticated in this line of work. Allen had heard the shadowy reports of a drug ring using women for something or other. Nothing more than that. It wasn’t his case. It was being handled by Emmet Ryan and Tom Douglas downtown, and Allen wasn’t even supposed to know that much.

  “There’s at least three drug organizations up and running now. None of them are very nice folks.” Allen said evenly. “Tell me more.”

  “My friend doesn’t want much involvement. Just some information for you, that’s it, Frank. If it goes further, we can reevaluate then. We’re talking some scary people if this story is true.”

  Allen considered that. He’d never dwelt upon Kelly’s background, but he knew enough. Kelly was a trained diver, he knew, a bosun’s mate who’d fought in the brown-water Navy in the Mekong Delta, supporting the 9th Infantry; a squid, but a very competent, careful squid whose services had come highly recommended to the force from somebody in the Pentagon and who’d done a nice job retraining the force’s divers, and, by the way, earning a nice check for it, Allen reminded himself. The “person” had to be female. Kelly would never worry about guarding a man that tightly. Men just didn’t think that way about other men. If nothing else, it sure sounded interesting.

  “You’re not screwing me around, are you?” he had to ask.

  “That’s not my way, man,” Kelly assured him. “My rules: it’s for information purposes only, and it’s a quiet meet. Okay?”

  “You know, anybody else, I’d probably say come right in here and that would be it, but I’ll play along with you. You did break the Gooding case open for me. We got him, you know. Life plus thirty. I owe you for th
at. Okay, I’ll play along for now. Fair enough?”

  “Thanks. What’s your schedule like?”

  “Working late shift this week.” It was just after four in the afternoon, and Allen had just come on duty. He didn’t know that Kelly had called three times that day already without leaving a message. “I get off around midnight, one o’clock, like that. It depends on the night,” he explained. “Some are busier than others.”

  “Tomorrow night. I’ll pick you up at the front door. We can have a little supper together.”

  Allen frowned. This was like a James Bond movie, secret agent crap. But he did know Kelly to be a serious man, even if he didn’t know squat about police work.

  “See you then, sport.”

  “Thanks, Frank. ’Bye.” The line clicked off and Allen went back to work. making a note on his desk calendar.

  “Are you scared?” he asked.

  “A little,” she admitted.

  He smiled. “That’s normal. But you heard what I said. He doesn’t know anything about you. You can always back out if you want. I’ll be carrying a gun all the time. And it’s just a talk. You can get in and get out. We’ll do it in one day—one night, really. And I’ll be with you all the time.”

  “Every minute?”

  “Except when you’re in the ladies’ room, honey. There you have to look out for yourself.” She smiled and relaxed.

  “I have to fix dinner,” she said, heading off to the kitchen.

  Kelly went outside. Something in him called for more weapons practice, but he’d done that already. Instead he walked into the equipment bunker and took the .45 down from the rack. First he depressed the stud and action spring. Next he swiveled the bushing. That allowed the spring to go free. Kelly dismounted the slide assembly, removing the barrel, and now the pistol was field-stripped. He held the barrel up to a light, and, as expected, it was dirty from firing. He cleaned every surface, using rags, Hoppe’s cleaning solvent, and a toothbrush until there was no trace of dirt on any metal surface. Next he lightly oiled the weapon. Not too much oil, for that would attract dirt and grit, which could foul and jam the pistol at an inconvenient moment. Finished cleaning, he reassembled the Colt quickly and expertly—it was something he could and did do with his eyes closed. It had a nice feel in his hand as he jacked the slide back a few times to make sure it was properly assembled. A final visual inspection confirmed it.