The Perfect Husband

  You will not be an alcoholic.

  Having a beer after dinner is not alcoholism, it’s enjoying a beer. Just one. I drank all the time in the service, we all did. And could we perform? We always performed. It helps take off the edge. Christ, I want to take off the edge.

  Find the zone.

  Fuck you, J.T. You know you’re a liar, you know there’s no real zone. Only time you find it is when you’re in battle, and rifle shots crack the air and adrenaline buzzes in your ear. The only time you’re calm, you’re centered, you’re at peace, is when someone’s trying to kill you. And that’s just plain twisted.

  His hand reached out on its own. His fingers curled around the base of the cold, wet bottle.

  God, he was so thirsty. His fingers were trembling. He wanted, he wanted, he wanted.

  The sliding glass door slammed back and he leapt guiltily, stuffing his hand beneath his thigh.

  Marion stood on the patio with the lights golden around her. The picture shook him back to other times. Marion standing at the foot of his bed in her long white nightgown, her blond hair cascading down her back, her hands twisting in front of her. Marion begging him to save her, while the colonel pounded at his locked door and demanded his children let him in.

  J.T. searching for a place to hide his sister. The colonel taking the door off its hinges.

  He bit his lower lip to contain the memories.

  She took a step forward, then another. Slowly her face became visible. She was uncommonly pale.

  “Angela isn’t in the kitchen,” she whispered. “She isn’t anywhere in the house.”

  J.T. nodded dumbly.

  “That was the Information Division. I know who she is, J.T. And, my God, I think I may have screwed up. I may have really, really screwed up.”

  TWELVE

  LIEUTENANT LANCE DIFFORD was getting old. He was unbearably conscious of it these days. His hair had thinned considerably; it was harder to get up in the mornings. Coffee was starting to hurt his stomach and he was actually contemplating giving up doughnuts and prime rib.

  Now the weather was getting colder and yeah, his insomnia was growing worse.

  He wasn’t actually that old—fifty was hardly one step away from the grave in this day and age. He’d never planned on leaving the force until he was sixty. He was a good lieutenant, a decent cop, a respected man. Once, he’d thought he’d spend his days investigating death, helping the Hampden County DA prosecute homicides, and eventually retire to Florida to visit baseball’s spring training camps.

  Then a girl was found outside of Ipswich, her head beaten in and her own nylons wrapped around her neck. Eight months later they had another girl in Clinton and calls from the DA in Vermont wanting to compare their crime scenes with homicides from Middlebury and Bennington.

  Virtually overnight Difford went from low-key police work to one of the highest-profiled cases Massachusetts had ever seen. At the end he could summon unbelievable amounts of manpower just by snapping his fingers, from county resources to state resources to the FBI. Everyone wanted to help catch the man who’d probably killed four women in three states. Except then it became five women, then six women, then ten.

  Difford had aged a lot those days. Six task forces operating around the clock and the most manpower logged on a single investigation in the state’s history.

  What we have here, boys, is the worst serial killer New England has seen since Albert DeSalvo in ’67. And you know how many mistakes he’s made? Zero.

  Special Agent Quincy had them staking out grave sites and memorial services without avail. They’d arranged with columnists to profile the victims, keeping their names and tragedy fresh in the public mind. Maybe the guy would contact a loved one to brag. Maybe the guy was actually the bartender at the local police hangout, pumping officers for details. They’d executed the case like a textbook study, and still more blond daughters/wives/mothers went out for a drive and never came home.

  Then one night Difford had gotten the phone call, not on the hotline but at home. The woman’s voice had been so muffled, he could barely discern her words.

  “I think I know who you’re looking for,” she whispered without preamble. Difford had the image of a woman crouched in a closet, her hand cupping her mouth, her shoulders hunched in fear.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Is it true it’s a blunt wooden object? Could it be a baseball bat?”

  Difford gripped the phone tighter. “That could be, ma’am,” he said carefully. “Would you like to make a statement? Could you come to the station?”

  “No. No, no, absolutely not. He’d kill me. I know it.” Her voice rose an octave before she cut it off. Difford listened to her deep, steadying breaths as she tried to pull herself together. “I know who it is,” she said. “It’s the only explanation. The bats, his temper, all the unexplained hours . . . The look I sometimes see in his eye. I just didn’t want to believe—” Her voice broke. “Promise me you’ll protect my daughter. Please promise me that. Then I’ll give you anything.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “This man, this killer you’re looking for—he’s one of you.”

  Difford felt the chill shudder up his spine, and he knew then that they had him. The Hampden County DA had become involved in the case at the request of the Berkshire County DA—the minute the Berkshire County team began to suspect a Berkshire County cop might be involved.

  The next morning Difford arranged with the Berkshire County DA to keep Officer Jim Beckett busy that afternoon. Then Difford paid a visit to Beckett’s wife.

  Difford liked Theresa Beckett. He didn’t know why. He’d been prepared to hate her, to think nothing of her. If her accusation was true, then she was the Bride of Frankenstein. What kind of woman married a killer? What kind of police force gave him a job?

  Maybe it was the way Theresa sat across from them, so young and scared, but still answering their questions one by one. Maybe it was the way she cradled her two-year-old daughter against her neck when the baby cried, rocking her gently and whispering over and over again that everything would be all right. Maybe it was the way she handed over her life to them. Every small, tortured detail, with her whole face telling them she would do the right thing, she needed to do the right thing.

  They stripped her bare that first week. They met with her at prearranged locations every afternoon and dissected her marriage. How long had she known Beckett? Where did he come from? What did she know of his family? What was he like as a husband, a father? Was he violent? Did he ever try to choke her? What about sex? How often? What kinds of positions? Any S&M, choking, sodomy? Hard-core pornography?

  And she answered. Sometimes she couldn’t look them in the eye. Sometimes tears silently streaked down her cheek, but she gave them everything they asked for and then she gave them even more. She’d kept logs of his car odometer for six months. She’d noted what time he left for work, what time he came home, and listed any inexplicable scratches or bruises on his body.

  She told them that Jim Beckett actually wore a wig. Shortly after their marriage he’d shaved his head, his chest, his arms, his legs, his pubic hair, everything. The man was completely hairless, like a marble sculpture. The kind of perp that would leave no hair samples behind at the crime scene.

  She told them he was cold, arrogant, and without remorse. The kind of man who would poison the neighbor’s dog because he objected to a Pekingese shitting on his lawn. She told them he was relentless, the husband who always got his way. The kind of person who knew instinctively how to make people suffer without even raising his fist.

  And each afternoon when they tucked their notebooks away, they told her they needed more conclusive information before they could move against Officer Beckett, and they left her to face her husband alone for another evening.

  By the seventh day, they thought they had enough, but apparently so did Beckett. They never figured out who leaked what, but he walked into a sandwich shop on his lunch hour, tailed by two agents, a
nd never came back out. That simply he dropped off the face of the earth.

  They moved in force.

  Difford still remembered the look on Theresa’s face, the way her eyes widened, the way her whole body swayed that afternoon as she opened her door and investigators swarmed her house. They all wore white airpacks borrowed from the fire department, full laboratory treatment suits with hair covers to keep them from further contaminating the crime scene. They looked like creatures from a bad sci-fi flick, weighted down with equipment, moving with an eerie rustle, and descending upon her home.

  Samantha had begun to cry, so Theresa called her mother to come take her daughter away.

  Then she sat alone on the sofa as the men pulled up her hardwood floor, ripped up kitchen tiles, dug up sections of the basement floor, and chipped mortar from between the stones of her fireplace. They vacuumed all surfaces with a special high-powered vac that picked up hair particles and dust particles. The bags were sent to the Mass. State Police crime lab for analysis. Stains on the carpet were cut out and sent. Ditto with the kitchen tiles. Later, the police crime lab said it had never churned out so many reports on baby saliva and spit-up peaches. One patch of dirt in the basement revealed bovine blood approximately one year old.

  Next they brought in the lights. The 500-watt quartz light that helped highlight unseen hair and fibers. The ultraviolet radiation light with a 125-watt blue bulb to fluoresce hair, fiber, and body fluid. The blue-green luma light also to reveal hair, fiber, body fluids, and fingerprints. Finally they even dragged in portable laser lights and infrared. All the toys the CPAC boys never got to play with, never had the resources for, that were now being offered up to them from other states, other agencies, and the FBI.

  Half the state police force looked under every stone and twig for the elusive Jim Beckett while the other half dismantled his house in search of evidence of his crimes. Their first discovery was a six-month supply of birth control pills stuffed behind a piece of insulation in the attic, right over the boxes labeled

  SAMANTHA’S OLD CLOTHES, TWO MONTHS.

  “They’re mine,” Theresa told them. Her gaze rested on Difford. “I got them from a clinic in North Adams. He wanted a second child. I couldn’t . . . I just couldn’t.” She added without thinking, “Please don’t tell Jim. You have no idea what he can do.”

  Then, her own words penetrating, she sank down onto the sofa. One of the officers, a victim trauma expert, sat down next to her and placed an arm around her shoulders.

  In the front hall closet they found a family pack of condoms. Theresa said Jim never used them, so the condoms were sent off to the lab for the latex to be analyzed and compared with residue found in the victims. They also discovered five baseball bats and a receipt for an even dozen. Later, analysis of the fireplace ashes revealed wood compatible with the kind used in the bats, plus a chemical compound reminiscent of the glaze finish.

  They also recovered four test tubes containing premeasured amounts of a blue liquid identified as the sleeping drug Halcion, as well as the Compendium of Pharmaceuticals and Specialties, a virtual bible of most drugs, their manufacturers, their properties, and side effects.

  In the attic, tucked behind a loose board, they retrieved a stun gun and a rubber mallet. But they couldn’t find any direct links between Jim Beckett and the victims. Not the trophies serial killers were liable to take, or any traces of blood or hair.

  What they did find was copies of files requested by Beckett from Quantico’s Training Division. The files contained the profiles and interviews of several serial killers. Beckett had gone through and marked them up with such notes as HIS FIRST MISTAKE. HIS SECOND MISTAKE. THAT WAS SLOPPY.

  At the end they found one last summary comment: DISCIPLINE IS THE KEY.

  And the week turned into six months without any sign of Jim Beckett.

  Now Difford rose off the sofa. He looked out the window of the safe house and identified the unmarked patrol car keeping guard across the street. He checked the front door and then, because he still remembered what had happened that one dark night, would always remember what happened that night Beckett returned for his revenge, Lieutenant Difford checked the closet.

  All was clear.

  He walked down the hall of the tiny bungalow and opened the last bedroom door. Samantha Beckett slept in a puddle of moonlight, her face soft and smooth and surrounded by beautiful golden hair. Difford leaned against the doorjamb and just watched her.

  She looked so unbelievably tiny. She still cried for her mommy. Sometimes she even cried for her daddy. But she must have a lot of Theresa’s blood in her, because at four years of age she was also a real trooper. Most afternoons the kid beat the pants off him in dominoes.

  Difford sighed. He did feel old, but maybe these were the days for it.

  “God, Theresa, I hope you know what you’re doing,” Difford muttered.

  He tucked the blankets beneath Samantha’s chin, then finally closed the door.

  “I failed your mom,” he confessed in the hush of the darkened hallway. “But I won’t fail you, kid. I swear, I won’t fail you.”

  He sat down in the living room, the light on, his police revolver across his knee.

  He still couldn’t bring himself to close his eyes.

  The previous week the media had asked Difford what concerned citizens should do to safeguard their lives now that the infamous Jim Beckett had escaped.

  There’d been only one thing he could think of to say. “Lock your closets.”

  THIRTEEN

  WHEN IT GREW past seven and there was still no sign of Angela, J.T. admitted to himself that he was worried. At seven-thirty he gave up memorizing the ceiling fan and pulled on a pair of jeans.

  He had only one hunch, but it was a good one. It was cool outside. Fall moving into the desert and bringing some relief. The sky had expelled the sun and now a moon rose waxy and pale. Just enough light to frame the saguaros as frozen soldiers.

  The desert wasn’t quiet. It hummed and pulsed with the low, rhythmic chorus of the crickets, the eerie cries of the dry wind, and the faint fluttering of Gila woodpeckers whirring among the saguaros. Somewhere far off, a lone coyote mournfully howled.

  J.T. left behind the oasis of his swimming pool and headed for the shooting range. He may have locked up his .22, but Angela had reclaimed hers.

  He spotted her from thirty feet back, and his footsteps slowed. He didn’t call out because he didn’t want to startle an armed woman. Then he didn’t call out simply because he couldn’t think of anything to say.

  He stood in the moonlight and watched her point her unloaded gun at hay bales and pull the trigger. Again and again. And then she moved and pointed, trying new stances, practicing moving and shooting.

  Over and over.

  He could see that her arms shook. He could tell that her fingers had grown thick and sluggish, but she didn’t stop. She had set up a flashlight to illuminate her targets and she seemed intent on not wasting the light. She raised the gun and sighted the target and pulled the trigger yet again.

  And he could tell that the minute she tightened her finger around the trigger, she dipped the nose of her gun, so that maybe she thought she was hitting the target, but really she was simply killing dirt.

  A LONG TIME later Tess walked back to the house, her fingers too sore to curl and her arm a mass of knotted muscles. The palm of her hand hurt, her biceps hurt. Everything hurt. But she was trying.

  She walked into the yard. And as her hands pressed against the sliding glass door, she knew she wasn’t alone.

  She turned, the gun empty against her bare thigh, and peered out into the night.

  She didn’t see him. She felt him.

  His gaze washed over her. She felt it touch her face, then move down slowly, caressing the pulse throbbing in her throat, her breasts, her belly, her hips. It traveled back up, settled on her mouth.

  A red match glowed in the dark. He brought it up to his lips, cupping it in front of him s
o that it briefly illuminated his jaw. He inhaled sharply until the end of his cigarette glowed. Then with two quick jerks, he shook out the match.

  The darkness settled back between them, no longer calm but filled with a slow-heated pulse. She felt the throbbing rhythm in her blood. She felt the fierce feral pull of his gaze. Her lips parted.

  He stepped forward.

  “We need to talk.” His arm came up and he dumped a six-pack of beer on the patio table. “They’re for you, Theresa Beckett. Start drinking. And tell me everything.”

  “THEY COULDN’T FIND him. They told me they had him under surveillance, that they knew what he was doing at all times, that I was safe. Then one afternoon he entered a sandwich shop and was never seen again. Special Agent Quincy predicted Jim would be back. Sooner or later Jim would return to kill me.”

  You turned on him, Mrs. Beckett, and he didn’t see that coming. That’s a big blow to a man like him. Now the only way he’ll be able to restore his ego, his sense of self, is to kill you. He’ll come back. And he won’t wait long.

  “I made them put Samantha in hiding. We didn’t think Jim would hurt her—he seemed to honestly adore her—but we couldn’t take any chances. I remained in the house, night after night. Just waiting. For six months.”

  She lay in bed every night, covers pulled up to her chin, ears strained, eyes open, and heart stuck permanently in her throat. She chewed her fingernails down to raw nubs. She leapt at small noises. She forgot how to live, how to feel. And winter rolled down from the hills and blanketed Williamstown with snow.

  “They searched for him everywhere, but they didn’t have many leads. He rarely spoke of the past and the investigators uncovered little. His family was dead, his foster parents dead. His only friends were from the police force, and they were more like acquaintances. There didn’t seem to be anyplace for him to go, and yet he disappeared absolutely, completely, as if he’d never existed. I used to wonder if he wasn’t just some horrible phantom. I guess the cops began to think the same. Originally there were ten men watching my house. But then one week turned into two months. Then four months. Then six months. Just two plainclothes officers were still around. And suddenly Jim reappeared.”