The Fate of Katherine Carr

  20

  "WHY ARE YOU HERE SO early?" Alice asked. She'd clearly been sleeping, but even upon awakening, a distressing weakness clung to her, one that signaled the approach of her final days, her heart inevitably growing more feeble, the last of her strength now draining away.

  "Do you mind that I'm early?" I asked. "I could come back when you've..."

  She inched herself upward and lifted her head slightly with what seemed an added measure of effort. "What did you do today?" she asked softly, her voice noticeably weaker, everything about her suddenly much more frail.

  "Well, for one thing, I thought I might have found the house—the actual house that Katherine goes to in her story, the one Maldrow takes her to. So I went there. There wasn't much left of it. Nothing that led anywhere, that's for sure."

  In all of this I was simply trying to return Alice to our little game of Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe. I'd even planned a carefully paced rendering of my visit.

  But Alice said simply, "I'm afraid of what's going to happen to her, George."

  She meant that she was afraid for Katherine, afraid to face her dire end, certain that she'd been ensnared in Maldrow's malicious web, Katherine's story no longer a harmless little mystery, but a chilling narrative of true crime.

  "We can stop reading the story if you want," I told her. "We don't have to go to the end."

  Alice glanced at my briefcase, then back up at me.

  "Yes," she said, "we do."

  "Are you sure?"

  Alice nodded softly. "Yes," she said.

  And so, like two wayfarers on a boat together, we journeyed on.

  NOW

  "So, it seems you have guided her well to the final moment," the Chief says.

  Maldrow sips his drink silently, reviewing the questions Katherine asked, the answers he'd given.

  "And quite cleverly, at that," the Chief adds. "You never lied to her."

  "I was afraid to lie to her."

  "Why?"

  "Because when the time came, she might not have believed the evidence."

  "Ah, yes," the Chief says. "The evidence."

  Maldrow sees a vast array of objects, souvenirs of their bloody crimes, torn from blouses or snatched from hands, ripped from walls or pulled out of small wooden chests, pins, locks of hair, all of them bearing the eternally recurring panic of their former owners.

  The Chief starts to speak again, then stops abruptly as the bartender approaches.

  Maldrow catches the Chief's warning glance and waits.

  "You want another drink?" the barkeep asks when he reaches the table.

  Maldrow lifts his still-half-filled glass. "Not yet."

  The bartender eyes Maldrow briefly, then steps away.

  "There is so little we can change," the Chief says.

  Maldrow sees the endless slaughter, the unquiet graves. He sees Bobby Franks climb into the black sedan, Loeb at the wheel, Leopold in the backseat, fingering the chisel. He sees Fish take Grace Budd's small white hand. He sees young Klara Jessmer reflected in the oversized spectacles of Joachim Kroll, András Pandy stuffing his refrigerator with the body parts of four children. He sees Amelia's body sprawled across the barn floor, the ripped cloth at her breast. Last of all, he sees Yenna disappearing into the darkened alley where Stanovich waits in an even-darker corner.

  The Chief seems to see all these things as well. He watches Maldrow a moment, then says, "We are almost done now. And soon it will be time. So let us go on with the report."

  Maldrow knows that the Chief is right, that what is done is done. He takes a quick sip from his drink, then returns the glass to the table.

  "The final steps," the Chief says.

  Maldrow peers toward the window of the bar, his own image superimposed over the Chief's, the features of the one draped in strange transparency over the other. As if they were his own, he watches the Chief's lips as they part in the old final recitation:

  "Amelia."

  Maldrow sees her as she makes her way through the snow, the empty milk bucket dangling from her hand, the kitchen fire already blazing in the little cabin a few yards away, singing to herself as she walks, the little gold cross she treasured tucked inside her dress.

  "So innocent."

  She is in the barn now, moving through its shadowy light.

  "And unjustly doomed."

  The figure swoops down from the overhanging rafters, arms spread in flight, like the wings of a ravenous bird. He hears the thud of the drop, then the rip of cloth, the whisper of the knife as it tears through the air, the small snap of the necklace as the tiny gold cross is ripped from around her throat. Then, as if from a great height, he sees the broken body dragged through the snow, then tossed into the icebound river that never gave it back, nothing left of his dead daughter, save—

  "The evidence," the Chief says softly.

  Maldrow remembers the little gold cross glowing softly in the Chief's open hand.

  "And now..."

  The Chief stops and waits for the necessary response:

  "Katherine Carr," Maldrow whispers.

  "Tell me the best thing about her," the Chief says. "The thing the world will miss."

  "Her kindness," Maldrow answers. "The way she looked when I told her about Amelia."

  "How did she look?"

  "As if she knew the truth," Maldrow answers. "That there can be no solace for a murdered child."

  I glanced up to where Alice stared at me silently. There was a strange bleakness in her expression, the glimmer of her initial engagement in Katherine's story now completely drained away, so that she seemed empty, without shine.

  "So Maldrow's daughter was murdered," I said. "And the Chief found out the one who did it, and brought Maldrow the evidence. That little gold cross."

  Alice's face was a mask of dread. "But it's all a lie," she said. "That story is all a lie, the one about Amelia."

  I was stunned by so dark an interpretation of the section I'd just read. "Then why are Maldrow and the Chief talking about it?" I asked.

  Alice's eyes seemed to shrink back into her head as small creatures back into their burrows, retreating ever deeper at the predator's approach.

  And yet she said, "Go on."

  THEN

  We drove through town, then along the shaded lanes on its outskirts. The homes were large, with wide front lawns, and as we drove, Maldrow glanced from house to house, his gaze casual, but at the same time deeply concentrated, like a man who could see through walls, but found nothing particularly extravagant in such a power.

  We continued on, Maldrow still silent, though I could sense a growing tumult within him. It was like the distant stirring of a storm, of building winds and tides. He held his gaze firmly ahead, and this, too, appeared a matter of careful calculation and control.

  "The stop is over there," he said finally.

  He nodded straight toward a bus stop, then pulled over in front of it.

  "The 34 should arrive very soon," he told me.

  "But the 34 just goes back into town."

  Maldrow glanced away, like one concealing the perilous details of a dreadful mission.

  "All right," I said and got out of the car.

  I didn't look back as I walked to the bus stop. By the time I got there, Maldrow was gone. I sat down on the small bench, alone in what seemed a desolate place, and waited for the bus. A few yards away, a green metal Dumpster rested on a weedy patch of ground. A few sparrows fought over the garbage scattered around it, and just above them, perched on a bare limb, a large crow sat staring off into the distance, motionless and haughty, indifferent to their small wars.

  There was little traffic this far out, no more than an occasional passing car, sometimes laden with family, sometimes with a single driver. Once, a lone man slowed as he drifted by, glancing over with a grin and a nod, to which I returned an icy glare.

  I looked at my watch. It was just past six, the evening shade now falling all around me, darkening the air.

&nb
sp; A terrible wave of dread passed over me, and I might have rushed away, returned to the old shadowland of my former life, had not the bus arrived at just that moment. I got in, walking briskly now, past a young woman with a baby and two girls in white blouses and checked skirts, and finally an old man with a white beard, who sat with a wooden cane grasped shakily in one hand.

  The bus moved on toward town, and I recognized that this was the same area through which Maldrow had driven me the day before, the same barn and the wide fields, the hint of a stream through the trees, one whose course I was following idly until the old slaughterhouse came into view, the bus slowing steadily as we closed in upon it until it finally stopped, and another rider came on board.

  He was tall and very thin, and he wore a baseball cap with its brim facing backward, like a cocky boy.

  "'Bout time you got here," he said to the driver.

  My skin tightened and my muscles grew taut, and I felt the air inside my lungs go hot and dry, as if I'd breathed in a draft from the underworld.

  The man craned his neck as he lurched forward and I saw the rounded knob of his Adam's apple bob slightly between the bulging ligaments of his neck.

  He took a seat near the front, the back of his head all that remained visible to me as the bus moved on.

  The woman with a baby got off at the next stop, and at the one after that, the old man left the bus as well. A mile onward, the girls bounded off the bus, laughing as they hopped out into the evening shade.

  The bus moved on for a time, the man in the cap faced forward, his body very still, so that it seemed almost lifeless. Then, as if animated by a sudden charge, he turned toward me. His eyes glimmered and a thin reptilian smirk slithered onto his lips. He said nothing, but I heard the little buzzing engine of his malice, and saw the terrible thing he had done, the long ordeal of the one whose hands he'd tied and whose mouth he'd closed with masking tape, whose ankles he'd strapped to the legs of a wooden chair, saw the slow, prancing circle he had made around her, dousing her naked, trembling body drop by drop, saw with what demonic joy he had struck the match.

  I felt my knees tremble, my skin liquefy. A terrible sensation of melting seized me. For an instant, the bus seemed to tilt to the right, and I felt my fluid self spill out and begin to flow across the floor like a runny, sizzling egg. Then the bus righted itself, as if directed by an unseen hand, and I realized that I'd stepped briefly out of time, and during that lost moment, the man had risen and moved forward and was now closing in upon me.

  "Got change for a dollar?" he asked.

  "No," I said.

  "You look familiar," he said. His lips parted and I saw lines of jagged yellow teeth. "Yeah, familiar," he added with a sudden wariness, like a man who'd abruptly heard something rustling just beyond the firelight. He nodded brusquely, wheeled around, and moved back up toward the front of the bus, where he took a seat a few rows back from the driver. He didn't move again or look back at me, and when we pulled into the center of town, he left the bus so quickly that he seemed almost to dissolve into the man who stood before its open door, one older than his years, dressed in a dark suit and blood-red tie.

  "Hello, Katherine," Maldrow said. "I've come to take you home."

  I looked up at Alice, and it seemed to me that a dreadful chill had suddenly struck the air around us.

  "That's the end of the section," I said softly.

  Alice said nothing, but only turned and stared out into the night.

  "Do you want to discuss anything about this section, or should I just go on?" I asked.

  Her eyes drifted over to me. "I'm tired, George," she said. "I think I'd like to rest." A faint smile fluttered onto her lips, briefly held, then faded. "Sorry."

  "Don't be," I said. "Just get some rest. I'll see you tomorrow."

  Her attention had already drifted back to the window by the time I gathered up the pages and headed for the door. When I reached it, I looked back to where she lay. She was still peering out into a wall of night she must have considered utterly faceless and indifferent to her, so that I thought again of nature's old murderousness, how much like Katherine's list of killers it actually was, like them a cruel slaughterer of innocents, Alice but another of its helpless victims, chosen at random, tortured for months and years; then, with a sudden, casual shrug, reduced eternally to ash.

  I closed the door softly and headed down the corridor. Most of the doors were open, and glancing into various rooms as I went by, I saw patients in their beds, some unconscious, some staring listlessly at wall-mounted televisions.

  These were always sad glimpses of the human fate, but there was nothing unusual about them, so that it was only the sudden appearance of a uniformed policeman that drew my attention.

  He was young, barely beyond a recruit, and he came out of the room at the end of the corridor with a quick, youthful stride. There was a nurse a few yards away, young and quite attractive, and as he approached, he said, "The bastard's still alive."

  The nurse waited until he reached her, then the two of them inched around a near corner where I could see just the shoulder of the policeman's uniform, and the hem of the nurse's skirt.

  The bastard's still alive.

  Suddenly the words stopped me, and I looked at the name outside the room from which the young policeman had just emerged: Warren Maizey.

  The door was partly open, which offered a narrow view into the room. I could see the foot of the bed, the vague outline of feet and legs beneath a single sheet.

  For a moment I hesitated, but my brief talk with the woman I'd met at the house returned to me, her mention of the "horror house" she'd visited. Surely that, too, had been an evil place, Maizey not unlike the hideous villains that were referenced in Katherine's story and seemed to reside like dark tenants in Maldrow's mind, figures of pure malice. Katherine had made the odd claim that she could feel this malice as a "buzzing" in the air, and it struck me that in a strange way Warren Maizey on his deathbed offered me the chance to experience the actual presence of the same unadulterated evil she had written about in her story ... if it actually existed.

  It was a far-fetched notion, of course, but I thought, Let me try, and stepped into the room.

  21

  "JESUS, YOU WENT INTO Maizey's room?" Charlie asked, clearly excited by the opportunity chance had given me. "Did you get a deathbed interview?"

  "I wasn't thinking about an interview," I told him.

  "Then what were you after?"

  I recalled the last section I'd read of Katherine's story, its grim prospect of actual evil, fearful and ubiquitous, configured in a thousand shapes, and which she'd felt as a jangling in her own nerves, heard as a sinister buzz. "Evil," I said. "Its actual presence. Katherine Carr said she felt it."

  Charlie laughed. "Felt it?"

  "As something real in that way," I said. "Unseen, but real."

  Charlie laughed again. "Sounds like Katherine was off her nut."

  "Maybe so," I said. "But she's not the only person who's felt evil in that way."

  I recalled a particular evening I'd planned to have dinner with Sarah Byrne, an old friend who'd dropped into town, a fellow traveler whose journeys, like mine, had tended toward the dark side, though in her case specializing in tombs, the beauty of mortuary art. I'd hired a babysitter for Teddy, who was three years old at the time. He'd been recommended by neighbors, and arrived punctually. One of Sarah's contact lenses had fallen out. She'd recovered it and retreated to the bathroom to put it back in. During that time I'd shown the babysitter Teddy's room, given him all the relevant emergency numbers, all the things a parent does before leaving a child in another person's care. Teddy had been sleeping at the time, and so once these preliminaries were completed, the boy had returned to the living room and had sat down on the sofa.

  He'd still been sitting there fifteen minutes later, when Sarah came into the room. She'd been dabbing at her eye, but she stopped instantly, and I saw her gaze fix on this silent boy, her features sudd
enly concentrated and wary and troubled, something in the hunch of his posture or the vacant look in his eyes, or perhaps in the twining of his fingers, or the way he sat with his feet pointed inward. Or was it the crook of his neck that alerted her, or the slant of his nose, or the fact that he'd buttoned the top button of his shirt? Did his socks not match? Was he too thin? Was his Adam's apple too prominent?

  Sarah never knew, could never explain, called it "the strange part," then laughed and noted that all Truman Capote's villains had hair sprouting from their ears. Perhaps, she said, it was something as silly as that, but whatever it was, it had sounded the alarm, and she'd immediately drawn me into another room and said, "We're not going out, George."

  And we didn't.

  And three months later the news flew through the neighborhood that this same boy had been arrested for exposing himself to a child in a public park.

  I hadn't thought of this incident for many years, but now, as I faced Charlie silently, I knew that I'd also felt some measure of Sarah's dark intuition, and of Katherine's, palpably felt the evil of an incontestably bad human being.

  "A friend of mine once felt it," I said, hesitated briefly, then added, "And I've felt it, too."

  "You?" Charlie asked. "When?"

  "The day Teddy disappeared."

  It was as I'd stood by the window, watching the first wave of rain pass over Jefferson Street, I told Charlie.

  "I saw a man in a yellow rain slicker," I said. "And out of nowhere, I just felt ... uneasy."

  But because it was day, the middle of the afternoon, and raining, and because my line about Extremadura was waiting to be finished, I'd merely watched as he drifted past my house, then dismissed the eeriness that had washed over me, and returned to my desk.

  "But you don't know, do you?" Charlie asked when I finished my story. "I mean, you don't know if it was him."

  "No, I don't," I said. "And I never will."