Billy made a high noise, a sort of keening.
A moment later the welts were properly livid. Barton delivered a quick, vicious series to the center of the buttocks. Billy shrieked more with each strike. Then he began to squirm away, twisting from side to side, using his hands to ward off the blows. His will to appease with compliance had broken down. He was on his way to becoming a squirming, squalling animal.
The fury came upon Barton then, velvet and fire in his head. He attained a rhythm, up and down, up and down, until flecks of blood and skin began to fly up, forming a sort of haze around the leaping flesh.
At last Billy lost everything. His back arched, his eyes became teary, wrinkled lines, his screams pealed. Now, if they were in the black room, Barton would have let go completely, would have transported himself by the torment he was inflicting into heaven itself.
There was a last flash of rage and a final, brutal slash of the strap, and he was finished.
It was as if he had just awakened from hypnosis. The velvet in his mind was gone, the extraordinary calm that had formed its base was changed to sorrow and disgust.
What was he doing in these ridiculous clothes, hurting this poor child? My God, look at him, look at what had happened to Billy!
Throwing down the strap as if it was crusted with filth, he turned and rushed from the room. He closed the door. Maybe he should also have cuffed the poor creature and locked the lock, but what was the point? Barton knew from experience that Billy would be unable to move when he returned to consciousness. Sometime in the night the child would wake up in severe pain, and cry himself to sleep. Tomorrow morning there would emerge a quiet, compliant boy, walking stiff-legged. In his eyes there would be something of the rat.
Walking into his own bedroom, Barton glimpsed himself in the floor-length mirror that hung on the back of his closet door. Instantly he looked away, but it was too late. He knew what happened when he did this, and yet he did it every time.
"No," he said, trying to force himself not to look again. But he did look, he could not help looking.
There stood a fat, middle-aged man loaded with lurid makeup. His underarms were soaked, his spike heels wobbling absurdly. By the time he'd lurched into the bathroom he was sobbing.
This mirror was worse, the fluorescent light made him look like a ghoul.
The lips were fat, the eyes glaring, mad. He was so incredibly, totally screwed up. He was worse than that, he was completely psychotic.
He had just maimed another human being and would almost certainly end by visiting him with a horrible death.
You cannot stop, you cannot prevent yourself!
All his justifications were lies. Nothing explained him, not even his hard childhood. He did what he did because he got pleasure from it.
That makes you evil.
Evil, he was evil! He was an ugly, vicious, evil swine!
A huge roach crawled slowly out from his dress and up his face. He could feel the tickle of its claws, the faint, frantic scratching as it made a trench in his makeup.
When he clapped his hands to his face the makeup came off like sodden clay. He wiped at it, making little screams in his throat, his whole body twisting with the loathing he felt for himself. There was no roach under his hand. He ripped off the dress and stood naked, a sweated lump who stank of his ugly labor.
He fell to his knees, he crouched down, drove his fists into his eye sockets until he saw bursts of red and yellow. His mouth opened, he gagged, he felt something awful and black within him slither to the surface.
A snake was flipping on the floor, slick and wet as if it had been coiled in his gut. He fell down moaning and as black sorrow closed upon him he wished with all his heart that he would be free.
Billy was a dot of light in the middle of the forever dark. He'd been killed, he thought, whipped to death. "Momma," he said. "Momma?" It was so still, so very silent.
The whipping was a red memory.
"I don't want to be dead!"
Such a great agony assailed him when he moved that he flew into panicked thrashing. His screams were broken and soft, pitched to the tone of small wind. He was completely unfamiliar with great physical pain, but nevertheless he finally managed to calm himself down.
The overhead light was still on, filling the room with its hard, yellow glow. Billy was lying in a wet spot on the bed. Slowly, he slid to the side. With trembling fingers he felt his buttocks.
The skin was lumpy and covered with something sticky. When he looked at it, he saw that it was blood.
The sound of his own moaning made him feel so sad that he forced himself to stop. Nobody could ever be bad enough to deserve what he'd just been given. It wasn't possible to be that bad.
Billy was a good person, with a natural desire to find good in his fellow man. His innocence, which had so disadvantaged him until now, came to his rescue by preventing him from understanding the hopelessness of his situation. Beneath his suffering there was fresh water flowing, the very water of life. It bubbled up in him no matter how hard his fortune, and would not run dry.
This deep strength, which had not been so vividly present in the other children Barton had abducted, enabled Billy to continue his struggle. Although it hurt terribly, he fought his way to his feet.
"Mommy," Billy said. He wanted her so badly, she made it not hurt anymore! "Oh, Mommy!" He was sinking back through the layers of his young personality, back to the days when she carried him on her hip. "Carry me, Mommy, I is tired now." When he moved the pain clutched at him. "I sorry, I sorry . . ."
A part of him reminded himself, 'You aren't a baby, you can make it, you must try to get out of this.' It was just so hard—he had been whipped so terribly. His legs were like two posts, almost impossible to move. When he did, fire raced up and down his back, making him flail his arms and grit his bared teeth.
Like any normal child, Billy's sorrow would have extended to the hand that had hurt him if he felt he was dependent upon it for his survival. He would have accepted help even from the blond woman. When she was gentle to him he would have reacted with gratitude.
This is why children cleave so tenaciously even to hard parents. It takes repeated beatings, long periods of brutal treatment, considered and relentless injustice to break hope. As spectacular as Barton's assault had been, Billy had nevertheless survived like a little coal in the ashes; he was still struggling and would not stop. The pity of the abused child is that he does not cease to hope, not until the last beam of his life has faded.
So he wobbled across the floor, raised his arm to the knob on the door and tried. Every movement caused agony; the buttocks relate to so many other important muscles. To shuffle, to stand still, to raise his arm, to tighten his fingers on the silver doorknob—all of it hurt.
Under his breath he was uttering a new litany. Gone was "Jesus," gone was "God." He was down deeper now than those words, which come to have meaning in a child's vocabulary only at the age of four or five. "Ma," he said with each step. "Ma-ma-ma" as he crept along.
He did not exult to find himself in the hall, nor did he even think of where he was going or what he needed to do. He simply kept sliding one foot after the other, and so made it into Barton's bedroom. He had never seen it before, but he did not notice the beautiful canopied bed, the lovely silken sheets, the lace curtains or the perfume in the air.
He did see Barton, a shadowy heap on the bathroom floor. As far as he was concerned, though, this was not Barton. The blond hair told him that it was the woman who had whipped him. He went over, concern for her rising in him. But then he saw she was sleeping, her dress drawn over her like a coverlet. He returned to the task at hand.
He had come to call Mama. When you got hurt and nobody else would help, that was what you did, you called Mama. He looked around him. On a small, ornate desk was a telephone. "Mama," he said. He put his hand on the phone, picked it up, heard the dial tone in his ear.
Although his danger was now extreme, he was beyond caring ab
out whether or not he was caught.
He began to press the numbers on the phone.
26.
The skin was being savagely scourged from her back when the ringing of the telephone woke Mary. For an instant the agony of the whip mingled with the noise of the phone. She came to consciousness in blood and rage, flailing frantically for the receiver, composing herself. Try not to sound sleepy, be calm, it might be the end.
"Ma-ma."
Some baby was up early and playing with the phone. "You put the phone down, honey, you aren't supposed to be calling people at this hour."
"Ma-ma!"
In an instant she couldn't think, couldn't remember even how to speak. Frantically she swallowed, fighting to respond. "Billy!"
"Mommy."
An instinctive impulse to grab him almost made her hurl the phone away from her. But she held it hard to her ear. 'OK, settle down now, take it easy, remember the instructions, get information.' One deep intake of breath was all she allowed herself. Calmly, distinctly, she asked: "Where are you, Billy?"
"Hollywood Hills."
When his voice stopped the silence in the phone was tremendous.
"What street?"
"Near Ridgeway . . ."
"Do you know the name?"
"No. The people next door have a blue Mercedes. Barton has an Aerostar."
"We know about the Aerostar. We know he's called Barton Royal. Anything else?"
"He has a brown Celica. He hid the Aerostar."
"What does the house look like?"
"Garage in front. . . dead-end street—" His voice dropped to a whisper, then she heard weeping like she had never heard before in her life. It burned into the depths of her soul, as if a hot knife was plunging into her. She gritted her teeth.
"Anything else." She managed to sound quite calm.
"We're the last house. Top of the hill—"
"Number on the house?"
"Ma-ma, I got spanked, I got bad, bad—"
She bit her knuckle. The skin crunched in her teeth, she tasted the blood. The pain seemed to belong to a distant, fraudulent life. Think, woman! "Is he nearby?"
"She in the bafroom."
My God, he sounds like he's a toddler! He's regressing, he's hurt, he's being tortured to death, oh God in heaven help me I am not strong —
"Hang up."
"Mama wait!"
"Say goodbye."
"Goodbye Ma-ma."
The silence continued on the line. He was frozen, he couldn't put the phone down!
"Goodbye. Hang up now."
He began weeping, a sound like little rain.
She jerked her head away from that pitiful baby's voice as if it was a bellow of agony. Her beautiful, brilliant child—all the labor and the love—was being ruined! He was suffering, oh, terribly, yes, there was no question that it was terrible, terrible—
At that instant a door opened in her and she came to the part of her that was as strong as stone. Here Mary Neary was objective and effective. When she spoke again her voice radiated sure confidence. "Now put the phone down and get away from it. Don't try to call Mommy again. The police will be there as soon as they can." She stopped, and when she did the big silence assaulted her again.
"Mommy—"
Again she writhed. A huge sob came up into her throat. She threw her head back, sucked air into her open mouth, spoke again. "You have to hang up now, honey."
But he didn't hang up. He was unable to break his connection to her. So powerful was her desire to radiate strength, to fill him with her own health and courage and her very blood she literally snapped to attention beside the bed. "Put that phone down," she barked. "I want to hear the dial tone this instant!"
"Mommy help. Mommy help."
"Hang up right this instant."
"Ma-ma, Billy wants—"
"I know, darling, I know. But you have to hang up. Right now. Do it, Billy!" The silence replied. Her free hand was a fist against her chest. She was shaking so hard she could barely see. "This is an order, young man! Obey me instantly!"
Click. Then at last the dial tone. She sank to her knees, crouched with the phone hugged against her chest. Oh let it be that he was not seen. God, please. Aloud she whispered into the silent room, "I love you, honey, Momma loves you."
With exaggerated care she put the receiver back on its cradle, and then stared at the phone as if it contained a living spirit. Something happened to her that was beyond tears. When she thought of him out there somewhere suffering that much—my God, some vicious thing had beaten him, had reduced him to a gibbering jelly, tortured him—her mind swarmed with images, each one more hideous than the last. She sank to the floor, twisted this way and that. Her hands twined in her hair.
She couldn't help herself, she started pulling and pulling. Her body burned with the agony of her son's voice and she knew then the deepest, truest meaning of motherhood, that it has to do with the very spirit become blood and bone. She had borne him and held his naked body in her arms, and he was of her, and was her own self transformed.
Her hands dug into her hair, her body seemed to sputter flames, she felt rising on her buttocks the welts her son had received, the heartless whipping splashing into flesh that had never been struck, and shattering not only the body of the boy but his little soul's light.
"Momma!"
Sally had come into the room. She wore her summer shorty pajamas. Her face was stricken. Mary realized that the poor thing must think she was dying.
She got to her feet, drew herself up. "I just got a call from Billy and we have work to do."
"Momma, what's wrong with you!"
"I'm upset. But that doesn't matter—"
"You're bleeding, Momma, you're bleeding all over your face!"
Mary withdrew her hands from the tangle of her hair. Her scalp was tender; there was wet all down her forehead. She hurried into the bathroom. She had literally been pulling her hair out at the roots. Sally turned on the water, got a washcloth wet and began daubing her mother's face. "Momma, is he—"
"Oh, Sally, he sounded like hell." To hear herself saying those words made her congeal inside. Again she began to tremble.
"Did he say where he is?"
She all but threw herself out of the bathroom, grabbed the phone again, jabbed in Toddcaster's home number. "Walter, he called—"
With a muttered "I'm coming," he slammed up the phone. Mary took the precious tape out of the recorder, put in a new one.
Five minutes later the phone and the doorbell rang at the same time. The phone was the FBI in Des Moines. Walter had already called them. "He said he's in the Hollywood Hills at the end of a dead-end street near a street called Ridgeway, but it isn't Ridgeway. They're at the top of a hill. The man drives a brown Celica. There's a blue Mercedes parked next door."
Walter joined her and in a moment the tape was being replayed so that he and the FBI officer on the phone could both listen. While it played Sally cradled her mother in her arms, cleaning her face with a damp washcloth.
Walt finished with the tape. "That's a hell of a stress reaction you got going there," he said, touching her bloody face. "It's called sweating blood when you do that, hon."
He stepped into the hall, motioned Sally to follow him. But Walter Toddcaster was not a man who could readily whisper. "She's about had it," he said in a low voice. "They start pulling their hair out, they're losing it."
Sally's reply was an inarticulate whisper.
"We gotta help her, keep her going, because this thing will play through real quick."
"Play through?"
"It means we're going to find your brother real soon." Walter went back to Mary, glanced into her watchful eyes. "You heard me, didn't you? Which I guess I wanted. You gotta get some Valium or something, hon. You can't take this pressure. Nobody can."
"The hell I can't, Walter Toddcaster. No way am I going to dull my mind with pills at a time like this."
"Hey. Just trying to assist. I think you did good
on that phone call. Real, real good."
Sally suddenly went for the phone. Mary's first impulse was to pull her off it in case there was another call.
"What time is it in Nevada?" Sally said. Mary realized that she was calling Mark. 'Oh, Mark, I forgot you, I called Walter first!'
"Dad, it's me. He called. We know approximately where he is."
Mary grabbed the phone. "I talked to him, Mark. I talked to him!"
"Where?"
"The Hollywood Hills."
"Address?"
She told him what they knew.
"I'm going to fly to L.A. as soon as I can. I'll call the police when I get in."
"The FBI's already done that. Maybe they'll have him by the time you get there."
"Maybe. Look, I love you, and I'm outa here."
Mary put down the phone. Sally grabbed it again. In moments she was talking to American Airlines, ordering tickets for the two of them.
Toddcaster stood in the doorway to the living room, looking as if his presence here had become tentative, uncertain. "Walter?"
"The case is outa my hands. It's up to the FBI and the Los Angeles police now. All we can do from here is offer support as needed."
"I'm going."
"Of course. But be careful, Mary. There are don'ts in this thing, major don'ts. Don't try to find him on your own. When you get to LAX report to the police. They have a missing persons unit. By then they will know your name, they will be on the case. Do not go to Hollywood by yourself."
Sally put down the phone. "If we can make the seven-twenty flight to Albuquerque, we can be in L.A. by nine-thirty their time."
By the time Mary was grabbing her clothes out of the dresser Walter Toddcaster had faded into the background of her life. She didn't even see him leave the room.
By the time she was snapping her bra he was already a memory. In ten minutes she was dressed; she even had an overnight bag with some things stuffed into it. As they ran to the car Sally was still pulling her curlers out, throwing them on the dew-fresh grass. Toddcaster watched from the front porch. "I'll man the phone," he said.