Twenty-one
The crickets sang and the stars sparkled in Sorrel's
skies the night of the raid on the Ronnie Bates' apartment. Amy parked
the Volkswagen in the alley behind Carl Adler's grocery store to act as
look-out. Karen stood guard at Amy's house, watching over the twins and
accompanied by Wendy and Leslie. Carol had volunteered to sleep over at
Lori's to serve as bait, offering with a sly smile to put on a strip tease
act worthy of any voyeur's attention.
There would be no danger, Lori assured herself. They
had spied on Ronnie for several nights. If he left his room to roam the
town, he'd be gone for at least an hour, and he never locked his door
behind him.
"He's leaving!" Amy whispered excitedly over the
walkie-talkie. "He has his drawing pad with him, moving your way!”
Lori left Karen's house with her lantern, taking the
long way around to ensure that she and Ronnie passed one another at a safe
distance. She ducked through a space between Carl Adler's store and the
abandoned post office to emerge into a dead-end alley.
A street light a half block away cast a feeble glow
across the stained and broken concrete. Comforted by the silhouette of
the Volkswagen parked at the entrance to the alley, Lori tried the door to
the back room of Carl's store. Not only was it unlocked, it stood ajar an
inch or two. She threw it open, and swept the light across a desk, a
chair and a dresser. A small table with two chairs centered the room, and
the bed was situated against the wall to the right.
Lori returned the beam of light to the wall above
desk. Drawings taped to the dingy wallpaper stirred in the light breeze
from outside. They generated all the curiosity she needed to step into
the room for a closer look. Step by step she approached, focusing on the
largest and most elaborate of the images. When it registered in the glare
of light, she reeled back in shock.
The sketch was a pencil drawing on crudely torn
wrapping paper of an unclothed woman lying bound to a table surface. It
was a three-quarter view taken from the same vantage point of the glass
eye of her recurring nightmare.
"Please, no..."
The drawing was as lifelike as a photograph.
Graphite eyes from a familiar face stared out at her with a strange
expression of surprise. She expected the face to be her own, or Wendy’s,
but it was Carol's image.
Even so, it was too much coincidence for a sane mind
to contend with, her recurring nightmares, Ruben's glass eye, and even
Henry Kahn's logo of the stylized eye on his business card. And now
this. There was something wrong with the way the world was working. She
had been taught that coincidence was just random chance at work, that the
world was a logical place understood by the physical sciences. She could
see for herself there were more unknowns and room for mystery than the
authorities of the world had ever cared to admit.
And more room for horror.
There were other drawings scattered about the desk,
all exquisite renderings of bound nudes. Some were of women she failed to
recognize, but many were of Carol.
And Wendy. Lori felt shock and fear, but no anger
until she saw Wendy's face staring up at her, attached to the same body as
the others.
Lori searched the desk and came up with stacks upon
stacks of practice drawings, bound wrists and ankles, anatomical details,
but only six faces. Lori studied the walls again and counted a total of
four unrecognized faces in addition to Wendy and Carol's image.
Wendy had been one of Ronnie's victims all along,
just as Karen had suspected. Carol had become one of opportunity, she
suspected. But what of the other four, unfamiliar faces? Strangely, they
bore a resemblance to one another. They were all a bit broad in the face
and pretty. Lori resisted thinking the terrible thought, but they
reminded her of herself when she was a bit younger, in her early twenties,
perhaps. Aside from variations that gave each of them
their own individuality, they were at least of a type.
The bodies, though, were identical in minute detail.
Every single drawing she inspected was a copy of an identical feminine
form, a woman more mature than Wendy, a bit slimmer than herself, but more
voluptuous than Carol.
Lori assembled a collection of six finished drawings,
one sample of each. She rolled them into a cylinder, cleaned up the mess
she had made, and closed the door behind her on her way out. She fled
down the alley to the Volkswagen. Amy drove her back to the house.
Turning into the drive, Ronnie Bates ducked out of
sight around the side of the house. Amy pulled the car alongside the shed
and shut off the engine without comment. Lori leaned her head back
against the seat, light-headed and shaky in the aftermath of the risk she
had taken. Despite the unexpected bonanza it had reaped, Trent would
never in a thousand years condone the break-in.
"Are you okay?" Amy said breathlessly.
"I'm fine."
Carol appeared at the back door dressed in one of her
translucent negligees. She turned away to the kitchen extension as Lori
and Amy approached and phoned for Karen to join them. Lori relayed
instructions for Wendy and Leslie to stay in an upstairs bedroom at Amy's
house and baby-sit the twins for an additional hour.
When Karen arrived, Lori spread the drawings out on
the dining room table beneath her modest crystal chandelier.
"That's me!" Carol cried out. "That little bastard!
How dare he!"
Karen reached for one of the unidentified faces as if
having recognized it, then snatched her hand back. "My God, look at what
he's done," she murmured in deep felt horror.
Lori sensed Karen associating the bound women with
her missing daughter, just as she associated the perverse drawings with
her own recurring dream of the glass eye. "Don't take too much for
granted," she warned. "There's something strange going on here."
"Dirty pictures," Amy spat in derision.
"Carol? Do you see it?"
Carol leaned closer to study the detail of the
drawings. "Except for the faces, everything's the same."
"It's not creative artwork," Lori said. "Ronnie
copies what he sees. He can put different elements into one picture, but
all he had to work with was one body and six faces, and I've never seen
four of them before."
Carol looked up with a doubtful frown. "Are you sure
Ronnie did these himself?"
"There were hundreds of sketches in his room," Lori
assured her. "They were all sketches of the details of these drawings.
These six drawings were the only complete ones I saw, copied over and
over. And I saw him sketching at Wendy's window myself, so I'm certain
he's responsible."
"It's awful!" Amy cried, wrought with fear.
Carol reached for the likeness of herself in morbid
fascination. "This is absolutely beautiful, except that my boobs are too
big."
Karen took a seat, rigid and pale, her lips
compressed to a thin white line. "This obscenity has to stop. The boy
has had his way long enough. He must be brought up on charges."
Lori stared at the drawings, wondering if she had
gained the information she wanted, or merely a thousand new questions to
answer. "We'd better not rush into anything. If anyone were to see these
pictures, what would impress them the most?"
"The talent," Carol said without hesitation. "The
boy is a damned good artist. More than just good."
"I told you he was putting us all on," Karen said.
"He's not all that backward."
"That doesn't necessarily follow," Lori said. "He
must have seen a picture, a photograph, or something from a magazine, and
he's putting faces he knows on the body."
"I've certainly never been kinky enough to let
anybody tie me to a table!" Carol chided, laughing nervously. "Maybe to a
mattress once or twice..."
"I'm on your side," Lori said to Karen. "Ronnie
can't be allowed to continue with this, but there’s more we have to know
before we can put a stop to it.”
"I'm scared," Amy said. "Ralph was always drunk
before he got mean. I always knew what to expect. This is so much
worse."
"Ralph is an innocent in comparison to this," Karen
said with tears in her eyes.
Lori took a seat at the table, puzzled by Karen's
upset. "Why are you so certain that Ronnie was responsible for Gloria's
disappearance? Was it just because you caught him looking in Gloria's
window?"
Karen shook her head vigorously. "It's much more
than that."
"You should let us in on it. You must know that
you're getting a seriously bad rep picking on Ronnie so much."
Karen gave a determined nod. "Okay, if I must, then
I shall. I've kept it to myself long enough anyhow."
Carol and Amy sat down and listened intently.
"Gloria and Ronnie were childhood friends." Karen
took a deep breath and sniffed back tears. "Gloria was... shameless. She
allowed Ronnie to take certain liberties. I caught them together half
naked."
"Kids do a certain amount of that," Lori said. "It's
not so unusual."
Karen gave her an angry look. "I forbade Gloria to
play with that boy, but it accomplished nothing without her father's
support. Benjamin refused to stand behind me. But then Gloria began
associating with girls her own age, and they ridiculed the boy. Ronnie
would fly into a rage, and they would laugh at him."
Karen fell silent, her face bleached white and her
eyes glazed and unfocused.
"Is it all that bad?" Lori said gently.
"It's awful."
"Why haven't you told anyone?"
Karen looked up with pleading in her eyes. "I did.
Nobody but me saw it happen and I was accused of lying.”
Lori's voice was almost a whisper. "What happened?"
"A group of children taunted him," Karen said.
"Ronnie chased them right down the middle of Main Street. He was insane
with rage. Had he caught one of them, I swear he would have killed them with his
bare hands."
Amy gasped in shock. The others waited for the rest
of the story with wooden expressions.
Karen glanced at each of them in turn, as if finally
able to justify her paranoia. "I know this for a fact. He didn't catch
any of the children, but he caught one of their dogs. It was just a
puppy. He kicked it. He kicked it hard enough to kill it, and then he
kicked it over and over and stomped on it with both feet. Carl Adler told
everyone that it had been hit by a car. Carl's word is as good as gold.
Mine is worthless."
Amy stood, embarrassed by Karen’s anguish. "I should
go check on the babies. I'll send Wendy and Leslie home."
Carol tossed the drawing of herself to the table.
"I've got to catch some sleep. Don't you dare let this stuff get away
from you, Lori Malcolm."
“He frightened you,” Lori said to Karen when they
were alone.
“Yes. He frightens me. I’ve seen the extent of his
anger when he’s pushed too far. He could kill a child, even if he didn’t
mean to."
"Nobody deliberately murdered Virginia. They just threw her in
with the hogs. Are you saying Ronnie could have done something like that
as well?”
Horror came to Karen's face.
She stared into space, momentarily oblivious to the sound of Lori's voice.
She rose and left the house a few minutes later without a response.
When Wendy and Leslie returned
home, they headed blurry-eyed with sleep directly to their rooms.
Lori locked the house. She pulled all the shades, but left the
lights on, wandering the house with the drawings in her hand.
Karen's behavior frightened
her. Karen knew or suspected more than she was willing to share, and Ronnie
probably knew by now that someone in town knew of
his nocturnal activities, because it dawned on her that she had closed his
door on the way out when he had left it open. She wondered how that strangely distorted mind
would react to her theft. She wondered who the unidentified women in the
drawings were. The unknowns were enough to keep her pacing the dark house
until dawn.
