CHAPTER 31

 

Valerie moved efficiently about the narrow kitchen as she prepared dinner for Matt and herself. Although the cooking area was barely adequate, Valerie was proud of how she had organized it. Everything was right at her fingertips. The sun was nearly gone as she paused to look out the little window at the end of the galley. The view of the city, silhouetted by the receding sunset always brought her pleasure. Unlike a painting, this picture changed daily. Tonight, the glow behind the buildings had a reddish—nearly pink—cast to it. What is it they say about a red sky at night? Sailor’s delight – that’s it!

The meatloaf was just about done, so she called Matt to the table. It was his favorite dish, and she always served it the same way: with freshly made mashed potatoes, frozen peas (better than canned), steamed carrots, and homemade gravy. Valerie had prepared it in the hope that it might take her husband’s mind off his work, if only for an hour or so. She turned from the kitchen to the table, hot platter in hand, and was surprised to find her husband missing.

“Matt!” she shouted. “Come on, honey. It’s going to get cold.”

“I’ll be right there,” he answered from the living room.

As he wandered into the dining area, he was engrossed in reading the autopsy report he carried in his hand.

Valerie frowned. “Matt, for God’s sake. Can’t we just eat dinner alone?”

“Huh?” he asked. His face showed not a trace of comprehension.

Valerie pointed at the report in his hand.

“Oh,” he replied. “I’m sorry.” He placed the papers on the floor next to his chair and sat down. They ate in relative silence, punctuated only by the sounds of knives and forks scraping the ancient dinnerware. A dinner that had been planned as special had suddenly become very ordinary—just another supper.

But, Valerie wasn’t giving up without a fight. When they were done, she quickly cleared the table and placed the dishes alongside the sink. Turning to her husband, she said, “Honey? Why don’t you put on a little music?” She looked at him with a little twinkle in her eye. “Maybe we could dance?”

Matt seemed lost in thought, and so Valerie, without waiting for a reply, stripped off her apron, hung it on the refrigerator handle, and walked over to the aging stereo resting on its aluminum-framed stand. She fingered a stack of Frank Sinatra albums, and eventually selected September of My Years, which she carefully placed on the turntable. Most of their friends had progressed from records to cassettes to CDs, but Matt insisted that the best sound still came from a turntable. She switched on the receiver, and gently placed the needle in the wide starter groove at the outer edge of the record. In a second the familiar scratchy tones of the title song filled the room. Matt wasn’t always right, thought Valerie.

Matt was still seated at the kitchen table, again poring over the autopsy report. He turned when he heard Sinatra begin to sing. With a smile, he placed the report on the table, slowly got up, and moved to the living room to join his wife. With a little bow at the waist, he looked at Valerie and said, “May I have this dance?”

She blushed, and put her arms around his neck.

They began to move slowly to the music. Matt inhaled the fragrance of Valerie’s perfume and sighed. It was Shalimar—his favorite. He kept her well supplied, and she never failed to wear it. Matt nuzzled Valerie’s neck with his chin, causing her to shiver slightly. After several more songs, she pulled away from her husband and looked him directly in the eye. “Hey, big boy. Don’t you have a bed in this place?”

Matt laughed. Valerie’s question was a reference to their first date. On that occasion, he had been so shy that he had barely been able to kiss her. She had then asked the now-famous question, and the two of them had ended up making love, much to Matt’s surprise—and pleasure.

Now, he accepted the question for what it appeared to be—an open invitation to lovemaking. Without a word, he took Valerie’s hand and led her to the small but cozy bedroom. He turned his back to her, unbuttoned his shirt, and removed it, tossing it haphazardly into the corner. His shoes followed suit, and finally his trousers. At the same time Matt was disrobing, Valerie was removing her dress and underclothing. She slid quietly beneath the covers. Matt walked around to the other side of the bed, and slipped in beside her.

Valerie immediately turned and embraced her husband, kissing him hard on the lips. She was naked. Matt’s hand reached automatically for her left breast. It was a routine perfected through the three years or so of their marriage. Valerie moaned softly and pressed herself to him. Preliminaries were neither elaborate nor very necessary, and soon they were both fully aroused.

Gently, Matt inserted himself and they began to move in unison. Caught up in the moment, Valerie whispered familiar words into her husband’s ear, while Sinatra continued to croon unheard in the other room. Soon, she felt the familiar warmth and tingling that signaled she was nearing orgasm. She gripped her husband tightly, and ground herself hard against him, moving faster and with more urgency. Together, they moved as one, in the timeless rhythm of love, until they both had attained the release they so desperately sought. Afterwards, they lay quietly in one another’s arms, their breathing shallow and quick, as they regained their strength. Presently, Valerie sensed a change in the rhythm of her husband’s breathing; it was slower—more deliberate. Val opened her eyes and looked at Matt’s face. He was fast asleep. She smiled. Sweet dreams my love. Had she know the nature of his fantasies she might not have been quite as pleased.

...Matt had been summoned to the scene of a murder. When he arrived, he found himself in his own apartment, only the walls were painted a violet color, and the ceilings were remarkably high. As he moved down the hallway toward the bedroom, the corridor narrowed progressively, until by the time he reached the end its walls were touching his shoulders. His entire being was filled with an inexplicable sense of dread. Archbishop Romero stood at the end of the passageway, wearing a long black gown. His face was shrunken and evil looking. He extended a bony hand, and beckoned Matt to follow him into the bedroom.

The interior was bathed in a soft, golden light. There was a small bed, like in a dollhouse, positioned in the center of the room – and nothing else. Suddenly, Matt felt himself growing taller and taller. He and the archbishop stood side by side, looking down at the postage-stamp sized bed. His confusion grew and he turned to the cleric for enlightenment. The archbishop raised his hand and pointed a finger at the bed. Matt felt his body growing feathery light, and he began to fly over the bed, circling it like a hawk covering its prey.

He swooped down, and was startled to discover Valerie, lying nude on its surface. She was dead. In silent agony, he turned back toward the archbishop, who stood alongside the bed, pointing an accusing finger in his direction. Romero began to laugh, louder and louder, until the sound was like cannon fire hitting Davis’s ears. It was deafening…

Matt awoke with a start. His upper body was drenched with perspiration and his hands trembled violently. It was well past midnight. Faint traces of the nightmare still clung like cobwebs to his subconscious. The sky flashed with lightning, and a clap of thunder shook the apartment. Matt sat on the edge of the bed, his heart beating furiously, his breathing ragged. He listened to the sounds of the rain and occasional thunder outside the apartment. Valerie lay sleeping peacefully next to him, her slow even breathing in marked contrast to his own syncopated efforts. Thank God, she’s safe, he thought. With a smile he placed a hand on her rounded buttocks, and gently massaged the curve of her hip. Then he patted her behind softly and stood up. He dressed quietly, mindful not to wake her, and slipped out of the bedroom and into the kitchen.

Soon, the kettle was steaming aggressively on the stove, a thin trail of steam disappearing into the air. Matt dumped some cocoa into a cup, filled it with boiling water and stirred it carefully, then topped the whole thing off with a squirt of whipped cream from a can. He rummaged through the cupboard, found a half-empty bag of Hershey-ets candy, and poured the contents into a small bowl. He looked at the kitchen clock. It was one-fifteen a.m. With the cup of hot chocolate in one hand and the bowl of candy in the other, he moved down the hallway to his study.

Davis sat down at his fly tying bench. In front of him were the tools, hooks, and delicate materials germane to his hobby. He selected a tiny hook and clamped it into jaws of the Regal rotary vice that Valerie had bought him on their first wedding anniversary. It was the finest tool of its kind and he took great pride in using it.

He decided to tie a gold-ribbed hare’s ear nymph. There were literally thousands of fly patterns to choose from, but this particular one was an old standard. A stack of instructional manuals lay undisturbed at the far corner of the worktable. He hardly needed them anymore. In the beginning, when he was first learning to tie, Matt had been forced to rely upon books to help him through the process. Now, he prided himself in his knowledge of the construction of the various patterns, and could make most of them without consultation.

Working effortlessly, he had soon tied half a dozen of the tiny insect imitations, each an exact duplicate of the others. Consistency was what it was all about, he thought. As he finished each one, he used a small needle dipped in vinyl cement to carefully coat the wrappings of thread that made up the head of the fly. Then, he placed each one neatly in a row on a magnetic strip that he had affixed to his tying bench to let them dry.

The apprehension that Matt felt upon waking from the nightmare had begun to dissipate. As the tension faded, so, too, did the memory of the details. He got up and moved to the hall closet, retrieving his notebook from his jacket pocket. He returned to the study, sat down at his desk, and removed a piece of paper from the drawer. He took a pen and wrote down the names of the three victims: Ida Simpson, Melina Spiros, and Cindy McKenzie. Next, he printed alongside each victim’s name her age, marital status, and race.

Each was white, each was married, and each was about the same age – in her thirties. Then, he added the word “cheating” next to the first two names. Davis knew that that information was probably important, but exactly why was still a mystery. Simpson’s lover had been in Atlantic City at the time of her murder, so, of course, that information had eliminated him. And Spiros’ killer could have been any one of perhaps a dozen casual pick-ups described by “helpful” neighbors. Only God Himself knew how many men she had been with. Naturally, the detectives were trying to track down anyone matching the various descriptions they had been given. Nevertheless, it was like looking for a needle in the proverbial haystack.

All three husbands had been cleared initially by airtight alibis, and then through blood typing. Bob McKenzie, the most recent widower, decried any knowledge of infidelity by his wife. It was further proof that “husbands were always last to know.” Maybe she had been cheating? Perhaps that’s why she had gone to Confession for the first time in ten years? None of the husbands had had any reason to doubt the faithfulness of their spouses, and yet each of their wives was dead. Matt hoped he would learn something tomorrow when he met with Father Pete.

He reached into the bowl of Hershey-ets and extracted a handful, popping just one into his mouth. Following his usual ritual, he allowed the warmth of his mouth to soften the chocolate within the hard candy shell. Then, he cracked the casing, and separated the morsel into two halves. Finally, using his tongue, he sucked out the chocolate from one half, then the other. He repeated the process until the bowl of candy was gone.

With his candy “Jones” sated, Matt turned his attention once more to the piece of paper in front of him. He drew pictures of three hearts with the initials “J.C.” inside each of them. Then he added an additional set of initials—the victim’s own—to each drawing. He studied the sketch, trying to make sense of what he saw. It seemed too simple. Too damned simple, he thought. But, it couldn’t be that simple, could it? There had to be something he was missing—some connection. But what the hell was it?

There was one other thing. All three women had belonged to the same church. Not much to go on, but maybe something. It reminded Davis of the famous “Rosary Murders” back in 1955. Seven nuns had been brutally raped and stabbed in Chicago. Each had had a set of rosary beads forced into her vagina. It turned out that the murderer had been a caretaker in a convent, rejected by a nun. Once he started killing, he couldn’t stop. The police had finally caught him by using a decoy. Davis guessed that that technique might prove useful at some point, but not until he had more to go on. Right now, he had nothing.

He rubbed his eyes, yawned, and stretched his arms in the air. He was bone weary, tired of murders, and tired of the nightmares. He laid his head down on his desk, and closed his eyes. Soon, he was asleep, with images of fly-fishing for salmon filling he head. He was still dreaming when Valerie gently nudged him awake in the morning.