Shame Page 5

  Elizabeth felt claustrophobic. The room was small—too small. She could barely breathe and was afraid to meet Shame’s eyes. That was how the world knew him: Shame. He sat there calmly observing her. He was wearing the orange T-shirt that marked him as a Death Row inmate. Around his wrists were handcuffs. They seemed more of an inconvenience than something that could truly deter him from putting his hands around her neck.

  “I have no desire to hurt you,” he told her.

  His words didn’t reassure her. He didn’t say, “I am not going to hurt you.” She sat down anyway.

  She felt around in her bag. All fingers. The prison administration had refused to let her bring in a tape recorder, citing security concerns. What she had was a pad and a pen, a felt pen. Her ballpoint pen had also been deemed a security risk.

  If they were so worried about security, why hadn’t they stationed a guard in the room? No, two guards.

  Elizabeth looked at her watch. She was supposed to have an hour’s session with him. She wasn’t yet sure whether that was too much time or not enough.

  “‘The clock indicates the moment—but what does eternity indicate?’” he asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Whitman,” he said. “You started me reading him. I’m afraid I quote him to excess. I am not sure if that means I’ve run out of things to say myself or whether he just says them better.”

  She sneaked a quick glance his way. He was pale, the result of being hidden away from the light of day. Death Row inmates, she knew, were allowed in the exercise yard only twice a week for two hours at a time. She looked down at her sheet of questions. When she’d been preparing them, she had kept wondering, What do you ask the devil?

  “Is that why you spared me? Because I quoted Whitman?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead he looked at her and made her look at him. “Why are you here, Miss Line?”

  “To interview you,” she said.

  “Then it seems only fair that I have the opportunity to interview the interviewer.”

  Elizabeth nodded.

  “Do you really have any idea what you’re doing?” he asked.

  “I was a literature major. I wrote—”

  “I’m not inquiring about your writing skills. I assume you can join a noun and a verb together and make a passable sentence. But I wonder if you know exactly what you’re pursuing. You say you want to talk to me. What if the things I have to tell you change you forever? Are you prepared for that?”

  She allowed herself a moment’s hesitation, a moment’s thought, before replying, “I’m prepared to listen to what you have to say.”

  “Is money your incentive for writing this book?”

  “No. I’ve been offered money, yes, but I’d write the book for free. I’ve always wanted to be a writer.”

  “But is this the book you always wanted to write?”

  “I suppose I won’t know that until I finish it. What I do know is that I wouldn’t have chosen to be one of its main characters.”

  He nodded, as if to say “fair enough,” then asked, “What do you hope to get out of this?”

  “Some understanding. Some coming to terms with what happened.”

  “‘But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not.’”

  “More Whitman?”

  “More reality, Miss Line. Are you willing to look into the abyss? To crawl to that edge and stare down? You thought you lost your innocence that first night we met, but that was just the initiation, the cakewalk.”

  They were seated five feet apart. His right hand was on the table. He moved it forward, just past the line that people always establish for each other: this is my territory, that’s yours. It made her want to turn her head to the hack’s window, want to make sure the guard was standing there watching, but she was afraid of finding him absent and having Shame make that same discovery.

  “Right now your heart’s pounding,” he said, “and it feels as if there are these hands squeezing your chest and your face. You want to walk away and go back to your old world. If I were you, I’d do that. Let someone else write your book. You can be one of those ‘as told to’ authors. That’s the safe way. In a couple of years you’ll even be able to forget I came into your life. I’ll just be a big, bad dream.”

  His hand had moved closer to her body, another inch over the line. She was afraid, but she also felt herself growing angry. He had made her feel powerless once, something she often reflected upon. She didn’t want that to happen a second time.

  “I’m going to write my own book.”

  “Stubborn,” he said. “But then you’ve always been stubborn.”

  She wondered how he knew that about her but was too stubborn to ask. He must have known that as well.

  “Your name announces how stubborn you are. Most people would have shortened it. They’d be Liz, or Beth, or even Lisbeth. Your whole life you’ve been facing up to people with axes who have tried to chop at your name, but you haven’t let them. Would you like to tell me why?”

  “Would you?”

  Her reply seemed to amuse him, but only for a moment. He took up her challenge, his words coming fast and hard: “Because having a long name was a way of standing out. When you were a girl you used to like to imagine that the blood royal ran through your veins, that some mistake had been made, and that your real residence was a palace.”

  Elizabeth’s red face spoke to the accuracy of his words.

  “You grew older, and you tried to fit in, but you never really did. As an adolescent, you rubbed your face a lot, hoping to erase your freckles. The habit remains, even though most of the freckles don’t. You still rub at them, and you don’t even know it.”

  She drew her incriminating hand away from her face and tried to find a place to bury it.

  “All good little literature majors read Heart of Darkness, Miss Line. ‘The horror, the horror,’ Mistah Kurtz said. If you’re going to write about me, you’re going to have to face up to what Kurtz saw, and what ultimately killed him. Do you really want that for yourself?”

  Her jaw didn’t want to move, nor her mouth open, but somehow the words came out. “I do,” she said.

  Even to her own ears, it sounded as if she were taking wedding vows.

  Elizabeth found herself shaking. Maybe I should hire a goddamn priest, she thought, and have him do an exorcism. Her past kept popping out at her like some demonic jack-in-the-box. She turned her head quickly and saw that Louise hadn’t noticed her shakes. Elizabeth returned to examining The Book, doing her best to study it with single-minded purpose. Every report done by everyone and anyone was in The Book, from the notes of the first sheriff’s deputy on the scene to the medical examiner’s report.

  Immersed in her scrutiny, she didn’t expect a packet to fall on her desk. She jumped. That seemed to give Sergeant Eick some satisfaction.

  “The photos are not to leave this room. Is that understood?”

  “Yes.”

  “When she’s done with them, Louise, I’ll need you to take possession of them and walk them back to Evidence.”

  “Aye, aye, Sergeant,” said Louise.

  As Eick walked out of the room, the two women’s eyes met—they could barely refrain from laughing.

  Elizabeth put the photos aside and returned to The Book. She wasn’t ready for the pictures yet.

  She reviewed the transcriptions, sketches, and the breakdown of who had been responsible for what in the investigation. There were aerial photographs to examine and field reports she had to work her way through. Most of what was in The Book was a study in futility. The investigation had been methodical and thorough, but for all that, they had very little to go on.

  When she finally finished with the paperwork, all that remained was for her to look at the photos. Elizabeth hated to look at such pictures, and yet she needed to see them for what they had to say. “Scene of the scream” was how one homicide detective had referred to crime scene p
hotos. That phrase had stayed with her over the years. She could never pick up the photos without thinking about that and how true it was. Over the years she’d seen so many pictures. She wished she could forget them but couldn’t. They even surfaced in her sleep. She had this recurring nightmare where she’d find herself staring at crime scene photos, only to realize that she herself was the victim.

  Though she often woke up screaming, she still could not stop herself from going on to the next case.

  Elizabeth turned over the first photo and looked at the picture. It was a close-up of Lita Jennings’s face. Though she was dead, her green eyes were still open. Doll eyes. There had been a time when murderers hadn’t wanted their victims to look upon them as they died, believing that what a dying person last saw became imprinted on the eyeball.

  In essence, Elizabeth wanted to fulfill that superstition, to become that eyeball and see beyond death.

  She turned more pictures over, moved them around like a tarot reader. There were close-ups of the bruised neck, of Lita’s discolored skin. Of her bluish tongue. Of her propped legs. Of the red A, almost indistinguishable in her brown pubic patch. Of her twisted mouth.

  Still screaming.

  He had taught her to how to contemplate such scenes without looking away, without even blinking. Gray Parker, mentor.

  Not passionate. The impression—no, the certainty—overwhelmed her. More purpose than compulsion.

  First the impressions came, then she tried to apply the logic. A choke hold had killed Lita. The murder appeared to be methodical, without rage. Scripted. Rehearsed.

  The evil hadn’t been random. This wasn’t a chance death. And it wasn’t the work of a serial killer or even a copycat killer. The revelation surprised Elizabeth.

  But he still enjoyed it.

  The murderer had taken his pleasure in the planning, in Lita’s execution. He was sure, prideful. She sensed that in the way he had posed her.

  Elizabeth suddenly gasped, but not for air. Sometimes she looked at pictures, or visited crime scenes, and felt the evil as if it was still there. But this was different. This time wasn’t like the others. She wasn’t looking at the evil; it was as if it was looking at her.

  Staring right at her.

  Elizabeth put the pictures back into the folder. She’d seen more than enough. And tomorrow she’d probably get the chance to study Teresa Sanders’s pictures. And there would be others, of that she was certain.

  Elizabeth looked at her watch. A little after six. What it was on the eternity scale she couldn’t be sure.

  The FBI might describe her scrutiny as a primitive form of profiling. The Feeb’s Investigative Support Unit shrinks were famous for checking off boxes and taking in data. She just felt. The bureau had learned its profiling trade from conducting hundreds of interviews with serial killers and rapists. Elizabeth hadn’t interviewed nearly as many killers but believed she had the dubious distinction of having learned from the best. Gray Parker had taught her how to look at evil.

  Elizabeth stood up and stretched. “I guess I’m finished for the day.”

  “Wish I could say the same.” Louise leaned back in her chair. The women had said remarkably little to one another for having shared an office for so many hours.

  “Pull up a chair,” said Louise. “Take mine if you want, especially if you’re a good typist.”

  Elizabeth made a cross of her index fingers as if warding off a vampire, and both of them laughed. “So what are you working on?”

  “A Lieutenant Borman project. Boreman. The man does live up to his name.”

  Louise gestured disparagingly at the paperwork. Elizabeth reached for the nearest pile and came away with a stack of bills and invoices.

  “The lieutenant wants me to make a list of service people that might have been at the Sanderses’ during the last two months. It’s not going to be easy. Their house was entertainment central. They always had florists, caterers, wait staff, and party rental people going in and out. And talk about upkeep. They had a regular army working there, what with gardeners, painters, pool service, and contractors.”

  People with uniforms, Elizabeth thought. Mrs. Sanders might have easily opened her door to someone with a uniform.

  “Thought we might have had something earlier,” Louise said. “One of the Sanderses’ neighbors, Ruby Davidson, thought she saw a gardener’s truck parked in their driveway yesterday morning. Problem is, Ruby’s eighty-two years old, and she’s the first to tell you that she doesn’t remember like she used to. Turns out the landscaping service didn’t come yesterday, but the day before yesterday. And the last tree service was two months ago.”

  Elizabeth made sympathetic clucking noises while continuing to flip through the bills. Louise was right; it did seem as if an army had been employed by the Sanderses. And it would take an army of detectives ultimately to interview everyone. In the pile she had grabbed were bills for tack and feed, cable, tree service, security...

  The thought suddenly came to her: What if Ruby Davidson wasn’t wrong? What if a vehicle had been parked in the driveway that looked like a gardener’s truck? That might even explain the 911 call. Someone could have seen something but been too panicked to become involved.

  Elizabeth reached for the landscaping invoices. Mister Tree had removed two eucalyptus trees on March 16. Teresa Sanders had paid by check, and a receipt had been given to her. Elizabeth examined that receipt. If the signature hadn’t been so textbook neat, she wouldn’t have noticed the name.

  Caleb Parker.

  The name jumped out at her. Before she had always thought that expression a sorry cliché, but that’s how it felt, a name standing out amid everything around it. Impossible, she thought. She was jumping to conclusions. Parker was a common surname.

  But she knew Gray Parker had fathered a son. The boy had been named after him. Elizabeth had seen him only a few times. She remembered the boy’s pinched, sad face. And she remembered something else. To differentiate between the two Grays, the mother had sometimes called her boy by his middle name.

  She’d called him Cal, or Callie. And sometimes, especially when she was upset, or she wanted to get his attention, she’d called him Caleb.

  7

  ELIZABETH RANG THE doorbell.

  She knew this was crazy, but she had to see for herself, had to know whether this man was Gray Parker’s son.

  Wild goose chase, Elizabeth told herself. Waste of time. Caleb had to be in his thirties. Someone that age didn’t suddenly become a serial murderer. They almost always started killing at a much younger age.

  But still, palmed in her right hand was a pepper spray canister. And in her purse she had her gun.

  The door opened. Involuntarily she whispered, “My God.” There was no question. Caleb Parker had his father’s dark hair, blue eyes, and handsome features. This man was the picture of Gray Parker. Looking at him brought on a feeling of vertigo.

  “Are you all right?” Caleb asked.

  Without taking her eyes off his face, she managed to nod. Caleb was sure he had never seen this woman before, but she stared at him as if he was familiar to her, as if she knew him.

  “May I help you?” Caleb asked.

  The woman didn’t answer immediately. She was well dressed, her tailored clothing fitting her tall, thin frame nicely. She had highlighted red hair, wide blue eyes, and skin translucent enough to reveal blue veins. Her age was difficult to gauge. She was blessed with the sort of timeless good looks that left him wondering whether she was closer to thirty or fifty.

  “I came to ask a question,” she said, “but I don’t need to ask it now.”

  Her scrutiny unnerved Caleb. This was the start of it, he knew. She wasn’t the police, but he had this feeling she was something just as bad. He wanted to slam the door on her but didn’t dare. The dining room was just off the kitchen, within sight of the front door, and though his children were paying no attention to the visitor, Caleb saw Anna throw him a questioning glance. He steppe
d out onto the porch and closed the door behind him. Though they stood in the semi-darkness, Caleb kept his eyes averted from the visitor’s, knowing that she was still staring at him. He didn’t ask her what she wanted. She would tell him in her own time, tell him things he didn’t want to hear.

  “Is that your family?” she asked.

  Still looking away from her, he nodded.

  “My name is Elizabeth Line,” she said.

  It was almost enough to make him look at her. He realized who she was. It gave him a momentary surge of anger. This woman had done enough damage to his life. How dare she just appear on his doorstep?

  “I have nothing to say to you,” he said.

  “I take it by your refusal that you’re familiar with my writing.”

  He finally looked at her. “I’m aware of your reputation,” he said, “not your writing. I’ve never read any of your books.”

  “You sound pleased about that.”

  “It’s just the way things are.”

  “Your father always used that phrase.”

  Caleb’s face tightened up, and his hands clenched in fists. Elizabeth took an involuntary step backward and brought her right hand up, ready to spray him. But he wasn’t advancing on her, and he didn’t notice her defensive posture.

  His head was lowered, his arms held stiffly at his sides. He looked like an embarrassed little boy. “I am not my father,” Caleb whispered.

  The door opened, and light penetrated to the front porch. “Cal?” asked Anna.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Ms. Line came over to discuss a business matter.”

  Anna was a handsome woman, tall with dark brown hair and large hazel eyes, but there was a severity to her. She offered a rigid beauty with her pursed lips and narrowed eyes and set chin. She looked from Caleb to the stranger and then back to her husband again. Something was wrong, Anna knew; something had been bothering Caleb. But as usual, he hadn’t been willing to talk about it.

  “Your dinner’s getting cold,” she said.