Calypso, p.21
Calypso, page 21
part #33 of 87th Precinct Series
The door opened only a crack, abruptly stopped by a night «chain. Beyond the door, beyond the crack was darkness. In the darkness, they could vaguely make out a pale oval that seemed to be a woman's face floating in space behind the door.
"Mrs. Parker?" Carella said.
"Yes?"
"Isola Police," he said, and showed his shield.
"Yes?"
"May we come in?"
"What for?"
"We're investigating some homicides back in the city," Meyer started, "and we'd-"
"Homicides? What would I know about-"
"May we come in please, Mrs. Parker," Carella said. "It's cold and wet out here, and I think we might be able to talk better in-"
"No," she said, "I'm busy," and began to close the door. Carella immediately shoved his foot into the narrowing wedge.
"Take your foot away," she said.
"No, ma'm," he said. "My foot stays where it is. Either you let us in-"
"No, I'm not letting you in."
"Fine, then we'll talk right here. But you're not closing that door on us, ma'm."
"I have nothing to say to you."
"We're here because we found your telephone number on a train schedule belonging to one of the homicide victims," Carella said. "Is three-four-six, eight-seven-one-one your telephone number?"
Pinpoint pricks of light in the darkness beyond the cracked door, her eyes flashing. Silence. Then- "Yes, that's my number."
"Do you know anyone named C. J. Hawkins?"
"No."
Long blond hair, he could make that out now in the darkness. The eyes flashing again in the narrow pale face beyond the narrow open wedge of door and jamb.
"How about George Chadderton?"
"No."
"Ambrose Harding?"
"No."
"Mrs. Parker, we know that C. J. Hawkins came out to Sands Spit every Wednesday, and was met at the Fox Hill station by someone driving an automobile." Carella paused. "Was that someone you?" he asked.
"No."
"Ma'm, if you'd just open the door, maybe we could-"
"No, I won't. Take your foot away. Move it, damn you!"
"No, ma'm," Carella said. "Do you know anyone named Santo Chadderton?"
Again the eyes flashed in the darkness beyond the door. A brief hesitation. Then- "You asked about him earlier, didn't you?"
"That was George Chadderton. This is his brother, Santo."
"I don't know either one of them."
"Do you own a pistol?"
"No."
"Have you left this island within recent days?"
"No."
"Were you here on the night of September fifteenth at around eleven o'clock?"
"Yes."
"How about three-thirty a.m. that same night?"
"I was here."
"Anyone with you?"
"No."
"Mrs. Parker," Carella said, "I'd appreciate it if you took off this chain…"
"No."
"You're not helping yourself…"
"Go away."
"You're only forcing us to come back with a search warrant."
"Leave me alone."
"Okay, then, that's what we'll have to do," Carella said, and pulled his foot from the door. It slammed shut at once. His goddamn foot ached.
"Rotten bitch," he said, and began walking down the path toward the waiting launch.
Beside him, Meyer said, "We really going for a warrant?"
"In Elsinore County?" Carella said. "It'll take us a month."
"You thinking what I'm thinking?"
"I'm thinking we go in anyway."
"Good," Meyer said.
***
Sonny Gardner was waiting at the dock for them.
"We're staying a while," Carella told him. "I'd like you to head back to the mainland without us. Make a hell of a lot of noise, rev your engines, toot your foghorn, make sure she knows you're going. You got that?"
"I got it," Sonny said. "When do you want to be picked up?"
Carella looked at Meyer. Meyer shrugged.
"Make it an hour," Carella said.
"What the hell's in that house?" Sonny asked.
"Ghosts maybe," Carella said.
"It sure looks it," Sonny said, and rolled his eyes. He was starting the engine when they heard the first scream. The scream was one of terror and pain, it threaded the fog, it raised the hackles on the backs of their necks. Carella and Meyer reached for their guns. At the same moment. Sonny killed the engines and drew his own weapon-but he did not move from the boat. The two detectives came pounding up the slate walk to the front door. Carella kicked it in, and both of them fanned into the entryway, lighted now with a Tiffany lamp that hung over a corner table upon which were heaped magazines, newspapers, and mail. Crouching, they probed the empty foyer with their guns, and heard the second scream coming from somewhere below and to the right.
"The cellar," Carella said, and ran toward a door at the far end of a corridor leading to a kitchen beyond. He threw open the door and heard the screaming again, sustained this time, unrelieved this time, this time a single piercing steady scream that paused only long enough for whoever was screaming to draw breath, and then continued again. He came down the cellar steps with Meyer close behind him. Together, they ran through a finished room with a pool table in the center of it, and then past an enclosed furnace, and then stopped just outside a massive, piano-hinged, oaken door that was open into the corridor. The screaming was coming from inside the room beyond that door, a pause, the gasping for breath again, and then the scream, steady, terror ridden, agonized. There was a second door beyond the first one, also open, this one angled into the room. Carella stepped into the room and almost tripped over the carcass of a German shepherd dog lying just inside the doorway. The back of the dog's head had been blown away, there was a puddle of drying blood on the floor. Carella was moving around the blood and around the dog and around the second door when she came at him.
Sonny Gardner had told them that the woman who lived here was only forty years old, but the woman who came at Carella now was certainly older than that. Oh, yes, she was tall and slender, and yes, her body seemed youthful in the long black dress that covered it, her blond hair graying only slightly here and there. But her face was the face of a sixty-year-old, lined and haggard, a ghastly pallor clouding it, the eyes sunken, the lips tightly compressed. He realized all at once that he was looking into the ravaged face of a madwoman, and felt a sudden cold chill that had nothing whatever to do with the incessant screaming that came from the other side of the room.
Lily Parker had a knife in her hand, and the knife dripped blood, and her long black dress was drenched with blood, and her long blond hair was streaked with blood, and there was blood spattered on her hands and on her face. As she came toward him-he had not yet seen what was on the bed-he wondered if the blood was why she had not opened the door, had she been drenched with blood standing there in the hallway beyond the night chain? Her eyes were wide and staring as she came at him-he had not yet seen the man on the bed- the knife extended and flailing the air. He fired low the first time, at her legs in the black sheath of the blood-drenched dress, and missed, and still she came at him, and this time he raised the gun and pulled off two shots in succession, both of them catching her high on the left shoulder, and spinning her around, and dropping her to the carpeted floor.
He had not yet seen the horror on the bed.
There was blood all over the carpet around the bed. There was blood soaked into the bedclothes. On the bed, on his back, a man lay spread-eagled, his arms and legs tied to the four posts. The man was still screaming though Lily Parker lay wounded on the floor, where she could no longer harm him. The man had skin only on his face. The rest of his skin had been peeled away from his body so that he lay there a naked pulsing bleeding mass of unsheathed muscles and nerves.
Carella turned away at once, almost colliding with Meyer who was directly behind him. "We'll… we'll need…" he said, and could not get the rest out. He looked for a phone, found none in the room, and went swiftly out into the cellar and upstairs to the kitchen where he found one on the wall. He dialed the local police then, and identified himself, and told them what he had here, and asked that they send an ambulance at once.
"It's very bad," he said. "I've never seen anything like it in my life."
***
It did not stop raining until Sunday morning, September 24. The rain stopped all at once; the clouds would not dissipate for hours, but for now at least there was no rain. The first tentative rays of the sun filtered down through the overcast at 2:00 p.m. and by 2:15 the wet pavements were glistening with sunshine. At 3:30 that same afternoon, Santo Chadderton died in the Intensive Care Unit of the Fox Hill Hospital. That same day, in the Psychiatric Unit on the sixth floor of Isola's Buena Vista Hospital, a team of psychiatrists was interviewing Lily Parker to determine whether or not she was sane enough to stand trial. A transcript of the interview later found its way to Carella's desk. It was in the form of a standard Q and A. As he read it, he could remember nothing but the flayed body of Santo Chadderton in that basement room at Hawkhurst.
***
Q: Mrs. Parker, can you tell us why you killed George Chadderton?
A: Because he knew.
Q: What did he know?
A: That Robert was with me on the island.
Q: Robert?
A: My husband.
Q: Was with you on the island?
A: In the basement room where they used to lock me up.
Q: Who used to lock you up?
A: Robert and my father.
Q: Mrs. Parker, your husband left you almost twenty years ago, isn't that so?
A: Well, yes, but he came back.
Q: If he left you so long ago…
A: Yes, but he came back, I just told you.
Q: Then it would have been impossible for him to have locked you in that basement room.
A: Yes, but not my father.
Q: It was your father who locked you in that room, is that it?
A: Nurse sitting outside the door. Giving me shots all the time.
Q: Your father did that to you?
A: And Robert. Because of Robert, don't you see?
Q: Because Robert left you?
A: Yes. That was when I got sick. When Robert left. That was when my father had the doors put in, and locked me up.
Q: Mrs. Parker, when did your father die?
A: Seven years ago.
Q: What month, would you remember?
A: July.
Q: And when did you meet Santo Chadderton?
A: I don't know who that is.
Q: Mrs. Parker, we have here a guest list for something called the Blondie Ball, a charity ball that took place on September eleventh, seven years ago.
A: Yes?
Q: Your name is on the list-we assume it's your name-L. Parker. Is that you?
A: Yes, Lily Parker.
Q: Santo Chadderton was one of the musicians at the ball that night.
A: I don't know anyone named Santo Chadderton.
Q: Isn't Santo Chadderton the man you were living with on the island?
A: No, no.
Q: Who was that man then?
A: Robert. My husband. He came back. After Daddy died, Robert came back to me.
Q: Where did you meet him again, Mrs. Parker?
A: At a ball in September, fairy princess all in white, mask on my face, he didn't even know it was me at first. Silly Robert making music in a band.
Q: When did you take him to the island?
A: In the morning. We spent the night at the hotel, he was extremely apologetic, we made such beautiful love.
Q: And in the morning, you went out to the island?
A: Yes.
Q: And he stayed there with you from then on?
A: Oh, yes, why would he want to leave? I took very good care of him. He knew that. He finally came to understand how much he loved me.
Q: Mrs. Parker, why did you kill Clara Jean Hawkins?
A: She was the one who told.
Q: Told what?
A: About us on the island. I brought her home to Robert one night because I thought he might be, well, stimulated by her, you know, by a third party. It wasn't fair, he never wanted to leave the island, I thought I'd bring him some outside stimulation, you know. I spotted her on the street downtown one day, in the city outside the railroad terminal, she seemed young and vivacious, I asked her if she'd like to come out to Hawkhurst with me. And of course she accepted, she could see I was a beautiful woman of good breeding, he always used to tell me how beautiful I was, my father, gave me the island as a sweet-sixteen present you know, and C. J. recognized my beauty as well, licked my cunt, savored my cunt, it was a shame I had to kill her.
Q: When you say she told…
A: She told his brother, don't you see?
Q: Santo's brother?
A: I found out last Thursday when I was driving her back to the station. She told me she was going to do an album with him, songs! They were going to write songs about all her experiences, can you imagine? Songs about us! Songs about what we did together on the island.
Q: She said that? That the songs would be about you?
A: Well, what else could they be?
Q: So you killed her.
A: Of course. To save Robert.
Q: To save him?
A: Yes, to save him, to keep him.
Q: Then… Mrs. Parker… why did you kill him?
A: I didn't.
Q: He's dead, Mrs. Parker. We learned a little while ago that he's dead.
A: No, no. He'll come back, you'll see. I thought he was dead, too, for the longest time, but he came back, didn't he? Only this time I won't be as understanding, I can tell you that. I took all his clothes from him, you know. Stripped him naked. That was so he wouldn't run away again. But when he comes back this time, I'm going to be a bit harsher with him. I put needles in his cock one time, to keep it stiff. That was before C. J. started coming out to join us. Cut off one of his fingers, too. But that was because his cock wasn't stiff. A man has to have a stiff cock. If he hasn't got a stiff cock, what good is he? I kept telling him that. This time… when he comes back this time… well, he'll see, I can promise you that.
Q: What will you do this time, Mrs. Parker?
A: Oh, he'll see. He'll see.
***
It was almost October when the report reached Carella's desk. By that time, Lily Parker had been remanded to the Riverhead Facility for the Criminally Insane. By that time, the city's skies were clear and blue, and there was a clean crisp bite on the air. Typewriters were clacking in the squadroom, phones were ringing. Carella rose from his desk and walked to the filing cabinets, and found the folder for Chadderton under C, and filed the report at the front of the folder. The case was closed, everything wrapped up neatly and tied with a pretty little bow. All the pieces in place, just like a phony fucking mystery novel. But the phone on his desk was ringing again.
Ed McBain, Calypso
