Роберт Паркер - All Our Yesterdays

Kramer was motionless as he listened. He had no reaction to what he heard, that Gus could see, but Gus knew that he heard everything.

“Homicide guy on the case solves it, gets a confession. But for his own reasons, he deep-sixes the confession, and lets the kid go free. Mr. X stays straight, at least he doesn’t kill anybody, for like forty years. And then one day, out of nowhere, he seems to have done it again.”

“This past Monday,” Kramer said.

“I don’t know,” Gus said. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Murder looks just like the one he got away with forty years ago.”

“In what ways?” Kramer said.

“About the same age, this kid the other day was thirteen. Shot in the same way. Bite marks on her buttocks. Teddy bear.”

“Did he have sex with these children?”

“Apparently. This recent victim was not a virgin.”

“And the previous victim?”

“He confessed to having sex with her.”

“Was there some pressure from the detective who let him go, to stay on the straight and narrow, so to speak?” Kramer said.

“Yeah. He kept the confession, used it as a hold on the family.”

Kramer nodded slowly. He leaned back farther, letting his chair tilt against the spring. He rested one foot against the bottom drawer of his desk.

“In his current life, were there any startling changes, any sudden and unusual pressures that preceded this killing?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you describe them?”

“Things were closing in on him,” Gus said.

“The past murder?”

“Not exactly,” Gus said. “He probably felt as if he were in financial, or legal, or physical danger, or some combination of all three. He probably also feared public disgrace.”

Kramer smiled a little.

“Then,” he said, “I guess it would be fair to say that things were closing in on him.”

Gus nodded.

“Was there any hope of safety?” Kramer said.

“Yeah.”

“Were the mechanisms of safety in his control?”

“No.”

They were both quiet while Kramer thought about what he’d heard.

“Ritualized behavior,” he said, “which is what you have described, devolves from an attempt to control circumstances which would otherwise overwhelm you. When confronted with something fearful, for instance, and beyond control, a child will create a fantasy which grants him at least the illusion of control.”

Kramer paused and looked at Gus. Gus knew he was wording this carefully so that the uninitiated cop could follow it.

Gus nodded.

“The fantasy becomes life sustaining, so that in instances when the fantasy is threatened by reality, it must be defended. And when one is enacting a fantasy the danger is great, because reality will almost certainly clash with fantasy.”

Kramer paused again to let Gus digest the information.

“Fear is the mother of ritual,” Gus said.

Kramer made a faint nod that hinted of approval.

“Yes,” he said.

“So if Mr. X is, say, fantasizing about little girls,” Gus said, “and then finds himself actually having sex with little girls, the actuality may scare him.”

“Most fantasies, enacted, are less rewarding than they were as fantasies,” Kramer said.

“So X might have been having sex with a kid forty years ago and some aspect of it scared him. And then he either didn’t have sex with kids again, or he did but nothing scared him.”

“Possible,” Kramer said. “Though you have to understand that he has never not been scared. That’s why he has the fantasy. It’s when the fantasy is threatened.”

“Would there have been other kids?”

“I know too little,” Kramer said. “The human condition is too various.”

“I know that,” Gus said. “Give me a guess.”

Kramer shrugged. “The fear that drew him to little girls might have continued to draw him. He may have been violent only under special circumstances.”

“Something the girls did?”

“Not necessarily. People who defend themselves with ritual resort to it when there is external pressure. It doesn’t have to be something about the little girls.”

Gus nodded again, slowly.

“Except that it happens to them, it may have nothing to do with the girls,” Gus said.

“Yes. The pressure of his situation could have driven him to seek a little girl again and, when he did whatever made him kill the first one, may have made him kill this one. Do you know why he killed the first girl?”

“No.”

Kramer looked quietly at Gus for a while.

“Your son holds you in high regard,” he said. “And he is not a fool. But I cannot conspire with you to conceal several murders. In due course I will need to know that you’ve acted.”

Gus nodded. He sat for another long moment, and then he stood and put his hand out.

“Thanks for your help.”

Kramer stood and returned the handshake.

“May I ask you a question?” he said.

“Sure.”

“I asked you if Mr. X had the means to control his safety and you said no.”

Gus nodded.

“Do you know who controls those means?” Kramer said.

“Me,” Gus said.

They were in one of the chintz-and-maple bedrooms at the Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge. Gus lay on the bed, his head propped on the pillows. In the bathroom the shower was running. Then it shut off. In another five minutes Laura came out of the bathroom naked except for a pair of high heeled shoes. She stood at the foot of the bed with her legs apart like a fashion model, her head cocked and her hands on her hips. She was wearing lipstick, he noticed, and her hair was carefully brushed.

“So what do you think?” she said.

Gus looked carefully at her, running his eyes the full length of her, and smiled and silently applauded. She turned slowly so he could see all sides. There was an adjustable mirror attached to the dresser, and she tilted it so that she could examine herself full length in it, as she turned.

“All that tennis may have paid off,” she said. She completed her turn and faced Gus again.

“You don’t mind me posing, do you?”

“I like it,” Gus said.

“Tom and L...” She shook her head and shrugged.

“Tom didn’t like to see you naked?” Gus said.

“No.”

“That’s sort of unusual, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know what’s usual, Gus,” Laura said. “I’ve only known Tom and now you. Are you usual?”

“I think so,” Gus said. “What was Tom’s objection?”

She shook her head quickly, as if she didn’t like the conversation.

“I don’t know, really,” she said. She paused, and reddened slightly.

“What?” Gus said.

“We didn’t come here to talk about Tom, did we?”

“Tell me what you were remembering.”

“My wedding night,” Laura said. “Tom and I were never intimate before we were married. A few kisses. And our wedding night was very awkward.”

“He didn’t know what to do?”

“Neither of us was too sure, but that wasn’t it so much. When he saw me for the first time” — she glanced down at her naked self — “he was frightened... He didn’t... we didn’t... consummate the marriage until weeks later... in the dark.”

“How old were you?”

“Eighteen.”

“How’d you meet him?”

“My mother,” Laura said. “My mother and his mother were friends. They sort of put us together.”

“His mother was Hadley Winslow?”

“Yes. She was very eager that he marry.”

“I’ll bet,” Gus said. “You love him?”

Laura thought about it, and after a moment shook her head.

“No,” she said. “He was an appropriate mate: Ivy League, Episcopalian, wealthy. I was a good girl. I did what I was bidden.”