John Lutz - Dancing with the Dead

“That’s the truth.”

“You and I know it, anyway. The police’ll be skeptical. I won’t tell them about you giving me information.”

If you have to, go ahead. She thought it, heard it in her mind, but she didn’t say it. She was afraid of the police, of authority. Fear had been with her all her life, like a parasite in her bowels, sapping her of resolve and independence. The frustration, the curse, was that she knew it and could do nothing about it. That was the nature of fear.

“I just wanted to talk to you before you saw or heard about the murder on the news,” Rene said. “Wanted to assure you, no matter what you hear about me, no matter what anybody says, I never so much as laid eyes on that woman.”

“ ’Course you didn’t.”

“I’m afraid the police’ll buy into the importance of the dancing connection now, after three murders. After all, it’s what I’ve been trying to convince them of all along. I should stay away from dance competitions. I’ve been hanging myself and didn’t know it; it never occurred to me a woman’d be murdered while I was in the same city. The police’ll think I have some mental problem about dancers who look like Danielle. I don’t, of course. Sweet Lord, I do some dancing myself. My mother was a ballroom dancer. A dancer’s the very last person I’d hurt.”

“Maybe this murder’s not even connected. Maybe the dead woman did just happen to take dancing lessons.”

“And get her throat slit the way Danielle did?”

“It could have happened that way. People get murdered all the time, ten times more often than they win the lottery. Almost one every day here in St. Louis.”

“I hope that’s the way it is, despite the fact this murder fits with my theory. I haven’t seen the victim’s photo yet. Pete didn’t even know her name when he called. I hope she’s black or Oriental and her husband’s already confessed. But I doubt it; I’ve got a feeling I was right about this, and the killer came to the competition to scout a victim. It builds up in someone like that, someone mentally tortured. The pressure gets worse and worse. It was time for him to kill again, and I happened to be in the same city when he acted out his sickness. It’s not really that much of a coincidence, you stop to think about it. Christ, it’s something I should’ve taken into account.”

Mary gathered her courage until it encased her heart like cold, hard armor. “Rene, if you have to, go ahead and tell the police about why you went to Kansas City, about the information I sent you. Honest, I don’t care.”

“I do care. I promised I’d keep you clear, and I meant it. Your name stays out of this. Which is another reason I called, to tell you I won’t talk with you again till this is over. If I try to contact you, the police’ll almost certainly know. If they were watching me before, they’ll be hiding in every shadow now, using every kind of electronic eavesdropping gadgetry. They’re merciless and relentless, and they’d close in on you like wolves.”

“Rene, it doesn’t matter-”

“It does to me, Mary. I won’t have you dragged through this kinda crap.”

“Don’t worry, any problems it causes can be worked out.”

“But it doesn’t need to be that way. Not on my account, anyway. It was never my intention to mess up your life, Mary. I won’t let it happen.”

“Rene-”

“Bye, Mary. I’ll talk to you again when this is over. A promise.”

“But-”

The receiver clicked in her ear.

“Mary?”

She hung up the phone and stared at Victor, standing before her desk and frowning down at her. The bright light from outside was behind him, creating a blinding aura around him, making him seem slim and tall and making her squint.

“Something wrong, Mary? I hope not your mother?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing, Victor. Please!”

“Please what?” He looked perplexed.

She sighed. What could she tell him? What could you ever tell someone like Victor? “You call that four-family buyer about closing figures?”

“Sure did. I’m leaving now to meet him at the Maplewood property. I just thought I’d stop by your desk and let you know.”

“Good, Victor. Fine.”

Still looking puzzled, he shrugged into his coat, shot her a quizzical smile, and went outside.

Mary immediately switched on the small portable radio she kept in her desk drawer.

The rest of the afternoon she played with the radio dial, jumping from station to station. She heard mostly music, a smattering of news, a few minutes of a heartfelt debate about cellulite, but nothing about a murder in Kansas City. Maybe the police were keeping it secret for now. No, that couldn’t be-that reporter, Pete something, had phoned Rene, so the press must know. Probably it simply wasn’t a big enough story to make the national news. It wouldn’t become big enough until the police realized Rene had been in town, or until they made the connection between the Kansas City victim and the women murdered in New Orleans and Seattle.

Assuming there actually was a connection.

Rene had learned about the murder around midnight, so the story might be in the papers. Newspapers reported crime more thoroughly than radio or television; crime seemed to get more complex, unlike how it sounded or looked, the longer it was covered.

As soon as five o’clock arrived, Mary hurried from work and drove to a drugstore, where she bought a Chicago Tribune and a St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

In her car, with the lowering sun beating through the windshield and giving her a headache, she examined the papers and finally found the news item on page four in the Post.

She sucked in her breath. The victim’s photograph accompanied the story, and her name, Vivian Ferris. The story had made the St. Louis paper because of the relative nearness of Kansas City and the viciousness of the crime. The victim’s throat had been deeply slashed, her breasts and genitalia mutilated, and the speculation was that she’d been raped.

Mary was sure the autopsy would reveal intercourse had occurred after death.

She felt dizzy. Death and sex, sex and death. Marriages and funerals. Lady-killers and lovers’ leaps. Was death so much a part of the danger and allure of sex?

Despite the grainy black-and-white newspaper photograph, she was positive she and Vivian Ferris could have passed for sisters.

As she was driving to try on her dress at Denise’s before work the next morning, Mary heard on KMOX news that Rene had been questioned by the police, then released. Two people at the Kansas City dance competition were sure they’d seen him there at the time of the murder, a tall man with dark hair and a deeply cleft chin, avidly watching the dancers.

Though she’d planned on waiting until she’d picked up the dress, Mary stopped at a vending machine and bought a newspaper. She leafed through the front section until she found the story.

The information was the same as the report she’d heard on her car radio, only it confirmed that Vivian Ferris had been sexually molested after death. A newer, more sharply focused photograph of the victim was in this edition; Mary was struck even more by the resemblance to her own image in the mirror. Dark hair, lean features, even something about the tilt of the head. And beyond that, some essence.

Helen had laughed and told her it was her imagination, that she and Vivian Ferris looked nothing alike. She’d argued with Helen about that.

Occasionally Mary would answer her phone and no one would speak, though she was sure someone was on the other end of the connection. Crank phone calls? Or Jake?

Despite, or maybe because of, the day she’d resisted him and forced him from her apartment, Jake still concerned her. Though no longer in her life, she suspected he’d reappear in a way she wouldn’t like. He was a problem looming like a specter in her near future, one of those dilemmas the mind shied away from, like an impending war too terrible to contemplate.