David Morrell - Creepers

Awfully talkative detective, Balenger thought. He volunteered way too much information. Ask questions. Don't provide details. Let the person you're talking to provide the details.

The hotel had no idea what might have happened to Iris after she left, the document indicated. It then went on to note that a month later a private investigator arrived from Baltimore, asking the same questions. The hotel representative who summarized the inquiries gave the impression that he was keeping a record in order to make sure everyone understood the hotel wasn't at fault.

Balenger felt his pulse quicken with the sudden thought that perhaps Carlisle himself had written the document. As darkness hovered beyond the balustrade, he concentrated on faded ink that was almost purple. His flashlight's beam went through the brittle yellow paper and cast a shadow of the handwriting onto Balenger's hand. Was there a hint of age in the handwriting, an imprecise quality in the letters that might have been caused by the arthritic fingers of someone in his late eighties?

Vinnie and the professor returned. As Conklin put the plastic bottle in his knapsack and zipped it shut, Balenger asked, "Was Carlisle's diary handwritten?"

"Yes. Why?"

"See if this looks familiar." Balenger handed the report to him.

The harsh lights made Conklin squint through his spectacles. The degree of his concentration was obvious. "Yes. That's Carlisle's handwriting."

"Let me have a look," Vinnie said. He surveyed the handwriting as if it posed a riddle. Then he passed the document to Rick and Cora.

"Makes me feel a little closer to him," Rick said. "You told us Carlisle had a… How did you put it? An arresting physical presence because of the steroids and the exercise. But what was his face like? His manner? Was he attractive or homely? Charming or overbearing?"

"In his prime, he was compared to a matinee idol. His eyes were the color of aquamarine. Sparkling. Charismatic. People felt hypnotized by him."

Rick gave the missing-person report back to Balenger and indicated a yellowed page from a newspaper. "I've got one of the murders. The thirteen-year-old boy who took a baseball bat to his father's head while he was sleeping. Hit him twenty-two times, really bashed his brains in. Happened in 1960. The boy's name was Ronald Whitaker. It turns out his mother was dead and his father sexually abused him for years. His teachers and the kids he went to school with described him as quiet and withdrawn. Moody."

"A common description of sex-abuse victims," Balenger said. "They're in shock. Ashamed. Afraid. They don't know who to trust, so they don't dare talk to anybody for fear they might blurt out what's being done to them. The abuser usually threatens to do something awful-kill a pet, cut off a penis or a nipple-if the victim tells anybody what's going on. At the same time, the abuser tries to make the victim believe that what's happening is the most natural thing in the world. Eventually, some victims feel everybody's an abuser in one way or another, that the world's all about manipulating people and they can't rely on anyone."

Rick pointed at the document. "In this case, the father took Ronald to Asbury Park on the Fourth of July weekend. A so-called summer treat. A child psychiatrist tried for several weeks to get Ronald to talk about what happened next. Eventually, the words came out in a torrent, how Ronald's father accepted money for another man to spend an hour alone with the boy. The stranger gave Ronald a ball, bat, and cheap baseball glove as a bribe. After the man left, the father came back to the room drunk and fell asleep. Ronald found a use for the baseball bat."

"Thirteen years old." Cora was sickened. "What happens to someone like him?"

"Because of his youth, he couldn't have been tried in a regular court," Balenger replied. "If he'd been of age, he'd have probably been found innocent by reason of temporary insanity. But in the case of a minor, a judge likely sent him to a juvenile facility where he received psychiatric counseling. He'd have been released when he was twenty-one. His court and psychiatric records would have been sealed so that no one could learn about his past and use it against him. Then it was up to him to try to move ahead with his life."

"But basically, that life was ruined," Cora said.

"There's always hope, I guess," Balenger said. "Always tomorrow."

"You sure know a lot about this." Rick studied him.

Is he questioning me again? Balenger wondered. "I was a reporter on a couple of cases like this."

"This hotel soaked up a lot of pain," Vinnie said. "Look at this report." The aged paper rustled in his hands. "The woman who owned the suitcase with the dead monkey in it. What was the name on the suitcase tag?"

"Edna Bauman," Cora said.

"Yeah, it's the same. Edna Bauman. She committed suicide here."

"What?"

"August 27, 1966. She took a hot bath and slit her wrists."

"Cora, your instincts are finely tuned," the professor said. "Remember you asked Rick to look in the bathtub? You were afraid something might be in there."

Cora shuddered. "Almost forty years earlier.''

"August twenty-seventh," Rick said. "When was the date of the obituary for her ex-husband?"

"August twenty-second," Balenger answered.

"Five days. As soon as the funeral was over, she came back here to where she and her then-husband spent their last vacation the previous summer." Vinnie thought a moment. "Maybe that summer was her last happy memory. That's when the photograph of the two of them and the monkey was taken. One year later, her life was in ruins. Surrounded by better memories, she killed herself."

"Yes," Cora said, "this hotel soaked up a lot of pain."

"But wouldn't the police or somebody have removed the suitcase with the dead monkey in it?" Rick wondered. "Why did they leave it behind?"

"Maybe they didn't," Balenger told him.

"I don't understand."

"Maybe Carlisle took it before the police arrived. Later, he returned it."

The group became silent. Balenger thought he heard the wind outside, then realized that the sound came from an upper level.

"The room that has the Burberry coat," Conklin said. "When I was in there, Vinnie thought to search the pockets."

"I found this." Vinnie handed a letter to Rick and Cora.

Cora read the heading and the date. "The Mayo Clinic. February 14, 1967. 'Dear Mr. Tobin: Your recent chest X rays indicate that the primary tumor has spread from the upper lobe of your right lung. A secondary tumor has appeared on your trachea. A new course of aggressive radiation needs to be scheduled at once.' "

"Tobin." Rick sorted through the pages Balenger had given him and found another yellowed newspaper clipping. "Edward Tobin. Philadelphia stockbroker. Age forty-two. Suicide. February 19, 1967."

"Right after he received that letter."

"February?" Vinnie asked. "Even if he was suicidal, winter's an odd time to come to the Jersey shore."

"Not if he intended to walk into the ocean and freeze to death before he drowned." Rick pointed toward the newspaper article. "The guy was wearing only a shirt and trousers when his body was found iced-over where the tide brought him in."

Again, Balenger was conscious of the shriek of wind above him. "Odd to have two rooms next to each other, both associated with a suicide."

"Not if you think about it," Conklin said. "Thousands and thousands of guests stayed here over the Paragon's many years. A changeover in each unit every few days. Decades and decades. Eventually, every single room would have been associated with a tragedy. Heart attacks, miscarriages, strokes. Fatal concussions from falls in bathtubs. Drug overdoses. Alcoholic rages. Beatings. Rape. Sexual abuse. Marital and business betrayals. Financial disasters. Suicides. Murders."