Slowly, without looking directly at her mother’s ace, Rhonda Weaver Norton unbuttoned the top three buttons of her cardigan sweater; then she slipped the soft knit material down over her shoulder. Under the sweater her bare shoulder and back were discolored by a mass of green-and-purple bruises. Lael gasped when she saw them.
“You let him do this to you?” she demanded. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”
Blushing furiously, Rhonda pulled her sweater back up. “The first two times he promised he’d never do it again, so I dropped the charges. This time I haven’t... not yet.”
Lael tossed the piece of blue pastel in the general direction of her box, then slammed the lid shut. “And you’re not going to, either. Come on. We’ll to talk to Jean Paul. He’ll know what to do.”
He waited until midnight. Not that midnight had any special significance, other than the fact that it was the time of day he liked best—the time when he felt most at home.
He thought about what he was doing as a bridge—a ritual bridge—between the past and the future, between the women who had already died and the ones who soon would. Although he didn’t think of himself as particularly superstitious, he always performed the midnight ceremony in exactly the same way, starting with closing all the blinds. Only when they were all safely closed did he light the candle.
Once upon a time, he had used incense, but his damn fool of a landlady in Sacramento had reported him to the cops. She had turned him in because she thought he was smoking dope in her precious downstairs apartment. That was right after Lois Hart, and he was nervous as hell. When the young cop showed up on the doorstep and knocked on his door, he’d been so scared that he almost peed his pants. He’d managed to talk his way out of that one—barely—but he’d also learned his lesson. No more incense. From that day on, he’ used only candles.
As the wick of the scented candle caught fire, he breathed in the sweet, cinnamon scent. He preferred cinnamon over all the others because they always reminded him of his grandmother’s freshly baked pumpkin pies. Cinnamon candles were easy to come by during the holidays, and he usually stocked up so he wouldn’t run out during the rest of the year.
After setting the burning candle in the center of his kitchen table, he went around the whole house and switched off all the other lights. Turning off the lights slowly, one by one, always added to his sense of anticipation. He liked finishing his preparations in darkened rooms with the only light coming from the flickering glow of a single candle. Everybody always said candlelight made things more romantic. No argument there.
Next came the music. That was always the same, too—Mantovani. In her later years, his mother had kept only one Mantovani album, and she had played it over and over until he thought he would lose his mind. The record had worn out eventually, thank God. So had the record player, for that matter, but when he had wanted to play the familiar music once again, he’d had no trouble finding it.
Now he used a cassette player and cheap cassettes that he picked up for a buck or two apiece at used-record stores. He himself didn’t care all that much for Mantovani, certainly not enough to pay full retail.
By the time he turned on the music, his eyes had adjusted to the dim light. With the soft strains of violins playing soothingly in the background, and with his whole body burning with anticipation, he would finally allow himself to go to the bottom right-hand corner of his closet to retrieve his precious faux alabaster jewelry box.
The box wasn’t inherently valuable. What gave it worth was where it came from, what it meant. Like that single scratched Mantovani album, the jewelry box had been one of his mother’s prized possessions. When he was twelve, he had bought it for her as a Mother’s Day present. He had paid for it with money he earned delivering newspapers.
His mother had loved the box, treasured it. When she died, though, the gift had reverted to the giver. He remembered how, on the day she unwrapped t, his mother had run her finger over the smooth, cool stonelike stuff, how she had admired the figure of the young Grecian woman whose delicate image had been carved in transluscent relief on the hinged top.
He looked down now at the graceful young woman in the revealing, loosely flowing gown. His mother had thought her very beautiful. As a matter of fact, so did he. In a lifetime of quarreling with his mother, the Greek maiden’s virginal beauty was one of the few things the two of them had ever agreed upon. The girl’s obvious innocence was one of the reasons he used the box as an integral part of his midnight ritual. He liked the symbolism. The other reason for using it was equally satisfying in the same way Mantovani was—the box had belonged to his mother. Had she known the use he made of it, the knowledge would have made her crazy, if she hadn’t been already. That aspect of the ceremony always added a whole other dimension to his amusement. He had never loved his mother, never even liked her.
As he carried the box to the kitchen table, his hands shook with anticipation. His whole body quivered. But he held back. Instead of giving in to his growing physical need, he forced himself to sit down and wait. He calmed himself by staring into the flickering glow of the lighted candle, by watching its muted, soothing light reflected in the satiny finish of the jewelry box.
He liked knowing that he could control the urge, that he could turn it off and on at will. He prided himself on being able to go all the way to the edge and then pull himself back if he had to, although sometimes, like tonight, waiting was almost more than he could bear. It reminded him of the game he used to play with his mother’s old dog, Prudence. He’d dish up the food and put it on the floor, but instead of letting the dog eat it, he’d put her on a down stay and make her wait for it, sometimes for hours. And if she tried to sneak over to it without permission, he’d beat the crap out of her. It had been great training for Prudence. It had taught her the meaning of self-control. It had taught him the same valuable lesson.
So he sat at the table, in front of the flickering candle, and waited for however long it took for his breathing to slow, for his heart to stop pounding, and for the painful bulge in his pants to disappear. Only after he was totally under control did he al-low himself to lift the hinged lid and look inside at the folded treasures waiting there—six pairs of panties.
Each pair had its own size, shape, and color. He could have sorted through the box blindfolded and still known which was which because he knew them intimately, more by feel than looks.
Except for the beige ones, which he quickly laid aside, he always stored the underwear according to a LIFO (last in/first out) style of inventory—a system he had learned about way back in college. That when he was so naive that he had wanted to be accountant just like his daddy, when he was still growing up and all gung ho on following in his father’s footsteps. Screw that!
Even though the box was open, still he delayed, postponing for a few minutes longer the moment of gratification. It struck him as interesting that each pair was so different from all the others. But then, since the women were so different, that was only to be expected. Every time he sorted through collection, he felt like a decorated veteran examining his medals. Each trophy brought to mind name, a place, and a time. The sounds, the feelings, replayed themselves as vividly as if it were happening all over again. He was sure his memory did a better job at replaying the details than any of that virtual reality stuff he kept reading about in the newspaper.
Finally, satisfied that he had waited long enough, he picked up the first pair—white cotton briefs so worn that the material was see-through thin. Holding it to his face, he closed his eyes and breathed in and out through the soft folds of material. With each breath he remembered everything about that Mexican girl with long, dark hair and big tits. Serena was her name. She had been anything but serene out there on the mountain. He smiled again remembering her good looks and those soft, voluptuous breasts.