He found the squad car parked in front of a video store close to the strip mall where the cop had been the other night. He sat in the car looking into the store. He wished he would’ve found the cop in the XXX section. Instead he found him in the comedy section.
He was very conscious of the clock. He knew that if he was gone long, Elise would be suspicious. What was he doing here anyway? What good did it do to just follow the bastard around?
He put the car in gear and drove out of the video store lot.
He was seven blocks away when the emergency light bloomed blood red in his rearview mirror.
2
He pulled over to the curb. Waited for the cop to appear. A few cars went past, surveying the scene. Wondering what he’d done.
No swagger. Unassuming walk. Flipped open his ticket book as he approached.
Josh had his window rolled down. The night smelled of distant rain and cold. It was in the low forties.
“Evening, sir.”
“Evening.”
“May I see your license?”
“Sure.”
Showed him his license.
“The information here correct?”
“Yes; yes, it is.” It was a good thing she’d taken the gun from him. He wanted to kill this man right here.
“Was I speeding, officer?”
“No.”
“Taillight out or something?”
“One thing about a silver gray Saab. Brand new one.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“There aren’t very many of them.”
“No, I don’t suppose there are.”
The cop handed him his license back. “Why’re you following me, Mr. Madison?”
“Following you? You were behind me.”
“The other night it was the shoe repair shop. Tonight it’s the video store. And then you just follow me around in general sometimes. What’s going on?”
“Gosh, I wish I knew what you were talking about.”
For the first time he saw anger in the cop’s face. “I catch you following me again, something bad could happen, Mr. Madison. You understand?”
Put the bullet right in the center of his throat. Watch the life choke out of him as he grabbed and clawed at the wound. “You keep that in mind, Mr. Madison.”
Josh woke up around two o’clock. A light rain haloed the streetlight outside. Elise was awake, too. They made love. He surprised them both with the power of his ardor. He could have killed him. He knew now he was capable of it. It gave him new strength. He didn’t tell Elise about seeing the cop.
Three weeks later, they were having after-dinner brandies in the TV room when Elise said, “My God, it’s him.”
Nine O’clock News on WGN.
“Patrol officer Earl Frazier has been accused of rape by South Side resident Oreila McGee.”
Frazier’s photo was a color close-up taken some years ago.
“While McGee’s lawyer, Jefferson Hardin, freely admits that his client is a prostitute, he insists that Officer Frazier beat and then raped his client this past Thursday night. Police spokesperson Donald Thomas said that the department will issue a statement tomorrow morning. But that as far as he knew, Officer Frazier would stay on his regular duty at full pay.”
“Earl Frazier,” Josh said. Now he knew the bastard’s name.
“They’ll laugh her out of court,” Elise said, “a prostitute accusing a cop like that.” Then, quietly, “He’s just going to keep on doing it, isn’t he?”
“Yeah,” Josh said. “Yeah, he is.”
“That poor woman,” she said.
At breakfast, Lisa decided to decorate herself for the holidays. She got most of her Gerber’s pureed carrots all over her face, hands, arms and hair. The carrots looked especially fetching dangling from her left ear lobe. She looked intensely, radiantly pleased with herself.
Josh fed her. He loved feeding her. “I think I’ll run her through the car wash this morning,” he said. “That’ll clean her up.” He’d almost cleaned out the small glass jar.
He glanced at Elise. She looked drained, tense. “You all right, honey?”
“I should’ve gone to the police that night. I should’ve told the truth. But it’s way too late, now. It’d be just my word against his.”
“Yours and a prostitute.”
“God, I really want to see him in prison.”
“So do I.”
“But how can we do it now?”
He was glad that Lisa chose this moment to smear more of the carrot puree all over her face. “Gee, look, honey,” he said, not answering her question. “An orange baby.”
It was two days later when Josh got the idea.
He was in a TV studio producing a commercial for a car security system. Everything was wrapped up except the final sequence, which showed a shadowy burglar trying to break into a new Buick. The set was carefully lighted to effect a film noir look. The actor, dressed in dark clothes and a fedora, was hulking and ominous as he leaned into the car and glanced first right then left. Resembled a shot from a horror movie.
The sequence took on a more urgent meaning suddenly. He imagined that the burglar was actually Frazier the cop and that he was forcing Elise out of the Saab. He didn’t want to imagine any more. He’d tried to avoid thinking of the actual rape itself. Doing so literally made him sick to his stomach.
“You all right?” the director said. They were in the control booth, a spaceship-like panel of knobs and buttons stretching out before them, Sixteen small monitors filled the dark wall in front of them. They could see the sequence being shot in both color and black and white. “Man, you’re really sweating. Maybe you’re getting that flu that’s going around.”
But it wasn’t the flu. It was glimpses of the rape filling his mind. Her eyes. Her small fists hammering on him. The brutal way he’d taken her. And it was his idea. It had happened before, so why couldn’t it happen again? An unseen private citizen with a home video camera out for a night’s amusement when he accidentally stumbles on...
“Yeah,” he said, finally answering the director. “Must be the flu.”
Elise’s first response was negative. She didn’t think it would work. But the more he showed her the unedited video from the car security commercial, the more she got drawn in. There was a lot that needed to be done. And it wouldn’t be cheap. He’d have to pay a lighting director, a camera operator, a makeup person, a costumer, two actors and an art director who could find the right car and fit it out accordingly.
The first night they were scheduled to shoot was canceled. Rain. The second night was also canceled. Fog. The third night, they actually got down to business. They drove out to the lonely, deserted spot where the rape had taken place and then everybody went about his job. They did every sequence over three or four times. He was afraid that reliving the experience would be too much for Elise. But her anger kept her sane. She’d been able to match the outfit she’d worn the night of the rape. She looked beautiful.
They didn’t get home till midnight. Terri, the babysitter, was asleep on the couch, her senior History book over her face. Conan O’Brien was talking to her but she wasn’t listening. Josh ran her home. By the time he got back, Elise was in the kitchen, micro-waving them hot cocoa with tiny bobbing marshmallows. They sat in the breakfast nook. She raised her cup. They toasted. Everything was ready to go.
Frazier had lived in an apartment complex ever since his divorce. He liked summers best because he had most of the day to hang around the swimming pool and size up the ladies. A lot of them were stewardesses. Being politically correct, the airlines had started using older women these days. The image of the vacuous hut deadly-beautiful stew had changed. You now often found middle-aged ladies serving you on your flights. Still, there was plenty of young flesh around the pool, many of whom didn’t mind coming over to his apartment for a gin and tonic and some afternoon delight. It was the cop thing. They’d deny it of course. But they — the type of women he attracted anyway — liked the authority thing. Even the women he raped. A few of his victims had even had an orgasm while he was raping them. Even against their will they’d responded to the uniform, the badge, the nightstick, the gun. One of them, he’d even used his nightstick on a little bit. He could still remember the way she’d shuddered.