The DA pushed hard for the death penalty, contending that the rough-sex defence was the cynical last-ditch stand of a remorseless killer, and that the jury had rightly seen that it was wholly without merit. Although her killer might well have taken drugs, there was no forensic evidence to indicate that Karen Dandridge herself had been under the influence of anything other than a powerful and ruthless murderer. Karen Dandridge needed to be avenged, he maintained, and society needed to be assured that her killer would never, ever, be able to do it again.
Paul Dandridge was looking at Croydon when the judge pronounced the sentence, hoping to see something in those cold blue eyes. But as the words were spoken-death by lethal injection-there was nothing for Paul to see. Croydon closed his eyes.
When he Opened them a moment later, there was no expression to be seen in them.
They made you fairly comfortable on Death Row. Which was just as well, because in this state you could sit there for a long time. A guy serving a life sentence could make parole and be out on the street in a lot less time than a guy on Death Row could run out of appeals. In that joint alone, there were four men with more than ten years apiece on Death Row, and one who was closing in on twenty.
One of the things they’d let Billy Croydon have was a typewriter. He’d never learned to type properly, the way they taught you in typing class, but he was writing enough these days so that he was getting pretty good at it, just using two fingers on each hand. He wrote letters to his lawyer, and he wrote letters to the women who wrote to him. It wasn’t too hard to keep them writing, but the trick lay in getting them to do what he wanted. They wrote plenty of letters, but he wanted them to write really hot letters, describing in detail what they’d done with other guys in the past, and what they’d do if by some miracle they could be in his cell with him now.
They sent pictures, too, and some of them were good looking and some of them were not. “That’s a great picture,” he would write back, “but I wish I had one that showed more of your physical beauty.” It turned out to be surprisingly easy to get most of them to send increasingly revealing pictures. Before long he had them buying Polaroid cameras with timers and posing in obedience to his elaborate instructions. They’d do anything, the bitches, and he was sure they got off on it too.
Today, though, he didn’t feel like writing to any of them. He rolled a sheet of paper into the typewriter and looked at it, and the image that came to him was the grim face of that hard-ass brother of Karen Dandridge’s. What was his name, anyway? Paul, wasn’t it?
“Dear Paul,” he typed, and frowned for a moment in concentration. Then he started typing again.
“Sitting here in this cell waiting for the day to come when they put a needle in my arm and flush me down God’s own toilet, I found myself thinking about your testimony in court. I remember how you said your sister was a good-hearted girl who spent her short life bringing pleasure to everyone who knew her. According to your testimony, knowing this helped you rejoice in her life at the same time that it made her death so hard to take.
“Well, Paul, in the interest of helping you rejoice some more, I thought I’d tell you just how much pleasure your little sister brought to me. I’ve got to tell you that in all my life I never got more pleasure from anybody. My first look at Karen brought me pleasure, just watching her walk across campus, just looking at those jiggling tits and that tight little ass and imagining the fun I was going to have with them.
“Then when I had her tied up in the backseat of the car with her mouth taped shut, I have to say she went on being a real source of pleasure. Just looking at her in the rearview mirror was enjoyable, and from time to time I would stop the car and lean into the back to run my hands over her body. I don’t think she liked it much, but I enjoyed it enough for the both of us.
“Tell me something, Paul. Did you ever fool around with Karen yourself? I bet you did. I can picture her when she was maybe eleven, twelve years old, with her little titties just beginning to bud out, and you’d have been seventeen or eighteen yourself, so how could you stay away from her? She’s sleeping and you walk into her room and sit on the edge of her bed….”
He went on, describing the scene he imagined, and it excited him more than the pictures or letters from the women. He stopped and thought about relieving his excitement but decided to wait. He finished the scene as he imagined it and went on:
“Paul, old buddy, if you didn’t get any of that you were missing a good thing. I can’t tell you the pleasure I got out of your sweet little sister. Maybe I can give you some idea by describing our first time together.” And he did, recalling it all to mind, savouring it in his memory, reliving it as he typed it out on the page.
“I suppose you know she was no virgin,” he wrote, “but she was pretty new at it all the same. And then when I turned her facedown, well, I can tell you she’d never done that before. She didn’t like it much either. I had the tape off her mouth and I swear I thought she’d wake the neighbours, even though there weren’t any. I guess it hurt her some, Paul, but that was just an example of your darling sister sacrificing everything to give pleasure to others, just like you said. And it worked, because I had a hell of a good time.”
God, this was great. It really brought it all back.
“Here’s the thing,” he wrote. “The more we did it, the better it got. You’d think I would have grown tired of her, but I didn’t. I wanted to keep on having her over and over again forever, but at the same time I felt this urgent need to finish it, because I knew that would be the best part.
“And I wasn’t disappointed, Paul, because the most pleasure your sister ever gave anybody was right at the very end. I was on top of her, buried in her to the hilt, and I had my hands wrapped around her neck. And the ultimate pleasure came with me squeezing and looking into her eyes and squeezing harder and harder and going on looking into those eyes all the while and watching the life go right out of them.”
He was too excited now. He had to stop and relieve himself. Afterward he read the letter and got excited all over again. A great letter, better than anything he could get any of his bitches to write to him, but he couldn’t send it, not in a million years.
Not that it wouldn’t be a pleasure to rub the brother’s nose in it. Without the bastard’s testimony, he might have stood a good chance to beat the death sentence. With it, he was sunk.
Still, you never knew. Appeals would take a long time. Maybe he could do himself a little good here.
He rolled a fresh sheet of paper in the typewriter. “Dear Mr. Dandridge,” he wrote. “I’m well aware that the last thing on earth you want to read is a letter from me. I know that in your place I would feel no different myself. But I cannot seem to stop myself from reaching out to you. Soon I’ll be strapped down onto a gurney and given a lethal injection. That frightens me horribly, but I’d gladly die a thousand times over if only it would bring your sister back to life. I may not remember killing her, but I know I must have done it, and I would give anything to undo it. With all my heart, I wish she were alive today.”
Well, that last part was true, he thought. He wished to God she were alive, and right there in that cell with him, so that he could do her all over again, start to finish.
He went on and finished the letter, making it nothing but an apology, accepting responsibility, expressing remorse. It wasn’t a letter that sought anything, not even forgiveness, and it struck him as a good opening shot. Probably nothing would ever come of it, but you never knew.
After he’d sent it off, he took out the first letter he’d written and read it through, relishing the feelings that coursed through him and strengthened him. He’d keep this, maybe even add to it from time to time. It was really great the way it brought it all back.