“Not anymore,” Sherman said, grimly.
“What do you mean, Sherman?”
“You’ll see.”
“Sherman, don’t frighten me. Please.”
“Christ, I’m sorry, Ruth. I just meant from now on bad things aren’t going to happen to you.”
“Not when I’m with you, anyway.”
“More than just then,” the big detective said, his voice lush with love and menace.
1959 October 07 Wednesday 00:54
Another man entering the back door to Tussy’s house would have seen only darkness. Dett’s nightman eyes quickly registered the vague shapes and outlines, and his memory supplied a map of the living room.
Tussy sat on the edge of the couch, knees together primly, hands in her lap. She was wearing a soft pink nightgown.
“Walker,” was all she said.
Dett approached the couch. He dropped to his knees next to her.
“I told you I was chubby,” Tussy said, throatily. “Do you still think you could pick me up and carry me?”
1959 October 07 Wednesday 00:59
“Does it make you happy, putting criminals away?” Ruth asked.
“Happy? Not really. It’s a good thing to do, but it doesn’t mean much.”
“Why doesn’t it?” Ruth said, turning so she could watch Sherman’s eyes.
“Because fighting criminals isn’t the same as fighting crime, Ruth. It’s like… a garden, okay? If you have weeds, what do you do?”
“Pull them out.”
“Yeah. Pull them out. Not chop them off, because that wouldn’t do any good, right? They’d just grow back.”
Sherman rolled onto his back, then shifted position so that he was sitting up, his back against the headboard of the bed. Ruth spun onto her knees, facing him.
“You know what people say about Dobermans?” Sherman asked.
“That they turn on you?”
“Yeah, that. It’s a lie.”
“Why would people make up lies about a dog?”
“I’ll tell you why,” Sherman said, eyes glinting with unforgiveness. “A man gets a Doberman puppy. Now, he’s heard that Dobermans are really tough dogs, and he’s going to make sure this one knows who’s boss. So he beats the dog, that puppy. Until the dog does everything he wants it to.
“This goes on and on. But, one day, the dog realizes he’s not a puppy anymore. And when the man picks up the stick to beat him that day, the dog nails him. You know what the guy he bit is going to say? He’ll say, ‘My dog turned on me.’ You see what I’m telling you, Ruth? The dog didn’t turn on him. The dog was never with him. He was just biding his time, waiting for his chance.”
“Oh.”
“But if he had been good to that dog, from the beginning, I mean, the dog would never have done that.”
“And you think people are like that, too?” she said.
“No. People aren’t as good as dogs-some will turn on you. I see it happen in my job, every day. And there’s men I’ve known, they had every chance in life, but they were criminals in their hearts. Like rich kids who steal just for the thrill of it.
“But the thing is, the one sure thing is, the truly… sick ones, like the rapists and the child molesters, they all were like those Dobermans, once. Only once they got stronger, instead of turning on whoever hurt them, they went looking for weak people to hurt themselves. Like, once they learned how to do it, they got to love it.”
“Some people are just born mean,” Ruth said.
“That might be so,” Sherman said, “but I don’t believe anyone’s born to murder a whole bunch of people for the hell of it. You don’t get to be Charlie Starkweather from reading comic books, no matter what those idiot professors say.”
“I remember that. Everybody’s still talking about… what he did. You’re not saying a man like that, he didn’t deserve to die?”
“He deserved to die a dozen times over, Ruth. I’m just saying, well, he didn’t get that way overnight.”
“What about the girl? That little Caril?”
“What about her?”
“She went to prison. People say she did some of those murders, don’t they?”
“Yeah. And I don’t know what the truth of her is. I don’t think anyone’s ever going to know. Starkweather, he wasn’t one of the hard men, he was just a freak.”
“What do you mean, one of the hard men?”
“A professional. A man who does crime the way another man does whatever his job is. A man with… a code. If he’d been one of those, you can bet he would have taken the weight. Said it was all his fault, that he had forced the girl to go along. He was going to die anyway; he might as well have gone out with some class. Sat down in that chair and rode the lightning like a man. Starkweather, he was nothing but a degenerate. A piece of garbage like that, he doesn’t care what other people think of him, even his own kind.”
“You know what, Sherman?” Ruth said, curling into him. “Even if you’re right, even if his family did… horrible things to him, he didn’t have to do what he did. He had choices. Everybody has choices.”
“Everybody?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice as soft as gossamer. “Sometimes, the only choice is to live or to die. But you always have that. Like a bank account no one knows about, one that you can always go to if things get bad enough.”
“You’re not talking about Starkweather now, are you?”
“No, sweetheart. I was talking about that little Caril girl.”
1959 October 07 Wednesday 02:02
“Are you sure?” Dett said. “You don’t even-”
“If I wasn’t sure, do you think I would dare to do it here? In my own house?” Tussy said, indignantly. “I already know you’re not going to be with me when I wake up.”
“But you’re… crying.”
“So what?” she said, defiantly. “Just because I’m a big enough girl to know my own mind doesn’t mean I can’t cry if I feel like it.”
1959 October 07 Wednesday 02:09
“Night desk. Procter.”
“I’ve got a story for you.”
White male, mid-to-late-fifties, Midwest accent, but not local, flashed through the newsman’s mind, as he reflexively reached for his reporter’s pad. “Go,” he said.
“There’s a pay phone outside the Mobil station on Highway 109, just past the-”
“-exit. So?”
“I’ll give you an hour,” the voice said.
1959 October 07 Wednesday 02:13
Tussy’s kisses tasted like peppermint and Kools. Dett was lost. He cupped her breast gently, as if testing its weight.
“I don’t know how to do this,” he said.
“It sure looks like you do,” she chuckled, her hand trailing lightly between his legs.
“I don’t mean… that. But I never…”
“Oh, Walker,” she said, pushing him onto his back, “don’t tell me you’ve never been with a woman before.”
“Not with a woman I…”
“What?” she said, fitting herself over him.
Dett looked up at Tussy’s face, haloed in the reflected light from the hallway. His life fell into her eyes. “Love,” he said.
1959 October 07 Wednesday 02:20
“Do you hate them all, Sherman?”
“Who, honey?” he asked.
“The… bad people, I guess you’d call them.”
“There aren’t that many truly bad ones, girl. Most of them, they’re just… dopes. You know how we catch them? They start throwing money around, brag to some girl they meet in a gin mill. Or one of them gets arrested for something else, and he turns informer to save his own skin.”
“Some of them… you know the kind I mean… they’re nothing but animals.”
“No, they’re not,” Sherman said, with sad certainty. “But they all practice on animals. When they’re still kids, I mean. Every single one I ever talked to, he started out hurting animals. They loved the feeling. So they went after more of it. They all loved fire, too.” Holden loves animals, flashed into his thoughts. And, just like them, he fears fire.