“Hurting you sounds like a good plan.”
Ruth walked up to Will. She placed herself directly in front of him. “I’ll tell you what you can do — to get this out of your system. You can slap me. Show me who’s boss. Slap my chubby lady cheek and then feel good about yourself.”
“I just might. I just might slap the fat pig that went wee-wee-wee all over my friends and me.”
Ruth sighed. “They were never your friends, Will. You — none of you — you don’t know the definition of the word ‘friends.’ A lot of men are this way; do you deny it? Self-centered bastards who can’t see beyond their own selfish needs.”
“Men sacrifice themselves for other men all the time. Cops. Firemen. Soldiers during times of war.”
“Some men. The good men. But the two good men in your little band of brothers are both dead. All that’s left are the dregs.”
“And you’re a conniving, malicious bitch.”
“So slap the bitch. But here’s the thing: I get to slap you back. Because Tommy did rape my friend Jane, and you were probably just fine with it. It’s the same thing you wanted to do to all of us, wasn’t it? To compensate for your little pencil dicks.”
Will smiled his crooked smile. “Well, you pretty much summed it up there, didn’t you?”
“Give me your best shot. It won’t be any more painful than the slaps those two tract house witches used to give me when I was five. But get yourself ready. Because I intend to give back as good as I get.”
They stared at one another for a moment and then Ruth took a deep breath, scrunched in her shoulders and shut her eyes.
Ruth wasn’t bluffing.
Will took this as his opening. He slapped her. It wasn’t a hard slap, but it made a loud pop. And it smarted. Ruth rubbed her reddened check. Then she pulled back and delivered a much more robust open-handed smack to Will’s face.
He waited a moment.
Then he reciprocated.
It went on like this: back and forth — mechanical, without emotion — like two little hinged figurines in lederhosen on a Bavarian clock. Will wasn’t going to stop until he felt Ruth had been properly punished. Ruth wouldn’t stop unless the two of them ended even.
As this was going on Jerry opened the door to the changing room. He thought he had walked into the men’s changing room. Jerry Castle was in a daze.
Will, whose turn it was, paused, his hand poised in the air, and looked at Jerry. Jerry walked over to the bench on the other side of the room and sat down, his gaze unfocused, his look blank, indecipherable.
Will and Ruth resumed, Jerry watching with empty eyes, not really registering.
Thirty minutes earlier, Lyle had succeeded in getting some important information out of a friend who worked the craps tables at Lucky Aces. It turned out that a number of the casino’s employees lived in the same newly built condominium complex about three miles from the casino.
“I need the number for the unit where several of the van drivers live. I want to drop off some cookies my sister made.”
“How come Jane never makes cookies for me?” Lyle’s friend teased.
“I don’t know, Greg. She don’t make them for me neither.”
“I don’t have the unit number, but I can tell you where they live. They use the pool a lot, and I see them going in and out of one of the apartments next to it. Their door’s downstairs and all the way to the left when you’re standing with your back to the pool gate.”
“Thanks, Greg. I’ll tell Jane to bake you some cookies sometime.”
“Chocolate chip.”
“You got it.”
Lyle hung up and went straight for his pickup. He drove over to the condominium complex. From the cab of his truck he could see the unit that interested him, but there were children playing in front.
Lyle waited. He finished his Big Mac. After a few minutes the kids were called home.
There was a young woman in a deck chair sunning herself next to the pool. Lyle waited until she went inside, until the pool and the area around it was empty.
Until there were no witnesses.
Then he got out of the cab. He went up to the door to which he’d been directed. He gave it a strong kick. It was a cheap door. It was a cheap, poorly built condo thrown up in a few weeks to house transient casino workers, and the door was no problem.
Lyle found Tom Katz sitting on the toilet taking a shit in one of the bathrooms.
Tom barely had a chance to look up from his Sports Illustrated when Lyle pulled the trigger, aiming for his head. Lyle’s sister’s rapist fell sideways against the wall, the broken streak of blood left on the drywall forming something like a red exclamation point above his head.
Lyle flushed the toilet with his gloved hand and walked out.
Chapter Twenty-One
Tulleford, England, September 1859
Maggie Barton had stopped talking. She lay in the bed which Miss Mobry had prepared for her. She lay quiet and still as Miss Mobry and her mother took turns placing wet compresses upon her head and speaking to her in soft, dulcet tones. “There’s a good girl,” said Lucile Mobry. “You sleep, my dear.” Then, turning to Maggie’s mother, who stood next to her, rubbing her hands one against the other with maternal unease, Miss Mobry said with whispered concern: “Not a wink? All through the night?”
Mrs. Barton nodded. Then she confided, “Each time I entered her room, I found her lying on her back and staring at the ceiling with open-eyed insensibility. A most frightening picture. And each time I spoke, I could extract not a single word from her in response.”
“Her eyes are closed now. Mayhap the cordial I administered will put her into a restful sleep from which she’ll awaken feeling more herself. Will you stop here, Clara, or go off to reunite with your Mr. Osborne?”
“I wish I could bring him hither. He would know just what to do to help Maggie.”
“Clara, I doubt very much that Mr. Osborne’s offices would be of benefit to our present purposes. I should think you’d prefer he stay away and not risk exposure to the police.”
Clara cast a fearful glance out the window. “They will catch him — most assuredly they will. I begged him to go to London, to Glasgow — anywhere he might lose himself in the throng and create a new name and a new life for himself. But he said he couldn’t bear it were he never to see me again.”
“And is there anyone else he should miss?”
Clara resumed with a hint of irritation, “Well, of course it should be naturally assumed that he wouldn’t wish to part with his daughter — to lose the chance to make amends for what he’s done. Next to ruing the violent act itself, that should be his greatest regret.”
“My dear Clara, the time has come for me to withdraw endorsement of your blind allegiance to Mr. Osborne. A crime has been committed, and if the man is guilty of that crime — as we know he is — then he should be made to pay the price for it. You have clearly failed to learn the lesson I learnt long, long ago.”
Clara placed herself wearily into the chair next to the bed. “You are bent upon telling me your lesson. Be quick about it. I’m so very tired.”
“That there are few men upon this earth who do not bear the mark of Cain. And here I do not mean that unfortunate Mr. Pardlow who inexplicably killed himself, but Cain of the Bible who slew his brother. And here I do not mean all men are murderers — not in a literal sense — although most men do own a tendency to murder in the abstract that which is good, that which is beautiful, that which is noble, that which is innocent and should be held dear. It is man’s nature — this dereliction. You have now loved two men, each of whom has borne the mark. I dare say if another comes your way, he will be similarly stained.”