The Searing Read online

  “Oh, no, Sara! You, too! Thank God. I mean, I thought I was going crazy.”

  “It still doesn’t explain them away. I had almost convinced myself that it was me. That I was suffering from some sort of mental disorder. Now how can we explain both of us coming down with schizophrenia at the same time?”

  “Perhaps it’s simply stress.”

  “I don’t know, but I’m leaving. These last few days have been a nightmare for me. I’m going to find an apartment in the District.”

  “But, Sara, your new home!”

  Sara shook her head. “I don’t care. I don’t want to live here alone. I’m afraid of my house. I’m afraid of being there alone. Last night it happened. It was terrible. My whole body was sore. They just kept coming, again and again.” Sara’s hands were trembling and her fingers around the cup shook, spilling coffee onto the table. “I’m sorry.” She pulled her hands into her lap, embarrassed by what she had done.

  “It’s all right,” Marcia said quickly, wiping up the mess with a sponge from the sink. Their roles had quickly reversed, and now it was Marcia offering comfort. She brought Sara another cup of coffee. “Here,” she whispered, “drink this.” Marcia spoke comfortingly, as if she were consoling her son.

  “I’m all right. Really.” Sara straightened up in the chair. Now she was upset with herself for behaving badly. It was so unlike her to lose control, to react emotionally in such a situation.

  “Sara, I don’t mean to pry, but has anyone been with you when you’ve had them?” Marcia asked.

  Sara shook her head, and then stopped. “Yes, Tom Dine was with me yesterday afternoon.”

  “Tom Dine …?”

  “He’s the Post reporter who interviewed us at Peggy’s that night.”

  Marcia shook her head. “I just don’t remember. So many people have been here.”

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter, but he came by the house yesterday afternoon to show me the coroner’s report, which he’d somehow gotten his hands on. We sat out on the terrace and then moved inside when it got cold. That’s when I was attacked.”

  “Was that the first time?”

  “No, the first time was the morning of Amy’s death. I had come back home and found Cindy Delp in my bathroom.”

  “Your bathroom …?”

  “It seems as if she’s fixated on my house. She’s always around. In fact, I spotted her on the rocks behind my property when Tom and I were in the kitchen.”

  “When was that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, about five o’clock, I guess.”

  Marcia nodded, indicating she wanted Sara to continue. In the big, empty kitchen the two women were sitting together, and their proximity, the dark dampness outside, had brought them close together, establishing a trust and confidence between them.

  “I didn’t know how or why, but it was happening; I was having these intense orgasms.” Sara was speaking softly, explaining what had happened. “What makes it even more incredible is that I never have them. I just accepted the idea that I was one of those women who never would. After all, I’m thirty-two and I’ve been involved with men since I was twenty and, well, it just never happened before to me.”

  “But you had more?”

  Sara nodded. “I woke up at one o’clock with an attack.”

  “Sara,” Marcia spoke slowly. “I woke up in the middle of the night, too. I don’t know what time exactly, but it was after midnight; I’m sure.”

  Sara shook her head. “Tom Dine said something yesterday afternoon that I discarded, but now I think he might have a point.

  “According to the coroner’s reports, both Debbie and Amy were killed by a seizure in the hypothalamus region of their brains. I’m not sure what chemical was used, or how it got into the brain, but the coroner said that the cells and nerve fibers were burned—he used the word electrified.

  “Now you and I are having violent, frightening orgasms for no reason. But those come from the hypothalamus, too. They’ve done experiments, for example, where this section of the mind was stimulated by electric current, and it caused sexual aggression in castrated animals. It’s our minds that cause orgasms, Marcia, not our bodies. And it is our minds that are being attacked. Whoever killed those children is after us.”

  “Why us?” Marcia cried. Tears of fright sprang to her eyes as she remembered how Debbie Severt had looked, slumped over in the grass at the top of the hill. “We aren’t even those children’s mothers. Why isn’t this happening to Helen Severt and Peggy Volt?”

  “Marcia, maybe it is.” Sara paused and stared at Marcia, the shock showing in her eyes. She had not thought of the possibility before. “We have to call them and find out,” she said quickly. “I’ll telephone Peggy.” Already she felt better, planning what to do next.

  But Marcia sat frozen, paralyzed by the realization that something in the Village was trying to kill them.

  “Sara, what is it?” Marcia grabbed her arm. “You’re a doctor. You must have some idea.” The fear in Marcia’s eyes blazed like passion.

  Her voice rose steeply, and Sara saw she was near hysterics. It was too much—Amy dead in her crib, Debbie killed only a few feet from Benjy, and now these mysterious and brutal attacks. Perhaps she should give Marcia a sedative and let her get some sleep.

  “Marcia,” she said softly, “we’ll be all right. Everything will be all right, I promise you.” Then she paused and looked out the kitchen window. The day had cleared, but she realized she wouldn’t be going into Washington to look for a new apartment. Something terrible was happening in Renaissance Village and she could not run away.

  Cindy Delp stood deep in the trees and watched the girl cross Wycliffe Drive and go to play by herself in the small park below the last row of houses.

  But it was too cold and windy in the open field and, after only a few minutes on the swings, the girl left the playground, and went back up onto the sidewalk and stood there, bundled up in a thick sweater, and watched several adults come out of one house and cross the newly sodded front lawn to the next house.

  The woman waved to the young girl, and she returned the greeting, but did not run back across the street to join them. Instead she stood alone on the sidewalk, then bored and aimless, she continued up the hill, toward the trees beyond the Village.

  Cindy moved silently forward, slipping quickly through the oak trees and, when she reached the clearing of the woods, she halted. The new girl had spotted her and waved tentatively, with the awkwardness of her age, then approached, smiling nicely and saying hi.

  Cindy was frightened now. Her hands shot up to her forehead as the bright lights zigzagged across her eyes. Through her blurred vision, she could see the girl approach, and then her head began to spin. She stumbled forward, losing her sense of balance as the whirling intensified. It was as if someone were whipping eggs inside her head, scrambling her brain. She gasped with pain and seized her head with both hands.

  The girl stopped, shocked by Cindy’s behavior, and shouted out, asked if Cindy was okay, and then she started towards Cindy, saying she would get help. She reached out, as if to touch Cindy, and then she was struck. Her head felt the crushing attack, the whacking across the back of her skull, and she fell into the thick leaves, her blond head ricocheting off the huge stones, her brains spilling out onto the forest floor.

  NINE

  Tom Dine opened the lot map of Renaissance Village and spread it flat on Sara’s butcher block kitchen table, using the salt and pepper shakers to hold down the edges. It was a surveyor’s map, and Sara saw he had marked several of the numbered lots with large X’s.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I’m really not sure. Just something I’ve been thinking about. A notion, that’s all. Look!” With a black magic marker, he circled the X’s he had already drawn. “I’m trying to see if there’s a pattern here, if you women and the children are being attacked in any sort of a pattern.”

  “But what would that tell us?” She saw that he
had already X’d her lot, as well as Marcia’s and the Volts’.

  “I have no idea, but if we think of the Village as sort of a mine field, and people only in certain locations are hit, then, at least, we have something to work with. Now, among the women, who have been attacked?”

  “We’re not sure we’ve talked to them all. But certainly Kathryn Mackey.”

  “Where does she live?”

  “Here, lot 67 on Boccaccio Court. And Rebecca Hunt on Montesi Court. This lot here, on the corner, number 68. And Jill Terracciano farther up the hill, number 74. She also thinks her daughter Michelle has had them, but her daughter is only eleven and Jill refuses to ask her.” Sara shook her head.

  Tom placed an X inside lot number 74. “Who else then?”

  “Lynn Myers. She lives on the other side of the farm road, in either 52 or 53; I’m not sure. We can check by calling her.”

  “That’s okay for now. It’s close enough. Any more?”

  “Joy Lang behind the Myerses’. Pam Finney on Chaucer Drive. That would be lot 54.”

  “How many have been hit?”

  “About fifteen. Let me get the list to make sure we have them all.” While she read off the names and lot numbers, Tom placed X’s on the map, then at the top of the map he sketched in the outcropping of rocks and Indian mound, and added another X. Then he studied the map for a moment before he said to Sara. “Do you see the pattern?”

  She shook her head.

  Tom drew three black lines through the map and connected the X’s. They pointed like spokes of a wheel toward the Indian mound.

  The pattern was unmistakable, and Sara was impressed. The chart was something that would never have entered her mind. “What does it mean?” she asked.

  “I’m trying to see if the women in certain spots in the Village are being attacked, proving that it’s the location that matters, or why no men out here are being hit.”

  The kitchen wall phone rang, and Sara went to answer it while Tom leaned forward, bracing his hands at the corners of the table, studying the map.

  “Oh, God, no!” Sara exclaimed.

  Tom turned quickly, and Sara put her hand across the mouthpiece and said, “It’s Neil Cohoe. He says there’s been another death.”

  “Who?”

  Sara listened a moment and then said, “A couple out looking at houses … their daughter. She had gone off to play and they found …”

  “Where?”

  “Neil, Tom Dine from the Post is here and he wants to know where they found the girl.” Sara listened a moment and said, “In the woods.” She paused again, listening, and then repeated for Tom, “Near his house. That’s off Wycliffe Drive, beyond the Volts’. Neil, what lot are you?”

  Tom picked up the magic marker and leaned over the map.

  “It’s lot 75, Tom,” Sara said.

  Tom drew an X in the wooded section beyond the development. It was still in line with the other killings and the attacks on the women, but outside the village. He moved the salt and pepper shakers and rolled up the map. Santucci would be in the woods with the police, and there was a story to write.

  “Neil said this child was brutalized,” Sara explained, getting off the telephone. Her face was white and the fear had returned to her blue eyes. It made them look cold, like glass. “He said the child’s head was smashed against some rocks.” She picked up her coffee cup, but did not drink from it. The cup shook in her hands.

  “I’d better go see what happened.”

  “Oh, don’t,” she blurted out. She did not want to be left alone in the house.

  “I have to go, Sara,” he answered softly. “It’s my job. And I’ll have to interview Santucci. He’ll be there.” Tom stopped talking. He set down the map and went to her, holding her first by the shoulders. He could feel her body shaking beneath his fingers and he pulled Sara gently into his arms, hugging her against his chest.

  “We were wrong,” Sara whispered. “Someone is killing these children.”

  “We knew that, didn’t we?”

  “Yes, but this is cold-blooded murder. My God, the child had her head smashed against rocks.” She shuddered in his arms.

  “I have to go, Sara.”

  “Are you coming back?”

  “Yes, I’ll get the story and phone it in from here. I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he added.

  She nodded, thankful that Tom was with her. “I’ll be here,” she whispered, and leaning forward kissed him quickly, embarrassed by her own forwardness.

  At the dead end of Wycliffe Drive, the half-dozen police cars were jammed together, blocking access to the murder site, and Tom Dine had to walk across several front yards to reach the scene of the crime.

  The child’s body was still on the ground, in the middle of a cluster of oak trees that grew in a thick patch of woods a dozen yards from the last subdivision lot. The police had roped off the area in a wide circle around the dead child, but Tom slipped under the line and walked over to Joe Santucci, who stood away from the body talking with two uniformed county policemen. He nodded to Tom as he approached, then signaled that the reporter should stay away. Tom stopped where he was and looked at the dead child. The gray plastic shield had already been slipped over the corpse, and the body lay in the fall leaves like a small package.

  Tom took out his notepad and pen, and began to jot down a description of the murder scene: “The body was found within shouting distance of Renaissance Village, the latest victim of the bizarre child murders in this new community of Washington intelligentsia.”

  He paused and glanced around, then added, “The child’s body was discovered in a small cluster of black, leafless trees. It lay on a carpet of soft leaves, her head within a few feet of a large boulder, one corner of the massive rock still wet with blood.”

  Tom looked again at the murder scene. There were other rocks half-buried under the thick foliage, and a band of sturdy oak trees circled the murder site. There were more trees and thick green bushes beyond this small clearing and the whole forest would have appeared impenetrable, except that it was late September and the trees were bare. Tom had not realized such a dense corridor of trees existed this close to the open valley and the Village.

  “This one is different,” Santucci announced, walking toward Tom Dine. His big feet kicked up the ankle-deep leaves as he came across the clearing.

  “That’s what I’ve heard.”

  “The little girl had her face all smashed up.”

  “How bad?”

  “It’s hard to say without the autopsy, but her face was a fuckin’ mess. The mother went berserk when she saw the kid.”

  “Who found her?”

  “Some children. They said they were playing cowboys and Indians here in these woods.”

  “No chance they did it?”

  Santucci shook his head. “Nope, these kids were maybe seven and eight. Whoever did this, you know, had to be bigger, stronger. The girl is eleven and tall for her age. You can see that much.” He gestured toward the plastic gray bundle.

  “Number three,” Tom commented.

  “Yeah, number three.” Santucci sighed and, opening his suit coat, slipped his hands into his waist and pulled up his loose trousers.

  “Are you getting much pressure at headquarters?”

  “What the fuck do you think?” Santucci snapped. “Every day there’s another of your goddamn articles about the murders in the Post. Believe me, I got them all screaming, from the governor’s office on down.”

  Santucci was not looking at the reporter as he spoke, but staring past Tom at the small crowd of village people who stood quietly behind the ropes. “You know who telephoned me?” he said. “Lew Magnuson! He wanted to know when we were going to catch the killer. He said the murders were ruining sales. He said everyone was afraid of Renaissance Village.” The big detective shook his head.

  “Well, he’s right.”

  “What do you mean, he’s right?”

  Tom gestured toward the girl. “
Weren’t her parents just looking for a new house?”

  Santucci sighed. “Shit, don’t you give me trouble, too.” He flexed his shoulders as if his suit coat was too tight, and then he nervously straightened his tie.

  “Okay, I’m sorry, Joe. I know you’re under the gun. What about the farmer? What about Delp?”

  “We got him under surveillance.” Santucci looked away.

  “How many more kids does he have to kill before you lock him up?”

  “We’re still not sure it’s him,” Santucci admitted. The pushiness of the reporter got him angry. He did not need Tom Dine to tell him what to do. That was the trouble with investigative reporters. They all thought they were cops.

  Tom shook his head in disgust and zipped up his green down jacket. He was ready to leave. There was a sudden distance about the man that made Santucci immediately wary, and he blurted out, “Don’t go taking this investigation into your own hands, Dine. Don’t go making a lot of half-assed accusations in the Post, or I’ll have a judge clamp the lid on you.” He sounded small-minded and mean.

  “Have you heard about the women?” Tom responded, baiting the big detective.

  “What about the women? What are you talking about?” The man was immediately worried.

  Speaking softly, as if embarrassed, and not looking at Santucci, Tom told him about Sara and what had been happening to the women in the Village.

  “Jesus H. Christ!” Santucci shook his head. “Orgasms! Spontaneous orgasms. Now I’ve heard it all.” He shook his head, and then, sounding annoyed, “How can that have anything to do with these murders?”

  Tom told him what Sara had said about the hypothalamus region of the mind, of how it controlled the sexual response of women. “I can’t tell you why,” he explained to Santucci. “I don’t know why, but there might be a connection between the deaths and the attacks on these women.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about, Dine?” Now there was real annoyance in Santucci’s voice. He gestured to the damp spot on the leaves, to where the child’s body had been found by the huge boulder. There was no sign of blood on the ground. It had disappeared, blending with the bright colors of fall foliage.