The Third Victim (2 page)

She rose, gathered up the dishes, stacked them in the sink. She ran the water, then moved to the back door, to check the lock. With her fingers still on the deadbolt, she hesitated. Kevin had installed that lock, before he left. He’d wanted them safe, he’d said—she and Josh. Then, two months ago, he’d gone.

Had Kevin left before the first Tarot murder, or afterwards? Did she have Tarot to thank for the sturdy deadbolt lock?

She couldn’t remember.

She turned to the clock. It was twenty-five after eight; her time was gone. Almost gratefully, she surrendered her thoughts to the day’s hectic demands: she must put on her lipstick, get into her shoes, extricate Josh from the TV, lock up the flat, and coax the car to life. She must drive Josh out to the north end of town, to the day-care center. Then, backtracking, she must drive downtown. She’d park in the city-run all-day parking lot—if there was room. Otherwise, she’d pay three dollars. With luck, by nine she’d be at her drawing board. At three o’clock today, a four-column sketch of a chafing dish was due at the engraver’s. The ad would run Friday. It was already Tuesday.

She must hurry. She must begin the whole frantic process, put this Tuesday in motion. In her daily race with time, she was already falling behind.

Yet she remained with her back to the sink, leaning leadenly against the counter. She was still staring at the clock, immobilized.

At that moment, Kevin was sleeping with someone he hadn’t even known six months ago. Perhaps they were making love, he and Cathy.

Kevin had told her, earnestly, how he felt about Cathy. As he’d talked, he’d frowned intently. His eyes had searched hers. Kevin’s eyes could shine with the innocent clarity of childhood. He’d even touched her hand, explaining. He loved them both, he’d said, in different ways. He needed them both.

She’d tried, at first, to understand. She’d listened to the words. He was stifled, he’d said. He’d even admitted once, holding her close, that he was frightened. He still loved her. He loved Josh. He needed them. But he must be free. For a while, he must be free. Not to go to Cathy, especially. It wasn’t just Cathy. It was everything. His responsibilities were choking him. His job—such as it was—curdled his soul. He was slowly strangling—as Gauguin had strangled, before he’d finally broken away. Kevin had to have his freedom—for a month, a year, maybe forever. Otherwise, his creativity would be slowly, surely stifled. The problem, he’d said—the real problem—was society’s hypocrisy, oppressing him.

But Kevin had another problem. Kevin was thirty—a filmmaker, so called. But he’d never actually made a film. He’d once written a play, but he’d never made a film. For a while, in New York, he’d taught filmmaking. Kevin was talented and sensitive and intelligent and charming—and terribly, terribly serious about himself. But he’d never made a film.

And now he was sleeping with someone else—a stranger named Cathy.

Aware that her legs ached with a dull, dragging fatigue, Joanna walked slowly down the hallway. Josh was again sitting within three feet of the TV, hunched forward on his little red stool. Josh never watched TV unless he was sitting on his stool. Kevin had made the stool for Josh’s last birthday, his sixth. Joanna had just started working steadily at Gorlick’s, and she’d gotten only one paycheck, most of which had gone for past-due rent. So she’d knitted a pom-pommed stocking cap for Josh’s birthday. And Kevin had made the stool. The grandparents had supplied an extensive jumble of outsize plastic toys—slick, eye-catching, vaguely obscene.

As she reached across to switch off the TV, she touched the boy’s shoulder. “Come on, honey. If we don’t hurry, we’ll be late.”

Lying on his back, eyes still closed, Kevin moved his left foot slowly toward the center of the bed. Midway across, the foot encountered flesh. He felt her stir, heard her sigh. The waterbed undulated as her body moved subtly, then lay still. Cathy wasn’t ready for wakefulness.

He slowly opened his eyes, stared at the ceiling for a moment, then shifted his gaze to the French doors opening onto the small patio. For a graduate English student, Cathy lived in style. Her father, she said, was guilt-wracked. He’d bilked the public to make a fortune in advertising. He’d asked Cathy’s mother for a divorce fifteen years ago. So her father sent Cathy five hundred a month. Plus tuition. Plus a new Volkswagen. Plus a stereo system. Cathy’s mother fared considerably better.

Moving cautiously, Kevin turned onto his right side, to face the French doors. A fig tree overhung the patio’s rough redwood fence, dappling the bricked floor with large, splashy shadow-shapes. On film the patterns would work together, a study in contrasting forms and textures. He’d use a large-aperture color shot angling up into the fig-tree foliage, just out of near focus. He’d catch the glancing sun glare, using the sparse white clouds as background for the dark, heavy green of the fig leaves. Then, panning down, he’d pick up the texture of the redwood fence as he moved across low-growing ivy to play with the light-and-shadow-leaf designs falling on the brick. It was a good, tight composition. It would work. As background, it would work.

But what about action?

He had the setting. But he didn’t have a story line.

A successful filmmaker, though, began with either a story or an action line. The story was the engine. Backgrounds were incidental. It was an axiom of the trade.

Where had all the stories gone?

As he watched, the sun seemed to lose its brilliance; the brick pattern lost its interest. The redwood textures faded; the ivy seemed bedraggled. The moment’s vision had passed, joining countless other illusions, long forgotten.

He drew a long, soft sigh. He exhaled quietly, unwilling to wake the girl at his side.

Why?

Why was he unwilling to wake her? Because he knew she’d want to make love? Because he was afraid she wouldn’t?

Which?

Yesterday morning, they hadn’t gotten out of bed until almost eleven, love-sated. They’d eaten omelettes and finished a bottle of white wine left from the night before. Then they’d gotten into her car and driven to the beach. He’d brought his notebook, and worked on a few scenes. Cathy, too, had taken a notebook. She’d written three pages. “Stream-of-consciousness exercises,” she’d called them. Someday, she said, she’d write novels. Sagan-style novels.

Finally they’d fallen asleep on the warm sand.

His eyes were closing. He blinked, refocusing on the bricks and leaves and redwood. By an act of will; could he make the composition sparkle again? He squinted, simplifying the textures, making himself a camera’s viewfinder.

I Am a Camera.

It had been the basis of his first conversation with Joanna. New Year’s Eve, seven and a half years ago. He’d been drinking vodka and tonic, blearily blundering through a discussion on Kant. His antagonist had been a big, broad blonde with the build of a lady wrestler and a near-genius I.Q. By contrast, Joanna had seemed almost elfin—almost a pixie. She’d been standing alone in the center of the huge room—actually a loft converted into a studio-cum-apartment. She’d arrived in New York only the week before. In the whole city she knew only one couple, the hosts. Listening to the big blonde remorselessly pressing home her philosophical points, knowing he was beaten, he’d concentrated instead on the vision of the strange girl. Feature by feature, line by line, he’d assessed her: a good, supple torso, long legs with well-shaped calves but skinny thighs, a small, narrow face with thoughtful blue eyes and a firm, determined mouth. Her dark hair had been long then, loose about her shoulders. She’d been wearing a plaid wool skirt and a heavy cardigan sweater. Something about the tentative way she’d held her glass suggested a small town in Kansas. Something about her clear blue eyes suggested a certain playful innocence. He’d eased away from the blonde, executed one full circle, and come up on Joanna’s blind side, in good party-time position.

He was conscious of Cathy’s water-borne movement. He felt a slow, lingering finger move down his spine.

“Hi.”

“Hi.” He turned to face her. She yawned, at the same time pushing her cornsilk hair back from her face. Her eyes were sleep-swollen. She had the smooth, untroubled, faintly petulant face of a willful child. But the facial musculature, he knew, was misleading. Only the eyes hinted at Cathy’s essence. The gray-green eyes were opaque—inscrutably, covertly watchful. Cathy revealed only what she chose to—when she chose to, to whom she chose.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“Eight twenty-five.”

“We’re up early.”

“We went to bed early.”

The full lips curved into a slow, knowing smile. “Yes.”

For a long, speculative moment they stared at each other. Her lips stirred again, this time mischievously. “I have to go to the bathroom. Don’t go ’way.” She pressed the tip of his nose with a slim, playful forefinger, then slid out of bed. He watched her walk to the bathroom, naked. She moved with a deft, self-sufficient grace, as a model might move crossing in front of the camera. She was compactly made. Her torso tapered to firm, flaring flanks. Her thighs were robustly rounded; her calves thinned down to elegant ankles. Her figure could have come from sturdy peasant stock, refined by later decades of privilege. Her long, shining hair fell almost to the small of her back. She carried her head high, neck arched, chin lifted. It was a confident, almost disdainful pose. Cathy’s ego was completely intact, unassailed.

A folded newspaper was sailing in slow motion over the redwood fence, plopping onto the bricks. It was the
Bulletin,
late. He flipped back the bedcovers, slipped into his shorts, got the paper. As he propped himself against the padded plastic headboard, thumping at the pillows, he heard the bathroom door open, heard the rustle of her footsteps.

“Tarot’s at it again,” he said, pointing to the headline. He watched her come toward him. Her breasts were small, curved close to her torso. Cathy would never sag. She swung her legs together as she slid back into bed. It was almost a dancer’s turn: expressive, economical, effortless.

“Has he killed someone else?” She was close beside him, their shoulders in intimate contact. Aroused, he felt his genitals stir.

“No. Not yet. He’s warming up to it, apparently.”

“He means it, too,” she said softly. “This is what he did last time: wrote that he was going to do it, then wrote that he
did
it.”

“That’s how he gets his kicks.”

“The publicity, you mean?”

“That’s part of it, probably.”

“Did he warn both the other two women—the last two?”

“No. Just the second one.” He quickly scanned the news story. “The first one he apparently murdered before he wrote to the
Bulletin.
The second time, though, he wrote before he did it. Just like he’s doing now. Jesus—” He shook his head. “He’s way out. Way, way out.”

“I wonder if he rapes them first.”

“They’ve never said. The papers, I mean.”

“Are you sure?”

He shrugged. “Pretty sure.”

She smiled again, moving closer. Now her thigh was touching his. Her voice became huskier: “You’re a real Tarot fan.”

He finished the story, folded the paper neatly, and dropped it on the floor beside the bed. As he did, he glanced again at the bedside clock. The time was almost twenty to nine.

At twenty to nine, Joanna would already have dropped off Josh at nursery school. She would be on the freeway, heading back downtown. In twenty minutes, she’d be at her job. As he’d turned to the back pages of the
Bulletin,
following the Tarot story, he’d noticed a half-page Gorlick’s ad: a living-room group featuring “the carved-oak look.” The drawing had been excellent. In a year on the job, Joanna had learned a lot.

“You’re off again, Kevin.” Cathy’s voice was very low. He felt her breath warm on his cheek. “You’re somewhere else.”

Still turned half away, he decided to smile. “Everyone’s somewhere else, some of the time.”

“But not most of the time.”

He allowed the smile to fade. Cathy had a strong sense of her possessions. Had she ever been a loser?

“What shall we do today?” She was touching his foot with hers. Now her foot was beginning a slow, sinuous upward tracery. “Why don’t we rent a sailboat? Do you have to go to work?”

He shook his head. “No. But today’s the day that producer’s supposed to be in town. Dick Wagner. He promised to call me this morning.”

“At this number?”

“Yes.” It was, he realized, a half-reluctant response.

“Maybe we can go sailing after you talk to him.” Her fingers were resting lightly on his stomach, expertly beginning a slow, erotic caress.

“Maybe.” Inexorably aroused, he turned toward her, to draw her close. With the length of his body, he could feel her body answering his.

It would be another morning of omelettes and last night’s wine.

He felt her breasts grow taut against his chest. Now her body’s center was moving with his, beginning the first deep, urgent rhythms of love. Her breathing had quickened, matching his own. Their eyes were closed.

Last night’s wine…

The phrase had an evocative lilt. It could be a film title.

Leonard Talbot impatiently turned to the back of the newspaper, fighting the flapping confusion, finally batting the pages flat. Across the table, his mother stirred, momentarily roused by the rattling. But now she frowned, squinted, and once more dropped her eyes to her bowl, scraping up the last of her milk-sogged cereal.

He scanned the back-section page. Was it the right number? Had it said page twelve?

Yes. On the right side, halfway down on the last column?
Tarot, Con’t.

Tarot…

The newsprint blurred as his eyes lost their focus. At that moment—right now—thousands were reading the same words he was reading. They’d already seen the front-page letter. They knew of the three letters before. And they knew, too, about the women—the other two.

Everybody knew. It was all before them, printed. As much as he wanted them to know, they knew. The rest they’d never know.

Until he wanted them to know—until he willed it—they would know no more.