NightScape Part 3

And then a breakthrough. What the detectives hadn't told Chad - but what he now learned -was that the tire tracks left by his daughter's desecrater had been identified last year, back in April, as standard equipment on a particular model of American van. Not only Stephanie's corpse near Yale but the later victim near Va.s.sar had been linked with the tire tracks on that year and model of van. Because the Biter's numerous targets had all been students at colleges and universities in New England, the authorities had concentrated their search in that area.

When a blond, attractive, female student narrowly escaped being dragged inside a van as she strolled toward her dormitory at Brown University, the local police - braced for the threat - ordered roadblocks around the area and stopped the type of van that they'd been seeking.

The handsome, ingratiating male driver complied too calmly. His responses were too respectful, not at all curious. On a hunch, an officer asked the driver to open the back of the van.

The driver's eyes narrowed.

Chilled by the intensity of his gaze, the policeman grasped his revolver and repeated his request. What he and his team discovered... after the driver hesitated, after they took his keys... were stacks of boxes in the rear of the van.

And behind the boxes, a bound, gagged, unconscious co-ed.

That night, the police announced the suspected Biter's arrest, and Chad shouted in triumph.

Finally! A textbook salesman. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d's district was New England colleges. He stalked each campus. He studied his variety of quarry, reduced his choices, selected his final target, and...

Chad imagined the Biter's enticement. "These boxes of books. They're too heavy. I've sprained my left wrist. Would you mind? Could you help me? I'd really appreciate.. .Thank you. By the way, what's your major? No kidding? English? What a coincidence. That's my major. Here. In the back. Help me with this final box. You won't believe the first editions I've got in there."

Rape, torture, cannibalism, and murder were what he had in there.

Step in farther. Nothing's going to hurt you.

But now the b.a.s.t.a.r.d had finally been caught. His name was Richard Putnam. The alleged Biter, the media carefully called him, although Chad had no doubt of Putnam's guilt as he studied the television images of the monster. The unafraid expression. The unemotional eyes. The handsome suspect should have been sweating with fear, bl.u.s.tering with indignation, but instead he gazed directly at the cameras, disturbingly confident. A sociopath.

Chad phoned policemen and district attorneys to warn them not to be fooled by Putnam's calm manner. He wrote letters to the parents of every victim, urging them to make similar calls. Each night at three a.m. as he wandered through his cluttered apartment, he always found Stephanie's brilliant light hovering in the kitchen.

"At last they found him," she said. "At last you can give up your anger. Sleep. Eat. Rest. Distract yourself. Work. It's over."

"No, it won't be over until the son of a b.i.t.c.h is punished! I want him to suffer! To feel the terror you did!"

"But he can't feel terror. He can't feel anything. Except when he kills."

"Believe me, sweetheart, when the court finds him guilty, when the judge p.r.o.nounces his sentence, that sociopath will suddenly find he can definitely feel emotion!"

"That's what I'm afraid of!"

"I don't understand! Don't you want revenge?"

"I'm speeding so brilliantly. I don't have time to.. .I'm afraid."

"Afraid about what?"

Stephanie's radiant light faded.

"What are you afraid of?"

Nothing will hurt you. The song kept echoing in Chad's mind. While he hadn't been able to protect his daughter as he had promised when she was a child, he could do his utmost to guarantee he was there to make sure that the monster suffered. Calls to police departments revealed that the various states in which the murders had occurred were each demanding to put the Biter on trial. The result was bureaucratic chaos, arguments about which city would have the first chance to prosecute.

As the authorities persisted in quarreling, Chad's frustration compelled him to visit the parents of each victim, to convince them to form a group, to conduct news conferences, to insist that jurisdictional egos be ignored in favor of the strongest evidence in any one city, to plead for justice.

It gave Chad intense satisfaction to believe that his efforts produced results - and even greater satisfaction that New Haven was selected as the site of the trial, that Stephanie's murder would be the crime against which the Biter was initially prosecuted. By then, a year had pa.s.sed. As part of his divorce settlement, Chad had sold his co-op apartment in Manhattan, splitting the proceeds with Linda. He moved to cheaper lodgings in New Haven, relying on the income he received from his ten percent of royalties that his former authors were required to pay him for contracts that he'd negotiated.

Successful.

Sure.

Before Stephanie was...

Nothing will hurt you?

Wrong! It hurts like h.e.l.l!

Each day at the trial, Chad sat in the front row, far to the side so he could have a direct view of Putnam's unemotional, this-is-all-a-mistake, confident profile. d.a.m.n you, show fear, show remorse, show anything, Chad thought. But even when the district attorney presented photographs of the horrors done to Stephanie, the monster did not react. Chad wanted to leap across the courtroom's railing and claw Putnam's eyes out. It took all his self-control not to scream his litany of mental curses.

The jury deliberated for ten days.

Why did they need so long ?

They finally declared him guilty.

And yet again the monster showed no reaction.

Nor did he react when the judge p.r.o.nounced the maximum punishment Connecticut allowed: life in prison.

But Chad reacted. He shrieked, "Life in prison? Change the law! That son of a b.i.t.c.h deserves to be executed!"

Chad was removed from the courtroom. Outside, Putnam's lawyer make a speech about a miscarriage of justice, vowing to demand a new trial, to appeal to a higher court.

Thus began a different kind of horror, the complexities and loopholes in the legal system. Another year pa.s.sed. The monster remained in prison, yes, but what if a judge decided that a further trial was necessary, that Putnam was obviously insane and should have pleaded accordingly? A year in prison for what he'd done to Stephanie? If he was released on a technicality or sent to a mental inst.i.tution where he would pretend to respond to treatment and perhaps eventually be p.r.o.nounced "cured"...

He'd kill again!

At three a.m., in Chad's gloomy New Haven apartment, he raised his haggard face from where he'd been dozing at the kitchen table. He smiled toward Stephanie's speck of light.

"Hi, dear. It's wonderful to see you. Where have you been? How I've missed you."

"You've got to stop doing this!"

"I'm getting even for you."

"You're making me scared!"

"For me. Of course. I understand. But as soon as I know that he's punished, I'll put my life in order. I promise I'll clean up my act."

"That's not what I mean! I don't have time to explain! I'm soaring so fast! So brilliantly! Stop what you're doing!"

"I can't. How can you rest in peace if he isn't - "

"I'm afraid!"

Putnam's appeal was denied. But that was another year later. In the meantime, Chad's former wife, Linda, had married someone else, and Chad's percentage of royalties from his past authors dwindled. He was forced to move to more shabby lodgings. He began to withdraw money - with tax penalties - from his pension. He now had a beard. Less trouble. No necessity to shave. So what if his unwashed hair drooped over his ears? There was no one to impress. No authors. No publishers. No one.

Except Stephanie.

Where in G.o.d's name was she?

She'd abandoned him. Why ?

While Stephanie's murder had officially been solved, others attributed to the Biter had not. Putnam refused to admit that he'd killed anyone, and the authorities - furious about Putnam's stubbornness - decided to put pressure on him to close the books on those other crimes, to force him to confess. Before he'd been a book salesman in New England, he'd worked in Florida. A blonde, attractive co-ed had been murdered years before at Florida's state university. The killer had used a knife instead of his teeth to mutilate the victim. There wasn't any obvious reason to link the Biter with that killing. But a search of that Florida city's records revealed that Putnam had received a parking ticket near where the victim had disappeared as she left the university's library. Further, Putnam's rare blood type matched the type derived from the s.e.m.e.n that the killer had left within the victim, just as the s.e.m.e.n that the monster had left within Stephanie contained Putnam's blood type. Years ago, that evidence could not have been used in court because of limitations in forensic technology. But now...

Putnam was arrested for the co-ed's murder. His lawyer had insisted on another trial. Well, the monster would get one. In Florida. Where the maximum penalty wasn't life in prison. It was death.

Chad moved to the outskirts of Florida State University. His pension and his portion of royalties from contracts he'd negotiated increasingly declined. His clothes became more shabby, his appearance more unkempt, his frame more gaunt. At some hazy point in the intervening years, his former wife, Linda, died from breast cancer. He mourned for her but not as he mourned for Stephanie.

The Florida trial seemed to take forever. Again Chad came to stare at the monster. Again he endured the complexities of the legal system. Again the evidence presented at the trial made him shudder.

But finally Putnam was found guilty, and this time the judge - Chad cheered and had to be evicted from the courtroom again- sentenced the monster to death in the electric chair.

Anti-death-penalty groups raised a furor. They pet.i.tioned Florida's Supreme Court and the state's governor to reduce the sentence. For his part, Chad barraged the media and the parents of the Biter's victims with phone calls and letters, urging them to use all their influence to insist that the judge's sentence be obeyed.

Richard Putnam finally showed a reaction. Apparently now convinced that his life was in danger, he tried to make a deal. He hinted about other homicides he'd committed, offering to reveal specifics and solve murders in other states in exchange for a reduced sentence.

Detectives from numerous states came to question Putnam about unsolved disappearances of co-eds. In the end, after they listened in disgust to his explicit descriptions of torture and cannibalism, they refused to ask the judge to reduce the sentence. There were four stays of execution, but finally Putnam was shaved, placed in an electric chair, and exterminated with two thousand volts through his brain.

Chad was with the pro-death-sentence advocates in the darkness of a midnight rain outside the prison. Along with them, he held up a sign: BURN, PUTNAM, BURN. I HOPE OLD SPARKY MAKES YOU SUFFER AS MUCH AS STEPHANIE DID. The execution occurred on schedule. At last, after so many years, Chad felt triumphant. Vindicated. At peace.

But when he returned to his c.o.c.kroach-infested, one-room apartment, when at three a.m. he drank cheap red wine in victory, he blinked in further triumph. Because Stephanie's light again appeared to him.

Chad's heart thundered. He hadn't seen or spoken to her in so many years. Despite his efforts on her behalf, he had thought that she had abandoned him. He had never understood why. After all, she had promised that she would be there whenever he needed to talk to her. At the same time, she had also demanded that he stop his efforts to punish the monster. He had never understood that, either.

But now, in horror, he did.

"I warned you, Dad! I tried to stop you! Why didn't you listen ? I'm so afraid!"

"I got even for you! You can finally rest in peace!"

"No! Now it starts again!"

"What do you mean?"

"He's free! He's coming for me! Don't you remember? I told you he doesn't feel emotion except when he kills! And now that he's been released, he can't wait to do it again! He's coming for me!"

"But you said you're soaring so brilliantly! How can he catch up to you?"

"Two thousand volts! He's like a rocket! He's grinning! He's reaching out his arms! Help me, Daddy! You promised!"

Based on the note Chad left, his psychiatrist concluded that Chad's final act made perfect, irrational sense. Chad bled profusely as he struggled over the barbed-wire fence. His hands were mangled. That didn't matter. Nor did his fear of heights matter as he climbed the high tower while guards shouted for him to stop. All that mattered was that Stephanie was in danger. What choice did he have? Except to grasp the high-voltage lines.

To be struck by twenty thousand volts. Ten times the power that had launched the Biter toward Stephanie. Chad's body burst into flames, but his agony meant nothing. The impetus of his soul meant everything.

Keep speeding, sweetheart! As fast as you can!

But I'll speed faster! The monster won't catch you! Nothing will hurt you!

Not while I can help it.

I readily admit that "Elvis .45" is the most cryptic t.i.tle I've ever used, but I wouldn't change it for the world. You see, I never got over being on the high-school social committee that was empowered to select and buy the records for the weekend dances, As this story indicates, in those ancient days there were listening booths in record stores. My friends and I could spend all afternoon there if we wanted. Not playing CDs, of course. That format hadn't been invented. Vinyl, along with Elvis, was king, A lot of you are too young to have heard vinyl (I continue to believe it sounds better than CDs do), or if you have, the word probably suggests IPs (long-playing records the size of pizzas) that held a half-dozen songs on each side and turned at thirty-three-and-one-third revolutions per minute. But there was another vinyl format, the small, one-song-on-each-side 45 (forty-five revolutions per minute) that gives this story its t.i.tle, as do the .45 revolvers Elvis liked to play with. The t.i.tle also refers to a number of a course at a university, as in English 101 or Presley 45. Hey, I told you it was cryptic. In any case, the story was written for a 1994 anthology called The King Is Dead and gave me a chance to experiment with an unusual technique. There is no exposition. No description. I avoided speech tags in the dialogue. The story is presented solely in dialogue fragments or in dialogue-like subst.i.tutes.

Elvis .45 You want to teach a course on...?"

"Elvis Presley."

"Elvis...?"

"Presley."

".. .That's what I was afraid I heard you say."

"Do you have a bias against Elvis Presley?"

"Not in his proper place. On golden-oldie radio when I'm stuck in traffic. Fred, are you really serious about this? This isn't the Music Department. Not that I can imagine them offering a course in Elvis, either. Musical appreciation of Elvis. What a joke. So how could I justify teaching Elvis in the English Department? The subtlety of the lyrics? The poetry of 'Jailhouse Rock?' Give me a break. The dean would think I'd lost my mind. He'd ask me to resign as chair. Fred, you don't look as if I'm getting my point across."

"Not a literature course."

"What?"

"A culture course."

"I still don't-"

"We already offer Victorian Culture. And Nineteenth-Century American Culture. This would be Twentieth-Century American Culture."

"Fred, don't you think you're interpreting 'culture' rather broadly? I mean, listen to what you're saying. Elvis Presley, for G.o.d's sake. The department would be a laughingstock. And for you in particular to want to teach such a course."

"I?".

"That's what I mean. You said I instead of 'me.' Perfect grammar. You're the only person in the department who speaks as if he's writing an essay for Philological Quarterly. Correctness of language. Wonderful. But Fred, you're hardly the type to...You'd sound ridiculous teaching Elvis Presley. You're a little -how would the students put it - uncool for the topic."

"Maybe that's why I want to teach the course."

"High school. When I was fifteen."

"What are you talking about?"

"If you'll stop interrupting me, Edna, I'll explain. When I was fifteen, my high school had a student committee that selected the records for the Friday-night dances after the football and basketball games."

"So it's going to be another stroll down memory lane. Every night at dinner. Well, if I'm going to have to hear one more story, you'd better pa.s.s me the wine."