Wireman

CHAPTER 15

IT HAD BEEN two weeks since Marjorie Sider’s murder. February was a mimic, a soft pretender to spring. Houston’s temperature rose to the high seventies and stayed there. Nights were still cool and the winds often gusty, but the days sparkled. Marjorie was buried on one of those fake spring days, her father shuffling his feet in embarrassment at the graveside. He stared at the ground and wished he was home in San Antonio, away from the curious, pitying stares of the strangers attending his daughter’s funeral.

Though he was introduced to Marjorie’s friends, they were not his friends, and during the service he suffered, knowing the strangers knew of his daughter’s mutilation. They knew she had to be buried headless. It was such a total embarrassment that he left before the end of the service, jumped into his rickety ’69 Chevrolet, and headed back to his apartment, where he could feed the mongrel dogs he collected and pretend he had never been a father.

Five days after Marjorie’s burial the killer left his home at seven in the morning. His destination was uncertain, as was his victim. He only knew that he would kill another woman and that she must be very old.

If he could kill an old woman, he would be purged. He might even be able to stop his killing. He would be cleansed in the blood. The child and the other woman were not enough. People were calling him a serial murderer. He was not sure what that meant, but he liked the sound of it.

After it was determined the heads of his victims had been cut from their bodies with a length of wire, one newspaper dubbed him “Wireman.” It was a catchy phrase, and he hoped they would use it again. He almost called the reporter who first used it and told him he appreciated his insight, but then decided that would be too much like bragging. They might misinterpret what he was doing and think he was doing it for media attention, and what could be farther from the truth? Besides, he had no desire to communicate with the authorities anyway. Let them guess. Let them organize task forces. Let them turn all their wonderful deductive and scientific powers of investigation in his direction. He had no urge to help them.

He drove toward Galveston, continuing to think his erratic but pleasant thoughts. Before he was far outside the city limits of Houston, he changed his mind, exited Highway 45, made a U-turn, and headed for southeast Houston. He drove around Hobby Airport and parked once along Telephone Road to watch the jets take off and land. At nine-thirty he walked into the Ramada Inn restaurant across from the airport complex and had a cup of coffee. He stared at a barren tree, a real tree dug up from the soil and set into cement in a copper canister, looped in small white Christmas lights. The holiday season was long past. He could not make sense of the peculiar piece of decoration. The room was too festive for warm February, too bright and cozy for his mood.

He paid for his coffee and left. He drove through various subdivisions in southeast Houston looking for a house. It was no good trying to kill someone on the streets in broad daylight. As he cruised down one street of older homes, he spied an old woman in a badly ironed cotton dress emerge from her home and start toward the street. He parked beneath a pecan tree and watched the elderly woman in his rear-view mirror as she walked to the corner. He could just make out the bus-stop sign.

She was the one—his intended victim. If she was taking a bus, her home would be empty for hours. He could break in and wait for her. Simple. Easy. The elderly were not any problem. They had witnessed the face of death many times throughout the years.

He stroked his thighs, kneading the knotted muscles of his knees. He saw her board the city bus. He backed up the street and turned into the gravel driveway that wound behind her house. He was careful, so careful.

His eyes watched the neighboring houses for fluttering curtains in the windows. No dogs barked.

He jimmied the wood-frame backdoor with a knife blade. It creaked and gave easily. Inside he paused, adjusting to the dim light. The house smelled as old as the woman. Old house. Old woman. He crinkled his nose at it.

He spent an hour leisurely searching the rooms. There were hairy dust balls beneath her rusty metal bed, layers of dust on the ancient and scarred furniture. When the mailman came up the front steps to deliver the old woman’s mail, the intruder ducked behind a heavy chair and waited until he heard the envelopes fall into the slot. Not a dog barked. Curious, no dogs. That was a puzzle, no dogs. Yet it was all part and parcel of a master plan. Things were going his way.

Around noon he searched the refrigerator for something to eat, but could find nothing except an open can of sardines floating in congealed tomato sauce, one stiffened square of American cheese, and a few wilted green onions. There were no covered leftovers and the cabinets were nearly bare. What did she eat? Did she survive on water and air? She should be glad to die and get it over with. Why linger on in misery? She should be grateful she was the chosen. He would wait until afterward to eat.

He amused himself by looking through drawers. He read old shriveled letters dated thirty years earlier. He found a shoebox of yellowed receipts. He found stacks of magazines with tattered edges. Ladies Home Journal, Reader’s Digest, and Saturday Evening Post were piled on each other. He put everything back carefully where it belonged. The thin rubber gloves he wore insured anonymity. They were smart, but he was smarter. It was somewhat frightening to learn they knew he used a wire. But they would know nothing more. Not if he could help it.

Toward evening he began pacing. The house was becoming oppressive with its poverty and dust and smell of age. What if the old lady had gone off to spend the night elsewhere? He would give her until twilight, no longer. With the setting of the sun he would leave her house and she would be spared. On the streets, in the dark, he would eventually find another old woman.

He paced like a panther in a cage.

Jennie Sargosie celebrated her seventy-seventh birthday with a slice of hot apple pie and a cup of coffee at Woolworth’s. It was an event to travel to downtown Houston. It entailed walking four blocks from her white clapboard home to the suburban bus stop. It also meant switching to a cross town bus after braving the freeway and finally being pushed and shoved on the sidewalk in front of Woolworth’s.

Jennie did not like riding the bus with all the smart-mouthed little brats and the hostile foreign women. Mostly Mexican women, the ones who shouldn’t even be here.

When she had to share a seat with one of them, she shrank closer to the window, turning her head away in anger. She wrinkled her nose at the smell of perspiration, lifted her pale blue eyes at the cheap, bright clothes. Houston was not becoming an international city the way they claimed it was on TV. Long ago Jennie had decided Houston was turning into a cesspool. One day it would die from the diseased humanity that clogged its streets.

Jennie had papers and photographs proving her ancestors had come to Houston in wagons all the way from West Virginia. That this same family had emigrated from a tiny, poverty-ridden village in Ireland did not change her attitude toward “foreigners.” Houston belonged to her and her kind, and it was being given away to people who could hardly speak English. And it was a crime.

All of her family was dead—all but herself and one badly bred grandson who had hitch-hiked to California during the hippie era. She had not heard from the boy again and she did not care to. His mother had been her own flesh and blood, but the child’s father was Mexican-American so the boy was lost from the start.

Jennie viewed the changing world as an increasingly alien place. Her small house was paid for, but she had to live frugally on a Social Security check. Sometimes in the dark of night when she was loneliest and most susceptible to self-pity, she wished she might come down with pneumonia or a heart attack and let it all end. It was terrible to be seventy-seven, arthritic, frail, unloved, and bored.

At the counter in Woolworth’s Jennie marveled over the flavor of the apple pie. She lifted a forkful to her mouth and chewed it slowly. Her gums hurt where her ill-fitting dentures rubbed, but the pie was worth the pain. The coffee too was a prize. It always tasted better downtown at Woolworth’s. She sipped it with relish.

Jennie fingered the black cloth bag beside her saucer. She had six dollars and forty-two cents she could splurge without throwing her monthly budget totally off. After the delightful pie and coffee she thought she would look around for something to get as a birthday present to herself.

It did not strike Jennie as pathetic to have to buy her own presents. She had long since forgotten how once she had been surrounded by a husband and family, forgotten how she once had money for luxuries. Every birthday for the past ten years she had put aside money for the bills she owed, money for food, and took whatever was left over for the trip downtown. Each year the birthday allowance dwindled because of rising expenses, but even if it were only a dollar, it would suffice.

A woman dressed in a tailored, white linen suit sat next to Jennie. Occasionally the woman glanced over and frowned to show her disgust for the old woman. Jennie noticed. She deliberately held the fork in front of her before theatrically licking the last crumbs from the tines. She slanted her eyes at the lady, wondering if she were Mexican because she sure was dark.

“I ain’t bothering you,” Jennie said loudly. “Go on and move if you don’t like it.”

The woman blanched and moved down two stools.

The waitress had heard Jennie’s remark. She brought the coffeepot to the counter. “More?” she asked. Her eyes traveled over the old woman’s plain dark cotton dress and raveled white sweater.

“Had my fill, thank you very much. I’ll be paying my check now. Don’t think I’m welcome around here no ways.”

Jennie paid the outrageous sum of a dollar-ten for the pie and coffee and walked off into the store grumbling.

Woolworth’s was nearly deserted. Salespeople stood around looking bored or walked the aisles fingering the merchandise. Jennie took her time wandering from one department to another. The number of things money might buy in just this one department store was an amazing show of shoddy merchandise, she thought. Most of it made by foreigners. “No one cares about quality these days,” she mumbled.

She approached a shelf of knickknacks and picked up a tiny figurine. She turned it upside down to read where it had been made. “Figures!” she said loudly when she saw Taiwan stamped on the bottom.

The figurine was nice. It was of a girl in a long blue dress. In the girl’s hand was a rainbow-striped umbrella, as delicate as a butterfly’s wings. It would look pretty on a windowsill. The girl in blue could watch over the weather and predict the warm spring rains that were sure to follow Houston’s cold winter.

From the corner of her eye Jennie saw a saleslady approaching and put the blue girl down. She had not yet decided to spend four dollars and ninety-five cents on a piece of Oriental junk. She sidled away quickly.

It was great fun pretending she might buy anything her heart desired. She stood over the embroidery section a long time contemplating the pretty work that could be done on pillowcases, scarves, and aprons.

But her hands were too stiff with arthritis to hold a needle for any length of time.

In the pet department she watched tropical fish cavort through plaster castles and treasure chests that opened with a hundred bubbles every few seconds. She was so enthralled she missed the approach of a small black girl who wore a name pin in a prominent position on her blouse.

“Want some fish, ma’am?”

Jennie jumped. Her eyes filled with contempt as they settled on the black salesgirl.

“No, I don’t ’spect I’l1 be needing no fish. Think I’m out to steal ’em, do you?”

The girl did not blink. She looked Jennie up and down evenly.

“Why you staring like that, girl? You got nothing better to do?” Jennie was more than a little flustered. “Get outta my way. Tend to your old fish.”

The girl refused to move, so Jennie did her best to swish the full cotton skirt as she went around her. It was ten minutes before she could calm down enough to consider birthday presents again. She glanced at her feet, which were sending sharp jabs of pain up her legs. The tan patent leather of her shoes was cracked where the tops of her feet always swelled, and the cracks were pinching the flesh badly. It was a long trip back home, and by the time she got to the rocker and hassock in her living room she would hardly be able to walk.

Although she had not seen everything in the store, it was necessary to make her choice. She bought the figurine. The rest of her anger melted away as she looked at the rainbow colors of the umbrella.

“Wrap it for me,” she commanded the woman who took her money.

As the figurine was being covered with white tissue paper she decided the present deserved a box too. For four ninety-five a person should at least get a box. “Put it in a box,” she ordered.

“It don’t come with a box.” The sales lady’s voice was close to a snarl. She put the blue girl in the bottom of a thin paper bag.

“I don’t care if it comes in a doggie bag, I want a box for it,” Jennie said firmly.

She got her way. She usually did. She knew she was often crotchety and rude, but she did not care. What had the people in this city ever done to deserve courtesy? Had good manners made life more comfortable for her? They had not.

Only the ornery got what they asked for these days. The nastier and more demanding you were the more respect you received.

The bus ride home was as bad as Jennie had thought it would be. The downtown bus was packed with city workers returning home. At first she could not find a seat and thought she would be forced to stand. There were not any gentlemen around anymore to give a lady a seat. The bus lurched two blocks before Jennie, in a state of near panic, spied an empty place in the back. It was between two Hispanic women with parcels heaped in their laps.

“Can I sit down here?” Jennie asked. She intended to sit anyway, but the lady by the window had an imposing look about her. “I gotta sit down,” Jennie added, pressing past the aisle woman’s knees.

Finally squeezed into place between them, she hawked her elbows close to her sides to keep contact with them minimal. Tacos, hot sauce, refried beans. Sweat, greasy hair, unwashed clothes. Jennie gagged at the revulsion that crept up her throat.

When Jennie finally unlocked her front door, she was beyond exhaustion. Before unwrapping the birthday present, she went to the big rocker in the corner and put her stockinged feet on the blue vinyl hassock.

Closing her eyes, she relived the day and found it partially rewarding. The pie and coffee were good. The umbrella girl was a stroke of good luck. But the rides back and forth!

She woke with a start and realized she must have fallen asleep. She still had the box in her hands. Glancing at her feet she saw the brief rest had helped the swelling. As she began to unwrap the figurine something stopped her fingering through the tissue paper. A premonition. A chill that rolled down her spine.

She held still for several seconds, pondering the feelings. Sloughing it off as a bad case of birthday nerves, she finished pulling tissue from the umbrella girl. Getting slowly to her feet, Jennie took the figurine to the front window and set her on the sill looking out at the ending of the day.

Then the premonition returned. Someone was in the house! She knew it without turning around or searching the rooms. She knew it in her old aching bones. Fear took over, but she fought for control. She watched her hands begin to shake as if they no longer belonged to her, but she would not succumb to irrational fear. How dare someone come into her home! How dare they lurk in the shadows and deliberately frighten an old, defenseless woman!

She whirled and saw a split-second imagine of a man’s head as it pulled back around the door facing in the hall. A surge of indignation carried Jennie across the room. She had her hand on the doorjamb exactly where she had seen the face seconds before. Peering into the darkness beyond the hall, she could see nothing that might be a man. To reach the light switch she would have to step into the darkened room. She hesitated, then called out, “What do you want?”

The silence that followed made her falter. Why had she not run out the door rather than toward this fearful confrontation? Someone was hiding and what was it he might do to her? “Answer me! Answer me this minute! You come out of there. I don’t have nothing worth stealing.” Her voice was strong and steady, but that wasn’t how she felt.

She supported herself against the wall. Tension held her erect, but there was a fuzzy line creeping up her vision. She could feel the blood in her head thumping wildly. Quick bites of pain slicing through her chest.

She thought she would rather die than endure this horrible, waiting, creeping silence.

“You have something worth stealing. You have your life,” a voice said from the darkness.

He came to the door, the game at an end; the serious time of killing had arrived. He found her on the floor in a faint. He checked the pulse in her bony wrist. At least he had not been cheated.

He lifted her light body and carried her outside. He had to get out of the house, have her on his own, in his own way, not surrounded by the putrid smell of rotten oranges and dust. He put her in the car and left the neighborhood. They were on a little used highway in an industrial area bordering southeast Houston before she awoke whimpering.

“Shut up, old woman,” he snapped.

She sat up in the back, looking around her in confusion. Gray hair spread untidily around her gaunt face and a tic began in her left eye. He could hear her breathing hard, and her fear thrilled him.

“You let me out of here,” she said, but it was a whimper, not a strong command. “What do you want with me? Where are you taking me?”

He smiled at her, and she was stayed quiet.

Ahead was a barren spot. He pulled onto the shoulder of road where a beaten grass path led to a wide drainage ditch.

“Where are we going?” Jennie cried as he hauled her out onto gravel. She spoke into his face, his strange, expressionless face. “I don’t believe this.” She searched through her mind for a code, a bit of advice, some reasonable argument that might stop the man from harming her. She giggled and sobbed at the same time.

He had her hidden behind tall grass. He let go of her arm and fiddled with his shirtfront.

Jennie backed away from him on her hands and knees, scurrying backward like a startled crayfish. There was a clay-like mud in the ditch that stuck to her hands. Horrified at the filth she was in, she looked up at the monster in the last light from the setting sun. There was something swinging back and forth, back and forth from his right hand. It hypnotized her and she stopped, staring.

He was speaking to her. She strained to hear. “This is merciful and clean,” he whispered. “Tell them I sent you home.”

She struggled for breath. None of his words made any sense to her, no sense whatsoever.

The killer stepped behind her and wrapped the wire around her shivering throat. She fought very little, surprisingly little, but it might have only seemed that way to the killer, whose strength had met no real match. Bones cracked and blood flowed, leaped to meet the ground, flowed once more.

The killer stood quietly for several minutes. Sated. He imagined himself within the old woman’s blood as it seeped into the ground, dripped, streamed, seeped. Finally he walked three feet to his left and picked up her head by the spiky gray hair. Then carefully, fondly, he positioned the head on her flat chest. She had fallen back gracefully and looked as peaceful as any corpse in a silken casket.

He hiked a shoulder, squatted beside the body, and peered at her eyes. “I don’t want you on my land,” he told her quietly. “I’ll leave you here for them to find. All of you. Only you.”

He chuckled and tapped two fingers lightly on her hair. His hands scooted down the length of her still body, straightening the cotton dress. The head suddenly unbalanced and rolled from her chest. He reached for it beside her arm and pressed it down into the sunken rib cage until it was lodged in place. He noticed one brown support hose sagged around her calf and pulled the stretchy material up tight. Finished. When they found her, no one could complain he had left her in a mess. She was as neat as death by garroting could leave her. Except for the odd placement of her spiky gray-haired head, she might only be asleep and dreaming of apple pie and strong good coffee.

Jennie Sargosie had been dead two weeks before her body was discovered. Two surveyors stumbled across her lying stiff and decaying in the drainage ditch. One of the surveyors turned his back and retched miserably before scrabbling up the slight hill to the highway. The other surveyor stooped and curiously poked at the severed head, which still miraculously sat on the chest cavity. He could tell it was an old woman because of the dress, but without it he would not have been sure. There had been too many warm days in February, and maggots and ants had eaten away part of her face to expose the right cheekbone. But none of the desecration was as terrible to contemplate as the open empty neck. The surveyor would not pursue his morbid instinct to look at it closely.

Yet during the hour and a half before the police arrived the curious surveyor satisfied his thirst for gory detail by looking over the rest of the corpse from every conceivable angle. He even got on his hands and knees and turned his head upside down to stare up into the shriveled hole of her nose to see if he could catch sight of the brain. He lifted her skirt with a stick to see what she wore underneath. Her slip stuck to her thigh, however, and he let the skirt drop back into place.

That night he told his wife everything he had done. He was surprised and hurt when she went to their bedroom and locked the door on him. He never mentioned the old woman again. But he dreamed of her often. She reminded him of his grandmother. It was a pity the murderer had cut off her head. The surveyor knew it was an act of depravity, but most of all it seemed to him such a damn pity.