Dis Mem Ber and Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense Page 4

  In the shiny black Cadillac Seville that Rowan Billiet drove.

  These were “day trips” to other regions of New York State like the Chautauqua Mountains or the Adirondacks—or “out-of-state” trips to Pennsylvania, Ohio, even Ontario (Canada).

  (Where was the sky-blue Chevy at this time? Left behind in the three-car garage at the Colonel’s house where police would discover it. Somehow the Chevy was dented by now, with rusted chrome and a worse-stained back seat. Bloodstains and clumps of hair on the floor of the trunk. And the chassis not so sky-blue as we remembered.)

  The men had been to Vegas several times. It was “Vegas” and not “Las Vegas” to them.

  The Colonel spoke proudly of himself as a professional poker player. Rowan Billiet favored blackjack and boasted that he’d been asked to leave several casinos because he had figured out the game.

  When the men went to Vegas they flew business class, and left the Cadillac behind.

  In Vegas, they would rent a vehicle. It was crucial, the Colonel said, to always have a vehicle at your disposal.

  After the discovery of Rowan Billiet’s remains car rentals in Vegas contracted by Cornel Steadman would be studied carefully. Mileage on the cars would be examined, and credit card receipts.

  There was an unsolved abduction of a ten-year-old boy from Carson City, Nevada, in February 1962. This was at a time when Rowan Billiet and Cornel Steadman had been in Vegas registered (in a suite) at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino; Cornel Steadman had rented a car for six days. The boy had disappeared from the back yard of his suburban home two miles from downtown Vegas and was never seen again. His abductor or abductors had not asked for ransom. Though searchers had made their way on foot through much of Ormsby County, Nevada, no trace of the body had ever been found.

  If I try to remember the last time I saw Rowan Billiet a cloud comes over my brain. I don’t want to think it was when Rowan shoved me out of his car and called me ugly mutt so I try to remember an earlier time when Rowan smiled at me and circled my wrist with his forefinger and thumb and praised me for being a fuckin smart little girl.

  My mother says she just can’t remember when she saw her (step)-cousin last. Shuts her eyes like she’s feeling dizzy, and presses the back of her hand against her forehead.

  Oh. Damn Rowan. Never one you could rely on.

  One day at school there came a message for me. I will never forget fourth-period geometry and a knock at the door and it was requested that I bring my books with me and go to the principal’s office. And everybody stared after me—including the teacher. My heart knocking so hard against my ribs, I could almost not move my legs. And downstairs my father was waiting with this look in his face like he’d been hit over the head with a mallet. And it was a terrible thing, that my father was not at work at the GM factory, so that I knew that someone had died and I was very frightened.

  Jill! C’mon.

  My father just grabbed my arm and pulled me. The principal was trying to talk to him, or had been talking to him, but as soon as my father saw me he grabbed me and walked me out of the building with him like he wasn’t even hearing the principal, had forgotten the principal entirely.

  It was like my father to be rude sometimes. But it was not like my father to be rude to another man, especially a man who was wearing a suit, a white shirt and a necktie and eyeglasses.

  In the car I was trembling badly. I could not speak. For I knew that my mother had died, and that it was my fault for I had wished that my mother would die. I was sick with this knowledge. I did not even ask my father how my mother had died, or where she was when she’d died. Or where he was taking me now.

  My father was saying to me in a low angry surprised-sounding voice that it was better to take me home now, before the news was all over town.

  All over town—I could see this. Shut my eyes and it was a flock of black-feathered birds flapping their wings all over town.

  But it was not my mother who had died. It was not my mother whose remains had been found in an abandoned quarry.

  And so it was a great relief to me not to be at school on the day that Rowan Billiet’s picture was on the front page of the Strykersville Journal. It was a bad shock but also a relief, I would not have to run away to hide in a girls’ restroom.

  Still it would be hard for me to face my close girl friends who knew that Rowan Billiet was a relative of mine, and someone special to me.

  It was revealed that Rowan Billiet had been “missing” for approximately eight weeks. (Had I known this? Had my mother known this? We had not seen Rowan in so long it was like this awful thing had happened to a stranger.) The body had been found by hikers in an abandoned limestone quarry at Iron Forge, in the Chautauqua Mountains. This was about seventy-five miles southwest of Strykersville.

  The body had been dismembered with something like a sharp ax or special knife. The parts had been scattered. Coyotes, foxes, possibly dogs and vultures had been scavenging at the site. It was my father who had to make the identification at the Beechum County Morgue for my mother could not have done this and other relatives (it seemed) were too old, or too feeble, or too upset, or too disgusted and just flatly refused. So ironically it was my father who’d had to identify the remains of Rowan Billiet, who would have to insist for the rest of his life that Rowan Billiet was no relative of his and only “remotely related” to my mother.

  My father was not a softhearted man but he returned to the house stricken, very quiet.

  People would ask my father why he’d been the one to identify Rowan Billiet’s remains when there’d been others who might have done it, or should have done it, and my father said with a pained look and a shrug of his shoulders, Jesus! I don’t know.

  I guess, it was the least I could do. Seeing that he’s Irene’s cousin or whatever the hell he was.

  My mother did not ask my father what he’d seen at the county morgue. My mother did not ask as others did Who would do such a terrible, sick thing for (gradually I came to realize) my mother was not so surprised.

  I have not mentioned that my mother had a pretty turquoise necklace that Rowan Billiet had given her a year or so before his death. Just aqua glass meant to be “turquoise” and fake-gold for (my mother said) Rowan had probably found the necklace in a tavern or on the ground somewhere, picked it up and put it in his pocket and the first person he happened to run into, in town, to whom he might give such a necklace, was my mother.

  My mother laughed saying it was typical of her cousin, to hand over such a “gift,” not even noticing that the necklace had long thin hairs caught in the glass beads, that must have belonged to the owner.

  (But what became of the turquoise necklace from Rowan Billiet? When police made inquiries my mother did not mention it. To me she’d said more than once that the necklace had been lost and it was true, I never saw it again.)

  Everyone who knew him said of my father that he was never the same person after the identification of Rowan Billiet at the county morgue. If a body has been dismembered you would “identify” only the head, the face. But if the head is not attached to a torso? To a neck? You’d see my father staring off into a corner of the room. He’d become a distracted person. He rarely laughed, and his old way of laughing and jeering had ended. In the midst of a conversation he’d go suddenly quiet. Set down whatever it was he’d been drinking, and you would know what he was thinking about, what he was remembering.

  Except you hadn’t seen it, and so you didn’t really know.

  Dis member.

  If you say this word aloud it will sound like re mem ber.

  Dismember was not a word we had been told.

  Dismember is a word that sticks in your head like a burr or a thorn in clothes.

  As soon as the police came for him the Colonel confessed. Led the police up the stairs to Rowan Billiet’s room and told them Everything is here. Not a thing has been hidden. I’ve been waiting for you, gentlemen.

  Together they had killed the two girls, t
he Colonel said. He and his chauffeur Rowan Billiet.

  The Colonel knew of details that had been known only to the police, that had not been printed in any newspapers. And he claimed there’d been other girls and “a boy or two” they had abducted, killed, dismembered, and buried in other states including Nevada.

  Why’d they do such terrible things, the Colonel was asked; and the Colonel replied it hadn’t been his idea but Rowan Billiet’s.

  See, the Colonel said, Rowan liked the thrill of cutting up a body—disarticulating. To hear the Colonel speak of it he’d been totally in the power of the younger man.

  He’d had to kill Rowan Billiet, the Colonel claimed, to keep Rowan Billiet from killing more children.

  It was the only way, the Colonel insisted. Also, he’d had to kill Rowan Billiet to keep Rowan Billiet from killing him.

  This caused a sensation in Beechum County!—in all of western New York State. The Colonel’s “confession” was in all the papers and on TV.

  Rowan’s relatives protested—there was no way for Rowan to defend himself!

  My mother was devastated by Rowan’s murder. My mother did not believe a word of the Colonel’s confession except that he’d killed Rowan in cold blood. She did not believe that her (step)-cousin Rowan had ever killed anyone, she knew Rowan and he was not like that.

  It was this sick, terrible man who’d murdered and dismembered children and was lying now to incriminate poor Rowan who was one of his victims, who could not defend himself.

  Cornel Steadman pleaded guilty to several counts of first-degree homicide and was sentenced to death in the electric chair. But he was never executed, only just died in prison in Attica of heart failure at the age of sixty-two.

  It is true, when a dead man is accused of terrible crimes, he cannot defend himself.

  Among the snapshots in Rowan Billiet’s room were a number of snapshots of a young girl identified as Jill Cotter. Some of them had been taken at the creek that day, and some other days (that I had forgotten).

  And so, I was one of those persons “interviewed” by authorities.

  Most of what I said is I don’t remember.

  I wish that I could help you but I don’t remember.

  Or I would say I don’t know! Leave me alone.

  After approximately a week the questions ceased. During this period of time my clothes grew loose on my body, my mother was appalled when I lost eight pounds. Neither she nor my father asked me questions about Rowan Billiet. Girls at school were the ones to ask me but I shook my head rudely, I had nothing to say to them.

  Silence has gathered around me like a thick, viscous water filling in a muddy footprint.

  Early evening, swollen sky like an eye that is shut, that has been blinded. On the slanted roof, just slightly sagging, of my grandfather’s old barn, where the heat of the tin beats against my bare legs, thighs.

  This is a forbidden place. If an adult sees me I will be scolded harshly—Jill, get down! You know better.

  It is true, I know better. I am not a young child any longer.

  I am long-limbed, lanky. I am a senior at Strykersville High School. I have many friends but in truth, of course I have no friends. I am known as a “witty”—”articulate”—”secretive” person. I am an honors student—of course. Sometimes I write about Rowan Billiet on sheets of lined notebook paper, then I crumple the pages without reading them and throw them away.

  Rowan Billiet would be surprised to see me now, maybe he would not recognize me.

  I think that I am better-looking now. I am not so ugly, I think.

  To look at, I am not so ugly.

  The roof of my grandfather’s barn, the side that faces farmland, and not the house, is a special place for me.

  Refuge is a word for it. One of those adult words that contain more meanings than you can say simply.

  I am the only girl my age who continues to climb on this roof that is obviously an unsafe roof. The tin sheets are rusty, and sagging. Inside the barn, when it is raining there is a staccato pelt of raindrops like bullets.

  By eighth grade we’d mostly lost interest in my uncle’s junked vehicles as well.

  You forget. You lose interest. Other things to do.

  Things you did as a child, even forbidden things you disdain when you are a few years older.

  He’s driving his Chevy along Iron Road. Bright sky-blue with chrome fixtures that gleam like winking eyes. In a few miles he will turn onto the Cattaraugus Creek Road which is our road and in a few minutes shading my eyes I will see the blue car moving swiftly in my direction.

  Jill-y! When’s your birthday?

  What would you like for your birthday, Jill-y?

  Could be, I will have a surprise for you.

  THE CRAWL SPACE

  Please. You make us uncomfortable.

  You are always watching us. Like a ghost haunting us …

  Though her husband had died seven years before the widow still drove past the house in which they’d lived for more than two decades.

  Why?—no reason.

  (To lacerate a scar, that it might become a raw-throbbing wound again? To lacerate her conscience? Why?)

  She was in a new life now. She was no longer in the old life.

  He could not know. He had died, his ashes were buried in a proper cemetery. All that was gone. In her new, safe life, in which she lived alone.

  Yet: sometimes she drove past the old house deliberately, and sometimes she found herself driving past without (quite) realizing where she was. Then, it was something of a shock to see—where she was….

  Often when she was driving she would instruct herself Maybe no. Not today. And yet when she approached a crucial turn she found herself unable to drive onward as if doing so would be a betrayal of her husband whom she had loved very much.

  As he had loved her. Very much.

  Similarly, she felt the same way while driving through the small town in which her husband’s ashes were buried—in a cemetery behind an old redbrick Presbyterian church, that dated to the mid-nineteenth century.

  She could not not stop at the cemetery. Could not.

  Just us two. No one else.

  Very much.

  Of course, she understood how mistaken this was. No force was compelling her to drive past her former house, or to stop in the little town, that was losing population and becoming derelict since an interstate highway bypass opened close by.

  Its sad Main Street, with vacant stores. For Sale signs. The small cemetery in need of mowing, at this time of year festooned with dandelions gone to seed.

  The widow parks at the cemetery, she visits the husband’s grave. It is only my own mind. It is not another’s mind, that is making me do these things.

  Still, she clears away leaves and other debris from the grave. Sets upright the ceramic pot containing the (artificial) wisteria with its sinewy vines and lavender blossoms she’d brought to the grave, that has been surprisingly durable through winter months. Almost, you would think the blossoms were real….

  A small enough gesture from you, my beloved wife. But thank you.

  She did not like it: they were watching her.

  She was certain. The new owners of the house. For she so often drove past the house.

  At more rational times she thought no, of course not. The new owners—(whom she’d met: they were nice-seeming people)—would have to be standing at the front windows of the house and looking out at just the time she drove past. They would have to recognize her car.

  Yet, approaching the house she begins to feel her heartbeat quickening. A visceral alertness of the kind you might feel approaching the edge of a great height. Vertigo, it is called. A sensation of dread, and yet yearning. You dare not approach—yet, you are drawn to approach. Almost, you feel an opened hand on the small of your back, gently pushing.

  Come here! Come forward.

  Yes! You know exactly what to do.

  The new owners had assured her, out of sympathy for her w
idowhood (she’d supposed), that, any time she wished, she could come back to visit the house. They’d been very friendly, very kind-seeming, but she’d never wanted to return to the house, in any way that involved them. Though she knew better she could not help but think of them as intruders whom she resented, and whom she knew her husband, who could be unreasonable, would most bitterly resent.

  So many years she’d driven this route: returning to the house on Linden Road which was five miles from the small suburban college at which she taught English; turning her car into the asphalt driveway; feeling anticipation as she approached the house, unless it was apprehension—for she never (quite) knew what her husband’s mood would be.

  Nearly always, the husband was home. For the husband did consulting work in applied mathematics, working from an office at home.

  Not wanting to think Like clockwork for, living our lives, as our bodies live for us, we are not at all clockwork; we do not feel ourselves to be clockwork; each second is new to us, quicksilver and unexpected, undefined.

  Unexpected: that day she’d returned home, not from the college but from the medical clinic. With the news that had shaken them both.

  Him more than her. For he’d been the one who’d most adamantly not wanted a child.

  In his family, mental derangement. (As he called it.) Not mental illness, insanity or psychosis—nothing that could be clinically diagnosed, or treated. Just—derangement.

  She, the wife, a young wife at the time, had not wanted to inquire too closely. She saw the pain in her husband’s handsome thin-cheeked face. She saw that he was distressed, and anxious.

  He’d carried himself with a sort of sinewy muscularity, a physical obstinacy that didn’t express his scrupulosity, his fastidiousness. He’d been a perfectionist, and had driven himself very hard in graduate school; from rueful remarks he’d made, she understood that he had come close to a nervous breakdown, or perhaps had actually had a nervous breakdown before he’d met her, and he did not want to risk anything like this again.

  What is manliness, masculinity?—she felt sympathy for her husband, for whom imperfection was a kind of shame. She did not like to pry into his personal life, which he called “private.”