By Reason of Insanity (2 page)

She lay there quietly in the dark, holding back tears. She felt used up, drained of all energy. What was the sense of fighting? Men always got what they wanted, the bastards. They made promises or gave a few dollars or took by force, it all came to the same thing. They got their fun and then they were gone. If she had her way she would kill every last one of them, the miserable bastards. Miserable bastards, she shrieked to herself. She opened her mouth to shout it, but nothing came out. Suppose he was still around? What did she know of him? He carried a gun and a funny kind of light. He had dark hair and bushy eyebrows. And a big nose. What else? The rest of him was small, she thought with grim satisfaction.

A thump startled her. She quickly threw on her dress, shoving her brassiere and panties and slip under the cushion. She leaned over the front seat and fixed her face in the mirror. Tired or not, scared or mad, she knew what she had to do. Just in case.

Fumbling with the key, she finally got the trunk open. He was wild with anger, running around, wanting to go after the man with a tire iron. But there was no one in sight. Embarrassed, mortified at the blow to his pride, his manhood, he cursed his enemy incessantly as he was slowly led back to the car. In his rage he didn’t notice that she had pulled him into the back seat.

Now she snuggled tightly against him, cooing softly, murmuring words of encouragement. She stroked his cheek, his chest, calming his anger little by little. After a while she placed his hand on her ample breast. Her face was ecstatic, her eyes wide and limp with innocence. In her heart she was cursing him as just another bastard man, so wrapped up in his own feelings that he gave no thought to what she had just been through. Not a word of pity, not a gesture of sorrow, not even a look of interest to see if she had been hurt. Nothing but his own stupid pride, his own hurt feelings. You son of a bitch, she almost screamed at him.

Her face showed nothing as she slid farther down the seat, pulling him on top of her. Her sexual whisperings became frenzied, her breathing heavier. She felt his hand beneath her dress as she wiggled it higher until it was above her hips. Her open mouth found his tongue and held it, working it between her teeth. Now his breathing became charged, his movements more frantic. He suddenly leaned to one side and began fumbling with his pants. As she heard the zipper she silently vowed to give an Academy Award performance right here, this night, on this deserted strip of road. She would, by God or the devil himself, give this bastard man the greatest sex he ever had, the greatest sex any man ever had. She would do it because she had to. She needed him.

Two months later they were married in Las Vegas. The chapel cost twenty dollars, the other eighty they lost at the crap table. With return tickets in hand, they boarded the last bus back to Los Angeles. Sara didn’t tell her new husband that she was pregnant.

True to her vow, Sara had given him all the sex he wanted and any way he wanted it. Shutting off her mind, she performed her act so well that he soon came to believe he couldn’t live without her, or at least shouldn’t. He hadn’t realized women could be so passionate— some women, anyway—so willing to satisfy his every fantasy, yet never demanding anything of him. It was like having a wind-up toy, life-sized and eager to please. He decided that he would play along with it for a while.

After the marriage Sara kept on with her act, though with somewhat diminished fervor, as befits a married woman. She had little use for sex herself since no man had ever brought her to satisfaction. But the emotional security of just being with someone was worth the effort, she believed. And the money helped too. His pay at the gas station was more than she could ever make in the bakery. With two paychecks they even had a bit to spare. Between the sex and the promised good times, she thought she could hold him. And so one day she decided that she would keep the baby when it came.

A month later she told her husband that he would be a father. She was lying for in her heart Sara somehow knew, as only a woman could know, that the real father was a rapist with dark hair and a big nose and a funny light. But he wasn’t here and this man was, so of course he was the father. Poetic justice, Sara told herself. Here’s at least one time to get back at the bastards.

Her husband was impressed. Dumb as only a twentythree-year-old can be dumb, he felt that fatherhood made him even more of a man. And when Sara promised him that a baby wouldn’t interfere in any way with the sex he was getting, he dropped his pants right there on the kitchen floor and had her make love to him where he stood. Afterward he went out for a few beers.

On January 24, 1948, Sara Bishop, now Sara Owens, read in the Los Angeles papers of the capture of a robber-rapist who preyed on couples in lovers’ lanes. She looked at the picture. It was him! She looked again, more closely. Now she wasn’t so sure. He was only a man she had once been under for a few minutes, and the father of her child. She read the name of the rapist: Chessman. Caryl Chessman.

When her husband came home she showed him the paper. The man had taken thirty dollars from him, a supreme insult. “I hope they kill the son of a bitch” was all he said. He hadn’t seen the face clearly that night. But she had. “I’m not positive,” she told him, and he threw the paper down in disgust.

For days Sara thought about going to the authorities. But what good would it do? They hadn’t reported it at the time because neither wanted to get involved with the police. And of course she had told her future husband that the man was impotent, that he had just played with her a little that night and had then left. She wasn’t sure she was believed but she didn’t really care, that was her story. Now with the baby coming, it might not be a good idea to bring all that up again. In the end she decided to do nothing about the night. But she followed the case in the papers, and when they started calling Chessman the Red Light Bandit because he had flashed a red light on the occupants of cars, she was almost certain he was her man.

On April 30, 1948, a son was born to Sara Owens. Named Thomas William, his eyes were brown and his hair dark, whereas both Sara and her husband had light-brown hair. At a glance he looked nothing like his father, but a nurse kindly pointed out that physical characteristics often skipped a generation. The father nodded gravely.

On May 18, 1948, Caryl Chessman was convicted on seventeen of eighteen counts of armed robbery, kidnapping and rape. He was subsequently sentenced to death and given a July date of execution. In handcuffs and under heavy guard, he was taken to San Quentin. His appeal delayed the execution, and by summer’s end the Chessman case—except for further appeals and various legal actions over the next twelve years—was out of the headlines and the public mind for the moment.

In the Owens household the addition to the family brought about subtle but increasingly disruptive changes over the next several years. Sara lost some of her energy, which had never been vast anyway. The birth had drained her physically and emotionally. She vowed never to have another baby, no matter what. She would die first. Then, too, her great disappointment at not having had a girl could not be contained forever. Unconsciously at first, without willful deliberation, she began to resent the boy. Toward her husband as well she became increasingly remote. After losing the job at the garage he had run through a string of odd jobs that never seemed to bring in enough money. She herself could not work because of the boy, nor did she feel up to it any longer. With growing alarm she sensed her husband changing, not realizing that she was changing as well. She came to feel that he was careless toward her, that he was no longer accepting his responsibilities. She resented the spiraling amount of time he spent away from home with his friends, whom she saw as drifters and bums. She worried that he might be with other women. In short, Sara gradually began to feel cheated out of whatever it was she should have had, and as always she saw it as a plot directed against her by men.

Harry, for his part, also felt cheated. His wife no longer was the sex toy he had married. She wasn’t exciting anymore, she didn’t make him feel alive. Now she just nagged him and was sloppy around the house and screamed at the kid all the time. And he resented her wanting him to work night and day, especially when she did no work. He was good with cars and he liked money, sure, but he couldn’t see spending his life just working to take care of her and the brat. He never should have tried to settle down, it just wasn’t in him. He felt trapped, and somehow he knew it was all her fault. What he would do is figure out a way to get enough money to leave.

By the third year of their marriage Sara and Harry were openly dissatisfied with each other. Yet they remained together in their three-room apartment, each afraid to let go of the old, fearful of the new. She still gave him what sex he wanted, or at least some of the time. He still gave her what money he had, or at least part of it. Sara had taken to drinking wine in the house. Harry, strictly a beer man, didn’t think women should drink, at least not married women, and certainly not his wife. The first time Sara got drunk, at least the first time Harry came home to find her drunk, he hit her. After that the beatings became more frequent.

On June 24, 1951, Caryl Chessman again made the Los Angeles papers in one of his many legal actions. Sara, glass in hand, read the account avidly. Over the years Chessman had assumed celebrity status for her because of his notoriety. Everyone seemed to know of him; why, she had even seen magazines with stories about him. For her, Chessman was no longer just a rapist; he was a name and a face, someone familiar. Of course he was still a man and therefore to be hated and despised. But at least he wasn’t around to torture her every day of her life, as others were doing.

By the time Harry got home Sara had had a number of drinks. When the shouting started she turned on him and loudly informed him that he was not the boy’s father. He laughed, and Sara, stung by his derision, blurted out that she had lied to him. “It was Chessman in the car that night, Caryl Chessman, you stupid son of a bitch. And he wasn’t impotent. He’s more of a man than you’ll ever be.” Now it was Sara’s turn to laugh. “You think you’re so good. By the time I let you touch me his seed was all the way inside me, keeping me warm. What do you think of that, Mister Big Shot?”

She didn’t notice Harry’s eyes getting smaller. “You don’t believe me, do you?” She stormed into the next room, coming back a moment later dragging the boy by the arm. He had been sleeping and his eyes were half shut. “Look at his hair,” she shouted at her husband, “it’s dark. Yours is light brown and so is mine. Look at his mouth, his whole face. Nothing like yours. Not even the skin’s the same.” She grabbed up the paper from the table. “You want to know whose kid he is? You really want to know?” She tossed it at her husband. “There’s his picture, right on that page. Look at it, you poor dope. Look at it,” she screamed at him.

Harry, deathly still, took the paper and examined the picture. He looked at the boy, who was sniffling now with fright. He looked at the picture again for a long time, then again at the boy. Without a word he gently put the paper back on the table and quietly walked over to his wife and hit her full in the eye. She staggered back and he hit her again with all his strength on the side of the cheek. She fell and lay there. The boy, terrified, stood rooted to the spot. Harry walked up to him and with doubled fist slammed him in the face, knocking him unconscious.

After three days Harry returned home, unshaven, smelling of liquor and perfume. He didn’t mention the incident. Neither did Sara, nursing a black eye and puffed cheek. Nobody mentioned the boy, who was still sick in bed from the beating.

Sara knew that her husband would soon be gone for good. But she just didn’t care anymore. She wondered only why he had bothered to return at all.

That night Sara dreamed about Caryl Chessman. He was chasing her and she couldn’t seem to get away. He was all around her. There were other people in the dream too, crowds of men. But the next morning she could not remember exactly what they were doing. That afternoon she picked up a man in a bar and had illicit sex for the first time since her marriage. It was unsatisfying and she came home tired and defeated. She lay down on her bed and cried bitterly and asked God to grant her wish that all men be horribly killed that very second, all men everywhere, right down to infant males.

Six weeks later her boy was admitted to a hospital with seconddegree burns covering his left arm and side. An accident, Sara told the doctor. She had been boiling water for coffee and he crashed into the stove while playing. When it was pointed out that such extensive burns would require a large amount of water, she replied that she always made enough coffee in the morning for a small army. “Saves time later on,” she murmured sweetly.

In the afternoon the hospital administrator and resident physician met with the intern who had admitted the burned boy.

“Where is he?”

“I put him here in 412.”

“How bad is it?”

“Hyperemic and vesicant damage from the neck to the waist. Same for the left arm almost to the wrist. Some plasma leakage already. Could be worse, I guess.”

“You’re an optimist, Doctor.”

“I have to be in cases like this or I’d go nuts.”

“We all would.”

“Is the mother in the hospital?”

“Home. Or somewhere. I think she got scared.”

“The son of a bitch.”

“Daughter.”

“What’s that?”

“Daughter of a bitch. She’s a woman, isn’t she?”

“She’s still a son of a bitch.”

A nurse came into the room.

“Joanne, make sure someone stays with him tonight. Just in case.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“Christ, he’s tiny.”

“How old is he?”

“Three.”

“Oh my God,” said the administrator.

“There are two others worse than this in the burn section downtown.”

“The Ames girl?”

The resident physician nodded. “Of course she’s older.”

“Yeah, she’s five.”

“What’ll happen to him when he gets out of here?”