By Reason of Insanity (26 page)

Even as her shudders shook the sky Margot Rule knew that she would remember these moments beyond all others for the rest of her life. No matter what else ever happened to her, this would be the supreme thrill of her existence.

After a long while she took David’s penis between her lips and lovingly brought him to climax, and as his love gushed into her waiting body Bishop’s hands clasped round her throat and choked her to death.

Suddenly, swiftly, without sign or signal, she who had been life, given life, held life, was now lifeless. For her, forevermore, in the spirit sphere beyond the stars, the sun would rise in the west and set in the east, and she with it.

Bishop worked quickly. He removed a watch and two rings from the body. He put the lean-to back in the car, the clothes on the front seat, to be dumped somewhere on the way home. Her lunch basket and pocketbook, stripped of all identification, would also be disposed of along the way.

From the trunk he scooped out a shovel and a five-gallon can of gasoline which he had filled that morning. He poured gasoline over the body and struck the match. Flames shot up, and he watched the fire slowly blacken the body into burning ash. Several times he poured more gasoline onto the reddish flames.

When little was left but bone and sickening slime, he dragged the remains of the blanket some fifty yards to soft sand. Here he dug a grave, small but deep, into which he shoveled the human debris. Afterward he smoothed out the sand back to the picnic spot, where he brushed away any sand and dirt on his body and hurriedly dressed.

In the car again, shovel and can once more in the trunk, he drove to the road, then walked back to the area with a branch trailing on the ground, wiping away the tire tracks.

On the return to Las Vegas he made numerous stops by the side of the road, flinging things he no longer wanted, including the shovel and empty gas can, into the desert. He also brushed out the car, removing all traces of human occupancy.

He kept the money case close to him.

In his hotel room he counted out the 240 hundred-dollar bills. He folded ten in his pocket and returned the rest to the black zippered bag, which he hid in the toilet tank after flushing the water and plugging the spout, still another trick learned from TV. He then burned the paper contents of the pocketbook in the bathroom sink. Other items such as keys and comb and mirror and makeup kit had already been discarded separately, as had the watch and rings. He kept only a picture of the woman. She was wearing a severe dress that made her look quite matronly.

That night he exchanged the big bills in his pocket for tens and twenties at a casino on the Strip, then walked out. He felt a sudden contempt for the people around him. He didn’t gamble or drink or smoke. He was a moral young man in all things.

Home again, he put most of the bills with the others and placed his few possessions in the flight bag. He was ready to leave Las Vegas. He was glad.

The next morning he returned the car to the rental office, paying his bill with some of the tens and twenties. He didn’t pay by credit card because he wanted no record of charges going back to California. Also he needed the card to remain valid in case of emergency. Again he wore the dark sunglasses and false beard he had bought in Los Angeles. Wearing them, it was impossible to get an accurate description of his face. He could as easily be Vincent Mungo as Thomas Bishop or Daniel Long or almost anyone else.

With the flight bag slung over his shoulder, the zippered money case tightly gripped in his right hand, Bishop boarded the noon bus bound for Phoenix. He was leaving Las Vegas on his wedding day. And leaving behind his intended bride.

She too would be missing.

Seven

DEREK LAVERY just sat there scowling. No one was in his huge penthouse office on the sixth floor of the
Newstime
building in Los Angeles. Not yet anyway. The carpeted living and dining space, the large work area at the room’s other end, the enormous middle ground where Lavery sat behind his mammoth oak desk: all were empty. But Lavery pushed the scowl wider by the minute. He didn’t like it, not a bit of it. Whenever those sons of bitches called from New York there was trouble and this time was no exception. Not that he minded trouble; on the contrary, he sought it, lived with it, needed it. Without it, he often felt he would just shrivel up and disappear in a puff of smoke. But this was different. This kind of trouble he didn’t need. And he didn’t at all appreciate the fact that those bastards in the East had ultimate veto power just because they had financial control of the magazine. He had built up the West Coast edition almost from scratch, built it to a peak of performance. And prosperity too. Those bastards knew that! Knew they were dealing with the best man in the organization. Since all they could read intelligently was a balance sheet, they mostly left him alone to work his money miracles.

Lavery lit the second cigar of the morning. He glanced at his watch, August 15, 8:50 A.M. He pressed a button on the telephone console but no one answered. Naturally, she wasn’t in yet. In his mind’s eye he pictured his secretary’s long slim legs, her heavy breasts as she leaned over the desk. They were always firmly encased in a bra, reminded him of the old line the salesman gave the slight young thing shopping in the bra department: Let’s not make a mountain out of a molehill, dear. Christ, she was goddam Mount Everest! He was sure she wore nothing at night, just flopped around her apartment getting all the phallic symbols hot. He thought again of the breasts, must be at least ten-pounders. They reminded him of his daughter, she had big ones too. And long slim legs. But she almost never wore a bra. Half the time they were falling out of her shirts and blouses. When she took a dip in the pool all she wore was a strip covering the nipples, he could see almost everything. Twenty years old with a body like that. Jesus! She would ruin a dozen good men before she was through.

A few minutes later the buzzer sounded. He pressed the button. “Coffee,” he snapped. The hell with her. Who did she think she was? He could get a hundred like her. He wondered if she was any good in bed.

Soon she brought in his coffee, a pewter cup on a silver tray. Leaning over the desk, she placed the tray in front of him. Lavery interested her. She would have liked to look at his penis; one of the girls in promotion had sworn it was the biggest she had ever seen. That interested her too. She would hold it rigid with both hands, her long thin fingers wrapped tightly around it, slowly pulling the skin back. She liked to do that to her men. Little by little she moved her hands faster until she was masturbating them. She knelt between their legs on the bed and watched their faces until they came. That excited her more than anything, to watch their faces. They looked like animals for those few moments, total crazed-out lovely animals that belonged in zoos, or in trees a million years ago. There was a sense of danger and excitement about them at those times, something she found primitive and wild and very masculine. That turned her on more than anything else, when she was on top of a wild animal grunting and groaning underneath her. It drove her crazy with desire, and when they finally came she would watch it shoot out of them, and she would usually come herself as she put her head down and wiped the sperm all over her face, her eyes, her breasts. For those few moments she was an animal too, and when it was over she would lie down, sperm running down her face, and let them do whatever they wanted to her.

Once, only once a long time ago, did she abruptly stop as the man was about to come. She was much younger then and just fooling around; not quite ready, she wanted to wait a bit. He reared up and hit her; he went totally berserk for a few seconds and would have killed her. His hands were around her throat, strangling her, when he came to his senses. That’s when she first saw the incredible power of the animal during those few moments. She had never been so turned on in her life, and as she nursed a swollen jaw and bruised throat she knew that from then on she needed the power of the animal, needed to hold that power in her hands, needed to watch the animal revert to savagery. Only then could she become part of that savage power herself.

Afterward she chose her men carefully. She would sleep with a man more than once only if his penis was big enough for both her cupped hands and he was animalistic in bed. She had no use for passive men or those who came quietly with nothing but smiles on their faces. Through trial and error she found that aggressive men were best for her, successfully aggressive men who viewed the world as a jungle and themselves as predators.

Derek Lavery was her kind of man, but he was also her kind of boss. She liked the job and the pay and she had no desire to become anyone’s mistress. She was much too independent for that. Since there were always enough men to satisfy her wants, she didn’t feel any particular loss in not seeing Lavery’s face in bed. But if she ever quit or something happened—

Lavery glanced at his watch again; it was 9:05. They were late as usual. He could be in at eight o’clock to talk to New York but they couldn’t even make it by nine. He felt the world was against him.

New York. The thought made him shudder. He had been there enough times to know he didn’t like it. New York didn’t have the spaciousness or the friendliness of the West. People there lived tightly packed together, they had little sense of privacy or ownership. Worse, the place was full of foreigners who took everything and gave nothing. No—whatever else New York was, it wasn’t the good life. That was as clear to him as his secretary’s bra.

He thought of the moneymen on the magazine; all of them lived in New York or its suburbs, right up to the publisher. He didn’t like any of them. Now he liked them even less for their reaction to the Chessman piece. Not the story itself but the bad timing, what with Vincent Mungo and Senator Stoner. In the two weeks since the new Mungo killing Stoner’s name was being heard across the state. His campaign to restore capital punishment was picking up steam, and everywhere he spoke he held the Chessman story up to ridicule and scorn. He linked Mungo to Chessman as a sort of symbolic son, a legatee of Chessman’s alleged criminal mind and murderous mentality. The senator’s tough stance and his clever linkage between the dead and the living were beginning to turn people toward the death penalty.

In a way Lavery admired Stoner, at least for his game plan. It was really brilliant. Tie the past to the present, the known to the unknown, trade on people’s fears, throw in a touch of dramatics, and the result was one senator going statewide. Maybe even nationwide if he kept rolling. The issue was a good one and there was no telling how far he would be able to ride it. And Vincent Mungo was helping greatly.

An hour earlier Lavery had told New York that he was doing a story on Mungo that would scream for the death penalty. They were relieved. The New York papers had printed news of Stoner’s campaign, mentioning the Chessman article in
Newstime
. Even network television had carried items about the senator’s increasing impact.

What he told them was at least partially true. He intended to do a story on Vincent Mungo, one that would demand death. That’s the way the game was played: on a good issue like capital punishment, hit both sides hard. Mungo was current, and Stoner’s tying him to Chessman made it perfect. Even New York saw that and wished him luck.

The only problem was the angle; he didn’t have one yet. Mungo had been at large for six weeks and had killed two people, maybe more. He was still free. Those were facts, not angles. There was no way to prove gross negligence by hospital officials at Willows, and no point in taking on the sheriff’s office for failing to capture him.

Downstairs, Ding waddled into the building and quickly ducked in a darkened elevator. The lobby man, who knew him well, snapped on the light and shut the doors.

“What time the boss get here?”

“I came at eight. He was already in.” The man glanced at Ding. “Must be important, eh?”

“His girl in yet?”

“Miss Charm? About ten minutes ago.”

Ding smiled. “Why do you call her that?”

“What?”

“Miss Charm.”

“She got big tits, ain’t she?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “That means she’s trouble.”

Ding studied him a moment.

“You should be a writer,” he said finally as the elevator stopped.

“You think so?” said the lobby man, interested now.

“Sure thing,” Ding said on the way out. “You see people for what they really are.” He turned around. “And you know how to bury the truth.” He toddled down the hall, shaking his head. “That’s all you need,” he muttered softly. “All you really need in this game.”

Inside he adjusted his eyes to the sunlight flooding the penthouse office. He always thought what the place needed were a few myna birds flying around. And maybe a small beach at one end, with breaking waves and bare women. Then the other end could have some gambling tables—blackjack, baccarat, craps. Nothing pretentious. In the middle would be a bar where a bevy of big-breasted beauties sat around waiting for action. Ding had been with Lavery a long time and knew him well. What he didn’t know was what the hell the bastard wanted at nine in the morning.

He looked toward the bar. It was bereft of beauties. In fact it wasn’t exactly a bar at all; seemed to be more of a large desk. Behind it Lavery sat scowling, as usual. Ding blamed it all on the Barclay Lounger, something about it turned his boss into a scowler.

He squeezed into a normal chair, which was two sizes too small for him. He tried to scowl back but his face just didn’t work that way. Whatever he did with it came out fat smiles. He sat there smiling.

Lavery took the cigar out of his mouth. “Nice to see you,” he growled.

“Nice to be back.”

“Where were you?”

“Sleeping.”

Lavery reached for the ashtray. “Maybe you sleep too much.” Missed it. “Ever think of that?”

“All the time.”

“And?”

“That’s what makes me fall asleep.”

Lavery gave up. He knew better than to cross words with Ding; the man had that crazy kind of head that saw paranoid humor in everything. He was not aggressive, had no drive or ambition to make it big and didn’t seem to care about real success. The kind he, Lavery, had carved out for himself. They had started together on a local California newspaper, both having grown up in the same area. Lavery rose right from the beginning; he had the balls and the brains and he knew how to wheel and deal. As he jumped higher and higher—night editor, city editor, managing editor, magazine offers, always moving up—he took Ding along because he was a good legman and writer. He knew what to do with words. And what he didn’t know hadn’t been written yet.