JF Gonzalez - Fetish.wps (29 page)

He sighed and closed his eyes, feeling a strange sense of euphoria. He was beginning to salivate.

Chapter 18

March 24, 1998, 6:30 p.m.

Los Angeles, CA

Charley was seated at the kitchen table eating a plate of beef tortellini in spaghetti sauce. Mother was picking at the food wistfully but Charley ignored her, plowing into the meal with hungry abandon. He had been hungry for tortellini for almost three days now, and was glad that he had made it. Mother usually liked it, too but after starting her dinner enthusiastically she had slowed down to merely picking at her plate, swirling the beef enclosed pastas around in the sauce like a child playing with its food. Charley tried to ignore her for awhile, but her demeanor got to him shortly. He put down his fork and looked at her. “Why aren't you eating, mother?"

She shook her head. “I don't know. I thought I was hungry. Guess I really wasn't.”

She was dressed in her usual garb of flannel P.J.'s with a red and black flannel robe covering her corpulent body, her white hair gathered up in a bun behind her head, wispy strands trailing behind her. Her features were wrinkled and cracked, her hands withered like the limbs of an old tree. She looked older than her sixty-four years.

“Well, that's okay,” Charley said. “Leave your plate there and I'll clean it up."

She seemed to accept this and nodded. Charley resumed his meal. Mother remained in her seat, hand still clutching her fork, staring down at her food. She had a vacant stare.

Charley stopped eating and looked at his mother. “Mother, are you sure everything's all right?"

“Yes, I'm sure."

“It looks like something's bothering you."

“No, nothing's bothering me.” She shook her head empathetically.

“Well, it looks like something is."

She looked up at him for a moment, her hands stealing down to the front of her robe. He offered her a smile and lifted his fork to the plate of tortellini. With a fluid motion, mother reached into the folds of her robe and brought out a black beaded rosary.

She clutched it between her knobby fists. “Pray the rosary with me, Charley."

Charley felt his patience deflating. He also felt himself in her crosshairs, suddenly a child again and not an adult man of thirty-six years. “Mother, I really don't think—"

“Why don't you got to church with me anymore, Charley?” Mother asked. She looked saddened suddenly, as if she were looking at a drowning man. “You used to go to church with me every Sunday, sometimes even on Wednesday evenings, but you don't go with me anymore. It's been over three years since you even went to church yourself."

“Mother, please...” He felt himself grow tense.

“Please, what? I'm only concerned for you, Charley. I don't want you slipping down the path of—"

“I'm not slipping down the path of anything!” he cried a little too loudly.

The sound of his voice didn't startle her as it would have in the past. She seemed to brush past it and continue. “You're a good boy, Charley. God knows I raised a good son in you. But you're not like your brother at all. Johnny is not only devoted to—"

“
I do
not
want to be compared to my goddamned brother!
” Charley thundered, and this time the sound of his voice made her tremble.

The resulting silence echoed louder than the tone of Charley's voice. Mother shriveled back into herself, looking down at her food, the tears silently running down her wrinkled cheeks. “Oh, Lord, please forgive Charley for he knows not what he says—"

“
Mother
!” Charley warned, voice stern and powerful, but not as loud as before.

He was doing all he could to control his anger.

“Why don't you go to
church
?” She cried and now he could see that she was crying now. Small sobs cracked her voice. “I'm not saying that you have to be like your brother, but if you go to church you will be happier ... you won't be spending so much time in your room doing all those nasty things—"

“Mother—” Charley closed his eyes, steeling himself.

“—that are so sick.... they're
sick
, Charley.
Sick
and
wrong
and—"

“Goddammit mother—"

“...if you went to church you wouldn't have the need to do those things, you might even meet a nice girl that would—"

“A
nice
girl!” Charley squealed. He rose from his chair abruptly, the chair squeaking back from the table on the floor. “And so
what
if I meet a nice girl at church, mother? You'll just drive her away like you always do."

Mother burst into fresh tears. She reached out for Charley, grabbing his hand.

“No, Charley ... not like that ... that girl you brought home a few months ago ... not girls like
that
..."

“Well what the hell kind of girls do you fucking expect me to like mother?” He leered at her. “
Nuns
? Because other than nuns, girls like Carmen are typical of the girls you see at church. There's nothing morally wrong with them except—"

“They will lead you into sin and despair!” Mother cried sharply. “And don't lie to me boy, I see how you look at those girls with lust in your heart. I know that you watch those ... damn videotapes of naked girls spreading their legs for men ... that you ... you..."

“Masturbate to them? Jack off to them? Yeah, well, welcome to the real world, mother.” Charley was breathing heavily with anger and the exertion of yelling. “That's what happens when you've force fed your son a steady diet that sex is wrong, sex leads to sin, sex leads to eternal damnation, and then finding out later that all that you've been saying is outright lies and
bullshit
. Thanks for raising me to be not only afraid of women but of my own sexuality as well. You fucking
bitch
!"

“Charley!” Mother cried fresh tears, sobbing hoarsely.

“Stop your fucking crying,” Charley said but he was crying now too, though not as hard as mother was. The tears ran down his cheeks, and he felt the sobs threaten to spill from his chest, fueled by long-buried emotions that he had kept pent up inside him. His hands clenched at his sides with uncontrollable fury, threatening to unleash on her. Christ, but he felt so much like killing her sometimes. Maybe then the madness would stop.

His mother looked up at him, her chest heaving, her voice coming in starts and fits through her crying. “I always thought you were a good boy Charley ... always ... always just thought that ... maybe you were ... shy ... or something ... I ... Oh God, Charley....

when you didn't show any interest in girls at first I thought you might be a faggot—"

This accusation cut through him like a knife. He clenched his teeth, his eyes widened at the revelation. He felt his cheeks redden. “Mother..."

She didn't notice his reaction but kept going. “...but then I saw that ... you
were
interested in girls ... but not the girls at church, but those ... tarts and tramps in those ...

heathenish magazines.... and those girls on the street corners..."

“Mother, don't start.” He advanced on her slightly, fists clenched. What she was saying were such lies.

“And then you brought home that one girl from your catechism class, remember her? You said you were going to study.” And Charley suddenly did remember. God, that had been so long ago. He had been fifteen and was studying to receive his confirmation.

The girl his mother was speaking of was Suzanne Borega, who was in the same grade as he. Suzanne was a pretty girl, part of the self-hip, rock and roll/stoner crowd at school, the same crowd that occasionally tripped him up in the halls, flicked his ears from behind his desk in class, and embarrassed him in school with cries of “Hey, Charley ... lose control of your pee-pee lately?” This in reference to when he was in the second grade and he had pissed his pants in class one day and had to be led by the teacher to the bathroom while he cried, and the rest of the class laughed and laughed. That stigma had remained with him ever since.

But Suzanne Borega was a little different. For one, she never made fun of him at all, but then she didn't go out of her way to be nice to him, either. She was pleasant, polite, talkative, and she didn't ignore him. When she came over to study for their Catholic Confirmation it had been at her urging—they had been enrolled in Catechism together since they were nine-years-old, and up until Confirmation they hadn't talked much or associated with each other. She was pretty, popular, and out-going. She hung out with all the cool people, while Charley didn't have any friends. But then one day on the bus home from school, she had asked him how much he'd studied for the test, and he said he was doing pretty well. She then revealed to him that she needed help and wondered if he would help her. Charley had been wary at first; after all, she hung out with the same crowd that made him write their term papers and take their tests and copy his answers for them. He was tired of being taken advantage of, but too scared to stand up for himself. In spite of this he agreed, and the next day she had come over with her books. It was then when he realized she was serious: she
did
need honest to goodness help, and she wasn't out to cheat off him. But then mother had spoiled it.

After he had ushered Suzanne into his room, he went into the kitchen to get them soft drinks. Mother was in the kitchen making dinner and she started in on Charley immediately; what did he think he was doing bringing that girl in without her prior approval? Did he notice the size of the boobs on that girl? How they bounced freely under her sweater? That meant she wasn't wearing a bra. And you know what that means? She was a whore, a cheap slut, and she was going to take off her sweater and lead Charley into sin right under her own roof and mother wasn't going to have it. And no matter how much Charley explained that Suzanne was his classmate at Our Lady of Guadalupe's catechism class and that they were studying for their confirmation, Mother wouldn't hear it. Her accusations were loud enough for Suzanne to catch some of it, and when Charley returned to his room, mother trailing along behind him, Suzanne rose from his desk where she had been perusing
Good News For the Modern Man
and the accompanying workbook that was issued with it, and said that perhaps today wasn't a good day for them to study together. Charley had gone red with embarrassment because he knew that Suzanne had heard what mother said about her, and ever since that incident Suzanne spoke to him very little. Charley went through his confirmation and the rest of his freshman year of high school with a feeling of dread that she would tell one of her long-haired druggy friends what had happened and he would receive a viscous teasing or a beating, a cat call across the quad of the school, something like “
Hey Charley.... your mother don't like you to
study with girls in your room, huh? What does she think you're gonna do? Piss all over
them before you can even shoot your wad? Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha.
"

With that memory now crashing full force into his mind, he breathed heavily. “We were going to study, mother. Too bad you didn't give us a chance. I might have learned something. I might have even become a good Catholic like you wanted."

She ignored him and went on with her rant, dabbing at her eyes with a napkin as she sobbed more. “And then you had to bring that tramp home a few months ago ... Oh, God, don't you realize what these women represent?"

“Stuff it up your ass, mom,” Charley said. He couldn't stand it anymore. The hold she had over him was too unbearable. It was so bad he tried not to even be seen talking to a woman when he was in mother's presence. He even tried avoiding the tenant that lived in the back house, which was usually fairly easy since she kept odd hours. Christ, even his fucking
brother
had had more contact with her than Charley. For all he knew, John had gotten lucky and fucked her.

Mother was sobbing uncontrollably. “Don't talk to me like that!"

"Fuck you!"

“Charley...” She began to collapse. Her tears had run dry, but she still sobbed, hiccuping now amid her crying.

“Go to hell, Mom,” Charley said, rising from the table. “You deserve it for fucking up my life.” He turned and left the kitchen, heading to his bedroom, leaving his mother behind to cry hoarsely and uncontrollably.

Chapter 19

March 24, 1998, 3:30 p.m.

South Bend, Indiana

Rachael Pearce stood on the corner of Notre Dame Avenue and Cordby Road in the heart of South Bend's University district. She had a leather satchel slung over her shoulder that contained a mini-cassette recorder, a notebook and some pens, a map of the South Bend area, and another map that contained the routes and byways of Indiana itself, and copies from the reports Daryl had given her. She had spent the last four days in a fruitful search for some meaningful information but so far had come up with nothing that wasn't already in the files.

She had arrived in South Bend three days ago. During her initial research for her book Daryl had seemed supportive, but when she announced her trip he appeared to withdraw it. She had moved out of her condo three weeks ago and moved into his home, and for awhile things were great. But then just a few days before she left he had become sullen and moody and they even had a little argument—their first major one—shortly before he was set to drive her to the airport. This was out of character for Daryl, and Rachael supposed it had to do with the way the Butcher case was going. Ever since the discovery of the last victim last summer, no new leads had turned up. It seemed as if the unknown killer had vanished off the face of the earth.

Of course, Rachael knew that wasn't the case.

The missing persons reports coming out of the area the killer favored seemed to support the theory that the Butcher was still operating. When Daryl drove her to LAX

three nights ago she finally got him to reveal why he was in such a foul mood: the case was going nowhere. The task force members were chasing down useless leads, and they still had at least three missing people in the area that fit potential victims. There was pressure from his internal supervisors to take him off the case because he wasn't making any progress and replace him with an FBI agent. He was worried about Rachael travelling to South Bend alone. Rachael figured this had to do with his fears over what had happened to Shirley, his first wife, and she put his mind at ease. She was tough, she'd assured him. She could kick some royal ass if she had to and that seemed to put him at ease. By the time they reached the airport Daryl had been his old self. He'd apologized.