Come Destroy Me

  COME DESTROY ME

  Vin Packer

  a division of F+W Media, Inc.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Dark Don’t Catch Me

  Also Available

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Q. You said what?

  A. I said I was glad he wasn’t fooling around with girls. His father died when Charlie was one year, and for fifteen years I had to be his mom and his dad and I was glad he was a good boy. He finished high way ahead of others his age and he was always reading books. This summer he went to the library practically every night. He never even thought about girls. I was glad. I thought to myself, I’ll never have to worry about Charlie.

  — From the testimony of the murderer’s mother

  FROM HIS BEDROOM window in the bungalow on Conrad Street, Charlie could see the hills of Azrael, burned rust color from the hot July sun. The little town was in the heart of the Green Mountains of Vermont, and if Charlie went to Harvard in the fall, he’d miss Azrael. Plenty! He’d miss those hills — he used to ski down them in the winter — and he’d miss the fresh green smell of Azrael in the spring. He’d miss walking up Sock Hill on his way from town, the giant pines lining the sides, the kids playing cave man in the vacant lot, and at the top the groups of granite workers gathered to wait for the red bus that went past the quarries. He’d miss sugaring time, the rows of trees with the pails hanging on their trunks, and the taste of the maple candy fresh made. Little things he’d miss. He’d miss … a lot of things.

  One thing he wasn’t sure about, because it was crazy. It was the library. Not just the library, but what it was like to be there. It was clean, for one thing, hallowed. There was never any noise. He could go there and stay there and no one ever looked over his shoulder or said anything to him or interrupted him. He spent a lot of time there, almost every night, and sometimes she came, but oh, what the hell, why think about her?

  Except I always do, he thought. Oh, wow, cripes, this is the silliest goddamn summer I ever spent. When will it be over?

  Charlie was tall, tall and thin with gaunt facial features that made him look older than sixteen, and a brush cut to his black hair, and piercing dark brown eyes. He wore a pair of gray summer slacks and a white shirt unbuttoned at his chest, no socks, and scuffed brown loafers on his feet. He picked up the red leather-bound book of verse that was open on his desk, and, slumping down into the wicker chair with the soft brown pillows, he began to reread the poem, underscoring in ink.

  “I wish I were where Helen lies …”

  “Not him, he won’t come out to say good-by.” The saucy voice of his sister, Evie, drifted into the room from the hallway. “Really, Inez, you never saw such a hermit!”

  “I think he’s sexy,” Inez said.

  Evie raised her voice. “Hear that, Charlie? ‘Nez thinks you’re sex-see!”

  He began the line again: “I wish I were where Helen lies …”

  “Sex-see, Charlie — hear?”

  “I guess he doesn’t think I am,” Inez said.

  “Sex-see, Charlie.” Evie’s voice droned farther away as she walked with Inez to the front doorway.

  Charlie was staring at the print without knowing what the words said. It just ruined everything when Evie got that way. It spoiled everything. She was in love with talking like that since she began college. It made him ashamed of Evie, and, curiously, ashamed of himself too. It made him not want to finish what he was reading, and it reminded him of something funny to remember.

  He remembered going to the movies with his mother Friday nights in the winter, and the way he tried to hold his breath whenever a man and woman kissed on the screen. He tried to hold his breath so his mother wouldn’t hear his breathing hard, because he was embarrassed. Holding his breath only made it worse, and once he had a violent fit of coughing in a close-up where Dane Clark was kissing a girl in a two-piece bathing suit on a beach. Charlie had had to go downstairs in the lobby and get a drink, and when he saw his face in the mirror, he hated it. He said, “You!” to it, and wished to God he didn’t have to go back to his seat. When he did return, his mother smiled and whispered, “O.K.?” and he had wanted to slap her. Now explain that one! Ah, why try to understand everything?

  Evie wasn’t going to win this time. He picked up the book again and began to concentrate.

  “I wish I were where Helen lies …”

  “Char-lee!”

  “He won’t come, Mom. He’s busy — reading.”

  “Well, he better come. Can’t wait dinner for him.”

  “Leave him alone, Em. Boy will come soon enough when he’s hungry.” Charlie recognized Russel Lofton’s voice. So he was staying to dinner again.

  His mother complained, “I wish he wouldn’t read so much. All he does is read. Never bothers with people. Reads all day. Charlie!”

  O that I were where Helen lies,

  Night and day on me she cries …

  “What does he read?”

  “Anything! Everything!” There was a note of pride in his mother’s husky voice; there always was when she talked about the way Charlie didn’t do another thing but read.

  “Let’s just go ahead, Mom.”

  “I wish he’d come.”

  “He’ll come.”

  “Charlie Wright!”

  “Out of my bed she bids me rise …”

  “He doesn’t even hear you. Mom.”

  “Let the boy be, Em.”

  “That’s right, Mom. He doesn’t even hear you.”

  “Says haste and come to me!”

  Oh, I hear you, all right, I hear you. Charlie stood up slowly, put a marker in the page of the book, and stretched his long arms above his head. The poem beat its cadence like a drum in his brain. I wish — I were — where Hel — en lies. For a moment he let it pound around, a real rhythm he could really hear, and he stared again at the hills and the sun setting behind them. Whenever he thought about that poem he was confused. He liked it. He imagined a beautiful soft woman calling him, a white goddess, a sylphlike girl, calling him. He decided she would not be naked. She would wear something. Something silky, flimsy, white. She would call him at all hours and he would have to go to her and he would imagine rising from his bed to go to her, but what then?

  Then, Charlie thought, then the hell with it. It was all muddled up in his mind and he did not know why he even bothered with poems like that. He snapped his fingers as if to bring himself to, stuffed an old handkerchief in the pocket of his trousers, and slicked back his hair with a broken comb he found on his dresser. He looked at his own reflection thoughtfully when his hair was combed, and then he grinned, because it was silly to see himself staring at himself, and he thought with sardonic amusement, I must be getting simple, plain simple.

  As he walked from the room he whistled softly. There was no tune, just random notes. He went down the hall with its worn blue-flowered wallpaper, past the antique rosewood coat rack with the angry head of an eagle mounted on top, and on to the entranceway of the dining room. He paused to listen to the conversation before he went in, but they weren’t even talking about him any more.

  “Say, this is swell,” Russel Lofton was saying. “How do you do it, Em?”

  Charlie des
pised the barking manner in which Mr. Lofton spoke. He was a lawyer in Azrael and his wife was dead, and he was always hanging around the Wrights, calling Charlie’s mother Em. He never called anyone by the name everyone else did. He had his special names. Evie was ?-venus, and Charlie was Chucker.

  “Well, well, well, well, Chucker!” Mr. Lofton said as Charlie walked into the dining room. “Chucker!”

  He reached out and touched Charlie’s sleeve as the boy pulled his chair forward and sat at the table. It was an annoying habit Lofton had, catching hold of the coat of the man or woman he was talking to, or gripping him by the arm. He was in his middle forties, but he could easily pass for a man of fewer years. His physique was good, wide athletic shoulders, fine muscular arms and legs, and a flat hard stomach. He had a good head of thick black hair, which only in recent years showed gray at the temples, large brown eyes, a thick crooked nose, a broad full mouth, and a square jawline.

  “So you did hear after all, honey?” Mrs. Emily Wright said. “Some boys you have to call from ball games. Have to call you from books!”

  “Aw, Mom, forget it.”

  “College won’t be all books either, you know. They have football and hockey and rowing — ”

  “Sure, Mom. O.K.”

  His mother looked tired. Her face had a tense, haggard quality. She was a handsome woman, thin like Charlie, but perpetually weary. She had married Charlie’s father when she was twenty-two, had Evie the same year, and lost Egan Wright when she was twenty-six, a year after Charlie was born. People in Azrael said she never got over Egan’s sudden death in the quarry cave-in, and that was the reason she never remarried. But she said, “There simply wasn’t anyone, and when there was, he didn’t want a ready-made family.”

  Sometimes when she said that, Charlie resented it, because he liked to think it was the other way — the way folks said. His mother was a dark, tall lady, quick and talented. She had managed the Azrael Gazette for ten years now, and if she was occasionally annoying and usually slovenly in her dress and actions, Charlie tried to remember she worked hard. Her hair was cut short and brushed back from her forehead, and her eyes were a matching brown color. Her nose was small, and her chin pointed and determined. Russel Lofton was her best friend, a fixture around the Wright house, like a lamp or a table, and there was never any fuss made for him. He was treated like one of the family, like a father to Evie and me, Charlie thought, and it made him angry. He had no specific reason for disliking Lofton, but he knew that he resented him.

  Mrs. Wright said, “Hungry, honey?”

  “Eat a horse,” Charlie answered.

  “You ought to,” his sister said. “You’re too skinny, doll. You ought to fill out.”

  “Your sister’s right,” Mr. Lofton said. Charlie didn’t even look at him.

  “So you can get a girl friend when you go to Haa-vud.” Evie giggled and winked at Russel Lofton. She was a slim, pretty, nineteen-year-old girl, medium-sized, with a good bust, a shock of dark hair cut poodle style, regular features, good legs, a soft voice, and a cocky manner.

  “You know what ‘Nez thinks. Maybe you ought to date ‘Nez and practice up.”

  “Time enough, time enough.” Mr. Lofton chuckled, reached over with his large square hand, and patted Charlie’s wrist. “Time enough for girls, eh, Chucker? Time enough, eh, boy?”

  Charlie felt himself squirm inside.

  “Never mind girls.” Mrs. Wright smiled. “I just wish he’d play sports more.” She looked at Charlie, nodding her head slowly, as though she would never get used to the idea that he was the way he was — an intellectual, she called him to herself — and she was pleased. “Books!” she said, smiling. “Land! I’d never have thought — ”

  That was the way that July evening began, slowly, evolving into a typical evening, with small talk and not too much to do, and everyone saying much the same things they might say on any warm night in the Wright house in Azrael, Vermont.

  Mrs. Wright sighed. “Whew, it’s a scorcher! Whew!”

  Time enough for girls, eh, Chucker? Time enough, eh, boy?

  It began slowly with Charlie thinking when his mother said, “I suppose you’ll go to the library again after dinner?” that yes, he would go to the library. He would.

  “What a boy!” his mother said, again proudly. Charlie was oblivious of her pride; he wished she would not talk about it all the time. There wasn’t anything wrong with him, for Pete’s sake. Was there anything wrong with him?

  Evie said something flippant and Mr. Lofton said something unimportant and Charlie did not hear because then he started to think, What if she is there!

  He thought, Silly good goddamn, what if she is at the library? What of that? He wasn’t going there because of her. No, he certainly was not … was not!

  Time enough, eh, boy?

  Chapter Two

  I’ve got a song —

  I’ve got a final song.

  I’ll sing it but it won’t take very long,

  Just while I sit and wait now,

  Because it’s getting late now….

  — Fatal Blues

  THE CLOCK TOWER on the top of the library gonged seven times as Jake Shaw stood in the doorway of his luncheonette on the corner of Broad Street. He was a man in his thirties who looked older because his head was bald as a rock, and he was wide and gross with a round paunchy stomach. As he stood there scratching his back, the white apron tied at his waist, the stub cigar hanging from his puffy lips, his big yellow-colored eyes watched Miss Jill Latham lock up the Red Clover Bookshop, two stores down.

  She’s somethin’, he told himself, for this town, and it wasn’t any wonder she left it before she could even walk, because she’s somethin’.

  He knew as much as anyone in Azrael knew about Jill Latham. When her mother divorced Bud Latham over thirty years ago, Jill went to live in Europe with Mrs. Latham, and neither of them ever returned until old Bud died. Then she came back and moved into the white frame house on Deel Street, bought the shop, and settled down, just like that. Alone. Folks in Azrael said Mrs. Latham was dead too, and wasn’t it nice Miss Jill came home?

  Jake Shaw thought it was fine. It was a real pleasure. He liked to watch her the way he was doing now, and he liked to speculate on why a woman like her was satisfied to live here with no one for herself. He saw her turn the key in the lock and try the door to be sure, and he sucked in on the wet edge of his cigar and shook his head, musing.

  She had a fine, clear-cut profile, a short, finely modeled nose, and a beautiful mouth, with thin lips, curling rather bitterly. Yet her face was a sweet face, with bright cheeks, girlishly thin for a woman in her early thirties, a pale complexion, and a strong chin. Her hair was black and soft-looking, and her changing eyes were gray and amber-colored, passing quickly from one light to another, greenish and golden like the eyes of a cat. There was something catlike in all her nature, in her apparent torpor, her semisomnolence, with eyes wide open, always on the watch, as though she were nervous and suspicious. She was not so tall as she appeared and not so slender; her body was richly matured with large curved breasts, wasp waist, beautiful shoulders, lovely arms, and fine long shapely legs.

  That evening she wore a black linen dress without sleeves, cut low at the neck with white lace trim, sheer nylon stockings, and high black heels. Even in that way she was instinctively catlike, never giving in to the barelegged, sandal-clad fashion of other women in Azrael, instinctively aristocratic. She had the look of a strange, lovely woman, better bred than others, incurably shy and wild.

  “Evening, Miss Jill,” Jake said as she walked near him. He took the cigar from his mouth and wiped the perspiration off his forehead with his sleeve. “Must miss the record business with the kids gone for the summer.”

  “I don’t miss the noise,” she said. “I don’t miss the roughhouse.”

  “Still, you can’t sell many books to people in these parts.”

  Jill Latham smiled briefly without offering an opinion o
n the subject, and Jake said, “I suppose now you’ll go to the library.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Think you’d get tired of books, books, books.”

  “I like it there.”

  “Oh, it’s quiet.”

  “Yes.”

  “And if you like books, well — ”

  “Well, then you go to the library.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Yes.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Good night, Mr. Shaw.”

  “Good night, ma’am.” He watched her walk, a strut really, as though she were a countess stepping over the heads of dead peasants, and he shook his head again, sucked on his cigar, and went back in behind the counter of the luncheonette.

  When Charlie Wright came in to buy a pack of gum, Jake thought all the funny ones were left in Azrael for the summer. Charlie was carrying his books under his arm, and Jake had to laugh when he thought of Evie and Mrs. Wright, both with the strength and pep of ten armies, and this one, as quiet and sober as a priest.

  He said, “You and her keep the place open, just about.”

  “What?”

  “The library. You and Miss Jill keep it open.”

  “We’re not the only ones,” Charlie Wright said, and he flung an angry look at Jake that Jake did not understand.

  Charlie said, “I got to study for my boards.”

  “Don’t get sore.”

  “I’m not!”

  “O.K. Six cents for the gum.”

  “Six it is,” Charlie said. He took a stick from its wrapper and folded it over, stuck it in his mouth, putting the pack in his pocket. For a minute he read the songs listed on the jukebox fixed to the counter, but he never played the jukebox. He shuffled the books to his other arm and dug his right hand in his pants pocket. Before he left he said something Jake didn’t hear.

  “What?”

  “I said, besides, I don’t even know her.”

  “Who?”

  “Miss Latham. I never even go in the Red Clover.”

  Jake said, “I didn’t say you did.”