Chapter 7

I dimly noticed when Cecelia's car pulled up in front – I'd opened the curtains over the windows, which face out onto the driveway – but only dimly; I was buried in slime. Most of the letters and phone calls had been garden variety threats: I'll get you, you --, You'll rot in hell for what you're doing, God hates faggots and murderers, stuff like that. The letters and calls seemed mostly to be from varied sources – almost all men, though a few female voices appeared on the tapes, for women tend to be less dramatically brutal when they commit serious crimes. A man'll take a shovel to your neck, but a woman will more likely use poison if she decides you've got to die. The only major exception to that generality is domestic violence, where men and women alike grab whatever weapon is handy when they go into killing mode. That's one reason why I really doubt that Lizzie Borden killed her father and stepmother – using an hatchet and a candlestick to hack and bludgeon them to death is more of a male thing.

With the letters it was harder to make guesses about gender. These days it can be hard to tell the difference just from handwriting. Yeah, there are women who still use a schoolgirl hand, with little circles or hearts dotting their Is and pretty curlicues in the letters, but there are also women whose writing is as sloppy as any man's. But if I had to guess I would have guessed that the ratio of women to men was about the same in the letters as in the tapes. It seemed a valid guess, at least until I needed to try for more precision.

I was taking a quick breather from the letters when a voice came over the tape player's speakers. I couldn't say that I had or hadn't heard it before, since I'd only been paying enough attention to the sound to notice things that I needed to pick out of the mass. It was a male voice, deep and raspy, and didn't sound disguised. And what it said was vile. It began with profanity, and progressed rapidly to anatomical threats. No wonder Dr. Bernard was scared – if this man ever tried to do to her what he was threatening to do, she'd have a very horrible time of it before she died. Rape and sodomy were the least of the things he said he'd do to her – and that's saying something, for rape and forced sodomy are two of the worst things a woman can endure.

I listened to that call all the way through, then stopped the tape. I grabbed a pad and pen, and noted the tape's dates – for there were multiple days' calls on each tape. Unfortunately the machine didn't have a counter, so it was hard for me to note where the tape was on the spools. I rummaged through my desk, and was beginning to think I'd have to take my pocket knife and put a small mark in the clear plastic window of the cassette. But in a bottom drawer, into which Cecelia had apparently directed her contractor to dump the stuff that manifestly I didn't use much if at all, I found an old bottle of whiteout. I shook it vigorously, and unscrewed the cap. There was no telling how long I'd had it – it had been years since I'd used a typewriter, and I couldn't remember ever doing that at home. For all I knew this bottle was a relic of my pre-marriage days, when I'd done a little more from my apartment than I'd ever done from our house.

The brush was clotted, and as far as I could tell there was nothing liquid left about the contents of the bottle. I dug around in the drawer some more, not really expecting to find what I was looking for, but there it was – a bottle of thinner. It seemed unopened, and hopefully it hadn't all evaporated. I opened it up, and it hadn't. I poured some into the whiteout, put that cap back on, and shook vigorously. I let it sit for a while, and went back to reading.

It was just a couple of letters later that I found the written counterpart of what I'd heard on the tape. Whoever had written it had been smart enough to do it all in block capitals. It didn't look like he'd taken the time to use a ruler – when you rule off each line, and make each letter merely a variation on a square, no expert on earth can tell who wrote a document – but it was still enough that I knew he was trying to disguise his identity. I assumed it was the same man as on the tape, for the threats were similar – even some of the phrasing seemed identical. There were sexual threats, and even the threats which were "merely" of physical harm seemed to me to partake of a sick sexual component. I knew that some men get excited by thoughts of rape, and some psychopathic killers actually derive sexual satisfaction from their butchery – and indeed can't find satisfaction any other way.

Of course those were generalities, and weren't universally true – Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer, had used prostitutes in the usual way first, and then killed them, and had a sexually normal marriage besides. But I had a sense – call it a hunch – that when this guy was making these written threats, he was feeling a sexual excitement. It was sickening.

I shoved the file away, and picked up the bottle of whiteout. I shook it again, and unscrewed the cap. It wasn't as thin as it would have been when it was new, but it seemed suitable for my purpose. I pulled the tape out of the machine, carefully put a thin streak of white where the tape rested, and blew on it to dry the whiteout, which didn't take long. They made the stuff quick drying so that whoever was typing could fix an error and get back to work in just a few seconds.

I put the tape back in and hit Play again. As it played, more generic threats, I picked up the next letter. And then I hurled it from me, the paper fluttering to the other side of the desk, not being suited for hurling. If I'd thought the previous letter was vile, I'd been mistaken. This one seemed like Satan himself could have written it. It wasn't so much threats as a fantasy – but a fantasy which if it came true would leave Dr. Bernard, and any other woman working at the abortion clinic, a bloody mess. The tortures would have inspired awe in a Spanish inquisitor. I knew that some Indian tribes employed torture to test captured enemies, partly to see how tough they were and partly to make them unable to fight in the hereafter. This guy could have taught the Apaches a thing or two.