Ike ponders the note several moments, his brow wrinkled with concern. He tries to frame the words, then says to me, “Toad, here’s what bothers me. And it really bothers me. Why is this guy telling you the truth?”
Molly surprises me by answering. “He’s instilling the fear of God in all of us. He’s ruining our everyday lives, and he knows it. He wants to punish us, all of us, for loving his children.”
CHAPTER 26 Evil Genius
The city of palms and tea olive and unseen gardens turns overnight into a place of galvanic nightmare. The narrow streets with their houses riding sidesaddle, which have always brought me comfort and pleasure, now make me shiver with apprehension. Water oaks frame themselves into ogres, and Spanish moss appears as hang knots. Crepe myrtles come disguised as the bones of dead men. Though I have always loved Charleston at night, it now assumes an incurably sinister cast when the sun sets in the west. I wouldn’t have gone for a walk beneath the streetlamps for the promise of either wealth or beauty, nor stepped foot in any of its storied alleys. Without my knowledge, Charleston has put on a grotesque mask that fate designed when an Atlas moving van pulled up to a house across my street more than twenty years ago.
Wormy and his crew of locksmiths descend on my house. Wormy promises both of us he will not leave my house till I return. It surprises me to see how solicitous and gentle Wormy is with Trevor. With genuine feeling, he recalls the talent show in high school when Trevor played the piano and Sheba sang “Lili Marlene,” and, as Wormy phrased it, “blew the fucking socks off that school.” Ike and I leave the house with the sweet noise of men working with tools sounding out on every floor. Ike waves to the cop he placed on duty in front of my place. When we drive past Niles and Fraser’s house, Ike rolls down his window to talk with the cop he assigned to protect the Whitehead family.
Two squad cars are parked in Sheba’s mother’s driveway as we pull in front of the house. Sheba rushes out to greet us. “I’ve had a rough day with the Bride of Frankenstein. It’s great to see you boys. The worst thing about this job is being bored off my ass.”
“Don’t throw open the door like that again,” Ike orders her. “Your daddy’s in town.”
Inside, Ike strides through the house, untying the draperies of every window on the first floor, and instructing me to do the same upstairs, where I find Evangeline Poe sitting in a recliner beside her bed, vacant and unresponsive. Ike brings Sheba to her room and delivers a brief thumbnail sketch of the day’s highlights. When he begins to play the tape, the uncommunicative Evangeline goes berserk at the sound of her husband’s voice. Her shriek is unworldly and haglike, and loud enough to draw the attention of two cops on duty in the squad cars outside.
Sheba shuts off the tape recorder in an instant, and her mother is restored to the baffled vacancy that will be her natural dwelling place forever. When Sheba takes her by the arm to lead her to bed, she tries to bite her daughter, lunging like a dog at Sheba’s arms and face. With surprising nimbleness, Sheba holds her mother at bay and succeeds in calming her down, then walks her to the bed to lay her down for the night, sending Ike and me downstairs to wait.
Fifteen minutes later, she returns to the living room with a bottle of Chardonnay, and pours each of us a glass. “I’m going to have to take a course in kung fu if she gets any meaner.”
“She’s a handful,” Ike agrees.
“Mom tried to put my eyeball out with a bobby pin the other day,” Sheba says. “So no more bobby pins. She hid the scissors under her pillow. I have to put her down a couple times a day, like a cop with a perp.”
“Was that your dad’s voice you heard on the tape?” I ask.
“No. It’s Satan’s voice. But unfortunately for me and Trevor and my mom, it’s also my father. If you listen well and you’re an actor and know about these things—it’s his voice. It’s a bottomless evil. I don’t know a single actor who could pull it off.”
She begins to weep when Ike plays the tape in full, as her father’s demonical voice lays waste to the air around us. The menace in his undertones could throw a scare into a highland gorilla. It paralyzes me as I watch its effect on his daughter and study Ike’s worried and careworn gaze. But when Ike reaches over and hugs Sheba when the tape is over, his calmness and professionalism is bracing.
“What can you tell us from the tape?” Ike asks her.
She shrugs. “That he’s lost all control of himself. Control used to be his strength. He could push you to the point of breaking, then pull back. He would go from killer to lover of all mankind in a single breath. But he prided himself on his utter mastery of every situation. Now he’s aiming his rifle at a bunch of kids at a parade. He’s gone. He’s finished. He’s toast. Bye-bye, Dad.”
“Do you have any pictures of your father?” Ike asks. “Any documents or birth certificates or anything that can help us get him?”
“Nothing. I’ve looked through all of Mom’s things. There’s nothing. Mother named me Sheba the day we escaped Oregon. The year we finally got away, I was Nancy. Trevor was Bobby. Or maybe he was Henry that year. Trevor was Clarence one year, and he hated it. When I was about six, Dad named me Beulah,” she says, wrinkling her nose at the memory in a way that makes her look young and vulnerable.
“What perfect training for an actress,” I say.
“I’ve been playing make-believe since the day I was born,” she says with a small smile. “You get good at pretending you’re other people, in other places, living with someone like my father.”
“Well, you can’t stay here alone,” I tell her. “Pack your things, and your mother’s. Both of you can stay with me.”
“Isn’t my fiancé a sweetie?” she asks Ike. “What did I do to deserve a man like this?”
“I’m not your damn fiancé,” I tell her. “Quit playing around and get serious, Sheba. The guy on that tape’s a fruitcake. And he has a rifle. You are not safe here.”
“My dad may be crazy, but he’s crazy like a fox,” she says with another shrug. “He didn’t like jail time, obviously. He won’t make a move with those cop cars parked outside. Besides, I can’t bring my mother to your house, Leo, or anywhere else. I’ve just gotten her settled down.”
“Let’s sleep on this,” Ike suggests. “I need to come up with a plan. I’m beginning to think this cat may be smarter than all of us.”
“He’s an evil genius,” Sheba says. “But a genius nevertheless. When’s my lovable bodyguard getting here? If that guy doesn’t scare the bejesus out of my old man, then it can’t be done.”
“Betty’s picking Macklin up at the airport on Monday,” Ike tells her. “The director of the school told me Macklin’s the pick of the litter. Tops in his class.”
“Can’t believe I’ll be glad when he gets here. I cleaned out the basement room for him this morning.”
Before we leave, I give it one more try, but Sheba won’t budge, unable to deal with the idea of moving Evangeline. Ike and I drive back to my house in a stoic, uneasy silence. The day has exhausted and terrified me. I have no particular gift for courage, and I don’t mind sharing that juicy fact with anyone. Wormy is waiting for us, sitting on the curb, talking to the on-duty cop as we drive up. He comes ponderously to his feet to give us a hug. He tells us to take care of Trevor, and promises to kill anyone who touches a hair on the head of anybody he’d loved in high school. He says he wants to read about himself and his company in my column, and I give him my word of honor.
“I’ll do Mrs. Poe’s house in the morning,” he says as he climbs into his truck. “I moved it up on my calendar. Just for Sheba.”
I am fixing Trevor breakfast in bed the next morning when someone pounds on my front door. I open it to find Ike standing there, in terrible emotional shape. I have seen him in tears before, but I have never witnessed him so close to collapse. At first, I think something has happened to Betty or one of his children. When I grab his arm and ask if his family is all right, he nods with such emphatic fury I realize he is having tr
ouble speaking. Leading him by the arm, I take him to the nearest couch. When he sits down, he drops his head and starts to wail like a beaten child. The sound chills me to the bone. I sit down beside Ike and hold him in my arms, but I cannot comfort him. Standing, I open a drawer for a box of tissue so he can blow his nose and wipe the tears from his face. He holds a tissue over his eyes, but the more he tries to gain control of himself, the harder he falls apart. Finally, he excuses himself in a voice I don’t recognize, then stumbles down the hall to the bathroom. I hear him washing his face. Soon, he has gained control, and the hysteria subsides with each breath drawn. When he comes back into the living room, he returns as the police chief of Charleston.
“Can you take a ride, Leo?” he asks. “Just the two of us. Leave Trevor here.”
“Of course,” I answer, but with dread.
Ike waits till we are in the patrol car before he says a single word: “Sheba.”
“What about Sheba?” I ask, but Ike nearly loses his composure when he hears the question. He waves me off, unable to say more, so I grow silent as he drives us to Broad Street. I glance his way when he takes a right on Ashley as Colonial Lake shimmers in the morning light. He drives to Sheba’s mother’s house, which looks like a used-car shop for squad cars. Yellow crime-scene tape circles the yard. It occurs to me then that something has happened to Evangeline. Ike parks in my mother’s driveway.
“Is your mama home?” he asks me, staring straight ahead.
“I don’t know,” I answer weakly. “She’s probably at Mass. What’s happened at the Poe house? Goddammit, Ike, if it’s Evangeline or Sheba, you better tell me.”
“I can’t. I’ll have to show you.”
We walk across the street. Ike lifts the tape and motions me to go under it. Solemnly, he nods to his fellow officers as several of the younger ones salute him smartly, but it’s obvious there isn’t a policeman or policewoman on the scene who is having a good time. When we get to the open doorway, we encounter two detectives who eye me with some suspicion. After I flash my press card, the suspicion transforms into open hostility.
“He’s with me, Mac,” Ike says.
“Tough scene for a civilian, Chief,” Mac says.
“Tough scene for a cop,” Ike says. “Brace yourself, Toad. I’m about to ruin your life.”
As I enter Evangeline Poe’s bedroom, I step into an abattoir. The sight and smell of it hits me, and I make a run out the front door, gagging. Taking deep breaths, I force myself to return to the bedroom. I go into shock the moment I take in the bloodbath, extraordinary in its grotesqueness. Sitting calmly on her bed is Evangeline, dressed in pajamas, holding a butcher knife and covered with blood. On the floor, unrecognizable if you didn’t know her, lies the hideous, mangled corpse of the radiantly beautiful American actress Sheba Poe. She has stab wounds all over, even to her face and both eyes. One of her breasts has nearly been sheared off her body.
My eyes move away from Sheba, for I will never look at her violated body again. The sight of Evangeline is mythic in its dreadful power. She sits there still holding the knife in her hand. In her confusion, she sweeps the air with the bloody knife at anyone who approaches her. Her daughter’s blood covers her hair, tangling it in bizarre kinks and curls. Her pajamas are drenched in Sheba’s blood. Her face is a red mask.
“I thought she might recognize your voice, Leo,” Ike says with great gentleness.
“Hey, Mrs. Poe,” I make myself say. “Do you remember me? I’m Leo King from across the street. All the kids called me the Toad. I brought cookies over to this house the day you moved in.”
She stares at me, a stare as vacuous as an open well. “Glasses?” she asks finally.
“Yes, ma’am. That was me. I wore horn-rimmed glasses then. I’ve been wearing contact lenses for years.” “Toad,” she says. “Toad?”
“That’s me, Mrs. Poe.”
“Poe?” she questions.
“That’s your name. Evangeline Poe.”
“No. No,” she says. “Mark. Mark.”
“What mark?” I ask. “Is that Trevor’s real name.”
“Where’s Sheba?” Evangeline asks. “She promised not to leave me. Mark?”
“Sheba’s not here,” I say, my voice breaking. “Sheba’s not coming back.”
Evangeline’s eyes grow mean, and she flashes the knife at me in a quick cutting movement. I back up, even though I am already a safe distance from her. There is a policewoman both recording and writing down every word that comes from Evangeline’s mouth.
Ike says, “See if you can get her to drop the knife, Leo. Otherwise, we’re going to have to jump her, and I’d hate to do that.”
“Mrs. Poe?” I ask. “You want to see your son, Trevor? Trevor’s over at my house. He wants to play the piano for you.”
“Trevor. Trevor,” she says. Her face brightens in a surge of recognition, then freezes again. “Trevor?” she repeats without affect.
“Trevor wants to borrow your knife. Big surprise. He’s cooking you dinner tonight. He needs your knife.”
“No knife. I don’t have a knife, Mark. Where’s a knife?”
“In your hand. Is that a spider on your head, Mrs. Poe?” I suddenly remember a phobia of hers. She won’t even walk in my mother’s garden at springtime because of her incurable fear of spiders.
The knife slips out of her hand, and she begins swatting her head violently. The policewoman reaches over and grabs her arm. Evangeline bites the woman’s hand so hard that she draws blood.
“Okay. Finish it up,” Ike says. He then leads me out of the room, holding me by the elbow. I collapse against him when we make our way outside into the hot sunlight. Neighbors have gathered in clusters around the crime scene, curious, attuned, hoping for the worst in their malevolent gawking. At that moment, I hate them all, then instantly forgive their open show of raw humanness and innocent curiosity.
“My cops think the old lady did it all,” Ike says.
“No. It was him,” I say.
“Maybe, but we’ll have to prove otherwise. They can’t find another drop of blood in the house. If her father killed her, he would have to be covered with blood himself. He’d have been dripping with Sheba’s blood, and we’d have found it all over the place as he made his getaway.”
“The guy is slick,” I say. “And from what I just saw in there, he’s pretty committed.”
“I want to ask a favor, Leo,” Ike says. “Would you write a column about all of this? The threatening phone call you got at the office, the father stalking the twins all those years, and the commission of the perfect crime. I mean, Leo, I think this guy pulled it all off without a flaw. I bet my evidence guys will find nothing to prove there was another person in that room.”
“Then, why do you want me to write a column?”
“I think it’ll flush him out,” Ike says. “And after seeing how he cut Sheba up for bait, I’d like the chance to kill him face-to-face. But don’t write that part.”
“I won’t,” I promise. “But I love you for saying it.”
I stand up on the porch and stagger, but Ike is watching me. He catches me as I lean against one of the columns.
“My God, Ike,” I say. “That was beyond horrible.”
The curious neighbors will receive an immense measure of satisfaction when they get to report to friends and family that they witnessed a newspaper columnist and a police chief weeping helplessly in each other’s arms.
In my column, I describe the shock of seeing Sheba’s mutilated body and the dementia-addled mother who had recently grown violent, sitting on her bed standing guard, her knife and clothes covered with her daughter’s blood. If Evangeline Poe had killed Sheba, I wrote, there would be no crime scene because no crime had occurred. I was witness to a great tragedy and nothing more: Alzheimer’s disease had rendered Evangeline Poe incapable of either crime or rational act. I talk about the day Sheba and Trevor moved into the house across the street from the one I grew up in and my welcomin
g them to the neighborhood with cookies. And about the night the twins and their mother flooded into our home undone by fear of an unseen intruder, the same month I was attacked by a masked and fearsome man in Stoll’s Alley on my paper route. I tell of the mournful smiley face as his emblem and calling card, of his constant predatory stalking of his two terrified children. I write about how in New York City, he was finally caught when he killed a doorman at a Park Avenue address where Sheba was staying. He was sentenced to life in prison, where he faked insanity, then faked his own suicide after his transfer to a mental hospital. I describe his journey to San Francisco, and the dead Indian man in the trunk of a car, and the break-in at the house on Vallejo Street. I call him the man with no name, and I reveal that even his children had no idea about the true identity of their father. He made up a multitude of pseudonyms, changed jobs each year, rented houses deep in the country, insulated his children, raped them at will, brutalized them in every conceivable way.
While she was being raped, Sheba Poe dreamed of being a great actress, starring in tragic roles, speaking lines so powerful she could bring the whole world to its knees. When Trevor Poe’s turn came, he imagined himself on the great orchestra stages of the world, bringing people out of their seats with the indescribable delicacy he brought to the works of the great composers. Out of the unimaginable ruins of their childhood, they both had managed to craft lives of exceptional beauty.
For the first time, I admit that Sheba Poe was the first girl who had ever kissed me. For a homely, bashful teenage boy, it was like kissing a goddess. And a goddess, I wrote, is what Sheba Poe set out to become as she took off for Los Angeles the day after graduation. And that is what she had become: a goddess of film and the limelight, with a body of work that will grant her a portion of screen immortality.