Witch Water (12 page)

“Hi, Artie, it’s me.”

“Oh, nice of you to give us a call,” came
some obvious sarcasm. “Are you all right?”

“Of course—”

“So
where
are you? Hagerstown?”

“Haver-towne,” Fanshawe corrected.

“Oh, I’ve heard of it! Are you all
right?”

“No assassins have knocked me off yet.”

“Funny. You know, you could at least touch
base with us once a day. You’re turning our hair gray.”

“You’re already gray, Artie—prematurely. No
offense.”

“Oh, none taken!”

“Look, I’ve got a wild bug up my—”

“Really? You?”

Fanshawe chuckled. “I want you to have the
research people check something out for me. I want to know about a
guy named Eldred Karswell—”

“Who’s he?”

“Just…a guy. He drives an old black
Cadillac,” and then Fanshawe read off the vehicle’s license plate
number.

Artie sighed through a pause. “Got it. Not
gonna tell me the deal with the guy—this…Karswell?”

Fanshawe smiled. “No. Just run a make on him
because…well, because I’m the boss.” Fanshawe didn’t want to reveal
that Karswell had actually been murdered, or at least killed, if
the police were wrong.
Artie would go ballistic…
They would
find out soon enough
.

“I’m hearing you loud and clear…boss.”

“Good. Just ring me on my cell when you’ve
got it, okay?”

“Sure. Say, aren’t you going to ask how
things are going with all your astronomically successful
businesses?”

“I don’t have to ask, because I have the
utmost confidence in you.” Fanshawe liked Artie but he just didn’t
feel like talking right now. “Thanks, Artie. Take the office out on
the company card tonight. Anyplace you want.”

“Uh…”

“A simple thank you will suffice.”

“Uh, thanks, boss!”

“Later, Artie.”

“Yeah, sure, I—”

Fanshawe hung up, feeling satisfied in some
inexpressible way. He couldn’t imagine what goaded his curiosity
about Karswell, but then there were a number of things he felt
intensely curious about in Haver-Towne, things that wouldn’t
ordinarily pique him.
It’s because my life has changed now…for
the better. I’m essentially retired; my managers run my businesses,
so I need new interests,
and with that he began to walk. He’d
done lots of walking since he’d arrived, and he found that he liked
it. It cleared his head…

He began to walk back toward the trails.

It occurred to him that police might still
be around.
I hope they don’t think I had something to do with
it…
Still, he felt like a criminal returning to the scene of
the crime. But he couldn’t quell the urge to see the trails again,
and the scenery off the most elevated of the hillocks. He didn’t
think for a minute there was a subconscious motive, the joggers,
for instance.
After what they saw today, they’ll NEVER come back
out here.
Before he knew it, he was ascending the hillocks.

No surprise there,
he thought when he
saw that the trail where Karswell’s body had been found was
cordoned off completely with yellow tape. Only when he discerned
that the police had left did he realize how unwise coming here
might be.
Whoever killed Karswell might still be out
here…

But how likely was that?

At any rate, Fanshawe wasn’t convinced it
had been murder, missing wallet or not. The Wild Animal Theory
seemed much more plausible; then someone coming along afterward
(someone disreputable, of course) could easily have taken
Karswell’s wallet after the fact.

I don’t know…

The sun was descending, drawing smoldering
orange light across the horizon. The vision was spectacular, and he
realized then it had been ages since he’d seen such a sunset—just
one more of nature’s wonders he’d been deprived of in New York.
They’re all back in the Rat Race, but here I am, watching the
sun set on Witches Hill…
It almost seemed funny.

Sometime later, once darkness had drained
into the hills, Fanshawe had turned.

Toward town.

That daze he’d felt earlier only magnified.
It was as though the glittering lights of the Haver-Towne had
puppeted him, had
made
him turn, like a hypnotist’s pocket
watch. Fanshawe’s guts sunk; he knew what was behind the
impulse.

The windows.

Was it
this
 perverse desire that
had been brewing in him all day, without his conscious recognition?
In the past, too, he could remember times when his obsession had
taken him out with seemingly no volition of his own. His eyes
locked on the Travelodge, and its neat, enticing rows of
picture-glass windows.
Useless,
he reminded himself.
The
joke’s on me.
Even if he had come up here with the subconscious
intent of peeping, he already knew he was too far away to see
anything.

Then a noxious question slipped into his
mind.
Yeah, but what would I do—right now, right this second—if
I had a pair of binoculars on me?

His guts sunk further when still another
impulse fed his hand into his jacket pocket. In a hushed shock, his
fingers touched something, then gripped it.

He grit his teeth, his eyelids reduced to
slits, when he withdrew his hand and found it gripping the
looking-glass from the inn. He held it as though he were holding a
rancid body part. It felt heavier than it should, like a bar of
solid metal.

Oh my God, my God, what have I done?

There was only one way to explain the
device’s presence in his pocket…

I put it there,
without ever
realizing it…

After all, he
had
been looking at it
over the past few days.
How would I do that and not remember it?
Am I that oblivious?
Indeed, it seemed that his id had
overruled his conscious will and prompted him to steal the
instrument. He didn’t have to wonder what for…

His hand shook as he held the looking-glass.
I’m not crazy,
he convinced himself.
I KNOW I’m not
crazy.
I’m just a little wrung out, that’s all. I’m in a
strange place where I don’t know anybody, and now I’m suffering
from some delayed-stress thing…
His chest felt tight when he
raised his hand and stared at the looking-glass.

I WANT to scope some windows, but I’m NOT
going to,
 he determined.
What I’m going to do instead
is go back to the inn and put this damn glass back in the damn
display case.

He turned on his feet, then began to walk
back down the grass-lined path which would lead him back to the
inn.
In twenty minutes I’ll be in my room,
he thought,
and this ridiculous looking-glass will be back where it
belongs.

That’s when his will began to fade. He
sensed himself continuing to walk, but was cognizant of nothing
else. He heard his feet crunching gravel on the trails, and he
sensed some aspect of excitement but he couldn’t grasp that
aspect’s nature, save that it seemed very far away.

As the night-sounds of crickets gained
dominion over his surroundings, a drone entered his head…

Next thing he knew, his heart was racing,
and his right eye felt dry from being open so long. The most
delicious images swirled in the back of his mind. No, Fanshawe had
not returned to the hotel—

Instead, he’d gained a better vantage point
for the intent he’d failed to admit to himself.

He was standing at the highest point of
Witches Hill, spying on the town with the looking-glass. The drone
in his head amplified. He could not turn away from what he was
doing…

In the glass’s viewing circle, he scanned
the Travelodge pool, which now wobbled extra-dimensionally blue
with its underwater lights. Mostly children waded about but several
attractive mothers accompanied them. Fanshawe found that a ring on
the glass would zoom the image surprisingly close.
Oh, God…
One woman’s breasts filled the circle now, water droplets
glittering in her cleavage. Through the wet bikini top’s baby-blue
fabric, he could see the darkened plugs of her nipples. Fanshawe
swerved the glass, to another unknowing mother climbing out of the
water. The contrast of this one’s black bikini against the
luxuriant white curves of flesh left him breathless. She turned,
standing still to talk cheerily to someone in a lounge chair;
Fanshawe exploited this as any competent voyeur would, and scanned
her entire body from her neck to her toes.

He raised the looking-glass then, to the
upper-level windows…

Time turned to a smear along with Fanshawe’s
free will. He only vaguely noticed his watch beeping, signaling
eleven p.m. From this point on, he floated on a squalid euphoria,
as myriad images found their way into his famished psyche; it
seemed as though the looking-glass itself were injecting the hot
crush of glimpses deep into the substance of his brain, like
marinade into the middle of a rump roast: shapely women in
underwear or less striding across rooms; a melon-breasted college
student stepping out of the shower; a man and woman having rowdy
intercourse on their bedroom dresser-top, and a half-dozen more,
all commingling into a single, inflamed kaleidoscope that existed
solely to stoke Fanshawe’s idiosyncratic lust.

He couldn’t imagine how long he’d stood
there sampling so many visual delicacies; time didn’t exist, only
the most vivid, lascivious succession of images. When he’d
exhausted the Travelodge windows of everything his eye could
pilfer, the drone in his head swelled, and he moved the hoary
spyglass to the Wraxall Inn.

Silence shrouded him. Had the incessant
night-sounds ceased, or had his craving shut them out? Indeed, like
last night’s dream, all he could hear were his own heated breaths
and the quickened thuds of his heart.

And through the elaborate windows of the
inn, Fanshawe’s smorgasbord marched on, a visual feast the likes of
which he’d not experienced in over a year.
People are naked a
lot,
his thoughts broke through his fever,
when they don’t
think anyone can see…
He started at the top floor, then slowly
moved the glass one window at a time from left to right. The window
of the corner suite stood dark—of course, it was his own—but next
to it a slightly overweight woman with robust curves and shining
blond hair stood nude before her open closet, hunting for the
desired nightgown. Eventually she turned, showing all that plush,
soft flesh and the exorbitant substance of her bosom, just as
Fanshawe zoomed in to scrutinize in every detail.
Oh,
Christ…
On the next floor a window displayed a bed that was
empty until a clearly excited male suitor approached with his nude
girlfriend or wife—her feet wagging aloft as she silently
giggled—dropped her into the middle of the bed, then slid briskly
on top of her. The man’s mouth moved from one nipple to the other;
evidently, he was biting, for the woman’s back arched, and she
clenched, but the look on her tense face was one of pleasure, not
discomfort. The man disappeared for a moment, only to return with
handcuffs and a blindfold, but after applying these things to his
lover, he turned off the lamp, leaving only ghostly television
light.
More pay-dirt,
thought Fanshawe, for deeper along the
floor, a shimmering sight slammed into his eye: a svelte woman,
nude, on her belly with her legs wishboned. Her skin shined from an
obvious application of oil, while another naked woman, just as
shapely, straddled her and slowly massaged her back. Fanshawe’s
hands shook when he crudely zoomed the glass close between both
women’s legs.
The motherlode,
he thought.

When the sultry masseuse leaned for the
bottle of oil, he caught the sides of her breasts, like a model in
one of the classier men’s magazines, but he also saw enough of her
face…

Harvard,
he realized.
And they’re
about to…

—after a few moments, the masseuse hopped
up, laughing, then quickly closed the curtains as if her partner
had casually mentioned that it might be a good idea.
How’s that
for some bum luck?
Fanshawe thought, frustrated and now
painfully aroused; he grew light-headed when he considered what
he’d be missing. But at least the pair of lovers seemed to have
recovered from their gory shock on the trails.

Now his crude excitement left him
disordered.
I’m such a scumbag!
he yelled at himself, but
only continued to manipulate the glass. Through a careless curtain
gap, he zoomed in a young brunette wearing only panties; she stood
before a narrow, full-length mirror, and seemed to be grinning at
what she saw: wide hips and a flat stomach; long, sleek legs; small
breasts that swooped upward, topped by dense nipples. The woman’s
grin deepened; next, she drew her hands up her abdomen, cupped her
breasts, then began to vise each nipple between forefinger an
thumb…

Fanshawe made an aggravated fist with his
free hand, his self-disgust simmering.
Scumbag…
Pervert…

He moved the viewing circle past several
dark windows on the second floor, then stopped when the last of
them went alight. He held the glass fast, waiting, heart thudding.
No movement revealed itself, yet Fanshawe seemed to sense that
patience, as far as this window was concerned, would be well
rewarded. The room appeared smaller than the others; he thought he
detected heather-green carpet, then walls papered in flowery,
neutral tones. In a split-second, then, a shape strode past.
Fanshawe only made out jeans and a light top, but he knew it was a
woman.

Patience, patience,
he insisted.

The shape returned, and a hot breath
suddenly seemed trapped in Fanshawe’s chest. Now the woman was
bereft of jeans and top, and was skimming off her panties and bra.
Of all the women he’d spied on tonight,
this
woman possessed
the most exorbitant curves. But her back was to him. Was she
getting something from a closet?