Shame

he would be asking for. Jean Keys. Where did Queenie come up with her names? Maybe he would ask her that the next time his hands were around her neck.
    Suddenly, the line started ringing. He had been connected to Vera Macauley’s room. Feral listened for a moment, made sure there wasn’t some mistake, and then hung up.
    Time to check in, he thought.
    Aloud, he announced, “Patience, my ass. I’m going to kill someone.”

28

    T OO MUCH COLD, too much pain.
    As Caleb shifted, the branches creaked—but not as much as his bones. He hurt everywhere and was so thirsty he’d taken to licking leaves for their moisture. Lapping up the dew made him feel like a dog. He was afraid that at any moment he might start baying at the moon.
    Maybe he already had. His mind kept drifting. In a way that was a blessing, for time passed that he wasn’t even aware of, but it was also scary. Only minutes earlier he had awakened to the sound of other voices, or at least thought he had until he’d recognized those voices were his own.
    He had gone through several spells of trembling, each worse than the last. Caleb wished he had brought along a coat and water, but of course he hadn’t planned to be up a tree. Now, with all the patrol cars going by, leaving his perch wasn’t an option.
    There was little to do but stare up into the sky and think. It was a cloudless night, and the stars were tantalizingly near. Caleb wished he could name the constellations. Another regret. He wondered if you could wish upon stars whose names you didn’t know, or whether that voided the whole process. He made his wish anyway. “Wish I may,” he whispered, “wish I might, wish my family’s well tonight.”
    If I survive this, he vowed, I’ll take my family on a special vacation. And this time I won’t take along the same baggage I’ve carried for so long. It had weighed everyone down on their last trip. They had traveled up the coast to San Francisco, their first vacation in over a year. Caleb had known his marriage was in trouble, and he had thought a getaway might help it. They had gone on an outing to Fisherman’s Wharf, and there the children had been seduced by the flashing lights of the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Museum.
    “Let’s go to the wax museum! Let’s go to the wax museum!”
    Janet started the chant, and then James joined in. Their exhortations grew louder.
    Laughing, Anna surrendered to their demands. Though they entered the museum as a family, the kids quickly ran ahead. “I better stay with them,” Anna said.
    “I’ll do it.”
    “No, let me. Take your time.”
    Both he and Anna were reading from the same overly polite “you first” page. What Caleb should have said was, “Let’s all stay together.” But that thought came too late. Anna had already gone ahead.
    He could have run after her, but he didn’t. Alone, he made his way through the exhibits. There was a mazelike feel to the museum, the twists and turns opening up to the displays of the bizarre, strange, and morbid. The exhibits were realistic, making for a sideshow feel, but no carnival barker was needed. Many of the wax figures were triggered by motion detectors, voicing their incredible stories to all passersby.
    At times Caleb closed in on his family, hearing his children’s excited laughter two or three displays ahead. Their reactions offered him previews of what he was going to see. But he wasn’t forewarned, at least not enough.
    When Caleb walked into the Hall of Shame, it lived up to its name—literally. They were all there, gathered together likefraternity brothers: Bluebeard, Attila, Bundy, Speck, Gacy, Hitler, Dahmer, Manson, and Amin.
    And Shame.
    His father was standing center stage and smiling. In his hands was a book of poems—Whitman. His father was by far the handsomest man in the group. He also looked the most self-assured.
    Caleb’s presence set off his recording: “Seventeen women, a dozen of them college students, died by my hands,” he announced. “I strangled them and left my signature on the naked body of each. Not Gray Parker, the name I was born with, but the name I came to be associated with: Shame.
    “My killing spree lasted for three years. I left behind bodies in five states. I was described as having the looks of an angel and the heart of the devil.
    “Before being executed for my crimes in the state of Florida, I was asked if I had any last words. And I told the world, ‘Shame on you. Shame on you.’”
    The