Shame

laugh and part sob. “Tell me about these people. Explain them to me.”
    He was leaning close to her, and that frightened her. She could sense his agitation, his anger.
    “I can’t explain people, but there was a poem that Whitman wrote,” she said, her tone shrill despite her best efforts to sound calm, “that taught me how to try to understand a person. He said, ‘Agonies are one of my changes of garments; I do not ask the wounded person how he feels...I myself become the wounded person.’”
    It was several moments before the intruder responded. “Oh,” he said, as if hurt, as if wounded. “Oh.”
    He edged off the bed and started pacing around her room. Elizabeth saw him as a shadow, something darker than the dark, making his way back and forth. His hand kept moving to his brow and rubbing, as if wiping away sweat, as if a fever had broken.
    “No one understands,” he said.
    “I’ll try to,” she promised.
    He retreated from her, as if now he was the one who was afraid. She heard him feeling through the darkness, moving toward the front of the room. When he opened the door, there was enough light from the hallway for her to catch a glimpse of his face. Elizabeth was surprised at his appearance. He was a very handsome man, with dark good looks and sensuous lips. The lips moved for her.
    “Don’t scream,” he said, and then was gone.
    Several minutes passed before Elizabeth raised herself from her bed. She had been afraid he was still out there, still waiting. She finally steeled herself to turn on a light. With two hands she grasped a letter opener and slowly made her way out to the hallway. There was no one in sight, and all was quiet. Tracy’s room was the nearest to hers; the door was slightly ajar.
    Elizabeth pushed it open. There was no sign of the intruder. Tracy was in her bed, all tucked in. She called to her, but Tracy was a heavy sleeper. She usually set two alarm clocks to get up, and sometimes that wasn’t enough.
    “Tracy. There was a man in here.”
    Tracy continued to snooze. Elizabeth pulled back the bed-covers. Tracy wasn’t wearing any clothes, but there was a length of panty hose trailing down her back.
    “Tracy, wake up.”
    As Elizabeth was shaking Tracy by the shoulder, she noticed that the panty hose were twisted around her neck. She turned Tracy over and confronted the horror.
    The panty hose had dug so deeply into Tracy’s neck that it looked like a balloon tied into sections. Her face was even worse, her eyes distended and bulging, her tongue huge.
    Elizabeth had promised she wouldn’t scream, but she did.
    She opened her eyes and let the memories recede. Even after all these years, she sometimes awakened screaming. Parker had murdered both Tracy and Paula, but for whatever reason, he had let her live. When he was finally captured, after he had murderedseventeen women, her testimony helped convict him. She was the only eyewitness and the only woman who had survived his calling upon her.
    The captain came on the intercom. He promised a smooth flight the rest of the way to San Diego.
    Liar, Elizabeth thought.

4

    October 10, 1986
    T WENTY-FOUR-YEAR-OLD K ATHY F RANKLIN had gone on a Sunday outing with her friend Suzanne Epstein to watch the clustering of hot-air balloons. At midafternoon Kathy left Suzanne to go back to her car for more film. Parker intercepted her on the way there.
    “I hate to bother you,” he said, his voice reflecting a Southern upbringing, “but I’m kind of in a fix.”
    The “fix” was obvious—his left leg was in a cast. The handsome stranger looked as if he wasn’t used to asking for favors. Even without the cast most women would have gladly helped him, but the cast was magic. His helplessness gave women who might have been intimidated by his good looks an easy bridge to cross.
    “My car has this big trunk,” he said, “and I can’t reach inside far enough to get this compressor we need. I wouldn’t bother you except that my crew is ready to take off.”
    “Your crew?” Kathy asked.
    “I’m a pilot,” he said, then tapped his cast with a crutch, “or I was until I broke this.”
    No combat ace ever assumed such a manly pose. His plaintive voice was played to perfection, his need apparent. Kathyimmediately offered to help the wounded pilot. They talked all the way to his car. He apologized that it was so far away, explained its distant location by saying that he had arrived late and hadn’t been able to park in the main