—
But Susan Olson remembered this:
As a third grader in Shirley Falls, Diana Beach was taller than her classmates, and she would often stand on the playground at recess time and tell stories to the other girls. The stories were always about horrific things that had happened to various women. Diana would have these small groups of girls—there would be three or four of them at a time, almost all a head shorter than she was—walk with her over by the basketball area, and in the springtime, bees would be flying around the garbage bins there. And then, looking around with her eyes almost closed, Diana spoke to the girls about men taking these women and doing certain things to them.
—
Here is an example: A man would drive a woman to a spot in the woods and make her take off all her clothes. “Then she had to drink her pee-pee,” Diana would say. She spoke with great authority and believability, and the girls watched her with terrified eyes. Very specific detail was given. A young woman’s dress would be described, a striped dress that had a wraparound waistband—and the man got the young woman into his car by saying that her mother had been in an accident and he was going to take her to her mother. Diana told of the kinds of back roads these women were driven on until they were taken far into the woods and then forced to get out of the car.
“But what if she just said no?” a wary child asked, and Diana turned to her and said quietly, “Then he would kill her.”
—
Another man took off one of the spiky high heels that the woman had been wearing and stabbed her in her stomach with it, pushing it right down while the woman screamed and screamed.
Diana told of feces that were smeared on women, only she did not use that word, she did not know that word yet, so Diana said, “When she had a movement the man smeared it over her face.”
The little girls she spoke to were terribly frightened, and then Diana would abruptly turn and walk away.
—
“Strange to think of it now,” Susan said. She was sitting on the large glassed-in front porch of the house of Gerry O’Hare, who years earlier had been the police chief in Shirley Falls. Gerry’s bald head had red freckles sprinkled over it, and he frequently wore a blue cap, which he was wearing now. He had developed quite a paunch over the last few years—this aspect of himself he was not as aware of as he was his bald head. Gerry’s wife had died a year ago, and he and Susan had fallen into the habit of having coffee on his porch two or three mornings a week. She had just told him her memories of Diana Beach. Gerry had gone to school with Susan and also Diana Beach, but he did not remember Diana very well. “Just a vague memory of her. Never especially knew her. But, yeah, what you just said—sounds really strange, telling those stories to kids on the playground.” Gerry stretched out his legs; on his feet were white socks and moccasins with the backs folded down.
“There’s the oldest kid,” Susan continued. “He left town and lives in Oregon now, and he’s a psychiatrist.” Gerry nodded. “I don’t really remember him, do you?” And Gerry said that he did not. Susan said, “But I remember Matt. You know, when he got cancer and his mother quit working and took care of him, remember that?” She shook her head and said, “Holy mackerel. And that’s when she lost so much weight.”
Gerry leaned forward slightly and said to her quietly, “Back when I was police chief…” He hesitated and sat back.
Susan said, “What? Come on, tell me.”
He leaned forward again and said, “Back when I was police chief there was talk about Matt being a pervert. I mean it was kind of known around town that he was a perv.”
“In what way?” Susan frowned slightly. “What do you mean, exactly? A pervert in what way?” She asked this with both hands holding her coffee cup.
Gerry sat back, took his cap off, and ran a hand over his head before putting his cap back on. “He used to ask pregnant women if he could paint their picture naked.”
Susan didn’t say anything. But she raised her eyebrows. Then she said softly, “But to kill his mother?” She added, “She was a bitch, though. Do you remember her?”
“Of course. Bitch Ball. Working in the line in the cafeteria. She scared me to death.”
“I think she scared everyone to death,” Susan said.
Gerry opened his hand, palm upward, shrugged, and said nothing.
Susan said, “Listen.” She crossed her legs and leaned forward and said, “So this morning, before I came here to meet you, I was talking to Gail Young—do you remember Gail?—I thought you would—well, anyway, she called me up and she had been friends with Diana Beach when they were small, and she said that Diana would come over and spend the night at her house—Gail’s house—and that she would boss around Gail’s little sister, but I mean really boss her. Penny—Gail’s sister—had just reminded her of this. Diana used to make Penny be her prisoner.”
Susan sat back.
“Her prisoner?” Gerry asked.
“Yeah. Diana would tell Penny, You are my prisoner and you have to do everything I tell you to do.”
“And what would Diana tell Penny to do?”
“Like walk into a room and sit on the bed and not move until Diana said she could go.”
“And would Penny do this?” Gerry asked.
“Of course.”
“Where was their mother?”
And Susan said, “Who knows.”
—
Gerry had grown to be quite dependent on these mornings on his porch with Susan. She was comfortable to him in a way he would not have imagined. They had dated briefly in high school, and then he had broken up with her—they never talked about that. He thought about her a great deal, adding up in his mind the things he wanted to tell her when he saw her. He felt that they had an easy intimacy, and so why could it not go further? He did not know why. But it did not.
Now Gerry wanted to tell her about an incident last night at the grocery store where he had seen a woman fall, she was old, and she had pissed herself as she was lying on the floor.
But Susan said, “Gail told me she went to the Beaches’ house just once, and the kid, Matt, looked perfectly dreadful, all dark around his eyes, so sick. She said the house had been clean, though. Gail’s mother had wanted to know if the house was clean.”
And then Gerry told Susan about the woman who had fallen in the grocery store and how she had peed herself, how you could see the urine creeping over her really old yellowish pants.
“Oh God. Oh dear God. Oh that’s awful.” Susan shook her head.
—
Anyway, as we have said, the Gloria Beach case had gone cold.
