Jack in the Box

by Blake Banner

  The funnel of light picked out a tall man. His clothes were dark gray or black. He held up his right arm to shield his eyes and took a step forward. Again he said, “Dehan? What the hell are you doing here?”

  She stepped toward him, seeing now that his clothes were covered in slime and mud, recognizing his face in the light, smeared also with sludge and mire.

  “Stone? Oh God, Stone!” She ran, hurled herself at him, taking him in her arms and crushing him to her. “You’re alive! Thank God you’re alive!”

  He held onto her, leaned against her and then fell to the ground. She knelt by his side, feeling for a pulse. It was faint, but there. She felt his hands and face. They were cold. She rubbed them hard, then grabbed her phone and called the inspector.

  “Dehan! Where the hell are you? Why were you not at the briefing?”

  “I have him, sir. I think he’s going into hypothermia. He needs a doctor right now, and probably hospital. I am sending you my location. You need to come in off the Williams Bridge. Please hurry!”

  “You have him? What in the name of…? Is he OK? Where are you?”

  “Sir? Can we talk later? Just get here, please!”

  “All right! All right! We’re on our way.”

  He hung up and she sent him her location. Then she wrapped Stone in her jacket and began to slap and pat his face until he slowly came around again.

  “Stone? Stone! I know you’re tired. I know you want to sleep. But you have to do this for me, OK? You need to stand up. I’ll support you. I’ll hold you, but you need to stand up and you need to walk. We need to walk to the car, OK? I’m going to take you home and get you warm. Come on, big fella, get up!”

  He struggled and she heaved him to his feet, hooking his arm over her shoulder. He swayed and groaned, but stayed upright. Then they staggered, one step at a time, toward the footpath, where they turned left and headed slowly through the dense shadows and the looming trees, back toward the Charger, and home.

  “I knew you’d come,” he said.

  “You bet your ass you knew. You owe me six kids and a retirement home in Madison, remember.”

  They staggered on. “I remember,” he said.

  SEVENTEEN

  When I woke up, I wasn’t sure who I was, and I had no idea where I was. I knew I wasn’t where I had been. I had been in a cellar, and there had been a wire across my throat. My hands and feet had been tied so hard I couldn’t move them. I couldn’t remember how I had gotten there. But I knew that was where I had been.

  Before.

  Then it had been dark and wet, and I couldn’t move and I couldn’t breathe. I felt the thrash of panic inside me and took deep breaths, long, slow, deep breaths. That was before. Now I was OK.

  I was in a room in a hospital. The walls were white. There was a TV up on the wall that was switched off. On my right there was a white door with a clipboard hanging on a hook. On my left there was a window with panoramic views of New York. As I looked, I realized that I knew the area. It was Morris Park. I lived in Morris Park.

  Right beside my bed, beneath the window, was a large armchair, and in the chair was Dehan. Dehan was asleep and looked extremely beautiful. She was my wife; my wife and my partner.

  I was a cop.

  A detective. I was Detective John Stone, NYPD. And my partner in the chair was Carmen Dehan. I smiled and sat like that for maybe twenty minutes, looking out at the spring sunshine while she slept. Slowly things came back to me, piecemeal, but not a whole picture, and the thing that filled my mind the most was the cold, wet mud clinging to my face and my body, clogging my mouth and my nose.

  After a while, I realized that Dehan had her eyes open and was watching me. She smiled at me.

  “Hey, big guy.”

  “Hi.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Pretty confused. How long have I been here?”

  She looked at her watch. “About fifteen hours. How much do you remember?”

  I shook my head. “Bits, pieces. It’s like it’s downloading but I have a modem from the ’90s.”

  She frowned. “Really? What do you mean?”

  I pointed at my head. “There are big, empty spaces, mainly about…” I paused. “Last night? The last couple of days.”

  She stood and came to sit on my bed. She took my hand. It felt good. “What’s the last thing you remember, Stone?”

  “I was in a cellar. I was tied to a table, on my back. There was somebody there, but I couldn’t see them. They put…” I hesitated, an enormous sleepiness overwhelming me. I fought it, looked into Dehan’s eyes and drew strength. “They put a cheese wire across my throat that was attached to a pulley.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment and gripped my hand. When she’d opened them again she asked, “They? There was more than one of them?”

  I shook my head. “There was only one. It’s hard to remember. Most of the time it was dark. I remember a black dress, black stockings, blond hair pulled back… It was…”

  “A woman?”

  “I remember a woman.” I sighed and shook my head. “I’m sorry, Dehan. That’s all I remember.”

  “It wasn’t Penelope.”

  “Penelope…”

  “You remember Penelope?” She said it like there was a ‘surely’ tacked on the front. I stared out the window.

  After a while, I said, “Madison. But she had an apartment in the city. Upper West Side, Riverside Drive.”

  “Jesus, Stone! You remember the case?”

  I stared at her for a long time. “Jack Connors? He was beheaded. Somebody cut off his head…”

  “You have amnesia. Holy sh…”

  “I’m sorry, Dehan.”

  “Don’t be stupid. It’s not your fault. I can’t even imagine what you’ve been through. I’ll call the doctor.”

  She left the room and I lay staring out the window, not seeing the trees or the fresh blue sky, but the darkness of my memories, and the impenetrable black spaces between them.

  Jack Connors. He was in advertising. He’d gone out to lunch… No, not to lunch, to meet Penelope. He was going to her apartment. Like me. I went to her apartment. I was in her apartment, talking to her. She had lied, and cried. She was skilled at manipulating people’s emotions—men’s emotions. Had Jack gone there and spoken to her, like me?

  I had left. Had he left too? I had left to go back to Dehan. Why had he left?

  The door opened and Dehan came in with a young, balding man in jeans and a white coat. He looked like a butcher, only he had a stethoscope around his neck that proclaimed him a doctor.

  “Good morning, Detective Stone, how are we feeling this morning?”

  “Great. Can you answer a question for me?”

  “Ask me the question and I’ll tell you if I can answer it.” He smiled like he’d said something funny and also wise.

  I returned the smile and asked, “Why do doctors always talk in the first person plural?”

  He laughed like I was a lovable old rogue. “I guess it’s a misguided attempt to create rapport. How are you feeling, Detective?”

  Rapport.

  “I feel fine, tired but good. I have big holes in my memory, though.” He frowned and I ignored him. “Rapport, is that an NLP thing?”

  Now he looked surprised. “NLP?”

  “Yeah, I read somewhere if you mirror a person, make them identify with you by the things you say and do, you will create rapport, and they will be easier to persuade.”

  He shook his head. “No, it’s just one of those old bedside manner things. I am more interested in the holes in your memory. It’s not unusual after a traumatic experience to have a certain amount of amnesia. I don’t want you forcing your memory, Detective. The most likely thing is that it will come back in dribs and drabs all on its own, but if you force it, it will have the contrary effect. In any case, I am going to arrange for you to see a psychologist who specializes in trauma-induced amnesia.”

  He made a note on a clipboard he w
as holding, and while he was writing, he asked me, “What is the last thing you remember?”

  “I was in a cellar. I felt a bit high, like I’d been given something. The walls were bare brick. There was a lot of junk in boxes, there were steps leading up to a door, a bulb hanging from the ceiling. I was tied to a table with nylon rope, and there was a wire, like a piano wire, or a cheese cutter, across my throat, attached to a pulley on my right.”

  Dehan went to the window and the doctor sat on a chair beside the bed. “Don’t strain yourself. If you feel at all distressed…”

  “I’m OK. I want to remember. There was somebody there. The light was poor and my sight was kind of foggy, but I could make out a black dress, black stockings, blond hair pulled back in a kind of loose knot.”

  Dehan turned to look down at me. “A woman.”

  I nodded. “I remember recognizing her. I knew who she was.”

  “But you don’t now?”

  “I’m trying, but it’s like a wall, like my mind doesn’t want to go there.”

  “Then don’t.” It was the doctor. “Just rest and take it easy. Our resident psychiatrist will be around to see you later on. For now, I want you to rest.” He glanced at Dehan. “Understood?”

  She nodded, but her face was expressionless. I said, “Understood.”

  He gave me a quick physical, made a note on my chart and left. Dehan sat on the bed and took hold of my hand. I studied her face for a while, marveling, not for the first time, at how lucky I was. After a bit, I asked her, “Where did you find me?”

  “The Botanical Gardens. Do you have any recollection of how you got there?”

  I shook my head. “I remember feeling panic. I remember a heavy weight on my body and my limbs, mud on my face. Then I remember the darkness of the woods, trying to walk. It was like a dream: a nightmare. If somebody told me I had dreamed it, I’d believe them. Then you.”

  She squeezed my hand. “She, this woman, sent a note. There was a photograph of where you were buried, and a note saying she hadn’t killed you because she was looking for redemption.”

  I frowned and closed my eyes. The word seemed to echo inside my head. It had meaning. I had spoken to her.

  “I spoke to her. I told her to release me, to cut the bonds and take the wire from my throat. I told her it wasn’t too late to make it right.”

  Do it now and I promise you, I will help you find redemption.

  “I told her, I said, ‘Do it now and I will help you find redemption.’”

  “Son of a gun.”

  “I told her I knew there were others. Did they find any others?”

  “Yeah, two, both on the road to Madison.”

  “Madison?” I frowned. “That doesn’t make sense. Torso or head?”

  “Torso. Why doesn’t it make sense?”

  “I’m not sure. But it wasn’t Penelope, Dehan, or Shaw.”

  “You’re remembering.”

  “Shaw was her lover, but she was in love with Jack.” I closed my eyes again and spoke like I was in a trance. “Jack was in love with her too. They were in love with each other, they were going to get married. She promised him she would break up with Shaw, and she did, that night.” I opened my eyes. “She didn’t have sex with Shaw that night. They broke up on good terms, as friends. She called Jack the next day to tell him she’d broken up with him and he went to her apartment, only…” I sat up, memories beginning to flood back. “Only it wasn’t like me! He never arrived. He never arrived, so he never left. He must have been picked up before he got there.” My mind was racing. I began snapping my fingers, like the clicking would make the memories come faster. “I was coming back to you, but he wasn’t going back to anybody. It was Penelope he wanted to be with. He wasn’t going back to…” I stared into Dehan’s face. “Helena…”

  “Jesus Christ…”

  “The black dress and the stockings of a wife in mourning, the blond hair pulled back in a knot, that was who I remembered. It was Helena.”

  Dehan pulled her phone from her pocket and dialed. After a moment she said, “Consuelo, Dehan here… You called last night? I was pretty tied up. Did you chase up the vans at Connors Communication? Oh, that was what you were calling about? Good, OK, shoot… That’s great. Good work. Later.” She hung up and sighed. “Connors Communication own two white Savannahs.”

  “That’s significant?”

  “You were seen being wheeled out of Penelope’s block in a wheelchair yesterday at eleven AM. You had been roughly disguised as an old woman.”

  “Great.”

  “You were taken around to 96th Street, where there was a white Savannah waiting. You were loaded in and driven away. Connors Communication own two such vans. One of them was taken out yesterday by Penelope.”

  I scratched my head. I was beginning to get a headache. “Surely there is CCTV footage…”

  “There is.”

  “So who was wheeling me?”

  “It looks like a young man, but you know what CCTV is like. The quality is not great, and hell, you look like an old woman. Only, you know, you don’t, big guy.” She grinned and winked, which kind of helped, but not a lot.

  “You think it could be Helena?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t. The techs are on it as we speak. Either way.” She shrugged and walked to the window. “Thinking about it, she is a woman who has a way of fascinating men. She had enough fans and disciples, it’s not impossible she could have roped one of them in. Hell, Stone!” She turned to face me again. “She’s a crime writer. This is literally her daily bread.”

  “Disciples.”

  “What?”

  “One of her disciples.”

  “One of her students, a fan, Jesus, even Alornerk. Men seemed to fall for her. What’s wrong?”

  I had swung my legs out of bed. “We need to go and take her in.”

  “You’re not going anywhere, Stone.”

  “I am going to Helena Magnusson’s house to take her into custody, and you are coming with me.”

  “No way! You are staying in bed and I will go and take her in. Don’t be an ass, Stone!”

  “Don’t upset me. I have had a rough couple of days. Get me my pants.”

  “I said, no way!”

  “Fine.” I stood and made my way across the room to the wardrobe.

  “Goddammit, Stone!”

  “This is simple, Dehan. You help me or I do it alone. But unless you plan to physically assault me and tie me to the bed, a thing I have frankly had just about enough of over the last couple of days, I am going to Helena Magnusson’s house and I am going to take her into custody. So get with the program, kid!”

  “I swear! One of these days!”

  “Shut up, Dehan, and help me get dressed.”

  She glared at me, wrenched my clothes from the wardrobe and snapped, “Sit down!”

  Ten minutes later, she was climbing behind the wheel of the Jag and I was getting in the passenger seat beside her. As we pulled out of the lot, I called dispatch and asked for backup. When we had turned onto the Hutchinson River Parkway and headed south, she said, “OK, talk me through this.”

  I knew what was going to happen next, so I smiled at her and waited. She sniffed, gave her head a small twitch and went on.

  “Helena Magnusson and Jack Connors kept up the public image of being very much in love and happily married. It was good for each of their public images. But in fact they had been growing apart for some time. He had been seeing Penelope for a while and they had been gradually falling in love. Helena had been seeing Alornerk, but for her it was more an act of revenge against a man who, or as you would say, whom, she still loved and was not ready to let go of, but who had betrayed her.”

  “Sounds about right.”

  “Shut up.”

  I smiled. “You asked me to talk you through it.”

  “Shut up. So, bit by bit, Jack’s relationship with Penelope turns from an affair, to infatuation, to being actually p
retty serious, to the point where he is prepared to leave his wife and she is ready to dump the guys who have been keeping her. Somehow Helena finds out. Maybe she finds some texts, gets into his email, hears them on the phone, all of the above, or maybe it’s just good old female intuition. Whatever the case, she finds out, and she decides to kill him. One thing is having an affair, quite another is getting serious and planning to dump her and marry another, younger woman.

  “So, when he calls to say he is going out to lunch, she knows that this is code for, ‘I am going to see Penny’ and she goes to wait for him. When he comes out of his office onto the street, she intercepts him. Maybe she tells him she knows where he is going, maybe she uses some other excuse, either way, neither of them wants a public scene, so he gets in the car. Once in the car, either alone or with the help of an accomplice, she knocks him out and drives him to their house. From there she takes him to their basement, where we are going to find the set up you described. She straps him down and cuts off his head.” She glanced at me. “Sorry if this is a bit close to home.”

  “It’s fine. Go right ahead.”

  “She then packages up the head and sends it to herself at the college, by UPS, where she will receive it in a very public fashion and thus become the victim and so the least likely suspect. Meanwhile, Alornerk, her accomplice, provides her with her alibi. The really brilliant part of the plan is that her alibi works on two levels. If the first alibi is busted, she has the perfect excuse, which also provides her with a second alibi. A plan worthy of a novelist of her caliber.”

  “Question.”

  “Shoot.”

  “What about the other bodies? What made her kill them? Also, why did we find the bodies and not the heads? Why were the heads not mailed to anybody?”

  She stared at me for a moment, then shrugged. “I guess we’re about to find out.”

  “I guess we are.”

  EIGHTEEN

  We turned into West 122nd off Morningside Avenue with two patrol cars hot on our tails and pulled up outside Helena’s front door. I climbed out with care while Dehan bounded up the steps, leaned on the bell and hammered on the wood. The patrolmen stood on the sidewalk and watched us. I climbed the steps. Dehan looked at me.