Mania

by Craig Larsen

“That’s right.”

  “You’re her birth son?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She gave birth to you. She was your real mother.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you know your father?”

  Daniel didn’t answer.

  “Do you mind if I tape this interview, Daniel?”

  Daniel leaned his head into his hands. His hair was long, and he combed it back with his fingers. He seemed to make a concerted effort to regain control over himself. They hadn’t been sitting inside the diner very long. Nick clasped a small tape recorder in his hand on the red Formica tabletop, waiting for the teenager to respond.

  Nick had waited for him outside the grim concrete high school on Eighth Avenue, standing at the chain-link fence that bounded school property. At three o’clock, the bell had rung, signaling the end of the school day. There was no guarantee that Daniel would be at school, but Nick had no other way of locating him. The school’s administration had an old address on file, and now that his mother was dead, he wasn’t easy to find. No one had any idea where the boy might be sleeping.

  “So what do you say? You mind if I tape this?”

  “What are you going to ask me?”

  “About your mother mainly.”

  “Are you looking for who killed her?”

  Nick didn’t want to lie. “I’m a reporter,” he said. “Not a policeman. I’m not looking for your mother’s killer. The truth is, I don’t think anyone is. That’s one of the things I’m going to write about.”

  “Because she was a whore.”

  Nick didn’t argue. “Because she was a prostitute.”

  “You didn’t know my mother, did you?”

  “No. The first time I saw her, she was already dead. Out by the Green River, where she was found. That’s where I saw you the first time, too. When the police brought you there to ID her body.”

  “Okay.” Daniel dropped his gaze, once again combing his hair back with his fingers. “You can record this if you want to. It’s up to you.”

  Nick had spotted Daniel as he pushed his way out the school doors and started down the steps. Daniel took off the moment he saw Nick. He shoved through the crowd on the stairs and tore down the street. Nick shouted for the boy to stop. Knocking into a few students, he sprinted after him.

  Nick didn’t see the car pulling away from the curb halfway down the block until it was too late, and as the car screeched to a stop, he glanced into it sideways before he was able to jump out of its way. He cradled his camera as he fell, ripping a small gash in his jeans when his knee hit the pavement. By the time he was back on his feet, Daniel had disappeared. Ignoring the angry shouts from inside the car, once again he sprinted down the street. His heart pulsed inside his ears, his breath burned his lungs. He didn’t see the small alley on his left until he was on top of it. Even before he could hear him, though, he knew that this was where Daniel had hidden himself. Slowing to a stop, he took a few tentative steps into the alley. Struggling to quiet his breathing, he kept his ears peeled, peering closely into the shadows.

  “So tell me why you ran, Daniel.”

  “What?”

  “When you saw me.” Nick looked down at the recorder on the Formica tabletop, making sure that the tape was still spinning on its reel. “You ran.”

  Daniel shook his head.

  “Did you think I was someone else? Has someone been looking for you?”

  Daniel took a deep breath before responding. “Not for me.”

  Nick understood that he had stumbled onto something. “Who did you think I was, Daniel?”

  “I saw you yesterday, too.”

  “I know. I saw you, too.”

  “At the Safeway. Where they found that body.”

  “You ran from me then, too, didn’t you?”

  Daniel didn’t respond.

  “Why, Daniel? Who did you think I was?” Nick asked again.

  “One of the doctors.”

  Nick took the information in. “One of which doctors, Daniel?”

  Daniel shrugged. “You know, a social worker. One of the doctors.”

  “I’m not sure I understand why you’d run, then. If you thought I was a doctor.”

  Daniel hesitated. “People say they’ve been giving them bad drugs.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  Daniel didn’t answer.

  “Doctors are there to help people, aren’t they?”

  The boy assessed the man opposite him. “You’ve never lived on the streets, have you?”

  Nick ignored the temper the boy’s question triggered, burning hot inside his chest. “Tell me what that means, why don’t you? To live on the streets.”

  Again, the boy shrugged. “It means different things.”

  “So—what—you sleep on the sidewalk? Is that what it means?”

  The boy considered the question. “It means I’m always moving. I have slept on the sidewalk, yeah. But I’m not sleeping there now.”

  “Where are you sleeping?”

  The boy smiled.

  “But you go to school.”

  “Yeah. That’s what Mom wanted. I go to school.”

  Nick had waited for his eyes to adjust. Then he took a few more steps into the shadows. Three steps into the narrow alley, the light seemed to drain from the day. He glanced upward, at the brick and concrete buildings rising four stories above him on either side. As far as he could determine, the alley stretched the better part of the city block. The cobblestone corridor seemed to vanish into a black hole, though, so Nick figured it was a dead end. Daniel must be trapped. The scrape of a lone gravelly footstep echoed down the length of the alley. Daniel? Nick took another hesitant step forward. I just want to talk to you. The doorways in the buildings lining the narrow street were so dark they were black. Nick peered into the shadows, looking for movement.

  He saw the blade glinting in Daniel’s hand before he spotted the boy, hidden in a shallow doorway, waiting for him. The boy had tricked him. He had led him down the alley, now he was going to ambush him. Nick’s heart pounded in his ears. He was blinded by fear. Yet Daniel wasn’t preparing to attack him. The boy wasn’t moving at all. He was standing still in the black doorway, the knife clasped in his hands. His eyes were closed, and tears were streaming down his face.

  “So what are you going to do now, Daniel?”

  “Now that my mother’s dead?” the boy asked.

  Nick looked at him across the booth. “Yeah, now that she’s dead. Where are you going to go? How are you going to live?”

  The boy took his time, and when he spoke, he didn’t answer directly. “In a way it’s going to be easier,” he said at last. “When Claire was alive, I was worried all the time, you know? She was a whore, I know that. But she was my mom, too. It was my job to protect her.”

  Nick had turned the tape recorder off when he thought to ask Daniel one last question. He had already put his things back into his bag, and they were on their way out of the diner. Nick stopped Daniel as they stepped into the street. “Did you know Dickenson?” he asked him.

  Daniel shrugged. “Not really.”

  “But you’d seen him before?”

  Again, Daniel shrugged. “Sure. He was around.”

  “What do you make of what happened to him?”

  “What do you mean?” Daniel was looking down the street, as though he was figuring which way to walk.

  “His hand,” Nick said. “Why do you think someone would do that to his left hand?”

  “He was married.”

  “What?”

  “Not anymore. His wife is dead. But he had this ring. This big gold ring with a diamond in it.”

  “His wedding ring,” Nick said.

  “Yeah. That’s right. His wedding ring. It was probably worth something, but he never took it off. Everyone knows that. Dickenson was really proud of that ring.”

  “Your pictures didn’t leave much to the imagination,” Laura Daly was saying. “The irony i
s, your work was so thorough we couldn’t use it.”

  It took Nick a moment to focus. He had lost himself in his memory. “You know,” he said, glancing across the table at the senior editor, trying to hang onto the thread of the conversation, “I’m not exactly sure why you haven’t printed some of those pictures.” He looked at his hands on the white linen tablecloth in front of him, wondering why they weren’t trembling. He felt sick, queasy.

  Daly smiled, unaware, leaning forward onto her elbows. “You’re too young to remember. You moved out here what—ten, eleven years ago?”

  “When I was nineteen,” Nick confirmed. “To go to the university.”

  “It’s a beautiful city, Seattle,” the editor said. “We’re pretty proud people. We have a reputation, though, for being home to some fairly notorious murderers over the years.”

  “Ted Bundy,” Nick said.

  “And then the Green River Killer.”

  “Gary Ridgway.”

  “Yes,” the editor said. “That’s right—Gary Ridgway. Forty-eight acknowledged homicides. Probably the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history, a Seattle native. You can understand how people around here are gun shy. The Claire Scott murder by itself was probably enough to set people off. Another prostitute from downtown Seattle kidnapped and slaughtered and dumped in the woods. Left to rot on the banks of the Green River. People get scared it’s going to start happening all over again.”

  “So you censor the news.”

  Once again the editor smiled. “Back when I started out, I was a lot like you. I thought it was my job to tell the truth.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  Daly shook her head. “It’s my job to sell papers. Today, tomorrow, and the day after that. I don’t trade in truth. I trade in credibility.” The editor leaned toward her young reporter. “Can you believe that we’ve been criticized for the stories we’ve been running? You know what they’re saying? They’re saying we’re trying to take advantage of the public’s paranoia. They’re calling us terrorists. Terrorists. If the people only knew. If they could see the pictures we haven’t printed.”

  “You didn’t invite me here to bitch about your critics,” Nick heard himself say. He felt nervous, watched. He concentrated on his hands, trying to steady himself.

  Settling back in her chair, Daly examined the young man in front of her.

  Nick tried to hold her gaze but couldn’t. “I’m just wondering where this is going,” he said.

  “No—you’re absolutely right.” The editor raised a hand to cut off Nick’s apology. “You deserve my candor, Nick, so let me level with you.”

  Nick glanced at his boss, then back down at his hands, waiting.

  “We’ve been pretty careful with the news so far. Claire Scott gets killed and dumped in one of Ridgway’s graveyards, and we write columns telling people it’s a one-off thing. Dickenson gets stabbed a couple of weeks later, and for the most part we reassure people the two murders aren’t related. I’m not publishing lies. I’m writing what credibility demands me to write.” The editor looked at the young man, trying to gauge him. “But now with your brother, we’ve got three murders in three weeks. All of them stabbings.”

  Nick waited for Daly to continue.

  “Credibility. That’s what it all boils down to. I’ve got my credibility to think about. I like you, Nick. You know that. And it’s more than that. I know you. I believe in you. The time has come, though, where I have to run what I’ve got. From every angle. Understand?”

  Nick turned the words over. He understood that the editor would have drawn the same conclusion as the police. Until he was able to remember what happened, he was a natural suspect.

  “You’re one of my reporters. One of my best photographers. Hell, tomorrow morning I’m going to be running that piece you wrote a couple weeks ago. The story about Claire Scott’s son—what was his name? Daniel, right? But you’re also part of the story now. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “So what does that mean, Laura? You’re going to investigate me? Is that what you brought me here to tell me?”

  The senior editor sat back in her chair, flustered. “Don’t be ridiculous, Nick. We know each other better than that. I just wanted to make damn sure we had this conversation before you read about yourself in the paper.” Daly herself seemed surprised by the harshness of her words, and she took a few seconds before continuing. “You can understand my taking you off the murders, though, can’t you?” she said. “At least for the time being.”

  Nick didn’t respond.

  “If it was baseball season, I’d send you out to the park to cover a few games. Seriously.”

  Nick knew how closely the editor followed the Mariners, but he couldn’t bring himself to return her smile.

  “There’s no reason you can’t work on something else,” Daly said into the awkward silence. “There’s the Hamlin gala tonight, for example. I’m sure you’ve been invited, haven’t you?”

  “It’s too soon,” Nick heard himself say, cutting Daly off.

  “I understand,” Daly said, reminding Nick of the sympathy that Delilah had shown him a few minutes before, on the phone. “These things take time.” When Daly lifted one of her hands, Nick noticed how slack the skin on her arm was. There were deep creases in the thin, waxy skin between her knuckles. The editor’s hand was nearly on top of his own before Nick understood that the middle-aged woman intended to touch him. He jerked away from the contact.

  “I appreciate your concern,” Nick heard himself say. “But I’m okay. Really. It’s not Sam I’m talking about. I was talking about Sara. It’s too soon for you to ask me that.”

  The twenty years that separated them were suddenly visible in the senior editor’s face. “I see.” Daly shifted in her chair, recovering her composure.

  “I’ve only known her for a few weeks,” Nick explained.

  Daly nodded, taking her time. “I thought that an assignment like this might be good for you. That you might want to work a little.”

  Nick made an effort to meet the woman’s steady gaze. “I appreciate that,” he said. “But like I told you, Laura, I’ve only known her for a few weeks.”

  “The gala’s a big event,” the editor said, ready to press the point. “The cream of Seattle society’s going to be there. Jason and Jillian Hamlin are about the closest thing to a king and queen we’ve got here in the Pacific Northwest. When they throw a charitable ball like this, they put on a real show. They’ve booked the whole of Benaroya Hall, and I hear the symphony’s going to be there tonight playing dinner music while the guests eat meals catered by a chef they’ve flown in from Paris.” Nick was aware of Daly’s censure. “One of Hamlin’s companies—Hamlin Waste Management—just earned a twenty-million-dollar bonus for cleaning up that toxic spill in Elliott Bay a month ahead of schedule.” Daly shook her head. “As if he didn’t have enough money already. They’re going to bring the house down, Nick. You can be sure of that.”

  “Aren’t you going yourself?”

  “Me?” Daly smiled. “I’m a newspaper editor. That’s all I am. The press isn’t invited.” She leaned forward. “You get pictures, and it would be a scoop for us. Not just the red-carpet stuff. Pictures from inside.”

  Nick shrugged. “I can’t do it.”

  “Think about it some more,” the editor said, apparently oblivious to Nick’s increasing distress. “The pictures would make the Sunday supplement.”

  “Sara invited me as her guest.”

  “Ask her, why don’t you? See what she says if you tell her you’re bringing your camera.” The editor leaned back comfortably in her chair and looked up to signal the waiter, turning her attention to the meal.

  “I’ve got to go,” Nick said.

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re ready to order?” the waiter asked, standing over Nick’s shoulder. Daly lifted a hand to stay the tall, thin man.

  “This was a mistake,” Nick said. “I’m not hungry. I can’t do this.
”

  “Sit and talk to me, then,” the editor said, changing her tone. She waved the waiter away. “We don’t have to eat. You know you’re more than just a reporter to me, Nick—”

  “You wouldn’t ask me to do this if that were true.” Nick raised his eyes, expecting to have stung the editor with his words. The expression on Daly’s face, though, remained gentle. Unfazed. “Look—I’ve got to go. I’m sorry.”

  “I wanted to talk to you, Nick. Seriously. Not just about the gala. I’m not being coy.”

  Nick wouldn’t be persuaded. “Another time.”

  Laura Daly examined him, then seemed to give up. “Another time,” she echoed.

  Aware of the shadow of deep concern darkening the editor’s eyes, Nick pushed his chair away from the table and strode to the exit. Daly was still watching him as he shoved his way through the doors past a few customers, and Nick knew it. He couldn’t decide what her expression was concealing. Was it concern for him? Or was she allowing herself to wonder whether he had slid a knife into his brother’s chest? Nick took a deep breath of fresh air, grateful to be outside.

  chapter 11

  After leaving Daly at the Metropolitan Café, Nick found himself drawn to the parking lot beneath Pike Place Market. This was his first visit back to the scene since Sam’s murder, and he had to steel himself against an upwelling of memories.

  At three o’clock, the sun had broken through the clouds, and the waterfront was crowded. A flock of seagulls was circling and screeching overhead. He wasn’t certain precisely what he was looking for. Standing on the edge of the lot in the light of day, among hundreds of tourists and residents happy for the interlude of warm sunshine, he was convinced that he was grasping at straws. He looped the camera’s leather shoulder strap around his hand a few times, letting the camera dangle at his legs. The cast aluminum body of the telephoto lens tapped against his knee. There wasn’t anything for him to see here. Nothing to find that the police wouldn’t already have found.

  He was ready to give up when two girls caught his attention. He hardly noticed the yellow tube top that the blonde was wearing, or the brunette’s long, slender legs. It was the way the blond girl was laughing that grabbed him. The shrill sound resonated in Nick’s head, and despite the sunlight, despite the crowd of people streaming past him on either side, his world went black. Nick was shivering, dressed once again in his jacket. A mist was swirling around him, a foghorn was sounding over the water. A few students were talking loudly, drunkenly, a couple of blocks down, their words indistinct. A girl was laughing. And Sam was next to him, in step at his side.