by Julie Frayn
“Billie, what happened? Are you all right?” Bruce stormed into the tiny room and filled it with his presence and his voice and his cologne.
Billie put on her best outside smile. “Sorry, I can’t make date night tonight.”
He touched her cheek near the stitch on her swollen upper lip.
“Billie,” the doctor laid a hand over her knee.
She flinched.
“We’ll get you some morphine for the pain. Try to rest.”
“No, I just want to go home.”
The doctor sighed. “All right. I’ll get you some pain killers to go.” He turned to Bruce. “Take care of her.”
Bruce glared at him. “She does a fine job of that on her own.” He waited for the doctor to leave the room before turning to her. “What the hell? Who did this to you?”
“Bat Head.”
His ruddy complexion boiled over with rage and turned the colour of a red velvet cupcake. “How? Did he follow you?”
“He didn’t know it was me at first. When he figured it out, all hell broke loose.”
“Billie,” Bruce looked at the ceiling and inhaled until his chest puffed out, “you didn’t bait him? Didn’t try to make our edits come true?”
She squinted and shook her head. Was he blaming her for being attacked? She was the victim, for God’s sake. “It was coincidence. You know, those things you and Doc Kroft keep saying all of this is? I say baloney. It’s fated. I just know it.”
He put his arms around her. She rested her undamaged cheek on his chest and closed her eyes.
“Billie, did he—?” he whispered, his voice more raspy than usual.
She shook her head. “He tried.” She pulled away, tears dripping into the stitch on her lip, the salt stinging through the numbing cream that was fast wearing off. “I stabbed him.”
Bruce’s brow furrowed. “Is he dead?”
“I don’t know. They won’t tell me. But I had to. He was going to ….” She looked away. “And the hate in his eyes? I honestly figured he would kill me after. We said he’d become a serial killer, right? I’d be victim number one. His trigger.” She gathered the hospital sheet into both fists. “What if he dies? I didn’t mean to kill him. I just wanted to save myself.”
“Did you have a chance to get away? Could you have run?”
The threat of tears stung her eyes and snot dripped from her nose. “Maybe.”
He nodded. “But you chose to play superhero? Billie, it’s not real. You’re not Batman for God’s sake.”
“Of course I’m not Batman. I’m not an idiot, Bruce. I’m not crazy.” She crossed her arms over her chest and grimaced at the pain in her ribs.
“Hey, how you doing?” Katherine stood in the doorway, her designer-clad shoulder leaning against the jamb.
Billie mustered a weak smile. “I’m okay.” She gestured at Bruce. “This is my boyfriend, Bruce. This,” she looked at him and raised one eyebrow, “is my boss, Katherine.”
Bruce stepped around the bed and held his hand out. Katherine smiled and shook it. “Nice to meet you. Billie, you never told me about Bruce.”
Billie blinked. Had they become girlfriends now that Katherine had shown a modicum of human kindness? Was Billie obligated to reveal her private affairs to the harridan in the corner office? “Sorry.” It was all she could manage.
“Well, I just wanted to check in on you. If you need to take some time off, just let me know.”
“I’ll be in on Monday.” And at that interview Tuesday morning. Maybe that was Katherine’s plan, to sideswipe Billie’s chances with faux kindness. “I’m sorry about your jacket. They took it for evidence. I’ll replace it.” And her life’s savings would be out the window.
Katherine waved her hand in the air. “Don’t worry about it. I got it at a thrift shop for ten bucks.”
Billie gawked at her. “But, wasn’t it Holt Renfrew?”
“Hell yes, it was. Three or four seasons old. You have to dig, but sometimes there are good brands and designers with the original tags still on.” She huffed. “You think I can afford to look this good on the pittance they pay me to manage the proofing pool?” Katherine rolled her eyes. “Puh-lease.” She nodded at Bruce. “Well, it was nice to meet you. And seriously, Billie, call if you need some time off.” She waved and slipped into the hallway.
Billie listened to the click of thrift store designer heels echo down the hallway and stared at the empty doorframe. She was left stunned in the wake of Katherine’s Chanel cloud.
“Isn’t she the shrew?” Bruce sat on the edge of the bed and took Billie’s hand in his. “She seemed pretty nice to me.”
“I don’t know who that was, but it’s not the Katherine I know.” Thrift stores? Actual concern? No name-calling or backhanded compliments? What was happening to the world?
“Maybe she’s got a good heart under that mask of makeup and hairspray and fake nails.”
Billie snorted. “No way. You be careful around her. She discards men like used dental floss. She’s a succubus.”
“A what?”
She smiled at him. “Never mind.”
“Billie Fullalove?”
She turned to find a police officer standing in the doorway, his uniform pressed and tucked in, his hat under one arm. A wave of comfort and safety blanketed her. It was an old and familiar feeling that she hadn’t experienced in years. The same feeling she got every time her father donned his uniform, every time she helped him starch his collar and iron crisp pleats into the sleeves and the pant legs. “Yes, that’s me.”
“I’m Constable Donnelly. I have to take your statement.”
She nodded, ready to tell her story, eager to hear of Bat Head’s fate. “Will he be all right?”
“He’s in recovery. Apparently, you nicked an artery or an organ or something. Serious, but he’ll live.”
A heady mix rippled through her. Relief with the distinct aftertaste of disappointment.
The officer walked her through the attack and made notes.
As she told her tale, the heat rose in her cheeks and she sat straighter on the gurney. When she told of the stabbing, she mimed the action and thrust her empty hand into a mental red-ink reproduction of Bat Head’s lean torso.
“And the knife you stabbed him with. That was his?”
“Yes. He dropped it when I pepper-sprayed him.” She bent her arm and held it up for inspection. “I think that’s what cut my elbow.”
“Well, some cops say you should never fight back. That it’s better to give in to save your life.” He approached the bed and put one hand on her shoulder. “I come from the ‘fight like hell’ camp.” He held his hand out. “Keep up the good work, Billie.”
She shook his hand. “I’ll try.”
“I’ll have this typed up. You’ll need to come by the station and sign it over the weekend. But for now, go home and relax.” He tipped his hat and left.
“Billie?” Bruce kneeled on the floor and pulled the legs of hospital pyjama pants over her feet.
“What?”
He helped her stand, pulled the pants up and tied the drawstring around her waist. “Next time you play superhero? Call for backup first.”
Wednesday
EVERY MORNING PLAYED OUT the same. Gold Tooth, Tony Dickinson, sat in his usual spot. Billie nodded at him on the way by. He would smile and put his hand over his cup, sometimes offer her a quiet good morning.
Each day her desire to see him dead waned. Her fantasies of his dismembered body parts strewn in the alley, or him hanging by the neck from one of the gargoyles on her apartment building, faded. He looked less like a giant mound of shit, and more like a huge, slightly melted, Oh! Henry. Her red pen quit drawing horns on his head and a trident in his hands and replaced them with a fedora and a submarine sandwich. She even bought him food. But she knew he wouldn’t accept if from her, so she gave her offerings to Bruce to deliver.
Every day, Billie summoned the strength to ask Tony the one question she needed a
n answer to. Finally, after a week of avoiding it, she steeled herself for the truth, and eased her body, still aching from her run-in with Bat Head, to the hard cement next to Tony.
“You’re not going to try to give me money again, are you, Billie?”
She shook her head and handed him a cup of hot black coffee and a bag with two apple fritters. “Just breakfast.”
He peered in the bag. “Oh, bless you.” He took a huge bite of sweet pastry. “What happened to your face?”
She touched the stitch on her lip. The story had been numero uno on the office hot gossip list. By the time she went for a follow-up interview yesterday, even the barista in the lobby coffee shop knew what had happened. There was no question it was Katherine who spread the story around. Billie hadn’t figured out her motives. But if the sympathy gave her a leg up with the editor-in-chief, well, dang, who was she to complain? “I got attacked last Friday.”
“Attacked? You okay? He get arrested?”
“I’m fine. He’s still in the hospital, but cuffed to the bed.”
“Hospital? What you do to him?”
“I stabbed him with his own knife.”
Tony laughed and nudged his shoulder against hers. “Good for you. You have to testify?”
“Eventually. But you know how slow the system works. And he has to recover first. But whenever they get around to trying him, I’ll be there.” She scratched a non-existent itch on the back of her hand. “Tony, I have to ask you something.”
He nodded and stuffed another mouthful of fried dough in his mouth.
Billie took a deep breath and blew it out slowly between pursed lips. “What’s his name?”
Tony froze. He swallowed hard and took a swig of coffee. “Who?”
“Come on, don’t mess with me. You know who.”
He looked at his lap. ”I can’t.”
“Why not? It’s been twenty-two years. He got to go about his life like nothing ever happened. Live free and out in the open. It’s more than my parents got. Heck, it’s more than I got.” She shifted and turned to face him. “Please, I need to know.”
Tony’s head shook in that Parkinson’s-like wobble he had. “He hasn’t been free.”
“What do you mean? You keep tabs on him?”
“My parole officer keeps in touch. She fills me in. That no-good scum is out now, but he was in jail most of the last fifteen years.”
“For what?” She could barely eke out a whisper.
“Rape. Of a fourteen-year-old girl.”
Billie shut her eyes and balled her fists. If only Tony had told the truth back in ninety-three, this guy would’ve been arrested and convicted. He’d have never had the chance to rape anyone. That’s two young girls whose lives he’d ruined. Billie bet there were many more.
Her eyes flickered open. “I need his name.”
“He’ll kill me.” His face contorted and pleaded with her.
She squinted. “I don’t care,” she deadpanned.
“I deserve that.” Tony turned his gaze to his lap. “And it don’t matter anymore.”
Billie sighed. “What do you mean?”
“I got some cancer.”
“What kind?”
“It’s in my liver. Don’t have a lot of time left.”
“I’m sorry.”
He huffed. “No you’re not.”
She touched his arm. “Yes. I am.”
He burst into tears. “I’m so sorry, Billie. I think the cancer is my proper sentence. It’s what I deserve for what happened to your family. For what happened to you. I’ve hated myself. Hated him. It didn’t have to happen.” He slumped forward and his shoulders convulsed.
Billie put her arm around him and hugged his body into hers.
He sobbed, his tears soaking through her light cardigan and into her skin.
They sat that way for several minutes, oblivious to the stares of passersby. He was probably accustomed to stranger’s stares. She certainly was.
His sobbing subsided and he pulled away, swiped at his face with his sleeve and sniffed. “Douglas.”
“Pardon?”
“Art Douglas. That’s his name. Arthur Richard Douglas.” He ripped off a chunk of the fritter and tossed it at a trio of pigeons.
Her heart skipped one beat, two, four. Arthur Richard Douglas.
“He’s all over the system. Shouldn’t be too hard to find.” He turned to her. “Tell them to get him soon. I’ll testify. But hurry. I’ll be lucky if I make it until autumn.”
Billie took Tony’s hand and squeezed. “Thank you.”
She got to her feet with tears in her eyes, pulled a twenty from her pocket, and stuffed it in his cup. She turned and walked away before he had a chance to protest.
Arthur Richard Douglas. Murderer. Rapist. All-around waste of human skin. A real life Joe Chill.
Time to die.
Art Douglas
ART DOUGLAS DREW SMOKE deep into his lungs and watched the tip of his cigarette burn red in the dark. He lounged on a stack of crates, sated and content in his favourite haunt, the abandoned end of the docks, where the stench of rot and filth and sewage kept the pussies away. Even the cops had given up all hope on this area, just ignored it and assumed no one would want to spend more than one second there.
Cops were morons.
Blue smoke trailed into the sky. A perfect night. Not a cloud, every star visible from his vantage point in the shadows, far from the hot lights of downtown Grantham. When ash neared filter, he reached out and butted his smoke on the peach fuzz of a young hooker’s ass.
She didn’t notice. Dead girls don’t flinch.
Nobody could call him a moron. He’d learned from his mistakes. No more little girls from good neighbourhoods. People cared too much about them. Searched for them when they went missing. Demanded justice when he popped their sweet little cherries.
Since they opened those jailhouse doors and set him free for the last time, he’d sworn to be smarter. He knew he’d never stop. How could he? It was as much a part of him as his arms and legs, as his hot breath and his cold heart. But from that day forward, just whores and skanks, junkies and hobos. He’d only cast his line into toxic waters and reel in whatever mutant took the bait. They didn’t need to be pretty. Didn’t need to be skinny. They didn’t even need to smell good. He couldn’t smell anything anymore anyway. Nope, they just needed to be part of the landscape. Part of the invisible background that regular folks never see, never remember. Women, or when he was lucky, girls, who nobody noticed had gone missing. Who nobody gave a rat’s ass about if they never came back.
The other lesson he’d learned? No witnesses. He knew he could only get it up for rape. What he’d discovered about himself is that he got a powerful orgasm if he came as he choked the life from them. Shot into them when their eyes could no longer see. Yeah, that was a pleasant surprise. But like all cravings, all addictions, he had to feed it. And like all crimes, he had to cover it up. Shooting his load into a rubber lacked a certain satisfaction that filling a whore’s pussy held. But no condom equalled jail time. Bastard cops had his DNA on file. There ought to be a law against that. No damn privacy left in the world.
Except in his little slice of dock heaven. Private. Peaceful. No one around to hear them scream. He patted her naked bottom and flipped her over for one more go. One look into those open, dead eyes, and he was ready and able. And when he was done, he’d slice her into chum and toss her to the fish. They would feast tonight. She was a hefty one.
Saturday, August 29th
BILLIE SIPPED ON HER morning coffee. Sun streamed in the window and laid a hot slice of light across Peg Leg’s blackness. How that cat didn’t fry up into kitty nuggets was beyond her.
She sat at her laptop, typed “Arthur Richard Douglas” into the search field. Her pinkie hesitated over the Enter key. Was she ready to dive headlong into this man’s world?
“Screw it.”
She flicked the key and the Google gods responded in a nanosecon
d with a long list of links. A goldmine of potential leads. Tony was right, Art Douglas was all over the system.
She pulled up an article dated seven years ago. An op/ed piece about convicted felons and re-offending. It discussed the case of Art Douglas, convicted of rape and aggravated assault. As if taking the virginity of a young, innocent girl wasn’t enough, he piled on by burning her with the tip of a lit cigarette. He served the full ten-year sentence. Not even a month after his release and still on parole, he robbed a convenience store and snatched a young girl from out front. Before he could do her any physical harm, a citizen called the cops when they heard muffled screams in an alley.
Joe Chill still loved his dark alleys.
He did another three years for robbery and attempted rape. The author of the article felt he should have done harder time, second conviction and all. And since he was still bent on rape, his inability to complete the nasty deed notwithstanding, it showed a pattern. Citizens needed to be protected from scum like him. Well, that’s not what the article said. But that’s how Billie edited it.
She nodded through the article. Damn straight, they all needed to be protected. And if protection wasn’t going to come, then someone needed to take the threat off the streets. Put justice right. Something the courts seemed incapable of doing. Or at least doing well.
Another newspaper clipping had him walking out of prison five years ago. It appeared he’d begun living a normal life. Gone straight, or so his parole officer claimed. Though she found some internet chatter that maybe he was responsible for the rape and murder of two prostitutes whose bodies were discovered floating in the Grantham River. Speculation was, he must have worn a condom, and the water had washed away any other evidence. Except the cigarette burns on their bodies, his signature move. But that clue went nowhere without an actual cigarette with spit or a fingerprint still intact.