Girl Most Likely

by Max Allan Collins

  She is pretty as ever, her medium-length brown hair framing her face beautifully. You feel a pang and it’s not hunger. Well, really, it kind of is. There are hungers and there are hungers.

  “Everybody at home but me has the flu,” you say.

  A real smile. “I sure hope you’re not contagious.”

  “No, I’ve already had it. You’re perfectly safe.”

  She has a menu for you, but you say you don’t need it.

  “Rocky’s Ravioli,” you say.

  “Your favorite.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “You’re my favorite.”

  Her smile is gone but a frown hasn’t replaced it. “Don’t say that. It’s cruel.”

  Sammy Davis is singing “Something’s Gotta Give.”

  “I don’t mean to be cruel,” you say. “It’s just that. . . I’ve missed you. I am not coming on to you! Just telling you. I’ve missed you.”

  “Yes,” she said, cheerfully, “it’s nice seeing you, too. I’ll bring your bread and salad.”

  She goes off to do that. The middle-aged couple are finishing up. After Jasmine returns with the bowl of salad and basket of bread, she goes over and gives them their check, then disappears.

  In a few minutes, when you are still just getting started on your bread and salad, she returns and takes the middle-aged couple’s money. A little while later she brings them their change, and you are done with the salad and bread.

  You only eat half of what she brought. That low hum inside you means your stomach might not like any more.

  You sit and think. Ponder. Consider. You may not have to do it, after all. She seems friendly. She seems not at all scared, though you would imagine by now she has reason to be. Your belly seems to be handling the rich buttery garlic bread and the tangy Italian salad. You even eat a yellow pepper.

  You are doing fine.

  Bobby Darin sings “Call Me Irresponsible.”

  She brings your order of ravioli—a half dozen good-size pasta puffs filled with ricotta cheese; the marinara they luxuriate in is excellent. You ordered this because it’s your favorite all right, but also to take it easy on your stomach, which is not made of cast iron. Neither are you. You are human. You once felt something for this girl. You still do maybe.

  Maybe you won’t have to go through with it.

  While you are eating, Jasmine comes in and clears the middle-aged couple’s table. No busboy is working this evening. When she bends over, her slender shapely figure reminds you of the needs that drive you, needs you can’t help, needs you must respond to or you might just go mad.

  When you are finished, eating only half of the serving, Jasmine returns, brings the check, and asks if there’s anything else.

  “I would like a glass of white wine,” you say. “Chardonnay. The Main Street.”

  “From California. Good choice.”

  “Why, is that your favorite?”

  She smiles a little. “One of them.”

  “Why not sit and talk? You’ll be closing, in what. . . twenty minutes. I don’t see any other customers.”

  “No. I’d imagine you’re my last.”

  “If Tony spots you,” you say, referring to the assistant manager who seated you, “you can scurry off like a good girl.”

  “I. . . I have to clear the table first.”

  You say fine, and then give her two twenties. “Settle up for me later, and keep the rest.”

  She nods, or you think she does—it’s barely perceptible. She clears the table.

  So you sit awhile and wonder if she’ll disappear with your money. Maybe Tony will show up with your glass of wine.

  But it’s Jasmine who comes, bringing a bottle and a glass. She sets it before you, and takes the seat beside you. Then she fills the glass all the way, which is what Frank Sinatra is singing. You sip. Then she looks around surreptitiously and does the same—an under-drinking-age girl, stealing sips. How much sweeter the wine tastes because of that.

  You speak very softly. It’s barely audible above “Ol’ Blue Eyes.” You tell her how much you miss her. How often you think of her.

  “I think of you, too,” she admits.

  “That makes me happy.”

  “But I think we both know it was wrong. You told me so yourself. You told me how wonderful it had been, how much you’d cherish the memories. But that we would have to go our separate ways. You were kind about it. Sweet, even. But it hurt. Do you know how much it hurt?”

  You put sadness in your smile. “Wasn’t it Roy Orbison who said, ‘Love Hurts’?”

  “. . . I think it was Nazareth.”

  She steals a sip. Yours takes its time.

  Then she says, “We haven’t spoken since then. Except when you and your family were here and I took your order. Do you know how hard it was for me to see you living a life like that without me? But at the same time. . . how could I deny you that? No. I was in the wrong. I made the first move.”

  They always did. They always thought they did. You were really good at maneuvering that. Which always paid off, when it came time to talk about blame.

  “I’m not here,” you say, after a sip of wine, “to start things up again. . . as hard a reality as that is to face. You have a new love in your life. I saw you at the reunion.”

  She shrugs. “We’re not real serious yet. Getting there, maybe, but. . . not like we were. Maybe that’ll happen. I know I haven’t really been in love since. . .”

  Her lovely brown eyes are swimming with tears. That’s good! That’s perfect.

  You consider touching her hand, but think better of it. If Tony should peek in, and saw that, you would have to call it off. They trade sips.

  “Sweetheart,” you say, “I just had to talk to you because. . . well, you’ve been much on my mind.”

  “I have?”

  “You have. After what happened to that reporter from Chicago, Astrid Lund—”

  “She was from here, you know. One of the girls I room with had a sister who went to school with her. She was on TV in Chicago, I guess, really kind of a big deal.”

  “Yes, I know. I wanted to make sure you weren’t too upset about it.”

  “Why would I be?”

  “Well, that boy you’re seeing, I don’t know if you know this, but he used to date her. The dead girl.”

  When she was living.

  “I knew that,” Jasmine says. “But that’s old news.”

  You almost smile at that—Astrid the big-time broadcast journalist. . . old news.

  “I think,” you say, “that everyone at the reunion has been questioned by the police. I know I was.”

  “Me, too!”

  “Oh?”

  “Earlier today. Right here. Police chief and her father.”

  “I hope you weren’t too alarmed.”

  “No. It was just a matter of giving them. . . I guess you’d say an alibi for Jerry.”

  “He was with you after the reunion?”

  She seemed embarrassed now. “Yes, I, uh. . . we spent the night.”

  “You’re not just saying that to make me jealous.”

  “No! No. You didn’t have anything to do with it. Uh. . . that sounded wrong. I didn’t mean anything by it. But you must know I’ve gone on with my life. I had to. And I’ve never told a soul about us. Not a soul.”

  You sip wine. “The age difference, I’m afraid, would have people judging us.”

  She sips wine. “That’s what I think. It’s not fair. So what if I was sixteen? Some places people marry younger than that!”

  Yes, but seventeen is the age of consent in Illinois. You’d been all too aware of that, but not enough for it to matter.

  She asks, “Is your. . . situation at home better now?”

  “Not really,” you say. “But I have to think of the bigger picture.”

  “Oh, I know. I don’t blame you. I really don’t.”

  “Good.” You put concern in your expression. “Really, I just want
ed to make sure this horrible event hadn’t upset you terribly.”

  “I don’t consider what we had to be horrible at all!”

  “I’m not talking about us. I’m talking about what happened to the Lund girl.”

  “Oh. Well, yes.”

  Again you trade sips, hers cautious, yours not.

  “By the way,” you say, “did anyone see you and Jerry together after the reunion? I mean, if you’ll forgive me for snooping, where did you. . . wind up?”

  “My apartment. Over Honest John’s Trading Post? But my roommates weren’t around.”

  “Not even the next morning?”

  “No. I know how to be discreet. You know that.”

  She has her last sip of wine and says, “Well, better say good night. There are a few things I need to take care of before closing.”

  Dino is singing “Arrivederci Roma.”

  You gesture to the sound. “What he said.”

  That makes her smile.

  She is talking to Tony at the register by his station when you pass, nodding to the host, but not acknowledging Jasmine, who does not even glance at you. She was right—she always was good at discretion.

  You slip outside.

  The night is cold. Colder. You have a coat on, but not the coat you need. You move the car, parking it on Bench Street. You go around to the trunk. You glance about—nothing around but the rear of stores and the front of churches, neither doing business right now. No traffic at all.

  You pop the trunk. Exchange your coat for the black hooded raincoat. Climb into it. Again, it’s a new one, the previous one discarded in a dumpster in Dubuque. You take out the fresh pair of kitchen gloves and snug them on. You’re getting used to the feel. The butcher knife you had not needed with Astrid is here for you now.

  You shut the trunk and head down the concrete stairs. The world is not just cold but empty and almost silent, just some distant bar noise. You are at Main now. You tuck into the trees of the park-like area adjacent and wait as a couple of cars glide by. Through the trees you have a view on Vinny Vanucchi’s. You hear a door open and a good-night exchange between Jasmine to Tony, clear yet distant in the chill.

  You rush across the street.

  Along the side wall of Honest John’s Trading Post a wrought-iron stairway with wooden steps rises to the door to the apartment where Jasmine and two other girls live. You know that already. You do your homework.

  You rush up the steps, your running shoes making a little noise but not loud, not echoing. At the landing where her apartment door awaits, you tuck yourself into the recession. You wait. Not long.

  Because she comes up just as quickly as you had but with no worry about being heard. Her feet are gunshots—she’s in shoes not sneakers—and you count her steps, because you know how many there are. Homework.

  And when she reaches the landing, you raise the knife and jump out and bring the blade down.

  But without her in front of you, to judge, you only slash the sleeve of her red thermal jacket. There’s enough street light conspiring with a nearly full moon to show you her face as her eyes go so wide they might have fallen from her face, dark brown centers and stark white in an almost as white face, her mouth open in a silent scream.

  She reacts quickly and well, you have to hand her that, turning and running down those stairs and by the time she reaches the sidewalk she is screaming. It resonates through the canyon of the facing buildings. You are close behind her but not close enough to strike, though as she runs across the street, she pauses, whether to duck any car that might be coming or to flag one down, only there isn’t any car, and when she starts running again, she stumbles a little.

  Then you are right behind her and you bring the knife down once, hard, and it plunges deep, and when you withdraw it, red spurts from the red jacket, as if the jacket itself were bleeding. She goes down, half in the street, half on the sidewalk, and she isn’t dead yet, her motions like a swimmer trying not to drown, her back to you and you are in a way glad, because you loved this girl, and part of you still does as you plunge the blade in another five times, and she stops swimming.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The sprawling ultramodern Midwest Medical Center on the outskirts of Galena on Highway 20 West had, a dozen years ago, replaced the much smaller Galena-Stauss Hospital.

  For a police chief like Krista, the Medical Center was unquestionably a real boon to the community. But she also found it a little over-the-top, from the lobby’s high vaulted ceiling and indirect lighting to the self-noodling mahogany baby grand and sweeping ceramic-tiled staircase leading to a “family meditation” room. The modern design and mission-style trappings of the overthought facility might have been comforting to her if her mother hadn’t died here.

  Not that Mom hadn’t received the best care—Krista herself had recommended the Medical Center to her father and mother over the Dubuque options, in part to be closer to her mom but also because it was so highly regarded.

  But she was worried about Pop. Booker Jackson had called and said “no worries, everything’s fine”—her father had been assaulted by two “Chicago goons” (now in custody and jailed) and taken to the ER at the Medical Center. Her first reaction, past the initial alarm, was relief—she knew he’d receive top treatment there.

  When she was on her way to the hospital, however, Booker called again to say her father had been treated and admitted to a room for an overnight stay and observation. Which on the face of it was fine. The patient “suites,” as they were called, were the most attractive, spacious hospital rooms Krista had ever seen.

  Her mother had died in one.

  Krista worried about the psychological impact that might have on Pop. She told herself she was being silly, but then she thought about him sitting in his comfy recliner in the ranch-style on Marion Street with a gun barrel in his mouth.

  As she slipped into his room, closing the door behind her, Pop appeared to be sleeping. She was relieved to see he was not on an IV. The “suite” was exactly like the one Mom had been in—all shades of yellow and green with hardwood flooring, a wood-paneled wall behind the sizable hospital bed with its country-style quilt; above the bed a framed Galena landscape, a hot air balloon floating over the town. A lime-colored recliner sat in a corner, a green-and-yellow couch stretched beneath a big window, blinds shut.

  She pulled up a hardwood visitor’s chair as quietly as she could and sat beside the bed, her father on his back but his face angled toward her, eyes closed.

  “It’s quiet out there,” he said. “Too quiet.”

  She laughed softly. “You’re such a cornball.”

  He opened his eyes and smiled at her. “You should see the other guys.”

  “You don’t look so bad.” She was on her feet now, at his bedside.

  “You haven’t seen my ribs.”

  She leaned in. “How bad, Pop?”

  “Broke one and I was lucky at that. Both those SOBs were kicking me in the sides.”

  “I’m so sorry. . .”

  “Don’t apologize for them. Anyway—maybe I deserved getting kicked.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Going around Chicago, poking into politics and dirty dealings.”

  She gestured behind her, toward Galena. “Booker has both of them locked up. He says he’s going to look into this himself.”

  “Tell him I have a Chicago police contact for him.”

  “Will do. Your friend Barney?”

  “My friend Barney.”

  “So does this mean you’re on to something?”

  His eyebrows went up; even so, his eyes looked barely awake. “You mean, are one or any combination of Alex Cannon, Daniel Rule, and Sonny Salerno involved in these killings? Unlikely. I just got warned not to poke into their business. I doubt your classmate Alex knows anything about it.”

  “Might be able to embarrass all of them, though. And those two strong-arms will do some time. Assault charges. Beating up on a Galena cop who came asking question
s.”

  “Beating up on me? Sounds kind of schoolyard.”

  “Well, ‘schoolyard’ is closer to our case. Something ten or more years ago, involving my classmates, sparked these murders, don’t you think?”

  “No argument.”

  “Even with you getting leaned on, hard, the idea of a professional killer being responsible for the Sue Logan and Astrid Lund homicides, playing psycho as a sort of cover-up?. . . It’s just too far-fetched.”

  “Smart daughter I got.”

  “They’re keeping you overnight?”

  “Yeah. They took some X-rays. Gonna keep an eye on me. Should be out of here in the morning.”

  “Good.”

  “Something we haven’t talked about.”

  “Oh?”

  “Crank this thing up.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. Not all the way, just enough.”

  She did as she was told. He winced and smiled at her at the same time.

  Then he said, “In Chicago, I looked over the complete case file that cop Hastings in Clearwater sent. About the Logan homicide. I’ve been mulling it ever since.”

  “And?”

  “In both instances, the killer had been known to the woman.”

  “You sound sure of that.”

  “Two cups of coffee at Logan’s, two cups of tea at Lund’s. He or she was invited in. Takes the time to wash the cups out in the sink, after each crime. Logan answered the door and was stabbed where she stood. Lund allowed the killer in and on leaving, he or she placed duct tape on the latch to reenter.”

  She was slowly nodding. “Both had a friendly conversation with the victim, left. . . and returned.”

  “That seems to be the case.”

  “Why would it go down this way, do you think?”

  “If both women knew the person, and opened the door for him or her, the killing could have taken place right there and then. But the washed-out cups, and bloody footsteps leading to and away from the sink, revealed by luminol, indicate a pre-kill visit that required some cleanup.”

  “Why the pre-visit, though?”

  Pop’s eyes narrowed. “If something in the past—something bad—is at the root of these homicides, perhaps the killer wanted to determine whether the victim needed killing.”