Hush

by Anne Frasier

  She turned in time to see the knife come down. She twisted away. He missed, the blade becoming embedded in the floor. With her last bit of strength, she jumped to her feet and ran for the kitchen, for the refrigerator. While Ruby struggled to pull the knife from the floor, she grabbed the head by fistfuls of gray hair, pulling it from the metal rack. Her hands spread over the cold ears, she held the face away from her, her arms outstretched, shrieking at Ruby.

  "STOP!"

  He looked up—the color drained from his face. His mouth dropped open.

  The head was heavy, and her arms were shaking. A weakness was building in her.

  "Put the knife down!" Ivy shouted. "PUT IT DOWN!"

  He looked guilty, as if his mother had caught him doing something he shouldn't.

  Behind her, Ivy heard the layered thud of heavy footfalls. Help was coming. A lot of help. Outside, sirens screamed. The door crashed open and she heard Max's voice calling her name.

  Max would never forget the image that met him when he broke open the apartment door—Ivy holding a human head in her hands as if it were a cross held up to ward off Dracula. A man—the Madonna Murderer— stood there, staring at the head in horror, looking as if he'd just come face-to-face with his own private version of hell.

  And then Ruby moved. He came at Ivy with a gleaming knife raised high, screaming, "I hate you! I hate you!"

  All of Ruby's hatred for his mother was directed into that scream, that attack. He would strike a deathblow.

  In his years as a detective, Max had never shot anybody. But now he pulled the trigger. Once, twice, three times—because Max had the feeling a single bullet wasn't going to stop Grant Ruby. Sick animals were the hardest to kill.

  Ruby's mask of hatred crumpled, to be replaced by one of idiotic surprise, total and utter surprise that his life's work had been cut short in his very moment of triumph.

  He was dead before he hit the floor.

  Time became weird the way it always did when adrenaline flooded your veins. The third bullet had barely left the chamber when Max thought, What have I done?

  Ethan.

  Ruby was the only person who knew if Ethan was alive or dead, the only person who knew where Max would find him.

  In the very second he had that thought, Ivy spoke his son's name.

  He was distantly aware of Abraham and the other officers behind him, but they were a peripheral blur, not important.

  He slid his revolver back in the shoulder holster as he ran the few steps through the kitchen into the main room. He was afraid he'd misunderstood Ivy's communication, but then he spotted Ethan on the floor, on the other side of the bed.

  He dropped to his knees beside him, his hands shaking. Ethan's eyes were open and locked with his. Max pulled off the duct tape. As soon as his mouth was uncovered, Ethan began to sob.

  "Here—"

  An officer handed Max a pocketknife, blade open. Max cut through the bindings on Ethan's wrists and legs, then he sat on the floor and pulled his son into his arms, hugging him, kissing his blood-matted hair, rocking him, tears spilling.

  Someone must have taken the head from her hands. Ivy had a vague awareness of Abraham being there, of a tourniquet being tightened around her arm, of two ambulance attendants putting her on a gurney.

  I'm not dead, she thought she whispered, but they didn't seem to hear her. Perhaps the words had been unvocalized thoughts. Would they put her in a body bag? For some reason, that idea gave her no anxiety.

  Outside, cameras flashed and reporters shouted questions, trying to put microphones in her face. And then she was rushed away, sirens wailing, the ambulance rocking her to sleep.

  Chapter 42

  The story of how Claudia Reynolds reemerged as Ivy Dunlap hit newsstands, and Ivy became an overnight celebrity. People she didn't even know sent flowers to her hospital room. Reporters posed as long-lost relatives trying to get a story. Every national morning show wanted to book her, and two publishers had already contacted her about writing an autobiography.

  She'd almost bled to death. By the time the ambulance reached Blessings Hospital, her blood pressure was almost nonexistent. It took four pints of blood to get it back up. One specialist worked on her wrist and hand while another repaired her other injuries—three wounds that had miraculously missed all major organs. There were five less severe cuts to her arms, cuts that had required a total of twenty-two stitches. If Ivy had been conscious when they were working on her, she would have insisted on twenty-three, or twenty-one. Twenty-two allowed the Madonna Murderer one final statement.

  Abraham came to see her, and he had one thing on his mind: He wanted her to stay and work for the Chicago Police Department.

  "We haven't yet decided what your exact position would be," Abraham explained. "It would be up to you. You could join Homicide as our expert in the field of criminal psychology. Or if that feels too constrictive, you could be a hired freelancer. We're flexible."

  Two minutes earlier, she'd pushed the button on her morphine pump. Now all she could do was lie there, trying to absorb his chatter.

  "By the way, Max is staying on," Abraham added.

  She wasn't surprised. She hadn't been able to picture him anywhere else.

  "Naturally, he's concerned about Ethan's safety, so until Ethan's older, Max is going to keep a lower, more administrative profile while retaining his position as Chief of Homicide. I think it can be done if we work at it."

  "That's good," she said, struggling to keep her eyes open.

  "I'll leave you alone," Abraham said, seeing that she was having trouble staying awake. "But think about staying. You'll think about it, won't you?"

  She nodded.

  On the third day of Ivy's hospitalization, the needle was taken out of her hand and her supply of morphine cut off. She was wheeled into a sitting area with a huge window where she could see a bit of Lake Michigan in the distance, and maybe a couple of sailboats if she were lucky.

  That's where Max found her, in a wheelchair, staring out the window.

  She immediately asked about Ethan.

  "Still shaken up, but glad to be alive," Max said, sitting down in one of the vinyl-covered chairs.

  Ivy knew Ethan had spent one night in the hospital, then had been sent home.

  How long would it take for him to recover, to forget and be able to live again as a teenager?

  Sadly, Ivy knew that would never happen. He, like so many others, had been touched by the hand of a madman, and that kind of touch left latent prints that would never, ever go away. Ethan would return home and find that he'd lost the foolishness it took to hang out with his old friends. They wouldn't understand, and with the impatience of youth, they wouldn't want to understand. He was a drag, that's all they would know. And when somebody's a drag, you don't hang around with them.

  Maybe Ethan would meet new people, people who were a few years older, who had more life experience. But even then, no matter what they'd gone through— loss of a parent, loss of a sibling—they wouldn't be able to understand the darkness and fear that came upon Ethan at odd times.

  "The tire tracks at the murder scene of Alex Martin matched the tire tread on Ruby's car. Or rather, his mother's car."

  She nodded, not surprised.

  "He canned her."

  "What?"

  "Part of her, anyway. There were thirty jars of spaghetti sauce in the basement. DNA in some of the sauce matched the mother's. A meat grinder was also found to contain her DNA."

  "Oh, Christ. I could have done without knowing that. I'll never be able to eat spaghetti again."

  "Sorry. Thought you might find it interesting.

  Here's another bit of information. In his high school yearbook, Ruby said that he hoped somebody wrote a book about him and hoped that book was made into a movie. Unfortunately, that will probably happen."

  He got up from the chair and walked over to the window. He looked out for a moment, then turned back to Ivy. "I'm sorry I blamed you the other day. If
you hadn't come up with the letter idea, the Madonna Murderer would still be out there."

  A man who could say he was sorry. He had her attention. But Ivy believed in taking responsibility for her own actions. "You had every right to blame me. The letter drove Ruby over the edge. It got Alex Martin killed and Ethan kidnapped."

  "There was no way we could have predicted the outcome. And we had to do something."

  "I became too confident," she said truthfully. "We should have approached with more caution."

  "Ruby may have come after Ethan anyway, eventually. The hockey stick proves he'd been following him for a long time. He wanted you both. Our knowledge of the tattoo was the first piece of the puzzle for him, leading him to the possibility that Claudia Reynolds, the only person who could link the tattoo to the Madonna Murderer, was still alive. At that same time, he was trying to find out who Ivy Dunlap was, and what she was doing here. We found a well-thumbed copy of your book, Symbolic Death, at his house. One theory is that he figured out that you and Claudia Reynolds were the same person. Then he saw you with Ethan that night at the hockey game. Because of the similarity of your features, he drew the same conclusion others who saw you together did. He thought you were Ethan's mother. And he thought if your death had been faked, then so had your baby's. Another theory is that he wanted to harm Ethan simply because he is my son."

  She nodded. "It would have been a thrill for him to know you were called to the crime scene to find your own son's body."

  "He may have even wanted me to be the one to track them to your old apartment."

  "What did you find out about the sixteen years of no murders?"

  "Shortly after you were attacked, he checked himself into a state mental hospital where he was evaluated as paranoid schizophrenic with obsessive-compulsive tendencies. He was put on heavy medication, stayed there several years until the mental hospital did some house- cleaning and ejected over a hundred patients. In all that time, he'd never been diagnosed as dangerous. I'll see that you get a copy of his file. It seems his favorite pastime was sculpting figures out of chewed-up bread. Most of the figures were of the Madonna and Child."

  "And nobody picked up on that?"

  "Apparently not. As a child, he suffered severe abuse at the hands of his mother."

  "Which will most likely spark a fresh debate on whether or not people are simply born bad or shaped by outside influences."

  "If he'd been taken out of that environment when he was an infant, would he have gone on to murder?"

  "It's media attention like this that stigmatizes mental patients," she said with feeling. "The schizophrenia didn't make him kill. That, combined with an abusive childhood, created a lethal cocktail."

  "As you can probably guess, he quit taking his medication several months ago."

  "Wasn't anyone monitoring him?"

  "He was under psychiatric care, but he was able to convince his doctor that he was doing remarkably well and still taking his medication."

  "I'm sure he could be quite persuasive," she said. "What about Regina?"

  "No change. The doctors said if she hasn't regained consciousness by now, she probably won't."

  "They don't know who they're dealing with."

  He agreed. "I chose her for the task force because I liked her tough, straightforward attitude. By the way, your cat's fine," he said, examining a scratch on the back of his hand. "He hates me, but he's fine."

  "It's not you. Jinx doesn't like anybody. He's really half-wild, poor guy."

  "I heard a rumor that you're leaving the hospital soon."

  "They're releasing me day after tomorrow."

  "Can I give you a ride to your apartment?"

  "That would be nice."

  Once she got there, once she'd given Jinx all the attention he could stand, she would open the box she hadn't been able to open for sixteen years. Inside she'd find a tiny white gown. It had been an extravagance, something she couldn't afford, but she'd bought it anyway. Recalling its softness, she imagined raising it to her cheek. It would smell like the attic of her house, but maybe, just maybe, the brushed cotton would still hold the faint scent of a baby. Her baby.

  "I know Abraham's been to see you. I know he asked you to join Homicide. Have you come to any kind of decision?"

  "Not yet."

  She thought about her future. For sixteen years, she'd lived for one thing and one thing only, and now her life seemed superfluous.

  What would she do?

  Take care of Jinx.

  And every day she would go over questions that had haunted man since the beginning of time. What am I doing here? Who am I? What's my purpose?

  Those deeper, more reflective questions often came with middle age, but with Ivy it was more than that. "I know this seems weird, but now that Ruby is gone, now that he's dead, I feel ... I don't know, empty. I used to be able to see into my future, but now I look and there's nothing there."

  "That's understandable. He occupied a big space in your head for a long time. You'll have to find something else to fill that with."

  "I don't know if moving here is the answer. If I move, there will be no going back. If I move, I'll have to sell my house in St. Sebastian, a house that's been a refuge for me." Could she and Jinx live where there were no fields piled high with round stones shaped by glaciers?

  "Maybe you'll find a new refuge."

  It was strange, but in her mind, she'd already given up her world where the only death she saw was an occasional dead mouse or baby bunny that Jinx had caught. "It's safe in St. Sebastian."

  But it was also a world that had never seemed quite real. Because of the secret she carried, she'd never been able to open up to people, never been able to move beyond a certain level of intimacy. But how could she leave the security of St. Sebastian to embrace a world of murder and chaos?

  What about her research?

  Maybe she could continue with it in Chicago. In Chicago, she could visit her baby's grave, because she was ready to do that now.

  "What about you?" she asked. "I heard you decided to stay in Homicide."

  "We can't go back," he said quietly. "None of us can go back."

  He'd been faced with the same decision she was facing, and had chosen the harsh reality of Homicide. And while such a world hadn't broken him, it had left him scarred. Left his son scarred.

  He was silent. She knew he was thinking about what was ahead for her. "I won't beg you to stay," he said. "You're the only one who can make that decision, but Abraham was right when he said that you can't close the door on this kind of thing and expect it to remain closed. I really wish you could go back to Canada and forget all of this happened. But you know it won't be like that. And personally, I hate to think of you so far away."

  "It's not that far. Two hours by plane."

  "It wouldn't be the same."

  "What are you trying to say?"

  She could tell by his expression that he was struggling over how much of himself to reveal. "I'm saying I'll miss you," he admitted. "But I want what's best for you, not for me."

  He was her friend, she realized, and she'd needed such a friend for a long time. "I know," she said softly. There were only two people in the world who knew her and understood her: Max and Abraham.

  He moved away from the window. "I've got to be going soon. Don't want to leave Ethan alone too long."

  "Tell him I said thanks for the roses. They're beautiful."

  "He'd like to see you, like to talk to you, but not right now. It's all too fresh. He cries a lot, and he has no control over it. I think he's embarrassed about that."

  "It's good that he's showing emotion."

  "That's what I told him. Cry like hell if you want to."

  "If he ever needs to talk, I'm available—day or night. Please tell him that."

  "I will."

  He picked up her uninjured hand, cupping it between both of his as if it were a fragile bird. "You saved my son's life. Take comfort in that."

  She kn
ew they were both thinking of a son she hadn't been able to save. And even though her loss had been so long ago, the horrific experience in her old apartment had finally brought her memories to the forefront. "The mind is such an amazing universe," she said, feeling something lift from her heart—a heaviness. Saving Ethan had absolved her of the guilt she'd carried with her for so long.

  A nurse appeared from around the corner. "There you are. We've been looking for you. Time for your meds." She extended a paper cup containing a codeine tablet that Ivy swallowed with gratitude. Her hand was beginning to throb. The doctors had been able to reconnect nerves and tendons, but she would probably never regain total mobility. And in a few years, they'd warned, arthritis would likely set in.

  The nurse wheeled Ivy back to her room and helped her get settled in bed.

  "Is the pain bad?" Max asked when the nurse had left.

  Ivy opened her eyes. "Sometimes it hurts like hell," she admitted. "But I'll be okay. It'll just take some time."

  "You're an incredibly strong person, Ivy Dunlap."

  She smiled, grateful not only for the compliment, but because he'd called her by her real name. Because she was Ivy now. She'd been Ivy for a long time.

  She was beginning to drift to sleep when he leaned over and pressed his lips to her forehead. "I left something on the table next to your bed," he whispered. "Something that might help you come to a decision."

  Shit.

  Oh, Shit.

  Regina felt like shit.

  Like a thick cement blanket was crushing her, keeping her from taking a deep breath.

  Sleep. Just sleep.

  But she couldn't sleep. She felt too shitty to sleep. Her head hurt. Her eyes hurt. Her joints hurt.

  And the pain just kept increasing. It wouldn't go away. Just kept knocking, knocking on her brain until she had to force her eyes open.

  Bright, blinding light.

  A weight against her thigh.

  Someone with dark hair, a forehead pressed against her leg.

  Get off.