Pillow Stalk

by Diane Vallere

  I remoted the doors to the SUV and hopped in, flipping the visor down and shielding my face with my hand while passing the neighbors. I drove to the theater. Two blocks away, as I sped through an intersection, I passed a black Jeep on a side street. The next thing I knew, I’d picked up a tail.

  Two traffic lights and three stop signs later, I pulled over. Tex parked his jeep in front of me. So much for faking him out and making a clean getaway.

  He approached my car and draped his tanned forearms over my open window. “What are you doing in this neck of the woods?”

  “I was looking for someone,” I said, shielding my eyes from the sun.

  “Anyone I know?”

  “How long have you been following me?”

  “Who said I was following you? I saw you blow through that intersection and thought I’d see what you were up to.”

  “Move your car, please,” I demanded.

  “I don’t think so, Night.”

  My fists balled up and I punched the steering wheel. “I could report you for harassment if I wanted. You have no right—no right!—to question me about my comings and goings!”

  “You might have a point. Go where you’re going. I’ll follow. If you want, I’ll drive and save you the gas.”

  I threw him a curve ball. “Fine. I have a lead on your case and you can drive me. It’ll save us both time.”

  “You’re going to see Hudson?”

  “No. I’m going to the Mummy.”

  “Forget the Mummy. Carrie Coburn’s murder was a mistake. The Mummy isn’t involved in this.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Cowboy.” He took a half a step backwards. “You can’t even connect all four murders with Hudson. You have twenty-year-old unproven allegations and the current murder of the previous victim’s mother. You say Carrie Coburn’s murder was a mistake? What about Pamela Ritter’s? What does she have to do with Hudson? Try as you want, you can’t wrap it all up into one neat package. There’s no connection.”

  “Night, I didn’t want to be the one to tell you this, but you’re wrong. We found our connection between Hudson James and Pamela Ritter.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “What connection?” I asked. My foot relaxed against the brake and the truck glided forward, tapping the back bumper of Tex’s Jeep. I threw it into park and turned off the ignition.

  “You don’t know?”

  “They dated?” I blurted out before I could self-edit.

  “What? No, well, I don’t know about that.” He looked at me oddly, as if he was assessing why I’d jumped to that conclusion. “He did some contract work for her. Staging, I think it’s called. Hired him to come into a couple of the houses she was selling and fix stuff up so it fit the fifties look.” He paused for a couple of seconds, and watched my expression.

  For no good reason, I felt betrayed, but fought to keep that from showing on my face.

  “And if that’s not enough for you, it seems Thelma Johnson had a yard sale a couple of weeks ago. Pamela bought a couple of pieces of furniture and hired Hudson James to fix them up. But she never paid him, for that job, or for a couple of others. We found the invoices, a couple of them with handwritten notes.”

  “Hudson wouldn’t kill someone over unpaid invoices,” I said. My eyes broke contact with Tex’s, which I instantly regretted. He continued to stare at me, making me feel all the more self-conscious. “How much?”

  “Enough to make him confront her.”

  My eyes flitted around while I thought, not settling on any one thing in particular. I was trying to piece this together. So she owed him money. And he’d sent invoices, that wasn’t too big of a surprise, it was standard in the industry. And he’d included a couple of notes? Well, that was just polite. But why hadn’t he told me? Staging was more the job of a decorator than a handyman. When we’d talked about the murders, why hadn’t he mentioned he had a relationship with Pamela, or that he’d recently worked on furniture that came from Thelma Johnson’s house? Those two omissions troubled me more than I cared to admit to Tex.

  “Okay. So you have a connection between Hudson and Pamela. Considering his skill set, it’s not such an odd connection. That can’t be enough to give you a warrant for his arrest.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “There’s more?”

  “I’m not going to throw the case to prove to you I did my job.”

  “And I’m not going to let you use me as bait to catch an innocent man.”

  “Damn it, Madison! Don’t you think this job is hard enough without me having to keep you out of trouble, too?”

  “Then stop it! Stop following me! Stop watching me! Leave me out of it!” I turned the key and threw the car in reverse. I hit the gas. I peeled out, narrowly missing the left bumper of Tex’s Jeep. Three blocks later there was still no sight of him in my rearview mirror.

  If Tex wanted to find me, he would, because I drove directly to the theater like I told him I was going to. But even after I parked the car and sat in the lot for five minutes collecting scattered thoughts and wits, he didn’t show up. Whether he had a better lead on Hudson than following me around or not, it seemed as though, for the time being, I’d shaken my tail.

  I went to the Mummy for one reason: Richard. The theater was his home away from home and just maybe I’d learn something else if I spent some time looking at things through his eyes.

  I went in through the back door. The air was mingled with the scent of dust and stale popcorn. We popped fresh popcorn for all of our events but often kept the leftovers in large plastic bags in the back room, for after hours viewings and donations to local shelters. One of the bags sat by the back door, never having been couriered to its next stop. The plastic had split and a stream of kernels was strewn across the floor in a diagonal pattern. Several kernels had been flattened by the sole of a shoe. I placed my foot next to the footprint. It was almost double the size of my yellow canvas sneaker. A man’s shoe.

  I crossed through the kitchen and turned into the office. It was empty. No sign of Richard or anyone else. In fact, there were no signs the theater had ever reopened at all.

  I sat in Richard’s chair and looked around the room. What did he see when he sat here? What made this his office versus the office of a different manager?

  The bookcases, unlike his bookcases at home, were bare. Shelves held knickknacks like ceramic popcorn bags, empty film reels, and the kind of fake Oscar statues popular at Academy Awards parties around the country. Nothing seemed out of the norm. Nothing looked like it represented anyone other than the twenty-eight year old who operated the theater. We all knew his contacts in the industry had landed him here, contacts he’d made getting his Masters of Fine Arts. He’d been, to the city of Dallas, an example of what could be accomplished with passion and networking skills. But add that letter into the mix and suddenly he wasn’t the person I knew. Suddenly, he was a stranger.

  Footsteps. Over my head. Clear creaking of the boards in the balcony, making the kind of noise that can only come from a person advancing across the floor. I’d left everything of mine in the car except for the keys. They were on the desk, somewhere. Frantically, I padded my palms over the piles of paper that covered the scratched wooden surface, looking for the metal lump. When my left palm landed on them I knocked the papers aside and saw my name written in block letters. TELL MADISON—

  I pushed more of the papers aside. Tell me what? Was this what I was looking for?

  TELL MADISON SHE’S NEXT.

  The handwriting matched the handwriting of the other threats. And it matched ‘anonymous,’ the signer of the letter that John Phillips had faxed me. I had my proof, my connection. But I still didn’t know what it all meant. I couldn’t begin to fathom what Richard’s hatred of Doris Day’s movies had to do with the murders of four different women, but what it didn’t relate to was Hudson. It was something for me to take to the homicide division to make them rethink their one track investigation.

  I pushed t
he rolling chair away from the desk and stood. My right shoelace caught in the wheel of the chair and I fell, slamming my left kneecap into the ground. Even painkillers couldn’t mask the explosion of nerve endings that caused me to cry out.

  “Madison?”

  I heard behind me. I struggled to get up, to get out of there.

  “Madison, wait!”

  I fought unsuccessfully to free my shoelace from the chair’s wheel. The casters bobbled while I kicked my foot back and forth. I removed the shoe with the toe of the other foot and pulled myself from the floor. The chair crashed into a stack of metal film reels, a cacophony of noise echoing around the room. Worse, Richard stood in the doorway, blocking my exit.

  TWENTY-SIX

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  I stood facing him, balanced on my bare right foot. My hand had closed around one of the metal film reels and I held it in front of me like a shield of protection. My left knee pounded with pain. In seconds I assessed the situation: I was hurt, but he was unarmed. In fact, he was disheveled, with a couple of days beard growth, and he didn’t smell altogether fresh. He took a step toward me and I pushed the metal reel out.

  “Stop!” I yelled.

  “You’re hurt. Sit down. I want to help you.”

  “Stay where you are.”

  “Madison, what’s going on? Are you the one who’s after me?” he asked.

  “After you? You just came after me! I know you’re the one who’s been leaving me threatening notes. And I know about the letter to AFFER, so back off and let me call the cops.”

  “No!” he hollered.

  My hand rested on the receiver of the phone, and quite frankly the last person in the world I wanted to call was Tex, except that I kind of did want to call him because here I was face to face with a person who was somehow tied to the murders. Only Tex didn’t believe me and I didn’t know how to make him understand without more information.

  “Stay back!” I shouted, still clutching the reel.

  “Madison, what happened? Did they get to you, too? What is going on?”

  “Did who get to me?”

  “I don’t know who. The people who are doing this.”

  “Richard, you’re not making any sense. You have a lot of questions to answer before I tell you anything.”

  “I’ll answer anything. Just please, stop acting crazy.”

  “I’m not acting crazy,” I said, and readjusted my grip on the metal wheel.

  “You look like you might decapitate me with that film spool.”

  I looked down at my hands, holding the metal reel like a Frisbee. “Sit down. Over there.”

  “You’re not going to hurt me, are you?” he asked, the whites of his eyes wide with fear.

  “Sit down, Richard.”

  He collapsed into a red molded plastic chair, like a balloon with a slow leak. All of the air, the bravado, fizzled out of him. His rumpled clothes and unshaven face hid a grey pallor that was borderline unhealthy. I knew I wasn’t going to hurt him—probably wasn’t capable either physically or mentally of hurting him unless he came after me—but I wasn’t about to tell him that before finding out a few things. He wasn’t acting like a murderer, but what he was doing could be just that—an act. And I wasn’t going to fall for it.

  “Why are you threatening me?”

  “I’ve never threatened you.”

  I pushed the papers around the desk and held up the sheet of paper.

  “You thought those were threats?”

  “How do they sound to you?”

  “I was brainstorming potential titles for your film festival.”

  “That sounds like a convenient cover story.”

  “Come on, ‘Your Days Are Numbered.’ The title for a Doris Day film festival? Considering you know I don’t even like the idea, you have to give me credit for a good event name. Can you please put that thing down?”

  I lowered the film spool to the desk and rested my hand on it. The pressure I put on my palm offset the weight on my right leg, still holding me up. Despite the pain in my leg, I stood, not willing to trade my position of power.

  “Tell me about the letter you wrote.”

  “What letter?”

  “The letter about Doris Day movies being a cancer on the landscape of American Cinema.”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “Never mind how. I want to know why you wrote it.”

  “That letter is the biggest buzzkill ever. I can’t believe it’s going to haunt me after all these years.”

  “So you admit you wrote it?” I asked, wishing for a second I had a tape recorder.

  “Of course I wrote it. It was my entrance essay for the MFA program at the University.”

  “Keep talking.”

  Richard slumped down in the red plastic chair, his shoulders hunched, his spine curved in the way a mother would immediately correct. He kicked his feet out in front of him and pulled on a raffia cord that was tied around his left wrist.

  “There were only five spots for the advanced program’s admissions, and I wanted to get in. We had to write a letter to an industry professional to prove we were hungry, that we wanted to be there. Show our passion for the art of film and cinematic history, man. I thought it would stand out from my classmates and give me an edge. I didn’t want to take the chance of sounding like a kiss-up like everyone else.”

  “Did you get in?”

  “Yeah. But what’s the big deal? It was an entrance essay. The only people who saw it were on the deciding committee.”

  “If that’s true, then how did it end up at AFFER?”

  “It went to AFFER? Why didn’t anybody say anything?” he asked. He sat forward, the fear that had crumpled him now replaced with an interested expression. He was suddenly alert and his eyes danced around the room. “That’s fantastic! What did they say?”

  “Richard, focus. If you didn’t send the letter, who did?”

  “Why do you care? So I wrote a letter about destroying Doris Day’s movies. It’s not like I actually meant it. Wait a minute. You think I meant it? You think I have some kind of Doris Day vendetta?” He jumped up from the chair and it flipped over backwards. “You think this has something to do with the women who were murdered around here, don’t you? You think I’m a murderer?”

  It was hard to admit to his face that I did. If I really did think he was a murderer I’d done a lot of stupid things in the past couple of hours. Like go to his house, leave him messages on his phone, corner him at the theater...

  “Richard, why are you camping out at the theater?”

  “Because someone’s after me and I don’t know where else to hide.” He righted the chair and sat back down. His shoulders raised and fell, shuddering unevenly a couple of times. Theatrics or not, the man was clearly shaken up.

  “Someone’s been leaving notes under my windshield. About not letting you organize the Doris Day film festival. At first I thought it was a joke. I told the other people from the committee we’d end up doing your idea unless one of them could come up with something better. I wrote that note to myself when nobody came up with any other suggestions. ‘Tell Madison she’s next.’ I didn’t want us to go down that path of fluff. No disrespect,” he added.

  “None taken.”

  “I tossed the notes but they kept coming. Don’t let her get away with it. Make her stop or I will. It would have been funny if it hadn’t started freaking me out. Then the notes started showing up at my house. They were all sort of the same tone. I didn’t know how to deal with them. Who did I know who knew where I lived, knew where I worked, who wouldn’t come to me directly?”

  “Did you tell the cops about this?”

  “I’m not about to invite the fuzz into my personal business, if you catch my drift. I know how they work. I tell them about those notes and they bust me for possession. The only reason I’m involved at all is that Carrie was killed at the theater. I used up a whole can of air freshener that day.”
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  “Richard, who had access to your entrance essay?”

  “My professor and roommate. My parents. My ex-girlfriend. The deciding committee.”

  “That’s a lot of people. Can you give me a list of names?”

  “You don’t actually think one of them is involved, do you?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. But it’s too weird that someone sent your letter to AFFER. Whatever your motivation for writing it, somebody out there thought it was a good idea to send it. And they didn’t bother taking credit for it, which means maybe they didn’t want anyone to know what they were up to.”

  I encouraged Richard to go home. If nothing else, he needed a shower and a meal other than stale popcorn. He left and I stayed, straightening up the mess from where the stack of film spools had crashed. I told him I had last minute business, not entirely untrue. I wanted to look around a bit. Richard’s explanation was sufficient, but I still felt he was hiding something. I walked up the stairs to the balcony to see his makeshift sleeping quarters. And there, in the corner of the projection room, next to a couple of sheets that had been pushed aside in a pile on the floor, lay two small, round, velvet pillows like the ones that had been used to kill Pamela, Sheila, Thelma, and Carrie.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I broke a few traffic laws driving home. While stuck at the third of five red lights I flipped through the recent callers on my cell phone and found Hudson’s number. I didn’t know where he was, but he needed to know what I had discovered. If he was on the run, not sure what was going on here, then maybe what I’d learned would make him come back and look less guilty.

  He didn’t answer after four rings. I hung up and called again in case he was screening. When he didn’t pick up on the second call I left a message.

  “Hudson, it’s Madison. I found something that might matter. Call me back.” I flipped the phone shut and tossed it in the cup holder. At the last red light I dialed him a third time. Call waiting beeped while it was ringing. I punched the button to take the call without looking at the display.