A Long Way Down

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A Long Way Down Page 11

by Randall Silvis


  “In my chest? No you can’t. My cogs are elsewhere.”

  “Art is good for the soul? That tells me you’re optimistic. And that tells me you have an idea.”

  He kissed the top of her head. “How does a frittata sound?”

  “Excellent. I’ll be your sous chef.”

  She followed him to the kitchen, where she took a green bell pepper and the remaining half of a foil-wrapped sweet onion from the vegetable bin in the refrigerator. He gathered two Idaho potatoes from the bag in the cupboard, scrubbed and rinsed them at the sink. Then he plunked two sweet Italian sausages from the freezer into the deep cast-iron skillet to brown, then set to grating the potatoes while she chopped and minced. The conversation continued with intermittent pauses while they built and seasoned the frittata and watched it cook.

  “So,” he said, “working from the premise that the 1988 killer was familiar with the Cleveland Torso Murders. But not the same person.”

  “I thought we were going to forget about 1988 and Cleveland altogether,” she said.

  “We are and we aren’t. We can also assume that the new killer was familiar with the 1988 killer’s work.”

  “But yet another different person?”

  “Correct.”

  “And just what,” she asked, “makes us so certain of that?”

  “Something I read last night in Tom’s papers.”

  “Are you waiting for me to guess?”

  “Sorry,” he said. “It was advice to one of his students. A boy who was upset because the grade on his first story was so low. Tom reminded him that he was a student, not a professional. But that he could expect to get better the more he practiced. That even thinking about writing, imagining himself as a successful writer, would speed the process.”

  “And this applies to us…how?”

  “If it were the same killer,” he explained, “what’s he been doing for the past thirty-two years? He’s either been killing…if not here, somewhere else, even some other country…or he’s been in prison…or he’s been hiding in plain sight as an upright citizen.”

  “But?” Jayme said.

  “But he hasn’t shut off his brain. He hasn’t had his…what parts did Hoyle say?”

  “The amygdala and prefrontal cortex.”

  “So he hasn’t had those fixed, right? He still wants to kill. Has at least been thinking about it. Fantasizing. Over and over and over until he just couldn’t stop himself from actually doing it again.”

  “Like a pedophile masturbating to photos. Soon or later he’s going to have to have the real thing.”

  “Not an appetizing image for the breakfast hour,” DeMarco said. “But accurate.”

  “And you’re suggesting that just by thinking about killing, he would have gotten better at it?”

  “Tom told his student that wretched prose is not forever fixed in its wretchedness. He said that evolution of craft is inevitable. Maturation alone will account for some of it. Practice and intent will account for the rest.”

  “I don’t know,” Jayme said. “Our guy does seem pretty good so far.”

  “Knife skills,” he told her. “Compare 1988 to now.”

  She paused. Looked at the blade of the knife in her hands. Said, “From fixed blade to electrical power. So the only evolution is technological.”

  “He couldn’t even finish the job with his second victim. And made a real mess of her neck.”

  She nodded. “So it’s positively absolutely a different guy. He’s smart; he’s cunning; but, in the words of Gordon Ramsay…”

  “‘Your knife skills are bloody wretched, mate.’”

  She smiled. “Your British accent could use some tweaking, babe. Just saying.”

  “I do Sean Connery better. Five more minutes on the frittata.”

  She went to the cupboard for the plates.

  He said, turning down the heat, “So maybe our new guy hasn’t been practicing his knife skills, but he has studied up on at least the 1988 murders, if not the Cleveland ones too.”

  “Easy enough,” Jayme said. “Both are all over the internet.”

  “But let’s just say,” DeMarco mused. “Let’s say he was concerned about having that information on his hard drive. Whoever this guy is, he hasn’t left any tracks so far. That’s his forte.”

  “He’d have to hit the library.”

  “And so should we. The same one he would have.”

  “If we can get access. And we probably can’t.”

  He shrugged. “Gotta try. You mind if I brown up some of this ham too?”

  “From the freezer?”

  “Meat compartment.”

  “What’s the expiration date?”

  “We’re close,” he said.

  “Close close or close over?”

  He held the open plastic container to her face. “Here, smell it. It’s still good.”

  She sniffed, and wrinkled her nose. “It’s iffy at best.”

  “The heat will kill the bacteria.”

  She took the container from his hand. Carried it to the trash bin. Popped open the lid and dropped the ham inside.

  “I better look at your cheese too,” she said.

  “Don’t let the blue scare you. It’s like free penicillin.”

  Twenty-Four

  They waited in the parking lot, inside DeMarco’s car, until the library doors were unlocked at one minute after ten. The morning was no longer soft, the air no longer sweet. DeMarco looked up at the sky as if it had insulted him. It was going to be one of those gray flannel days that keep promising rain, with black squall lines in the distance that never get any closer, and flaming tempers that threaten to combust everything in the vicinity, and muscles that feel like pasta cooked five minutes too long. The kind when the air tastes and smells and lays in your lungs like your high school gym socks after a week of hard workouts. By noon women’s makeup will be running and their hair hanging limp. Everybody will unbutton their shirts as far down as they dare, and then a button or two farther. People who work outside won’t be able to see for the sweat in their eyes, and will accidentally massacre the hedges or run their equipment over a dog sleeping in a patch of shade, and will be too exhausted to care. Everybody will avoid conversation and hardly anybody will have the energy to raise their eyes more than four feet off the ground. People who work inside will cling to their air-conditioning like a suffocating Methodist clings to the Holy Spirit.

  That’s the kind of day it’s going to be, he thought. Hot. Triple digits hot. Humidity a hundred percent. Already half the people in the city would have sold their souls for an ice bath. By nightfall there would be power outages over a third of the county. People would climb onto their roofs in their underwear, lie spread-eagled in their yards as if that might make the breathing easier. All it would make easier was the mosquitos’ and ants’ and gnats’ ingress into their choice of human orifices.

  Inside, he breathed a little easier, and recovered a few degrees of hope for the future of the world. Two reference librarians were seated behind the large round counter on the second floor of the Youngstown Public Library, each at her own computer station. The room was spacious and cool, hushed and well-lit, still fresh with the lemony scent of the janitor’s night work.

  The younger librarian, tall and thin and probably no older than twenty-five, smiled up at Jayme, who stepped close to the desk and said, “We’d like to take a look at any newspaper articles from July 1988. Could you point us in the proper direction for that?”

  “Let me guess. The Talarico murders.”

  “It’s a popular search?”

  “Most of last month. So many that we’ve catalogued the sources together for easier access.”

  “Actually,” DeMarco said, and stepped closer to the counter while reaching for his credentials, “what would be most useful are you
r records for which patrons accessed that material prior to the Justin Brenner murder.”

  The older librarian, smaller, petite, swung around on her chair and allowed her colleague no chance to respond. “You know we can’t do that,” she said after a long look at his ID.

  DeMarco shot a glance at her name tag: Meghan Bauer. Then he turned a faded smile on her, and lowered his voice. “I understand. But we’re dealing with a serial killer here. The information could help us identify—”

  She was already shaking her head no. “‘Library records or patron information shall be released in the following situations: (a) in accordance with a subpoena, search warrant, or other court order; (b) to a law enforcement officer who is acting in the scope of the officer’s law enforcement duties and who is investigating a matter involving public safety in exigent circumstances.’ Section 149.432 of the Revised Code.”

  “We are aware of the code,” he told her.

  “But you don’t have a search warrant and you aren’t a law enforcement officer.”

  Jayme took out her ID and showed it to both librarians. “We are employed as consultants by the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office.”

  “Then perhaps the sheriff would like to make the request. In person.”

  “You’re going to force him to come over here?” DeMarco asked.

  “I will be happy to look up the number for you.”

  “I have it,” he told her, and pulled his phone from his pocket. “But thanks so much for your assistance.”

  * * *

  While the reference librarian, seated behind the circular table, copied information from her screen onto an index card, Olcott looked across the room to where DeMarco and Jayme stood side by side, feigning patience, with their backs to the windows. He gave them a wink.

  “He’s such a mellow guy,” Jayme said.

  “Detective Mellow,” DeMarco said.

  She put a hand to his back, pinched the skin through his shirt. “What did we talk about?” she asked.

  “Don’t be mean,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “You miss your badge, don’t you?”

  He grunted. Scowled. Tried a smile. Let it fall.

  “Just don’t take it out on Olcott,” she told him.

  “He’s a wonderful human being. He has the patience of Job and a beautiful head of hair.”

  She pinched him again. “No more snark!”

  He stretched his back, pulled away from her hand. “I get it, okay? You’re right. Please stop pinching me.”

  Half a minute later, Olcott approached them. He held the card out to DeMarco. “I feel stupid that we never thought of this ourselves.”

  Jayme said, “You have a suspect already.”

  DeMarco read silently. There were two names on the card: Dr. Terence Gillespie, Mr. Daksh Khatri. Gillespie had visited the library once, nine weeks before the first of the triple homicides. Khatri had spent three consecutive afternoons with the relevant microfiche reels, beginning two days after Gillespie’s visit. Each name was followed by an address.

  To Olcott, Jayme said, “You done good.”

  “Meghan and my aunt Sarah are friends.” He grinned at DeMarco. “She’s not fond of you, by the way.”

  “Your aunt Sarah?”

  “My aunt loves you. Doesn’t know you from Adam, but she loves you anyway. She’s like that.”

  “And what did I do to earn Miss Meghan’s ire?”

  Olcott merely smiled. He placed a fingertip atop Gillespie’s name. “He’s a professor at Heaton-Young College. Religion. Lives very close to here.”

  “And Khatri?” Jayme asked.

  “Struck out on him. Just the name and address.”

  DeMarco mused aloud. “Why would a professor of religion be researching a thirty-year-old double homicide?”

  Olcott said, “Hard to say, isn’t it? My aunt Sarah is religious, and she’s the sweetest person on the planet. Other religious people think they have a moral obligation to slaughter the infidels. But a professor of religion? I guess it all depends on how he professes it.”

  Jayme said, “Why don’t we all drop by for a chat? Let the good man explain himself.”

  “Would love to join you,” Olcott told her. “But my partner would accuse me of fraternizing with the enemy.”

  To DeMarco, Jayme said, “You really do rub people the wrong way, don’t you?”

  Olcott said, with a laugh, “Pusillanimous? Really? And what was that other word?”

  “Pococurante,” she said.

  “Right. He is never going to forgive you for that.”

  DeMarco told him, “I lose so many friends because of her.”

  Twenty-Five

  On the short, halting, noisy drive to the professor’s house on the edge of the small college campus, DeMarco realized how far from the city he had grown, and how much he longed to be surrounded by undisturbed greenery and trees, where the loudest sound came from crows or geese and not from car horns. As a boy wandering farther and farther from his home, he had always been excited to discover a new street or bridge or a new route to the river, though even then he did not love the fabrications of man, no matter how he marveled at them, but only wondered how vast the city really was and if he would ever find a way out of it.

  Later he discovered that Youngstown was not infinite at all, only seemed so to a boy on foot, and that there were innumerable cities bigger and noisier and brighter than his hometown, but that none of them held what he needed either. And now, driving from stoplight to stoplight, impatient and hungry and annoyed, he was reminded of a phrase Raymond Chandler had used: the big sordid dirty crooked city. Chandler’s Marlowe preferred it over small-town life, but DeMarco was no Philip Marlowe, and he knew it. Any similarities were only skin-deep. He was more like Chandler himself, a man whose spirit and heart were gradually crushed by the city.

  And now, for the first time, DeMarco thought about the quarter of a million dollars in reward money he and Jayme might share if they could bring the killer to justice. Most of the reward had been contributed by the father of Samantha Lewis, a county commissioner flush with old money. A quarter mil could get DeMarco and Jayme away from the cities of this world forever, even if it caused him a stab or two of guilt for profiting from other people’s misery. And that was when he started thinking how nice it might be to live in a log home on the slope of a mountain somewhere in the Dakotas or Idaho or Wyoming, anywhere humanity was not crowded together so tightly that people continually ground and grated against one another. He thought that Jayme would probably like that too.

  “There it is,” Jayme said, and pointed to her left.

  It took him a few seconds to come down off the mountain and back to Youngstown. Gillespie’s prairie box house, three blocks north of Wick Park, was one of the few old, stately homes on the street that hadn’t been claimed by the university for administrative offices. It sat at the rear of a long, narrow lot bordered on three sides by firs, maples, and thick walls of well-established lilac bushes, all of which gave the building an isolated, imperious appearance. The home was constructed of large blocks of red sandstone, their faces rounded and polished. On the top floor, dormers were visible on at least three sides. A front porch ran the width of the building, its shingled roof supported by four white pillars on sandstone block foundations. A long gravel driveway of white limestone chips led to the attached garage.

  “We need a big house like that,” Jayme said.

  “Made of logs,” he answered.

  “You mean the ones in your head?”

  “You don’t like log homes?”

  “For ski trips,” she said.

  He winced. He had forgotten about skiing. If he lived in the mountains he would have to learn how to ski. Just thinking about it made his bones creak.

  They unbuckled and climbed out of the car. Immediately the he
at rose up off the pavement and into his face, a dirty, unpleasant scent that made his eyes sting. When he came around the front of the car to meet Jayme, she said, “Just curious. Have you always been so competitive?”

  His forehead wrinkled. “What are you talking about?”

  “Back in the library. You didn’t like it that Olcott got information the librarian wouldn’t give to you. Because you don’t have a badge to flash anymore.”

  “Badges?” he said with a bandito accident. “I don’t need no stinkin’ badges.” But he heard himself and knew there was more sadness and anger in the joke than humor, knew there was no humor in his eyes or in the tightness of his mouth, and because he did not want Jayme to know it too, he turned away briskly and walked ahead of her and onto the professor’s porch.

  He rapped on the door three times, waited five seconds, and rapped again, harder.

  Jayme came to his side, laid a hand against his back. “Slow down, babe. Take a breath.”

  For some reason his body had gone into guerilla mode, and he didn’t like it, didn’t understand it. It was a simple interview, for God’s sake.

  He nodded. Saw a shadow approaching from inside. Then took a half step back from the door and told Jayme, “You talk.”

  The door was opened by a very pretty young woman of twenty or so, barefoot in a pink midriff tank top and gray gym shorts, with short brown hair and green, wide-set eyes, a small nose and pouty lower lip.

  “Hi,” Jayme said. “Is your father home?”

  “You mean…Dr. Gillespie?”

  “I’m sorry, I just assumed…”

  “It’s okay. He lets us study here sometimes. Because it’s so quiet. But no, he isn’t available just now. And who are you?”

  Jayme showed her ID card. DeMarco stood smiling at parade rest.

  Jayme said, “We’re working with the county sheriff’s office,” and watched the girl’s eyes. And there it was, that momentary lift of the eyebrows. “And what’s your name?” Jayme asked.

  “Kaitlin,” the girl said. “What, uh…what do you want to talk to him about?”

 

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