by Steven James
Patrick appeared to be sorting through everything she’d just told him. “What’s his name? The man who attacked you?”
“Dylan Neeson.”
“And no one from the warden’s office contacted you when he was released,” Pat concluded, “because they didn’t know your name, your current identity.”
“Exactly.”
“Any idea on his location?”
“No.” As she thought about what had happened to her fifteen years ago, she wondered if the same thing had happened to her friend and found the tears hard to hold back.
“Do you need a minute?” Patrick asked her. “Or is there anything else I can do for you right now?”
“No.” She tried putting on a smile. “I’ll be alright.”
++++
When Sharyn hesitated, I wasn’t sure if she was waiting for me to reply. “You said that Dylan had a thing for grenades?” I said.
“He tried sticking one in my mouth when he was . . . well, when he was done with me.”
I had no idea what to say. “Sharyn, that’s terrible. I can’t even imagine what it was like to go through that. And about your friend. I’m very sorry. Really.”
I knew that Sharyn cared deeply about people, and I could tell that even though she might not have been especially close to this woman and was doing her best not to let it affect her right now, the impact of Simone’s death was still a fresh wound.
“Sharyn, this morning Kramer’s partner mentioned something about a grenade here in Detroit. Do you know what that might have been about?”
“A couple of weeks ago, a man entered one of the precinct stations, yelled something no one was able to distinguish, tossed a grenade into the lobby, and then ran. Thank God the grenade didn’t go off.”
“Any clue who it was?”
“No. The security cameras at that precinct hadn’t worked in months.” When she went on, she returned to the topic of her friend. “The last I heard from Simone was a text from her number that said I’m coming to see you. Now I wonder if she was really the one who sent that text.”
“Her killer might have. It might have been Dylan.”
“Yes.”
There was enough to justify a response. We contacted dispatch and put out a BOLO for Dylan Neeson. Then I said to Sharyn, “I’m not sure if this is too personal, and you don’t have to answer it, but a moment ago you said, ‘when he was done’ with you. Sharyn, what did he do to you?”
She stared past me, toward the tangled underbrush. When she finally did answer, her voice was hushed, hardly above a whisper. “He raped me, Pat.”
I felt that same breed of sharp anger and deep sorrow that I always felt when I saw a dead body, but in this case, it was worse, because her suffering wasn’t over. By the look on her face, I could tell she still felt the pain of what’d happened all those years ago.
At this point, I knew that anything I said would not be enough, so I took her in my arms and I held her. I hugged her like a friend.
Or, maybe, just a little more.
42
2:34 P.M.
Dispersal in 24 hours
The pinging sound of gravel spitting up against the undercarriage of the rental car jarred Ali awake.
The car he was driving was on its way off the shoulder and into the ditch.
He swung it back onto the highway, but overcompensated and careened all the way into the passing lane, clipping the rear bumper of a white minivan, sending it fishtailing across the road as Ali managed to draw his car to a stop.
White-knuckled, he clenched the steering wheel, breathing rapidly, with the car half off the road, his heart racing, his arms shaking.
The driver of the minivan parked, climbed out, and studied the back of his vehicle.
Ali had heard about “road rage” in America, about how drivers sometimes shoot those who cut them off in traffic, and he worried that everything might come to an end right here, right now.
He couldn’t see any damage to the minivan, but the man, who was tall and angular and brisk, must have, because he came storming toward Ali’s car.
Unsure if he should get out or not—if it would be perceived as being aggressive—Ali finally decided to meet the man and offer him money.
He cannot call the police. You cannot let that happen.
Ali walked toward him.
“What the hell was that?” the man roared.
“I am so sorry,” Ali said.
“You see the back of my van?”
Ali was not about to argue with him by telling him that there was no damage, and just repeated, “I am very sorry.”
“You better have insurance!”
“This is a rental car,” Ali said. “I do not know.”
His response seemed to take the man by surprise and even calm him down somewhat. “A rental?”
“Yes.”
The man cursed under his breath but then became suddenly sympathetic when he saw the dent in the front of the rental car. “You’re screwed worse than I am, my man.”
“What can I pay you?” Ali pulled out his wallet. He had some American money but didn’t know how much of it he would need over the next twenty-four hours. “To fix the damage to your car.”
The man’s eyes were on the wallet.
“How much you got?”
Ali had no idea how much to offer. “May I give you three hundred dollars?”
“That won’t cover it. You can give me six hundred.”
Ali gave him everything. It was short of six hundred, but the man accepted it.
Ali decided he could use the credit card for gas, for food, for whatever else he needed.
“Good luck with the rental car company,” the man said before he left. “You’re gonna need it.”
________
Back in the car, Ali let out a long breath.
He hadn’t realized how tired he was, but the lack of sleep last night had finally caught up with him, and although his adrenaline was pumping now, he knew that wasn’t going to last.
You must rest, Ali.
No, you must get to Dearborn, Michigan, as soon as possible.
Rest. You won’t get there at all if you crash this car first.
He checked the map on his phone and found a rest area that was about forty-five miles, or just shy of seventy-five kilometers, farther up the road. If he could make it there, he could sleep, stretch, and take some time for Salat Al-’Asr prayer—which was not something he wanted to do at a petrol station.
After that, he would still have six hours of driving in front of him. But it was the kind of break he needed.
He waited for a gap in traffic, pulled onto the highway again, and headed for the rest stop.
++++
Sharyn and I left the edge of the field and returned to the school’s parking lot.
Julianne’s brother Eddie Springman and two other officers arrived to hold the scene until CSI could get here. We received word that Lieutenant Sproul was on his way. Kramer’s partner, Officer Sunshine, was limping, and when Sharyn asked him about it, he said, “Bum ankle. Hurt it at the gym.”
“The gym?” I said, thinking about what happened inside the school last night.
“Men my age shouldn’t be playing basketball anymore, I guess,” he said with an annoyed head shake.
Huh.
Naw.
Too easy.
Sharyn had stopped crying, and I was glad that I’d at least had the chance to be here for her. We called Angela Knight at Cyber to have her team work up a full background on Dylan Neeson.
“Are you going to be okay?” I asked Sharyn.
“I should be the one asking you that with your burns.”
“Oh, they’re alright. Losing someone you care about, that hurts a lot worse and for a lot longer.”
“Thanks. It means a lot. Your concern, I mean.”
I wasn’t sure if I should pivot the conversation back to the case, but when at last it felt appropriate, I said, “Listen, I’m wondering if we might be looking at a modern Bluebeard here.”
“A blue beard?”
“Yes. Like in the story.”
“You mean the pirate?”
“Actually, that’s Blackbeard. The Bluebeard designation is something the advisor in my doctoral program, Dr. Calvin Werjonic, came up with. He hasn’t published his findings yet, but it’s a name he’s given to a killer who entices people to come to him rather than hunting them down like most serial killers do. Think of the difference between a spider and a bat. The bat goes out each night and searches for its prey. The spider weaves a web, sets a trap, and his prey walks right into it. Two completely different types of predators.”
“Most serial killers are bats,” she said, tracking with me. “A Bluebeard is a spider.”
“Yes.”
“But if he lures them into his web, why the different locations in the city?”
“I’m not sure. Most of the time it’s one location, but sometimes he has more than one web.”
“Why is the story called Bluebeard, though? I’m not really that familiar with the fairy tales—at least not that one.”
Officer Springman informed us that an officer had located the tunnel’s exit at a vacant factory two blocks away. He gave us the address, and as Sharyn and I headed toward it, I said, “There are different versions of the story, but normally it goes something like this . . .” And then, not being the most natural storyteller, I began to tell it as close as I could remember to the way Calvin had told it to me.
43
Once upon a time there was a young woman named Constance who was courted by a man with a blue beard. Her two older sisters were too troubled by his appearance to be interested in him.
Constance liked him well enough, but still—there was that beard.
However, her mother said, “If he is a good man, the color of his beard means nothing. Besides, brown or blue, it doesn’t matter, all beards turn white eventually.”
And so, despite the rumors that he had already been married at different times before, and that the marriages hadn’t worked out well, the young woman wed him.
He held a great feast and she invited all of her friends and family, who were quite impressed by his wealth and his grand and expansive home.
But he had one room that he did not allow Constance to show to anyone. Instead, he informed her that it must always remain his, and his alone, to enter.
“Of course,” she told him, knowing that all people have secrets that, for their own reasons, they feel must be kept hidden.
A few days after the feast, he had to leave for a long journey. “Here are the keys to all of the rooms in the house,” he told her. “But that one key you must not use.”
“To the room at the end of the hall?”
“Yes.”
“Certainly,” she told him.
“I will know if you open it. Please respect my wishes.”
“Yes. Of course.”
After he left, she enjoyed exploring the estate and all of the other rooms in the mansion, all the while making sure she avoided going toward the end of that hall so that she would not be tempted to go into that room.
But, in time, when he did not return on the appointed date, she found herself drawn to that door. She stood outside it for a long time before finally inserting the key, unlocking it, and then easing it open.
The darkness inside the room did not allow her to see much.
But it allowed her to see enough.
Bones and hair and a vat of blood, all from the other women that the man with the blue beard had brought home in the past. Seven forms hanging from hooks. Forms that she could now see were not dresses, but empty skins.
The seven wedding rings still encircling the seven severed fingers on the crimson velvet pillow all matched.
And they matched the ring that she wore on hers.
These women had been his previous brides.
Constance gasped, backed out of the room, and tried to remove the key from the lock, but it would not come out.
And it bled.
The key bled.
Dark red drops fell from it to the floor and pooled at the base of the door.
The key bled, for it had been marked with a dark magic.
Hearing the sound of hoofbeats, she rushed to the window.
A cloud of dust rose from the road as her husband galloped on his horse toward the mansion, his long blue beard whipping to the side, caught in the wind.
Desperately, she tried to think of how she might escape and stop her husband from killing her, from killing anyone again.
If only her brothers or her sisters were here to fight him for her!
But they were not. So, being alone, she had to act alone.
She hurried to the kitchen, prepared herself, and then made it to the front door just as he was walking up the steps.
“Hello, my dear,” she said.
“Hello, Constance.”
“How was your trip?”
“Pleasantly uneventful.” He kissed her. “And did you enjoy yourself in my absence?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Constance, did you go into the room I forbade you from entering?”
“My dear, all I want to do is fulfill your wishes.”
He held out his hand. “May I have the keys?”
She pretended to reach for the keys, but instead drew out the kitchen knife she had hidden and brought with her.
A look of shock fell across his face and he tried to back away, but her determination made her swift and certain with the blade. She thrust it into his neck and he collapsed limply to the ground at her feet.
The dark magic of that place had seeped into her heart and she watched as he bled, watched as he struggled to breathe, watched as he died. He was a big man and strong and he did not die quickly or well.
It wasn’t easy, but she managed to drag his body to the room at the end of the hall, where he would now join his previous wives.
After she had used the knife to slice the ring off his finger, the key that was still in that lock stopped bleeding and she was able to remove it.
She cleaned up the blood and cleaned up the ring and waited.
Another suitor would come by, especially when he found out she lived alone in such an exquisite home.
She slipped the keys into the top of her gown beside her left breast, where they would remain close to her. Close to her racing heart.
++++
Sharyn listened with rapt attention as he finished telling the story.
“Pat, honestly, that was creepy. You told that a little too well.”
“Thanks. I guess. Mostly that’s the way I heard it from my friend.”
“So her innocence was corrupted? Evil won in the end?”
“In that version, yes.”
“Maybe being one of the previous wives would have been better. Even though they were killed, I’d say it’s better to die in innocence than to live having been conquered by evil.”
“Well,” Pat replied, “just like with most folktales, there are lots of variations. In some, Bluebeard is killed when the young woman’s brothers arrive just in the nick of time. In others, he murders her as well and gets away with it. From what I understand, this seventeenth-century French variant is similar to a story from England called ‘Mr. Fox,’ which, if Calvin is right, seemed to be familiar to Shakespeare’s listeners because the bard refers to it in Much Ado About Nothing.”
“You really know your folktales.”
“Calvin does.”
They arrived at the old car factory where the tunnel exited.
It
opened up in a shipping area on the first level, but after looking around for a few minutes and not finding anything that appeared to be significant to the case, she suggested they return to the school so Pat could head back to the motel and change clothes.
“Honestly,” he said, “that doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.”
As they walked, she filled him in on what they’d covered at the briefing before she left. Then, she considered his theory about the Bluebeard and how it might fit in with what she’d uncovered involving the Hook’dup app. “If we are dealing with a Bluebeard, and if it really is Dylan, I might have the connection we’re looking for. You were right about the victims’ phones. I found a dating app that all of them were using.”
“Which one is that?”
“Hook’dup.” She took a few moments to summarize how it worked, then said, “The developer’s office is near the airport. I was planning to head over there. At this time of day, it’s probably an hour or so drive.”
“If we leave now, we can probably make it before they close.”
“I’m sorry, ‘we’?”
“I’ll come with you.”
“Pat. No. You need to go get cleaned up, get some clothes that aren’t singed or covered with soot and that don’t smell like smoke or lighter fluid.”
They were almost back to the school.
“Sharyn, I don’t like the fact that someone snipped out your face and stuck it on that painting where Jesus’s face should have been. Or that the man in the tunnel knew about the movie. Or that Dylan is free and might be here in Detroit. That can’t all be a coincidence.”
“Did you say over the face of Jesus?”
“Yes.” He gave her the details about the painting and explained that it was most likely the one from the room where Jamika’s body had been found. “He set you up as an idol. He worships you.”
“Maybe.”
“If that was Dylan down there in the tunnel, is wearing a disguise part of his MO?”
“Not that I know of. Listen, I can tell you’re worried about me. Don’t be.” She smiled at him. “I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”
“I know. And I respect that. But I wouldn’t respect myself if I didn’t also want to protect you. I’m a guy. I can’t help it.”