Pete opened his eyes just in time to see the point of the blade.
One dead, one almost.
“Almost” remained on the floor in her red-white nightgown, moving around on all fours, blindly knocking into a chair, then heading in another direction, hitting a wall.
“Scream,” he encouraged her.
She tried, but couldn’t, gurgling in her own blood. He had captured her scream in his digital voice recorder before slashing her speechless.
“Lose something?” he asked. Then he said, “Wait. I found it.” He pressed a button on the handheld device and played the scream back at her.
She scrambled toward the source of her voice.
He stepped away and she banged into a table.
Finally, she sat up against a wall, gasping.
He walked over and kneeled in front of her.
He took her hand. It was trembling. He uncurled her fingers and placed something in her palm.
“This is for you.”
He wrapped her fingers around it.
“It’s your eye.”
If she could have screamed, she would have let out a whopper.
Within ten minutes, she was dead.
He pulled himself up on the couch. He pulled off the face mask. His face was wet with sweat. He rubbed it with his hands.
Two in one day. A double header. And he had paid for it.
His ankle hurt like hell from the little dance with Pete. It was probably sprained. It needed ice. He couldn’t walk on it right now.
Just as well.
He reached into the paper bag on the sofa cushion next to him and took out one of the beers. He removed the cap, threw it on the floor and took a long sip.
He could stay here for a little bit. She lived alone. It would take about a day for people to get curious and come looking for her, and by then he’d be gone. If someone buzzed sooner, she had a back porch with steps leading into the alley. A getaway route.
He had time to regroup, clean up, and enjoy his trophies.
He touched the cold beer bottle to his ankle. He giggled through the pain.
Tonight had been fun. Maybe he wouldn’t wait so long for the next one.
As he took another sip of beer, the telephone rang.
He paused. He lowered the bottle from his lips. He listened to her answering machine pick up.
“Hi, this is Peg. I’m not home or maybe I’m not in the mood to answer the phone right now. But if you leave a message, I’ll probably call you back.”
After a beep, a young man’s slurred voice sounded in the speaker: “Hey, babe, it’s Kev. You’re probably passed out. I’m about to crash. Just wanted to say hey. I’ll call you tomorrow night. Maybe we can go out again or something. Six-dollar pitchers at Dolly’s. Okay. Anyway. See ya. Be good.”
The call disconnected.
He thought to himself, Come on over, Kev. The party’s just getting started. There’s room for one more.
He leaned back on the sofa and drank another beer. He listened to the first entry in his scream collection.
He couldn’t wait to add to it.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ellen sat at a table in Kaffinate, only two blocks from her usual cafe, but coffee was coffee, and she just didn’t want to run into Charles right now. In fact, it wouldn’t bother her if she never set foot inside of Pacific Coast Coffee again. Sometimes it was best to start a new chapter.
And this place was okay, a bit retro-beatnik, with a pseudo art gallery on the walls and folksy acoustic guitar strumming through speakers. The publications were more interesting, including a pile of what appeared to be various homemade zines with poetry, drawings and rants.
In her heart, she knew that the relationship with Charles had become broken beyond repair. Things had already been delicate when Peg had swooped in and made them worse. Ellen wouldn’t blame Charles if he never wanted to see her again.
She felt anger at Peg for trying to take Charles’s notebook and then trying to push some other guy on her. She was sick of people who felt free to shove her around.
This morning, more than anything, she had wanted to drag Peg into the back room at the Book Shelf and give her an earful.
And no, her ire wasn’t fueled by jealousy because Peg was pretty and outgoing, without a worry in the world.
Peg was just a loudmouth who got in the way of other people’s lives.
Ellen realized that this was why she liked books so much. They sat silent in her big bookcase, politely offering their spines but otherwise remaining unobtrusive until she reached out and initiated the acquaintance. They didn’t scream at you from across the room, not like TV or movies or the radio. They remained closed until you lifted the cover, like opening a doorway, choosing to enter their world. You knew what to expect: words on paper that moved through your head at your own pace, your own volume, in your own space.
Not many people understood and appreciated this unique and special bond with the written word.
Charles did.
Ellen left Kaffinate and headed to work.
She arrived on time, looked around for Peg, didn’t see her, and started unloading a cart of new arrivals in biographies.
After a while, Terri walked over to her.
“Do you know where Peg is?”
Ellen shook her head.
Terri checked her watch and sighed. “Well, this isn’t the first time she’s gone missing in action. I wish she was more responsible and reliable—like you. Ten to one, she’s hung over in some boy’s apartment.”
Ellen had to nod in agreement, thinking back to how wasted Peg had sounded on the phone the night before—and it hadn’t even been eight o’clock when she called from the bar.
“Do you have a minute?” Terri asked Ellen.
“Of course,” said Ellen.
Karen walked past them, and Terri said quietly to Ellen, “Follow me. This is just for you, not for the others.”
Ellen followed Terri into the back room, curious about what was to come.
They stood together just inside the doorway, surrounded by boxes of books and various promotional displays.
Terry said, “District is opening up a new store. It’ll be downtown in the Loop, near State and Randolph.”
“Yes, I heard about that.”
“Out of all my girls—and one guy—you might be the quietest, but I also think you’re the smartest. You’ve been with us for a while and it’s obvious you know the business. You’ve been involved, in one way or another, with just about every aspect of this store. They’re going to have an open position at the new store for an assistant manager. If you’re interested, I would put in a wholehearted recommendation for you. Now, to be honest, I don’t know how long you want to stay in this type of work. Lord knows we aren’t seeing a booming business in this industry. That’s why we keep adding all this other crap—the coffee and bagels, CDs and greeting cards. Fewer people bother to read anymore. They’re too busy with their cable channels and video games and the Internet. But there are still enough book readers to keep us going and make all this worthwhile and even rewarding. I know how you love books—you’re the best-read employee on my staff. If I can help, are you interested?”
At first, Ellen couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t imagine herself as an assistant manager, telling people what to do, helping to run an entire store. But Terri’s vote of confidence filled her with a positive feeling that maybe she could really pull it off.
Ellen realized she wanted to stay in the book business. This wasn’t a brief stop on the way to someplace else as the job was to many of her co-workers.
“I’m interested,” said Ellen. “I’m flattered that you thought about me. I…I really think I could do it. I mean, I’d have a lot to learn.”
“There’s training involved.”
“Thank you, Terri…”
Terri reached out and hugged her.
Ellen felt a sudden urge to cry, but held back. People didn’t hug her very often. And
she never initiated hugs. But this one felt good.
Shortly before noon, Terri said, “Well, I don’t know whether to be worried sick or just more angry.”
She stepped out from behind the cashier counter and approached Ellen and Karen at the bargain books table, where they were replacing “Two-for-$10” stickers with ”Three-for-$12.”
“I’ve called Peg all morning and there’s no answer,” said Terri. “You don’t think she had her days mixed up and thought she had today off, do you? It’s happened before. That girl can be such a flake.”
After Terri left, Karen muttered, “She should just fire her. She’s so unreliable.”
Ellen said nothing. Her imagination had started to take her to dark places that she didn’t want to discuss. What if Charles really was a schizophrenic killer? What if he had no control over his other half? What if he had gone after Peg?
The notion seemed ridiculous, but the entire past few weeks were surreal, so anything was possible.
She could just as easily imagine Peg moaning in bed with a puke bucket at her side. Peg had once bragged about her “puke bucket”, as if it was a symbol of a true party girl.
Toward the end of her shift, Ellen walked over to the mystery-thriller section and scanned the end of the alphabet for Robert Walker. There were several Robert Walker books.
She found See No Evil, the book about a serial killer who removed the eyeballs of his victims…and the book that Peg had said she had sold to Charles.
Ellen flipped through the book until she found one of the murder scenes. She read a brief passage.
He reached for the curve of her eye, dried and unblinking, fingers digging into the rim of the socket, squeezing and plucking the object like a grape from a vine.
“Disgusting,” Ellen said out loud, slapping the book shut.
Reading that was a mistake, she thought to herself.
Now she felt even more nerve-rattled.
She saw Karen walk past, trailing a customer, offering to help in a half-hearted tone. The customer shook her off.
“Karen,” said Ellen.
Karen turned. Ellen walked over to her.
“What’s the name of your friend in the police department? The detective?” asked Ellen.
“Jack Allen?” Karen said.
“Yeah. I was wondering…could you give me his phone number?”
“Sure. Why?”
“Well, there’s this, um, really strange man in my building, and with these recent murders, I thought I’d tell him about this guy.”
“A weird guy in the city of Chicago?” said Karen. “Gee, sounds like you’ve cracked the case.”
Ellen forced a chuckle. “I know, they must get a lot of tips…”
“Hundreds.”
“But this guy gets really weird mail sometimes and I just thought…”
“Sure, give him a call. Add your name to the list,” said Karen. She led Ellen to the cash register counter and wrote out Jack Allen’s name and phone number on the back of a flyer promoting an upcoming appearance by an author-chef.
Ellen took the flyer and thanked Karen. “No problem,” said Karen.
Ellen wondered if she really had the courage to call the police on Charles and finger him as a suspect.
Best-case scenario: the police would look into it and find that her suspicions were ridiculous and impossible, just like their other one hundred leads. Then she would know for absolute sure.
But even under this best-case scenario, there would be bad consequences. If she was willing to call the police on Charles, it was a sure sign that their relationship was dead. He would never forgive her. And perhaps she would never find another man with whom she could bond so passionately. Sending the police after Charles was a major roll of the dice.
Could she do it anonymously?
She folded up the flyer and retreated to the back of the store to put it in her purse, which was stashed out of sight with her coat in an employee-only area of the back room.
As she opened her purse, she caught sight of another scribbled phone number—Seymour’s phone number on a white napkin.
She recalled their encounter. She wished she had an excuse to call him. She felt so alone right now and Seymour was a true ally…a fellow war veteran. She remembered the way he had looked at her, surprised by her physical transformation.
She thought about the spelling bee certificate she still had in her possession and realized it was the perfect opening…
She went to the phone and dialed the number on the napkin. She vowed to hang up if the dour, narrow-faced blonde answered.
After six rings, Seymour said hello. But his voice was on an answering machine.
She forced herself to leave a message, which she promptly regretted when the words came out garbled and hesitant. “Seymour… Hey…it’s Ellen… I’m… I have… never mind, I’ll call back some other time.”
She hung up.
And spat, “Damn!”
When nothing goes right, nothing goes right…
Evening arrived quickly, another day shortened by the winter.
“Peg never called,” said Terri. “Now I’m really worried.”
Karen said, “Well, nobody’s found any fresh murder victims today.”
Terri snapped, “Karen, don’t be morbid.”
Ellen put on her coat. “I’ll stop by her apartment and see if she’s home. She lives just a few blocks away.” It would only take a minute and might yield a quick and simple explanation for her absence.
“Thank you,” said Terri. “I know it’s probably nothing, but it would be nice to rule out any trouble. And once you find that she’s okay, tell her to get her butt in here tomorrow morning by eight o’clock sharp. One more no-show like this and she’s going to be looking for new work. I’m serious this time.”
The sky held a deep darkness, without stars, shrouding the residential streets in blacks and grays. Ellen entered Peg’s apartment building, stepping out of the winter chill and into the warm foyer.
She found the buzzer for P. Shore and pressed it. She waited for Peg’s voice to crackle on the intercom, even if all she said was “Go away.”
Instead, Ellen was met with silence.
She buzzed again, longer and more aggressively.
After another wait, she buzzed for a third and final time—letting it continue for a good ten seconds. If that didn’t bring Peg’s head out of the puke bucket, then nothing would.
The ten-second buzz was followed by more silence.
She waited several minutes. Then she turned and left the building, pushing through the door that led back outside.
She walked to the sidewalk and then turned around, looking back at the building. She glanced upward, looking for Peg’s apartment on the second floor.
At that moment, a shadow pulled away from one of the windows.
Ellen froze. Was it Peg? Ellen straightened up, looking for any further movement. She could see a dim light behind a row of drawn shades. Wasn’t that Peg’s apartment? Or was she farther to the left?
Ellen waited for the shadow to return.
She considered going back inside the building to buzz some more. Did Peg know it was her? Was it Peg in the window?
Ellen grew more unsettled. The shadow didn’t return. Had Ellen seen anything at all? She decided to go home. Her next action would be to call Peg’s phone and leave an urgent message for her to respond. And then what? She could always try to reach Peg’s boyfriend, Kevin.
If Kevin was unreachable or didn’t have answers, she had Detective Jack’s phone number.
Ellen knew one thing for certain: she couldn’t sit around and do nothing.
She headed down the street, stepping in and out of the sporadic reach of street lamps.
The air remained bitter cold, another Chicago deep freeze on its way. She didn’t see many other people out and only the occasional car.
As she turned a corner to head up the street that led to her apartment, she heard a short scraping
sound, like a shoe brushing across pavement. It was a small noise, not close, but amplified by the quiet.
Ellen stopped and turned.
She didn’t see anyone. The sidewalk was empty. Then what had she heard?
Was somebody following her?
Ellen picked up her pace. She fought back a rise of panic. She told herself to be calm. Home was only a few minutes away.
He kept out of view, nestled in the shadows. He watched her enter her building. So frail. So vulnerable.
After a few minutes, he saw the lights snap on, illuminating the lower-level apartment. A future death scene.
He was determined to get inside to do his dirty work. Where there’s a will there’s a way.
He closed his eyes and killed her in his latest mind play.
He fantasized about her screams…
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ellen entered the vestibule of her building with the uncomfortable feeling that she was being watched. She continued to look behind her for any sign of unusual movement. She thought about Peg and calling Detective Jack. How long until Peg’s absence was deemed suspicious? Of course, it was entirely possible that Peg was out with Kevin, maybe even getting loaded again. But there was also a madman loose in the neighborhood. Ellen planned to leave Peg an urgent message on her answering machine, something like “Peg, please call back. Just let us know if you’re okay…”
And if that didn’t generate a response, she’d call the police.
Ellen checked her mailbox—bills and credit card pitches. She took one final look around before producing her key and opening the door that separated the vestibule from the apartment units. She stepped inside and the door closed behind her. She heard the click of the latch and felt safe. The building’s warmth surrounded her.
Ellen walked down a short corridor, bypassing the staircase leading upstairs to the nice units. She unlocked the door to her garden unit apartment. She stepped inside, flicking the light switch. She shut the door, a second barrier against the outside world. She flipped the bolt into place and hooked the chain for good measure.
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