by Robert Ellis
He opened the ashtray, searching for what was left of a joint he’d rolled before going to work this morning. It looked like there were two, maybe three hits left. Striking a lighter, he held the charred end over the flame and took a deep hit. As he exhaled and started coughing, he noticed their neighbor Mr. Andolini sweeping his front steps. He was an old man, a crackpot who thought he ran the neighborhood, and Andrew didn’t like him much either. Why would anyone sweep their steps on a day this cold? What fool wouldn’t wait for the wind to die down?
The only good thing about Mr. Andolini was that he grew Concord grapes and was a generous old fuck. Andrew had to give him that. It was Mr. Andolini who had taught him how to eat a Concord grape, how to squeeze the inside out with his tongue and swallow it whole, then spit the sour skin onto the lawn. Mr. Andolini’s Concord grapes were the best grapes that he had ever tasted.
Andrew turned and looked at the steel plant behind the rundown houses across the street. At the end of the block, he could see the Delaware River. There was a small park here that included two benches and a narrow dock. The city of Philadelphia was just ten miles downstream. Andrew liked to get high at night and gaze at the lights and tall buildings and dream about the way things could have been. The way things would never be, except in his mind, except when he was stoned.
In spite of the frigid air, he had sat there last night for the better part of an hour. He’d smoked an entire joint and tried to pull himself together. Tried to understand what happened during his field trip to the suburbs and another visit with the rich and famous. Tried to focus on who he’d been and what he was now becoming. Tried to stop the rage and the anger and the shaking and the dream walking. Tried to slow everything down.
He could still see them. Still see the terror in their eyes. Still hear them whimpering and begging. Still hear their faint moans and weak attempts to cry for help as they bled out.
A headline.
A living legend.
What he wanted, and what he was becoming.
Those stupid fucking animal heads. He could still see them on the wall watching him do what had to be done.
Andrew took a last hit on the joint, scorching his fingertips as he flicked it out the window. Then he turned back to Reggie Cook’s car and gazed at his mother’s cedar-shake house. It was more of a cottage than a real house. It was small, the walls too thin to give anyone any privacy.
He could feel his mind buzzing from the weed, his empty stomach growling. Only two hits and he was stoned and hungry.
He felt a draft from the window and shivered. He had to go inside, he decided finally. He might freeze to death out here.
He locked the car, hiked up the steps to the porch, and pushed the front door open. He found them in the kitchen. Cook was seated at the table with a shit-eating, I-just-fucked-your-mother kind of grin seared onto his stupid face. Andrew’s mother, Sarah, was standing beside the slob, wearing a completely transparent baby-doll top, a bare midriff, and a pair of low-riding, skintight jeans.
Andrew glanced at his mother’s full breasts, her puffy nipples and supersized areolas, then lifted his gaze to her face. She was only thirty-five, with golden-brown eyes and light-brown hair that she liked to have highlighted. She was only thirty-five and still hot in a trashy, Northeast Philly sort of way. Still dirty hot and messing with his head.
“What’s he doing here?” Andrew said.
His mother smiled at him. “He came over to visit, Andrew. Reggie was just leaving.”
“Good,” he said.
Andrew could smell his mother’s sex lingering over the table and guessed that Cook hadn’t washed his face. He could feel the man’s eyeballs on him. When he turned to give him a look, Cook slapped the table and howled.
“You’re weird, kid,” he said, his voice booming. “Goddamn it, you’re weird. You give new meaning to the phrase odd man out.”
Cook’s eyes got big and lit up as he roared with laughter. Andrew’s mother frowned.
“Stop it, Reggie. It’s time to go.”
He nodded and got up from the table with his fly undone. Zipping it up, he gave Andrew a wink and a hideous smile, and walked out still laughing. Andrew watched his mother follow the man into the living room. They were whispering, and he could hear them kissing. Then the front door opened and closed and his mother strolled into the kitchen with a warm smile on her face.
Andrew looked at her tits again. The transparent top. He could feel his dick getting hard. He couldn’t help it.
“Why do you dress this way in front of me?” he said in a quiet voice.
She moved closer and ran her hand through his braided hair. “I do it for you,” she said. “Everything I do is for you, Andrew.”
“For me? It’s not proper to dress this way in front of your son.”
She met his eyes and smiled again. “But you like it.”
“I don’t. I really don’t like it.”
“Yes, you do. You’ve liked it ever since you were a little boy. Since you were a baby. You like looking at them. You like looking at me. You like the time we spend together.”
The time we spend together.
Andrew gazed at her face, wondering if someone had slipped LSD into his weed. It felt like he was tripping. He knew from experience that it wasn’t safe to trip alone.
His mother brushed her nose over his cornrows and kissed him above the ear. “Did you bring anything home tonight, honey?”
Andrew nodded and pulled two partially frozen New York strip steaks out of his jacket pocket. Like the Gatorade he’d stolen from the Walmart Supercenter, dinner would be on the house tonight, just as it was most nights.
His mother looked at the steaks and seemed pleased. Andrew lifted the camera strapped to his shoulder over his head and set it on the table.
“You could do better than working at Walmart, Andrew. You were given a gift. A real talent. You should be making a living with that camera. Photography shouldn’t be something you do part-time.”
He didn’t say anything. He looked at her bare shoulders and back, her hips and ass as she turned on the stove. His dick was still hard, and he felt stupid. Mortified. He hated her, even though he loved her. He hated her.
CHAPTER 24
Andrew switched on the lights and TV, then sat down at his worktable by the window and woke up his laptop and printer. As he attached a cable to his camera, he glanced at the TV and then the clock radio by the bed. His favorite show, an animated comedy called Olive Kills Her Neighbor’s Cat, wouldn’t begin for another fifteen minutes. Until then, he’d have to endure this ignorant show that pandered to the weirdos who got off on gossip magazines.
Get Buzzed with Ryan Day.
He had caught glimpses of the show many times in the past. It was a carbon copy of every other gossip show he’d seen on TV, and just as difficult to avoid. The segments almost always involved young celebrities, especially but not always young female celebrities who were in some sort of trouble. Picked up for drugs or drunk driving, failing to attend a court hearing, a return trip to rehab on a beach in paradise, weight loss and a new bikini, a young female climbing out of her car with her panties in her purse, or even the well-tested and overdone “wardrobe malfunction” at a public event that usually involved a young female celebrity showing off her tits accidently on purpose.
The one constant was that none of these people had anything else going on. Their careers, if they even had one, were short and sweet and over. They were washed up and circling the drain, and so desperate to be noticed that Andrew thought he could see it on their faces.
He turned back to his laptop and snickered. It didn’t make any difference. An appearance on a show like Get Buzzed worked like a signal, a warning beacon, a eulogy given at a funeral. It was like getting your ass kicked with millions of viewers laughing at you. The big good-bye.
Andrew let the thought go as he downloaded thirty-seven new images from his camera. When the photo library opened, he skimmed through the portrai
ts he’d taken until he reached the photograph of Avery Cooper. Without protesting, Avery had let him take a handful of close-ups before leaving the arcade. He caught a whiff of his mother’s perfume on his skin as he examined each image, then clicked backward until he found the picture he thought might be his favorite. His stomach was stirring again—glowing—and this surprised him.
Avery Cooper was the first girl to ever come on to him. He wondered if he could trust her. If she wasn’t playing with him. Messing with him the same way his mother messed with him.
He thought about his mother, and after a few moments, managed to shake it off. Things happen for a reason, he reminded himself. There had to be a reason why he and Avery Cooper met this afternoon. A purpose. A meaning. He’d given her his cell phone number. Now he wondered why he hadn’t asked for hers.
He heard someone say something and glanced at the TV. It was Ryan Day poking his microphone into some guy’s face on the street outside the Holloways’ mansion on the Main Line.
Andrew rolled his desk chair closer, mesmerized. They were doing the story on a national TV show. Who cared if the show sucked?
What’s it like inside, Detective Jones? Five more murders by the infamous Dr. Baylor. Another entire family dead. What are you feeling right now?
Who were these people? What were they talking about?
Andrew got up and closed his bedroom door, then rushed back to his seat and watched the detective push his way past the camera and drive off. Then Day moved over to the driveway and finished his segment with the Holloways’ mansion just visible in the darkness behind him.
The image was haunting and creepy, and Andrew felt a chill crawl up his spine. It was almost as if he’d never been there. Almost as if he were hearing about the five murders, an entire family savagely killed, for the first time.
But even more, Day was recapping the story. He was introducing Andrew to a detective from Los Angeles named Matt Jones and a psychopath, someone Day kept calling the real killer, a Dr. George Baylor. What a great name for a mad scientist. Dr. Baylor. What a great name for the real killer.
The story ended with a photograph of Dr. Baylor and video of Matt Jones chasing someone down a street in Philadelphia with his pistol out. When the segment ended and they cut to a commercial, Andrew took a deep breath and exhaled. Then he grabbed his bong and a lighter and rolled his chair back to the computer. He wanted to see who he was dealing with. He wanted to have some more fun.
He clicked open the search engine and typed a name into the window as quickly as he could. The one he’d seen on TV. That detective who’d come all the way from Hollywood to investigate the mass killings here in the City of Brotherly Love.
Matt Jones.
CHAPTER 25
Matt found Brown sitting at a table by the window in the cafeteria. It looked like all she had was a glass of ice water. She gave him a look as he walked over. She was still wearing the same emotions on her face that he’d seen in the operating room. He could tell that she was disappointed in herself.
“It’s okay, Kate,” he said. “It’s over.”
She shook her head. “No, it’s not. It’s not okay, and it’s not over. How did it go?”
He reached out for her hand. “Let’s get out of here. Let’s go someplace quieter.”
She got to her feet, and they walked out into the hall, heading for the lobby.
“We can do that later,” she said. “Rogers wants us downtown. Something’s come up.”
Matt checked his watch. It was 7:30 p.m.
“Did he say what happened?”
“No. He just said that he wanted us to drive straight back once the autopsies were over. He said that it’s important.”
They reached the hospital’s main entrance, walked outside into the frigid air and down the steps to the parking lot.
Brown gave him a look. “You never answered my question. How did it go in there? What’s the official cause of death?”
“If the tox screens come back clean and there aren’t any surprises, then it’s the gunshot wounds. The ME said that it would have been a slow death. An hour, maybe even longer. He thinks that’s why the wounds were taped over. The killer was regulating their blood loss.”
“Baylor,” she said in a dark voice.
Matt remained quiet. He wanted to tell her what he was thinking, but knew that holding back was the right move for now.
“What about puncture wounds?” she said.
“They didn’t find any. Not on any of them. They think the tox screens could come back clean, Kate. That the loss of blood from the gunshots would have been enough to keep them docile.”
More evidence that Baylor really wasn’t the killer, Matt thought. More evidence that a ghost was out there. An alien working in the dark with no one even looking for him. Baylor had used a drug that still hadn’t been identified to keep his victims in a vegetative state for days while he sexually abused them. Matt had seen the doctor inject something into Anna Marie Genet, an eighteen-year-old college freshman, who was the only known victim to survive.
They reached the car. Brown clicked open the door locks, then turned and stepped in front of Matt. She was standing close to him again. He could feel her left arm find its way around his waist, her right hand on his chest exactly the way she had held him in the operating room. Her eyes were smoked out and hot.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t with you,” she said in a quiet voice. “I’m sorry you had to go through that alone.”
“Everything’s good, Kate. You’re covered. I’m glad I was here to help.”
She didn’t say anything. She stood there holding him and looking at him. Matt could feel her thighs brushing against his thighs, her warm belly pressing into his belly. In the operating room, they had been wearing their hazmat suits. Now they were wearing street clothes and their jackets were open. The moment was decidedly sensual, even erotic.
And then it passed. And then Brown let go, opened the car door, and climbed in behind the wheel as if nothing had happened. Matt didn’t know what to make of it. As he got in the car and fastened his seatbelt, he wondered if he should say something. In the end, he decided to let it go. The last woman he’d been with, the way it played out and ended, was still too close. He had spent the last month and a half working through it with his psychiatrist from the LAPD’s Behavioral Science Section. Over and over and over again. It was essential to his recovery that he let go of his feelings for her, make a clean break, and move forward. On most days he was fine. On others, not so lucky.
But tonight he’d felt something.
He looked over at Brown as she pulled the car out of the lot. He wondered if she wasn’t exactly what he needed. He could remember his shrink saying that the sooner he had sex, the better off he’d be.
Matt watched her switch on the radio, then settled into the passenger seat. He’d missed another night’s sleep, but was afraid that if he closed his eyes, he’d replay the last eight hours in his head. All those horrific images of the Holloway family being cut into pieces and then sewn back up with a heavy black twine. All those hideous memories that he knew would never go away.
CHAPTER 26
Matt followed Brown past their desks and across the floor to the conference room. He could see them through the glass. Rogers and Dr. Westbrook were seated at the table, while Doyle paced back and forth along the far wall.
Rogers swung the door open and waved them in. “There’s been a development,” he said.
Matt could tell by looking at the somber expressions on everyone’s face that whatever happened wasn’t good. Once he closed the door, Rogers returned to his seat and shook his head.
“A development,” Doyle repeated. “That’s one way of looking at it, I guess.”
Matt leaned against the credenza and watched Doyle walk the length of the room, then turn back.
“What happened?” Matt said. “What is it?”
Doyle clasped his hands behind his back and shrugged. “The lab report came
back, and this time it’s definitive. The semen found in Tammy Stratton doesn’t match Baylor’s DNA.”
It hung there. Matt couldn’t believe it. Definitive proof. Finally.
“No,” Rogers said in a low voice. “The DNA doesn’t match the doctor’s. It’s worse than that. As bad as it gets.”
Matt turned to the special agent. “What could be worse?”
Rogers met his eyes. “The semen came from the boy, Jim Jr.,” he said. “He was only thirteen.”
Doyle nodded. “They had intercourse, Jones. The way the boy was draped over his mother, we thought the semen had been contaminated by his blood. Now we know that there was no contamination at all. Baylor forced the boy to have sex with his mother. It’s a safe bet that the Holloway boy was forced to do the same thing. Forced to have sex with his mother while his sisters and father watched.”
The idea, the image, the thought and all the darkness that came with it, settled into the room like nerve gas. No one said anything for a long time.
But Matt’s mind was spinning. He looked at Doyle and Rogers, then Westbrook and Brown. He looked at their faces and knew that he had to say something.
“I don’t think it’s Baylor,” he said quietly.
Doyle jerked his head up, aghast. “What?”
“I don’t think that Dr. Baylor is responsible for these murders. I think there’s someone else out there.”
Rogers slammed the table with his fist and got to his feet. “You’re young, Jones. You’ve been a homicide detective for what? Is it two months or is it two and a half? I told you before what I thought about you being here. But this is different. What you’re saying, what you’re thinking, could get you into a lot of trouble.”
Doyle stepped forward, measuring Matt carefully with a brutal expression on his face. “What makes you think it’s not Baylor, Jones? Give me something that would stand up in court.”
“I can’t do that. But from everything I’ve seen, especially tonight with the lab report, these murders wouldn’t seem to relate to what we know Baylor did in LA and New Orleans. All four of those murders were about greed.”