“Yeah.”
“That’s kind of funny, since it’s so cloudy out, huh?”
“That’s what Daddy said.”
“What else did the man look like?”
“Ummm. I don’t remember.”
“Did he have very, very short hair, about the same color as mine?”
“Yeah.”
“How tall was he?”
“Like Yale.”
“Okay. Did he have a tan?”
Daniel touched his face. “Yeah, sort of.”
“What was his mouth like?”
“Big.”
“Did he say anything to you?”
“Ummmm . . . He said, ‘Hi, Daniel.’ ”
“He called you by your name?”
“Yeah. He said, ‘Hi, Daniel. You want to play with me later?’ ”
“Daniel, I don’t want you ever playing with that man. Or with anyone you don’t know. Do you understand me?”
“I told him, ‘No!’ I yelled it at him, like Buster said to do.”
“Good for you.”
“And then he . . . he reached out and he . . . squeezed my nose. Really hard. It hurt.”
“Oh, no. Oh, Daniel. What did your daddy do?”
“My daddy hit him in the head with a sword.”
I stared at him.
“And then he . . . he flew away.”
“He flew away.”
“On a broom. And he turned my daddy into a mouse.”
“Are we telling stories again?” It was Daniel’s mother, Erika Klein. I didn’t know how long she’d been standing there. “You have to forgive him, Samantha,” she said, adjusting dainty, wire-framed glasses. “He’s at this phase where he just makes up stories all the time. I think you’re turning into quite the young novelist, eh, Daniel?”
He smiled shyly. “Yes . . .”
“Now, what do we call making up stories and acting as if they’re true?”
“Lying.”
“And is lying a good thing?”
“No . . . I’m sorry, Ms. Leiffer.”
“That’s okay, Dan. Why don’t you show your mom Squad Watery.” As he took out the picture, I recalled how much my own mother’s voice had sounded like Erika Klein’s.
“You lied to me, and you lied to your grandmother.”
“But, Mom . . .”
“There was no man in a Pinto with a princess crown for you, and you know it.”
“But . . .”
“There was no pigeon that saved your life.”
“Yes, there was.”
“You were lying to get attention. Admit it.”
“He tried to kill me . . .”
“Are you a little baby, Samantha?”
“No.”
“Then stop making up stories. Admit you were lying. That’s the first step to growing up.”
“But—”
“Samantha Elizabeth Leiffer!”
“I’m sorry I lied, Mom.”
“That’s a good girl.”
As Daniel’s mother started to lead him out, I put a hand on her arm. “Please make sure and always listen to Daniel. Sometimes the strangest-sounding stories turn out to be true.”
Erika blinked at me. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
After all the kids were gone, I straightened up my desk while Yale cleared the art detritus from the rest of the room.
“Do you always keep the bathroom key on the chalk tray?” he asked.
“What? No. It goes in the desk.”
Yale tossed me the key and looked closely at my face. “Given the current situation, this may seem like a stupid question,” he said. “But what’s on your mind?”
“Daniel Klein, actually. He said something weird.” I pulled out the top drawer, put the key back in and started to close it. But stopped when I saw the bottom of a ripped-out magazine ad. I hadn’t put it there.
“What did he say?” Yale said.
“He . . . said . . .” With the short fingernails on my thumb and index finger, I slowly pulled the ad out of the drawer and stared at it, my pulse getting faster, my breath more shallow. Blood pounded in my ears, and I was only dimly aware of Yale’s voice.
“Sam? What is that?”
It was an ad for a doll—Schoolteacher Barbie. Her hair in a glossy bun, Barbie wore a pink cardigan and jeans and stood in front of a miniature chalkboard, her name dancing across it in familiar, cursive letters. Several student dolls sat before her, little backs to the camera, raising chubby plastic hands. Barbie appeared to be deciding on whom to call, but it was difficult to tell, because the top half of her face was hidden by a thick smear of dried, reddish brown liquid.
It had been applied to her eyes with a finger, and had dripped down the side of the page before drying.
Yale and I sat at either end of my dinette table, with the magazine ad at the center like a ticking bomb.
I knew I should have called the Sixth Precinct from school and had a cop take the ad. As Yale had pointed out, I could have spoken to anyone there; it didn’t have to be Krull. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to do it—not there, not then.
So I’d put my gloves on, gingerly placed the ad between two pieces of the white drawing paper we’d used in class that day and carried it home like a relic.
Yale and I had taken a cab to my apartment because it seemed like the safest place to be. The more we were out on the streets, the more likely Peter was to track us down, to follow us, to watch us through windows. My apartment overlooked an airshaft. Only neighbors could watch us here.
My phone was still off the hook, and I wanted it to stay that way. He’d gotten into my classroom, into my locked desk drawer, into my best friend’s bed. It was only a matter of time before he got into my phone, before he learned my number, my address. I wasn’t listed, but what difference did that make? Peter Steele would find his way in.
Yale said, “We need to call the police.”
“Can’t we wait?” I said. “Can’t we just sit on the couch and watch TV and eat peanut butter sandwiches and wait until it . . . it blows over?”
“As tempting as that is, all my things have been destroyed and, okay, my valuables aren’t all that valuable and I have some insurance, but this is the thing, Sam. He’s going to kill you if we don’t do something.”
I forced a grin. “You sound so certain.”
Without a word, he pointed to the smear across Barbie’s eyes. It was blood, I knew, and too thick to have come from a pricked finger.
“All right,” I said. “But can you do me a favor and put the phone back on the hook and bring it over to me? I . . . I don’t feel like moving right now . . . I’m sorry.”
He patted my hand. “Abject fear means never having to say you’re sorry.”
Yale was only able to make it a few steps before the floor started slamming and shaking beneath him. “What is happening . . .” he said, arms straight out and knees bent, as if he’d suddenly been dropped at the center of a tightrope.
I smiled at him. “That’s just my crazy downstairs neighbor, Yale. She moved in about six months ago.”
“This hasn’t happened before, and I’ve certainly been here in the past six—”
“You were probably wearing sneakers or something. Elmira has a thing about boots.”
“Sweet Jesus, what a horrible, horrible . . .” Yale unlaced his thick, brown hiking boots and stepped out of them. I winced at his socks on the bare floors, but didn’t say anything. Yale hated it when I brought up superstitions.
Elmira eventually stopped banging, but he still backed away from his shoes as if they were venomous snakes.
When he reached the phone and placed it on the hook, it rang immediately. Yale jumped back. “Your apartment is trying to give me a heart attack!”
“Please, can you pick it up?”
Yale took a massive breath and steadied himself, shaking the tension out of his hands, cracking both sides of his neck, gently slapping himself in the face. It was the same series of
motions he went through before beginning an audition monologue.
“Hurry up.”
“All right, already . . . Hello? . . . Yes, she is. May I say who’s . . . Certainly. Okay . . .”
He placed his hand over the mouthpiece and raised an eyebrow at me. “Detective Krull.”
“You’re kidding.”
Yale walked across the room and handed me the cordless.
“Hello?”
“Samantha . . .” He said my name like a drawn-out sigh. “I was worried about you.”
“You were?”
“Your phone’s been off the hook. I’ve been trying to call you . . .”
“I think I must’ve forgotten to hit the button after I hung up with you last night . . .” I felt my face heating up. Yale was gesturing dramatically at the magazine ad, making it even harder for me to concentrate. I spun around in my chair, put my back to him. “Look, Detective . . . I’m really sorry about last night.”
Yale said, “Oh, Jesus Christ, would you please tell him about this fucking thing!”
“Shut up.”
“Why?” Krull said.
“Not you. I was talking to my friend.”
“No . . . Why are you sorry?”
“Uhhhhh . . . Because I . . . Because I . . .”
“You didn’t hit me, or steal my wallet, or say terrible things about my mother.”
“Oh, come on, Detective . . .”
“John.”
“John, you know what I did.”
Yale said, “We interrupt this episode of Live and Let Live to bring you important information about a murderer !”
I held up my index finger, mouthed the word “Wait.”
Krull’s voice was quiet, a little tense around the edges. “What you did . . . was you made me a very nice offer. Of course you were about two minutes away from comatose.”
“I didn’t scare you?”
“Are you insane?”
I covered my face with my hands.
“And if you’re sorry about getting so drunk, don’t apologize to me. Apologize to your digestive system.”
“God, John. When I woke up this morning, I just felt so . . .”
Yale grabbed the phone out of my hands. “Maybe you and Sam could continue your conversation in person. She received some sort of note in her desk at school today with blood on it . . . Yes, blood . . . I’m almost positive that’s what it is. She found it there after the children left. And Peter Steele vandalized my apartment last night . . . Right . . . Yeah, that’s me. Her friend Yale who slept with the psychopath.”
I listened to Yale giving Krull my exact address and then his address, as well as his super’s name and apartment number so that police could begin dusting his place for fingerprints. I felt a powerful warmth welling up in my chest and spreading. He’s going to take care of this.
“Oh, and Detective,” Yale said, just before he hung up, “I wouldn’t wear boots over here if I were you.”
Krull showed up fast and made directly for the dinette table.
On Yale’s recommendation, he slipped off his shoes and I noticed they were surprisingly tasteful—soft and black and Italian looking. They contrasted sharply with the rest of his outfit: the same brown suit he’d worn the previous day, a faded oxford shirt of beige and brown plaid and the kind of colorless, rectangular knit tie my seventh grade math teacher used to wear. “Nice shoes,” I said.
Krull didn’t reply. He opened his briefcase, removed a large, plastic evidence bag and a pair of tweezers, and carefully slipped the magazine ad in. For several moments, he stared at Barbie’s bloody face through the clear plastic.
I said, “Thanks for coming by.”
Still no answer.
“Are you mad at me?”
Slowly, he shifted his gaze from the doll’s face to mine. He didn’t say anything; he didn’t need to.
“What changed between the phone and here?”
Krull shoved the bag into his briefcase, snapped it shut. When he finally spoke, his voice was excruciatingly tight and measured. “Why didn’t you call me from school?”
“I . . . I felt like I’d be safer at home.”
“Instead of calling me, you went outside and onto the street, where you could’ve easily been attacked. And you risked contaminating the evidence to take it home? Because you felt safer there?”
“I’m . . .”
“Let me ask you something. If I hadn’t called you, would you have—”
“We were just about to call the police,” Yale cut in. “That’s why I put the phone on the hook.”
Krull stared at me hard. “Not the police,” he said. “Me. Would you have called me?”
I stared right back at him. He was starting to make me mad. I didn’t need that—anger on top of embarrassment and confusion and fear and all these other unpleasant emotions. What happened to the verbal judo? The least you could do is patronize me. “I don’t know. Probably not. I think I would have called Art.”
Krull said nothing. His eyes were like sharpened pieces of jet.
Yale said, “I should’ve taken that damn bow tie with me. Peter left his bow tie. That’s evidence, isn’t it?”
Krull did not respond.
My jaw tightened, but I refused to remove my eyes from his. “I feel more comfortable around Art,” I said through my teeth. “I think Art would be more understanding.”
Finally, he looked away. I felt a hollow satisfaction, having won this ridiculous staring contest. He un-snapped his briefcase again, removed a cellular phone—a long, fold-up model from the nineties—then a business card and a pen. “This phone was issued to Amanda,” he said as he wrote on the back of the card. “It’s an NYPD phone, and everyone knows she’s on maternity leave so you don’t have to worry about getting her calls.”
He handed it to me along with a charger, then gave me the card. “This is my card, but I’ve written Art’s direct line and cell number on the back. If anything happens . . . or if you . . . feel scared, call me. Or him. Suit yourself.”
He took a notepad out of his briefcase and turned his attention to Yale, asking him a series of questions and putting together a timeline related to the break-in the previous night. “You know what the phrase ‘under the umbrella of suspicion’ means?” he said to Yale after he closed the pad.
Yale replied, “Only insofar as it relates to John and Patsy Ramsey.”
Krull smiled. “It more or less means that Peter is a possible suspect—but not a probable one,” he said. “Even if he did wreck your place, it’s not necessarily connected with the child murders. We don’t have any solid proof he’s even a devil worshiper.”
I walked out of the room, into the kitchen area.
Krull went on. “I guess what I’m saying is I know this is difficult for you. But try not to think too much about it now. The important thing to remember is you haven’t done anything wrong.”
From where I was standing, I could see Yale’s face, his eyes glistening slightly. “Thanks, Detective,” he said.
Knows exactly what to say to everyone but me.
“I’m going to your place to see how the crime scene guys are doing. When you get a chance, stop by the Sixth Precinct on West Twelfth Street, okay? We’ll need your fingerprints so we can exclude them.”
“My first fingerprinting.”
I said, “Good-bye, Detective,” and Krull finally looked at me. His eyes were no longer sharp and hard, just sad.
After Krull left, Yale exhaled dramatically. “Well, it certainly feels good to have the authorities involved.”
I glared at him.
“Sorry, but I don’t give a rat’s ass who’s winning the Tournament of Mind Games.”
“I made one mistake. He doesn’t have to—”
“I don’t understand you, Sam. You’re terrified of spilled salt and chills up your spine, but Bloodbath Barbie isn’t all that big a deal?”
“I . . . don’t feel like talking about it.”
“Tha
t’s fine. Just one reality check: human sacrifice.”
“Krull said there’s no proof Peter is a devil worshiper.”
“He was only trying to make me feel better, and you know it. I have to say he’s pretty sensitive for a straight man. A straight cop, no less.”
I looked at him. “How do you know he’s straight?”
“Oh, please.” Yale started to put his coat on.
“I’m serious. He works out of the West Village precinct, he turned me down when I threw myself at him—and I’m sorry, I was drunk and nude. He’s not married. He obviously spends a lot of time at the gym . . .”
He shook his head at me. “Samantha, dear,” he said, as if he were teaching a child to read, “no self-respecting gay man would be caught dead dressed like that.”
“Oh . . . right.”
“Not to mention he’s hot for you.”
I stared at Yale.
Yale finished buttoning up his coat, then grabbed his boots and headed for the door. “God, you’re dense sometimes. Must be all that L.A. smog you inhaled as a child.”
“What do you mean?”
“Figure it out for yourself, Stanford girl,” he said. “I have locks to change, fingerprints to give, an investigation to aid.”
“Be careful.”
“You be careful. Lock your door.” Yale closed the door, and I bolted it. Through the peephole, I watched him put on his boots before heading down the hall to the elevator.
I settled back at the dinette table, picked up Krull’s card, turned it over and over between my fingers. I looked at the thick black ink on the back of it, at Art Boyle’s name printed in calm, capital letters. Call me. Or him. Suit yourself.
“Oh yeah. He is so hot for me.”
I folded up Amanda’s cell phone, shoved it in my pocket and wandered into the kitchen. I desperately wanted a beer, but decided to make myself coffee instead.
The cupboard with the filters in it was sticky, so I had to pry it open with my big, wood-handled kitchen knife. I always needed to do this, yet I never could stop myself from putting the filters back in that cupboard when I was through with them. Perhaps subconsciously, I enjoyed the extra work I had to go through every morning to get to them. Or maybe it was because I hardly used the knife for anything else and I liked the feel of the thick pine hilt in my hand. It was probably sexual.
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