I broke into a run for the warehouse. At first Ruby kept pace with me, but she soon pulled ahead. She reached the warehouse door first and made a move to go inside. I grabbed her from behind and yanked her back.
“You can’t go in there!” I shouted.
Foul-smelling smoke continued to pour out the broken window and seeped from underneath the shuttered door, too.
“She’s my mother!” Ruby yelled back at me, her face twisted in agony.
“You’ll never be able to pull her out,” I said. “You don’t have the strength. Think about it! The drugs. The cancer. You’ll never get her out, and you’ll probably die trying. I’ll go.”
Ruby screamed, “No!” as I pulled the door open. A plume of smoke sent both of us staggering back several feet. Ruby yelled, “No!” again, but that was after I had vanished inside the burning building.
My first thought was that the movies made it look easy—cover your nose and mouth with your arm, get low to the ground, and go barging into a raging fire. What they don’t show is the survival instinct kicking in. They ignore the invisible wall that pops up and halts your advance the moment that first poisoned gulp of air slides down your throat. Your eyes close up and water, your lungs cough in rebellion, while the heat lashes at your skin and produces nearly intolerable pain. I felt every bit of that and more, and I’d taken only three steps inside. The fire had been raging for a grand total of two minutes. The fire department would be here in seven minutes at most, maybe sooner. But “sooner” might mean “too late.”
From behind me I heard Ruby screaming, “John! Mom!” She continued to call my name as I plunged deeper into thick plumes of smoke that turned the warehouse into the darkest night imaginable. The pestilent fumes burned my lungs. I fell to the floor, forced there if I wanted to breathe. Down low, I could see an inch or two in front of my face, but no more. Waves of heat washed over my body. Imagine holding a hand to a flame, unable to pull it back, not even after the skin begins to sear.
Bit by bit the pain ratcheted up.
One thought kept me going: Save Winnie. Save Ruby’s mom.
I crawled forward, moving an inch at a time, trying to orientate myself within this dark and alien world. How far in were those burning pallets? How far from that was the first pile of debris?
The only thing saving me was the size of the warehouse. Smoke was spreading out across the ceiling, with thousands of square feet still to cover. If Uretsky had put Winnie on the upper floors, it probably would have been easier to reach her. He knew that. The fire had yet to burn a hole into the ceiling. The accumulating smoke had no place to go but down on top of me, like a thick black curtain signaling the end.
Breathe.
Crawl.
Breathe.
I tried to scream, “Winnie!” but the smoke suffocated my voice. Even if I could have shouted, the snap and crackle of the fire would have drowned me out.
At this point I wasn’t thinking about being brave, or trying to make amends for what I’d done; I was thinking, I want to get the fuck out of here. That desire beat like a war drum in my head, getting louder and louder as I crawled farther from the exit. For a second, I thought this was just a nightmare from which I’d soon awaken. And when I did, I’d be in bed, in our Somerville apartment, with Ruby right there beside me, and it would be B.C., before the cancer, and our life would be beautiful again.
At that moment, a tendril of fire reached down from the ceiling and whipped the ground inches from my face, as if to say, “This is a nightmare, all right, but you’re not dreaming.”
I couldn’t think clearly under the constant roar of fire. My lungs were burning for air. Did I have enough oxygen to make it back out? Still, I moved forward, slithering on my belly as quickly as I could.
I covered my mouth with my arm, as if that would protect me from the smoke. My lungs seemed to laugh at the attempt. A hacking cough exploded from inside me, hard enough to shake my bones. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. Above me, I heard the floor moan and hiss as the flames below it converted trapped moisture into steam. I reached a place where the fire burned hotter, and I knew that I was directly across from the wood pallets used to start the blaze.
If I hadn’t just been in the room, I might not have been able to orient myself in total darkness. But I remembered that if I headed in a northwest direction, the pile of debris closest to the pallets was about twenty feet from my current location. I moved ahead, my fingers doing the work of my eyes, and ended up crawling maybe another fifty feet before I found the trash pile. Cardboard boxes, concrete bricks, an overturned sofa, trash barrels, and scraps of sheet metal that had formed a makeshift wall kept me from seeing Winnie while I was dousing the pallets with gas. But I found her. Unconscious. Inert.
I didn’t have time to see if she was alive. The smoke was descending more rapidly. I figured I had fifteen seconds at most to drag Winnie out of the building before we could both kiss the land of the living good-bye. My chest screamed for relief, poisoned by a thirst for pure air. Every breath exited my body as a cough.
Still, I had enough strength to grab hold of Winnie by her wrists. I was on my knees, with my head bent low, crawling backward toward the door, pulling hard. Winnie came along with me, I assumed on her back, but I couldn’t see her through the smoke. I couldn’t see the light of the door, either, but at least I could hear sirens, so I figured I was getting closer.
I’m not going to make it.
Every fiber of my body screamed out for oxygen. How bad my lungs hurt. How hot my skin felt. A deeper darkness overcame me.
This is what forever feels like.
Before I knew what was happening, before I blacked out, I sensed myself being pulled. A human chain had formed—someone (a firefighter?) on one end, Winnie on the other, and me in the middle. I don’t know how long it took to drag us outside, but in that kind of situation, a second passes like eternity.
The next thing I knew, I was on the ground with an oxygen mask on my face.
Rebirth.
I looked to my right and saw a group of EMTs working on Winnie. I could tell she was unconscious. But was she breathing? Was she alive?
Ruby stood with the EMTs working on her mother for about half a minute. Then she came rushing over to me. I motioned to the EMT to give us privacy—it was too hard to say the words. He understood and backed away, but only a little.
“She’s alive,” Ruby said, brushing away her tears. “She’s alive because of you.”
Fire trucks were everywhere: hoses and water and people with oxygen masks, wearing thick fire-retardant coats, rushing into the burning building, doing what firefighters do best. I pulled away my oxygen mask. I needed to feel Ruby’s touch. Her fingers came away black with soot. She was holding on to me, trembling, calling my name over and over. She kissed my forehead and stroked my blackened arms.
“We don’t know her,” I said, coughing out the words.
“What?”
“Winnie,” I said, still coughing. “We don’t know her. We can’t explain that.”
“I know,” Ruby said.
God, how I loved her.
“What did you tell them?” I asked. “The firefighters, I mean.”
“We were passing by and saw the fire. I pulled the alarm. You heard a woman call out for help. You went in to save her.”
This time I said it. “Ruby, I love you so much.” Then I said—or more accurately, managed to wheeze—“We’ve got to get out of here. I don’t want to make the news again.”
Ruby nodded. “They want to take you to a hospital,” she said. “I’m fine,” I said. “I don’t have to go.” Then I coughed. A lot. I couldn’t see my reflection in a mirror, but if my arms were any indication, my face was almost entirely black. I coughed again and spit out something black and nasty on the ground. “Find out where they’re taking Winnie,” I said, “and then let’s get out of here.”
I saw a police officer, youngish, fittish, and wearing a look of concern as he appro
ached. He knelt beside me and asked, “How are you doing?”
“Fine,” I said, just as I started to hack and cough. Again, I spit out something terrible.
“You need to go to the hospital,” he said, not a question but a statement of fact.
I waved him off. “No, really. I’m fine,” I said. “I’m actually allergic to hospitals. They give me hives.”
That inspired a little smile.
“Look, I need your statement for the police report,” he said. “Do you think you can manage that?”
Maybe he caught my apprehensive look, but he probably thought I was about to cough again. In truth what really got my heart rate going was a vision of a thousand reporters all clambering for an exclusive interview with the hero who saved a mysterious woman from a burning inferno. If somebody recognized me on the six o’clock news, the police would be one step closer to linking us to Winnie.
“I don’t want the reporters hounding me,” I said.
“Your personal information will be redacted from the police report. They can’t know you if you don’t want to be known,” he said.
I grimaced as I took a breath and probably flashed the cop my blackened teeth in the process.
“Okay,” I said.
“Good,” he said. He took out a pad and pen from his utility belt. “Let’s start with your name.”
I didn’t hesitate. “Elliot Uretsky,” I said.
CHAPTER 40
The news people faced an incredibly busy day of reporting, and it was all because of me. They had three major stories to cover, but the two fires in Southie, and the mystery woman who was rescued by the mystery man, were not the lead items. Not even close.
But let’s start with those fires in Southie, both of which were labeled as arson by Boston’s FIU, Fire Investigation Unit. As it turned out, Officer Christopher Walsh—the guy who took down my police report at the scene—was right about the press. I’m sure they would have loved to interview me, and if I hadn’t been the one who started the blaze in the first place, I would have granted that request. I would have said things like, “I’m not a hero. . . . I was just in the right place at the right time. . . . I just wanted to help. Yada. Yada. Yada.” But in truth, I wasn’t a hero, was I? I was an arsonist. Fortunately, my name (okay, the Elliot Uretsky name) was not made available to the press via the police report, because I hadn’t been arrested for any crime—at least, not yet.
Having the media all over the first fire in Southie helped me stay an enigma. By the time Ruby and I were leaving the scene of the second fire, the news trucks were just rolling in. We slipped away in the gathering crowd before anybody could point the newsies in our direction.
The reports about Winnie were pretty vague. They knew that she was a woman, but they didn’t have a picture to show the public or any identification to go on. I had no idea what Uretsky did with her purse and wallet. Maybe it burned in the fire. They could have filmed her inert body splayed out on a stretcher as it got loaded into the back of an ambulance, but I guess that’s considered poor form—even for the local news. According to the Channel Seven reporter, this Jane Doe had been taken to Mass General Hospital, where her condition was reported as critical.
We knew a little bit more than the reporter did, but that was because we had gone to see her.
After the fire, Ruby and I returned to the apartment. We both showered, and I turned the bathroom black with soot. I still couldn’t get a decent breath, but with every cough and everything I expunged from my aching lungs, I was clearing a pathway for some actual respiration. Once we’d cleaned up, we drove Ziggy to Mass General, parked in the garage, and ten minutes later identified ourselves to the staff working the ICU as the people who pulled the Jane Doe out of the Southie fire. We asked if we could see her for just a moment, if that would be all right with them.
“It’s important for closure,” I said.
If any of the staffers found it odd that Ruby got emotional in this woman’s presence, they didn’t say. Tears in the ICU are a common occurrence, but I bet the staff didn’t often witness one stranger sobbing over the medical plight of another. Of course, they didn’t know this was a daughter holding her mother’s hand.
Winnie was on a ventilator, her arms an octopus of IV drips. All sorts of other machines were attached to her, all humming and beeping away, but I didn’t know their purpose and didn’t think it wise to ask. It might seem odd to take such an interest in Jane Doe’s medical condition. Thanks to HIPAA, we didn’t glean all that much about her prognosis, either. She was suffering from severe smoke inhalation; that much we were told, though it was unclear when—or even if—she would regain consciousness.
I overheard two nurses talking about the toxicology report they were expecting from the lab at any moment. I’m sure when the police read through that report, they’d have some questions for Elliot Uretsky—aka me. How did I manage to hear this woman calling out for help if she had enough drugs swimming in her system to knock out an elephant? Those questions might come up, and if they did, either I’d BS my way through them or I’d make a call to Clegg and ask for a lifeline. Right now I needed to be a rock for Ruby, who sat silent by her mother’s bedside, swallowing down tears as sour to her as the smoke lingering in my lungs.
But of all the stories to make the evening news, Winnie and the two fires in Southie were merely footnotes. We got back to our place a little before five o’clock in the afternoon and parked Ziggy in the reserved spot out back. We entered the apartment building through the back door, which meant we didn’t see any of the action going on out front. I immediately turned on the TV, curious what the reports would have to say about the fire.
That’s when we heard the lead story—the really big news item of the day. It hadn’t been confirmed yet by the police, but there was growing speculation about a possible serial killer on the loose in Boston. According to the somber-sounding newscaster, the body of a mutilated woman had been found inside her Winthrop apartment. Authorities were not releasing the woman’s name pending notification of her family, but they did have some disturbing information about the crime to share with the viewing public.
The woman’s fingers had been severed and placed ritualistically on her body. And some bright reporter with a nose for the news managed to link the gruesome details of the murder victim to a similar act performed on Rhonda Jennings. Somebody read the police reports and matched the modus operandi of the two crimes. Somebody didn’t need a lot more information to connect those terrible dots. Now the race was on between the people trying to control the flow of information and those who wanted to expose the truth. We sat riveted to the news, watching the reporters trying to make sense of it all.
The news people had all their bases covered. One television crew was out in Winthrop, at Jenna’s apartment, one was at the Boston police headquarters, and another was stationed right outside the apartment on Harvard Avenue where Rhonda Jennings once lived. Ruby went over to the window and confirmed at least four news trucks from different television stations parked right outside. Thank goodness we’d come in through the back door, or we would have been accosted like our other neighbors, who were just trying to come home for the night. On the TV, the Channel Seven news anchor was asking the same questions anybody would ask.
Was this the work of a single killer?
How many other killings had there been?
What did the placement of the fingers mean?
Was it part of a demonic ritual?
In addition to rampant speculation, the media had given this killer a name. In a mere couple of hours from the discovery of the bodies to the linking of the two murders, the SHS Killer had been born: see, hear, and speak no evil. SHS. Maybe twenty years ago it would have taken a day or two for the name of the SHS Killer to become part of the cultural lexicon. But with the advent of instant communication networked to just about everybody, fear could travel at supersonic speed and a name could catch quicker than a fire in Southie. One minute, people were watc
hing the end of Ellen and the next they were tweeting and updating their Facebook profiles with warnings to stay vigilant, walk in groups, and avoid going out at night unless absolutely necessary.
We watched the five o’clock news blend into the six and were witness to the police battling a swelling tide of panic. They urged caution while warning against jumping to conclusions.
“At this point, we cannot confirm or deny reports of a serial killer,” the police commissioner said on camera. “We do have two murders with strikingly similar characteristics, and we’re asking anybody with information to come forward to help us solve these terrible crimes.”
The words tumbled about in my head. Anybody with information —well, that would be me. I had all the information, but yet I felt powerless to do anything about it. I could give up Uretsky’s name, along with my role in the fire, Jenna’s death, the robbery of Giovanni’s Liquors, Rhonda Jennings’s murder, and our medical fraud in the process, but would that stop the killings? Uretsky and his wife, Tanya, were both MIA. What realistic hope did the police have of tracking them down?
Ruby must have been thinking along the same lines. “We’ve got to tell them what we know,” she said.
“The police, you mean?”
“Yes, John, the police. We’ve got to tell them about Elliot Uretsky.”
I nodded, because I agreed with her. We needed help. We needed the police. And yet the consequences of a confession were immense.
“I just need to think about it,” I said.
“What’s there to think about?” Ruby asked, her voice a burst of hostility. “Make the call, or I will.”
“We need to make arrangements. For you . . . for us,” I said, stammering to get out the words. “I’m going to jail for what I’ve done. You don’t have to.”
Ruby’s eyes turned downcast as she ruminated on what I had said. “We could run,” she suggested. “We’ll vanish. We’ll figure it out.”
“Or we wait until we hear from Uretsky,” I said. “Keep playing his game.”
“Who knows what he’ll ask us to do next?”
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