Defenseless

by Celeste Marsella

  “Hey there,” Mike said. “Did I scare you?”

  I let out the breath I’d been holding. “You smoke?”

  “Only when I get involved with women.”

  “Chain smoker, huh? What are you doing here?”

  “Seeing if you’re okay. This thing with your sister must be rough for you.”

  Yes, I thought, rough as hell. If anything happened to Cassie, I would be losing my entire family in one clean sweep. As religious as they were, my parents would still never make it through the ordeal of burying Cassie. An incorporeal God could never replace their living, breathing child.

  “We’ll get through it.”

  “Stop playing so tough.”

  “What are you really doing here, Mike?”

  “There’s a questionably legal student party going down in the park off Grotto. It’s student affairs and within our purview, so you won’t get in trouble with Carlyle.”

  “Purview. Big word. You sure you’re up to it?”

  Muttering, he threw his butt down and smashed it with the heel of his shoe. “This is why I smoke.”

  “So you and Elliot Orenstein must be reading the same blogs. I’m supposed to meet him there in about twenty minutes.”

  “I don’t swap spit with the students and you shouldn’t either. Let’s go.”

  I’d always thought “swapping spit” meant kissing, but I didn’t correct him, because for all I knew that’s exactly what he’d meant. And I didn’t feel like getting into an argument with him over my playing kissy-face with Elliot Orenstein, nor did I think it wise to tell him that I’d let Rod Lipton into my apartment the night before. In fact, I was getting real shy about telling Mike anything anymore.

  I followed him wordlessly up the street to his car parked next to a fire hydrant. He went directly to the drivers side and got in, not bothering to open my door for me, and we drove in silence to Patterson Park, where he pulled over to a wooded area overlooking a cliff and the Providence River, and then cut the engine. A few blocks away down the same river, Sherman’s apartment was dark.

  Mike threw open his door. “Smell that,” he said, and jumped out of the car. I got out and we both inhaled. The air was thick with the smell of marijuana. We began our walk through the inky woods. The frozen grass crunched underfoot. For all I knew, Mike was a ruthless murderer and he had lured me into the secluded forest to kill me before I discovered that he had raped and butchered Melinda Hastings, Lisa Cummings, and Emily Barton. He knew enough about my personal life to lure Cassie too. And she would have gone willingly with an ex-cop who worked with me at Holton. As best I could, I chased these thoughts from my conscious mind, but apparently Mike and I were sharing brain waves.

  “There aren’t too many women who would do this,” he said as we walked. “And as far as I can tell lately, I was just a one-night stand for you.”

  I stopped dead in my tracks. Behind a flock of trees, we saw flickering lights and breathed the blatant smoke of marijuana. “What is that?” I whispered.

  “Spoiled Episcopalian offspring on drugs.”

  I stopped in the stalky weeds. “Don’t go any closer. There’s no place to hide.”

  “You don’t think I’m afraid of these little punks, do ya?”

  Mike surged through the trees and I followed cautiously behind him. He hollered into the air: “Swallow the pot or dump it, kiddies, cause I’m rescinding your drug privileges.”

  Like a pile of leaves in the wind, the circle of a dozen figures flew into a frenzy of activity and all lights went out. By the time Mike and I were upon them, complete darkness had obscured my vision. I slowed up and stopped. “McCoy?”

  “Stay here,” he said.

  Cautiously I hung back in the trees as Mike left my side and walked into the thicket.

  “All right, what’s going on here?” I heard him say in the distance. “I want some answers.”

  I lost sight of him in the darkness and began to inch forward toward the voices, when one of them shouted “Now!” as a rapid succession of several 120-lumen blinding Mag-Lites stunned my reflexes and I clamped my eyes shut in total blindness. Instinctively I raised my arms in front of me to protect myself and then to feel my way ahead. After a few baby steps, I heard a hoarse whisper from behind me.

  “Mari. Marianna,” the voice repeated threateningly.

  Right, and then left, and then from behind, my name was repeated in my ear as the breathy voice taunted my blindness. “Can you feel me?”

  I ran back in the direction from which I thought Mike and I had come, and with each step I took farther back into the swell of trees, my feet caught in dead sticks and low-lying branches as I stumbled through them. A branch slapped my face, stinging it, catching my hair, pulling me back. And then a hard thud into my chest. Sudden-onset blindness makes you stupid. Was it a bullet? Had I run into a tree? Two hands on my chest pushed me down to the ground, onto my back, my unblinking eyes staring into a sky I couldn’t see. The same hands flipped me over onto my stomach and pushed my face into the coarse ground, where stones and acorns, prickly leaves and mummified branches embedded themselves into my cheek. Down came a warm breath to my exposed ear. My lips, freezing into the icy ground, had no space to open. I moaned softly, trying to talk. Talk seemed to always be my only salvation.

  “Mmmm . . . Mmmmm . . .” The only sound that would emerge from my mouth into the ground.

  “I’m going to kill you next.”

  I shook my head under the pressure of the hands still holding my head down, the palm pressed firmly against my head, its fingers weaving into my hair. Then both hands were gone and I heard footsteps crunching away from me.

  “Mari? Where the hell are you? Goddamn you. Marianna?”

  I spat the dirt from my mouth. “Mike?” I whispered.

  “Those little bastards,” Mike growled.

  Weighing the safety of the move, I considered sitting up. But I was still too scared and instead lay motionless on the ground.

  Mike’s voice again, inches from me, as he still hollered into the woods: “I’ll find every last one of you—”

  And then there was a hard thump . . . a gasp and a groan . . . and all was quiet again. Like a wounded animal in a herd of slaughtered deer, Mike fell heavily beside me—another trophy whose head would be mounted on a hunter’s wall next to mine. I played dead right along with him and remained curled on the ground like an earthworm, waiting paralyzed, until my sight slowly returned and I recognized the outline of a fallen branch in front of me. The blessed night sky had reappeared, and with it my other senses came back to life in the smell of burnt wood and ashes.

  “Mike?” I whispered.

  “Shh,” he whispered back. “Don’t move yet.”

  “I’m blinded.”

  “ High-intensity flashlights. Temporarily blind you. One of them knocked me down and side-kicked me in the gut. You alright?”

  I felt his movements next to me. His shoulder against mine turning around and then his hands on my face, pushing hair out of my eyes.

  “Are they gone?” I asked.

  “I think so. Get up.”

  He stood on wobbly feet and pulled a pocket light from his coat.

  “Why didn’t you use that before?” I said.

  “They caught me by surprise. I’m a little blind my-self.” He turned the flashlight on me and then on himself.

  Mike’s jacket was covered in blood.

  “You’re bleeding.”

  He looked down at his chest. “I’m okay. Get up,” he said.

  “But you’re covered in blood.”

  “Come on! Let’s go.”

  I sat upright and felt a dampness on my cheek that my curious hands followed around the side of my head and into my hair. Sticky. My face and the back of my head were wet with blood too.

  Mike knelt down and pulled me up by the arms. “Now. Run!”

  I bolted up and ran again. This time with sight, I was able to find a connecting path and finally the cleari
ng a few yards ahead of me. From behind me I heard Mike’s heavy thudding steps run toward me and then stop. I continued running to the clearing where I saw his red steed still parked at the curb. I stopped, negotiating my next move. Should I run to the car or wait for Mike? Before I could move, I heard a woman’s scream, loud and ear shattering. And then frantic panting as the voice came closer—hysterical—still the woman’s voice.

  “Huh! Huh! Huh! Help meee . . .”

  I should have run, but something in me, my curiosity unhurt and still intact, rooted me in place. The plaintive voice was begging for help. A woman’s voice pleading for help—I couldn’t resist.

  “Ahhhh. Nooooo! Help meeee . . .”

  There, from the same clearing I had just exited, stumbled a woman about five eight, thin and dark. She raised her arms in front of her like a ghost in a fairy tale, sleepwalking through the darkness. She stumbled a few more steps and fell to her knees. I crept closer, and out to me she held her bleeding wrists from which one hand dangled.

  Mike, his hands and chest covered in blood, lumbered out of the woods after her. I looked up at him in horror. His eyes were wild.

  “You did this,” I said.

  “Are you fucking crazy?” he growled.

  I looked down at the girl who had fallen at my feet. “It’s Mila Nazir with her wrists slit open, you sick bastard!”

  “Shut up, Marianna. I dropped my cell phone. Do you have one on you?”

  I stood away from Mila’s body and backed into the street, feeling in my pocket for my cell. “I’m calling the police,” I said.

  “Pithy idea,” he answered. “Why didn’t you think of it sooner?”

  I ran farther into the street and dialed 911. I then dialed the Providence police thinking I could get help sooner by dialing direct.

  O’Rourke answered. “Bernie’s Meat Market. What’s your beef?”

  “O’Rourke, it’s Mari Melone. Is that how you answer a police line?”

  “Hey, this is a private line. Not for public emergencies. What’s the problem?”

  “Get an ambulance and some black-and-whites to Fox Point woods over by Patterson Park. A girl’s been hurt. Maybe dead.”

  I flipped my phone closed. Mike was kneeling at Mila’s body.

  “Who recognized you in there? I heard someone call your name.” Mike looked up at me.

  Silent and stubborn, I remained on the street side of Mike’s car, waiting for help. Within minutes, several uniforms emerged from three cars as the ambulance pulled up behind. One cop walked by me and went directly to Mike. Safe now in the growing crowd, I crept closer to Mike to hear his explanation for this evening’s horrific events—and the blood that covered him.

  He knelt back from Mila’s body. “I tried to stop the bleeding,” he explained. Makeshift tourniquets fashioned from Mike’s leather belt were tied around Mila’s wrists. “But she’s gone. Nothing I could do.”

  The cop nodded as the ambulance techs did a pulse check.

  “You had blood all over you before that, Mike,” I said. “Tell them.” I nodded toward the cops, then spoke directly to them. “He came out of the woods covered in blood. After Mila.”

  “Jesus, Marianna, you have blood on you too,” Mike shot back. “Maybe you cut this girl up.”

  “You put the blood on me when you touched my face and hair with your bloody hands.”

  Mike stood and shook his head. “Some guy knocked me around in there. It must be blood transfer. This is crazy. I’m getting cleaned up.”

  “There’s alcohol in the truck,” a cop announced. “Come with me while we wait for the ME’s office to get here.”

  “What?” I screeched. “That blood on him is evidence. You can’t just wipe it away.”

  The cop walked up to me and stuck his nose in my face. “Hey, the blood is going to be this dead girl’s. And it’s on both of you, so any which way you slice it, if he killed her or not, finding her blood on him isn’t going to prove anything. Like Mikey said, you’re almost as bloody as he is.”

  My panting was subsiding and cold sweat was dripping down my back. I felt as if I were coming down from a drug-induced high, the ringing in my ears quieting. I had been alone in the woods with a cold-blooded killer. But thinking it could be Mike had begun to seem absurd. Good old Mikey could never inflict the injuries I’d seen. Like his excuse for being with the red-headed student, this explanation of his blood-soaked clothes was tidy and clean. And simply inarguable.

  Another officer put his hand on my elbow. “Come on, let one of the cars drive you to the station, where we can get a statement. Mike’s going to have to come too.”

  I zeroed in on Mike’s indigo eyes, their color even deeper in the darkness, before I turned away and got into the assigned police car while Mike strutted off to his.

  Mike and I had been temporarily separated in the woods so our stories wove in and out on minor details, but on the main events our narratives meshed and overlapped like two cars zigzagging to the same goal line. Neither one of us was a suspect because our motives were wholly lacking and the MO of Mila’s murder was obviously similar to Hastings’s, Cummings’s, and Emily Barton’s. It was deduced that the Holton killer had struck again, and the frequency of his attacks was escalating.

  It was midnight when I reluctantly agreed to let Mike drive me back to my Jeep. There was an eerie silence between us during the ride, and when I opened the door of his car to leave, he sullenly watched and waited while I got into my car and pulled away. On my drive home I worked to understand Mike’s and my inability to find words between us during our ride together from the station. Maybe it was nothing more than the physical and emotional exhaustion of the evening; my fear combined with his guilt for dragging us into danger. But my sleepless imagination worried that his silence was anger at me for accusing him of murder. As much as Mike and I had been through together—the silly bantering fights, the provocative repartee, even the lovemaking—we still didn’t trust each other, and the chance of our reaching that place seemed to be moving farther away from us.

  Despite numbing fatigue, I wasn’t sleepy, and I was sure my parents were wide awake too, waiting for any word from me about their missing daughter. But I had no words of comfort and I didn’t want to face them, so instead of going home to bed, I headed my Jeep to downtown Providence.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Sunday School

  SEVEN DAYS A WEEK, every two hours throughout the day and night, bells rang through downtown Providence, calling people to the doors of St. Francis Chapel on Weybosset Street, where services were held for anyone who needed them, regardless of denomination, faith, or the lack thereof. A short sidewalk away from speeding cars and high-rise buildings, homeless people sometimes set up camp outside with their newspaper tents and shopping-cart trailers. I felt welcomed even as a nonbeliever there. St. Francis was so unlike the ornate and heavily incensed Roman Catholic church my parents attended every Sunday near our house on Federal Hill, where a cultish blind faith was required for admission.

  The monks who lived in the attached church house prayed or meditated between services and were always available for anyone in need of soul-searching, confessions, or a 911 call for an ambulance to the nearest emergency room. The Franciscan monks, who floated over the stained marble floors in full-length robes the color of mud, were as much a part of the church as the candles that burned continuously, the smell of the city streets, the damp, and the darkness. They performed an arcane ritual of slow rounds beginning at the altar, moving on to the candles, then to the back of the church, and returning to the altar to pray.

  I’m not sure how I first found the place. My cloudy memory suggests that one night after a big-case-win celebratory dinner and too much wine (without the girls), I stumbled in from the Pot Au Feu restaurant around the corner. I was a responsible drunk. Knowing when I was too sloshed to see straight, I never got behind the wheel of a car.

  The first time I’d wandered into the cathedral, I’d colla
psed in a back pew near the door, ready for instant escape. The altar in front had seemed miles away from the entrance, so far, in fact, that I felt removed in the back, afraid that if I’d sat any closer—some pew in the middle for instance—I would be crossing the line from being a mere spectator to a needy participant. But after a while the soft chanting of the monks at the altar became music. Row by row I moved forward until I reached the front of the cathedral and eventually fell asleep in a front pew—or more likely passed out—until I heard the soft voice of one of the monks shaking me awake.

  “Sister, sister? Although God welcomes you to his house, you are not allowed by city ordinance to sleep in this church. Sister? You must either sit up and pray, or sleep outside.”

  I opened my eyes to a hooded face with soft brown eyes.

  “Too much to drink. Can’t drive yet,” I said.

  “No need to explain. Even I have taken more than my share of wine. Stay until you’re ready.” He spoke to me awhile as I sobered up. He explained to me that the monks were the collective ear and voice of God, each one a stream, and together, the ocean. But I knew that before the church, each monk had been a boy in another life, and that they had probably begun life like me, with two parents, siblings, and a toy box, and that ultimately they had reached the same road I did with dashed beliefs in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. But for some reason, these men retained a belief in God, a concept that to me was as preposterous as the Easter Bunny. I relegated religion to the likes of mah-jongg and bingo—it was for other people, those who had too much time on their hands, didn’t like being alone, or old people afraid of dying. I, like Dr. Gannon at the morgue, held on to science as the explanation of life and death.

  The night Mila was killed I drove to St. Francis Chapel. It had been years since I’d been back. I walked through the heavily paneled doors and immediately filled my lungs with the smell of frankincense and wax, a smell that spirited me back to my childhood when my parents still had the power to force me to attend Sunday services with them.