by JA Schneider
Brand said, “Sonny Sears is dead. So somebody’s copying the mask.”
A frozen calm began to move through Jill. She blinked. “Wait. Elaine Wheeler must have struggled, but didn’t mention an exotic mask to us. She just said, ‘a ski mask.’”
“A ski mask,” Connor said disgustedly, scribbling. Like a million other ski masks, finding its fibers would be useless. Everything Jill was telling these detectives was new to them. They hadn’t gotten to Lainey Wheeler before her seizure.
Jill was frowning slightly. “How did the first victim get such a good look at the exotic mask? You said she was attacked at night in an alley.”
“Neon lights angling in,” Connor said. “He grabbed her near the sidewalk and pulled her back.”
“And where was she raped? What hospital was she brought to?”
“Attacked way over on West 60th. Brought to Mercy Hospital.”
“Across town.” Jill processed that, her frown deepening. “But ‘signed’ with the same red HID letters, which the guy knew you would connect - and, gee, Lainey Wheeler lives in this neighborhood, so she was brought here where he knew you’d be coming and describing the exotic mask, which any staff would connect with me.”
Looks exchanged between the two detectives.
Brand smiled thinly. “You ever consider becoming a cop?”
“Yes, now. Can I have a gun?”
“No.”
“Figured you’d say that. By the way, I don’t suppose you’ve seen Elaine Wheeler’s rape kit yet? Photos? The red letters?”
They hadn’t.
Jill pulled out her cell phone and scrolled to the photo she’d taken. “Here’s the signature on Elaine’s belly.” She held the phone at an angle so both detectives could see.
Impressed, they studied it. Then Brand got out a folder, and from it pulled a photo. He looked at it, said, “Same on the first victim,” and handed it to Jill.
She peered at the unknown first victim’s belly – and - scrawled over it, the red capital letters HID.
“Wouldn’t it be nice,” she said dryly, “if HID were the guy’s initials?”
Connor groaned. “If only. Unfortunately, we still have to plow a database the size of China for them.”
Jill studied Brand’s photo more closely. Then she took her cell phone back and peered at her photo.
“They’re different,” she said. “The letters on Elaine’s belly are more erratic. The spacing is off.”
“He was in a building in a hurry,” Brand said. “Scribbled faster.”
The spacing is off.” It bothered Jill; she didn’t know why.
She handed Brand’s photo of the first victim back to him. “Any ideas what the letters mean?” she asked.
They looked at a loss.
Some sort of signature known only to a sick mind, the detectives said. Connor pointed out that a signature meant the attacker was likely going to attack again. This kind of psycho loves the attention; loves to taunt. It makes him feel important.
“Attack again…” Jill said quietly. “These rapes happened two days apart. And the second inflicted more injury.”
“Which means he’s closer to killing,” Brand said somberly.
The detectives gave Jill their cards.
Alarmed, they all knew there was no more to say.
Jill sat, trying to think, for several minutes. The spacing is off. Why should that bother her? Does anyone’s scrawl ever look the same twice? She was starting to scare herself. That’s what it was – she was obsessing, fixing on something trivial, meaningless, hoping to force it into meaning.
Stupid, she kept telling herself. It’s what the cops said it was. The guy was just more frenzied this time, in a building during the day.
Outside her head was a blur. She was vaguely aware of residents coming in and through, of saying hi back when they greeted her. Some other surgery besides Lainey’s must have just finished; there were scrubs rushing in hollering “Shower! My kingdom for a shower!”
She was aware of smiling, in a vacant way, not looking at anyone.
A female surgery resident sat down next to her. “You okay, hon? You look shell-shocked.”
“Just a little,” Jill heard herself say, her voice sounding far away. She didn’t want to talk; was struggling with thoughts that collided like frantic birds, unable to settle…
Another surgery resident stood before her, bending. “Earth to Jill.” He sweetly waved his hand in front of her face. “You in there?” He sounded concerned.
She looked at him. “Yeah.” Smiled and inhaled, noting that others had stopped too, looking concerned. They all knew what she and David had been through.
Her gaze swept them, and she shrugged. “I’ve just finished talking with police detectives, that’s all. It was…awful.”
Oh, said every face, sympathizing. “That explains it,” someone said; and someone else mentioned having scrubbed in for the Wheeler rape before getting called to a gunshot surgery.
Jill got up, eyed the door (escape!), and thanked them. Got two or three hugs, one from a resident with blood on her scrubs.
Blood…blood…red laundry marker…
The elevator dropped, and Jill’s stomach fell away. She held onto a rail with one hand, and got out her cell phone again. Looked at the red scrawl on Lainey’s belly.
Different floors, different staff got on and off. Jill took no notice.
On the ground floor she got out and paced a little, still studying Lainey’s red scrawl…and something niggled at last. An idea that lit, just like that.
The idea grew…
With the photo still looking at her, she hastily punched several numbers, got voicemails, and left each the same message.
9
“That rape,” Tricia Donovan said. “Horrible. That’s why you called?”
“Yes. I’ll tell you at the table,” Jill said.
They had been moving their dinner trays along in the cafeteria. Tricia stopped, took off her wire-rimmed glasses, and kept wiping them emotionally. “Ken Lee was so upset after you took her up. He thought he should have called for an MRI sooner.”
“Wouldn’t have made a difference,” Jill said. “The damage was bad. Trish, put your glasses back on, you gotta move.”
The line behind them was getting impatient. Trish had forgotten herself, and an empty stretch of tray rails lay before them. The specs popped back on. “Oh, sorry!” she leaned and called to a medical resident just behind Jill.
He smirked tiredly. “I was gonna honk and pass,” he said. Then his face cleared when he saw Jill. “Oh, it’s you! Jeez, I’m glad you’re back and okay.”
The medical resident behind him smiled and said the same thing. Jill didn’t know either of them, but thanked them, and nudged Tricia who was now staring blankly at grinders and wilted salad.
“Pick anything,” she whispered. “Let’s just get to our table.”
She looked over to where David and Sam MacIntyre were already seated, looking somber. Get a table in a corner, she had told them. We gotta discuss something.
Throughout the cafeteria, staff in scrubs sat over their dinners, sending admiring, sympathetic, or uneasy gazes to her and over to David. Even the noise seemed less than usual.
It was to be expected: their first day back; rehashes of the shock over one of Madison’s research geniuses turning out to be a madman; worry over what it would all do to the hospital’s reputation; talk of this morning’s crowds outside the hospital; of the damn fan emails clogging every department’s offices. Had they also heard of the bales of snail mail? Probably.
Jill and Tricia carried their trays to the designated table, in a corner on the edge of things. David and Sam looked up tiredly, pulled out chairs. David helped with the trays.
“That’s all you’re eating?” he asked Jill, frowning down at an emaciated burger on dying lettuce.
“Can’t eat, not hungry,” she said, sitting. Her heart thudded and she really felt a little sick.
“Can I te
mp you with some vending machine crap?” Sam said. He was as tall as David, and not at all unattractive unless one counted his occasional temper, his white jacket that always looked slept in, and the eating manners of a timber wolf. But he was a good, true friend. He, Tricia, and Woody Greenberg had gone nearly crazy running around shouting into their cell phones during the roof crisis.
Jill asked David, “How’d your twins go?”
“Great.” He grinned for a second. “Two little boy sluggers.” Then he eyed her nervously jabbing her burger with a fork, and turned somber again. He wasn’t eating either, but leaning tiredly with both elbows on the table and his hair a wet mess. He had just showered too. Looked worried and lonesome; inched his chair closer.
“So?” he asked. “What’s the reason for this emergency meeting?”
Jill put her fork down, took in a very deep breath. “I…talked with detectives about Lainey Wheeler.”
With a whoop and clatter Woody Greenberg appeared and slid into the last seat. “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “Had a delivery walk in off the street. No pre-natal care, galloping contractions, and naturally the kid was a breech. I had to reach way up to turn him around.”
Woody’s curly brown hair was just-showered wet too. House staff often looked like exhausted capsize victims who’d just swum ashore. Although, even on no sleep, Woody was usually amped and stumbling over his words. Now he was saying about the breech, “Mama lost a lot of blood. Pass the ketchup, please?”
They did. Woody started squeezing and pounding the plastic bottle. Sam announced irascibly that when Woody was finished banging, Jill had something important to say.
Woody blinked and turned serious. “Oh sorry, tell,” he said, putting the ketchup down.
Jill laid out the story. None of them knew that a nearly identical rape had happened two nights ago across town. Jill told them about the same red letters on the belly, which meant a signature attacker. The police feared he’d strike again.
She passed around her cell phone and its photo. “Here’s the rape brought here today. Laney Wheeler. Twenty-two years old, just got here from Maine five weeks ago.”
Leaning forward, she watched her cell phone pass from David to Sam (“Jeezus,” Sam gaped at it), then to Tricia and Woody, whose faces worked with compassion and horror.
David had seen Lainey when they tended her; now, less focused on the clinical emergency, he studied the photo.
Tricia said anxiously, “The cops think he’ll strike again?”
“That, apparently, is what signature attackers do.” Jill bit down on her lip. “The rapes were two days apart. That’s close. The next one may be closer. This guy is raging.”
David looked up, frowning. “Why HID? What does it mean?”
“Ask the attacker,” Sam said.
Like the police, none of them thought the rapist was dumb enough to use his initials, so they started to guess.
“Hyde?” Tricia said. “As in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, only the guy can’t spell?”
She was met with gloomy expressions. The creep didn’t sound literary.
Sam said, “Hidalgo is Spanish for aristocrat. It’s also a last name.”
More gloomy expressions. There seemed to be no more words. Jill glanced out, across to the long window overlooking the front drive and the setting sun. It was busy out there, a drop off, pick up zone for ambulatory patients. The amber light was briefly tranquilizing; then it became harsh and Jill turned back, surprised.
Woody had opened a paper napkin, laid it flat, upended the ketchup bottle again and squirted HID on the white background. “Like that,” he said thoughtfully, studying it.
Blinking, Jill reached for the napkin and angled it toward her. “With a difference.” Her heart lurched. “The way you have it now is like the first one … the detectives showed me the photo.”
Her heart pounded harder as, carefully, she used her fingertips to tear through the napkin’s I and D. “Today’s rape’s red letters have this difference in the spacing.”
The others hunched closer, again passing back and forth Jill’s cell phone with its photo, then studying Woody’s torn, red-gloppy napkin. “I see it,” David said gravely. “That space.”
Jill said, “Cops thought it was ‘cause with Lainey Wheeler it was daytime in a building and the guy was in a hurry. The first victim he attacked across town at night in an alley.”
“Where he had less light, but his spacing’s fine,” David said. He seemed to sink into a fit of abstraction.
Tricia got it. “Oh come on. You’re not saying…”
“’Hi David?’” he answered softly, looking at her. “I’m the ‘D’ and the creep is using women like mail to me?”
Jill’s heart leaped in her chest. “I tried to believe what the cops said - that the guy was just more frenzied with today’s rape and that’s all the spacing difference meant. It didn’t work. The red letters are a message and they didn’t see it.”
The five of them stared slack-jawed at each other.
“There’s more.” Shakily, Jill described the mask the rapist wore for his first attack. “Copycat dried grass, like what my mugger from the museum wore. That he didn’t do for today’s rape because he knew he didn’t have to. Knew the cops would connect that part - but the message...”
“Hi David?” Sam looked actually in pain. “It fits. Jeez, call the cops back.”
10
She saw me! Buck Loki thought. Looked right at me, or through me, the condescending bitch. Didn’t even bother to make eye contact, just…blew…me…off…
He watched through the cafeteria window, an old racing bike propped against his side. His helmet and biking goggles covered his face, but he gave her no pardon for that, or the fact that he was backlit with the sun low behind him. What difference would it make? She would still just see a nobody silhouette, no better than all the nobodies crowding the sidewalk behind him.
For that he hated her even more, if it was possible. I am so much smarter than you and your hotshot boyfriend, he thought…and then realized…hot-SHOT, oh wasn’t that hilarious?
Stage One had gone so well, and it was just the beginning of what he had planned. He was going to be so famous. Look at them in there, huddled over their little table with such worried faces. He had made that happen! Had they guessed his wonderful riddle? Talked to detectives and hit on his first little clue? His starter clue to his Main Event? Then millions would honor him. He was such a good planner.
An overweight cop approached him. “Hey, you gotta move. You’re blocking the sidewalk.”
Insolent loser. Buck Loki turned from the window and faked contrite; fought the urge to smash the guy’s face in. “Sorry, officer,” he said affably. “I thought pulling the bike over here to the side would be okay.” He smiled, very guy to guy. “I gotta wait for my girlfriend.”
The cop was having none of it. “Move along,” he ordered. “There’s wheelchairs comin’ out, injured being brought in. This sidewalk has to stay clear.”
Dumb cop didn’t even notice the good goggles that didn’t fit with the stolen old bike even kids wouldn’t re-steal.
Buck Loki apologized again. Got on his bike and glided down the driveway to First Avenue. There he stopped in the bike lane and looked back at the hospital. The media had been so stupid, shameful, really: kept fawning over the two glorious heroes from the hospital’s sixth floor obstetrical department.
He gazed at the windows of that floor, picturing its anonymous, daily traffic, its constantly changing rush of relatives and friends getting off the elevator. For that matter, anybody could buy a scrub suit and blend right in. He’d heard a guy in a bar laughing that he’d done just that on a bet. Nobody notices in hospitals. They’re all so preoccupied…
Biking down First through the traffic and dusky light, Buck Loki sang tunelessly to himself: “Lainey Lainey, pain-y pain-y, Raney Raney…ha, we have liftoff!”
He tried to think of something that rhymed with Levine. Ravine? Trie
d to decide too which one he should go after first. There were, after all, three he wanted dead…
Alex Brand was still in at Midtown East precinct. They’d just gotten Elaine Wheeler’s rape kit.
“Bizarre but a possibility,” he said, maybe impressed, taking notes as Jill spoke. “Using women like mail to Dr. Levine? If it’s true…” A hesitation. “That’s how a signature psycho taunts you, tells you he’s close to you.”
Jill caught the inflection of his words. She shot a troubled look to David, seated next to her on the bed in her on call room. He was studying Brand’s card.
Back to her phone she said tensely, “Especially when you combine the ‘HI-space-D’ with the Sonny Sears copycat grass mask. Similar mask with the first woman, same signature with both women, and an extra little message – to us - scrawled on today’s victim.”
“A good theory,” Brand said. “But where does it lead? As you said, your museum mugging could have been heard about anywhere, and you’ve both been covering the media like a blanket. That makes you targets for every weirdo.” He exhaled, sounded sorry about not mincing words. Sounded tired, too. “Some psycho latches onto David or some celebrity and wants attention in a sick, vicarious way. For now, that’s all we have. Wish I could tell you more, beyond seriously watch your backs.”
“Any suggestions how we do that?” Jill said dryly.
A silence. In the background were sounds of activity. A muted shout. Someone protesting. Phones ringing.
Abruptly Brand said, “We didn’t get to meet Dr. Levine. Is he available?”
“He’s right here.”
Jill handed the phone to David, who muttered a greeting. Heard about plainclothes people being added to stepped-up security in the E.R. and Gyn clinic; promised to keep Brand’s number on speed dial.
“Can you describe the plainclothes people?” he asked, sitting straighter. “We get a lot of suspicious looking characters who are just waiting for their relatives.”
He listened. Muttered responses. Changed the subject and asked about the men in Elaine Wheeler’s building.
“Lots. All had already left for work and have alibis. Plus her attacker was definitely an outsider who followed her in.” A pause. “We’re all impressed, by the way - where’d you learn how to shoot like that? Your Sonny Sears pal? Bam, right between the eyes.”