Blood Music

by Jessie Prichard Hunter

  There was a light at the top of the stairs. The stairs were across a dark room; the darker bulk of a sofa crouched in one corner like an animal. There were chairs, a patterned rug. The room was bigger than the ones John had already gone through, and it was airier. The living room. The man was upstairs, John was certain of that. He had heard something—running feet—just before he came through the door. There were two other doors, but the sound had been going up.

  There was faint light coming in through the windows. There was a body at the bottom of the stairs. John hadn’t seen it at first as being apart from the other large, dark forms of tables and chairs. It lay sprawled where it had fallen, probably down the stairs.

  John walked toward the body, forgetting caution. It was a middle-aged woman in a flowered nightgown. One thigh was obscenely exposed. He could see the woman’s face; it was devoid of expression, as though death were boring.

  Who was the woman? What was the man doing here? There was a baby crying. The sound was so incongruous that it had not even registered. John’s ears had been tuned to the faintest whisper of a footstep, the faraway closing of a door. There was music playing and a baby crying.

  There were voices coming from upstairs but all he could hear were the cadences. Then silence, and then a man’s angry reply. And the baby’s crying.

  John ran up the stairs with no thought of caution or his own safety anymore: a baby. The voices were coming from the left. John ran down the hall toward them, but when he came to a room it was empty. He could hear music playing from beyond a door on the far wall. Then there was another hall, and another room, and the music was coming from beyond that door. And John wrenched the door open, his heart a living thing in his throat.

  Someone had just come down the stairs. Madeleine didn’t know where the stairs were. The moon shown in a lopsided circle outside the window. The footsteps were coming toward her; they were running. She was in a large dark room that was crowded with furniture; she was afraid that if she moved she would bump into something and make a noise.

  In the darkness she could see his face. He might be anywhere. She looked at his face inside her head. The lip pulled back in private ecstacy while he hurt her. She looked around for a weapon. If he came through the door she could kill him, but she could not survive looking into his face.

  The room was brightly lit. Books lined the walls, and there was a big roll-top desk in one corner. There was a stuffed pink poodle on the floor. There was a playpen in the middle of the floor. John moved over toward the crib, feeling faint—the baby made no sound—but she was only sleeping. She wore a little pink gown with a ruffle and elephants and she was sucking her bottle in her sleep; her lips pulsed beneath her closed eyes. There were tears on her face and her skin was red and mottled. There was a noise behind him. Footsteps, maybe voices, out there in the dark outside the bright door. John turned and followed the sound.

  At the bottom of the steps she had to jump over her mother’s body. For one sick second in the air she was afraid she would land on it. It was rage that fueled the jump, rage that sent her surefooted across the living room into the sun room beyond. To lay herself down by that body would be a luxury—never to get up. Her mother, her baby. Her baby—she had to keep going. Anything else he’d done didn’t even matter. He had killed her mother. If she even allowed her brain to complete the thought she would be paralyzed. But she had to move. If he found her he would kill her too, and who would there be between him and the baby? Her brother Daniel used to hide under the drop of the long tablecloth on the big wooden table over by the far wall. Joey used to just open a door and hide behind it and when you came to get him he jumped out and scared you and ran away: he said it didn’t count unless you tagged him.

  Zelly slipped behind the dark red brocade curtains that covered the window seat. There were curtains on the inside as well, against the glass, keeping out the night. She felt her mother’s scissors, useless inside her sweater. The seat was small, a child’s size. Zelly pulled her knees up against her body and hugged them. She could hardly breathe; a cough caught in her throat. She could hear Pat walking deliberately toward this room. It had been a stupid place to go. He would know she was in here.

  “Zelly,” his voice came, gentle as a snake, “I know you’re in there. I have so much to tell you. Come home with me.” Zelly knew she had gotten to the point where she almost literally couldn’t think anymore. The images welled up without words—her mother, her mother dead, her baby, newsprint pictures of dead girls, a blackened spot on a crumpled tarp, an earring, a tiny brown bear, a knife. If she put words to the images she would begin to scream. The scream was there already.

  “Zelly,” Pat was saying; he had moved past the sun-room door, into the room. “I could kill the brat now, Zelly. I could go back upstairs—” He stood in the doorway now. Zelly could see him in her mind, in the pitch blackness of the window seat she could see him. She put her hand under her sweater and touched cold metal.

  Lieutenant Viscotti tapped the cradle of the telephone until he heard a dial tone. “Get me the Slasher Task Force,” he said. “Kirby!” he yelled to an officer passing his door. “Get ready to put out an all-points. House with a hedge. Black van in driveway. Sirens on.”

  “What’ve we got?”

  “Looks like we’ve got the Symphony Slasher in our backyard. I’m running this past the Slasher Task Force now. Concentrate on the area around Stevens—where the old houses are. There are hedges there repeat, sirens on. Get the car closest to Castle Point Terrace—” He paused, raised his hand, then motioned to Kirby. “Yes,” he said into the phone. “This is Lieutenant Vincent Viscotti of the Hoboken Police Department—”

  The door was already open, and maybe that saved his life. If he had opened the door the man would have seen him. The man was standing in a doorway across this dark room. He was a shadow only, a big outline of a man, almost invisible in the dark.

  The shadow figure was bulkier at one side, halfway down; an arm held a little bit out from the body, a thickening. John stood stock still; he was holding a knife and the man was holding a knife.

  The man moved into the room. “Zelly,” he said—John thought it was “Zelly”—“I want to go home now, don’t you? Where did you hide from those bastard brothers of yours?” The voice was calm and mocking. The man was moving toward where John stood half-hidden behind the open door. When the man started yelling John became acutely aware of how cool the metal doorknob was against his hand. “Where the fuck are you, you bitch? I’ll stick you like a chicken, you dirty cunt! You never, never, never—” and each “never” was punctuated by the man’s fist slamming against a tipsy end table, smashing something made of china, upending a lamp onto the floor—“never knew who I was! With all your stupid reading and all your stupid theories and fucking prognostications”—books and another lamp and a pillow went now—“you never knew! So—” and the voice dropped suddenly—“let’s go home. The baby’s crying, Zelly.” And it was, again, a thin keening. This time John was sure the man said, “Zelly.”

  “The baby’s crying and I know you’re in here and it’s time to go now.” The voice was consoling. A child might have come. John wondered where Zelly could be hiding. Was the baby the man’s baby? The man moved to one of the windows and pulled back the shade with a single sweep of his hand. Pale light from the street poured in and made a big puddle of light in the middle of the floor. The rug was blue, John noticed, with flowers on it. The man walked to another window; John could see now that the room was circular on one side, with four curtained windows in an arc along one wall. The man stood thoughtfully in front of another window, his hand on the curtain. There was a wedding ring on his hand. John wanted to call out, to tell Zelly that someone else was here with her and that the baby was okay. But if John moved at all the man would see him; he would turn. And when he turned it was by no means certain that Zelly, whoever she was, would be any safer than she was right now.

  “Zelly,” the man said with exaggerat
ed patience, “come out now and I won’t kill the baby.” He jerked the second curtain open. The room got still lighter. There was no rustle, no hint of anyone else in the room. “Okay, bitch,” the man said conversationally, “I’ll be going back upstairs now. If you don’t think I’ll kill Mary, just think again. Am I capable of it? Will I kill her? You know. You decide.”

  Suddenly there was a rustling from one of the floor-length curtains that covered the bay windows, and a woman stepped out and into the light. She looked very young.

  “Good choice, Zelly,” the man said.

  “Pat,” she said. The simplicity with which she spoke was shocking. The man had a name and this woman knew his name. She was his wife. She was wearing a wedding ring too; John had not thought that the man could have a wife. A wife, a baby. A life. The woman just stood, simply and without defense, and looked at the man.

  “Pat,” she said again. The man looked at her and John thought he was crying but it was only a trick of the light.

  “Blackman here.” He held the radio mike in a clenched fist. “We’re in front of Wyche’s house. The Jersey guy never showed. Request to proceed with interro—damn it, I know. I know.” He paused, listening. “What?” he asked. “You just—what? An all-points bulletin? What’s that—house with a hedge,” signaling to Scottie, who immediately started the car’s engine. “Yes. Got it. Sirens. Out.”

  The car was halfway down the block before Blackman spoke again. “The Hoboken Police just put out an all-points on the Slasher,” he said. “Madeleine Levy called, said she was in a house with him. They don’t know where. Turn the goddamn siren on and drive. I’m not going to sit on my ass waiting for news of the next murder.”

  From where John stood behind the door, the man was only about ten feet away. The woman was lovely—what an odd thing to notice. Her hair was paler than Madeleine’s or Cheryl’s, and the sadness in her face was beyond anything John had ever seen. She stood as though she were being held up by a wire at the top of her spine. The man stood before her. He was big. Much bigger than the woman, than Madeleine, than Cheryl.

  The man’s name was Pat. It was Pat that had killed John’s sister. Pat that had raped and tried to kill Madeleine. Pat’s wife, if that’s what she was, simply stood before him. There was no pleading in her eyes. One hand hung down, one rested at her belt.

  “Don’t you want to go home?” Pat asked her. John did not dare move.

  “I do,” said the woman. Zelly. Light from the windows silhouetted them both, and she stood in a nimbus of light. Now her face was beyond sorrow or fear or anything John could name. Her face could have been carved out of rock. She didn’t move, and John waited, watching her magnificent resignation, and then she sprang straight toward her husband.

  Zelly sprang, and John saw the flash of something silver in her hand, and he did not hesitate: he ran toward the man, his knife firm in his own.

  Pat wasn’t ready for Zelly to come at him, and neither of them was ready for someone else to be in the room. Pat was caught completely off guard.

  When he turned from his wife’s attack he turned straight into John. John moved, and the knife went into Pat (which is what John was idiotically thinking, The knife is going into Pat now) and John felt it all the way up his arms, it felt the way it feels to hold a knife when it goes into a piece of cake; there was that same spongy resistance.

  The man—Pat—was down. The woman—Zelly—was standing directly in front of him with her hand held up—protecting, supplicating—and there was blood on the front of her shirt. He saw what she was holding—scissors—saw that the scissors were covered with blood and her arm was bloody too and her eyes were enormous. John’s eyes met them for an instant and then he was bent over the body, stabbing, stabbing, and with each terrified thrust all he thought was, Don’t get up, Don’t get up, and he might have been saying it, and it seemed like he’d never be sure, could never be sure, the man would get up—Pat would get up—he couldn’t be dead it was too easy, and the feeling, creeping like a numbness up his pumping arm he’s dead he’s dead he’s dead the image of Madeleine the image of Cheryl—dead—he was pumping his arm up and down and he couldn’t stop and then there was a hand on his arm and he dropped the knife and it was Madeleine but his hand was shaking, the woman was just looking at him and his hand was shaking.

  Zelly’s face was very calm. She could have been looking at what was in front of her or she could have been looking at something far away. There was some sort of odd light over everything, odd shining light—and every line and every hair was clear. Pat’s face where he lay on the carpet was very clear in that light; one eye was visible, it looked at the carpet and there was blood at his nose, and along his cheek there was a long, thin line of blood. The blood seemed to eat up the light.

  John was panting, and he felt nothing. He turned to face Madeleine. Somewhere, incongruously, a baby was crying. The sound mingled in his head with another, high-pitched, keening sound, and both seemed to be coming from a long way away, and coming closer, and he looked at Madeleine with his bloody hand held out, and listened without comprehension to the sound of the baby crying and the approaching sirens.

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank my dear friend Jane Cushman; I will always be glad I sent it to Jane. Also my friend and editor Susan Kamil, whom I fought every step of the way: I’m happy you won. And my husband, David Bayer, without whom I would not have this life. Also David Doty, for his invaluable help with research. And, finally, Kobe Japanese restaurant and Le Royal de Paris, where much of this book was written.

  If you loved BLOOD MUSIC, check out these other Witness titles. Read on for excerpts from

  THE GREEN MUSE

  by Jessie Prichard Hunter

  and

  THE SILENT GIRLS

  by Eric Rickstad

  The Green Muse

  Chapter 1

  Edouard

  THIS MORNING I was called upon to photograph the dead again.

  The messenger boy came at five-thirty. His name is Martin. I gave him a few sous: Martin works hard for his sous, running errands all over Paris for the Prefecture of Police.

  I sent the lad off and packed up my camera and plates; I took the omnibus to the rue Mazarine, in the Ninth Arrondissement. The building, number 21, proved to be a dreary four-story tenement. Police Captain Bezier was there; he led me around to the back courtyard. The morning sky with its huge racing clouds seemed far away. The windows no longer went up in straight lines but listed as though the whole building were a rocking ship. There was an empty wheelbarrow; there was a tunnel leading to the front of the building; there were two dirty awnings; there was offal on the ground.

  Of course a crime scene cannot be photographed at night, but the dead can wait till morning. It is all the same to them. I change nothing, other than to cover a naked body. We must preserve the setting quite exactly as we find it but a sheet disturbs nothing, and I cannot bear that the dead be subjected to indignity.

  Capt. Bezier motioned me to a patch of darkness under one of the awnings. Night had not left it yet. A woman lay there.

  I checked the camera’s register to see if the magazine was full: eighteen plates. It was just a habit, a necessary part of the ritual; I have never gone out on a job with an unloaded camera. The night before, I had treated cotton papers with albumen and sodium chloride, dried them, and dipped them in a solution part silver nitrate, part water, to render the paper sensitive; I had again dried the paper, then fixed it carefully against the glass plates that it might be ready for my camera when I awoke. There is always a stack of newly treated plates in my darkroom, as I never know when I may be called upon. I am naturally in need of but little sleep; sometimes I think that the city wakes me early, like a lover, because she knows that there is so much each day to be seen and experienced together. And sometimes I awaken so refreshed, so eager, that I almost feel I might indeed have been kissed awake by this city I love so much.

  But now I readied myse
lf to kneel in foul semidarkness and see the unbearable.

  “Have you questioned the tenants?” I asked the captain.

  “No,” said Capt. Bezier. “There will be time for that. It’s not likely to be someone from the building, anyway. Why leave her here to be found?”

  The captain is something of an ass.

  I ran my right hand up and down the pebble-grained leather of the side of my camera box, once, as I raised it to my eye: another facet of the ritual. I walked around the body, looking at the corpse through my lens. Through the round aperture,everything recedes except sight, and you are alone with the image before you.

  And yet the image is made distant, merely a collection of lines and angles of light. This distance is necessary if I am not to be overwhelmed by pity, anger, and disgust. For my day-to-day existence I work part-time in a fashionable studio where tintypes are turned out as though they were loaves of bread. I also make sentimental portraits of those who die in their beds, either peacefully or after long illnesses. Sometimes I photograph them before they die, that the family might having a living subject for their memento instead of a dead one. For the police I record the scenes of murders. Sometimes, if the victim is unknown or well-known, my photographs are put up on flyers all over the city. More commonly they are filed with the police and used later, as a tool to incriminate the murderer.

  I stooped to capture the image before me.

  The woman was young; she was lying on her back with her hands folded over her heart, and her head was turned away from my camera. She was wearing a black bolero jacket and a sky-blue silk waist; her skirt was dove-gray. Her shoes were of leather too soft for these streets. It is difficult not to put a story to the posture, clothing, and obvious social standing of the dead: This woman did not belong here.