Messages, a Psychological Thriller

  At the end of the article, there were two small pictures of the Simonellis…one was their wedding photo. They looked very young, and their shy, promising expressions were enough to break Lacey’s heart. The other was also a studio portrait, but it must have been taken for an anniversary, maybe their fiftieth? and though they are very old in it, Lacey could still see the young couple from the first photo. Something in the eyes, she guessed. A hopefulness, a kindness they had managed to hold onto through the years.

  Lacey found the whole thing incredibly depressing.

  She went back to the beginning of the article to check the date of the attack, the day they were killed. Had it been Sunday? No, it was just this past Monday. The morning she’d been a bit hung over, the day James had come home with…

  She closed the paper and stood, banging her elbow on the granite.

  She went to the sink and vomited her yogurt in hard, economical yurks. Then she turned on the hot water. While the water had washed all vestiges of vomit from the sink, she stared at the blank wall.

  Monday was the day James had come home with injuries.

  The water ran and ran, and she let it, thinking. The funeral was going to be at Holy Eucharist tomorrow. Lacey knew where that church was, she has driven past it. She could stop in on her way to work Thursday afternoon, look around at the people, see if anything…seemed…

  She didn’t let herself finish the thought.

  Chapter 20

  Lacey goes to her car in the parking lot of Holy Eucharist and slides behind the wheel. She is still shaking. She can’t decide what to do. Should she call the police? That would be insane. James is different, maybe even crazy, but a killer? She can’t make that assumption based on what amounts to a gut feeling. Not even a gut feeling, more like a gut twinge. A small, insignificant twinge at that.

  She turns her key, and the engine cranks but doesn’t turn over. She turns the key again and gets only the slurry rurr, rurr, rurr of a dying battery. “Oh shit,” she says. “Not now.” Her little Mazda is nine years old, two years old for her, and she doesn’t know when the battery was replaced, if it ever was. Certainly she has never replaced it, wouldn’t have been able to afford the hundred or so dollars it would have cost. James had offered to have the car checked over for her when she bought it, had offered to take it to his mechanic for a clean bill of health, but she had refused. She had never wanted him to feel that she was taking advantage in any way. She had said she would get it done soon, when she had the money. And of course, she’d never had it–no one ever had an extra hundred just hanging around, did they?

  James did, she thinks. James had it and had wanted to make sure her car ran, make sure it wouldn’t leave her stranded and now look at this. As soon as she decides to leave him, before he even knows that she has left, the damn thing breaks down.

  She puts her head against her steering wheel and takes a deep breath. The day has turned warm, the first really warm day of the year so far. She turns the key to accessory so she can power down the windows, and then she pulls the lever under the dash.

  She goes to the front of the car and lifts the hood. It screeches up, springs twanging, and then stays there, shaking slightly. Lacey isn’t completely ignorant to her car’s inner workings. She knows the dipstick is for the oil and where the windshield fluid goes. She even knows the air cleaner and that there is a filter in there–the mechanic at the oil change place has shown her that much. And of course, she knows what the battery is…she just doesn’t know if there is some secret mechanic’s trick which would get her going enough to at least be able to get somewhere to get a new battery.

  She considers wiggling the wires where they are bolted to the battery but isn’t sure if she could get electrocuted or not. She checks the time on her phone and shakes her head. She’ll never make it to work on time–she’s going to have to call in. A wave of black depression washes over her, and her stomach sinks under the weight of it.

  “Need a jump?” A voice comes from next to her, and she jerks back, scraping her hand on a sharp edge in the engine compartment. The pain causes her to draw her breath in in a hiss. She turns, and it is the guy from the funeral, the one who’d been standing next to her. She remembers because of the motorcycle jacket.

  “No,” she says. “I’m fine. Thanks.”

  She examines her hand. A long cut starts on the top of her ring finger, jumps to the soft pad of flesh at the bottom of her ring finger, jumps again and cuts across the bulge under her thumb. It is bleeding but not too badly. It’s a shallow cut. She considers putting it in her mouth but notes the black engine grease and thinks better of it.

  “Battery dead?” he asks.

  “No,” she says, shortly. His face closes up, and he starts to turn away, and she says, “I don’t know, maybe.” He turns back and stares at her, his jaw clenched, hands in his jacket pockets. “I think it is, actually. It’s been going for a while.”

  He nods and walks to her, boots crunching on the gravel. “Can I hear it?”

  She tilts her head in confusion. “Hear what?” She pictures him in a white coat, a stethoscope in his ears, listening to the battery.

  “Can you try the key? Let me hear what it sounds like?”

  Lacey feels her face redden. “Yeah, of course, hang on.” She slides into the driver’s seat. Thinking again about electrocution, she leans back out. “Okay, I’m going to turn the key now.”

  “Okay,” drifts faintly from the front of the car.

  She can’t see him, and she fidgets a little, trying to see under the open hood. She wants to make sure his hands aren’t anywhere near the engine. What if he isn’t paying attention and she cuts his hands off by accident? She’d never be able to live with herself. She squishes down in the seat and peers harder through the break between the hood and the car body…she can’t see him at all.

  “Hello?”

  She jumps and squeaks out a small, “Oh!” He is standing at the driver’s side window.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  She nods.

  “Want to try the key for me now?”

  She nods again. Her eyes are very green. Very big.

  He gives her a quizzical look, blinks, and then ambles to the front of the car. She turns the key…rurr, rurr, rurr…

  “Okay, that’s good,” he says from under the hood, “let off it.”

  She is about to exit the car when he appears at her door again.

  “Yeah, it sounds like your battery. I would give you a jump; that should get you to a Meineke or Sears or something but…well, actually, I don’t have a car. Not here, anyway.”

  He puts his hand through her window. “I’m Henry, by the way.”

  She takes his hand and shakes it twice, wincing.

  “Lacey,” she said. “Listen, I…I’m sorry for being short with you. Out here and in there. I’m just not…I’m not myself right now.”

  “Is your hand okay?”

  “Yeah, I just–I cut it on the car when you walked up.”

  “Here, let me see,” he said, putting his hand back out, palm up. Her hand is so soft in his, he can’t believe how soft. He turns it over and looks at the cut. He picks a small bit of rust from the palm of her hand and traces the track of the cut with his fingers. He feels her shiver.

  He looks down at her, and she blushes. “That tickles,” she says. She smiles at him.

  “Let me see if I can find someone with cables,” he says, letting go of her hand. The service is over, and people are starting to file out. A trickle at first and then the big double doors are propped wide, and people pour out in a flood.

  Henry stands near her car, asking each person if they have cables. He feels embarrassed–he’s not used to talking to people in parking lots, asking for favors–but more than that, he really wants to help this girl.

  Before too long a man in an ill-fitting suit says he has cables, and he comes back with his truck. Henry hooks them up, and the guy cranks his engine. He tells Lacey to turn the k
ey, and when her little car roars to life, she looks at Henry with such joyful amazement that he feels like Superman rescuing Lois Lane.

  He thanks the man and is surprised when the guy shakes his hand. “That’s a pretty girl you got there,” he says and winks at Lacey. “You take good care of her.”

  Henry blushes and nods as the man drives away. Then he looks back at Lacey. She is grinning, almost laughing, and he is relieved.

  Then he sees his mom in the crowd, and he turns to Lacey. “Hey, take me to where I work, and I’ll put the battery in for you. I have to charge you for the battery, but I’ll do the labor part in return for the ride.”

  Lacey looks him over, suddenly unsure. He is skinny and a little ragtag looking, a little on the rough side; not the kind of guy she’d usually associate with. But he did just do her a favor. And underneath his tough exterior she’d glimpsed something…something younger, undefined in the unsettled light of his eyes. She realizes she recognizes the look from her own mirror–he is a person who hasn’t found himself yet.

  Lacey leans over and pushes open the passenger side door. Henry closes the hood and slides in next to her, throwing her a cautious smile.

  “Where to?” Lacey asks.

  Chapter 21

  Officer Riddel sits across the booth from James. He is in street clothes. This diner is busy, and they have to be careful what they say. When the waitress comes over, they stop talking. James nods a yes to the proffered coffee pot, but Officer Riddel has his hand over the top of his own mug. The waitress doesn’t even glance his way as she refills James’ cup.

  Once the waitress is safely back behind the counter, James leans over. “Did you find anything?” he asks.

  Riddel shakes his head. His hair is close-cropped, salt and pepper, his eyes a hard gray. He frowns, crossing his arms, and deep fissures appear around his mouth. He must have had many years of strenuous frowning, for lines to have sunk that deep, James thinks.

  Riddel glances at the waitress once more before speaking.

  “It goes deep, I can tell you that much; deeper than I could have imagined.” His voice is a bass rumble, and a shiver of excitement runs over James’ skin. He knew it. He knew that this was…something.

  James pushes his hand into his pocket, curling his fingers around the object, feeling the hard edges dimple the soft surfaces of his palm. The object begins to heat up, as though responding to James’ touch.

  Riddel’s eyes squint. “Is it warm again?” James would have been afraid of the man’s growl if he hadn’t spent so much time with him in the past three days. He knows that Riddel’s intensity is due to his concern. In this short time, he has already become like a father to James.

  James nods and smiles. “It’s warming up.”

  “Yeah, well, be careful. What if it decides to float again?”

  James nods and pulls his hand from his pocket. Immediately, the object begins to cool against his leg. “You’re right. Wouldn’t want to make a scene in here.”

  Riddel nods and chuckles. The sound of it is like gravel being poured from a canvas bag. James feels warm again, but it’s a different kind of warm, an all-over warm–he basks in Riddel’s appreciation. His admiration.

  Riddel sobers and leans back. He pushes his mug one way and then another. His hands are big, knotty with age and the beginnings of arthritis. He looks at James. “I’ve checked around. Very quietly, very discreet. This old couple…the Simonellis…”

  James’ face gets hot, and he drops his head. He knows he killed them. He killed the man with the shovel, and he didn’t kill the old woman, not deliberately, but still, he knows he is responsible for her death anyway. The thing is, he can hardly remember any of it. It’s like it wasn’t him. It’s like a dream. A nightmare.

  Riddel’s big, rough hand is on his, and he looks up.

  “I found out some stuff about the guy, that Simonelli. He’s been part of a lot of nasty business over the years. That stuff in the paper about his family and job with the township–a lot of it’s true, but they also skipped a lot of things, left out the bad stuff…know what I mean?”

  James nods, his mouth open, eyes dazed. He wants so much to believe that what he’s done was for something…was part of the messages he’d been receiving.

  His other hand, the hand not held by Riddel, strays back to his pocket. He just touches the object through his pants this time. He cups his hand over the small bulge in his pocket, drawing comfort from the iron-clad fact of it.

  “He was involved in illegal prostitution; they sure didn’t put that in the paper,” Riddel says. “No sir, they left that right out of their eulogy.” He sits back, a worldly-wise smile on his face. Just a bit cynical. He is a man who knows what the score is. Who knows how it all works. James looks at Riddel, and he is grateful…relieved to have the guidance. The help.

  “There’s one place, right up the road from his house there, called Perfect Ten. It’s a nail salon, right near that Brother’s Pizza.”

  James jerks, sitting up straighter. “I was there,” he says, his voice breathless with astonishment. “Christ, I had followed the kid, 18 Oak Ave, and he went to Brother’s Pizza, and I ended up…looking at the girls in Perfect Ten…there were three of them, like triplets. They looked alike, and I knew–damnit–I knew it was a sign!”

  “Yeah, it all fits,” Riddel says. “Turns out Simonelli was running prostitutes through there, plus he had a pretty lucrative drug trade going. Maybe out of Brother’s…I’m not sure about that.” He glances at the waitress standing behind the counter, arms folded over her chest, but she stares right through him, looking past him and out the window. “But I bet I know who would know…that kid. 18 Oak Ave. Sounds like he spends enough time there.”

  James feels feverish, amazed at how everything is coming together. The further they get into it, the more it all begins to fit. Like puzzle pieces floating in an amorphous dark, they are finally sliding together, making a picture.

  Riddel has told him to keep Lacey out of it, that she wouldn’t understand. She might even be in danger, if she knew as much as they knew. But even still, he wants desperately to talk to her about…all of it. He has a fierce desire–on the tipping point of becoming an actual compulsion–to see what she would say. And to see what she would do.

  He puts his hand over his pocket, and a question blooms darkly in his mind. What am I, then? The object seems to ask him. James shakes his head. He looks at the waitress and then back at Riddel.

  “What do you think that has to do with this, though?” He indicates his pocket.

  Riddel opens his mouth, but then shuts it and sits back, crossing his arms as the waitress comes over.

  “You need something, honey?” she asks. James stares up at her, his eyes going wide.

  “Your hair,” he says, “your hair…”

  She smooths a hand through her gray curls. “What about it, baby-doll?” she asks him.

  “It got…it looked…” James struggles with his words. “I’m sorry, for a second there it looked…bigger…or…”

  The waitress throws her head back with a laugh. “You’re just as crazy as a bed-bug, honey, but funny! You let me know if you need anything else.” She sways away, still laughing. James watches as she corners the other waitress and they huddle, heads together, and then the other waitress breaks out laughing, too. She looks right at James as his waitress turns and looks at him over her shoulder. She wiggles her fingers at him, then points to her hair and nods. Both waitresses break up laughing again, and the owner, who’d been sitting by the register reading a newspaper, yells over and tells them to settle down.

  James stares at her, confused. When she had bent over him that way, coming so close–it seemed her hair had grown, becoming a dark red. Her face had blurred, as if seen through tears. Dark tears. Thick and viscous. Heavy with salt.

  He puts his hand in his pocket, and the object warms. He can feel it wanting to spin, wanting to float. It wants to be seen, James thinks, but I won’t l
et it. It doesn’t understand what might happen if someone should see it. It doesn’t understand just how evil the world can be.

  James realizes he has been staring into his coffee cup, gripping it with both hands. He looks up, but Riddel is gone. He must have slipped out while the waitress was pulling all her shenanigans. He knows that Riddel has put himself in a bad spot…a vulnerable spot. After all, he and Simonelli worked for the same town. Had the same bosses, essentially.

  Riddel had to tread very, very lightly.

  Chapter 22

  Lacey is sitting in a red plastic chair near the register at Mack’s Auto, Oil, and Car Wash. The waiting area divides the bays for oil changes from the car wash. There is a long, soap-spotted window lined with chairs where customers can watch their cars. Facing the chairs are racks with air fresheners, oil additives, windshield wiper fluid, key chains, and car mats.

  It is late afternoon, almost dinnertime, and the stream of customers has slowed considerably. The shop closes at six, and it’s already quarter ’til. Henry had introduced her to Mack, the owner. He is a big man, at least six-five, probably forty pounds overweight, and in his mid to late fifties. He had shaken her hand and asked where she got her oil changed. When she’d told him that she usually went to the Jiffy Lube across town, he’d turned to fish under the register and then had handed her a thin deck of coupons for a free car wash with every oil change.

  “You come here instead, get it washed for free. Better deal for you, you send your friends and what not. Plus, we’re honest,” he’d winked, just once, straight faced with no hint of flirtatiousness. “Got the same customers been coming to me for twenty years; that means something.”