Holy shit, Nicky thought. It’s the Case Western Reserve University campus in 1988.
Right down to the mailboxes.
He could hear that the loud music was coming from the canvas room to his left. He could see a shadow against the wall, moving around, darting, growing in size, diminishing. Then slides projected onto the canvas. Yearbook pictures. John Angelino. Benjamin Crane. Julia Ann Raines.
He stepped up to the curtains, parted them slightly, and peered inside. His mind was hardly prepared for what he saw, but he tried to take it all in. Amelia was tied up, kneeling on the bed, surrounded by department-store mannequins. There was a man, a naked man, passed out in a wheelchair, facing her.
But it was the other man in the room that filled Nicky with dread. A man who sat down at the desk, then turned to face Nicky, as if sensing his presence, and slowly removed his sequined mask, a dime-store trick that concealed a very familiar face.
This time, though, the man behind the face wasn’t wearing the thick, Coke-bottle lens glasses.
And it was for that simple reason that Nicky finally saw Gil Strauss’s eyes. Sure, the nose was different, and the chin was a little stronger than it was in his college yearbook picture, but it was the eyes that told him what he needed to know.
G. D. Woltz.
Gillian Strauss.
Strauss.
Woltz.
Nicky put his hand into his pocket, gripped the pepper spray, put his finger on the trigger, and stepped through the canvas curtains, into Gillian Strauss’s world.
59
THE MAN IN the white jumpsuit sat at the desk, cooking another run of heroin. The TV blaring an old Who’s the Boss rerun. The stereo played ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ over and over again.
Maddie. No.
God, no.
Amelia fought the nausea, the heart-shattering grief.
Okay. Maybe . . . maybe she fell on the next building over, Amelia thought. Or a ledge. Maybe she hit an awning or a Dumpster full of soft garbage bags or . . .
She had to get out of this.
Had to.
Her little girl wasn’t dead, see.
Just hurt.
Just . . . hurt.
Amelia leaned slightly to the right, then to the left. Right. Left. And began to work on the ropes. But before she could budge them, she looked at the corner of the room, where the two canvas walls met, and thought she might be hallucinating. In fact, she was sure of it. For a moment she thought she saw Nicky standing there, wearing a dark coat, his hands in his pockets.
‘Nick!’ the man in white shouted, as if he were expecting a visitor. He stood up. ‘Come on in!’
Nicky stepped inside, flesh and blood. It wasn’t a hallucination after all. He stood in the corner, nodded at her. She looked at the man in white and, for the first time, saw his face. His ordinary face. She had seen it before. But where?
‘You remember Julia, don’t you?’ the man in white said, gesturing toward Amelia. ‘Julia and I are engaged.’
Nicky just stared.
‘And let me introduce you to the AdVerse Society. This is my good friend Geoffrey Coldicott.’ He crossed the room, not missing a beat of the music. He stood behind the soldier-mannequin. ‘A blow job to die for. Believe me.’ He placed his hands on the mannequin’s shoulders. ‘Between you and me? Not for publication? Off the record and all that? He died screaming mommy mommy mommy mommy. I swear to God. Like a little girl.’
‘This is so fucked up, man,’ Nicky said. ‘You gotta get some help.’
‘Help? I don’t need help.’ He gestured to another mannequin. ‘And this, of course, is Johnny Angel. Johnny is the society’s resident thespian. Thespian, not lesbian. Jenny’s our resident dyke.’
Nicky looked away for a moment, back. ‘You called Sebastian Keller from my apartment, didn’t you?’
‘Of course.’
‘And that was you online? You were Prufrock?’
‘Call me Al.’
‘But how did you boot Amelia from the room? You can’t just—’
The man in the white jumpsuit held up his right hand, made a snipping motion with his fingers. ‘Wire cutters. I was right outside her house. The phone company fixed it a few hours later. She never knew the phone was out.’
‘But . . . St Francis?’
‘Long story, Nick. I was going to follow Johnny into the seminary, wait awhile, kill him there. But for some reason I couldn’t. It wasn’t time, I guess. So I took the job at St Francis. It was supposed to be temporary, but it turned into a good thing. No one ever looks at the guy who sweeps the church.’
‘How did you—’
‘Of course, I had to take a lot of side jobs over the years. I had to pay for all this. Landscaping and such. Great work for a college graduate, huh? I even took a correspondence course in refrigerator repair. Got pretty good, too. Got to repair fridges all over the east side. And do you know what I saw when I stepped into all those kitchens, Nick?’
‘What?’
‘Drawings,’ he said, as if it made complete sense. ‘Crayon drawings on the refrigerators. Little drawings of trees and cows and turkeys and boats. Drawings of happy little bungalows with chimneys and curly black smoke. From Vanessa. From Kevin. From Carole and Jessica and Timmy and Gina.’
Amelia closed her eyes. She thought about Maddie’s drawings.
Maddie-bear. Gone.
The man became more animated. ‘All those drawings delivered to all those daddies as they sat in their dens with their feet up, smoking their pipes. And I knew, I knew, they would never be for me. No report cards, no field-trip notes to sign. That’s why this had to happen, Nick. Surely you can see that. These people took my drawings from me. From Julia.’ He sat down, the name somehow taking his thoughts for a moment.
‘But why now?’ Nicky asked. ‘Why me?’
‘Why now? Because it was time, Nicky. Because it took twenty years for everybody to have enough to lose. When Johnny moved to St Francis . . . let’s just say he would have recognized me eventually. Even with my pop-bottle glasses.’ He reached beneath the desk, took out a carousel of slides, put them in the projector on the shelf, hit the remote. Telephoto shots, night shots. Nicky and Amelia against the schoolhouse wall. Amelia’s breasts, Nicky’s hands, a freeze-frame of Amelia’s hand near Nicky’s zipper.
‘And you. You fell in love lost your fucking mind. Drugs, sex, murder, suicide. Just the kind of thing a hack freelancer would love to write about. Too bad you’ll be dead.’ He opened the desk drawer, pointed to a pistol. ‘You’re gonna blow your brains out in just a little while. Catholic guilt and all.’
‘Then why did you tell me to walk away?’
‘Because you’re a fucking journalist. I knew you’d do exactly the opposite.’
Nicky spread his feet slightly, struck a pose. ‘How do you know I don’t have a gun in my pocket, pointed right at you?’ he asked. He looked past the man, at the drawer. Besides the pistol there was also a pair of handcuffs, a set of keys, something red . . .
‘I know,’ he said.
‘You can’t be sure.’
‘Yes I can. The last door you passed through was a metal detector. But now that you mention it, I want you to take your jacket off, lay it on the bed.’ Nicky complied.
Amelia noticed that when the man in white took his eyes from Nicky, Nicky took a half step toward the desk.
‘But what about all the others?’ Nicky asked. ‘Surely you fucked up somewhere. Surely there’ll be evidence. You can’t tie me to all of this. You can’t possibly—’
At that moment Amelia summoned all her strength and grunted as loud as she could, hoping to draw the man’s attention momentarily. She did. Nicky took a full step toward the desk.
‘I’ll be with you shortly, Julia, my love. This is business, I’m afraid. Gil’s got to take care of business.’ He looked back at Nicky, taking an extra second to focus. He seemed not to notice the altered proximity. ‘There’s blood from each scene on the clothe
s in your closet. A fleck or two of Geoffrey, a spot of Johnny. I put them there when I picked up the canned goods. There’s no holes, Nicky. Quit looking.’
Nicky’s mind raced. He remembered Gil staying behind, drinking his Pepsi. Then it hit him. The semen. The semen in Geoffrey’s mouth. A DNA gold mine. ‘But you did fuck up, Gil. Big time.’
Gil looked up, interested, but clearly not concerned. ‘Did I, now?’
‘The semen in Geoffrey’s mouth, you sick fuck. They will find you.’
‘You think I put my cock in that man’s mouth without a rubber? Please. What era are you living in, Nick?’
There was only one other explanation, Nicky thought. And he was right.
‘The semen in Geoffrey’s mouth was his own,’ Gil said. ‘Don’t you love it? It’ll confuse the hell out of the FBI for years. Don’t ask me how I did it, though. Toughest part of this whole thing.’
Amelia found another breath somehow, made another noise, low and raspy. The man in white, the man who called himself Gil stood and, instead of looking at her, instead of being drawn by her ruse a second time, spun in place and stabbed Nicky with a syringe.
But Nicky was fast. He shifted his weight – the needle caught him high on his left shoulder – and before Gil could depress the plunger more than halfway, Nicky rolled with it and lashed out with a straight right hand, catching Gil on the point of his chin, driving him into the wall. Gil regained his footing, threw a right hand of his own, stunning Nicky, dropping him to one knee. Then, Gil picked up the desk chair, raised it over his head, and brought it down hard on the back of Nicky’s neck.
Stars. And pain. Golden Glove tryouts, 1990. Knocked out by a gorilla named Rocco. Never saw it coming, never heard the count.
But he wasn’t in the ring now. He was in the—
Gil Strauss. The warehouse. Amelia.
Nicky tried to push himself up with his arms, failed miserably. When he hit the ground his head split in agony. He tried again. And again.
Then, from behind him, he heard Gil take a step toward him.
The gun, Nicky thought. Jesus Christ, the gun. He was going to—
But instead of a loud bang, something warm and fuzzy and soft landed on the side of Nicky’s face. Something . . . familiar? Calling on every ounce of boxer’s discipline he had ever possessed, Nicky found the energy and the courage to roll onto his back, to sit up. The soft thing fell into his lap. He shook his head, tried to lose the cobwebs, the ringing in his ears. He reoriented himself in the room. Gil against the wall, opposite him. Amelia still tied on the bed. How long was he—?
He looked down at his lap and, for a moment, thought he was imagining things. Red. Raspberry red.
It was Meg’s beret.
‘She’s not coming back, Nick,’ Gil said, removing a loosened, bloody tooth, dropping it into the wastebasket. ‘They never do. Take it from an expert.’
The rage inside Nicky flared, cauterizing his pain.
Gil continued. ‘She really was beautiful, though. As beautiful as my Julia. It’s one of the reasons I figured you would understand all this. You understand loss.’
Somehow Nicky was on his feet. He lunged.
Gil dove for the gun.
But Nicky got there first. He bulled Gil against the wall, then set his weight and threw three left hooks in rapid succession, each one landing on Gil’s face, stunning him, splitting the flesh over his cheekbone, the final blow shattering two fingers on Nicky’s left hand. Nicky finished the flurry with a right cross that exploded Gillian Strauss’s nose.
Gil slumped to the floor: unconscious, still, silent.
Nicky turned to the desk, grabbed the gun, pulled back the hammer, and put it to the back of Gillian Strauss’s head. His hand began to shake.
But Strauss didn’t move.
And, in an instant, it was over.
Nicky took the gag out of Amelia’s mouth. The sudden rush of air into her lungs made her cough, made her gasp for a breath. ‘Thuh-thuh win-win,’ Amelia said. ‘Thuh-thuh win . . . dow . . .’ She nodded at the broken window. ‘Look . . .’
Nicky walked over to the broken window, looked out. He glanced back at Amelia, shrugged his shoulders.
‘Maddie!’
Nicky looked again, the hundred feet or so to the ground making things blend together. Willie’s car, Dumpsters, lots of garbage bags. ‘I can’t . . .’
Amelia got her wind back. ‘Go down there and see, Nicky. Please. Now. You have to go down there and see!’
Nicky crossed the room, stepped onto the bed, looked at the ropes around Amelia’s wrists. He would need a knife.
‘Go!’ Amelia shouted. ‘Don’t worry about us right now. Go!’
Nicky reached into the drawer, took out the handcuffs, and cuffed Strauss’s hands behind his back. He held up Strauss’s head by the hair. ‘Amelia, this is Gillian Strauss. Also known as Gillian Daniel Woltz. Also known as Mac.’ He let Gil’s head drop into the small but growing pool of blood coming from his mouth.
Nicky found the hypodermic needle, the one that had been in his shoulder, looked at it, then at Amelia. ‘Do you know what this is?’
‘No.’
Nicky thought for a second, then reached over and injected the remainder of the contents into Strauss’s leg. ‘Hack freelancer? Fuck you.’
He then rummaged through Gil’s pockets, found a set of keys. He also found some change. ‘I’ll be right back,’ he said. ‘But I’ll need this.’ He reached out and pulled hard on one of the canvas walls. After three attempts it came down, bringing with it the slide-projected image of a young retarded girl on a carousel at Cedar Point.
Nicky left the room.
Amelia cried.
And waited.
It took five tries, but the sheet of canvas finally provided him with enough purchase to get up the oil-slicked ramp. He had tried every key on Gil’s ring before finding the master key to the doors in the stairwell. Every single move he made seemed to delay him, seemed to seal the fate of the little girl. Had Amelia been right about this? he wondered.
Had Gil Strauss gone that far?
He really didn’t relish looking into the back alley, but he had to.
When he got to the top of the ramp, he was just about to fall backward when his hand closed around the knob. He closed his eyes, waiting for resistance, and pulled on the huge steel door.
It opened.
The rush of night air, the streetlamps on East Fifty-first Street, filled him with a great sense of relief. The sickness at the top of the warehouse seemed a million miles away now. But it wasn’t. If Amelia was right, it was just around the corner, in the alley.
He looked both ways up the street, found it deserted, stepped out onto the sidewalk and turned right, toward the alley behind the building. He stood at the mouth of the alley and began to visually sort through the debris. Willie’s car was parked halfway to the rear. To the left, a Dumpster, overflowing with garbage.
And then he saw it. The burlap bag.
The bag had split open when it hit the ground; the deep red contents were splayed onto the crumbling asphalt, wet and warm and steaming in the night air. Nicky steeled himself, knelt down, peeled back the edge of the bag, saw the orange hair, the splintered bone, the gobbets of flesh. The bottom of the bag was soaked with blood, thick with viscera. He turned away, stood up, tried to walk off the overwhelming nausea.
How could someone do this? He looked skyward, saw the window. It was at least a hundred feet or so. He walked back to the bag, knelt once more, shifted his position to allow for more light, and saw that it wasn’t orange hair at all. It was orange . . . fur?
My God, Nicky thought, his heart soaring, his eyes welling with tears.
It wasn’t the little girl. It was the dog. The big golden retriever.
Gil had thrown the dog out of the window.
And maybe – maybe – that meant that the girl was still alive, still upstairs somewhere.
Nicky couldn’t imagine the agony that
Amelia was experiencing. He had to get back upstairs and tell her. But first he had to phone the police, before whatever had been in the hypodermic needle kicked in. He sprinted back to Euclid Avenue and the phone booth on the corner. His vision was starting to cloud now, to soften his periphery. He fought the drowsiness and dropped the quarter into the phone.
His knees gave a quick trick, buckling momentarily. He held onto the side of the phone booth, dialed 911, waited, his mind misting up by the second. ‘Come on . . . come on . . .’ he said. ‘Answer the fuggin’ . . .’
Nicky glanced at his watch. Hard to focus. Looked like nearly midnight. Midnight on Halloween, he thought. The cops had to be busier than hell. But why doesn’t the—
‘Nine-one-one emergency’ the voice said.
‘Hi,’ Nicky began, but he knew his words were coming out flat and unintelligible. His tongue felt a foot wide. ‘I’d . . . uh . . . I’d lige do wee-pord a . . . a . . .’
‘A what, sir? You’ll have to speak up.’
Nicky’s mind was deserting him. He took a deep breath, tried again. ‘I . . . ’
But that was all that he would say. He slumped to the ground, his mind and body a slave to the drug now. And then his world went dark.
A dark that made the warehouse look like daylight.
60
AMELIA STARED AT the huge expanse of the room, through the space where the canvas wall had hung. Time became an abstract thing. Waiting, waiting. Maddie. Please, God. Nicky, come on.
Roger still sat in his wheelchair: shackled, naked, unconscious. Amelia looked but could not see if his chest moved, if he was breathing. She wanted to hate him for this, for the horror of this night. But she could not, not now. The sickness of her grief would not allow it.
She looked at the floor. Strauss was still out, too, face-down on the floor, his hands handcuffed behind his back, his white jumpsuit slashed with blood.
The music had stopped again. From somewhere nearby Amelia heard . . . crying?
Was somebody crying?
Before she could pinpoint the sound, she saw Strauss stirring. He rolled over onto his back, his face contorting in pain, the blood already drying on his white jumpsuit in wide brown streaks along the lapels. He opened his eyes, blinked a few times, tried to focus.
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