The Violet Hour

by Richard Montanari

  Amelia noticed that he now looked more like the picture in the yearbook. G. D. Woltz. Nicky had broken his jaw and unwittingly undone what must have been a very long and painful operation.

  Strauss sat up, his hands still cuffed behind his back. He shook his head side to side. His eyes were red and damp, glassy. His nose was a flat, purplish mass of crushed cartilage and mucus. He looked at Amelia. ‘Wherisee?’ he asked, slurring his words together.

  ‘Gone,’ Amelia said. ‘He went and got the police, you sick son of a bitch.’

  Strauss laughed, but it was a mirthless noise. He grimaced in pain.

  Then the sound again. Crying.

  Where . . .

  Strauss seemed not to hear it. He began to rock side to side, and eventually got up onto his knees. Even though he was handcuffed, the fact that he was moving filled Amelia with a fear she had just begun to relinquish. ‘Nicky!’ she yelled at the top of her lungs. ‘Nicky!’

  Strauss struggled to his feet, backed over to the desk, reached into the drawer, and removed a set of handcuff keys. Within moments, he was free.

  No, Amelia thought. This can’t be happening.

  Strauss shook the feeling back into his arms, grabbed the full hypodermic needle off the desk.

  And stumbled toward her.

  ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ again. Loud.

  Amelia sat on the bed, on top of Nicky’s jacket. Her hands were free, her legs were free. She looked to her right. Roger’s head was now propped up with a cervical collar. His eyes were slightly opened.

  Before Amelia could move, Strauss stepped around the remaining canvas wall. ‘Walk over to the window,’ he said to Amelia, obviously with a great deal of pain.

  Amelia obeyed, crossing the room, leaning back against the sill of the one unbroken window that overlooked Fifty-first Street.

  Strauss had washed the blood from his face, had made an attempt to rinse it out of his jacket. He reached into his pocket and removed a packet of glossy paper. He opened it, dipped in with a sharp fingernail, and took a furious snort in his mangled nose. Then another. Then another. He crumpled it, tossed it to the side, and faced Amelia. He turned up the music.

  ‘Now it’s my turn,’ he said. ‘My turn to be the pirate.’

  He walked toward her, unbuckling his belt.

  But what Amelia did made him stop in his tracks.

  She began to hike up her skirt, slowly, slowly, not taking her eyes from his. She unbuttoned her blouse, let it slide down over her shoulders. She spread her legs slightly.

  Confusion in Strauss’s eyes. Pained, stoned confusion. Then acceptance. Acceptance of her acceptance of the inevitability of the situation. Strauss glanced over at Roger, then reached out to her. She opened her arms to him. He stepped closer, between her legs.

  Amelia kissed him, and the revulsion flowed through her like sewage in her veins. She felt his growing erection against her thigh. She reached down, unzipped his zipper.

  ‘Gillian,’ she said directly into his ear.

  ‘Julia,’ he replied, and closed his eyes.

  When he opened them, instead of staring into Amelia’s eyes, he found that he was staring at the nozzle of a small can of pepper spray.

  Amelia sprayed.

  Strauss shrieked in agony, tearing at his eyes, flailing his arms like a madman, trying desperately to find his bearings, his face now a deep blue from the dye in the spray. He stopped, opened his eyes wide with his fingers, found Amelia in the morass of his vision. He dug his feet into the rug and ran at her, propelled by twenty years of hatred, twenty years of sorrow, twenty years of anger.

  But, as he had so many years ago, the pirate would best Gillian Strauss one last time.

  Amelia dove to the ground as Strauss tripped over the pirate mannequin on the floor, lost his balance, and raged past her. His head burst through the glass, and the sound was a shotgun blast over the music. Amelia scrambled to her feet and turned around to see Strauss stuck halfway through the opening, a thick shard of filthy glass emerging from his back. It had gone clean through him. And for the time being, he could not move.

  Or so she thought.

  Amelia ran to the desk and grabbed the gun, astounded at how heavy it was. She gathered the last of her strength, pointed it at Strauss’s back, pulled back the hammer as she had seen in a million cop shows.

  Strauss was still for a moment, then threw back his head and howled in pain as he forced his body straight, snapping the glass off at the frame. He turned, slowly, and faced Amelia, his eyes a red mass of burning flesh now, his small intestine a slithery pink cord on the glass protruding from his abdomen.

  ‘Julia,’ he managed. He tried to approach her, but he stumbled backwards, leaned against the sill. ‘Why, Julia . . .?’

  But she wasn’t Julia. She was Amelia St John and the monster in front of her had taken her little girl. It was Maddie who steadied her hand.

  She pulled the trigger.

  The gun roared and tumbled from her grip, but not before slamming a nine-millimeter hollow-point bullet into Gillian Strauss’s chest. At this close range, the impact finished the job that inertia had not, carrying him through the window and out into the autumn night, down to the cold pavement a hundred feet below.

  Amelia turned, disoriented. She located the record player, then struck out at it, plunging the room into a sudden deafening silence. She fell into the desk chair, consumed now by the vast expanse of blackness that was the warehouse, consumed by exhaustion, by the electricity of her sorrow.

  Again she heard the crying. Louder now. Amelia tried to calm herself, tried to slow her breathing, tried to pin-point the sound . . .

  Who was crying? And where was it—

  Under the bed.

  It was coming from under the bed.

  Amelia got down on her knees, and when she felt the coarse texture of the material, when she felt the weight of the second burlap bag, her heart stammered. She pulled the bag out, rejoicing in its heft, and untied the top. When she saw the cheap wig, the suede fringes of the Pocahontas costume, everything poured forth at once.

  ‘Mom?’ Maddie asked, sleepy and obviously disoriented, thoroughly miserable, but alive, God. Alive. ‘Where’s my candy?’

  Amelia pulled her daughter from the bag and held her close, so close.

  A thousand charities owed, now.

  A million prayers to be given voice.

  Amelia covered Roger with a blanket from the bed, found a slow, steady pulse. She located Strauss’s lair on the other side of the warehouse, called 911.

  Back in the dorm room, Maddie at her side, she stepped over to the window, just as the wail of the sirens rose in the distance. She looked down, at the sidewalk on East Fifty-first Street, at the grim composition she would see every day for the rest of her life.

  White jumpsuit. Gray concrete. Red ribbons of blood. A still life in madness, she thought.

  She glanced up at the purple bruise of sky above the city of Cleveland.

  Safe now, Maddie-bear.

  Safe.

  61

  THE CLERK AT Cleveland Costume was in her early twenties, pale and brunette, full lips, hips to match. She was the same one who had rented him the costume. He was hoping she would be there. ‘Hi,’ she said as he stepped through the door.

  ‘Hi,’ he replied. He noticed that she fluffed her hair. That was a good sign. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Just fine, thanks,’ she said. She took the plastic garment bag from him, along with the bag that held the boots. ‘And did we have a good time on Halloween?’

  ‘Sort of,’ he said. ‘I buckled a few swashes, I guess.’

  The girl laughed. ‘You don’t sound so sure.’

  ‘Well, it was a crazy night round my way. A little more excitement than we’re used to.’

  ‘Hope nothing bad happened.’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid some bad things did. But everyone near and dear to me came out of it just fine. That’s the good news.’

  �
�Maybe you should go for something a little less provocative next year. Something like a clown or a vampire.’

  ‘No. I don’t think so. This costume will be fine.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said as she handed his deposit back. ‘It’ll be here waiting for you.’

  ‘Terrific,’ Garth Randolph said with a smile. ‘Let’s just hope I’m the same size.’

  ‘Oh, I have a feeling you will be.’

  ‘Because I’d really hate to break with tradition,’ Garth said, walking to the door.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He turned, winked at her. ‘I’ve always been the pirate.’

  62

  THE HEALING RACE came to an end at Christmas. The dose of PCP that Gillian Strauss had given Roger should have been fatal, and Roger had lingered in a coma for three days, but eventually, slowly, he came out of it. He claimed not to remember a thing from that night, only that he had taken a cab to Edgefield Road, paid, and before he had taken three steps, had been chloroformed from behind. He also claimed to have returned to 100 percent of his previous form, but everyone knew it wasn’t true. Whenever a word wouldn’t come to him, whenever he found that he was repeating himself for the third time in a single conversation, his eyes met Amelia’s and her heart broke. There was probably nothing wrong with his mind, but if he thought there was, there might as well have been.

  Shelley Roth’s name was never mentioned again.

  The tragedy, of course, the heartbreak of that terrible night, was Paige. A day didn’t go by without her crossing Amelia’s mind, her heart. Mutual friends had rallied around Amelia, but they all knew that she and Paige had been close, and that nothing was going to replace her. The police learned that Gillian Strauss owned a few acres out on Sperry Road. It didn’t take them long to find the shallow graves. They also found Geoffrey Coldicott’s mother.

  After Paige’s funeral, Roger insisted that they buy the bookstore and try to make a go of it.

  The name of the store, of course, remained.

  Dag Randolph stood behind his picture window, the one through which his twelve-year-old son Garth had once chipped a brand-new Titleist, the one beneath which he had once seduced his young, shy wife, Martha, the only time in their forty-two-year marriage they had ever made love outside of their maple four-poster bed, a night now four decades deep in Dag Randolph’s memory, yet still so vivid, so new in his heart.

  The snow was relentless, his mood relentlessly grave. As it had every day for weeks, Dag Randolph’s lunch sat untouched on the TV tray.

  His wife and daughter had long since stopped trying to roust him from his funk. They sat in the kitchen, a cooling pot of coffee between them.

  ‘And still not a word about that night?’ Amelia asked softly.

  ‘Nothing,’ Martha whispered. ‘It’s like it never happened.’ Martha leaned backward, looked into the living room, then leaned close to her daughter. ‘He thinks he let everybody down, you know. Madeleine especially. I can’t even mention Maddie’s name without him tearing up and leaving the room. I don’t know what to do. I just don’t know . . .’

  Dag Randolph had been taken out of the equation early that night. The police found him unconscious in the azaleas in the Cameron backyard, another victim of chloroform. The only thing broken was the man’s pride in his role as grandfather-protector, as patriarch of a small but needy Randolph clan.

  ‘And what about Garth?’ Amelia asked.

  Martha just stared, absently. ‘Gone again, I suppose.’

  Amelia was worried about her family. What was happening to them? Would they ever recover from this madness? Would they ever be the same?

  The answer came mid-meal on Christmas Day when Dag, without a word, got up from the table, put on his hat and coat, and left the house, only to return twenty minutes later. He had a big smile on his face, and in his arms the scruffiest runt of a golden retriever pup any of them had ever seen.

  And it was right around the time Martha Randolph served her traditional Dutch apple pie and coffee that a beaming, lovestruck Maddie St John – with a confused but enthusiastic young puppy in tow – lumbered into the dining room and introduced everyone to the newest member of the St John family: Molson Lite.

  On New Year’s Day the pier at Seventy-second Street was deserted, save for the lone figure in black, standing on the rocks. Even the most hard-core fishermen wouldn’t come out on a morning like this, Nicky thought. It had to be Joseph. Joseph had called, left a somber message. The two hadn’t met on the pier in years.

  Nicky parked his car, made his way down the treacherous rocks to where his cousin stood. As always, Father Joseph LaCazio seemed to have a sixth sense about the presence of another human. He didn’t turn around, he didn’t look.

  ‘Good morning, Nicky.’

  ‘Morning, Joey. How ya doin’?’

  He got his cousin’s attention, gave him one of the two cups of McDonald’s coffee he carried. In silence they opened their cups, blew on the coffee. When it was cool enough, they sipped, looked out over Lake Erie. Joseph spoke first.

  ‘A murderer, Nicky. A murderer lived at the St Francis rectory.’

  ‘I know, Joey. But you shouldn’t—’

  ‘A murderer lived at the rectory and he killed a priest. How does a parish ever get over that?’

  Nicky had no idea what to say. How do you begin to revive someone’s faith, especially when that person’s faith has always dwarfed your own? The police had found a number of bizarre things in Gil Strauss’s room. Not the least of which were two dozen scrapbooks containing hundreds, probably thousands, of images cut and pasted from magazines. All the same. Julia’s face pasted onto the body of some Playmate or 1980s movie star Some of the pictures were Gil’s face pasted on the body of Christ.

  How does a parish get beyond that? Nicky had no idea. But he started moving his lips, and words somehow appeared on his vaporous breath. ‘Catholics are tough, Joey. You know that. Time will heal all of this. Look at my hand,’ he said, holding up his bent but healing left hand. ‘God takes care.’

  Joseph lit a cigarette, expertly into the wind, the street kid on the pier again. ‘I knew Gil Strauss a lot of years,’ he said. ‘I had no idea. None at all. What the hell kind of priest am I?’

  Nicky grabbed Joseph by the shoulders, squared himself in front of him. ‘The best kind. You hear me? The kind who sees the good in people. Not the evil.’

  ‘It’s not nearly enough these days, Nicky. Not nearly enough.’

  ‘Come on, man. Don’t do this to yourself.’

  ‘I wish there was a choice.’

  The two men embraced, a bit awkwardly, trying not to spill their coffees. Nicky wanted to comfort Joseph, to take care of his older cousin who had rescued him so many times, but he really had no answers.

  So instead, they stood on the rocks, watching the frigid waves crash into the shore, watching the gulls circle in their odd, seemingly random patterns, patterns that Nicholas Stella used to think were ruled by the moods of the moon, by the whim of the Lake Erie winds.

  But he knew better now. He had learned that the fate of people is not random at all, but led instead by history, personal history, the moments of madness we all carry around like deep red scars on our souls.

  This Slow-Gathering Storm would be nonfiction, the story of Gillian Strauss and his murderous rampage. About the furthest thing from a romance Amelia could imagine. But that was okay. Amelia decided that she didn’t have the words to be a writer, nor the discipline, nor the ability to translate her thoughts onto paper the way some people did. People like Nicky.

  What she could do, though, was research. In the weeks that followed that night, in between her victim’s therapy sessions at the Justice Center, she became quite proficient with her computer. There was much to learn, much to find out. Strauss was from somewhere. He had a family. Friends.

  They would get to the bottom of the Gillian Strauss story.

  To that end, Nicky had put together a book proposal that
had gotten an immediate response from two publishers. And as they sat in the USAir jet in late January, waiting for takeoff from Hopkins International Airport in Cleveland, heading to New York, it looked to Amelia as if she might have a book in her future after all.

  ‘Ready?’ Nicky asked. He wore a navy wool suit, a burgundy tie. He looked like a million bucks.

  ‘Ready,’ she replied.

  She buckled her seat belt, closed her eyes, gripped the armrests, waited for the roar of the engines. And found that she was. Definitely.

  Amelia St John could honestly say that she was ready for anything.

  Epilogue

  Time Present, Time Past

  63

  DR MARSH HUNG up the phone, made a brief notation on the ledger in front of him. He had spoken to the bank in Cleveland, and was told that their instructions had been to keep mailing the money every month until the account was depleted, an account to which a Mr Thomas Macavity had suddenly stopped making deposits.

  Marsh had never met Mr Macavity, had never seen him visit the woman. Nor anyone else, for that matter. She had no family, no friends.

  Sad, he thought. And now this.

  Marsh rose from his desk, filed the report.

  Then walked down the hall and stepped into Room 56.

  She sat, as always, looking out the window, her shiny gray hair pulled back from her face, lashed into a bow. A girlish thing to do, Marsh had always thought. It made her look younger, even more vulnerable, than her delicate features allowed. Today the bow was lemon yellow. Marsh, who was in his early sixties, still felt a rush of attraction for her. She had just celebrated her fortieth birthday, if celebrate was indeed the proper term.

  Marsh sat on the edge of the bed, studied her. She did not acknowledge his presence, but that was nothing new. Soon Alice Jilek stepped into the room and placed a hand on his shoulder. Alice was the new head of admissions for the Fostoria Clinic. ‘Have you told her?’ Alice asked softly.