Cry Baby

by David Jackson

  ‘Fuck!’ she screams into the dead driver’s face, spittle flying at him. ‘Fuck you!’

  ‘Nice job, Erin. Messy, but nice.’

  ‘Fuck you too.’

  She can feel something running down her face, and she’s not sure if it’s tears or blood. She could be crying, yes, because she feels so enraged and so distraught and so fucking emotional right now. Every single emotion she has seems to be bursting out of her simultaneously, including love. Love for her baby, because that’s what this is all about, isn’t it? That’s why I’m doing this. That’s why this piece of shit had to die, and actually, you know what, I don’t feel much regret over this one. This is a world apart from the poor homeless guy. This one is scum. This one asked for it.

  She takes a moment. Tries to talk herself down. Tries to give her rational mind a look-in. She needs to get out of here.

  She opens up the glove compartment. It’s full of junk. Sunglasses, pens, business cards, candy wrappers. But also a small packet of tissues. She rips it open. Does what she can to wipe the blood from her face and hands.

  ‘Don’t get too clean, Erin. Not just yet.’

  She knows what that means. Her work here isn’t quite done.

  She looks again at the driver. His eyes are wide and fixed straight ahead, as if staring in terror at an oncoming truck about to plow into his car and crush him to a pulp. Blood is still oozing out of that huge gash across his neck. His face is ghostly white.

  She picks up the knife again, examines its deadly edge and sharp point. She knows what’s coming next, and strangely she is not so repulsed this time. She thinks it is partly because she has done this before, but mainly because of what this man represents. He is a predator. He seeks out vulnerable women and tries to subject them to his evil will.

  Didn’t I give him a chance? Didn’t I tell him I wanted to get out of the car? He could have been nice to me. He could have dropped me off somewhere and driven away. Why did he have to be so disgusting and violent? Why did he have to choose that path?

  Well, you did. And actually I’m grateful, because you don’t deserve to live and my daughter does. It’s a good trade, because her life is worth infinitely more than yours.

  ‘I’m ready,’ she says.

  When he gives her the instruction she hardly hesitates. A few swift strokes, and she’s done. She even thinks she carries it out with a little more gusto this time. Her cuts perhaps a little deeper – scraping against his skull, in fact.

  She cleans herself up again with the remaining tissues. Wipes the knife and returns it to her pocket. She looks out onto the street. Deserted, quiet, dark. As though nothing has happened. Everyone asleep in their beds, unaware of the sexual assault, the violence, the slaying, the mutilation that has taken place just yards away from their cozy bolt-holes.

  She gets out of the car and scans her surroundings, double-checking that she remains unseen. She realizes she’s still on East Tenth Street, just a couple of blocks away from her home. Which is useful seeing as how she needs to cover the distance while dripping in a man’s blood.

  She puts her head down and starts to walk. Hopes that nobody notices her, nobody sees the mess she’s in.

  She gets only a few yards from the car when the noise blares behind her, startling the shit out of her.

  The car horn.

  For the briefest of moments she imagines the driver sitting there, pushing in desperation on the horn, doing whatever he can to summon help, someone to get him to a hospital. He’s sitting there and he’s moaning and gasping for breath and he’s leaning on the horn button, making it send its plaintive cry into the night for him.

  And then she shakes her head. He’s dead. I know he’s dead. He must have fallen forward, that’s all. That’s all it is.

  But still she runs for home, not once looking back.

  4.07 AM

  ‘So tell me again why you ain’t got a girlfriend.’

  This from Doyle. He’s sitting in the police sedan next to LeBlanc, taking a break from trying to find anyone who knows anything about the demise of Vern. Teasing LeBlanc is a lot more entertaining.

  ‘I didn’t tell you the first time.’

  ‘Well now’s your golden opportunity. You got… you know… problems?’

  LeBlanc stares at him, and Doyle finds it hard to keep his face straight.

  ‘No, I haven’t got problems. What do you mean, problems? What kind of problems?’

  ‘I don’t know. Any kind of problems. Problems of an intimate nature.’

  LeBlanc continues to stare. ‘No, I don’t have intimate problems. And if I did, you’d be the last person I’d be confiding in.’

  ‘Well, so, what is it then? What’s holding you back?’

  ‘Nothing’s holding me back. You think a guy’s always got to have a girlfriend? Didn’t you ever have a time when you were without a girl? Or can’t you remember that far back?’

  Doyle smiles. He’s not much older than LeBlanc, but he’s not going to let the discussion be deflected onto him.

  ‘I remember, and actually no, I was never without a girlfriend. Sometimes I even had several at the same time. You, on the other hand, seem disturbingly uninterested in women.’

  ‘Disturbing? What’s disturbing about it? Why does that bother you so much?’

  LeBlanc’s voice is becoming comically high-pitched, and now Doyle really is struggling to contain his amusement.

  ‘Doesn’t bother me at all,’ says Doyle.

  ‘Well, good.’

  ‘Can’t speak for other people, though. All those rumors…’

  ‘Rumors? What are you talking about, rumors?’

  ‘The rumors. You know how other cops can be, right? The way they talk? Somebody says something, somebody else believes it, and suddenly it spreads like wildfire. Everyone ends up believing something that has absolutely no basis in fact. It always amazes me how that kind of thing happens.’

  LeBlanc sits bolt upright, all ears now. ‘Wait. Who’s been saying this? What rumors?’

  Doyle’s confession that he’s just made all this up is sitting on the tip of tongue. He’s about to let it out when something else demands his attention. It’s the car radio, which has been blathering in the background all the time they’ve been sitting here. Experienced cops develop an innate radar, capable of filtering out the noise while remaining subconsciously alert to items of interest. And now Doyle’s radar is definitely pinging.

  ‘Eight Adam to Central, K.’

  ‘Go ahead, Eight Adam.’

  ‘Central, confirm the report of a DOA in that car on East Tenth Street.’

  ‘Ten-four, Adam. Stay with it, we’ll put the calls out.’

  Doyle looks across at LeBlanc. ‘That’s just a coupla blocks from here.’ He grabs up the radio and requests more details. And what he hears sends a tingle up his spine.

  ‘Central,’ he says, ‘show us as responding, K.’

  As he fires up the engine, LeBlanc says to him, ‘You don’t think…’ and leaves it hanging in the air like that, because that’s exactly what they both think.

  They get to the scene in minutes. The first thing they hear when they get out of the car is the steady mournful drone of a car horn. There is a small gathering of people – not nearly so many as there was for Vern – but only because word has not gotten around yet that this is a homicide scene. Anyone else who has woken up probably thinks it’s just a faulty car alarm.

  A uniform approaches the detectives, greets them, then leads them over to the Ford sedan.

  ‘The horn going off when you got here?’ Doyle asks. He has to raise his voice to be heard above the noise.

  ‘Yeah,’ says the uniform. ‘That’s why the vic was found.’ He jerks his thumb toward a stout balding man standing on the sidewalk. ‘Guy over there is the superintendent of that apartment building. He lives on the ground floor at the front. The noise woke him up. When it wouldn’t stop, he came out to tell the driver to shut the fuck up. That’s when he fou
nd the body.’

  Doyle and LeBlanc try to peer into the black interior of the vehicle.

  ‘Here,’ says the uniform, handing Doyle a flashlight.

  Doyle shines the light through the window. He can see a figure slumped onto the steering wheel, plus a lot of blood, but that’s about it.

  ‘Anyone move the body?’

  ‘No. The super says he opened the car door, but closed it again as soon as he saw what was inside. When we got here I checked the vic for vitals, but that’s all.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s wait for crime scene. Let them take some pictures and check it out before we move him.’

  He hands the flashlight back to the officer, then he and LeBlanc head over to the man who reported this.

  The building superintendent is wearing a thick trench coat over pajama pants and sneakers. He rubs his jowls nervously as the detectives approach.

  ‘Mister…?’ says Doyle.

  ‘Stavropoulos.’

  ‘Mister Stavropoulos, we’re detectives from the Eighth Precinct. Can you tell us what happened here tonight?’

  ‘The noise. Can’t you stop the noise? I have sensitive ears. Noises like this make me crazy, you know?’

  ‘We will, just as soon as we can. I understand you were the first one to find the victim. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes, it’s correct. It was the noise, you understand? I can’t sleep through noise like that. This is a noisy city, I’m used to noise. But this, right outside my window? Nobody could sleep through this. You think you could sleep through this?’

  ‘No,’ says Doyle. ‘I’m sure I couldn’t. And that’s why you came out here, right?’

  ‘Yes. I looked out of my window. I put my light on so that he could see I was looking out of my window, but he wouldn’t stop. I didn’t understand why he was doing it. So I came out here. I’m not afraid. I can handle punks. But still he didn’t stop with the horn.’

  ‘So you went over to the car.’

  ‘Yes. Even though the noise was killing my ears I went over there. I knocked on the car window, but the man didn’t even look at me. I thought, this man’s drunk. He’s drunk or he’s on drugs, or he’s had a heart attack or something. I never thought… well, I never thought it would be this. All the blood and everything. Horrible. I never saw anything like that before.’

  It’s LeBlanc who puts the next question: ‘Mr Stavropoulos. What time was this, when you first woke up?’

  Stavropoulos looks at LeBlanc with a slightly surprised expression, as though he’s just realized he’s there.

  ‘Are you a detective too?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I am,’ says LeBlanc.

  ‘You look too young to be a detective. They let you work on big cases like this?’

  ‘Yes, they do. So what time did you get woken up?’

  Stavropoulos thinks for a moment. ‘About a quarter to four. Unheard of, right? Nobody should be woken up at a time like that. But the noise, you know?’

  ‘I understand. And then you looked out of your window, right? Did you see anyone on the street?’

  ‘Not a soul.’

  ‘What about when you went outside? See anybody then?’

  Stavropoulos shakes his head. ‘Not a soul. Whoever did this, they just vanished. Like a ghost.’

  Sure, thinks Doyle. A ghost. Only this guy wasn’t frightened to death. Someone very solid went to work on him.

  They thank Stavropoulos, then question a few of the other bystanders while the Crime Scene Unit detectives arrive and do their stuff. Eventually, they get the all-clear to take a closer look at the body.

  ‘So are we taking bets?’ says LeBlanc as they approach the car again. ‘On this being our Zorro guy?’

  ‘I got a bad feeling about this, Tommy,’ says Doyle. ‘Something tells me we’re in for a long night.’

  At the car, a squat Chinese man straightens up from his examination of the interior, then turns his bespectacled eyes on the detectives.

  ‘Hey, Norm,’ says Doyle. ‘How’s tricks?’

  Norman Chin, one of the city’s leading Medical Examiners, gestures helplessly to his left ear.

  ‘What?’

  Doyle raises his voice. ‘What’ve we got?’

  ‘What’s that?’ says Chin. ‘Speak up.’

  Doyle frowns, then steps up his volume even further. ‘You okay to move the body? Cut off this noise?’

  Chin looks at the corpse, then back at Doyle. ‘You know what, I think I should pull the body back and kill the noise.’

  Doyle nods. ‘That’s a great idea, Norm.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said I think that’s— Are you yanking my chain?’

  A mischievous grin appears on the medic’s face. ‘Who, me?’

  Chin holds up a wait-a-second finger. Leaning into the car again, he gently pulls the driver back into his seat. The horn stops, and from behind Doyle comes the sound of Stavropoulos thanking God for an end to his torment.

  Doyle’s eyes remain fixed on the victim. He holds his breath as it is raised into view. Someone angles a light straight into the driver’s bloodied face.

  ‘Jesus,’ says LeBlanc.

  Doyle takes a step closer, not quite sure he’s seeing correctly. But he’s not mistaken. The cuts are there, all right. Slap bang in the middle of the man’s forehead. But it’s not what Doyle expected. It’s much, much worse:

  ‘You see what I see?’ says Doyle.

  ‘Yeah,’ LeBlanc breathes. ‘Yeah, I do.’

  ‘We were wrong. About the homeless guy. It wasn’t a Z. It was a 2.’

  The two detectives take their eyes off the victim and look at each other.

  ‘So,’ says LeBlanc. ‘If Vern was number two, and this guy’s number three…’

  Doyle finishes the sentence: ‘Then where the fuck is number one?’

  4.25 AM

  Numb.

  That’s how she feels. Detached, somehow. As though she’s not really here. Just looking out through somebody else’s eyes, the way that man looks out at the world through the brooch pinned to her coat.

  She has been sitting here on a chair since she got home. A wooden chair rather than the sofa, because she’s still covered in blood and doesn’t want to ruin her furniture. Doesn’t want to soil it with the blood she has just spilled.

  And she spilled a lot of it. She can still feel it gushing out of the man’s neck. Hitting her in the face, hot and wet and somehow alive.

  She knows she should wash it off, but it almost seems a futile gesture. Like wandering through the remains of a house that’s been smashed into pieces by a hurricane, and then picking up an overturned chair, as if that somehow restores order.

  She’s not sure she can ever remove this blood. Not completely. Even if she could wash a hundred times, she will still feel as though it is there. As if it has seeped into her skin and become as permanent as a tattoo – an eternal reminder of what she has done.

  And yet she is not as upset as she was after the homeless guy. This man was garbage. Scum. He deserved to die.

  Did he? Did he deserve it? Does anyone deserve to die?

  Oh, Jesus, Erin. Let’s not get philosophical about this. You don’t know what that piece of shit would have done. You don’t know what he’s done to other women either. Maybe he would have raped you and then murdered you. You did what you had to do to protect yourself and get out of there.

  Yes, but I got into his car in the first place. Doesn’t that make me at least a little bit guilty?

  Why should it? Are you saying girls shouldn’t wear short skirts or smile at strangers? Next you’ll be saying they shouldn’t be revealing their ankles either. How far do you want to take an argument like that, Erin? No means no, end of.

  Yes, but…

  Oh, fuck.

  Listen to me. Setting up a debating society in my own head. As if it’s not already crowded enough in there with Mister Voiceover.

  ‘Are you all right, Erin?’

  Right on cue. Right on fucki
ng cue. Come on in, join the party, why don’t you? Put your two cents in. Not that you need an invitation. Since when has that stopped you? When did you ever stop and consider that the interior of a woman’s head is the very last place you should be intruding.

  No fucking manners, some people.