‘Don’t tell him. Stick with two. He doesn’t need to know more than that.’
But she wonders what the point is of withholding that information. Two victims or four – what’s the difference to him? He heard about Vern on the radio. Maybe he’s heard about the others too.
‘It’s four in total.’
His eyes widen and his jaw drops. ‘Four? You’re shitting me, right? Four? Jesus Christ, girl, what’s gotten into you? What did these people do to you?’
She doesn’t know how to answer that. They were available, that’s all. They were in the right place at the right time. At least for Erin they were. But can she tell him that? Of course not. That would just sound crazy.
But the true story would sound even crazier.
Says Bruce, ‘You know the cops will be chasing your ass, don’t you? I mean seriously hunting you down, man. Four people on the slab because of you? Five-O will be crapping theirselves over that. That makes you Public Enemy Number One, girl. And that makes you worth something.’
She can almost see the dollar signs in his eyes. The plans being formulated in the brain cells that the drugs haven’t destroyed yet. He’s seeing big money. Enough to buy a ton of drugs and stay wasted forever.
‘Fuck,’ he says dreamily, his gaze drifting. ‘I don’t believe this.’
‘You need to get ready to make a move, Erin.’
The warning unnerves her. A move? What kind of move am I supposed to make against a junkie armed with a gun? Is he serious?
Bruce snaps back into reality. He starts looking around him.
Erin narrows her eyes. What’s he searching for?
‘It’s going to be soon, Erin. Before it’s too late. Be ready on my signal.’
Signal? What kind of fucking signal? What’s he going to do, fire a starting pistol in my ear?
‘Turn around,’ says Bruce.
‘What? Why?’
Bruce glares at her. ‘Because I said so, is why. Now turn the fuck around.’
She turns, so that she’s now facing the disgusting bed. From behind comes the sound of drawers being opened and closed.
‘I can see him, Erin. I’ll be your eyes. Are you ready?’
She twists her head slightly to the left. She can just see her coat out of the corner of her eye, and she tries to throw it a question in her expression: Ready for what?
She doesn’t know whether he understands her query, but he comes back with a response: ‘When he’s not looking, you need to attack, hard and fast. Do you hear me, Erin? Are you ready?’
No. I’m not ready. I can’t do this. What are you talking about?
But then there is no more time for debate, because the order arrives, loud and clear.
‘NOW, ERIN! GO, GO, GO!’
It’s as if she is not in control of her body. The words in her ear act like hypnotic suggestions. She cannot defy them. She doesn’t know what form her attack will take, but suddenly she’s spinning around, ready to pounce, ready to jump on this sonofabitch’s back and rip his throat out, ready to—
But that’s impossible. Because Bruce doesn’t have his back to her. He is not rummaging in drawers. He has found what he wanted and is already facing her. And before she can take a single step forward he is lifting his gun hand again and a snarl is forming on his lips and his eyes are bursting with the heat of death, and he is about to shoot, about to kill…
‘What the fuck?’ he screams, his voice shrill and scared and angry. ‘What the fuck are you doing? I told you. I fucking told you!’
He steps right up to her. Puts the cold steel muzzle to her temple. Presses it hard against her skull. If she were thinking logically now she would stand stock still and she would pray and she would plead and she would hope for mercy.
But she’s not thinking logically. She is breaking inside. Snapping. Not because of Bruce. Bruce is secondary now. Bruce is an irrelevance.
She is not even aware of Bruce as she pulls away from him and turns toward her jacket on the floor and unleashes her fury.
‘What the fuck was that? Are you trying to get me killed? Are you trying to keep me from my baby? Why did you do that?’
She expects an apology at least. An admission of error, maybe. What she gets is laughter.
He laughs uproariously in her ear. This is what he finds funny. Sick, insane situations like this are what floats his boat. He finds this hilarious.
‘NOO!’ she screams. ‘STOP IT! STOP IT!’
And the laughter stops. In an instant. No tailing off or fading away. Just a dead stop, as though he has turned off his microphone.
She stares at the coat, at the brooch. She is panting heavily, like a lioness that has just chased down a gazelle. And like that lioness she could tear someone limb from limb right now.
And then she remembers she is not alone.
She turns to look at Bruce, and she sees in him what she would expect to see in anyone who has just witnessed a woman shrieking at an invisible companion – a woman who, not too long ago, was hammering the life out of a man before carving up his head. She sees in Bruce’s eyes the uncertainty that anyone would feel in the presence of sheer insanity.
Bruce doesn’t speak for a long time. It’s as though he’s not sure how to handle this. Not sure what he’s gotten himself into here. This is beyond his wildest experience, beyond his understanding. She can tell he’s afraid, the fear arising from the certainty he is not dealing with a rational being.
‘You need to turn around now,’ he tells her. His voice is not forceful, but quiet and tremulous. Despite that, she knows she must obey, because Bruce is even more likely to kill her now. He is scared of what he doesn’t understand, and will gladly put a bullet in this untamable creature rather than risk falling victim to it.
So she does as she is told, and when he orders her to lie on the bed she does that without hesitation. And when he tells her to stretch out like a starfish so that he can tie her limbs to the corners of the bed using the cord he has just found in one of his drawers, she does that too. And when he pushes a cloth into her mouth and ties it in place with a second cloth, she doesn’t try to fight it.
And when Bruce leaves the apartment, leaves her alone with her face buried in his grease-stained pillow, she tries to come to terms with the near certainty that she will never see her baby again.
5.22 PM
Doyle taps his fingers on his desk and stares at his bobble-headed leprechaun. It perturbs him that it was so recently and so intimately interfered with. It perturbs him even more that he’s perturbed by such a minor thing. Better not tell Vanessa, he thinks. She’d have a field day with that confession. Tell me about your childhood, she would say. Tell me about what other little flexible possessions of yours were interfered with.
She’s good, he thinks. Vanessa the shrink. She’s good with the questions, good with her technique. She seems unflappable, with the patience of a saint. Every time Doyle has gone to watch her through the two-way mirror, he has been impressed by how professional she seems, how in control. He’s glad he’s not across the table from her, the subject of her scrutiny. He feels he would break down in seconds, tell her everything she wants to know, whether she asks directly about it or not.
But Albert is better.
Albert is a paragon of secrecy. He would make a great spy, able to withstand the most probing of interrogation techniques. He’s giving nothing away except his love for numbers, Edifix construction sets and the water coolers. And the funny thing is, Doyle finds himself rooting for Albert. Perverse though it seems given that there’s a possible corpse at the bottom of all this, Doyle will almost let out a cheer if Albert manages to withstand the psychological shenanigans of the mind-prober sitting opposite him.
Doyle doesn’t think he’ll tell Vanessa about those thoughts either.
Doyle’s phone rings, and he picks it up.
‘Cal? It’s Marcus.’
Sergeant Marcus Wilson at the desk downstairs. Doyle suddenly realizes that he’s we
ll into the next four-to-eight shift already, and with that realization comes an immense feeling of tiredness. He has not been home for over twenty-four hours, and has been without sleep for even longer. He needs sleep, he needs his bed, he needs his family.
‘Hey, Marcus, what’s up?’
‘Got a call here from a guy says he wants to talk to whoever’s in charge of the murder investigation.’
Mentally, Doyle sighs. Whenever a homicide hits the news, the bedbugs come out in droves. They all know something. They’ve all got a story to tell. They’ve all got a theory.
‘He say which murder investigation?’
‘Nope. Says he’s got some hot information, though. You wanna take the call?’
I have a choice? thinks Doyle. ‘I guess so, Marcus. Patch him through, will ya?’
Doyle waits while the connection is made.
‘Detective Doyle. Can I help you?’
‘Y-yeah. I think so. They say you’re in charge of the murder investigation. Is that right?’
‘Depends. Which murder are we talking about here?’
Give them nothing – that’s the rule. Don’t volunteer any info, because this could be a newspaper reporter or some such. Let them show their hand first.
‘Murders plural,’ says the caller. ‘Four of them, to be exact.’
And now Doyle suddenly forgets his tiredness. Now he is sitting bolt upright, pen in hand to take notes. This could be a shot in the dark, but something tells Doyle it’s not.
‘Four murders? Would you care to be a little more specific?’
‘You know what I’m talking about. Actually no, maybe you don’t. It’s prob’ly too soon. Maybe you only know about three of them. Am I right, Detective? You know about three murders, all done by the same killer?’
Doyle knows he has to dance the dance. This could still be a fishing expedition. This could still be a reporter who suspects there’s a serial killer on the loose, but isn’t certain about the numbers involved. Try four to begin with. If that doesn’t work, try another number. Keep going until you hit the jackpot.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ he says, ‘but do you mind telling me the purpose of your call? You got some information you’d like to pass on to me?’
A snort of laughter. Then: ‘Oh, yeah. I got information. Man, I got the best information money can buy.’
So that’s it, thinks Doyle. This guy’s looking to make a few bucks. Okay, well let’s see what he’s got.
‘Sir, if you know something about a case we’re working on—’
‘Let’s cut the crap, shall we, Detective? We both know what we’re talking about here. A bunch of dead bodies, all killed by the same nutso woman, all with weird shit cut into their heads. Ring any bells with you, Detective Doyle?’
Ding-ding-ding. Yessir, those bells are ringing loud and clear. And now Doyle is spinning in his chair and waving his arms frantically at Tommy LeBlanc, who is too engrossed in his reports to notice – that is, until Doyle picks up his bobble-headed leprechaun and throws it at him.
Doyle gestures to LeBlanc to pick up his own phone and connect to the same line. ‘Maybe,’ says Doyle into the receiver. ‘You mind telling me where you heard about this?’
‘Straight from the horse’s mouth. The woman herself.’
Doyle hears the pride in the man’s voice. The smugness that comes from believing he’s way ahead of the cops on the biggest case in the city. Which Doyle is starting to think might be the truth.
‘Wait a minute. This woman, whoever she is, told you she committed some murders? Why would she do that?’
‘Don’t matter why. You interested in doing business with me or not?’
‘I like to know who I’m doing business with. Who are you?’
‘Far as this goes, you can call me Bruce. Just so you don’t go wasting any precious police time tracking me down, it ain’t my real name.’
Doyle looks across at LeBlanc, who just raises his eyebrows. He has heard only a fraction of the conversation, and doesn’t know what the hell is going on.
‘Okay, Bruce. But what you have to realize is that we get a lot of calls like this. People claiming to know a lot more than they do, and hitting us for handouts.’
‘I don’t care what you get. This is the real deal. I know who’s doing these murders.’
‘I’d like to believe you, Bruce, but I gotta be sure. You’re gonna have to give me something more. All you’ve said so far is that it’s a woman, which already is starting to sound a little far-fetched, if you know what I mean.’
‘Yeah, well, you haven’t met this crazy bitch. You haven’t seen what she can do.’
The line goes quiet for a second. Doyle exchanges glances with LeBlanc again. They both sense this could be the break they’ve been waiting for.
Bruce comes back: ‘All right, you want proof? There’s a vacant lot on East Sixth, opposite a place selling automobile spares. Right next to the lot is an empty tenement, only it ain’t so empty now, if you catch my drift. Check it out. See what this nice lady did. Nobody else knows about this, not even you, right? So go see, then maybe we can talk. Catch you later, Detective.’
‘Wait,’ says Doyle, but he’s too late: the line has gone dead. Doyle puts the receiver down and stares at LeBlanc. LeBlanc puts his own receiver down and stares right back.
And then they spring into action.
5.45 PM
‘One hand, Erin. That’s all it takes. One hand.’
She tries to yell back, but all she can manage through the cloth stuffed into her mouth is a muffled, unintelligible sound. But still she tries to inject all the venom she can into that sound.
Ever since Bruce left the apartment, she has been desperately attempting to pull her hands free from the cords that bind them to the bed rails. She is fully aware – Lord knows, she has heard it enough times over her earpiece – that all she needs to do is get one hand free, and then she can untie the knots holding her other limbs. But it’s not working. Her wrists are sore and swollen, which is only making things worse.
‘Come on, Erin. He’ll be back soon. He’ll—’
Another stifled yell. ‘Shut up! Shut the fuck up!’ is what she’s trying to tell him. She wants to know why the hell she should listen to his advice any longer, especially after the stunt he pulled earlier. She still finds it hard to believe he did that. Bruce could have blown her head off. He was standing right there, with his gun pointed at her, and he could have shot her dead. Why the hell was she put in that situation?
And the worst thing of all? The way he laughed. The way he thought it was the funniest thing ever that he almost got her killed. As if her life means nothing to him, just as he said Georgia’s life means nothing to him either. She is starting to believe that now. He has no feeling for others, no empathy. He is a true psychopath, with no comprehension of the pain of his playthings. Like a kid tearing the wings of flies. He is interested, fascinated, but cares nothing for any agony or distress they might feel.
And what that tells her is that she is on her own. She cannot rely on anything this man might tell her. All that stuff about protecting her, getting her through this, making her stronger – it was all horseshit. So far he has done nothing to help her – quite the reverse, in fact. He will bring about her death if it suits him, if it amuses him, and he will do the same to Georgia.
It is a profoundly sobering and frightening realization. Much as she has never fully trusted this man anyway, she has always believed he would at least do his utmost to keep her alive until the end of his sick game.
But that also puzzles her.
Isn’t the game the whole point of this? Whether or not he has an ounce of compassion in his body for Erin and Georgia, doesn’t he at least want to see this play out to the end? Six bodies, he said. He was very specific about that. And so far he has only four.
So why endanger his plan? Why put his only means of executing that plan in the path of such immediate danger?
It doesn’t make sense.
But none of this makes any sense. And now it doesn’t matter, because the game is over anyway. Bruce is going to sell her to the cops for whatever drug money he can get. And that means she can never complete her mission. She cannot save Georgia.
‘NOOO!’ she tries to yell, and cannot even do that. In her frustration, she yanks furiously at the ropes again. Twists and turns her hand this way and that, feeling the cord bite into her flesh, feeling the burning as it sloughs off the top layer of her skin. She bites down on the cloth, tears running down her cheeks and onto the grimy pillow that smells of sweat and grease and cigarette smoke.
‘You can do it, Erin. Come on. You can do this.’
But she has already given up. She is exhausted and racked with pain and guilt and the sordidness of it all. This is the end. This is the end.
When she hears Bruce come through the door, she almost finds it too much just to turn her head and look at him. There is a stupid smile on his face.
‘Won’t be long now,’ he says. ‘I gave the cops a heads-up. Sent them to check out what you did. Soon as they see that, they’ll take me a little more serious. Won’t be long now, girl.’
No, she thinks. It won’t be long. Not long until you bring about the death of my little girl. You have no idea what you’re doing.
No idea at all.
6.08 PM
They exercise caution going in.
A call like that, it could be a trap. Something designed to lure cops into a situation where there is a gun or several pointed right at them.
Some people are weird like that.
But Doyle senses it’s the genuine article. Trailing behind all the ESU cops with their body armor and high-powered weapons as they crash into the building, he has the feeling that they will find one thing and one thing only in here.
A body.
And there it is.
Collapsed on the stairs. Hunched over there as if he has just fallen asleep. Flashlights play over him as the cops fan out to search the rest of the building.
But this is all, thinks Doyle. This is all we will find. All we are meant to find. This killer is careful, and works with precision. A dead body, a number cut into the forehead – there, over to you, detectives. Go figure it out.
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