by Mark McNease
Kyle had never fired a gun in his life. He’d never held a gun. And yet, here he was in the basement of a townhouse owned by one of the most vicious and elusive serial killers New York City had ever seen. That killer was dead, and Kyle had killed him.
Linda stirred, moaning on the floor.
“She’s alive,” Danny said.
“He’s not,” said Kyle, looking into the open, lifeless eyes of Diedrich Keller. And then he said, simply, “Call the police.”
Chapter 40
Kyle wished it had been a dream. He lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, afraid to look at the digital clock by the television. A muted sitcom re-run played on one of a hundred channels, the light from the screen flickering into the room. Danny was asleep beside him. Or at least he was pretending to be. Kyle stayed silent, not wanting to know if Danny, too, was wide awake on his side, reliving the last moments of the night before.
Kyle was consumed with guilt. Not for killing Diedrich Keller—lives had been saved by that gunshot, immeasurable pain had been spared his victims and his victims’ families. But guilt for chasing killers in the first place. It had become a pastime for him, a way of amusing himself. Bo Sweetzer at Pride Lodge, Kieran Stipling from the Katherine Pride Gallery, Charlotte Gaines at CrossCreek Farm, and now the deadliest of them all, Diedrich Kristof Keller III. Dead by Kyle’s own hand in an air-conditioned basement.
He’d thought the interrogations would never end. He, Linda and Danny spent most of the night at the police station giving statements, reliving what had happened, and answering over and over why they had not gone to the police with their suspicions. What was he supposed to tell them? That it was too much fun chasing killers on their own? That was the real answer, the answer that shocked him, like realizing something about ourselves we would never tell anyone and had not wanted to know.
It had to stop. Now was as good a time as any, too. So many things were about to change. So many shifts and rearrangements in life. Now was his chance to turn away from the dark side, to just be a personal assistant, amateur photographer, friend and husband. To live a normal life. Could he do it? Would he do it?
The answer is what had him awake at 3:00 a.m., blinking in the darkness.
The answer was no.
Epilogue
July came and went without the kind of heat Kyle was accustomed to in New York’s summer months. On the whole it was shaping up to be one of the coolest summers they’d had in a decade. He was fine with that; the heat, stench and humidity of Manhattan between June and September were usually overwhelming. But not this year. This year had been different in so many ways.
He had killed a man. He’d pursued murderers before, but never had it come to this: struggling with someone who was determined to end his life in a feverish bid to save his own, wresting Linda’s gun away, and then … without thinking about it, without even intending it, shooting Diedrich Keller in the heart. He didn’t know he’d shot him in the heart until later, when an autopsy was performed. But he knew immediately Keller was dead, and he knew he had killed him when he lifted himself up from the floor, with Danny behind him and Linda just beginning to regain consciousness. It was a scene he would relive in his mind for years to come, perhaps for all the years he had left on the planet.
It was now August. The Pride parade had snaked down Fifth Avenue over a month ago and displayed its explosion of color without them. Linda would simply have to visit again, or find another parade to go to, although Kyle suspected she never would. For her, too, the memory of what happened had quickly become a stain. There was no way any of them was going to a parade after the events of that Thursday in the basement of an Upper East Side townhouse. By Friday morning everyone knew the Pride Killer was dead. The police knew. The media knew—including Kyle’s boss Imogene, who for once in her life had the good sense not to press him for an exclusive interview. At least not until the following week. He turned her down.
The three of them gave exhaustive statements. The detectives they met took a very dim view of them pursuing a serial killer on their own. There was also the issue of Linda’s firearm. New York City was famous for its gun laws and the whole thing had left them in a gray area. Kyle was the one doing the shooting. Kyle was not licensed to have, hold, shoot, or own a gun. But Kyle had somehow gotten the gun from Keller and ended the career of a killer who had confounded the NYPD for seven years. At the mayor’s prodding, any idea of charges concerning the weapon were dropped. Kyle was hailed as a hero, a position he never sought or wanted to hold. It had made for a stressful, dreadful weekend, with the time they had to spend with Linda its only saving grace.
Linda Sikorsky had no problem with a dead serial killer. She also did not envy Kyle’s sudden fame as the man who stopped the Pride Killer—a claim he would never make anyway. She had encountered many terrible things in her years as a cop and was able to put most of her feelings aside, down where she kept the fear she’d known on the job, the doubt, and the sorrow of having told so many people their loved ones were dead. She also had bigger concerns. Her wife was waiting for her in Phoenix with her dying mother-in-law. Life did not stop because a madman died quickly and deservedly in a New York City basement.
The three of them spent the rest of that weekend going around the city. They shopped, they sight-saw, they even went to a Broadway show for Saturday matinee. None of it made them forget what had happened, but it helped. Nothing could be changed, but Linda’s time with them was limited and they spent it having as much enjoyment as they could. Then, early Monday, they said goodbye on the curb outside their apartment building as Linda got into a taxi and headed to the airport. Nothing would ever be quite the same.
In the six weeks since, parts of their world had shifted dramatically. Margaret Bowman had her going-away party, and it was a huge success. Also a very tearful one, as guest after guest toasted the old woman and offered anecdotes about what Margaret’s Passion meant to them—a first date, a wedding anniversary, the signing of a contract to star in a movie. Danny did not buy a new suit after all and doubted he would be suit-shopping anytime soon. He gave the last toast of the night.
Two weeks later they got a call from Linda. She was still in Phoenix with Kirsten, making funeral arrangements. Dot McClellan had died the night before, quietly, as is usually the case with someone riddled with cancer and pumped full of opiates. All in all it had been a cool but very hard summer.
Now Linda and Kirsten were back in their small house in rural New Jersey. Linda was back at her vintage-everything store. Kirsten was taking pottery classes and wondering what she wanted to do now that she’d sold her real estate business. One thing she knew: she never again wanted to stand in anyone’s living room but her own, selling a prospective buyer on the neighborhood and the schools. She wanted something new, something very different in her life. She had Linda, they had the house, and the future looked interesting since she, too, had spread her wings and taken a leap into the unknown.
The four of them were talking, in very early conversation, about going on vacation together. A belated, delayed double honeymoon. They’d not decided where, but were hoping to finally arrange it the following spring. As they found themselves living again, laughing, letting the immediate past move further and further away, they thought a shared vacation might be just the thing to really give them distance from it all. In the meantime, Kyle had much to do—learning to be a landlord at the building they now owned, soothing his mother’s feelings over being bought out (she took the deal, knowing it was best for them all), and somehow becoming the man he had been before he ended Diedrich Keller’s life. He wasn’t sure that was possible, but he hoped. Death had come up to him, looked him in the eye, and walked away. It was time to live again.
About the Author
Writing is the one thing I have done consistently all my life, whether it was being expressed in short fiction, long fiction, poetry, prose, plays, or children’s television scripts. It is the one thing I’ve always felt compelled to do.
Day jobs come and go, but the keyboard is forever. One day, hopefully far in the future, they’ll find me dead with my head on the space bar, having passed on to the Great Word Processor in the Sky doing what I loved to do.
Thanks to anyone and everyone who has spent some time with Kyle and the gang. I hope you’ll stop by again on their journeys, meet a new traveler or two, and keep me getting up before the sun to bring you more.
As for my personal life, I live in New York City with my husband Frank Murray and our dwindling family of cats. We have a house in the rural New Jersey countryside where we plan to move permanently someday … maybe.
Mark McNease
www.markmcnease.com