The Serialist

by David Gordon

  “God, don’t worry,” Claire said. “Lighten up. You didn’t kill anyone.” She chuckled at the thought.

  “You should see the lump on his head,” Dani said.

  Claire stood. “OK. I’m going to leave you to finish up,” she said. She shook hands with Townes, gave Robertson a kiss on the cheek, and jingled her keys at me. “I’ll check the mail and then I’ve got to run. I’ve got school.”

  “She has keys?” Dani asked as the door shut.

  “And where does she go to school?” Townes put in. “It’s after ten o’clock.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Robertson said. “She’s getting straight A’s. Right?” He asked me. I nodded and he explained to the others, “He’s her tutor.”

  Dani frowned. “We’ll discuss this later,” she told me, as Townes and Robertson went off to supervise the wrap-up.

  “There’s not much to discuss,” I said, trying to assert myself a bit. “It’s a business relationship.”

  “That’s even weirder. If you were just a normal pervert, I could understand. But this is, I don’t know what.”

  “We’re partners,” I offered.

  Dani wrinkled her nose. “Pick another word.”

  “Colleagues?”

  The door opened and Claire burst back in. Clutching the mail, she ran to my bedroom and shut the door.

  “What’s going on?” Dani asked.

  “I don’t know,” I told her. “Wait here.”

  I knocked on the door. There was no answer. I opened it slowly and stepped in, shutting it behind me. Claire had flung herself face down across the unmade bed, the mail sprawled out on the floor beside her.

  “Hey,” I said in a low voice. “What’s going on?”

  She shrugged but didn’t move, her face sunk in a pillow that I knew smelled like Dani. The whole room smelled like sex. “Come on, you can tell me,” I said, and sat down on the edge of the bed, preparing to pat her back and tell her not to mind Dani, or to thank her for standing up for me and handling everything brilliantly as usual, but then I saw the photos.

  They were spilling out of a plain manila envelope that had my name typed on it, but no stamp or return address. Claire had torn down the edge. They were eight-by-ten color prints with a white border. The one on top was Sandra Dawson. I knew because I recognized the room in the background, her bed and white dresser and on the wall the photo of a woman in a slip and lace veil. Also I could tell because she was hanging upside down with her head cut off and her entrails dangling, like the pink and white vines of a hanging plant in bloom, ending in the bright red puddle of blood that spread like a blossom on the floor.

  I reached for it, but then thought of fingerprints. “These were in the mail?” I asked. Claire nodded. I got the lawyer’s card from my pocket and used the stiff edge to push the photos apart. There were three altogether, one for each of the victims, full color head-on shots of the crime scenes I’d just witnessed, carefully composed and framed. Again, like at Sandra’s, I felt someone there, just behind me. Wherever I’d been, he had been, and whomever I saw, he visited next. Now, he was letting me know, he’d been here.

  I patted Claire on the shoulder. “I’ll be right back, OK?” She nodded into the pillow. I used the card to push the pictures back into the envelope and then used the sleeve of my robe to pick it up. I went into the living room and then the kitchen, where Dani, Townes and Robertson were sitting in the breakfast nook and drinking coffee from my mom’s mugs, brown with yellow flowers. I put the envelope in front of Townes.

  “This was in the mail.” I squeezed Dani’s shoulder. “You might not want to look.” Then I went back into the bedroom, where Claire still lay facedown.

  “Can I hug you?” I asked, kneeling beside her, and she nodded, so I did.

  47

  Who? This was the word that I repeated to myself, ceaselessly, as I ate, showered, dressed, walked around and held full conversations on completely different topics. Who? Whatever the reason for killing off Clay’s girlfriends, only someone in contact with him, or with access to his mail or prison cell, could know who the women were or the specifics of their fantasy lives with Clay. Who, then, could this be? A collaborator of course. Or else a copycat: a cop, a prison guard, a nut who somehow had access to these documents, a demented clerk in the system somewhere. Or else some kind of stalker: another jealous lover perhaps, or someone envious of Clay’s fame and female fan club. Which in turn would mean that person had been following me, stepping into my footsteps and killing each girl after I left. Each time my thoughts revolved back to this starting point, a new shot of fear burned my stomach and closed my throat and I saw Sandra’s body turning, inverted, then felt the blow to my head, and I asked myself, Who?

  And what did Whoever want from me? Was I a victim being toyed with by a sociopath, like in a Jim Thompson dime novel? A patsy being framed, like in all those Hitchcock movies? Or, like in every other thriller, including my own, was I just a clueless witness about to be eliminated, too dim to realize the truth, until I washed up dead in the next chapter? And then there was the thought I could barely let myself think, much less say aloud, the idea that would have been ridiculous just the day before: was Clay somehow innocent after all? And was the real killer back in town?

  One thing was certain—I couldn’t count on Townes for protection. He had done everything but spit on my shoes before he left, and even Robertson, my own lawyer, had made it plain when we shook hands good-bye: “You might want to tie up some loose ends now. An arrest could come anytime.”

  “Don’t worry,” Claire had added. “I’ll bail you out. This arrest thing is just a formality, right?” Robertson shrugged.

  Claire, meanwhile, was fine. Once her tears dried, she shook the horror off like a bad dream after a movie, and bounced back with the resiliency of the young, desensitized by all the media nastiness provided by people like me. She was right back at work the next day, sprawled on my couch, chewing a Twizzler. Straight from field hockey practice, she wore space-blue fractal sneakers, red kneesocks, a pleated skirt and a hoodie. Stick at her feet, and with her blond hair pulled tight to the skull and bound in a high ponytail, she looked like a cartoon warrior girl in a golden helmet.

  “I know it’s a total tragedy,” she said, gnawing her licorice, showing her red tongue, “but the value of this book in the marketplace just like tripled. I mean it already had historical interest, but let’s face it: there’s nothing like fresh bodies to give it that torn-from-the-headlines feeling.”

  “Yeah, I know that feeling,” I said. “I’ve been eating Tums for two days to get rid of it. I’m changing my name and moving to Kansas. You can have my couch.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic. You already have like six names. What would those Watergate guys do, Woodsteen and Burns? Did they run away the first time Nixon tried to kill them?”

  “Nixon didn’t chop their heads off with a cleaver. Rent the movie.”

  “You’re a writer, damn it.” She poked her Twizzler at me, like some muckraking old editor with a stogie. “At a time like this you should be working. Tracking down leads and stuff. Doing what you do best.”

  “Spare me.”

  She shrugged. “At least show up for your Clay interview tomorrow. That’s inside a prison. You’ll be nice and safe.”

  She had a point there. I did have an appointment to see Clay the next day. As was our routine, I was supposed to interview Sandra, then go up to deliver his story and collect my interview. I had written nothing, of course, reality having intervened. Even the most extreme and disturbing fantasy was a fairy tale compared to the newspaper. And what about the book, Clay’s book? Was that still a reality? For now, let’s just say I was blocked: all I could think about was not becoming a character in it. But my appointment was still on the calendar, no one had canceled, and I supposed it wasn’t a bad day to be behind bars and under armed guard, talking to the one person who I knew for sure had not attacked me, and who might even know who did. So I packe
d my bag and rode the night train and checked back into the sad motel. I tried Dani but got no answer. Perhaps she was at work, hanging naked from a pole.

  Prison, however, was not as warm and cozy as I’d hoped. Although passing through the gates was a lot less scary than walking down my block to the deli, I still felt exposed. It seemed like everyone knew who I was. I was “that guy,” and I felt both select and ashamed as people stared, muttered and then quickly looked away. I was tainted with Clay’s Disease, and as I went through security, the friskers seemed reluctant to touch me. But like some scandalous VIP at a nightclub, I was swept right through to the visitor’s waiting room, where I found Theresa Trio, tapping her toes beside the battered soda machine. She stood when she saw me.

  “Good. You’re here. They’re waiting for you.”

  “They?”

  “Carol wants to see you too. Ms. Flosky.” She was worked up about something and it made her skittish, girlish. Her eyes sparkled. “We, I mean she, has meetings with the judge and the governor’s head legal counsel later. Actually things are looking up.”

  “I’m glad the evisceration of three women has an upside for you.”

  Stung, she looked away, picking at a chip in the table. “That’s not what I meant. I’m sorry about those women. But maybe now the police will catch the real killers.”

  “The police? Please. You know who their main suspect is? Me.”

  Theresa raised her eyebrows and I laughed.

  “And what’s even scarier is that the real killer knew all about those girls, when I saw them, their addresses, everything.” I leaned in to make eye contact with her. “Who knew all that? Clay. Your poor innocent victim.”

  Theresa eyed me evenly. “Lots of people could have known. Even me.”

  Even you. I remembered the tattoos I’d seen peeking from under her clothes, the online correspondence of vampT3, the streak of perversity I’d found so intriguing, the hidden inner life. My fan. The vampire-loving freak. I asked myself, Did she know who I was after all? I answered myself, So what? I was getting dizzy. Once again, that bitter, bilious taste, the terrible taste of terror touched my tongue: a mixture of nausea, adrenaline, and Amtrak hot dog. Then the guard appeared in the door and called my name.

  “See you later,” I said. I thought she smiled weirdly at me before reaching into her bag and pulling out my book.

  48

  “Harry,” Clay said, smiling and shaking his head. Flosky sat across the table. Another plastic chair waited for me. “Wow. You look like shit. But I guess it’s all relative. Considering what you’ve been through.”

  Flosky puffed on her cigarette and peered at me through the cloud, as if reading my fortune or my character. As I took my chair, the smoke brushed over my face. I wanted to sneeze.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s been a rough few days.”

  “No doubt,” Clay went on. “We’ve been following it in the news. Now you know how I feel.” His smile widened. Flosky watched me impassively. I looked from one to the other.

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

  Flosky dropped her cigarette and ground it into the scarred linoleum. “He means you know what it feels like to be hounded by the press, brutalized by the police and suspected of a horrific crime of which you are innocent.”

  “I hope you’ve got a good lawyer,” Clay said, chuckling, but cut it short at a glance from Flosky. “Sorry.” He put his fingers to his mouth and chewed. His big white teeth seemed to cut into the gums when he smiled. “Nervous laughter,” he said. “Gallows humor, right? I don’t know what to say. I never met the girls, of course, but I feel like I did from their letters and pictures. It was very intimate in its own way, you know. Their parents, friends, families are all mourning them now. But I knew a side they never saw, a part that they only trusted me with. People don’t realize how deep that connection can be. But you do of course. You knew them all.” He sat forward. I could see the place where he’d nicked himself shaving, near the base of his throat. I could see food in his fake teeth. “You don’t happen to have that story with you, do you? The one about Sandra?”

  I jerked back, as if he’d tried to kiss me. “I didn’t fucking write it.”

  “OK, OK,” Flosky spoke up. “That’s enough. I don’t have time for this bullshit. Of course you didn’t write it. And you,” she told Clay, “shut up and let me talk.”

  “Sorry, Carol,” Clay said, and to me, “Don’t worry, bro. I won’t hold you to our deal on that one.”

  “Darian,” Flosky repeated, through a clenched jaw.

  “Sorry. Go ahead.”

  She took a breath, the kind you take while silently counting to ten, and turned to me. “You know I’ve been against this book from the beginning. Now it looks like maybe it’s turned into a whole different kind of mess. On the other hand, I admit I might have misjudged you. Anyway, we have no choice now, we’re going to have to trust each other. Three more girls have died. And your own safety is at stake.”

  “Trust me how? What are you talking about?”

  “What I’m about to tell you is privileged. The kind of thing an attorney only discusses with their client. But you’re involved, so . . . Do you know what disclosure is? In the legal sense?”

  “Sort of.”

  “The defense has the right to see all the evidence, everything the prosecution has in their files. We were privy to information that was never released to the public. Things only the cops knew. And the killer.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So I saw the photos of those murders ten years ago and read the reports. And yesterday the judge made Townes show me the reports on the new killings. They fit the profile exactly.”

  “How exactly?”

  “Like handwriting. Why do you think Townes is shitting a brick? This case made him. Now I intend to argue that the signature on these crimes is so close that the same killer must have done them all, or in any event they certainly raise enough doubt to warrant a new trial.”

  I frowned. “That’s one view, I guess.” I was unwilling to admit that the possibility had already crossed my mind. What if the creepy killer across the table from me was just a regular old creep?

  Flosky put another cigarette in her mouth and lit it, waving the match out furiously as if it were a gnat. “Whatever. I’m not going to argue my case here. What I need to tell you is this: I do believe that the Photo Killer is back. The real one. I think he’s back because of the publicity surrounding the execution, and even more so, I think he surfaced because of your book.”

  “What?”

  “These people, these psychos, whatever, they have huge egos. Does he want to get caught? No. He’s not stupid. When Darian got arrested, he was happy to go underground, to stop killing, or at least change his signature, move away, who knows, and let someone else take the blame. But the idea that someone else will get the credit, the idea that someone else will go down in history, in a book, as having done what he did? That got to him. It ate at him until he started killing again, to show the world who he really was and what he could do. Like I said, he’s not stupid, but he is crazy, and I think it’s my duty to warn you. There’s a good chance he could come after you.”

  “Me?” I sat back to consider this, and they both considered me, Flosky glumly smoking and Clay with a sadly mocking or mockingly sad little smile. Again I wondered at how seminormal he seemed, how nonlethal. Teeth and nails, was that enough? Were they the mark of the beast? Was that what I needed to watch for, walking home tonight? “What did I do?” I asked them, as if they knew or cared. “I’m just the writer.”

  49

  “So the answer lies in the past,” Claire mused, after I filled her in on my meeting with Clay and Flosky. She sucked Diet Coke thoughtfully through a bent straw, spindly ankles crossed on the coffee table. “Sounds to me like you need to do some legwork and find that connection. Dig up the backstory on this.”

  “Only if I can solve it safely from here, while I water my orchids, li
ke Nero Wolfe.” I leaned back in the armchair, wriggling off my boots, and put my feet up across from hers.

  “Who’s he?”

  “This detective. A fat genius.”

  “Well, you’re not there just yet,” she observed. “But with all the books you wrote, you should be a pretty good sleuth by now. You could go out there and find some clues. Just do what Mordechai would do.”

  “You’re right. I am pretty good at finding those clues. Want to know why?” I poked her little feet with mine. “’Cause I’m the one who put them there. That’s the difference between playing detective in a book and real life. I make up the crime and then I solve it. And even then it gives me a headache.”

  She kicked me back, heel to heel. “All I’m saying is it would make a great book if you cracked it yourself.”

  I snorted. “Did I forget to mention the part about my life being in danger?”

  “Well, isn’t catching the killer the best way to save it?” She sat up and earnestly squeezed my feet in her two hands. “What if they’re right? What if Clay is innocent?”

  “Stop.” I shook her off. “That tickles.”

  “Seriously, Harry.”

  I shrugged and faced her bright eyes. “If Clay’s innocent, then there’s a serial killer loose and after me.”

  “And who’s going to catch him? The cops?”

  Before I could think of an answer to that one, the intercom buzzed, and Claire leapt up to press it.

  “Who’s that?” I asked, suddenly worried.

  “That is a very important magazine person who asked to see you. Your cell was off in the prison, so I told them to just come over. But I have debate team at school, so I’m going to have to leave.” She pulled her backpack on and headed for the door.

  “What’s debate on?” I shouted.

  “Illegal immigration,” she yelled back. “I’m pro!”

  The door slammed. Magazine person? I took a quick look at myself in the mirror. I was demon-eyed and unshaven, my dirty hair flattened by train sleep. I even found a tiny puff of white pollen hiding in it, like a spring motif. The doorbell rang.