The Serialist

by David Gordon

  We knocked on the door, but my courage faltered when I heard the lock turning. No one home would have meant another break-in, or even a wasted trip, but I dreaded a confrontation with a victim’s parent far more. Dread isn’t the word. I was frightened as the door pulled back and I saw Marie Fontaine’s mother, overweight, in very tight black stretch pants, a black and white striped top that didn’t quite reach the pants, and white sandals. She wore black eyeliner and her dyed black hair was showing brown roots. Her toenails were pink and her rings cut into her puffy pink fingers. She was only about five feet tall. And I was afraid of her, the power of her grief. I couldn’t look her in the eye. I stared down, instinctively recognizing that she had now, tragically, attained a kind of royalty in the realm of human emotions while I, with my clotted desires and petty depressions, remained a mere peasant. I was ashamed at myself for having no answer to the question that her very presence righteously asked the world: Why? Why is it like it is?

  Or at least that’s what she asked in my mind. What she asked in reality was “Can I help you?” But even that mild, utterly conventional greeting suddenly seemed so terrible (Help us? You?) that I was momentarily stumped. Luckily Dani spoke up.

  “I’m Daniella Giancarlo. My sister was one of Darian Clay’s victims.”

  “Oh . . .” Mrs. Fontaine’s face seemed to soften. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

  “Thank you. And this is Harry Bloch. We’re both very sorry for your loss, as well.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I was very sorry to hear about your daughter.”

  “You knew my Marie?” she asked, suddenly interested in me. I regretted speaking.

  “Not well.”

  Dani stepped in. “Harry is writing a book about the Clay case. He spoke to your daughter because she’d been in touch with Mr. Clay.”

  “Yes. I had no idea. Why would she do such a thing?” She addressed me.

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Fontaine. Young people get confused or angry. I only met her once. I liked her though, very much. She seemed like a special person. I’m sure she would have sorted it all out.”

  She smiled. “Yes, she was a special girl, always. Right from childhood. Used to stand up in her crib with her hands on the bars and holler. Hated being cooped in. She was so naturally talented. Had the highest GPA in her major at college. Not in the whole class but still, in her major the highest. But always so angry. Like you said. And I never really knew what for.” She trailed off, no longer looking at us but past us, to the trees.

  Dani said, “Mrs. Fontaine, it would really help us a lot with our investigation if we could take a look at Marie’s room.”

  “I can’t go up there yet. I guess I’ll have to eventually, but I can’t. Not yet.”

  “No, well, of course not. But that’s not necessary. We can just go up. If you don’t mind, that is.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t mind. The police said don’t go up there, but I don’t mind.”

  She gave us a key and we climbed the steps to the little studio above the garage. We unlocked the door and again ducked under some tape. Since we were here with permission, more or less, we switched on the light and opened a window. The place looked like Marie had moved out in a hurry. The bedding and mattress were gone, and across the walls, strips of tape marked where an image had hung. The police had taken all the posters and other crime- or horror-related artifacts, even the Marilyn Manson picture, a corner of which still stuck to the wood paneling. Before the mirror, where the shrine to Clay had been, there was only some dried candle wax and the shape of the beaded letter box outlined in the dust.

  We sorted through her drawers together, and I looked in the medicine cabinet while Dani looked in the closet. We poked around aimlessly, flipping through folded T-shirts and stacked magazines as if expecting a clue to fall out. I remembered my first visit to this room, my one meeting with Marie.

  I told Dani, “You know, I hate to say it now, but this girl was kind of awful. She freaked me out.”

  “How?” She unfolded an extra-large Nine Inch Nails T-shirt, held it up, and then put it back.

  “I don’t know. Like her mom said, she was harsh, argumentative, full of herself. Had these fantasies that she and Clay would go off and kill together. I hate that poseur bullshit.”

  She sat beside me on the sunken couch. “She must have been very unhappy.”

  “Then she started playing with herself.”

  Dani sat forward. “What? Really? How?”

  “Yeah. She hiked up her skirt and showed me. Jesus, her poor mom. I can’t believe I said I liked her.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I got the hell out of there. Out of here. She was guffawing.”

  “You didn’t want to just fuck her?”

  “No,” I said. “No way.”

  “Not even a little?” She smiled slyly. “Just to teach her a lesson even?”

  I shook my head.

  “Come on. I bet you had a hard-on walking away.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “I bet. I bet you did,” Dani said, her voice thick. “What a little slut. Laughing and fingering herself in front of a random stranger.” She was flushed now. She slid closer to me on the couch. “You wanted to show her what happens to sluts like that.”

  “No,” I said. “I didn’t.”

  She unzipped her jeans and put her hand down the front. “Show me. Show me how she did it.” She moved closer and took my hand, steering it toward her open pants.

  “No, come on. Let’s go.” I pulled my hand away.

  She reached over and touched my groin through my pants. The look on her face was angry. “See, you’re hard now. I knew it. Don’t pretend. Show me how you’d fuck that little whore. Show me what you’d do to her if you had her here right now.”

  “Fuck off,” I said, standing up. I turned to go. “I’ll be downstairs when you’re done.”

  “Fuck you,” she yelled after me, as I opened the door. “Fuck you!”

  Marie’s mother was waiting on the steps.

  “Mrs. Fontaine.” She shifted uneasily, holding a paper grocery bag to her chest. Had she heard anything? Did I look strange? “Hi,” I said.

  I heard the door slam open again.

  “Hey!” Dani shouted and came clattering out, stopping abruptly when she saw Mrs. Fontaine. “Oh,” she said softly and backed up a step. I was afraid to look, but I prayed silently that her pants were completely zipped. I kept smiling at Mrs. Fontaine.

  “We were just on our way down,” I said.

  “Sorry,” she said, though who knows what for. “I thought of this.” She handed me the bag, without meeting my eyes. “I found it before and took it. I didn’t want the police to see. I know that’s wrong but I didn’t want them to think of her that way. But you met her and you . . .” She looked past me, up at Dani. “Well, you both might understand better.”

  I looked in the bag. It was the decorated box that I knew must contain her correspondence with Clay.

  “We’ll return this to you right away,” I said.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t want it. I just took a peek and then hid it away. I don’t want to know about that part. What good would it do?” She put her hand on my arm. “I know she wasn’t really a good girl, like you said. But I loved her. I did my best with her. Sorry,” she said again, and this time I said, “That’s OK,” and squeezed her hand. I forgave her, because I was there and I could. Then Dani came down and hugged her and they forgave each other too.

  58

  It was quiet back in the car. We exchanged a few words about needing gas and pulled into a station. We decided to gamble on traffic and take the George Washington Bridge, then head down the East Side toward Brooklyn. Neither one of us knew quite what to say about the incident back at Marie’s. The connection, in Dani, between grief and sex was typical enough—there are many stories of people spontaneously fornicating at funerals and hospitals—and frankly she had more of an excuse than I, except tha
t I was terribly lonely and terribly horny and she was terribly beautiful, all of which adds up to its own kind of grief, I suppose. But even as I yearned and grieved, I couldn’t help but wonder, was this girl nuts or what? Who knew everything I knew? Who had total access to all the information, past and present? Who could have easily followed me and tracked my comings and goings? And if she was supposedly in school, why the hell wasn’t she ever there?

  “Hey, how’s school, by the way?” We were cruising down the ramp from the bridge toward the Harlem River Drive. On our right was a granite tower on a hill where, when I was a kid, they used to dump stolen cars after they’d been stripped. The metal carcasses would tumble down and get caught in the trees, hanging as if they’d fallen from the sky. No more. “Don’t you have class?”

  She gave me a curious look. “School’s over. Next week is finals. I told you, remember?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  As we rolled downtown, Queens appeared on the left, under a blue sky and across a gray river. A barge the size of a football field slid by, hauling a garbage mountain.

  Heart of a failed poet, mind of an amateur detective, ass of a middle-aged hack writer—did I really suspect her of the murders? Ass of a detective, spleen of a poet, pituitary gland of a burned-out pulp novelist—what I felt was the sudden abyss that opened between us, the irreducible distance between one body and another, one mind and another. Skull of a poet, wings of a detective, claws of a two-bit sci-fi novelist—who are you when you are not with me? Sex of an angel, face of a devil, ass of a curious fourteen-year-old boy—even if we talk all night, even if we cry, even if we sleep with our arms round each other, even if I plunge my fangs as deep into your flesh as I can, that tiny crack remains, waiting to split at any time. Eyes of a mountain, clouds of a tiger, river of a soft-core poet—then anything becomes possible: you might lie to me, you might betray me, you might change, die or leave. Hands of a monster, throat of a victim, lips of a dying vampire—so then why not murder? Why not her? And in her mind, why not me?

  59

  We found our way into Brooklyn and arrived at Sandra Dawson’s.

  “There it is,” I told Dani, and she pulled into a spot across the street. People were going in and out of the bodega. Dani shut off the engine and lit a cigarette. The car filled with smoke.

  “You go,” she said. “I’ll wait here.”

  “We don’t have to do this now if you’re not up to it,” I said. “I’ll come back.”

  “No. It’s fine.” She dismissed me with a wave and I remembered, again, that she was not my girlfriend, not my partner. She was really no one I knew. “Go do your thing.”

  I got out and crossed the street to Sandra’s building. The afternoon had turned clear and bright without my noticing, and now all the windows on the street flashed with the blue of the sky. Suddenly the bodega’s plate glass front exploded. I heard a high shriek and a hollow, echoing crack. I paused, standing stupidly, as the people in front of the bodega scampered away and those inside it ducked. I realized something bad was happening—the thought that crossed my mind was of a building collapsing—and I started to run. I heard another crack. A chip flew off the brick wall above my head and I understood. That was a bullet. Someone was shooting at me. I hunched down, darting between parked cars. I could feel the blood in my heart. The next shot hit a tire in the car beside me and the air escaped with a soft rush. Then I heard an engine and honking. Hesitantly, I peeked up, and there was Dani, making a crazy U-turn and roaring over, putting her car between me and the gun.

  “Come on,” she screamed, pushing open the door, and I ran. I bolted as fast and low as I could and jumped in, rolling against the dash as she slammed on the gas. The rear window blew, hailing us with glass. We both ducked, and my door swung wide as she fishtailed out, screeching around the corner, where I managed to grab it shut. Dani turned again, sliding through a stop sign, then joined the flow of traffic. I watched out the back. There was no one behind us, except the hundreds of normal people.

  “Fuck,” I yelled, as numb terror and adrenaline melted like ice in my stomach. Someone had really shot at me. I shuddered uncontrollably. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  “Are you OK?” she yelled, as she turned again. This time she pulled into an empty alley with parking spaces at the end. “Are you hit?”

  “No. I’m OK. Are you OK?”

  “No. I’m OK,” she said. Then she hit a pole.

  60

  The hood and trunk of Dani’s car both popped open from the impact as we bounced to and fro, then settled back into our seats.

  “Fuck,” I said again. “Are you OK?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” she said. “Are you?”

  “Yeah.”

  We sat in silence, breathing hard. The steel pole was there to mark off the parking spots, and Dani, driving too fast and too frightened, hadn’t seen it. I checked behind us again. The coast was clear. We were, I supposed, safe. My hands were still trembling though, and I tucked them under my thighs.

  “I think we should just wait here for a bit,” Dani said. “Just to make sure no one’s out there. Just till I feel ready to drive.”

  “No problem. Take your time.”

  Dani turned to me in her seat. Her face was flushed and I could see her chest heaving.

  “I just can’t catch my breath,” she said. “It’s like an asthma attack.”

  “Do you have asthma?”

  “No.”

  “It’s OK. I keep shaking. It’s adrenaline, nerves. Fear.” I squeezed her shoulders. “It’ll pass,” I said. “You were great. What the fuck, you were awesome. You saved me.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I just wanted to get the fuck out of there.” She kept gulping big mouthfuls of air between each word. I gripped her tighter. I took her face in my trembling hands.

  “Careful, glass,” I said, and picked a few bits from her hair.

  “Thank you,” she said. She brushed mine.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “Thank you.” She looked me in the eyes. She leaned toward me.

  This time I couldn’t even say who started it. It was like something our bodies were doing separate from us, something they needed to do while we waited. Now I felt close to Dani, like she was the person I was most linked to in the world, but I was cut off from myself. We were like two couples there together in the car: she and I, us and them.

  Afterwards, despite her shortness of breath, she smoked. It actually seemed to help. We slid our clothes back on. I yawned, inexplicably. All of a sudden I was tired, hungry, thirsty. I was everything.

  “I wonder if my car is ruined,” Dani said, finally breaking the silence. It was certainly trashed. In the backseat my wig and cane lay mixed with broken glass from the shattered rear window. I brushed the glass from my wig and stuffed it into the bag with Marie’s letters, which I’d almost forgotten.

  “Guess I’ll check out the damage,” I said, thinking it was the polite, manly thing to do, although I know nothing about cars. I got out and looked at the front. The bumper was crumpled and the hood was creased. I lifted it up. Nothing was cracked or smoking.

  “Looks OK,” I shouted.

  “Anything leaking?” she asked.

  “Good point.” I got on my knees and peered under the car. “Nope. Looks good.”

  She started the engine and it took. Smiling, she gave me a thumbs-up.

  “Let me get the trunk,” I said. While fumes rose from the tailpipe, I hustled around back. The latch had popped from the impact and the lid was agape. I lifted it to check inside and there, spilled from a blanket and lying on top of the spare, was a big steel cleaver with a sharpened edge. There was also a long, thin boning knife and an old rusty machete with black tape on the handle. There was a screwdriver and a small saw, a coil of rope, some duct tape. There was a small burlap sack, and even before I opened it I knew what I would see: a flat black automatic pistol.

  “What’s wrong?” Dani yelled. “Everything good?”


  “Great,” I said. I pushed everything back into the blanket and slammed the lid. It popped back up and showed me its open mouth. I slammed it again and it stuck. I went back around and got in beside her. I put on my safety belt. I smiled.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  I reported the attack over my cell phone, and Townes met us in front of my building, along with his agents and a contingent of cops. He bought a Softee ice cream from the truck on the corner and then listened impassively while the city cops took our statements. The shopkeeper with the smashed window had called in the shots and the cops had found the slugs, but it seemed the only car anyone saw fleeing the scene was “a piece-of-shit Datsun.”

  “Let’s recap,” Townes said finally, finishing his cone and tossing the napkin into Dani’s back seat. “You evaded the FBI, then illegally gained entry to crime scenes—crimes, by the way, in which you yourself are a suspect—and you are now claiming to have been shot at, presumably by the real killer, who’s after you because you’re getting too close.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Exactly.”

  “Which conveniently proves your own innocence, or rather it would, if anyone else saw it.”

  “Are you saying I shot at myself?”

  “Let’s see,” he said. “Do you own a gun?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have access to one or know anyone else who does?”

  I couldn’t help glancing at Dani, who sat on the hood of her shitty Datsun, but she didn’t notice. She was too busy glaring at Townes.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think I do.”

  61

  “Hello? Claire? Are you home?” I shouted, as I stepped through the door. “You’ll never believe what happened.” I bolted the lock and got the chain on.

  “In here,” she called from the bathroom. “Come in. I can’t get up.”