The Serialist

by David Gordon

  Claire was spread naked on my bed. Her thin arms and legs were stretched to the breaking point and bound to the bed frame with my ties. Her mouth was sealed with duct tape and a line of blood trickled from a thin cut in the crook that ran across her throat. Her eyes stared at me in a horror so pure it seemed animal, a creature in a trap. Her eyes rolled.

  “Claire.” I stepped toward her and her head jerked wildly. She made a very soft gurgling sound that I knew was a muted scream, eyes rolling again to my right. I turned, just in time to see a huge knife coming at me. I saw a woman’s red-nailed fist around the handle. And then I was face to face with Carol Flosky.

  Our eyes met as the blade slashed my left arm. Pain flashed through my nerves, lit me up like lightning, and I saw a deep flap of flesh fall open and fill with blood. I howled, a wild high sound that didn’t seem to be coming from me at all. It sounded far off, like a wolf. I wanted to curl up and clutch myself, but the knife went up again. That’s all I saw—the blade, the arm. I put up my left hand and grabbed her arm below the wrist and we went down together to the floor, my right arm trapped beneath our weight. Now the blade was over my throat, and she was bearing down with all her strength while I held her up with my bloody arm, wrestling to free my other from where it was pinned behind my back. Shock was setting in, and there was no more pain from the cut, but my hand was numbing, and I didn’t know how much strength it still contained. Our faces were only a few inches apart. She stared right into my eyes. I saw nothing in hers but total concentration on my death. A force willing me to die. Her lips twitched slightly into a near smile and I saw it, the resemblance. I never would have noticed, but now it was obvious. They were alike.

  I grunted and pushed up with all my strength, trying to find some leverage to slip out or get my right arm up. She leaned her whole body against me, pushing everything down. Our eyes moved together

  toward the blade, its point pressing my skin, and then met again. Then there was a shot, so loud my ears seemed to go out for a second, and Flosky’s eyes went big. She twitched.

  “Look out, Harry,” I heard Dani say. I felt warm blood seeping from Flosky to me, between our legs. She grimaced in pain. Her eyes flicked away from mine for a second and I felt my chance. Instead of pushing back, I forced my numb arm sideways an inch or so and let it fall. The blade sunk into the carpet beside my left ear, and I jerked up sharply as Flosky’s face collided with mine. Our skulls knocked painfully and I rolled to the right, throwing the woman off. I heard another shot, and this time it was Flosky who howled. I looked up to see her down on the floor, scrambling back into the corner, bleeding from her leg and her arm. Dani was holding the gun in her right hand with the left supporting her wrist. She kept it on Flosky as she moved closer, eyes never leaving her target.

  “Who is she?” she called out to me, loudly, as if I were down the block.

  “The lawyer. She’s been killing the girls. She’s Darian Clay’s mother.” I clutched my wound now as pain throbbed back. My whole arm was stained red. Claire whimpered from the bed above me.

  “Should I kill her?” Dani asked. Flosky, twitching, cringing, looked at me.

  “Yes,” I yelled. “Kill her. Shoot.”

  Dani stepped over me. She leveled the gun at Flosky’s head. She looked right at her. She asked, “Where is my sister’s head?”

  That’s when Agent Terence entered the room.

  67

  Ambulances came and took us all to the hospital. I wasn’t hurt that badly after all—the cut had missed the important bits—but I was weak and dumb from the loss of blood and spent the night getting pumped full of various fluids while cops, nurses and FBI guys wandered in and out, never once knocking.

  Carol Flosky underwent surgery. The first bullet had shattered her femur and lodged in the meat of her thigh. The second had gone clear through her shoulder, slicing muscle and nerves on the way. The cops dug it out of my floor.

  Dani was briefly treated for shock and then taken in to give her statement. She had asked about my welfare but had not requested to see me.

  Neither had Claire. She was unhurt except for small bruises and the cut on her neck, really a very minor, accidental scratch made when I startled Flosky by opening the apartment door. However, since the tape was removed from her mouth, Claire hadn’t spoken at all. She seemed OK, responding with nods and shakes to questions, sipping juice from a straw held up by a nurse. But when I was wheeled past her in the emergency room, on my way to be sewn up, and called out her name, she just shut her eyes and turned away. Her father, who was golfing in North Carolina, had chartered a plane and was flying up that night. Her mother would arrive from Hong Kong the next day.

  Townes came to see me with a whole team of agents, including Terence. They made me go over everything, the whole story, again and again. When I mentioned the Marie Fontaine letters, still back at my house, a couple of them ran from the room. They all seemed uncertain as to whether I was actually guilty of anything criminal or not, and I wondered about Claire’s high-priced lawyer. I assumed he was off my case. Anyhow, I was too dizzy and weak to worry about it much. I was mostly preoccupied with Claire, and when I was told that her father had arrived and taken her away, I finally fell asleep.

  In the morning they drove me home in a police car, and the neighbors all watched, opening their doors and staring in frank amazement as I was escorted down the hall and into my apartment. The place was wrecked, the police and feds having done far more damage than Flosky. Then Townes arrived, looking exhausted, worse than me. The others left, and when I offered coffee, he accepted and sat at the kitchen table with a sigh.

  “Well, there’s good news and bad news,” he said.

  “Shit,” I said. Trying to make coffee one-handed, I had poured it all over the counter. Townes got up and helped, brushing the spilled grounds into the filter. I noticed some old breadcrumbs mixing in but didn’t mention it.

  “Good news first,” I said.

  “She confessed to the killings. Officially signed her statement last night.”

  “And what’s the bad news?”

  “She confessed to the killings,” he said again, sitting down to watch the coffee drip into the pot. “All of them. Including the ones we’re about to execute Clay for.”

  “Oh, I see.” I sat down too. “What does she say?”

  “She says that she never lost touch with her son or not for long anyway. That she tracked him down at the foster home, kept seeing him secretly. After he grew up, they were together again, mother and son, reunited. The only problem was when he started photographing women. She didn’t approve. She says she knew what women were like, she’d been a whore herself, and she saw right through these girls. They were tempting him, trying to steal him away. So when he worked with these models, she would spy on them, and afterwards, she killed them. When Darian got arrested, she went and got a law degree just to help him. It checks out. He had a public defender through the trial and she took over as his attorney five years ago. Turned herself into a death penalty expert just to defend her son. She’s a formidable woman, in her own fucked-up way.”

  “You believe her? About the earlier killings?”

  “Of course not. It’s her last shot at saving her boy. Do you?”

  “No.”

  “But the problem is she doesn’t need us to believe her. All she needs is for a judge to think she raises enough doubt or new evidence to warrant a new trial for her son. And then, if at that trial she testifies that she did the killings, well, the prosecutors have quite a job on their hands, proving him guilty and her innocent. He could end up with a hung jury or who knows what? A walk. Anyway, I think that’s her plan.”

  He pulled a bottle of aspirin and bottle of Zantac from his coat pockets and shook some out. He sucked them slowly, like mints.

  “Water?” I asked.

  He shook his head and swallowed. “Why do you think she tried to kill you?” he asked.

  “She knew I was on to her. Or about to be
. There’s a woods in back of Clay’s old foster home where he used to take pictures for some art class. I recognized it from a photo in Flosky’s office. When I saw it, everything fit. I knew she was his mom. She had to be mixed up in the killings.”

  Townes perked up at this. “I’ll have somebody go fetch that picture.”

  “She must have followed me out there. Terence tried to warn me, but I thought it was . . .” I hesitated. “I thought it was someone else. Anyway, Flosky saw that I had all the pieces and it was just a matter of time. I think at that point she decided to take me out. She went back to my place to wait for me and found Claire.”

  “Yes,” Townes agreed. “Claire was unlucky. She was there when Flosky broke in. So she had to kill her and make it look like the others. But you got back early.”

  “I took a cab,” I said. “I never take cabs.” Then I scowled at myself. Saving Claire’s life with such a shoddy miracle—Cheapskate Slips in Mud, Scares Self, Takes Taxi—felt like a further insult. Poor Claire.

  Townes nodded at the counter. “I think the coffee’s done.”

  “Oh right.” I stood. “Milk? Sugar?”

  “Both.”

  I poured two mugs and put out milk and sugar. Townes loaded his up and took a grateful gulp. This was the first time he’d asked my opinion of anything. I realized that he was speaking to me, if not as an equal, at least as someone he didn’t despise. But I despised myself more than ever. Townes stood.

  “Get some rest. Come to my office tomorrow and sign your statement.”

  “I can come now.”

  “Tomorrow’s fine. Go to bed. And thanks for the coffee.”

  “OK,” I said, and sat without moving until I heard him leave. Then I locked the door and took his advice. I rested. But I didn’t go to bed. Just the thought of stepping into that room made me see Claire again, strapped down, gagged and spread before me, a line of blood running down her throat. So I lay on the couch with the TV on, which is how I slept that night, and the next, and the next, and the next. It took a long time.

  I tried reaching Claire, both on her cell and her house phone, but there was no answer on either, and my messages weren’t returned. Nor were my texts and emails. I also left a message for Dani, who called me right back.

  “Hi,” she said, when I picked up the phone. “How are you?”

  “OK, I guess. Thanks to you.”

  “No. Don’t be silly. It’s just chance.”

  “Chance? You’re a badass. How did you learn to shoot like that?”

  She laughed. “It was after my sister died. I had this fantasy of tracking the killer down and started going to the firing range. I had a whole collection of weapons I was going to use, just like he did to her. Then when they caught Clay, I just kept it up. I guess it made me feel safer or something. Crazy, I know. Paranoid.”

  “Well, I’m no psych student,” I said, “but I don’t think it counts as paranoid and crazy when you’re completely right.” I told her about the letter I found, how it led me to the foster house.

  “Yeah, I wrote him,” she said. “I drove by the house. Repeatedly. He’s the whole reason I even took psych, to be honest. I guess I didn’t want you to realize how crazy I was about getting revenge. Even though he was caught, somehow in my mind I was still hunting him. What can I say? I’ve got a lot of baggage. I guess I can’t let it go while he’s alive.”

  I thought about the new legal problem that Dani’s own capture of Flosky had paradoxically created, but I didn’t mention it. Nor did I mention my own dark, crazy thoughts about her. Instead I said, “Let me buy you dinner tonight. A thank-you for saving me. Twice. So you get dessert included too. A cheap reward, I know, but then my life isn’t worth that much. Even if you double it.”

  She laughed. “I don’t know.”

  “Come packing heat if you want, but remember, I’m one-armed. You’ll be able to take advantage of me.”

  She laughed again, lightly, like a small smile I could hear on the phone, but said, “That’s just, it. I’m not sure we should.”

  “Oh, I see.” I realized that she meant it. “Why not?”

  “It’s just, I don’t know, I can’t really see us ever being just a normal couple splitting a flourless chocolate cake. It’s not your fault at all. You’re a good guy. Like I said, I’ve got a ton of baggage.”

  “So does everybody. At least ours matches,” I said, and she laughed, for real this time. “Who knows? Maybe I can lighten your load.”

  “No,” she said, quietly. “That’s not how it is. Everyone carries their own.”

  I said I understood and she apologized and I said not to, and after a bit more warmhearted but hopelessly awkward stumbling we said good-bye. I knew she was right about everything. We had gone too far and we couldn’t cross back over that line. My own issues or whatever you want to call them—emotional problems, distrust, suspicion—had hobbled us more than she knew. And despite what I’d just said on the phone, she was most certainly crazy. Still, I couldn’t help feeling that I had blown something big, maybe the biggest thing of all.

  Then, since I couldn’t sleep anyway, I sat down and finished writing the Zorg book. I needed the money.

  68

  From Whither Thou Goest, O Slutship Commander, chapter 24:

  “There it is,” Polyphony shouted, pointing to the white stone tower that appeared on the mountain’s far green side. Using our last ounce of thrust, I took the ship down, trying to aim her toward a clearing.

  “Hang on, Poly,” I yelled, and we hit, crashing into a forest. The poor old Phallus plowed through the trees and came to rest its battered head against a boulder. The windshield shattered and the dials on my console froze as the pilot lights went out. Polyphony was knocked semiconscious. I forced the hatch, set my cell on mutilate, and then, uniform in tatters, Polyphony in my arms, I staggered from the smoking wreck of the Phallus.

  I was in a glen. Sunbeams filtered down through the pine trees. The only sound was the wind. An old bearded man in a white lab coat sat on a rock, watching us curiously. He smiled and puffed his pipe.

  “Welcome, friends,” he said. “Welcome to the Gore Institute. I am Dr. Beamish.”

  After he patched our wounds and fed us, we told Dr. Beamish our story, how we’d come to Earth hoping to find a temperate planet where the love of a Master for his android sex slave would be accepted and had randomly chosen the year 2058 (5819 on your lunar-Jewish calendar) as the closest entry point on our navigational charts. Our timing could not have been worse. Earth was undergoing vast cataclysms as a result of global warming: floods, droughts, famines and pestilence, leading of course to war. We’d escaped the submerged ruins of New York, fought off the bands of psychic killer dolphins who now ruled it, then made it past the Jesus-freak tribes of the Middle States to safe haven in the Native American Free Zone, searching the whole way for the Gore Institute, in the former state of Colorado, where we’d heard scientists were working feverishly on an answer.

  “I’m afraid you heard wrong, friends,” Dr. Beamish said, smiling sadly. The Institute was abandoned and he himself was the last surviving scientist. We were sitting in what had once been the World Climate Command Center, high atop the rather redundantly named Rocky Mountains, but on the center’s screens we saw nothing but horrors, doomed humans fighting over the dwindling resources that would let them survive a little longer until, degree by degree, human life was erased from this planet. Meanwhile, as the world’s infrastructure ran down, Dr. Beamish watched his screens die slowly, one by one.

  “It’s funny you came here from outer space, looking for a future,” he said. “The stars have been my one consolation. You see, the night sky has been growing brighter and more beautiful, as the earth goes dark.”

  “Dr. Beamish, is there really no hope at all?” Polyphony asked.

  Dr. Beamish puffed his pipe and stroked his long beard. “My dear, as a sworn meteorologist, I quote a wise human, Kafka, and say, of course there’s hope, infinite h
ope.” He shrugged. “But it might not be for us.”

  “Nor for us, Doctor,” I said. “Our ship’s too damaged to escape Earth’s gravity. We are stuck here with you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Dr. Beamish said, “that our human foolishness should doom you to death as well. Earth was once a very pretty planet. Pity you picked the wrong year.”

  The dutiful Dr. Beamish went to check his readings. Poly and I stood on the observation deck, watching the beautiful, fatal sun go down. It was sixty-five degrees that evening, but it felt like sixty-three. She was crying.

  “I’m so sorry, Master,” she said. “It’s all my fault. I selfishly wanted to live with you in realtime, and now we will both die.”

  “No, Poly, you were right,” I said. “I have no regrets. One night with you is worth everything. You’re the best slut I ever had.”

  She clutched me tightly, and I leaned in to kiss her, when, suddenly, her tears became laughter.

  “I do have one regret,” she said. “That we didn’t randomly pick another year. Say 2009.”

  “Poly,” I cried, grabbing her close again. “You wonderful droid, that’s it!”

  We found Dr. Beamish and brought him to the wreck of the Phallus. I explained my plan. He puffed his pipe excitedly and raised his fuzzy brows.