by John Lutz
Chickens coming home to roost, Sherman’s mom had remarked a few times, and that was the end of conversation about her late husband and Sherman’s late father George.
George the forgotten man.
The hinge on Mr. Marks’s door squeaked again, not loud, almost like the plaintive cry of a mouse surprised by a trap. Marks was a big man, in his late sixties, but he still looked strong. Sherman’s mom was being careful.
Sherman let his gaze slide to the side in the dim bedroom. It took in his wicker desk, where he was homeschooled. His bamboo fishing pole, propped gracefully against the wall in the corner. His threadbare armchair, where he loved to sit and read, whenever he could buy or steal a used paperback. Sometimes, when he had nothing to read, he simply sat and did math problems in his head. It was funny, the way the world could be broken down into numbers and mathematical equations. Everything neat and orderly in its place, if you concentrated hard enough and made things fit. If you questioned things enough. Sherman was always questioning. Not out loud, of course, but questioning.
How many heartbeats to the minute? He considered taking his pulse. His heart was surely racing. He’d read somewhere that seventy-six was normal. He placed his fingertips over his pulse for what he thought was ten seconds, then did the calculation.
Much higher than seventy-six.
He knew why.
The door hinge squealed louder out in the hall. His mother, no longer being careful, opening Mr. Marks’s door all the way.
Much, much higher than seventy-six. Like a bird trapped in my chest and beating its wings.
Footsteps in the hall, bare feet on the plank floor. His mother, coming toward his room.
She pushed his door open all the way and looked in at him. He could see her only in silhouette, dark and almost without substance, like a shadow.
Sherman rolled onto his side, facing away from her. He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t.
He never did.
“Sherman, I know you’re awake. I need your help.”
He knew there was no point in arguing. He simply didn’t disobey. It was always easier if he did as he was told. Always.
He rolled over and sat up in bed.
“Go into Mr. Marks’s room and wait for me,” his mother said. She wasn’t whispering.
“Mom…”
“This isn’t any fun for me, either, Sherman.”
He nodded to the shadow in his doorway and watched it disappear into darker shadows. Then he climbed out of bed, slipped on his jeans that felt stiff and cool even though the night was warm, and walked reluctantly into the room across the hall.
The conch shell lamp by the bed was on, too dim to read by. Next to it on the table was a cracked saucer with a snubbed out filter-tip cigarette in it. Mr. Marks was in bed, lying on his back, his right hand raised about a foot off the mattress, as if he were about to reach for something. Not looking at it, though. Staring at the ceiling. Not breathing. So still. Dead.
The light was on in the hall now, and Sherman’s mother came into the bedroom. She was carrying a long-bladed pair of scissors.
“We’ll undress him here,” she said in her crisp voice that meant business, “then you know what to do.”
Sherman knew.
Mr. Marks hadn’t been dead long enough that he was starting to get stiff. Sherman had been told that was why they had to act soon each time, before rigor mortis set in. He’d looked up the term in his old dog-eared dictionary and knew what it meant, though he didn’t quite understand why it happened.
Like the dead cat I found that time out in the swamp…Didn’t bend when I picked it up by one leg. Its claws were out, though, sharp, hurt…
Sherman, thinking of other things, any other things, wanting to be in some other place, any other place. Pretending this was happening to somebody else. A different Sherman altogether.
While his mother snipped away with the scissors, Sherman yanked and tugged, and the tattered gray T-shirt and underpants Mr. Marks slept in came off and away from his heavy body. Sherman tossed them into a pile alongside the bed. He knew his mother would burn them later. She rolled Mr. Marks off the bed and he landed on the woven throw rug with a terrible soft muted sound of flesh-padded bone hitting hard.
Sherman and his mother each grabbed a corner of the rug near Mr. Marks’s head, and then pulled with all their might to get him moving. Then it wasn’t so difficult to drag his body on the rug along the hall floor to the bathroom.
It was more of a struggle to wrestle him into the big clawfoot bathtub. As if he felt the need to resist even though it was too late.
An elbow bonked loudly against the tub. “Damn you!” Sherman heard his mother say, but he knew she was talking to Mr. Marks. Sherman worked harder to get a long, uncooperative leg into the tub, his own bare foot slipping on the plastic his mother had spread on the tile floor, making him almost fall.
Then Mr. Marks’s big soft body with gray hair all over it settled down in the tub, his feet at the end with the faucets, his head resting on the slanted porcelain at the other end. His expression was peaceful. He might have been relaxing, taking a bath.
There was no need for words now between Sherman and his mother. She tugged the plastic shower curtain around the freestanding tub so it shielded the back wall, then went into the kitchen while he went out to the garage and got George’s old tools—a handsaw, jigsaw, cleaver, and a power saw with a long coiled cord.
He carried them into the house in a burlap sack, then removed them and placed them carefully on the floor next to his mother’s kitchen knives.
His mother began to undress, which was his signal to leave.
He went out to the hall and closed the door behind him, but he stooped and peered through the keyhole, as he always did.
There was his mother, her leg, the rest of her, looking so much paler, smoother, and larger than she did with her clothes on. The shower was running and she was bending over the tub, using the knives and heavier tools. Sherman knew that when she was finished with the knives, cleaver, and handsaw, she’d turn off the shower before using the power saw. Water and electricity were a dangerous mix, she’d warned him. Setting a good example.
She never once glanced toward the keyhole, but he was sure she knew he was watching.
It was the power saw’s lilting whine that he could never forget.
When she was finished, Sherman’s mother called for him to come back into the bathroom. He waited a few seconds, so they could both pretend he’d been in his bedroom, then he opened the bathroom door, knowing what he’d see.
There was his mother, fully dressed. Everything in the bathroom was meticulously scrubbed. All the fluids from Mr. Marks had been washed down the drain to the septic tank. His pale, clean parts were neatly stacked in the tub, his torso, thighs, calves, arms, then his head. His sparse gray hair was wet and matted, but his face wore a peaceful expression, as if he might be dreaming of his childhood.
The black plastic trash bags were folded in the tiny closet with the towels. Sherman’s mother got them out, separated plastic, then snapped a bag in the air to open it out. Sherman helped her to stuff the pieces of Mr. Marks into the bags, arms and head in one, two bags for thighs and calves, one for the torso. The bag with the head in it was always surprisingly heavy, so Sherman carried that one. Always the gentleman, or he’d be scolded.
He and his mother lugged the bags out to the cedar-plank back porch that faced the deep swamp. The alligators were conditioned to being fed from there, everything from fish heads to…everything. They’d be waiting in the darkness, all of them, hungry and expectant; as if they recognized the sounds and knew what they meant. Maybe the whine of the power saw.
Sherman and his mother removed one by one the pieces of Mr. Marks and tossed them to the alligators beyond the porch rail. Some of the pieces the gators dragged back into the depths of the swamp. Some they ate right there. One of the big gators always made primitive, guttural noises along with the crunching of bone. Th
at was another sound Sherman would never forget. A sound that was older than the human race, and might be in the collective memory and needed only reminding.
It wasn’t until years later that Sherman understood what it was all about. The elderly boarders would disappear from the isolated shack on the edge of the swamp and be missed by no one. Before renting them a room, Sherman’s mother always made sure they had no family. Their Social Security checks would continue to arrive, and be endorsed by Sherman’s mother. One of the few useful skills her con man husband had taught her, before leaving her so she could toil alone with child and poverty, was forgery.
She made the most of it, and wasted little time.
Tomorrow she’d place another classified ad in the papers under Rooms for Rent. She knew there’d be plenty of replies. Florida was full of pensioners, lonely and poor and closing fast on the end of life, people who had no family and needed a final place to stay before being claimed by death or the dreaded retirement homes.
There! Dessert.
There was a final grunting and stirring and rippling of water in the moonlight, a parting splash in the darkness beneath the moss-draped trees.
Sherman’s mother leaned down and with his help began folding the now-empty plastic bags.
They were the thick kind that could be washed out and used again. Over and over.
Fifteen minutes later Sherman was back in his bed, listening to the night sounds outside his window. A loon cried off in the distance. Closer by, there was the rustling of something moving through the brush. Insects droned and shrilled constantly so that you got used to them and only now and then realized you heard them. The swamp seemed peaceful but wasn’t.
The swamp was a dark place that held its secrets close.
11
New York, the present
Florence barely had time to go to the kitchen and have a drink of water from a plastic bottle before the Federal Parcel deliveryman knocked on her door. It must have been a straight shot for the elevator.
She placed the water bottle back in the refrigerator. The cold air that tumbled out felt good on her stocking feet. And the hall carpet felt soft after the tiled kitchen floor.
She opened the door to find the deliveryman smiling at her. A nice-looking guy with a nice smile. That was the word he brought to mind—nice. Regular. And he was cradling a long white box of the sort flowers came in.
“Florence Norton?” he asked, making a show of looking at something on his side of the box, an address label, probably.
“That’s me,” Florence said, returning his nice smile, wondering if the box contained flowers, wondering if this guy was married or otherwise attached.
He used a balled fist between her breasts to shove her hard back into the apartment, then stepped inside, closed the door, and lifted the box’s lid a few inches so he could reach in and withdraw a gun.
The room spun and her chest ached where he’d pushed her. Anger became fear became paralysis.
“Keep your head,” the man said. “That might keep you alive.”
Florence felt herself nod. The muzzle of the small, blue-steel gun looked like a tunnel to death. Which was what it would be, if she didn’t do what this nice man said.
“Step to the center of the living room,” he said.
Keeping the gun low for a moment, he moved to the window and closed the drapes.
“If this is a robbery—” Florence began.
“Keep your mouth shut or I’ll shut it with a bullet.”
That got through.
“Now you can undress.”
Not robbery. Something more. Something worse.
Her dread was like a drug, slowing her motions. Florence undressed slowly and deliberately, keeping her elbows in close, movements tight, trying to make what she was doing look like anything but a striptease.
“All the way,” he said, when she was down to panties and bra. “Leave your clothes on the floor. I’ll pick them up and fold them for you later.”
She felt more naked than she ever had in her life, yet strangely she wasn’t embarrassed. Maybe because the stakes were so high. Or because of her terror. She would cling to any hope. She told herself the nice man was right. If I keep my head and do as I’m instructed, I might get through this.
Might.
It was all she had, all she could allow herself to believe.
“Sit down on the sofa.”
She obeyed, keeping her knees pressed tightly together, her arms crossed over her breasts.
He laid the white box down alongside the sofa, where she couldn’t see its contents, then straightened up holding a thick roll of wide silver-gray duct tape.
Useful for so many things.
Quickly and skillfully, with the practiced motions of someone who’d rehearsed or done it countless times before, he taped her wrists together, then her ankles, then her knees. It had happened almost before she started to panic, aghast at her sudden immobility. She strained against the tape. He seemed to expect this and hurriedly ran a length of tape around her back and taped her wrists so she couldn’t raise her arms from her lap.
She was about to scream when a rectangle of tape was slapped painfully over her mouth. Her lips were parted about half an inch and stayed that way. She began breathing noisily through her nose and realized she was crying.
She panicked and began to squirm desperately.
He smiled and patted her gently on the head until she was calm enough to sit still.
“It’s going to be all right,” he said. “I promise.”
She nodded.
“There’s nothing to get excited about,” he assured her.
But at the same time he pulled the white box out where she could see its contents—gleaming steel, and what looked like a portable electric drill or saw.
Yes, a saw!
Meticulously, with a lazy kind of precision, he undressed before her, standing directly in front of the sofa so she’d have to look at him.
He had an erection, but how could he violate her, with her legs taped so tightly together? The inaccessibility of her position was some small comfort to Florence. If only she could move something other than fingers, toes, or her head. If only she could make some noise, attract someone’s attention. Anyone’s attention. She needed help.
Any kind of help!
Without glancing at her, the intruder turned his back and sauntered toward the hall, toward her bedroom and the bathroom.
Then came a familiar sound; pipes clanking in the walls.
Water. Preparation!
Florence knew that the man in her bathroom must be the Butcher.
Panic took her again and her body shuddered as if she were freezing. Her tears blurred the room around her. Her rapid breathing through her nose sounded like a small animal nearby panting.
A warmth spread beneath her and she knew she was urinating on the sofa cushions. An acute humiliation cut through her panic, only making it worse.
There was no hope here. None.
She attempted mightily to scream, but the only sound in the apartment was that of running water.
12
Pearl almost fainted when she was hit with the familiar charnel house smell as she, Quinn, and Fedderman entered the victim’s apartment. Sickening images of the previous Butcher victims flashed through her mind. She felt them in her stomach.
It was another white-glove affair. The crime scene unit was still at work, dusting, photographing, picking, probing, bagging, choreographed to stay out of one another’s way in the crowded apartment.
Fedderman started talking to the uniform who’d been standing by the door, someone he knew, or possibly the first officer on the scene. Pearl followed Quinn toward a hall and what figured to be a bathroom. The meat market stench grew stronger, along with the perfumed disinfectant scent of soap and detergent.
Only Nift, from the Medical Examiner’s office, was in the bathroom with the victim. Though it was hard to think of Florence Norton as a victim, because a vict
im was a person. Florence had become a blanched stack of body parts in the bathtub. Pearl remembered what Sinclair had said at Nuts and Bolts:
“…the way he carves up his victims and puts their parts on display. The meat.”
The Napoleonic, annoying little bastard Nift was dressed today as if on his way to apply for a banker’s job. His shave was so close he’d nicked himself, and his sleek black hair was combed straight back. Stooped low next to the tub, he had his chalk-stripe blue suit coat unbuttoned. His red silk tie was tucked into his white shirt, so it wouldn’t dangle and contact any blood or anything else that might stain it. He glanced up at Quinn and Pearl, flashing his nasty smile.
On the floor was an assortment of bottles and boxes, empty cleaning agent containers. The shampoo was Swan, the brand Pearl used—used to use.
The body parts were stacked in the same ritualistic order, the severed head resting on top, its facial expression one of pain even though the eyes were closed. The victim’s brow was furrowed, cheeks and mouth drawn tight as if braced for more agony to come. Agony that had mercifully ceased.
It was obvious to Pearl that Florence was older than the other victims, and though it was unfair to judge in death, she hadn’t been a particularly attractive woman. Not the usual sort of Butcher prey. Pearl wondered why the deviation from type.
“The guy would make things easier if he’d shrink-wrap the meat,” Nift said.
Pearl felt like kicking him.
“What I’m wondering,” Quinn said, “is if you’ll find any water in her lungs.”
“Haven’t gotten that far yet.” Nift began parting the victim’s matted hair with his fingertips, exploring for head injuries. “Haven’t even gotten down to finding out whether she had good boobs. It’s a science, you know. The blood stops flowing and they don’t look so great, but I can tell.”