A Good and Useful Hurt

by Aric Davis

  “Yeah?”

  “If this doesn’t work, you’re going to speak to a friend of mine. He will not be supportive of this sort of delusion. Do you understand what I mean?”

  “Your buddy is going to say that I’m crazier than a shithouse rat?”

  “Yes.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Mike tattooed Doc with the design of a small bird on his foot. He used the ink with the niece’s ashes for the black outline. Doc sat in silence while he worked, and left as soon as it was finished, barely allowing Mike time to bandage it. Mike could see that his friend had reflected on it all, and he probably thought that both of them were crazy—Mike for conceiving it, and Doc for considering it.

  When Mike finished he went back upstairs. Lamar and Becky were working, but Mike had no energy for them or for work. He went to the bathroom—no Sid—and took a sleeping pill.

  He woke on a playground that he dimly recognized from somewhere in that weird ago of childhood. Deb was sitting next to him on a bench swing.

  “Where do you go when I wake up?”

  “I don’t go anywhere, Mike. I just am. Regrettably, we don’t have so much as an air hockey table unless you imagine it.”

  “I talked to Doc.”

  “Are you sleeping in a mental health care facility?”

  “No. He believed me. A little bit anyways.”

  “The niece?”

  “I have ink with her ashes in it at work.”

  “Why didn’t you use any on yourself yet? We could be that much closer to knowing who he is!”

  “I wanted to talk to Doc first. Depending on what he says, I will tomorrow.”

  “You still think this might all be a hallucination.”

  “Part of me does, yeah. How else would I think of it?”

  “As truth, as love—as whatever you want, I guess.” She kicked back with her feet, and the swing flung backwards.

  “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Deb. I don’t trust myself. What if I’m just fucked up from what happened?”

  “You are fucked up from what happened—don’t be stupid. I’m just worried about time. You know he wants to kill her while the baby watches? He wants the child to watch because he wants to do it in front of a person and not get caught. He loves the attention as much as he hates it, and he’s getting hungrier for it.”

  “So after Doc either puts me in a padded room or decides to help, what’s next?”

  “Let Doc tell you what to do. He’ll know which family to approach first and how to go about it. It’s what he does.”

  “I can’t draw. I can’t do anything.”

  “It will come back to you—it always has. It’s what you are.”

  “There’s something I never told you about the bathroom in the apartment.”

  “I know about Sid. I wish you would have told me, though; I would’ve thought it was neat.”

  “She’s the one who told me to come for you.”

  “I know.”

  “Can you talk to her now?”

  “I don’t think so. I would if I could.”

  “I miss you. I miss you so much. I’d sleep all the time if I could.”

  She kissed him across the lips and wrapped an arm over his shoulders. “I miss you too. It will get better. It will all get better after you catch him.”

  “How can you be so sure we will?”

  “I can’t imagine anything worse than if you and Doc couldn’t.”

  Mike could think of nothing to say to that, so they sat in silence and let the wind rock them. It was as good as it could be.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  The phone insisted Mike wake, and he did. Rolling over, he glanced at the clock and saw that it was only four a.m. The phone was ringing, but there was another noise, a pounding at the door. Mike turned on the phone and headed to the door. Doc said, “Let me in!”

  Mike did as he was told. Doc brushed past him with a blast of cool night air following him, shoving his phone in his pocket as he went. His eyes looked as though they’d caught fire. He sputtered and sprayed a garbled mess of words, and Mike said, “Have a seat, and I’ll get some coffee started.”

  When Mike had finished with the grinder, beans, and water, he sat across from Doc. He looked at the twin scorch marks and Doc did as well, squinting his eyes and shaking his head.

  “So you believe me?”

  “That would be the tip of the iceberg, my friend, the tip! This is a full-blown revolution, a secret revolution to be sure, but one nonetheless, and we are at the forefront! My niece sends her regards.”

  “How is she?”

  “Better than the last time I saw her. It was wonderful to speak with her, and as we spoke, her condition improved. She wants me to poke her mother with some of the ink, as if by accident, but I’m convinced my sister would descend into madness were I to do so.”

  “She might just think she was having really vivid dreams.”

  “I suppose. I’ll certainly consider it. Now, on to the matter at hand: you need a new tattoo.”

  “Why, can’t you just tell me what she said about the man?”

  “I could, but it would only settle half the issue. We need their collective memories gathered up in one vessel. You will need to be tattooed with my niece, just as I will need a tattoo from the ink containing the bits of Deb. It will be that way with all of them, for both of us. We have so little time. I did a little research before I rushed over here, and I made a list of all the addresses of next of kin for the other six slain women. We need to start today.”

  “How exactly are we going to do that?”

  “We must convince them to let us have ashes, and we must hope that all of the girls were cremated. Your bit of disinterment’s success aside, I believe such an act would be dangerous to replicate. It’s possible, I suppose, that even with just what Deb and Annie know we can find our man. With each family we can convince to help we’ll be that much closer to catching him. Mike, if we’d known to do this after Annie was killed, Deb would still be alive.”

  Mike was caught dead by the thought. He’d considered telling Doc about the ashes after his niece had been killed, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do so. Deb had been no help in the matter either; she’d thought it hugely inappropriate. Now Mike didn’t know that he’d ever forgive himself; he was even angry with Deb over it. Surely the thought had to have occurred to her while they talked. Was she angry about it as well?

  Mike steadied his voice as well as he was able and said, “You’re right. Which family should we talk to first?”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. You go downstairs and get the necessary equipment, and I’ll start looking up some information on my laptop.”

  Mike went down to the dark shop and shut off the alarm—his fingers fumbled on the buttons, and for a second he felt sure that he was going to do it wrong and have the cops over to check on things. He gathered up two needles, a box of gloves, and ointment. Deb’s ink was already upstairs. He locked the store before heading back up the stairs.

  Doc spoke while Mike worked to set up a little station at the table.

  “Maybe if I presented myself to them as some kind of researcher—the truth would be best, of course, but who would believe a total stranger spouting such insanity? It’s just such a sensitive subject.” He paused, thinking. “I think it will have to be the truth, even as damning as it is. What do you think, Mike?”

  “I have no idea, Doc. I had a hard enough time telling you, and I was half hoping you’d just tell me I was crazy. What do you want me to do?”

  “It doesn’t much matter—just do a couple of short lines next to the bird. What if I had presented this matter to you as a mental health professional before you’d heard of the phenomenon? Could you have taken it seriously? Now we add in the elements of grief, I’m more likely to be shot for asking than I am to be drummed out for being a lunatic. Not that I’m overmuch concerned with my career coming to an end, but I’d like to avoid its cause being a c
omplete dissolution of my professional and personal contacts. I’ll do it if I’m forced—I’d certainly not let ego be the cause of the young lady’s death—but it would be a horrible thing to both fail and lose my livelihood. We could even be arrested.”

  “I’m not worried about any of that. We need to figure out a way to do this. What can you say to make this OK?”

  “Are you done?”

  “Yeah. I’m going to clean up, and then I’ll do mine.”

  “I’ll get back on the computer, then. Every one of these families is going to need to be approached differently.”

  Mike cleaned up the small tattoo setup and went to work making a new one. It was mindless busywork, but he was perfectly happy letting Doc do the heavy lifting on this one. He couldn’t imagine presenting someone with the reality of the proposition, but he could think of no other way. In the end, Doc couldn’t either.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  They settled on talking to the family of the fourth girl killed, Angela Johnson, because from the pictures they saw on the newspaper’s website they somehow looked the most approachable. The parents looked nice in the few pictures Doc had found online, nice and blue collar.

  Doc wanted Mike to come in with him, but Mike refused, saying that there was nothing he could say that Doc wouldn’t have thought up first. Mike wanted to call before they showed up cold, but Doc shut down the idea. Doc figured on both of the parents being home as it was a Saturday, and Mike hoped that was the case: If the woman was alone, Mike doubted Doc would get through the door.

  While Doc drove them to the Johnson household, Mike missed two calls from Becky but ignored both of them. He wondered what she might want, but he just had too much to deal with otherwise to care all that much.

  They rolled into exactly the kind of neighborhood Doc had expected. Not affluent but not poor, well-kept lawns and landscaping, but not so well kept as to have been done by professionals. It was exactly the kind of neighborhood where Mike had imagined in his wildest moments that he and Deb would’ve ended up.

  Finally, Doc stopped the car and got out. He didn’t look back, but gave a curt nod to a man mowing his lawn as he crossed the street. Doc knocked three times on the door, and a woman answered. Mike watched her speak to Doc, then a few moments later a man joined her, and then Doc was ushered inside. Mike braided his fingers together and closed his eyes, hoping against hope for Doc, and for all of them.

  Five minutes later his phone buzzed. It bore a text message that read: “Come on in.”

  Mike sighed, braced himself, and left the car, images of disaster whirling through his mind.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Doc was sitting on a red chair, and they sat across from him on a matching sofa. Between them was a coffee table, and on the coffee table was a steel urn about sixteen inches tall. It had a mother-of-pearl inlay on the lid with gold filigree.

  The woman stood up, and Mike could see she’d been crying. “Let me get you a chair.”

  “That won’t be nece—”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  She returned with a high-backed dining room chair. It was stained black, and Mike could see from the fur and scratches on the cushioned seat that they had cats. She set it in front of him and motioned for him to sit. He did, and she said, “Would you like something to drink?”

  “No thank you, ma’am.”

  “Please, call me Katherine. This is my husband, Gabriel. Your friend has some very interesting things to say. Are they true?”

  “It’s nice to meet you, I’m Mike. I think so, ma’am, yes.”

  She sat again next to her husband, and Mike could tell from the way they drew together that they were doing the good thing and relying on each other for support instead of shoving each other away out of grief or anger. She looked thin, pale, and reedy next to him, but he seemed strong and evenly built, with thick arms and a well-managed beard.

  The man spoke. “Tell me what happened.”

  “My girlfriend was the most recent victim of the same man who killed your daughter and Doc’s niece. Over the last year I’ve done a few tattoos involving ashes of deceased loved ones, and when my girlfriend was murdered, I decided I wanted a tattoo like that as well. I’m assuming Doc told you the rest.”

  “And you want to use my daughter’s ashes for the same reason, to see what she saw?”

  Doc said, “That’s exactly it, Gabriel. We feel that apprehension and punishment for whoever’s been committing these crimes could be possible, as well as preventing more of them. Mike and I are going to put a small amount of the ashes into our skin, and if all goes as planned, we will be able to do the same with ashes from all of the girls.”

  “How much of my daughter’s ashes are we talking about?”

  “Not much, even an eighth to a quarter teaspoon should be sufficient. I want you both to know that we accept doubt of what we’re saying, and if either of you would like to have the procedure done as well, Mike would be happy to tattoo either of you with some of your daughter’s ashes.”

  “Can you excuse us for a moment so we can discuss this?”

  Gabriel stood, and she followed him from the room.

  Mike said, “Why did I have to come in?”

  “To help me. They wanted to believe, and I needed a second voice to help push them over the edge.”

  Mike began to speak, and then Gabriel returned alone. Mike was sure that the answer was going to be no. Gabriel said, “I want you to know that if this isn’t true, I hope it’s because you’re both crazy, and not just cruel.”

  He sat and began to open the urn; Doc set a small vial next to him.

  “If you see my daughter, tell her that we love her and think about her every day. If I hear on the news that they caught the piece of shit who hurt her, I’ll come to see you about a tat. Otherwise, I hope for your sakes we don’t cross paths again.”

  He handed Doc the vial with the gray powder, and they thanked him before they left.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Amazingly, the next two houses went in similar fashion. The second was a single mother and her grown daughter, who both seemed to think the whole thing was entirely reasonable and had even gone so far as to ask if they could help in any other way. The third had been a mother and father who had at least six children under the age of twelve running around. Neither Mike nor Doc had asked if they were running a daycare, or just had a large number of offspring. The family had seemed disinterested, and the mother of the deceased gave them far more product than they needed for the task.

  After the three successes, they started back to the shop. Becky had called twice more, and Mike finally answered. “What’s up, Becky?”

  “I need to know when you’re going to be back. I’ve got calls and e-mails coming out of my ass, and Lamar wants to schedule some interviews. We need to know what’s going on.”

  “Becky, I appreciate the problem, but I can’t give you a time frame right now. I’d expect at least two weeks.”

  “Mike, you’re booked for every day that you work for those two weeks. What’s going on?”

  “I’m taking care of something. I’m sorry but I can’t elaborate.”

  “Mike, what happened to Deb was awful, and both Lamar and I know that you’re going to need time to grieve and get your head right. If you could do some of that at work, it would really help, though. We’re busy as hell, and without Deb’s income it’s going to be hard enough. With you not working, well, frankly I’m worried. I know you need time, but we need you too. We’re all hurt, Mike.”

  “Becky, you and Lamar can schedule whoever you want to hire in as guest artists. Hell, let two of them come in at once. We’ll figure out who to hire when I can get back. My clientele is going to have to wait. Like I said, two weeks should be enough time, but I’ll let you know as soon as possible. Call me if you need me, but otherwise I need you two to handle the shop, and its finances, while I’m gone.”

  She started to sputter something else, and he hu
ng up the phone. Doc pulled the car into the lot by the shop, and they went up to the apartment.

  Mike tattooed Doc first, and then he worked on himself. He hadn’t realized how tired he was until he’d finished his tattoo. Across the room, Doc looked exhausted as well. Mike made himself work it out: they’d been going for almost eighteen hours.

  “Doc, I gotta sleep, man. Like now.”

  “I think that would be for the best, don’t you?”

  Mike did.

  When Mike came to, he was back in the interrogation room. He was alone. There was noise around him, and it was missing the clarity it had had before. There were fuzzy spots on the walls where things should have been clear. Where there had been a mirror was now a black wall. The cinder blocks that formed the room looked misshapen, as though they’d been badly poured. Perspectives were off: things that should have looked close seemed distant, as though in a fog. The affect of it all was disorienting to his eyes, almost perverse. He spoke: “Hello?”

  The words echoed and undulated as they came back. Mike wondered for the first time if he could be hurt here. Was what they were doing safe? For Deb or the niece to behave benignly made sense, but he hadn’t known the other girls, and he had no idea how they’d react. Even Deb had seemed cold, even hostile to him at first.

  There was a loud crash from the hallway, and Mike could hear at least two voices, and neither of them sounded too happy. The door flew open, bounced hard against the cinderblocks, and then swung back to sit half ajar. He still couldn’t see into the hallway, but the yelling was much louder now and more voices were audible, maybe as many as four or five. The door slammed open, the handle taking chunks of concrete from the wall, and bits of dust fell to the ground.

  Then, finally, silence, and they entered.

  Deb entered first, looking as he’d remembered her before the attack, though strained. Another flash of fear: Was he safe here? Then Doc’s niece stepped in, and she looked all right as well. The last three women entered in quick succession. They were healing, that was apparent immediately. What wounds they bore at the times of their deaths were still apparent and horrible, black eyes and broken jaws, ligature marks on their necks that were dark and obscene, abuse after abuse, and Mike could see the pain on their faces as they moved their beaten bodies about.