Welcome to Witchlandia

by Steven Popkes

  Overhead, I saw three of Sam’s former students shoot down Columbus Avenue as we drove into town. Once we got to Kneeland Street, we got stuck. I watched one gentleman dressed as a clown bouncing a great orange ball, just staring at it. Down the street, a woman was flying paper airplanes in complex circles eight feet overhead.

  Every third person was a juggler.

  Dooley leaned on the horn until I reached over and popped on the lights. After that, we crossed Kneeland without any trouble.

  Dooley turned onto Essex for half a block, then into this narrow alleyway and parking lot filled with trucks. He stopped behind the trucks, got out of the car and went to the trunk.

  I got out of the car and looked around. I didn’t see anything interesting. I glanced towards the back of the car. I could hear him rummaging back there. “What’s in the trunk?”

  “Special equipment.”

  I looked back to the alley, wondering where we were going. A sweet solvent smell and then his hand clamped a cloth over my face. I inhaled and I was gone, nothing left of me but tatters and light.

  oOo

  I woke with a headache and a nearly overwhelming urge to vomit. After a few moments, my stomach settled and I opened my eyes. Dooley was sitting across from me, watching me intently. He was silent.

  “What’s the...” My voice trailed off. There was somebody sitting in another chair a few feet away, the three of us making a neat triangle. He was leaning forward, unconscious. I didn’t need to see his face to know it was Sean.

  “What is going on?” My mind cleared and I stared at Dooley in horror. “You’re the killer?”

  Dooley didn’t say anything. He pulled out a knife and held it. Short. A little wide—a small skinning knife, perhaps. I remembered what Hickey had said about the murder weapon: short, narrow and sharp.

  He stood up and came over, looking down at me.

  Without looking at Sean, he said, “Sit up, Gifford. I know you’re faking.”

  Sean lifted his head. He looked at me, then Dooley, then back at me.

  Dooley shrugged. “You two can speak.”

  I tried to but coughed. Then, I managed to say: “How long have you been down here? Are you okay?”

  “So far.” He shook his head, still dazed. “What day is it?”

  “Thursday.” I looked up at Dooley.

  “It’s still Thursday.” Dooley smiled at me and his face was someone I’d never seen before.

  “I’ve been here two days.” He shook his head again. “I’m okay. I think.”

  Dooley stared down at me. “Another lover. Someone else you abandoned.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  Dooley slapped me as easily as he might have slapped a puppy. The explosion made my vision dim and my ears ring. I tasted blood.

  “Leave her alone!”

  “Shut up.”

  Dooley brought his face down to within a few inches of mine. He grabbed my jaw with his hand and turned my face towards Sean. “What do you feel towards him?” He released me.

  I jerked back to stared at him. “I’ll kill you if you hurt him.”

  Dooley laughed softly. “You will try.”

  Dooley stood up. Watching me closely, he swung his arm in a broad backhand and slashed Sean’s throat.

  Sean tried to scream but only bubbled. He shook, thrashed—blood spurted across his chest, across Dooley, across me. I felt it in my heart, a controlled, cold death-dealing thrust, leaving me bleeding and lifeless.

  I cried out. I tried to reach him, to rip through the cord and hold him. Instead, he died in front of me, both of us helpless, an inconsolable distance between us.

  His life drained away and I was weeping, crying like a child lost in the dark.

  Dooley took my chin and turned me to face him. Kill me. Kill me, too, said every part of me.

  His face was filled with light and blinded me, deafened me to anything but his voice.

  “We’ve never met before, Katelin,” he said in a sing-song voice. “My name is Misty.”

  Part 3: David, 1999

  Chapter 3.1: Thursday, October 28

  Obsessions accrete slowly, like bones or the shells of crabs.

  First, there’s the breakup. The five descending stages of grief: anger, recrimination, regret, loneliness, depression. Was it my fault? Was it hers?

  Picking up an object, any object, forgetting what the object is and remembering only the object’s heritage: where we bought it or found it. The complete string of memories it evokes. An ancient, cheap lobster fork we found in a shapeless pile of silverware at the bottom of a rotting cardboard box holding down the floor in a junk shop, when we visited Provincetown for the first time. She insisted we watch the sunrise from the east side of the spit and then be sure to watch the sunset on the west side of the same day so she could watch the sun appear from the ocean and disappear back into it. A thin book discussing bamboo, written completely in Japanese, discovered in a garage sale on a trip to northern Missouri when she showed me land so flat I was morally certain I could see China if I only found the right spot and stared hard enough, her laughing at me as I stared, then grabbing me and pressing her face against my chest and telling me how much she liked the way I smelled. How much she loved me.

  That sort of thing fades into the occasional surprise late at night or during the morning before coffee.

  But the interest remains—nothing to be concerned about. After all, there’s any number of reasons for a normal, healthy interest. And if that interest continues after the memories begin to fade—well, that’s normal, too. Isn’t it?

  Then, when the interest doesn’t really abate. If, in fact, you find yourself searching the net, Googling traces of your… interest, then that’s okay, too. After all, everybody looks up old teachers. Girlfriends. Ex-wives. If everybody does it, it’s still normal.

  At some point, you cross a line. Maybe it’s the pay-per-search sites—The person you’re looking for is in Boston, Massachusetts! $29 to find birth records, deeds, marriage records!

  But it’s still all right. Okay, it’s gone past normal, of course. But it’s not really pathologic, is it? After all, nobody knows what you’re doing. It’s all legal—if it wasn’t, how could they advertise so openly on the net?

  Even when it’s not a single search or even a regular search but you’ve purchased a continuously updating feed. It’s still private. It’s still legal.

  You know you’re in stalker territory, though, when you’re offered a private deal. For a modest fee, you can watch private videos of her. At this point, there’s no going back. There’s no hiding it from yourself. You know what you’re doing is rotten. But, you console yourself: I can’t help myself. I’m obsessed. As long as no one knows, that’s consolation enough.

  Then, you have a change in perspective. A new light shines on you and it’s as if you see yourself for the first time.

  I knew my life was shaky when I got the call from Dooley.

  I was in Saint Louis. Frieda had set me up with a short tour that ended in New York just prior to Conclave back home. It was a nice set of gigs. The one in Saint Louis was a solo recital. I’d been working through the Liszt piano transcriptions of the Beethoven symphonies again—I was finding a wealth of possibilities I hadn’t understood before. Tonight, I would finish the concert with the Seventh. The Allegretto, with its pendulous and fallen grandeur like an unstoppable river flowing to the sea, never failed to move the audience. Or me, for that matter.

  I was eating dinner by myself in the hotel restaurant. After dinner I would go upstairs, dress for the concert and take a cab to the hall. Drink a cup of coffee. Use the bathroom. Practice my warm-up exercises. All of those little rituals I had grown into over the years.

  My cell rang. I didn’t recognize the number but I answered anyway. Officer Abraham Dooley.

  I agreed to speak with the Boston Police Department when I returned to Boston. I hung up the phone and stared at my salad. My hands and face fe
lt numb. Without thinking, I started some finger stretching exercises. Scales. Arpeggios. I was calm in a few moments.

  It had to be about Where’s Katelin.

  Should I have a lawyer present? After all, Katelin was a Boston police officer. BPD was very protective of its own, even if it didn’t like them. You didn’t grow up around Boston without realizing that at an early age. On the other hand, I thought, what did I do that was really wrong? I watched some illegal videos. I’d always felt too squeamish to watch any of the bedroom files. Any half decent record of the site would show that. So I watched some records of Katelin flying around. Talking to locals. Drinking coffee. Laughing.

  I would manage.

  That night it hit me right in the Seventh. Right in the Allegretto, in the dolce expressivo, second line, fourth measure. For a moment, I couldn’t remember the music at all. Just remembering all of the records I had seen. It would all be exposed: all of the searches I had made, videos I had seen. There would be interviews with other members of the site—sure, we know DAVID902. He was always watching. You couldn’t sign on without seeing him there. Oh! He was that David? Wasn’t he in a mental hospital? Multiple Personality Disorder? All of my flaws, all of my past, every rumor of me, every opinion of me, all visible and broadcast across the world. I’d be lucky to ever play a concert again.

  But my left hand remembered the expressivo on its own and after a brief moment, my right joined it. My mind might be gone but my hands remembered their job.

  A lawyer didn’t matter. What records I had or hadn’t seen didn’t matter. One drop of data in the sea of the internet and I would be swamped. I had managed to avoid being eaten by the celebrity machine until now. If the BPD willed it, I’d be swallowed up. I was at their mercy.

  I had no idea I could feel so vile.

  That was as far as my mind got until I entered the station and met Detective Hoffman. He brought me through a back room and I saw Katelin and all the light seemed to be drawn to her. She looked at me.

  And I understood at that moment that Katelin knew. Knew it all. Knew what I had done. Knew what I had become. Knew how small and ugly I really was. If there had been anything between us, her cool gaze said to me, it was gone now. I was just a witness. A perp. An offender. A criminal.

  I thought I had felt as low as I could possibly feel. I was wrong.

  Hoffman led me to a small gray room and left me alone.

  I stared at the wall for a long time in wonder. Ah, I thought. So this is bottomless despair.

  oOo

  I was in the room an hour before Detective Hoffman came in with another man.

  “Detective Hoffman,” I said. I looked at him for some cheer, maybe. He stared back at me, his tiny eyes black and empty.

  The other man spoke up: “I’m Detective John Rush. This is Detective Albert Hoffman.”

  “Detective Hoffman and I have met,” I said, nausea fermenting in my stomach. I should never have eaten. I had a sudden urge to bolt—I was here voluntarily. I could scream for my lawyer. The room felt close, anechoic. The only sounds were our voices, the hiss of our breath, the rasping of our clothes, the minute squeaks and groans of our bodies as we moved in our chairs.

  I glanced at Hoffman again. His expression was implacable.

  Intellectually, I knew that Rush was playing a good cop and Hoffman was playing a bad cop. But it didn’t make any difference. I found myself wanting to cozy up to Rush and frightened of Hoffman.

  Rush sat down across from me and pulled out a folder. He opened it on the table with a slap. “You’re a paid subscriber to WheresKatelin.com, right?”

  I felt defeated. Ashamed. I thought about trying to explain it but there was no point to any explanation. I didn’t say anything for a moment. The air in the room felt stale and devoid of oxygen. The lights seemed brighter than they had when I had come in here. I smelled something meaty like stale blood. Hoffman? I glanced at him. He was still glaring at me. He didn’t seem to be sweating, and Rush looked as cool as a bird.

  Rush leaned back in his chair and watched me. He slid a paper silently over to me. “Is that a copy of your credit card records? With the regular charge over to Cybertech Investigations?”

  I nodded.

  Rush passed another sheet over to me. “This is a paid subscriber list for the Where’s Katelin website. That’s your name, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, Mr. Sabado. Let’s try that question again: are you a paid subscriber to the Where’s Katelin website?”

  “Yes.”

  “For the last…” Rush consulted the contents of the folder again. “Year and a half. Correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “You do know that Katelin Loquess is a police officer, don’t you?”

  I nodded.

  Hoffman stood up. The scrape of his chair was loud in the room. He turned away.

  I was startled by his sudden movement and slid my own chair back. He glanced back at me contemptuously. Then, he pulled off his jacket and hung it on the door. His forearms hung loosely out of his short-sleeved shirt.

  “Mr. Sabado?” Rush said, his voice like oil. “Please pay attention. I’m asking the questions here. Not Detective Hoffman.”

  But I could no more take my eyes off Hoffman than a deer could avoid looking at headlights. Hoffman pulled a tennis ball out of his jacket pocket and came back to his chair. He sat down and resumed his staring at me.

  I didn’t realize I was practicing five-finger exercises until Rush stared at my hands. I clasped them together and held them in my lap.

  “You watched illegal videos of Officer Loquess?”

  “I watched videos of Officer Loquess. I don’t know if they were illegal or not.”

  Hoffman snorted. He started squeezing the tennis ball. Every muscle and tendon in his forearm bunched up to twice their normal size. The tennis ball bulged as if it were going to explode. I had never seen such muscles in my entire life.

  Rush smiled thinly at me. “Point taken. Did you watch videos of Officer Loquess?”

  “Yes.”

  “Videos of her on the street? In the air?”

  “Yes.”

  “Videos of her in her apartment?”

  I nodded, miserable.

  Rush leaned forward. “Videos of her in bed?”

  “No!”

  Rush leaned back affably. “All right. All right. Did you know there’s a record of every video you’ve ever streamed or downloaded?”

  “I figured there probably was.”

  “We have that record. So if you ever did download some nice bedroom footage of Loquess—and who could blame you—we’ll find out.” He chuckled dryly. “She’s a very pretty girl, isn’t she? And you were together for a long time. I bet things were pretty spicy. It’s natural to want to relive some of the good parts.”

  I didn’t say anything. I thought of Katelin’s eyes. She didn’t think it was natural.

  Hoffman squeezed the ball again. The strength in those hands.

  I dragged my attention back to Rush. “Beg pardon?”

  Rush smiled. “You were about to tell me how you missed the good parts of the relationship.” Rush didn’t give me a chance to answer but turned back to the folder. “Did you know any of the other subscribers?”

  “No.” I couldn’t breathe. I burped something noxious.

  “You didn’t participate in the chat rooms?”

  “I didn’t know there were any chat rooms. Just a list of members on line.” I could hear that tennis ball, a faint groan from the pressure.

  “When you were in Columbia, did you know a William Wallace?”

  “The plastics factory guy?”

  Rush glanced up from his file. “You did know him?”

  I shook my head. “I never met him. I’d heard of him.”

  “How did you hear about Wallace?”

  I shrugged, feeling slightly more comfortable and on familiar ground even if I was confused. “I did a lot of local concerts when I was liv
ing in Columbia. Parlor room sets. School gigs. Even a wedding or two—there are a lot of people there with too much money and not enough taste. They’d want to hear Beethoven’s Ninth at their daughter’s wedding just so I’d play there. People talked about things and I’d overhear.”

  “What’s wrong with the Ninth for a wedding?”

  I didn’t answer immediately. “It’s too big for the occasion,” I said carefully, not wanting to give offense.

  Rush nodded and consulted his file again. “Why would people talk about William Wallace?”

  I spread my hands. “Cautionary tale, I suppose. Columbia was a college town until the early seventies and the university budget crunch. Then, the town decided to attract business. Several factories were built—a pipe factory, a factory that built valves for the automobile industry and Wallace’s plastic factory. He did very well but fell off the deep end with religion and then got caught up in a nasty divorce. The cautionary part depended on who was telling the story. If it was the wives—say, at a wedding—it was when to start divorce proceedings against a crazy husband. If it was the husbands, it was how to protect the business from a voracious wife. Anyway, the end of the story was always the same: Wallace ended up in a mental hospital and the plastics company ended up in receivership. Both Wallace and his wife ended up with nothing.”

  “I see.” Rush watched me. “So you wouldn’t recognize him if you saw him?”

  “No.”

  “Here’s his picture. Take a good look.” Rush slid over a picture of a dead body lying in a pool of blood.

  “I don’t understand.” The room felt suddenly cold. I felt dizzy. Every sound in the room compressed. My breakfast chased my coffee all over my insides.

  “Did you know Oscar Plante?”

  I shook my head. “The juggler? I’ve never met—”

  “Ah. Here’s his picture, too.” Rush slid over another picture of a dead body. More blood. “Vice gets all the pretty pictures. Homicide is never quite able to get the right pose.”

  I stared at the pictures silently.

  “Or Tim Rabbitt?” Rush slid a third picture over to me. “Surely you remember him. After all, didn’t you kill all three of them?”