Bleeders

by Anthony Bruno

  A crash from inside the apartment distracted her. It sounded as if something had fallen off a shelf. Shugrue honed in on the sound. Trisha noticed that he was scared but also concerned—concerned about his things, concerned about being polite when he’d addressed her, concerned that he was displeasing his keeper. Trisha had observed serial offenders who acted submissively in detention—that wasn’t’ unusual—but Shugrue’s motivation seemed to be different. She didn’t think his submissiveness was a con job. Admittedly this was just an initial reaction, but she trusted her instincts.

  “Whoa! I think we got something here.” Pete’s voice coming from the kitchen.

  Shugrue tried to stand up, but Detective Serious grabbed his shoulder and sat him back down. Trisha breezed past them and rushed into the kitchen with Barry right behind her.

  Pete in one of his signature black suits stood in the middle of the kitchen under a bright ceiling fixture. Two other male detectives in blue NYPD windbreakers huddled around him. He held a large cardboard box of Brillo pads and a Zip-lock bag full of something. Trisha wedged between the detectives to get a closer look. The bag contained a collection of rings. Women’s rings.

  “So what do you think?” Pete said to her, a self-satisfied grin on his face. He lowered his voice so Shugrue wouldn’t hear. “You proved that Drac takes rings as souvenirs. If these match any of our victims, I think we’ve got our man.”

  The other two detectives looked to her for confirmation, their expressions verging on belligerence just in case she disagreed. That’s how anxious they all were to put an end to the Drac murders.

  “Hold on, hold on.” A female detective with curly black hair, also wearing a windbreaker, came out of one of the bedrooms, holding a cell phone in her gloved hand. “I found this in the drawer with his underwear,” she said with a strong Dominican accent. She showed it around like a waiter displaying a wine bottle. “I turned it on. It belongs to a Heather Blanford.”

  The room went silent as they all thought the same thing—another victim.

  The Dominican detective shook her head. “I just talked to Ms. Blanford. She thought she lost this phone.”

  “When?” Trisha asked.

  “She noticed it was missing a few days ago. Said she hardly uses it because she has a cell from her work.”

  Barry caught Trisha’s eye. “You received a suspicious text that might have come from Drac. It was sent from a stolen cell. Maybe Shugrue stole this one, too.”

  The two male detectives moved in unison like robots. The suspect was in the other room with just one detective guarding him. If he figured out that his stash had been uncovered, he might try to flee, and they weren’t about to let their Drac get away.

  “Call for three more units,” Pete said to the Dominican detective.

  She pulled a police radio out of her windbreaker.

  Pete put the bag of rings and Brillo box on the kitchen counter and pulled out his cell. He pressed a preset number. “Yeah, this is Detective Warwick,” he said. “Is she there?” Pause. “Okay, you tell the Assistant Chief that the search at Shugrue’s apartment was fruitful. Very fruitful. I’ll give her the details when I talk to her.”

  He pocketed his phone and turned to Trisha. “Is the fat lady singing yet?”

  “She might be.” Trisha didn’t want to spoil the party, but she still had her doubts.

  Barry whispered in her ear. “Make yourself available for that interview as soon as we can book time with him. I want our participation on record.”

  Politics, she thought. Barry didn’t care if they had the right man. He just wanted to make sure the FBI could take some credit for the arrest. She seethed inside. This was all moving too fast and possibly in the wrong direction. At least not in the direction she wanted. Lassiter was Drac. She was convinced.

  Or was she just trying to convince herself?

  In the living room the detectives were handcuffing Shugrue who protested verbally but didn’t resist. “Hey, wait a minute. Come on! I don’t have any shoes on. Let me put my shoes on.”

  The detectives ignored his pleas, turning him around and patting him down. Detective Serious held the chain of the handcuffs, controlling him like a bad dog, forcing him to bend over at the waist.

  “Okay, let’s go,” one of the detectives said, taking him by the arm.

  But Shugrue held his ground and looked straight at Trisha.

  “Can’t I just have my shoes, Ms. McCleery? Please? Can you tell them that?”

  “We’ll bring you a pair of shoes,” Detective Serious said. She jerked on the handcuffs, making Shugrue wince, and that was enough to get him moving. Trisha watched as they led him out of the apartment.

  “Get some coffee,” Barry said. “It’s gonna be a long night.”

  She could feel a tension headache coming on. It’s not him, she thought. I don’t want it to be him.

  Lassiter lay on his side on the bed—Natalie’s bed—staring at the portrait of Trisha on the shade. He’d been this way for hours. He was going stir crazy cooped up by himself in his townhouse, but his attorney had strongly advised him to stay home for a few days and keep out of sight. Photographers and film crews would try to ambush him, his attorney said, and they were practiced at taking subjects by surprise. So despite his terrible yearning for Trisha, Lassiter forced himself to stay put. The police had arrested young Richard, and according to the news reports, the poor boy had replaced him as the prime suspect in the Drac slayings. That’s why he had to sit tight for a while. Let them feast on Richard’s carcass without distraction.

  He twirled a fresh spinal needle between his thumb and forefinger, randomly poking at the comforter. He had a box of needles and a box of tubes in a hidden compartment behind the pegboard over the workbench in the dirty basement. He was still worried that the police would find the needle and tube he’d thrown from Adele Cardinalli’s patio, but it had been almost four days since his arrest, and so far he hadn’t heard a thing about it. If they had recovered his apparatus, they certainly would have used it as evidence to charge him with additional crimes.

  Trisha’s image on the shade looked down at him. Her eyes were sympathetic, but they were asking him what he was going to do now. He was stumped. He’d always walked a tight rope, balancing his desires with his need to survive. Until now he’d never been this close to getting caught. In the past he’d found ways to move on and continue climbing the rungs toward his life’s goal, to bleed Trisha just like her mother, but better. But if he left the house to hunt for her and the police caught him again, that would be the end. He’d be arrested and put away for good. And worst of all he’d never have Trisha.

  But on the other hand, if he waited too long, she’d be gone. She didn’t live in New York. She was here temporarily for the Drac investigation, and her work took her all over the country. What was he supposed to do? Track her wherever she went, like a hobo riding the rails? She did have an apartment near D.C., but could he really set himself up in a new city and recreate this bedroom in another house so he could stalk her there? And what about his business? He couldn’t just abandon it. How suspicious would that look?

  He stabbed the comforter harder and faster.

  “This wasn’t the way I wanted it,” he grumbled at her portrait. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this, Natalie.”

  He flung the needle at the picture, but instead of sticking like a dart, it bounced off and fell to the floor where two days’ worth of newspapers were spread out—the Gazette, the Post, the Daily News, and the Times. He’d arranged to have them delivered, doing it online with a credit card so he wouldn’t have to talk to anyone.

  The front pages of the tabloids screamed with Drac news. Yesterday they featured pictures of him leaving court after his bail hearing.

  DRAC RELEASED

  DRAC OUT ON BAIL

  COURT TO THE
COUNT: FLY, DRAC, FLY

  Today’s papers had a different theme.

  POLICE ARREST REAL DRAC

  NEW DRAC ARRESTED

  POLICE FIND REAL DRAC’S CRYPT

  Each paper had a slightly different photo of Richard on the perp walk, looking scared, confused, and disheveled. One shot captured his whole body, and Lassiter noticed that he was wearing polished black wingtips without socks. He stared at Richard’s distressed expression in the three photos and tried to feel sorry for him just to see if he had those kind of emotions, but he really felt nothing. Not pity, not glee, not malice. He had set up Richard to take the fall, but he didn’t feel guilty or triumphant. Richard was in jail, and he wasn’t. Richard was in trouble, and he was staying out of trouble. Their fates were on separate, unrelated paths as far as he was concerned.

  The only thing he felt was the desperate need to bleed Trisha. He had no interest in Natalie substitutes anymore. There was only one person who would satisfy him. After Trisha, he had no idea what he’d do. He didn’t think about it, didn’t care. For him she was all there was.

  He reached over the edge of the bed and picked up the inside sections of that day’s Times. This paper was too snooty to put crime coverage on the front page. If there was anything about Drac at all, it would be buried in the Metro section. They seldom ran photos with crime stories, and when they did, they weren’t very interesting. While the tabloids all had shots of shook-up Richard, the Times might have a photo of the exterior of his house. Lassiter opened the paper on the bed and flipped pages just to prove himself right. What else did he have to do?

  But the glint of a shiny object on the floor distracted him. It was the needle he’d thrown, laying on the hooked rug. He stared at it. His gaze wandered to the pillows where he would rest Trisha’s head. The posts of the headboard stood tall and erect, waiting like palace guards for the moment when he could tie her wrists to them with silk scarves. He looked at the footboard, the round post heads where he would secure her ankles. He imagined her stretched out like a fly trapped in a spider web. He pictured her wearing the same clothes as the day they’d gone to the Cloisters. White cotton shirt and blue jeans.

  He hoped she’d be wearing a bra. She had small breasts so she might not. He hadn’t seen her mother’s breasts, so he didn’t want to see hers. Of course, he hadn’t bled Natalie directly from her heart so there had been no need to remove her clothes.

  He imagined himself unbuttoning Trisha’s shirt. He tried never to pop buttons or rip material because he hadn’t done that with Natalie. No doubt Trisha would struggle. Most bleeders struggle. Only the ones petrified with fear didn’t. Natalie hadn’t struggled, but of course she had asked for it. It was her idea. He knew that bleeding Trisha could never be the exact duplicate of his experience with Natalie, but Trisha was Natalie’s daughter, the one who looked so much like her and had the same mannerisms, the same weary knowing smile, the same penetrating intelligent eyes. That’s what made her special.

  He hoped she wouldn’t scream because her mother had barely made a sound. But in his fantasies Trisha screamed. Why wouldn’t she? But he had already decided not to gag her because he hadn’t gagged Natalie. He had been able to see Natalie’s mouth as she died, the lips slightly parted, and he wanted to see Trisha’s mouth, her lips slightly parted.

  He would slide his fingers—left ring and middle—along her rib cage. Her skin would be soft and creamy but not exactly like Natalie’s. Her skin had been as delicate as rice paper. He’d locate the bottom edge of Trisha’s breastbone, marking it with the tip of his middle finger, then with his right hand he would insert the needle, coming in at a low angle, slanting it up toward her heart. A bead of blood would form at the point of insertion. It might turn into a trickle and flow a bit but never more than a couple of inches. It never had with any of his other bleeders.

  He’d feel some resistance as he pushed the needle in little by little, holding her down with his elbow on her chest if she bucked. This was always the hard part because he had to get the angle right or else he’d miss the heart. But by now he’d done it enough times to know how. And when he reached the pericardium, the membrane that encased the heart, they always stopped fussing almost immediately as they started to go into shock. From there it was just another inch or two to the center of heart, which presented a different kind of resistance, more like piercing a rubber eraser.

  At this point the woman would be fully in shock, no more struggling, but her body would become rigid. A few of his bleeders had shuddered violently as if they were being electrocuted. He hoped Trisha wouldn’t be like that. Her mother had been so placid and calm.

  The bleeding wouldn’t start on its own—it never did—but he knew how to make it happen. It was basic science. Just as water towers have to be higher than the sinks and toilets they serve, the end of the tube had to be lower than the heart. He’d kneel on the floor beside the bed and suck on the end just enough to get the flow started. He’d never tasted their blood, though he’d been tempted on a few occasions. The act of sucking was enough. This intimate connection with his victim always gave him shivers. For him, it was a spiritual transfusion.

  He started to get hard as he envisioned what would come next. The drip, slow and stingy at first, but then constant and rhythmic. He’d watch every drop as it came out, anticipate each one’s fall the way he’d watched rain drip from the leaves of the cherry tree in his front yard when he was a kid. He’d often watched the dripping rain until he was soaked to the bone, earning him sharp scoldings from his mother and disapproving frowns from his father.

  This was the part he longed for, the sweet part. Watching the blood drip… drip… drip…. He’d watch their faces as fear and pain slipped away. Frantic eyes became glassy and fixed. Complexions whitened, sometimes comically if the woman wore too much makeup and the contrast in skin tone made their painted-on faces look like disembodied masks. That hadn’t been the case with Natalie, and he was sure it wouldn’t be with Trisha. She was younger than his usual victims, who tended to wear heavy foundation and dark lipstick, and she didn’t appear to wear much makeup.

  Cotton. He loved the spectacle of blood seeping into cotton fabric. It fascinated him. He’d tested this comforter with his own blood on a small patch. It spread like a slow-motion forest fire. He imagined the arctic white material absorbing all of Trisha’s blood. Rain dripping from the cherry tree. Dying like her mother. But better. This time he wouldn’t have to flee. He would stay with her as long as he wanted. He would stay with her forever.

  And just as he had done by accident with Natalie in checking to see if she was still breathing, he would touch her cheek with his bloody fingers and smear two parallel lines, leaving his mark and making her his.

  Lassiter threw back his head and shuddered, clenching his fists and opening his eyes wide, staring at the ceiling to stop himself from coming. His breathing was ragged, his mouth dry. He wanted her so much. But how was he ever going to have her now? With all that had happened, his goal seemed impossible.

  He glanced over the side of the bed, looking for the needle, and happened to notice a headline on the front page of the Times. It was on the fold so he could see only the first few words:

  CHILD POVERTY CONFERENCE

  He stretched to pick up the paper and read the rest.

  ON U.N. AGENDA

  He skimmed the first paragraph. “World leaders will convene… United Nations in New York… World Health Organization… worldwide child poverty… presentations from government officials as well as celebrity advocates…”

  The article continued on page 12. Lassiter flipped to it and immediately spotted the photograph that went with the article. Michael McCleery surrounded by a group of African children wearing little more than loin clothes. The caption said, “Philanthropist Michael McCleery, who’s private fund has pulled thousands of children around the world out of pover
ty, last year in Congo. McCleery will address the U.N. General Assembly tomorrow to begin a three-day conference.”

  Michael must be in town, Lassiter thought. He narrowed his eyes, thinking hard.

  The portrait of Trisha stared at him.

  He got off the bed and paced, pulling on his lower lip. He picked up the needle from the floor, tilted his head sideways, and looked at the portrait. Natalie’s eyes were watching him.

  He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and scrolled through his contacts until he found Cindy McCleery.

  He ran through what he would say.

  Yes, he thought. Yes. This will work. He cleared his throat and pressed Send.

  He listened to it ring. Once… twice… three times—

  “Hello.”

  “Hello, Cindy? This is Gene Lassiter. I know you must be furious with me. I’m calling to apologize for all the confusion and to assure you and your father that the foundation’s money is safe. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Gene, we’ve been worried sick. What the hell’s going on?”

  “I maintain a fail-safe system to protect special client accounts, and your father’s is obviously one of them. I’ve never used it until now, but when I was arrested, I felt it was necessary.”

  “I don’t understand. Explain.”

  “I was afraid the police might freeze my business accounts. I didn’t want that to happen to the McCleery Foundation. You deal with urgent situations, and you know how the government can be. They could tie up that money for God knows how long. I transferred your holdings off shore, but I’ll get them back into your regular account as soon as possible. I know this must have upset you, but I was just being cautious. I’m sorry.”

  He could hear her letting out a long sigh of relief. “I thought Dad was going to have a stroke.”

  “Cindy, I feel awful about this. Not to mention angry as hell for being falsely arrested. I mean, you’ve known me for years. Do you really think I could be this character Drac?”