Joe R Lansdale

by Act of Love (2011)

  Yep, that was the game plan. Then Sunday they could rest. She might even be able to talk Frank into moving in . . .

  She heard a noise, slowed her pace.

  Nothing. She didn't hear a thing now.

  She started walking again. She was almost to the stairs.

  The trashcans beneath the stairs rattled.

  Evelyn stopped, tucked her books up tight beneath her arm, listened.

  No other sound came to her ears. A cat she decided. Simple as that, a cat in the garbage. She started up the stairs briskly.

  There was a jerk at her ankle.

  She screamed. The books and papers she was carrying went flying and she toppled backwards. Just before her back hit the bottom step she realized what had occurred.

  Someone had reached through the steps and grabbed her ankle. Someone hiding in the shadows. Someone with a grip like iron.

  The step striking her back sent an explosive pain throughout her body. It felt as if the world's population were wearing cleats and walking up and down her spine.

  She opened her mouth to scream again. A voice, hard as flint, cold as ice, said: "Scream again, and I cut your heart out."

  Evelyn held her scream. She could see a face now, peering between the steps. The eyes were like those of some demon. The arm of the man was fully stretched through the stairs, his gloved hand clutching her ankle tightly.

  "I warn you," the chilling voice said again, "don't scream."

  She could see more of the man now. There was something in his other hand. He was holding it up for her to see. It looked like a sword there in the shadows.

  "Oh God!" she said trying to twist free.

  The man let go of her ankle, came around the stairs quickly, and buried his fingers in her hair.

  Evelyn saw that he was wearing a raincoat. That was crazy, she thought; it didn't even look like rain.

  "Get up, cunt!" he said, pulling her down the last three steps 'til she lay on her back at the base of the stairs. He tugged her upright by her hair, pressing the point of the bayonet against her spine. "One scream and I run the bayonet all the way through, my pretty."

  "You're . . . you're him. The one in the papers," she said softly.

  "You mean," he held the last words for effect, "The Hacker?"

  Evelyn could not speak. She just nodded.

  "No. Not me, Evelyn."

  "How . . . how do you know my name?"

  "I know lots of things. I'm observant. You should learn to be. You might have saved yourself this night had you been observant. Women aren't real bright, are they, Evelyn?"

  Evelyn said nothing. Her breathing was labored. Her back felt like a river of molten lava. The point of the bayonet wasn't helping any.

  "You didn't answer me, Evelyn. Women aren't too bright, are they?" "No."

  "No what?"

  "Wo . . . women aren't too bright." "Good, good. You're not too bright, right, Evelyn?" "No. No, I'm not too bright." "I'm a man in need of a little, hot, tight pussy. You got hot, tight pussy, Evelyn?" Evelyn swallowed. "Up the stairs, sweetheart."

  Sobbing. "Don't hurt me. God, don't hurt me.

  "Evelyn. Such lack of trust." "Please."

  "Up the stairs. And keep it quiet, or I'll hurt you."

  "I'll do as you say." "I know."

  "You won't hurt me?" "Wouldn't think of it. Come on, Evelyn. Up the stairs. Let's go to your place for a little fun."

  They went upstairs. She unlocked the apartment for him.

  "Just a little fun, Evelyn. Just a little fun." Evelyn had no fun at all.

  FRIDAY . . . 11:01 p.m.

  Frank Callahan, Evelyn DeMarka's steady boyfriend, first felt fear when he found the books and papers at the bottom of the stairs. Friday night they had a steady date as soon as he was off work. Talk, sex and the late movie. A nice combination. It had gone that way for months. He looked forward to it. It made his Fridays.

  He wasn't so sure right now. Something was churning in his guts. He couldn't imagine why Evelyn's books—correction—he could imagine why her books were where they were. He could imagine all sorts of things. What he wanted to imagine was a rational explanation for the books, but he couldn't. He tried a few, but none stuck to his brain.

  He went up the stairs with the key Evelyn had given him in his hand. Normally he knocked in spite of the key, but tonight the door had no life. He feared he would knock and she would not answer. The door gave him the same feel he got from old, vacant, boarded up houses; an almost supernatural feel of gloom and depression.

  I'm being silly, he told himself. Silly. There's a rational explanation for those books being where they are, and Evelyn will give it to me and we'll laugh, and afterwards we'll have sex and feel great.

  Why did the thoughts ring hollow in his mind?

  He slipped the key into the lock. It snicked free. He turned the knob and made silent prayer as he opened the door—to whom he prayed he was uncertain since he was an atheist—but for some awful reason, it seemed the thing to do.

  It'll be all right, he told himself. It'll be all right, it'll be all right, it'll be all right, it'll be all right.

  Frank went in.

  It was not all right.

  SATURDAY ... 1:15 a.m.

  He wiped the bayonet off with a damp rag, then used a dry towel. He inspected it for rust. Not a spot. Not even a fleck. He would sharpen it tomorrow.

  The one tonight had dulled it. She had certainly had tough bone, but not a lot of spirit. In fact, she hardly had any spirit at all. He put the bundled raincoat in the sink and removed tonight's morsel.

  "And they say I'm heartless."

  He put it in a plastic container, placed it in the freezer.

  "Talk about a cold, cold heart." He chuckled at his own joke.

  He heated water for instant coffee. He had two fig bars with his coffee. After his snack, he took his raincoat to the bathroom, opened it up and stretched it out in the tub. He turned the shower on, watching fascinated, as the blood swirled and bubbled and fled down the drain.

  He shook out the raincoat, hung it over the shower curtain rod. He went back to the kitchen to get the sheer plastic gloves he had used tonight. He wrung them out over the kitchen sink, then struck a match and held it to them. The gloves shrunk, made black plastic smoke—the kind that stinks. He loved the odor. It was incense to him.

  Part of the gloves wouldn't burn.

  Too much blood.

  *

  When Frank Callahan found Evelyn he did not call the police. His knees buckled and he collapsed with his back against the wall. He sat there staring catatonically. The only sound he could make was a whimper. In a deep state of shock he sat that way until 4:17. At that time he began to scream bloody murder at the top of his lungs.Mildred Cofey, the apartment manager, went up to investigate. She was angry and sleepy and determined to throw the troublemaker out on his or her ear. It never occurred to her that the screams were of anguish.

  The door to Evelyn DeMarka's apartment was open. Miss Cofey found Frank curled up on the floor crying. She also saw Evelyn and she was suddenly and violently ill all over the carpet that just last week Evelyn had insisted she have shampooed.

  Staggering, trying to get away from Frank, whom she thought to be the murderer, Miss Cofey half stumbled downstairs and called the police.

  SATURDAY . . . 4:58 a.m.

  Two carloads of blue suits and an ambulance came first.

  The officers checked out the area and sealed off the room.

  Frank Callahan, hysterical, had been hauled away in the ambulance when Hanson arrived. Clark came fifteen minutes later, the lab boys shortly thereafter.

  It was Hanson's and Clark's baby now, even if it was no longer in The Ward. Of course other officers and detectives were involved.

  No policeman works alone like the movies depict, but this case was Hanson's and Clark's main concern. And now, viewing the murder scene and the body—what was left of it—Hanson determined that The Hacker would be caught, and b
y him. He also determined that when he caught the beast, he would make sure that the guy had a little accident on the way to the station. He felt certain that The Hacker would choose to do something rash. Like make a run for it. Hanson intended to give him a warning shot in the back of the head.

  The bed where the bulk of her lay was dark with blood. Her head, fingers and feet were missing. The head was found in the toilet bowl; blonde hair matted strawberry red, eyeless, noseless, lipless. Her fingers had been chopped off and arranged in a row on the kitchen sink. Her feet had been amputated and placed beneath the bed. Intestines were strung out over the room, draped over the bedroom light fixture and the bed post. The smell was awful.

  Cameras flashed as police photographers made their pictures. The lab crew went about their duties. Voices, usually buzzing at even the most brutal of crimes, were oddly silent. The men and women of the homicide team were all pale faced, except for Hanson, and as black as he was, it was hard to tell. But his eyes were wide and his pupils were dilated.

  Death, Hanson thought, I never get used to it. No one that's human gets used to it. Not a cop, a fireman or an ambulance driver. You accept it. You adjust quicker and easier than the average man or woman whose closest exposure to death was their Aunt Minnie's funeral; the memory of it a hazy blur of peaceful features and white face made "lifelike" by makeup. You might even crack jokes about it, but adjust or not, you did not get used to it. At least not if you were normal. Or unless you were The Hacker.

  Hanson said softly, "Joe, I'm gonna get this fucker. I'm gonna make sure he has a little accident on the way to the station."

  Clark moved up close to Hanson. "Not so loud. They already think we're a bunch of thugs."

  Hanson turned to him. "They?"

  "The papers. The people."

  "Just cops here."

  "Just best to be quiet. Keep it down and the people and the papers never know. I mean Barlowe's contact might be right here in the room."

  "Fuckum."

  "That's who we work for, Gorilla. The people, remember? You and I, we're the good guys."

  "We're not trying to drown handcuffed Mexicans or play Russian roulette with some black kid in the back seat of a cop car. We're trying to get ourselves a cold-blooded looney. No insanity plea for him. No nice, cozy cell and hot meals. No psychiatrist telling him it's all because he had poor potty training as a child. I'm gonna get this motherfucker. With you or without you. I don't want anyone else to get him. I want to get him. I mean really get him."

  "Easy, man."

  "Easy, hell!"

  A lab technician turned to look at them.

  Clark rested his hand on Hanson's elbow. Hanson pulled away from him, stalked outside the apartment, away from the smell of horrible death. Clark did not follow.

  Hanson stood at the top of the stairs and looked out over the city. Daylight was creeping in. Electric lights were dying.

  Hanson rubbed his huge hands across his eyes, up and over his forehead. Saturday morning a corpse for breakfast, he thought. What a way to start a day. What a way to make a living. There wasn't even a goddamned skyline to look at. Just grey and black smog rising above the city, eating away what would normally have been a beautiful morning blue. But nothing was normal anymore.

  Nothing.

  Or worse yet, maybe there was a new kind of normalcy. A normalcy made up of sickness, death and despair. And this Hacker, this motherfuckin' Hacker, was its High Priest.

  Well, watch out Priest of Blood. Watch out. 'Cause Marvin Hanson is gonna blow your ass away.

  MONDAY

  Barlowe's Monday morning column no longer walked the line between journalism and sensationalism. It had leaped feet first into melodrama and exaggeration, although the latter was a bit hard to accomplish in as gruesome a case as the death of Evelyn De- Marka.

  The article took its toll. People were afraid to walk the streets after dark. Shopping malls suffered. Movie theaters remained half filled. Waitresses leaned on bars and sat at tables and looked out at the night, not looking forward to walking to their cars. Cars growled along the highway with windows rolled up tight and doors locked and respectable speeds maintained. Lights burned in houses and apartments far beyond normal hours. And those who lived alone lived enveloped in double terror.

  The city had cold chills and goosebumps. The Hacker stalked the streets of Houston, and no one was anxious to become his next victim. The week began to slink by on coward's feet.

  But The Hacker knew there would always be victims. The world would not crawl into a hole and pull the hole in behind it. There would be others to cut; others to drip blood and guts. Women were such fools, just a little time and they'd stick their noses outdoors again, and soon thereafter they'd be flaunting their stuff again; teasing him, tormenting him.

  But now it was his turn to torment back. His turn to hand out agony and fear like party favors, and he had a mental sack full.

  Sleep was hard for him anymore. His dreams kept him awake with anticipation. He needed his bloody elixir for peace of mind and relaxation of the body, and he needed it more often.

  He awakened almost every hour on the hour and listened to his old-fashioned, wind-up alarm clock tick heavily in the emptiness of his dingy room. The bed and the sheets stank of sweat where he had tossed and turned. He drifted in and out of sleep, and shortly before daybreak he arose, went to the bathroom to relieve himself. He washed his hands afterwards and looked in the cracked mirror over his rust stained sink for a long, somber moment; the crack sliced his face from forehead to jaw.

  Face.

  God! Sometimes he couldn't focus; couldn't even remember what he looked like. Was the mirror filled with a stranger? Sometimes it seemed that way, seemed that the face looking out of that cheap, cracked mirror was not his at all. Sometimes this body he wore didn't even seem his. It was as if someone else lived in this plaster peeling dump over the rooms of old women who creaked worse than his rusted bedsprings. It was as if his mind were trapped in a robot's body, and that body did as it pleased in spite of how his mind thought.

  And then . . . other times it was just the reverse. It was his mind that had control, and the robot was merely a slave . . .

  Whatever the function, he constantly felt outside himself; a half separate entity from that thing that looked at him from the mirror.

  He washed his face and went back to bed.

  After a while his mind dove into the dreaming pleasure of gurgling blood and cold death; and this time, it helped him sleep.

  *

  Rachel, feeling uneasy, awoke.

  Hanson was not beside her. It didn't seem that he had been to bed at all. She worked vision into her eyes and sat up. When she felt oriented she swung her legs over the side of the bed and slipped on her house shoes. She plucked her robe from a chair and put it on. Quietly, she opened the bedroom door and stepped out into the hallway. She went to the head of the stairs and looked down into the dining room below. There wasn't a light on, nor was there a sliver of illumination beneath the door to the den. If he was up, he wasn't reading. She pulled the robe tight about her and went downstairs.

  She went first to the kitchen. Nothing.

  The dining room. Nothing.

  The den. Nothing.

  Puzzled, she started back through the house, stopped when she heard the doorknob rattle in the living room; the door to the outside.

  "Marvin?" she said, and the moment the word passed her lips she felt foolish. She had said it much too softly for anyone to hear. She could barely hear it herself.

  She went into the living room.

  The door was opening, a man's outline was in the doorway.

  "Marvin?"

  "Yes."

  Rachel let out her breath with a loud sigh.

  Hanson shut the door, flicked the lock. He flicked on a light. Rachel, a faint smile of relief on her face, had a bit more cream mixed in her chocolate color than usual.

  "Honey, what's the matter?"

  "Just sca
red me. I saw you weren't in bed, and ..." She waved her arms expansively.

  "Hey, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."

  "Of course not."

  "You shouldn't be up. You," Hanson looked at his watch, "hell, woman, you go to work in a couple of hours."

  "It's all right."

  "No, it's not. It's my fault."

  "You don't ask for the hours they give you."

  Hanson looked sheepish. "My own hours. I got home hours ago. I couldn't sleep. I'm sorry, baby."

  "All right. It's all right." Her voice wasn't ecstatic with pleasure in spite of her words. Rachel highly valued her sleep.

  "I just couldn't sleep."

  "You're going to feel like hell today."

  "I know."

  "Where you been, Marve?"

  "Walking."

  Rachel went to him, they embraced. "What's the matter, baby?"

  "Old age, I guess. Can't sleep."

  "You're not so old . . . Not from what I can tell." She gave him a lecherous wink.

  He smiled. "How would you know? We don't have time for that anymore."

  Rachel made a pouty expression. "True. Long as we're up, want some coffee?"

  "Sure."

  Rachel kissed him on the cheek. "I'll make some." She started for the kitchen.

  "Baby?" Hanson said.

  Rachel turned. "Yes?"

  "I'm sorry about waking you up."

  "You didn't wake me."

  "I mean about not being there and all. In bed."

  She winked at him. "I'll make the coffee."

  Hanson went to the window, pulled the curtains back. He looked out at the street and the houses nestled quietly across the way. Rachel started up The Mr. Coffee machine, came back and put her arms around Hanson.

  "Where'd you walk?"

  Hanson let the curtain drop. "Just down the sidewalk and on out to the highway. It's a beautiful night."

  "What were you thinking about?"

  "Nothing much."