“Getting the wine for me, that was nice. I’m sorry I made you late again, but those pictures …”
“Cathy’s upset.”
“That’s my fault. I’m sorry.” She sounded genuinely sympathetic.
“No, no … We’ve been having some problems.” I leaned forward, elbows on my desk. Jesus, what the hell was I thinking, saying that? Was I going to use Jennifer as my marriage counselor? “Look, I’ve gotta go. I’m just glad you’re okay.”
“And I’m glad you called, John.” There was that honeyed voice again. “Remember what I said, about making yourself happy. If you ever want to talk, or anything, you know how to reach me.”
She rang off. I sat for a long minute, as confused as ever, knowing that she was apparently leaving a door open. But what had Frank wanted to confide in me about his enigmatic sister? I knew that I shouldn’t even be wondering, because my attention should have been riveted on my upcoming living room chat with Cathy. And what that would mean for me and Molly.
When I called Jack to tell him that Jennifer was okay, his phone line was busy. He was probably on the line with an old crony. Jack didn’t own a cell—damn people can hunt you down wherever you are—so connecting with him took me a couple of tries.
“She’s okay, Jack. Just talked to her.”
“Yeah, they told me it ain’t your girl, but there might be somethin’ quirky about the murder.”
We’ve got slashed-up bodies littered across town, missing heads and arms and legs and dicks, and he’s calling this killing quirky? “What the hell’s that mean, Jack?”
“Don’t know for sure. The guy I talked to is gonna run down some rumors and get back to me. I’ll call you when I know.”
Fuck. It wasn’t yet ten o’clock, and I already needed a drink. Jack was always good for an early tipple. Plus, I could swing by the Lakewood Police Department and drop off the photos for Salvatore. “What about lunch? We can talk then.”
“People keep seein’ us hanging out, they’re gonna start rumors. But it’s on me this time.”
“You don’t—”
“Hey, I ain’t no charity case. Plus, I wanna find out how good this broad is in the sack.”
He hung up.
With Cathy at work, I’d have plenty of time to sneak in—into my own home—and clean up before meeting Jack. On the way out, I decided to tell Marilyn about the photos. She was hunched over her desk, earrings dangling along her cheeks, while she made notes on the pages of a brief that I’d asked her to proofread. She raised her head as I approached.
“Where you off to, sport?”
“Shouldn’t that be Mr. Sport?” I grinned, wishing that I could keep the mood light. “Look, I need to tell you something, but I want you to know right up front that it’s nothing to get upset about.”
“Okay, I’m upset.” She leaned back in her chair and rested her hands on the desktop. “You finally going to tell me what’s been happening?”
“I don’t know, Marilyn.” I leaned into the file cabinet next to her desk. “This is probably nothing, but Jennifer Browning received some pictures in the mail. Shots of her, her brother, and me. Cathy and Molly. And one of you.”
Marilyn’s face flushed pink. “You gotta be shitting me.”
“I know, it’s weird, right?” I stepped away from the file cabinet. “They’re in my car. I’m dropping them off with Bernie Salvatore now.”
“Jesus, John.” She cast a glance toward the door, the feather in her earring fluttering.
“Notify building security, tell them what happened so they’ll keep an eye out.”
“I though you said there was nothing to worry about.”
I raised my hands. “Just being cautious. If you want some time off …”
“So I can sit home by myself and watch for strange photographers? I’m better off in the building, all these people around. With these killings, the security guys act like this is the White House.” She looked at me pointedly. “Is there something else, besides these murders? Something with you? You haven’t been yourself since you got involved in this mess.”
“Relax, Marilyn. I’ll call you after lunch.” I already felt like taking the rest of the day off.
“I’ve known you for a long time—”
I headed for the door. “Trust me. Everything’s under control.”
After dropping the photos off with the Lakewood Police, I would join Jack for a lunch. Then I would probably take the rest of the afternoon off to steel myself for the parlay with Cathy. We would sit as husband and wife in our tidy living room, lock eyes across the figurines and the Bible, and I had no idea what was going to happen.
20
“She was a copycat killing.”
“The Gates Mills girl?”
We were at the Parkview Cafe, a longtime hideaway with decent food and generous pours, tucked away at the end of a residential street in a decaying blue-collar neighborhood.
“Who the hell you think I’m talkin’ about, Queen Elizabeth?” Jack took a swig.
“I mean, I don’t get it. Now somebody’s copying the Butcher?”
“No, the Butcher is copying the Torso Murderer. My guy told me that the Butcher did the Gates Mills girl just the way Torso murdered a woman back in nineteen fuckin’ thirty-seven.”
“How’d they ID her?” I leaned into the red bumper that fronted the long wooden bar.
“Left her purse, right where her head should have been. The Butcher wanted us to know who she was, just like with Oyster. Robbery wasn’t the motive; her credit cards and cash weren’t touched.”
The bartender, a young, perky girl with stringy blonde hair and breasts barely contained by her V-neck, gestured toward Jack’s shot glass, and he nodded. Determined to stick with beer, I asked for a bottle, letting my gaze wander over the profusion of faded sports memorabilia and dated photos of local celebrities that lined the varnished pine walls. We perused our menus, then fixed on the TV above the bar when the noon news came on. The lead story was about the two murders in one night, Frank and the Fourth Street girl.
The screen caught the bartender’s attention, and then she shook her head. “This is gonna kill us. Dinner business is already shot. Why can’t they catch the son of a bitch?”
“Don’t give up yet, honey,” Jack said, flipping through the menu. “The way he’s piling up bodies, he just might make a mistake.”
“As long as it’s not me.”
“C’mon,” I said, “You’ve got the frickin’ Fraternal Order of Police right down the street.”
“Still, I’m careful. I used to close all by myself. Now my brother comes in to watch my back.”
I ordered pierogis, Jack a ham and cheese with fries. The bartender was like everybody else in town, fixated by the uncertainty of it all. A guy from a bar in Lakewood, a beach in Rocky River, a park in Shaker, and now a girl from Gates Mills. There was no pattern, not by sex or age or race or anything. If the Butcher wanted to terrorize a community, chalk that one up for him.
The bartender plunked the beers on the bar, and I drew my mug toward me. “Maybe it was coincidence. I mean, they cut up Oyster, too, and the others. Maybe this time, what was done just happened to match the old case.”
“Shoulda let you eat your lunch first, because it isn’t pretty.” Jack took another sip of whiskey and stared into the mirror behind the bar. “No coincidence, Johnny. He left a telltale sign, matching exactly what the Torso Killer did. Her asshole was stretched out, and a man’s pants pocket was stuffed in her rectum. Not somethin’ you see every day, or want to.”
Jack and I didn’t say anything for a while, just glancing at the TV. The bartender approached, carrying our food, and slid the whitish plates onto the bar. I decided to join Jack in a shot.
“But why do that, copy a murder from so long ago?” I couldn’t get the raw image out of my mind.
“Who knows? Go ask Salvatore’s girlfriend, the so-called expert. I told you, it’s impossible to figure these freaks out.”
Jack swallowed a bite of his sandwich. “I’ll tell you something else, somethin’ not made public back then, but one of the Butcher’s kills from the ’70s was a copycat too.”
“Whaddya mean?”
“What I mean is the Butcher hacked somebody up then, too, just the way the Torso Murderer did years ago. It was the only murder where Torso carved out the guts but left the heart. That’s exactly what the Butcher did, more than three decades later. Then, last night, another one.”
“Some kind of tribute?”
“Who knows?”
Above the bar, near the TV, hung a framed copy of the PD from 1948, proclaiming the Cleveland Indians’ victory over the Boston Braves in the World Series. Before my time—hell, my generation was more accustomed to serial killers than championships. “Any leads with the Gates Mills kid?”
“They got jack shit. Nothing links the vics. A different type of knife was used every time. The bodies were cut up different, dumped in different spots, and each vic was a different type of person. They haven’t even identified the bodies from Rocky River or Shaker. Unless the Butcher slips up, he could just disappear again.”
“So what you told the bartender, about him making a mistake, you think that’s bullshit.”
“I said that to make her feel better. This Butcher’s too damn careful. Look, if we can’t catch the son of a bitch, maybe the best thing is if he does like before: stops. Killed five in a row, bing, bing, bing, then vanished.”
“So that leaves one more murder to go, best case. Not exactly a good ending for whoever victim number five happens to be.”
Jack gave me a piercing stare. “Still worried about Blondie?”
“C’mon, Jack. Her and every woman I care about.” I knew that he would ask about Cathy, so I decided to just put it on the table. “Cathy tossed my ass out last night.”
Jack tilted back in his chair, exposing the white grizzle flecking the underside of his jaw. “This is supposed to be the part where I let out a big sigh. ‘The difficulty in life is the choice.’”
“I don’t know …”
He chortled and looked at me in disbelief. “For Christ’s sake, they stop teaching literature? Only one of the great Irish novelists, George Moore. One of ours, and you don’t know him?”
“So you were an English major—studied by candlelight, right?” I fixed on a faded color photo behind the bar of the Kardiac Kids, the Browns’ legends from 1980. Guys who had played their guts out and earned Cleveland some respect, three decades ago.
“Funny, Johnny Boy, but those words are as wise as they come.”
“And what lesson is it I’m supposed to learn from the words of the eminent Mr. Moore?”
He shrugged. “How’re you gonna watch out for both of ’em? ’Less you can be two places at once. The difficult choice, dumbass.”
I cut a cheese pierogi in half, let it sit. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, Jack. Cathy and me—”
“You gonna bullshit me? I goddamn helped raise you, and you’re gonna bullshit me?”
“Jack …”
“I can’t live your life. I know what the right choice is, but I can’t make it for you.”
Whenever he’d given me advice, the words tended to sink in. My reflection in the mirror, a man in the fourth quarter of life, stared back at me. “I’m talking with Cathy, okay? I wanna keep things together.”
“You sounded off base this morning, when you called,” he said. “Worried about the hot piece you’ve been sniffin’ after.”
“Of course I was worried. She—”
“Meanwhile, the missus is layin’ up in your marital bed, freezing her ass off because her man walked out.”
“Hey, she threw me out.”
He laughed out loud, like he’d just heard the funniest damn joke ever. “Yeah, right. This was all her fault.”
I gulped down the rest of my shot.
Jack tapped his big knotty finger against the bar. “Clear to me you didn’t listen. I warned you not to get sucked into this thing. Warned you clear as hell, and now you’re not thinkin’ straight.”
“You’re just wrong, Jack.”
He eyed me as if I had failed in not finding the strength to stay away from the entire mess.
I eyed him right back. “And Jennifer … that’s—”
“—the one you’ve been fucking.”
“I’m not answering that.”
“Wasn’t a question.”
“Last night—yesterday, sometime—she received some photos in the mail. It’s crazy, I know, but they’re like surveillance photos of her and … me, Cathy, and Molly.”
“Somebody tailin’ you?”
“I don’t know what to think. Jennifer’s scared. Seeing those pics rattled the hell out of her. Me too. I mean, even my secretary’s in there.”
“What about Cathy?”
“Give me a break, Jack. I told you that she tossed me out. Those photos aren’t the kind of thing you talk about over the phone.”
He sneered, his eyes hard. “Maybe you should have got your ass in your car and gone to see her.”
“Damn it, I am going to see her. Just what the hell do you make of it?”
Jack squinted and mulled over my question. “Hard to tell. Usually, when pictures are sent to somebody, it’s to scare ’em or shut ’em up. You know, when parents are supposed to testify against some mobbed-up prick, they get a photo of their little Joan skipping home from school. In your case, Molly.”
“I can’t see that here.”
“I don’t know. Can’t believe it has anything to do with your old man. Maybe it has something to do with you runnin’ around on your wife.”
“Damn it, it’s not like that.”
“Fifty-eight years, Johnny. Fifty-eight years, me and the missus. Look, I was no saint comin’ up. There were plenty of holster humpers around, and the only good time in life is a strange piece of ass, right? Well, you gotta accept that marriage is a tradeoff. You’re drawing in on sixty, right?”
“Sooner than I wished.”
“You better take stock. You got a wife and a kid, a home. You really gonna toss that aside for fresh pussy you just met? If it doesn’t work out, what’s your plan? Run back to Cathy with your dick in hand?”
“It’s not that simple. She’s really pissed. I think she might tell me that she wants out.”
“You think? How can you not know?” He mumbled something and looked away, then turned back to me. “If you’re right, you better get on your knees and beg forgiveness, dumb ass, ’cause you don’t know what you have. You should see yourself whenever you talk about your little girl.”
“Jack—”
“Never mind, that’s all I got to say. You ignore my advice anyway.” He snagged a fry drizzled in ketchup and popped it into his mouth. “I suppose you never got a permit, either?”
“I’m still giving that some thought.” I had never considered owning a gun, much less carrying one, but maybe he was right.
“You do that. You need to give thought to a whole lot of shit.” He stood, in his long-sleeved brown shirt and faded jeans, and faced me. “I’ll see you around.”
Jack lumbered past the scattered tables, the stand-up piano, and the shuffleboard game. Customers glanced at him, obviously impressed by his size and his don’t-fuck-with-me demeanor.
His broad shoulders nearly filled the doorway as he shoved the screen wide open and was gone.
21
The fact that I’d managed to piss off Jack, on top of everything else, was hard to believe. I went back to the office and puttered around for most of the afternoon, but then told Marilyn that I was knocking off. I needed a drink and time to gather my thoughts. The Great Lakes Brewing Company, a local microbrew on a brick side street not far from the market, had been one of my haunts back in the day. I still popped in on occasion and, after my discussion with Jack, it seemed like a perfect day for a visit.
When I shoved open the bar’s heavy wooden door, the place wa
s uncharacteristically like a tomb. I would be the only patron, which was fine by me. I wondered if there were any statistics about a region’s business decline per serial killing. A grungy bartender sported long dark hair and a thick, silvery necklace. I didn’t recognize the name of the band scrawled on his orange T-shirt. I ordered a Dortmunder Gold.
He drew a perfect pour and slid the pint in front of me. “You’ve got the Eliot Ness stool.”
“I remember the story.” Someone had tried to assassinate Ness while he was seated at the polished oaken bar. His feet had rested, just like mine, on the shiny brass foot rail.
“They say those nicks are from the bullets.” He pointed to three chips in the paneled wall. I’d been at the bar often enough to know that the cause of the marks was uncertain, but the assassination angle made for a great story.
“Let me have a shot with this, will ya?” I could kill the afternoon by nursing a couple of drinks at Great Lakes and go home early in the evening when Cathy would be back from work.
The television above the bar announced a special report, delivered by the same Greek kid I’d seen before, Mr. Breathless. He was giving an update on the last Butcher killing, because the cops had released a photo and identified the victim: Barbara Nichols. Her face, her dead, pretty face, filled the screen.
“Wow. What a fox,” the bartender said. She was—no, had been—a blonde. Her hair trickled over her shoulders and framed a comely face with a toothpaste-commercial smile.
“Can you imagine telling the parents?” I thought of the nearby market and all of that dead meat. For some reason, I visualized Barbara Nichols stuffed in a glass-fronted stall, her head gone and a swatch of cloth stuck up her ass. There was nothing remotely erotic about the image. A shiver ran along my spine; I reached past the beer for a healthy dose of whiskey.
“Creeps me out just thinkin’ about it. And another one, that guy with his throat cut.”
I nodded, deciding not to tell him that the man who had discovered Frank was sitting in front of him. Draining the shot glass, I motioned for another. Eliot Ness had been just as confused about the Torso Murderer as I was about the Butcher.
The Company of Demons Page 14