A Soft Barren Aftershock

by F. Paul Wilson

  Readers would eat it up. All he needed was a final touch, an added ring of authenticity that would enable him to drag it out for two or three issues: personal testimony.

  He needed to talk to Olivia Hansen.

  It hadn’t been easy coaxing her out of the cold and into Clancy’s. Jay had used every ounce of persuasive skill he owned—and fervent promises of no talk of her past, just her present and immediate future—to cajole her into having one lousy drink with him before she went home. She hadn’t removed her raincoat, just sat there opposite him in a rear booth and answered in monosyllables as she sipped her drink.

  He’d poured on the charm and pushed the Anthony Perkins boyishness to the limit to stretch one drink into two, and then into three.

  She was beginning to loosen up.

  “I don’t usually drink,” she said. He heard a slur growing in her voice as she sipped her screwdriver. Yeah, she was getting very loose. “Bad for the muscles.”

  Hey, Paula was playing on the juke. The vodka in the screwdrivers had relaxed the anger lines in her face, making her softer, prettier. Jay sensed even more vulnerability in her eyes, and a faint tang of sweat in the air. He found it exciting as all hell.

  “Tell me about the muscles.”

  “What about them?”

  “Why have them?”

  “I gotta be strong.” Her expression was suddenly fierce. “Strong enough to keep any man from doing what he wants with me ever again.”

  Jay repressed a cheer. She’d opened the door.

  He took a deep breath. Here goes nothing.

  “You mean the rape?

  “Hey! I thought you weren’t going to mention that!”

  “I didn’t bring it up—you did.”

  She calmed.

  “Want to talk about it?” Jay said softly.

  “No!” She shook her head violently, then began to do what she said she wouldn’t. “It was awful! Horrible! I was in my dressing room at Hubert’s, getting ready to go on with my snake dance when he—it—appeared out of nowhere. I mean, one minute I was alone in the room with all the lights on and the next minute he was there and everything went dark and cold.”

  “What he look like?”

  She shuddered and Jay wondered uneasily what it took to get a shudder out of a girl who used to dance wrapped up in a boa constrictor.

  “I only got a glance at him before everything went dark but he was old and greasy and unshaven and dirty and his skin wasn’t right, like it wasn’t human, and he was cold, so goddamn cold, and the things he did to me and the things he made me do, the things he made me do!”

  She sobbed and Jay thought she was going to lose it.

  She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I was powerless, completely powerless. But that’ll never happen again.” He saw her flexing her muscles under her coat. “No one’ll ever do something like that to me again. Ever!”

  “But how come you clammed up about it back then? Maybe they could’ve caught this creep.”

  She shook her head slowly. “The way he comes and goes? Nobody’ll ever catch him. And besides, everyone was looking at me like I was crazy or trying a publicity stunt. Insult on top of injury. I didn’t need it.”

  As the jukebox began Walk Like a Man, she glanced at the Schlitz clock on the wall.

  “God! I’ve got to get home! The kid’ll be starving!”

  Kid?

  Jay saw his story fading as she rose to her feet. He had to say something here, and quickly.

  “I didn’t know you were married.”

  “I’m not. Never was. Baby’s father was . . . well, we were just talking about him.”

  Jay was stunned. She got pregnant from the rape and kept the kid! What a headline!

  Son of the Times Square Spook!

  God, he could run this for months! Make Profumo and Christine Keeler look like the Knights of Columbus!

  “Uh . . .” He didn’t know how to phrase it. “Why . . .?”

  “What was I to do? Risk an abortion and maybe die? Besides, it wasn’t Baby’s fault. He didn’t do anything to me. And after carrying him for nine months I . . . I couldn’t give him up. I’m his mother, after all.”

  Here was one weird lady, but she’d be so easy to write about. The quotables just poured out of her. He couldn’t let her go. Needed more time to work on her. If he could somehow get a picture of this kid—

  “Let me take you home,” he blurted.

  “I don’t need your protection.”

  Jay smiled, “I was hoping you’d protect me.”

  She laughed and Jay realized it was the first time she’d done that all night.

  “Okay. It’s only a few blocks. We can walk.”

  He used the walk to make contact.

  First he took her elbow as they crossed the street, then kept a grip on her arm, then his arm was around her shoulders. By the time they reached her apartment house, she was leaning against him.

  This was working out fine, he thought as he followed her up the stairs to the third floor. A little romance here, then handing her a line about helping protect other innocent women from this rapist spook by going public in The Light, and she’d come around for sure.

  A shotgun apartment—a front room, back room, and a kitchen. Liv went immediately to the back, leaving Jay by the door. The front looked like a gym—barbells and dumbbells all about. A padded pressing bench sat where most people put a couch.

  Liv returned from the back.

  “Baby’s sleeping.”

  “You leave him alone here all day? How old is he?”

  She took off her coat, then loosened the tie on the terry-cloth bathrobe beneath.

  “One and a half. He sleeps all day and most of the night. I check on him between shows.”

  he bathrobe was off now, revealing her Supergirl bikini and her muscles . . . ah, those muscles. Her breasts bobbed under the fabric as she walked over to him. She put her hands on his chest and looked up at him. He could tell the vodka had worked its magic.

  “I need someone tonight. Want to stay?”

  Jay ran his fingers up her biceps, over her deltoids and traps, and down to her lats. He pulled her close.

  “I couldn’t say no even if I wanted to.”

  He realized with a pang that this was probably the first completely honest statement he’d made all night.

  She led him into the dark of the rear room. In the borrowed light from the front he dimly saw a bed against the wall and a crib in the far corner. He heard a rustle from the crib and saw the kid pull himself to his feet and look at them over the rail.

  “He’s awake, Liv.”

  “That’s okay. We’ll be in the dark here and he won’t know what we’re doing.”

  Jay glanced at the crib again. He couldn’t make out any of the kid’s features, just a shadow, craning his head and neck over the rail and staring at them. He didn’t like the idea of an audience, even if it was just a one-and-a-half-year old, but then Liv had his shirt open and was kissing his chest and he forgot all about the kid.

  She was crying, sobbing gently under him.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. That was so good. Sometimes I just need it. I tell myself I don’t, but sometimes I just do. And that was so good.”

  It had been good, Jay thought.

  He’d been good. Damn good. At the end there he’d thought she was going to squeeze him to death like a python. Even now, as he lay weak and limp atop her, she still had her arms and legs wrapped around him.

  “You don’t have to cry.”

  “Yes, I do. ’Cause I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry? You kidding? That was wonderful!”

  “Oh, good. That makes me feel a little better.”

  Jay was trying to figure out what she was getting at when he heard a noise over by the crib. He glanced up. The crib was empty.

  “I think your baby’s out.”

  He felt her arms and legs tighten about him.

  “I know.”


  He sensed movement along the floor, coming toward the bed, then a little face popped up over the mattress and looked at him from only inches away. He cried out in shock at the huge, dark, staring eyes and wide slit of a mouth crowded with teeth that would have been more at home in a shark. As the kid’s teeth angled toward his throat, he struggled to free himself but could barely move, barely breathe.

  “Let me go!”

  Liv’s arms and legs tightened around him even more, locking him helpless against her.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said through a sob, “but Baby needs you, too.”

  FACES

  Bite her face off.

  No pain. Her dead already. Kill her quick like others. Not want make pain. Not her fault.

  The boyfriend groan but not move. Face way on ground now. Got from behind. Got quick. Never see. He can live.

  Girl look me after the boyfriend go down. Gasp first. When see face start scream. Two claws not cut short rip her throat before sound get loud.

  Her sick-scared look just like all others. Hate that look. Hate it terrible.

  Sorry, girl. Not your fault.

  Chew her face skin. Chew all. Chew hard and swallow. Warm wet redness make sickish but chew and chew. Must eat face. Must get all down. Keep down.

  Leave the eyes.

  The boyfriend groan again. Move arm. Must leave quick. Take last look blood and teeth and stare-eyes that once pretty girl face.

  Sorry, girl. Not your fault.

  Got go. Get way hurry. First take money. Girl money. Take the boyfriend wallet, also too. Always take money. Need money.

  Go now. Not too far. Climb wall of near building. Find dark spot where can see and not be seen. Where can wait. Soon the Detective Harrison arrive.

  In down below can see the boyfriend roll over. Get to knees. Sway. See him look the girlfriend.

  The boyfriend scream terrible. Bad to hear. Make so sad. Make cry.

  Kevin Harrison heard Jacobi’s voice on the other end of the line and wanted to be sick.

  “Don’t say it,” he groaned.

  “Sorry,” said Jacobi. “It’s another one.”

  “Where?”

  “West Forty-ninth, right near—”

  “I’ll find it.” All he had to do was look for the flashing red lights. “I’m on my way. Shouldn’t take me too long to get in from Monroe at this hour.”

  “We’ve got all night, lieutenant.” Unsaid but well understood was an admonishing, You’re the one who wants to live on Long Island.

  Beside him in the bed, Martha spoke form deep in her pillow as he hung up.

  “Not another one?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh, God! When is it going to stop?”

  “When I catch the guy.”

  Her hand touched his arm, gently. “I know all this responsibility’s not easy. I’m here when you need me.”

  “I know.” He leaned over and kissed her. “Thanks.”

  He left the warm bed and skipped the shower. No time for that. A fresh shirt, yesterday’s rumpled suit, a tie shoved into his pocket, and he was off into the winter night.

  With his secure little ranch house falling away behind him, Harrison felt naked and vulnerable out here in the dark. As he headed south on Glen Cove Road toward the LIE, he realized that Martha and the kids were all that were holding him together these days. His family had become an island of sanity and stability in a world gone mad.

  Everything else was in flux. For reasons he still could not comprehend, he had volunteered to head up the search for this killer. Now his whole future in the department had come to hinge on his success in finding him.

  The papers had named the maniac ‘The Facelift Killer.’ As apt a name as the tabloids could want, but Harrison resented it. The moniker was callous, trivializing the mutilations perpetrated on the victims. But it had caught on with the public and they were stuck with it, especially with all the ink the story was getting.

  Six killings, one a week for six weeks in a row, and eight million people in a panic. Then, for almost two weeks, the city had gone without a new slaying.

  Until tonight.

  Harrison’s stomach pitched and rolled at the thought of having to look at one of those corpses again.

  “That’s enough,” Harrison said, averting his eyes from the faceless thing.

  The raw, gouged, bloody flesh, the exposed muscle and bone were bad enough, but it was the eyes-those naked, lidless, staring eyes were the worst.

  “This makes seven,” Jacobi said at his side. Squat, dark, jowly, the sergeant was chewing a big wad of gum, noisily, aggressively, as if he had a grudge against it.

  “I can count. Anything new?”

  “Nah. Same M.O. as ever-throat slashed, money stolen, face gnawed off.”

  Harrison shuddered. He had come in as Special Investigator after the third Facelift killing. He had inspected the first three via coroner’s photos. Those had been awful. But nothing could match the effect of the real thing up close and still warm and oozing. This was the fourth fresh victim he had seen. There was no getting used to this kind of mutilation, no matter how many he saw. Jacobi put on a good show, but Harrison sensed the revulsion under the sergeant’s armor.

  And yet . . .

  Beneath all the horror, Harrison sensed something. There was anger here, sick anger and hatred of spectacular proportions. But beyond that, something else, an indefinable something that had drawn him to this case. Whatever it was, that something called to him, and still held him captive.

  If he could identify it, maybe he could solve this case and wrap it up. And save his ass.

  If he did solve it, it would be all on his own. Because he wasn’t getting much help from Jacobi, and even less from his assigned staff. He knew what they all thought-that he had taken the job as a glory grab, a shortcut to the top. Sure, they wanted to see this thing wrapped up, too, but they weren’t shedding any tears over the shit he was taking in the press and on TV and from City Hall.

  Their attitude was clear: If you want the spotlight, Harrison, you gotta take the heat that goes with it.

  They were right, of course. He could have been working on a quieter case, like where all the winos were disappearing to. He’d chosen this instead. But he wasn’t after the spotlight, dammit! It was this case-something about this case!

  He suddenly realized that there was no one around him. The body had been carted off, Jacobi had wandered back to his car. He had been left standing alone at the far end of the alley.

  And yet not alone.

  Someone was watching him. He could feel it. The realization sent a little chill-one completely unrelated to the cold February wind-trickling down his back. A quick glance around showed no one paying him the slightest bit of attention. He looked up.

  There!

  Somewhere in the darkness above, someone was watching him. Probably from the roof. He could sense the piercing scrutiny and it made him a little weak. That was no ghoulish neighborhood voyeur, up there. That was the Facelift Killer.

  He had to get to Jacobi, have him seal off the building. But he couldn’t act spooked. He had to act calm, casual.

  See the Detective Harrison’s eyes. See from way up in dark. Tall-thin. Hair brown. Nice eyes. Soft brown eyes. Not hard like many-many eyes. Look here. Even from here see eyes make wide. Him know it me.

  Watch the Detective Harrison turn slow. Walk slow. Tell inside him want to run. Must leave here. Leave quick.

  Bend low. Run cross roof. Jump to next. And next. Again till most block away. Then down wall. Wrap scarf round head. Hide bad-face. Hunch inside big-big coat. Walk through lighted spots.

  Hate light. Hate crowds. Theatres here. Movies and plays. Like them. Some night sneak in and see. See one with man in mask. Hang from wall behind big drapes. Make cry.

  Wish there mask for me.

  Follow street long way to river. See many lights across river. Far past there is place where grew. Never want go back to there. Never.
/>   Catch back of truck. Ride home.

  Home. Bright bulb hang ceiling. Not care. The Old Jessi waiting. The Jessi friend. Only friend. The Jessi’s eyes not see. Ever. When the Jessi look me, her face not wear sick-scared look. Hate that look.

  Come in kitchen window. The Jessi’s face wrinkle-black. Smile when hear me come. TV on. Always on. The Jessi cannot watch. Say it company for her.

  “You’re so late tonight.”

  “Hard work. Get moneys tonight.”

  Feel sick. Want cry. Hate kill. Wish stop.

  “That’s nice. Are you going to put it in the drawer?”

  “Doing now.”

  Empty wallets. Put money in slots. Ones first slot. Fives next slot. Then tens and twenties. So the Jessi can pay when boy bring foods. Sometimes eat stealed foods. Mostly the Jessi call for foods.

  The Old Jessi hardly walk. Good. Do not want her go out. Bad peoples round here. Many. Hurt one who not see. One bad man try hurt Jessi once. Push through door. Thought only the blind Old Jessi live here.

  Lucky the Jessi not alone that day.

  Not lucky bad man. Hit the Jessi. Laugh hard. Then look me. Get sick-scared look. Hate that look. Kill him quick. Put in tub. Bleed there. Bad man friend come soon after. Kill him also too. Late at night take both dead bad men out. Go through window. Carry down wall. Throw in river.

  No bad men come again. Ever.

  “I’ve been waiting all night for my bath. Do you think you can help me a little?”

  Always help. But the Old Jessi always ask. The Jessi very polite.

  Sponge the Old Jessi back in tub. Rinse her hair. Think of the Detective Harrison. His kind eyes. Must talk him. Want stop this. Stop now. Maybe will understand. Will. Can feel.

  Seven grisly murders in eight weeks.

  Kevin Harrison studied a photo of the latest victim, taken before she was mutilated. A nice eight by ten glossy furnished by her agent. A real beauty. A dancer with Broadway dreams.

  He tossed the photo aside and pulled the stack of files toward him.

  The remnants of six lives in this pile. Somewhere within had to be an answer, the thread that linked each of them to the Facelift Killer.

  But what if there was no common link? What if all the killings were at random, linked only by the fact that they were beautiful? Seven deaths, all over the city. All with their faces gnawed off. Gnawed.