by Rick R. Reed
"What is it, Ma?"
"I thought you wanted some breakfast. I called. How come you didn't answer?"
"I didn't hear you. I'm not hungry."
"C'mon, Randy, you gotta eat."
"I'll get something later."
"What? A piece of toast and a cup of coffee? That's no breakfast for a man."
"Don't worry, Ma. I'll take care of myself."
She came over and sat on the bed beside him. He noticed how lined her face had become, how gray she was. When had she grown old?
She took his hand. "Randy, you gotta give this up. It's hard, I know, but Maggie wouldn't have wanted you acting like this."
He snatched his hand away from her. "How the hell do you know what Maggie would have wanted? Maggie wouldn't have wanted to die at the hands of some psycho, but she didn't get any choice in the matter." He was yelling and he saw his mother recoil with hurt. She stood suddenly, tears glistening in her eyes.
"Okay," she whispered, "okay."
He watched her leave the room and felt even more nauseated. Later he would apologize. He was just nervous now and couldn't stand her doting. He picked up the phone once more, dialed the number he knew from memory. Resisting the impulse to slam the receiver back into the cradle, he listened to the ringing . . . once, twice, three times.
"Hello."
A woman's voice. Randy had never pictured Joe MacAree as having any kind of family. He thought that psychos were loners, people who holed up in filthy apartments and wrote weird things on walls, put blankets over their windows. If this was his wife or mother, what would she be like? Would she know?
"Hello?" The woman's voice became more insistent.
"Yes," Randy said, struggling to keep his voice even. "Could I speak to Joe MacAree, please?"
The woman sucked in some air, as if she was surprised. "Who is this?"
Randy didn't know what to say. The IRS scam went out of his mind completely. "This is just a friend of his. Is he there or isn't he?" The annoyance in his voice was apparent, he feared. Be calm, he told himself.
"No," the woman said, "he isn't here right now. Could I give him a message?"
Randy was tempted to tell her everything he knew. Maybe she didn't know, perhaps she was a completely innocent woman trapped in the middle of evil. Maybe, he thought, she's in some danger.
"Do you know where he is? Maybe I could call back later and catch him in."
"I really have no way of knowing."
"Who is this? His wife?"
"That's really none of your business. Who's this?"
Randy decided against telling her anything. Maybe she knew everything and telling her would just tip MacAree off to watch out for him. He couldn't afford to take that chance. Avenging Maggie's death meant everything to him now. He didn't even care if hfe was caught and had to spend the rest of his life in prison. It would be worth it. "I think I'll try him a little later."
"It's not likely—"
Randy hung up on the woman in midsentence.
He threw himself back on his bed and stared up at the ceiling, noticing the cobwebs in the corners and a long crack that ran from the light fixture to one corner of the room.
He decided he would have to find MacAree some other way. He didn't know what it would be yet, but there was no question: He would see that bastard die.
Anne put down the phone, confused. She had received many calls the past few weeks from Joe's clients, wanting to know when they could expect work they had commissioned, wondering why he hadn't kept in touch with them. Anne was tempted to say, "He's gone insane. At least that's what I think. It may be that he's not a human being at all, but some sort of living dead. Is that excuse enough?"
This last person, though, frightened her. He sounded insane too. Or frightened, Anne thought, picking up a cold cup of coffee from the kitchen table.
The buzzer sounded in the living room and Anne hurried to the intercom. "Who's there?"
The mechanical voice came through. "Anne, it's Nick."
She buzzed him in and ran to the bedroom to slip into jeans and an oversize red chamois shirt. She was pulling her hair back when she heard him knock. "Just a minute," she called, wrapping a rubber band around her hair.
Nick hugged her when she opened the door, holding her close to him for a long time. She breathed in his smell: Irish Spring soap and his leather jacket.
"Let's not stand here," she whispered, breaking away from him and leading him inside.
Once they sat down next to each other on the living room couch, Anne asked him, "Did you go? Did you find anything out?"
"Yes, I went," Nick said. Then he paused for a long time, thinking. "And I did find some things out. I just don't know if what I found will be any use to us." He got up and looked out the window at the traffic rushing by on Lake Shore Drive.
"That part of the country is really a mixture," he said after a while, staring out. "On one hand, it's really beautiful. I wasn't expecting the big hills. And the hills are covered with trees, almost a wilderness. It must be beautiful in the summer and fall. But then there's all this industry . . . steel mills, nuclear power plants with big cooling towers along the river . . . it's real industrial. A lot of the houses there are run-down; it looks kind of depressed."
"Nick, what are you talking about?"
"I don't know." He came back and sat down on the couch.
"What is it?"
"You remember how Joe wrote in his journal about his sister, Margo?"
"Yes."
"When did he see her last?"
"I don't remember exactly. Wasn't it around eighty-one? Before that," she added, "she showed up around graduation."
Nick took a breath. He lit a cigarette and looked around for an ashtray. "According to the records at Summitville City Hall, Margo committed suicide not long after seeing Joe for the last time—at least, according to his journal."
Anne stared at him.
"Anne, I looked up some stuff in the paper. She . . . um . . . she slit her wrists with a razor." Nick stared at her, trying to see what effect the coincidence would have on her. Anne's face showed nothing. "She spread herself out on a bed with white satin sheets. She was naked and in sort of a crucified position."
Nick could tell by Anne's expression she was trying to get this new information to register— without success.
"So you think maybe Margo might have something to do with Joe's behavior?"
"I can't say. I'm just an investigator, not Freud." Nick frowned at her. He felt himself wanting to get out, to go back to the industrial theft, the infidelity cases that made up his life before Anne walked into his office. "The point is I didn't really learn much that can help us find Joe now."
Anne stood and stared out the window. "We have to find him, Nick."
They hugged for a while. There was nothing left to talk about. Anne burrowed deep into Nick's chest, wanting to shut out everything she knew and more, everything she didn't know.
"We will," Nick whispered. He didn't want to admit it to Anne, but he was afraid too. He remembered the dark road along the river in Sum-mitville, recalled how the mist rose off the dark waters and the black trees reached gnarled hands out over the silent rushing river. He thought, We have to find him because I sure as hell don't want him to find us first.
The morning sun coming in through the blinds woke Nick first. He looked over at Anne, her face looking calm against the pale blue pillowcase. The calmness was a rare sight lately. Even when they had made love the night before, she'd been distracted, and her obvious fear made him lose his erection. He had held her until she fell asleep.
Now, he was thinking, the real search has to start. The night before he'd thought the first person he should go to was Pat Young. She was the last person Nick knew Joe had seen. She must know something.
Trying not to wake Anne, he slid out of bed. As he was putting on his pants he saw her open her eyes.
"Where are you going?" she asked sleepily, forcing herself up on her elbows.<
br />
"I want to start looking for Joe."
"Are you sure?"
"I think we really have to find him as soon as we can."
Anne looked afraid, and he was sorry he had brought on that fear. She swung her legs over the side of the bed. "Maybe I should come with you."
"Really, Anne, I work better by myself."
"Don't start this macho stuff—"
"It's not macho. I just need to be by myself. I don't know exactly where I'll go. And maybe if I'm lucky enough to find him today, maybe it would be better if you weren't there."
"I think just the opposite." Anne got up and went into the bathroom. Nick heard water running. Then he heard her call, "Joe will come with us if I'm there. I know he will."
Nick went into the bathroom and watched her brushing her teeth. "Listen, Anne. What if he calls? Don't you think you should stay here in case he should try to call?"
She rinsed her mouth and looked at him. "Maybe you're right," she admitted. "But could you do me a favor?"
"Sure. Anything."
"Keep me posted on what you're doing. Give me a call a couple times today. Let me know how
it's going. I'm not going to be able to think about anything else today."
He went to her and wrapped his arms around her. "I promise to check in with you, even if I don't know anything. Okay?"
"Okay."
"Now let me finish dressing. We're going to get this thing worked out."
She watched him disappear into the bedroom.
Pat Young looked at herself once more in the mirror. Her face was a puzzle of wounds, ranging from scratches to deep cuts. Both eyes were swollen into slits; large purple and yellow bruises surrounded them. Her upper lip was puffy.
She pushed herself away from the bathroom mirror. The TV was blaring Sunday morning gospel and she wheeled herself in front of it. She prayed that Joe would return to her. When he saw what that man had done to her, Joe would save her. Joe would punish him.
And if Joe didn't, she thought, she would make him. The police were just a phone call away.
The buzzing of the intercom startled her. She went to it and rang the person in, hoping it would be Joe. The knock on her door came seconds later. Pat peered through the peephole and saw Nick.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"My name is Nick MontPierre, ma'am. I'm a friend of Joe MacAree's."
Pat looked around the room. A messenger?
Maybe Joe had sent this man to get her and bring her to Joe?
"Who?"
"Joe MacAree. Please, could you open the door?"
Pat slid the bolt across and opened the door. She looked the man over, noticing how handsome he was. "You can come in, but you can't stay."
Nick looked at Pat Young, wondering if Joe had done this to her. He couldn't remember when he'd seen a person so badly beaten.
"What happened to you?" he asked.
"That's none of your damn business!" Pat snapped. "Now, what did you want?"
"I told you, I'm a friend of Joe MacAree's."
"So?" Pat decided she wasn't giving anything away. Joe would have told her if he was sending someone. Wouldn't he?
"I'm trying to find him."
"Why would I know anything?"
"You're a friend of his, aren't you?"
"Who told you that?"
"All right, Ms. Young. I'll lay my cards on the table." Nick took off his hat and sat down. "I'm a private investigator working for Joe's wife. We think Joe is very sick and want to help him. I followed him here one night."
Nick watched the anger come up in the battered face. The change happened in seconds. Pat spoke in a low voice, her teeth clenched. "How dare you associate me with anyone! I don't know any Joe MacAree."
"I saw him come to this building." "I don't give a fuck what you saw. ... He must have been coming to see someone else."
"I watched him ring your buzzer. I wrote it down."
"You bastard. You had no right. Anyway, it's common practice around here for people to ring just any buzzer to get into the building. We don't have any intercoms, so generally we just buzz in whoever's ringing. I don't get much company, so I think nothing of buzzing someone in and then not hearing a knock on my door. The plight of the sad cripple," Pat spat out.
"I think you know him."
"I told you, I don't care what you think."
"Would this help?" He took twenty dollars out of his wallet. Pat snatched it out of his hand.
"No, it wouldn't. Neither would anything else you have in your wallet." She tucked the bill into her bra. "Now get out of my house."
"Please, Ms. Young—"
"Get out or I'm calling the police."
"We don't want to hurt him. We just want to help him. He might be in some trouble."
"I really don't care. I told you. I don't know him."
Nick called Anne later from a phone booth in Berwyn. He told her that Pat Young knew something she wasn't telling and he would try to keep an eye on her.
"Sooner or later," Nick said, "he's going to show up at her place. I've got a gut feeling and I know I'm right."
22
From Joe MacAree's journal (undated):
His need for blood consumes. The world suddenly has turned crimson; everywhere he looks he sees the color, the shape of flowing blood. It spouts from the top of a lamp in a furniture store window, shooting high like some bloody ejaculate; a little boy in the zoo stops to drink from the water fountain and blood arcs out, and he envies the little boy who bends down and sucks up the blood hungrily. He watches it run down the boy's chin, staining his shirt. The animals in the Lincoln Park Zoo all sport open wounds. In some the blood oozes out; in others an artery has been hit and the blood spurts. The animals don't seem to mind, and he longs to vault the fence separating him from them. Everywhere he hears the sound of rushing blood, pounding in his ears like a siren's song.
He must drink blood.
The streets of the city shimmer in red. The snow falling is tinged with pink: bloodstained. Bricks of buildings are splattered with blood. Here, near the train station, the spaces between the bricks of the foundation ooze blood. He wonders if any of these commuters notice as they hurry by him, arms upraised to hail taxis, on their way home. He wonders if they even see him, hidden here in the warmth of the darkness, the shadows. He watches as they walk by, headed for the subway, waiting to see the one who will be right. The one who is ripe.
Then he sees her. Black. Huddled down into a fake gray-fur coat, the collar pulled up, obscuring all but a mountain of nappy hair that collects the falling snow. Miniskirt and high heels. Even from the shadows, he can see the legs are well formed as he traces the seam up the back of her stockings. The tightness in his pants tells him: This is the one. He has never tasted black blood and knows it will be warmer.
She walks alone, her hips swaying. He gives her some time to make her way into the darkness, toward the subway and away from the few stragglers who are still coming out of the train station. He tightens his grip on the ice steel of the X-Acto in his pocket. Slash, slash, he thinks, smiling to himself. She stops after a few moments and glances over her shoulder at him. He sees the fear in her eyes. In that instant he watches as the whites of her eyes turn red, filling with blood: She is ready. Increasing pace of footsteps, he hears her mind: "Damn these shoes."
The time has come. His effort to overtake her is almost too easy. She stops, facing him off. "Whatchoo want?" she asks, defiance and false bravery in each word. He doesn't answer because she knows, too, that she is ripe and he must save her. He gets behind her, grabs her around the throat, and covers her scream with his hand. Shadows await him, and he pulls her into the warm red darkness. Most people assume darkness is black, but he knows the truth: It is deep crimson, the color of clotted blood. Her struggling is nothing compared to his force. He takes out the X-Acto with the hand that was around her throat He draws a pencil-thin smile across her throat with his blade, thert probes inside with the pointed
end. She gags, coughing up blood. He kisses her. She drops. He cuts.
The Chicago Tribune, in its late-afternoon edition, carried this headline: chicago woman murdered near train station. The story described how Elizabeth Rawlings, twenty-six, of Cottage Grove Avenue, was on her way home from her job as a clerk in the Loop when she stopped in the train station to buy a pack of cigarettes before continuing on her way to the subway. The last person who remembered seeing her alive was Sam Jordan, a cashier at the magazine stand in the train station. The woman was slashed in a manner believed by Chicago police to be connected to other killings in the area this winter.
The Chicago Sun Times headline read: woman
brutally slashed; madman sought. The paper also carried a photograph of the woman's body covered by a sheet in the gangway where she had been killed. The photographer snapped the picture just before the woman's body was loaded into the ambulance. There also was an inset of the woman's mother in tears.
By late that evening Chicago detectives were fairly certain that the two killings in Berwyn and this one were all the work of one person. Specialists had confirmed that the slash marks on all three victims were made by the same instrument, although they were unsure of what the instrument was. Most suspected a razor blade. Skin found under the fingernails of all three of the victims had been identified and matched: One person was responsible. Each had suffered a massive loss of blood, although very little blood was found at the scene of each crime. No one in the Chicago Police Department was sure of what became of the blood, and if the detectives assigned to the case were honest with each other and the press, they would have admitted they were afraid to speculate what had become of it.
During a midnight press conference, the mayor of Chicago announced that a task force was being formed within the Chicago Police Department and that the killer would be apprehended before he struck again. He sent out a plea that if anyone had any suspicions at all they should get in touch with the Chicago or Berwyn police department as soon as possible. A special hotline was being installed and the number
