Touchstone

by Sharon Sala

  Happy to oblige, Kenny took the drinks and headed for the living room.

  “My dear Miss Austin, your refreshments have arrived. It seems there was no tea, so he sent a Coke instead.”

  “As long as it’s wet and cold, I’ll take it,” Rachel said, and took a long drink as Kenny settled in a nearby chair.

  While Kenny was spreading his own brand of charm, Houston was struggling with a guilty conscience. Another deception added. The lie was growing. Then he shrugged and headed for the pantry to look for the pretzels.

  Beatty Andrews had joined the ranks of the unemployed. Ironically, it was the bomb blast that had precipitated the management’s decision. Fearing another bomb, several of their renters had moved out, and even in a city where decent living accommodations were always at a premium, the owners of the building found themselves having trouble leasing the vacated apartments. Hoping to reassure the tenants that were still left and lure new ones, they hired a security company, which promptly installed round-the-clock guards at the door, negating the need for doormen. In a sense, Beatty had made himself obsolete. He would be eligible for unemployment, but that wouldn’t last forever, and he’d already checked into the fact that it would not be enough to cover the cost of his current lifestyle.

  He stood on the corner, lost in the crowd, his eyes on the light, willing it to change. Nausea burned in his throat. His stomach was knotted in fear. He needed another job. If he didn’t work, he couldn’t pay his rent. Moving was out of the question. He’d never lived anywhere else. He’d been born in that apartment. His father—and his mother—had died in that apartment.

  His chin quivered. His eyes filled with tears. What would he do? If his mother were still here, she would know. But she’d gone away, just like his Rachel. He took a deep, shuddering breath. Everyone he loved kept going away.

  “Move it, buddy, or get outa the way,” a man muttered behind him.

  That night Beatty’s answer came in the form of a dream. She appeared in the doorway to his bedroom. Her dress was stained, her body rotting, and she kept grabbing at her flesh, trying to put it back on her bones. A trickle of blood was running from the corner of her mouth, and she kept pointing to the walls in front of him, mouthing something he could no longer understand. Horrified that she’d come back in such a state, he tore his gaze away, to look in the direction she was pointing. The walls were covered with pictures of Rachel Austin. Even the ceilings were plastered with images of her face. On the floor at the foot of his bed was a pile of dirty sheets. As he stared, they burst into flames. It was then he could hear his mother’s words. She kept screaming for him to repent.

  He awoke with an erratic heartbeat and bathed in sweat. He looked wildly about the room, peering into the shadows for any lingering remnants of his mother’s ghost. The screen saver on his computer monitor was still dancing in the dark, but to his undying relief, she was nowhere in sight.

  He bolted from his bed and dashed across the floor to turn on the light switch beside the door. Everything was still in place, including a lingering odor of the scrambled eggs and toast that he’d made for his supper last night.

  He stepped into the hallway, moving swiftly toward Rachel’s new room and then stepping inside. As he did, he had a sensation of moving into something alive. The walls seemed to undulate, as wavering shadows, thrown off from a streetlight beyond the windows, moved across the surface. Below, he heard the startling shriek of approaching sirens and stared in fixed horror as the flashing red and blue lights suddenly reflected through the windows. He gasped. Just for a moment he saw his mother standing there. But the image was gone as quickly as it had come. He shook his head, reminding himself that his mother wasn’t here. This was no longer her room. It was Rachel’s. He took a deep breath and then closed his eyes, searching for her in his mind, but she was gone, too. It was then he remembered. She was in Texas with another man.

  He jerked as if he’d been slapped. When he looked up, his eyes were wide and filled with rage. He turned without thinking, grabbed a letter opener from his mother’s old desk, and stalked toward the pictures of Rachel he’d hung on the walls. A victim of idolatry in its basest form, he stared at her image until his eyes began to burn.

  “Bitch!”

  She stared back at him from the wall, smiling at his misery and pain.

  Then he lifted his arm and slashed, shattering the glass and ripping through paper, tearing her face from eye to chin. The release of rage from the action spurred more of the same, until Beatty was raping the walls with the talonlike blade. Long, jagged slashes appeared on the red surfaces, revealing the white underbelly of broken Sheetrock: a nightmarish reverse of the human body in its palest form.

  Finally he dropped to his knees, spent in both mind and body. His arms were shaking as he stared at the letter opener. The point was missing, having broken off in the wall during a previous slash, and bits of red paint clung to the handle, as well as to his hands, like splatters of blood.

  He opened his fingers, letting the blade fall to the floor, then stumbled out of the room and into the bathroom just in time to throw up in the commode. A few minutes later he stood naked beneath jets of cold water pouring from the showerhead.

  After a while he emerged, shivering so hard he could hardly focus on drying himself off. And even after he was dry and lying back beneath his covers, the dream kept running through his mind.

  It came to him then, how to put everything right. Nothing had been wrong with his world until he’d let Rachel Austin come in. It was all her fault. She’d ruined everything that mattered to him. And even though she’d paid with her eyesight, it wasn’t enough. Her beauty was unnatural. She was a child of the devil, just as Mother had claimed. She’d been put here to ruin good men. Men like him. What had happened wasn’t really his fault. And even though he had killed Rachel Austin in his heart, he still needed to watch her die. To gain absolution for his mother’s death, he must finish what he had started. But he’d have to find her again first.

  The longer he thought about it, the more he decided that getting fired had been fortuitous. At least now he wouldn’t have to explain why he needed time off. After he returned from Texas, he would look for a new job. He’d always wanted to be a bartender. Everyone liked bartenders. It would be easy to make new friends.

  Detectives Danny Sullivan and Peter Gianelli were batting zero on solving the identity of the bomber at Rachel Austin’s apartment. And there had been next to nothing left of the bomb itself other than a few bits of blue, which their bomb expert identified as Flex X, a pliable, sheet-style plastic explosive; a fragment of the electric initiator; and a small nine-volt battery. It was simple but deadly, and almost impossible to trace.

  They’d checked and double-checked every lead that they’d had, and interviewed every resident and employee of the apartment building many times over. No one had noticed anything unusual, and everyone’s alibi checked out. They’d questioned a cab driver who’d dropped off a passenger only minutes before the explosion had occurred, only to discover that the fare had been severely injured in the blast. There were easier ways to commit suicide. A victim was hardly someone to suspect.

  The young staffer who’d delivered the package to Rachel Austin’s apartment had come on duty only minutes before she’d made the delivery. She’d claimed the package was sitting at the desk with a note to deliver it. She didn’t know who’d left it. She’d thrown the note away and followed instructions. It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence.

  The staffer before her had claimed the desk was empty when she went off duty. That left them with little to go on. It was an apartment building. People came and went without hindrance. There would have been no reason to suspect that a package such as that one would contain a bomb.

  Three days ago Sullivan and Gianelli had learned through Rachel Austin’s agent that she was no longer in the hospital, and in fact was no longer in the state. They couldn’t much blame her. Somewhere in their city a man was getting away with mu
rder. Yes, Rachel Austin had lost her sight and a career, but it was the old man who’d lived six floors below the penthouse apartment who had paid the ultimate price. He’d suffered a heart attack as a result of the excitement and died two days afterward, making his death a homicide rather than due to natural causes. In the past week no new leads had come in, and they had exhausted every avenue of investigation. At this point they were just waiting for a break.

  “Sullivan!”

  Detective Danny Sullivan looked up. Abe Malloy, his captain, was waving him into his office. He shoved aside the report he was working on and headed for Malloy’s office.

  “What’s up?” Sullivan asked.

  Malloy handed him a piece of paper. “You and Gianelli head over to the East Side. Here’s the address. Some guy found a body in a trunk in the basement of this apartment building.”

  Sullivan rolled his eyes. “Oh shit. I hope it’s been there for years. My stomach’s been bothering me all day. I don’t think I can take a fresh one. Forensics is still riding me over the last one I worked.” Then he grinned. “Maybe I’ll throw up on that damned Devine’s shoes this time. She gets the biggest kick out of my weak constitution.”

  Malloy grinned, then opened a drawer in his desk and handed Sullivan a small green jar.

  “Rub some of this under your nose. It always helped me.”

  Sullivan dropped the small jar of Vicks VapoRub in his pocket. “Thanks, Captain.”

  Malloy nodded. “I’ll expect a report on my desk ASAP.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sullivan said, and left, waving at his partner, Peter Gianelli, to follow.

  A short while later they arrived at the address. Patrol units had already cordoned off a portion of the street, giving easy access to all of the necessary emergency and police vehicles.

  “Hey, Donat, what have we got?” Sullivan asked as he made his way inside the building.

  The patrol officer pointed. “That way,” he said.

  “Thanks,” Sullivan said, and started toward a set of stairs at the other end of a darkened hallway.

  “Hey, Detective,” the officer yelled.

  Sullivan stopped. “Yeah?”

  “How long can you hold your breath?” the patrol officer asked with a grin.

  “Shit,” Sullivan muttered, and reached into his pocket for the Vicks, liberally dousing his upper lip with the thick, greasy unguent. “Here, Gianelli. Your stomach’s no stronger than mine.”

  A few moments later they opened the door and started down the steps. The intermittent flash of lights told Sullivan that the police photographer was still taking pictures of the scene, and he could hear the high-pitched voice of some man in distress— evidently the guy who’d discovered the body.

  “Somebody get him upstairs,” Sullivan ordered. “I want to talk to him after I’ve finished down here.”

  A nearby officer nodded, then took the hysterical man from the scene.

  Gianelli almost gagged. “This sucks.”

  Sullivan glared. “Do not mention anything to do with chewing or swallowing to me until sometime tomorrow.”

  “Sorry,” Gianelli said, and took a deep breath, pulling more of the menthol vapors up his nose to mask the overpowering stench.

  “Hey, Sullivan, what’s that under your nose?”

  Sullivan glared at the woman from the coroner’s office. It was moments like these that made him hate Susan Devine. She was grinning like a Cheshire cat, and he could hear the crack of her chewing gum from where he was standing.

  “Where’s the body?” he asked, choosing to ignore her comment.

  She pointed to an old trunk against the wall. The lid was up, and far too much of the body was visible to suit Sullivan’s mood.

  “It’s a woman,” Susan said.

  Sullivan looked, then gagged and averted his eyes.

  When he could talk without choking on his words, he asked, “Jesus... how can you tell?”

  Susan Devine took a tissue from her pocket and spit her gum into it as she gave the body another critical look.

  “Well, she’s wearing a dress, so it’s either a cross-dresser or a woman. And she’s old. Lots of white hair.”

  “How long do you think she’s been dead?” Sullivan asked.

  She shrugged and tossed the gum into a nearby container of trash. “In this heat, it’s going to be hard to tell. But I would say at least a month, maybe longer. You can tell by the way the maggots have—”

  Sullivan pointed his finger in Susan’s face. “Save it,” he said, wondering if he looked as green as he felt. “That’s more than I wanted to know. Just get me a copy of the autopsy report ASAP.”

  She grinned. “You got it.” Then she reached in her pocket, pulled out a package of jelly beans, and popped a couple in her mouth.

  “Want some?” she asked, offering both Sullivan and Gianelli the sack.

  They glared at her, then walked away to the sound of her laughter.

  Upstairs, the hysterical man was somewhat calmer. Both detectives pulled out their notebooks as Sullivan began the interrogation.

  “Sir, what’s your name?”

  “Charlie Costa.”

  “Do you live here?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m the super.”

  Sullivan glanced up from his notes. The building superintendent. At least that explained why he’d been in the basement at this time of year. The heat down there had been intense. No windows, no air, no nothing except the huge furnace that would heat the building in winter, some trash, and boxes—and, of course, the body in the trunk.

  “How long have you worked here?”

  Charlie squinted thoughtfully. “Nearly twenty-five years.”

  “And how did you come to discover the body?”

  “Well, I was halfway down the stairs when I smelled it. After that, it was a matter of following the odor.”

  Sullivan squelched a shudder. “Obviously you don’t go into the basement often, or you would have found it before now.”

  Charlie nodded.

  “What was your purpose in going down there today?”

  “Mrs. Silver, in two B, said there was a bad smell coming through the heat register in her apartment. She’s so fussy, always finding fault with something. I thought she was imagining things. I almost didn’t go.”

  “I know this is a difficult question,” Sullivan asked. “But did you recognize the body?”

  Charlie shuddered, then wiped at his face with his hands. “No . . . my God, no. There’s nothing left to see.”

  “I know, sir, it’s a terrible sight. But I want you to think for a minute. The dress the woman was wearing. Have you seen it before?”

  Charlie kept shuddering. “I don’t hardly remember what it looked like,” he said. “All’s I could see was that face... or where her face was supposed to be.”

  Sullivan nodded. “Let me ask you this, then. How many residents live in this building?”

  Charlie frowned. “Oh, more than a hundred, I’d say.”

  “Do you know them all by sight?”

  Charlie nodded. “Yeah, we ain’t had a vacancy in years. Most people who live here have been here for a good twenty or thirty years. Some even more.”

  “So who’s missing?”

  Charlie’s eyes widened. “Oh God—I never thought—I just saw it and . . .” He leaned against the wall. “Of course she had to have lived here. How else would her body have wound up in the basement?”

  Sullivan sighed. “I can’t say for certain that it’s so, but I would think it likely.”

  “Jesus,” Charlie muttered, shaking his head.

  “So, Charlie,” Gianelli asked. “Think of all the old women who live in this building, then tell me: Who haven’t you seen in a while?”

  Charlie shook his head. “Right now I could hardly remember my own name, let alone the names of more than a hundred tenants, but I got a resident list in my office.”

  “You got any copies?” Sullivan asked.

  “Yes,
sir,” Charlie said. “I’ll bring you a couple. Be right back.”

  Gianelli glanced at Sullivan as the superintendent scurried across the hall into his office.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  Sullivan took out a handkerchief and wiped the excess Vicks from under his nose, then handed it to Gianelli, who did the same.

  “As soon as we get the list, we start knocking on doors.”

  Gianelli agreed. “I’ll start at the top and work my way down.”

  “I’ll meet you on six. That’s halfway. Got your two-way?”

  Gianelli patted his pocket.

  “If you get lucky, give me a call. Don’t do anything on your own. Anyone who would stuff another human being into a trunk like a bunch of old rags isn’t firing on all cylinders.”

  “So you think it’s a man we’re looking for?” Gianelli asked.

  “Well, it took someone strong to carry that trunk all the way down here, that’s for damned sure. So unless you run into some female weight lifter who seems to be holding a grudge, I’m leaning toward a male as the perp.”

  Gianelli nodded. “Agreed.”

  A couple of minutes later Charlie was back. He handed a copy of the list to each detective.

  “We have your number,” Sullivan said. “We’ll be in touch.”

  Charlie swallowed nervously and then nodded. “I’ve lived and worked here for a long, long time. I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

  Forty-five minutes later Sullivan exited the elevator on the third floor and then glanced at his list, trying to decide which way to go first. As he was reading, a door slammed, breaking his focus. He looked up, frowning at the old woman who was heading his way. When she saw him, she hesitated. The uncertainty on her face was obvious, and when he put his hand in his pocket, it turned to fear. He winced. The last thing he wanted to do today was scare some old lady out of her last breath.

  “Police, ma’am.” He pulled out his badge and headed her way. “I need to ask you some questions.”

  Marjorie Carl breathed a sigh of relief and leaned a little harder upon the walking cane she used when she went out.

  “What is it I can do for you, Officer?”