by Rick Wayne
“That’s really smart.” She’d finished her wine.
“Well, unfortunately I can’t take credit for it. They’ve been doing it for a while.”
“Why are you always making excuses for how smart you are?”
“Am I?”
“Sorry, I interrupted. Please continue.”
“Um. Yeah, so the problem is . . . the parts of the city you’re most interested in are also the parts that are too dangerous to go into with a whole team and everything. We already gotta do everything with pen and paper because if you use any kind of handheld device, some percent of your interviewers will get robbed. And that’s not even in the really bad parts of town. Certain grid squares get flagged, either based on crime stats or interviewer feedback, and instead of doing a survey there, if one of those blocks gets randomly selected, we try to do some spot interviews, just to get something rather than nothing, and then pick again.”
“So what you’re saying is you volunteered.”
I smiled. “It was my first week. I got the right color skin. Plus, I grew up in a place like that. They needed someone to get it done. So, yeah. I volunteered. I thought it would be a good way to make a quick splash. You can’t go in with any kind of credentials, though, or they’ll just think you’re a cop. Most of these folks either don’t know or don’t care about the alphabet soup of agencies. You flash an ID card of any kind and you’re just another authority figure they got no reason to talk to. Some of the churches do good work, but building those relationships takes—” I stopped. I remembered she worked in community health. “You know what I mean.”
“So what’d you do?”
“Left my wallet at home and went with a giant bag of suckers.”
She laughed out loud. “Suckers?”
“Yeah, you know those little round suckers that come in giant bags of 100 or whatever? It’s a great conversation starter. Everybody likes to pick out their favorite flavor. A lot of these girls don’t have regular meals either. And a sucker is something they can have in their mouths that doesn’t exactly turn the clientele away, if you know what I mean.”
“See? Very clever, Doctor.”
“There’s this concept in survey methods called reciprocity, where if you do something for people, they’re more likely to do something for you. It’s the reason charities always send those free preprinted address labels in the mail. Because they know they’ll get more responses if they send you something first. By the second night, though, it was kind of a joke. Girls were seeking me out. Pimps were, too. I got told to mind my own business a few times and had to turn around and walk the other way.”
“Dangerous.”
“Eh, not as much as you might think. Pimps are a different breed. Not like dealers. Anyway, the last night, I was out pretty late. I was basically just hanging around looking for girls I hadn’t already talked to when these kids came up and said this woman Cheri was sick and would I take a look. Cheri Cardenas. They didn’t know who I was, just that I was going around talking about health and stuff. I didn’t know what the hell I could do. But it sounded serious and I didn’t have my phone with me. I’d left it at home with my wallet. So I figured I oughta at least see what was going on. As soon as I did, I told the boys to run to a convenience store down the street and call 911.”
I stopped and she waited.
“And?”
“She was dead. To be honest, I hadn’t remembered talking to her until I saw the apartment. She was so emaciated, I didn’t recognize her face. But I remembered talking to a girl with a heavy Brooklyn Latina accent. She wasn’t working. She was sick and staying at her grandmother’s. Grandma was apparently stuck in some horrible nursing home. I tried to get the name from her, but she wouldn’t say. Like she was scared.”
“What happened?”
“Same as everybody else. She was in bed. Her grandma’s bed. You could just tell it had been an old lady’s apartment. There was crap everywhere. Old crap. Not stuff a young woman would have, even a hoarder. Stacks of country lifestyle magazines with, like, a million Catholic saint candles lying around. The poor girl looked like she’d shriveled. All her hair had fallen out. Half of it was on the pillow. I guess maybe it was because I’d seen it up close, seen her and how awful it was. No one else acted like it was a big deal. Bad drugs or something. But there’s not that many things that can do that to a person, especially not that fast.”
“So you put out your health alert.”
“Ha. You make it sound easy, like I just filled out a form or whatever.”
“I’m sure you put up a big fight.”
“I made my arguments. I think at the end, Dr. Chalmers agreed just to shut me up. But . . .” I raised my glass to Amber before downing the last swallow. “Without her, you and I never would’ve met. You wouldn’t have told me about Alonso, and we wouldn’t be sitting here.”
“What do you think is going on?” she asked, suddenly very serious. “Like, really.”
The question caught me off guard and I paused.
“I think someone is making people sick,” I said solemnly.
“You mean accidentally. Like a company or something.”
I shook my head and washed down the bitter wine with a drink of water. All the ice had melted. The water was tepid and unrefreshing.
“On purpose? Why? What would be the point?”
“I don’t know.”
“So, wait. You think there’s some nut case—”
“No. Nothing like that. I don’t think he gets any enjoyment out of it. Or she. Whatever. Serial killers, you know, they have to be there to witness the suffering of their victims. To inflict it. That’s the whole point. It’s sick, but it’s that very deprivation of their victims’ humanity that drives them to kill.
“Normal people don’t care about the suffering of others. Okay, maybe that’s not fair. They might prefer it not happen, but that’s not the same. People are suffering all over the world tonight. In this city, even. And here we are having a nice dinner.”
Amber got quiet. “I know . . .”
My shoulders dropped. “Not trying to guilt you. I’m just saying, whoever is doing this isn’t getting off on it. They’re not hanging around to watch. A serial killer kills to fill a need, because they feel powerless. I doubt whoever is doing this feels powerless. Not at all. And I doubt they even see these people as people. Not really. They’re just a means to . . .”
I paused as Amber studied my face with her head tilted slightly to one side. “To?”
I shook my head slowly.
“Hm. So, what are you gonna do?”
Her question seemed like a polite way to express skepticism about the whole thing, and I can’t say I blamed her. I immediately felt uncomfortable, not so much at what I’d said but how much. I was being chatty. I was sure I’d bored her with all the work talk, and I realized then that I might’ve had a little too much to drink.
I took back the reins of my mind that instant.
“I dunno . . .” I said, sitting up. “You’re the first person I’ve told. No one would believe me anyway. Which I’m sure was the point of picking the people they did.”
“Well, I believe you.”
I smiled. “Thanks. You might not be the only one, actually.”
That seemed to genuinely interest her. “Oh?” Her head turned the opposite way. “Who else?”
I looked at the restaurant logo on the white napkin that had kept the condensation on my water glass from reaching the tablecloth. Bistro Indigenes.
She noticed something behind me and went for her purse. Seemed like maybe the waiter was coming with the bill. The way she moved, I thought I might have to arm wrestle her even to see it. I at least wanted to know how much I was in her debt. But when the waiter arrived, he explained to us politely that there was no bill. He’d been told that our meal was on the house. Amber looked to me for an explanation, but I had none. She said something about me really knowing how to impress a girl, and we got up to go. She touch
ed my arm to steady herself. I held on as we walked to the front. Outside, I turned my head almost incidentally to the side door, the one Milan had led Ollie and me through the other day. It was open.
Wide open.
But dark.
“So, do you wanna maybe share a cab or something?” she asked. “We could talk on the way. I always hate that quiet cab ride home after a nice evening. Don’t you? It’s so depressing.”
I could feel the open door behind me, like the warmth from a radiator.
I must have waited too long, or maybe it was the look on my face, because she said “Oh my God” and put her face in her hands. “Oh my God,” she repeated. Even her ears were red. “I just thought . . .”
Our eyes met.
“Oh wow.” She walked to the curb. “Wow. It’s been a really long time since I made this big an ass of myself.”
I wanted to object, but she didn’t give me the opportunity.
“It’s just, you know, I met you. And you care. You really do. And you seemed lonely. And I thought, here we are, two lonely people who care.”
I got it. I had gotten it the first day I met her. I got it when she confidently asked to show me around the city. I was safe. Not only was I married, I would be gone at the end of my appointment. Whatever she had planned for herself and her career, I wouldn’t be the guy to muck it up.
Dr. Massey stood on the curb and waited for a taxi. I walked over and put my hand on her shoulder. Not intimate. But not distant either. Friendly. I squeezed.
“I like you, Amber. If I led you on—”
“No,” she said in a way that invited no further comment. She stepped free of my grasp.
I glanced back to the open door. No movement. No nothing. It had been shut and locked before. We weren’t exactly in a bad neighborhood, but there aren’t many places in New York that leave their front doors open, especially at night.
A taxi stopped and she opened the door without making eye contact.
“Your wife is very lucky,” she said, climbing into the car without a glance.
The door shut. The taxi pulled away. I raised my hand in parting, but it was dark and I couldn’t tell if she saw me or not.
My hand dropped.
“She doesn’t think so . . .”
When the car was no longer in sight, I turned to the open door.
It yawned, as if to swallow me.
Mom had driven Bug and me to my auntie’s house. Really she was a cousin, but we called her Auntie Susan. She’d married an ex-con, a reformed skinhead, and they lived with their three kids—one each by a previous marriage and one together—in the redneck ghetto, the kind of place where wheel-less cars on blocks outnumbered those in working order about 2 to 1. The whole way, I knew something was wrong. But Mom’s late-90s Chevy Cavalier had a loud, rattling engine and no air conditioning, which meant the windows were down and it was impossible to do anything other than yell simple sentences to each other.
“Are we there yet?”
“I have to pee!”
Before we left, I’d heard my mother mention that Auntie Marie and Aunt Zelda—why two of them were “auntie” and one “aunt” was never clear—might come up with their families, so I thought we were going for a reunion. As we pulled up the gravel drive, there was all the evidence of a party. There were cars everywhere and a couple kids I vaguely recognized running between them and shooting each other with water guns. Mom was nervous. I could tell. So that made me nervous, too. Bug wasn’t even speaking. He hadn’t said much at all since the drive-by a couple nights before. Mom and I were both worried.
We got out and I stretched my legs. My stomach growled at the smell of grill smoke. The parents rounded up all the children and everyone gathered in the living room. Bug and I were reintroduced to our cousins, which was good. I didn’t remember their names. Auntie Susan asked my brother, whom she called by his real name, if he had a bag and if he wanted to take it upstairs. I looked to Mom. I hadn’t brought a bag. I hadn’t been told to. I realized what that meant. Bug wasn’t coming back with us.
I was angry. It wasn’t even that I would miss him. At that age, you don’t think more than a few weeks out. It was that Mom and I would be alone in the house, which meant I would be alone in the house.
The three of us got the quick tour of the place, after which my uncle explained that he had a possum under the house that he hadn’t been able to clear. Not only was it getting into the trash, which was hassle enough, it was damaging the plastic lining that kept the water out of the foundation. As he spoke, I realized he was the only one wearing long sleeves. He said he wanted everyone to know, especially us kids, that the pellets lying around the house were poison and that we should stay away from them. Not even touch them, in fact. And we should keep all food in the house, so as not to feed the creature with our crumbs, and we should restrict our play to the front yard.
To my juvenile brain, this seemed like the perfect occupation. When I was older, I escaped my cousins by helping the adults in any way I was allowed—with cooking, with dishes, with errands to the store. But this trip, I had nothing. I was fourteen and angry. The last thing I wanted was to be around kids, the very oldest of which was 11. I needed to sulk. I convinced myself the poor animal under the house was nesting, which meant it probably had young, and that there wasn’t another person there who cared an ounce for any living thing they couldn’t shoot and/or eat, just like no one cared about me or my feelings, and that if anyone was going to save it and its helpless babies from painful and pointless death, it would have to be me.
It helped, I’m sure, that my auntie’s place was ripe for exploration. They had an old trailer out front and in the garage, a collection of barbecues, lawn mowers, and motorcycles, none of which were workable. Their back yard was huge and there were dogs to play with, only half of which had collars. They came and went in groups through gaps in the wood-slat fence. Beyond it, there was a gully and a border of trees and then the wide lawn of an old church.
I excused myself to the bathroom. When I came back, the younger kids were already out front. I took a plastic grocery bag from under the sink and used it like a glove, picking up the poison in the yard like it was dog poo and putting it in the trash can. Then I gathered some chicken wire and some sticks from my auntie’s garden supplies under the porch and took them to the back, away from the other children. I made a curved container I assumed would be large enough to hold an opossum, although I had never actually seen one in the flesh and in hindsight I’m sure it was too small by half.
All I needed was bait, which meant risking a return to the house. As an adult, I can see that my Auntie Susan wasn’t rich by any definition, but at the time, they were without a doubt the wealthiest people I knew. There was all kinds of food. I had pulled pork and corn and stuffed my cheeks with sweet-sauced sausages and vinegary slaw and put a few links on a paper plate and turned for the back door where my plump Auntie Susan, with thighs like a buffalo, stopped me and reminded me sternly that I wasn’t to take food outside, per my uncle’s orders. She took my plate and replaced it with her hand and led me to the front, where the younger boys were playing with action figures. My aunt convinced them to do something more to my liking, like dodge ball, and we played a few games in a patch of high weeds just down the street. Bug got hit in the face, but when it was clear, after a moment of tense silence on his part, that no one thought the less of him for it, he smiled at me. He was having fun. Suddenly, I didn’t feel so bad. Maybe Mom was right. Maybe it was better he stayed there.
Maybe I wanted to stay, too.
After a while, it started to get dark and I remembered the poor opossum and the unset trap I had left in the back yard. My cousin Shawn, who was the whitest kid I had ever seen, had some candy and I asked for a piece. I think my idea was that animals were always hungry—that’s how you always saw them on TV, running around desperately for food—and that all I had to do was put food inside my little trap and wait, out of sight, behind a stretch of
leaning fence that ran along one side of the yard, until the opossum came to feed. Then I would pounce on it. How I planned to cover the twenty or so yards from the fence to the trap before the animal fled back under the house, I have no idea. But I remember wanting to release it in the “big” woods on the other side of the church, which seemed like a right long ways away, far enough that it couldn’t wander back, even though it was probably less than a quarter mile.
But when I went round to the back, my trap was gone. I looked all over. But I couldn’t find it. I thought maybe one of the adults had picked it up. Adults were always taking things and putting them away before you were done with them. I was about to walk back to the porch to see if there were more materials I could use to make a replacement—perhaps even one with a trigger mechanism—when a light clicked on. It was high on a pole that rose over the cluster of trees and shrubs that separated the lawn from the church, which had clearly seen better days. Weeds grew three-feet tall in the parking lot, and the huge lawn had died over the summer. It looked abandoned. I’d never seen an abandoned church before—or since, actually—and I wondered what could possibly happen to a house of worship that folks would no longer feel welcome there.
A tractor path—just two tire-dug dirt grooves—ran from the yard to a work shed near the electric pole. The door of the shed creaked slowly open. I thought that was unusual. I seemed to remember it was always locked, especially when family was over, because that was where my uncle and my cousins kept their guns. But it swung wide and rested against the outside wall. There was no voice. No footsteps. No calls to the house that so-and-so couldn’t find what they were looking for and where was it again? No one was there. But it swung open all the same. And resting right in the middle of the shed was my discarded trap, just sitting there, lit by the light cast across the floor by the open door. It was blue-dusk then, right after the sun disappears over the horizon but right before total dark, which meant I could still see the workbench and the gun rack and the tools and the lawn mower and the old motorcycle covered in a tarp, but only in silhouette, like they’d been cut out of black construction paper.
