by Lisa Black
“I take in people who have nowhere else to go,” the woman said, gasping the last two words as the grip on her hair tightened.
“Don’t ask me how she finds them—I guess she’s developed a sort of radar. They will have nothing in common, not come from the same neighborhoods or even ethnic groups. She doesn’t want a concerned ex-neighbor wondering how old Mrs. O’Brien is doing since her eviction.
“Maria tells them she has a spare room, she’ll take care of all their affairs, etcetera. They pack their meager belongings and file a change of address with the Social Security Administration. Then they’re tucked into bed in a pretty, sunny room on the first floor. And left there. And left, and left, and left, until they’re too weak to protest.”
The woman squirmed under Jack’s grasp.
“Then Maria here gets one of her boyfriends to help her move them to the second floor—the group ward, you could call it. Keeps the odors at the top of the house, keeps the neighbors from getting suspicious. She doesn’t live there, of course, who wants to breathe in that smell every waking minute—and just in case some distant family member or neighbor or the SSA finally get curious, she’s not on the premises. And of course, one of the many services she provides for her charges is cashing their Social Security and pension checks.”
Maggie looked at Maria Stein.
“In the photos you saw, only two people were still breathing. The rest had been dead for a while. She’d leave them in place until she needed a bed, then shove one onto a tarp to take to a Dumpster. They’d be so emaciated by then that she didn’t have to trust a boyfriend with that part of the process.”
“Do something,” Maria Stein said to Maggie.
“Before you ask, I did arrest her,” Jack went on, conversationally, as if he weren’t pressing a gun barrel into a woman’s neck as he spoke. “But the judge had no reason not to grant bail, not to a woman with no record, recent acquaintances—most of whom genuinely believe she’s a nice person—who make it seem as if she has ties to the community. Then she puts on a tearful, sincere act of contrition. She was just trying to help.”
“I am helping.” Stein’s jaw clenched so tightly that she seemed to be biting the words off. “These people would be out on the street if it wasn’t for me.”
She reminded Maggie of all those people who have a herd of starving horses in their backyard or two thousand cats crammed into their house. They started out just wanting to help, they feel such compassion for those in need that they let themselves take on way more than they could physically handle, blah, blah, blah, when in truth it was all a control thing. They enjoy having those beings under their command. They like having the power over life and death.
“Then she patted her bail bondsman on the head, went home, packed a bag, and found a new place to set up shop, with a new name, a new history, a new look. Then a new place after that, and after that.” For the first time Jack took his gaze from Maggie to look directly at the woman he had pursued. “But not this time. There won’t be a next time with a new crop of victims for her.”
“Jack—”
“That file you looked at?” Jack said to Maggie.
“Y—yes?”
He sighed, and for a split second his expression had vulnerability to it, his eyes hollow and in deep pain. She felt the connection between them as if it were a physical entity, sucking her into his mind with all its chaotic, roiling despair. “Those photos are of my grandfather. The man who raised me, more or less.”
This really did all stem from vengeance, at least at the beginning. Justified vengeance.
Stein cried out, “Do something, you stupid bitch! Stop him!”
Maggie said, “And how, exactly, do you suggest I do that?”
“We were on our way to check out the third floor,” Jack said to Maggie, the flash of vulnerability gone. “Why don’t you join us?”
“Happy to,” she said, and meant it. Time to find out who might be the craziest person in the room—Jack, Maria Stein, or herself.
He jerked his head. “Up there.”
Maggie led the way. It seemed strange to turn her back on them but it was Maria Stein Jack wanted to kill, not her.
Of course, what happened once that woman was dead . . . he had not been swayed from his mission by threat of immediate exposure. Perhaps he felt protected by the angels whose work he thought he did. Perhaps he would feel that Maggie, if she tried to intervene, belonged to the devil. Consistency was not something she could count on here, not with Jack under such stress.
With the lights on she could now notice the molding and wall panels, formerly painted a coral shade with white trim, and the threadbare wool carpets in an intricate floral design. The center of each step bowed in slightly, worn into grooves by generations of feet pounding up and down. The place must have been renovated a number of times, perhaps most recently in the fifties—the wallpaper peeling from the walls bore images of poodles and girls in full skirts. It had been an incredible house, once. Now it smelled of dust and decay and, as she rose up the staircase, human rot.
“Lucky that the electricity is still on.” She spoke without turning her head.
A muffled exclamation from the woman, and Jack said, “Luck has nothing to do with it. She needs the lights for moving new tenants in and dead ones out. She does all her work at night. Like the rats.”
“I don’t know who you are.” Maria Stein tried a new tack, in a voice both desperate and angry. “This isn’t my house. I only stopped by to check on a friend. What do you want, money? I have some in my purse—take it.”
“And there’s more in the mailbox, isn’t there?” Jack said.
Maggie reached the third-floor landing, turned to watch their progress. The wallpaper there had an elegant design of bamboo fronds and distant mountains, from what she could tell of the remaining scraps. Her nose picked up something less serene in the air. “Don’t worry. The police are on their way.”
Jack peered at her when she said this, looking both disappointed and suspicious. He had taken her cell phone and assumed she hadn’t had time to stop.
Maria Stein said, “You called them? I mean—I don’t want any trouble. You can both leave now, and I’ll tell them it was too dark to see anyone. I won’t tell them.”
“You won’t have to,” Maggie said with more certainty than she felt. “We’ll still be here.”
The widening of the woman’s eyes told Maggie what they would find in the upstairs rooms.
Jack and his charge reached the landing as well. “Turn on the lights, Maggie. All of them.”
She started at the back of the house. Standing in the doorways she flicked on every switch she found, though half the bulbs were burnt out and one spluttered and died in front of her with an unnerving pop. Most rooms were utterly empty, nothing but dust and minute scraps of paper, a few venetian blinds with wide slats dangling from their brackets. One had a two-by-four and a lamp with no shade sitting on the floor, its base an intricate ironwork in the shape of a horse. Rat droppings and old cigarette butts cropped up here and there. She took her time, trying to use the few moments to think. Jack had no interest in fleeing. He would see this through—and so must she. But to what end?
They moved on.
Maggie found them in the front room, a twenty-by-thirty-foot space with three huge windows (one broken) and a sagging hardwood floor. A dingy chandelier dangled from the ceiling and provided barely adequate light to see the horror that spread from wall to wall.
At least a dozen cots sat, neatly lined up on each side of the room in a parody of a hospital ward. Each held an occupant, emaciated, skeletal beings with wisps of hair and soiled clothing, tangled in blankets, hands clenched in fists of pain. One had fallen from the cot onto the floor beside it. Another, definitely dead, had begun to yellow and “marble” as the coagulating blood began to rot in the veins; two large rats looked up from the thigh, sullenly resenting the interruption, then nestled down to await being left alone to finish their meal.
It was exactly what she expected to find, and yet it still bewildered Maggie into a temporary shock.
“Wh-who are these people?” Maria Stein asked in an utterly unconvincing stammer.
“Your clients,” Jack hissed in her ear. “Like the eight in Chicago, and where were you before that? Phoenix? Then Minneapolis, then Atlanta, right? Maybe Pittsburgh? But they let you go. I let you go. Not anymore.”
She persisted, “This is not how I left them. I was just trying to help.”
Maggie found her voice. “Jack.”
He looked at her, gun still ground into Maria Stein’s neck. He looked at her as if he didn’t know her, which illustrated how close he had arrived at the edge, jacked-up, bloodthirsty, but also elated. This had been his goal for a long time, and if she tried to stop him he would kill her. She had no doubt of that.
So she willed her body not to move, not the slightest shift of weight, and kept her voice low. “I need my phone. They’re going to have to bring ambulances. A lot of ambulances.” She couldn’t be one-hundred-percent sure that Sadie would have delivered her message. She doubted the odd woman would speak to anyone except Marty at the casino entrance, and Marty could have called in sick tonight or been on break or—“If you stay here, you’re going to get caught. If you leave, you’ll just be a theory I can’t prove.”
Over Maria Stein’s shoulder his gaze burned into hers. “My grandfather died because of me. These people are here now because of me. Because I didn’t stop her before.”
“Jack—”
“Someone has to act, don’t you see? Stop observing, Maggie. Act. That’s what human beings do.”
“Human beings also—”
But in his agitation his hold on the woman slipped, his fingers loosening only a fraction of an inch.
Maria Stein turned, quick as a snake, and kicked out his knee with an audible pop, shoving the gun to one side of her. It fired, narrowly missing Maggie and taking a chunk of plaster out of the wall above the head of what looked to be a man. Maggie had jumped aside out of instinct, her body trying to get out of the way, and fell backward over the cot, catching the frame at the last minute with both hands to keep from crushing the man’s chest. He didn’t react, his eyes screwed tightly shut, but loud and startled moans went up from several others. Maggie righted herself awkwardly, hands slick with rotting bodily fluids. She rubbed them on her pants before the sensation even had time to register.
Jack went down on the knee Stein had kicked, and blocked a second kick with one arm. Maggie heard the thump as his palm connected with the woman’s shin. Stein still had her hands on the gun, trying to pull it from him; she folded herself into his arm like a dance partner and dropped her entire body weight on his shoulder and bicep. Jack fell back against the worn hardwood floor, his head hitting the surface with a whump.
Maria Stein was up and turned in an instant, both hands on the gun, arms completely outstretched. The barrel pointed directly at Jack’s midsection. With only three feet of air in between the two objects, she couldn’t possibly miss. She pulled the trigger and a bullet thudded into Jack’s chest.
Maggie had no chair this time, no knife. She had nothing to fight with save her own body. So she took two running steps across the floor and launched herself into Maria Stein.
Both women hit the floor.
Stein remained on the bottom, but Maggie’s right arm had gotten caught on the wrong side and slammed onto the floorboards with their combined weight on top of it. She pulled her knees in, tried to direct them into the woman’s midsection and grab for the gun with her un-stunned hand. She could smell the woman’s sweat over a flowery perfume, see a thin gold chain around her neck.
But Stein wouldn’t let go.
Locking her elbow above the hand with the gun, keeping the weapon pointed away from her, Maggie struggled to get at least part of her body upright. So did Maria Stein.
The woman’s finger tensed on the trigger and a boom split the air. Again a small cacophony of cries arose from the unmoving occupants.
Maggie had no idea what Jack was doing behind her, if he were even conscious, if he were even alive. She put a hand on the other woman’s chin and slammed her head into the floor.
Stein bucked, rolling them partially to the side. They were nearly touching the outermost cot—at the edge of her vision, Maggie could see a bony hand extending over the side, stick-like fingers spread like a bird’s wing.
She wrapped both her hands around Maria Stein’s wrist as they struggled to their feet, ungracious and wavering. Stein responded by punching her in the face.
Maggie saw stars, again. Then Stein noticed the blood on her shirt and punched her in the shoulder.
With no other strategies at hand, Maggie rushed her target, butting her good shoulder into Maria’s chest. Unfortunately for the unlucky man on the first cot this drove them backward onto the top of him as the bed’s frame caught the back of Stein’s knees. Maggie pulled at the gun to keep any bullets from hitting the man.
Stein pulled the trigger again; Maggie heard the thud as it hit the thick plaster wall.
Sprawled across the man’s sunken chest, Stein tried to get her other hand in position to support the one with the gun, and when that didn’t work she hit Maggie on the cheek. The woman’s ornate rings caught a piece of skin and it stung.
But before she could ready another blow, a skeletal spider crept near the woman’s head. The man’s hand slid across the hair, covering her nose and face.
In a panic born of revulsion Stein loosened her grip on the gun and batted at the man’s fingers.
Maggie wrenched the gun from her hand, stood up, and stepped back. She didn’t stop until she felt the solid mass of the now-pockmarked wall behind her. From there she could cover both Stein and Jack, now on his feet. The bullet must have caught him in the chest.
Maria Stein slid off and away from the man, landing on her buttocks and crab-walking another three feet from the cot—and from the gun Maggie now pointed at her.
Jack paused, assessing this new arrangement of power.
Then Maggie raised the gun and pulled the trigger, shooting Maria Stein directly in the center of her forehead.
Smoke swirled in front of her face. The echoes of the gunshot died away.
“Okay,” she said to Jack. “This is how this is going to go.”
Chapter 36
Friday, 8:42 p.m.
She had managed to surprise Jack Renner. His gaze swung from the dead woman to Maggie, back again, and then back again. “I thought you didn’t know anything about guns.”
“About makes and models, no. About shooting them, yes.”
“She would have gotten away, you know,” Jack said after a pause. “If I had simply arrested her.”
“After suing the department for kidnapping, wrongful imprisonment, and attempted murder, yes, she certainly would have. Are you trying to make me feel better for killing her, or yourself for not?”
“Both, I guess.”
“I want my phone back.”
“Maggie—”
“Now! These people need help.”
He pulled the small object from his pocket and handed it to her. He didn’t ask for the gun and she didn’t point it at him. Without the urgency of his all-consuming mission, he seemed to be deflating. The anger seeped out and he had nothing with which to replace it. He simply gazed at the dead Maria Stein with something like wonder. And something like surprise, relief, triumph, and a bit of disappointment. Perhaps he didn’t know what to do now, had never thought of life after his goal. Perhaps he only regretted that he hadn’t been the one to drop her.
Maggie dialed 911 and in a deceptively calm voice explained who she was, that they had at least ten elderly patients in extreme distress and to send as many pers
onnel and ambulances to the address as possible. Oh, and to alert Patty Wildwood to the situation.
She’d clue Patty in about the corpse in the Johnson Court building when the detective arrived. Dillon Shaw hardly warranted speedy service.
Then she flipped it shut and regarded Jack. Then she held the gun out, butt first. “It’s time for you to leave,” she began.
He accepted the gun, gingerly, but when she had finished speaking he said: “No. That’s not how it’s going to go.”
“Fine. Then I dial this phone and tell your—”
“No, I meant—” He held up a hand in halfhearted protest. “I will cease and desist, I got that. After all, I’ve accomplished. . . well, my most important goal. But I can’t leave. That will be waving a red flag to a pen of bulls, and they’d never stop looking for me. I need time—to mop up, get myself assigned to the Johnson Court scene so my fingerprints won’t be a problem, let the investigation wind down. Then I’ll leave, with some reasonable, innocuous explanation that has nothing to do with unsolved murders.”
“And you pay no price for—how many people have you killed?”
He nodded at Maria Stein’s body. “Do you want to ‘pay your price’ for this one? Do you want to sit in jail for doing what needed to be done? No? Then why should I?”
She took a few moments to examine that idea. “Time frame.”
“Six months.”
Maggie hesitated, then shook her head. “Okay.”
He considered her, with something close to a very annoying smile hovering in the corner of his mouth. “Should we spit in our hands and shake on it?”
“I don’t spit.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.” The hint of a smile faded. “You’re going to have to give them a description of the killer. Picture someone real, that way your details will stay consistent. A celebrity, but not anyone easily recognizable from a description. Not Brad Pitt.”
