9
Ariel’s Grave
Detective John Krull was lying next to me on my pullout bed. We were both naked and I could feel the warmth coming off his body, but I wasn’t sure how we’d gotten there or where our clothes had gone. Must be the scotch, I thought, must be the scotch . . .
Krull was stroking my chin with the back of his index finger. His black eyes glowed, as if they held lit matches.
“You want them?” he asked, his lips curling into a grin. His finger traced the outline of my mouth. “You want them?”
Want what?
“You want them?” Like a caress. But what did he mean? I couldn’t answer. Not until I knew. His face began to change. “You want them?” His voice now sounded different—flat, inflectionless.
“You want them.” I realized it had been him all along as I looked into Peter Steele’s mirrored irises. “YOU WANT THEM!” shouted the bloated mouth. The hand went to my neck, tightened around it as the other shot in front of my face, a clenched fist opening. “WANT THEM!” Opening to reveal two bloody eyeballs.
“NO!” I screamed, wrenching my eyes open, waking up on my pullout couch, heart pounding, pouring sweat, naked and disoriented but alone. All alone. “Holy fucking shit.”
I patted around in the dark next to the bed and found an empty trash can on the floor, next to a full glass of water, which I gulped down greedily. Nobody had put a trash can next to my bed since college. “What the hell?” I said, but then I remembered Krull’s voice. I’m putting this here just in case.
I rubbed my eyes. Slowly, they began to adjust to the darkness. I spotted the digital clock on my VCR. Five o’clock a.m. What had happened to me? An unpleasant stiffness settled into my muscles, intensifying as the rest of the evening replayed itself, like scenes from a movie on which I deeply regretted spending money.
Me, reaching across the table, grabbing Krull’s bottle of beer and draining it.
Krull taking out his wallet, saying, “My treat.” Saying, “We should get you home.”
“How about you get me into bed?”
“Hey, are you okay? Let me help you up.”
My face smashed into Krull’s chest in the cold night air. “I think I drank too much.”
“I know you drank too much.”
“Can you please walk me into my apartment and make sure there aren’t any murderers in there?”
“Sure.”
Krull turning on the lights in my apartment, pulling out the bed.
Me, toppling forward, the pillow slamming into my face.
“Samantha? You should at least take off your sweater and shoes.”
“I can’t move.”
“Can you breathe?”
“I don’t think so.”
My shoes coming off, then my sweater. “Try and roll over. That’s good. Can you get under the covers?”
“Get under the covers with me.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Footsteps, retreating into the kitchen, water running.
Me under the covers, pulling off my jeans, my shirt, my bra, my panties.
Krull’s footsteps returning from the kitchen. “I’m putting this here just in case. And water, which you’ll want later.”
“I’m totally naked under here.”
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“I’m not wearing panties anymore.”
“Good night, Samantha.”
The soft click of the light switch. The thump of the door closing.
I moved my hands up and down the cool sheets, felt my balled-up jeans next to my hip, my shirt draped over the upper edge of the bed. I sensed cloth wrapped around my left ankle and identified it as my underwear. Oh no, no, no . . .
At least I wasn’t afraid. I was too embarrassed to be afraid. I should’ve enjoyed the feeling.
The girl in the ice chest was wearing purple jeans and a Little Mermaid T-shirt. A sad bit of irony for a three-year-old whose final destination was under water. Until they had an official identity for her, the Post would refer to her by the mermaid’s name, Ariel. None of this information was in Boyle’s advance copy of the article, but it was in the version I saw on page three of the newspaper, which I bought the following morning at the Happy Face Deli. The headline had been changed to “Watery Grave for ‘Little Mermaid.’ ”
Purple jeans. One day, about a month earlier, Serena had shown up at school dressed entirely in the color—bright purple tights and turtleneck, lavender jumper, deep grape sweater, three or four violet ribbons tied haphazardly in her short, curly hair. “My mommy let me pick my clothes today,” she’d announced, at which Nancy had started to cry. “That’s not fair. I wanna be purple.”
Purple was a color made for little girls, and I was sure Ariel had loved it too. Loved it right up until she could no longer see it. I folded up the paper, stuffed it into my bag, pulled my coat closer around me.
It was only a few minutes after 6:00 a.m. and barely light outside. The sidewalk was empty, and what few cars were on the road buzzed by with a luxurious speed. I knew I was very early for work, but I’d already been up an hour and I couldn’t stay in my apartment anymore. Making my bed and folding it back up had been close to torturous when I remembered, again and again, what I had said and done in it the night before. I’m not wearing panties anymore. Jesus.
During the moments when I was able to put my own humiliation out of my mind, other thoughts replaced it. Thoughts of devil worship, ritual murder, dead children with damaged eyes. Peter Steele.
In the shower, all I could think of was the pale blue ice chest, sinking into cold, dirty water.
So I’d dressed and left early. If I was lucky, maybe I could find an all-night bookstore and replace the Book of Practical Cats. Otherwise, I’d just get breakfast at a diner. There was a good one called Brugerman’s a block and a half away from Sunny Side. Big menu. Excellent ham and eggs. I’d been there a bunch of times with Yale because it wasn’t far from his apartment. Maybe, after breakfast, I’d stop by.
The more I walked, the less the all-night bookstore appealed and the more my empty stomach took precedence. Thanks to four glasses of water and a couple Advil, my hangover wasn’t as debilitating as the one from the previous day. But a big, fatty breakfast—eaten nowhere near Ruby Redd’s Brewing Company—was becoming increasingly necessary.
I finally got to Brugerman’s, sat at the counter, ordered coffee, ham steak, fried eggs over easy and buttered rye toast. I took the Post out of my bag, but I avoided page three and went straight for Liz Smith. Liz never said anything frightening.
My breakfast arrived, quick and hot and better than anything I’d ever eaten in my life. Liz was waxing on about some gorgeous Spanish pop star, the waitress said, “Can I get you anything else, honey?” and for a few minutes, it seemed like everything was going to be all right.
Then I heard a man’s voice behind me, so close it made my shoulders shoot up.
“Where the hell have you been?” It was Yale, and he looked awful.
“What do you mean?”
“I tried calling you all night. Your phone was off the hook. Then I go to your apartment and buzz you, and no one answers.”
I stared at Yale’s face. His skin was dead white, his eyes puffy and red rimmed. Tufts of his blond hair stuck out at eccentric angles, dotted with odd, white flecks. “I was at a bar,” I said. “What happened to you?”
“I’ve been out all night,” he said. “Feel free to say I told you so.”
“What do you mean?”
Yale sighed. “I had a date with Peter last night.”
“But you said I scared him off.”
“Yeah, well, what was I supposed to tell you?”
“Oh, Christ, Yale—”
“Peter and I were supposed to meet at Temple Bar at ten o’clock. So I go there, and I wait for two fucking hours and he never shows up. Don’t waste your breath because everything you’re going to say to me I’ve already said to myself about five hund
red thousand times.”
“At ten o’clock last night—”
“I figure, whatever, he’s a huge flake. So I go back to my apartment, and it seems the lock has been picked.”
“No.”
“Yes. And after I walk in, I discover that every breakable thing I own has been smashed to bits—my dishware, my glass-topped coffee table, my Tiffany-style lamps, my comedy/tragedy masks. That asinine porcelain dog I won on Wheel of Fortune during my trip to Hollywood five years ago. Oh, no, he did not discriminate at all.”
“You think it was Peter?”
“Who else would it be? He knows where I live, and he knew I wouldn’t be there. And besides, he left his stupid checkered waiter’s bow tie on the kitchen floor. It must’ve fallen off while he was decimating my china.”
“Did you call the police?”
“I was too humiliated.”
“You should’ve—”
“I went to your place and you weren’t there and I wanted to be with people, that’s all, and I certainly didn’t feel like going to another bar . . . So I saw the second half of Rocky Horror.”
“That’s still playing?”
“At certain theaters, yes. Rocky Horror, Sam. I hated that movie in high school, and it’s just . . . gotten . . . worse.”
I reached over, plucked a white fleck out of his hair. “Rice.”
“I’ve got rice in my hair from Rocky Horror. God help me, I’ve hit rock bottom.”
“Yale—”
“After the movie was over, I . . . I needed to talk to someone. And . . . I wanted to feel safe, so I went to David’s.”
“David?”
“Rum Tum Tugger.”
“Oh, no.”
“And he’s got a new boyfriend.”
“Oh no.”
“Who lives with him. I show up at his apartment at three in the fucking morning with rice in my hair, and his personal trainer boyfriend answers the door in a jock strap. Life does not get worse than that. I’ve been wandering from diner to diner ever since.”
“Yale. It’s my fault.”
“No, it isn’t. You were a little rude to him at the restaurant. Big deal. That’s no reason to trash all of my—”
“I think he trashed your stuff because I called the police on him. I think he saw me going into the station to report him. It’s practically across the street from Ruby Redd’s Brewing Company, and this incredibly loud soap opera actress called attention to me.”
“You called the police on him?”
I turned to page three of the Post, showed him the article.
“That’s horrible, but of course it’s a coincidence, Sam. You don’t honestly think Peter would—”
“It’s not, and I do. Honestly.” I told him the whole story, from my conversation with Tredwell to my visit to the Sixth Precinct to the discovery of the ice chest, and how Krull had said my description had matched the one found by the construction workers. I told him about Peter’s proclivity for devil worship and sadomasochism and the ritualistic nature of the girl’s death. How something had been done to her eyes—just like something had been done to Sydney’s eyes in the valentine photo. I told him how Peter had skipped out on Detective Boyle, who was also scheduled to meet him at ten o’clock the previous evening.
Yale just stared at me, his skin growing even paler. When I was finished, he asked if he could have a sip of my water, and when he took the glass, I noticed his hand was trembling. He drank all of it before he was able to speak. “I had sex with a murderer.”
I put my arm around his shoulders. “You didn’t know.”
“A . . . a sick fuck who k-kills little kids.”
“You didn’t know, Yale. You had no idea.”
“But that doesn’t change the fact.”
He put his head down on the counter, and I patted his back. I wished I could change the fact. I wished I could change everything, or at least make it go away for a while. “You want to know what I did last night? I asked Krull to walk me home, and when he was getting me a glass of water, I took off all my clothes and begged him to get into bed with me.”
“No, you didn’t,” Yale said into his hands.
“Oh, yes I did.”
When he looked up at me, I saw that his eyes were moist. “You stripped in front of an NYPD detective? The same one you screamed at?”
“Yep, and you know what else? He turned me down.”
“We’re quite a pair, aren’t we?”
“You want some of my ham and eggs?”
He cleared his throat. “Sure. Screw nutrition.”
I asked the waitress for another fork and knife, and we both ate off my plate in silence.
After we were done with breakfast, Yale asked if he could wash up at Sunny Side because he still didn’t feel like facing his apartment. I said, “Why don’t you just sit in on my class and we can spend the day together?” He took me up on the offer, though neither of us said much on the walk there.
As I opened the main door to the school, I turned to him. “Hey,” I said. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
“Of course.”
“When you and Peter were . . . together, did he, I mean . . . Did any of those things that Tredwell said sound familiar?”
“No,” he replied. “If anything, I thought he was a little too vanilla for me.”
“That’s odd.”
“Isn’t it? Maybe I’m not what’s he’s looking for in a slave. Maybe I’m too . . . threatening.”
“You are pretty butch.”
“You think?”
“Definitely.”
Yale beamed at me, but just for a moment. His expression darkened again, and I could almost see the thoughts entering his head. “I want to kill him.”
“Me too,” I said. “No more of that talk, though. You’re entering a nursery school.”
We walked through the courtyard. Anthony, who was sweeping up outside Veronica’s classroom, waved to us. “You Sam’s boyfriend?” he called out. “You are one lucky guy.”
Is anyone more clueless than Anthony?
Before Yale or I could respond, Veronica poked her head out of her door. No matter what hour of the morning I showed up, she was always there first. I figured her parents wanted her out of the house as early as possible, and who could blame them? “That’s not her boyfriend,” she said, peering at Yale through her thick glasses. “Obviously.”
Yale put his arm around my waist with such confidence it startled me. “How do you know Sam hasn’t changed me?” He winked at her, and she slammed the door.
“Well, there’s something that’s going to keep her up for the next couple of nights,” I said.
“Good. I won’t be the only one who’s too disturbed to sleep.”
I opened the door to my classroom, unlocked my desk drawer and tossed Yale the boys’ room key. “Go wash up,” I told him. “I don’t want you scaring my kids.”
Just as I was unlocking the closet, I heard light footsteps coming into the room. I turned and saw Daniel Klein wearing a red-and-white striped Oxford shirt, navy sweater and overcoat, chinos, red duck shoes and his usual serious expression. He looked like a miniature president on retreat at Camp David and I thought, Maybe I’m seeing into the future. “Hey, Dan! How’s your fish?”
“His butt’s where his tummy should be and little brown strings come out of it. That’s his poo.”
Correct, Mr. President. “You want to help me set up for today?”
“Okay.”
I took several pads of white drawing paper out of the closet, as well as a bag of Magic Markers and three large boxes of crayons, which I handed to Daniel. “You can put these on the table, Dan. Put one box at either end, and one in the middle. Okay?”
“What are we making?”
I had no idea. Usually, I thought about what I’d do with the kids while I was taking care of busywork at the Space or when I was getting ready for bed or at least during the walk to school, but lately, my class had been th
e last thing on my mind. I felt extremely guilty. “Ummm. I thought we’d . . . draw our favorite animals today and try and spell their names. You can draw your fish.”
“His name is Squad Watery,” Daniel said.
“That’s right. How could I forget?” Squad Watery . . . contact the Sixth Precinct detective squad . . . Watery Grave . . . “You can draw him if you like, and my friend Yale will be here to help out.”
“Is he the man Daddy and I saw out there?”
“You’ve met Yale before, sweetie.”
“The man outside with the sunglasses?”
“Ummm . . . What?”
The door opened, Yale entered, his face scrubbed, his hair damp and combed, flanked by Nancy, Serena and Kendrick. “Class is here, Teacher!” he announced, tossing me the bathroom key.
“See, Dan? Yale. Remember?”
“He’s not the same man.”
“Crayons!” yelled Serena, as several more of my kids arrived. “I wanna draw my name in gold with stars around it!”
“I’ll help you,” said Yale. “Serena is a lovely name.”
“What about Nancy? Nancy!”
“Beautiful as well. Do you know what letter it begins with?”
“N!”
“Fabulous.”
“I’m gonna draw my butt!”
“Not acceptable, Kendrick.”
The school day went fast, with Yale doing most of the talking. The kids drew their favorite animals—mostly cats, of course, plus several renderings of Buster the Safety Dog, a shark, three Lion Kings, Squad Watery and Kendrick’s butt (which I managed to turn into an unusually fat bird for his mother’s sake). When the kids begged me to read from the Book of Practical Cats, Yale saved the day by treating them to a booming, acapella rendition of “Memory,” for which he received a standing ovation and several hugs.
Before too long, their parents started to show up, complimenting pictures, helping with coats and mittens, taking their small hands and escorting them out the door. It was amazing how quickly the sound level dropped, even with just a few of them gone.
Daniel’s mom had yet to arrive. I spotted the boy across the room, folding up his picture and putting it into his little briefcase. “Hey, Dan,” I said as I approached. “Did you and your dad really see a man outside, wearing sunglasses?”
Hide Your Eyes Page 10
