Hide Your Eyes

by Alison Gaylin

  “You’ve been through so much,” Debbie Reynolds kept saying. “Don’t you want to take a sip of water?”

  Why didn’t she at least call herself Deb or Deborah? Maybe Debbie was her full name, and her parents were the kind of witty sadists who name their kids Justin when their last name is Case, or Cherry when their last name is Baum. Maybe she had a brother named Burt.

  “How about some apple juice? Your blood sugar’s pretty low, and that might perk you right up.”

  I let my head roll back till I could see the faded Monet print on the wall behind me. Upside-down Water Lilies.

  It felt so dark in here, even with those headachy fluorescent bulbs over the bed. There was a big window, but the blinds were closed and I couldn’t get myself to ask Debbie to open them. The room probably faced a brick wall anyway, knowing my luck. My rotten luck. Finally meet a nice guy, somebody shoots him in the neck.

  My back still ached from the gunshot. According to the doctor who had examined me, I’d soon have “a hell of a souvenir bruise” between my shoulder blades.

  “You know you almost got him,” said Debbie. “You are one plucky little gal, shooting at bad guys.”

  I wished I could crawl underneath the bed. Lay on the floor and hide forever from Debbie Reynolds, RN.

  “So,” she said. “This fellow was wearing those Magic Mirrors, huh?”

  Fellow?

  Who could blame his girlfriend for running away, fast as she did, without looking back? Boyle had chased her several blocks, then returned wheezing and sweating and even redder than usual, saying, “Oh fuck no,” again and again, when he saw what had happened to Krull, to me. And when he saw that the shooter had just . . . disappeared.

  “My daughter borrowed some of those Magic Mirrors from one of her girlfriends,” Debbie was saying. “Got herself a nasty case of pinkeye, just in time for the school play.”

  Debbie blinked at me a few times. “I bet you want to cry, don’t you?”

  I shook my head, because I couldn’t cry. All I could do was replay the scene in my mind.

  Mirror Eyes, staring at me as I squeezed the trigger.

  The force of the shot, knocking my arm into its socket.

  The gun dropping out of my hand, clattering to the ground.

  Concrete, socking me in the back of the head.

  Next to me, Krull’s face, chalky and still, bright red seeping into his collar.

  I’d lain there, hurting too much to move, until I heard the paramedics’ sirens.

  Krull was rushed to the hospital, but the man had run into an alley and disappeared, leaving some blood—Krull had tagged him in the arm—but nothing else. Cops later found an old, open manhole in the alley, a tarp thrown over the top, nothing inside but more blood. Obviously he’d hid there, like a rat, until it was safe to leave.

  How could I have shot at him and missed?

  According to the paramedics, I had a mild concussion from hitting my head on the ground. They’d asked me my name, and the current president’s name, and even though I’d appeared to know the answers, I hadn’t said a word. So they’d gurneyed me into the ambulance and driven me to St. Vincent’s for observation.

  “That detective is going to be fine,” said Debbie.

  “How the hell do you know?” The words flew out, along with tears. I was crying now, and Debbie was leaning in, putting both of her big arms around me, letting me cry on her clean blue uniform.

  “He’s still in surgery,” I said. “He’s been in surgery for a long time, and how can you say he’s going to be fine when he was shot in the fucking neck?”

  “He is going to be fine,” said another female voice. “Because if he’s not I’ll be pissed. And you don’t want to piss off a woman with postpartum hormones and a gun.”

  I looked up, saw Boyle standing in the doorway with a slim, sandy-haired woman wearing gray NYPD sweats and a badge around her neck. “Hi, Miss Leiffer, this is—” said Boyle, but I didn’t need an introduction.

  “You’re the third partner.”

  She walked up to the bed and stuck out her hand. “Amanda Patton.”

  “Congratulations,” I said, still crying a little. “Boy or girl?”

  It was a boy. Patton and her husband had named him John—after her father, not Krull. But that didn’t stop me from crying again as soon as I heard the baby’s name.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, as Patton opened her handbag, and handed me a Kleenex.

  “Do you have any idea how much I’ve cried since John was born? Between the lack of sleep and the postpartum and the breastfeeding, which is really hard—nobody ever tells you that—and then this . . . But Krull’s going to be fine. He’s strong and tough. It’s not like he’s a six-pound baby who’s starving to death because his mother can’t even get her fucking milk to let down.”

  Boyle cleared his throat.

  Debbie had left the room. I was sitting up in bed in my pink hospital gown, with Patton in the chair and Boyle standing next to her. I looked at these two people, whom I barely knew, and felt such a deep longing that I couldn’t even cry anymore. I missed my clothes. I missed that damn leather jacket.

  “John will live,” I said.

  Neither of them asked which John I was talking about.

  After a while, we all got thirsty, so Patton went looking for a vending machine.

  “What was the deal with those sharpshooters?” I asked Boyle.

  “They were positioned, just couldn’t get a clear shot.”

  When I tried sitting up straighter, I felt a vicious yank between my shoulder blades. “Well, he did pretty good.”

  “The more targets you have, the easier it is to hit one,” Boyle said, as Patton returned to the room with three cans of orange soda.

  “I heard the fuckwad bled a little,” she said.

  “Are you guys running tests on the blood?”

  “It’s pretty corrupted,” said Boyle, “And even if it wasn’t, we probably wouldn’t have anything to match it with.”

  I looked at him.

  “He washes those bodies clean—including your neighbor, Mrs. Bean. Nothing under her nails. Not a stray fiber on her.”

  “Did he give her a makeover?” asked Patton.

  He shook his head. “Probably not enough time.”

  “A makeover?”

  “This guy makes . . . improvements on the corpses,” Boyle said. “Maybe he feels guilty about taking their eyes—I don’t know. Johnny was the one talking to the profilers, and I don’t much believe that shit anyway.”

  “Right, just astrology,” said Patton.

  “Hey, the moon is full and Mercury’s out of retrograde during the Aquarius/Pisces cusp. Last time that happened was when we found Graham, so you tell me what to believe.”

  “There are other factors and you know it.” Patton started to say more, but then she looked at me and stopped.

  I thought of Elmira, thought of the child found dead on my block, thought of the other gruesome discoveries yet to be made since I’d locked eyes with him on Valentine’s Day. More little corpses, then little you.

  “What kind of improvements did he make?” I asked.

  “Weird ones,” Patton said. “Sarah’s nails were painted to match her purple pants, and somebody put her hair in pigtails. There were freckles drawn on Graham’s face with an indelible pen.”

  “John never mentioned that.”

  “The last girl, in the footlocker?” said Boyle. “He dyed her hair yellow. Looks like he may have used some kind of paint, mixed with water. The funeral home’s going to have a hell of a time getting it out.”

  Patton looked down at her hands. “I’m sure they’ll have a closed casket.”

  “That reminds me,” said Boyle. “I gotta call Forensics.”

  After he left, Patton gestured towards the closed blinds. “Mind if I open them?”

  “Please.”

  She pulled the cord, revealing more darkness on the other side of the window. A brick wall.<
br />
  “Figures,” I said.

  “At least you have some privacy. You wouldn’t believe how many reporters are out there.”

  Patton returned to the chair, collapsed in it. She put her face in her hands, and for a minute I thought she might be crying. But when she lifted her head to talk, I saw that her eyes were dry, her voice smooth. “John Krull let me beat him at arm wrestling. My first day on the job, in front of the whole squad.”

  I looked at her.

  “Here I am the first female detective in the precinct, and everybody’s staring at me like I’m some kind of space alien with tits, so of course I find the strongest-looking one of them and challenge him to arm wrestle.”

  “Why?”

  “I have no idea why I do these things. But before I know it, there’s this huge crowd around us, and everybody’s betting on Krull. He doesn’t know me from a crack in the ceiling, and his own partners have put up fifty dollars apiece against me, but still he lets me win. Can you believe that?”

  I smiled, because actually, I could.

  Just then, Boyle returned, his face squinted up like he was trying to determine the origin of an unpleasant odor.

  “So?” Patton asked.

  “Miss Leiffer, do you remember the substance covering the eyes of the doll in the Schoolteacher Barbie ad?”

  My jaw clenched up. “Whose blood was it?”

  “Nobody’s.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Acrylic paint.” He turned to Patton. “Can you imagine? The guy jimmies kids’ eyes out, but when he wants to scare Miss Leiffer, he gets squeamish and fakes it with paint?”

  “There was . . . paint in the girl’s hair,” I said.

  Boyle nodded. “What they’re doing now is looking at different brands of acrylic paint after they’ve dried, trying to find the best match for the color found on the ad. The closest one’s called Black Cherry, brand name Liquitine.”

  “Who’s that used by, artists?” Patton asked.

  “Sure, but it’s also real popular with . . .” Boyle’s voice trailed off.

  Nurse Debbie Reynolds stood in the doorway, arms crossed over her chest like thick ropes. There was a doctor behind her—a tall middle-aged woman with glasses and a white coat and tired brown hair. “Detective Krull is out of surgery,” the doctor said.

  “Is he going to be okay?”

  “That’s anyone’s guess right now. The bullet didn’t hit anything but muscle, but he’s lost quite a bit of blood and we had to intubate him.” For a second, I thought she’d said incubate.

  “He’s in Intensive Care.”

  “Can we visit him?” I asked.

  “You’ll need to get the attending physician to discharge you first, and no more than one in the room at a time and . . .”

  “And?” Patton said.

  “And . . . it might be . . . a bit upsetting to look at him.”

  Boyle coughed. It was the only sound in the room.

  Typically, only blood relatives were allowed in Intensive Care, but Krull’s father was at a conference in Russia and difficult to reach, and his brother couldn’t get a flight out from Seattle until the next day. So by default we achieved family status—his two partners and last night’s lay.

  The overhead lights were dim in Krull’s Intensive Care room, and thick curtains blocked the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the nurses’ station. There were two armed guards on the other side of his door and, in the waiting room just outside the unit, a guy from the Police Benevolent Association, a woman from Internal Affairs and—before three orderlies escorted them out—a few of the more persistent tabloid reporters, all waiting for Detective John Krull to open his eyes or die.

  You’d never know that here, though, in this quiet room, with its dull lights and softly blinking medical equipment, where only one conscious person was allowed at a time. Here, the only sound was that of Krull’s ventilator.

  At first I’d found it comforting, that deep, echoing gasp—like En’s yoga breathing—and I’d liked the way it made Krull’s chest rise and fall so reliably. But then a nurse had told me that the machine was doing his breathing for him, thus weakening his lungs, and the sooner they weaned him off it, the better his chances for survival.

  I’d been standing next to Krull’s bed for the past ten minutes—watching him the way you’d watch a baby sleep, with that same awkward reverence. His neck was heavily bandaged and his soft lips, taped clumsily to the long, plastic air tube, were chapped and grayish. But other than that, and the IVs that ran into each arm, Krull looked like he was sleeping.

  I wondered how many people had died in this room. You could smell death here, in snaking, antiseptic fumes. “Please live,” I said.

  I placed my hand over his. It felt cool and dry, almost inanimate.

  The two big orderlies remove the reporters from the waiting room, arms grasping their backs as if they were old, drunken friends.

  Patton turns to me and whispers, “I didn’t think Krull should be handling this Ariel thing, to tell the truth.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s too much of a fucking sweetheart.”

  It couldn’t have happened more than fifteen minutes ago. Yet in my mind, the reporters, the orderlies—even Patton and myself—seemed as static as magazine pictures. The room, the machinery keeping Krull alive— this was reality. And it wasn’t easy for my mind to stay in it for long.

  I dragged a chair up to Krull’s bedside and sat down, put my head next to his on the pillow. When I turned, I saw nothing but white bandages edged in dried blood.

  One of the reporters has a pointy, pale face. He reminds me of a ferret. “You the girlfriend?”

  Patton says, “Ignore him,” but I stare anyway.

  He leans forward in his chair, smiles. His teeth are tiny. “What was John like?”

  My throat tightens. “Where do you get off using the past tense, asshole?”

  The Internal Affairs woman stops typing. Police Benevolent lowers his magazine and stares. Patton leaves the room.

  The reporter says, “Well, isn’t he on life support?”

  Don’t say anything, don’t say a word.

  “Isn’t he?” repeats the smiling ferret, but now Patton is back with the orderlies.

  “Hey, don’t I know you?”

  I lifted my head. Standing over me was the surfer nurse from the emergency room.

  “Remember me, from last night? It’s totally okay if you don’t. They move me around all the time.”

  Last night. It had been less than twenty-four hours. “How is Sal?”

  “Much better. Amy took him home this morning. She is such a sweet girl.”

  “She does a great whip impersonation.”

  “Awesome. Anyways, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. The doctor’s coming in, and we’re gonna try and wean him off the ventilator.”

  I got up from the chair. “You think he’s ready?”

  “Ready as he’s gonna be.”

  I’d hoped for a more positive response than that, which the nurse seemed to sense.

  She put a hand on my shoulder, and I glanced at her name tag. Gretchen Trask. Such a solid-sounding name for such a frothy-looking girl.

  “Everything is going to be all right,” she said.

  When I returned to the waiting room, everyone had left except Boyle. Internal Affairs and Police Benevolent had presumably gone home for the day, while Patton was in the lobby, calling home. Somewhat guiltily, I mentioned I still had her phone, but Boyle said, “That one’s NYPD property. She’s got her own personal cell for calling her husband.”

  I leaned close to Boyle, as if the reporters were still here. “They’re trying to wean him off life support.”

  Boyle held up a hand, crossed his fingers.

  “Superstitious?”

  “Can’t hurt.”

  I heard Amanda Patton’s voice asking someone where the waiting room was, and two seconds later, she walked in. “This place is such a frigg
in’ maze.”

  “How’s the baby?” Boyle asked.

  “Sleeping. I miss him. I think I’m gonna go home.”

  I started to tell Patton she might want to wait a little while, because they were weaning Krull off the ventilator, but then I realized I had no idea how long it would take. Probably hours. I wasn’t able to say or think much more than that, because Gretchen was standing behind her, shaking her frosty blond head, saying, “Sorry, guys. Not today.”

  15

  Intaglio

  Since the doctor had asked for the atmosphere in Krull’s room to be as serene as possible, that meant no visitors at least until morning.

  “I guess that’s our cue,” said Boyle, after Gretchen finished telling us as much and returned to the ICU.

  “I’ll take Samantha to the hotel,” Patton said.

  I frowned at her. “Hotel?”

  “The NYPD has booked you a lovely, guarded room at the Days Inn on Twenty-third.”

  “Guarded.”

  “Two uniforms outside the room, just like Krull’s,” she said.

  I watched her face. Her cheeks colored slightly.

  “Do I really need that much protection?”

  “Couldn’t hurt, right?” Boyle said. The way he avoided my eyes made my shoulders tense up.

  “You guys think he’s going to come after me, don’t you?”

  “Hey, you can never be too safe,” Patton gave me a forced smile. “Plus, you can order all the room service you want, on us.”

  I started out the waiting room door and followed them down the hall to the elevator, trying not to imagine my own eyes scooped out of my head and placed on the shelf of a hotel minibar.

  Just as Boyle hit the “down” button, though, Dead Man’s Fingers rushed up my back. I pressed my shoulder blades together, felt the pressure of the gunshot as if it had just happened.

  The elevator door opened. Patton and Boyle started in.

  “Just a minute.”

  Again. Another galloping chill, this time stronger, this time in italics. Dead Man’s Fingers. Just like Valentine’s Day. Two times in a row.

  I took a step back, and once more it sliced into me. Three times. Yes, a bad premonition. Bad times three. But was it about me?