When the Day of Evil Comes

by Melanie Wells

  I looked up and saw the man’s face over my shoulder, dark and lined as tree bark. I glanced at his name tag.

  “Thank you very much, Earl. But I was just about to read it.”

  “That one’s been read,” he scolded. “I’ll get you a new one.”

  “The words look the same to me. They don’t evaporate when someone reads them the first time or anything, do they?”

  He laughed. “You right about that. Don’t know why everyone so worried about a newspaper’s already been read. But I always like to offer a fresh one.”

  He stacked the newspaper and placed it neatly on the table in front of me.

  “You enjoying your stay, ma’am?”

  I decided I could not lie to this man. He was just way too dignified for that.

  “I’m not staying here,” I said. “I’m just stopping in.”

  “It’s a good place to stop in, that’s for sure.”

  “How long have you worked here?”

  “Long time. I can’t even say,” he said, shaking his head. “Long, long time.”

  I leaned forward. “Can I ask you something? Earl?”

  “Yes ma’am. I may not know an answer, but you can ask all you want.”

  “Were you here when that boy committed suicide a couple of weeks ago?”

  “The Zocci boy? No, ma’am. I work the night shift.”

  “But you knew him.”

  “Everyone knows that family. They stay here all the time. Every one of them, and they’s lots of them. Always ask for the same room. Up there on the twelfth floor. They like it up there on twelve.” He straightened.

  “Do you happen to know the room number?”

  “You a reporter or something, miss?” He didn’t seem at all concerned. Just mildly curious.

  “No. Just a friend.”

  “Can’t say the number. It’s up there on the corner. Looking back on Delaware. You can see the water from the window.” He picked up the ashtray. “I better get myself busy. They don’t pay me to visit.”

  “One more question,” I said. “Do you mind telling me where the gift shop is?”

  He pointed. “Right over there, other side of those elevators. You have a nice evening, ma’am.”

  I watched him walk away. His stringy little body moved with surprising agility.

  I sat there for a few minutes, contemplating my next move and wondering where I could find a McDonald’s or something. I’d just realized I was starving.

  The arm of a uniformed hotel employee startled me, reaching out of my peripheral vision and whisking the newspaper off the table in front of me, replacing it with a new one.

  I looked up to see a young woman standing over my chair. She tucked the used paper under her arm. “May I offer you a drink from the bar?” she said.

  “Club soda?” Surely that would be cheap.

  “Certainly.”

  She returned in a few minutes with a club soda and lime on ice and a generous bowl of snack mix. What a jackpot.

  I tried not to shovel down the snack mix, slowing myself down by perusing the paper. I started with the metro section, thinking there might be something about the Zocci family or about Erik’s suicide. I didn’t find anything, so I finished my drink, fished the last pretzel out of the bowl, and left a few dollars on the table.

  The gift shop was closed. I checked my watch. 6:15. It had closed a quarter of an hour ago. The sign said it would reopen at nine the next morning.

  I stepped back into the lobby, suddenly feeling the weight of the day. The weight of the week, perhaps. I was tired. And hungry Snack mix wasn’t going to cut it.

  I decided I’d done enough sleuthing for one day. I’d figure out a way to see the twelfth-floor suite tomorrow.

  I made it back to my parking space before the meter ran out. The purple car was still there, right where I’d left it, greeting me cheerily with its tacky happy-face flag. No one would be even remotely tempted to steal it. I had that going for me.

  I checked my map and made a circuitous, inefficient, mazelike route to my motel, which it turned out was only six blocks from the Vendome, though it seemed like a universe away. I checked into my room and unpacked my sparse belongings.

  The Downtown Chicago Best Mid-Western shared a parking lot with a Denny’s. I walked next door, slid into a booth, and had a grilled cheese sandwich, a salad, and a slice of chocolate pie.

  Then I went back to my room, took a shower, and got myself ready for bed, checking the lock on my door twice before turning my light out for the night.

  18

  I AWOKE TO THE SOUND OF SOMETHING clattering loudly to the floor in the bathroom. Afraid to move, I cracked an eyelid and looked at the clock, its numbers glowing red beside the bed. 3:30.

  Keeping my head still, I rolled my eyes around and looked at the bathroom door. It was closed. I could see a thin strip of light under the door. I was certain I hadn’t left it on. As I watched, the light clicked off.

  I shot out of bed and made it to my bag in one leap, keeping my eyes on the bathroom door.

  My purse (more of a backpack, really) has the weight and heft of a bowling ball. I don’t know what leads me to believe I need everything I carry around in there—I couldn’t possibly have a daily, urgent need for four different kinds of lip gloss, for instance—but for once I was glad to be so thoroughly disorganized and indecisive.

  I hoisted the bag over my shoulder and froze, my eyes fixed on the bathroom door. I leaned in and listened, silently cursing the air conditioner for rattling so loudly over there by the window.

  I heard nothing. Whoever was in there wasn’t making a sound.

  The room was pitch black, save for the faint red glow of the digital clock. I inched my foot sideways, sliding it across the floor toward the bed. After a few steps, the polyester bedspread scratched against my ankle, and I shifted my direction to ease my way around the bed.

  When I reached the night table, I felt for the phone, my hand grasping the receiver just as I realized what a stupid idea this was. Did I really want to let the boogie man hear my voice so that he could come barreling out and kill me before I completed my first sentence? Besides, who was I going to call? 911? The front desk? “Excuse me; There’s a monster in my bathroom. Could you send someone right away please?”

  I didn’t have to wait to find out. While I stood there indecisively, I heard the bathroom door click open.

  I lunged for the front door, grabbing the doorknob and flipping the deadbolt simultaneously I yanked on the door and heard a huge thwack as the door slammed, six inches open, against the inside latch.

  I flipped on the light switch and whirled around, swinging my bag and screaming.

  I faced an empty room.

  The bathroom door was open.

  My heartbeat almost choking me, I stepped forward slowly, bag at the ready, and moved toward the bathroom. I looked to the right as I passed by the bed. No one hiding behind it.

  I stopped and listened again when I reached the bathroom door. I heard nothing. Not even breathing.

  I leaped into the doorway, slamming the door against the wall with all my weight. No one was back there. I flipped on the light.

  The shower curtain was crumpled on the floor, rod and all. I pushed the door flat against the wall.

  The room was empty.

  Lowering my bag, I stepped back out of the bathroom, went back to the bed, and threw the skirt of the bedspread up onto the mattress. Like most hotel beds, it was built to the ground. There was no space underneath at all.

  I was alone in the room.

  I sat on the bed and tried to breathe normally and bring my heart rate down to some level that might sustain life.

  Had I imagined the entire thing? I didn’t think so. It had seemed so vivid. So real. The shower curtain, surely what had woken me in the first place, was in a tangled heap on the floor. That, at least, was indisputable. As to the rest, I had lain there in bed and seen the closed door. I had watched that light go out. I h
ad heard the door open.

  I walked back to the bathroom and examined the crumpled shower curtain and rod. The screws that had held it in place were still in their brackets, drywall clinging to the threads. I dropped the end of the rod back to the floor, hearing the distinct hollow clatter that had woken me.

  I reached up and examined the holes in the wall.

  The beige vinyl wallpaper had six neat holes in it. Three on each end, in a triangle, at either end of the tub enclosure. The wallpaper was ripped slightly downward at each hole where the screws had scraped against it, coming out of the wall. Something had brought that rod down with force.

  One thing I knew. Sleep was impossible. I needed to get out of that room.

  I threw on some shorts and a T-shirt and grabbed my bag, my cell phone, my Bible, and the hotel’s copy of the Greater Chicago Area telephone book, which weighed about twenty-five pounds. I unlocked the latch on the door and stepped outside into the warm night, the air conditioner chattering a farewell as I walked next door to Denny’s.

  Thank God for twenty-four-hour diners.

  The restaurant was busy. Apparently lots of people eat at Denny’s at 4:00 a.m.

  I slid into an empty booth and ordered a cup of coffee.

  I opened the telephone book first, hoping blindly that Joseph and Mariann Zocci were listed in the Chicago phone book. Of course, they weren’t.

  There were only fifteen Zoccis listed in the Chicago area. I pulled the Tribune article about Erik’s death out of my bag and checked the names of the Zocci children. I found one match. Erik’s older brother James Andrew. And there was one “VA. Zocci.” VA. could stand for Virginia Anne, one of his older sisters.

  I wrote down the addresses and phone numbers.

  I hadn’t brought the business pages with me, so I walked over to the phone booths by the front door and looked up Garret Industries. No listing.

  The Chicago public library was listed, though. I wrote down the number and address of the main library, which I guessed would be downtown, near my hotel. I also wrote down the address and phone number of the University of Chicago’s library. I flipped to the back of the phone book and ripped out the simple map of the city.

  I returned to my booth and studied the map, sparse as it was. My Complimentary Local Map from They’re Ugly But They Run was more detailed, of course, and would have been much more helpful. But the map was. in the car and the car was parked right outside my room, and I wasn’t going back there until the sun was shining.

  A voice interrupted me.

  “You needing directions, hon?”

  I looked up. My waitress was back with the coffee pot.

  “You don’t happen to know where the University of Chicago is, do you?”

  “Nope,” she said. “You startin’ school there?”

  “No, I’m just looking for a good library.”

  “Can’t help you with that. You want some breakfast?”

  “How’s the French toast?” I asked.

  “Greasy.”

  “Hash browns?”

  “Greasy.”

  “Sausage?”

  “Greasy.”

  “I’ll have oatmeal.”

  She smacked her gum. “Good girl.”

  I gave up on the map and stared into space, tumbling the week’s details in my mind, hoping something would lock into place.

  The oatmeal came, along with some brown sugar and a little pitcher of milk. It was warm and filling.

  I finished my breakfast and opened my Bible, reading and sipping coffee until the sun came up and had hung in the sky a good long while.

  I paid out and left my waitress a ten dollar tip. I’d taken up a table in her station for over three hours, and she’d filled my cup faithfully without the slightest trace of impatience.

  I walked the parking lot back to the room and slipped my key into the slot, pushing the door open all the way with my foot before I stepped into the room.

  The room was exactly as I’d left it.

  The sheets were thrown back, the overhead light on. The bathroom door was open, the bathroom light on. Air conditioner rattling.

  I checked the bathroom. The shower curtain was still on the floor.

  That posed a particularly vexing problem. I pulled the shower curtain out of the room and filled the tub for a quick bath, my physician father’s ominous warnings about hotel bathtubs ringing in my ears. He was convinced that viruses and germs lurked on every surface within reaching distance. My brother and I had spent our entire childhoods paranoid about touching stair railings or faucet handles. Probably the beginnings of my love affair with cleaning products.

  I dressed quickly and loaded my things into my bag, grabbing my notes from this morning and my cell phone as I walked out the door. I stopped by the front desk and let the clerk know that my shower curtain had fallen in the middle of the night. She looked at me suspiciously and assured me it would be fixed by this evening.

  I studied my map in the car. From what I could tell, the University of Chicago was pretty far away from where I was. I’d probably be better off with the public library, given my rotten navigational luck so far. But I couldn’t find that address on my map.

  My cell phone service, I remembered suddenly, had dial-up information. It was one of those tricky, useful little things that I’d never quite learned how to use. Supposedly the operators would look up anything for you. Movies. Restaurants. And, perhaps by extension, libraries. I dialed.

  “How may I help you?” the operator asked.

  “I’m in downtown Chicago,” I said. “Near the Vendome hotel. Can you tell me where the nearest library is? University or public. Either one.”

  “Hold one moment, please.”

  I heard him tap keys.

  “Loyola University Library.”

  Like magic. I wrote down the address and thanked him, congratulating myself on my spontaneous stroke of genius.

  I found it easily on my map. It was six blocks from the Vendome.

  I decided to go to the Vendome first.

  My parking luck ran out this time. No gifts from the heavens today, so I had a hike to the hotel. I was sweating a little by the time I’d reached the lobby and made it to the gift shop.

  The gift shop was open and empty of patrons. It was surprisingly large for a hotel gift shop. A lone clerk polished silver picture frames with a blue cloth. I recognized the frames. I had apparently purchased one here recently, for the bargain price of thirty-eight dollars.

  “Good morning,” said the man. “May I help you find anything?”

  “I’d just like to look,” I said. “Thanks.”

  I poked around for a minute, not sure why I’d come.

  “Lovely necklace,” he said, a knowing smile on his face.

  I touched the stone at my throat. I’d forgotten I was wearing it. “Thank you. I like it a lot. It’s unusual.”

  “That designer is very good. We sell quite a few of her pieces.”

  “Do you have any more?”

  “Right over here.”

  I followed him to a lighted jewelry case. He stepped behind it, unlocked the door, and took out a velvet tray of necklaces.

  They were lovely. Each one had a heavy, chunky feel to it. They were all done in sterling silver with some sort of stone on a leather cord.

  “The designer’s name is Rosa Guevera. She does wonderful work. Each piece is one-of-a-kind,” he said.

  “Do you remember this necklace particularly?” I asked. “It was purchased here.”

  He frowned. “Not that piece per se. Her pieces don’t stick around very long.”

  “Do you happen to remember taking an order for a necklace of hers recently? This one was ordered by phone.”

  “I don’t remember it myself, but there are only three of us working here. You might talk to Eloise, our store manager. Was there some problem with the order?”

  “No, no, nothing like that. I was just wondering. It was sort of a gift. An anonymous gift.” />
  “A secret admirer,” he said, smiling.

  “Something like that.”

  “Lucky girl.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Eloise comes in at noon on Wednesdays,” he said. “You might stop back by. Or if you like, I can have her phone your room when she arrives.”

  “No, thank you. I’ll just give her a call in the morning. Thanks for your help.”

  “Certainly,” he said.

  I picked up a business card as I walked out, sticking it in my back pocket.

  From the Vendome it was about the same distance to my car as to Loyola. It was a nice day, so I decided to take the long route and walk along Lake Michigan. Loyola fronted the lake.

  The walkway along Lake Shore Drive was buzzing. I passed by runners, bikers, skaters, walkers, loiterers, tourists, dogs, and one monkey riding on its owner’s handlebars. Frisbee and volleyball were being played on the sand beach. And a bagpiper stood on a rock jetty and played his mournful tune into the wind. I was enchanted.

  I wondered if Loyola or the University of Chicago needed any psychology professors. Maybe I could outrun my soiled reputation by moving to the Midwest.

  Too soon, I arrived at Loyola and stepped off the walkway onto the manicured lawns of the campus.

  Feeling suddenly at home in the anthill atmosphere of the university, I asked someone where the library was and was pointed toward Cudahy Library, in one of the large buildings on the main square.

  The faint ring of my cell phone reached my ears from the depths of my bowling ball bag just as I walked up the library steps.

  It was Tony DeStefano.

  “Ready for this?” he said.

  “No. What?”

  “Your boy cracked up last night.”

  “Gavin?”

  “Jenny’s at the hospital with him now. We checked him into Green Oaks.”

  “The psych hospital? What happened?”

  “He tried to hang himself from the shower curtain.”

  19

  I SAT DOWN ON THE LIBRARY STEPS, the heat of the sun suddenly blinding, stifling, unrelenting.

  “What time was this?” I asked Tony.