No Ordinary Man

by Suzanne Brockman

  Jess rang the doorbell and waited. From several units down, she could hear sounds of a TV talk show. Someone else in the condo complex was playing an Allman Brothers CD much too loudly. She rang the bell again, but Ian’s condo was silent.

  Using the key on the Betty Boop chain, she unlocked the door. She glanced at Rob, but he was looking out at the street, as if making sure no one was watching them. Jess pushed the door open and stepped into Ian’s home.

  The place looked like a pigsty, and smelled like one, too. The pizza on the table definitely dated from some previous lifetime. There was a full ashtray next to the pizza and empty beer cans everywhere.

  Rob closed the door tightly behind them, locking it from the inside. “I hope you know what you’re looking for,” he said, wryly surveying the rubble of junk and garbage piled around the living room.

  The problem was, Jess didn’t know what she was looking for. But she knew that she’d recognize it when she saw it.

  She headed through the living room, to the back of the condo, toward the kitchen.

  It was also a mess. As Jess walked in, her shoes stuck to the floor. Judging from the smell, garbage from longer than just the past week was overflowing the trash container. The sink was full of dishes and glasses. They were all dirty, most were disgusting. The counters and the small dining table were overrun with clutter of every kind.

  But no knives covered with blood and gore.

  Although, how could she be sure? How would she even notice such a thing in this mess?

  Lord, how could she have lived with this man for all those years…?

  Jess turned and found Rob watching her, his eyes gentle, as if he knew what she was thinking, as if he knew how difficult it was for her to be here.

  “I used to…clean up after him,” Jess said, looking around and shrugging hopelessly. “I’m sorry—I don’t know why he doesn’t hire a maid.”

  “Maybe he likes living this way,” Rob responded quietly. “Maybe it gives him a real reason to feel sorry for himself.”

  Jess was silent.

  “Besides, you don’t have to apologize for Ian. You’re not responsible for him anymore.” Rob reached out and touched her shoulder.

  It was the slightest, gentlest of caresses, yet it gave Jess a wealth of comfort. He was there and he cared.

  “I do feel responsible,” she said, “but not in the way you mean.”

  Rob followed Jess as she led the way back into the living room, toward the stairs that went up to the second floor.

  “If Ian is the Sarasota Serial Killer—”

  Rob shook his head. “Jess. Just because your ex-husband is nearly always rude and sometimes nasty doesn’t mean that he’s—”

  “If he is the killer,” she repeated, turning to face him. Standing on the first step put her almost at Rob’s eye level. “If he is, then every time he kills one of those women, he’s symbolically killing me.”

  Rob’s eyes looked shocked behind his glasses. “What?”

  “Here’s the theory,” Jess said, turning and climbing the stairs. On either side of the steps, Ian had piled things that belonged upstairs. “For some reason, I don’t know what or why, Ian snaps. He was never particularly stable, but say that something pushes him over the edge. His feelings for me—always confused and complicated, a kind of simultaneous love-hate thing, even at the best of times—go totally haywire.”

  There was a small landing at the top of the stairs with three doors leading off of it. Jess pushed one door open and found the bathroom. It looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned since he’d moved into the condo, but other than that, there was no incriminating evidence of any kind.

  “So Ian snaps,” Jess continued, turning to look at Rob, “and now, instead of an unnaturally adversarial relationship with me, his ex-wife, he becomes absolutely obsessed. He comes to all my shows, he stops by my house at odd hours of the day and night, he calls, he writes, he follows me when I go shopping….”

  “Does he really?” Rob asked.

  “Sometimes,” Jess said. The second door on the landing opened into Ian’s music studio. In sharp contrast to the rest of the apartment, this room was spotless. Ian’s violin lay open in its case near a music stand. He had a computer along one wall, attached to a keyboard rack that held several different synthesizers.

  The synthesizers were tied in to a twelve-track recording system that Jess looked at enviously. He had a rack of compressors, effects boxes and equalizers that took up nearly another entire wall.

  Ian hadn’t had this stuff when they were married, and Jess knew she was looking at what had become of the child support payments she was supposed to have received from him.

  “It’s a big step from following your ex-wife around to killing women who look like her,” Rob remarked.

  “I’m not saying I understand why,” Jess said, lightly running one finger along the polished wood of Ian’s violin, “or even that this is anything more than a convoluted theory.”

  “How do you know so much about this?” Rob asked.

  He was watching her again. Jess turned away from the questioning look in his eyes, staring down again at the decorative sound holes of the violin, her gaze slightly out of focus. What was she supposed to tell him? That she spoke at great length with an FBI shrink who believed Rob was the real serial killer…? That would go over really well. Or…

  Wait.

  Jess focused her eyes and for the first time truly looked at the ornate wood of the musical instrument that was directly in front of her.

  Ian’s violin.

  What was Ian’s violin doing here, in his condo, when he was supposed to be playing it tonight at Symphony Hall?

  Unless…

  Jess looked at her watch. Quarter to six.

  Unless he hadn’t left for downtown yet. In which case, he’d be back any minute to scoop up his violin.

  Rob heard it the exact moment she did.

  It wasn’t a very big noise, but it was unmistakable. It was the sound of a key in the lock of the door at the foot of the stairs.

  “Dear Lord, it’s Ian,” Jess breathed. “What do we do?”

  “Hide.” Rob grabbed her hand and pulled her, hard, across the top landing, and directly through the third door—the one that led into Ian’s bedroom.

  It couldn’t have been any worse than the kitchen and the living room. It shouldn’t have—but it was.

  The shades were down and the room was dark and smelled damp—moist, like an animal’s den. Rob quickly flipped on a switch next to the door and a bare bulb in the ceiling harshly lit the room. Piles of clothes were everywhere—except in the closet, which was empty. Ian’s dresser drawers hung open at crazy angles, stuffed with even more clothes. Pizza boxes and beer cans littered the floor and an overflowing ashtray spilled onto a bedside table.

  “In the closet,” Rob commanded, giving Jess a little push in that direction. She hopped over a pile of books and newspapers and climbed inside. Rob turned off the light, and somehow—silently and without tripping over a single one of the obstacles on the floor—he joined her inside the closet.

  It was dark in there. Very, very dark. It was also very close quarters. One of Rob’s arms was around her, his body pressed tightly against hers. Jess could hear her heart pounding. She also heard the sound of metal on metal—Rob had taken out and opened his deadly-looking knife.

  “Rob,” she whispered. “What—”

  “Shhh,” he said, barely audibly.

  She heard Ian then, his footsteps coming up the stairs.

  Turn right, Jess prayed silently. Make him turn right and pick up his violin and head straight back down those stairs and out the front door.

  Ian turned left, toward his bedroom.

  The bedroom door opened with a spine-tingling creak, and Ian came in. He didn’t flip on the overhead light. Instead he turned on a small lamp that was on the bedside table. The door creaked slowly closed. Jess could smell the smoke from his cigarette.

  Rob�
��s arm had tightened around her, and Jess looked up at him. His face was shadowy, but she could see his jaw was tightly clenched, his eyes narrowed as he listened intently. He was holding his knife as if it were an extension of his right hand. With his face such a picture of intensity, Rob looked absolutely capable of using that knife.

  Something hit the back wall of the closet with a sound like a gunshot, and it was all Jess could do not to jump and give them away. Rob held her even tighter as a second thing hit the wall, and Jess realized that Ian, no doubt in a burst of neatness, had kicked off his sneakers, firing them into the closet.

  And then, as quickly as Ian had appeared, he was gone. He left the light on, but the door creaked open and shut. There were several moments of silence, then the sound of his feet clattering down the stairs. The condo shook slightly from the force of the front door being slammed shut.

  Only then did Rob move.

  His knife hissed slightly as the blade disappeared back into the handle. Another swift movement sent it back into the holster.

  Then Rob pulled Jess close, holding her tightly, both arms wrapped around her.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Jess whispered. “This was a mistake.”

  Rob exhaled, as if he’d been holding his breath all that time. “Yeah,” he agreed.

  Jess stepped out of the closet, over the piles of junk on the floor.

  Ian’s waterbed was a rumpled pile of grungy sheets and stained pillowcases and…

  Jess looked closer. There was a dangerously sharp pair of scissors open on Ian’s bed. Razor sharp scissors, on a water bed… And there was also a packet of newly developed photographs on the bed. Pictures of her. She picked them up, leafing quickly through them. They’d been taken recently—pictures of her onstage, pictures of her and Kelsey in the backyard. There was even a picture of her driving her car.

  Ian had been using the scissors to cut several of the photos. He’d painstakingly cut the backgrounds out of the pictures, leaving only Jess’s face and body. And on several of the pictures he’d gone one step further—snipping Jess’s head from her shoulders.

  “Hey, Jess?” Rob’s voice sounded strange, almost tight. Even though he was speaking softly, it seemed unnaturally loud in the stillness. “What were you saying about Ian being obsessed with you?”

  Jess turned, and saw it.

  Ian had put it on the wall on the other side of the door, so she and Rob hadn’t seen it when they’d first entered the room. But now there was no way they could have missed it.

  It was a collage, a huge ten-by-six-foot collection of pictures of Jess. There were hundreds of photographs, and all of them had had the backgrounds carefully cut away. And all of them had the heads removed from the shoulders. Ian had pinned all of Jess’s heads on the top part of the wall. The collection of her bodies were on the bottom. It was weird, and more than a little scary.

  “God,” Rob breathed. “How long did it take him to do this?”

  It was way outside of the realm of a normal, healthy bout of anger and bitterness due to a divorce.

  It was clearly weird.

  It was definitely obsessive.

  It was exactly what Jess had been looking for, though Lord help her, she hadn’t honestly expected to find it.

  Jess took Rob’s hand and pulled him out of the bedroom and down the stairs.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “To find a pay phone,” Jess answered. “To call Parker Elliot.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Who’s Parker Elliot?” Rob asked, watching Jess as she tried both to catch her breath and dial the phone number that was on the little white business card she’d pulled from her purse.

  “He’s with the FBI,” Jess answered. She turned away slightly as someone on the other side of the line picked up.

  The FBI?

  Rob felt his blood run cold. Jess hadn’t just said FBI, had she?

  “Yes,” Jess spoke into the phone. “I need to speak to Mr. Elliot, please.” She paused. “No, it’s very important.” Another pause. “Tell him it’s Jess Baxter, please. I think he’ll leave his meeting to talk to me.”

  “Yes,” Jess said again. “Mr. Elliot? I’m sorry for bothering you, but I’ve found out some information I’m sure you’ll want to know.” She paused, and shot a look at Rob. “No—no, it’s not about…him. It’s about Ian Davis—my ex-husband?” Jess lowered her voice as she gave this Elliot guy a description of the “artwork” they’d found in Ian’s bedroom. She recited Ian’s street address, then slipped her hand over the speaking end of the telephone receiver. “They’re going to go check it out,” she whispered to Rob.

  They? Who were they? Were they really the FBI?

  Rob watched Jess as she spoke again to the man on the other end of the telephone line. Her face was flushed. Her eyes were bright with excitement yet shadowed by grief.

  Once upon a time, she had been married to Ian, Rob made himself remember. She’d imagined herself in love with the man, and no doubt she’d thought Ian was in love with her, too. Seeing those crude pictures, that strange collection of photos, that weird shrine—that had to have hurt.

  Rob had always felt a little sorry for Ian. He found the concert violinist to be pathetic and sad. But now, after seeing those pictures on his wall, imagining the sheer number of hours it had to have taken to cut all those photos out, Rob had to wonder if maybe Ian wasn’t also dangerously obsessed.

  “Tomorrow,” Jess said, hanging up the phone with a crash. “They’re going to check it out…tomorrow.” She threw herself down on the bench next to the pay phones and folded her arms across her chest. “Apparently, they’re far too busy to get to Ian’s house tonight.”

  She exhaled fiercely, jutting out her chin so the burst of air briefly lifted her bangs.

  Rob sat down next to her. “Jess, who is this Elliot guy?”

  She turned and looked at him, lightning bolts of anger still glimmering in her eyes. “Parker Elliot,” she replied. “He’s an agent with the FBI.”

  Rob forced himself to sit absolutely still. His expression didn’t change, his face didn’t give him away, but he couldn’t keep his pulse from kicking up into fifth gear.

  “Do you remember Pete?” Jess asked.

  “The bartender you thought was following you?” What the hell did he have to do with the FBI?

  Jess nodded. “Pete wasn’t really Pete,” she told him. “He was Parker Elliot, an undercover Federal agent.”

  “My God,” Rob said. The bartender had been an FBI agent. But that had been weeks ago. If the FBI had had any reason at all to investigate Robert Carpenter, then they might already know who he was, what he’d done….

  “Parker Elliot approached me a while ago,” Jess was saying, “because he thought that I might have some kind of connection to the serial killer.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” His voice sounded raspy, strained, but Jess didn’t seem to notice.

  She was looking away from him now, gazing down at her feet, clad in those enticingly bare leather sandals.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” Jess said slowly. She glanced up at him and her eyes held embarrassment. “But…”

  She smiled at him then, a sweet, self-conscious, lovely smile. Rob had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach that the news she was about to share with him was not going to be good.

  Jess continued. “The FBI—Parker Elliot—actually considered you their prime suspect.”

  Prime suspect.

  Fireworks exploded in Rob’s head as Jess’s words took on meaning.

  It was. All over.

  He had to leave town, and he had to leave now.

  But, how could he just leave Jess now? Ian was out there somewhere, in Sarasota, like a heat-seeking missile with Jess as his computer-programmed target. No way could he leave Jess right now. Not until tomorrow when Ian was brought in for questioning, and the FBI shrinks took a good long look at that bizarre collage hanging on Ian’s bedroom wall
.

  No, Rob couldn’t leave Jess alone tonight—even if it meant that he’d be caught.

  ALL THROUGHOUT DINNER, Rob was tense and quiet.

  As they cleaned up the dishes in the kitchen, Kelsey chattered away about the finger painting she’d done over at Doris’s that afternoon, and the girl down the street who just had a baby brother.

  “I’d like a baby brother,” Kelsey said.

  Jess looked up to find Rob watching the child sadly.

  “I’d like you to have one, too, Bug,” he said softly. He sat down at the kitchen table and took a deep breath. “Come here for a sec, Kelsey,” he said. “Sit down.”

  Jess watched her daughter slide into a seat across the table from him. She saw the hope in Kelsey’s eyes. Oh, Rob, she thought, be careful….

  “I have to go away,” he told her. “I’m gonna leave in a couple of days.” He looked up at Jess. “Maybe even tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow? Jess turned back to the sink, afraid of what Rob might be able to see on her face.

  Kelsey was quiet for a moment. “Why?” she asked.

  “Well,” he answered slowly. “There’s a lot of reasons, but the biggest one is because of my job. I’m going to have to live in a different city.”

  The little girl’s eyes filled with tears. “I thought you loved us,” she said in a very small voice.

  Rob reached for her hand. “I do, Bug. I love you an awful lot.” He looked up at Jess again and swallowed. “Both of you.”

  Kelsey pulled her hand away. “But you don’t love us enough to have a job here.”

  He was silent, unable to respond.

  “Which different city?” Kelsey asked.

  “I’m not sure yet. Maybe Phoenix or Dallas. Or maybe Seattle. I don’t know.”

  She nodded, hope in her brown eyes. “We can go with you.”

  Rob looked up at Jess. She said nothing. Leaving Sarasota was his decision, his choice. He was going to have to explain it to Kelsey.