So Like Sleep - Jeremiah Healy

by Jeremiah Healy

  I popped the tape back in and pressed the Play button. After some whirring static, lute and mandolin music began. As I was about to hit the Stop button, William's voice, very hushed, came on.

  "Thursday, March eleventh, eleven-thirty P.M." That was six weeks before Jennifer was killed. There was a change in the background noise after he said "P.M." I turned the volume up and up without effect until a sound blared from the speakers and bounced off the walls like a wild animal that wanted out. As I turned it down, Mrs. Daniels yelled, "Oh, God, oh, God, turn it off, turn it off!"

  The noise had sounded like a young man screaming. Mrs. Daniels was crying hoarsely. "That's William . . .» that's William. From his nightmares . . . Oh, God, he taped them, so he could hear . . , himself .... Oh, God."

  I let her go for a minute or two, getting some Kleenex from the bathroom for her. I took the desk chair, she stayed on the bed. She slowed down, dried her tears, looked up red-eyed.

  "I'm sorry," she said.

  "That's all right. Can you talk about it now?"

  "Yes," she said, swiping at her nose with the tissues.

  "I'm fine now."

  "William was having nightmares?"

  "Yes."

  "When?"

  "About the time he started going to Goreham. No."

  She sniffled. "No, more like Thanksgiving time. He wasn't doing well there, his grades and all the other stuff must have been weighing on him more than I knew. Then he moved home here, and he started having these terrible nightmares. Not often, but he'd cry out, in the middle of the night, so . . . so piteous, like a wounded creature. He would cry out and I'd come running into his room. I mean, he was in college, but he was still my son, and he'd be all tensed up and sweating, like on his stomach, but with his head on the pillow and halfway up on his knees, like a little child hiding from the dark. And I'd try to hold him, but he'd fight me off, even"—she lowered and slowed her voice—"even hit me once, and he never hit me, not ever, but he was still asleep and he didn't know what he was doing, didn't know it was me, even. But then he'd finally wake up and he'd be crying and shivering like he was freezing to death, even with the heat on and all. It was awful when they came, the nightmares. Just awful."

  "Did he ever see anybody about them?"

  "I told William to talk to that psychiatrist he was seeing. Or at least Dr. Lopez over to U Mass, but he never would tell me whether he did."

  "Can I take the machine and tape with me?"

  "Well, yes, I guess. Do you think they can help him?"

  "They may help me."

  "Then take them, please."

  She promised me she would look to see if there were any more tapes lying around. I made what I hoped were reassuring noises while she showed me out the door. As I walked down her steps and turned toward my car, I was looking at the tape machine instead of ahead of me. Stupid.

  I was less than twenty feet from them before an odd sound made me look up properly. My three friends from last time were lounging on the same stoop, smiling at me in a superior way. Leaning against my car, his rump on the driver's-side window ledge, was another, older black, maybe six-one and carrying a muscular two forty or so inside his sleeveless sweatshirt. He was swinging a fire chain casually with his left hand against my door. He must have just started with the chain, because it was making the noise that caused me to look up, a drumming like intermittent hail on a tin roof.

  "Welcome back," said the kid I remembered as Negotiator.

  "Nice to see you adapting to the culture," said Stooper, bobbing his head toward the tape machine.

  I shifted the thing to my left hand, holding it by the handle across my stomach. "How's the protection business?" I asked.

  "Little slow," said Negotiator, "till you come a1ong."

  "What makes you think it's going to pick up?"

  Stooper gestured magnanimously and spoke in a falsetto voice. "Perhaps you haven't met my dear brother, Floyd."

  Stooper lowered his tone back to normal. "Floyd, he like two things. Movies and the money to see 'em with."

  Negotiator said, "He hate two things too. You and your car."

  I looked over at big Floyd. He smiled and accentuated the arc and therefore the sound of his weapon.

  "The tire chain for me or the car?"

  "The car," said Negotiator.

  "You," said Stooper.

  "Maybe both," said Third.

  Floyd grinned malevolently. I said to him, "You must be a real prodigy, Floyd. Hired muscle for three punk kids. What's the matter, the barbells cut off the blood to your brain?"

  Floyd stopped smiling. He came off the car and began swinging the tire chain like a samurai. Around, across, over, intersecting but varying patterns. Unfortunately, he looked like he knew what he was doing. He took two steps toward me and repeated the show.

  "So, Floyd, you like movies, right?" I said, slipping my right hand behind the tape player and toward the left front of my belt. "You remember Raiders of the Last Ark? The market scene?"

  "Say what?" said Floyd, coming two steps closer.

  I drew my gun and leveled it at his chest. His face dropped a few inches and he ran his tongue over his lips. He backed up and I started forward. We kept moving that way, he maintaining the same distance as we approached my car.

  Stooper recovered first. "He ain't got the balls to shoot, F1oyd."

  "That's not the issue, fellas," I said, setting down the tape player, but keeping my eyes and gun on the now stationary Floyd. I put the key in the lock and opened the door. "The issue is whether Floyd has the balls to find out."

  Negotiator chimed in. "He bullshitting you, Floyd. He shoot you, he lose his license. He won't shoot. It ain't like the movies."

  "You're right there, my friend," I said, gently tossing the tape machine onto the passenger seat. I rolled down the driver's-side window and got in. "It's not like the movies. Out here, dead is forever."

  I started up and pulled out fast, ducking a little, then checking the mirror. Nobody had moved by the time I was half a block away.

  TWENTY

  -•-

  I parked the car behind the building and carried William's music box up to the condo. I called my answering service and checked my telephone tape machine. Still nothing from Lainie.

  I set the blaster on the coffee table and mixed myself a strong screwdriver. I drank half of it, changing to a pair of tennis shorts and a sweater. Then I rewound the tape to the beginning and, being careful to modulate the volume, listened to the tape in its entirety.

  It was, in effect, an oral diary of William's nightmares. Each entry started with William's whispered statement of day, date, and time. Then dead airspace, then nerve-curdling screams as the voice-activated trigger kicked the machine on during the night. There were five entries altogether, on three of which I could hear Mrs. Daniels's frightened but soothing talking after two minutes or so of horror. Not much of William's screaming involved discernible words. I clearly heard a few "No, no" passages and twice I thought I heard him say, "Please, no more, it hurts, it hurts," or something close to it. Aside from the screaming, the only consistent theme was that each entry was on either a Thursday or a Friday.

  I rewound and replayed several times the passages where I thought words were being spoken. I stopped after that. It was pretty gruesome stuff, and I knew that there were enhancement techniques that could bring out more detail if it proved important later on.

  I finished a second screwdriver and thought seriously about a third. I was still on an adrenaline high from the incident with the street kids, and I weighed the dulling effect of the drink against the increased chance it would give me my own nightmares. I decided I was being silly and had the drink. And the nightmares.

  The hammering at my door woke me up the next morning. Having dropped off on the couch, I was still dressed. I moved to the door, trying to remember if I had heard the downstairs, building door buzzer. I was pretty sure I hadn't.

  "Who is it?" I asked through th
e wood.

  "Detective Cross. Open up."

  I recognized her voice and unlocked the door.

  Her eyes looked bloodshot. So did those of Paul O'Boy, standing behind her.

  "Can we come in?" she said.

  "Sure."

  I led them into the living room and pointed toward the sofa. The music box was still on the coffee table, but there wasn't much I could do about that now. They both sat down, looking about as comfortable as a priest and a nun on a blind date.

  "I don't drink it myself, but there's probably some instant coffee around somewhere if you'd like."

  They both said "No" quickly. Odd. Cops after long nights always want coffee.

  I took a leather chair across from them. "So how do I merit this interjurisdictional visit?"

  "Detective O'Boy?" said Cross, staring down at her knees. .

  A O'Boy looked up at me. "I'd like you to come with me. The chief wants to talk with you."

  "Your chief?"

  "Naturally my chief."

  "What about?"

  O'Boy chewed on his lip. "He said not to tell you."

  Cross kept looking at her knees. I sank back in my chair. "What the hell is going on here?" I said.

  "Chief Wooten has some questions he wants to ask you," said Cross.

  "I gathered that. Questions about what?"

  "Jesus, Cuddy," she said, looking up. "Can't you just go with the guy'?"

  "Why? Because he's asking politely?"

  "Why not?"

  I leaned forward. "I'll tell you why not. First, it's barely dawn. Second, O'Boy here doesn't just call me and say, 'Could you stop out here sometime today?' He drives twenty miles to arrive unannounced at my doorstep with a beat Boston homicide cop as shotgun guard. That suggests to me a big-time problem with a short-term deadline for O'Boy's chief. That makes me want to hear a reason why I should go with him."

  O'Boy worked his hands as if he was lathering them with soap. "Cuddy, you were in the service, right?"

  "Yeah."

  "MPs," said Cross.

  O'Boy said, "Then you can understand the spot I'm in. The chief says bring you in, but not to tell you why. What can I do?"

  "Sure you won't have some coffee?" I said, settling back into the chair as though I had all day.

  Cross read the hint. "Cuddy, with what he's got, he might be able to get a warrant."

  "Arrest or search?"

  She said, "Look, why force something that might embarrass someone?"

  Meaning Murphy? I watched her closely. She was tired and on the verge of decking me, but she was trying to pull off a distasteful task professionally.

  "I'll go with him," I said. "He can drive his car, and I can drive mine."

  O'B0y said, "Cuddy . . ." .

  I said, "Or I can drive his car and he can drive mine."

  O'Boy moved his head, more in resignation than in disagreement. "I'll follow you out there."

  I got up and moved to the coffee table. "This thing's busted," I said, picking up the blaster, "but it can turn on the stereo if you'd like some music while I shower and shave."

  Cross looked up at me as though she wished she carried a concealed chainsaw. I took William's machine into the bedroom and got ready as quickly as I could.

  O'Boy drove Cross to her apartment house in the South End, then followed me as I wound him out of there and to the Mass Pike. We made it to Calem in about thirty-five minutes. Parking in the police lot, we walked abreast into the station house.

  O'Boy put me in the same room I'd seen before. He returned ten minutes later with a slim, crew-cut man in a turquoise short-sleeved sport shirt. There was a fading Navy tattoo on the man's right forearm and an unlit filterless cigarette in the man's mouth.

  O'Boy said, "Chief Wooten, John Cuddy."

  "Chief," I said.

  Wooten turned to O'Boy. "He been frisked and advised of his right?"

  O'Boy reddened. "No, Chief."

  "Do it."

  I felt sorry for O'Boy, so I assumed the position against the wall while O'Boy gave me a desultory pat-down and recited this year's interpretation of Miranda and Escobedo. I sat back down.

  "Where were you last night from four am. onward?" said Wooten.

  "I want a lawyer," I said.

  Wooten turned angrily to O'Boy. "You said he'd cooperate."

  "I would have," I said.

  "What do you mean?" said Wooten.

  "Just what I said. I would have."

  "Then why aren't you?" said Wooten.

  "Because I don't like the sudden onset of Bjorkman syndrome I see in you, Chief. Tell me, does old Georgie remind you of yourself when you were young?"

  O'Boy didn't know where to look, so he just squeezed his eyes shut. What little flesh there was on Wooten's face stretched back taut. "Who the hell do you think you are, mister?"

  "A private investigator who twice has come, without any trouble, to your station. I'm guessing you've got a major coronary coming on, since last time you wanted me gone forever and this time you want me back before breakfast. Now, if you stop playing Felony Squad with me, I'll be happy to cooperate. Okay'?"

  "Chief," said O'Boy, "can we be straight with him?"

  Wooten just glared at me.

  "Chief?" said O'Boy again.

  Wooten spoke with difficulty. "Lainie Bishop was found dead last night, Cuddy. Your voice was on her telephone machine, saying you were going to meet her. Now account for your whereabouts. Without any shit on the edges."

  I went through my timetable from 4:00 P.M. onward: Mariah Lopez's office, dinner at Arnhein's, Mrs. Feeney's shop, Beth's grave, Mrs. Daniels's house. I skipped the street kids and William's tape player.

  "You figure that covers you until about nine P.M.," said Wooten.

  "More like nine-thirty, I 'd say."

  "Word of a charged murderer's mother isn't exactly gospel."

  I added the street kids, explaining how they could verify my arrival and departure, but still deleting the music box.

  "When was she killed?"

  Wooten looked disgusted and took a chair. O'Boy said, "Medical examiner'll try to pin it down closer, but we got a real estate customer putting her alive at four-thirty P.M. and a date finding the back door busted and her dead at eight-thirty P.M."

  "Her house?"

  "Yeah."

  "B and E?"

  Wooten said, "Looks like it now."

  "Chief," I said, "just because I have an alibi doesn't automatically make it a panicked burglar."

  Wooten flared up again. "Her skull was broke open by a poker from her fireplace, and the sliding glass door to a back deck was jimmied. We got the Daniels kid in the slam, no motive for the date who shows up, and four houses hit similar in town in the last three months. What does it add up to to you?"

  "Any violence in the other hits?"

  "No," said Wooten.

  "Same time of day?"

  "No."

  "M.O. of the other hits in the paper?"

  O'Boy said, "Local weekly's called the Chronicle. It runs a 'Police Blotter' column. Editor says they were all in it, with enough details to warn the home owners."

  "Or to tutor a guy who's copycatting or masking."

  "Masking what?" said Wooten.

  "If somebody other than Daniels killed the Creasey girl, then maybe the somebody killed Lainie Bishop and masked it to look like a burglary."

  Wooten looked exasperated. "Cuddy, do you know how many witnesses there were to Daniels's confession? He had the gun, the motive, the opportunity, blood on his shirt. God almighty. The Daniels boy did the first, and some other junkie from Rox' did this one."

  "C'mon, Chief. You didn't buy that before you heard my alibi, and you shouldn't buy it now. Two women from the same five-patient therapy group are murdered in your town inside a month and they're not connected? How many other homicides you had in this town in the last ten years? Three?"

  O'Boy said, "Two other than these here."

  Wooten stood
up. "Cuddy, I've about had my fill of you. Come up with some hard evidence, and I'll be all ears. Till then, why'n't you peddle your theories someplace else?" He looked to O'Boy. "Drive him back when and if you get the time."

  O'Boy and I stayed silent until Wooten closed the door behind him.

  I said, "Commander like that makes the days seem longer."

  O'Boy started to say something, stopped, and said, "The chief's a good cop. You give him something to sink his teeth into, he's like a bulldog."

  "Come on, O'Boy. Doesn't this case stink to you too?"

  "I dunno."

  "Jesus."

  "Awright. Say, just for the sake of argument, now, that some guy other than Daniels really kills the Creasey girl. When Daniels confesses, the guy's home free. Why spoil it by killing Lainie Bishop?"

  "Blackmail?"

  "By Bishop, you mean?"

  "Yeah."

  "Okay. So he pays her. For a while, to let things cool down. Then kills her. Maybe somewheres else. Like on a vacation. Broad like her, she musta liked Club Med or whatever. Wait it out."

  "Maybe she wants the earth and the moon."

  "So he goes in hock for a while to pay her. Good investment if you need the time and your neck's on the line."

  "O'Boy, you in touch with anybody else from the therapy group about the Bishop killing?"

  "No. Well . . . the old guy. Linden?"

  "Homer Linden."

  "Yeah, the guy that looks like a corpse. When I pulled up to Bishop's house, Linden was already there, talking to one of the uniforms. Claimed he heard the dispatcher on his police scanner radio."

  "Pretty convenient."

  "The guy only lives around the corner."

  "A little farther. I've been there. Who was the date?"

  "Huh?"

  "Bishop's date. The one who found her."

  "Oh, some computer troubleshooter. He's here for two days, staying at the Marriott in Newton. He meets her in some bar coupla months ago, dukes her that night, and calls to set up a 'date' for last night. Guy's married, from Rochester, for chrissakes. I give him a lot of credit for even calling it in to us."

  "Who was the uniform?"

  "That talked to Linden?"

  "Yeah."

  "Clay. You met him."

  "I thought he and Bjorkman were on the day shift?"