The 7th Victim kv-1

by Alan Jacobson

  “Oh, yeah.”

  She let go of the poster and it rolled back on itself. Robby pointed to the white dresser with gold trim. “Anything left in the drawers?”

  “Doubt it.” She pulled one open and peered inside. “Hmm. Must be stuff my mom put in here.” She removed a box, which contained a photo album. They sat on the bed together and thumbed through the photos. “I don’t remember ever seeing these.”

  “Who are these people?”

  “Haven’t the slightest. Relatives and friends, I guess.” The black-and-white snapshots were held in place on dark paper with scalloped corner mounts. She turned a page and pointed to one of the photos. “Oh. That’s Aunt Faye with my dad. I guess I’m the little one on his lap.” Robby bent forward to get a close look. “You were cute. You were, what, a year old there?”

  Vail nodded. “About.” Turned the page. “Here’s my mom again.”

  “She was beautiful,” he said, studying the photo. “Who’s that next to her?”

  “I don’t know. Kind of looks like Mom, though, doesn’t it?” She carefully pulled the picture out of the corner mounts and turned it over. Written in scripted pen were the words, “Me and Nellie.”

  “Obviously,” Robby said, “that’s Nellie.”

  Vail nudged a shoulder into his. “Guess that’s why you’re the detective, Detective.”

  “Your room is just as you left it.” Emma was standing in the doorway, a knit shawl draped around her shoulders.

  “Except for this,” Vail said, holding up the album. “Found it in my dresser drawer.”

  Emma smiled. “Haven’t seen that in years. I’d forgotten where I put it.”

  “Who are these people?” She opened the album to the first page and handed the book to Emma.

  “That’s Uncle Charlie—my Uncle Charlie—and his father, Nate. Nate was from Ireland. Nate O’Toole. Half the people on his side had red hair. Probably where you got yours from.” She pointed to another photo. “And that’s Mary Ellen, she used to live next door to us in Brooklyn, before Gramps moved us all out here.”

  A teapot whistled in the distance. “Oh. Do either of you want some tea?”

  Robby nodded. “Sure.”

  “I’ll go tend to it, then.” She handed the album back to Vail, then disappeared down the hall.

  “She’s very sweet,” Robby said.

  “She was a good mother.” Vail studied the photo she still held in her hand. “When she loses her memory completely, she’ll take a good part of our family history with her.”

  “I’ve got a buddy I work with, an investigator who’s been with VPD for fifteen years. He’s got this software to make your own family tree. Works on it every day. Traced his roots all the way back to the Native Americans who lived in Virginia. Pretty cool. Maybe you should do one. Before it’s too late.”

  “I hardly know anything about my family. Would’ve been good to get all this info together before they started dying off.” Vail suddenly became aware of the teapot’s building whistle. She looked at Robby. “She should’ve poured the tea by now, don’t you think?”

  They headed downstairs and found Emma sitting in the living room on the edge of the easy chair, staring at the blank television.

  “I’ll get it,” Robby said above the shrill noise.

  “Ma,” Vail said, kneeling beside Emma. “Ma, what are you doing? You went to pour us some tea.”

  Emma’s face turned hard. “You’re always yelling at me. Why can’t you just leave me alone!”

  “Ma, I’m not yelling at you.” But she knew that trying to reason with a person afflicted with Alzheimer’s was futile. “I’m sorry,” Vail said. “I won’t yell anymore.”

  “I can’t find my glasses,” Emma said. She grabbed the arms of the chair. “I can’t find my glasses.” She looked at Vail, then reached out to touch her face. “Nellie, is that you?” She smiled. “Can you help me find my glasses?”

  Tears pooled in Vail’s eyes as she looked at Emma. She set the old photo on the coffee table, knelt at Emma’s feet, and took her hand in hers. She had been so wrapped up with her own affairs the past year she hardly had any quality contact with her mother. Now, as she looked at Emma’s wrinkled face and felt her knobbed, arthritic hand, guilt crept into her thoughts. After so many years of dealing with victims’ families, the phrase “I should have” was ingrained in her brain like acid on stone. Now she felt herself uttering the same words. I should’ve spent more time with her. I should’ve made her move closer to me. I should’ve brought Jonathan here more often.

  “Did you find Papa’s watch? He’s going to be angry with us if we lost it,” Emma said. She took her daughter’s cheeks in her hands and looked at Vail’s face as if she hadn’t seen it in years, studying every square inch.

  Then, as if someone had waved a wand over her head, Emma’s eyes changed. Vail struggled to define what had happened. A narrowing, maybe, or perhaps it was something more. The sharpness had returned. “Ma?”

  “What’s wrong?” Emma asked. “Why are you kneeling in front of me, Kari? Did I faint?”

  “Ma, who’s Nellie?”

  Emma’s gaze rose above Vail’s shoulder. Vail thought she had lost her again, but Emma spoke: “Nellie?”

  “You were just talking about her. And I found this.” She reached beside her and scooped up the old picture. “It says ‘Me and Nellie’ on the back. She looks a lot like you.”

  Robby appeared in the doorway. Vail’s gaze met his and told him not to come any closer. He set the tea cups down and hovered in the background.

  “Ma, is Nellie a relative of ours?”

  Emma’s eyes teared. “My sister.”

  Vail waited for her to elaborate, but she remained silent. Emma pulled her hand from Vail’s and interlocked her fingers in her lap.

  “Ma, you don’t have a sister.”

  Emma’s eyes met Vail’s. “I don’t feel like talking about it.”

  Vail leaned forward. She felt pressured to elicit the story before her mother drifted back into another Alzheimer-induced fog. “Please, tell me. About Nellie.”

  Emma must have sensed Robby’s presence, because she turned suddenly, rose from her chair, and pointed an arthritic finger. “Who are you! What are you doing in my house?”

  Robby looked at Vail, who wore a look of chagrin.

  “Ma, calm down, that’s my friend Robby. You met him before. He’s a detective, a police officer.” She helped Emma sit back in her seat.

  Robby reached into his shirt pocket and handed Vail a pair of glasses. “They were in the freezer, in the ice cube tray.”

  Vail handed them to Emma. “Look, Ma, Robby found your glasses.”

  “I told you the police would find them.” She looked up at Robby. “Thank you, Officer.”

  He smiled. “Just call me Robby.”

  Then Emma’s eyes teared up and she held a hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  Vail sat on the adjacent couch and rested a reassuring hand on her mother’s shoulder. “It’s okay, Ma. I understand.” She knew this was not a good time to press the issue, but as had always been the case, she had a difficult time controlling her curiosity. “Ma,” she said softly, “you were going to tell me about Nellie.”

  “Nellie? Your mother?”

  Vail’s brow furrowed. She picked up the photo she had dropped on the floor and showed Emma. “No. Nellie, your sister. I want to know about Nellie.”

  Emma’s eyes again dropped to her lap. Her hands rolled into a fist and she shook one at Vail. “How could you do that to me? You asked me to watch her for a couple of hours! What kind of a mother abandons her baby?”

  Vail stared at Emma, trying to understand what she was talking about. She looked up at Robby, as if he could provide some answers. He sat down slowly beside Vail on the couch.

  “She thinks I’m Nellie,” she whispered to him.

  “You can’t just show up now and expect to take her back,” Emma sa
id, her voice firm. “Ward and I raised her, she’s ours.”

  Vail’s hand slid off Emma’s shoulder. She was silent for a moment, staring at Emma’s reddened face.

  “Talk to her as if you’re Nellie,” Robby said softly by Vail’s ear.

  “Emma,” Vail said, “I’m not here to take her from you. I’d never do that. I just came by to see you. I’ve missed you.”

  “I’ve missed you too, Nell.” She reached out and gently touched Vail’s face.

  “Oh, my god,” Vail whispered. She swallowed hard, then turned away from Emma and found Robby’s eyes. “Emma is my aunt. Nellie is my mother.” Vail shook her head, as if this was a bad dream and denying it would make it go away. “No. This is just an Alzheimer’s fantasy. She’s confused—”

  “Karen . . . Emma is still your mother. She raised you, just like my aunt raised me.”

  “But my biological mother is Nellie.” Vail turned to Emma, who was crying silently, a hand draped across her eyes. Vail pulled her close, letting Emma cry on her shoulder.

  “I’m so sorry, Kari,” she said.

  “It’s okay, Ma,” Vail said, then felt her own tears trickle down her cheek. “It’s okay.”

  thirty-one

  He was in a rhythm, words tumbling from his mind like rocks in a landslide. He couldn’t type as fast as he was thinking, which made it frustrating. But he continued, nevertheless, figuring he’d go back and fix the typos when he was done, before he’d send these sections off for “publication.”

  My needs are outgrwing my home. I can do jsut so much with a space barely larger than a tiny closet. And as I’ve gotten older and taller, the space has gotten even smller. I even took in a pet. A mouse I call Charlie. He dosn’t take up much space, other than a little cage. I take him out while I’m in there, let him roam around. He’s my only friend.

  But then I started thinking that I really need more room. I knocked on one of the walls, and it sounded hollow. So I bought a saw with money I made at the slaughterhose down the road. It’s my job to feed the cattle and clean up after them as they get ready to be sliced and diced. It’s not a great job, but it’s money under the table, and if you have money you can do things.

  Then I borrowed a book from the library. I didn’t really borrow it, I more like stole it. But tht’s okay, because it has exactly what I need. I do my sawing in the afternoon, right after I get home from school—or on days when I stay home and skip. I don’t have any friends at school, so it’s not like I’m missing anyhting. To me, school is a lot like being with the prick. It’s all about control. Teeachers tell you where you can and can’t go, what you can and can’t do. They don’t hit you like a father does, but it’s not a whole lot different. One day I’m going to stab the pretty little whore teacher right in the stomach and watch her twist in pain. She yelled at me the other day, and I yelled back. Almost got suspended. As if I care.

  She should know I’m different from most twelve year olds. The prick shouldv’e told her that.

  I like the way my place is turning out. I ran some wire in and now have a bare bulb light. Charlie likes it better too. I still have to put up a littel plywood, but I can finish that tomorrow if I can find a way of getting the plywood home. I can get my hands on a shopping cart and load it in, then push it home. It’s a few miles, but if you want somehting bad enough, you find a way.

  I also need some things to decorate the space, but that’ll come. I have a Playboy centerfold I plan to hang. I can hang it with pushpins, right through her eyes. Yeah, that’ll be good. Through the eyes. Like most whores, she’s got evil eyes—

  It had never come out so fast. What does that mean? It probably means something, because expanding his hideaway marked the beginning of his escape, another step on the road to freedom. Maybe he should’ve celebrated at the time, because it turned out to be so significant. Damn, he wished he could write like that all the time. Maybe this was one he’d keep to himself. At least for now. Too much information to give Super Agent Vail and her cohort, Paul Bledsoe. But what a name for a detective! How perfect that he’d be assigned to this case. “Gee, I’m really sorry she died, Detective, but she just bled so! What can you do?”

  He took one more look at the passage he wrote and realized he’d have to go back and fix the spelling errors. But not now—he was too riled up. He opened the freezer door and the cold air hit his bare feet like a pail of water. He shivered. The fog crawled around his ankles.

  He reached into the freezer and removed two Tupperware containers, the special ones he’d bought just for this purpose.

  He pulled open the lid on the first one and removed the Ziploc freezer bag. Inside, rolled in gauze, were his prizes. Slight ice crystals had formed and the cotton stuck a little as he peeled it away.

  He set the hands on the table in front of him. He was amassing quite a collection. But was it too much? Was this getting out of hand? Ha! Out of hand, that was a good one. He looked over each of them, marveling at his work. He’d had to cauterize the veins and arteries to prevent the blood from draining out completely. Then the hand would shrivel and wouldn’t be the same. They needed to look as close to the way they looked when he’d harvested them.

  But he couldn’t move the fingers. They were curled, frozen in place, except for the index fingers, which he’d used for painting his masterpieces on the bitches’ walls. It was the same finger his father used to point at him when he was young. The prick would curl it and wiggle it forward and back, his sign to come to him.

  But the fingers were his now. He had control over them.

  Each hand looked similar to the other: blood thick on the index finger’s tip, dried and frozen to the print’s ridges. But even though they looked alike, he knew which bitch-whore contributed which hand, just like a mother can tell her children’s baby pictures apart.

  He stuck one of the hands in the microwave, just to see if he could soften up the fingers. He chose number four, since hers were the thinnest and would probably nuke the fastest. He entered fifteen seconds, then hit start. The little tray turned slowly as it cooked. Kind of reminded him of his potter’s wheel. Now that would be something.

  Ideas were flying through his mind. The microwave beeped and the rotating tray came to a stop. He opened the door and heard a slight sizzle, but the skin appeared to be intact. He took it out and set it on the table. It was still frozen, but the sizzling bothered him. He didn’t want to risk thawing it too fast and burning the delicate hair or skin. Perhaps a slow defrost in the refrigerator would work better. Then maybe a formaldehyde solution, brushed onto the skin and injected into the muscle. He didn’t want to soak it, because that might make it tough and leathery.

  He unwrapped the other hands and sat down at the table. He’d missed the third one, and he could kick himself for that. But he learned something. That was the most important thing, right? To learn from your mistakes?

  Another lesson he needed to learn was to be grateful for what he had and not to lament over what he didn’t have. At least he had these hands. They helped him remember each bitch, each killing, in detail. He felt his pulse quicken, and he suddenly got hot. He had to unbutton his collar. His breath had gotten shallow, just like it did whenever he sliced the bitches open.

  But something was missing. The eyes. He needed some more eyes.

  He grabbed the TV remote, and started the recording of Eleanor Linwood. “You will rot in hell, your soul hung out to dry in front of everyone, for society to see who and what you are: a monster. . . .”

  Yes, he’d found the eyes he wanted next.

  He looked back at the hands, undid his pants, and reached inside.

  thirty-two

  Vail was in bed, wearing a nightgown borrowed from her mother. She had taken her long overdue shower, then called Aunt Faye, who agreed to come by in the morning to help pack Emma for a temporary stay until Vail found a care facility in Virginia.

  Robby had stayed awake with Vail until one in the morning, talking with her about t
he revelation that her mother was really her aunt, and the fact that her biological mother was nowhere to be found. Finally, she told Robby to get some sleep, and he settled himself onto the downstairs couch.

  Now, as the clock hit 2 A.M., Vail was glad she was having a hard time falling asleep—no chance of lapsing into one of her nightmares, which might wake Robby. She’d then have to tell him about the dreams, and that was something she wasn’t prepared to do just yet. She needed to get her own mind around them before she tried to explain them to others.

  She turned onto her side and faced her closet door, where the old Shaun Cassidy poster once hung. She remembered sitting in her room listening to his records on a beat-up, secondhand Panasonic phonograph, wondering if Corey Andrews, a boy in her class, would notice her. It seemed so terribly important at the time. Totally focused on him, smiling his way, brushing up against his arm, hoping he would talk to her.

  When he didn’t, and the school year ended, Emma had comforted her and told her that she was beautiful and smart, and that eventually boys would be lining up to ask her out. It happened, of course, the next year in seventh grade, but that summer was miserable. Miserable because a boy hadn’t asked her out.

  She flashed on her memory of sitting in the six-by-eight jail cell, waiting her turn for the portable phone to be wheeled to her. Her thoughts turned to Jonathan, again, as they had done every other minute since she had visited him at the hospital. Her BlackBerry remained silent, which meant there was nothing significant to report.

  Nothing significant to report.

  She certainly had something significant to report. Things that really meant something, not a preteen infatuation that failed to develop. But that was the way life went. Problems seemed to weigh on you until you realized there were far worse issues, far worse situations, that would make your current concerns instantly seem petty. Her son was lying in a coma, her mother, who’s really her aunt, was losing her mind, and she was on suspension because she had beaten up her ex-husband, who had assaulted her—and held her at gun-point. And there were young women being murdered because she couldn’t help catch the killer. Those were real problems. Too much for one person to handle.