The Helper cd-2

by David Jackson

  ‘Uh-uh. You were too confident. You were in no doubt he left his apartment last night. That tells me you had him under surveillance. I know better than anybody that Andrew can be an asshole — that’s why I’m no longer a Vasey. But I also know that basically he’s a stand-up guy. He’s not the man you’re looking for. So call off the dogs or I’ll fire a harassment suit at you so fast you won’t have time to duck.’

  She turns on her heel and click-clacks down the hallway, leaving the detectives with an indelible memory of her rear view.

  ‘Is she right?’ Holden asks Doyle.

  ‘Right about what?’

  ‘That your intuition couldn’t be that good. That you had more to go on than a hunch.’

  ‘You really wanna know?’

  Holden stands there for a moment while he weighs up the pros and cons.

  ‘Maybe it’s better if I don’t.’

  He starts to walk away. Doyle trails after him.

  ‘Because if you’re really interested, I’d be happy to tell you.’

  Holden speeds up his pace to get away.

  ‘All right,’ says Doyle, ‘if you’re gonna drag it out of me, it was like this. .’

  But by now Holden has his fingers in his ears and is singing loudly.

  The call comes just as Doyle pulls up outside his apartment. He knows from the absence of any caller ID who this is going to be, and he’s ready for him. He presses the answer button, but says nothing.

  ‘Cal?’

  ‘Don’t say another word,’ Doyle tells him. ‘Not one fucking word. No stupid clues. No music. Nothing. I don’t just mean now, either. I mean forever. I don’t need your help no more, get me? That man you killed last night was a cop and a friend. That makes you my enemy. That puts you top of my list of people I need to take off the streets. And if it was my decision, I’d reinstate the death penalty just for you. In fact, I would stick the fucking spike in your arm myself and watch you die, you sick fuck. Do you understand?’

  ‘Ten-four, Detective. Message received loud and clear. No clues. I get it. But to be honest, I wasn’t calling to give you clues. You know why? Because you already have them.’

  And then he ends the call.

  Just like that.

  Leaving Doyle staring at his phone and wondering how it could have gone so awry. This wasn’t how it was meant to happen. He was supposed to deliver his rant and then come away feeling good about himself, satisfied that he’d put both himself and the caller in neat little labeled boxes. The hunter and the hunted. The investigator and the criminal. But yet again he has been left with blurred vision, unable to make out the boundaries between right and wrong. Feeling somehow sullied by that simple brief reply.

  You already have them.

  What do I have?

  What the fuck do I have?

  It bothers him the whole evening.

  For one thing he is furious with himself. He should have said what he had to say and then ended the call. Goodbye. So long. See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya.

  But you had to hang on for those extra few seconds, didn’t you, Doyle? You had to go and let yourself hear those words. The words that now seem to be the only things in your stupid brainless head, you dumb prick.

  Because now it’s too late. The words won’t go. They won’t be ignored. They insist on flashing themselves in front of his eyes like they’re written in neon, or tapping on his skull like his own personal woodpecker from hell.

  You already have them.

  The clues.

  And that’s the other thing. Because he really has no idea what that means. What clues does he have? There was the U2 song and the Irish jig. So does that mean the next victim will be Irish? Or is he not meant to look at the clues that have already been used to point to victims? Is there something else that has been said? Something he’s overlooked?

  He is tempted to sit down with a notepad and pen and do what he did before: jotting down everything he remembers of the phone calls and trying to read something into them. But that didn’t help Hanrahan, did it?

  At the dinner table, Amy asks him something he doesn’t even hear. When he doesn’t answer, Rachel has to prod him.

  ‘Honey, Amy’s asking you a question. A very important question.’

  ‘Huh?’ He comes awake and looks at his daughter. ‘What is it, Amy?’

  ‘I said, which is more spiky — a hedgehog or a porkie-pine?’

  ‘Oh. Definitely a porkie-pine. No doubt about that.’

  ‘Good. Because that’s what I said to Ellie, and she said I was a doofus. I’m not a doofus, are I?’

  Doyle smiles at her misuse of the English language. She has developed a habit of saying ‘are I’ instead of ‘am I’ and he doesn’t have the heart to correct her.

  ‘No, you’re not.’

  Not like your dad, he thinks. I graduated summa cum laude from the School of Doofus.

  And my ignorance is going to get someone killed.

  Andrew Vasey sits motionless in his typist’s chair in his apartment, staring straight ahead. Looking out through his floor-to-ceiling window at all those lights. All those sparkling, twinkling, colored lights. The city at night. Millions of people. Perhaps someone is looking back at him now. Wondering.

  He breathes, and the air seems to shudder as it gets dragged into his lungs. His body vibrates with the effort. His eyes sting.

  He wants to cry out to all those people. Look at me. LOOK AT ME!

  It is not time yet. It will be soon. Seconds away, surely. A few pulse-beats of time remaining.

  He has accomplished many things, he feels. Helped many people. He is a good man. Not everyone can see that. But he doesn’t deserve this.

  He thinks about last night. With Anna. It was unplanned and perfect. The irony is that he knows whom to thank for it now. But that’s not important. He must latch onto that moment. Hold it tightly. Remember her warmth, her passion, and yes, her love. Because there was still something there. He is sure of it. And that is what he will take with him.

  It is time.

  The movement begins.

  Slow at first, then gathering speed. Until that huge window is rushing at him at what seems like fifty miles per hour. Filling his vision with all those lights. Those bright twinkling stars.

  He closes his eyes at the last possible moment. He feels the massive impact, hears the incredible noise. It is the universe breaking apart, and when he opens his eyes all he can see are the stars it contains. The wind rushing past his ears seems primordial to him. As it was at the beginning, so is it at the end. The cosmos is taking him back.

  He wants to cry out. Something profound. Something befitting the moment.

  But even if he had the words, he does not have the ability to broadcast them.

  And so he remains silent. Watching the world rush up to meet him. Feeling that his heart is about to burst open. Listening to the roaring in his ears. Trying to rise above the absurdity of it all.

  A man bound to a typist’s chair with duct tape. His mouth also sealed with tape. Plummeting from the twenty-eighth floor of his apartment building.

  Falling, falling.

  Until the rope around his neck becomes taut, and the man’s head is ripped from his shoulders, while body and chair smash onto the roof of the adjacent brownstone.

  The man who has just wheeled Andrew Vasey across his hardwood floor and through his own window moves quickly now. He steps over broken glass, smoothes down his hair that has been ruffled by the cool air now blowing into the open-plan living area.

  He leaves the apartment and walks swiftly along the hallway. He summons the elevator, which arrives almost immediately, then gets in and presses the button for the lobby. When the doors eventually swish open again, he steps out and looks around. The place is deserted. He glances toward the door of the small back office where the doorman keeps his possessions, makes himself the occasional cup of coffee, that kind of thing. He can be found there now. Dead, of course.

  The man regret
s the death of the doorman. He didn’t need helping. Not to the man’s knowledge, anyway. But Vasey did need help. And getting to Vasey meant removing the doorman. It was a matter of expediency, pure and simple. Poor guy.

  He steps out onto the street. Starts walking toward his car. Casually. Without too much haste that might attract attention. He looks around him, expecting to see very little out of the ordinary. A window breaking twenty-eight stories up is just a tinkle when set against the background noise and frenzy of a city like New York. Even a subsequent thud five stories up is difficult to pinpoint and identify, especially when most of the passers-by at this time of night are comfortably ensconced in cars. Now if Vasey had come crashing down onto the sidewalk here, chair and headless body flattening and splattering across the slabs, then that might have been noticed. That might have caused one or two citizens to break stride for a moment, to be a little delayed in taking the next bite out of their Big Macs.

  But as it was, the presence of the brownstone directly below Vasey’s window proved hugely convenient. An ideal landing pad for a decapitated body flying a typist’s chair. Not that it was fortuitous, of course. Things like that cannot be left to chance. It was all in the plan. All factored into the scenario. And everything went just as it was supposed to.

  Except. .

  That guy.

  Across the street. Looking up at the hole left by Vasey in his window. Talking animatedly into his cellphone.

  Now he is noteworthy.

  Not just because he is aware of what just happened way up there. There was always the possibility that somebody might see or hear something. That was anticipated. It was accounted for.

  No, this man is significant for other reasons.

  Turning his face away in case the man should look across and see him, the killer quickens his pace toward the corner of the block.

  What bothers him is that he has seen that onlooker before. And at almost exactly the same spot.

  A nerdy-looking redhead like that is not easily forgotten.

  Doyle is beginning to wish he never had a cellphone. It seems that almost every time it rings it brings him trouble. He expects this call to be no exception.

  ‘D-Detective. It’s m-me. Oh my gosh. Oh my g-g-gosh.’

  ‘Steady, Gonzo. Calm down. What is it?’

  ‘I’m here again. I was trying to help. I just thought I could keep watch for you. You know, like I said. Because of you not having the m-manpower. And so I came here. But now I don’t know what to-’

  ‘Gonzo! Take a deep breath. Okay? Now, nice and slow, where are you?’

  ‘Outside Vasey’s building. Watching him for you.’

  Doyle rolls his eyes. Oh brother, he thinks. What is it with him?

  ‘All right, Gonzo. You don’t need to watch him every night, okay? Now what’s got you so worked up?’

  ‘I think. . I think. .’

  Doyle can hear his rasping breath. He sounds like he’s on the verge of an asthma attack.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think he’s dead.’

  Tired though he is, Doyle is instantly alert. He is glad that Rachel is in the shower, so that he doesn’t have to sneak off to the bedroom again to continue his conversation.

  ‘Who? Vasey? Are you talking about Vasey? What makes you think he’s dead?’

  ‘I. . I just saw him. At least I think it was him. Oh my God.’

  ‘Gonzo, where did you see Vasey? Outside his apartment building?’

  ‘No. Well, yes. But not in the way you mean. I think it was him. . but I’m not sure. Maybe it wasn’t him. I couldn’t see too well. It’s dark, and it was high up. I dunno. Maybe I’m wrong. But it was somebody. It was definitely somebody-’

  ‘Gonzo! For Pete’s sake, tell me what the hell is going on!’

  There is a pause. Gonzo trying to compose himself, presumably.

  ‘He came out of the window. Whoever it was. But I think it was Vasey because he lives in apartment 28A, and this looks about the right height to me. He came out of the window. Smashed right through it. And he was tied to a chair. And then. . and then. .’

  Doyle puts his free hand to his forehead. He feels sick.

  ‘Go on, Gonzo.’

  ‘There was a rope. Around his neck. I think. . I think his head came off. Oh, God.’

  Doyle says nothing for a long while.

  ‘D-Detective? Are you there?’

  ‘I’m here, Gonzo.’

  ‘What should I do? I don’t know what to do.’

  Doyle chews his lip. ‘Listen to me, Gonzo. Are the cops there yet?’

  ‘No, not yet.’

  ‘Is there a big crowd around the body?’

  ‘No. The body landed on a roof. It’s on a brownstone next to Vasey’s apartment building.’

  ‘So did anybody else see this?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Look up at the apartment building, Gonzo. Is anyone looking out onto the roof of the brownstone?’

  A pause. Then: ‘Yes. I can see figures at some of the windows. I think maybe they heard something.’

  ‘All right, Gonzo. Now go home.’

  Another pause. ‘Go home? What do you mean? I’m a witness. I saw a murder. What do you mean, go home?’

  ‘Just do what I say. You saw a crime. You reported it to me, a police officer. You’ve done all you can. I’ll get some cops to come over there.’

  ‘If you’re sure. .’

  ‘I’m sure. If you stay there, you’ll have a lot of explaining to do. Now leave it with me. If I need to speak with you again I’ll call you on this number. Is that okay?’

  ‘Yeah. That’s fine. I’ll. . I’ll go home now.’

  ‘You do that, Gonzo.’

  He ends the call. He wants to throw his cellphone through the window, the way Vasey just went through his. Jesus, what an exit.

  He has no intention of calling the cops. The people in Vasey’s building will see to that. And what would he say, anyhow? How would he explain Gonzo’s role in all this? Especially when he’s not even sure what goes through that kid’s head at the best of times. Who does he think he is? Dick Tracy?

  Doyle thinks he could do with someone like Dick Tracy right now. He could have figured this out. He would have known Vasey was next.

  I wasn’t calling to give you clues. You know why? Because you already have them.

  It should have been obvious. He’d uncovered a link between Cindy Mellish and Sean Hanrahan, and he’d assumed it was a pointer to their killer. Only he was wrong. Sure, the link was there, all right. But it wasn’t telling him anything about the murderer.

  It was telling him who the next victim would be.

  The link was the clue. And a bigger fucking clue you couldn’t ask for. Doyle feels as though the caller might just as well have said, ‘The next person to die will be Andrew Vasey,’ and still he would have missed it. He feels that stupid.

  Something else occurs to Doyle. He looks at his watch. .

  And laughs out loud.

  The timing of the murder. He missed that, too, didn’t he?

  When Doyle delivered his tirade over the phone, and the guy responded with ‘Ten-four, Detective.’

  Ten-four.

  Which can be cop-speak for ‘message received’.

  But which can equally mean four minutes past ten. The time Vasey was killed.

  So he’d been told who, and he’d been told when. What more could he have asked for?

  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  And just how clever is this bastard, that he can assure you he is giving you no clues when in fact he’s giving out every fucking clue under the sun?

  There’s a severe mismatch of intelligence here, Doyle thinks.

  It doesn’t bode well.

  FIFTEEN

  ‘So let me get this straight. .’ says Cesario.

  Doyle and Holden sit opposite the Lieutenant in his office. This is their first task of the day: to bring the boss up to speed without causi
ng him to wet his pants over what a nightmare this is becoming.

  ‘Both the Mellish girl and Hanrahan go to see Vasey as patients-’

  ‘Clients,’ says Doyle.

  ‘Whatever,’ says Cesario, giving Doyle a withering look. ‘They’re both connected to the psychologist.’

  Yeah, thinks Doyle. They’re shrink-linked.

  ‘So you bring him in, he lawyers up, and you get nothing.’

  Doyle looks at Holden. Holden looks at Doyle. Doyle feels they should have something to add. That word ‘nothing’ seems a little harsh. It sounds less than the emptiness it represents. In fact it resounds with negativity. Only he’s not sure how to nudge it over the line and into the positive zone.

  Cesario continues his narrative: ‘And then Vasey gets whacked. Does that about sum it up?’

  Doyle would have phrased it differently. He thinks it’s like summarizing the movie Jaws as Fish attacks bathers, sheriff kills fish. Where’s the fine detail? Where’s the emotion? Where’s the stuff that makes it interesting? But he shrugs nonetheless. Says, ‘I guess.’

  Cesario sits in silence for a while, then says, ‘So where are you going with this, Detectives?’

  ‘We think. .’ Doyle begins, emphasis on the we, ‘we think these could all be the work of the same perp.’

  Cesario sighs. ‘See, that’s what I thought you were gonna say. I didn’t like it when I thought it and I hate it even more now. Do you understand the enormity of what you’re asking me to accept?’

  Holden says, ‘We understand, Lou. But we have to at least consider the possibility.’

  ‘All right, so let’s consider it. Go ahead. Convince me.’

  Doyle finds the ball rolling back to him again. Thanks, Holden.

  ‘Okay. We have three DOAs, not counting Vasey’s doorman, who we’ll put down as collateral damage for now. Admittedly, they were all killed in different parts of the city, and with completely different MOs. A multiple stabbing, a shooting and a guy thrown through his window. On that basis alone, I agree, there’s nothing there. But toss in the Vasey connection and it changes the whole picture. It’s just too much of a coincidence that a shrink and two of his clients should all take hits from separate, completely independent killers. And there’s something else they have in common, too.’