by Jacob Stone
I’ll be getting my jollies when I see stories about you on TV.
Was it possible he was the Nightmare Man? Joplin thought the creep had been in his early thirties. She remembered the ex-cop saying this new killer would’ve been in prison at the same time as the man they were now convinced was the first Nightmare Man, and he died in 1992. She was too numb with fear to do simple math in her head, but wouldn’t that make the creep way too young to be the killer? But what if the ex-cop was wrong? That police sketch they showed was done in 1984, and it took them all these years to realize they’d been wrong about that!
The Nightmare Man could be anyone.
That thought crystalized in her mind. He could be anyone. She made a decision. She’d call the police and tell them about the creep. What was his name? Dale, at least that’s what he’d told her. She wished she had played along and gotten his phone number. Too late now for that, but they should be able to figure out who he was from the gym’s membership records.
Her cell phone was in her purse, which she had left in the kitchen. She got to her feet, but her legs felt so rubbery she almost fell back onto the couch.
This is insane. Get a grip! There’s no reason to be so freaked out by this!
Thinking of the word freaked made her giggle, and it took her a few seconds to realize why. Dale wasn’t a creep but an outright freak. She also had the thought that a shot of vodka would help steady her, and she could use that! She waited for her legs to feel less rubbery, then headed to the small galley kitchen off the living room.
She kept the vodka in the refrigerator. It tasted so much better chilled. This last bottle she’d bought only a week ago, and she was surprised to see it was already half gone. She normally wasn’t a big drinker, and in the past would go a month or longer without any alcohol, but the last few weeks she’d been anxious and had been having a shot or two almost nightly. At first she attributed it to her breakup with Richard, but lately she realized there was something else working on her and fraying at her nerves. When she saw the stories yesterday about the Nightmare Man killing a woman her age in her very same neighborhood, she had a bizarre realization that her recent anxiety and the Nightmare Man were connected, even though she only had a vague memory of him from when she was nine and stories about him were all over the TV. She wondered if she had had a premonition about him coming back and murdering more women. It was almost as if someone had whispered in her ear that this would be happening. She even had a crazy thought that she had heard those whispers. God, was she going crazy?
She poured herself a generous double shot of vodka and drank it straight, not even mixing in any orange juice. It helped. She felt steadier, and when she held her hand out in front of her face, she detected only a slight tremor. She decided another drink would help even more, and she poured herself another couple of ounces, and this time sipped it. Once her glass was empty, she brought the vodka bottle, glass, and her purse back to the living room. She plopped down on the couch, being extra careful not to spill any of the vodka, especially since she was already feeling its effect. She poured herself one more drink, and she giggled as she dug her phone out of her pocketbook. Instead of calling the police, she called Richard. When she reached voicemail, she hung up and called him again. This time he answered on the fourth ring.
“What do you want?” he demanded coldly.
“Wow,” she said. “You can’t even be nice and say hi, Joplin, how are you?”
“You got it, babe.”
“Really? We were together for two years! After all the times we fucked, you can’t even be a little nice to me?”
“What a charming mouth on you.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t call to fight. But you could be a little nice to me.”
“Do I really need to remind you of all the nice things you said to me?”
Joplin’s hand shook as she poured herself yet more vodka. Richard could be so infuriatingly smug when he wanted to be. She took a deep breath and concentrated to keep her voice under control.
“Do I really need to remind you that I found you in my bed screwing whatsherface?”
“Her name is Debra. And I thought it was our bed?”
Joplin’s mouth gaped open. Did he really just say that?
“You’re joking, right?” she asked.
“Why don’t you ask me where I’m living now?”
“What?”
“Aren’t you at least curious after you kicked me out of our apartment without any notice?”
“You were screwing her right in front of me!”
“Mistakes happen, Joplin. It wasn’t as if we were married, or I didn’t catch you flirting openly with your good buddy Connor.”
She had no idea what he was talking about. She did have a friend at work named Connor, but he was gay. There was never any flirting, only outrageous joking, and Richard knew that, but then again, he was a lawyer, and he was good at talking circles around her.
“You know Connor is gay,” she said.
“That doesn’t matter. Flirting is flirting, regardless.”
He said this in such a mean-spirited way that she understood all he wanted to do was hurt her, and that he must’ve been looking forward to this for weeks. She also knew he had to be shacked up with his so-called platonic friend Debra, and he was just dying to rub that in her face.
“You know Richard, you really are a Dick!”
“Lovely,” he said. “Exactly what I should’ve expected from you.”
She disconnected the call. She couldn’t believe she had actually called to reconcile and invite him over for the night. For almost two years he had completely bamboozled her, making her think he was charming and witty, but eventually he showed her what he really was: a cruel, selfish bastard! He couldn’t even apologize for cheating on her, instead he had to try to turn things around so that she was the one who had wronged him!
At first she was furious, but then she started giggling, and she realized she was inebriated. More than that, she was flat-out blotto.
She stared bleary-eyed at the vodka bottle and saw it was almost empty. She had poured nearly half a bottle down her throat. A full bottle was seven hundred fifty milliliters, and she struggled to work out in her head how many ounces half of that would be. Her thinking was too fuzzy to figure it out, but she knew it had to be more than she’d ever drunk when she was in college.
I’ll be paying for this tomorrow, she thought. She also made a promise that this was it; she wouldn’t be buying another bottle tomorrow. She was done letting any guy make her anxious—whether it was Dick the Prick or the Nightmare Man. She thought suddenly of Rosalyn and smiled. Yeah, she was ready to try something different. Even if she was badly hungover, she’d be heading over to the gym tomorrow morning.
She remembered again about the Nightmare Man and how she was going to call the police so she could tell them about the creep. That would have to wait. She was feeling too wasted to do anything other than crawl into bed.
She fell back onto the couch three times before she got to her feet, and she knew she was staggering like a clichéd drunk in a movie.
Tomorrow morning, she promised herself. I’ll call the police then about creepy, freaky Dale.
She was snoring loudly seconds after collapsing onto the bed.
Chapter 50
“Thanks to Parker I got red wine all over my favorite blouse!”
Morris arrived home just after midnight and was relieved to see Natalie still awake with his spare thirty-two next to her. She gave Parker an enthusiastic hug before getting off the couch and taking Morris’s hands. After they embraced and shared a lingering kiss, she revisited the topic of her stained blouse.
“How did Parker accomplish that?” he asked.
“I was drinking a nice glass of Bordeaux waiting for your TV appearance, and I watched in amazement as Parker plopped on top of Marg
ot Denoir and started treating her like a lollipop. That was it as far as my blouse went.”
“Ah jeeze. His hijinks caused you to spit out a mouthful of wine?”
“Worse, I laughed so hard it came out my nose.”
Morris grimaced. “Ouch.”
“I know it. It stung like you wouldn’t believe.”
Parker let out several dissatisfied grunts, unhappy that he was being excluded, and he tried to worm his way between them. Morris let go of Natalie so he could thump Parker on his side. That appeased the bull terrier, his tail wagging at a good clip.
“Have you heard from Rachel?” he asked, trying to sound unconcerned.
“I talked with our intrepid daughter a half hour ago. She was safe and sound and busy studying.” Natalie opened her eyes wide, her expression showing she had a secret to divulge. “I heard Doug in the background before she shushed him. I didn’t mention this to Rachel, since she would’ve insisted I was hearing things, but Doug must be sleeping over now.”
Morris grunted an unintelligible response. Natalie was of course right about how Rachel would’ve responded to any sort of personal question like that. Their daughter was fiercely protective of her privacy, and had told her parents very little about her boyfriends since she started dating back in high school. Morris wasn’t oblivious. His daughter was a beautiful young woman, and she’d been seeing Doug Gilman for over six months. Still, he was as fiercely protective of his daughter as she was of her privacy, and there were certain things he preferred not to think about. But even though he had installed what should be an impenetrable lock on her door, he liked the idea of Rachel not being alone while this Nightmare Man maniac was on the loose. For now he would assume Gilman was only spending the night on Rachel’s couch. He decided that would work.
“What?” Natalie asked.
He smiled over being caught during a private thought. “Nothing.”
“Hmm.” She hooked his arm. “I picked up cheese blintzes at Goldie’s Deli just in case you needed a snack when you got home. Do you want me to fry a couple up for you?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Did you get sour cream?”
“What do you think?”
They walked arm and arm to the kitchen with Parker tagging along. While Natalie put two blintzes in a frying pan and watched over them, Morris sat at the table and told her how their investigation seemed to be stalling to a dead end.
“The team’s been working overtime, and when I left MBI we’d been able to eliminate every ex-inmate Blount had contact with in Ashfield.”
Natalie used a spatula to flip the blintzes. Parker sat like a stone watching her.
“How were you able to do that so quickly?” she asked. “There must’ve been hundreds of them.”
“There weren’t as many as you’d think, not when you factored in deaths, hospitalizations, ex-inmates ending up back in jail or prison, etcetera. I don’t know, Nat. I was hoping this would lead us to this maniac, but now it’s looking like we’ll have to get our break another way.”
“Any leads from your TV appearance tonight?”
“The hotline got plenty of calls, but nothing useful.”
Natalie looked deep in thought, so much so, she almost burnt the blintzes. She got them out of the frying pan and onto a plate in the nick of time but stopped on the way to the refrigerator to retrieve the sour cream. Her eyes had a distant, faraway look, her brow deeply furrowed.
“If this new killer didn’t get the Nightmare Man secrets from Blount, who’d he get them from?”
“I don’t know,” Morris admitted with a pained sigh. “It’s possible whoever Blount talked to passed his secrets to someone else. Or someone from the department could’ve intentionally or otherwise leaked the information. Or a person who saw one of the ’84 victims.”
“Hmm.” Natalie brought her right index finger up to her mouth so that it was touching her lips, and she froze like that long enough for Morris to know she was working out an idea. She said, “You looked at the ex-inmates from Ashfield, but what about prison guards and other prison officials?”
Morris couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of that, and he told Natalie he blamed not doing so on lack of sleep. “For now that’s the best excuse I can come up with,” he admitted. “Give me time and I’ll see if I can think of a way to blame Dennis Polk.”
Natalie was beaming as she retrieved the sour cream and a container of chopped liver from the fridge while Parker watched intently. She put a dollop of sour cream on the plate with the blintzes for Morris, then scooped out a large tablespoon of chopped liver for Parker.
“I didn’t get the chopped liver for Parker, but he made me laugh so hard tonight I figured he earned it,” she said, still beaming.
Morris nodded absently as he dug into the blintzes. He was too deep in thought to taste them, which was a shame since Goldie’s made the best blintzes around. He badly wanted to call the former Ashfield State Prison warden, Bill Schofield, but he knew he’d be waking him if he did. It would have to wait until morning. He had no doubt that Schofield was an early-to-rise kind of guy.
While Morris might’ve been too absorbed in his thoughts to enjoy his food, the same wasn’t true of Parker, who grunted happily in appreciation of the chopped liver.
Chapter 51
Joplin woke up in the dark feeling awful. Really worse than awful. She was too groggy and her thinking too badly muddled to make much sense of her situation, but several questions seeped through the fog in her brain.
Where’s that awful ammonia smell coming from?
Why’s my thumb hurting so much?
Where am I?
She remembered getting drunk on vodka and had a vague memory of falling onto her bed. She’d had a few bad hangovers in college, but nothing like this. Well, at least it explained why her mouth felt so fuzzy, like it was filled with cotton. But if she was in her bedroom, why was it so dark? Her bedroom had an alarm clock and a plugged-in carbon monoxide detector that both gave off a soft ambient light, and because of that it never got this dark. And why was her thumb throbbing so much?
She groaned, except the noise that came out didn’t sound like a groan, and instead was something badly muffled. As if this was all some kind of bad joke, she said, “Well that didn’t sound right,” but it came out as the same faraway, unintelligible murmur.
She woke up fully, her heart racing as she realized that the reason her mouth felt so fuzzy and woolly wasn’t because of the vodka but because something had been stuffed in her mouth. A rag, maybe? Or even a pair of sweat socks?
She remembered about the creep from yesterday. In her fear, she tried bolting out of bed, but she couldn’t move, at least not her hands or feet.
Someone had tied her wrists and ankles together.
An icy fear overwhelmed her as she realized this same person had removed her clothing. She was lying on her back naked and helpless. Even though she knew at an intellectual level it would be pointless, she tried screaming.
In her extreme terror, she was aware that the ammonia smell had faded. When something metallic clamped onto the nail of the index finger, she understood why her thumb on the same hand was hurting so much.
* * * *
At the beginning there was only suffering and silent pleading and bargaining. Later, there was acceptance and the wish to die and end what seemed like an eternity of pain. Whenever she blacked out there was that awful ammonia smell bringing her back into consciousness, but even during those times when she had lost consciousness, she was still at some level aware of the pain. It just seemed to fill her up, as if it were something unendurable and ever-present.
Near the end, when a hollow metal pipe had been pushed into her throat and the blindfold removed so she’d be forced to see the rat being held in front of her eyes in a gloved hand, she caught a glimpse of her killer’s face. Joplin had long since cried her
self out, and because of that any further tears wouldn’t have been possible. Still, the bitterness she felt seeing her tormentor’s face nearly made her forget about the pain.
So unfair, she thought. Just so damned unfair.
Chapter 52
Morris patiently waited until seven a.m. to call Bill Schofield. “I hope I didn’t wake you,” he said.
The former warden sounded surprised by the question. “Heck no. I was up at five thirty so I could take Queenie for her morning constitutional.”
Morris chuckled at that. “Parker usually lets me sleep until six thirty before making his demands.”
“With Queenie, it’s my own fault. For forty years my job required me to wake up at that hour, and I continued the habit after retirement. But as much as I’d enjoy trading bull terrier stories with you, I don’t suppose that’s why you called. You’re looking for those names you asked for yesterday, right?”
“Actually, no. I need a list of all prison officials who had contact with Blount. And I’d appreciate it if you let me know anyone you have in mind who stands out.”
Schofield’s voice took on a more reserved note as he asked, “Stands out as in possibly being this maniac?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not seriously thinking he could be someone I employed at Ashfield?”
“It’s not any of the former prisoners.”
“You know that for a fact?”
“I do.”
“I see. Let me give the matter some thought. I’ll call you if a name comes to me.”
Schofield hung up the phone. Morris had picked up something from his voice that told him Schofield already had someone in mind. It wouldn’t be an easy thing admitting you had a burgeoning serial killer working for you. He’d give the former warden a few hours to get back to him before pushing him.
