Cry Baby

by David Jackson

  Cesario sighs, and Doyle reckons he’s seeing this for what it is: a whole heap of nothing.

  ‘What does the ME say about the order?’

  ‘Yeah, we thought about that. But Norm says the third guy isn’t a dump job. He was definitely killed after the other two. The order is two, three, one – no doubt about it.’

  ‘Two, three, one. What the hell does that mean? Why that particular order?’

  Nobody answers. Then Jay Holden pipes up.

  ‘Just a thought. What if it’s not a one on this guy? What if the killer started to draw a four, but got disturbed and had to run?’

  Silence in the room while everyone thinks about this. All the cops mentally drawing the number four. You might make the vertical stroke first, then add the diagonal and the horizontal to build a four. And if you only got as far as the vertical…

  The cops all look at each other, waiting for someone to shoot the theory down.

  ‘It’s possible,’ says Cesario. ‘And to be perfectly frank, I prefer that explanation. Simple counting I can cope with, but some kind of coded message to us I could do without.’

  ‘I don’t buy it,’ says Doyle, and he senses a slight hostility as he voices his demurral. Cops like simplicity; they hate complicated. Doyle himself wants this to be straightforward. But he has a bad feeling about it.

  He says, ‘The perp has gone to a lot of trouble to send these signals to us. I don’t see it being allowed to go so badly wrong now. There’s a big difference between a one and a four. I don’t see the perp letting that kind of confusion creep in.’

  ‘But Holden’s point is that it wasn’t in the plan,’ says Cesario. ‘Something spooked the killer, and he booked the scene before he could finish writing.’

  ‘This killer doesn’t spook easily,’ Doyle says. ‘From what we can put together, the guy’s body wasn’t discovered until at least twenty minutes after he was killed. Plenty of time to write a four if you wanted to. Three cuts, right? How long does that take? Not much longer than it takes to make one cut. If I started to draw a four, I’d finish drawing a four.’

  Other voices start up in the room now. Everyone arguing over what might have happened and what the killer might have intended.

  ‘Quiet!’ yells Cesario, and the hubbub dies down. ‘This is all guesswork. Either way, we have a problem. If it was meant to be a four, then we still haven’t found number one. If it was meant to be a one, then I don’t know what the hell we’ve got here.’

  Cesario puts his index fingers to his throbbing temples. ‘For the sake of argument, let’s suppose it was meant to be a one on this guy’s head. Is there anything about the three vics that would make that sequence of numbers meaningful? Anything at all?’

  LeBlanc consults the notes in his hand. ‘The latest DOA is William Fischer. Unemployed. Lived with his girlfriend until she moved out last week. Neighbors say he’s an asshole. Plays his music too loud, gets into arguments – like that.’

  ‘Okay, so putting them in numerical order gives us Fischer, then Vern the homeless guy, then Steppler the kitchen salesman. What does that tell us?’

  Silence.

  ‘Anyone see a pattern of any kind?’

  More silence.

  ‘Shit,’ says Cesario. ‘Me either. Can anybody give me some good news? Something positive in this mess?’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Doyle. ‘Mrs Darby.’

  ‘Who the hell is Mrs Darby?’

  ‘Old lady lives on the fifth floor. She got into the elevator with Fischer on the first floor. Says another woman got in with them too.’

  ‘Another woman? You manage to locate her?’

  ‘Nope. Not much of a description either. She was wearing a red woolen hat and a scarf around her face. But when Mrs Darby got out at her floor, this other woman stayed in the elevator with Fischer.’

  Cesario considers this. ‘Steppler got his pecker out for someone in his car. Is that what this is? Is our serial killer a woman?’

  Doyle shrugs. ‘Could be. Norm says Fischer was killed in the elevator, before being dragged into the hallway. On the rough timings we’ve got, it could be the one Mrs Darby saw.’

  Cesario addresses the gathered group. ‘Find this woman. Check every apartment in that building. Put an alert out for any woman wearing a red woolen hat and scarf – I don’t care if that means stopping ten thousand of ’em. And find out what Fischer was doing before he came into his building. She might have followed him there. If she did, I want to know exactly where she followed him from.’ He pauses, becomes thoughtful again. ‘Something else I don’t get. The change in MO. Quick stabbing for the first guy, frenzied attack for the second, then a completely different weapon for the third. There’s no consistency.’

  Again he gets no answers – just the silent thought balloons of a million other questions hanging in the air. Why is this woman doing this? Is she just whacko, or is there some rational thought process taking place here? How does she select her victims? Randomly, or with precision?

  And who’s next?

  1.57 PM

  ‘You’re not eating.’

  ‘I had some toast.’

  ‘You had one small triangle of toast. That’s not enough. You need energy.’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘You should eat.’

  ‘If I eat, I’ll throw it back up. I don’t want it.’

  She gets a feeling of déjà vu. Back to when she was a teenager and she’d fallen out with her boyfriend – some dickhead called Brian – and her mother was trying to persuade her to eat, even though she truly believed she would never be able to eat again, because her world had come to an end.

  Oh, for such trivial problems now. A mere tiff with a boy. Peanuts compared to this. Try this on for size, teenage version of me. Try dealing with multiple murder and a kidnapped baby you might never see again. Not such a catastrophe now, huh?

  She has made toast and scrambled egg. She thought it would be easy to swallow, but the smell of the egg has made her feel nauseous. Even her coffee tastes old and bitter and poisonous.

  ‘Try something sweet. You got any candy bars? Any chocolate?’

  Yeah, because everything can be cured with chocolate, right? That’s all a woman needs when she’s got somebody else’s blood on her hands. A few cubes of chocolate will take away the misery and the guilt and the utter hopelessness.

  ‘You know what I want?’ she asks.

  ‘What’s that, Erin?’

  ‘I want to hear my baby.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said I want to hear Georgia. Not crying. Not in pain. I want to hear her like she is most of the time, when she’s with me. I want to hear her laughing.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘What do you mean, why? It’s such a strange request, me wanting to hear my baby being happy?’

  He makes her wait, and she thinks he’s going to deny her. But then:

  ‘All right, Erin. If it’ll help. Wait a minute…’

  There’s a scuffling noise, like that of a microphone brushing against something. And then…

  Gurgling. Soft, tiny explosions of breath. And then – yes! – a word. Not a real word. Not anything intelligible. But something that sounds like it could be a word in some foreign language.

  ‘Make her laugh,’ says Erin.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Tickle her belly. Gently. Don’t hurt her.’

  More scuffling. Erin waits, and prays. She will know if this is not Georgia. She knows her laugh. She could pick it out in a whole roomful of babies.

  And then it comes. A high, cheeky chuckle. Tentative at first, and then growing in intensity. Loud and clear over the earpiece, it plucks the strings of her brain and sets them singing. She closes her eyes and puts her arms out as if they are holding her baby, and she can imagine her, can see her Georgia in her arms, giggling at some secret knowledge into her mother’s ear. And she doesn’t want to let her go, not ever let her out of her arms, out of her sight, because Georgia i
s Erin, and Erin is Georgia. They should never be separated, because they are one and the same, and to take Georgia away is to cut Erin in two.

  For a minute, a whole minute that is the most emotionally filled minute she has ever experienced, Erin listens to that most sublime of sounds and lets the tears fall.

  2.10 PM

  In the interview room Doyle drops his sheaf of reports and a brown bag on the table, then goes across to the cage. Still sitting on the bench, apparently in the exact same spot he was in when Doyle left him, Albert cocks his head and turns one roving eye on the approaching detective.

  ‘Did you bring a rabbit?’

  ‘Uhm, no,’ says Doyle. ‘I did bring you something, though.’ He unbolts the door and swings it wide. ‘Come on out, Albert. Stretch those legs.’

  Albert doesn’t move. ‘I don’t want to stretch my legs. They’ll be too long for my body. I like to be in proportion.’

  ‘Figure of speech, Albert. Come over here, see what I got.’

  Albert stands, then shuffles to the doorway of the cage. He pauses at the threshold and looks around, a little like an animal that’s not too sure about sacrificing its familiar surroundings to gain its freedom in the wild, dangerous outdoors. Doyle backs away to the table and waits there, so as not to add to the man’s stress levels.

  Eventually, Albert plucks up the courage to step out into the room. He meanders over to join Doyle, taking a roundabout route that makes sense only in his mind.

  Says Doyle, ‘Take a seat, Albert. I brought you some lunch. Thought you must be getting hungry by now.’

  Albert sits. His gaze shifts to the bag on the table. He points. ‘What’s in the bag?’

  ‘Uhm, that’s your lunch. It’s not in my pockets, Albert. It’s there, in the bag.’

  ‘Oh.’

  He makes no move to touch the bag, and his eyes start to rove again.

  ‘You wanna see what I got you?’

  Albert stares at something in the corner of the room, and Doyle has to fight to prevent himself following suit.

  ‘Sure,’ says Albert, without enthusiasm.

  Doyle opens up the bag. ‘First of all…’ He reaches in, pulls out a can of soda. ‘Ta-da! Seven-Up! Didn’t you say you liked Seven-Up the best? And guess what else? Go ahead, Albert, guess.’

  But Albert is now too busy looking at the huge two-way mirror on the wall.

  ‘Why do you have such a big mirror in here? Do you get dressed here? Is this where all the cops try their uniforms on?’

  ‘Something like that.’ He snaps his fingers a couple of times. ‘Here, Albert, look. Guess what else about the soda?’ He slaps his palm on the table in a show of glee, causing Albert almost to shoot out of his chair. ‘It’s only from the Seven-Eleven. Your favorite store, right? Whaddya think of that?’

  But already Albert’s eyes are elsewhere. A tough customer to please, thinks Doyle. Okay, I lied about going to the Seven-Eleven, but he doesn’t know that, so could we show a bit of interest here, please?

  ‘I got you a cup too. From the water cooler. I know you like those cups. And you know what else I got?’ He reaches into the bag again. ‘I met a guy when I was working a case not so long ago. Reminds me of you a little. He had a thing for corn chips, and especially these…’

  Doyle pulls out a bag of Doritos. ‘You like these, Albert? I bet you do.’

  Albert scratches behind his ear. ‘Yeah, they’re okay. Although I prefer Cheetos.’

  ‘Cheetos, huh? Okay, well, you can leave these if you want. But here’s the piece de resistance. Are you ready?’

  Doyle pulls out the final item in the bag. It’s a sandwich. Ordinarily not something he would make such a fuss over, but hey, whatever works here.

  ‘What is it?’ asks Albert.

  ‘It’s a BLT. I took a wild guess at what you might like, but you seem like a BLT kinda guy to me. Am I right? Do you like BLT?’

  ‘What’s a BLT?’

  ‘You don’t know what—? It’s bacon, lettuce and tomato.’

  ‘So why isn’t it called a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich?’

  ‘Well, it is. Kinda. See, BLT. It’s the initial letters. B for bacon, L for lettuce, T for tomato. Sound good to you? Was it a good choice?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Yeah? Cool. That’s what I was—’

  ‘Except for the lettuce.’

  ‘The lettuce?’

  ‘Yeah. I don’t like lettuce. It’s cold. And wet.’

  ‘Okay, we can take out the lettuce. Here, let me do that for you…’

  ‘And the tomato. It’s also cold and wet. And technically it’s a fruit. I don’t do fruit sandwiches.’

  ‘No,’ says Doyle. ‘When you put it like that, it does sound a little weird. Okay, so out with the tomato. Here – we’ve gone from a BLT to just a B. That okay now?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Okay, then, so eat. Go ahead.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  For a few seconds, Albert does nothing except scan the room. Then, abruptly, he pounces on the sandwich and takes a bite and starts chewing. And keeps chewing.

  ‘Uhm, you enjoying that, Albert?’

  Albert points to his mouth to indicate he can’t speak right now. Doyle waits. And waits. Finally, Albert makes a huge swallowing noise and smacks his lips.

  ‘My mom says I have to chew my food properly, or it’ll stick in my throat. She also says I shouldn’t talk with my mouth full.’

  ‘Good advice, Albert. It sounds like your mother really wanted to keep you safe. She must have loved you. And I bet you loved her too, right?’

  Albert’s eyes flicker onto Doyle’s, then drop back onto his sandwich. He grabs it again and takes another bite, as if using it as an excuse for avoiding the question.

  Shit, thinks Doyle. Sonofabitch is smarter than he looks.

  ‘Am I right, Albert? You loved your mother, didn’t you? You would never want to hurt someone close to you like that.’

  Chew, chew. More of the snap glances. Only not around the room anymore, but down. Down to the table.

  ‘You ever argue with your mother? Ever get angry with her?’

  He’s not sure Albert is even listening. The table has become a lot more fascinating than Doyle’s questions. So much for my interview technique, thinks Doyle.

  What the hell’s he looking at, anyhow?

  The corn chips? The soda?

  No, not those. Farther away from him. More toward my side of the table.

  Doyle looks down. The only things here are the reports he’s been carrying around. Why would Albert—?

  He sees it then. Realizes what has grabbed Albert’s attention.

  When Doyle came into the room, he casually tossed his paperwork onto the table. The top report shifted out of line a little, exposing the one beneath. And on that second report down is an artist’s reproduction of the numeric digits on the victims’ foreheads. Currently only two of the symbols are visible, the third still being hidden beneath the uppermost document:

  ‘What is it, Albert? The numbers? You find them interesting?’

  Chew, chew.

  Doyle waits for him to finish, then asks again: ‘Is there something about these numbers?’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Albert. ‘Two is prime. Three is prime. Two plus three is five, which is prime. Twenty-three is prime.’

  Doyle nods. ‘Prime numbers again, huh? You really like those, don’t you?’

  Albert chomps down again. Gives his jaw some more intense exercise.

  Doyle stares at the drawings. Tries to see them as someone like Albert might see them. Is there something here? Some mathematical property that hasn’t jumped out at them? Some religious or mystical significance, perhaps? Hard to tell with just two digits.

  He waits for the audible swallowing signal, then holds up a finger. ‘Wait up, Albert. I know you’re hungry and all, but you mind taking a break for a second? I need to ask you something.’

  Albert sits there with the sandwich half-ra
ised to his lips, seemingly unsure as to what to do. Then he makes one of his sudden decisions and practically throws the sandwich back onto the table. His eyes flutter in a way that suggests he’s a little perturbed by this interruption to his eating.

  ‘It’s okay,’ says Doyle. ‘You’re not in trouble. I just want your help here.’

  He picks up the sheaf of papers, then takes off the top report and puts it to the back. He slides the whole lot across to Albert, who is already staring with puzzlement at the mirror again.

  Doyle taps the paperwork. ‘Albert. Look, here. The numbers.’

  Albert sneaks a sidelong glance down at the table. It’s so quick that Doyle wonders whether he has taken in the row of three symbols that is now clearly visible:

  ‘Albert. Did you see them? Did you see the numbers?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘Whaddya think?’

  ‘About what?’

  Jeez. This is like pulling teeth.

  ‘Okay. One step at a time. Two is prime, right? And three – also prime. What about the one? Is one a prime number?’

  A quick look of disdain. ‘No.’

  Doyle is starting to feel a little stupid. He feels he should know this stuff, but it went out of his head long before he became a policeman.

  ‘Remind me,’ he says. ‘What’s the definition of a prime number again?’

  ‘A prime number is any number that is divisible only by one and itself. You know, this doesn’t make a great changing room, even with the mirror. For one thing, there are no clothes hooks.’

  ‘No. You’re right. But about these primes. Doesn’t the number one fit the description you just gave me?’

  Another withering look. ‘Doesn’t count. If you counted one it would violate the fundamental theorem of arithmetic.’

  ‘Of course,’ says Doyle. ‘Right.’ He has no idea what the fundamental theorem of arithmetic is, but he doesn’t want to be made to feel any more dense by requesting an explanation. The number one isn’t prime, Doyle, you dumbass. Accept it and move on.