Cry Baby

by David Jackson

  ‘How dubious, Bruce?’

  ‘Felony dubious, maybe.’

  ‘We can talk about that. See what wriggle room there is. Nothing is impossible. The important thing is to get this deal sorted out.’

  Lemmy can see the money slipping away, and it’s killing him. The cop is being evasive, trying to make light of what is a serious issue here, namely Lemmy’s freedom. The cops don’t want him thinking about that. They want him to remain focused on the money, to picture himself surrounded by piles of lovely green dough. And he wishes he could do that, but it’s all blowing away. It’s all disappearing.

  The bitch was right.

  He knows that even more when he hears the siren.

  This city, sirens are not a surprising sound. But this one, this particular one, Lemmy knows is not good. It’s one of those whoop-whoop get the fuck out of my way type sirens, coming from around a corner of the next block. And when the police cruiser finally rounds the corner, it makes no more noise. It does this because its occupants are hoping to sneak up on Lemmy. He knows this. He sees how the stupid cops try to hop their car around the traffic without attracting his attention, and he knows it’s intended for him.

  ‘You cocksucker!’ he yells into the receiver. ‘Fuck your deal!’

  ‘Bruce…’

  But Lemmy has stopped listening. He is already sprinting down the street, heading for home, running hell-for-leather away from those dirty bastard cops, and wishing he were more like Bruce Willis. He dodges traffic, he dodges people, and he is almost crying over the money he never had but which he feels has just been taken away from him. The money he was allowed to sniff but not touch. It was cruel, so cruel.

  He stops running only when he gets to his apartment building, and as he pauses to catch his breath in the lobby he tries to decide what he should do next. He tries convincing himself that all is not lost. He still has the bitch, and the cops still want her. There has to be a way of making a sale here.

  But his doubts increase with each step he takes up the staircase. He didn’t trust the cops before, and he trusts them even less now. They kept him on the phone. Kept him talking while they tracked him down with their fancy-dancy equipment. And then they sent the dogs after him. They had no intention of making any deals. The bitch was right. The cops want her and him.

  So what to do? Jesus Christ, I got a crazy-ass killer tied to my bed. Can you believe that? Not an everyday turn of events. Hey guys, I got a hot chick in my bedroom. Want a piece of her? Yeah, well, you’ll need to bring protection. No, not that – I’m talking about something that will stop your head being caved in.

  He can’t release her.

  He’s already decided that. If the cops get her, which they will eventually, then she’ll blab about him. Why wouldn’t she? And if she kills more people before they catch her, won’t that make him some kind of accessory to murder? Even if she doesn’t kill anyone else – even if he dumps her someplace and calls the cops – she will still blab and the cops will still throw him back into prison.

  He’s not going back there. Uh-uh.

  So what does that leave?

  Not a lot. Not a lot of options, my friend.

  Christ, what a mess. What a fucking weird mess.

  I’ll have to waste her.

  I got no choice. She’s a liability now. A fucking seagull around my neck. No, not a seagull. That other big fucking sea bird. Whatever. She needs to go. She needs to be out of my life before she fucks it up even more than it is already.

  Shit.

  So in he goes. Into his apartment. His mind occupied with the logistics of how he’s going to do this. How he’s going to kill her and dump her and restore order to a situation that he never should have gotten into in the first place. In he goes and turns his eyes directly on the bed where Erin the psycho-killer mad crazy fucked-up bitch is lying and waiting and hoping that he hasn’t brought bad news.

  Except she isn’t.

  On the bed.

  Where she is, God help me, is to one side of the door. Holding a hammer. Swinging a hammer. Bringing that hammer in a wide arc so that she can drive it into the side of my skull. That’s where she is.

  Oh, crap.

  This never woulda happened to Bruce Willis.

  8.28 PM

  The break the cops get comes far too late for Lemmy.

  It comes in the form of fingerprints found in one of the first floor apartments of the abandoned tenement building. The prints are on a beer bottle next to some recently used drug paraphernalia on the dusty floor. The Latent Print Development Unit identifies them as belonging to one Lemmy Bilinski, currently out on parole having served time in Rikers for burglary, and now residing on East Sixth Street, practically a stone’s throw from the derelict tenement.

  So the cops hurry on over there en masse, and they enter Lemmy’s apartment without even the courtesy of a knock, the manners of some people, and what do they find there? The lifeless corpse of Lemmy Bilinski himself, one side of his head caved in and a nice big numeral sliced into his forehead:

  ‘Shit!’ cries Doyle as he slams his hand against a wall. ‘Too fucking late again. Why are we always one fucking step behind?’

  He’s tired. Really, really tired. Each killing has drained a little more out of him, and he can see no end to this carnage. He has nothing to go on. There is no logic here, no apparent pattern. Well, except for the numbers.

  Those damned numbers!

  Five victims, numbered one to five, but not in precise sequence. Why not in sequence? What the hell does it mean?

  It’s counting. It has to be counting. But who the hell counts like that? Everybody else on the planet counts one, two, three, four, five. Nobody takes the one and puts it after the three, keeping everything else the same. Why would you do that?

  He looks to LeBlanc for help. ‘Do you get this? Do you understand what the hell is going on here?’

  But LeBlanc shakes his head. ‘I’m just a simple country boy. This is far too complicated for me.’

  Doyle stares down at the body. Is it complicated? Or are we just making it complicated? Could it be a lot simpler than it appears?

  If only they had managed to grab Lemmy at the payphone. Or at least get close enough to make a positive ID. Shit!

  Doyle worries that he mishandled the phone conversation. Maybe he should have given in to Lemmy a bit more, in which case Lemmy might have given them something more in return. Maybe then Lemmy would still be alive and the killer would be in their custody.

  Jeez, I am so tired.

  8.45 PM

  ‘No more,’ she says. ‘I’m done.’

  ‘Come on, Erin. You can’t give up now. Look at how close you are. Five down, and only one more to go. One more. You can do this.’

  ‘No, I can’t.’

  ‘You can. You’ve proved how resourceful you are. Think about what you just did. You were tied up, with no hope of escape, and yet you did it. You did escape. That’s the kind of person you are, Erin. You’re stronger than any other woman I’ve ever met.’

  She doesn’t feel strong. She feels wasted. She feels like a crumpled-up dishrag, all limp and worthless. What happened back there wasn’t down to her strength; it was luck, that’s all. Sheer good fortune.

  She remembers the desperate, furious way in which she fought against those bindings. Pulling and twisting and bucking, without any real thought for what she was doing. Just hoping that something would give way, something would break and release her. She recalls the burning of her skin against the cord, the squeaking complaints of the lumpy mattress, the rattling of the cheap metal bedrails.

  Ah yes, the rattling.

  Even now she’s not sure what led her to focus on the rattling. She remembers raising her eyes, bending her neck back as much as she could so she could watch the bedstead as she pulled on it. Rattle, rattle, rattle. And, running along the top of the vertical posts, a single black horizontal rail, fixed to the others by a brass knob.

  And the brass kn
ob was jiggling.

  It was loose.

  All that time fighting with the cords, and it was the bed that was the weakest link.

  It was quite a stretch getting her hand to the top of the rail. She didn’t think she was going to make it. It felt as though her arm was coming out of its socket as she slid it as far as she could up the post. And then more stretching – her fingers crawling slowly over the metal as she sought the brass knob. Then an agonizingly long period of time as she unscrewed the seemingly endless thread, her body crying out for mercy until, eventually, the knob came away with a jolt and the whole bedstead practically fell apart, freeing her hand and allowing her to undo the other knots holding her there. She managed it just in time, barely seconds before Bruce put his key in the door. Just time to grab the hammer from her purse and make it across the room so that she could stove that creep’s head in. And after that? Business as usual, only this time with Bruce’s own knife, from his own vomit-inducing kitchen.

  She did nothing clever there, nothing courageous or strong. She got lucky. Throughout all of this she has come several times within a whisker of being caught or hurt or killed, and all that has saved her has been luck. But luck doesn’t last forever.

  ‘You were supposed to help me,’ she says. ‘You told me you would look after me.’

  ‘You’re here, aren’t you? Back in your own apartment. Safe and sound.’

  ‘No thanks to you. Why did you do that, in Bruce’s apartment? Why did you make me attack him at that moment, when he was ready for me?’

  ‘It was a test.’

  ‘A test? What kind of test?’

  ‘A test of him, to see what he was capable of, and a test of you, to see how much you trusted me.’

  ‘Right. I see. Never mind that he could have killed me. Well, you know what? It’s backfired, mister. Because now I don’t trust you an inch. I don’t trust you to keep me safe, I don’t trust you to look after my baby, and I don’t trust you to give Georgia back to me when this is all over. How about that? Is that what you wanted?’

  ‘You’re making something out of nothing, Erin. You’re alive, aren’t you? You’re free from that crazy junkie.’

  ‘I was nearly killed. And you found it hilarious. You thought it was the funniest thing ever.’

  ‘Well, you should have seen it from here. It was pretty funny. You running at Bruce. Bruce not knowing whether to empty his gun or fill his pants. It was like something from a comedy show.’

  ‘Yeah? I’m glad it amused you. I’m so happy you’ve had your fun. Make the most of it, because there’s no more. Show’s over, asshole.’

  ‘Don’t be such a killjoy, Erin. It wasn’t so terrible.’

  She doesn’t answer him. She wants to let him know how badly he’s misjudged things. Not that he will necessarily make that inference. He doesn’t think like other people do. His mind runs on different tracks.

  And that’s why she has given up trying to second-guess him. He is too erratic, too unpredictable. His responses are just downright weird.

  It was dangerous out there tonight. Life-threateningly dangerous. She has never looked down the barrel of a gun before, and hopes she never has to again. But that fear pales into insignificance in comparison to what she now knows to be true.

  She is not getting Georgia back.

  This man’s promises mean jack. His assurances mean jack. He is using her, and using her child, to get his kicks. After that… well, after that, it’s the end.

  Earlier, in Bruce’s apartment, she had puzzled over why her tormentor should jeopardize his plan by getting her killed before she had accomplished her mission. Now she understands.

  There is no mission.

  At least not in the precise sense of killing six people before midnight. That was a crock of shit. Six was just a number. He could have chosen five or seven, or fifty. Similarly, midnight was just a time. He chose those parameters because he thought they were the most he could get away with. He viewed those as the upper limit of his victim’s acceptability threshold. Too many bodies stretched over too long a period would just be seen as impossible, and his plan would come to naught.

  All he wants is to be entertained.

  Sex doesn’t do it for this guy. He’s not interested in her body. What he wants is to live vicariously through a killer – seeing, hearing and experiencing what it’s like to murder without actually having to do it himself.

  And he wants to do that for as long as he can.

  The only reason he told her to attack Bruce was that he got bored. It wasn’t a test, as he claims. Because she had been caught, the pace of the game was flagging, and so he needed to spice it up a touch.

  And that’s why she knows that when this is over, when she has killed her sixth victim, he will lose interest. The game will be at an end. He will dispose of Georgia because she is no longer useful to him, he will abandon Erin to whatever fate awaits her, and he will move on – probably to another unsuspecting victim in another perverted game.

  But what if she doesn’t go after her sixth victim? Well, then the outcome remains the same, doesn’t it?

  You’re damned if you do, Erin, and damned if you don’t.

  So you might as well go down fighting. You might as well cheat this man of his prize. And there’s only one way you can do that.

  The movement is quick, before he can say anything that might stop her. In one swift motion she snatches out her earpiece.

  She holds it up in front of the camera still attached to her jacket.

  ‘I know you can see this,’ she says. ‘I know that you’re probably making all kinds of threats now. But I can’t hear you. More to the point, I can’t hear Georgia either. I know you’re going to hurt her, but I believe you’ve always been planning to do that anyway. It’s just a question of when. So you might as well do it now. Go ahead, kill her. I can’t stop you. I never could stop you. But what you need to know is this. I win. I win the game. You asked for six victims, but you’re not getting them. I refuse. And that means I win. You’re a loser. You will always be a loser.

  ‘You might be wondering how I can possibly do such a thing, how I could willingly give you the excuse to hurt or kill my baby. The answer is, you did that for me. While you were enjoying living through me, I was changing. I was becoming what you don’t have the balls to be: a cold-hearted serial killer. Bruce saw that in me before I realized it myself. He saw how wrapped up I was in the killing of that junkie friend of his. I was shocked when he told me. I didn’t believe it. But now I know he was right. Nobody can do what I’ve done without being changed in some way, without becoming desensitized to the act of murder.

  ‘You kept going on about the lesson I would learn from all this. I think you were talking through your ass. You had no idea what would happen to me, and you didn’t care. But the ironic thing is that I have become stronger. Nothing matters to me anymore. You can’t hurt me. So I have only one thing left to say to you.

  ‘Goodbye.’

  9.38 PM

  ‘What do you mean, it’s not my case anymore?’

  Doyle does his best to sound affronted, but he was expecting this. This thing has grown too big, become too high-profile. Somebody has murdered five people in a single day, and there’s no sign of the rampage coming to an end. Unable to contain the pressure any longer, the police top brass have finally gone public and confirmed what news reporters were already suggesting, namely that a spate of unexplained homicides on the East Side are linked – are in fact suspected to be the work of a single killer. Members of the public have been advised to exercise extreme caution and to be vigilant until such time as the perpetrator has been apprehended. Other than that, have a nice day.

  Doyle would not normally be back in the squadroom so soon after attending a homicide scene. He would be canvassing. He would be talking to witnesses. He would be chasing up friends and relatives. But he has been dragged back here, along with LeBlanc. Ordered to return to base, leaving others to work the case. He know
s what’s coming.

  ‘It’s the Task Force’s baby now,’ says Cesario. ‘No offense, Cal, but there’s no way they could leave a precinct detective running the show. Doesn’t matter how good that individual cop is, the people will expect to see a proportionate response. Besides, you’re ready to drop to the floor. Both of you.’

  Doyle looks across at LeBlanc. He sees that there is no resistance there, no inclination to fight the good fight any longer.

  He turns back to Cesario. ‘So what are you saying?’ An unnecessary question, he knows, but his brain can deal only with plain speaking right now.

  Cesario sighs. He sounds tired too, and he’s been awake for only half the time that Doyle has.

  ‘I’m saying go home. Get some rest. You’re no good to me as you are. With any luck we’ll catch this lunatic before the night’s out. If not, come back in the morning and help out. It might not be your case, but you can still work it.’

  Doyle nods. He feels he should be arguing against this, but his mind and body won’t let him. They’re saying, We want sleep, damn it!

  Besides, a small part of him is glad to be shut of this case. Let somebody else feel the frustration of not catching this perp. This one’s impossible. There’s no logic, no sense, no—

  Yeah, haven’t we done this already? Don’t I keep telling myself how there’s no pattern here, that there’s nothing concrete to hang my hat on? Not that I would hang my hat on something made out of concrete. And not that I ever wear a hat either, but anyway…

  See, that’s what I mean. That’s how fucking tired I am. I’m rambling. I’m delirious. I need to get away from the job for a few hours. Away from the fruitcakes and craziness and the horror.

  So, okay, Lou. You win. I’m going home. Call me when it’s over and the world is back to normal.

  Doyle forces himself to stand, even though he could quite happily go to sleep in this hard, uncomfortable chair. He beckons to LeBlanc, who follows him to the door.