Alone with the Dead

by Robert J. Randisi

  "See here? That was my second one. They all thought the Lover was killing girls in Brooklyn, but that was me."

  Jesus, Keough thought, he's confessing.

  "And see here…"

  "Arnold."

  "… on this page? This was my third. She was pretty, Mama…"

  "Arnold!" Keough said louder.

  The boy stopped what he was doing. His shoulders hunched, and then he turned his head quickly to look at Keough. The detective could see what Mrs. Hall had meant about the boy's appearance. There was a great ridge of forehead overhanging two deep-set eyes, and his jaw was like an anvil. His cheekbones seemed swollen to the point of bursting through his skin.

  "Who are you? What do you want?" he demanded. Now his voice was deep, menacing, not the little boy's voice he'd been using to talk to his mother.

  "I just want to talk, Arnold."

  "I can't talk. I'm reading to Mother."

  "Arnold… your mother is dead."

  "Dead?" Arnold turned and looked at his mother, and then suddenly he skittered away from her, the album falling to the floor. It fell open and Keough could see one of the Lover headlines.

  Arnold Dexter stopped when his back banged into the wall, and he stared at his mother's body. He was wearing jeans and a torn T-shirt. His body was huge, brutish rather than muscle-bound.

  "Did you kill her, Arnold?"

  Arnold looked at Keough, then at his mother again, and then Keough. His menacing demeanor was gone, and once again he was a little boy.

  "Yes, I killed her."

  "Why?"

  "She… she came home without a man, and she… she wanted me to do things," he complained. "I didn't want to… to do those things no more. She used to make me do them all the time." He looked at Keough, his eyes pleading. "It's not right for a son to do that with his mother, is it?"

  "No, Arnold," Keough said, feeling sick to his stomach, "it isn't."

  "So… so I told her no and she… she slapped me."

  "And you killed her?"

  "No. First… first I wanted to show her what I did, so I… I told her about the girls."

  "The girls you killed here in Brooklyn?"

  "Yes," he said, nodding. "Yes. I told her, but she… she didn't believe me." He looked at Keough, hurt now. "She said I was crazy! She shouldn't have oughta said that."

  "No, Arnold, she shouldn't."

  "I wanted to show her my scrapbook, but she wouldn't look at it. First… first I just put in clipping of his murders."

  "The Lover."

  The boy nodded. "He was great… he was better than a… a baseball player. He was my idol."

  "So you started copying him."

  "You ever watch Krazy Kat?"

  "What?"

  Arnold looked at Keough, his mouth agape in a grin, revealing gaps and yellow teeth.

  "Krazy Kat? She used to get hit with a brick. You ever see it?"

  "Uh, yeah, I saw it years ago." Keough also remembered it as a comic strip.

  "They show reruns on TV. I like Krazy Kat, so I started my own part of the scrapbook. See?"

  He crawled across the floor and began to turn pages of the book. When he got to the page he wanted, he turned the book around to show Keough. He'd written on the black page with a white marker the word Kopykat.

  "That's me."

  "Kopykat," Keough said.

  "That's my part of the book. I took my clippings and put them in there." He turned the pages so Keough could see the clippings.

  "Arnold… when did you kill your mother?"

  The boy frowned and stuck out his lower lip.

  "I don't wanna talk about that."

  "Come on, Arnold. I need to know."

  Suddenly, a crafty look came into Arnold's eyes and he wasn't a little boy anymore.

  "Are you a policeman?"

  "Yes, I am."

  "The Lover gave up to the police," Arnold said, "but not me. I'm gonna be better than he was."

  "Arnold, when did you kill your mother?"

  "I killed her this morning!" he shouted suddenly, spraying spittle on his scrapbook. "She wouldn't listen, so I… I grabbed her by the neck and she… she broke."

  "What about the rose?"

  Arnold looked at his mother and then reached out and touched the rose. The petals were flush with the woman's vagina, the entire stem pushed up inside of her.

  "A rose for Mama," he said, stroking it. "The other girls got roses, so why not Mama?"

  Sure, Keough thought, why not?

  He looked around the room for a phone and saw it on a table by the window. Slowly, while Arnold was engrossed with his mother, he moved to it and picked up the receiver. He dialed 911 left-handed, holding the gun in his right hand, and took his eyes off Arnold only long enough to pick out the numbers on the old rotary phone.

  That was all Arnold needed.

  Suddenly, the huge body was hurtling toward Keough and Arnold was screaming something unintelligible. Keough turned, trying to bring the gun up, but Arnold hit him right in the midsection with a tackle that sent both of them through the window.

  Glass showered down on them as they fell to the porch outside. Keough managed to hang on to the gun, but there was no breath in his body. It was hard to think or move when you couldn't take a breath. It's like everything in your body stops until you can get another breath, only the breath won't come. In addition, he couldn't see that well, although he had no idea that a shard of glass had cut his forehead and blood was streaming into his eyes.

  Arnold got to his feet and looked down at Keough.

  "You wanna take me to jail. I can't go to jail. I'm better than him!"

  Keough struggled to say something, to move, but he was helpless as Arnold bent over and took hold of him. The boy's strength was immense and he lifted Keough over his head and threw him off the porch.

  Keough felt himself twirling through the air, and as he hit the ground, the gun was jarred from his grasp. It kept going as he hit the lawn and landed some twenty feet away from him.

  The odd thing was that landing on the lawn seemed to jar some air into his lungs, and suddenly he could breathe again. He took a shuddering breath and fought to get to his feet. He saw Arnold come down the steps from the porch and start across the lawn toward him.

  "Arn… Arn… Arn…" was all he could say, holding his arms out to try to keep the giant at bay.

  "I have to kill you, too," Arnold said to him. "You're a bad man. You came to fuck my mother, didn't you? And to arrest me?"

  "Arnold" Keough finally managed to squeeze the name out. "Don't…"

  "No," Arnold said, shaking his head, "I have to."

  Keough, who was only halfway to his feet, anyway, sank back onto the lawn in a seated position. As Arnold advanced on him, he put his hands down on either side of him and suddenly lashed out with both feet. One foot caught the boy on his huge left thigh, doing no damage, but the other caught his right knee. Arnold shouted in pain and reached down to grasp the knee.

  Keough started to skitter back on his butt, much the way Arnold had done inside the house. When he was out of reach, he turned and started looking for the gun. He was on his hands and knees, feeling around the unkempt lawn for the gun, when suddenly he was grabbed from behind and lifted into the air.

  Arnold was shouting something in Keough's ear, squeezing Keough around the midsection. Once again, the detective couldn't breathe.

  "You hurt me!" he heard the giant shout, but then he couldn't hear anymore. Arnold squeezed tighter and tighter and Keough thought he felt something pop, like a rib.

  Arnold was going to kill him and there was nothing he could do about it. He felt the way he had when Slovecky had been squeezing his neck. Everything started to go fuzzy around the edges, and there was a loud roaring in his ears… No, not a roaring, a ringing… more like a siren… lots of sirens.

  Suddenly, he was on the grass, gasping for breath, clutching at the pain that was lancing through his ribs.

  "Just ho
ld it right there!" he heard somebody shout.

  Abruptly, it became quiet, and for a moment he thought he had lost his hearing. He looked up and saw four uniformed police officers standing with their revolvers pointed. He turned his head and saw Arnold standing above him, staring at the officers.

  No, he thought, but the word wouldn't come out. He wanted Arnold alive; he wanted him to confess to the Brooklyn killings.

  "Go away!" he heard Arnold shout. "Go away or I'll kill all of you."

  "Just stay there, fella," an officer called. "Lie down on the grass with your hands behind your back."

  "… kill you all," Keough heard. His hearing seemed to be coming and going.

  In fact, he must have gone deaf there for a minute, because as the officers started to fire their guns, he couldn't even hear the shots.

  Suddenly, a great weight fell on him… as did total darkness…

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  The kite soared and dove at the whim of the winds. All Keough could do was work the string out so the kite would get high enough that there was no danger of it crashing back down. Flying it here by the highway assured the fliers that there would be no trees to snag either the kites or the strings.

  "Okay," he said to Cindy, "it's high enough now for you to hold it."

  "Oh good, give it to me," she said, slapping her hands together.

  "Please?" Nancy said firmly.

  "Please," Cindy said.

  She snatched the spool of string from Keough's hand and said, "Mommy, look, I'm fiyin' it."

  "Yes, you are, honey."

  Keough stood next to Nancy and watched Cindy happily hold the string. He was happy to do it. Even the light tugging of the kite made his broken rib hurt. He turned his head and looked at Nancy's profile. This was the first time he had ever taken anyone with him to fly a kite. He liked it.

  "Joe, are you all fight?"

  He looked at her and said, "I'm fine."

  He had the one cracked rib from having the killer fall on him, and he had a bandage over a scalp wound that had not required stitches.

  "It's all over, isn't it?" she asked.

  "It's over… in a way."

  "What's that mean?"

  "Well, both killers are caught, and Dolan will go down for Swann's murder."

  "Will he?"

  He nodded. "We've got a witness that puts him at the house that night."

  "Who?"

  "Slovecky. Apparently he was going to go to the house to talk to Swann, but when he got there, he saw Dolan leaving. Something told him not to go to the house then."

  "So he knew all along that Dolan killed Swann?"

  "Maybe," Keough said. "He won't admit that. That would mean he kept evidence to himself, and he's in enough trouble."

  It was funny, but Keough felt sorry for Dolan. The man had expected to do his job quietly at the task force and then, when they caught the killer, follow Slovecky up the ladder. Maybe the man hadn't even known how badly he wanted it until it looked like Swann was going to ruin it for everyone. He went to talk to Swann and accidently killed him. He wondered, If Dolan hadn't been coming out of the house when Slovecky got there, would the same thing have happened to Slovecky?

  And what about Swann? He was the one to feel sorry for. All he ever wanted to be was a real detective.

  "And the Lover and his, uh…" Nancy said.

  "Copycat," Keough said. "We found a scrapbook inside the house. Apparently, this kid idolized the Lover, tried to emulate him, and then got upset when the man gave himself up. After that, he was going to be better than his idol."

  "And you caught him because he was picking roses instead of buying them," she said, shaking her head.

  "That's the way a lot of police work gets done, Nancy," Keough said. "Accidents, coincidences, chance."

  "Will you get your job back?" she asked.

  "If I want it."

  "Why wouldn't you?"

  He smiled at her. "I just have to think it over."

  "Come on," she said, "tell me what happened."

  He told her then what was really bothering him, that the chief of detectives had called him and offered him his job back if he kept his mouth shut about the Brooklyn killer. LaGrange said that the boy-if he survived the four bullets that had been put in him-would go up for his mother's murder. All of the rose killings would continue to be attributed to the Lover.

  "And the department gets away clean," Keough said. "Nobody ever finds out how badly everybody fucked up."

  "Everybody except you," Nancy said.

  "That's what LaGrange said."

  "He was being nice to you?"

  "No," Keough said, "he was trying to buy me."

  "How?"

  "He called me Sergeant."

  "But you're not a sergeant."

  He smiled at her and said, "I know."

  "Oh," she said, understanding that the chief of detectives had been trying to bribe him.

  "What are you going to do?"

  "I like being a cop, Nancy, but I don't want the job under those conditions. I have one other option."

  "What's that?"

  "I can tell everything to Mike O'Donnell so he could put all of it into his book. When it's published, everybody will know the truth. Oh, the department would deny it all, but lots of people believe what they read-especially when it's in a book."

  "If you do that," she said, touching him lightly, "you won't ever be able to be a cop again."

  "Well," he said, smiling at her, "not here…"