(2011) The Gift of Death

by Sam Ripley

  ‘You don’t the first thing about it. And if that story you fed me about your mother never loving you was true, which I sincerely doubt, I reckon she was right.’ She was trembling now, consumed by anger. She could feel her face burning. ‘Who could ever love someone as despicable as you? I hope you rot in hell.’

  She cut the line, feeling purged of her anger, elated almost, but then she felt immediately ashamed. Her last comments were too harsh. Yes, she hated Ross for what she had done, but she didn’t wish that on her. She almost felt like calling her back to apologise, but she realised that that would be just too ridiculous.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, as Josh got out of the car and walked towards her.

  ‘What’s to be sorry for?’ he said. ‘Look at you – you’re trembling. Let’s go inside.’ He banged on the side of the car. ‘Peterson, I’ll be back in a few minutes.’ He put his arm around Kate.

  ‘You don’t think I was too hard on her?’

  ‘Christ, no. I reckon hell is just the place for her.’

  23

  He took hold of the scissors and held them up to his face. Such beautiful things. He’d always thought so, ever since he was a child. He remembered his mother holding a pair of scissors up to the light as she sat at her sewing table. There was a roll of blue gingham spread out before her. And then she started to cut the fabric in neat, perfect lines. He adored watching her work, but finally it had been time for him to go to bed. ‘Do I have to, mom?’ he had asked. In the morning he had been amazed to find a new pair of curtains, all finished and ready, hanging above the yard door. Creation was such a wonderful thing, he thought. But destruction had its appeal, too.

  The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. It could almost stand as his motto.

  He turned the page of the newspaper and ran the tip of the scissors over and around the story. She had such beautiful skin, a sure sign of clean living. He was sure her baby would inherit her goodness too. He traced the scissors around her face before beginning to cut the paper. The sound was satisfying somehow. It was something so definite and complete.

  He didn’t make a habit of cutting items from newspapers. He didn’t want to create a mess. And he loathed most of what was supposed to constitute news these days. Yet he had a rule. The stories either had to provide him with a lead – which he might or might not act upon, depending on the circumstances – or they had to have a direct bearing on something he was working on. For instance, he had cut out the two or three paragraph reports about the deaths of Raymond Cutler and Philip Vine. Nobody had made a link between them yet. And he guessed they hadn’t received a huge amount of coverage because, in some respect, the general public assumed the men had deserved their deaths. And they would have been right.

  A fucking internet pervert and a drop-out drug-dealer. They were scum. The world was a better place without them. The same with that wife-beating shit, Garrison. Good riddance to bad rubbish, his mother had always said. Now she was in a better place.

  He looked at the cutting in his hand. At her photograph again. He delicately tacked the paper onto the corkboard above his desk. She had something of his mother about her. Perhaps it was the silver hair – almost like a halo.

  24

  Dale Hoban was beat. It was eight in the morning and he needed a drink. A strong one. Ten hours sitting behind the desk watching a bank of monitors, fed from a constant live stream of security cameras, had left him brain dead. A walking zombie. As he got out of his car and walked towards his apartment block in Korea Town, he spotted an LAPD vehicle drive by. At the time he’d thought being a traffic cop was dull – gee, it was nothing compared to work as a security guard at a downtown finance company. Hours staring at nothing but brick walls, locked doors and empty rooms. Sometimes, as he sat there at his desk, his ass aching from doing nothing, he willed for something exciting to happen – the appearance of a suspicious-looking character walking into reception, the return of a former employee hell-bent on revenge by introducing a virus into the computer system, even an illicit coupling in a store cupboard. Jeez, that would be something to spy on.

  He’d thought about trying for another job. Reckoned he could turn his hand to a bit of light detective work – spying on cheating wives, tracking missing people, investigating the odd case of financial impropriety. But every time he thought about it seriously he pushed it to the back of his mind, and filed it away under things he might do at a later stage in life. The time wasn’t right, he would tell himself, as he reached for another drink.

  A drink. Yep, that would make him feel better. He’d have a couple of half glasses of scotch and then he’d try and sleep. He usually managed three or four hours before he’d have to get up for some lunch of a burger and another shot or two of liquor. He’d spend the afternoons watching TV – football, basketball, soccer, the news, the weather channel. Sometimes when he was flicking between stations he’d catch a glimpse of women who reminded him of Anne – middle-aged blonde, fuller-figured women being interviewed on Oprah or Geraldo or one of those other shows that Anne used to like. He’d hit the remote pretty fast. Anne belonged to a life that didn’t exist any more.

  He took out the key to the apartment block, but when he went to insert it into the lock the door swung open. He stepped inside the windowless hallway, dark even though it was morning. A whiff of ammonia stung his nostrils. Those fucking kids from the family on welfare had been pissing in the hall again. He swore under his breath. He’d have to go down and have a word with their mother. He suspected she was a user. If this carried on he’d have to call the welfare officer and inform on her. He was too old to have to put up with the smell of piss when ever he came in from a night shift.

  Today, though, he was too tired to do anything about it. Today he was going to have a couple of drinks and then hit the sack.

  He pressed the call button on the elevator before he noticed the piece of paper tacked to the wall saying it was out of order. He hauled himself up the stairs, puffing as he did so. One of these days, he told himself, he’d quit smoking and try and to get fit. Some day soon, but not yet. After stopping once or twice, by the time he had reached the third floor he was sweating and finding it hard to catch his breath. He let himself into his apartment, grateful to close the door on the world outside.

  He went into the small kitchen and started to prepare himself a toasted bagel with peanut butter and jelly. As he waited for the bread to toast – he liked it to be really well done, almost burnt on the outside – he got out a glass. He filled it with ice and then poured himself a large measure of scotch. The anticipation of his first drink of the day always gave him pleasure. And today was no different. As he brought the glass up to his mouth he could almost feel the saliva flowing. He smacked his lips as the peatiness of the scotch burnt into his mouth. He took down a gulp, then another, before setting it aside to butter his bagel. He took his drink and his snack into the lounge and hit the remote. He let the images and words float over him until he had finished his drink.

  He took his glass into the kitchen and poured himself his second drink. He’d only have another one, maybe two. He didn’t have a problem, he told himself, despite what Anne and those meddlesome doctors had told him. What was it she had said? That she was having to share her husband with someone else. That he was having an affair with alcohol. Some crap like that. Jesus. He blamed it on all those moronic daytime shows she watched. The ones were people talked about their feelings – their emotions, for God’s sake – and seemed to analyse everything over and over again. In his job as a cop he hadn’t had the luxury to deal with that kind of bullshit. What a waste of fucking time.

  He watched some more news – the usual trouble in the Middle East, the growing terrorist problem in Britain, a school massacre somewhere in the mid-West – before he felt his eyes closing. Nothing seemed to change from day to day. He finished his drink and stumbled to the bathroom. He took a piss, thought about cleaning his teeth, decided against it – he’d do that before going to
work. He passed the bathroom mirror without looking – he knew he wasn’t a pretty sight at this time in the morning – and started to unbutton his shirt. By the time he reached the dark, airless bedroom the shirt was off.

  He bent down to take off his shoes, and had to steady himself by the bed. He looked down at his distended stomach that hung over his pants like a slab of tripe. Had he really put on so much weight or was there something wrong with him? He’d have it checked out at some point.

  He sat down on the bed to take off his socks. He undid his belt, felt his stomach sag even more and shifted position as he started to take off his pants. He reached out behind him to support himself, lifting himself off the bed as he pulled the pants down. Suddenly, he felt something cold, jellylike, on one of the pillows. He turned his head to look, but the blinds were down. He moved a little closer, blinked. He thought it was – but, no, it couldn’t be. It’s some kid playing some kind of joke. He stretched out his hand and turned on the bedside lamp. Tobacco yellow light illuminated the bed. On the pillow there were two eyes – brown in colour just like his. They were staring sightlessly up at him from a darkening pool of blood.

  25

  He’d been watching him for some time now, following his trail. After the first couple of incidents – the snatching and killing of that baby, the murder of that girl and the sick way he had cut off her fingertips and then sent them to that blind woman – he had become so angry that he wanted to finish him off just like the others. He planned how to do it too, even went so far as to get his tool bag out and look through it for the appropriate equipment. Seeing his array of instruments set out before him – a couple of scalpels, the knives, a few different sizes of hammers, a family of saws and a drill with assorted bits – gave him a thrill. He ran his hands up and down the cold metal, imagining the damage he could do with each of the tools.

  But something wasn’t right. Finishing him off like this – ending his life so he couldn’t commit any more of his sick jokes – would be just too easy. Sure, he could chop off his fingers, make him suffer like that girl dumped in the dunes in Baja. He could cut out his tongue so that he would never be able to speak again, turning his cries of pain into unintelligible, muffled moans. But the equation – the subtle balance between crime and punishment - was slightly skewed somehow.

  Of course, the other option was to turn him in. Ring up the cops from a phone box and tell them that he knew who was behind the series of attacks. Yes, the ultimate end would be achieved – the removal and imprisonment of a dangerous individual – but something wasn’t quite right with the plan. The psycho would be caught and locked up for the rest of his mortal life, but would he suffer? Hell, no. He’d get to enjoy the comforts of prison life like the rest of those lazy scumbags. And what would he personally get out of it? Nothing but the satisfaction that the sicko was off the streets.

  So what to do? What would be the most appropriate way of getting rid of him?

  He thought back to what that psycho had done, how he had toyed with his victims. The dead baby thrown into the sea outside the home of a woman whose wish it was to get pregnant. The fingertips sent to a blind woman whose greatest asset was her sense of touch. The tongue placed in the icebox of a lawyer, famous for his verbal brilliance. And now a pair of eyes left in the bedroom of a former cop who had first spotted Gleason.

  The schizo was playing a game, that was for sure. But there was no reason why he couldn’t join in. He was, at heart, a serious person, but this could be an opportunity for him to show his lighter side. Yes, it was time for him to have some fun.

  26

  ‘No way,’ said Kate, her voice rising. ‘It’s completely out of the question.’

  ‘But why not?’ said Cassie. ‘It’s the kind of thing you would do.’

  ‘Do you really need me to spell it out to you? Look, Cassie. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but it would be way too dangerous.’

  ‘But I could be of real help to you. You know that.’

  ‘I’m sure you could. But what you have in mind is just plain foolhardy. It’s crazy. The idea of you putting yourself at that kind of risk just freaks me out. Imagine if something happened to you. And besides, it wouldn’t be professional of me to let you do it.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t be acting as a professional. You’d be doing this, this – whatever it may be – from the point of view of a private individual. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, yes, but –‘

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Look, I can’t talk about it now. The traffic is starting to move. But there’s no discussion about this Cassie. It’s not going to happen – period.’

  Kate heard nothing but crackle down the line.

  ‘Cassie?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I’ll see you back at the house. And promise me you’re not going to do anything stupid.’

  There was an uncomfortable silence on the line. ‘Promise me?’

  ‘Okay, mom,’ said Cassie, adopting the tones of an aggrieved adolescent. ‘I promise.’

  ‘That’s my girl.’

  Kate cut the connection as she pressed her foot down on the accelerator. As she drove along Santa Monica Boulevard she thought about Cassie’s crazy plan. She had wanted to stage some kind of entrapment, in which she returned to her Venice Beach apartment, alone, in order to lure whoever it was – this sick fucker – to her. The cops could be stationed outside and, as soon as he entered her apartment, the police could be sent in. Of course, the plan was to capture him, but even if he escaped they would be one step nearer. The secret lay in Cassie’s hands, her fingertips. All she needed, she said, was a chance to feel his face. Then she could work with Kate to form an image of him, just as they had done with Gleason.

  Kate didn’t doubt Cassie’s conviction, or her expertise at face-reading. And she was sure that the resulting clay sculpture would prove immensely helpful – if not central - to the investigation. What if they had an armed officer secreted inside the apartment? But even that wasn’t a guarantee of Cassie’s safety. Given the sadistic nature of the killer’s personality – the dead baby, the sliced fingertips, the ripped-out tongue – he would have no qualms about snuffing out her life. Actually, Kate knew he could do a whole lot worse things to her than simply killing her. A quick and easy death wasn’t his style.

  She tried to think about what she should do next. In the trunk of her car she had all the information she had amassed on the Gleason case. In addition to the sculpture, she had her notes, newspaper clippings and case files detailing the crimes. She had a transcript of the court proceedings and Gleason’s psychiatric report. She hoped that somewhere in the boxes she would find a clue to what was happening.

  As the flow of traffic slowed she dialled Josh’s number. She got his voicemail and left a short message asking him to call her cell. She felt a sting of regret somewhere near her heart. It would have been better if she had never met him, she told herself. Almost as soon as she had formulated the thought she knew it wasn’t true. No matter how hard she tried to convince herself otherwise Josh had been the best thing that had happened to her in a long time. If only they had been able to make it work. If only Jules hadn’t come into his life. If only she had been less neurotic about getting pregnant. If only she had paid more attention to him and had been less obsessed about the mechanics of fertility perhaps they might have been able to enjoy a future together.

  She tried to imagine what life would be like as a single mom. Hard, for sure. But she was certain she could do it. It wasn’t as if she had to worry about money like so many single parents. And she had a great network of friends whom she could draw upon to help. She ran through a list of people she had been too busy to call, promising herself to arrange dates with all of them once this was all over. She had been so preoccupied that she hadn’t had the chance to tell them of her pregnancy.

  She had tried to prepare herself for the fact she might lose the baby. After all, she knew it was quite common in women her ag
e. But she wanted this baby more than anything in the world. She was going to fight for it.

  Just then her phone rang. Josh’s name flashed on her cell.

  ‘Hi, Kate. Are you okay?’

  ‘Yeah, sure. I wanted to ask whether I could drop by.’

  ‘You mean later at the loft?’ His voice sounded bright, expectant.