You Kill Me

by Alison Gaylin

  “I drew a taxi, Mommy!”

  “That’s nice, honey.”

  As she signed the construction paper for Boyle, I went to Ezra’s cubbyhole and grabbed the stack of drawings I’d put inside—colorful sketches of street signs, trees, a bright yellow taxicab with black squares racing up the side.

  “Thanks, Ms. Sargent,” said Boyle. “Listen, I’ve got to know something. Why did Blythe try to kill her own brother?”

  She delivered her answer directly to me, reading my face like a teleprompter. “He isn’t really my brother.”

  “I knew it! Blythe’s father, Marco, stole Lucas when he was a baby, right? Right?”

  I held out the stack of artwork, and she took it. “We’re in love,” she said. “We’re going to get married.”

  “That’s terrific.”

  Boyle said, “No, it isn’t; it’s disgusting. You were raised as brother and sister.”

  Finally, Jenna looked at the drawings. I watched her face soften into a smile as she looked at the yellow taxicab.

  “I’d say he deserves an IMAX movie and an ice-cream cone, wouldn’t you?” I said.

  “Yay!”

  “Just one scoop, honey.” Just as she was about to leave, Jenna shot another glance at my trash can. Then she eyed me up and down, like something she’d ordered out of a catalog and was considering sending back. “I thought you’d be taller,” she said.

  After Jenna Sargent left, Patton stood staring at the door she’d closed behind her. “What a bitch.”

  “What do you want?” said Boyle. “She’s an actress and a Leo. Her kid’s lucky she remembers his name.”

  Boyle pocketed Jenna’s signature, then walked over to the window and opened the blinds. “That’s the place, right? Next to the Gap?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, interestingly enough,” said Patton, “nobody lives there.”

  I looked at her.

  “That’s not completely accurate,” Boyle said. “There is a resident. An old guy by the name of Arnold—not sure whether that’s his first or last name. But he’s been in the hospital for the past month hooked up to machines.”

  “The super wasn’t aware of anyone watching the place for him,” Patton said. “You sure you saw binoculars? I can’t imagine anybody wanting to be in that dust trap for more than a minute.”

  “The super took you inside?”

  “Yes, unfortunately.”

  “Did you get his name and number?”

  “Her,” said Boyle. He handed me an orange Post-it, the name Katia Stavros written in the careful, angular script of an older woman. There was a phone number underneath. “Can I have this?” I asked.

  “Sure.”

  I put it in my desk.

  Maybe it was a onetime thing with the binoculars. A squatter who liked breathing dust and looking very closely at a preschool classroom’s venetian blinds. I remembered the feeling I’d had yesterday, standing at the pay phone.

  “He’s watching you. Always.”

  Okay. A two-time thing. Three, tops.

  “I don’t know if Krull told you guys,” I said, “but this weird guy in Starbucks—”

  “The bomb scare?” said Boyle.

  Patton shook her head. “Pierce is such a freak.”

  “I called the guy.”

  “Why?” Boyle asked.

  “He gave me another note,” I said. “It’s on the desk.”

  As Boyle picked up the note and started to unfold it, I told Patton, “On the phone he said, ‘He’s watching you. Always.’”

  “Really?”

  “He’s probably full of shit, this guy. And I feel bad to be wasting your time with it. I know you’ve had a busy day, with the press conference and—”

  “What press conference?” said Patton.

  I swallowed hard. “John…told me that…”

  “John should have a press conference so we can find out where the fuck he is. He was questioning Marla’s fiancé, but he should have come back, like, hours ago.”

  “I’m sorry; I hate to interrupt,” Boyle said. “But did I hear you say you called him after getting this note?”

  “Yeah…”

  “Because there’s no phone number on this.”

  “Yes, there is, on the bottom, and what do you mean there was no press conf—”

  “I’m sorry, Sam,” Boyle said slowly, “but I’d like you to take a look at this note, please.”

  Boyle gave me the piece of paper. Patton might have said something as I read it, but I couldn’t hear her—not with the blood pounding in my ears.

  He was right. There was no phone number on this note. Just two sentences, written in a shakier hand than the others.

  HE KILLED MARLA S. DON’T GET HIM ANGRY AGAIN.

  6

  Marlamania

  Whoever this guy was, he had ample time to put the new note in my bag, because I hardly ever looked inside this black canvas junk receptacle. “Sam’s bag,” Yale had once announced in his horror-movie voice after spending twenty minutes looking for a breath mint. “Items go in…but they never come out.”

  The fact that I’d found the Marla S. note amid all the debris I carted around was something of a miracle. I remembered what the man had said when I called him: “You found my note.” Not read. Found.

  But when had he planted it? After I talked it over with Boyle and Patton, I decided the most likely scenario was that he’d followed me to the Gap the previous day and seized the opportunity when I left my purse in the dressing room.

  Had he been watching as I called my mother from the pay phone outside? Had he been waiting for me to search for a quarter in the depths of my bag? Had he been angry—angry as Marla’s murderer—when I’d used my memorized card number instead? You found my note.

  “Do you…Do you guys really think someone killed Marla because I made him angry?” I asked Krull’s partners.

  Patton looked straight into my eyes, and I had to brace myself for her answer. The detective was not someone who could look at you and lie—not even about a surprise party, or her opinion of your terrible new haircut. “Marla Soble was murdered because she upset a lunatic,” she said. “Not because you did.”

  I exhaled heavily.

  Boyle said, “She’s not just trying to make you feel better. She means it.”

  “I know,” I said. “Thank you…for meaning it.”

  “I do want to question the asshole who gave you that note,” said Boyle over lunch—which turned out to be chili dogs from a stand on the northwest corner of Washington Square Park. “I want to teach him a lesson about fucking up investigations.”

  Patton nodded. “That note is just like the billions of false leads we’ve been getting. You have a high-profile case like this and freaks just pop out of the woodwork. Either they confess to the crime themselves, or they turn in their exboyfriend or their landlord or their fuckin’ cat. Only difference with this guy is, he contacted you rather than us.”

  “You think he’s one of those Marlamaniacs, who happens to remember Sam’s case, too?” Boyle said.

  “No way. He was interested in Sam first. Remember she got the ‘danger’ note before Marla was even identified. He’s stalking Sam, trying to scare her into needing him.”

  “That’s exactly what Yale said.”

  She turned to me. “Soon as we determine his identity, you’ll file a restraining order.” It was more of a command than a suggestion.

  “What’s a Marlamaniac?” I asked.

  “That’s what we’re calling her fans,” Patton said. “There’s this whole convention of them parked outside her building. You should see it. I swear, it’s like a zombie movie out there.”

  I looked at her. “Why would somebody…”

  “She’s pretty and she’s dead, I guess. That’s all some people need to build a day’s activity around.”

  “Some of ’em asked me for my autograph,” Boyle said. “Can you imagine?”

  “They mighta just thoug
ht you were Nick Nolte.” Patton winked. “Art’s wife thinks he looks like Nick Nolte.”

  I finished my chili dog and threw my napkin into a nearby trash can.

  It felt strange having a conversation like this just twenty or thirty feet away from the crime scene. I’d avoided the area on my way to Sunny Side, but now I couldn’t stop looking at the stretch of yellow police tape bordering the easternmost part of the park’s giant, shallow fountain, which had since been drained. It was guarded by three uniformed cops—I could see the backs of their heads from where we were standing—but it seemed almost a waste of manpower, considering how many officers strolled through the park on a regular basis.

  All those cops walking around a concrete square with practically no trees and a big French arch at one end, dozens and dozens of tourists and NYU students…Weird place to dispose of a corpse.

  “Body was wrapped in garbage bags and packed against the inner side of the fountain with gaffer’s tape,” said Boyle, who must’ve seen me staring. “No one noticed until her legs came undone and kind of…floated out a little.”

  “That’s a lot of effort.”

  “In the pouring rain, no less,” said Patton. “I still can’t figure out why he moved the body. It’s not like he was trying to dispose of evidence. How long did he think it would take before someone noticed a body in the Washington Square Park fountain?”

  “He wanted her to be found here,” Boyle said. “He’s physically strong, smart, very fast on his feet, he knows this area like the back of his hand—and he wants the whole world to see that. He’s proud of what he did.”

  “Nice profiling, Art,” Patton said.

  I looked at them. “Any idea who he might be?”

  Patton said quietly, “An NYU professor would know this area like the back of his hand.”

  “No fucking way,” said Boyle. “Did you see the way Valdez is built? My twelve-year-old daughter has bigger muscles. Plus, he’s a Cancer. A Cancer would never do something like this. We’re talking a Leo on a very bad day, or maybe an Aries with Scorpio rising.”

  “Valdez certainly had a motive,” Patton said. “And he could have had help, could’ve even contracted someone.”

  Boyle said, “Yeah, well, hit men are usually more efficient. This was overkill.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking…what exactly was done to Marla?” I said.

  Boyle finished his third chili dog, then checked his watch. “Stabbed through the heart,” he said. “Thirteen times.”

  Patton shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe somebody’s superstitious.”

  Boyle headed back to the precinct house, while Patton walked me to the Space. “Why would Krull lie to me about a press conference?” I almost said. But I didn’t. To me, the topic was nearly more disturbing than the notes, the binoculars, anything, because I knew the answer: He had somewhere else to go.

  “Amanda,” I said, as we stopped at a crosswalk. “Did you…Have you ever thought your husband might be cheating on you?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

  “No, I…”

  “I’m kidding. But I know why you asked me that.”

  I swallowed hard. “You do?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Marla’s journal. It’s got us all asking ourselves that type of question.”

  “Oh…yeah, of course.”

  “And it’s usually the men who cheat, right?”

  I stared at the sidewalk. “It’s hardwired into their DNA.”

  “We’re lucky, though, you and I. We got ourselves two of the good guys.”

  Behind my back, I crossed the fingers on both hands, then my wrists to make it an odd number. “I hope…” I started to say, but before I could get out the sentence, I felt it again, the deep shiver of eyes on me. I whirled around fast, but the only person standing behind me was an elderly woman fearfully clutching her pocketbook.

  “What’s wrong?” Patton said.

  “Do you feel like…like someone’s watching us?”

  She turned around. “Just those jackasses.” She gestured at three construction workers leaning against some scaffolding on the corner. “Gimme some sugar, baby,” said one of them, grabbing his crotch.

  I sighed. “Man, I’m getting paranoid.”

  “Having a stalker will do that to ya.” She flipped off the construction workers. “Don’t worry; we’ll find this guy. We’ll get a sketch made up, get the beat cops on it, too.”

  “You need me to come to the station and give a description?”

  “No, Krull saw the dude, too, right?”

  “Yeah, and Pierce.”

  She grinned. “Right. I’m sure he already gave a description to the bomb squad.”

  I arrived at the box office on time, but was greeted by a sight that made me consider turning around and never coming back. The ticket line stretched all the way to the end of the block—nothing new, but when I got closer I noticed a second line, nearly as long, threading malignantly off the front of the main one.

  “Could you please sell me four tickets for next May?” a voice shouted at me.

  I hurried past the lines and toward the box office without looking at or speaking to anyone. I had this irrational fear that, if I did, the awful thing might sprout more extensions—like some sort of Hydra with terrible taste in theater.

  In the small courtyard, En was involved in his daily therapeutic yoga pose, balancing on the palms of his hands, a leg wrapped around each taut elbow. He looked like something out of Cirque du Soleil—but Shell seemed far more interested in the latest issue of Marie Claire.

  I said, “What do you call that pose, En?”

  “The Frog.” He cast a glance at Shell. “It helps release stored sexual tension.”

  “Sorry I asked.”

  Before I went into the box office, I said to Shell, “Any idea what’s going on with the line out there?”

  “You mean our line, or Tabitha’s?”

  I hurried into the subscription room, where Roland was adding up a pile of credit-card receipts, into the box office, past Yale, who was looking at his Mikado sheet music.

  We still had ten minutes before we were officially open, but I made for the ticket window anyway and pushed aside the shade.

  “Don’t do that,” said Yale. “They attack when they see movement.”

  I stared through the window. “Shell’s right.”

  Yale glanced over my shoulder. “Yep. A star is born.”

  Tabitha was standing in her usual spot, at the front of the ticket line. She wore a sleeveless black cocktail dress from the fifties—the most skin I’d ever seen her show. And she was signing autographs.

  At least twenty people were waiting in line to meet someone who’d suddenly become famous for waiting in line. “Now that’s just insane.”

  Yale said nothing—he just reached into his jeans pocket, pulled out a rolled-up Shakespearean Idol program and tossed it to me.

  On the second page was a bubbly signature, wrought in hot-pink ink: ’Til Death, Tabitha Meeks!

  “You’re not going to set her house on fire, are you?”

  “Very funny.”

  “You know, until about an hour ago, I would have thought you’re the most pathetic person on earth for getting that signature.”

  “What changed your mind?”

  “Marlamaniacs.”

  “You mean—”

  “John’s partners told me about them. Fans of a dead woman, can you imagine? They ask cops for their autographs.”

  “So that’s who they were,” said Yale.

  “You saw them?”

  “On my way to work. I thought they looked too weird to be protestors.”

  Yale unlocked the ticket drawer. And, for a long moment, he just stared at the lined-up cardboard strips, as if they were tea leaves and could tell him the future.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “I just…” He took a deep breath. “I’m glad you don’t live t
here anymore.”

  “Me too.”

  “I mean, she was a woman with dark, straight hair like yours. And she was your age, living in the place where you’d be living—”

  “You’re saying it could’ve been me.”

  He nodded. “If you never met John. He probably saved your life when you think about it—and not for the first time either.”

  “You sound like quite the fan yourself.”

  “Everybody loves an action hero.”

  That’s what I’m afraid of. “He didn’t call for me, did he?”

  “No. Was he supposed to? Oh, my God, is he okay?”

  “He’s fine, Yale. Everybody’s perfectly fine.”

  “I’m being melodramatic, aren’t I?”

  “Yeah, a little.”

  “I’ll be glad when this damn Mikado audition is over so I can stop obsessing over the idea of random executions. Last night, I dreamed I had to cut Peter’s head off with a letter opener.”

  I rolled my eyes at him. “It’s Gilbert and Sullivan.”

  “But it’s dark. It’s very dark and…complex.”

  “I think you’re getting into the role too deep. I think you’re rehearsing too much. They call it light opera for a reason.”

  “I’m trying out for the role of a hired killer.”

  “A hired killer named KoKo!”

  Before Yale could reply, Roland strode into the ticketing room, shouting, “Okay, people! Places!” and threw the shades open.

  Just like always, Tabitha said, “Hello,” so quietly I could barely read the word on her lips, and placed forty dollars through the metal slot under my window. I handed her the front-row-center ticket I always pulled for her, said into the microphone, “Enjoy the show, Tabitha.”

  “Tabs.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m trying out a new nickname, okay, Sam?”

  “Oh. Sure…Tabs.”

  She winked a glittery, kohl-smudged eye at me. “Thanks, honeychild.”

  As Tabitha moved away from the window, followed by her small entourage of autograph seekers, I turned to Yale. “A star is definitely born.”

  “Tabs is not good, though. What she should do is drop the last name and just be Tabitha, with an exclamation point…like Evita! or Liza with a Z!”