“Uh…my name is…Sarah Flannigan.”
“Only first names are necessary.”
“Sorry. Sarah. And what I’d like to talk to…the doctor about is…” My voice sounded wet and choked. I clenched both fists. Don’t cry…. “I feel abandoned.”
“By whom, Sarah?”
“Everyone. My boyfriend—”
“You will be the next caller. Turn off your radio if it’s on. Dr. Stark-Leiffer will be with you after the commercial break.”
“Shit, she will?”
All I got in response was a man’s voice, telling listeners how they could be debt-free within thirty days.
I took a deep, shivering breath. What am I going to say to her? Am I really going to tell my mother off, live on the air?
Is this going to make her lose her job?
Next thing I knew, I was listening to Sydney’s piped-in voice—soft and gentle, the same voice she used to read me bedtime stories as a kid. “Welcome back to Dr. Sydney’s ‘Art of Caring,’” she said, “I care about you.”
I was about to hang up when I heard, “Next up, we have Sarah from Manhattan. Sarah, what can I help you with?”
This is so weird.
“Sarah? Honey?”
Finally, I got my jaw working. “I…I’m calling because…my boyfriend left, and I don’t know where he is.”
A long pause. She recognizes my voice. Why didn’t I use a fake accent? I should have—
“Did you have a fight?”
“Yes. And no.”
“What do you mean, yes and no?” Sydney didn’t seem rattled, didn’t sound like she knew me as anything other than another one of her fucked-up fans.
“Sarah, are you still there? I said—”
“I know what you said.” I coughed. “We didn’t have an actual fight because there was no yelling. He never yells.”
“And you consider fighting to be yelling at each other.”
“Yes.”
“Fair enough. Do you ever yell?”
“Sometimes.” I exhaled. “For instance, I just yelled at my neighbors.”
Another pause. “Why don’t you tell me what happened between you and your boyfriend.”
“I didn’t tell him the truth about something.”
“Was it important that he know the truth?”
“Isn’t it always important to know the truth?”
“No.”
“That’s your actual answer? Just, ‘No’? In other words, you’re saying lying is great.”
“Not great. But sometimes the best option.”
“You mean, like, how it says on your press materials you’re forty-five years old?”
She laughed. “Touché.”
“Touché?!”
“Sarah, can I ask you a question?”
“Ummm…”
“When my daughter was five years old, she asked if her daddy was a good man. You think I should have told her the truth?”
Daddy is good, and he loves you very much.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know whether you’ve read my books or not, but my daughter’s daddy left us when she was a teeny little kid.”
“I’m familiar with that story.”
“I understand he’d gotten all he needed from me. But my daughter. Not once did he try to contact her. Never sent her a letter, not a card for her birthday. Nothing.”
Look, Sammy-bear, your daddy sent you a birthday card. Isn’t that nice?
“He called once when she was ten. Asking for money. I said, ‘I won’t give you a dime, but would you like to know how your daughter is doing?’ He hung up the phone after I said I wouldn’t give him a dime. Does that sound like a good man to you, Sarah? Should I have told my daughter about that phone call?”
“He…didn’t…send her cards?”
“Not a nineteen-cent postcard, Sarah. Not a chain letter.”
Dear Sammy, I wish I could be with you for your birthday, but I hope you like this pony card. (Your mommy told me you love ponies!)
“That’s…”
“But I bought her some cards. Did it four, five years in a row. Because I figured she should at least get a birthday card from her father. Was that wrong, Sarah? Should I have told her that I’d bought the cards myself?”
You’re my most special girl and I love you. Love, Daddy.
“He…didn’t love…your daughter. Did he?”
“Who knows?” Then her voice got softer. “I’m sure he did love her. In his own way.”
“What the hell kind of way is—”
“What I’m trying to say is, there’s a reason why people talk about ‘brutal honesty.’ If we all told nothing but the truth, all the time, the suicide rate would triple. There’s so much vulnerable, fragile equipment inside human beings. It’s why we have skin, and it’s why we build up emotional layers, too. There’s nothing wrong with protecting yourself. And there’s nothing wrong with protecting someone you love.”
I closed my eyes. “I wasn’t protecting anyone I love,” I said. “I lied to my boyfriend because…somebody else asked me to…to keep a secret.”
“Would it hurt anyone for you to keep the secret?”
All we talked about was Live and Let Live. I didn’t even know her last name…. Just give me twenty-four hours…. “I don’t think so.”
“Then your boyfriend has to learn that you are not an open book. This may surprise you, but there are probably lots of things about him that you don’t know.”
I stared at the ceiling. “It doesn’t.”
“Doesn’t what?”
“Surprise me.”
“Let me ask you something, Sarah. You said earlier that your boyfriend doesn’t ever yell at you?”
“Yes.”
“But you yell at him.”
“Sometimes. Not that often, but…”
“You know why people yell?”
“Ummm…because they’re angry?”
“Because they want to be heard, Sarah. Do you want to be heard?”
“Yes.” I felt a tear trickling down my cheek. “Yes, I do.”
“All human beings want to be heard. All of us want to be understood, to be valued, don’t we?”
“Yes.”
“If we’re not heard, we either scream at the top of our lungs, or we shut up completely. And both feel terrible, don’t they?”
“Yes…yes, they do.”
“Well, let me tell you something, Sarah. I hear you.”
“You don’t even know who I am.”
“Yes, I do, honey,” she said. “Yes, I do.”
And I started sobbing. I couldn’t help myself. I hung up the phone without saying good-bye to Dr. Sydney—to my mother—who had just spent more time talking about me, and only me, than I could ever remember her doing in my life.
And she didn’t even know who I was.
I kept crying until my whole face was wet and my muscles went lax and there was nothing left inside me but air. And then, without knowing it, I fell asleep.
Lying in bed, I heard the key in the door, heavy footsteps in the living room…thump, thump, thump.
Well, it’s about time.
I wondered if I should let Krull know I was awake. Maybe confront him in the living room, ask why he hadn’t trusted me. How can he have evidence? What the hell was he talking about?
I inhaled sharply. Actually, I think it would be a better idea if I pretend to be asleep.
Thump, thump, thump…
He was making more noise than usual. No ninja-lawman routine this time. He wanted to be heard. For him, this was yelling.
I was aware of him now, moving past the bed, opening the closet door, working the combination on the safe. Why didn’t I know that combination, anyway?
Thirteen-thirteen-thirteen.
Is that it, really?
I sat up in bed, opened my eyes and saw him hunched over the safe. He wasn’t taking off his gun; he was putting something inside.
“Hidin
g a present from me?” I said.
Krull turned around. His hair was sopping wet from rain, and drops rested on his nose and cheeks. He smiled broadly. “You bet I am!”
He threw Nate Gundersen’s severed head in my lap.
“What did you do?” I said. But the tone of my voice was strange; it didn’t fit the situation. “Tell me what you did right now, John Gabriel Krull,” I said, like I was scolding a student. My “voice of authority.”
The phone started ringing. “Telephone!” Krull said cheerfully. It kept ringing and ringing.
I wrenched my eyes open. Dreaming, thank God that was a dream, thank—
Riiing. I looked at the pillow next to mine, then the clock. It was six a.m. The phone was ringing, and I was still alone in the bed. But the closet door was open.
Riiing.
I reached down beside me and grabbed the cordless receiver off the floor. The caller ID screen read PRIVATE NUMBER. “Hello?”
“Sam…” It took me a few moments to identify the voice, choked as it was with tears, with panic.
“Yale? Are you—”
“Please come to the theater now,” the voice said. “And bring John. Oh, God…please!”
Yale’s cell phone went to static before I could ask what was going on.
Still in the clothes I’d been wearing the night before, I slipped on a pair of flip-flops, ran down the hall, rode the elevator downstairs and took a cab to the Space.
I saw him sitting on the curb out in front. Dressed to rehearse in a leotard top and sweats, he was rocking back and forth with his arms grasping his stomach, as if he were literally trying to hold himself together.
Yale’s face was pale and wet, and when I put my arms around him, I could feel his whole body trembling. In shock.
“Where’s John?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What happened, Yale?”
He didn’t reply, but he did stand up. This was something of a strange relief—knowing he at least had that much strength in him. Then he said, “Peter’s guarding the door.”
I followed him through the courtyard to the theater. Peter stood out front, staring, his usually olive complexion a bloodless white. “Where’s John?” he said.
“She doesn’t fucking know.”
“All right,” I said, as slowly and calmly as possible. “Why do you guys think you need John?”
Wordlessly, Peter opened the theater door.
The first thing I noticed was how bright it was in the theater. Every houselight was up, every worklight backstage, every klieg on the catwalk, blazing. Why? I started to mention it—but then I noticed the next thing.
Facedown, stage center, was the body of a man, blood pooling out beneath him like a slick red mat.
“Who is that?”
“We have absolutely no idea,” said Yale. “We just unlocked the theater, and saw all the lights on and…him.”
I took a deep breath, steadied myself. “Okay. We need to call the police.”
“That’s why we wanted you to bring John,” Peter said.
I moved closer to the body. “Either of you guys have a cell phone that works?”
I didn’t bring mine,” said Peter. “Yale called, and I ran.” He was wearing shorts and an I QUEBEC T-shirt, both inside out.
Yale said, “My battery died.”
“That’s all right.” I moved closer, until I was standing directly in front of the stage. “We can call from the box office.”
The body looked to have been stabbed repeatedly in the back, and there was so much blood I couldn’t even tell the hair color.
“Okay. The important thing to remember is not to touch him, and…” Suddenly, I felt myself stop, as if the rest of the sentence had somehow gotten lodged in my throat and I might never speak again.
Clutched in the dead man’s hand was a fresh Sterling rose.
“Do you think he was killed here, in the theater?” said Yale.
“I…don’t know.”
“Who do you think he was?” Peter said. “A fan?”
Slowly, I nudged his face away from the stage.
“Sam, you said you’re not supposed to—”
His eyes were open and vacant as two huge, black marbles. His mouth was open too, in some kind of final, silent scream. It was hard to imagine that overpriced accent coming out of this mouth, hard to imagine these blue, bloodless lips, tightening elegantly around an O.
“He was,” I said.
Peter said, “He was what?”
“A fan. He was a fan.”
9
Six Charlie
There’s a definite choreography to crime-scene response; I’d come to learn this in the past year and a half. I say choreography rather than system because it is, in its way, a sad kind of dance, repeated over and over again with the exact same steps, no matter what the circumstances may be.
For instance: This man needed paramedics just about as much as he needed ice-skating lessons, yet sure enough, EMS arrived within minutes of our 911 call.
And, as they set about determining that the stiff, cold man lying in a pool of his own blood was, in fact, dead, the sector car showed up.
Staying on script, the two uniformed cops from the sector car (Sector Six Charlie in this case; precinct sectors patrolled by squad cars get alphabetical pseudonyms, like army platoons) began preliminary questioning of the witnesses. They asked Yale, Peter and me for our full names, ages and occupations—even though, in my case, they knew the answers to all three of those questions.
Even though there were so many other questions more relevant: Why this man? Why the rose? Why this theater?
I remembered the broken Sterling rose in front of Marla’s shrine, the bloody valentine heart finger-painted on the brick wall I used to love. HE KILLED MARLA S. DON’T GET HIM ANGRY AGAIN.
Were two people really murdered because of me? Two people stabbed to death, their corpses placed where I could see them? If that was true, then why?
“I don’t know his name. But he’s planning…” The man was lying dead, center stage at the theater where I worked. He would never be able to complete that sentence.
“Did any of you know the victim?” asked one of the sector cops—a blunt-speaking redhead named Fiona Hamilton.
“I did,” I said.
Her partner, Billy Rathke, asked, “What was his name?”
“I have no idea. Can you guys please get Boyle and Patton over here?”
“Sure,” said Fiona. “But what about John?”
“If you can find him, that would be great.”
After Billy phoned the Crime Scene Unit from his cell and Fiona relayed facts to the detective squad room on the car radio, they asked us a few more basic questions. Who had found the body initially? Why were we here so early? How long did it take us to call the police?
Who did this? That was the question I needed answered.
CSU arrived on cue with their surgical gloves and cameras, their ominous dark briefcases packed with sterile evidence bags. I wanted to follow CSU into the theater—if only to look at the victim once more—but I was just a civilian witness; my place was outside.
So I sat down on the squad car’s bumper, closed my eyes, went over what little I’d learned from eavesdropping on Six Charlie:
Someone had repeatedly shoved a long, sharp knife into the man’s back. Most likely, it was a hunting knife, like the one Nate had posed with on the cover of Soap Opera Digest. And like the as-yet-unfound knife used to murder Marla Soble.
Though he’d been attacked from behind, there was some sign of a struggle. Scratches on his hands and impact wounds on his elbows and forearms indicated he’d fought back for an unusually long time before ultimately going unconscious from blood loss.
In other words, this guy may not have seen his killer coming, but he sure as hell knew what was going on. Watch your back.
He had not been killed in the theater. The man’
s body showed signs of postmortem bruising—secondary lividity—meaning that, like Marla Soble, he’d been picked up and moved to a significant spot. It was important to the killer for this body to be discovered. Here.
The number of knife wounds on the man had not yet been determined—he was too much of a bloody mess, necessitating closer inspection by CSU—but I’d have bet both my salaries on thirteen. Just like Marla.
Same weapon, same killer—only Marla had gotten it in the chest, while this man had been stabbed in the back.
Mirror images, killed because…Because you made someone angry.
Yale sat down next to me and handed me a bottle of water. “Want it? I got it from the paramedics.”
“Thanks.”
“Peter’s throwing up right now—”
“Sorry,” Billy interrupted. “But you can’t converse with each other until you’re released from questioning.”
Yale leveled his eyes at him. “Billy, right? I met you at John and Sam’s Christmas party. You were dancing to that fabulous ABBA song in your underwear? I didn’t know they made Spiderman briefs for grown men!”
Billy’s face went pink. “Go ahead and talk.”
“Thank you.” He turned to me. “It’s not fair, Sam.”
“What’s not fair?”
“This. You should be happy, or bored, or annoyed or whatever the rest of us humans are.” He put his arm around me. “You’ve already used up your lifetime supply of mortal terror.”
“The man in the theater…he knew, Yale. He tried to warn me, and now he’s…”
He’s angry.
“You didn’t know. How were you supposed to?”
“I’m just such a…crappy judge of character.” Even as I said it, a string of thoughts flooded my mind. Ugly thoughts, lodged in my subconscious, but now center stage. Like the dead body.
Krull handing me three Sterling roses. “One for ‘I,’ one for ‘love,’ one for ‘you.’”
The bent rose in front of Marla’s shrine, the rose clasped in the dead man’s bloody hand.
Krull, climbing into bed after a four-hour disappearance, his hair wet, his skin wet. “Sorry. I just needed time alone.”
“He’s taking this case too personally,” Pierce had said. “There’s something else going on in his head about Soble.”
You Kill Me Page 12
