Diary of a Serial Killer

by Ed Gaffney

  The basement was unfinished, but dry and cool. The gray floor was spotless, and the exposed cinder block walls were unpainted. There was a dark green, oval area rug on the floor under the chair Vera had glimpsed through the window. And the table she had seen wasn’t actually a card table—it was one of those metal folding tables. The high school yearbook and the Shakespeare book were at the end closest to her.

  On the part of the table that wasn’t visible from the window sat a second computer. This one was not attached to a phone jack. But right next to it was a printer.

  A Printex 343.

  Vera took a deep breath. It couldn’t be him. It really couldn’t be him.

  The Shakespeare book was extensively dog-eared. To avoid contaminating the evidence with her own fingerprints, Vera took a pen from her jacket pocket and slid it into the book to open it at the marked pages. Several contained the quotations used in the killer’s note to her.

  They were circled, and above the appropriate word in the quotation, Ellis had written the word that was substituted for it in the note.

  The yearbook was from Capo High School, Class of 1982. A piece of paper had been used as a bookmark, and using the pen again, Vera opened to that page. The picture of Carrie Bernstein, victim number seven of the Springfield Shooter, had been circled, and across her face had been written R. I. P.

  And on the bookmark itself, she saw a list of names with their middle initials circled:

  Corey S. Chatham

  Iris A. Dubinski

  Laurence L. Seta

  Andre L. Englewood

  The victims of the Eternally Yours killer.

  Then she looked again at the middle initials, and saw that they spelled out S-A-L-L.

  And without warning, everything suddenly made sense.

  Vera felt ill. For the past several weeks, she had been literally side by side with the most notorious killer Springfield had ever faced. Who was in the process of constructing an elaborate frame-up of Malcolm Ayers by planting evidence, and even by selecting victims whose middle initials would spell out Sally, the title character in Ayers’s claim to fame.

  Vera was willing to bet a lot of money that Ellis’s next victim would have a middle name that started with the letter y.

  Unless she could stop him.

  She pulled out her cell phone to call the lieutenant, but there was no signal. Probably because she was in a basement.

  She turned to go back up the stairs, when she heard a click, and then an electric hum. She whirled back toward the computer. But the noise seemed to be coming from beneath it.

  Vera used her flashlight to illuminate the floor under the far end of the table.

  Where there was a small refrigerator.

  Oh no. The idea that Ellis could have been keeping trophies from his kills right beside him as he composed and printed out the twisted messages that he sent to Vera was almost too much to bear.

  She knelt, and keeping the flashlight in her left hand, she used the pen in her right hand to pry open the door.

  Mercifully, the only thing inside was a six pack of Miller Lite beer.

  She released her breath in a loud hiss. She hadn’t even realized she’d been holding it. She closed the refrigerator, but just before standing up, she noticed a file box sitting on the far side of the refrigerator.

  Again, taking care not to leave her own fingerprints on the box or its contents, she dragged it out from under the table, and looked through its contents.

  And that’s when the nightmare became complete.

  Because what was inside were file folders containing information about the victims—not only of the Eternally Yours killer, but also of the Springfield Shooter. And the documents weren’t just copies from the police files. There was an entire folder of photographs of the Eternally Yours killer’s victims, taken during the recent attacks. While they were still alive.

  Most of them showing heartbreaking expressions of pain or terror.

  Vera started for the stairs so she could call the lieutenant, but then she froze.

  Because the sound of the front door opening came down to the basement as clearly as if she were standing right next to it.

  And then the door closed.

  Ellis was home.

  TWENTY-NINE

  STEPHANIE WAS SITTING IN HER KITCHEN, talking with Mrs. Giordano on the phone.

  While she stared at the paper bag in which she had hidden the Tupperware container with the finger.

  “I’m very worried about David,” the old woman said. “He just doesn’t seem to be himself these days.”

  There was a considerable amount of irony in the situation, but Stephanie couldn’t bring herself to confront her neighbor with it.

  If there was anyone who deserved to be worried about in the relationship between Mrs. G. and her son, it was Mrs. Giordano. The woman was living all by herself in the house in which she’d raised David and two other kids. She was more than eighty years old, half blind and mostly deaf, and probably kinder and gentler than anyone Stephanie knew in the world.

  And worried didn’t even begin to cover what Stephanie was feeling. She opened her freezer, and removed a box of frozen yogurt pops. She emptied it except for a couple of the desserts, then she reached into the paper bag, and removed the plastic container. She put it into the now mostly empty dessert box, and slid it into the very back of the freezer, behind several packages of frozen microwave dinners.

  “He seems so distracted lately,” Mrs. Giordano was saying. “I was talking to him on the phone the other day about one of his nephews—my grandson Troy. He’s applying to college, and is interested in Amherst, but before I could even get two words out, David starts in about this serial killer nonsense. It’s almost like he’s obsessed with it.”

  Stephanie hadn’t yet told Mrs. G. about her father Malcolm’s arrest. She wanted desperately to keep this little part of her life—her friendship with her sweet little old lady neighbor—insulated from all of the ugliness that seemed to be closing in on her these past weeks.

  Just then, Steph’s call-waiting signal sounded. “Mrs.G., I’ve got another call. Can we talk later?”

  “Of course, dear. I bet it’s that lawyer you were talking about. I believe there’s a hint of romance in the air.”

  Although she’d not gone into details, Steph had mentioned Terry Tallach and the very good-looking Zack Wilson to Mrs. G. Now she blushed and mumbled something like “Don’t be silly,” but the old woman was sharp as a razor. If there was one person in the world Steph wanted to hear from, other than her father, of course, it would be Zack Wilson, saying that the conflict of interest had evaporated, he’d gotten her father out of jail, and he was just calling to see if she was free for dinner. “I’ll talk to you soon, Mrs. G.,” she said hastily.

  And then she clicked over to the other line.

  “Stephanie?”

  The male voice was obviously disguised—possibly through an electronic device of some kind. It echoed frighteningly, and Steph’s throat tightened.

  “Who is this?”

  “Never mind who this is,” the distorted voice snapped back. “Don’t try to be cute with the finger. Take it out of the freezer where you hid it, and put it back where you found it.”

  Steph felt paralyzed with fear. This couldn’t be her life. This couldn’t be happening to her.

  Quickly, she spun around the kitchen, looking toward the windows. But she had pulled the blinds before she had taken the container with the finger out of her purse.

  This was impossible.

  There was no way that this person knew she had just hidden the finger in her freezer. Whoever he was, he couldn’t possibly even know that she had the finger. The only person who knew was her father, and he was in jail. He had to be bluffing.

  She did her best to do the same. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking about the human finger that you just shoved into the back of your freezer in a frozen yogurt box, Step
hanie,” the voice said.

  Steph spun around again, but seeing nothing different, she opened the freezer, grabbed the Tupperware container, and ran.

  Seconds later, she was driving out of town.

  Terry was supposed to be reading a new case that had come down from the Supreme Judicial Court on conflicts of interest. But instead, he was gazing out the window, wondering why Vera hadn’t called him back. He’d been trying to reach her for hours.

  Zack was across the room at his desk. He was supposed to be reading the same case, but even though his eyes were pointed at the computer screen, he was clearly thinking about something else. He glanced up from the monitor at Terry, and said, “How’s that reading going?”

  Outside, the infinite road construction project had moved on to the narrow-lanes-bounded-by-concrete-barriers-everywhere phase. Traffic was a horror show. At least the doomsday machine had moved on to destroy other parts of Northampton. “Great.” Terry looked over his shoulder at Zack. “How about you?”

  Zack sat back and put his feet up on his desk. “I’m having a hard time concentrating, because I’m having a hard time understanding why a man like George Heinrich would go so far out of his way to make sure that a serial killer has an easy time of it in prison.”

  “Maybe he really thought Alan was the wrong guy.”

  Zack nodded. “I was thinking that myself. Although that means Heinrich had an awful lot of faith in his accountant. Basically, it was Alan’s word against a freezer full of fingers and a computer loaded with incriminating evidence.”

  “Sounds like Stephanie What’s-Her-Name talking about her father. He gets caught with a murder weapon, a Taser, and a severed finger, and she’s more convinced than ever that dear old Dad’s innocent.”

  “Man, wouldn’t all of that be nice to put into Alan’s motion for new trial.” Zack had laced his fingers behind his head, and was now staring pensively at the ceiling. “Talk about whether justice was served. He gets convicted of nine murders based on evidence found at his house, which he denies knowing anything about. Twenty years later, a murderer with the same M.O. shows up, and the police grab a suspect based on evidence found at his house which he denies having anything to do with.”

  “Like the frozen finger little Stephanie Sunshine is probably carrying around right now in her pocketbook.” Terry stole a quick look at Zack. “And by the way, she is so into you, you hot law-dog.”

  Zack closed his eyes and sighed. “How do you manage to bring everything down to sex?”

  “It is my gift.”

  Just then, the phone rang.

  “That’s probably your booty call right now,” Terry said. Zack shot him a look, and Terry shrugged. “I gotta be me.”

  Zack picked up the receiver. “Hello? Zack Wilson.”

  But it wasn’t a booty call, Terry realized. Zack was frowning. Something was wrong.

  “Excuse me? I’m sorry, but we don’t represent Ms. Hartz. She needs to go to the police. It’s way too dangerous for her to try to do this on her own.”

  There was a pause. Whatever Zack was hearing, he didn’t like it.

  “Can you get in touch with her?…Well, try to tell her that she needs to tell the police about the phone call.”

  Okay, this was driving Terry nuts. He scribbled Who is it??? on a pad and shoved it in front of Zack, who promptly ignored it.

  “Doesn’t matter if she thinks it’s Russell Crane. She needs to go to the police.” Zack rubbed his eyes and sighed. “If she tells you where she went, call me, and I’ll go to her, okay? Please tell her that if you speak to her.”

  Oh no. Sandra Bullock was in trouble, and Zack was getting sucked into doing something stupid.

  “Okay. Thank you for calling. Good-bye.” And Zack hung up the phone.

  Terry looked over at Zack and did his best Keanu Reeves. “Don’t tell me. There’s a bomb on the bus.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. What’s happened?”

  Zack was already shrugging on his jacket. Why he even bothered was a mystery. Faded jeans with a jacket were still faded jeans. “Stephanie got a threatening phone call, panicked, and ran.”

  Terry stood up. If they were going to the police, he was going, too. He wanted to see Vera, anyway. “Um, I know Stephanie is cute and all, but seeing as how she isn’t our client, what does that have to do with us?”

  “Because the threatening phone call was from the serial killer.”

  Vera slowly withdrew her weapon from its holster and approached the bottom of the cellar stairs.

  After she had heard the front door open and close, she listened for other sounds, but heard nothing.

  She wasn’t familiar with the creaks and groans that Ellis’s house usually made, but she still would have expected to have heard footsteps above her as Ellis walked around.

  Instead, there was only the humming of the refrigerator behind her and the sound of her own breathing. And the thundering of her heart, of course.

  She had left the door from the kitchen to the cellar open and the light on. But Ellis had entered through the front. It was possible that he hadn’t noticed there was an intruder in his home yet.

  Of course there was no way he could have overlooked her car parked in front of the garage behind the house.

  But if he had pulled into the driveway, then why did he enter through the front door?

  She hesitated. She was still out of sight if Ellis was standing in the kitchen, looking through the open cellar door down the stairs. To mount the staircase, she would have to walk another three feet forward, and then make a sharp right U-turn to begin up the steps.

  Her right index finger was already wrapped around the trigger, ready to fire. She put her left hand around the grip and the fingers of her right hand, to steady it. Then she took a deep breath, and spun around the base of the stairs, pointing the gun up at the top.

  There was no one there.

  Quickly she returned to her previous position and, keeping her right hand on the gun, used her left to untie her boots. She couldn’t remember if the stairs creaked when she came down, but she couldn’t stay down here forever. It was only a matter of time before Ellis noticed she was here. She had to get up those stairs fast, as soundlessly as she could, and try to take him down.

  Now standing in her socks, she whipped around the base of the stairs, gun aimed at the open doorway at the top. But again, there was no Ellis in sight.

  Moving as quietly as she could, and as quickly as she dared, she mounted the steps, gun pointed directly up the staircase. And still, Ellis did not show.

  When she reached the top of the stairs, Vera hesitated again. Ellis was here somewhere. If by some miracle, he had parked on the street and hadn’t spotted her car, she had the advantage. She knew he was in here, and he had no idea she was.

  But what was more likely was that he’d seen her car, and was going through the house one room at a time, checking for where she might be hiding. He just hadn’t reached the kitchen yet, so he didn’t know she’d been in the cellar when he’d entered the house.

  When it was time for her to come through the door into the kitchen, she was going to spin around to her left, toward the passageway from the kitchen into the rest of the house. If she was lucky, Ellis was still at the other end of the dwelling, near the bedrooms. If she wasn’t so lucky, he’d be waiting for her, and it would simply be a matter of who shot who first.

  She took a deep, silent breath through her mouth, let it out, and moved through the door, turning left into the kitchen.

  Still no Ellis.

  But now, at last, she heard something. A scratching noise. And then the rasp of paper tearing.

  It was coming from her left, through the passageway between the kitchen and the living room.

  For whatever reason, it seemed that Vera had gotten lucky. Ellis had obviously parked in front, come in through the front door, was now in his living room, with no idea that she was in the house.

  She didn’t h
esitate. Whatever Ellis was doing, it wasn’t standing there with a gun trained on the entrance to the kitchen. This might be her only chance, and she took it.

  With a single stride she stepped past the end of the wall dividing the kitchen from the living room, spun around with her gun leading the way, and shouted, “Ellis! Freeze!”

  THIRTY

  IT WASN’T ELLIS.

  It was the same damn delivery boy who had brought the letter to Vera when she was at the Ruby Cee house. He was seated on the couch, filling in a form that was attached to the outside of another overnight letter.

  “Police! On the ground, hands behind your head!” Vera shouted, pointing her gun at the kid.

  She didn’t know where Ellis was, she didn’t know why the delivery company hadn’t informed them that they’d received another job from Ellis the killer, she didn’t know much of anything, except that she was very, very angry.

  “How did you get in here?” she demanded, as she knelt and handcuffed the acne-scarred boy facedown on the living room floor.

  He offered no resistance, but he was breathing so rapidly it was hard for him to answer. He turned so that his cheek was on Ellis’s well-worn carpet, probably in an effort to see her. “The door was open,” he gasped. “My boss told me the door would be open, or the key would be under the mat.”

  Vera had already pulled out her phone, and was calling for backup. In minutes, this place would be swarming with cops.

  Next, she pulled out a pair of latex gloves from her pocket, and put them on. Then, she took the envelope the kid had brought to the house off the coffee table, tore it open, and taking care to touch only the edges, she began to read.

  Dearest Vera,

  I had hoped to reveal myself to you under different circumstances…

  Goddammit.

  She dropped the letter back onto the table. “Didn’t Lieutenant Carasquillo tell your boss to inform us the next time you got a job from this guy?”

  “I’m sorry,” he gulped. “I didn’t know. I didn’t mean to do anything wrong. Am I going to jail?”

  Then, he started to sob.