Sleep When You're Dead

by Chris Hollenback

  Rachel nearly choked on her tears. “How could you…”

  He writhed.

  Leila trotted to her car and drove off. Hailangelo followed, delighted his muse had gotten her wish and escaped unscathed. He would allow her to enjoy it for awhile, until the timing to immortalize her was just right. It delighted him to get to know her better. Leila got two blocks away from the Twig residence when an ambulance and two police cars passed her en route to the scene. Hailangelo simpered.

  As they drove, Casey’s cell phone rang; it was Leila. “Oh, hey sis. How are you?”

  “Never been better. I feel…amazing.”

  “What’s gotten into you?” Casey said.

  “Nothing much. I only found my rapist.”

  Found him? “I didn’t know you were looking for him.”

  “That’s because I wasn’t looking for him. But I found him. Who would’ve thought, right?”

  Casey frowned. “You saw him and you feel better?”

  “Yep. I shot him in the balls.”

  “With a snowball?”

  Leila scoffed. “No. A gun.”

  “A squirt gun.”

  “No, a real purse pistol. I bought it online.”

  “Cut it out, Lei, this isn’t funny.”

  “Last time I checked, the Second Amendment stands. Plus, now Wisconsin has a concealed carry law.”

  Casey glanced back at Shantell, who stared out the window in the back seat. He lowered his voice and covered his mouth with his other hand. “You’re saying you actually did that?” He extracted his trusty credit card and dug it into his palm to avoid an attack.

  Nell glanced at Casey with a look of curiosity.

  “At first, I was traumatized just to see him,” Leila said. “For a moment, I could barely move—it was like I was in a clear glass tank and water had rushed in, compressing my lungs. But then I envisioned him prowling the lakeshore for another unsuspecting university student.”

  “What were you thinking?”

  “I’ve read in psychology journals that rape is about power. I doubt he’s self-aware enough to realize it. He’s like a spider that crawls inside a house to catch flies. It would be better off outside where food is available. But it’s not about making sense. It’s about instinct and compulsion.”

  “Did you call the cops?” Casey glanced at Nell, who squinted back at him.

  She ignored the question. “I’ve been thinking about all the rape victims in history: slaves, refugees, women in newly occupied nations, victims of ethnic cleansing. How many rape victims have there been? If someone bottled all their tears and stacked the bottles, would they reach Jupiter? And back? So many of those women never uttered a word about it. How could they hold it in? I’d combust. Anyway, he won’t be raping again.”

  “That’s a bit…extreme,” Casey said. He purposely spoke in vague terms, so as not to arouse Nell’s suspicion any more than he already had.

  “Not really. He’ll survive.”

  “No, that’s definitely extreme,” he muttered through his teeth. “Aren’t you worried you’ll get arrested?”

  “I told him the statute of limitations on the rape hadn’t lapsed, and that’s true. I looked it up. I told him that I’d go to the media. He knows his other rape victims would come forward. He has victims in Tennessee, too, not just Wisconsin.”

  “Damn,” Casey said.

  “You’re such a buzz-kill. You can’t just let me bask in something positive happening. I have closure here, after all these years. I can finally move on with my life. But no, you always have to pull me down. I’m damaged goods, right, Case? Always will be. Do you feel better now?”

  “That’s not what I—”

  “What would you have done?” Leila said, agitated. “Sent your rapist to timeout with a scolding?”

  “There are laws, Lei.”

  “The lab lost the only physical evidence from the rape. According to the news, he has gotten away with this five, six, seven times.”

  Casey said nothing. He had a headache from hell and felt both exhausted and nauseous—either due to hunger, anxiety, narcolepsy, or all of the above. He needed to stay focused and alert. He slapped his cheeks a few times.

  Leila sighed. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I’m on my way home.”

  “Good. We’re bringing a little girl over to your place.”

  “A girl?”

  “Her mother’s a friend of Nell’s. I asked our ma to watch her at your apartment. She agreed.”

  “Okay…you asked Mom to babysit for a friend? That’s kind of random.”

  “I’ll explain later. How far away are you?”

  “Ninety minutes.”

  “We’re dropping the girl off and have somewhere to go. Thanks in advance for watching her. She’s sweet. Her name is Shantell.”

  “Yeah, sure. Thanks for listening, Casey.”

  “What are brothers for?”

  28

  WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 26

  Casey and Nell dropped Shantell off at Leila’s apartment. Elzbieta tried her best to smile and welcome Shantell, but it was like a cactus attempting to be a pillow. Elzbieta turned on cartoons and it entranced the little girl. It reminded Casey of Saturday mornings from his youth. At least now Shantell was safe. He and Nell thanked Elzbieta and left.

  As Nell drove toward Hailangelo’s studio, she asked Casey about the conversation with Leila.

  “It’s nothing,” Casey said.

  “You said something about calling the cops,” Nell said.

  “I did?”

  “Yeah. And you mentioned laws, as if she’d broken some.”

  Casey chuckled nervously. “Ah, just some irate customer at Fixate Factory giving her a hard time.”

  He wanted to vent to Nell, to tell her about Leila shooting Twig. But he couldn’t be sure Nell wouldn’t feel obligated to report his sister to authorities. He had no reason to believe Leila would harm anyone again, and he tried to put himself in her shoes. What if he had identified the rapist? Would he have flashed back to that night, to the helpless feeling he’d had while trapped in a narcoleptic attack and a stranger attacked his sister? Would he have kicked this man, punched him? Yes. Would he have shot him? Probably not. Casey didn’t own a gun, for one thing. Then again, he wasn’t the one who got raped. He tried to block out the conversation with Leila and focus on the future. Casey searched for the exact address in the GPS and set it so “Joan” would announce the driving directions. After Joan’s initial instruction, Casey said: “So what’s this about investigating a serial killer?”

  Nell glanced at him as if to say, who, me?

  “Please, we’ve come this far. I think I deserve to know.”

  Nell nodded. “You didn’t hear this from me. Six women have gone missing—four in western Illinois, one in Iowa and one in Colorado, all during the last two years. We have reason to believe they were taken by the same person. Our intel suggests the unsub operated for a while in Galesburg and migrated to Green Bay.”

  “Unsub?”

  “Unknown subject. The killer we are chasing but have not yet identified.”

  “Why would the killer move to Green Bay?”

  “I can’t tell you.” Nell looked straight ahead as she drove, never glancing at him.

  “You mean it’s classified?”

  “I don’t even tell my mother classified information.” Nell slowed the BMW and hung a left.

  “Your mother saved your head carved out of cheese. I’d hope you wouldn’t tell her.”

  That got her to smile. “Suffice to say there was a clear pattern from Galesburg.”

  “What kind of a pattern?”

  She gave him a knowing look.

  “How did you track him from Galesburg to Green Bay?”

  Nell hung another left at a stoplight. “That I can tell you—it was in the news. In late July, Green Bay PD found a car in a wooded area along a county road on the outskirts of town.”

  “What kind?”

  “A Dodg
e Caravan.”

  “A minivan? That sounds innocuous.”

  “Right, and that’s exactly why the killer drove it. Well, that and it gave him room to store and transport his victims.”

  “What tipped you off that it belonged to the Galesburg Killer?”

  “It matched the description of the vehicle he drove out of town. We had a BOLO out for the vehicle in neighboring states.”

  Casey jotted details in a reporter’s notebook.

  She continued, “Police in Green Bay impounded the vehicle and inspected the interior. We found a hair follicle and traces of blood from one of the missing women.”

  “Nothing that ID’d the killer?”

  “Nada. We had crime techs tear apart the minivan piece by piece until there was nothing left but the frame. He had bleached most of the vehicle.”

  “So he knew what he was doing.”

  “If he made prints, he’d washed them clean. None of his blood was detectable, no finger prints, no license plates. He even melted the vehicle identification number, probably with a blowtorch. I’ve been chasing whispers in the wind. A psychotic wouldn’t be organized enough to destroy evidence. Our unsub is narcissistic, intelligent, and has an ego the size of Hail Stadium. But even the most conniving criminals make mistakes. This guy’s no different—a hair had stuck in a nook of the minivan’s frame.”

  “Great, so you have DNA?”

  “Unfortunately, the hair had no root, so we could only conduct subjective analysis. That carries a twelve-percent error rate. But the blood on the hair yielded white cells, and the DNA sample matched one of the missing victims. That error rate is about one in a billion.”

  Casey stopped writing and stared out the front windshield. “That’s why you wanted to help me find Elena, isn’t it? You thought maybe your suspect abducted her, that he had finally made his big mistake.”

  “I didn’t rule it out.”

  “I don’t believe this. You’ve been using me this whole time.”

  “Hey, I was undercover.”

  “But if Narziss ordered the abduction of Elena, that would be a dead end for you.”

  “Well, sure, that would be a police case. I’m following a killer who crossed state lines. I’m keeping an open mind.” She turned onto the street leading to Hailangelo’s art and taxidermy shop.

  “Why the cosmetics cover-up?” Casey had wanted to ask her that earlier, but opportunity had eluded him.

  “Agents pose as prostitutes to catch killers. It gives them access to johns. By selling cosmetics, I have an excuse to meet any young woman I see. Now I know almost every chick in Green Bay who fits the profile for the killer’s preferred victim.”

  “If you can’t go to the unsub, you let the unsub come to you.”

  Nell nodded. “Something like that.” She parked the car in the lot behind Hailangelo’s store and pulled the emergency brake. She turned off the safety on the Glock, put it into her purse, and zipped it shut. Casey and Nell got out of the car and walked along the sidewalk around to the front of the store.

  Glass windows formed Hailangelo’s storefront. A bell chimed when they entered. Casey nervously checked his phone: no new messages.

  Inside, Hailangelo had displayed a plethora of African drums, wooden animals and ivory Buddhas on shelves. Incense and Middle Eastern music—set to a techno dance beat—filled the air. Fine scarves, hand-carved African masks and heads of dead deer, elk, moose, panthers, lions and cheetahs adorned the walls. A stuffed Siamese cat perched on a shelf, fangs flaring. Casey shook off chills.

  As Casey scanned Hailangelo’s shop, he noticed a teenage girl sitting on a stool behind the checkout counter in the center of the one-room shop. Casey said hello.

  She looked down from his eye contact and didn’t respond. So much for customer service. Women did this to him all the time defensively and, while he understood that they didn’t want to convey the wrong signals, he wished it didn’t have to be that way. Couldn’t people greet each other with a respectful hello and a smile? She rested her chin on her palm.

  “Hi,” Nell approached the teenager. “What’s your name?”

  “Olivia.”

  “Hi, Olivia,” Nell said. “We’re looking for the owner.”

  “Mr. Meintz was supposed to be back an hour ago,” Olivia said.

  “Did he say anything about where he went?” Nell said.

  “No.”

  “Have you been back there?” Casey pointed.

  “His office? Hell no. Reeks back there, probably another dead mouse. Oh my god, is there anything more disgusting?”

  “Hence the incense?” Nell said.

  “Exactly,” Olivia said. “I mean, I’m supposed to sit here with that smell and nothing to do? Screw that. Meanwhile, I’ve got a freaking Chemistry exam tomorrow. This is total B.S.”

  Casey looked at Nell. “What now?”

  She shrugged. “I guess we wait.” She walked past him; her hair smelled like mangoes. The fragrance faded fast, overcome by the incense. She grabbed a rain stick on a shelf.

  He bashfully looked away from Nell and stared at an African mask on the wall, painted in a checkered black-and-white pattern. It had blue beads for eyebrows and tiny white seashells on its forehead. Curved lines in red, yellow and orange began under the oval eye slots, ending at the cheeks like Technicolor tears. It unnerved him in a way that held his gaze. He tore away and glanced at Nell. “So is there anything else you want to tell me?”

  “About?” Nell said.

  “Was anything you’ve said to me in the last week true?”

  “I told you, I really do sell cosmetics.”

  Casey said nothing.

  She motioned with her head toward the front door and then went back outside. “Let’s see…I’m concerned for Elena, I’m really FBI and I’m tracking a serial killer. That’s all true.”

  “Where are you really from?”

  “Galesburg, originally. Although I’ve lived up here the last two years.”

  “They assigned the local girl?”

  Nell paused as someone walked by the front of the store. When the man was out of earshot, she continued. “Technically, I work out of the Chicago FBI field office. But yeah, I knew the territory, had connections.”

  “Did it help?”

  “I knew a Galesburg resident who reported suspicious activity. He said that, on a number of occasions, he saw a neighbor in his twenties or thirties moving large objects from his minivan late at night. Said it happened about once a month, sometimes twice. We had it narrowed to the owner of the local art shop. His name was James Meickle. Mr. Meickle used the same social security number as a Jack Meilenti of Des Moines.”

  “Another art-shop owner?” Casey said.

  “Nope, coffee shop.”

  “Hailangelo’s real name is Thomas Meintz,” Casey said. “So he’s our guy?”

  “Can’t say for sure,” Nell said. “But if it’s not, it’s one hell of a coincidence.”

  “I don’t believe this. I interviewed him years ago for the paper.”

  “What did he say?”

  Casey shrugged. “We just talked about his work.”

  Nell nodded. “Let’s go back inside.” She opened the door and they went in.

  The cashier glanced up, then went back to checking her phone.

  The middle-eastern techno song ended. Led Zeppelin’s “The Battle of Evermore” began, an ethereal tune featuring ukulele and acoustic guitar. Nell held up the large rain stick, about five feet long, made from dark brown wood with colored squiggles painted on each end. “Heavy,” she said, weighing it with both hands and knocking on the thick wood. She turned it over and the sound of rain flowed perfectly with Jimmy Page’s plucked strings. “Is it true Led Zep were into the devil?”

  “I dunno,” Casey said. “But God wishes he played like Jimmy Page.”

  “My favorite band is The Beatles,” Nell said. “They sang like angels.”

  “Can’t beat the Fab Four,” Casey agreed.
“Nearly three-hundred songs in a decade and countless hits. Are you kidding me?”

  Olivia made a disgusted noise and said, “Are you two going to get a room? Or actually buy something?”

  “Can we take a look in back?” Nell said.

  Olivia made a “pfft” sound. “Even if it were allowed, and it’s not, it’s locked. I don’t have the key.”

  Strange.

  Nell walked to the back of the room and tried the door handle. Indeed, it wouldn’t open.

  Casey whispered to Nell: “Flash your badge.”

  Nell whispered back. “I don’t want to tip him off. He’ll run.”

  “Jimmie the door.”

  “Not with her here.”

  “So we wait?”

  “No. Go see what you can get out of Miss Employee of the Month.”

  Casey approached Olivia, and noticed her sweatshirt promoted her school. “How do you like East High?”

  Olivia scrunched her face. “Ew, I have a boyfriend.”

  He raised his hands and eyebrows, pivoting back toward the scarves and masks to take his place among the dead animals. “Just making conversation.”

  “If you aren’t going to buy anything, I’m leaving,” Olivia said. “My shift is over.”

  “Don’t you have to lock up?” Casey said.

  Olivia lazily moved one shoulder.

  Casey said, “You’ll get fired.”

  “I was planning to quit after final exams, anyway.”

  “Well, don’t stay on our account,” he said, smiling and clasping his hands behind his back.

  Olivia gave him a poisonous look, grabbed her purse and left. The door chimed.

  Casey jogged to the cash register, looked through drawers and cabinets for keys to Hailangelo’s office. He didn’t find any. Nell extracted her lock-picking kit from her purse. This lock fought her more than the one at the church, but after a few minutes it popped open.

  The back room couldn’t have been more than fifteen feet long by ten feet wide. To the left of the door was Hailangelo’s desk. Nell stood in front of his computer, staring at something. The foul odor grew stronger.