Sleep When You're Dead

by Chris Hollenback

Nell and Casey raced in the Z4 through the last suburb, past an endless string of McMansions. “You think he poisoned the women, like he did Skeeto and Narziss?” Casey asked.

  “It fits the evidence,” Nell said. “He could poison them a number of ways, but I’d guess from the mark on Elena’s neck that he injected them all.”

  Casey imagined Hailangelo attacking his sister in that way. He wished Nell’s car had jet propulsion, anything to get there faster. He felt so damn helpless. He wanted to say something, anything, but there was nothing left to say.

  An awkward silence ensued.

  “Nice part of town,” Casey tried.

  “Urban sprawl,” Nell said. “Not so beautiful, if you ask me.”

  “At least there’s a sense of community,” he said. “I grew up on a farmhouse—not many kids around to play tag or football.”

  “Back in the ’50s, relatives lived near each other,” Nell said. “Everyone knew the barber, the butcher, the baker. Big cities and scattered families allow killers to be anonymous. More important, they can stalk victims who are strangers, who they can disassociate from being human. That allows serial killers to harm a human in the same way someone else might step on an ant.”

  “In the twenty-first century, there are more people and yet more isolation than ever,” Casey said. “Then again, we have text messages, webcams, smartphones, so many ways to stay in contact.”

  “Texting Uncle Ralph a few times a year isn’t the same as living a mile away.”

  There were days Casey wished he lived far away from his relatives. “Sometimes that’s not all bad.”

  “Unless you’re a kid from a broken home and there’s nobody else to serve as a role model,” Nell said. “Used to be that neighbors could help raise a child.”

  “Now, too often, there’s no sense of belonging within the typical village.”

  “Exactly. People don’t trust each other. Think it’s a coincidence that the prevalence of serial killers has ascended over the last half-century?”

  “Come on,” he said. “Is that really true? Or is it that we’re better at detecting and tracking them?”

  They left a residential area and turned onto Highway 33, a single-lane roadway that had been plowed and salted, leaving the pavement clear of snow. Two sheriffs’ cars blocked the highway, with chains of spikes across the lanes and shoulders designed to puncture tires. Nell slowed, pulled up to a halt, and showed her ID. The deputies moved the chains and allowed them to pass.

  Nell pressed the accelerator to the floor.

  Casey sighed. “Well, at least they set the perimeter.”

  “Yeah, but Hailangelo might have beaten us to it. Anyway, we are better equipped to fight crime than at any point in history. Authorities can now access joint databases like the National Combined DNA Index System. There’s ViCAP to share details about violent crimes, and even a growing facial-recognition system.”

  “Then again, we can’t forget that guys like Jack the Ripper predated all of that,” Casey said.

  “True,” Nell said. “There was Gilles de Rais, the French sadist from the 15th century, or the ‘Blood Countess’ Elizabeth Báthory of the 16th century.”

  Casey sighed. “Or pick your average warrior. Serial killers are as old as the human race.” He glanced at the speedometer. They were going a hundred miles an hour and it barely fazed her or the car. He was glad she was driving. “Are we there yet?”

  “Not far yet, sleepyhead.”

  “If divorces created serial killers,” he said, “there’d be a lot more serial killers—half the couples in America get divorced.”

  “Certainly not all kids from broken homes become murderers,” Nell said. “But researchers have partnered with the FBI to study a part of the brain called the hypothalamus. It regulates emotion and motivation. It’s part of the lower part of the brain, called the limbic brain.” She decelerated as they approached a stop sign, looked for oncoming traffic, and sped through the intersection. Fortunately, the highway remained in favorable driving condition. “If it’s damaged by genetics, poor diet, or injury, the person can lose control of emotions, temper, and the ability to relate to other people. He becomes more withdrawn, creates vivid, violent, sexual fantasies, and is not equipped to put them into perspective. It’s a breeding ground for deviant behavior. So if the parents are irresponsible, deranged, or violent, the child is at greater risk for developing into a killer.”

  Casey smirked. “So you don’t blame the media for the destruction of society?”

  She guffawed. “Certainly not. Most journalists simply report what they see. Although, giving serial killers catchy nicknames like The Green River Killer sensationalizes crime and gifts the perpetrator an emotional spike from fame…”

  Casey emitted a spitting sound. “Nice to know you’ve got my back.”

  Nell continued. “To be fair, those same monikers also help investigators track murderers and learn from past cases. It sparks the public to take precautions, and to pressure authorities to catch the offender before he kills again.” She tilted her head. “The positives might outweigh the negatives.”

  “And you don’t blame the porn industry?”

  “Past killers have blamed their actions on it.”

  “Come on, serial killers pre-date the printing press. Plus, how many people see porn and don’t commit murder?”

  Snow drifted across the road. Only slightly daunted, Nell slowed the car to a virtual crawl—eighty miles an hour. “Millions, obviously,” Nell said. “But mainstream pornography is the gateway to violent porn, which becomes the trampoline to violent fantasies.”

  “And acting them out,” Casey said.

  Nell shrugged. “Most don’t. But again, if you’re someone prone to such behavior—”

  Hailangelo certainly was. Now he had Leila, and Casey clutched the armrest so tightly he practically crushed it. “Is the behavior the cart or the horse?”

  “Who knows. But the subject then substitutes control for intimacy. Hailangelo thinks these women are objects he can collect. And as much as he loves his mother, he probably feels slighted she wasn’t there for him.”

  “But that’s not her fault,” Casey said. “You heard him—his dad killed her.”

  “I didn’t say it should make sense.”

  “He’s crazy.”

  Nell glanced at Casey. “But not legally.”

  Casey shifted restlessly, tugging on the seatbelt. “How far are we from Leila?”

  Nell glanced at the odometer. “A couple miles. He’s not crazy. Irrational, maybe. He led a double life. He duped Narziss and others into posing for his statues. Probably lured them with drugs. Might have used that to bait Leila too.”

  “I don’t see Leila doing the hard stuff.”

  “No offense intended.”

  “None taken.”

  “Regardless, if Hailangelo is rational enough to stalk his victims and hide their remains, he is not legally insane.”

  “So is Hailangelo just a monster who gets off on anarchy?”

  “That’s a cop-out,” Nell said. “There’s always more to it, even if the killer doesn’t realize it. He probably is sexually dysfunctional, but with his statues, there is no one to laugh at him if he can’t perform. He’s not psychotic, he’s psychopathic.”

  “Tomato-tomahto,” Casey said. “If we don’t stop him, he’ll kill my sister.”

  39

  WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 26

  Hailangelo laid a golden tablecloth over the fold-out table. On it, he set champagne glasses. “Come, Millie, have a seat.”

  He could tell Leila had no desire to sit but she realized she had no choice. She appeared still to be dazed from his initial assault. She half-fell into the wooden chair next to him at the table. Hailangelo opened a textbook on realist sculpture. It offered pictures of the casting process for creating the molds for each statue.

  “This is how it’s done,” Hailangelo said. “It’s the same process I used with Todd Narziss.”
/>   She choked back tears.

  “I’ll mix the plaster and cover you in it. It’s like being covered with wet sand at the beach. Did your friends ever do that to you when you were a child?”

  She nodded.

  “You see? This will be like that.”

  “That was sort of fun.” She sniffed.

  “Precisely. And it leaves your complexion brilliant, like a mud-and-cucumber treatment. Then we’ll take off sections piece by piece and I’ll build the mold for your statue from there.” He watched her closely to see how she would react.

  “I’m sorry I’ve been so silly. It’s just…with the rape when I was younger…”

  “Of course,” Hailangelo handed her a glass of champagne, toasted her, and smiled. “It’s only natural to assume other men are monsters. But I assure you, I’m just an artist who is quite fond of you.”

  She pulled her hair to one side.

  “It’s an honor to work with you,” he said. “In return, you’ll be immortalized.”

  She acted pleased as she tipped back half her drink. He guessed she felt resigned, and that the last thing she desired was to keep living her imperfect life forever. Maybe death would release her from the memories of her rape.

  “Think of how pleased Amelia will be to see your statue.”

  Leila scoffed. “I think she’d be creeped out by it. One of me is more than enough for anyone.”

  “Oh, it’s pretty clear she adores you.”

  She yawned, stretched, and swayed, trying to focus on Hailangelo’s face.

  He beamed back at her. “It’s nappy time, Millie.”

  For a moment, she defiantly held her head up with her hands. The wine was uncontaminated, but he had spiked her glass before they arrived. Hailangelo snickered, calmly stood, stretched his arms, and walked away. The last thing she saw before losing consciousness was her captor striding toward her, holding a rope. Suddenly her head slipped through her hands and planted on the folding table with a thud.

  Casey and Nell sped down Highway 33 past the sign for Junction B. The sun had melted into the horizon. Casey’s eyelids drooped and he wished he had a latte with a double shot of espresso. He pointed ahead. “There are the train tracks.” The headlights illuminated them.

  Nell passed through the intersection, then pulled to the side of the highway. Farmland, snowy fields, telephone poles, and patches of trees extended into apparent infinity. They got out of the car.

  Nell turned on her flashlight. Walking together, they headed toward the train tracks. The frigid air nipped at their ears. On the other side of the tracks, Nell flashed the light on two cars: an old black Chevelle and a black Chevy Suburban, the latter of which had several antennae.

  “I recognize the SUV from the Milwaukee bureau,” Nell said.

  “How’d they get here so fast?”

  “We had a unit in the area.”

  “The Chevelle is Hailangelo’s.” Casey yawned and squinted. “Is that it? In the tree back there?” He used his hand to shield his eyes from the swirling wind and snow. In the distance, though it was dark, they could just barely make out the gargantuan oak with what looked like a deer blind at the top. He sprinted toward it.

  “Wait up,” she called after him, pursuing.

  Casey slowed as he got about thirty yards from the tree. He could barely see his feet.

  Nell walked behind him. She took out her gun and held it under her flashlight. They marched through a cornfield. Stalks, snow, and frozen dirt crunched underfoot with each step. Wind gusted across the fields, sucking moisture from Casey’s cheeks and leaving his skin raw. He could barely see, but Mother Nature would not keep him from his sister.

  Nell flashed her light along the base of a tree and, as she panned the beam upwards, she found the deer stand. “Has to be ten feet in the air.”

  A hydraulic lift stood next to the tree, elevated. The wind picked up, lowering the chill factor and blowing even more snow, forcing Casey to shut his eyes. He focused on not falling into a narcoleptic attack. Your most important breath is your next one.

  When the wind died down a bit, he could see that the wooden structure was as big as an apartment and completely encased in the deer blind’s camouflage. Nell turned off her flashlight. They walked ahead in the dark, eyes still adjusting to the night.

  Casey tripped over a stump and fell to the ground, giving himself a face wash in the snow. He couldn’t decide what stung worse—the fall, the snow, or the embarrassment of it all.

  “You okay?” she said, crouching down to him.

  Casey rolled to a sitting position, wiped his face, and turned to look behind him. “What the hell was that?”

  Nell turned the light on the stump. It wasn’t a stump at all.

  It was a corpse.

  40

  WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 26

  Casey scrambled away from the corpse, kicking snow, some of it bunching under his pants and biting his ankles. “Aaah! Holy crap! Is that real? Can you hear me?”

  “Shhh!” Nell whispered. “Yes, it’s real, you’re not hallucinating.”

  Casey patted his legs. “I’m awake. I’m freezing. This is happening.” Who was it? Please don’t be Leila, he thought. Please please please.

  Nell flashed her light on the body—it was a male. She reached in the dead man’s pocket and pulled out a wallet. She flipped it open and shined the light on the identification. “No.”

  “What?” Casey scrambled to his feet and looked over Nell’s shoulder. The badge belonged to FBI Agent Nmandi Agu. He was bald, fit, and chiseled. His face had been scarred. “Did you know him?”

  Nell exhaled, holding the light on Agu’s body. She whispered, “When I turn off this light, crouch down.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it.” She turned it off.

  Casey did as he was told. “What’s going on?”

  Nell whispered, “The bullet wound in Agent Agu’s chest suggests a forty-five degree angle. The shooter is in the tree.”

  “How could he shoot in the dark?” Casey whispered.

  “He could have used a night scope, a standard tool for hunters. Or, maybe it was just a lucky shot.”

  “Well, if he’s got a night scope—” …crack! Pop-pop! Crack!

  They dropped flat to the ground. Death—cold and impersonal— stared Casey in the face. Would they lay here for a short time? Or indefinitely, objects to be stumbled over in the dark? Would crows pick at them in the morning, before authorities arrived? He expected the rifle shots to ring out, the bullets to pierce his body, at any moment. But they didn’t.

  “He’s not shooting at us,” Nell whispered. “It’s coming from the other side.”

  “The other agents?” Casey said.

  “Probably.”

  Pop, crack, pop-pop-crack! Most of the shots sounded like they came from the ground level, but a few definitely originated from above. “Come on,” Nell whispered.

  As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he could still barely see Nell or the tree. They trudged through snow another ten yards and fell at the base of the huge oak. Two-by-fours had been nailed to the trunk, forming a ladder. But the hydraulic lift blocked part of it. The deer blind reminded Casey of a tree house he and Leila had had as kids, where they’d sit and eat s’mores, read comic books, and suck on long blades of grass.

  Nell handed him the flashlight and whispered in his ear, “Shine this for me.” He did.

  Pop-crack-crack-crack-pop! The gunfire sounded closer. Not near enough to buzz in his ear, but close enough to make him sweat despite the wintry temperatures.

  Nell climbed, first on the hydraulic lift, then on the wooden ladder on the trunk. She held her pistol in her chapped, pink hand, her other hand covered by a thin, leather glove. Nell ascended half-way up the tree. Then two-thirds.

  The gunfire stopped. Had one of the shooters died? Had all of them? Silence never sounded so wonderful.

  Nell reached the top without a peep or even a shadow from Hailangelo. It hadn�
�t been this quiet since they’d arrived; it was as if even the tree held its breath. Disconcerted, Casey aimed the flashlight with care, such that she could see but not so that it would be visible from inside the stand. Nell slowly moved the gun over the top of the ladder, pointing it into the deer stand, above her head and out of view.

  Four heavy footsteps emanated from inside the stand. Hailangelo kicked Nell’s gun from her hand like a soccer striker; the weapon fell in an arc into the darkness, landing with a staccato crunch on the field about ten yards away.

  Nell lost her balance, fell backward, groped for the ladder, but only succeeded in catching a handful of air. She fell ten feet and landed on her side with a thud and a crack.

  Casey extinguished the CombatLight so he couldn’t be seen, then lunged to her. “Nell…Nell! Wake up.” He felt weird saying that to her; usually it was the other way around. “Don’t leave me now, please.” His eyes adjusted to the darkness enough that he could see her chest rise and fall with each breath. But her arm appeared broken and her eyes rolled back; it looked like she had hard-boiled eggs in the sockets. He glanced up at the deer stand and, when he saw no shadowy figures, used the flashlight to scan the field for her pistol. He couldn’t find it. Had he hallucinated the gun falling? No, not unless he had imagined Nell plummeting, and clearly that wasn’t the case. He turned to confirm she was still there. He crouched down and touched her. He wasn’t having a sleep attack. He really was standing at the base of Hailangelo’s lair in the middle of nowhere, without a weapon. Meanwhile, the psychopath had the rifle, the higher ground, and Leila. Casey began to panic, frantically searching the snow for the gun. Had it sunk deep in the snow, out of sight? In the shadows, the black metal of the pistol couldn’t be more camouflaged. Casey closed his eyes, recalled the trajectory of the gun, and scanned the light—back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, walking toward the location where he’d heard the sound of the gun landing. He saw nothing but snow and footprints.

  Eventually, he realized he’d gone beyond where it could possibly have landed, and backtracked toward Nell. He knew it meant risking Hailangelo seeing him, possibly shooting him, but without her weapon he’d stand little-to-no chance. He walked back to Nell, but found no gun.