His daughter, breaking from the water, rose from the lip of the pool, walked around the edge, drew a towel from folded stack, and climbed row after row towards him.
He strained with worry, afraid she’d slip on the heavily shellacked bleachers, wishing she’d put on her slippers first, as he held out a hand to reach for her, to pull her close.
Saying her name. His daughter’s name. His girl’s name.
The loudspeaker signaled a class change. Cryer continued waiting. He wondered what Bliss would make of the mission so far, if Cryer could find him and present him with all that he’d done so far. Would Bliss find it pathetic or would he be able to finger the murderer already? Cryer’s body seemed content to be here, so he tried to force his thoughts to follow suit. There was a faint lapping of water. No one entered the pool area. The period changed again. And again. Jesus Christ, the maniac could’ve sat around here all day long exactly as he was, waiting for his daughter to slip into her suit and then ease into the water. For all he knew, the killer was still here, planning more murders.
Girls giggled. When Cryer opened his eyes he saw that the swim team was meeting for practice. The girls ignored him. Their parents hadn’t taught them well at all. He hadn’t taught his own daughter well at all.
The petite swim coach, but not the petite swim coach from his dream, approached him. She looked hardly any larger or older than the girls. Caramel-colored freckles covered her face, and she wore her honey-blonde hair very short. What else would you expect from a swimmer? "This is a closed practice session. Only parents are allowed to watch."
He climbed down to her and said, "I used to be a parent."
"Used to be?"
"Yes."
She frowned and withdrew a step. Good, she was sharp to be so cautious. She should’ve lectured the girls more. "Your name?"
"Chuck Smith."
"I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave."
"I’d like to talk to you for a moment if I could."
"I know all the fathers of my girls. You’re not one of them."
"No."
"Then you’ve got to leave here, please."
He liked the way she held herself. All bundled energy, ready to get in his face. She kept a fair distance between them.
"My daughter was killed a year ago. There was another coach here at the time." He let his tongue move without him. "Coach Tabitha. Tabitha Lee."
"I was Coach Lee’s replacement. She’s moved up to training the team at Reed College. I’m Coach Price. Vivian Price."
"Oh."
"Your daughter was killed?"
"Yes. I was hoping to talk to Coach Lee about her. About–"
She waited, curious, trying to appear interested and helpful, but also checking over her shoulder, watching the girls, making sure there were no problems. An eye everywhere. "About what, Mr. Smith?"
The girls were in the pool doing laps, doing heats. A few were diving, their bodies arcing and jetting through the air, entering the water with hardly a ripple. So fluid, like their lives. Constantly changing, surging forward. He wondered if this woman, Vivian Price, had been here a year ago, if she’d have noticed anyone skulking about. If she’d have
"It’s nothing too important," he said.
"You can reach Coach Lee at Reed, like I said. And in the future, if you want to visit the school again, please stop in at the front office first." She turned her head, talking half to him and half to herself. "Was that damn security guard off taking a break on shift again? I’m going to bust his stoner ass for him."
29
The flower shop where his wife had worked sat wedged between a liquor store and a bakery. Cryer could just see himself coming here to visit his wife, then hitting both the other shops and getting back in his car with a bottle of whiskey and a box of crullers.
A teenage girl was working the store, attending to an elderly woman and putting together and huge and colorful floral arrangement. Cryer looked around the place, imagining himself here before, leaning his bulk up against the counter, enjoying some time with his lady before heading off to his daughter’s swim meet.
The teenager finished up with the old woman and Cryer asked some questions. The teen had only been working at the shop for a few weeks and had no idea about anyone who’d managed the shop a year ago. She hadn’t heard about anyone being murdered. She assumed he was a cop and called him officer. She told him that Mrs. Phillips owned the place now. Mrs. Phillips would be in on Friday, Officer.
Cryer continued to press, hoping to get Mrs. Phillips’ phone number, and the girl started to get worried the way any normal kid would. You mention murder to a young girl and push her for information she knows she shouldn’t give out and you’re going to scare her, even if she does think you’re a cop. She asked him to come back on Friday. She said that Mrs. Phillips might be able to help him. Said, "Officer, would you like some two-day old roses for your wife, no charge?"
30
He had no idea what to do next, where to go. He wondered if there was some way to get in touch with Bliss. Bliss would know what the next step was supposed to be, provided he hadn’t wound up hanging in his closet again.
Cryer sat on the curb out in front of the flower shop and took out the picture of his daughter and her friends. He held it to his scar and wondered if the little guy inside his head might reach out and grab it and tug it into his skull. Once in his brain, maybe Cryer would be able to remember her, and once he remembered her, maybe he’d know what else to do.
But he did realize that he didn’t need Boss to get him a blade, and decided to go buy himself one. Two blocks down there was a pawn shop that had a nice array of knives with leather sheathes. They varied from enormous Bowies to thinner, one-, two-, and three-inch blades that hardly had any weight to them.
He chose a three-inch knife, knowing that all of that metal had been sunk into his head and still hadn’t been able to put him away.
It proved that this knife was his intimate, his brother, his benefactor. The universe had moved itself so that all forces, attractions, stresses, values and reactions worked in tandem to protect him from death.
He paid forty-five bucks for it, stuck it in his back pocket where the hilt barely jutted free, and let out his first real laugh in over a year.
31
He wandered, thinking maybe he’d return to Annie’s; hit the bottle with her for a while. Talk to Phil, perhaps meet with Milly and get a deeper picture of what his daughter was like. He headed for the bus stop but was fifteen seconds too late to catch the bus already heading up the road.
Motion called for impulse, for impetus. He moved because he didn’t know what else to do. His body carried him along. Perhaps his body already knew who the killer was. Perhaps the little man in his head was aware.
The blade was abruptly in his hand and then it wasn’t. His hands weren’t only strong, they were fast.
He kept flipping the blade up and catching it again, pressing the point to the scar between his eyes. It was a crazy thing to do, but there it was. People on the street backed way the fuck off. Somehow, this was bringing him closer to the killer. To Bliss, to the priest, Larry, the ex-prostitute, to the flower shop girl, Phil, Doyle, Miss Avery, Mikey and Evelyn, the claw foot tub, the kids who worked the fast food drive through, to the powdered milk. His mission encompassed them all. He placed the flat of the blade against his lips and waited for his mouth to say something that might help.
Speaking to the mouth, he said, "Come on, let’s go already. Help me out here."
The mouth, failing to respond.
The mouth silent. The mouth holding back secrets.
Threading the blade through his hair, digging it lightly along his scalp that bled the white hair. The white dead hair. Beneath it, a metal plate. If the psycho ever tried to stab him again, it would be like trying to stick a steel girder.
Someone called to him, asked him what business he had to be here.
Cryer looked.
He was
back at his daughter’s middle school.
He stood at the little booth at the front gate.
The guard’s eyes were bloodshot. He’d been toking on a lot of Boss’s weed. Cryer felt a need to express his grave dissatisfaction with the guard for getting stoned on the job when he should’ve been watching out for the kids at school, keeping out mental patients like himself, watching for murderers. Cryer’s hand flashed out and chopped the guard across the bridge of his nose. Blood burst from both nostrils and the guy’s eyes rolled up in his head and he went down hard.
"Well now," Cryer said, and proceeded inside the school again.
32
Past the wall of trophies to the gymnasium doors. He walked in to see girls tumbling, whirling, and flipping on mats. His daughter hadn’t only been a first-rate swimmer but a gymnastics champion as well. He knew the after-school schedules. He knew that the top athletes took breaks between their training and then regrouped to continue punishing their bodies and perfecting their skills.
He climbed back into the stands and watched. This was his position. It had always been his position. Since long before he’d been born, this had been his place to sit and watch. The world needs men to watch and encourage and record the crafted perfection of their daughters’ movements.
And yet he hated what he saw here, what he had always seen here, and could feel the man he once was growing anxious and upset again. He was annoyed at himself and at the system which pressed these girls to win at any cost. His daughter had broken her fingers and toes, strained her back, pulled tendons and ripped muscles, had even been in traction. She’d once fallen off the high beam with such force that he’d thought she’d broken her neck.
Cryer closed his eyes and saw all her pain and all her pride. He let out a sharp grunt of emotion and the noise surprised the shit out of him.
The gymnastics coach’s name was Resnick. He heard the girls calling to Coach Resnick and watched the tall, wiry guy helping them during their practice. His hands carefully aiding their small, pliant but powerful bodies through the painful and trying actions.
Cryer glanced down at Resnick training a girl who looked to be no more than nine or ten years old. Cryer thought she was too young to be giving over so much of her life to such discipline. It’s what he always thought. It’s what he thought every day that he sat in every PTA meeting, every parent-teacher conference, to all the special events. The games, the heats, the tourneys, the practices. All that suffering, his daughter crying in the night because of her aching back, talking like a ninety year old woman. And yet always returning to the gym, to strain and beat her body further and further to the very edge of her endurance.
Now he watched a ten-year-old girl move so exquisitely along the balance beam, twisting and leaping to land on a piece of polished wood only a couple of inches wide. How many times had his daughter fallen off that beam only to climb back up onto it? Two thousand? Five thousand?
Dis moot.
With no apparent effort, the girl spun, leaped, and wove so gracefully that Cryer felt himself going with her. His hands were in his pockets but he could hear himself clapping, see himself waving, he could hear his own voice cheering, despite his fears and his reservations. The firm stomp of her feet landing on the wood occurred over and over again, the vibration storming into his chest.
Dee moont.
Cryer looked down and he was holding the knife and wondered why.
Thees ount.
The girls continued twining and hurling themselves across the mats, on the high bar, the balance beam, the vault. Running. Rolling. Bounding. Mounting and–
Tis ont.
"Dismount," Cryer said.
He’d seen the guy go out the window, swinging himself over the sill with that slight and effective motion, and it had struck a memory that had been ringing within Cryer ever since.
The gymnastics coach. Resnick.
Dismount.
Cryer climbed out of the stands and looked at the man–the Chatty Kathy–who had stabbed him in the head and murdered his wife and daughter.
33
Time meant little. He waited until the girls were finished with their practice and had retreated to the shower room. Then he watched as Resnick rolled up a couple of the mats, moved the vault box over to the side, and headed to his office in the corner of the gym. The guy either completely ignoring Cryer or just not noticing. In any case, not caring. Another sign that Resnick didn’t give a damn about the safety of the girls. What was one more psycho in the room anyway?
Cryer followed.
He knew, even as he took his first step after the killer, that the end of the mission would be a disappointment. There was no way it could be anything but dissatisfying. He could feel that his vengeance could not amount to anything truly worthwhile. Whatever blood fell in the next few minutes couldn’t wash away the grief and pain that had come before it. It would not return him to the world. It would not allow him to fully remember his family. This had always been the way but he had chosen not to see it. This had become his reason for being because he had nothing else to do. No hate accompanied him.
The scope of his clarity and understanding made him sigh deeply. The noise made Resnick turn just as he opened the door to his office.
"Can I help you with something?" Resnick asked.
How’s that for a loaded question?
Finally Cryer had come face to face again with the man who had taken everything from him, even himself.
Seeing Resnick now said as much about the man Cryer had been than it said about the psycho Chatty Kathy. Small, trim, plain, empty. Completely average in every way one could measure. Cryer couldn’t even describe the man except to say he was like ten million other men. And this is what had beaten him. What had watched him. What had been superior to him. What had talked to his daughter while his wife had bitten through her tongue and swallowed a pint of blood trying to get the duct tape off her mouth. This is what had entered his home and what had escaped from it. This is what he hadn’t been able to stop.
If the fat ineffectual game-playing addict he’d been wasn’t already dead, Cryer would’ve wanted to stab the fuck too.
"Excuse me?" Resnick said, entering the office, snapping on a light. There was an air vent high in the tiled wall. The echoes of the girls’ talking in the shower room could plainly be heard.
So maybe that’s what had done it. One of the slivers of pain that had pried under the guy’s skull and driven him mad. Sitting at his desk and listening to their laughter, thinking about their bodies, their slow and natural and unyielding transformation into women. Who knew? Men had been driven insane by less.
"Why did you do it?" Cryer asked. His voice was flat and weary.
"What?"
"Why did you do it?"
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean."
"I do? What do you want?"
"You know what I want. You know who I am."
"I do?"
You could go around like this for hours, days, years. The coach, this athlete in charge of a generation, so common and typical and yet anything but normal. This man who only wanted to talk because he was too often alone with the unspeakable.
Cryer said, "They have hotlines, you know."
"Hotlines?" Resnick let go with a grin and a little spurt of laughter. "Look, what’s this about?"
"Hotlines where you can call and chat. Costs a couple of bucks a minute, which is a lot, I know, but still, it’s better than the alternative. I think so anyway."
"What the hell is going on here?"
It felt important to make an effort to show Resnick that it shouldn’t have had to go this way. That the man once had choices, even if there weren’t any now.
"You could’ve talked to me, but I suppose that wouldn’t have been good enough. I had time. I had lots of time on my hands. You could’ve come by and played some games. If you were looking for a friend. We could’ve ordered some pizzas."
"Pizzas? What are yo
u–"
"I could’ve bummed a few cigarettes off you. We could’ve sat out back on the deck and watched the fish in the pond. You had options. You could’ve talked to me. You saw me for what I was. You watched me. But–that wasn’t enough. Christ, why didn’t you just take me out too? Why keep me out of the picture? I would’ve been the easiest one. I wasn’t strong, I couldn’t have resisted. Not like they did." The man’s eyes beginning to glint with understanding, perhaps even recognition. But no fear yet. Maybe there wouldn’t be any, but Cryer had to try. "But I suppose I wouldn’t have given you much satisfaction. You wouldn’t have gotten any joy out of murdering a weak man. You preferred strong women. You prefer powerful, driven little girls."
Now Resnick began reaching behind him going for a desk drawer. "I’m, I’m–"
"You can’t even deny it. You’re too full of shame to even try to dispute it. For a Chatty Kathy you sure as fuck aren’t saying much."
Cryer got in close, letting the charge grow in the air between them. He thought, Our heartbeats are in sync right now. It was something else that might be true, that he thought was true. Resnick seemed to understand and the confused expression vanished. He seemed to man up. His face hardened with acceptance.
"Killers don’t stop," Cryer said. "Are there more bodies out there waiting to be found?"
"Yes, there are," Resnick told him.
"You keep a journal? Trophies from your victims? A secret stash somewhere so when the cops break into your house they’ll have the whole story?"
"Yes."
"Good. When I cry, I cry for this."
"Whatever that means," Resnick said.
"When I bleed, I bleed for this."
"You should be dead. There’s no reason for you to be alive. I checked on you. You were comatose. You were asleep."
The Nobody Page 7
