Holy Hell

by Elizabeth Sims

  I left the alley and walked along Warren for a while, then called a taxi from a Lebanese all-night diner. It was cooler out now. I leaned against the rough brick of the building, feeling the stored heat of the day seeping out.

  When the cab arrived, it was an appropriately awful one, the driver a surly white man who watched me in the rearview mirror. The seat cushions stank. I directed him to Bonnie's neighborhood, my eyes straining sideways at every passing driver. I didn't know what Mrs. Creighter's car looked like. It had to have been parked out front when I first cruised by the house, but I had no reason to take note of it then.

  I got out at my car. Thank God the Creighters hadn't gotten around to searching me and taking my keys. I made a fast reconnaissance down Salem.

  Ciesla was right: The Creighters had been busy. The house was completely dark. The garage door gaped open, and I didn't have to squint very hard to see it was empty. If the file cabinets had contained documentation of the Creighters' activities, their contents could have quickly been transferred to the car and the car driven away anywhere. Sure, the cops were on the alert for it, but after one o'clock on a weeknight, it wasn't terribly likely a patrol officer would see it. For all I knew, the Creighters had obscured the license plate or changed it.

  After being the hunter, then the captured prey, now I was the hunter again. But I was no longer hunting unsuspecting game; I had exposed myself, stepped out too early from behind the blind, missed with my first shot, and no longer had an advantage. A fine lesson, but costly.

  I turned the Caprice homeward, driving in a disgraced funk. What were the Creighters doing right now? What would they do next?

  Self-preservation had to be tops on their list. Once they'd lost me, they'd turned immediately to the incriminating evidence, working as an efficient team. They'd packed up the photos and anything else, thrown them in the car and fled. Or maybe only one of them fled while the other stayed behind to keep up a semblance of normalcy. Once they'd covered their butts for the immediate moment, they'd turn to the task of covering their butts permanently. That would involve getting rid of me.

  Or would it? Would the fact that they'd be able to stymie the cops—who could search to hell and gone and find no hard evidence, who could question the neighbors and find not one, perhaps, who noticed the minor commotion outside the Creighters' house one hot night, cars being jockeyed around—be enough? I didn't think it would be. Killers who kill for pleasure, or for whatever the hell twisted reason, wouldn't hesitate to kill for security. For contingency. They had revealed themselves to me out of bloodlust and bravado, thinking I wouldn't live to act against them, and now they must follow through.

  First they'd have to find out where I lived. (My address wasn't listed in the phone book.) Then they'd have to develop a killing plan for me, one that would allow them to get away with it and cast no suspicion on themselves. This would take a little time, overnight at least.

  I drove straight home, parked a little way down the street, and scampered up the stairs to my flat in the dark. When I got in I didn't turn a light on. Todd bumped up to sniff my shoes.

  By the light of the refrigerator I checked his water dish, then poured myself a tall glass of water, drank it down, then added a shot of Dewar's to the next one. I sat on the living room floor, my back against the couch. It was a long turquoise leather couch, from the waiting room of a famous plastic surgeon in Grosse Pointe, according to the guy at the secondhand shop. Todd nudged his head onto my thigh, and I patted him while I sipped my drink.

  In the dark my heart and nerves slowed down. Goddamn it to hell, I began to think of Judy. I wanted her to comfort me, to marvel at my exploits, to fear for me, to insist, above all, that I come and stay with her until the danger was over.

  Ciesla and Porrocks would interview Bonnie tomorrow. While it was possible that she might somehow crack under questioning or make a misstep with her facts, I doubted it. The Creighters could come for me now. I had to figure it would be soon. Everlasting hell. My head swung toward the phone. One of my self-debates started up.

  Me: Call her. You need someplace safe. You need a safe harbor. In the storm. You need her.

  Me: I have other friends.

  Me: You need her.

  Me: I know I do. I do, but—

  Me: But what? What's there to discuss? This is life and death. You need somewhere to stay. Maybe not just a night or two, but longer. It'd work out. She'd love to have you. She'd understand.

  Me: She would, once she'd gotten me to say "I love you" again. I'd be a phony. I'd be using her.

  Me: You love her. You know you do.

  Me: I do. Yeah, I guess I do.

  In the dark my eyes strained toward the phone. Then it rang. I swear to God, it rang right then. Todd and I both jumped about a foot. It must have been about three o'clock.

  Once in a while, though I know she resisted doing it, Judy would call in the middle of the night. Just out of loneliness—you know, how people do. But what if...? I hoisted Todd by his nape and nestled him on my shoulder. The ringing deafened us, as it does when you're alone in the dark. Todd's ears quivered against my neck. After eleven rings it stopped. I went over and switched on the answering machine.

  I didn't know about Todd, but my ears needed soothing. I picked my mandolin from its hook in the dining room and checked the tuning. One of the D strings was flat, but the others were right on.

  My mandolin is a little old flattop I'd traded my extra set of golf clubs for a few years back. I liked to play bluegrass on it, and I was learning some Irish stuff. I believed that Todd's favorite tune was "Wildwood Flower" because he'd stretch out and go extremely relaxed whenever I played it.

  So I nudged up the D string and played it softly, just picking out the skeleton of the tune. I played it through a few times, adding a little bit of ornamentation each time and a little volume too. Before long I was playing it out full with all the hammer-ons and slides. It felt good. I omitted my traditional "shave and a haircut" tag, just letting the last chord die.

  Not liking the silence that followed, I played "Cripple Creek," then "Red-Haired Boy," then a snatch of "Carnival of Venice," to work on the old tremolo a little bit.

  After a while I quit playing and just sat there. Finally I looked at my watch, leaning over to a spot of streetlight coming through the bamboo blinds: three-thirty. I got to my feet creakily. My hips ached from the jump, and a knee and an elbow felt raw. In my bedroom I groped in the back of my closet until I found a piece of two-by-four some former tenant had left behind. I shoved it under the front doorknob, angling the other end into the carpet pile. Todd hopped back and forth under it a few times.

  I brewed half a pot of coffee in my stovetop percolator and remembered I'd left my good coffee mug on Ed Rinkell's desk, when we had our last conversation. That seemed a long time ago. I was afraid to go to sleep. I drank the coffee sitting in the same spot in the living room. Exhaustion crept up anyway, and I wound up dozing on the couch. The night was staying just a little cool.

  I came partly awake with the confused hope that the night hadn't been fully real. Light was building on the other side of the blinds. Todd, I saw, was sleeping several feet away from the couch, having made a little nest out of my socks and shoes. I was surprised he hadn't gone off to sleep on his bed of old towels in a corner of my bedroom.

  "Hey," I said. He roused a little, meeting my eye in his usual calm way.

  In the bathroom I flossed and brushed, looking like a zombie in the mirror. I took a quick, dribbling shower, not wanting to turn the water on full blast so I could hear someone breaking in and coming to stab me to death. I began to understand the overpowering paranoia shared by all fugitives.

  With the gathering light I began to feel better. I decided to collect my courage and go to the alley behind the Snap and look for that tooth. My watch said five-twenty. I fortified myself with some toast and an orange.

  Chapter 19

  Most city alleys are the same: filthy, stinking, ch
ock-full of stuff that archaeologists might or might not give a damn about in the year 10,000. Of course, everything organic would be fossilized or something, so it wouldn't smell. And nothing would move because nothing would be alive. Therefore the alley, gradually exposed by little flicks of their dust brushes, would be a much safer and more pleasant place to be than it was now.

  We may betray one another in our homes and workplaces, we may bite one another in the streets, but in the alleys we do our worst. Here are the useful dump bins for all things unwanted. Here are the packing cases called home by rats and people. Here are the syringes, the blood and the sickness and the babies. Here are the barrels of grease and garbage, the gutter waste that sluices out the back door.

  This particular alley, behind the Snapdragon, ran the length of a long block. Tattered scraps covered the grimy pavement like leaf litter in the forest. There was a paint-spattered broken chair behind the rent-to-own shop. It wouldn't be there long.

  I saw no one. The only sounds I heard were a few car doors slamming in the neighborhood, working people heading out for the early shift. That, plus a hardy handful of songbirds. Traffic on Livernois was sparse.

  I gave the alley a cursory walk-through, then went to the place where I was standing when I had thrown the tooth away. I walked in vectors from the spot, looking hard. I got down on my hands and knees and peered beneath the dumpster. I peered over its sticky steel side. It was full to the top with bulging plastic garbage bags and flattened cardboard cartons. As I scuttled around, the light changed from gray to pink.

  Here is what I found in that alley: assorted crumpled newspaper sections and advertising inserts, a wedge-shaped piece of plastic snow fence, a wadded-up disposable diaper, a small pile of what looked like sawdust, innumerable empty malt liquor cans (various brands), innumerable empties both broken and intact of fortified wine (various brands—I spotted Mogen David 20/20, a.k.a. Mad Dog, the football-stand brand of choice at my high school), a rusty chunk of angle iron, a wooden toggle button from someone's overcoat, a thoroughly weather-beaten (though full) package of Entenmann's chocolate chip cookies, a paint-can lid with a trace of pickle-colored pigment on it, one Vernor's bottle cap, three Pepsi bottle caps, a tangle of coaxial cable, a squashed teddy bear dressed in a train engineer's cap and overalls, a plastic five-gallon bucket empty (thank God) except for a dried crust of drywall joint compound, a plastic Kowalski kielbasa wrapper, and a striped men's dress shirt torn and twisted into a knot, as if an investment banker had fought the hounds of hell in this alley and escaped only with his skin.

  I found all those things in the alley. But I didn't find the tooth.

  Chapter 20

  At noon, back at home, I called Ciesla. He took my call sounding disgusted, as I'd expected. He was eating his usual lunch from the A&W down the street, munching his way around a burger.

  "Yeah, Tom, did you question Bonnie yet? How did it go?" He swallowed—a too-big swallow I could tell. He was eating angrily, as cops often do. If cops waited until they calmed down to eat, they'd all starve to death.

  "Well, Lillian," he began heavily, "yeah, I think you're onto something. There's something stinking-suspicious about the Creighters. Fortunately for them, however, your adventures last night gave them all the time they needed to get their shit in one pile. And that pile's gone, yes, ma'am. Maybe we'll find it and maybe we won't. I was about to call you up and thank you, because Porrocks 'n' I were getting bored around here with only the usual forty or fifty cases to—"

  "OK, Tom—I'm sorry. I'm sorry, OK? I blew it, I fucked up, I'm an absolute worthless moron piece of shit. But let's be fair: I turned you on to the right party, didn't I?"

  "I don't know!" he shouted.

  "Well, I did, goddamn it. I didn't make up that stuff."

  "Why didn't you grab some of the evidence you said you saw?"

  He had me there. When I yanked on that file drawer, the only thing on my mind was to use it as a tool to break the window. I saw the photos and papers, but my mind was so focused on getting out, and the time was so short...If I'd been less of an idiot, I'd have grabbed something.

  "I don't know," I mumbled.

  "I went over to the house after you called me."

  "You did?"

  "Yeah, I thought I'd better. It was dark. Nobody home. Then Porrocks and I went over at a normal hour; about nine this morning. Bonnie Creighter was home, she welcomed us in. The mother was sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee—"

  "She was?"

  "They showed us around the whole house. We didn't need a warrant. They were very cooperative. The place was spick-and-span—no nothing anywhere, no nothing. They were pretty casual—extremely casual."

  "Did you check the file cabinets?"

  "One had some stuff in it, family papers; the other was empty."

  "That should tell you something."

  Ciesla paused, as if counting silently.

  I asked quickly, "What about the garage?"

  "Empty. I found your peephole, though. Mrs. Creighter's car was in the driveway, a dark-blue Buick. You couldn't have mistaken it, could you?"

  For a maroon Escort? I gave a pleading sigh.

  "Funny, Bonnie Creighter called the station just before we showed up, reporting her car stolen."

  "Huh!" I exclaimed. "Huh!"

  "You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

  "Huh, gee, Tom," I stammered.

  "Just how did you get away last night, anyway?"

  "Ran like hell." It was true, for about fifty feet. Ciesla made me wait until he'd taken another bite of burger.

  "Lillian, don't you know you need evidence to convict? To even fucking arrest? It doesn't matter if you know who did it. The world is full of cops who know who did it. Now this lovely case may stay open forever, thanks to you."

  I was past the point of wanting to drop down a chute to the molten core of the earth. "What are you going to do now?" I asked meekly.

  "None of your goddamned business!" he yelled. "Do you hear me?" After a minute, he said, "I know you're trying to help, Lillian. But don't. All right? Don't."

  "But what if they try to kill me?"

  "That's your—" he caught himself. "I don't know." He sighed. "You've done me a few favors. Porrocks and I are paying you back by keeping a lid on this shit you've pulled. But there's no way you're going to get any kind of police protection. This ain't the movies. If you're afraid, leave town. Go hide out for a while. But I don't think they're going to do anything to you."

  "Why not?"

  "First of all, because I don't believe everything you've told me about last night." This was delivered pretty flatly. "It's just talk, and for all I know you made half of it up—all of it. You need work, right? You want to sell an exciting story, right? I have no reason to think you're in any great danger."

  "You think I'm lying!"

  "You haven't been straight with me on this from the beginning. I don't know what to think." The sound of a straw vacuuming the bottom of a drink cup came over the phone. "The second reason is, if these ladies really are the killers, they're so spooked of you they're going to stay the hell away from you. Killers are cowards. If you stay in this business long enough, you'll learn that. Now I'm warning you again. Keep your nose out of this or you're gonna get in bigger trouble than you ever thought possible. Don't call me anymore. I'm not obliged to talk to you."

  Click.

  Ciesla had acted that way with me once before, when I'd found a list of the salaries of all the detectives and deputies and printed it. He'd overreact sometimes, then get over it. I'd probably get him to work with me on this. After all, I was the one who knew a little territory here. But he had to stay mad for a while. In the meantime, I had no one to advise me.

  I spent the next hour pacing, thinking, churning through possibilities. The whole mess was too dangerous to tell any of my friends about; the only one I wanted to talk to was Judy. But I realized that if I talked to her, she wouldn't just listen; she'd try
to get involved, and if anything awful happened, well, it just couldn't be.

  I needed to find a way to get at the Creighters. Maybe there was a back door into their weird creepy minds that would lead me to more evidence or that would break down their defenses, or both.

  I kept wondering about the teeth. What did the Creighters want with Iris's teeth? Why would anybody want human teeth? There were strong overtones of necrophilia here: the morbid, the strange, the sickening.

  I'd learned that journalism was essentially one big research project. You're a perpetual student, and as such, you continually have to ask for help. A great many things can be learned from books.

  I'd learned, though, that an interview with an expert could take you further, faster than most any book. Of course, an expert could also derail you. But I was in a hurry.

  I thought of the creepiest and most morbid people I'd ever met. It was a short list. Other than the Creighters and my great-aunt Alberta, there was Greg Wycoff. I shuddered just saying his name to myself. Greg Wycoff was a disgraced funeral director who'd worked for one of the biggest mortuaries in Detroit. He'd been the epicenter of a mesmerizingly juicy scandal right around the time I joined the Eagle Eye. It wasn't something that had really hit the media, but everybody seemed to know about it.

  This fellow Wycoff had been making a good living running the funeral home for the owners, a family that had built up two or three generations of good will in the community. I won't say the name because they're still in business. Wycoff built himself a still grander way of life by catering to a select club of necrophiles. It was actually a matchmaking business: He'd evaluate the corpses on hand against his client list, and set up "after-hours encounters." That was the story. The cops, who acted very wise about it, hinted that that was just the tip of the iceberg, though when pressed they didn't offer any details.