Holy Hell

by Elizabeth Sims

  I gave the Triangle excellent marks in the distribution department. It was free, and you could find it not only in the bars, but also in at least half the coffee shops, laundromats, newsstands, and bookstores in the three counties of southeastern Michigan.

  I riffled through my magazines and found a recent issue. The theme for the week was "Sluts and Nuts: A Coming-Out Guide for the Rest of Us." There were essays on the subject by queers of all sorts, in between display ads for bars. I flipped through to the personals.

  Male lonelyhearts and female lonelyhearts, straight and gay, want the same thing: love and a chance to give it back. For some, intimacy means companionship for country walks, movies, and firelight kisses; for others, we're talking spanking, fisting, and bootlicking, which carry their own charms.

  Bonnie had probably placed at least one regular classified ad, for the disc jockey opening that Iris wound up filling. And what else? Placed some personals? Answered some? Each ad referred callers to a voicemail extension paid for by the person who placed it. The police could get ahold of phone records, but I couldn't.

  I read the female-seeking-female ads thoroughly.

  If the Midnight Five had been gay women, well, that would've been an easy thread for the police to try to follow. But what if—what if they weren't exactly gay? What about the dreaded "bi-curious" classification? It's a common path of entry to the gay/lesbian world. And somehow it's sort of a flashpoint for confirmed dykes. I can't begin to tell you how many lesbians I've known who, in the midst of their discussion groups, book groups, journal-writing groups, what have you, find reason to stand up and yell about what a phony thing it is to be bisexual. Criminy.

  Me, I can understand it. Why not go to a wine-tasting before buying a case? Iris had all but described herself to me in that fashion.

  I drummed my hands on the floor while poring over the ads. Todd watched me closely.

  Bi-curious WF seeking friend. I am 28, shy, curvy, honest. Magic words to me are Frisbee, Jacuzzi, Psychology, Astrology. You are sophisticated, sexy, athletic, vegan,

  financially solvent, animal-loving. Let's get together for coffee and hugs, possibly lasting relationship. Sincere inquiries only.

  Spicy WF tomato seeks Latina hot pepper. Could we make great salsa together? I love music, dancing, equality, mountain-biking. No head games or racists.

  Bi-curious? Join me and my husband for spirited fun. He will watch only. Clean, healthy, and discreet.

  Ugh. It was futile without more information.

  Was my assumption of multiple Creighter murders correct in the first place? Maybe the photos were from sexual encounters. I'd not seen dead bodies; I'd seen women's faces. I began to understand how valuable a skeptical mind like Ciesla's could be.

  I found myself talking to Todd, bouncing ideas off him. The air got muggier. The horse chestnut tree outside my window stood perfectly still. My anxiety mounted. I wondered how long it would take Ciesla and Porrocks to crack the case through the narrowed channels I'd left to them.

  I put down a meal for Todd and took off to the City-County building, where I requested Carl Creighter's death certificate. "Cause of death: cardiac arrest and multiple trauma." Hmm. I read it again. Cardiac arrest and multiple trauma? "Place of death: Highway 68, Taos County, New Mexico," and it specified a mile marker.

  Then I popped over to the main branch of the Detroit Public Library and, now having the exact date, looked up the newspaper death notice on the microfilm.

  For a minute, scanning down the columns I thought there'd been a mistake, that the Creighter notice had run twice, but no, there were two Creighter notices that day: Carl Creighter and his daughter Veronica Creighter. Same date of death, same place. Private interment at Woodlawn Cemetery, Detroit.

  I scanned through the A sections of the prior days' papers but found nothing more, no story about the deaths. The DPL didn't have film for any New Mexico paper.

  So Bonnie's father and sister bought it in a car wreck, possibly triggered by Mr. Creighter's coronary. Woodlawn was more or less on my way back to Eagle, so I stopped in, asked for the coordinates, and found the graves.

  A moist breeze kicked up and rustled the shrubbery while moody purple clouds swept overhead.

  Why did I stop in? I just had a feeling. When you're desperate to figure something out, you don't just dig for stuff you think'll be important. You dig for tidbits too, because you never know which tidbit might turn out to be the one.

  I don't know what I was expecting, but I was amazed by what I found: a marker the size and style of the Vatican. White marble to hell and gone. The main feature was a statue of an angel with a life-size lamb at its feet. On second look it wasn't an angel; it was St. Francis, the animal-loving saint. A stone sparrow nestled in the crook of his arm, a stone mouse nibbled his sandal strap, and his expression was one of sad benevolence. Above the names two biblical quotations were inscribed:

  FOR SOME ARE ALREADY TURNED ASIDE AFTER SATAN.

  WHEREFORE WE LABOUR, THAT, WHETHER PRESENT OR ABSENT WE MAY BE ACCEPTED OF HIM.

  I wrote down the inscriptions in my notebook, then slowly walked back to the Caprice and drove home.

  My apartment was quiet as usual, but I could tell some noise had occurred in my absence: Todd's ears were quivering, and there were three hang-ups on the old answering machine. We nibbled carrots and cookies together in the big orange chair, both of us a bit edgy.

  At about three o'clock the phone rang, and I let the machine get it. The speaker crackled, "Lillian, Ricky Rosenthal. I don't know if you've heard, but Minerva LeBlanc is in town, looking into the midnight disappearances, and I thought—"

  I picked up. "I'm here, Ricky. Minerva LeBlanc is in Detroit? Minerva LeBlanc?"

  "Yeah. Hi." Ricky's voice was high-pitched but unhurried. Under his direction, the Motor City Journal ran like a sewing machine. "One of my city people bumped into her at police headquarters. She said she was doing research on the midnight disappearances. Trying to decide if they're worth doing a book on. I thought you'd be interested to know that. You might want to compare notes."

  "My God, I can't believe it. She's only, like, the most fantastic crime writer in the universe. She's—oh, my God. I've read everything she's ever written."

  "Really."

  "Wow!" I was practically dancing in place. "I've always wanted to meet her! Do you know where I can get ahold of her—do you know where she's staying?"

  "Uh-unh. But somebody here says she always travels first class, which figures. She's gotta be so filthy rich from all those books—"

  "I'll try the hotels. Ricky, if you hear of another sighting of her, would you please let me know?"

  "Sure."

  I hung up all in a dazzle. Minerva LeBlanc: The name tripped off the tongue with elegance and style. She'd made her first enormous splash about ten years earlier, with the book Inside Johnny Florida, a true account of one of the most gruesome slaughters in history. Surely you've read it, surely you know the story:

  Johnny Florida started out as the mousy little son of law-abiding Hungarian immigrants, an extended clan that lived together in a big house in Queens, New York. As a young man he dropped his real name—his normal wimpy name, whatever the hell it was—and started calling himself Johnny Florida. He felt the name conveyed the kind of man he was, or fantasized being: hip, energetic, in control. But the kid was not very bright.

  One day he decided it'd be in his best interest to take over the family business, which was a hot-sausage pushcart in lower Manhattan. His father and uncles declared they weren't ready to retire. There was a commotion; afterward, the house in Queens was very quiet.

  Johnny Florida developed his own recipe for sausage, which he served from his pushcart. It was months before the murders were discovered and the skeins of sausages hanging from the basement beams analyzed.

  Minerva LeBlanc, a trainee in a New York brokerage house, had eaten regularly from Johnny Florida's pushcart, and she'd become fond of the swaggering littl
e dude. After the story broke, she quit her job and wrote a book about Johnny, his crimes and his trial, using information from dozens of exclusive interviews he granted her from the nuthouse they put him in.

  Inside Johnny Florida was a smash best-seller, a hit movie, and a springboard for Minerva to scrutinize other sensational crimes. Since then, she'd written half a dozen more books about the bizarre, incomprehensible worlds of psychotic killers. Her research on open cases actually helped the police catch some of them. All her books rode the best-seller charts for months. I'd read and reread all of them, thrilling to her snappy descriptions and trenchant insights. Now here she was in Detroit, treading, perhaps, the very same pavement I was.

  The Midnight Five were either the most puzzling string of missing persons the state had ever seen, or nothing at all. As any cop will tell you, people disappear every day; they walk away from their lives for a million different reasons, leaving things hanging in varying degrees.

  Five women had disappeared overnight, one every few months, starting about two years ago. The first couple of them no one connected; then as the count rose, the police started to wonder. But there were no signs of criminal activity, no signs of struggle in their homes, no abductions witnessed, no nothing except that they didn't show up for work the next morning, or their tennis date, or whatever. I couldn't remember much about the women, except that they'd come from different spots around metro Detroit and seemed to have nothing in common.

  Iris could be the sixth. But unlike the others she came up dead.

  I got out the phone book and started calling the top hotels. The Townsend in Birmingham, the Westin downtown. My fifth call was to the Ritz-Carlton in Dearborn, and whaddaya know, Minerva was registered. Out right now, evidently; I left a message.

  Now my little rush of adrenaline was over. I resumed brooding, pacing, sitting, drumming my fingers. What if she doesn't call back? What if the Creighters come for me? Or Lou? Or Bucky, for that matter.

  I was too paranoid to keep hanging around home. I put on my better blue jeans, an unfrayed madras-plaid blouse, and my penny loafers. I combed a little gel through my hair. I put my notebook and Iris's photograph (which I'd never given back to Porrocks) in my little leather bag and drove over to the Ritz.

  Leaving the Caprice in the self-park lot, I walked up the drive. It was awkward because there was no sidewalk between the parking and the lobby. The architectural message was, You should use the valet, you two-bit hick. The valet looked at me politely.

  I called her room from the lobby; she was still out, so I sat down to wait. What a lobby. The floral arrangements alone must've stripped about three acres of rain forest.

  I waited, doodling in my notebook, looking up every few minutes. Just as the sun broke under the cloud cover and turned golden, clarifying the air outside and in, in walked a slim, simply dressed woman lugging a soft leather briefcase, looking tired, and a little troubled.

  She was thinking. Boy, I could see her mind working as she moved. She stopped and spoke briefly to the concierge, then turned toward the corridor to the elevators. I bounced up and approached, my heart in my mouth.

  Chapter 23

  "Ms LeBlanc?" She turned. I could see her inner monologue shutting off. She looked me over with a businesslike expression, poised to deliver either a quick brush-off or half a minute's worth of attention.

  "Uh, my name is Lillian Byrd. I'm a local reporter here, and I've been a terrific fan of yours for years, ever since Inside Johnny Florida, and—" Her face relaxed into a semi-condescending meeting-a-fan expression. I noticed searching eyes, thin lips, and a shortish jaw that almost gave her an overbite. She reached into her briefcase and drew out a pen. "And—and I don't want your autograph—I mean, I'd love to have your autograph, of course, but that's not why I stopped you, I—it's that I'm investigating the murder that might be the latest Midnight Five disappearance—six!—and I thought we maybe could talk, because I heard you're working on the Midnight Five, but maybe you aren't, in which case, uh." Am I a smoothie or what?

  She put the pen away. Her expression now was identical to my seventh-grade gym teacher's when she had to grade me doing a routine on the balance beam or parallel bars. A determined suppression of laughter mixed with the cringing expectation of seeing me hurt myself badly any second.

  I was gratified that she didn't just walk away. She looked around; there was a bit of pre-dinner traffic in the corridor—and said, "Let's go into the lounge."

  Wowie. We took a table in a corner. Here we had British hunt-club atmosphere; we sank up to our waists in manly-smelling leather chairs. The barman came right over.

  "I'll have a lemonade, please," said Minerva LeBlanc. I held up two fingers.

  "Certainly," said the barman.

  "How did you know I was in town and that I was staying here?"

  I told her. "And, you see, I thought it might be worthwhile to compare notes. I know a few things about this recent murder, and I have some pretty good suspicions. In fact, the killers got their hands on me the other night, but I got away—" I started blurting out everything in reverse order, then stopped. "Are you looking into the midnight disappearances?"

  "Yes." She got that gym-teacher look again.

  Our drinks came, frosty and pretty, and she chugged half of hers. "Mmm!" The drink perked her up. She sat there across from me, a receptive, composed presence.

  "Let me back up," I said. "First of all, thank you for taking a little time to talk. The reason I came here is, I feel like I'm stirring a pretty deep bean pot here, and I'd really appreciate it if you'd listen to my story and tell me what you think. I mean, do you have a little time?"

  She nodded, getting out her notebook. She flipped it open and showed me a short page of notes. "I've been poking around for two days, and this is all I've got to show for it. The midnight disappearances: I don't know, maybe they'd make a good nonbook." She gave a short laugh. "I can't get a handle on them at all. Nobody knows anything, and the police can't pull out all the stops because so far there's no crime to investigate."

  "Exactly. See, I'm not sure this murder I referred to is related to these missing women, but if it is, a whole lot of questions could be answered from it."

  A cluster of pointy-toed guys came in and threw themselves into chairs in the opposite corner of the lounge. They were talking fancy business loudly. One shouted, "The only thing wrong with the deal's the goddamn Canadian taxes!" The barman glared at them and took his time getting over there.

  Minerva took another long sip of lemonade. "Tell me about this murder."

  So I did, starting from seeing the Polaroid under Ciesla's desk lamp (I got it out to show her), back to my unsuccessful attempt to pick up Iris at the Snapdragon, to my weird interviews with Bonnie Creighter and Gerald Macklin to the nightmare on Salem Street, to my even weirder encounters with Greg Wycoff and Mrs. Creighter again.

  She asked a lot of questions as I went. "Wait, who is this Emerald guy again?...Did you believe everything the husband told you?...Are there any other men involved in this? What do you know about this Lester Patchell? Which direction did the drag marks come to his barn—from the road?"

  "I believe Porrocks said from the road. I'm sure they would've noticed if they went toward the house."

  "Right, right." Her eyes shone; I could tell she was starting to have fun. Well, that was Minerva LeBlanc: A good grisly dish got her blood up. She nodded and watched me intently as I talked.

  I watched her back. Her clothes were simple but clearly expensive: beautiful cocoa silk slacks; leather basketweave slip-ons, solid and elegant; a short-sleeved jersey of perhaps linen-cotton in a seashell pink. It fit her like a second skin. Her hair was brown and straight like mine; she wore hers a little longer and swingier.

  I'd gazed at her photo so many times, you know, those photos on the dust jackets. I'd study the pictures intently, trying to tell from the look in her eyes everything about her: What did she like to do on Sundays? Who was her favorite author? Wh
at was her favorite movie? Was she really a nice person deep inside?

  Now, seeing her in real life, talking to her—well, there was a lot to take in.

  She made a note now and then. When I got to the part about being apprehended by the Creighters, she said, "Oh, my God...oh, no! Oh, wow...wow. Whoa! How did you—oh. Wow."

  The Wycoff stuff really got her going. "This is exactly the kind of...oh, my God. You're not making this up...I'd have given anything to be there. Wow."

  When I finished, she peered searchingly into her lemonade for a while, then scanned the landscape of the lounge. After another minute she looked at me and said, "We've got lots more to talk about." Her eyes were bright and quick, steered by a pair of sleek rack-and-pinion eyebrows. Boy, was she pumped. I was pretty stoked myself to finally be talking to somebody other than Todd who took everything I said seriously.

  "The thought occurs to me," I said, "that Ciesla and Porrocks might be in a little over their heads too."

  "That's very possible."

  "I mean, how many murders do they handle? Hardly any." In fact, I had no idea whether Ciesla and Porrocks had ever been in charge of a murder investigation.

  "Nothing," she said, "about this Iris Macklin situation adds up to anything they teach in police school."

  "Yeah?"

  She looked at her watch. I was surprised to notice it was an ordinary Timex; it didn't fit in with the rest of her ensemble.

  "No wonder I'm hungry," she said with a crooked smile. "That French toast and coffee was ten hours ago."

  "Didn't you have any lunch?"

  "Forgot."

  "Well—wanna eat?"

  She smiled so big I almost fell back.