Ray picked up the Hi-Power and aimed it loosely in the man’s direction. ‘Come on up. Slowly.’
The man did as he was told, his eyes on Ray and the muzzle of the pistol in his hand. Ray had a brief moment to study the man’s face. He was mostly bald, the hair he did have fully white. The left side of his face was covered with a red-skinned burn scar that went from the base of his neck to his forehead. The right side was gaunt, skin pulled down tightly over misshapen cheek- and jawbones. The eye on the burn side was not quite the same shade of blue as the one on the right and had the dull sheen of glass. For the first time in all his years as a cop a monster actually looked like one. Quasimodo without his hump. The man came up out of the trapdoor. Ray smelled a faint, musty basement smell come up with him but nothing worse. Nervously, the man put his hands in the air as he stepped around the open trapdoor.
‘Nothing much to steal here, mister.’ His voice was cracked and dry with a permanent rasp to it that was probably a result of whatever had caused the burn on his face.
‘That’s the second time in four days someone’s accused me of being a thief.’
‘If you’re not here to rob me, why the gun?’
‘I’m a cop.’
‘What did I do, steal a book from the library?’
Ray ignored the comment. ‘You’re working on a Sunday.’
‘I work every day except Christmas. Lots of work in my trade, believe it or not.’
‘You’re William Gerritson?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Ever heard of someone named William Cooper. Also known as Koop?’
‘No.’ The answer came too quickly but without inflection, although it was hard to read the man’s facial expressions or the tilt of his words.
‘Jennings Price?’
‘Yes.’
‘How?’
‘He brought me books to repair. Some gold-leaf work as well.’
‘He was murdered.’
‘So I understand.’
‘Hasn’t been much about it in the papers, what with the Kennedy assassination.’
‘Dick Schwager told me about it.’
‘Schwager comes in here?’
‘He has done.’
‘Where do you know him from?’
‘Here. He brings in books and documents for me to work on from time to time.’ Gerritson sighed. ‘I really wish you’d get to the point.’
Ray nodded in the direction of the picture on his desk. ‘In a hurry to get home to the wife and kids.’
‘We’re divorced,’ said Gerritson. ‘That’s part of the reason I moved down here from New York.’
‘Stay close to the family?’
‘Something like that.’ Which explained why the name in the telephone directory was in her name and not his. Gerritson was beginning to fade as a suspect.
‘How’d you burn your face?’
‘That’s none of your business.’
‘Why don’t you tell me anyway. Save us a lot of trouble and paperwork and lawyer’s fees.’
‘A fire.’
‘I can see that.’
‘I had a shop in Brooklyn. There was a fire. I got burned.’
‘The damage to the other side of your face?’
‘For Christ’s sake!’
‘Humour me.’
‘A two-by-four. I was wired up for almost six months.’ His face twisted into an ugly grimace and he ran his hand back through his hair. It fell back over his forehead almost immediately but Ray saw the old scar there. He could feel his heart begin to thump erratically in his chest and he tightened his grip on the Hi-Power. He hadn’t been wrong after all.
‘What about the scar on your forehead? The old one.’
‘What about it?’
‘Where did that come from?’
‘I fell off my bicycle when I was a kid.’
‘No.’
‘What? I’m lying about falling off a bicycle?’
‘I think so.’ He transferred the Hi-Power to his left hand and took the mugshot out of his jacket pocket and laid it on the counter. Gerritson took two steps forward and looked down at the old photograph. ‘Assault charge and a drunk and disorderly. December 1938, just like it says on the sign around your neck, Mr Cooper.’
‘My name is Gerritson.’
‘You originally come from a little place called Dundee, not too far from here. Your father worked in the local bindery and you went around killing small animals until you graduated up to pigs and then little girls. Two of them, both found later weighted down in a pond near some place called Graveyard Knob.’
‘I was born in Ogdensburg, New York. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ But he did. The one good eye was wide with apprehension and there was a faint line of perspiration in the bristly hairs on the man’s upper lip.
‘Word is you were also fucking your mother,’ said Ray, pouring gasoline on the fire to see if he would react. He stiffened visibly and took a step away from the counter. It actually seemed as though the scar on his face was turning a deeper red, almost a purple.
‘Watch what you say, mister. Watch what you say about my mother.’
‘Okay, Charming Billy, what about your father? After your momma disappeared, and we can go into that too if you want to, your daddy had an accident. Got chopped up in some kind of machinery at the bindery. Maybe that’s why you chop up little girls now, who knows? You thought it was the foreman’s fault so one night you tied him to a chair and poured gasoline all over him and lit a match. Took out the foreman and the whole damned bindery. Which is when you disappeared.’
‘This is insane.’
‘No,’ said Ray. ‘I think you are.’
‘Then why don’t you charge me?’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll get around to it. I just want to get my whole theory out on the table where you can see it. Maybe you can come up with something to prove me wrong. Do that and I’m willing to listen. But let me tell you, Charming Billy, we’ve got your prints from the drunk and disorderly and we’ve got your prints from when you enlisted in the Citizens’ Military Training Corps. All we have to do is match those to your prints now and you’ll be done like dinner, Charming Billy.’
‘I’d appreciate it if you didn’t call me that, Officer.’
‘Get your goat a bit?’
‘I just don’t like it.’ The man was using every ounce of energy to control himself and Ray knew it. He also cursed himself for a fool. He really was alone with a madman and there was no way to summon help.
‘I guess Moran and Durkin were making you nervous.’
‘Who?’
‘Two Texas Rangers who were on your tail. You’d stuck to killing black kids like Luci Edmonds you mighta got away with it longer, Billy. Those white girls, though, they got people pissed. Smart thing, joining the army like you did. Good place to hide. Too bad about the war, though. Or maybe it was good. Maybe it let you do all the things you liked for free. Lots of little kids to kill and no one was going to notice, were they?’
‘I think you’d better leave now.’
‘Who was it who recognised you? Price or Schwager? Probably it was Price. You did business with him before the war, didn’t you? You were a picker and he worked at his uncle’s bookstore in the summers, didn’t he? Did he find out what you were up to that summer of 1938? Did he keep your secret? Why? Because you’d bring him things? Special things?’ There was a long and very empty pause with nothing but the sound of the slanting rain outside to fill it.
Finally Gerritson spoke. ‘Because he didn’t have the guts,’ the bookbinder said, his voice almost too soft to hear.
‘Guts to do what?’
‘Kill the old man.’
‘The old man who ran the bookstore?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why did he want to do that?’
‘Because the old man was… doing things to him that he didn’t like. Because he wanted what the old man had.’
‘Books?’
‘R
are books. Valuable books. He used to tell people that his family had lots of money but it wasn’t true, they just had one of those old Atlanta names that got you into the right places.’
‘What happened?’
‘At the end of the summer he made sure everyone knew he was on his way back to Atlanta but he wasn’t. He came back to the old man’s store and so did I. We killed him and made it look like an accident. I had DiMaggio’s truck. He was dying by then anyway. Didn’t know what was going on. We took the best of the stock and drove it to Atlanta. He said we’d let things cool off for a while and then we’d open up a store.’
‘But then there was the war.’
‘They were getting too close, those two Rangers you mentioned. One of them even interviewed me. Moran, I think.’
‘Not about the little black girls, though. Not about Luci Edmonds.’
‘Who?’
‘Your first. The one you threw in the dump at Oklaunion. The one you took on her way home from school near Haynesville.’
For the first time the bookbinder smiled, the smile broadening, pulled down by the scar across half his face into a joker’s leer, and then he actually laughed, a strong, slight wet laugh as though he’d heard some terribly funny joke.
‘Her? My first? She wasn’t even my tenth, you idiot!’
The move when it came was terribly fast. Reaching out almost blindly with his left hand Gerritson plucked one of the engraving tools from its block on the desk and brought it down onto the back of Ray Duval’s right hand, which was resting flat on the counter. The engraver sliced like a trough-shaped scalpel through tissue and tendon, carving down between the metacarpal of the middle finger and the carpal wrist bones before it sank a full inch into the soft wood below, impaling Ray’s hand and pinning it to the counter.
Screaming in agony, Ray managed to get the gun up, thumbed the safety down and got off a single shot before Gerritson vaulted down through the trapdoor in the floor.
Suddenly the weapon felt as though it weighed a hundred pounds and he let it drop to the counter, his attention completely on the wooden knob of the tool pinning him to the wood below.
His heart was pounding with a strange erratic rhythm he’d never felt before and it was as though the hand of God Himself was reaching into his chest and squeezing for all He was worth as bright red blood began to pool beneath his hand and wrist. Ray could feel his vision begin to fade and knew that he was going into shock. The only thing to stop it would be to stop the pain and the only way to do that would be to pull the blade out of his hand and free himself. He grabbed the wooden grip of the instrument, closed his eyes and took a long shuddering breath. Then he pulled, straight up and straight out. He threw away the engraving tool as hard as he could, then used his free hand to loosen, then pull off his tie. He managed to wrap it around his hand, pulling the knot tight, stopping the flow of blood. He wrapped the rest of the tie around his wrist and put in another knot, squeezing hard like a tourniquet. Almost magically the pain in his chest began to recede as the episode passed. He stayed where he was for a few seconds, leaning on the counter, staring at the bright red stain of his blood, tasting its coppery scent in his nostrils. When he’d gathered strength enough he picked up the Hi-Power, went around the counter and headed across the room to the trapdoor in the floor.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ray was one-handed now so he went down the steep flight of stairs leaning his back against the railing, moving clumsily, one step at a time, trying to forget the terrible pulsing pain in his hand. He kept the gun pointed downward into the gloom at the bottom of the stairs but saw nothing. Faintly he heard footsteps disappearing into the distance towards the rear of the building, a strange sound, like someone walking on crunching gravel.
He reached the base of the stairs and found himself in a small, very low ceilinged room that was shelved on three sides. On the shelves were hundreds, perhaps thousands of pieces of leather kept between layers of dark felt with what looked like lead weights holding them down. Ray edged over to the nearest shelf, reaching out with his gun hand to feel the leather. It was smooth and fine, hairless and small pored. Horror. He jerked his hand back. There were cheap blue and brass trunks on the floor, half filled with more piles of the felt and leather, as though Gerritson was leaving, preparing to disappear again.
Stepping through a low doorway into a second, much smaller room, Ray paused, sniffing the air. There were tables here as well as shelves, the shelves piled with various supplies, the tables set out with paper. Another doorway and a third room, set, it seemed, at right angles to the second. Here there was only a single light and a huge, zinc-topped table. At the end of the table there was a gigantic cutting arm, four feet across, the full width of the table, a foot pedal and some kind of spring mechanism connected to it, probably to even the pressure as the blade came down. In the centre of the table there was a pile of heavy card stock or board, thick enough to be for the making of book covers. The floor here was pea gravel, unlike the concrete of the other two rooms.
An exit from the third room led into a narrow, twisting passageway, the walls rough plywood, tacked to the ceiling beams with long nails. Stapled at intervals were stretched pieces of leather, fat side out, ready to be scraped, taped and tanned. The leather patches were grouped in series of half a dozen swatches each and pencilled in above were dates, comments and colour references. ‘October 9/ #4 umber. Light tanning, very fragile.’ Once again the floor here was pea gravel and for the first time Ray noticed spots of blood on the ground. His single shot had been lucky but he had no idea how badly Gerritson was wounded. His bad hand brushed against the plywood and he had to bite back a scream as the pain roared up through his hand and arm. His tie was soaked with blood now and dripping continuously. Enough blood loss and he’d pass right out.
A smell was in the air now, thicker and darker with each step – the reek of the monster’s charnel house. Ray paused for a moment, wondering if his heart could take what he was about to see, wondering if after all this he had failed at the final moment, come too late.
There was a plain wooden door at the end of the corridor, grotesquely cut down to fit the low ceiling and the narrow passage. It was fitted with an old-fashioned cut-glass doorknob with no lock. He paused, bent his bad hand across his chest and nestled the automatic in the crook of his arm, pulling back the slide sharply with his free hand, re-cocking the gun. He took the gun back into his left hand and fumbled with one finger to push down the safety. He’d fired once so there were twelve rounds left; plenty of firepower to kill the monster. He pushed open the door.
Worse, oh dear God in Heaven, much worse than he could ever have imagined in the most frightening nightmares. Worse even than the beaches of Normandy where the bodies floated in the shallow water by the hundreds, always face down, rocking, cradled on the tide, anonymous. The room was small, the walls delicately covered with a floral wallpaper, the floors done in a sunny yellow flecked with red linoleum that belonged in a kitchen. There was a false window off to one side, fitted with a poster of Hawaii and lit from behind, just like Donna Reed had done in that scene on her wedding night in It’s a Wonderful Life. A small spotlight on a bare wire shone like a hot sun down onto the surface of the brass bed below. A hidden speaker behind the backlit poster was playing a scratchy rendition of a slack-key Hawaiian tune from the thirties called ‘Little Brown Gal.’
For a heartbreaking moment, though, he was looking at all that was left of Zinnia Brant, but then he knew it couldn’t be. This girl was much older, at least fifteen or sixteen, her breasts and hips fully formed, looking nothing like the innocent child in the strip of photos taken in the photograph machine. Looking nothing like a human being now, every part of her body separate from every other, the eyes in her severed head half open and milky, the tendons and veins and arteries hanging down from the hole beneath her chin like the white and red and blue plastic ignition cables of a car, touching but not really belonging to the torso an inch away, the breast
s fallen away to either side, a huge square of flesh hacked out of the midsection beginning just below the swayed dugs and stopping just short of the navel. Below that the horror escalated. The reproductive organs had been pulled out and lay between the woman’s legs in inverse horror, the horror intensified by the blood and faecal matter and urine that stained the pale pink bedclothes. A thick, twisted rubbery tube pushed up out of the mess and slumped down over to the floor on the opposite side of the bed. Ray took two steps and gazed at the smaller horror on the floor. The woman had been pregnant and the foetus lay sprawled on the floor.
Below the purged torso on the bed were the thighs, their ends like ham bones, and below that again the lower legs and then the feet. There was blood everywhere, dark and dried, caught and still where it had dripped from the sheets and pillows down the sides of the bed and finally to the floor. He knew if he rolled her over he’d find sections of skin taken from the back and buttocks as well. Flies had begun to gather at the eyes and the neck hole and there were already maggots squirming in the gore between her legs.
There was another door on the far side of the bed and Ray stumbled towards it, pushing at it with his left shoulder, a deep growling sound building low in his throat and finding its way through his pain. The door led into the darkness of what must once have been the furnace room, the Hawaiian music echoing from somewhere off to his right. He gripped his pistol in his sweat-slicked hand and moved forward. He could see a faint patch of light and followed it to a set of rain-slick metal chairs that led up to another open trapdoor beside a coal chute. Jamming his Hi-Power into the pocket of his jacket he grabbed the handrail and began to haul himself up into the rain and the silvery fading light of late afternoon.
He reached the top of the steps, retrieved his weapon and climbed out of the basement. Parked up against the wall on his left was a white Corvan with white-painted bumpers. There was a dealer’s decal on the rear door. Someplace in New Jersey. He’d been wrong about the rental. The plates were New York commercial. White, just like Texas plates. Directly in front of him, choked with weeds and high grass and broken stone, were the remains of the Old City Cemetery. Through it Ray could see the crushed undergrowth that marked Gerritson’s path and as he followed it he saw spots of blood leaking away in the rain.
Wisdom of the Bones Page 31
