Postmortem (40 page)

Marino. He was in charge of this damn investigation. All roads led to Rome.

Switching off the lamp again, I stared up into the darkness.

"911."

"911."

I kept hearing the voice as I tossed on my bed.

It was past midnight when I crept back down the stairs and found the bottle of cognac in the bar. Lucy hadn't stirred since I had tucked her in hours ago. She was out cold. I wished I could say the same for me. Downing two shots like cough medicine, I miserably returned to my bedroom and switched off the lamp again. I could hear the minutes go by on the digital clock.

Click.

Click.

Seeping in and out of consciousness, I fitfully tossed.

". . . So what exactly did he say to this Tyler woman?"

Click. The tape went on.

"I'm sorry."

An embarrassed laugh. "I guess I hit a nine instead of a four. . ."

"Hey, no problem, . . . You have a nice evening."

Click.

". . . I hit a nine instead of a four . . .

"911."

"Hey . . . He's a good-looking guy. He don't need to slip a lady a mickey to get her to give uC/ the goods "He's scum!"

". . . Because he's out of town right now, Lucy. Mr. Boltz went on vacation."

"Oh."

Eyes filled with infinite sadness. "When's he coming back?"

"Not until July."

"Oh. Why couldn't we go with him, Auntie Kay? Did he go to the beach?"

". . . You routinely lie by omission about us."

His face shimmered behind the veil of rising heat and smoke, his hair gold in the sun.

"911."

I was inside my mother's house and she was saying something to me.

A bird was circling lazily overhead as I rode in a van with someone I neither knew nor could see. Palm trees flowed by. Long-necked white egrets were sticking up like porcelain periscopes in the Everglades. The white heads turned as we passed. Watching us. Watching me.

Turning over, I tried to get more comfortable by resting on my back.

My father sat up in bed and watched me as I told him about my day at school. His face was ashen. His eyes didn't blink and I couldn't hear what I was saying to him. He didn't respond but continued to stare. Fear was constricting my heart. His white face stared. The empty eyes stared.

He was dead.

"Daddddyyyyy!"

My nostrils were filled with a sick, stale sweatiness as I buried my face in his neck . . .

The inside of my brain went black.

I surfaced into consciousness like a bubble floating up from the deep. I was aware. I could feel my heart beating.

The smell.

Was it real or was I dreaming? The putrid smell! Was I dreaming? An alarm was going off inside my head and slamming my heart against my ribs.

As the foul air stirred and something brushed against the bed.

Chapter
16

The distance between my right hand and the .38 beneath my pillow was twelve inches, no more.

It was the longest distance I'd ever known. It was forever. It was impossible. I wasn't thinking, just feeling that distance, as my heart went crazy, flailing against my ribs like a bird against the bars of its cage. Blood was roaring in my ears. My body was rigid, every muscle and tendon straining, stiff and quivering with fear. It was pitch-black inside my bedroom.

Slowly I nodded my head, the metallic words ringing, the hand crushing my lips against my teeth. I nodded. I nodded to tell him I wouldn't scream.

The knife against my throat was so big it felt like a machete. The bed tilted to the right and with a click I went blind. When my eyes adjusted to the lamplight, I looked at him and stifled a gasp.

I couldn't breathe or move. I felt the razor-thin blade biting coldly against my skin.

His face was white, his features flattened beneath a white nylon stocking. Slits were cut in it for eyes. Cold hatred poured from them without seeing. The stocking sucked in and out as he breathed. The face was hideous and inhuman, just inches from mine.

"One sound, I'll cut your head off."

Thoughts were sparks flying so fast and in so many directions. Lucy. My mouth was getting numb and I tasted the salty blood. Lucy, don't wake up. Tension ran through his arm, through his "Shut up!"

The hand tightened savagely. My jaw was going to shatter like an eggshell.

His eyes were darting, looking around, looking at everything inside my bedroom. They stopped at the draperies, at the cords hanging down. I could see him looking at them. I knew what he was thinking. I knew what he was going to do with them.

I'm going to die.

Don't. You don't want to do this. You don't have to do this.

I'm a person, like your mother, like your sister. You don't want to do this. I'm a human being like you. There are things I can tell you. About the cases. What the police know. You want to know what I know.

Don't. I'm a person. A person! I can talk to you! You have to let me talk to you! Fragmented speeches. Unspoken. Useless. I was imprisoned by silence. Please don't touch me. Oh, God, don't touch me.

I had to get him to take away his hand, to talk to me.

I tried to will my body to go limp, to relax. It worked a little. I loosened up a little, and he sensed it.

He eased the grip of his hand over my mouth, and I swallowed very slowly.

He was wearing a dark blue jumpsuit. Sweat stained the collar, and there were wide crescent moons under his arms. The hand holding the knife to my throat was sheathed in the translucent skin of a surgical glove. I could smell the rubber. I could smell him.

I saw the jumpsuit in Betty's lab, smelled the syrupy putrid smell of it as Marino was untying the plastic bag . . .

"Is it the smell he remembers?"

played in my mind like the rerun of an old movie. Marino's finger pointing at me as he winked, "Bingo . . ."

The jumpsuit flattened on the table inside the lab, a large or an extra large with bloody swatches cut out of it . . .

He was breathing hard.

"Please," I barely said without moving.

"Shut up!"

"I can tell you."

Then the eyes darted frantically to the cord leading out of my bedside lamp. Something white flashed out of his pocket and he stuffed it into my mouth and moved the knife away.

My neck was so stiff it was on fire. My face was numb. I tried to work the dry cloth forward in my mouth, pushing it around with my tongue without him noticing. Saliva was trickling down the back of my throat.

The house was absolutely silent. My ears were filled with the pounding of my blood. Lucy. Please, God.

The other women did what he said. I saw their suffused faces, their dead faces.

As I tried to remember what I knew about him, tried to make sense of what I knew about him. The knife was just inches from me, glinting in the lamplight. Lunge for the lamp and smash it to the floor.

My arms and legs were under the covers. I couldn't kick or grab or move. If the lamp crashed to the floor, the room would go black.

I wouldn't be able to see. He had the knife.

I could talk him out of it. If only I could talk, I could reason with him.

Their suffused faces, the cords cutting into their necks.

Twelve inches, no more. It was the longest distance I'd ever known.

He didn't know about the gun.

He was nervous, jerky, and seemed confused. His neck was flushed and dripping with sweat, his breathing labored and fast.

He wasn't looking at my pillow. He was looking around at everything, but he wasn't looking at my pillow.

"You move . . ."

He lightly touched the needle point of the knife to my throat.

My eyes were widely fixed on him.

"You're going to enjoy this, bitch."

It was a low, cold voice straight out of hell. "I've been saving the best for last."

The stocking sucking in and out. "You want to know how I've been doing it. Going to show you real slow."

The voice. It was familiar.

My right hand. Where was the gun? Was it farther to the right or to the left? Was it directly centered under my pillow? I couldn't remember. I couldn't think! He had to get to the cords. He couldn't cut the cord to the lamp. The lamp was the only light on. The switch to the overhead light was near the door. He was looking at it, at the vacant dark rectangle.

I eased my right hand up an inch.

The eyes darted toward me, then toward the draperies again.

My right hand was on my chest, almost to my right shoulder under the sheet.

I felt the edge of the mattress lift as he got up from the bed. The stains under his arms were bigger. He was soaking wet with sweat.

Looking at the light switch near the blank doorway, looking across the bedroom at the draperies again, he seemed indecisive.

It happened so fast. The hard cold shape knocked against my hand and my fingers seized it and I was rolling off the bed, pulling the covers with me, thudding to the floor. The hammer clicked back and locked and I was sitting straight up, the sheet twisted around my hips, all of it happening at once.

I don't remember doing it. I don't remember doing any of it. It was instinct, someone else. My finger was against the trigger, hands trembling so badly the revolver was jumping up and down.

I don't remember taking the gag out.

I could only hear my voice.

I was screaming at him.

"You son of a bitch! You goddam son of a bitch!"

The gun was bobbing up and down as I screamed, my terror, my rage exploding in profanities that seemed to be coming from someone else. Screaming, I was screaming at him to take off his mask.

He was frozen on the other side of the bed. It was an odd detached awareness. The knife in his gloved hand, I noticed, was just a folding knife.

His eyes were riveted to the revolver.

"TAKE IT OFF!"

His arm moved slowly and the white sheath fluttered to the floor . . .

As he spun around . . .

I was screaming and explosions were going off, spitting fire and splintering glass, so fast I didn't know what was happening.

It was madness. Things were flying and disconnected, the knife flashing out of his hand as he slammed against the bedside table, pulling the lamp to the floor as he fell, and a voice said something. The room went black.

A frantic scraping sound was coming from the wall near the door . . .

"Where're the friggin' lights in this joint . . . ?"

I would have done it.

I know I would have done it.

I never wanted to do anything so badly in my life as I wanted to squeeze that trigger.

I wanted to blow a hole in his heart the size of the moon.

We'd been over it at least five times. Marino wanted to argue. He didn't think it happened the way it did.

"Hey, the minute I saw him going through the window, Doe, I was following him. He couldn'ta been in your bedroom no more than thirty seconds before I got there. And you didn't have no damn gun out. You went for it and rolled off the bed when I busted in and blew him out of his size-eleven jogging shoes."

We were sitting in my downtown office Monday morning. I could hardly remember the past two days. I felt as if I'd been under water or on another planet.

No matter what he said, I believed I had my gun on the killer when Marino suddenly appeared in my doorway at the same time his .357 pumped four bullets into the killer's upper body. I didn't check for a pulse. I made no effort to stop the bleeding. I just sat in the twisted sheet on the floor, my revolver in my lap, tears streaming down my cheeks as it dawned on me.

The .38 wasn't loaded.

I was so upset, so distracted when I went upstairs to bed, I'd forgotten to load my gun. The cartridges were still in their box tucked under a stack of sweaters inside one of my dresser drawers where Lucy would never think to look.

He was dead.

He was dead when he hit my rug.

"He didn't have his mask off either," Marino was going on. "Memory plays weird tricks, you know? I pulled the damn stocking off his face soon as Snead and Riggy got there. By then he was already dead as dog food."

He was just a boy.

He was just a pasty-faced boy with kinky dirty-blond hair. His mustache was nothing more than a dirty fuzz.

I would never forget those eyes. They were windows through which I saw no soul. They were empty windows opening onto a darkness, like the ones he climbed through when he murdered women whose voices he'd heard over the phone.

"I thought he said something," I muttered to Marino. "I thought I heard him say something as he was falling. But I can't remember."