Butterfield Institute - 01 - The Halo Effect (36 page)

He hits them with a heavy rounded object
.

I heard Noah telling me about the weapon. This must be it, what he used to knock them all unconscious.

He was almost finished emptying the case. What was he going to do with us when he was? Did he have a gun? He didn’t need one. He had his hands. He had strangled five women. He would just—

And then I knew what Cleo was looking at. What she was trying to tell me.

Elias walked toward me, reaching into his pocket. For a gun? A knife? What was he doing?

“I’m not going to hurt you. I don’t need to. I’m leaving. You and her. Leaving you both here.” In his hand was a roll of the same kind of duct tape that bound Cleo’s hands and feet. The silver slash that covered her mouth.

As he walked he peeled off a long strip and ripped at it with his teeth. He was getting closer. My heart seemed to have stopped. Everything in me was calculating how fast he was moving and how close he was getting and how much time I had and when I was going to have to move.

Five feet away.

Too far.

Another step. Another.

Three feet away.

Still too far. One more step. I tried to focus all of my energy on what I had to do. On not thinking about it. Because if I thought about it too much I’d freeze.

His eyes were boring into mine. He was in a psychotic state. Not knowing, not feeling, acting out, his unconscious
on the surface, his reason and rationality deep inside of him, useless to us both.

He took one more step, and trying not to move too quickly, not to alert him, I slipped off one of my insanely high heels. Then as fast as I could I bent down and—

“What are you doing?” he shouted.

I didn’t answer. I swung my arm, the toe part of my shoe gripped tightly in my hand. Muscles tensed, stretched, fingers holding tight, but I felt nothing. He watched the movement, surprised by it, not understanding the swinging arm. He was fast and he was strong, but I had that one moment of shock on my side. He wasn’t expecting it. He looked up for one brief second, and as he did, the thin, three-and-a-half-inch heel came down at his face and went right into his eye.

The scream was mine, the blood was his. I felt it hot and liquid on my own cheek. His hands went up to his face. Howling, incoherent, he circled like an animal, caught in the intensity of his pain.

He was moving without knowing where he was going. One eye blinded, the other squeezed tight in agony. He made another circle. Closer to the door. He was losing blood. I had no idea how badly I had hurt him.

I needed time. To call the police, to get Cleo free. How long was his pain going to last? I opened the door to the apartment itself and went at him. If he saw me, if he understood, I couldn’t tell. The one open eye did not focus on me. He was still making guttural animal noises, ones I knew I’d never forget. I had caused that pain. I smelled of his blood. It didn’t matter, none of it mattered, and with all my strength I went at him again, praying that he was still in shock, that I’d be able to do this.

He reached out with one hand, grabbed my hair and pulled before I could get at him. Amazed at the power of the one-handed
grip, I took the pain, let him bring me closer, and then swung again with the shoe.

It hit his back and I heard a crack. Had I gotten his shoulder blade? A rib? A fresh scream ripped out of his mouth.

But still he held on to my hair, his other hand covering his eye, now drenched in a waterfall of blood. I let him hold my hair, and as if we were doing some macabre dance, we moved in more circles. Then we were at the door to the hallway again, and I was maneuvering him closer and closer to the threshold. Finally, I used my head like a battering ram, and despite his hold, despite the fire on my scalp, I pushed at him and hit his chin. The force of my skull crashing against him like that must have caused him new pain, for he fell backward into the hallway with a cry of agony.

I had only moments to get up and slam the door, to lock us in and lock him out.

Up. I swayed. Put my hands on the door, pushed. The last thing I saw was a thatch of my brown hair intertwined in his fingers.

The sounds of the locks clicking into place gave me time to breathe, to think through what I had to do next. Bottom lock. Middle lock. Chain bolt. Cleo had to be untied. I needed her help. And I had to call the police. Elias might have keys on his person to get back in. No, I’d used the chain. Still.

I grabbed the phone off the receiver and dialed 911, shouted the address of the apartment building.

“You have three minutes. He’s the Magdalene Murderer. He’s in the hall. I’m barricaded inside but I don’t know how long I have. He might have keys.”

“Can you tell me the nature of—” the 911 operator asked.

“It’s a fucking emergency. He can kill us. With his bare hands. Get someone here. Call Detective Noah Jordain. SVU. Tell him. Tell him Morgan Snow called. Fast. Do it.”

I dropped the phone and fell to my knees in front of Cleo,
ripping at the duct tape around her hands. I couldn’t tear it. It was too thick. I bent over, mouth to her wrist, teeth bared, and I tried to rip it the way Elias had. Too tough.

Her eyes were wild. She was looking behind me at the desk. I got up. There was a simple letter opener sitting on a pile of papers. Not sharp enough. I needed scissors. But there were no scissors.

I heard the awful metallic sound of the locks clicking. Of tumblers opening. It was so loud I thought I was going to go deaf. There was no other sound in the world but the key unlocking the door. There were two keys. There were two locks. But there was a chain. I’d put the chain on.

Giving up on Cleo’s hands for a minute, I gripped a corner of the tape covering her mouth and ripped. She grimaced, and as the tape came away, her scream erupted, growing louder and louder, so loud I couldn’t hear the keys anymore.

“Get a knife,” she said fast. As if she had been waiting to say it. “The kitchen is behind you.”

I didn’t look back, but ran into the kitchen and flung open one drawer, another, a third, and then saw a knife.

She smiled at me when she saw it gleam. It was such a hopeful smile that for a moment I actually believed we’d be all right. He wouldn’t be able to push the door open. The chain would hold. The police would get here.

Of course he wouldn’t be able to push the door open. It was a strong chain.

Slashing at the duct tape, trying to stay clear of Cleo’s skin, took more time than I had. But at last I freed her hands.

“Can you do your feet?”

She nodded.

I gave her the knife.

He was still on the other side of the door, his fingers trying to work through the space. But it wasn’t wide enough. We were safe. For a minute more.

Cleo had worked her way through the tape and was on her feet.

I ran into the kitchen again, to the intercom. I lifted it from the receiver.

“Hello,” the doorman answered slowly.

“Don’t come up here. Don’t let anyone up here except the police. Call 911. A woman is hurt. There is a killer loose in the hallway.”

“Who is this?”

“Just do it. We need help.”

I let the receiver drop and ran out to the living room. Cleo was looking at me, eyes wide with terror. My gaze swung to the door. The fingers were gone. I knew he wasn’t there.

“Where is he?”

She shook her head.

“Can you talk, Cleo?”

“Yes.”

“Where is he?”

And then I heard the click again. Loud in my ears like gunfire.

“Where is he?”

“There’s a back door. In the kitchen.”

I looked around. Where were we going to go? How much could he hurt us? There were two of us. Couldn’t we overpower him? I hoped so, but I didn’t know.

“Come,” I whispered, and took her by the hand.

T
he terrace off the living room was about fifteen feet long and six feet deep, and filled with heavy, wrought-iron furniture: a table and four chairs. There were also dozens of plants in terra-cotta pots.

We were both in black. It was night. Maybe he wouldn’t see us. Maybe. Maybe we could hide in the darkness. As long as he didn’t look for us here. As long as he didn’t think of the terrace.

“Lie down,” I whispered.

Cleo did.

I lay down next to her. And we waited. To hear the sirens coming up the block. To see Elias come into view after entering through the kitchen.

He looked like a victim of a violent crime. His eye was swollen shut. His face, his shirt, his neck and his hands were covered with blood. It dripped from him, sprinkling the ground.

I held my breath even though there was no way he could hear me from inside the apartment.

He was circling the room, crazed, knocking over vases and books as if somehow we were hiding there. He was almost unrecognizable, rage and blood and his injury having altered his face.

“What’s he doing?” Cleo whispered. From where I had pushed her she couldn’t see him.

“He’s looking around. Searching for us.”

“He won’t think of the terrace.”

“He won’t?”

“No, he won’t.”

Our words were prayers that I hoped would come true.

Until I heard the door handle turn.

“Stay down. Whatever happens stay down. The police will be here any minute. They have to be here. It hasn’t been more than five minutes even though it feels like hours.”

The door opened. Don’t look up, I thought. Sending the thought out to her. Hoping she would keep down, keep hidden. He didn’t love me; he wouldn’t want to kill me, but he would want to kill her.

“Dr. Snow. You hurt me.” His voice sounded childlike.

I didn’t say anything.

His feet were inches from my face when I felt him reach down and pull me up by my hair again. Even in so much pain, he was strong. He was going to break my neck, just as he had broken those other women’s necks.

Was that a police siren I heard, mixed in with the other traffic noises? Even if it was, it was too far away. He’d kill me and Cleo and still get out before the police arrived.

“Elias, if you let me go, I will talk to the police. I will convince them not to put you in jail but to get you help.”

My eyes were locked on his one good eye. He had no idea what I was saying. He couldn’t understand.

He stood me on my feet. Then one of his hands moved up to my neck. Then the other. The siren was closer but not close enough.

And then, fingers digging into my neck, he fell down and pulled me with him, so that I was on top of him. He was lying on his back and I was on my stomach. His body was hard underneath mine. I could feel his muscles and his bones. His breath was on my face. I could feel everything, despite his hands tightening around my neck. I knew it was only a matter of seconds.

Because everything was turning black.

“D
r. Snow. Get up.”

Cleo was standing beside him. The wind whipped around her legs and blew the nun’s habit up into the classic Marilyn Monroe pose. How could I be thinking this?

She held out the knife, glistening in the little bit of moonlight shining down on that part of the terrace. Drops of blood slowly ran down the blade.

Below me, he groaned, but they were watery groans, diluted and weak.

With my fingertips I pried his hands off my neck, and then slowly, as if I had never done so before and wasn’t sure I knew how, I got to my feet.

The sirens were below us now. The police would come up. Just a little too late.

I walked to Cleo and put my arm around her, and she put her arm around me, the hand with the knife at my back. Her body did not move. I barely felt her breathing. She was as still
as a statue atop a tombstone in a graveyard. For one second. And then she shattered. Her crying was dry at first and deep in her throat, as if her body, her torso, was weeping, but not yet her heart, not yet her head.

Suddenly more lights blazed on in the apartment. Bright and too white. Four policemen in uniforms, guns drawn, and preceding them, Detectives Jordain and Perez.

Through the window, Cleo and I watched them looking around for a body, for people, for the perpetrator, for a victim. It was as if they were on a stage.

Neither Cleo nor I had any strength to move, to summon them.

Noah was the first one to see us. He put a hand out. As if he could reach me through the glass. He called out and I heard my name. Then the terrace door opened and all the cops came out. One dropped to his knees and put his finger to Elias’s throat.

“He’s still breathing. He’s got a pulse.”

Someone else called out, “He’s got a pulse.” And two paramedics ran out onto the terrace. And efficiently and wordlessly got a blood-pressure cuff on him and began talking his vitals.

I was sorry about that.

A
fter I was finished giving a statement at the precinct house, Nina took me back to her apartment, put me in her bed and sat next to me, waiting for me to fall asleep. But I couldn’t.

In the morning I called Dulcie and told her only as much as I had to so that it wouldn’t alarm her that I was asking her to stay with her father for a few more days. And then Nina and I took a long walk to Central Park and continued walking. All the way up to the reservoir, and then we worked our way down, stopping at our favorite spot: the Conservatory Garden, which was ablaze with flowers—roses and delphiniums, foxgloves and begonias. We sat and watched birds pecking at the dirt, but we didn’t say much about anything that mattered. Not yet.

I just sat and took in the summer scents and let them erase the other odors from my head. The sun burned in my eyes and almost obliterated the images that had been seared there.

Afterward we took a taxi to the hospital where Cleo had been taken the night before. Gil was there, holding vigil, and he told us that she was fine and the doctors thought she might be able to leave in another forty-eight hours.

“And then I want to get back into therapy with you,” she told me.