Cry Baby (19 page)

12.27 PM

She wishes Clark were here. And hates herself for thinking that way.

She came here to start life afresh. To be a new, independent woman. Bringing up baby all by herself. Making new friends. Maybe starting a new job. She had thought about taking a course. Accountancy, maybe – she’s good with figures. Or a computer course. Learn some new skills.

And now she decides she’s so pathetic. Thinking about Clark. Wanting him to be here, telling her it’ll be okay. And then he’ll dash off on his white charger and vanquish the dragon and life will be back to normal. Just like the story books. Happy ever after.

But he’s not here. She will have to sort this out herself. And that seems like a gargantuan task at the moment.

‘Feeling proud of yourself, Erin?’

Proud? Not exactly the word I have in mind. Try frightened, or inadequate, or weak, or any one of a million descriptions that come nowhere near pride.

‘You should be. Half way there, Erin. Half way there, and you still have half the day to go. You’re easily on schedule.’

Schedule. Like she’s a bus driver or something. Pick ’em up, drop ’em off, move on. So mechanical and effortless you don’t even have to think about it.

Except she can think of nothing else. Her mind is filled with images of blood and gore and twitching, dying bodies. She suspects she has seen more of those in half a day than many soldiers see in their whole careers. The likelihood is that she will be permanently scarred by this experience – mentally traumatized and beset by nightmares for the rest of her life. What impact will that have on her relationship with Georgia? Will she get her child back, only to discover that she is no longer capable of looking after her properly? Is this all worth it?

‘Could you do this?’ she asks.

‘Do what, Erin?’

‘Kill people. Up close. Could you do that. Have you ever done it?’

A pause.
‘Doesn’t matter what I’ve done, or what I could do. What matters is what you’re proving to yourself. Look at how you stood up to that guy in the coffee shop. Do you think you could have done that before today?’

She knows she couldn’t. A day ago she would never have had the guts to make even a squeak of complaint about someone acting like that, especially one so aggressive and seemingly capable of handling himself. But she showed him, didn’t she? She proved to that sonofabitch what a—

NO!

What am I doing? It’s not about that. Don’t let him bend your mind like this.

‘Is that how you see yourself? As some kind of self-improvement guru? What kind of warped view is that? Or is that just how you choose to defend your actions to yourself? You pretend you’re doing some good, helping me out, when all you’re really doing is getting your rocks off. You talk about me seeing the light, well how about you facing up to the truth for once? You’re a pervert, that’s all. You’re the one who needs the help, not me. You’re sick, but you’ve deluded yourself into believing you’re some kind of savior. I’m right, aren’t I? You know I’m right.’

He gives her the silent treatment again. When he does this she never knows whether he’s sitting there trying to wash away the pain of her wounding words, or whether he’s become bored and switched off while she gets it out of her system. Whichever it is, his calmness when he eventually comes back to her is infuriating.

‘You haven’t finished the task yet, Erin. Still three more to go. Judge me then, when it’s all over.’

‘No. I judge you now. There can be no excuse for what you’re doing. None. Even if, by some miracle, I get through this and
Georgia is in my arms again, even if I discover powers inside me I never knew I had before, you will not go up in my estimation. What you are doing is monstrous. I have never thought this about any human being before, but you deserve to burn in the fires of hell.’

‘Really,
Erin? Really? Well, if you insist on getting all holier-than-thou about things, then consider this. Which is worse – someone who takes a baby, but then cares for it and gives it back, or someone who kills three innocent people in cold blood? Which of those two deserves to burn, hmm?’

‘No. Don’t even go there. It’s not as black-and-white as that, and you know it. You’re just as guilty of those killings as I am. Yes, I’ve done a terrible thing, and I will pay for it one day. But you will pay too. You have a choice in this, but I don’t.’

‘You have a choice too, Erin.’

‘What – to give up the life of my baby? You call that a choice? Do you even come close to understanding why that is no choice at all? Are you that detached from your own humanity?’

Another impenetrable silence. She wills him to yell at her. Come on, scream at me. Lose your temper. Show me that I’m getting to you. Show me that the sight of people being slaughtered isn’t the only thing that can bring out some emotion in you.

But she fears that’s the case. This man is dead inside. The only thing keeping him going is the torture and misery of others. The ability to play God. Isn’t that always what the Devil wants most?

And when he finally breaks into her thoughts again, it’s not to disabuse her of that view.

‘You never did get that coffee and muffin, did you,
Erin? You should eat now. You’ve got a busy afternoon ahead.’

1.38 PM

‘I’m getting a headache.’

This from Lieutenant Cesario. And he’s not the only one whose head is pounding with the facts of this case. He has a knot of detectives standing in front of him in his office, all of whom are struggling to wrap their brains around this one.

‘Everyone wants to know what the hell we’re doing about this. And by everyone, I’m talking about the Captain, the Chief of Detectives, the Commissioner, and even the mayor. And because I’m getting my ass kicked about it, I need to pass the ass-kicking on to you guys. These crimes took place on our turf, so that makes it our problem, and I want to put a stop to this before Homicide South or some other unit solves it and shows us up as fools. So tell me, in simple sentences my aching brain can und
erstand, where we are with this.’

For a while, nobody speaks. There is some shuffling of feet, and a couple of nervous coughs, but nothing of substance. Simple is what the Lieutenant wants; but the simple and truthful answer to where they are right now is ‘no place’. The detectives of the Eighth Precinct are nowhere near catching the perpetrator of this string of homicides.

Doyle decides that such negativity, accurate though it might be, is probably not what his boss wants to hear. So he tries to sound upbeat in his summation.

‘Okay, we got three male DOAs, each with a different number on his head. What we can’t figure out is why the numbers go in the order they do. A two, then a three, then a one. This morning we figured the perp was just counting up, and that we just hadn’t seen number one yet. Now it doesn’t look that way.’

Cesario sighs, and Doyle reckons he’s seeing this for what it is: a whole heap of nothing.

‘What does the ME say about the order?’

‘Yeah, we thought about that. But Norm says the third guy isn’t a dump job. He was definitely killed after the other two. The order is two, three, one – no doubt about it.’

‘Two, three, one. What the hell does that mean? Why that particular order?’

Nobody answers. Then Jay Holden pipes up.

‘Just a thought. What if it’s not a one on this guy? What if the killer started to draw a four, but got disturbed and had to run?’

Silence in the room while everyone thinks about this. All the cops mentally drawing the number four. You might make the vertical stroke first, then add the diagonal and the horizontal to build a four. And if you only got as far as the vertical…

The cops all look at each other, waiting for someone to shoot the theory down.

‘It’s possible,’ says Cesario. ‘And to be perfectly frank, I prefer that explanation. Simple counting I can cope with, but some kind of coded message to us I could do without.’

‘I don’t buy it,’ says Doyle, and he senses a slight hostility as he voices his demurral. Cops like simplicity; they hate complicated. Doyle himself wants this to be straightforward. But he has a bad feeling about it.

He says, ‘The perp has gone to a lot of trouble to send these signals to us. I don’t see it being allowed to go so badly wrong now. There’s a big difference between a one and a four. I don’t see the perp letting that kind of confusion creep in.’

‘But Holden’s point is that it wasn’t in the plan,’ says Cesario. ‘Something spooked the killer, and he booked the scene before he could finish writing.’

‘This killer doesn’t spook easily,’ Doyle says. ‘From what we can put together, the guy’s body wasn’t discovered until at least twenty minutes after he was killed. Plenty of time to write a four if you wanted to. Three cuts, right? How long does that take? Not much longer than it takes to make one cut. If I started to draw a four, I’d finish drawing a four.’

Other voices start up in the room now. Everyone arguing over what might have happened and what the killer might have intended.

‘Quiet!’ yells Cesario, and the hubbub dies down. ‘This is all guesswork. Either way, we have a problem. If it was meant to be a four, then we still haven’t found number one. If it was meant to be a one, then I don’t know what the hell we’ve got here.’

Cesario puts his index fingers to his throbbing temples. ‘For the sake of argument, let’s suppose it was meant to be a one on this guy’s head. Is there anything about the three vics that would make that sequence of numbers meaningful? Anything at all?’

LeBlanc consults the notes in his hand. ‘The latest DOA is William Fischer. Unemployed. Lived with his girlfriend until she moved out last week. Neighbors say he’s an asshole. Plays his music too loud, gets into arguments – like that.’

‘Okay, so putting them in numerical order gives us Fischer, then Vern the homeless guy, then Steppler the kitchen salesman. What does that tell us?’

Silence.

‘Anyone see a pattern of any kind?’

More silence.

‘Shit,’ says Cesario. ‘Me either. Can anybody give me some good news? Something positive in this mess?’

‘Yeah,’ says Doyle. ‘Mrs Darby.’

‘Who the hell is Mrs Darby?’

‘Old lady lives on the fifth floor. She got into the elevator with Fischer on the first floor. Says another woman got in with them too.’

‘Another woman? You manage to locate her?’

‘Nope. Not much of a description either. She was wearing a red woolen hat and a scarf around her face. But when Mrs Darby got out at her floor, this other woman stayed in the elevator with Fischer.’

Cesario considers this. ‘Steppler got his pecker out for someone in his car. Is that what this is? Is our serial killer a woman?’

Doyle shrugs. ‘Could be. Norm says Fischer was killed in the elevator, before being dragged into the hallway. On the rough timings we’ve got, it could be the one Mrs Darby saw.’

Cesario addresses the gathered group. ‘Find this woman. Check every apartment in that building. Put an alert out for any woman wearing a red woolen hat and scarf – I don’t care if that means stopping ten thousand of ’em. And find out what Fischer was doing before he came into his building. She might have followed him there. If she did, I want to know exactly where she followed him from.’ He pauses, becomes thoughtful again. ‘Something else I don’t get. The change in MO. Quick stabbing for the first guy, frenzied attack for the second, then a completely different weapon for the third. There’s no consistency.’

Again he gets no answers – just the silent thought balloons of a million other questions hanging in the air. Why is this woman doing this? Is she just whacko, or is there some rational thought process taking place here? How does she select her victims? Randomly, or with precision?

And who’s next?

1.57 PM

‘You’re not eating.’

‘I had some toast.’

‘You had one small triangle of toast. That’s not enough. You need energy.’

‘I’m not hungry.’

‘You should eat.’

‘If I eat, I’ll throw it back up. I don’t want it.’

She gets a feeling of déjà vu. Back to when she was a teenager and she’d fallen out with her boyfriend – some dickhead called Brian – and her mother was trying to persuade her to eat, even though she truly believed she would never be able to eat again, because her world had come to an end.

Oh, for such trivial problems now. A mere tiff with a boy. Peanuts compared to this. Try this on for size, teenage version of me. Try dealing with multiple murder and a kidnapped baby you might never see again. Not such a catastrophe now, huh?

She has made toast and scrambled egg. She thought it would be easy to swallow, but the smell of the egg has made her feel nauseous. Even her coffee tastes old and bitter and poisonous.

‘Try something sweet. You got any candy bars? Any chocolate?’

Yeah, because everything can be cured with chocolate, right? That’s all a woman needs when she’s got somebody else’s blood on her hands. A few cubes of chocolate will take away the misery and the guilt and the utter hopelessness.

‘You know what I want?’ she asks.

‘What’s that, Erin?’

‘I want to hear my baby.’

‘What?’

‘I said I want to hear
Georgia. Not crying. Not in pain. I want to hear her like she is most of the time, when she’s with me. I want to hear her laughing.’

‘Why?’

‘What do you mean, why? It’s such a strange request, me wanting to hear my baby being happy?’

He makes her wait, and she thinks he’s going to deny her. But then:

‘All right, Erin. If it’ll help. Wait a minute…’

There’s a scuffling noise, like that of a microphone brushing against something. And then…

Gurgling. Soft, tiny explosions of breath. And then – yes! – a word. Not a real word. Not anything intelligible. But something that sounds like it could be a word in some foreign language.

‘Make her laugh,’ says
Erin.

‘How?’

‘Tickle her belly. Gently. Don’t hurt her.’

More scuffling.
Erin waits, and prays. She will know if this is not Georgia. She knows her laugh. She could pick it out in a whole roomful of babies.

And then it comes. A high, cheeky chuckle. Tentative at first, and then growing in intensity. Loud and clear over the earpiece, it plucks the strings of her brain and sets them singing. She closes her eyes and puts her arms out as if they are holding her baby, and she can imagine her, can see her
Georgia in her arms, giggling at some secret knowledge into her mother’s ear. And she doesn’t want to let her go, not ever let her out of her arms, out of her sight, because Georgia is Erin, and Erin is Georgia. They should never be separated, because they are one and the same, and to take Georgia away is to cut Erin in two.

For a minute, a whole minute that is the most emotionally filled minute she has ever experienced,
Erin listens to that most sublime of sounds and lets the tears fall.