Hide Your Eyes (18 page)

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Authors: Alison Gaylin

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #General, #Contemporary, #Sagas

BOOK: Hide Your Eyes
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‘He probably didn’t,’ Krull said. ‘We know he called you at seven. That’s four hours he would have had to—’
‘New message. Six-thirty a.m.,’ the machine interrupted. Again, the caller was female, but older this time, and angry: ‘Young lady. I am calling from downstairs and this is
outrageous
. I know you are in there, and I know you are awake because I hear your boots clomping on those hardwood floors.’
Elmira
. ‘If you do not take them off this moment, I am COMING UP THERE AND I MEAN IT!’ I felt my jaw drop open.
Rosy Cheeks and the tattooed cop were pulling the couch across the room. And as it moved, the body that had been shoved underneath revealed itself like a sick, slow striptease: skinny legs first, then hips, chest, head.
Elmira
.
Krull said, ‘Turn around, Samantha.’
My eyes went to the feet, to the acid green mules.
‘Shit, man,’ said one of them. Rosy Cheeks, I think.
‘Do not look!’ Krull shouted.
I heard my own hollow gasp, saw blue-white skin, a torn green nightgown with a gaping dark bloodstain, a knife -
my kitchen knife
- submerged to the thick pine hilt at the center of the stain. I saw eyes, wrenched open, pupils so huge and black that the whites were obscured.
No . . . not pupils. Hollow, empty sockets
.
‘Shit, man, shit. My first corpse and it looks . . . looks . . . Help me . . .’
‘Act like a man, for chris—’
‘
Sam, close your eyes!
’
But I couldn’t respond, couldn’t move. Blackness crept into my field of vision, and I felt my knees start to buckle, saw the dusty wood floor rushing up to my face.
I was vaguely aware of a woman’s voice in my kitchen. ‘Found something!’ it said, half shout, half scream. As I lost consciousness, I realized it was Fiona. She must have opened my refrigerator.
¢>
13
Area Unsafe
‘She’s dead.’
‘Naw, look at her.’
‘I am lookin’ at her and she ain’t moving.’
‘She’s just out, is all.’
The first voice was male, the second female, and I didn’t recognize either. I thought they were probably talking about Elmira, and I wanted to say,
Are you crazy? Didn’t you see what was done to her?
But all that came out of my mouth was a groan.
‘See, I tol’ ya,’ said the man’s voice. Slowly, I opened my eyes and let them adjust to bright lights. I felt big, gentle hands on my face, figured out they were attached to John Krull. ‘You okay?’ he said.
‘Sure, she’s okay,’ said the voice of the man who stood over Krull’s shoulder. He was thin and weathered with large dog eyes. A small, pale woman stood next to him. ‘We thought you was dead, honey,’ she said, and I recognized them as my next-door neighbors, the Schultzes - or the Schwartzes, I still wasn’t sure - to whom I’d barely said anything more than
hi
during four years of living here. ‘Uh . . . Hi.’
I realized we were in the lobby of my building. Someone must have carried me down - presumably Krull. I was on the floor, my head and shoulders propped up on his knees.
My eyes went to the vaguely familiar people who stood staring ~v> behind the Schultz/Schwartzes - people whose names I’d never heard; people I sometimes nodded at, maybe exchanged forgettable remarks with, but only about the weather, only if we happened to be sharing the elevator and only if the weather was in any way remarkable. Looking up at them now, I felt overexposed and kind of silly. ‘What happened?’ I asked Krull.
‘You passed out. I took you out of there.’
‘That I could’ve guessed.’
He turned to my neighbors. ‘She’s fine, everybody. Move along.’
As the small group dispersed, I recalled the open mouth, the vacant, bloody sockets. I looked up into Krull’s warm black eyes and shuddered. ‘Elmira . . .’
‘I know.’
‘He just . . . scooped them out.’
‘Ssssh. Don’t think about it.’
I struggled into a sitting position and stared at him.
‘A woman’s eyeballs were in my refrigerator! You can’t not think about that.’
‘I know. But for now, you’ve got to try and focus on other things.’
‘Where were they, the butter tray? The fucking
crisper
? Jesus . . .’
‘Let me take you down the street, buy you a cup of tea.’
‘A cup of tea,’ I repeated stupidly. I wanted to say more, but my thoughts were moving so quickly . . .
Graham, Sarah, the girl in the footlocker. Elmira, barely bigger than a child herself
. . .
More little corpses. Then little you
.
I was on my feet, pushing the glass lobby door open and running outside, past the cluster of police cars, past the small group of gawking pedestrians, past the scaffolding on a neighboring building and then directly under a ladder, the first time I’d ever done something so blatantly unlucky. Keinahora.
Fuck that. You can’t get rid of the evil eye once it’s here, and it’s here. It’s in the refrigerator
.
I kept running to the edge of my block, out into the avenue and in front of cars, with their horns blaring and their tires screeching as I stood at the center of one of New York City’s clogged and dangerous arteries, thinking,
Go ahead and kill me. Run me over and kill me, and then I’ll be the last little corpse
.
Somebody yelled, ‘Get the fuck outta the fuckin’ street, ya fuckin’ psycho!’
I heard Krull’s voice calling my name and then I felt his arms around me, pulling me back onto the sidewalk and holƒidedthding me there as I struggled, body trembling, breath cutting through my lungs like that thick-handled knife.
Krull pressed me to his chest. ‘It’s okay. It’s okay,’ he said. I could feel his chin moving on top of my head, the curve of his warm neck, his heart beating as hard as mine through his heavy coat.
‘He’s going to kill one of my kids.’
‘He won’t. I promise.’
I pulled away, looked up at his face. ‘What if I had called the police Friday night as soon as I got back to the box office? You’d have caught him. Sal wouldn’t have gotten shot. Elmira would still be alive, and so would that little girl—’
‘You think they would’ve sent out even
one
squad car because you said you saw two people dropping an ice chest in the river - one of them a disappearing guy with mirrored eyes?’
‘If I’d insisted enough.’
He shook his head. ‘Anyone you spoke to would have tried to humor you like I did.’
‘It’s my fault.’
‘No. It’s mine.’
‘Give me a break.’
‘Do you know why I came to your classroom with Genovese and his dog puppet?’
‘Because you were interested in community service.’
He looked into my eyes long enough to make me feel uncomfortable. ‘Two years ago, our unit caught that other case - the boy in the Tenth Street Dumpster,’ he said finally. ‘He was such a small kid for six. His name was Graham, which is my younger brother’s name. My brother used to be small for his age too, and I was big, so I was always sticking up for him at school. I’d scare off some bully, and Graham would say, “You saved my life, Johnny,” because he’s always been kind of melodramatic like that . . .’
A guy on a cell phone passed us. ‘Whatever, we don’t do magazine events!’ he shouted into the tiny piece of machinery, gesturing so emphatically that he knocked Krull in the back. I pulled him closer.
‘My brother became a scientist like our dad.’
I watched him swallow to smooth out his voice, and I could almost hear the words as they entered his mind:
What can you become in six years?
‘I told Graham’s family we were going to find the murderer. Staked my life on it. Amanda said it was stupid to say that, and she was right—’
‘You tried.’
‘I went to your classroom with Genovese because I wanted to look into the faces of some of tƒes v> he kids I’d let down.’
I moved closer, bringing my hands up to his face, running them lightly against the beard stubble, across the nose he’d broken playing Superman.
His eyes glistened slightly, from the cold or from emotion, or from a combination of the two. ‘We did discover one thing about Graham. He’d been sneaking onto Internet chatrooms, using his older sister’s account. It could be where he met the killer.’
‘He was young to be doing that.’
‘He was advanced. Spent all his time on the computer and putting together these intricate model airplanes. He wanted to be an engineer. At six. His parents said he’d tested as a genius.’
I swallowed hard, thinking of Sarah Grace Flannigan - half Graham’s age and too young to have tested as anything.
What can you become?
‘I called Graham’s folks when I went back to the station this morning, to double-check the screen name. His sister had gotten a new address after he was killed. But when I logged on with her old password, I saw that it was still open, still receiving mail.’
I stared at him.
‘ER425160. The numbers are jersey numbers - hers and her two best friends’ - from junior varsity basketball. ER stands for the team name, the Edison Royals.’
‘John,’ I said. ‘Can we please just nail this fucker?’
 
I was relieved to hear that Krull had called in absent for me, placed Sunny Side under surveillance and given Terry my temporary NYPD cell phone number so he could call me in case of an emergency. It was one less thing to worry about on a dauntingly long list.
Near the top of that list - just under my butchered neighbor - was the wire. I was about to be fitted with one - a real, FBI-style listening device, which I would wear to meet the woman who had called me.
Meet me by the river at noon
, she’d said.
I want to help you
.
Well, sweetheart, you are going to help me. You’re also going to help some NYPD detectives catch your freaky boyfriend, whether you want to or not
.
In less than two hours, I would meet a blonde murder accomplice at an abandoned construction site, wearing a wire and a bulletproof vest. It was so over-the-top B movie, I had to say it out loud.
‘You going to start talking about skels again?’ asked Krull.
‘Skels,’ Boyle snorted. I was sitting in the back of a disguised police van (‘Gordy’s Plumbing’ was painted on the side) with Krull and Boyle, plus one other detective unit of three, finishing up the coffee and bagels that the friendliest of the new detectives, Munro, had provided. Munro was around Boyle’s age, but more or less his physical opposite - thin and sinewy with sharp, serioƒth ndlus features, his silver hair tied back in a ponytail.
‘Some of the DAs use that expression - skels,’ Munro said. ‘Makes ’em feel like tough guys.’
‘I’ve never heard it,’ said Krull. ‘They probably say it around you because you look like Clint Eastwood and served in Vietnam.’
‘You really think I look like Eastwood?’
‘Lotta people tell me I look like Nick Nolte,’ said Boyle.
One of the other detectives chuckled. A short, laconic guy named Pierce. ‘Yeah, and I look like Cher.’
‘Fuck you, Pierce, you fuckin’ Scorpio.’
‘What happened to
freakin
’?’ said Krull.
‘Are you going to fit me with the wire?’ I asked him. From what I knew of wires - which came entirely from late-night cop show reruns - the transmitter fit into one’s crotch or cleavage, and the wire part ran across the back and down the arm. I couldn’t imagine any of these guys putting one on me.
‘Not much fitting is needed,’ Munro said. He opened the glove compartment, produced a tiny, expensive-looking cell phone and handed it to me.
‘If her boyfriend shows up and tries to kill me, I’m just supposed to
call
you guys?’
All of them laughed, which made me angrier.
‘That’s the wire,’ Krull said. ‘It’s got the transmitter inside. Just clip it onto your bag and you’re set.’
I frowned at the device. ‘How very James Bond.’
‘It works great,’ Boyle said. ‘We park this boat where we can see you, put the receiver through the roof vent, you’re covered.’
‘Nobody finds out,’ Munro added. ‘Most people still expect you to be wearing them on your body, so if she wants to frisk you, you’re okay.’
I pictured this terrified little woman frisking me. ‘You sure?’
‘We’ve been using these almost exclusively for the past couple of years, and I’ve never seen anyone figure it out.’ Munro gave me a smile. ‘You’re going to do great,’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I have to.’
 
‘Showtime,’ said Boyle.
I looked at my watch, and indeed it was. Eleven forty-five, or, as we’d say in the box office, fifteen minutes to curtain. I was going to talk to her, get her to give me as much information as possible about her boyfriend’s whereabouts. The cops in the vaƒ coeenn would relay that information to another, on-call unit of detectives, which would hopefully have Mirror Eyes’s ass in custody by the time Blondie and I were through with our chat. If by some chance he showed up at the site, there were six sharpshooters positioned around the area. I even had a code word to say. Freezing. If anything freaked me out, all I had to say was ‘I’m freezing.’ Or ‘It’s freezing out here,’ and every heatpacking civil servant within wire range would come running. Presumably.
I glanced at Krull. How tired he looked, with those purplish half circles pressing against the bridge of his nose.
‘Time to gain five pounds in two minutes,’ said Munro, and handed me a bulletproof vest.
I put it on over my shirt, then pulled on my sweater and that comforting leather jacket. ‘Does this make me look fat?’ I asked Krull.
‘It’s completely unnoticeable.’
‘But what if she frisks me?’
‘Tell her you bought it from a spy store,’ said Boyle. ‘You were concerned for your safety.’
The vest was weighty and stiff - it reminded me of the lead aprons that dentists give you to wear during X-rays. ‘This thing is heavy. How come people are always running in them in the movies? I can barely stand up.’
‘You get used to the feeling,’ said Munro. ‘Sort of like wearing a backpack - only the weight is more evenly distributed. Ever go hiking?’
‘Not if I can help it.’
Krull said, ‘Before you go, can I talk to you, alone?’
I followed him out of the van, ignoring Pierce’s wolf whistle, glad Krull had asked because I wanted to be alone with him, too. I didn’t want to
talk
to him alone, though. I just wanted to
look
at him alone, once more for good luck. We headed up half a block, to a closed storefront behind a parked SUV, and I stared up at his face, pale in the flat sunlight.

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