Kill Me Once (5 page)

The young woman pressed her lips together. ‘It don’t pay much to notice strangers around here, lady. That family kept to themselves, like we all do. Other than that, I really don’t know what to tell you.’

Dana nodded, feeling about as welcome now as a raging case of herpes in a monastery. Still, even though it wasn’t the answer she was after it didn’t surprise her in the least. Nobody ever wanted to talk, but who in the hell could blame them? In this neighbourhood, cooperating with the authorities quickly branded you as untrustworthy, a reputation that usually prompted a severe beating – or worse – to remind you to keep your big fat mouth shut the next time.

Dana took a deep breath and went on patiently, as if she was talking to a young child. ‘Listen, Tyesha, a little girl was murdered here this morning. That’s the fifth one in three months now. You’re a mother so I’m sure you can understand how awful that must feel. Jacinda Holloway’s mother is at the Cleveland Clinic right now, barely holding things together. So if you know something, you have to tell me. That’s just the way it works. It’s the only way I can make sure nothing like this ever happens to another mother.’

The young woman smiled thinly at her. ‘First of all, I ain’t no goddamn crack whore like that bitch. Second of all, that might be the way it works where you’re from but it sure as hell ain’t the way it works around here.’ She waved a hand in front of her chest. ‘Take a look around, Dorothy. You ain’t exactly in Kansas any more. Like they say on the block,
stop snitchin’
. Ever heard that phrase before?’

Dana shifted on the couch again. Maybe the ‘bad cop’ routine wasn’t such a bad idea, after all.

‘Yeah,’ she said, holding the young woman’s stare. ‘Ever heard the phrase “accessory to murder” before?’

Tyesha laughed out loud. A deep, genuine laugh that filled the room and caught Dana completely by surprise.

‘What the hell you gonna do?’ Tyesha asked incredulously. ‘Haul me downtown? Toss me in a cell? Who’s gonna look after my baby while I’m locked up? You? I don’t fuckin’ think so.’

Dana didn’t answer her. She knew the young woman was right. Some people just weren’t cut out to be mothers – and Dana happened to be one of them. Hell, she could barely take care of herself these days, much less look after a baby.

Over in the playpen Tamara was beginning to stir, making soft cooing noises in her sleep and trying to lift her head.

The young mother looked over at the playpen and let out a resigned sigh. ‘Look, lady, I don’t know nothin’, OK? I ain’t seen no strangers because I ain’t been looking. Are we done here yet? I need to feed my baby.’

Dana stood and walked to the door. She was clearly unwanted here, but where was the surprise in that? In this part of town, law enforcement was just one step above the KKK in the social pecking order, if that.

Out in the hallway, she turned and handed Tyesha a business card. ‘Thank you very much for your time. If you happen to remember anything – anything at all – please call me at this number. Any time. Day or night.’

The young woman took the card and glanced down at it, then looked back up at Dana. ‘Like I said before, lady. I don’t know nothin’ about nothin’.’

And with that she simply closed the door in Dana’s face.

CHAPTER FIVE

2250 Drexel Street – South Central Los Angeles – 9:39 p.m
.

If there was one thing that Mary Ellen Orton knew better than anything else these days, it was that being old was no fun at all. Though her mind was still remarkably fresh considering her advanced years, her frail old body just wasn’t up to the exhausting task of simple day-to-day living any more.

The heat only made things worse.

She’d spent most of the long, tiring day trying to ignore the unforgiving temperature all around her, but nothing had worked out very well. Like most people her age, Mary Ellen hadn’t grown up with the unimaginable luxury of air conditioning, and as a youngster in Chicago each summer she’d read horrible accounts of the elderly citizens of the city literally
dying
from the heat.

Back when she’d been a fresh-faced girl, those sad tales had seemed little more than abstract concepts – nothing to worry about very seriously. But she had been
young
then. Now seventy-nine and still not fully recovered from a badly shattered right hip brought about by a nasty slip in the shower three years earlier, those old newspaper articles seemed to hit a lot closer to home.

Moving to Los Angeles in order to be closer to Jerry – her last living child and the only thing she had left on this Earth in terms of family – had brought with it a certain sense of emotional comfort, but the City of Angels wasn’t exactly known for its
mild
weather. And the cloying layer of smog always hanging over the city like a thick blue cloud of cigar smoke in a crowded bar certainly didn’t help matters, either.

Mary Ellen sighed and wiped her sweaty palms against the sides of her thin yellow housedress, desperately trying not to cry despite her many frustrations. How she wished Ed were here with her now. If Ed were here he’d hold her close and kiss her face and tell her not to worry, tell her everything would be all right and that he’d never, ever let anybody hurt her. He’d just smile that little smile of his and pull her to her feet to sway to imaginary music. Oh how they used to dance!

But Ed wasn’t here any more, hadn’t been for more than ten years now, so these days Mary Ellen simply filled out her time the best she could. But it really was
lonely
being old. Nobody had ever warned her about that part of life when she’d been a little girl, and as a result she was finding the Golden Years badly tarnished. They seemed more like something suspiciously along the lines of tin.

Word Searches with oversized type helped combat the excruciating boredom for short periods of time. Reading was a tolerable activity for a while, too – just so long as the words on the page were large enough to save what precious little remained of her failing eyesight. The Social Security cheques and small pension from her deceased husband’s job as a postal worker certainly didn’t allow for such outlandish modern expenditures as cable television, but Mary Ellen made do just fine with her old black-and-white set equipped with its rabbit-ears aerial.

Sometimes the set-up managed to pick up a halfway decent signal, allowing her to stay updated on her soap operas and the latest news, but even that much had become a chore lately. Tonight, however, the television was picking up only a snowy-white static – not to mention the obnoxious buzzing sound accompanying the flickering picture – so she simply flicked it off.

Mary Ellen tried knitting for a while, but it wasn’t very long before the arthritis shook the needles from her hands and they clattered down noisily onto the cheap TV-tray table in front of her. Old Arthur had been living with her for years now, and she’d be damned if he weren’t just the
rudest
house guest she’d ever known – even if the folksy term for the crippling affliction was a bit dated even for her taste.

A bead of sweat slipped down the back of Mary Ellen’s neck in the stifling heat of the apartment. The damn air conditioner had broken again and Jerry hadn’t quite gotten around to fixing it yet. Although basically a good boy in most respects, her son had just as many issues as anybody else. Probably a few more than most.

Mary Ellen’s gnarled fingers lightly brushed the Life Alert medical call hanging around her thin neck like a forlorn plastic cross. She’d never fallen before and been unable to get up, of course – as those silly commercials so condescendingly suggested – but neither had she ever been the type to tempt the fates. Besides, Jerry had absolutely
insisted
on it for the nights when he was out there doing whatever the hell he was out there doing and she’d grown fairly accustomed to it by now.

The heat rose high in her paper-thin cheeks as she struggled to her feet and crossed the living room in her small apartment to go do battle with the sticky window in the far corner. It was an
oven
inside the apartment and she knew she’d never be able to fall asleep if she didn’t at least
try
to do something to cool the place down. But when she finally managed to wrestle the window up, the arthritis in her wrists immediately screamed at her for her foolishness. The weak breeze that followed hardly seemed worth all the pain and effort involved.

Sighing as she gently rubbed her tender wrists, Mary Ellen stepped inside her tiny bedroom and slowly slipped out of her clothes, neatly folding them up and placing them on the old wooden chair next to her bed. She would wear the same clothes tomorrow. It was just too much of a hassle to do laundry more than once a month any more. Besides, who in the hell did she have left to impress, anyway?

Her aching muscles throbbed in hot protest as she pulled a thin white nightgown over her wispy silver hair and squinted her watery blue eyes at the digital alarm clock on her bedside table. Almost midnight now – well past her usual bedtime.

Her ancient joints sang with pain as she carefully climbed up into the rickety double bed with its lumpy old mattress in the middle of the room and leaned over to switch off the bedside light. The metallic sound of squeaking springs filled the darkness as she covered herself with a thin sheet and closed her exhausted eyes, desperately trying to think about the good old days. Sometimes that helped her forget the pain. On good nights it even helped her forget the loneliness for a little while.

Soft strains of remembered music echoed gently in her mind as she floated slowly back in time and once again became the picture of grace on the dance floor, hovering over the wooden planks like a lace-covered ghost whom all the men desperately loved and all the women desperately envied.

As she gradually drifted off into the painless world of her dreams, a contented smile finally played across Mary Ellen Orton’s wrinkled old face.

It would be the last smile in a very long, very well-lived life that once upon a time had
been full
of them.

CHAPTER SIX

Dana left the squalid apartment complex on the east side and fought her way through the insatiable press corps that had flooded into the parking lot. The questions rained down on her from all directions as she hurried to her Mazda Protégé.

A man with perfect hair in the middle of the pack stepped forward and shoved a microphone in her face. ‘Special Agent Whitestone!’ he shouted. ‘Chip Hall, Channel Three News. Was this murder the work of the Cleveland Slasher?’

Dana squinted against the bright television lights. She focused on the man’s perfectly plucked eyebrows, not wanting to encourage him by making actual eye contact but also not wanting to look evasive when they ran the footage on the eleven o’clock news. ‘There will be a press release in about two hours,’ she said, her voice steady and strong as she continued walking. ‘That’s all I can say right now.’

She unlocked the Protégé with the keychain control and hopped inside. Slipping the car into gear, she slowly backed the vehicle through the mass of humanity and out of the parking lot, being very careful not to run over anyone’s toes. That was the last thing she needed right now.

As she hit Interstate 90 and headed for home, Dana felt guilty about the little white lie she’d just told. There would be no press release coming in two hours, of course, but sometimes you had to throw the wolves a little meat to distract them. Her comment would keep them satisfied for tonight and buy her some time, though, and that was the important part. Most of the reporters would probably be happy enough with her empty promise, and if she was lucky they might even forget about it for tomorrow night’s broadcast and move on to chasing the next big story of the day.

One could always hope.

Half an hour later she was inside her own apartment on the west side of Cleveland, seated at her dining-room table with her notebooks scattered on the tabletop in front of her. She felt wired, unable to wind down after the events of the day as she tried desperately to map the case out in her mind. The MO for Jacinda Holloway’s murder matched the previous four murders exactly, but none of the few clues that the Cleveland Slasher had
left pointed
anywhere. The pattern was clear – little girls were his targets – but to what end or for what purpose? And why had he left behind a photograph of a pentagram at the Holloway apartment? What exactly was he trying to
tell
them?

When her mind started to grow fuzzy from information overload, Dana went into the kitchen and grabbed a Corona from the refrigerator, leaving her notebooks abandoned on the table. That was enough for tonight and she needed the beer after the day she’d just had, needed a little something to take the edge off. She found that alcohol usually did the job quite nicely, even if she knew it was an extremely dangerous friend to lean on. But it was when she was here at home – when she wasn’t actually out working in the field – that the seams started to show. For all its faults – and there were a lot of them, Dana knew – booze helped her keep the stuffing inside where it belonged, kept all the emotions from spilling out. She knew it was a crutch but she also knew it was the only thread keeping her tattered psyche together at this point.

Beer in hand, she went into her living room and curled up on the couch underneath a soft blanket with a classic text by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross – the Swiss-born psychiatrist who’d written the groundbreaking book
On Death And Dying
. Dana had always found the book helpful, both personally and professionally. It was comforting to know that other people had gone through the same things she had, soothing to know she wasn’t all alone in the world and wasn’t crazy for still feeling the way she did after all these years. Still, Dana wished like hell she could just let go of the terrible events of her past instead of endlessly wallowing in them like she’d been doing for more than three decades now.

She sipped on the Corona and tried to relax while the sounds of Regina Spektor played softly on her living-room stereo. The beautiful voice led viewers into Dana’s favourite show each week – the hit series
Weeds
on Showtime. Most people around the country had professed their allegiance to
Dexter
or
True Blood
on HBO, but Dana saw enough blood and guts in her real life to make watching dramatisations of it on television rather pointless. When
she
watched TV, she wanted to
stop
thinking, not be reminded of how cruel human beings – or vampires, for that matter – could be to one another.