Now or Never (35 page)

She put up the coffee, sliced bagels and slotted them into the toaster. She took out cream cheese and strawberry jam and set them on the counter, along with the pink flowered mugs, the low-fat milk, and a bowl of brown sugar.

She listened. The shower had stopped running. She pushed down the toaster, ran a hand through her hair, and was waiting, smiling, when he walked in the door, fully dressed.

He looked first at her, then at the burned-out candles
and the debris on the table, and finally at the toasted bagels waiting on the counter.

“You’re a miracle woman,” he said, laughing. “I take a shower, and
voilà
, breakfast is served.”

“Don’t get too used to it, detective. I’m on my best behavior this morning, that’s all.” She grinned at him. “There always seems to be lots of food, but have you noticed we never actually get around to eating it?”

“I noticed. And I’m starving.”

“There’s plenty of cold pasta. And salad.”

“I’m sorry, Mal,” he said. “It was a wonderful meal. The best I can remember in a long time. I guess other things just took priority.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” she said quietly. She took a bagel and spread cream cheese on it. “Strawberry jam?”

His eyes widened.
“On a bagel?”

She eyed him uneasily. “Why? What do you usually have?”

“Oh, lox, salami, maybe tuna.”

“The jam has no fat,” she said firmly, handing it to him.

“Yes, ma’am, Ms. Malone.” He took a bite and made an enthusiastic face, and she laughed.

“It’s eat and run, I’m afraid.” He gulped down the coffee—black the way she had remembered he liked it.

She leaned against the counter, her arms folded. “I’ll need everything you can give me on the case,” she said, suddenly serious.

“As soon as I get back to Boston,” he promised.

“The details of each murder, but more than that, details about the women themselves. Who they were and what they were. And their families. I want to focus on them, let the audience out there, watching television after supper in their nice comfortable homes, with their own daughters safely beside them, understand that this might have been their child. Their lives shattered.”

She began to pace, absorbed in planning the program. He could see she was really into it, and he was grateful.

He drained the coffee and picked up his jacket. “I’m sorry, Mal. I have to run.”

She came back from wherever she had been, looked at him, then sighed. “Okay.”

“It’s not okay, but I have to do it.” He put on his jacket, took her hand, and pulled her gently to him. He touched her cheek, smiling. “Did anyone ever tell you you are adorable?” he said.

She nodded. “Someone just did.”

“Even when you’re
mean,”
he added the stinger, laughing. Then he kissed her on the mouth and walked quickly away.

She heard the ping as the elevator arrived and watched the doors open, then close again, taking him away from her. She put her fingers to her lips, feeling his kiss still on them. He would be back—she knew it.

The Boston Serial Killer was getting plenty of publicity. With a fourth murder under his belt, the national media were giving him strong play. The videotape of the chief of police and the mayor was shown on all the national network newscasts, along with Nurse Suzie Walker’s funeral, and the tabloids went to work on it with graphic details of the stabbings and gory faked-up pictures of the supposed crime scenes.

“Not since the Boston Strangler put the women of this city into a state of fear and trembling has there been anything like this. And in a city with many colleges and a high proportion of young females in its population, most are again living in fear,” they said on the news.

By the time Thursday morning came around and they were ready to tape the show, Mal had all the information she needed. Her researchers and assistants had been working overtime; the Boston police department had been
more than cooperative, and the mayor had called her personally to thank her.

“Don’t thank me yet, sir,” she replied crisply. “Wait until you’ve seen the show. And then if there’s any thanks, they should be given to Detective Harry Jordan, because without his persistence I would never have taken this on.”

She refused to think about her own personal fears and misgivings as she prepared for the taping. She was single-minded, totally focused.

Before the show she sat quietly, lost in thought while Helen did her face. Then she read through her notes while her hair was blow-dried.

When she went back upstairs and out onto the floor, everything was ready. She caught sight of Harry in the shadows behind the cameras, but she was not thinking about him. All her energy, all the force of her personality was channeled into what she was about to say to those waiting families across America.

She took her place on the little upright sofa that was not meant for relaxing and placed her notes on the low table in front of her, next to the bowl of soft pink roses. Unusually, she was wearing black tonight: a simple V-neck long-sleeved dress, black hose, and black suede heels. She wore no jewelry, except for small pearls in her ears. She looked like a woman in mourning.

“Ready, Mal?” the director called. She nodded, and he signaled to the cameras to roll.

They had rehearsed it earlier, but then she had left out the emotion. Now it brimmed from her—you could see it in her eyes, feel the tension in her body, hear it in the soft level tone of her voice.

“Tonight I am asking you to grieve with me, and with four families who have each lost a precious child. I know there are some of you out there who have also suffered that same terrible loss. You are aware of how it feels, what it means. And there are others, watching now, whose
young daughters are safe in bed. Or perhaps they are doing their homework, or maybe just acting up and wanting to know why they have to go to bed, anyway.

“You fathers must remember when they were newborn and you first held that tiny infant, your baby girl. And how you felt about her at that moment. I’ll bet you vowed to yourself you would always love her, guide her. Protect her.

“Just the way the young Suzie Walker’s father did, and Summer Young’s, and Rachel Kleinfeld’s, and Mary Jane Latimer’s.

“Let’s look at these families, shall we? We shall begin with Suzie.”

The home video of Suzie Walker’s first birthday party began to roll. Her three-year-old sister, Terry, blew out the candles for her. The infant Suzie looked at her, big-eyed, then her mouth puckered, and she began to cry. “I guess she wanted to blow out the candles herself,” Mrs. Walker’s laughing voice came over the soundtrack.

There was more: quick flashes of Suzie as a toddler, then walking hand in hand with her father at the zoo. Suzie missing her front teeth. Suzie as a gawky redheaded teenager, pretty and pert in a fluffy blue dress, clutching the hand of her partner on prom night. Suzie curled up asleep on the sofa, an open textbook beside her.

“I want to thank Mr. and Mrs. Walker for so generously sharing their lovely daughter’s memories with us,” Mal said softly. “And also for allowing us to show the following pictures.”

A montage followed of the exterior of Suzie’s cottage, with the yellow crime-scene tape; the burly officers guarding the door and the squad cars outside; then the gurney with her body in its black plastic body bag being rolled hurriedly into the waiting ambulance. And finally, the funeral, with the distraught parents, the grieving brother and sister, as Suzie was laid to rest.

“A simple American family, nice as apple pie, you might say. As normal as yours, and not much different from any other family, in whatever state, in whatever town or city you live in. But Mr. and Mrs. Walker no longer have a daughter. And you, Mr. and Mrs. America, do.

“The reason they no longer have their younger daughter and will not see her progress in her chosen career of nursing—and she was a good nurse, dedicated, caring. The reason they will not see their younger daughter marry, will never see her children—their own grandchildren. The reason that the joy has gone out of their lives and left them devastated—is this man. Ladies and gentle-men, parents, take a good long look.”

The photo-fit filled the screen, and for a few seconds there was silence. Then, voice-over, she said, “This man—this killer—was seen by three eyewitnesses. Their description was the same. Caucasian, possibly in his early fifties, short, stocky, five foot seven or eight. A shock of thick dark hair that the police now know is naturally gray but tinted black. And dark, intense staring eyes. He was driving a dark utility vehicle, perhaps a Jeep Cherokee or a station wagon.”

There was no hint of a tremor in Mal’s voice as she spoke of the killer. She looked directly into the camera, thinking only of the victims and the man who had to be caught.

“I ask you. The Walker family asks you. Please, if you think you know this man, if you believe you have seen him, get in touch with the Boston Police Department at this special emergency number. Your call will be free, and the lines are open now.”

The camera focused on her face again as she said, “And now I’d like you to meet Gemma and Gareth Young, the parents of Summer Young.”

The camera panned to her side and picked up Gemma and Gareth Young sitting on the sofa holding hands. They
were pale but composed as she thanked them for agreeing to be on the program. She said that she knew how difficult it was and that she admired their courage. And then she asked them about their daughter.

Standing in the shadows in back of the cameras, Harry wondered how she had gotten the parents to appear. Watching her with them, he realized she must have appealed to them personally, asked for their help, and told them she was willing to do everything she could through her program to catch the man who murdered their daughter.

He admired her skill as she led them through their memories. “An only child, born in the summer of our days,” they said, smiling. “And a child meant to gladden our hearts in the winter of our lives.”

Mal reached forward and touched their tightly entwined hands. Her eyes glistened with unshed tears as she thanked them.

And then the face of the killer filled the screen again, as she told in a quiet, shocked voice what he had done to Summer Young. And Summer’s last words to Detective Harry Jordan.

The man was sitting in front of the television set, drinking neat vodka, his eyes fixed on Mallory Malone’s face. He gripped the fine crystal glass tightly, as she followed Summer Young’s story with Rachel Kleinfeld’s. She spoke with Rachel’s twin sister.

And then she showed
his
picture again. And she talked about
him
again. And she told everybody what
he
had done again.

Then Mary Jane Latimer, the prettiest baby of them all, cavorting in the tiny waves at a holiday beach, blowing out her candles. The parents had not been able to bring themselves talk about their daughter, but her grandparents were there, gentle, soft-spoken people who talked
with dignity about what a treasure she had been, what a joy to them. “But then, we all think that about our own, don’t we?” the grandmother said wistfully.

“No!” he yelled suddenly. “No, we don’t, you old bitch!” And he hurled the vodka at her face.

But it was
his
face on the screen again, and the vodka was trickling down
his
hair and over
his
eyes. He gripped the crystal glass tighter, not even noticing as it cracked, then shattered.

The details of the killer were repeated and the emergency telephone number given one more time.

Mal said, “Please, if you think you know this man, if you have any information at all, I urge you,
beg
you to call this number. Or simply call your local police department and talk to them.”

She thanked the families for their assistance and said it was their urgent desire, their
need
to see this man caught so that he could not kill again, that had made them put aside their own private grieving and expose their souls to their fellow Americans.

“When the time comes,” Mal said, “they want their daughters to be remembered as living people and not merely as victims. Because being a victim bonds them to their killer.
He
made them victims, but what they all
were
, were lovely young women on the brink of their lives. And let none of us forget that, when the time comes to convict this terrible man. Remember that they are not victims—they are all our children.”

Mal looked through the camera directly into the eyes of her audience. Her soul was in her own eyes as, deeply moved, she said quietly, “Parents, guard your children. Young women out there, please take care, be on your guard. You will not be safe again until this man is behind bars.”

And then her face was replaced by the image of the
tightly linked hands of Gemma and Gareth Young. Then it too faded into nothing, and the credits rolled.

“Lying bitch,”
he roared, leaping to his feet.
“You filthy lying little nothing! I decide who lives and dies, not you!”

He stood, trembling with rage, his face mottled purple. His feet crunched on the broken glass as he stepped forward. He glanced down. There was blood on the carpet. He stepped quickly back again, shocked. He stared at his bleeding hand and then at the remains of the glass. He hadn’t even realized what he had done. He stumbled backward with a cry of panic. There was blood on his carpet, his blood….

He ran to the kitchen, turned on the faucet and stuck his bloody hand under the cold water. Trembling, he inspected it. He went to a drawer, took out a pair of tweezers, and picked out the small pieces of glass. Then he examined the wound again. It was not deep—there was no need for stitches. He wrapped gauze around it. He was not worried about infection, he knew the vodka would act as an antiseptic.

He found the spot remover and went back into the den. Kneeling on the floor, he scrubbed at the stain, but the more he scrubbed, the worse it seemed to get. Defeated, he got to his feet. He couldn’t live with it; it just wouldn’t do. If he couldn’t get the stain out, he would have to replace the whole carpet.