The Cruelest Cut (19 page)

Katie looked out from her classroom window, across the empty playground, and felt a little irritation. She wasn't married to Jack anymore and didn't have an enemy in the world. Why would anyone want to harm her? It angered her a little that Jack had insisted on having policemen watch her house. She felt that, if anything, it would draw attention to her, and she was right. Just that morning, as she walked to her car she had spotted the creepy old van setting at the corner. She immediately made it as the type the police would use for surveillance. Believing it was one of Jack's buddies, she had even given a half nod to the driver. Just to let him know that she had seen him. Jack wasn't the only one that was observant. But the van was so obvious that before she got into her car, her neighbor, Mrs. Rosenbaum, had called out to her.

Mrs. Rosenbaum was a widow in her eighties. She had seen everything, and loved to tell anyone she could corner just how much she knew. This morning she said, “It's that ex-husband of yours, isn't it?” When Katie had asked her what she meant, Mrs. Rosenbaum said, matter-of-factly, “Stalking is against the law, dear.”

Katie had tried to explain that Jack wasn't having her followed, but Mrs. Rosenbaum had never liked Jack and had more than once referred to him as a thug. Before Katie could extricate herself from the one-sided conversation, Mrs. Rosenbaum said something funny that Katie wanted to remember to tell Jack.

She smiled now, thinking about how Mrs. Rosenbaum had said in a conspiratorial tone, “I'm afraid to even go to the store alone. You never know when one of them little punks is going to ‘cap you with his nine.'”

Katie had laughed at the old woman's remark, but could see that Mrs. Rosenbaum was completely serious.

I really have to tell Jack about that,
she thought, as she surveyed the playground for truant children. The little old woman had actually said, “cap you with his nine,” and had held her hand out like she was holding a pistol sideways.

“Mrs. Murphy,” a little voice said, snapping her out of her thoughts.

Katie looked down to see one of her students dancing from foot to foot and looking anxious. “You may go to the bathroom, Danny. But come right back,” Katie said. The boy rushed out of the room.

Two blocks down the street, Eddie sat with binoculars, watching Katie. He was eager to finish this, but Bobby wouldn't have it. Eddie wasn't sure how much longer he could wait. He could just walk right into that classroom and cut her head off with the corn knife. It would only take one swing. But he knew what Bobby would say.

 

Jack drove down Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard, each bump in the road causing short starbursts behind his eyes. The doctor had assured him that this particular symptom would soon go away, but the headaches were another matter. He felt like he had ridden a rodeo bull.

But there were worse things than headaches. The boredom of sitting around the restaurant, just waiting for something to happen, was unbearable. It was like the killer had vanished. He knew he should be glad there were no new victims, but with the recent bad news, that the DNA didn't match any known criminal, he was starting to feel the cases growing stale.

He pulled his Jeep into the back parking lot of the parole office and wondered what Susan had found. She'd been cryptic on the phone. As he stepped from the Jeep he saw Susan at the back door, motioning him to come inside.

“You're sneaking me in the back door?” Jack said, half jokingly.

“I just didn't want to waste time. Hurry up and come to my office.” She headed down the hallway, not waiting for him.

Jack entered Susan's office and looked around. Stacks of files and/or books were everywhere and anywhere there was a flat surface to hold them. The top of her desk was completely immersed in piles of paper. The seats of the two chairs across from her desk were used like bookcases. She ignored the mess and grabbed a couple of folders. “Let's go to the break room,” she said, and brushed past him into the hallway.

In the break room Susan grabbed a couple of Styrofoam cups and handed Jack one. When they had hot coffee and sat at a table by the window, she laid the files on the table top.

“First, let me tell you the background so you don't think I'm crazy when I tell you what I suspect,” she said.

“It's your story,” Jack said.

She took a breath and began. “When you first mentioned the Mother Goose rhymes something bothered me, but I couldn't think of what it was.”

Jack nodded, but didn't interrupt.

“It kept bugging me, and I couldn't shake the feeling that I knew something important.” She took a sip of the coffee and made a face, got up, and poured her coffee down the drain. “Anyway, this morning it came to me.” She looked at Jack, obviously pleased with herself. “One of my parolees used to quote pieces of Mother Goose rhymes when he would show up for our meetings.”

Jack waited. He didn't want to say, “So what?” but the fact that one of her nut-job parolees was spouting nursery rhymes didn't strike him as very unusual. They were all a bunch of smart-asses as far as he could tell.

“Aren't you going to ask me who it was?” she said.

“Who was it?” Jack asked, obediently.

Susan waited a heartbeat before answering. “Bobby Solazzo.”

“That's impossible,” Jack said, his fingers going to the scar on his face. “Bobby's dead. I killed him, remember?”

Eddie parked the van on the side street.
Just a short walk from here,
he thought.
No one will notice the van parked in this neighborhood.

He looked over at Bobby, who was leaned back, eyes closed, in the passenger seat.
Always in control. Unstoppable.

He watched Bobby for another minute before disturbing him. “Wakey, wakey, motherfucker,” Eddie said.

Bobby didn't open his eyes. “I got your ‘motherfucker' right here,” he said, and put a hand over his crotch.

They both laughed. It was good to be working together on this. Good to be brothers. And Eddie felt brotherly pride swell within. He had to admit, Bobby's plan was sharp. Bobby had his shit together, and it was a good thing, because Eddie wasn't feeling too cohesive.

 

“Bobby Solazzo's dead,” Jack reminded Susan. He thought about the last encounter he'd had with Bobby Solazzo. The chase through the alleys behind Turley's Jewelers. Finding the expended shotgun thrown aside by Solazzo. His mistaken belief that Solazzo was unarmed. The surprise of coming up against Solazzo in the rain, the huge blade slicing down toward him.

Pain began to creep up the back of his neck, and he could feel an electric buzz growing inside his skull. “Solazzo's dead,” he said flatly. “I put three bullets in him.”

“I know. That's why I didn't call you earlier,” said Susan.

Jack closed his eyes and rubbed at the base of his skull.

“You should be in bed,” Susan said.

Without thinking, he said, “That's all you ever think about, isn't it?”

Susan laughed and said, “Well at least you still have your sense of humor. Or whatever you call that.” She got up from the table. “I've got some aspirin in my office. I'll be right back,” she said, and started to leave, but Jack called her back.

“No, I'm okay,” he said, and he could feel the buzzing diminish from a chain saw down to an electric hum.

“You didn't call me here to tell me a dead man is behind all this.”

“Let me finish—then see what you think,” Susan said, and Jack nodded.

Susan opened the file she had brought into the break room.

“I thought about Bobby because he was always quoting parts of nursery rhymes to me when I had him under the hammer for some type of parole violation. At the time I thought it was just a defense mechanism. You know. Like trying to distract me, or himself, from the point of our conversation.”

Jack nodded understanding, and Susan opened the file to the back page.

“Because Bobby's crimes were so violent he had undergone extensive psychiatric examinations. The court had ordered the first round of examinations to see if he was fit to stand trial, and he was examined again by the Department of Corrections after his conviction to determine where to house such a violent inmate.”

Susan got up and poured another cup of coffee, and began pacing. Jack had noticed that when she was thinking something through she tended to walk the floor.

“Guess who his court-ordered psychiatrist was?” Susan said.

Jack raised his eyebrows, seeing where her train of thoughts was leading. “Anne Lewis?” he said.

“Yep,” Susan answered, then continued to pace. “But Bobby's dead. So that was a dead end,” she said, then looked at Jack and said, “And don't say it. Let me finish.”

He nodded for her to go on.

“I was curious,” she said, “So I looked up Eddie's file. Bobby's psychiatric report hinted at his being an abused child. So I wondered if Eddie was abused as well. Like I said, I checked Eddie's records and my hunch was right.”

“Eddie was examined by Anne Lewis, too,” Jack finished her thought.

“Yes,” Susan said, “and Eddie hasn't reported to me for a few months now.”

Jack hadn't considered Eddie a suspect in these current murders, but now it was all starting to make sense.

“Eddie Solazzo?” Jack said.

“Yep,” Susan agreed.

 

Charlie Toon had been on the playground for only a few minutes when he first noticed the man outside the fence. He was tall, with long dark hair, and dressed like a biker, with one heavy-soled boot stubbed against the front wheel as he leaned against the side of an old panel van. The other kids were huddled in their small groups, talking, laughing, telling stories, and making plans for the coming weekend, oblivious of everything else around them, and impervious to Charlie, but he didn't care if they liked him, or talked to him.

Harwood Middle School was a school where kids were sent when no other school would take them, and, even at Harwood, Charlie was an outsider. He had worn out his welcome at no less than six other schools before landing here. And from “here” there was only one other place to go: the Evansville Children's Psychiatric Center. He'd heard bad stories about that place and was behaving himself. But right now he was watching the man, and the man was watching him.

Charlie's mother was an exotic dancer, and she was real pretty. But “I'm not getting any younger,” she'd told Charlie last winter, and when she'd gotten a job offer in a Las Vegas club she had jumped at the chance. She'd told Charlie that he would have to stay behind with Uncle Jon, but it would just be for a while. Just until she got settled.

For nine months now Charlie had lived with his Uncle Jon, who wasn't really his uncle, but that's what his mother had made him call the man who had shared her bed. He knew his mother wasn't coming back.

As he watched the man across the street, he was reminded of the way his Uncle Jon looked at him sometimes, and he'd learned the hard way that it was much tougher on you if you resisted.

When he was nice to Uncle Jon, then Jon was nice to him, and gave him money or took him to a show, but at first he'd resisted Jon's crude, fumbling advances. The very first time he'd screamed until Uncle Jon had choked him unconscious.

“Hi, Charlie.”

Charlie was startled at hearing his name. He looked up to see Ellen Sanders. Ellen was the most popular girl at Harwood, and no wonder. She had blond hair and sparkly green eyes, and her smile could melt you down into your socks. He smiled back, but it quickly faded. He knew he could never be friends with a girl like this.

“What do you want?” he said. His tone sounded angrier than he realized, and he regretted it. But like everything else in his life, it just kind of happened. The thought of apologizing never crossed his mind, because apologizing was an action that implied hope—a chance of correcting some wrong. In his short life he had never had much use for that feeling. Life wasn't something to be celebrated; it was something to be endured.

Ellen didn't seem put out with his remark. “Can I sit with you?” she asked, and looked at him with those bright green eyes washing over him like a huge wave. She smiled, and for Charlie it was like the sun had come out. His previous mood eased, and his defenses dropped slightly.

He started to tell her that would be just great, but it came out, “It's a free country.”

“You don't have to be rude, Charlie Toon,” Ellen said, her smile faltering. Before he could say anything, he was shoved hard from behind and knocked to the ground.

“What do you think you're doing, Charlie Tuna?” Alex Templeton said with a laugh. Alex was the school bully. His father was retired military, and they had lived all over the world. Unfortunately, Alex had adopted his father's demeanor, barking orders and using physical force on anyone smaller than himself.

Charlie wasn't smaller than Alex, but Charlie was on thin ice. One more problem at school and he'd be locked up. He had to bite down his anger as he picked himself up from the ground.

“Why are you hanging around this loser, Ellen?” Templeton said with a smirk aimed at Charlie.

Charlie looked at Ellen, desperately wanting just once for someone to take his side. But she looked embarrassed, and not saying a word, turned and walked away.

Charlie felt his fists tightening into hammers at his sides, but he'd been beaten, and it was no use to resist his fate. He relaxed his hands and just stared away, toward the man across from the playground.

Templeton wasn't satisfied with just beating Charlie down in a word contest. He had to humiliate him further to establish that he was in command. Some of Alex's friends gathered around them, joining Alex in jeering at him, saying, “Why don't you get out of here, Charlie Tuna? You don't belong here. You don't belong anywhere.”

“Yeah,” one of the other boys said, “Only the best tuna gets to be StarKist.”

Another boy chimed in, “He looks more like a mackerel,” and they all laughed.

Seeing that Charlie was thoroughly beaten, Alex added, “I'd kick your ass, but you aren't worth it.” Alex stalked away, shouting, “Hey, Ellen, wait up,” and the other boys hurried away as well.

Charlie stood motionless, eyes trained across the street, but not seeing anything. His thoughts had brought him to an empty place, where there was no Ellen Sanders, no Alex Templeton, and no Uncle Jon. It was a quiet place, where only he, Charlie Toon, could go. A place where he did belong.

Without knowing why, he walked from the playground and toward the man across the street. It didn't matter, really. Anywhere was better than school.