Burning Time (16 page)

“I see a threat in them,” Dr. Frank said.

“Where?” April asked.

“All the way through. His tone is threatening, the talk about missiles and revenge, about a woman going bad. You know about the cases of disturbed people becoming obsessed with actresses and trying to kill them, or kill somebody else to get their attention?” He spoke with great intensity, but his folded hands rested calmly on the desk between them.

“If you remember the Hinckley case, you’ll understand this is a potentially very dangerous situation.” He lifted his hands for a second, then let them drop.

She nodded. Everybody remembered the case. So it was more than a public relations thing. Still, how did he know the letter writer was a man, and where exactly was the danger? She couldn’t start investigating a potential crime, the nature of which was completely unspecified.

She pushed the letters, now ordered and back in their envelopes, to the empty space between them. “What do you want me to do, Dr. Frank?”

“I’m concerned. I want it to stop,” he said, not actually asking her to do anything.

There was no return address on the envelopes. The complaint on the sheet did not justify sending the material to the lab. She looked up. Sergeant Sanchez had his head slightly cocked to one side. He didn’t say a thing, but she got a message from him anyway. That was disconcerting. She couldn’t read Jimmy Wong’s mind; how come she could read Sergeant Sanchez’s mind? The message was for her to take the letters.

“Okay,” she said. “Leave them with me.”

The doctor looked both doubtful and relieved. April could understand doubtful. There was no reason for people to think the police could solve anything. Truth was, most everything was needle in house-stack, as her mother would say. She gave him a receipt for the letters and took his business card. She looked at it briefly, but it didn’t reveal what kind of doctor he was.

Troland had just about reached his favorite part, no longer feeling any fatigue, when the girl woke up. She opened her eyes and within an instant she was hysterical. Her hands and feet were tied, but the middle of her body had no restraints. She began straining and bucking. Her eyes were enormous, about to pop right out of her head. She made sounds like no sounds Troland had ever heard. It was like she was having an epileptic fit. Her skinny body went rigid. Her head shook from side to side, and she was screaming from the inside because her mouth was taped.

“Shut up.” It freaked him out.

She didn’t shut up.

“Look, shut up!” he screamed. “I have a gun. See, it’s loaded. I have a knife, too. I’ll cut you up in little pieces.”

The noise didn’t stop.

“You want me to finish quietly, or blow your head off?”

Snot and tears ran down her face. Troland was disgusted. After all his trouble, now she was a mess.

“Okay!” He put the gun down and roughly wiped her face with a towel.

He considered hitting her, knocking her out, but didn’t want to spoil his work.

“You want me to take the tape off?” he said.

She nodded.

He hesitated. “You better not scream,” he warned.

She shook her head. He reached over and pulled the tape off. For a second she breathed deeply through her mouth, and then in gulps, crying with no tears.

“What are you doing? Are you crazy? You can’t do this. I’m—It hurts. What did you do to me? My whole body. It feels like—Oh, God, let me get up. I can’t stand this. Jesus, are you
crazy?”
She shivered convulsively. “I’m so cold—”

“Shut up,” Troland barked. “I could kill you. Understand?”

“Don’t kill me!” she cried. “Don’t kill me. Don’t kill me. I didn’t do anything. I did what you wanted. Why are you doing this?” Her words came in gulps.

“Shut up,” Troland commanded again. “Can’t you hear? I’m telling you to shut up. I’m in control here. You have to do what I say.” He stood over her waving the gun.

“Okay, okay, okay. Don’t
hurt
me,” she cried.

“I didn’t hurt you.” He was disgusted. She wouldn’t stop jerking her body around. “I can’t finish like this.”

“But what is it? What are you doing to me? Oh,
God.”
She lifted her head. “Ahhhhh.”

“SHUT UP!”
Troland raised the gun to strike, but he didn’t want to damage his own work.

“You’re freaking me out. Stop it, I can’t concentrate.”

“Ahhhhh,” she cried, trying to look at herself. “What is it? What did you do to me?”

“It’s just a tattoo. Now shut up.”

“A tattoo. Jesus, a tattoo? Ooohh. A tattoo, why does it hurt all over? Oh God, it
hurts
all
over.”

“Yeah, it’s a big one,” Troland said proudly.

“Ohhhh noooo. Ahhh,” she cried. “Oh God, oh Jesus. Oh God, no. Oh, no, you got to let me go? Oh, no. I can’t—”

It was irritating. It was good. Troland was full of rage and power, and also a feeling of impotence. He couldn’t get her to shut up, but he liked it. The fear was good. The girl was out of her mind. It was good to watch, but it was getting in the way. He wanted to finish. Yeah, watch her face as he tattooed her tit, so he could think about it. But she wouldn’t calm down. She was off the wall. He’d never seen anyone so off the wall.

He was like a squirrel in the road with a car coming on, that didn’t know which way to run. He had time, but he didn’t have time. He picked up the tattoo machine and turned it on, once, twice, three times. But each time she keened and twisted so much he couldn’t continue.

“You got to let me go. Please let me
go
. I can’t take it,” she cried.

“I have to pee. Let me pee. Just let me pee. I’ll come back. Just let me pee. I won’t do anything. I won’t go anywhere. You
have
to let a person
pee.”

He couldn’t let her pee. He didn’t have handcuffs. He didn’t like them. Handcuffs made him sick.
Willy, what do I do?
He hadn’t thought of her having to pee.
No!
He couldn’t let her up. She was crazy. He couldn’t trust her. She’d start jumping around. He made a note to think about what to do when the next one had to take a leak.

“I’m going to tape your mouth again. You want that?”

“No, no, no—”

“Then shut up and let me concentrate. I’m almost finished.”

“But I can’t hold it. You want me to pee in the bed?”

“I want you to lie still and shut up.”

“But I got to pee,” she protested. “It’s not my fault.”

“You can pee when I’m finished.”

She started to cry. “Let me go. Oh, God, are you going to let me go? Oh, please.”

He turned on the machine again and freehand, while she was moving around, made a quick question mark in the soft under part of her upper arm.

“Oh, oh, oh,” she cried. “Oh, it
hurts
. Oh,
God.”

And suddenly the bed was wet. Troland jerked back.

“Shit!” The bitch wet the bed.

Now she was crying harder. “Oh, let me go. Oh, God. It’s all wet. Please.”

She wet his mother’s bed
. He could see her coming out of the wall, shaking her head with disgust.
Can’t you be clean. Can’t you ever be clean?

Troland turned away from her to the girl on the bed. The girl was all wet. Wet from all the A and D ointment he had used. Wet with tears and snot and the heavy stink of sex and sweat and urine. She was still crying, begging for release. It went too far inside Troland’s head for him to come back. He struck without thinking. He leaned forward with his two hands spread, his right thumb on top of the left. The left one was the strong one. He pressed hard. He was a fixer. He fixed the place where the sound came out. Easy. One two three and her larynx was crushed.

A few minutes later, when he realized she was dead, he was upset. He had forgotten he had to brand her first. Now it was too late. He had no interest in branding a dead thing. He chided himself. He hadn’t gotten it right. Then he studied the tattoo. It was gorgeous. He took a few minutes to finish it. Then he snapped a Polaroid so he could see it whenever he wanted. He studied it critically. He was pleased there were no bruises on her neck. She was a little strange around the mouth. Waxy and slightly blue. And
even with her eyes closed, the tension was still there. He’d never killed anyone with his own hands before. It was interesting. It was even good. She deserved it. She didn’t do what he said.

See that, Willy. She didn’t do what I said
.

He didn’t hear a word of complaint from Willy, so he ate an orange and took another picture without the head showing. That was better.

When night came, he dug a small deep hole under the huge bougainvillea where he had played as a child years ago. He put her inside several extra-heavy, garden-sized garbage bags, sealed them carefully, and placed her in a crouched position in her grave.

“What was that all about?” Mike Sanchez asked.

April cleared her desk for the second time, tucking the letters into her bag so she could look at them later.

“Probably nothing,” she said. She didn’t see any reason to tell Sanchez. She didn’t want to tell him Ellen Roane might have been found dead in the California desert, either. She’d handled the parents by herself. The medical information she wanted she’d have tomorrow or the next day. She could only hope the match would not fit Ellen.

“Must be something,” he said.

They headed out of the squad room toward the stairs.

The precinct was built like a school. The squad room opened at the beginning of a long, wide corridor that led to other departments. A right turn took them to the stairs.

“Why do you want to know?”

April slung her bag over her shoulder. If she had her car, she wouldn’t need a ride out to the range. She didn’t have it because she had lent it to Jimmy two weeks ago. He needed to drive to New Jersey and didn’t want to take his own car. She had even been thoughtful enough to fill it
up with gas for him. He must have done whatever he had to do by now. It was time she got her car back, and she knew she would have to take action to get it. He wasn’t just going to drive it home without her making a fuss.

Sometimes she had a hard time dealing with Jimmy. He wanted what he wanted, and didn’t take no for an answer. When they first met, she didn’t seem to notice how bossy he was. But that was back when she was working in the 5th. She didn’t know a lot of things then.

“Maybe I can help,” Sanchez offered with a smile.

She still didn’t know what Sanchez’s smiles meant. He pushed the front door open and held it for her. There were blue uniforms everywhere, watching him hold the door for her. Why did he do that? She looked at her feet and walked out to the street.

“Hi,” she responded to the greetings of some uniformed officers. “I don’t need any help,” she told Sanchez.

“Everybody needs help.” Sanchez shrugged. “You can help me whenever you want.”

They walked the few steps to the lot where his car was parked. Sanchez unlocked the Camaro on the passenger side and opened the door for her. April wasn’t used to that. She looked guiltily around before getting into the car. It was low and red. It occurred to her that although she and Jimmy had done some monkey business together, it wasn’t a passionate thing, the way she thought love was supposed to be. And yes, Jimmy did hold out the possibility of their getting married some day, but he had never really asked her, and never showed any eagerness for such a day to come.

“Why do you want to help me?” she asked.

Sanchez shrugged. “We’re in the Bureau, on the same team. We work pretty well together. I think you have a lot of potential. Why not?”

Could be sneaky. Could be to steal her credit, make her lose face. Could be for monkey business. Lose more face. She was very quiet on the way to Randall’s Island.

At the range, she took a place at the end of the line. There was already somebody next to her, and somebody next to him, firing almost at the same time. Sanchez had to stand way down at the other end. April wanted him far away so he wouldn’t be able to judge how she shot. Jimmy Wong took her to the range at the Academy once, and said she was one lousy shot. He said she took too long to get her rounds fired off and would be dead already.

He seemed to enjoy saying it. “You’re dead already, kiddo.”

Every time she went there, she remembered his satisfaction. Wouldn’t want to be her partner, he said smugly.

Now the thunder got to her before she even started. Even with the sound muffled, there was the vibration. She could almost see the air shimmer with it. It used to be hard for her to keep the gun from kicking up when she fired it. She still had to work out on her own to keep her arms and hands strong enough so that when she pulled the trigger, the recoil wouldn’t make the shot fly wild every time. By now she’d had enough practice to be able to shoot into the paper torso of the man most of the time. Sometimes when she felt really mad and wasn’t too guilty about her thoughts being not so nice for a girl, she could pepper the whole region of the heart. At this distance with a pistol, though, precision wasn’t too important. They were .38 slugs. If you got him anywhere, he’d go down. Today she shot with concentration, and when she checked her score, she found she had done a lot better than usual.

“Thanks for bringing me,” she told Sanchez. “See you,” as she finished up and passed where he was still firing.

He lowered the gun and pulled the headset off his ears. “What?”

“Thanks for the ride. I’m going now.”

“Hey, wait a minute. I’ll take you home.”

She shook her head. “It’s out of the way.” She knew he lived in the Bronx. She lived in Queens. They were in opposite directions, and he would have a lot of problems with the bridges. She hadn’t expected him to drive her home.

“It’s no problem,” Sanchez assured her.

“It’s all right,” she insisted, heading down the line as people continued to fire around them.

“What? You’ll have dinner with me,” he said. “Great.”

“I said I’ll take the subway!” she shouted as all the shooting stopped. The other officers on the range stared.