Don't Be Afraid (29 page)

“Now!” Juarez shouted. He dropped the mike and sprinted from the car, hand reaching for his piece. He saw Dickson and Black coming from the other side and they converged on the house, pieces drawn.

“Freeze, motherfucker!” Juarez shouted so loud that the guy actually dropped the flowers.

“Hey, man, no problem,” the man said, holding his hands up without being asked, his head whipping back and forth from Juarez to Black and Dickson. Black slammed him hard against the side of the house, smashing his face up against the frame and the guy cried out and blood spilled from his mouth in a thin stream.

“What were you doing with the flowers?” Juarez demanded, holstering his piece as Dickson expertly cuffed the man and pulled him around to face them.

“Nothing. J-just delivering them.” He was young and he didn’t look familiar. His eyes were a watery blue. Vacant. He reeked of pot.

“What’s your name?” Juarez demanded, patting him down, searching his pockets for a wallet that he extracted as the guy answered.

“Brian. Brian Keesey.”

There was no Brian Keesey on their list of suspects. Amy had never mentioned a Brian. Something wasn’t right. He looked in Brian’s wallet. Up-to-date license. Same guy, same name. A community college ID. Fifty bucks. A red foil-wrapped condom that had probably been in there since the first Clinton administration.

“How do you know Amy Moran?”

“Who?”

“Amy Moran,” Black shouted. “This is her house, you moron.”

“I don’t know who she is.”

“So why are you delivering”—Juarez looked at the bundle on the ground and noticed the hard, black buds wrapped in black tissue paper—“dead flowers to her.”

“Some guy paid me to.”

“Who? Who paid you to deliver them?”

“I don’t know. Some guy.”

“You didn’t get his name?”

“He didn’t tell me. I didn’t ask. He said he’d give me fifty bucks if I took these flowers to a woman’s house and left them by the back door.”

“And you didn’t think there was anything strange about that?” Black demanded, shoving the guy’s shoulder against the wall.

“Ow!” The guy shrank from him. “It wasn’t like it was drugs, man. They were just flowers. I figured it was for an ex. I asked him that and he said the woman had screwed with him.”

“What did he look like?” Juarez demanded.

“I don’t know. Just an average guy.”

“White? Black?”

“White.”

“Hair color?”

“Dark brown. Curly.”

“Eyes?”

“He wore glasses.”

“Build?”

Brian shrugged again. “I don’t know. Average. Maybe a little big in the shoulders.”

His description wasn’t great, but Juarez thought he’d do better with a police artist. When he said as much, Brian protested.

“No way, man, I don’t want to be involved.”

“You’re already involved, ass wipe,” Black said. “The minute you took that fifty bucks you got involved.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Listen, Brian, this guy you took the money from probably killed two women. So you’re going to do exactly as you’re told or I’m going to charge you with possession for the nickel bag you’ve got stowed in your car.”

Juarez could have laughed at Brian’s mouth hanging open like a fish, but something was niggling him. That feeling again, the instinct that something wasn’t right.

“Have you done this before?” he said.

“No. Never.” Brian shook his head repeatedly, as if that made his denial more sincere. Black obviously didn’t believe him, taking the opportunity to give him another shove against the wall. Juarez knew it was the truth. Why? Why had the killer given this job to this kid?

It hit him at that same moment that the radios in both cars started bleeping like mad.

“Fuck! We’ve been played!” He bolted for his car, leaving Black shouting behind him.

The key almost snapped in the ignition and the transmission protested as he jackknifed in the road and floored the accelerator in the opposite direction. The voice of the dispatcher, “We’ve got a homicide reported at 225 Oakhurst Lane. All available cars report immediately.”

 

 

That it was Poppy there was no doubt. The same hot pink suit, the same blond hair, though it was plastered to her face in long wet strands. Her shoes were still on her feet, though the heel of one had snapped right off. Her eyes were gone, pools of blood in their place. The three-carat diamond wedding set she’d sported on her left hand was missing, as was the finger. She’d been nailed to a surfboard, her arms positioned above her head, her legs crossed at the ankles, the fiberglass shattered in spots.

Amy stumbled backward, falling on the cement and scraping her knee before rising and running. She moved with self-preservation. She couldn’t go back to the house; she couldn’t go in the garage. She pushed her way through the manicured hedges that bordered the portico and tore through the flowerbeds beyond it, heading down the front lawn toward the unmarked police car. She could see Feeney sitting there, but she couldn’t make her voice loud enough to alert him. She pounded on the car as she came abreast, but he didn’t move. He’d fallen asleep over his newspaper. She ran to the driver’s side and yanked open the door.

“He’s here!” she shouted, shaking Officer Feeney by the shoulder. He slumped to the side and that’s when she saw the blood spilling in a wide arc from his throat.

Blood was hard to get rid of it, which was why Guy generally preferred swift, sweet measures, but it was satisfying. Like finger painting. He’d longed to leave a message in blood—a little Hitchcock edge—but he hadn’t had the time.

As it was, he’d gotten a little spatter on his heavy cotton shirt and that had to go into the incinerator. Pity. He’d liked that shirt.

He was sitting on the couch with his right arm encased in a warm bath of Epsom salts that he’d rigged up in a large crystal bowl. All that nailing at one time had just about done him in. Thank God it was fairly quiet. He’d thought the surfboard might not work, the fiberglass split so easily, but he’d managed it. It was a much nicer touch than leaving her floating in the pool. Besides, her body fat count was so low she probably would have sunk like a stone.

He took another sip of his vodka tonic and thought again of the look on that woman’s face when she’d seen him in the pool house. Sometimes he wished he had a partner so that he could capture that image on film! What he wouldn’t give for a wall of those photos. That wasn’t a good idea, though. Those sorts of partnerships always soured. It was a good way to get caught and it was always the other guy who sold you down the river.

He clicked through the numerous cable stations until he found a nice serial killer drama. They were fun to laugh at usually. Either the killers were bumbling fools or the detectives or both. Tonight he couldn’t get into it. He was feeling restless.

He’d had this feeling before. He knew what it was. He was getting tired of the game. It was time to wrap this up. He was angry, too. Angry that Amy didn’t understand what he was trying to do.

He crunched his way through the ice cubes in the glass and then slowly got up, careful to keep his right arm immobile, and carried the glass back into the kitchen.

Violet stared at him from the refrigerator. She was naked in the picture. She’d agreed to that. Stretching on the faux mink blanket because he told her that Marilyn Monroe had done something similar, and you could say this about Vi, she wanted to be a star.

He selected a knife from the butcher block with his left hand and fiddled with the photo, thinking of Amy and her betrayal. He’d been a fool to believe in her. He could see that now. She’d never been Violet, not really. She was a whore, just like the rest of them. They were all whores. Stupid bitches in heat. Not worthy of a decent man. Not worthy of living.

He flicked the knife back and forth as he thought about what he would do to Amy. Little pieces of the photo dropped to the floor.

After a few minutes he stepped back and surveyed his work. Now Violet was missing her left breast as well as her right. He couldn’t shove something up her cunt, so he’d taken it right out. A neat little square, removing the center of her whoredom.

Soon he would remove the new whore. The imposter. That’s how he thought of Amy. She had to be punished for that. She had to be taught her place. He would bring her to see it before he released her soul. He would help her acknowledge her sinful nature, her whore self. She would be absolved.

The coroner made two trips to Oakhurst Lane. Officer Feeney’s body was carried out first, because there were fewer photographs needed and because he was one of their own. By the time they’d made it back to the station, the whole town knew there’d been two more murders committed because reporters had joined the crowd that gathered beyond the crime scene tape at the Harrigans’ house.

The chief personally visited Mrs. Feeney, the officer’s sixty-two-year-old mother, who doted on the son who’d still lived with her. Unfortunately, nobody realized that Mrs. Feeney loathed her son’s fiancé, so no one thought to tell her. She showed up at the department, plump face puffy from hours of crying, nails bitten to the quick from worrying because she hadn’t heard from him.

She’d been hysterical when they told her. They had to call an ambulance to have her taken to the hospital in shock.

Juarez drove straight from the station to the bar. He shook his head at the draft that the bartender offered him and ordered a shot of Jack Daniel’s instead. It went down smooth, so he ordered another.

A hand came forward and anchored it to the bar just as he was about to lift it to his lips.

“Mark, son, good to see you.”

Father Michael was on the stool next to him. Mark didn’t know when he’d landed there, but he did know he wasn’t in any mood to talk to the priest or anybody else.

“I heard you had a rough day,” the priest said. “Rough day for the whole force.”

“Rough day for Feeney.” Mark tried to pull up the glass, but Father Michael’s grip on it remained the same. The priest was surprisingly strong.

“Rough day for everyone who worked with him,” he said. “This isn’t going to help make it better.”

“No offense, Father, but that isn’t any of your business.”

“I’ve known you how long, Mark?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Fifteen years?”

“In fifteen years when have I ever told you how to run your life?”

“Never.”

“Exactly. Never. Not once. Not when you stopped going to Mass. Not when you moved to the city. Not even when you came back to Steerforth and began drinking.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is that since I’ve made it a point not to interfere in your business, you could do me the courtesy of listening the one and only time that I do.”

Mark started to say something but the implacable look on the elderly priest’s face stopped him.

“You’re hurting,” Father Michael said. “I can see that. Your parents can see that. But you won’t let anyone in. You’re trying to bury the pain and it just won’t work, son.”

“You’ve been talking to my parents?”

“Your mother still attends Mass regularly. She’s concerned about you.”

“She doesn’t have to be. I’m fine.”

“But she is. And you and I both know that you’re far from fine.”

The shot had mysteriously vanished to be replaced by seltzer. Mark cast the bartender a dark look, but the man was oblivious, drying glasses down at the other end of the bar.

“Look, I know you mean well, Father, but—”

“It’s not your fault that Officer Feeney got hurt.”

“He was a rookie. I shouldn’t have left him there. The bastard played us. He set it up, but I shouldn’t have let it happen. I should have known.”

“You had no way of knowing. Just as you had no way of knowing what would happen with that other young man.”

Juarez glared at him. “What do you know about that?”

The priest held out his hands. “Little to nothing. Because that’s how much you’ve shared with the people who love you. But we’re not blind. We read the papers.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I don’t want to talk about it. Maybe I don’t want to think about how I’ve fucked up.”

“You can’t hide from your mistakes because they’re part of who you are.”

“Shit, Father, why don’t you get your own show? You could be the Vatican’s answer to Dr. Phil.”

The priest didn’t respond, but he dug in his pocket.

“No, Father, let me,” Mark said, patting his arm. “I’ll gladly pick up the tab if you’ll leave me in peace. What’s that you’re drinking?”

“Cranberry juice,” Father Michael said. He pulled something out of his pocket and dropped it with a clink in front of Juarez. It was a small metal disk with a numeral 10 on it.

“What’s this?” Mark picked it up and tossed it in his hand.

“Ten years of hard work. Ten years of being honest about who I am and what I am. Ten years of accepting the mistakes I’ve made and struggling not to make the same ones again.”

Mark stared at the disk and handed it back to him. “Alcoholics Anonymous?”

“Yep.”

“I wouldn’t have pegged you for an alcoholic, Father.”

“I wouldn’t have pegged you for one, either.”

Mark winced. He stared at the seltzer and took a sip, wincing again at the taste.

“At one time I hid from myself in a bottle, too,” Father Michael said. “But you can’t hide from God.”

“I’m not sure there is a God,” Mark muttered, feeling sure his mother would have slapped him for that pronouncement.

“That’s okay. He’s sure about you.”

“Yeah,” Mark said. “And how do you know that, Father? You think you know me? You don’t know anything about me!” He slammed the glass of seltzer down and water splashed across the bar.

The bartender paused, looking over at them. Father Michael simply stared at Mark. He sighed and put his head in his hands.

“Look, Father, I’m sorry, but this isn’t a good time.”

He felt the priest’s hand on his arm and then Father Michael spoke in a low, hard voice. “Thirty-five years ago I tried to hide who I was because I didn’t like that person and thought that God must not like him either.”

There was a pause and Mark raised his head and looked at Father Michael. The priest’s eyes were glassy and he coughed, once, before continuing. “Don’t make the same mistake I did. Don’t run away from the truth.”

It was dark when Mark left the bar, the night air crisp in that particular way that happens only in autumn, and he remembered the smell of bonfires and apple cider and the warm feeling he’d had seeing his mother cutting his father a slice of pumpkin pie at the end of a long shift.

He didn’t know he was driving to Manhattan, not consciously, until he hit the outskirts of the city. Even then, he didn’t acknowledge where he was going or why, just driving and thinking, remembering Feeney with his stupid grin and his raw excitement over being a cop and the way that Tyson had laughed when he told a joke and the way his father had looked at the end of a shift, coming into the house in that uniform and hanging his cap on a hook by the kitchen door.

The smells in the city were different in the fall. The hot, smoky scent of chestnut stands and ash can fires. The wafts of Italian and Chinese and Syrian and Mexican and Ethiopian cuisines spilling out from restaurants as steam-covered doors swung open for diners. The advertisements for the Thanksgiving Day parade.

He drove into the bowels of the city, into the places where people had triple locks on their doors and mean dogs. He didn’t acknowledge where he was going until he arrived in front of the building and then he pulled across the street from it and parked.

At first all he could do was sit there and stare up at the building, his mind reliving that night. Then he heard kids gathering around the car and someone hit the window with something and a voice yelled, “Hey, spic! What you doing?”

So he stepped out of the car and he flashed his badge and they scattered. It was the sort of neighborhood where everyone feared the police.

 

 

The only thing that held Amy together was the need to get Emma. Staying focused on Emma helped her manage the fear. She was so frightened that if she gave into it she would huddle on the ground in a fetal position and never get up.

She’d been foolhardy to think that she could brave this, that she was being strong by not fleeing in the face of a killer. She thought she’d been tough enough to outwit him, but he’d just been toying with her. He’d killed Poppy to toy with her.

She kept seeing Poppy’s body in the pool and she didn’t want to see it, or the line of blood appearing around Officer Feeney’s neck when his head lolled.

She accepted the police escort to the hospital, but she wouldn’t let them drive her. Emma didn’t need that additional stress and holding on to what Emma needed was the only thing holding Amy together.

Emma was waiting to go. There was color in her face and a small bandage covered the spot where the IV had been.

“Mommy!” She threw herself at her mother, landing hard against Amy’s shins and knees, wrapping her small arms tightly around her mother’s waist. Amy swung her up into her arms and held her tight until Emma started to squirm.

“Are we going home, Mommy?” Emma said as Amy signed the papers at the nurses’ desk. “Are we, Mommy?”

“How would you like to go on a trip?” Amy said. She clutched Emma’s hand tightly and led her out to the car. As they pulled out of the lot, the patrol car fell in behind them.

 

 

Juarez entered the apartment building easily. The lock was broken and the foyer was littered with empty soda bottles and cigarette butts. He didn’t remember this trash, but he remembered the stairs. He mounted them slowly, hearing Tyson’s complaining and static from their radios, feeling the cold metal of the gun butt under his right hand, smelling the grease from years of poorly ventilated cooking.

Five flights up. Tyson’s cursing echoed in his ears.
“Probably some faggots!”
He took the steps slowly but in his mind they were racing up them again. Then he was in the hallway and the light was dim, a single bulb hanging in the middle. He stared at the linoleum floor, searching it as he walked without realizing that he was looking for blood. He stopped outside 513.

The whispered voices, Tyson grinning over his shoulder. The door swings open and there’s that unmistakable pop, Mark swears he hears that pop, and Tyson clutches his chest and drops, all in one motion. Mark shouts his name and then the figure in the doorway swings his way, arm rising in his direction, something dark in the hand and it’s automatic response time. Mark fires his own gun once, single, accurate hit, and the figure falls back, landing against Tyson.

Everything moves into triple speed. There’s screaming from the open doorway. A man moves toward the figure on the floor and Mark shouts at him to get down, get the fuck down, asshole, and put your hands where I can see them!

And the man’s shouting, “Why did you shoot him? Why did you shoot him?”

Mark gets him cuffed and then he’s checking the boy, for he can see now that he’s a boy, late teens or early twenties at most, and he’s reaching for the boy’s gun, but there isn’t a gun. There’s only a cell phone in the kid’s hand and there’s blood everywhere: on the boy, on Tyson, pouring onto the cracked and dusty linoleum. He radios for back up, for an ambulance, and he’s pressing his hands against the wound in the boy’s side, trying to slow down that blood. The boy’s skinny and he’s wearing a thin shirt that won’t staunch the blood and Mark knows that it’s too much blood and where the fuck is the ambulance?

Tyson’s not breathing and he’s got to do CPR on him fast, and he takes the boy’s hands and places them over the wound. “Hold on, okay, kid? Ambulance is coming, just keep your hands there!”

He’s performing the second round of CPR on Tyson and he can hear the whine of sirens when he sees the life fading from the kid’s eyes like a dimmer switch being turned down.

Mark slid down the wall opposite the door, feeling again the blood on the boy’s side, the boy’s hands cold and trembling in his. He could see the fear in the boy’s eyes and hear the man moaning, “Why did you shoot him? Why did you shoot him?”

There’d been an investigation and he’d had to turn over his weapon for a while, but he’d been lucky. Luckier than Tyson, who recovered from the massive heart attack that had felled him at the apartment door, but who had to retire. Luckier than the boy, who was a prostitute and who lay in the morgue for two weeks without any family coming to claim him. A throwaway kid, one of hundreds, maybe even thousands, rejected by their families for numerous reasons: The way they looked, the way they acted, who they chose to love.

He was sorry. He was so sorry. He wanted to take back that moment of firing. He wanted a rewind button, he wanted to spin back to the moment they got the call and tell Tyson they weren’t going to respond.

He heard shuffling footsteps. The door to number 513 slowly opened. “What you want? You okay?”

A small Chinese woman was looking down at him, clutching the door to her like she was afraid he was going to attack her. He shook his head, trying to speak, to explain that he was sorry, that he didn’t mean to shoot anybody.

The door closed and he heard the pop in his head again and watched Tyson fall to the floor. The pop had been a car backfiring. The heart attack felled Tyson microseconds after the pop. The boy held his cell phone out like a weapon. A tragic combination of events.

The door swung open again and the woman thrust a box of tissues out. “Here.”

Mark touched his face and realized for the first time that he was crying.

 

 

At the house the uniformed officers combed the house and the yard before letting Amy and Emma out of the car. “We’ll be here all night, ma’am,” one of the officers said to her. Emma’s fingers slipped into her mouth and she stared wide-eyed at them.

“It’s okay, baby,” Amy murmured, reassuring herself as much as she was hoping to reassure her daughter.

“I’m not a baby,” Emma protested.

“No, you’re not, are you? You’re a big girl.” She stopped Emma from running ahead. “Walk with Mommy, big girl.”

She looked up at the house, the place she’d worked so hard to make a home, and she felt nothing but fear. The cops were leaning against the patrol car a short distance away. One of them was smoking a cigarette and they were talking quietly.