Mania (16 page)

Nick examined her, puzzled by the depth of her emotion.

“He beat you up. Don’t you remember?”

“We were kids,” Nick said. “That’s what kids do.”

“Not like that. He was so cruel to you. I could never understand why you didn’t fight back. I always wished that you’d stand up to him.”

Nick understood that she meant for her sake as well. “I couldn’t,” he said.

“I was your girlfriend. How could you let him take me from you?”

“I didn’t want to. I didn’t know what to do.”

“You were like a powder keg, Nick. I never understood what kept you from exploding.”

Nick dropped his eyes, rocked by the image of Sam’s fingers wrapped around the rectangular, taped handle of his hockey stick as he went up onto his toes and wedged the man’s corpse as far as he could beneath the ice. Emily was twisting back and forth in front of him, freeing herself dramatically from her mother’s protective embrace. “Do you ever wonder,” he asked, pulling himself back into the moment, “how things would have turned out differently? If you hadn’t gone to that dance that night, I mean. If you and I had—well—” He didn’t finish the sentence.

“No.” Elizabeth shook her head.

“I wanna go see Grandma,” Emily said.

Elizabeth acknowledged her daughter by combing her fingers through the tangles of her hair. “I don’t like to look backward anymore. Like you said, I’m just glad everything turned out okay in the end.”

Nick smiled. He squatted down in front of Emily, eyeing her thoughtfully, then reached forward and tugged a few strands of her hair. “She really is beautiful,” he said to Elizabeth. “I look at her, and I can only see you.”

“Where the hell have you been, Nick?”

Nick had switched his phone back on and called Stolie the moment the plane touched the ground. He had only been gone from Seattle for a day and a half, but he anticipated the detective’s outburst. “I’m back in Seattle now,” he said. “I’m sorry if I put you in a bind, but I wasn’t running away.”

“You didn’t come back home to your apartment last night. I was worried about you.”

“You don’t have to worry. I can come to the station now, if you want.”

The pilot’s voice blared over the loudspeaker, announcing that the plane’s gate was temporarily occupied.

“You’re on a plane,” the detective observed.

“I’m arriving at SeaTac.”

“Where did you go?”

“It’s a long story. I want to tell you, but later.”

“Listen, Nick. I have some good news for you.”

Nick knew what this must mean. “You caught him?” He held his breath.

“His name is Jackson Ferry.”

Nick closed his eyes in relief. He had been expecting the police to take him into custody.

“We need you to come down here now,” the detective was saying. “We’ve been looking for you since yesterday. I could arrange an escort for you, but it will probably be just as quick if you catch a cab. We need you to make an ID.”

Nick was standing next to Stolie in front of an inch-thick piece of one-way glass. The police had gathered five other men from the street for the lineup. All of them were dressed in grimy, street-worn clothes. None was wearing shoes. Several of them had long, greasy hair. Nick, though, was only considering one of them. From the moment he had stepped up to the glass, his attention had been drawn to Jackson Ferry’s ravaged face. His eyes were fastened on Ferry’s. The detective had told him that the glass was mirrored on the other side, but Nick couldn’t shake the feeling that the man was staring back at him, too.

An image from the night of Sam’s murder filled Nick’s head. Ferry was charging at the two brothers out of the blackness of the shadows. The rustling of Ferry’s clothes echoed in Nick’s ears. Closing his eyes, for a split second Nick was able to recapture a photographic image of Ferry’s pocked and sallow face, his watery light blue eyes open wide with terror, as though he were being hunted.

“That’s him,” he said.

“Which one?”

“The third man from the left. The man with the blue eyes and long hair, wearing the black coat.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“That’s Ferry,” Stolie confirmed.

Nick continued to look at him. He was large, significantly taller and more muscular-looking than the other men the police had lined up. The skin on his face was reddish and leathery, deeply creased, his hair thick and scraggly and greasy. His lips were dark red, one corner of his mouth festered with sores. His hands were scabbed and filthy, badly scraped, powerful.
This was the Street Butcher, just inches away behind a plate of glass, the dangerous beast who had killed Sam.

Stolie leaned forward and pressed a button on an intercom. “You can take the men back out,” he said, his voice rumbling over a loudspeaker on the other side of the glass. Nick watched the two officers inside the room usher the men through a doorway. Ferry lowered his eyes, and Nick followed his gaze down to the dark brown, cross-hatched butt of one of the officer’s guns as Ferry shuffled forward. When Ferry was just behind him, the cop seemed to feel his eyes on his weapon. He turned and, resting his hand on his holster, directed Ferry through the doorway.

Nick hadn’t heard the other man approach, and he jumped at the touch of a couple of fingers on his shoulder. He turned to face the short and wiry gray-haired lieutenant he had met a few days before. Lieutenant Dombrowski nodded at him, his lips tightly compressed.

“Detective Stolie’s filled you in already, Mr. Wilder?”

Nick took note of the lieutenant’s nearly imperceptible Eastern European accent. “No,” Nick responded, shaking his head. “I just got here.”

“I brought him here to the window as soon as he arrived,” the detective explained to his commanding officer. “We haven’t had the chance to speak yet.”

“You’re a fortunate man, Mr. Wilder,” the lieutenant said.

“I’m not so sure I would consider myself fortunate right now,” Nick replied.

“No? Maybe not.” He allowed himself a thin, slightly apologetic smile before explaining the remark. “Detective Stolie managed to track your man down. He had been sleeping the last few weeks at the Hudson Hotel, downtown. Detective Stolie tells me you know the place?”

Nick nodded.

“He was moving on apparently, going south for the winter, on his way to Frisco. Detective Stolie found a friend of his at the shelter, though—told him to look for Ferry down at the rail yard. We nabbed him at midnight, about to hop onto a train. Another five minutes, and he’d have been gone. You don’t consider that fortunate?”

“My brother’s still dead,” Nick said.

Again, the lieutenant showed Nick his thin smile.

“We found him wearing your shoes,” Stolie offered. “The black and orange Nikes. Just like you said.”

“And a few things that belonged to your brother,” Dombrowski added.

“His wallet,” Stolie said. “His driver’s license—a couple of credit cards.”

“Ferry’s clothes were covered in dried blood,” the lieutenant continued. “We’re having DNA tests run now. Initial testing confirms that it’s your brother’s. We’ll probably find some of yours, too.”

“The evidence supports everything you’ve told us,” Stolie said.

“I wouldn’t want you to leave Seattle again, though,” Dombrowski said.

Nick looked warily at the lieutenant. “What about the other crimes? Dickenson. Claire and Daniel Scott. Have you questioned him? Has Ferry confessed?”

Stolie shook his head. “We’ve questioned him, but he hasn’t told us much.”

“He hasn’t
said
much,” Dombrowski corrected him. “About the only coherent response we’ve gotten from him is that he has absolutely no recollection of any of the murders. We’ve got the blood evidence, though. And Detective Stolie says you can place him near Pioneer Square the night of the kid’s murder.”

Nick remembered his conversation with Daniel Scott. “What about a ring?” he asked. “A gold ring with a diamond set into it—a man’s ring.”

Nick was aware of Stolie and Dombrowski exchanging a quick glance. “What about it?” the lieutenant asked.

“Did you find it on him?”

“In one of his pockets,” Stolie confirmed. “Did it belong to your brother?”

Nick shook his head. “To Dickenson.”

“I’ll look into it,” Stolie said. “Maybe someone who knew Dickenson can identify it.”

Dombrowski was looking at Stolie through narrowed eyes. “You got anything else for us?” he asked, turning to face Nick.

Nick returned his stare, then looked away. “Is he legally sane?” he asked.

“He’s sane enough to know what he did,” Dombrowski responded. “Just like you or I would know it if we killed someone.”

Stolie disagreed. He shot a glance at the lieutenant. “He could barely speak his own name when we first found him,” he retorted. “He seems a little more focused now. But he’s mentally ill. There’s no question. The memory loss is real. This guy is blacking out. He’s not acting.”

“So what will happen now?”

“We take the case to the DA,” Dombrowski said, “and we nail him.”

“Don’t let the lieutenant upset you, Nick,” Stolie said to him after Dombrowski had excused himself. They were walking together from the back of the precinct house, down a long, wide corridor that led past the holding cells to the street.

Nick considered his response. “I’m not upset,” he said at last. “I’m just not certain this thing is over yet.”

“No?” Stolie looked surprised. “What do you mean?”

“I came across two recent cases. Not here—one in New York, the other in Milwaukee. Random murders where the killer was a homeless man. The
Telegraph
arranged it so I could go interview them. That’s where I was yesterday.”

The detective was not impressed. “Someone murders someone else every half hour in this country—you know that.”

“Usually there’s a motive. These homicides were practically spontaneous. Both crimes were extremely violent, perpetrated by apparently mentally ill homeless men who have no subsequent recollection of the crime. Just like this one.”

“When did these other murders occur?”

“One was just a few days ago, in Manhattan. The one in Wisconsin happened a few months ago.”

“So what did you find out—anything interesting?”

“Yeah, maybe. I haven’t been able to prove anything yet, but I think both the killers have a past history in Seattle.”

Stolie considered the idea, then shook his head. “It’s true these hobos can really move around the country. Look at Ferry. He was on his way down to San Francisco. If I hadn’t caught him, he would probably have been there by now.” He pursed his lips. “By the same token, that only makes it that less unusual that these other men could have a connection here.”

“I suppose,” Nick admitted.

“Listen, Nick.” Stolie stopped walking. He turned upon Nick to make his point. “You’ve got my e-mail address. You can forward me the names of these two guys and I can dig around a little for you if you want. If I were you, though, I’d give it a rest.” He pointed a finger at Nick’s ravaged face. “As far as I can see, you’re running on empty. I’m not a psychologist, but if I were in your shoes, I’d be in shock. You still haven’t been able to remember everything that happened the night your brother was killed, have you?”

Nick shook his head, discouraged.

“Take some time off, Nick. Get some rest. Try to come to terms with your loss. It’s going to take you some time to figure out how you feel.” Stolie nodded toward the double doors directly in front of them, then once again continued in that direction. “This one’s in the bag already. We’ve got our man. This bastard killed your brother. Just leave it with us. We’ll take it to the DA, and like the lieutenant says, we’ve got Ferry nailed. He’ll be behind bars the rest of his life.”

Nick noticed the smell first. The antiseptic odor of the jail, laden with the heavy, industrial scent of oiled steel and the lingering stench of human excrement and filth. His eyes were focused on the double doors in front of them. The thick iron bars to his left were nothing more than a passing blur in the corner of his eye.

When Jackson Ferry leapt out at him, the sudden movement left Nick frozen in place.

Nick’s mind burst with the image of Ferry emerging from the black shadows beneath Pike Place Market. Nick saw the knife in his hand, glinting in the dim light of the street lamp overhead. This image was rapidly replaced with another: Nick wrenching the knife from Sam’s chest, staring at the blood-covered blade before dropping it onto the asphalt.

Ferry’s trajectory toward Nick was broken by the steel that separated the two men. He crashed loudly against the bars, as if he hadn’t seen them. Sliding his arms through the gaps, he swiped the air just in front of Nick’s face. He grunted as he missed, straining to reach a little farther, his cheek pressed against the steel barrier.

Stolie was quick to react. Even as Ferry was first colliding with the bars, he grabbed Nick and yanked him back from the holding cell. The nightstick fastened to his black leather belt was in his hand, and he brought it down sharply against Ferry’s outstretched arms. With a shriek of pain, Ferry fell to his knees, holding his bruised forearms with his hands.

“Guard!” Stolie shouted. The jail guard rushed down the wide corridor.

Ferry’s eyes met Nick’s. “I can hear what you’re thinking, brother,” he said in an intense whisper.

“Cuff him!” Stolie commanded the guard. “See that he’s properly restrained.” He turned toward Nick. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” Nick said. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.” His eyes were still locked with Ferry’s. The man remained on his knees, allowing the guard to draw his hands behind his back. A smile spread across his face.

“The exit’s straight down the hall, through those doors,” Stolie said.

“Sure, yeah.” Nick took a deep breath, then turned away from the powerful homeless man at his feet.

Walking down the steps in front of the station house, Nick wasn’t aware of the man standing in the window two stories above, watching him. William Gutterson let go of the curtain, and it dropped back down in front of the glass. He was a tall man with strong shoulders, now becoming slightly stooped. He had begun to age, and he knew it. His hair was thinning. In the last few years he had put on twenty pounds.

He took a look across the office at Lieutenant Dombrowski, seated behind his desk. He was aware of the man’s ambition. Dombrowski wasn’t waiting for him to stumble. Any sign of weakness, and the lieutenant would give him a push. “You keep your eye on that kid,” the chief of police said.

Dombrowski assessed the older man with a critical look. “You’re going in front of the cameras in half an hour, Bill. Telling Seattle we’ve caught the Street Butcher—that it’s safe to go back outside again. This is going to be primetime news. The headline story. You sure that’s a good idea? It doesn’t sound to me like you’re convinced we’ve got our man.”

“I’ve been around a few years.”

“Sure you have, Bill. And you’ll be around a few years more, too.”

The chief of police looked his lieutenant in the eye, measuring his sincerity. “I know what I’ve got to do,” he said. “The city wants reassurance, so that’s what I’m going to give them. This guy Wilder, though—there’s something about him that doesn’t add up. He works for the paper, he seems like an ordinary man—but so did Ted Bundy. Bundy charmed the pants right off his victims, literally. Put a tail on this guy. I’m telling you, watch him. It was good work nabbing Ferry, but the last thing we can afford is to be wrong here. Not on my watch, Dom.”

The lieutenant let the chief of police finish his rant. “Sure, Chief,” he said to his superior, “you know me. I’ve got your back, just like I always have.” To himself he remarked how tired the old man was going to appear on the ten o’clock news, even in the hour of his small victory.