The Absence of Mercy (16 page)

The boy shook his head.

“Good. Neither do I.” He returned the glasses to the cabinet, retrieved an opener, popped off the tops, and handed one of the bottles over to his son. “Cheers,” he said, smiling broadly, as he sat down at the table. The bottles clinked together.

Thomas lifted the beverage to his lips and took a long slug, and Ben followed suit. “Ahh,” he told his son, “nothing like an ice-cold beer at two-thirty in the morning, eh?”

Thomas smiled thinly and took another sip. “How is she?” he asked.

“Monica?” Ben let the second swallow of alcohol slide down his throat. The bottle felt light in his hand, and when he looked down he was surprised to see that it was almost empty. “She's pretty banged up,” he replied, realizing as soon as the words had left his mouth that the euphemism didn't nearly do justice to what he had witnessed today.

“Will she die?” Thomas asked, and Ben was struck by how similar the question was to the one Joel had asked him earlier that day.

“I don't know,” he answered for the second time in less than twenty-four hours. He wondered how many others would be looking to him for the answer to that question, as if holding a medical degree somehow enabled him to look into the future, to retrieve the likely outcomes of people's lives like rabbits from a magician's hat.

Thomas finished off his bottle, and Ben rose from his chair to retrieve another two from the refrigerator, placing one in front of each of them. There was no cheerful salutation or clinking of glasses this time, and they sipped their beverages in silence. Unlike Joel, Ben realized, there would be no questions about God or heaven from Thomas, no discussion regarding forgiveness or salvation. Ben didn't doubt that the questions were there, but his oldest son guarded his inner world much more tightly than Joel, keeping his thoughts and feelings mostly to himself. Over the years it had only gotten worse, the connection between them becoming increasingly distant. It was as if Thomas were standing on a boat that was slowly, almost imperceptibly, drawing away from a pier on which Ben stood and watched.
He could still bridge the gap,
he thought,
if he needed to
. But one day he worried that he would look down to find that the space between them had grown too wide for him to cross.

“I want to see her,” his son said suddenly, his eyes focused somewhere beyond this room that they shared.

“Sure,” Ben replied. “I'll ask her parents if it's okay if we visit her in the hospital. I'm sorry, son. I know she was a friend of yours.”

Is,
Ben thought, correcting himself. She
is
a friend of his.

Thomas nodded, pushed his chair back from the table, and stood up. He walked to the counter and placed his bottles in the sink. “Good night, Dad,” he said.

“Good night, son,” Ben replied. He rose from his seat, intending to place a hand on Thomas's shoulder, maybe even to give him a hug if the boy would allow it. But when he turned around, Ben found himself alone in the room—his oldest son already gone.

“Thanks for showing us in,” Detective Schroeder said as he and his partner followed the psychiatric unit manager down the corridor toward the elevators.

“I'm sorry he bothered you,” she said. She was well dressed and attractive, and she walked briskly along as she talked. “Patient confidentiality laws prevent us from providing you with any clinical information.” They stepped into the elevator and she leaned forward and pushed a button.

“It's our job to follow up on these things,” Carl told her. The Sheriff's Department had received a 911 phone call from the hospital's psych unit yesterday. The man, who'd identified himself to the emergency operator as Harold Matthews, had wanted to talk to the detective in charge about “that girl they found in the woods.” Carl wasn't particularly hopeful, since the call had originated from the psych unit, but he was at least willing to come here to see what the man had to say. It wouldn't be the first unproductive lead they'd investigated in the last few days. Since the second assault, the Sheriff's Department had been inundated with calls from civilians regarding suspicious characters and irregular goings-on within the town. None of these tips had led to anything fruitful. The truth was, there were simply a lot of weird people out there. Usually they settled into the background noise of everyday life. It took something horrific to recalibrate people's tolerance for the odd and eccentric.

The elevator doors slid open and they stepped out into a small lobby. There were two additional doors on opposite sides of the room. The woman had asked them to show their IDs before bringing them up here, and now she ran through a short list of contraband—lighters, cameras, and the like. They had none, and the unit manager used her hospital badge to buzz them through the door on their right.

They entered a common area where numerous patients sifted about. There were several small tables at which a few individuals were sitting, their bodies hunched forward as they applied their efforts to jigsaw puzzles, coloring books, and similar activities. In the upper corner of the room was a television, and several of the room's occupants sat on a long couch, studying the screen with varied degrees of interest. Still others meandered about the room, their faces turned downward as they tended to their own private worlds.

“This way.” She gestured, continuing down a hallway to a small private room on the left. Inside, a large black man sat in the far corner. To the nurses who had seen him brought in to the seclusion room five nights ago—fighting with the staff, punching the door, covered in scratches—this seemed like a different person altogether. The antipsychotic medications had transformed his wild, frenzied state into a more subdued and cooperative demeanor, although he still eyed the detectives suspiciously as Carl settled himself into the only other chair in the room and Detective Hunt took up a position near the door.

“Mr. Matthews?” Schroeder began.

The man said nothing, only continued to stare, his eyes flitting back and forth between the two of them, as if they were juicy steaks he might suddenly decide to devour.

“I'm Detective Schroeder and this is Detective Hunt. We're from the Sheriff's Department. We were told you had some information you wanted to discuss with us.”

“You wit' the police?” he asked in a deep resonant voice. There was a hint of a southern drawl to it.

“Yes, we are.”

“Mm-hmm. An' how do I know for sure?”

Carl reached into his pocket and showed him his badge. The man seemed unimpressed.

“Jus' 'bout anyone can git themselves one'ah them. You got a radio, too?”

Detective Hunt pulled back his jacket enough to reveal the small handheld police radio clipped to his belt.

“Mm-hmm.” The big man deliberated for a moment.

“Look, we're very busy,” Carl advised him, beginning to stand. “If you don't have anything to tell us we really need to—”

“I guess you ought ta know that I killed her.”

That simple statement brought the small hairs on the back of Carl's neck to attention. He sat back down. “Who do you mean? Who did you kill?”

“That girl in the woods.”

“Now, before you say anything else,” Carl cautioned, “I need to read you your Miranda rights—just so you understand them.” The man listened patiently until Carl was finished. “Okay,” the detective continued, “now, what were you saying?”

“I killed her. Didn't mean to, but I did.”

“The girl in the woods?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“And when did you kill her?”

“Five nights ago. Roun' two in the mornin'.”

“Where did it happen? Along what road?”

“Lockhart Drive.”

“What does she look like? The girl.”

“Pale skin. Long black hair. Little thing.” He paused. “They been showin' her picture on the TV.”

“You've been watching the story on the news?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“What did you do to her?” Danny asked.

“Don't remember. Sometimes things git dim.”

“Did you rape her?”

“Nah.”

“The body was missing an arm,” Carl said. “What did you do with it?”

“Didn't do nothin' with it. Body's still under the car.”

“What car?”

He looked back at them. Said nothing.

“Why did you kill her?”

“Couldn't help it. Tried to stop—but I couldn't. Now she's lyin' in the street dead, an' it's ma' fault. 'Cause I can't stop when I git goin'.”

“Where do you live?”

Only silence from the immense figure in front of them.

“Have you killed anyone else?”

He stared back at them. “I killed lots of 'em.”

“Where did you get those scratches on your arms?” Detective Hunt asked. “Did the girl do that to you?”

Nothing.

“You don't sound like you're from around here. Where are you from?”

“Tha's all I wanna say.”

“I understand, but can I ask you just a few more questions?”

“Tha's all I wanna say,” he repeated, his large hands clenching into fists on his lap.

“Sure, no problem,” Carl said, pulling out his notepad and pen. “Do you think you could write it down for us—what you just told us? It helps me remember. Write it down and sign your name at the bottom.”

“Mm-hmm.” He took the pen in his hand and put it to the paper. They waited while he worked. When he was finished, he handed the items back. Etched on the pad was a crude drawing of two stick figures, one lying on the ground and the other standing over her, hands to his head, his features frozen in a silent scream.

“Is this you?” Carl asked, pointing to the upright figure, and the man nodded.

“You should take me in. Can't stay here. They'll be comin' for me soon, all the ones I killed.”

“We can't take you in just yet,” Danny told him. “The doctors and nurses need to get you feeling better first.”

“They can't do nothin' for me.” The man dropped his eyes toward a corner of the room. “I can't stay here.”

“Once you're feeling better, we'll come back and talk to you some more,” Carl promised. “Thank you for sharing this with us.”

The man's eyes remained fixed in the corner of the room. His lips moved soundlessly, as if in a silent prayer or a conversation only he could hear. The detectives stepped out into the hallway. They walked to the nurses' station and knocked on the door.

“Finished?” the unit manager asked, exiting the station and joining them in the hall.

“Yes, we are.”

“I'll buzz you out then,” she said. They returned to the common area and she held her badge up against an electronic reader on the wall until a lock released, enabling her to push the door open. Once in the waiting area, she repeated the procedure to summon the elevator. “You can find your way out from here?” she asked.

“Yes. Thank you.” Danny offered her a smile as he and Carl stepped into the elevator.

When the doors closed, his partner asked, “So, what do you think?”

“He seems pretty disturbed. A few of his facts were correct, although most of them he could've gotten from the television news reports. The street name he gave was wrong, of course, and he didn't contradict you about the missing arm.”

“He said, ‘Body's still under the car.' What do you make of
that
?”

“I don't know,” Danny replied. “Maybe he's talking about another body—one we haven't found yet.”

“Now, there's an unsettling thought.”

Danny shrugged. “Said he's killed lots of 'em—that he tries to stop, but can't.”

“He also seems convinced that she's dead. If he's been watching the news reports, wouldn't he know that the girl's still alive?” They reached the first floor and proceeded toward the front of the hospital.

“Let's keep in mind that he's crazy. This is all probably delusional thinking. Still . . . I'd like to know where those scratches on his arms came from.” They exited into the parking lot, squinting into the afternoon sun. “By the way,” Danny remarked, “why did you even bother with that attempt at getting a written confession? In his current state in a psychiatric unit, there's
no way
it would've held up in court.”

“I wasn't doing it for the confession,” Carl replied. He unlocked the car but stood there looking over the roof at his partner.

Danny paused for a moment with his hand on the latch. Then a dawning expression blossomed on his face. “Of course. Our killer is left-handed. You wanted to see what hand this guy writes with.”

Carl nodded. “Did you notice?”

Danny thought for a moment, recollecting the image of the pen poised above the paper. “Son of a gun,” he said.

“File the paperwork with the hospital to put him on a police hold. When he's ready for discharge, we're taking him in. Mr. Harold Matthews gives me the creeps, and I didn't like that picture he drew. He may be crazy, but I don't think we should write him off just yet. We need to be damn sure there's nothing else to it.”

The office of Dr. Aaron Blechman, forensic odontologist, was located on the fourth floor of Children's Hospital. It was situated at the end of a long, dimly lit corridor, as if the room itself had been added to the building as an afterthought. A small sign affixed to the door identified the occupant. Inside, the office was cramped, almost claustrophobic, the majority of the floor space inhabited by a modest oak desk, its surface strewn with a haphazard assortment of books and papers. The afternoon gray filtered through a small window overlooking Forty-Fifth Street and St. Mary's Cemetery, just beyond.

“So what you're saying,” Detective Danny Hunt summarized, “is that the bite wounds from the second victim are identical to those from the first.”