The Murder Channel (27 page)

I nodded.

“He set Neville down on his butt without too much damage done.”

“Except to Neville’s ego,” I said.

“He took it out on Shannon. Neville can’t drink. It’s that simple. He was a good cop. When he’s sober, he’s a likable guy.”

“What did he do to Shannon?”

“That night, he slapped her. Couple of months later, he hit her hard enough to knock her down. They ended up in the E.R. He quit drinking. The two of them went to counseling. He slipped a couple of times, but no rough stuff that I know about.”

Bolton shrugged. “Then Zrbny.”

“When he heard about Zrbny’s release petition, he hit the bottle,” I said.

“Solace in an old friend,” he muttered.

“The Brothers warned him, then tossed him,” I mused. “He lied about it.”

“Maybe he was embarrassed,” Bolton said.

I filched more of Bolton’s cabbage.

“The Brothers were willing to support him through treatment,” he said. “He didn’t want that. They didn’t want an aggressive drunk in the monastery.”

“Maybe he’ll show for the arraignment,” I said.

“We can try to talk to him,” Bolton said. “Doesn’t usually do any good.”

“Anything on Braverman?”

“They’ve got a make and model on the gun that killed him. I’m waiting to hear. We’ll test it against Zrbny’s.”

“Expect it to be the same one that killed Danny Kirkland,” I said, “but don’t expect it to be Zrbny’s.”

“You think what’s left of Vigil quit BTT and went solo?”

“Whoever dismantled those two offices didn’t know where to look for what he was after. I suppose it’s possible.”

TWO HOURS LATER, I STOOD IN THE HALL
outside my hotel room. I studied the carpet, the baseboards, the walls. There was not a speck of evidence that a severed head had been there. I got down on my hands and knees and searched for a stain or a single strand of hair.

“It’s like this never happened,” I said.

The cleaners had done a thorough job. They had
eradicated the entire event. I wondered if any hotel employees would tell stories about the head in the hall. Doubtful. Everyone is in the business of rewriting the past.

I stood and opened my door. “Guess there wasn’t any head there,” I said.

I sat on the edge of the bed and wondered if others were as concerned with shaping events to fit their images of themselves.

“We revised the sixties right out of existence,” I muttered, clicking the TV remote control to find out what BTT was doing.

They had caught up with the Braverman story. An intruder believed to be Felix Zrbny had shot and killed Wendy Pouldice’s personal assistant. Pouldice had narrowly escaped with her life. Police, who concentrated their search for Zrbny in the Boston area, were trying to determine how the mass murderer had eluded the largest dragnet in the city’s history since Albert DeSalvo’s escape from Bridgewater State Hospital, the reporter said.

“Enough,” I said, banging the remote.

I was restless, not ready to sleep. I thumbed through case files, paced the room, and smoked. I grabbed the file that had shaken Neville Waycross. It was a particularly dense set of reports analyzing blood mixtures on Zrbny’s knife and at the three scenes.

At two
A.M.
I fell into bed.

THREE DEPUTIES STOOD BEHIND ME; TWO
deputies led the way into the courtroom. All were armed with stun guns and Mace.

Hensley Carroll sat at the defense table. He had not removed his rubber boots.

“Sit,” Carroll said. “Remember what I told you. We do this clean and quick, then we’re outta here.”

The three deputies took their positions across the front of the court. Two remained directly behind me.

As I expected, a TV camera at the rear observed and recorded everything. Most of the studio audience had taken their seats.

Insects buzzed on a summer day long ago. Water cascaded down the side of the vegetable crisper. I touched my fingers to the liquid and rubbed it on the back of my neck. I had waited fifteen years from that moment when I heard my sister’s voice, to this moment, when she spoke to me again.

“Today,” my lady of sorrow said, and her soft voice echoed inside, “Today.”

I waited patiently for my final scene.

WENDY POULDICE WORE HER GAME FACE TO
court. She sported two new bodyguards—African-Americans wearing black suits, dark glasses, and bald pates.

“Your friend Bolton has been making a nuisance of himself,” she said.

I waited. I was in no mood for sparring with her.

She surveyed the courtroom, then lowered her voice. “You two are ancients and you don’t fucking know it.”

I thought of numerous ways to return the jab, but refrained.

“Look at that camera,” she continued, pointing at a single TV camera at the courtroom’s rear. “That’s what the public wants. They don’t want summaries. They don’t want to hear from Bolton or Captain Newhall. They want to be in the middle of the action as it happens. Disasters are great, but they have a short shelf life. Continuing dramas like Simpson, the JonBenet Ramsay murder, Cary
Stayner in Yosemite, Timothy McVeigh, Theodore Kaczynski …”

“That’s where the money is,” I said.

She smiled. “Get used to it, Lucas. The hero runs for a night. The killer is worth months of prime time.”

She turned, and her muscle turned with her. They claimed their second-row, reserved seats.

She’s as dangerous as any killer
, I thought.
Perhaps more dangerous.

Bolton slipped into a seat beside me.

“Warrant’s on its way,” he said.

I nodded. “Our media queen’s arrest? Which of her many crimes are you going to nail her with?”

“We’ll start with obstruction and go from there. Anything that originates with Zrbny is worthless. We’ll need corroboration.”

“It’s a start,” I said, returning my attention to the front. “Boston is in for a treat. Pouldice will play the martyred journalist with aplomb.”

“All rise,” the bailiff intoned.

“Great theater,” I muttered.

Bolton elbowed me.

“In and for the County of Suffolk in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” the bailiff continued. “The Honorable Nancy Kahn presiding.”

As the judge and prosecutor attended to housekeeping matters, I surveyed the packed court.
Reporters scribbled, artists sketched, and the single camera eye recorded the show.

Blood.

Strange how a single word can pop into your head and commandeer your consciousness.

“Something is wrong,” I told Bolton.

He waved at me to be quiet.

People want a simple picture of the killer—a hulking, drooling, slobbering, primitive who is totally insane, incapable of reasoning, and who goes slashing through the city at night leaving a sea of blood.

“Ray, Waycross interrupted him,” I whispered.

Bolton ignored me.

“Neville Waycross interrupted you,”
I’d said to Zrbny.

“Does it matter now?”

“I’m curious, only because there are three ladies of sorrow. You killed three times.”

A slight smile creased Zrbny’s lips. “You’re very good,” he said.

“Not good enough,” I muttered.

“Judge Kahn will boot you out of here,” Bolton whispered.

I asked Zrbny if he remembered what he had said to Pouldice on that summer day fifteen years earlier.

“Of course. I said that Levana had spoken to me, that today was the day. Right here. Right now.”

I had watched him pull what was left of his sister onto his lap.

“I still haven’t heard Levana’s voice,” he said. “I thought I would.”

At his trial in 1970, Charles Manson propelled himself over the defense table, landing a few feet in front of Judge Older’s bench and falling to one knee. He was quickly subdued.

When Felix Zrbny rose from his seat, his movements were fluid and fast. He turned away from the bench; his target was not the judge. He shoved two deputies aside, planted his foot on the railing, and launched himself into the air. He landed hard on Wendy Pouldice.

Bolton flew from his seat. Four deputies converged on the melee. Pouldice’s bodyguards yanked at Zrbny, trying to pull him away. Reporters in adjacent seats moved aside and continued to scribble.

From beneath the human pile, I heard a loud crack and knew immediately that Wendy Pouldice was dead, her neck broken.

Deputies restrained and shackled Zrbny. Judge Kahn ordered the courtroom cleared. Bolton’s people secured the area around Pouldice’s limp corpse. I stared dumbly as the officers lifted Zrbny to a standing position.

He gazed at me, smiling, and said, “My lady of darkness.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

A HALF HOUR LATER, BOLTON AND I STOOD
on the sidewalk and watched a county van back into position to collect Felix Zrbny. The crowd, quiet now, moved slowly from the courthouse steps and followed the media army into the alley.

“I don’t understand this,” a small black man said. “He shoveled for me, cleared the steps, and he wouldn’t take a dollar. He shook my hand.”

“Eddie,” a Hispanic man said, “those flowers in the snow, Felix carried them to Sable.”

“He said his name was Felix, but I don’t believe he’s Felix Zrbny,” Eddie concluded.

I turned to Bolton. “If Wendy Pouldice was Zrbny’s lady of darkness, what the hell was Shannon Waycross?”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Bolton said. “He’s crazy.”

There were three ladies of sorrow, and Zrbny had killed three times.

Why would Neville Waycross believe that he had interrupted the killer?

“Lucas?”

“Zrbny planned to kill Wendy Pouldice fifteen years ago,” I said.

“It’s over.”

“He always intended to kill her on camera. That was his final scene.”

The side door opened. Deputies escorted a shackled Zrbny down a short flight of iron stairs to
the waiting van. His face expressionless, his long hair blowing in his face, he gazed into the eerily silent gathering until a man shouted, “She’s got a gun.”

The crowd retreated as a woman stepped forward and pumped five shots into Felix Zrbny.

He folded and collapsed on the pavement, and cameras caught the action for the evening news.

I saw the woman’s profile as deputies restrained and disarmed her. On my first day back in Boston, she had thrown a snowball at me, narrowly missing my head. “You fucking bastard,” she had screamed, not knowing her target.

This time she knew who she wanted to take down.