Killer's Diary Read online

  She clamped a hand over her mouth but couldn’t control the sobs. Confusion spun inside her head. Had she ruined a rare chance at happiness? She didn’t know what was real anymore, beginning with her feelings for Charles.

  It couldn’t end like this, not so fast with so many unanswered questions.

  Before reporting to work at the Book Shelf, she stopped in Pacific Coast Coffee, armed with an apology she had rehearsed in the shower, during breakfast and while getting dressed.

  However, Charles never turned up. She watched the coffeehouse door for forty-five minutes clutching her latte.

  She wasn’t surprised by his absence.

  At the Book Shelf, she tried calling his condo several times. He didn’t have an answering machine, so she listened to the ringing for several minutes, a hypnotic pulse she didn’t want to sever. She considered calling Charles at his job, but she didn’t have the number.

  By noon, she had picked out four books from the mystery-thriller section to give him, gifts, and she planned to pen a card that would read: To Charles, the next master of dark fiction.

  At the same time, she felt surges of doubt. Why should she apologize? Taking the blame was a reflex, a remnant of old Ellen.

  He had said mean things to her. All her life she had quickly assumed the guilt, accepted the hurt and felt sorry for herself, beginning with the departure of her father.

  Maybe this was just another episode of her continuing bad relationships with men. Maybe men in general were to blame.

  Later that day, while helping an older woman find the travel section, Ellen walked past the bookstore’s café and caught a glimpse of romantic bliss, which taunted her.

  Why is it so easy for other people to find true love?

  A young couple sat at one of the little tables, enjoying their bagels and java, holding hands.

  How peachy keen.

  The older woman found the books on Rome she was looking for and Ellen left the travel section. She glanced back at the happy couple for one more masochistic stab of melancholy.

  Then she stopped in her tracks.

  Something about the young man looked familiar.

  He looked like Seymour Ravenwood minus a generous number of pounds. Could it be George’s oafish son?

  A time warp quickly sucked her in. Being reminded of George at this moment, on top of everything else, felt like a bad dream.

  Then she felt waves of guilt and embarrassment. She remembered staying hidden in the shadows as George dragged his son out of the Amber Hotel and back to Decatur. It was her weakness that had given them away—a phone call to her mother, accompanied by the easy admission of where they were hiding.

  Ellen knew she had two options. She could avoid Seymour, hiding in the back shelves, which was a typical Ellen Gordon thing to do.

  Or she could walk up to him, introduce herself and apologize.

  She took one step backward, then several steps forward.

  “Seymour, hi,” she said.

  He stared at her for a long moment before the light bulb kicked in.

  “Ellen…?”

  “Yes. I work here.”

  “Ellen Gordon,” he said, standing. “Wow.”

  “I know. It’s been a while,” she said.

  “All this time…you stayed.”

  “Yes. You brought me here and I haven’t left.”

  Seymour turned to the pretty, narrow-faced blonde who remained seated. She appeared uninterested in—maybe even threatened by—the appearance of a girl from his past. He explained to the blonde, “I know Ellen from high school. My dad used to date her mom.”

  “And rape me,” Ellen announced to both of them, drawing shocked reactions…in the theater of her mind.

  She wasn’t that bold.

  “Hi,” said the blonde in a flat tone. “I’m Nikki.”

  Seymour was more animated. “You look great,” he told Ellen. His eyes took her in, top to bottom.

  “So do you,” she said, which was the truth. “You really…” She stopped and let him say it.

  “I know. I lost a lot of weight. Sixty pounds. I cleaned up. No more, you know…” He didn’t specify, but she figured he was referring to drugs.

  “You still see, what was his name…Racer?”

  “God, no,” he laughed. Then he said, “Your mom wised up. She dumped my dad.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “He’s a psycho. He is just…the worst.”

  “Seymour, I’m sorry,” Ellen said.

  He looked at her, puzzled. “For what?”

  “It’s my fault.”

  “What is?”

  “That your dad found you…after you brought me here. I got scared. I called my mother. I told her the name of the hotel…”

  “I know,” said Seymour. “My dad told me everything. It doesn’t matter now. That was years ago.”

  With those few, simple words, Ellen felt as though a weight had been lifted off her shoulders.

  “You’re doing well?” he asked. His eyes kept checking her out, and she realized that she probably really did look a lot different than in high school…prettier, more confident. In fact, to a certain extent, she had changed as much as he had.

  As the conversation flowed, Seymour’s girlfriend started giving him irritated glances and he finally noticed.

  “Well, if you ever need anything…” he told Ellen, pulling out a pen. “Let me give you my number.” He wrote out his number on a napkin.

  She took it and thanked him.

  He returned to the table with his blonde girlfriend who continued to look annoyed.

  Ellen thought, If she’s threatened, I must be attractive.

  She hadn’t seen Seymour in a long time and barely knew him…but still felt bonded to him in a special way.

  They had both endured George Ravenwood. For that they deserved medals.

  She realized she had forgotten to mention that she still had his fifth-grade spelling certificate. Was it strange that she had held on to it all these years? Would it be awkward to even bring up?

  She gave Seymour one last glance. His focus had fully returned to the pretty blonde. So Ellen’s attention needed to move on as well.

  Her mind returned to Charles and the romance in her own life, which was still a total shambles.

  “Okay,” said Peg later that afternoon, gesturing Ellen to join her in a back aisle of the bookstore, away from needy customers. “Come here. Let’s talk.”

  “What?” said Ellen.

  “You don’t look good.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No, really. You don’t have to tell me anything, but when I see you look all glumpy like this, I gotta ask what’s the matter and see if I can help.”

  “Glumpy?”

  “Glumpy. It’s a word I made up. It’s like a combination of glum and grumpy, with a dash of frumpy. I use it on my sister all the time.”

  “Well then, I guess you could say I’m glumpy.”

  “Anything I can do to help?”

  “No.”

  “Is it boy trouble?”

  Ellen didn’t answer, which became an answer.

  “I’m right,” said Peg. “I can smell boy trouble a mile away.”

  “I’d rather not talk about it.”

  “Did you and Charles have a fight?”

  Ellen sighed.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s…complicated.”

  “It can’t be that complicated.”

  Ellen almost laughed. “No. It’s definitely complicated.”

  “You know, I could fix you up.”

  “No. I’m not on the rebound. I’m just…” Ellen searched for what she really wanted and then frankly expressed it.

  “I want to talk to him,” she declared.

  “Then talk to him. Problem solved. Call him up. Don’t wait for him to call you. The phone works two ways, you know.”

  “He’s not at home.”

  “Call him at work.”

  “I do
n’t know the number.”

  Peg touched her arm with a look of mock concern. “There’s this service provided by the telephone company. It’s called Information. The number is 4-1-1.”

  “Sounds vaguely familiar,” said Ellen, returning the sarcasm.

  “Want me to write that down for you? Three numbers, 4-1-1.”

  “I think I’ve got it.”

  “Go use the phone in the back. Terri won’t care. She spends half the day on it yelling at her teenagers.”

  Ellen nodded. She peered down the aisle. Terri stood by the registers, talking to one of the regulars, a widow who consumed half a dozen books a week.

  Peg said, “Don’t worry. I won’t listen. I’ll stay here, tending to your customers. But you have to tell me how it goes after.”

  Ellen said, “I knew there was a catch.”

  “Talk dirty to him. If he’s got a boring job, nothing gets a guy more excited than a woody under the desk.”

  Ellen stepped into the back room and lifted the phone receiver off its cradle. She dialed Directory Assistance and wrote down the number for Technor.

  Ellen dialed the company. The woman who answered had a sweet voice, eager to help and very polite.

  But she had no listing for a Charles Balun. When Ellen persisted, the woman connected her with someone in Human Resources who was more definitive.

  “We do not have an employee named Charles Balun and our records indicate that we never did. Somebody gave you some bad information.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  When the urge tore up his innards, bubbling up in his throat like a surge of bile, he knew it was a duty, a higher calling, and any attempt to resist would fall in defeat.

  He bounced off the walls of his apartment, pacing in circles for hours until his legs ached and head throbbed. He squeezed himself into his favorite chair, created elaborate mind plays, rewound them to favorite moments, froze the frame, shouted out directions to the cast, clutched himself, pulled his hair and drew his own blood as he conjured life-and-death struggles.

  But it was all minor league. The mind plays did not seal the urges in a tight little box and send them packing. They didn’t provide the necessary relief.

  He hated the urges and cherished them all the same.

  Convincing himself to conquer his next victim took less time than before. After all, success had been at his side for those earlier romps into the city shadows. Young women had been buried, transitioned from above ground to below, from laughter to tears.

  And no one had come knocking on his door.

  He was charming and suave. No one had reason to suspect a thing.

  He loved the duality. He loved having more than one life. More lives made him feel more…alive.

  A little after ten o’clock, he thrust himself into the night, armed with the blade.

  Tonight’s strike took a little longer. The weather had warmed—more spring, less winter—meaning that increased numbers of people sprinkled the sidewalks and alleys. Finding his prey and accomplishing his task without potential witnesses would be harder.

  Like in a video game, he had advanced to the next level. A little less easy, but that was the challenge he would meet. Beating tougher odds would just make it more rewarding.

  He was not going to postpone the inevitable for a colder night. Now, that would be torture.

  He walked the neighborhood for an hour, searching out targets. On a few occasions, he found a candidate and followed her, only to be disappointed that she never offered the right moment, the proper cover or isolation.

  If these women only knew what one wrong turn would have cost them…

  In particular, he followed a tall woman with long, straight brown hair, prominent nose and chin and western boots. He relished the thought of cutting her throat while yanking back the head, pulling on a fistful of hair like a lever to expose a stretch of soft, waiting flesh. But she wasn’t headed home—she entered a noisy pub, and he was not about to wait around for anybody.

  After giving up on Cowboy Boots, he followed two Asian women, then a staggering drunk chick muttering to herself—most promising—but the optimum moment never arrived. The women entered buildings or cars or met with other people and spoiled all his fun.

  At one fifteen a.m., a dam broke and a stream of new hopefuls poured forth. A concert had ended at Dreadlocks, a small but packed reggae bar, and dozens of young people, soaked in sweat and alcohol, spilled onto the street and sidewalk.

  While the music inside was African reggae, the clientele leaned heavily toward white suburban chicks looking for urban adventure. They had made the trek via carpool or El train.

  Most of them had come into the city with friends…but some had come alone to meet friends.

  As the crowd diffused from a big glob into smaller groupings moving from the epicenter, he found a possibility, someone saying goodbye to friends and then heading off solo, a very good sign indeed. She had shaggy, spiky hair—not flattering—and a nose stud, which looked like a stray booger. She looked young—barely drinking age, or perhaps equipped with a fake ID.

  It didn’t matter to him. If she was old enough to test the dangers of the big bad city, she was old enough to become its victim.

  She should have been wearing a coat—kids these days!—but wore instead a college sweatshirt with a hood. University of the Damned. He wondered if she felt the crisp air running through her clothing, chilling her tummy, hardening her nipples.

  He smiled as she left the main road to take a narrow side street. She was heading for the El station, apparently choosing the shortest distance between two points instead of a well-lit route with regular traffic.

  Good choice, honey. Thank you for my gift. I think I love you.

  As he got closer, he could see the floral embroidered pockets on her jeans. The pockets lifted and fell in a nice rhythm with each other, like a teeter-totter. Her ass was biggish, baby fat, junk food. The hip-hugger jeans exposed her lower back almost to the butt crack. Refrigerator repairman pants, he thought to himself, and he chuckled.

  Out loud. Shit!

  She turned. He had a split second to reach a decision—make his move or surrender the opportunity—was it dark enough, isolated enough? No time to think—

  Act.

  He moved toward her quickly, a straight line, fierce and direct, a thirty-foot dash, leaving no doubt of his intentions, and she let out a little gasp, the beginnings of a yelp, and he hated doing it this way, with the victim facing him, because sneaking up from behind was so much easier, allowing for a powerful first strike, and then he realized he didn’t have the blade drawn yet and he wasn’t wearing the ski mask, and God damn it, everything was wrong wrong wrong and now she was going to scream loud into the night and run away—

  Instead, she crumpled.

  She fell to the ground in a pile. He reached her and looked down.

  A gift from the heavens?

  He glanced around. He saw no one. He looked back at her.

  She had fainted.

  A terrified little suburban girl, light-headed with alcohol, her mind already alive with paranoid fears about the city before he even showed up.

  His arrival was just the icing on the cake. A confirmation.

  He looked at the surroundings. There were too many apartment buildings, back porches, windows, parked cars.

  There was a gravel alley up ahead. The alley continued underneath the elevated train tracks. The tracks led to a platform perhaps two blocks away—no doubt, her destination.

  He grabbed her by the tennis shoes—pink, practically lost inside her frayed bell-bottoms—and dragged her along the gravel, away from the street.

  It made noise. Somewhere, a dog barked.

  Damn dog.

  Here he had a perfectly passive victim, someone to play with, and the environment was all wrong. He needed a garage, a shed, a basement, a laundry room, a—

  Dumpster.

  There was a large steel Dumpster, covered in illegible graffit
i, against the side of an apartment building.

  He dragged her quickly to the Dumpster, pebbles bouncing in her wake. She was chubby, but he was strong, and he shoved her up and over the lid of the Dumpster.

  She landed softly in garbage.

  He saw car headlights in the distance.

  He jumped into the Dumpster with her.

  He closed the lid over both of them. Everything disappeared into complete darkness and utter stink. He stuck his hands into the loose trash. He found the warmth of her bare back under her sweatshirt, amid the coldness of food wrappers, newspapers, bottles and cans.

  “Honey,” he told her, “You have just been thrown away.”

  The sound of a car engine filled his ears.

  He heard the vehicle drive past them, through the alley, grinding through the gravel, louder and louder, and then fading away.

  She stirred.

  “Oh…oh…” she said, little gasps.

  “Don’t speak,” he said.

  “Where am I?”

  Was she deaf? He shoved his hand in the direction of her voice, missed, struck garbage, and she let out a short shriek. She began thrashing.

  The first stab of the knifepoint hit gold.

  “Oh my God!” she cried out, a groan and a wail.

  “Don’t talk or I do it again.”

  She obeyed. Soft crying did not constitute talking, not technically.

  He liked it in here, just the two of them, holed up and pressed together, interwoven, master and servant, rolling in refuse. His nostrils became inflamed from the stink, but it didn’t bother him because he was pleased she was experiencing the same sensation.

  “I’m bleeding…” she whimpered.

  “What did I say about talking?”

  She shut up, except for her breathing, which was labored.

  “That’s right,” he said. “Stay quiet.”

  “Why…”

  “Ssshhh!”

  He waited in silence for his moment to arrive. The only sounds came from their bodies occasionally shifting, causing trash to tumble around them.

  Suddenly a happy melody chirped near her, electronic tones singing a song.

  He jumped, and she said, “My cell phone—”