Killer's Diary Page 14

  “Give it to me.”

  He felt her hand moving between them, pressing past his groin, fumbling for the cell phone, which grew louder.

  He snatched it from her. He flipped it open.

  A little blue square illuminated them. He saw her face up close—mouth gaping, eyes enlarged, hair filthy with garbage.

  He jabbed a button, connecting with the caller. He didn’t say hello. He waited.

  After several seconds of static, a woman’s voice said, “Amy?”

  “M-Mom,” said Amy, and he moved the blade to her chin, making sure the phone light illuminated the short distance between life and death.

  Amy shut up.

  He spoke into the phone. “Amy can’t come to the phone right now.”

  “Who is this?”

  “A friend.”

  “Amy is supposed to come straight home after the concert.”

  “Amy says you’re a horrible bitch of a mother. She says you beat her and raped her with a broom handle.”

  The woman gasped. “Who is this? Put my daughter on the phone.”

  At that precise moment, he heard a distant rumbling and knew that the time was near.

  “Perfect,” he said into the phone. “You get to listen.”

  “Put her on right now!”

  “I’m going to place the phone against her mouth. I might even shove it down her throat so you can listen really good.”

  “I’m calling the police!”

  The rumbling grew louder, as if a powerful force hurtled in their direction. The Dumpster started to vibrate.

  “Steven!” shouted the woman on the phone. “Get on the line! A crazy man has Amy’s phone!”

  “Good! Get Steven on the line!” he shouted as the rumbling intensified, growing closer. “I want Steven to hear this too. It’s a family affair!”

  The rumbling became a rolling roar, booming above the Dumpster, and then he had the perfect moment he was waiting for. The El train moved directly over them like a monstrous dragon, shaking the Dumpster with a blanket of roars, and he slashed his prey with the blade, up and down and across, like a mad painter attacking a canvas, and she screamed—

  She screamed very loudly, hopelessly lost in the noise of the train pulling into the station, her outburst creating a harmony with the screeching brakes.

  As he sunk the blade into the countless possibilities on her body, he simultaneously smashed the phone against her teeth with his free hand, an orgy of sound for Mommy and Daddy.

  Amy’s scream had great character. Everybody has a different death scream, he thought, like fingerprints. Amy’s outburst was hysterics, an extended cry, different than the goofy chokes of Oranjacket, or the sharp blasts of wailing from Parking Lot Girl.

  He wished he could capture the delicious screams of his victims for posterity, playing them back again and again in the privacy of his home like listening to sweet music. He made a mental note to buy one of those handheld digital recorders and start archiving the Sound of Death. Begin a scream collection! He liked that.

  Amy’s screams continued strong through the cuts, like a balloon that would not puncture. When her scream wouldn’t let up, he joined her. He screamed. He tried to top her scream. They created a lovely duet that continued as the train pulled out of the station. “AAAAA! EEEE!” Their voices tangled like exuberant lovers experiencing a joint orgasm.

  As the cover of the train noise faded, the concerto needed to end. Surely, young Amy must be worn out? Yet he still heard screaming…

  And then he realized it wasn’t Amy.

  The screams came from the cell phone, tinny and shrill.

  He moved the blue square of light up and down and sideways to obtain piecemeal glimpses of his work, adding the images up in his head like a picture puzzle. The sum of his efforts was impressive. Most of the stabs had opened her up. Amy was limp, wet, dead. She couldn’t make any more noise. In fact, during the frenzy of his attack, he had stuffed garbage in her wailing mouth—last night’s lasagna, lettuce, kitty litter—whatever he could grab in fistfuls and shove down her bulging throat.

  He brought the cell phone up to his face. The phone had cracked open a bit, hinge busted like an elbow bent the wrong way, but still working, as if in defiance.

  “What is happening?” wailed Amy’s mother.

  “Glad you asked,” he said. He heard her involuntary hiccups, remnants of a hard sobbing. “Your daughter has been thrown out in the trash.”

  “We’re tracing this call,” said Amy’s father.

  “You won’t get here in time,” he responded. “So you might as well shut up and listen to what I’m going to do next.”

  “Put Amy on the phone now!” said the father, and the mother chimed in with chants of “Amy! Amy! Amy!” that collapsed into more sobs.

  He told them, “This is what it sounds like when someone’s eyes are carved out of their head by a hunting knife. Listen carefully—you might be able to hear the blood squirt…”

  But they wouldn’t listen. They just screamed and hollered. He conducted his work anyway. Then he broke the cell phone into tiny bits of plastic and metal.

  Before he made his exit from Amy’s tomb, he had to wait for a rolling band of chatter to pass by—a group of kids making their way through the alley.

  He shifted slightly, which caused noise, as some cans and debris spilled from one side of the Dumpster to another.

  “Did you hear that?” said a young male voice.

  “Probably a raccoon…” said another.

  “Shit, let’s get out of here. Those things are mean…”

  Chapter Twenty

  Ellen yawned until her eyes watered, tired from a long night of sporadic sleep, having spent too many hours tossing and turning in the dark replaying her last conversation with Charles. She wished she had said some things differently. She resented several of his more biting remarks. She wanted to go back in time and rewrite their dialogue, patch some holes, but the damage had been done.

  She needed her steaming cup of caffeine this morning more than ever. Stepping into Pacific Coast Coffee, entering her old routine, she wasn’t really looking for Charles anymore or expecting to see him.

  But there he was.

  At first she didn’t recognize him. His hair was uncombed, tossed around and sticking up in bunches. He had not shaved, creating a screen of darkness over the bottom half of his face. His eyelids hung heavy. His entire body hunched over a tabletop.

  He was writing in a notebook.

  She stopped for a moment, uncertain of what to do. Should she go to the counter and place her order—pretending not to see him?

  Or was this a chance to approach him and reconcile?

  She hated confrontation. Every bone in her body urged her to stay away. Charles looked, well, glumpy. And gross, like he hadn’t showered in a while.

  The old Ellen would have turned around and slipped out the door, heading down the street to the convenience store for second-rate coffee, just to avoid a difficult encounter.

  But she was determined not to be the old Ellen.

  “Excuse me,” said a man standing near her. “Are you in line?”

  “No,” she answered, and it determined her course of action.

  “Hi, Charles.”

  She stood before him.

  He glanced up. He immediately shut the notebook. It was a new one with a green cover, same style as the red one he had retrieved from her.

  He didn’t smile. He looked awful, as if he had slept less than she had.

  “Hello, Ellen,” he said.

  She realized she hadn’t rehearsed anything to say. She said the first thing that came to her mind.

  “I’m sorry.”

  And he responded, “I’m sorry too, Ellen.”

  It sounded genuine, heartfelt. She experienced an immediate warmth spreading inside.

  “Do you want to sit down?” he asked.

  “Sure.” She took the chair across from him.

  For a mome
nt, neither one of them spoke.

  She gestured to the coffeehouse surroundings. “Old habits die hard.”

  “Very true,” he said.

  “I think there’s something in the coffee here that’s addictive,” she said. “There ought to be an investigation.”

  Another moment of silence passed. Charles continued to lean on the green notebook, covering it with his arms. Lines of concentration formed on his forehead. “Ellen,” he said. “I’m not happy with the way I acted toward you. It was wrong. You’re one of the few good things to come into my life in a long time. I don’t want to send you away. I know I can be an emotional roller coaster. I know I have a temper. I know you didn’t mean any harm by taking the notebook.”

  “I should have left it alone when I found it, but the writing spoke to me,” she said. “I kept waiting for the right time to tell you, but I was afraid. I knew it was messed up, reading someone’s personal diary…”

  “Novel,” he corrected, and he chuckled dryly. “Let’s not have that argument again.”

  “Right. Of course.”

  “You need to bear with me. I haven’t been in a whole lot of meaningful relationships,” he said. “I know that’s not an excuse…”

  “I’m in the same place,” she told him. “This is new to me, too.”

  “A lot of what you read in that journal…while it’s fiction, of course…it’s also grounded in some degree of reality,” said Charles. “The emotions of it. I had a really terrible childhood, Ellen. That’s a fact.”

  “I did, too. That’s why your words were so powerful to me. There was this connection that I’ve never felt before with anyone.”

  “But that’s not what I want our relationship to be about.”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t want to connect on that level. I’m trying to get away from the past, not embrace it. I’m purging it on paper—all the bad things, they’ve manifested into this character I’ve created, this fictional persona who becomes a killer. I’m extracting all of that and sending it on this course of destruction. I don’t want you attracted to it, even on some sympathetic level. That’s why the notebook was never meant for anyone to read. It’s an exercise, an exorcism. If we are going to have a relationship, it’s got to be based on the person you see here, in the flesh, in the present, and we have to leave the person in the notebook behind.”

  “I can do that,” she said.

  “It means we don’t discuss the character in that notebook any longer.”

  She couldn’t help staring down at the new notebook on the table, under his arms.

  “You’re still writing. Is it more of the same?”

  “It’s personal,” he said. “For my eyes only. And I’m not going to lose this one.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “There are some things that are meant to remain private. We all have a part of ourselves that must not see the light of day. You can see me naked anytime…” He tapped the green notebook cover and smiled. “But not this naked.”

  She smiled, feeling a little jolt of arousal. It was the word naked that did it, coming from his lips.

  She said, “Can we have a fresh start?”

  “I’d like that.”

  “We’ll go slow.”

  “I’d like that, too.”

  “Everything moved so fast these past few days, so intense… I think it became overwhelming.”

  “I agree.”

  “Maybe we can get together again on Friday.”

  “We’ll have a low-key date. No crazy nightclubs, no fights with drunks.”

  “We can rent a movie and have dinner at my place,” she suggested.

  “I’d like that. Just the two of us.”

  As she stared at him, she wanted very badly to ask about his job at Technor. It remained a loose end. The woman at the switchboard had told her there was no listing for him. Maybe there was a simple answer, but she wanted to hear it from Charles. She thought about bringing the subject up and chose to save it for another day. They had made good progress here. She didn’t want to jeopardize it with a new accusation. The question about his job could wait.

  He gave her a hug before they parted. It was solid and real. She felt good inside again. The reconciliation felt right, like two puzzle pieces coming together, a perfect fit.

  She told herself to never mention the red notebook to him again.

  On her way to work, she thought about the molestation she had suffered in childhood. Maybe Charles was right. Certain things deserved to stay buried. It was twisted to leverage them for some kind of romantic bond.

  But now there was something new that nagged at her, even though she fought hard to keep it out of her thoughts, where it could only cause trouble.

  What was he writing in the green notebook?

  Ellen arrived at the Book Shelf to find Terri’s entire staff grouped together, buzzing in conversation.

  Their faces looked stunned, serious. As Ellen stepped closer, she heard, “They say it’s a serial killer, because there have been three murders, all in the same area, killed the same way.”

  “A serial killer?” Ellen asked, joining the circle.

  Peg turned to her. “A girl from Wilmette was killed last night in an alley near Irving Park and Broadway.”

  “Oh, my God,” said Ellen, feeling a surge of fear. “That’s right near where I live.”

  “I know,” said Peg. “Me too.”

  “My friend Jack is a detective with the police department,” said Karen, a husky-voiced co-worker. “He knows the cops who were on the scene.”

  “Tell her about the eyes,” said Peg.

  “This hasn’t been in the papers, but the killer takes out his victims’ eyes.”

  Ellen gasped.

  “I wonder if he does it before or after he’s killed them,” said Peg.

  “Gross, gross, gross!” squealed Debbie, a chubby nineteen-year-old who worked in the bookstore cafe.

  “Get this,” said Karen. “Last night, when he killed the girl, he made her parents listen on a cell phone.”

  Ellen felt light-headed. Her vision frayed along the edges. “I don’t think I want to hear this…”

  “Are you going to pass out or barf?” Peg asked.

  “I’m okay,” said Ellen, turning away from her.

  “I’m going to buy a taser gun,” said Peg to the others. “No way that maniac is going to get me. I’ll fry his ass.”

  Ellen felt her knees buckling and slumped against a table of new releases.

  Bradford, the lone male co-worker, approached the group with quick footsteps, holding up a paperback. “This is the book I was telling you about.”

  Karen, Deb and Peg crowded around him. Ellen turned to look. It was a mass-market paperback with a lurid cover.

  “See No Evil,” said Bradford, “by Robert Walker. It came out last year. I’ll show you…” He began searching through the pages. “In it, there’s a killer who does the same thing. He pulls out the eyeballs of his victims, so they can’t identify him in the afterlife.”

  “Maybe the killer is Robert Walker,” said Peg.

  “Maybe the killer is imitating this book,” said Bradford.

  “I have to show that book to Jack,” said Karen. “Wouldn’t that be incredible if we helped solve the case?”

  “We’d be on TV, for sure,” said Deb.

  “Girls and guy,” said Terri, approaching them, clapping her hands together. “The store is opening. Let’s split up. And let’s not talk about the murder in front of the customers, please. This needs to be an ‘up’ atmosphere for our guests. Don’t forget your smiles.”

  Terri walked over to Ellen, who remained leaned against the table, head lowered. “Sweetheart, you okay?”

  “Just a dizzy spell,” said Ellen.

  “I know. It really shocked me when I heard it, too. There are so many crazies out there. I hope you girls are careful. I feel so bad for that family, those poor parents…”

  “Terri, yo
u gotta see this,” Bradford interrupted, waving a copy of See No Evil, split open to a specific page. “Read this part.” Terri glanced down, read a few paragraphs and then jerked her head back, wrinkling her nose.

  “Thanks, that’s lovely, Bradford,” she said.

  “The killer in this book rips out the eyes of his victims, just like what happened to the girl in the Dumpster,” Bradford said, excited, but Terri’s response was bland.

  “That’s a book. This is reality,” she said. “I’m sure there’s no connection.”

  Ellen couldn’t stop her mind from wandering throughout the day. She barely heard the customers, responding to their needs in automatic-pilot mode, speaking very little, but still managing to be efficient. The customers seemed far away, even when standing in front of her.

  Ellen felt a new wave of the horrible suspicions she had tried desperately to suppress. She needed to rule out the possibility that Charles was the killer once and for all. Could she confront him about it? Would she be able to read the answer in his eyes? Had he offered any clues she had not recognized?

  He had looked awful that morning, sloppy and drained.

  She had seen that he was capable of brutal violence, when he attacked Jeremy. If she hadn’t stopped him, would he have killed Jeremy?

  She pictured the green journal in her mind. Something had driven him to fill pages in a new notebook. Something uncontrollable that he had to purge?

  It all felt ludicrous. At the same time, she couldn’t shake the possibility.

  She wished the police would catch this killer fast and put her imagination to rest.

  She thought about her conversation with Charles earlier that morning and how it had put her at ease after a long night of anxiety.

  She wanted to find him and talk to him again, be reassured that he couldn’t possibly be the killer of these girls.

  One fact offered her solace: Charles lived outside the community of the three killings. He had told her that he lived near downtown in an upscale condominium high-rise on the Gold Coast on Chicago’s Near North Side. Why would he commute to commit the murders?

  Nothing made sense.

  She decided to do something then that was totally out of character, yet could provide clues about the real Charles.