A Good and Useful Hurt (19 page)

Doc was sitting on a red chair, and they sat across from him on a matching sofa.
Between them was a coffee table, and on the coffee table was a steel urn about sixteen inches tall. It had a mother-of-pearl inlay on the lid with gold filigree.

The woman stood up, and Mike could see she’d been crying. “Let me get you a chair.”

“That won’t be nece—”

“I’ll be right back.”

She returned with a high-backed dining room chair. It was stained black, and Mike could see from the fur and scratches on the cushioned seat that they had cats. She set it in front of him and motioned for him to sit. He did, and she said, “Would you like something to drink?”

“No thank you, ma’am.”

“Please, call me Katherine. This is my husband, Gabriel. Your friend has some very interesting things to say. Are they true?”

“It’s nice to meet you, I’m Mike. I think so, ma’am, yes.”

She sat again next to her husband, and Mike could tell from the way they drew together that they were doing the good thing and relying on each other for support instead of shoving each other away out of grief or anger. She looked thin, pale, and reedy next to him, but he seemed strong and evenly built, with thick arms and a well-managed beard.

The man spoke. “Tell me what happened.”

“My girlfriend was the most recent victim of the same man who killed your daughter and Doc’s niece. Over the last year I’ve done a few tattoos involving ashes of deceased loved ones, and when my girlfriend was murdered, I decided I wanted a tattoo like that as well. I’m assuming Doc told you the rest.”

“And you want to use my daughter’s ashes for the same reason, to see what she saw?”

Doc said, “That’s exactly it, Gabriel. We feel that apprehension and punishment for whoever’s been committing these crimes could be possible, as well as preventing more of them. Mike and I are going to put a small amount of the ashes into our skin, and if all goes as planned, we will be able to do the same with ashes from all of the girls.”

“How much of my daughter’s ashes are we talking about?”

“Not much, even an eighth to a quarter teaspoon should be sufficient. I want you both to know that we accept doubt of what we’re saying, and if either of you would like to have the procedure done as well, Mike would be happy to tattoo either of you with some of your daughter’s ashes.”

“Can you excuse us for a moment so we can discuss this?”

Gabriel stood, and she followed him from the room.

Mike said, “Why did I have to come in?”

“To help me. They wanted to believe, and I needed a second voice to help push them over the edge.”

Mike began to speak, and then Gabriel returned alone. Mike was sure that the answer was going to be no. Gabriel said, “I want you to know that if this isn’t true, I hope it’s because you’re both crazy, and not just cruel.”

He sat and began to open the urn; Doc set a small vial next to him.

“If you see my daughter, tell her that we love her and think about her every day. If I hear on the news that they caught the piece of shit who hurt her, I’ll come to see you about a tat. Otherwise, I hope for your sakes we don’t cross paths again.”

He handed Doc the vial with the gray powder, and they thanked him before they left.

Amazingly, the next two houses went in similar fashion.
The second was a single mother and her grown daughter, who both seemed to think the whole thing was entirely reasonable and had even gone so far as to ask if they could help in any other way. The third had been a mother and father who had at least six children under the age of twelve running around. Neither Mike nor Doc had asked if they were running a daycare, or just had a large number of offspring. The family had seemed disinterested, and the mother of the deceased gave them far more product than they needed for the task.

After the three successes, they started back to the shop. Becky had called twice more, and Mike finally answered. “What’s up, Becky?”

“I need to know when you’re going to be back. I’ve got calls and e-mails coming out of my ass, and Lamar wants to schedule some interviews. We need to know what’s going on.”

“Becky, I appreciate the problem, but I can’t give you a time frame right now. I’d expect at least two weeks.”

“Mike, you’re booked for every day that you work for those two weeks. What’s going on?”

“I’m taking care of something. I’m sorry but I can’t elaborate.”

“Mike, what happened to Deb was awful, and both Lamar and I know that you’re going to need time to grieve and get your head right. If you could do some of that at work, it would really help, though. We’re busy as hell, and without Deb’s income it’s going to be hard enough. With you not working, well, frankly I’m worried. I know you need time, but we need you too. We’re all hurt, Mike.”

“Becky, you and Lamar can schedule whoever you want to hire in as guest artists. Hell, let two of them come in at once. We’ll figure out who to hire when I can get back. My clientele is going to have to wait. Like I said, two weeks should be enough time, but I’ll let you know as soon as possible. Call me if you need me, but otherwise I need you two to handle the shop, and its finances, while I’m gone.”

She started to sputter something else, and he hung up the phone. Doc pulled the car into the lot by the shop, and they went up to the apartment.

Mike tattooed Doc first, and then he worked on himself. He hadn’t realized how tired he was until he’d finished his tattoo. Across the room, Doc looked exhausted as well. Mike made himself work it out: they’d been going for almost eighteen hours.

“Doc, I gotta sleep, man. Like now.”

“I think that would be for the best, don’t you?”

Mike did.

When Mike came to, he was back in the interrogation room. He was alone. There was noise around him, and it was missing the clarity it had had before. There were fuzzy spots on the walls where things should have been clear. Where there had been a mirror was now a black wall. The cinder blocks that formed the room looked misshapen, as though they’d been badly poured. Perspectives were off: things that should have looked close seemed distant, as though in a fog. The affect of it all was disorienting to his eyes, almost perverse. He spoke: “Hello?”

The words echoed and undulated as they came back. Mike wondered for the first time if he could be hurt here. Was what they were doing safe? For Deb or the niece to behave benignly made sense, but he hadn’t known the other girls, and he had no idea how they’d react. Even Deb had seemed cold, even hostile to him at first.

There was a loud crash from the hallway, and Mike could hear at least two voices, and neither of them sounded too happy. The door flew open, bounced hard against the cinderblocks, and then swung back to sit half ajar. He still couldn’t see into the hallway, but the yelling was much louder now and more voices were audible, maybe as many as four or five. The door slammed open, the handle taking chunks of concrete from the wall, and bits of dust fell to the ground.

Then, finally, silence, and they entered.

Deb entered first, looking as he’d remembered her before the attack, though strained. Another flash of fear: Was he safe here? Then Doc’s niece stepped in, and she looked all right as well. The last three women entered in quick succession. They were healing, that was apparent immediately. What wounds they bore at the times of their deaths were still apparent and horrible, black eyes and broken jaws, ligature marks on their necks that were dark and obscene, abuse after abuse, and Mike could see the pain on their faces as they moved their beaten bodies about.

Deb said, “You can talk to them if you like, but I don’t know how much you’ll learn.” She sounded discouraged and bone-weary.

Mike steeled himself. These were people, damaged and destroyed like Deb, and bidden back by him. He needed to make this worth it for them and for him. He looked at Deb, took a deep breath, and then turned to the others and said, “Angela?”

The first of the three mysteries strode forward to stand at the table. Mike could see the pain on her face as she moved. She dragged her left leg behind her, and Mike assumed it broken just above the ankle, where it folded at an irregular angle.

“I’m so sorry, Angela. I’ve spoken with your mother and father, and they want you to know that they love you. I think your father is going to try to speak with you.”

Her eyes, before dull and black as the heart on Mike’s hand, shone. All at once she was radiant. The wounds mottling her face began to peel and then faded altogether. Mike watched her leg straighten out and her foot pull itself up from under her.

He felt dizzy and had to force himself to breathe. He called to the next woman: “Veronica.”

This one stepped forward to stand next to the now beaming Angela. The second girl wasn’t damaged as badly as Angela had been, but her jaw hung at an awkward angle, and Mike could see it was broken as Deb’s had been. The girl wobbled and shuddered as she stood before him.

“Your mother and sister were very kind to me. They listened to us and agreed that anything that could help your killer be put to justice, no matter how ridiculous it might sound, was worth doing. They didn’t cry, but they told me how much they missed you and how special you were to them. Your mom believed me completely. I think she liked that you could still be out there in some form or another.”

Just as with the first girl, Mike watched her come to life. The eyes were the most beautiful part of it, but the rest of the changes were as miraculous. The bruises began to fade, and the jaw slowly reset itself with an audible click as it snapped into place. In moments, this one was glowing as well, radiant instead of the shadow she’d been, a reflection of life instead of death.

“Pauline.”

She stepped forward next to her sisters, pale and beaten, one cheek shattered, torn to the bone, the eye above it weeping lazily down. Blood had dried in her nose and on her upper lip, curling over her mouth in a cruel and crimson frown.

Mike looked again to Deb. She met his gaze, but did nothing more. He turned back to the girl, unsure of what to say, and let the words fall out.

“Your family is fine.”

Mike faltered and stopped. He let his voice regain its timbre, and continued. “Your family is fine, just as busy as always, but they still were able to help us find you, so that you can help us find the man who hurt you. We’re here to avenge what happened, and to make it so that it doesn’t happen to anyone else.”

Mike thought he’d failed. Nothing was happening—she was still there and not there. She looked cruel, menacing, and Mike wanted out of the room. It hadn’t worked. His eyes were locked with hers, but he saw the other girls approach her. First it was Veronica taking the still-damaged girl by her shoulders, and then Angela was with her, holding Pauline about the waist, and then Deb and Annie were there with them. Pauline was obscured by the other women, and Mike was unsure of what he should be doing.

The women stepped away from Pauline, and she was as they now were, her wounds healed, her eyes and mouth radiant.

When Mike looked around the room he could see that the walls had been repaired—there was no more fuzziness, the mirror was a mirror again.

All of them were beaming at him now, and his own smile felt about to split his face in two. But then he sobered. He had work to do—they all did.

“I need to know everything. If I’m going to have any chance at all to find this guy, you need to tell me about him. I’m sorry, but even the really bad stuff.”

Pauline said, “He was tall. He said his name was Phil. He helped me load the groceries into my car once; I remembered him when he attacked me because of how tall he was. I’d been attracted to the man who helped me load my car; I almost asked him for his phone number. But the one who attacked me was different. He was angry, and the rage made him hideous. He hated me; he hated all of us. Not just all of us here, but all women. There’s no way that those around him don’t know that he hates women. I don’t think anyone who knows him could understand how much he hates women, but they have to have seen something. It’s all that he is.”

She stepped back, still radiant, still beaming. Veronica spoke.

“Pauline is right, he was tall, better than six foot five inches—I know that because he was taller than my boyfriend, who’s six foot five. He had green eyes. He wasn’t a bad-looking guy, but she’s right, he hated us. He had a stubby nose—it didn’t fit well with the rest of his face. He smelled like a machine shop and egg-rolls, and he wore gray coveralls. He had a thick, one- or two-day beard, and he wept when I died. I could see the tears as my vision faded. The cord was tight but didn’t hurt anymore, nothing hurt. So it was just senses as alive as they could ever get, and I watched him cry and turn from me. There was still hate, but there was regret too. It looked like deep regret, and I’m not sure whether he wanted to kill me again, had regrets for how fast it had gone, or if he really felt bad for what he’d done to me. Either way, he left quick enough. I was all used up, and the last thing I saw was him walking out the door. His boots were steel-toed and had at least a one-inch heel.”

Annie said, “His name was Phil—I saw it on his jacket, but I really
knew
afterwards. I’d never seen him before; he just came out of nowhere. His hair was brown and cut close to his head, but what I noticed first was his height. He enjoyed hurting me, and I could tell that he wanted more time. When I saw the rope it was almost a relief. I hate myself for that, but it was. I still wanted to live, but if he was going to keep hurting me the way that he was…”

Annie stopped and turned to them. Angela began to speak.

“He caught me leaving my apartment, and threw me back in—that’s how my leg got broken. I fell on my back and tried to stand, and he stomped down on it to keep me from running. I don’t think he meant to break it, not like that anyways. I was howling, and I could tell he didn’t like that because he started beating me. I’m pretty sure I would have been dead with or without the rope. He wanted to rape me, but he was impotent—something about the leg was wrong for him. I could see it on his face that there was a certain way it was supposed to go, and when it hadn’t he became infuriated. Everything the other girls said is true. He’s big and mean, and he hates women. I also think he works at one of the factories by Thirty-sixth Street. My dad used to do machine repairs there, and the coveralls they gave him looked just like the ones the man had on. They had the same grease and metal smells I used to love on my dad because it smelled like work, and I could remember when I was very small and he got laid off.

“He’ll kill again, and he’ll keep killing because it’s what he loves. It’s his passion. For him it’s not a game or even a power thing anymore—it’s just how things are to be for him.”

Angela stepped back, and Mike ran his eyes over them before stopping at Deb. She smiled at him and said, “We need the rest—it’s not enough yet.”

“I know. Do any of you remember anything else, like what kind of car he had, or any other distinguishing features?” Their silence was answer enough, and one after the other the girls began to leave the room. When they were gone, it was just him and Deb.

“Will it always be all of us now?”

“Until this is finished. Then it can be just us again.”

“I miss you. It’s hard.”

“Worry about that later. Find the rest—bring as many as you can.”