A Good and Useful Hurt (22 page)

The second day of what Doc had begun calling “bird-watching” started much like the first.
There was no one of interest at the first or second shift changes they watched, and as they drove to the third, Doc spoke.

“This is faulty reasoning. There are so many more factories than I’d ever have figured on, and that says nothing of the people. Where do all of these people come from? We can’t expect this to work, at least not in the way we were thinking it would.”

“Any luck with Hladini?”

“None. She’s more withdrawn, if anything. I know with time she would be a problem I could solve, but time is an enemy becoming more threatening by the hour. She knows something, but I’ve lost all hope of pulling it from her in time. Our best bet is to continue on the path we’ve chosen and hope things work in our favor.”

“Do you think that’s good enough? I mean, there’ll be a dead girl in just a few days, and we knew it was going to happen.”

“So what do you propose we do? No one would believe it, not even the young lady herself, not to mention we have no clue who she is. All we can do is hope that we get lucky and find him before he takes action. And who’s to say he won’t strike earlier? We need to see this done, and it needs to be done as soon as possible.”

Doc pulled the car into the lot of the next factory, and they set to work with the binoculars, eliminating possibility after possibility. Doc saw one man who was close to tall enough, but the face was nothing like that on the paper. They watched for as long as they could, and when it was done they left.

The night was no better, and though neither said it, both were thinking the same thing: four days.

“She knows him.”

They were in the back of a parking lot off of Thirty-sixth Street. First shift was set to end in less than ten minutes.

“How do you know?” Mike asked.

“I just do. It’s in the way she talks. The other women have been making space around her, almost as if they can smell it on her—and I have a feeling that they
can
smell it, or hear it, or sense it in some other way. Is she segregated from them when you see her?”

Mike thought about that. Hladini had been set aside from them for him from the start because of her lack of knowledge of what had happened to her. He talked to the other women constantly—Deb most of all, and Annie almost as much, but the others were not ignored. Hladini, though, that was an interesting thing. He couldn’t recall anyone speaking to her at length after her introduction. Was it because she couldn’t or wouldn’t remember, or was it something else? None of the rest of them wanted to remember or talk about what happened, but they all did so willingly, and Mike didn’t think it was all for vengeance. They wanted to keep him from killing again.

Mike tapped the purse to feel the needle and the small bottle of ink next to it. Those first few days had been scouting only, and he hadn’t carried the tools necessary to fulfill either Doc’s plan or his own. “What delusion,” Doc had said. “That we would think ourselves able to not only find this man easily but to study him to be sure.” Doc was right, delusion and stupidity. They both knew better now. Even one opportunity would be hard to come by. This man they hunted knew he was hunted, knew an entire city was praying that he would be discovered.

Mike kept the needles and ink in a small clutch that Deb had purchased for fifty cents at a secondhand store. The clutch had the words “Mrs. Timberlake” embroidered across its front, and when Deb had bought it she’d leaned in close to the cashier and said, “Justin wants everyone to know who I am.” The woman had just nodded, and Deb was in near hysterics when they left the store. She’d used the bag once or twice, but now Mike carried it every day like some lucky talisman. In his pants pocket was the revolver.

The factory emptied as Mike peered through Doc’s binoculars, and he said, “How would she know him?”

“It could have been anything—look at this fellow to my left.”

“No, the face isn’t right, and I think he’s got blue eyes. You’re right on with the height, though.”

“Ahh, you’re right. I think she knew him from work. I’ve never talked to her about where she worked. If she temped at one of these factories, she could have known him or at least have seen him. I’ve been so focused on trying to get her to recall the attack, as if it were done by a neighbor or acquaintance, perhaps even an ex, that I totally glossed the idea that she might have just known him. I think they’re almost all out.”

“He could be a repairman who floats from place to place. If he were, he’d keep more odd hours. You need to crack her, Doc. You have to.”

Mike rubbed his hand over the clutch in his pocket and lowered the binoculars. He noticed his hands were trembling. If not today, then when? There was almost no time left, and if they failed, what was going to happen when he slept? Would Deb even come back?

“Let’s go back to your apartment,” Doc said all at once. “We’re skipping tonight’s bird-watching. I’m going to take a pill and I’m going to crack her.”

Mike didn’t say anything, just watched the road as Doc drove.

Doc awoke on the couch across from Mike as though he were shooting free from something, like a cork expelled from a bottle.

“He delivers rugs. The man we’re looking for delivers small area rugs from a linen supply company. He works in the area we’ve been looking at. Hladini said she used to flirt with him when he’d come into the oil change she worked at, and that he usually dropped by to change their rugs once a week. She hasn’t come forward because she was ashamed of her desire for him. Even in death, we’re ruled by shame! It’s incredible!”

“What day did he make his deliveries? What time of day?”

“I tried, but she couldn’t specify. We’ll just have to find him. I’m sure all of them use that type of service to some degree or another. We just need to catch him at his rounds. I feel good about this, I really do!”

Mike wasn’t sure what to say to that. Doc might
feel
good, but he looked like shit. Mike hadn’t looked at himself in the mirror in a couple of days, but he knew he had to look worse than he had the last time, and that wasn’t good. He felt like a shrunken, reheated version of himself. While Doc had slept, Becky had called twice, and Mike had neither the patience nor the energy to answer or call her back. Instead, he asked Doc what he wanted to do next.

“All we need to do is find a linen truck with an enormous driver in the cab. If we can’t find him, we’ll have to figure out something else. We could stake out the delivery companies—there can’t be but a few. We need to stay positive; this is something to go on, even if it is a bit tenuous.”

Mike had all but given up. There were only two days left to their deadline, and he’d quit on sleep almost entirely. He couldn’t face them. He and Doc were failing, and in just two nights the girl was going to die. There wasn’t a thing he and Doc hadn’t tried to do with what little experience and knowledge they had of the situation.

So they drove.

Miles back and forth, hoping to see a linen truck of any type. They’d twice seen trucks that had been perfect, but their drivers weren’t even close. Mike was full of nervous energy, and he couldn’t help twisting back and forth to see around the car. He took to caressing the little clutch with the ink in it constantly as they drove around the industrial area. Buildings and trucks, trucks and buildings, in a never-ending loop of smokestacks, diesel rigs, and commercial vehicles.

The sighting of a UPS truck would alert his senses to near euphoria until the familiar logo would come into view. It was the same with any partially distinguishable carrier vehicle.

Mike had wanted to just call every linen place in town and ask for delivery schedules, and Doc had laughed at the idea. “What,” he said, “would possibly make them want to give you that information? We’ll try this way for the time being; if we fail, we’ll start watching the laundry companies.”

Mike thought it made more sense to stake out the laundry companies’ plants, but he didn’t push it with Doc; he knew he’d be refuted and it would be a waste of time. Right or wrong, Doc was set on this course.

Instead of talking, they drove and watched trucks; there was just nothing more to say between the two of them. Mike wondered if Doc would ever go back to teaching, just as he wondered if he’d ever tattoo again. Mike found himself surprised that he didn’t care either way. This had scraped him down to the core, worse even than when Deb or Sid had passed in the first place.

That day Doc not only drove past the large lots, but occasionally would pull through and circle. That’s what he was doing in the parking lot of an enormous office equipment manufacturer called Case when Mike saw the truck.

It was like swimming and seeing a great white shark, or walking through a jungle to find himself eye-to-eye with a tiger.

Mike began to speak, and Doc said, “I see it.” Mike closed his mouth hard enough to hear his teeth snap closed as Doc circled the truck and parked about fifty feet from its front bumper.

Mike had the clutch out of his pocket and the needle out of the bag before he’d had any kind of confirmation. This was it, he knew it. Mike was unpacking the special needle he’d made, a thick barb of thirteen pins bound with soldering wire into a tight circle, when he saw the man.

They knew him as soon as he left the building: six foot five at least, and matching the picture more perfectly than either could have imagined. He wore his hair in a brush cut, longer than any of the girls had suggested, but the right length with time factored in. He walked with a slight limp in his left leg—nothing debilitating, but clear nonetheless as he moved across the lot. Mike moved to open the door, the needle clutched tight in his left hand.

“Wait.”

Mike sat back in his seat and watched with Doc as the man climbed into the back of the truck and then reappeared a few minutes later with an armful of rubber-bottomed rugs. He marched in his slow, slightly uneven gait across the lot and away from them.

“It’s him. It’s fucking him.”

“I know, relax.”

“I need to go now and stick him with this. What if that was his last trip in? If we follow him, he’s going to know it.”

Mike watched Doc swallow thickly. Then Doc said, “Wait by the side of the truck, over there where I can see you and he can’t. Fall into him the second he comes into view—stick him and bounce off.

“I wish we’d brought some whiskey. Slur after you come off of him and apologize. After that, get out of his way. Leave me the pistol.”

“Leave it?! What if I need it? Look at the size of that bastard—it’s no wonder he’s been doing whatever he likes. If he wants to break me over his knee, he will. I need that gun.”

“Hand it over. The last thing we need is him throwing you and you dropping it. I’ll be right behind you if things go badly, trust me.”

Mike handed him the revolver butt first. “There’s no safety, Doc, just aim and squeeze. Have you ever fired a gun before?”

Doc shook his head.

“Just don’t shoot me, OK? You just aim and squeeze, and don’t hesitate. If it looks like I need help, it’s because I do.”

Mike dunked the needle into the ink so that its tip came away black and wet.

“Let’s hope this works.”

He opened the door and left the car.

The blacktop was an ocean to cross: fifty feet yawned before him like forever, and behind him the car seemed like some long-ago oasis. Mike crossed with the wind in his hair and his ears. He crossed the lot for Deb and for all of them.

Mike hugged the side of the truck.
He could see Doc in the car, and also that Doc’s door was open, but not all the way. He figured Doc could be to them in about five seconds, an eternity in a time of need. His breathing was pitched and ragged. Mike slowed it as best he was able and stood with the needle palmed, waiting an eternity for the door the man had entered with the rugs to open.

He didn’t hear it open, but he both felt it slam shut in his feet and heard it as well. The man was crossing the pavement toward him now, Mike knew that without a doubt. A moment of frozen terror, and then a quickly repeated mantra under his breath: “C’mon you fucker c’mon you fucker c’mon you fucker c’mon you fucker…”

An endless inaudible loop. A request, a fear, a wish.

Mike flexed his knees by the truck, and when the man came into view, first a shoulder and then the towering rest of him, Mike picked a target and moved. He aimed himself at the man’s right forearm—it was exposed, and Mike could see the skin there now, pale and with a light spattering of freckles.
Stippling
, Mike corrected himself, and then he stumbled into the man and shoved the needle as hard as he could into the arm.

The man winced back from Mike before the needle could bite into him, probably already dismissing Mike as some drunken mess that had lost his way, but when he felt the needle claw at his arm and then slide into his skin, he was bellowing. Mike pulled the needle out and staggered on. Victory! No matter what happened next, he’d hurt the man who’d killed Deb.

Mike’s next thought was that he was flying, the needle popping free, soaring from his hands into the air. Next was pain, as he smashed shoulder-first into the blacktop.

The man screamed at him, “What the fuck are you doing? You fucking cut me with something!”

Mike rolled over to see the man clutching the injured arm, and then the man leaped toward him and kicked him hard in the side. Mike let the kick roll him as far away as possible, to help soften the blow and gain some space, and then he rose. The man stood before him, more a monster, some imagined thing, than a real man. Mike knew then that he was seeing him as Deb had seen him in those cold moments before he killed her. He was seeing him as they’d all seen him, and that was what made him walk back towards the man and not away from him.

Mike had been in fistfights before, but it had been a long time. He was already half whipped by the much, much bigger man; he was ragged from lack of sleep and food, and from the strain of the last few weeks. Mike pushed all of those things aside, rolled up his sleeves as the man stood watching him, and waded in. The ink might hurt the man and it might not, but Mike wanted to be sure he took a souvenir home for himself. It was selfish and stupid, but he was pretty sure Deb would’ve approved.

The man was powerful but lazy. He threw a hook from his hip that Mike ducked effortlessly away from, letting it pass in a looping arc above and behind his head. Mike fired a shot of his own now that he was close enough, peppering a neat cross into the man’s open and exposed face. Something crunched under his fist, and Mike smiled as he bounced away to safety, all fatigue and injury forgotten. The man lumbered towards him, and Mike readied himself.

The man was a lug, but he was adapting. He feinted a second looping left, and as Mike pulled in as he had the first time, the man threw a short right that nearly dropped him. He popped away again, but the man stayed with him. Mike had counted on the man’s limp giving him space, but the limp was gone, and then Mike was dodging a looping right and left. The man was smiling as he came after him.

Mike circled to keep from being cornered against the wall of the truck, surely the worst place for him to be, when he tripped. He was moving to his right when his shoe caught something, he stumbled and recovered, but it was enough time for the man to be on him. The first punch the man threw caught him on the back of the head and did little damage, but the second caught him full in the face.

Mike dropped. He could taste iron in his mouth and could see the man’s work boots approaching.

Mike understood then why Doc had wanted to keep the gun. It was not so Doc could protect Mike, but rather to protect Mike from himself. If he’d had it, he never would have concerned himself with the needle. He’d have just shot this man and been done with it.
Damn Doc anyways,
Mike thought.
At least I’d be alive.
The gunshot broke his train of thought.

Mike sat up, and the man was walking away from him. Doc stood no more than fifteen feet from them. “Stand up,” he said.

Mike did, his head cobwebs and pain.

“You,” Doc said to the man. “You back away from him, just get in the truck. You’re lucky I don’t want to get involved, or I’d have the authorities on you.”

“He fucking stabbed
me
! If you saw me beatin’ on him, you had to have seen that too.”

Mike watched Doc level the gun at Phil’s chest. His hands were steady.

“I saw a man fall into you, and then I saw you pummel him. That wound of yours isn’t a stab wound. That’s just a scratch—probably just something on his clothing that poked into you.”

Doc turned to Mike. “C’mon, friend, let’s get you some coffee.”

Mike walked to Doc. The man was to his left, and Mike could see him examining the small smudge on his forearm. It was bleeding and so was the man’s nose. Small victories, but Mike was pretty sure, even without a mirror or feeling his face, that the man had done pretty well for himself as well.

When Mike reached Doc, his friend put the hand without the gun over his shoulders, and they walked slowly to the car. The man called after them, “I better not see you again! Either one of you!”

Doc said, “Same for you, friend. Next time I won’t be shooting at birds.”

Doc opened Mike’s door and slid him in as fast as he was able, the gun still out and pointed in the man’s direction. Mike heard the door shut next to him, and then Doc was in the car too and had it started and rolling out of the parking lot.

Mike saw the man watching them as they left, and he had one thought as he passed out:
Your turn now, Deb. I don’t know what you mean to do, but you need to do it.
After that, there was nothing.