Disconnection (13 page)

Lewis smiled sadly and shook his head. “That I can’t say.”

“And Chloe Applegate? Was she was killed by the real deal, not some copycat?”

Lewis face dissolved to a tight frown. “Why do you want to know about Chloe Applegate in particular?”

The girl blushed. “I don’t know. Maybe because she was the last one. Do you think she was killed by the real serial killer?”

Lewis replied, “As real as I’ve ever seen it,” as Nick fired another sharp pain up his ass.

Dr. Angus, here I come
, Lewis thought wryly.

M
y cousin is staying with me for a few days, if you’d like to meet him.”

Woodrow had intercepted Sela in the middle of the apartment stairs. Sela, sleepy-eyed from a double shift at Frank’s, tried her best to smile. “Are you playing matchmaker by any chance, Woodrow?”

He turned red. “No, not really. The guy’s from Mississippi and he doesn’t know anyone here but me. I just though maybe you’d like to come over some time and share a beer with us.”

Sela’s last desire in the world was to complicate her life with more introductions to potentially psychotic people. But Woodrow was her friend. “Sure. I can stop by later, after I have a nap, okay?”

Woodrow smiled, his two rows of gorgeous teeth gleaming brilliantly under the hallway’s vague light. “I appreciate it, Sela.”

A while later, Sela lay sleepless in bed. She rolled over and faced the red cell phone on the pillow beside her. Chloe had been quiet since she had arrived home from work.

Sela’s fingers outlined the curves of the phone, the round receiver, the buttons, the dark screen.

The street lamp’s soft yellow hue and the moonlight poured into Sela’s bedroom from the open window. The New Orleans nights were now bearable; the heat had finally taken the hint and had moved closer to the equator.

Sela whispered into the phone, “Who are you, Chloe?” There was no answer. The fragrance of chrysanthemums tickled the tip of Sela’s nose. She asked, “What kind of person were you, before you died?”

She never answered, and Sela was close to giving up on her, when finally Chloe’s voice reached through the phone and pulled Sela back into the empty nothingness she now associated with death.

“You don’t want to die.”

Sela asked, “Why is that?”

“It’s so cold where I am. Colder than any winter I can remember.”

“Did you always spend the winter in New Orleans? If so, it’s not that great a comparison—the coldness of death to a Southern winter. Maybe a Chicago winter. I hear it gets pretty cold up there.”

“I spent a few winters in Ireland. We vacationed there when I was younger, mostly during the summer, but sometimes in winter.”

“Why Ireland?”

“My parents inherited land from a distant relative who didn’t have a family of his own. My parents are lucky that way, you know? Most of the property they have is inherited. That house in the Garden District—that belonged to my grandmother.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“Thank you. Anyway, Ireland winters are cold. And rainy. And murky. There are some mornings when you can’t see your hand if you place it next to your face, the fog’s just everywhere. I remember going to bed at night fully dressed, as if I could jump up from bed any minute and walk outside and build snowmen. So you see, I know what cold is. And I am colder now than I can ever remember.” As if to emphasize her point, Sela heard Chloe’s teeth chatter.

Sela asked, “Did you have a boyfriend when you were here?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes more than one.”

“What tune does your phone play?”

“What?”

“Your phone plays a song when it rings. What is it?”

Sela waited as Chloe took her precious time answering. “I don’t know,” she finally replied. “I don’t remember using a song for my cell phone’s ring.”

Sela impatiently tapped her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “You’re a lot of help,” she said. “I’ll just have to figure it out myself, I guess.” She rolled on her back and looked at the paint on the ceiling. “Chloe?”

“Yes?”

“Who killed you?”

Sela could hear the cicadas humming, though it certainly was not the season for them. And the grasshoppers and the birds and whatever else did not die immediately at the first touch of autumn, they sang too, loud, wispy sounds, whistles from tree to tree, grass blade to grass blade, through the bark and leaves. Everything wanted to live, and yet nothing could stay. God’s great plan.

Chloe answered, “I don’t remember. Do the police know?”

“The police don’t know anything. All they have is a newspaper dated back to the nineteenth century.” Sela paused and breathed in heavily. “You don’t remember what your killer looked like, or where you were? Do you remember the Fishhook sign? Do you remember them branding you with it?”

“Fishhook? No.”

“What’s the last memory you have of being alive?”

“That’s hard to say. I don’t remember being dead.” Chloe paused before continuing, “I’m sorry. I don’t know anything that happened to me. I try to figure things out, and I keep going back to the same place, the same memory. When I was five I was locked inside my church’s basement for twenty-four hours. I had fallen asleep during a film and the Sunday school teacher didn’t count heads on the way out.”

“What did your parents do?”

“Search. They were frantic. I was on the ten o’clock news. Police were going around the New Orleans ghettos asking drug dealers if there was underground news on me. Volunteers combed the streets and malls. Finally, the janitor found me Monday afternoon. I had spent the night and morning crying until my eyes were so dry, they felt like they were going to pop out of my head. I had shoved myself in the shelves where the Bibles were, just in case the Boogieman came to take me away. I just remember—I don’t know—the loneliness. Thinking, at five years old, that I would never want to die, because this must be what death feels like. And here I am now, and it is exactly how I had imagined it.”

Sela rolled over on her stomach and focused her eyes on the telephone’s screen. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help you. Is there someone I can go to? Someone who might know what happened to you?”

There was a long silence before Chloe finally replied, “Lisa.”

“Who’s that?”

“My best friend. I used to tell her everything.”

“How can I find her?”

“I’ll tell you but you might need something. Someone, rather.”

“Who?”

“Do you have guy friends?”

“Why?”

Sometime later Sela stood at the door of Woodrow’s apartment, asking—begging, really—for him to join her at one of the most notorious strip clubs in town. Woodrow, to her surprise, agreed. “But,” he added, “Can Stuart come with us?”

Sela shrugged. “Sure.”

“Hey, Woody, you got any more Coors? I don’t drink none of that German shit you got in there.” After a moment, the owner of the country-twanged voice entered the hallway.

Woodrow pointed to him. “Sela, meet Stuart.”

Sela studied Stuart. He was a medium-framed man with crow’s-feet, and sparse light blonde hair, handsome in a
Dukes of Hazard
kind of way. She reached out her hand and he took it. “Nice to meet you. Woodrow and I are going to a titty bar. The invite’s open.”

Stuart grinned from ear to ear. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Sela. And may I say, I never pass on an opportunity to visit a titty bar.”

Woodrow chuckled nervously, embarrassed. “Stu’s a character.”

Sela’s stare was unwavering. “So, should we get a move on?” She had thought about asking Woodrow to come with her after her conversation with Chloe because he was her closest male friend, and because she had not wanted to ask Dean. She was not sure what he would think of her suggestion, and they were at such a fragile stage of a—what was it, relationship?—that she saw no need to rock the boat.

Having Woodrow’s Mississippian cousin tag along was something she had not counted on.

The threesome hopped into Woodrow’s Jeep. The ride started smoothly, and would have remained that way had Sela not made the fatal mistake of changing the radio station during one of Britney Spear’s musical feats.

Stuart screamed from the backseat, “Hell’s bells, girl! What did you go and do that for?”

“Do what for?”

“Change the radio station.”

“Oh, you like Britney Spears?”

“Hell yeah, I like Miss Britney. I like Miss Britney just fine.”

“Oh. She’s just a little too pop for me.” And against Sela’s better judgment, she went on to explain her political theories behind why sucky pop music was the mainstream, and good music was no longer played.

Stuart howled with laughter. “You think it’s because of George W?”

“Republicans in general, yes. Whenever the GOP takes over the federal government, the music industry dies.”

“Just pretend for a moment that Britney Spears sucks ass like you think she does. She’s still Bill Clinton’s shit.”

“Oh, yeah? How do you figure?”

“That hit-me-one-more-time song came out in nineteen-ninety-nine. I remember because the DJ played it at my third wedding. How old are you?”

“Twenty-four.” Sela glanced over at Woodrow, who shrugged and gave an apologetic smile.

Stuart continued, “Then since you’ve been born, there have only been two Democrats in the White House. Carter and Clinton. Me, I’m thirty-eight, so I had Johnson. During Johnson’s administration, we were at the height of the Vietnam conflict. He left office in 1968. Jimi, Janis, The Doors’ you could probably give him credit for them, but there were few records sales until after he left office, so let’s give them to Nixon.”

“Wait, that’s a double standard. Britney didn’t reach her height of popularity until Bush was in office.”

“Do the math, sweetheart. Her first album sold at least a cool million more than all her other albums. Now, where was I? Oh, yeah when Pink Floyd released their first album in 1968, records sales were slow until “Dark Side of the Moon” in 1972. So they were clearly a Nixon band.”

“Okay, what about Grunge bands?”

“You mean like that Eddie Vedder feller and that guy who blew his brains out?”

“Kurt Cobain, yeah.”

“Shit, honey, that’s easy. Pearl Jam was formed in 1984 with members from Green River and Mother Love Bone. Reagan’s era, my dear. Their album, Ten, was released in 1991, durin’ Bush Sr.’s administration. Nirvana was formed in 1985, another Reagan band. Their album Nevermind was released in 1991. Bush. And for your information, Mr. Courtney Love pulled a Hemingway the year after Clinton took office.”

“Santana won a shitload of Grammies during the Clinton administration.”

“Fuck Santana. Overpraised spic.”

“That’s enough, Stu,” Woodrow said from the driver’s seat. He eyed him from the rearview mirror. “You do this every time, you know.”

“Do what?”

“Start shit.”

Stuart grunted. “I’m not startin’ shit. Hell, I was just givin’ the girl some food for thought.” He knocked on the back of Sela’s seat. “I know a lot of chicks, by the way, who are happy to go to titty bars by themselves.”

Sela straightened against the seat. “Well, I’m not one of them.” She had never been to a titty bar before, alone or otherwise. Places like titty bars had just never appealed to her. So much smoke. So much fire.

Once inside Johnnie’s Cabaret, Sela sat with Woodrow at a table in the center of the room. Stuart was at the bar giving the bartender a hard time about the pricey cover charge, demanding that a fee of fifteen dollars deserved at least one free drink. “A beer, and nothing foreign,” Sela heard him say.

Sela worked on squelching a panic attack while she watched the dancers on stage between the clouds of cigarette smoke and stage vapor. She took long, calculated breaths.

You have nothing to fear but fear itself
.

(just concentrate on something concentrate think think)

Find Lisa
.

Sela narrowed her eyes and began studying all the girls on the stage. Chloe had described Lisa as being small breasted and blonde, with pink tips at the front of her hair. Sela saw no girl that looked like that. She stood up and asked the nearest bouncer about Lisa’s whereabouts. The bouncer said he would go and look for her. “Thank you,” Sela said, before returning to her table.

After an intriguing number where two Asian girls dressed in astronaut suits danced to Rick Springfield around a pole while licking each other’s breasts, Woodrow decided to break the silence between him and Sela. He leaned over and nudged her. Sela looked his way and gave him an empathetic smile.

“Sorry about my cousin,” he shouted over the music.

Sela shrugged. “It’s not your fault. We can’t help whom we’re related to. Why is he staying with you, anyway?”

“I don’t know. The police want him to stay in town.”

“I can somehow believe that the police would be involved, but why?”

“Something about being an eye witness to murder.”

Sela’s jaw dropped. Woodrow nodded. “Yeah. They think he’s the Fishhook murderer, can you believe it?”

“Really?” A cold chill went up Sela’s spine.

“Yeah. Well, apparently Stu was with one of the girls before she disappeared.”

“The latest one?”

“No. The one before that. Stu was at the same convention as her. I don’t remember her name.”

“Hey, you’re looking for Lisa?” Another large bouncer stood over Sela’s table.

She nodded. “Yeah. You found her for me?”

He answered, “She’s in the dressing room. I can take you back there, but you’re gonna have to leave your boyfriend behind.”

Sela stood up and followed him behind the stage. She turned her head one last time and Woodrow waved.

The dressing room was the size of a large walk-in closet. Tall, cracked mirrors lined the walls. Lisa sat nearly naked in a lawn chair while applying a thick layer of red lipstick to an already vibrantly colored pair of lips. Her breasts were as tiny as Sela’s, and her hair had the pink glow of a sky before sunset. “You’re the chick asking about me?” she asked, not taking her eyes off the mirror.