Hide Your Eyes (17 page)

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Authors: Alison Gaylin

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #General, #Contemporary, #Sagas

BOOK: Hide Your Eyes
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‘Another
strangled
kid. With . . . something done to the eyes.’
‘Yes.’ He buttoned up a white shirt, selected a burgundy tie with wide, mustard-colored stripes. ‘I was planning on telling you eventually.’
‘Sure you were.’
‘I figured, after we’d had a beer, relaxed a little . . . But, um . . . you know, other things took precedence. I didn’t think you were going to seduce me.’
I felt an awful burn in my chest - a hard question, needing to be asked.
‘What?’ said Krull.
‘He killed the girl in the footlocker because of me, didn’t he? If he hadn’t seen me at the river—’
‘No,’ Krull said. ‘He killed Graham two years ago, and then for some reason he started again with Sarah Flannigan. The same thing that made him kill Sarah -
that
was what made him kill the footlocker girl.
Not you
.’ His words were quick and defensive. And they had the sound of having been said - or thought - before.
Krull unlocked his bedstand drawer, pulled out a gun and a shoulder holster and put them on. After he’d covered it all up with a polyester maroon sport coat, he turned around and faced me. ‘You know how to use a gun?’ he said.
‘Of course not.’
‘I’m going to show you later. Don’t leave. There’s coffee in the kitchen and food. I’ll be back really soon. I just have to pick up a car and check a few things out.’ From the blazer he’d worn the previous night, Krull removed the e-mail I’d given him and jammed it into a briefcase.
‘Can’t I do anything? Can’t I come with you?’
‘Just try and relax. Spend some time with Jake. Watch TV.’
‘But not the news, right?’
‘The press always gets things wrong. That’s why I let Art deal with them. He’s got a better sense of humor about it than I do.’
He paused for a moment and smiled at me. ‘You know, you look really good in my bed.’ His eyes glittered and I wanted to say:
Please don’t go. Just stay here and I’ll stay here and neither one of us will ever leave and Jake will be happy and I’ll be happy and I’ll never steal your furniture I promise
.
But I didn’t. I just winked at him. ‘Someday I’m going to help you pick out some new clothes,’ I said.
 
Jake’s bowl was empty, so I found his dry food in one of the kitchen cupboards and filled it up. As soon as the cat heard the faint creak of the cupboard door, he came clambering into the room, his paws thudding on the wood floors. Jake’s step was unusually heavy, even for an animal of his size. If Elmira had been Krull’s downstairs neighbor, she would have already sued both him and the cat.
Jake buried his head in his bowl, tearing at his dry food enthusiastically like a dog, without looking up. ‘You do like your breakfast, don’t you, big guy?’ I freshened up his water bowl and placed it next to him. ‘Don’t forget to breathe, okay?’
I watched him polish off the contents of his food bowl, then lap at his water noisily. He was a weird cat. There was nothing even remotely feline about him.
I wandered back into Krull’s bedroom. Being alone in here wasn’t so bad. I had an urge to open up his closet, bury my face in all of his awful suits.
I was wearing the top sheet, which I’d wrapped around my naked body like a toga. I figured I should put my clothes back on and make the bed - at least it would be something to do. I didn’t feel like listening to the TV or the radio, didn’t want any contact with the world outside. Contact with the bed, on the other hand, I could handle.
Just after I unfastened the toga and let it drop to the floor, the phone rang. I smiled. Krull had probably just arrived at work, and his timing was impeccable. ‘Hi.’
A voice floated back - a thin whisper, barely audible. ‘Samantha.’
‘John? Why are you whispering?’
‘It isn’t John.’ A small, bitter laugh, with no tone behind it, just air.
I gritted my teeth and said nothing.
‘Schoolteacher Samantha . . . They’re best when they’re little.’
‘Who the fuck is this?’ Of course I knew who it was. By now I knew.
‘More little corpses. Then little you.’ The whisper was toneless, genderless, but strong, like an icy wind.
< {‘div height="1em">
‘Leave me alone.’
‘Have you ever touched a corpse’s skin? It’s cold and stiff. Perfect.’
‘I said—’
‘Soon you’ll feel like that. Touch your face.’
I let the receiver drop back into the cradle, put my clothes on fast, then pulled Krull’s blanket around me. Suddenly, my whole body felt deeply, painfully cold.
 
When Krull showed up about half an hour later, I hadn’t moved from the floor. I heard his voice in the kitchen. ‘Where are you, the bedroom?’ But I couldn’t answer.
The minute he walked in, and asked, ‘What’s wrong?’ I jumped up and threw my arms around him.
‘What happened?’
I took a deep breath and told him about the phone call.
‘Right after I left?’ he asked.
‘About ten minutes. I thought it was you, so I picked it up.’
‘Did anyone call after that?’
‘No . . . No one. I’ve been . . . sitting on the floor.’
He picked up the phone.
‘Who are you calling?’
‘I’m going to dial star sixty-nine. He was probably calling from a blocked cell or a pay phone nearby, since he seemed to know you were alone. But who knows? It’s worth a shot.’
I watched him tap in the digits, watched him listen as the recorded voice listed the origin of the last received call. Slowly, his face went white.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
His voice flat beyond emotion, Krull recited the seven digits. It was my phone number.
 
We drove to my apartment in the unmarked police car that Krull had picked up at the station. It was beige, a few years old, American. It reminded me of Sal’s Cavalier, which reminded me of blood.
I was wearing the same outfit I’d had on the day before, plus Krull’s leather jacket to replace my ruined coat. It was the same one he’d been wearing when I’d first seen him at Sunny Side, and it felt good - protective, like strong arms around me. I wanted him to insist I keep it.
Art Boyle and a couple of squad cars were going to meet us outside the building. Then they’d either capture Mirror Eyes, or, at the very {, aa cleast, recover whatever evidence he’d left. The thought of his mouth on my receiver still made me cringe, but otherwise I was weirdly energized.
I’m working with the cops
, I kept thinking. ‘So am I an operative or an informant?’ I asked Krull.
He didn’t reply.
Krull hadn’t wanted me to come with him, but I’d insisted. If he was angry about it, I didn’t care. I didn’t want to be alone again in his empty bedroom, worrying about what was happening to him outside.
The detective stared straight ahead with his teeth clenched, his jaw squared. I examined his profile. He hadn’t shaved that morning, and faint black stubble highlighted the strong bones in his face. His eyelashes
were
beautiful, I realized. Soft and lush and sweet-looking - not like the hard stubble, not like the prominent bump at the center of his nose. ‘How’d you break it?’
‘Break what?’
‘Your nose.’
He looked at me. ‘I did something I shouldn’t have. Something that was not safe, that I had no business doing. If I had stayed where I should’ve stayed, it never would’ve happened.’ I knew he was trying to sound stern and punishing, but he wasn’t doing a very good job of it.
‘Oooh, what did you do? Get into a brawl with some skel?’
He let out a short, involuntary laugh. ‘
Skel?
’
‘Yeah, you know. A skel. A perp. A jailhouse Johnny.’
‘Where do you get these expressions?’
‘Jailhouse Johnny come at you with a shiv?’
‘Not quite, Mickey Spillane.’
‘Some rat fink squealing punk wouldn’t give up the goods, so you had to leave the negotiating to Mr. Fist and his five little friends?’
‘You have really been watching some crappy cop shows.’
I could tell he wasn’t angry anymore, so I put my hand on his thigh and squeezed it. ‘It ain’t easy being the Man, huh?’
He put his hand on top of mine. ‘You bet it ain’t easy, dollface,’ he said. ‘But that’s not how my nose got broken.’
I looked at him. ‘Then what did you do that wasn’t safe?’
‘I jumped off our roof when I was seven years old. I was pretending to be Superman.’
I smiled. ‘Ah.’
‘Broke my leg too, but that healed better.’
We were about half a block away from my building; Krull pulled over to the curb. Through the rearview mirror, I watched a dark blue Impala slide in behind us, watched Art Boyle squeeze out of it and walk up to the driver’s side window. ‘Freakin’ car only gets AM radio, so I’m stuck listening to that freakin’ all-news station that gets everything wrong.’
‘Since when do you say
freakin
’?’ Krull asked.
‘I’m a gentleman.’ He smiled at me. ‘There’s five uniforms up in your apartment, Miss Leiffer, and they say nobody’s there.’
‘Well, that’s a relief.’ It wasn’t, really.
‘I bet we find lots of trace,’ Boyle replied, as if he’d been reading my mind. ‘You’d be amazed at what people leave behind, without even knowing it. Probably be able to get a full DNA sample from your phone.’
I got out of the car. As we walked toward my building, I turned to Krull. ‘Hard to think of him as having DNA.’
‘Yeah, too human.’
Inside my apartment, I saw three of the uniforms standing near the door, and I realized one of them was Rosy Cheeks, the gay-paranoid cop from the previous night. ‘You might want to keep away from my CD collection,’ I told him. ‘There’s a lot of Liza in there.’
‘Huh?’
Near the coffee table, Krull and Boyle were speaking to two more officers - a Latin guy with an eagle tattoo on his arm and Rosy Cheeks’ redheaded partner, Fiona. ‘Miss Leiffer,’ she said, ‘do you like your refrigerator? I notice it’s a Kenmore, and I’m thinking of getting one.’
Well, that was out of left field
. ‘I don’t keep a lot of things in it other than coffee and leftover Chinese food.’
‘Mind if I take a peeksie?’
‘This is a crime scene, not Macy’s,’ Boyle said. ‘Go shopping on your own hours.’
A crime scene
. ‘To tell the truth,’ I said, ‘it feels kind of nice to talk about . . . kitchen appliances. It feels normal.’
Fiona looked at Boyle.
‘Knock yourself out,’ he said.
Krull put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Take your time. Look around, and see if anything seems out of place or different,’ he said. ‘If it does, just point it out, we’ll collect it.’
I paced the area, looking at the phone stand, the bookshelves, the positioning of the couch, TV, stereo. Everything was where I’d left it, including the cordless receiver at the center of the dinette table, next to Krull’s business card. ‘That explains where he got your number,’ I said, pointing to the card.
Krull nodded. ‘Good detective.’
I spotted the blinking light on my answering machine. ‘I didn’t have any messages before.’
‘Let’s give it a listen,’ Boyle said as Fiona moved toward the kitchen.
When he hit the button, I noticed the rubber glove on his hand, and it struck me as funny, this sterilized object in an apartment with dust bunnies under the couch.
The electronic voice said, ‘You have two messages.’
‘Probably from my mother. She’s concerned I might be a drug addict.’
‘Why?’ Krull said.
I shrugged my shoulders. ‘She’s a self-help author.’
‘Is your mother Sydney Stark-Leiffer?’ said Boyle. ‘I saw her on
Oprah
.’
‘New message. Three a.m.,’ said the machine.
Next came a female voice, but it didn’t belong to Sydney. It was small and trembling and, if I’d ever heard it before, I couldn’t place it. ‘Hello . . . Samantha.’ A sharp intake of breath. ‘You don’t know me, but you’ve . . . seen me. Your number was here, with your name. He wrote it. He only writes down numbers of people he . . . I need you to know I didn’t kill them.
He
did. I was afraid. I wanted to run away, but I couldn’t. Um, it’s early in the morning. Meet me by the river at . . . noon? At Shank’s. I want to help you.
Please
.’
‘Shank’s Dredging and Construction,’ I said.
The woman in the red dress
. Krull and I stared at each other.
The call had come in five hours after Sal had been shot, three hours after Yale and I had seen the man outside St. Vincent’s. ‘It was a new message - not saved. The only way he could have heard it is if he was in here when she called.’

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