The Jake Helman Files Personal Demons (2 page)

“It’s not worth half what we’re paying for it, and I’m told we got a sweet deal. But what can ye do? This is New York City, as everyone insists on reminding us.”

She led him into the darkness, the heels of her pumps clacking on the hardwood floor. She switched on a tall halogen lamp, and bright light bounced off the living room ceiling. A solitary window faced a brick wall close enough to touch, and framed photographs of smiling faces and rolling green hills obscured the titles of paperbacks nestled in a wooden bookcase.

“This is my suite,” she said, sweeping her arm like a game show hostess, “and that’s my bed.” She pointed at the foldout sofa on the other side of a chest that served as both a dresser and a coffee table. “I must seem like an orphan in a Charles Dickens novel, but Meg moved here first, so she got the bedroom.” Cocking her head to one side, she smiled. “But it’s all ours tonight.”

Pushing on the door beside the modest television, she led him into the dark bedroom. A white shag rug muffled Shannon’s steps as she circled the queen-sized bed. Two windows on either side of the headboard overlooked the street, and drunken laughter rose on the wind. She clicked on a small lamp with a red shade, which glowed beneath her like a small fire. Returning to the spot where Byron stood, she closed the door, shutting out the living room light. The sound of his even breathing made her smile.

Stepping to one side, Shannon pressed the
PLAY
button on the CD player atop Meg’s bureau, and Bono launched into a live rendition of “Sunday, Bloody Sunday.” She hummed along with him as she removed the cat ears from her hair and set them down. Seeing Byron’s reflection in the mirror, his eyes appraising her body from behind, she felt a surge of impatient desire. “Are ye going to keep your coat on all night?”

He smiled in the dim light. “That could prove awkward.”

“Spot-on.” Her words came out sounding slurred. Unpinning the cat tail from her miniskirt, she twirled it as she faced him.

Byron set his briefcase down on the bureau and slipped off his coat, which he laid over the back of a padded chair. “I’ve never made love to a cat before.”

A cat in heat
, Shannon thought, suppressing a giggle as she closed in on her guest. Purring, she ran her painted fingernails up the front of his shirt and loosened his tie, leaning close to his face. His lips parted, and she teased them with the end of the tail. His nostrils flared and she dropped the tail on the floor.

“Meow,”
she said, closing her mouth over his. Their lips pressed against each other, their tongues meeting. She breathed in his cologne, a subtle brand she failed to recognize, and her heart beat faster. Pulling the jacket from his shoulders, she threw it on top of his coat. She circled the bed once more, swinging her hips, and faced him from the other side. Drawing the tab of her jacket zipper down inch by inch, she allowed the fringed leather to slip to the floor. Stepping out of her shoes, she watched

Byron pull his tie over his head like a noose and toss it on top of his garments. She pulled her top over her head and discarded it on the floor. Unhooking her lacy black bra and tossing it aside, she exposed her pale, freckled breasts to him, the crucifix gleaming between them. She hooked her thumbs inside her miniskirt and wiggled her hips free of the tight fabric, then stood before him in black panties, her breasts rising and falling as she waited for him to catch up to her.

Byron unbuttoned his shirt with methodic deliberation and stepped over to the bureau with his back to her. He thumbed the tabs on his briefcase and the latches snapped open.

Shannon stood on her toes, trying to see inside the case as Byron raised its lid. “What are you doing?”

“Just getting ready,” he said under his breath.

She scrunched her eyebrows together. Did he carry condoms in his briefcase? American businessmen were so anal!

Byron moved his hands in the darkness, and Shannon heard the elastic snap of latex. When he turned around, she saw that he wore opaque surgical gloves. He whipped off his shirt in a fluid motion and flung it at the chair, the sudden motion causing her to flinch. Even in the dim light, she discerned the taut muscles on his wiry frame. She squinted at the colorful tattoos covering the upper half of his torso, and confusion clouded her eyes. He had seemed so straightlaced in the pub, hardly the type for such elaborate needlework. Her instincts told her this made no sense, that she had miscalculated his makeup.

Byron reached into the briefcase behind him. Raising a pocket-sized digital camera to one eye, he squeezed its shutter button. The flash made Shannon blink, spots dancing before her eyes, and she heard a whirring sound.

“What the
fuck?”

Without making a sound, Byron returned the camera to the briefcase and took out a second object. As he moved around the corner of the bed, closing the distance between them, Shannon’s mind registered the details of the tattoos on his chest and gasped. Then she saw the long blade of the knife in his hand and her eyes widened.

This isn’t happening
, she thought, sobering as panic coursed through her veins. She backed against the bedside table and the lamp crashed to the floor. The flickering bulb projected her shadow over the stranger she had brought home. No, wait; her real home was far away, in Ireland …

“Get the hell out of here right now!” The outburst strained her vocal cords as she scanned the dark room for something with which to defend herself. Why couldn’t Meg suddenly walk in with Ronald or Donald, or whatever the hell his name was?

Byron raised the knife high above his head and brought it down in a broad, diagonal stroke. First the blade sliced through the darkness, then through the soft flesh of Shannon’s throat, jerking her off balance. Hearing something spatter the wall to her right, she flailed her arms, struggling to maintain her balance. Blood jetted out from beneath her jaw, painting the floral bedcovers.

Sweet Lord Jesus!
She gagged on hot fluid rising from within her, and she knew it was not bile.

Byron rotated the knife and slashed upward with a backswing, severing her jugular vein. More blood spattered the mirror behind him.

Shannon tried to scream, but only a strangled gurgling escaped her throat. The hot liquid filled her mouth and she saw her reflection in the spotted mirror: blood sprayed out in opposing directions from the gaping wounds in her throat, which opened and closed like small, screaming mouths.

That isn’t me
, she thought, collapsing onto the rug, her body tingling. She tried to support herself on her elbows but fell back. Her head rolled to one side on the rug, blood pumping out over her bare shoulders and breasts. The wet sounds of her own breathing filled her ears as she gazed up at the ceiling. The swirling pattern in the plaster inspired images of clouds in heaven, and the flickering lightbulb suggested lightning. Footsteps vibrated the floor and she dropped her gaze. Byron had returned to the bureau, his naked back to her. No tattoos there. He set the bloody knife inside his briefcase and removed something else.

Why is he doing this?
He had seemed so kind—so safe—in the pub, and she had only wanted to get close to him for one night. Her head throbbed and she felt her life ebbing away. Her feet jerked in spasms, and she wondered if they were keeping time with the beat of the U2 song fading on the boom box.

“Sunday, bloody Sunday …”

Byron returned to her, his movements calm and detached.

He leaned over and clasped what looked like an oxygen mask with a translucent vinyl bag attached to it over her mouth and nose. She felt his breath on her face and saw twin reflections of herself in his eyes. His lips moved rhythmically, forming unintelligible words.

Chanting
—?

She wanted to pull the mask away, but her limbs refused to obey the commands from her brain. The smell of vinyl filled her nostrils and the bag attached to the mask crinkled up as she sucked in oxygen. Then it inflated as she exhaled. She felt light-headed, and as her vision turned dark, she saw Byron—what was his last name?—staring down at her, waiting for her to die.

She knew he would not have to wait long.

Darkness, followed by blinding white light.

Deprived of her senses, Shannon no longer felt the wounds in her throat. She experienced an odd sensation of ascension; it soothed her, like floating on her back in a gentle stream, naked in languid sunlight.

Where am I?

Perhaps she had only passed out, drunk, and the man with the knife had existed only in a nightmare. Or maybe he really had stabbed her, and she now lay in a coma, trapped inside her mind with nothing but her thoughts for company. She concentrated, willing herself to see again, and the world came into focus through the light: it was like staring through a veil of cottony gauze. A bright, golden glow filled the bedroom even though the only visible light source was the lamp on the floor. Her hearing returned, the sounds in the room amplified as they ricocheted around her; she went from sensory deprivation to sensory overload in an instant. She heard deep breathing and an excited heartbeat, neither of them her own. Two gigantic eyes stared down at her, blue and crystalline. She felt like an insect trapped in ajar before—

God?

No—Byron. He lifted her toward him as if she was an infant, yet she did not feel his hands on her. His lips split open like a fissure, revealing his teeth, snowcapped mountains. She tried to pull away, but her body refused to respond. Then her peripheral vision expanded, opening up as if her eyeballs had been turned inside out, and she saw around her in every direction at once.

What’s happening to me?

Her body lay bloody and motionless on the floor below her, an empty shell, and she stared into her own unblinking eyes. The gold crucifix between her breasts shimmered in the light, the blood around it rippling. Could all of that blood have come from her?

Dead
. No use denying it. The bastard had murdered her! How would Meg react when she discovered her corpse? How would her parents cope with the news? She felt a gentle tide tugging at her and sensed she belonged elsewhere, that Byron’s attention was somehow keeping her from her natural destination. Again she tried to break free of his grasp, but it was like trying to awaken from a nightmare that would not release her. Her thoughts scattered like dust in a windstorm, and when they re-formed, she realized that her disembodied essence had been trapped within the vinyl bag affixed to the oxygen mask.

Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep
…

Byron turned toward the bureau, and Shannon saw his reflection in the blood-spattered mirror: he held the inflated oxygen bag between his palms like a basketball. The bright light emanated from inside the bag—from
her
—but Byron seemed blind to it. He stepped toward the bureau as if carrying a fragile antique. Shannon focused on the briefcase as they approached it: inside it she saw the bloody knife and the camera. Her panic multiplied a thousandfold.

Not in there!
Stopping at the bureau, Byron set the bag inside the case, fitting it snug in a compartment. Smiling down at her, he closed the lid like that of a coffin. The bag flattened out and Shannon sensed it expanding on the sides. Her light filled the interior of the case, spotlighting the candy-colored blood on the knife’s blade. She heard two clicks as Byron latched the tabs, then felt vibrations as he thumbed the combination locks, entombing her.

A scream welled up inside her, unable to escape.

J
ake Helman stood on the sidewalk of West Forty-fifth Street, in the upscale Manhattan neighborhood formerly known as Hell’s Kitchen. The current residents preferred to call the area Clinton or Restaurant Row, but to Jake it would always be Midtown North, one of the precincts below Fifty-ninth Street that comprised Manhattan South. He lit his second consecutive Marlboro to steady his nerves, but the nicotine only added to his edge. Less than one hour into his shift, the rising sun restored color to the faded urine and vomit stains on the gray concrete, the remains of smashed pumpkins rotting near his feet.

Jake hated Mondays, especially during morning rush hour. The neighborhood yuppies moved like lemmings to the nearest subway station, casting sideways glances at the police activity on the block. Jake stood rigid in a cascading river of khaki slacks, designer sunglasses, and cell phones. Inhaling cigarette smoke, he tensed his muscles beneath his three-quarter-length black leather coat, and the tide of corporate hucksters parted around him like the Red Sea around Moses.

The pulsating strobes of three Radio Motor Patrol cars and one Emergency Services ambulance parked along the one-way street splashed garish red and blue light on the residential buildings. The doors of the white radio cars bore the NYPD’s motto in sky blue lettering:
COURTESY, PROFESSIONALISM, RESPECT.
Jake had parked his unmarked Chevy Cavalier up the block, behind the EMS bus. Uniformed police officers stood outside the apartment building behind him and along the curb before him, controlling the crowd.