The Guilty Read online

  The room was dark, a faint amber glow dying on the carpet. The sun was going down. How long had I been out? My heart beat fast, fear and adrenaline spreading quickly, my pulse racing as panic began to set in. Water dripped down my face. It got into my eyes and I tried to blink it away.

  Then I heard a sucking sound, looked over and saw a man I’d never seen before sitting at the living room table, smoking a cigarette like he didn’t have a care in the world. He was flicking ashes into a neat little pile on the floor. There was an empty glass in front of him, water beading down its sides. I recognized it as a piece Amanda bought from a mail order catalog a few months back. She’d said my glassware looked so worn it was ready to turn back into sand.

  The stranger cocked his head and smiled at me, like he’d just noticed I was there.

  “You’re a heavy sleeper, Parker. I thought I’d have to bring a marching band in here to get those eyes open.”

  I blinked the spots from my eyes. The man in my living room was young. Mid-twenties. His face had no lines from age, but looked slightly weather-beaten, like he’d grown up in the sun and hadn’t yet learned the dangers of UV rays. He was wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. A blue bandanna was wrapped around his head. His eyebrows and sideburns were dirty blond, but the bandanna hid his hair’s length and style. He wasn’t from the city. Nobody got natural tans living here. Immediately I knew this man, like me, had come to NewYork from far away. He’d come for a reason. He’d killed four people without mercy or remorse. And now he was in my home.

  The skin around his face was taut but smooth, like an older man squeezed into a younger man’s body. His hands were veiny and strong, his expression one of both deep thought and intense malice, like he’d take a long hard thought before slitting your throat. This was the man who had ended four lives.

  Mixed with fear, I felt a strange dose of excitement. The man sitting in my living room presented a fascinating story, one that I’d been dying to uncover. A spool that unraveled here—leaving me beaten and vulnerable, at a murderer’s mercy.

  He peered at me through a smoky haze as he took another drag and exhaled. I couldn’t see any weapons on him, didn’t know what he’d hit me with, only that it was heavy and knocked me out with one blow. I had a burning urge to write a very strongly worded letter to the landlord about the shitty security in this apartment building, but there were more pressing issues.

  “How did you…” I said. My mouth felt like it was filled with cotton, my words slurred and slow.

  “Please,” he said. “Your building is easier to get into than my jeans. And it costs a whole lot less, too.”

  He stood up. Moved closer until he was hovering over me. My heart was pounding. I tried futilely to struggle with my bonds. I could smell the stink of sweat. He was breathing hard, but not enough to keep a sick smile from spreading over his face.

  “Part of me just wants to kill you right now,” he said. “Lord knows you deserve it.”

  “Like Athena deserved it,” I spat. “And Joe Mauser, and Jeffrey Lourdes and David Loverne.”

  “Damn straight,” he said. “Fact is, you belong right in with the whole lot of ’em. I could fucking kill you right now and nobody would know until some shitty two-line statement in your newspaper told ’em.”

  I had nothing to say. I tugged against my bonds, felt pain in my shoulder. It was useless. My legs were asleep, and I had no leverage. The boy watched me with odd fascination, like watching a fly struggle to free itself from a web.

  Finally I stopped struggling.

  “If you wanted to kill me—” I started to say.

  “I would have done it right after I knocked your ass out,” he finished. “No, I don’t aim to kill you just yet, Henry. You’ve been useful so far. I’m sure you were flattered I left one of your writings behind.”

  “You’re demented.”

  He eyed me with disappointment. “Killing you is still a possibility, you don’t get a lot smarter.”

  “Smarter?” I said, rather stupidly.

  “I’ve read your paper,” he said. “I’ve read all those stories about the guns and the bullets and the blah blah blah. Fact is your stories don’t mean anything. What are you doing, son, other than just repeating shit that’s already happened? You’re a goddamn stenographer with a fancy business card, my friend, and just because you happened to look under a log nobody else wanted to get dirty enough to look under doesn’t make you any less of a maggot than the dirt you find underneath.”

  “Like you,” I said. “The maggot I found underneath.”

  “Maggot, whatever. All depends on your perspective,” he said, dropping his cigarette onto the floor where he stubbed it out with the toe of his sneaker. “Funny thing about maggots is, people hate ’em, but the whole world would go to hell without ’em. Maggots strip dead flesh from bone, make sure the smell doesn’t bother your pretty nostrils.”

  “Billy the Kid,” I said, tasting my own blood. “What do you…”

  “Shut the fuck up,” the boy said. Without warning, he stomped on my leg hard with his foot. I let out a cry of pain. “You don’t know anything. You know what you do, Henry Parker? You write about history. Me?” he said with a sharp laugh. “I am history. I decide what makes tomorrow’s headlines. Without me you’d have nothing to write about Athena Paradis, her shitty singing, and David Loverne screwing some whore instead of his wife. Without me Jeffrey Lourdes would have nothing to write about except no-talent hacks getting high and crashing their cars. Fact is, guys like you need a guy like me to survive in this world. You reap what I sow. Nothing you can do to change that.”

  “So why are you here?” I said, the words spilling out of my mouth. “You say I can’t live without you, but I didn’t break into your home and whack you over the head.”

  He laughed, one time, sharply.

  “See my problem is, ungrateful asshole like you doesn’t even know I’m doing you a favor. You might not be able to see it past your six-dollar coffee cup, but Athena Paradis, Lourdes, those people are ruining this place. You take the spotlight off of them you find what really matters. You talk about maggots? They’re the vermin. Guys like you put a spotlight on the vermin, pretend you can’t see how diseased they are. Then they infect you and everyone else. And what do you do? Blame people like me. And since you, Parker, are too chicken-shit to do it yourself, I’m going to do it for you. At some point there won’t be no Athenas left. No more maggots to celebrate. And then you’ll thank me.”

  “So why are you here, exactly? You have some grudge against the world? You didn’t get laid until you were eighteen ’cause the girls didn’t like some freak with a chip on his shoulder?”

  He looked at me, as though confused and saddened by my ignorance. “You’re even dimmer than I thought. Maybe I would be doing folks a favor ’n’ get rid of you.”

  “Then go ahead, get rid of me or get the fuck out of here.”

  “Trust me, I have something better in mind.” His mouth curved into a vicious smile that made my skin crawl. “The real reason I’m here is because there’s some history best stayed buried. I’ve seen you going to talk to all those people. I watched you leave that college professor’s office this morning. And you know what I was thinking when you left? When I saw that broad’s face watch you from her dirty window? I pictured what her head might look like with a rifle slug going through it at five hundred feet per second.”

  “A magnum slug,” I said. “From your Winchester, you freak.”

  “That’s right,” the boy said. He took a step back. “I know about your woman. Amanda, right? Pretty hair, got that cute little birthmark under her neck. I know how she saved your life, Henry. Funny, she keeps your ass out of the ground and all you do is keep bringing ‘maggots’ like me into her world. What I’m wondering, Henry, is if her skin is that pretty on the inside. Rifles aren’t the only things I know how to use pretty well. You don’t get any smarter, we’re going to find out what her skin looks like when we turn t
hat girl inside out.”

  “Amanda,” I breathed. “You go anywhere near her…”

  “I could walk up to her on the street right now and stick a knife into her heart and you’d still be stuck here wriggling like a stupid fucking fish on a hook. If I go anywhere near her you can’t do goddamn anything.”

  The boy’s face seemed to unwind, the tautness leaving it. In other light it might have even looked kind.

  “Amanda,” he repeated. “Amanda Davies. Daughter of Harriet and Lawrence Stein of St. Louis. I got her name from someone at your office, that newspaper you work for that’s going down the drain. People there are awful free with information. I know where she works, I know what train she takes to get to her office in the morning so she can save all the little children whose mommies and daddies didn’t love them enough. Kind of like you and Amanda, right?

  “That’s right, smart guy. So listen, Henry, you and me, we’re on the same page, right? You can do all the storytelling you want, hell there must be a million stories out there in this big bad city. I’m asking nicely, stay away from this one. And as a token of my friendship, I’ll make it a little easier on you.”

  The boy stepped around to where I was sitting. I saw something shiny, the glint of metal. He held a knife in his hands. I tried to crane my neck but I couldn’t see him as he leaned down and reached toward where my hands were bound.

  I started bucking like crazy, but between my head and the bonds my strength was gone. I felt a hand clamp down on my right wrist, holding it to the floor. I jerked my shoulder and tried to free it, gritted my teeth and attempted to pull away.

  Suddenly I felt a searing pain on my right hand and a shout escaped my lips as the blade sliced through my skin. I cried out again as the blade kept cutting, tearing through me for what seemed like hours. I felt hot blood dripping through my fingers, I bit my lips to keep from screaming.

  Finally the blade stopped. The boy stood back up over me. His hands and the blade were covered in my blood. I thought my heart was going to burst through my chest, the room fading away as blood leaked from my veins.

  “Now I’m going to just use your bathroom, clean all this mess up and then I’ll be on my way.” He stepped away and I heard running water. The pain was unbearable, blood leaving my body with every heartbeat.

  Then he came back. Squatted down. Pressed the tip of the knife against my chest, hard enough so I could feel the point digging in between two of my ribs. One small shove and he would pierce my heart.

  “You have a lot to lose, Henry. Think about where you’re going. Take one bad step,” he said, before walking out the door, “and you’ll know what bad means.”

  CHAPTER 33

  I sat still as the nurse sewed my hand back together. After sinking the blade into my flesh, the man had traced every finger, carving a gruesome glove on my palm. He hadn’t severed any tendons, and he’d missed or purposefully ignored the major blood vessels in my wrist. He wanted me hurt. Not dead.

  Curt Sheffield sat on a stool next to me, watching as the black threads closed the wounds. He winced every time the needle pierced my skin, which was slightly disconcerting since between the novocaine numbing my hand and the extra-strength aspirin for my head, I wouldn’t have felt it if someone hit me with a two-by-four.

  “Glad to know the boys in blue get squeamish at the sight of blood,” I said to Curt.

  “Blood? Uh-uh. I’m just wincing in sympathy ’cause you’re gonna have one ugly-ass hand once those stitches come out.” Curt looked at me, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  “Least I still have my looks.”

  “Yeah, right. I’d say you look like hell, but I don’t want to hurt hell’s feelings.”

  “Mmph,” I replied, as another nurse placed an ice pack on my head and secured it with an Ace bandage.

  “You’re lucky Amanda came home when she did,” Sheffield added. “Docs said if you lost any more blood they might have had to amputate the hand.”

  “They didn’t really say that,” I said. “Did they?”

  “Nah, just jerking your chain.”

  “Please, just go away. I bet there are some strangers in the waiting room who’d find you just hilarious.”

  But Curt was right. Amanda had come home to try and make things right, only to find me passed out on the floor, my hand flayed open, blood everywhere. I couldn’t bear to think what it must have felt like for her to see me like that. Because I knew how I would feel if the tables were turned.

  “Where is Amanda?” I asked. “Curt, is she here? Excuse me, Nurse? Are you sure you can’t give me any more novocaine? I think it’s wearing off.” The look the nurse gave me confirmed that if she gave me any more novocaine I wouldn’t feel anything for a long time. She kept on sewing.

  “Amanda’s waiting outside,” Curt said. “Girl’s all broken up, crying like she sprung a leak. Docs asked her to wait outside while they finished upholstering you.”

  “Christ,” I muttered. There was a dull throbbing in my head, and my hand was stiff as a plank of wood. I watched as the stitches were sewn in, knowing they would undoubtedly leave one hell of an ugly scar.

  “In the meantime,” Curt said, “we have a security escort looking after Agnes Trimble. Our guy would have to be crazy or stupid to go after her now.”

  “He’s definitely crazy,” I said, “but not stupid. And he’s not going to touch her. That was just a threat. He’s killing people for a reason, and that doesn’t involve spite.”

  “Nothing more dangerous in this world than a fool with a cause.”

  Prior to being loaded with painkiller, I’d managed to give a sketch artist the best description I could of my assailant. Of course, due to my being knocked silly and his bandanna, it could have been any tan young white guy in NewYork City.

  The nurse began laying strips of adhesive tape over the sutures. I watched with detached curiosity, like it was somebody else’s hand being sewn up. From the corner of my eye I saw Curt playing with a spool of stitching. He was threading it between his hands and wrapping it around his fingers.

  “Those are absorbable stitches,” the nurse said to Sheffield.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “They’re made from specially prepared beef and sheep intestine.”

  Curt smiled and gently placed the spool back on the table.

  Once the nurse finished taping me up, she said, “Keep it dry and clean for twenty-four hours. You can bathe again in forty-eight hours, unless the wounds begin to bleed or you notice a discharge leaking through the adhesive. The tape should fall off on its own in about five days. You need to come back in ten days to have the sutures removed, unless you break a stitch during that time. But try not to. You also have a grade one concussion. You’ll have a bad headache for a few days, but nothing that some extra-strength Tylenol shouldn’t help. If you still feel dizzy or disoriented after a week, or you find you can’t remember certain things, come back immediately.”

  Sheffield looked concerned. “Gonna be awful hard to type with all that junk in your hand. Not to mention your brain floating around in your head.” The nurse shot him a look.

  “I think that was the idea,” I said. “Make my job a little harder.”

  “I heard they’ve made some really good advances in voice recognition software,” Curt added. “Or maybe you can hire a helper monkey or something.”

  “I think I’ll manage.” The nurse gave me a gentle pat on the arm to let me know she was finished. I stood up tentatively. My equilibrium was still off, and I had to lean on Curt for support. “You think this kind of thing ever happened to Woodward?”

  “Not unless Bernstein got frisky with a tire iron. Besides, shadowy parking lots are much safer than the gutters you go digging in. But, hey, Amanda’s waiting for you outside,” he said. “I swear, that girl gains Hulk-like strength when she needs it. They practically had to handcuff her to the bench to keep her in the waiting room.”

  “I don’
t know if I can see her,” I said. “Not like this.”

  “Shut the hell up,” Curt snapped. “You still have your hand ’cause of that girl. That shit happened to me I’d be writing parking tickets with a hook. Get your ass out there. Give her a hug. Let her know her big stupid boyfriend appreciates the fact that in a few weeks he’ll be able to cop a feel with both hands.”

  “I got it, now give me a hand.”

  I wrapped an arm around Curt’s shoulder as he led me through the bright white corridors, navigating me around corners and blue-robed doctors until we reached the waiting room.

  “I can stand,” I said. Curt moved away, then opened the door.

  Amanda was sitting in the waiting room, tucked into a beige chair, her feet tapping relentlessly. As soon as she saw me she leapt up, ran over and threw her arms around me. I winced as the blood flowed to my head, but I wrapped my good arm around her and squeezed as hard as I could.

  “I’m tired of you being unconscious,” she whispered into my ear. I could hear the pain and relief in her voice. I wanted to find the man who’d done this, who made Amanda feel this way.

  “I’m okay,” I said. “A little banged up. And I might need you to open my soda cans for a few weeks.”

  “Not a problem,” she said. Amanda unwrapped herself and stepped back, wiping her face with her sleeve. Her eyes were red, a clump of tissues falling from her hand. “Let’s go home.”

  I said goodbye to Curt and thanked him for his help. He told me he’d give me a call in a few hours to make sure my brain hadn’t started leaking out of my ears. Nothing like a good friend to help cheer you up when you’re in pain.

  We hailed a cab outside the emergency room of New York/Columbia Presbyterian hospital. Amanda helped me inside, as I made sure not to grip anything with my maimed appendage. When we pulled up to our apartment, Amanda again held the door and pulled me out of the cab. She paid and all but carried me upstairs.