NightScape, Page 3

  Soon the Great Man will have you back. Carlos thought.

  * * *

  But His Excellency wasn't waiting when the freighter docked at Marseilles. Yet another frantic messenger hurried aboard, reporting that their leader was still being chased, delivering new instructions. He frowned at Carlos's beard-stubbled cheeks, flushed skin, and hollow eyes. "But are you well enough? Perhaps someone else should - "

  "I vowed to His Excellency! I must complete the mission!"

  When Maria privately objected that he wasn't well, he told her, "You don't understand what's involved!"

  Distressed, he arranged for the crate to be unloaded from the freighter and placed in a truck. Under guard, it was driven to a secret airstrip, from where the crate was flown to Italy and placed on a train bound for Rome. Three times, rebel teams attempted to intercept it, but Carlos was watchful. The teams were destroyed, although at the cost of several of his men.

  He paced in front of the crate in an otherwise empty boxcar. How had the rebels anticipated the itinerary? As the train reached Rome, he was forced to conclude that there was a spy. One of His Excellency's advisers must be passing information to the rebels. The itinerary had to be modified.

  As scheduled, the crate was rushed to a warehouse. But twelve hours later, Carlos had it moved to the basement of a church and two days later to a storage room in a mortuary. After an uneventful week, only then was it taken to its intended destination, an abandoned villa outside Rome. Carlos hoped that his variation of the schedule had confused the rebels into thinking that the entire itinerary had been altered. Further variations tempted him, but he had to insure that His Excellency could get in touch with him and, more important, rejoin Her Majesty.

  The villa was in disrepair, decrepit, depressing. The stained-glass windows were cracked. The lights didn't work. Cobwebs floated from the great hall's ceiling. In the middle of the immense dusty marble floor, the crate lay surrounded by candles, so Carlos could see to aim if any of the ruin's numerous rats dared to approach the crate and its sacred contents. His men patrolled the grounds, guarding the mansion's entrances, while Maria had orders to remain in an upper-floor bedroom.

  Periodically Carlos opened the crate and the coffin to remind himself of the reason for his sacrifice, of his need for constant vigilance.

  His vision of the blessed mystery became increasingly profound. Her Majesty seemed ever more lifelike, beatific, radiant. The illusion was overwhelming-she wasn't dead but merely sleeping.

  He couldn't remember the last time he'd bathed. His hair and beard were shaggy. His garments were wrinkled and filthy. As he slumped in a musty chair, unable to fight exhaustion, his chin on his chest, his gunhand drooping, he vaguely recalled a time when his dreams had been restful. But now he had only nightmares, assaulted by ghosts.

  A scrape of metal jerked him awake. A footstep on marble made him spin. His skill defeated his sleep-clouded eyes. He shot repeatedly, roared in triumph, and rushed toward the enemy who'd brazenly violated Her Majesty's sanctum. Preparing to deliver a just-to-be-certain shot to the head, he gaped down at Maria unmoving in a pool of blood, every bullet having pierced her pregnancy.

  He shrieked until his throat seized shut.

  * * *

  Maria was buried behind the villa in one of its numerous untended gardens. He couldn't risk sending for a priest, who in spite of a bribe would no doubt inform the authorities about the killing. What was more, to leave the villa to take his wife to a church and then a graveyard was out of the question. At all extremes, his duty remained. Her Majesty had to be guarded. Weeping, he patted his shovel on the dirt that covered Maria's corpse. He knelt and planted a single flower, a yellow rose, her favorite.

  His grief was mixed with anger. "You were told to stay upstairs! You had your orders just as I have mine! Why didn't you listen? How many times did I tell you? Obedience is the greatest virtue!"

  Holding back sobs, he returned to the villa's great hall, relieved the guards who had taken his place, and commanded them to remain outside. He locked the great hall's door and wearily approached the crate to open the coffin, wavering before Her Majesty. Her blonde hair glowed. Her red lips glistened. Her sensuous cheeks were translucent.

  "Now you understand how solemly I swore. On my soul. I sacrificed my wife for you. I killed my unborn child. There is nothing I wouldn't do for you. Sleep in peace. Never fear. No matter the cost, I will always protect you."

  His tears dropped onto her forehead. Her eyelids seemed to flicker. He inhaled sharply. But he was only imagining, he told himself. The movement had simply been the shimmer of light through his misted eyes.

  He wiped the tears from her forehead. "I'm sorry, Your Majesty." He tried to resist but couldn't. He kissed her brow where the tears had fallen.

  * * *

  A messenger at last arrived. After restless nights of sleeping beside the crate, Carlos sighed, anticipating that the Great Man had escaped and intended to reclaim his treasure. At the same time, he surprised himself by regretting that his mission had come to an end. It hadn't, however. With an odd relief, he learned that the Great Man was still being chased. Carlos studied his new instructions. To take the crate to Madrid.

  "His Excellency is obliged to you for your loyalty," the messenger said. "He told me to tell you he won't forget."

  Carlos fought to still his trembling hands, tugged at his unkempt beard, and brushed back his shaggy hair. "It's my privilege to be the Great Man's servant. No sacrifice is too burdensome."

  "You're an inspiration. His Excellency heard about the unfortunate loss of your wife. He sends his deep condolences."

  Carlos gestured in grief as well as devotion.

  But devotion to whom? he wondered. "As I said, any sacrifice."

  In Madrid, he noticed Her Majesty's lips move and knew he had to feed her.

  Three months later, having been ordered to move the crate to Lisbon, he knew that Her Majesty would be cold en route and covered her with a blanket.

  Six months later, having relocated in Brussels, he knew that Her Majesty would have trouble breathing in the coffin and ordered his men to bring him an electric drill.

  * * *

  Finally the message arrived. Escape accomplished. Faithful friend, your obligation is at an end. Directions enclosed. With heartfelt thanks and immense anticipation, I ask you to return what is mine.

  Yours?

  Carlos turned to Her Majesty and sobbed.

  * * *

  The motorcade fishtailed up the snowy road that approached the chateau outside Geneva. The Great Man waited anxiously, breathing frost as he paced the driveway. Pressing his chilled hands under the crate, he helped his servants carry it through the opened double door. Impatient, he ordered it placed in the steeple-roofed living room and commanded everyone to leave, except for the genius mortician who had used his secret skills to preserve the Great Man's love and who now had been summoned to validate the results of his promise.

  Each breathed quickly, ready with crowbars to raise the crate's lid but finding that it wasn't secure. Distressed, they reached to open the coffin but discovered that it wasn't locked.

  Her Majesty looked astonishingly lifelike, even more than the genius had guaranteed.

  But a hole had been drilled in the lid of her coffin.

  There was a matching hole in her skull, the drill having gone too deep.

  And rotten food bulged from her mouth.

  And brains and blood covered her face.

  Carlos lay on top of her, a bullet hole in his skull, a pistol in his hand, a beatific expression on his face.

  In 1987, my fifteen-Year-old son Matthew died from strep and staph infections, the consequence of complications in a bone-marrow transplant that was a desperate attempt to cure his rare form of bone cancer. Thereafter, my imagination dwelled on the theme of grief. Eventually, I wrote several stories on the subject, many of which appeared in my earlier collection, Black Evening. In this further grief-themed story, I co
uldn't help thinking of Ted Bundy. Commissioned by writer/anthologist Dennis Etchison, it appeared in the 1992 anthology MetaHorror and was nominated for that year's Horror Writers of America best-novella award.

  Nothing Will Hurt You

  Later the song would have agonizing significance for him. "I can't stop hearing it," Chad would tell his psychiatrist and fight to control his rapid breathing. His eyes would ache. "It doesn't matter what I'm doing, meeting a client, talking to a publisher, reading a manuscript, walking through Central Park, even going to the bathroom, I hear that song! I've tried my damnedest not to. I hardly sleep, but when I manage to, I wake up feeling I've been humming it all night."

  Chad vividly remembered the first time he'd heard it. He could date it exactly: Wednesday, April 20,1979. He could give the time precisely: 9:46 p.m., because although he'd found the song poignant and the singer's performance outstanding, he'd felt an odd compulsion to glance at his watch. It must have been a tougher day than I realized, he'd thought. So tired. Nine forty-six. Is that all?

  Sweeney Todd. The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

  Stephen Sondheim's musical had opened on Broadway in March, a critical success, tickets impossible to get, except that Chad had a playwright client with contacts in the production company. When Chad's wife, Linda, broke one of their marriage's rules and gave Chad a surprise birthday party, the client (pretending to be a magician) pulled two tickets from behind Chad's ear. "Happy forty-second, old buddy." But Chad remembered the precise date he saw the musical not because it had anything to do with his birthday. Instead, he had a deeper reason. The demon barber of Fleet Street. Come in for a shave and a haircut, have your throat slit, get dumped down a chute, ground up into hamburger, and baked into Mrs. Lovett's renowned, ever-popular, scrumptious, how-do-you-get-that-distinctive-taste meat pies.

  Can't eat enough of them. To startle the audience, a deafening whistle shrilled each time Sweeney slashed a throat. Blood spurted. And one of Mrs. Lovett's waiters was an idiot kid who hadn't the faintest idea of what was going on, but he had misgivings that something was wrong. He confessed his fears to Mrs. Lovett, who thought of him fondly as her son. She promised that she'd protect him. She sang that nothing would hurt him-a magnificent performance by Angela Lansbury of a tune that forever after would torture Chad, its title: "Not While I'm Around." A lilting heartbreaking song in the midst of multiple murders and cannibalism.

  After the show, Chad and Linda had trouble finding a taxi and didn't get back to their Upper East Side apartment until almost midnight. They felt so disturbed by the plot yet elated by the music that they decided to have some brandy and discuss their reactions to the show, and that's when the phone rang. Scowling, Chad wondered who in hell would be calling at such an hour. Immediately he suspected one of his nervous, not to mention important, authors with whom he'd been having tense conversations all week because of a publisher's unfavorable reaction to the author's new manuscript. Chad tried to ignore the phone's persistent jangle. Let the answering machine take it, he thought. At once, he angrily picked up the phone.

  A man's gravelly voice, made faint by the hiss of a long-distance line, sounded tense. "This is Lieutenant Raymond MacKenzie. I'm with the New Haven police force. I know it's late. I apologize if I woke you, but... There's been an emergency, I' m afraid."

  What Chad heard next made him quiver. In response, he insisted, "No. You're wrong. There's got to be some mistake."

  "Don't I wish." The lieutenant's voice became more gravelly. "You have my deepest sympathy. Times like this, I hate my job." The lieutenant gave instructions.

  Chad murmured compliance and set down the phone.

  Linda, who'd been staring, demanded to know why Chad was so pale.

  When Chad explained, Linda blurted, "No! Dear God, it can't be!"

  Urgency canceled numbness. They each threw clothes into a suitcase, hurried from their apartment to the rental garage three blocks away where they stored their two-year-old Ford (they'd bought the car at the same time they'd bought their cottage in Connecticut, so they could spend weekends near their daughter), and sped with absolutely no memory of the drive (except that they kept repeating, "No, it's impossible!") to New Haven and Lieutenant MacKenzie, whose husky voice, it turned out, didn't match his short, thin frame.

  Denial was reflexive, insistent, stubborn. Even when the lieutenant sympathetically repeated and rerepeated that there had not been a mistake, when he regretfully showed them Stephanie's purse, her wallet, her driver's license, when he showed them a statement from Stephanie's roommate that she hadn't come back to the dormitory last night...even when Chad and Linda went down to the morgue and identified the body, or what was left of the body, although it hadn't been Stephanie's face that was mutilated.. .they still kept insisting, no, this had to be someone who looked like Stephanie, someone who stole Stephanie's purse, someone who.. .some mistake!

  Nothing would hurt him, Angela Lansbury had sung to the boy her character thought of as a son in Sweeney Todd, and the night before when Chad had listened to the lilting near-lullaby, he had been briefly reminded of his own and only child, dear sweet Stephanie, when she was a tot and he had read to her at bedtime, had sung nursery rhymes to her, and had taught her to pray.

  "Now I lay me down to sleep," his beloved daughter had obediently repeated. "I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.... Daddy, is there a bogeyman?"

  "No, dear. It's just your imagination. Go to sleep. Don't worry. Daddy's here. Nothing will hurt you."

  "Not While I'm Around," the song had been called. But two years earlier Stephanie had gone to New Haven, for a B.A. in English at Yale, and last night there had been a bogeyman, and despite Chad's long-ago promise, he had not been around when the bogeyman very definitely hurt Stephanie.

  "When did it..." Chad struggled to breathe as he stared at Lieutenant MacKenzie. "What time did she..."

  "The body was discovered at just before eleven last night. Based on heat loss from the brain, the medical examiner estimates the time of death between nine-thirty and ten p.m."

  "Nine forty-six."

  The lieutenant frowned. "More or less. It's difficult to be that precise."

  "Sure." Chad bit his lip, tasting tears. "Nine forty-six."

  He remembered the odd compulsion he'd felt to glance at his watch the previous night when Angela Lansbury had sung that nothing would hurt her friend.

  While the bogeyman killed Stephanie.

  Chad knew. He was absolutely certain. Nine forty-six. That was when Stephanie had died. He'd felt the tug of her death as if a little girl had jerked at the sleeve of his suit coat.

  "Daddy, is there a bogeyman?"

  "Not while I can help it."

  Chad must have said that out loud.

  Because the lieutenant frowned, asking, "What? I'm sorry, sir. I didn't quite hear what you just said."

  "Nothing." Sobbing uncontrollably, holding Linda whose features were raw-red, dripping with tears, contorted with grief, Chad felt the terrible urge to ask the lieutenant to take him down to the morgue again-just so he could see Stephanie one more time, even if she looked like, even if her...

  All he wanted was to see her again! Stephanie! No, it couldn't be! Jesus, not Stephanie!

  Numbness. Denial. Confusion. Chad later tried to reconstruct the conversations, remembering them through a haze. No matter how often he was given details, he needed more and more clarification. "I don't understand. What the hell happened? Have you any clues? Witnesses? Have you found the son of a bitch who did this?"

  The lieutenant looked bleak as he explained. Stephanie had gone to the university library the previous afternoon. A friend had seen her leave the library at six. On her way back to the dormitory, someone must have offered her a ride or asked her to help him carry something into a building or somehow grabbed her without attracting attention. The usual method was to appeal to the victim's sympathy by pretending to be disabled. However i
t was done, she had disappeared.

  Afterward, the killer had stopped his car at the side of a road outside New Haven and dumped Stephanie's body into a ditch. The absence of blood at the scene indicated that the murder had occurred at another location. The road was far from a highway. At night, all the killer had to do was drive along the road until there weren't any headlights before or behind him, then stop and rush to open the trunk and get rid of the body. Twenty seconds later, he'd have been back on his way.

  The lieutenant sighed." It's only coincidence that a car on that road last night happened to have a flat tire where the killer left your daughter. The driver's a farmer who lives in the area. He switched on his flashlight, walked around the car to check his tire, and his light picked up your daughter. Pure coincidence, but clues, yes, because of that coincidence, this time we've got some. Tire tracks at the side of the road. It rained yesterday afternoon. Any tracks in the dirt would have to be fresh. Forensics got a very clear set of impressions."

  "Tire tracks? But they won't identify the killer."

  "What can I say, Mr. Dolan? At the moment, those tire tracks are all we've got - and believe me, they're more than any other police force involved in these killings has managed to get, except of course for the consistent marks on the victims."

  Plural. On that point, at least, Chad didn't need an explanation. One look at Stephanie's body, at what the bastard had done to her body, and Chad knew who the killer was. Not the bastard's name, of course. But everybody knew his nickname. One of those cheap tabloids at the supermarket checkout counter had given it to him. The Biter. And reputable newspapers had stooped to the tabloid's level by repeating it. Because in addition to raping and strangling his victims (eighteen so far, all Caucasian females, attractive, blond, in their late teens, in college), the killer left bite marks on them, police reports revealed.