The good, the bad, and the ugly
I
Despite her heart pounding in her chest, Heather fought the urge to run and finished with Max Sheehan’s arm. Even if she escaped, what then? As much as her mother interfered in her life she was still her mother. Despite all her mother’s aggravating ways, her obtuse view of the world and how things were, Heather still loved her. And she wouldn’t take the chance of leaving her with this killer, even if it were for a quick run to get help. Several thoughts raced through Heather’s mind. An unfortunate number of coincidences must have come into play to bring the man that had killed Roman’s parents into her own home six years later. How many nights while her father was away at work had her mother stay in the house alone with this evil man? Chills ran up her spine at the thought. Why hadn’t he tried anything? Or was it just a matter of when? How bad would it hurt Roman to relive that night again at the sight of his parents’ killer? The most important thing though was getting her mother and herself out alive.
During their brief combat session several weeks earlier, Roman had told her there were only two choices when faced with a mortal conflict—fight or run.
Running was out of the question at this particular juncture. And even though Roman had taught her the basics of self-defense, Heather was not thrilled at the idea of testing them against this John Smith or whatever his name was. Heather opted for a more subtle choice.
“We should call an ambulance for you now, Mr. Smith,” Heather said trying to hide the fear in her voice.
Why is she nervous all of the sudden, John? Does she know the tattoo on your arm really belongs to me somehow? “No, that won’t be necessary. You did a good job fixing me up and I think it’ll be fine.”
“Well,” Heather said clapping her hands together and stepping away. “I guess I should go up and get my backpack so I can study. Hope you feel better, John.” Heather tried to keep a slow pace as she walked over and ascended the winding staircase.
Why is she in such a hurry? What is she running from? “I better get going. Sorry for the mess,” John said to Gina as he walked toward the double doors, ignoring Max’s voice.
“Don’t worry John, the staff will get it. I’m so sorry you had an accident.
Won’t you go to the hospital? Heather is going to be a doctor someday you know?
She wouldn’t tell you to go unless she really thought you needed medical attention.”
“I’m sure I’ll be fine. Thank you for worrying.” John Smith put his hand on the doorknob, but something caught his attention out of the corner of his eye.
Under the coat rack, on the floor, lay Heather’s backpack. John closed his eyes and took a deep breath. She knows who you are, John. Why would she lie about something so trivial if it weren’t to escape your presence? As we speak, she is probably pressing the numbers into a phone that will finally craft our doom. It’s time to let me out, John. John grabbed the medallion hanging around his neck.
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“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.” I can make them pay for this John. I can make it right. “Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.” I can bring them pain. I can show them what real power is. ”
“John, are you all right?” Gina asked.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.” What do you say John? Time’s a’wasting. If we’re going to go out, let’s at least go out with a bang. Let’s have some fun, shall we? John grabbed his head with both hands and pressed, like his head was in a vice. He shook it back and forth violently. A moment later the thrashing stopped. He stood looking at the door, calm and still, and instead of turning the doorknob he locked it.
“Mr. Smith what is wrong?”
Max Sheehan turned around and faced her, smiling and tilting his head to one side. “There is no Mr. Smith, Mrs. Hawthorne; there never was.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
John walked around her slowly, circling his prey and devouring it from head to toe with his eyes.
“I demand you stop this behavior. You’re scaring me.”
John grabbed her by the back of the neck and pulled her into his chest. The more she wriggled to get free the tighter his grip became. He whispered into her ear. “Scared? You don’t know the meaning of the word.”
John released her. Gina ran two steps until the back of his hand smashed into her face. She lay horizontal in the air like a wrestler that just got clotheslined, and then she dropped, her head bouncing off the marble tile, knocking her unconscious.
II
The security system had been installed in the Hawthorne mansion at the same time the house was built—twenty-three years ago. The idea of updating the system had never even come up. The Hawthornes had never had so much as a peeping tom on the premises, and there was already security a mile down the road at the guard shack in front of the entrance to their subdivision. The private security guards made routine drive-bys throughout the rich neighborhood several times around the clock. The only problem of course was that John Smith’s truck was on the list of authorized vehicles because of his work at the mansion.
Heather stood in front of the keypad looking at the different buttons. There was a red bell that she took to mean “alarm”. Even if the security system was not wired to the local police via phone line a blaring siren might get the attention of the houses nearby or even the guard shack. Heather pushed it.
When nothing happened after several seconds she pressed it again. And when there was no sign of life she pressed the other two buttons. One was a musical note with a line through it, which Heather assumed was for a silent alarm.
The other was a flame for the fire department. Neither one of them produced a response from the plastic keypad on the wall.
Heather scampered down the hallway to her room, shutting and locking the door behind her. She pulled out her cell phone from her jeans’ pocket, flipping it open and pressing 9-1-1. The display read “low battery” and there were no bars 314
left on the power meter. The call dialed but never connected. Again she pressed the green button and the numbers dialed but did not connect. She scrolled through her phone book on the display and hit the name “Tony.” The call connected and began to ring but there wasn’t an answer, not even a voice mail. Back and forth she went from Tony’s cell to 9-1-1 until eventually the light from her display went dark and the phone was completely dead. She jumped across her bed, and found the cordless phone missing from her nightstand. She dropped down to the floor and looked under the bed. She ripped through the pillows and stuffed animals propped up against the headboard. She scanned her dresser, her makeup chair, bookshelves—all in vain. She ran to her bathroom, rummaged through the sink, tore open the doors, looked in the shower, the closet, the hamper—no phone. At that moment the lights in the house went out. Only the light from the moon came in through the drapes. John Smith had found the circuit breaker.
Heather slid back across her bed, stopped at the door in front of her, and unlocked it. Slowly, trying to avoid the softest creak of its hinges, she opened it and peeked her head out. Down the long now dark hallway at the top of the stairs was the gray shadowy outline of John Smith. She could see the bulkiness of his bandaged left arm. Even with the absence of light his eyes seemed to sparkle like a cat. And they saw her at once.
Her only chance was to get the phone in her parents’ room. It was caddy-corner from hers, a mere forty feet to the left. John was at least a hundred feet away but he was already sprinting down the hallway. Heather took a deep breath and bolted diagonally across the hall, too scared to look at her pursuer’s location and too full of adrenaline to veer off course.
She jumped through the doorway, feeling John’s fingertips swipe at the ends of her blonde locks and landed on her knees. She turned and grabbed the doorknob, hoping to slam the door and lock it at the same time. It wouldn’t shut; the bandaged hand of John Smith was grasping the doorjamb.
Heather jumped to her feet, pulled open the door slightly and with all her weight and might slammed it on the hand of her attacker. John let out an agonizing bellow but still held to the frame of the doorway. Heather repeated the maneuver again and again, this time in shorter strokes. Open and slam. Open and slam.
Finally, the hand receded, and the door closed. Heather tried to turn the doorknob for good measure. It did not move.
The phone sat in the corner of the room on a nightstand. It was white with gold trim around the base, mouth, and earpieces. Her body was trembling and when she ordered her legs to run, but they only staggered. She could feel her heart pounding against her rib cage. Her fingers pressed the three emergency digits once more as she put the receiver to her ear. No ring. No dial tone. Only silence. She pressed down the holder and let go, only to hear the automated voice of a woman.
“If you would like to make a call, please hang up and try again.” Then it dawned on her. John had taken one of the receivers off the hook downstairs.
Heather slid down the nightstand as if she were melting, still holding the phone, and now crying. There was a pounding sound from the middle of the door and Heather could see it jarring violently with each blow. It was not if John’s shoulder could bust down the door, but when. Roman was right, there were only 315
two choices, and now she was down to the last of them. Through her tears she could see her mother’s purse lying on the bed. She could either sit there and die, or do something and have a chance to live. Struggling to regain control of herself, Heather walked over to the bed.
III
Roman didn’t lie. He drank only one beer. Me and Carl had no problem guzzling down the other eleven. With each beer the conversation slowed and by the end of the twelve pack, the stadium crew shut down the lights of the stadium.
It was our cue to go home I guess.
The Pinto fired on the first try. Carl sat in the front seat because the Tavern was the first stop. Roman sat in the back seat looking out the window at the night sky, probably reciting names of stars and constellations in that restless brain of his.
Halfway to Carl’s watering hole—as he called it—our odd but astute friend noticed my cell phone under the console. “Say guy, I think your phone is trying to tell ya something.”
I picked it up, noticing the blinking display—4 missed calls. Secretly I wished at least one of those calls were from Sally, even if it was just to tell me good game. But they were all from Heather’s cell phone. I clicked on her number but it went right to her voice mail. “Huh, that’s odd. Four missed calls all from Heather.”
“Did she leave a message?” Roman asked.
“No message.” I scrolled to the call time and noticed that all four calls occurred in the same minute. “She called four times in a row, but didn’t leave a message.”
“Do you mind if I take a look?” Roman asked.
I handed the phone back as we pulled up in front of The Tavern.
“Many thanks fella. Carl owes ya.”
“You don’t owe me anything Carl, that’s what partners are for, right?”
Roman got out of the back and sat in the passenger seat. Carl shut the door but leaned in through the window. “Aye partners, and I’d just like to say how lucky Carl is in having you fellas as such. Probably wouldn’t been around this long if it weren’t for the two of ya.”
Roman stuck his hand out to shake. “You’re all right yourself Carl.”
“You fellas take good care of yourselves now. Stay away from the crack whores.”
Any other night Carl would be hopping out of the car in a beeline for the Tavern door. But tonight, as I drove off, I could see him in the rear mirror view standing on the sidewalk with his hand up, as if he were saying one final goodbye.
“Heather’s house line is busy,” Roman said. “Why would she call four times in a row unless it was important?”
“Maybe she didn’t call. Maybe the phone was just in her pocket and she bumped it or something. You know how those cell phones are.”
“The Hawthorne’s have call waiting. The only way the line would be busy is if there was trouble with the phone lines or the phone was off the hook.
Something is wrong. I just have a feeling.”
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“You want me to take you up there?”
“If you don’t mind.”
IV
The fifth ram of John’s shoulder broke the lock and the door burst open, throwing splinters through the air. A glance in front of him, then to his left. He looked behind what remained of the door hanging on its hinges. He didn’t have time to react. The mace hit his eyes at point-blank range and stung immediately.
This was probably the first time Heather was thankful for Gina’s disregard for the feelings of her fellow human beings. On her mother’s key chain was always a tiny bottle of the eye irritant, and while Gina always talked of using it on the would-be thugs and thieves of lower class society, Heather was grateful to be using it on John Smith. She sprayed the contents of the small can into the killer’s face until it blew nothing but air.
John lunged at her with closed eyes and managed to grab hold of her.
Without one thought, Heather kneed him in the testicles. And when he grabbed his crotch she planted her knuckles in an upper cut directly to the bottom of his nose.
Blood sprayed through the air. John’s groan was the only sound until the dull thud of his knees hit the floor.
Heather stood with her fists clinched, ready to go to war with him. But when he made no effort to get up, the voice of reason crept back into her head. It was that voice she listened to as she ran down the hallway to the staircase, yelling for her mother. There was no response.
After scouring the entire first floor eventually she found her mother on the sofa in her relaxation room with mouth, wrists, and ankles duct taped. Heather ripped the tape from Gina’s mouth. Her mother’s eyes were filled with tears but she was conscious.
“Oh dear, are you all right?” Gina whispered.
“We’ve got to get out of here mother. He’s still up stairs.”
“I can’t move.”
Heather tried to rip the tape from her mother’s ankles but it was wound around tight several times. “I’ll be right back.”
“No don’t leave me, I beg you, Heather!”
Heather left without arguing, bypassing the staircase and running for the kitchen. She found her way in the dark by feeling for the refrigerator, then the counter top, stove, and finally the rack of knives. She felt for the thickest handle and pulled the butcher knife from its sheath. She heard water run upstairs, no doubt Mr. Smith washing the mace from his eyes in one of the bathrooms.
Heather sprinted back to the relaxation room with knife in hand. She could hear the voice of her kindergarten teacher telling her to never ever run with scissors in your hand. Miss Joyce would have to forgive her.
She sawed first through the tape on her mother’s ankles and then on her wrists. She pulled her mother up and caught her around the waist when Gina’s knees buckled beneath her. “I’m so dizzy. I hit my head on the floor earlier.”
“Just hold on to my waist and I’ll lead us out.”
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There was a loud thump at the top of the stairs and then several smaller ones, like the low roll of a bowling ball. Heather proceeded anyway, holding the knife out away from her body. And though it shook with the tremors in her hand, there was no doubt she would cut John Smith’s throat if it came to it.
As they passed through the doorway to the stairs, John jumped from the seventh step and knocked them to the floor. Heather lost her grip and the knife slid across the marble tile into the room from which they had just come. All three of them wallowed on the floor for a moment, dazed from the crash.
John was first to his feet and went for the knife. Heather helped her mother up and dragged her to the door. Heather went for the lock but John charged, knife in hand. Having no choice she veered away from the door.
John took several swipes but missed. Realizing he had easier prey, John pulled Gina up from the floor and stood behind her holding the steel blade to her throat. “Move into the room.” John nodded toward the relaxation room.
“Don’t do it Heather,” Gina said as she gasped for air. “If you go in, he’ll kill us both. If you run, you’ll live. Leave me.”
Heather saw the tears in her mother’s eyes and they started to flow once again in her own. It would be easy enough to open the double doors next to her for freedom. But there was no way she could get to the guard shack or anywhere else for that matter in time to save her mother. John would kill her before he fled, out of spite if for nothing else.
Heather walked into the room in front of John and her mother. She now knew what fear was, what people thought moments before they were to be tortured or killed, what Roman’s mother must have felt six years ago in her basement.
Numbness went through Heather’s body—some sort of defense mechanism the brain produced when it couldn’t accept the atrocity of a situation.
John pushed Gina down on the sofa. He stood behind the couch with the knife still at her throat. “Take the tape and tie her wrists, ankles, and mouth,” John instructed.
Heather obliged. Her motions were slow and deliberate, emotionless from shock, thinking all the while that every second she obeyed bought more time to keep her and her mother alive. Maybe her father would come home from his business trip. Maybe the security system did send out a silent distress and the police would come crashing in. Maybe Roman would somehow know she was in trouble and save her once again.
John cut the cord of a lamp next to the window and fashioned it around the duct tape surrounding Gina’s wrist. He pulled it tight, strung it over the back of the sofa, and tied the other end to one of the sofa legs. Now, Gina could only watch.
“Take off your jeans,” John said.
Heather unbuttoned them, and slid them down to the floor. “You don’t have to do this. You could turn and leave and nobody would follow you. Nobody would stop you. You could drive off and disappear and start somewhere new like none of this ever happened.”
“Get down on the floor.”
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“And then I could be a normal teenager. I could go to the Prom and graduate with my friends, go to college and become a doctor and help people.”
“Shut up!” John walked up to her, stopped only a few feet away and gestured with the knife. “Get on the floor.”
Heather lay down on the floor. “I could marry some day and have kids of my own. I could take them for bike rides to the park. I would hug them, kiss them, and love them. I would make them feel warm and safe, like my parents did for me. I would tell them everyday how much they meant to me, how special they were. How I would never let anything happen to them.”
John wiped his swollen eyes with his bandaged hand, trying not to listen.
He looked at the half-naked body at his feet. Her eyes were unafraid.
“You can rape me and kill me. But you can never take my heart. You can never feel who I am. You can’t take my memories. You’ll never erase my father taking me for ice cream, my dance lessons when I was three, the games I cheered at, the songs on the piano, the hugs and kisses, shooting basketball in the driveway, lunch with my friends, running in the morning with the sun along side me, laughter.” Heather had gotten to her feet now and was face to face with the monster. “You can kill me but you’ll never take my life.”
John stood there staring at her. Never had he encountered one such as her.
The rest of them had begged and pleaded for their lives at one point or another. He could see the fear shiver through their skin and echo in their eyes. It was the fear that fueled him, that fed the black hole in his empty soul and satisfied it at least for a short while. But not this one. She stood in front of him and spoke the wishes of a child, wishes like he too once had. And now he could hear John Smith in his head, praying and crying to let her go.
Heather could see the battle going on behind his teary eyes. The knife was no longer pointed at her. It hung down to the side and shook as it had when she’d held it. At that moment there was pounding on the front door.
“Heather!” Roman’s voice called.
Max’s head snapped toward the noise and then came back to her. He walked briskly toward the door, hobbled by the staircase, and disappeared toward the back of the mansion.
“Roman!” Heather cried she ran for the front door.
The door opened and immediately she was holding onto him, sobbing on his shoulder, telling him between gasping breaths of her awful encounter with the monster that six years ago had killed his mother.
V
Roman passed off the part about the man being his parents’ killer as the hysterical talk of someone who had just been through a traumatic event.
Eventually we got Heather and her mother calmed down to a point where the tears had stopped and we could understand what they were saying. Max had left the butcher knife on one of the steps as he escaped, and Roman used it to free Gina from her bonds. Heather put her jeans back on and found a quilt to throw over her shoulders even though it seemed to be a hundred degrees in the house. Sometimes being cold had nothing to do with the temperature. I found my way through the 319
dark and turned the circuit breaker back on. Now the four of us sat in the living room.
“I’m calling the police,” I said and flipped out my phone.
“This is all my fault,” Gina began as she sipped from her water glass. “I should have never worried about those steps. The dining room was beautiful the way it was.”
“You could have never have known, mom, that the guy you hired just happened to be a serial killer.”
“I know better than to deal with Mr. Flowers though. His employees are often far from the salt of the earth.”
“Mr. Flowers?” Roman asked surprised.
“He’s the one that recommended that horrible man. John is rebuilding Mr.
Flowers’s warehouse that burned down.”
Roman shot me a glance.
Heather stood up from her chair and walked over to Roman. She put her hand in his trying to dull the blow she was about to drop on him. “Roman, this John Smith had the brightest blue eyes I’ve ever seen and…” She hesitated.
“And what?”
“And…on his right forearm there was a tattoo of a woman in a spider web.”
“It can’t be.” Roman paled, falling into the chair next to him, deflating like someone had ripped his soul out of his chest. He put his hands on his knees and looked at the floor, trying to put a mental rope around the rock that had just crushed his mind.
Gina began to sob. “I’m afraid I’ve made a terrible mistake, Heather. A few months ago I tried to persuade Roman to leave town. Here I was plotting to break the two of you up and thinking of ways to ruin him. I even had him suspended from school. If it weren’t for him showing up and knocking on the door when he did, we wouldn’t be alive right now.” Gina walked over to Roman and hugged him as she continued to cry. “I was wrong about you, Roman. Please forgive me.”
Roman said nothing, only continued to stare into nowhere.
Heather ignored her mother as well; she worried only for Roman now, and what he might do.
“The police are on their way,” I said.
“I’ve got to find him,” Roman said. “I have to face him.”
“For what?” Heather objected.
“I’m not sure.” Roman got up and walked into the foyer, his mind already entrenched in the business of finding this so-called John Smith. He noticed three little droplets of blood on the marble and then every few feet more splatters. He followed the trail through the to the lower level and then out onto the stone patio.
A few minutes later Roman was on the other side of the Hawthorne property, standing at the tree line and staring into the woods. I caught up to him there.
“There’s only one place north of here for him to run to, Tony,” Roman said.
I knew exactly what Roman was thinking. Besides the Hollow and more forest, the only thing that lay in the direction John Smith was heading was The 320
Flower’s property about five miles away through the woods. “Look, the cops’ll be here any minute. They’ll catch him in no time.”
“That’s why I have to catch him first. Give me your keys.”
“Man, I don’t think this such a good idea. I mean, so what if you catch up to him, then what?”
“I want answers. Just answers.”
“No matter what you do to him Roman, or what he tells you, it’s not going to bring your parents back.”
“Either you give me your keys, or I’ll run there through the woods.”
My granddad always said that if you leave a loaded gun laying around long enough, eventually someone is going to fire it. Roman’s anger was no different.
Calm was an understatement in describing the way he’d handled the last six years.
All the bullshit that he’d put up with, Ed Pentoch, the NN—all because a man decided to walk into an Iowa farmhouse and kill his mother. Roman was a loaded a gun—and John Smith had just picked it up.
VI
Roman was going no matter what I said or did so I decided to drive him to the warehouse that housed Extravaganza. Or at least I thought I was going to drive him. At the Pinto Roman took my keys but didn’t stop me from entering the passenger side. It was only the second time I’d ever seen him drive. Roman had his foot to the floorboard and the Pinto was wound out at a depressing seventy-five miles an hour. Roman did not speak on our short journey. He didn’t seem to be nervous or angry. His eyes were on the road almost nonchalantly, as if we were going to school or Scotty’s house for a party. I thought about how differently I looked at my life now: how many strange twists and turns had come my way since meeting my talented friend, how in a million years I never thought I’d be in a car traveling to confront a serial killer. And as we pulled up in front of the warehouse, secretly I hoped that the man we sought would not be there.
The warehouse was dark gray—primer I’m sure for the upcoming pink coating that the Flower would insist on. Part of the roof was still not complete, and it stood out like an open wound to the sky. The front door was wide open—not a good sign depending on your point of view.
We made our way up the steps to the walkway in front of the grandstand.
There was no electrical lighting; only the pale blue light of the moon shone in through the missing part of the roof. In the middle of the arena floor was a new addition to The Flower’s circus: silver chains hung from ceiling to floor, sparkling like diamonds. It was dark in the grandstands, but I could hear John Smith. He sat near the top, talking to himself and laughing like a mad man.
Roman followed the cackle, walking up the aisle one step at a time, as if he were going to talk to an old friend. John Smith made no attempt to run and never even acknowledged our presence. I went further down the walkway until I could see the man’s blue eyes and part of his face. And then I froze—unsure of what was to happen next.
John Smith sat on the top row smil