The Assailant (21 page)

“Oh shut up, Harry. He's a good physician.”

“I didn't say he wasn't. You want me to go up and apologize to him?”

She knew that he didn't mean it. She could fuck with him a bit by saying yes, but she wasn't in the mood right now. She said, “No. Just don't say anything more. He'll forget about it soon enough.”

She could see that he wanted her to give him some sort of sign now. A touch or a smile to put him at ease, maybe let him know that they could fool around after their shift. But she didn't feel like being all that generous now.

Harry. Maybe he meant well. But maybe he didn't. She was aware that Raymond Sheffield had something of a crush on her. She was not comfortable with this, partly because she wasn't at all attracted to him and also because she thought he was a little on the creepy side. She was glad that Raymond was a good doctor because his competency made it harder to feel pity for him. She did not like to pity people.

She wondered now if Harry had spoken to Raymond not so much because he wanted to take her to Chicago for a couple of days but rather to ward Raymond away.
She's taken, pal. She's
with me
. Had he spoken to Raymond as a favor to her, or rather to stake a claim on her? This would have been wrong on a couple of levels. First, she wasn't Harry's to claim. Second, and more important, the notion that she could conceivably bed down with Raymond was repellent to her. Did Harry actually worry about that?

Shit, she thought. Never mind. She hadn't gone into medicine to be wrapped up in this sort of nonsense.

“It's getting cold,” Helen said. “Let's go back in.”

They went back into the hospital, two figures walking hunched against the cold, visible to one standing at the window on the sixth floor. In sight until they walked under the cover of the ambulance sally port.

Raymond Sheffield kept looking out the window for a few moments after that, his hands in the pockets of his smock fingering a small piece of metal, his forehead almost touching the glass. At that moment, he was unaware of his reflection, his head outlined and glasses shining back their own reflection, hiding his eyes.

Hastings ordered a cheeseburger and fries and handed the menu back to the waiter, who then left them alone.

Carol said, “Why didn't you order the rigatoni? It's great here.”

“I'm not in the mood for it.”

“We're at one of the best Italian restaurants in the city, and you order a cheeseburger and fries. You're going to hurt their feelings.”

“The red sauce upsets my stomach.”

“You and your stomach. You can't drink wine? Not even a little?”

“Not even a little,” Hastings said. “I'll watch you drink yours. Maybe you'll spill a little on your lovely white blouse.”

“Then I'll throw the rest on you.” She paused and looked at him. Then said, “How are you?”

“Pretty beat.”

A moment passed. “I read the story in the newspaper. The letter. Was that the real deal?”

“We're not sure,” he said without looking at her.

Carol said, “It is, isn't it? The killer wrote that.”

“I think he did, yes. I wish I didn't.”

“Why?”

“Because it's what he wants. Credit. Attention. He's winning.”

“And you're losing?”

“I don't look it at it that way.”

“I'm sorry. I know you don't. Sorry.”

Hastings waved it away. Carol trafficked in human misery too, defending criminals and seeing destruction and waste. Most of them were guilty of the crimes charged against them, but she believed the devil himself was entitled to due process of law. Like many criminal defense lawyers, she used gallows humor to deal with grief.

But she knew Hastings too. Knew that his ego was part of what kept him going.

She said, “It's scary, a person like that.”

“Did you ever defend it?” Hastings said. “Did you ever represent a person like that?”

Carol knew that his question was not judgmental. He rarely judged her.

She said, “I don't think so. And I've defended some pretty bad apples. Particularly when I worked for the public defender. Most of them were poor and stupid and Latin or black. They never had anything.”

“Did you sense . . .”

“Sense what? Evil?”

“Yeah, maybe.” “I don't know. Maybe. Once in a while. Depravity. Moral depravity, sure. But you know how it works.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean is, I never asked myself if they were guilty. That's not my role. My role was to give them the best legal defense I could.” She smiled at him. “Should I apologize to you for that?”

“Never.”

“Anyway, I never thought of it that way. I believe in the system.”

“Due process.”

“Well, if we don't have that, all you have to do to put someone in prison for life is arrest them. And you don't want to live in a country like that.”

“We don't?”

“I don't and neither do you. So shut up.”

“Do you believe in monsters?”

“Monsters?” Carol waited to see if there was a joke.

“Yeah,” Hastings said. “Monsters.”

“You mean like human monsters?”

“Yeah.”

After a moment, Carol said, “Yeah.”

Hastings was surprised. She knew that he had always considered her a bleeding-heart liberal, unwilling to accept the existence of evil. But she had never been as simple as he thought.

Then she said, “But, George, who is it that determines if someone is a monster? You?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Is this something you can see?”

“I wish.”

Carol smiled, shook her head. “You cops . . .”

“What about us cops?”

“You're so black-and-white. This guy's a turd. This guy's a scumbag. This guy's a gangbanger.”

“We're simpleminded.”

“I didn't say
you
were.”

“But Joe is? Murph?”

“No. Stop doing this.”

“Okay.”

“All I meant was, you guys have a tendency to brand people. Not all of you, but a good many of you.”

“What do I call this fellow?”

“It seems like he named himself.”

“Yeah. That he did. But what would you call him?”

“A sociopath.”

“A sociopath is someone without a conscience. This guy's something more than that.”

“Well, yeah. God knows what made him like that.”

Hastings said, “Maybe nothing made him like that. Maybe he just—is.”

“George, come on. Nobody comes out of the womb ‘like that.' He obviously suffered some sort of trauma.”

“We don't know that.”

“It's usually the case.”

“No. I think it's something we'd like to believe is usually the case. So
we'll
feel better. Safer. But what if they're just born?”

“That's what you'd like to believe.”

“I'd rather not, actually.”

“Yeah, you would. You'd like to believe that because it's easier for you to believe it.”

“And your beliefs. Don't they make things easier for you?”

“No, not necessarily. Not always. I'm not simpleminded either.”

“No. But you are cute.”

“Don't patronize me. Not now.”

“Sorry.”

“And show a little compassion.”

“For who? The killer?”

“No, not the killer. But for the guy who had the shit beat out of him since birth. Who's only known poverty and cruelty. Who has nothing to lose.”

“Well, maybe I would if I had the time. But I'm pretty busy dealing with the victims these folks leave behind. The
girl
who's getting the shit beat out of her now. The women getting killed.”

“I see. So I have no compassion for them.”

“No. I know you do. We just see it differently, that's all.”

“I know it's just liberal dogma to you, George. But environmental forces make these people.”

“Why can't nature make these people? Just as nature sometimes produces a three-legged frog?”

“Because we're not frogs, goddammit. We're talking about a human being here.”

“Are we?”

“Oh, shit, George. Don't you see where that thinking takes
you? You start dehumanizing these people you're chasing, you might just as well exterminate them like bugs. You speak of monsters, fiends . . . these are people.”

Hastings didn't say anything.

Carol said, “You think this killer is an aberration. I agree with you. But then you suggest that he just
exists
. That he was a monster from birth. That's just too . . . cold.”

“Nature can be cold.”

Raymond finished his shift at eleven o'clock and drove home. He poured water into the kettle and cut some slices of apple and set them on his cutting board. While the kettle boiled, he read again his letter in the newspaper. It brought a satisfied smile to his face. But it was fleeting.

He was wondering about Helen Krans.

The events of the day had knocked his thinking out of whack. He had supposed that she was having some sort of relationship with Tassett. He had convinced himself that she was a modern woman and that she could live how she wanted to. He believed that he had convinced himself of that. But he had managed to think that she was not a bad woman. He had placed her in a certain compartment. But she didn't seem to fit there. Not anymore.

What was she doing with Tassett? Tassett was only screwing her. Did she think of him in a similar way? A pig to fill the void? Why had she sent Tassett to tell him that she wanted to go away for the weekend? Did she think so little of him?

Helen was supposed to be different. A physician who admired his work. A professional. Not just another slut on her back, spreading her legs and telling her idiot boyfriend to put it in, put it in, put it in.

No, he thought. She was nice to me. She's better than that.

Isn't she?

Or was she laughing at him? Saying unkind things about him to Tassett. Maybe Tassett teased her about him. Told her that Dr. Sheffield was after her and what did she think about
that?
Did Tassett tell her to close her eyes and think of Dr. Sheffield? What things did they do? What did they say about him?

Raymond reached into the pocket of his jacket and touched the small piece of steel, making sure that it was there. It made him feel better when he touched it. He took it out and placed it on his kitchen table.

It was a small, black hairpin.

She wore hairpins at work. She was like that. Not fancy, not taking the time to have her hair done because she was a professional and she didn't fuss much with her looks. Though she was attractive, to be sure. She would put her yellow hair up with hairpins, clipped at the top of her head. They would fall out here and there as her shift progressed. People joked that some of her pins could be found in the patients.

Raymond had found this one on the floor of the operating room where she had attended the young man's dislocated shoulder. It must have been knocked loose while she tugged on his arm.

After he found it, Raymond's first impulse was to bring it back to her. Tell her he'd found it and thought that she might want it
back. Might want it back after it had been on the floor in an emergency room ward.

An offering.

And maybe he would have given it to her. Maybe he would have given it to her even after she'd sent Tassett to tell him she wanted to switch shifts.
Go ask Raymond. He's got nothing going on. Ask Raymond to stand by while we rut like animals. . . .
Maybe even after that he would have taken the pin to her, and she would have smiled at him and cleared up the misunderstanding. Told him that the thing with Tassett was over. Or had never been.

But then he had seen them through the window. And after seeing that, he had reached into his pocket and touched the hairpin, and when he felt it, he felt comfort. For a moment, he felt peace. He had a part of her now. But only a part.

There were things in his past he liked to remember. Things he liked to take out and look at again. His work on Ashley was one of those things. A killing that he'd created.
His
creation, his work. He liked to think about that. He liked to think about the beginning, the middle, and the end. Sometimes he would start out by thinking of the end. The last moments of her life, and then he would go back to the beginning, where he had picked her up. Sometimes it was fun to do it that way. Explain the beginning after the end. He liked to play it different ways. It was his work, after all, and he felt entitled to move it around when it suited him.
But there were also things that he did not like to remember. He was getting better at sorting out the memories he liked and the memories he did not. He was getting more and more control. But he was not there yet. He had not yet reached perfection. Some of the bad memories would come upon him, and he could not stop them from coming. Like the times after his parents divorced and his mother would come home with a man she had picked up at a bar or a party. Sometimes the man would be surprised to see a little boy sitting alone in front of the television. And his mother would say, “He'll be fine.” And then she would take the man by the hand and lead him off to her bedroom. Later, Raymond would listen for sounds—silence, muffled conversation, more quiet, laughter . . .

His mother had not abused him. Indeed, she had seemed like an older sister to him. Later, he would decide that she was silly and frivolous and girly. A nonentity.

His father had remarried, a less pretty, more stable woman with her own children. Raymond's stepmother had tried to take to him but, like most grown-ups, had trouble doing so. Raymond remembered overhearing her tell his father, “There's something missing from him.” A disagreement over a toy led Raymond to slap his eight-year-old stepsister across the face, hard enough to knock her to the ground and fatten her lip. The parents tried to mediate the “problem,” but the swollen lip was visible evidence that couldn't be ignored. Raymond was no longer allowed to be
with his stepbrothers and stepsisters. His father had tried to spend time with him alone after that, but the visits grew less and less frequent and eventually ceased.