The Helper (29 page)

She turns away from him. Starts toward the phone. Realizes then that she doesn’t know Doyle’s number. Gonzo has it, but she doesn’t. She turns back, and sees that the detective
is craning to look along the hallway outside the apartment. His hand is tucked under his jacket, as if in readiness to pull his gun.

She thinks, This is no bullshit. He’s really expecting trouble.

‘I . . . I don’t have his phone number.’

The man looks at her in disbelief. He digs a phone out of his pocket and starts thumbing buttons on it.

‘What do you want? His home number? Wait, he’s probably on his way to your apartment by now. I think I got his cell number here somewhere, but we got to be real fast.’ He
pauses, glances up the hallway again, slips his hand back under his jacket.

Shit. This is for real. He could have killed me several times over by now if he’d wanted to.

‘Never mind,’ she says. ‘Let me grab my stuff. Thirty seconds, okay?’

She runs for the bedroom, almost tripping over in her eagerness not to waste any more of Detective Morton’s time.

In the car, he asks her lots of questions about her life, and invents a life for himself in response to her own gentle probing. He gives himself a wife and two kids. Twins, in fact –
Jesus, they can be a handful. Plus a dog which he never wanted to get in the first place, and which is tearing apart what little furniture they have, that little scamp. Which, by the way, is his
name: Scamp.

He enjoys weaving this alternate world on the fly. Relishes the challenge of throwing in each new deceit whilst avoiding becoming caught in any contradictions.

But it’s obvious she doesn’t suspect a thing. Each additional fragment of his fantasy is swallowed whole. She’s building up an image of a solid, dependable cop just doing his
bit to help out the poor victimized civilian. And each city block he takes her closer to her apartment only serves to reassure her that there is nothing wrong with this picture.

When they finally pull up in front of her building and he takes her bag and leads her up to the front door and invites her to open up, he senses the relief in her. The absolute trust she now
feels for him simply radiates from her.

And when he follows her up the staircase, he has to smile at what he has accomplished today.

Because the clues were there, if she chose to see them.

Didn’t he tell her the killer was on his way? How much clearer could he have been?

And then there was his name. Detective Todd Morton, was how he introduced himself.

Todd, from the German word
Tod
. And Morton, from the French word
mort
. Both meaning death.

Detective Death.

What a cool name.

Bridget Serafinowicz sets down her bags of shopping with a groan. Her knees hurt, her ankles hurt, her shoulders hurt. Why does growing old have to be so painful? Why do our
bodies have to go through this goddamn-awful process of becoming ever more decrepit? If we have to die, why can’t we stay healthy and fit until we do? It should be a simple case of turning
the light off one night, never to wake up again. Not this. This is just torture.

But it shouldn’t be like it was for Helena either. Not violent. Life should not be ripped away from people like that.

Her stomach clenches as she thinks about what happened upstairs. Here, in her building. So close.

The reporters were here again this morning. Ringing her buzzer, trying to cajole her into granting them an interview. The vultures. She ignored them. Stayed inside until they got bored of doing
their highly speculative pieces to camera and finally drifted away to sniff out more ghoulish and sensational stories.

She came out then, when it was safe. Went to lunch with her friends Golda and Phyllis, just as she always does on a Saturday. But it wasn’t the same. They were far too keen to hear the
details of what exactly took place, then far too quick to cast them aside in favor of their own baseless imaginings. Bridget found the whole experience so distasteful she couldn’t finish her
tuna sandwich.

The shopping helped. Again, something she has always done after lunch on a Saturday. She found it comforting to adhere to her routine, even though she had been tempted not to bother today. Being
amongst all those people, none of whom had an inkling about what she had gone through, made the events seem somehow more distant, more unreal.

But it
was
real. Coming home again has emphasized that. It’s as though the building has been tainted with an aura of horrific violence.

She starts unloading the bags. While she puts the grocery items away she thinks about Tabitha. That poor girl. She doesn’t deserve such misery. So much death . . .

She wishes Tabitha were back here with her. She would comfort her. She would put things right for her. She would do all the things she would have done for her own daughter, if she’d been
fortunate enough to have one.

She hopes Tabitha doesn’t leave because of this, but she suspects she will. And when she does it will be heartbreaking. Life will seem so much emptier without her.

Bridget opens the last of her bags and smiles at the contents. A teddy bear, from the Build-A-Bear Workshop on Fifth Avenue. Dressed up as the Statue of Liberty, no less. Something to help
convince Tabitha that New York has a friendly face too. That it’s not such a bad place really. That she should seriously think about giving it another chance.

Bridget locks up her apartment and forces her complaining bones up the stairs to the second floor. She takes the master key from her pocket and opens up Apartment 2B. She will make it look nice
again. Even though Tabitha was in it for only a brief period and won’t have created much mess, she will make it perfect again. She will tidy and clean and polish, and she will make the bed
and place the bear carefully on the pillow. For when she comes back.

She goes inside. Closes the door behind her.

But still her screams are heard right along the hallway.

Mrs Li is back in her apartment so fast she can’t remember the journey. Like she traveled faster than thought itself.

And in her apartment she is screaming at her husband and pointing back the way she came and trying to make the uncomprehending fool appreciate that while she is prepared to change light bulbs in
the dark, and do a lot of other things besides, the nature of which she is not about to go into just now but which they need to discuss at some point, she is absolutely not willing to tackle
apparitions of the type she has just encountered in the basement. She draws the line at that one. And so what is he going to do about it? Huh? Huh?

She is almost surprised when her husband shuts off the television and gets up from his chair. He looks solemn, concerned. It seems as though he is finally going to take decisive action for once.
He assumes the bearing of a tribal chief, about to take part in a duel to the death to defend his loved ones. She experiences a sense of pride swelling in her bosom.

Her bosom deflates when she sees him walk in the wrong direction, toward the bedroom.

She starts to yell at him again. She works herself up into a frenzy, throwing at him every sharp spear of insult she can think of. She threatens to leave him. Worse, she threatens to tell all
their friends how bad he is in bed.

She clams up when he returns from the bedroom. She is silent because she has seen that he is holding an industrial-sized flashlight. Not like the puny plastic one he gave her earlier. This one
is muscular. It looks capable of lighting up a whole football stadium. A part of her wants to know why he couldn’t be bothered to dig it out for her before she went down to the basement, but
she suppresses it. Instead, she watches while her husband steps into the kitchen area and takes the large meat cleaver from its hook on the wall.

Now she knows he means business. There is a boldness to him, a meanness even, that she has not seen in a long time. And as she follows him out of the apartment she experiences a tingling she
thought was lost to her forever.

Together they descend the staircase to the basement. At the door to the laundry room they pause. Mr Li pushes open the door and flicks on his flashlight. A cone of light punches through to the
far wall. As he plays it over the interior of the room, long fingers of shadow angle and stretch away from them. Mrs Li taps her husband on the shoulder and points in the direction of the washing
machine. They start toward it.

Something crunches underfoot. Mr Li flicks the beam downward. He shifts his boot, and the light glints off the myriad fragments of glass from a pair of crushed spectacles. He gives his wife a
puzzled glance, then presses on into the room.

Mr Li finds the mountain of washing and keeps the beam focused on it, as steadily as he can manage. There is no movement from the bundle. No sound either. Mrs Li is beginning to wonder if her
imagination was playing tricks on her. She believes that her husband will bury his meat cleaver in her skull if that turns out to be the case.

Mr Li steps closer and closer. He lifts his foot and presses it gingerly into the pile. Mrs Li holds her breath. She almost expects a hand to dart out and grab her husband by the ankle. In which
event she is out of here again.

Mr Li tries once more. This time he aims a swift strong kick into the center of the mass. His foot strikes something solid and there is a muffled cry. He leaps away, calls his wife to come
closer. She has no desire to go anywhere near that thing, whatever it is, but her man is insistent. She is almost crying when he hands her the flashlight and tells her to keep it trained on their
target.

Her hand shakes, but she does as she is told. Soft murmurs of fear bubble from her lips as she watches her husband start to pull off the sheets and garments forming the pile. Each time he yanks
something away, he takes a leap backward, his cleaver at the ready to strike down whatever is lurking here. Mrs Li thinks she is going to pee herself any moment now.

And then it comes into view. It’s a man. His arms and legs are tied with cord, and there is a cloth bag over his head. Duct tape is wound tightly around the bag at the point where the
man’s mouth should be.

Mrs Li’s fear suddenly changes its focus. This man could be suffocating here.

She cries at her husband to remove the bag. He looks at her, then back at the trussed figure. Keeping his cleaver at the ready, he reaches down with his other hand and snatches at the bag.

When Mrs Li sees what caused her to worry so much, what caused her to rant and curse, what caused her almost to have a heart attack, she wants to seize the cleaver from her open-mouthed husband
and separate the red-headed lunatic’s head from his scrawny shoulders.

The first call comes in just as Doyle is preparing to leave for work.

‘Hello?’

‘D-Detective Doyle? It’s me. G-G-Gonzo.’

‘Gonzo? What is it? What’s wrong?’

‘You promise you won’t be m-mad?’

‘Gonzo, I’m not promising anything. Just tell me what the fuck this is about.’

‘I . . . the girl. Tabitha. Sh-she’s gone.’

‘Gone? What do you mean, gone? Gone where?’

‘I don’t know. I was downstairs. It wasn’t my fault. When I got back up here—’

‘Gonzo. Stay there, okay? I’m coming right over.’

‘O-okay, but it wasn’t—’

Doyle doesn’t wait to hear the excuses. He ends the call and then grabs his jacket. In the hallway he meets Rachel coming the other way.

‘Gotta go,’ he says.

She raises an eyebrow. ‘Who’s your date?’

Doyle doesn’t answer. He stops only long enough to grant his wife a peck on the cheek, and then he’s out of the apartment and clattering down the staircase. When he gets outside, he
races for his car and jumps behind the wheel.

That’s when he gets the second call.

The voice says, ‘Cal? It’s Jay. I know you’re not on duty yet, but I thought you should hear this.’

Doyle feels the dread build in the pit of his stomach.

‘Hear what, Jay?’

Holden pauses. ‘This is fucking crazy, man. I can’t even believe this myself. But with all the weird stuff you’ve been saying about a serial killer . . .’

‘Spit it out, Jay.’

Another pause. ‘He came back. Whoever whacked Helena Colquitt, he came back and got the other one.’

Doyle’s mouth is suddenly very dry. He finds it a struggle to get his words out.

‘The other one? What do you mean?’

But he knows precisely what he means. He just can’t bring himself to accept it.

‘The roomie. Tabitha Peyton. He came back, got her too. Weird thing is, he used exactly the same MO. She’s in the bathtub, legs over the side. Exactly the same. Crazy.’

Doyle stares out of his grimy windshield. This conversation is too surreal. It can’t be happening. He saw Tabitha last night. He spoke to her this morning. She was safe. She was alive. How
could things have gone so drastically wrong in the space of a couple of hours?

‘Cal? You there, man?’

Doyle hears his own voice speaking. He thinks it sounds surprisingly calm and level. And yet it seems detached from him, as though he is listening to somebody else.

‘Thanks for letting me know, Jay. I’ll come straight over.’

He hangs up and continues to stare out into the street. Ahead, a woman is walking toward him with her dog. Nice day for a walk, he thinks. This is what spring is made for. Walking. Enjoying the
first signs of sun, of growth. Of life.

And then it hits him. A wave of grief and rage.

He says one word.
No
.

But it’s not a simple quiet utterance. It’s a long drawn-out syllable that is hurled from his mouth with a force that feels capable of shattering his windshield.

Outside, the woman turns her dog and quickens her pace in the opposite direction.

It takes a frustratingly long time to get there.

He is not in a police sedan, with its lights and sirens and air of authority. He is in his own rust-bucket of a car, and all he has at his disposal is a car horn; and everybody else on the
streets, many of whom have much more imposing vehicles and much more impressive car horns, simply blare back at him and flip him the finger and mouth words such as ‘asshole’.