The inbetween, p.8
The InBetween, page 8
part #1 of Painter Mann Series
Her own attorney, who’d been brilliant, worked every angle, every possibility, and had obsessed about the prospect of a videotape, just outside the convenience store. There’d been five cameras. Two on the forecourt to cover the pumps, two inside making sure no one pocketed the Little Debbies, then one to keep an eye on the cashiers in case they were looking to make an unauthorized withdrawal.
One of the forecourt cams was at a vantage point to catch the moment of impact. And for an excruciating twelve hours, they waited for the footage. At first, she had held onto hope that she’d be exonerated.
But just an hour before it was supposed to be delivered, she also made peace with the other possibility. One that would show she’d indeed mowed down the little boy. Did she swerve? Had she kept driving? Did she realize she’d hit someone’s child?
When the video clip arrived, she couldn’t remember sitting down.
“Maybe it’s good news,” her attorney Bronwyn had said, shrugging. “I mean, for the case. That one camera was just static. Couldn’t see the street where, you know, it happened.”
The next day, the stories came out of how one of the employees had been stealing, late-night runs from the storage room to a friend’s car, and that the camera likely had been deliberately turned off to avoid detection.
The digital age's Irrefutable Truth, the god's-eye-view black-and-white CCTV video, would not play a part in her trial.
Didn’t matter. None of it mattered. No jury necessary this time; her sentence had been handed down by a judge who already knew what happened.
She looked up, standing in the dark city street, and her head, ethereal and without substance, still felt heavy, leaden. In front of her was a home. She recognized it but couldn’t yet place it.
The boy’s home. Her sentence would be to comfort this child. Apologize. Soothe. Anything she could do to help him. Nothing would make up for what she’d done, but that didn’t mean she was in any way free of that debt.
Walking up the steps of the two-story house, her breath caught in her throat—there was a light on inside. Someone was home.
The Butterfly reached for the door’s knob, but her hand went straight through. Of course. Stupid. She wrapped her arms around herself, then lowered her head and went in to begin her sentence.
A beautiful wraparound staircase led to an upper floor. Afghan carpet under her feet. There was a soft light on a small table near the door. A wicker container held a set of car keys. Mercedes.
She didn’t yet see the boy.
Her feet were still, but she continued to move forward into the next room. Light spilled from that one into the foyer, illuminating her path. But when she crossed the threshold, she didn’t see a grieving mom and dad. Or a ghostly child hovering nearby.
A woman, sitting back in a plush leather office chair, the toes of her right foot slowly swaying her from side to side. Nearby, a large-screen television was rolling through one of the 24-hour news channels, muted.
When she came around to see the woman’s face, it took her a moment to recognize her. When she did, it was bittersweet.
“Hi, Bronwyn,” she said and momentarily felt the hint of warmth. “You look good. Where’s Alexand—”
On a stack of blankets, she saw a cat, a mutt of a thing, lift its head.
“There you are.”
Then the cat’s head flicked toward her, staring. Its body tensed. Either ready to pounce or run away. Small tics, flicker movements, but its large eyes only grew larger, locked onto the ghostly presence in the room.
The Butterfly shifted a few feet, and the cat’s eyes tracked her as she moved.
“Can you—?”
The cat groaned, low in its throat. Then a bit louder.
“Alexander, cut it out,” Bronwyn said, words slurring from either wine or sleepiness or both. Admonished, the cat blinked, licked its lips, and calmed. Still, it kept one eye on their visitor.
The bottle on the computer desk looked to have only been drained of a single glass. However, on the floor, there was another. That one was empty.
If the Butterfly had any tears, she might have shed them for her friend. She said, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You were so great, so brave.”
Whatever Bronwyn had been reading drew a small smile from her.
“I think in the end, you were just about my only friend left. That happens with child murderers, I hear. We don’t get invited to parties much.” This was the gallows humor–type banter that she and Bron—a British woman, Welsh?—had always fallen into with ease. She’d been grateful for it. It helped loosen the ropes around her head and heart.
She looked at the pictures on the defense attorney’s wall. Families. Kids. These were images of other families. Other people’s kids. A workaholic, the woman of the house hadn’t taken time for her own. Not yet.
“You need to find yourself a guy,” the ghost said. “A rich momma’s boy who loves to bake and work out who can help you make babies. You’d be a good mom.”
A picture drawn in a frame was inscribed with “to Auntie Bron.”
“Sorry we never did get to go to Disney World,” she said and was struck at the sound of her own voice, the depth of sadness it betrayed. “But still, that would have been weird, right? Two grown women showing up at the park by themselves.”
Bronwyn turned to her computer, one hand still on the file in front of her.
“Can you rent kids? They should have that service at Disney. Then you don’t look so weird.” She ran her fingers down the portrait of a tall man. Bronwyn’s brother? “Or Fiji or Cozumel or New Zealand would have all been good too. That post-trial trip, yeah?” She turned toward the woman at the computer. “But that’s…”
Bronwyn tapped away absentmindedly, taking another large swig of the dark liquid in her glass. The flicker on the screen tickled the corner of the Butterfly’s eye. Bright colors, a castle with fireworks, a smiling cartoon mouse.
She turned toward her friend and slid up next to her. “Disney World? How weird is that…”
The attorney lazily clicked around the website, every few seconds squeezing the mouse with her right hand while nursing the wine with her left.
The dead woman bent down so she was eye-level with her friend. A thin, pretty face that was aging too quickly. Her heart hurt to think this was how Bron spent her nights. Wishing. Wanting.
“You were so great,” the ghost said softly, stroking the woman’s arm as she typed one-handed, poking sluggish fingers at the keyboard, clicking the mouse. “I’ve never seen such a fighter like you.”
Bronwyn smiled.
Click, click. Sip.
“You were my hero! Door knocking every business and residence and lemonade stand for a quarter mile to find some other video. My million-dollar attorney, rolling up her sleeves and digging with her manicured nails!”
Click, tap, tap. Click.
Then the look on her friend’s face transformed. Not quickly. More of a shift, like a stack of magazines slowly sliding off a table and then tumbling to the floor.
Tap, tap. Click. Sip. Slide, click.
“What’s wr—?”
The Butterfly turned toward the screen. Bronwyn was no longer looking at fairyland castles or character parades or sunburned tourists posing with actors in costumes.
The mouse pointer hovered over a small rectangle. When the dead woman looked down to her friend’s hand, she saw the right index finger hovering over the mouse. Hanging in the air, trembling slightly. The look on her face was intense, and her eyes were heavy, watery.
“What’s wrong, Bron?”
Click.
The movie began to play full screen. There was no sound, just the images of the world slipping by a cityscape. Traffic. A succession of taillights ahead of her, to the left, to the right.
“This is what you watch? Your dash-cam footage? I should have left you a list of movies. You like mo—”
Bronwyn manipulated the mouse, and the images began to flutter by more quickly. Interstate driving, taillights strobing all around the dash cam like a disco. Then the car was off the interstate, whipping past a corner store, silently slamming on the brakes at a set of red lights.
Of course, it hadn’t slammed on the brakes, but at the accelerated pace, the car seemed to be racing through the streets, eager to get somewhere, somewhere important. Somewhere significant.
Another turn, then another.
The dead woman had to face away, the jerky video beginning to turn her stomach, which only reminded her that she no longer had one. When she turned back, Bron had begun to slowly rewind the video.
No, not rewind. The car was in reverse, backing into a driveway. Then a slight shimmer and a moment later the quick visual jarring of the car door likely being slammed.
“Did someone hit you on the way home, and you’re looking for a plate or something? What are you...?”
No, this couldn’t have been recent. When the ghost looked closer, there was a hint of snow on the ground. Frost. This would have to be late autumn. Earlier December.
Huh. That was right around the same time…
Again, Bron fingered the mouse. Despite being a bottle and a half deep into her wine, she still worked it with precision and purpose.
Wait. Hold on, wait…
These weren’t images from Bronwyn’s car. The dash-cam footage did not show this neighborhood but one the Butterfly was very familiar with.
Her friend advanced the footage quickly again, shuttling through until the daylight turned pale, the dusk turned to dark. The driver hadn’t turned the dash camera off.
Oh Christ, oh Christ, oh Christ…
There was a quick flicker, then a burst of white as the floodlights of the Speedway service station across the street came alive unevenly, then locked in.
This was where it had happened. This was the tape they’d been looking for. Bron had found the evidence.
Why hadn’t she told anyone?
Chapter Twelve
The Death of a Reporter: Brenda Matthews
Chandra could feel it. The tug was back. Already.
Oh, come on!
It hadn’t been even a day since killing the mailman. There’d also been another since then. The time between boosts was growing shorter and shorter.
The congressman would have to be dealt with sooner rather than later. But he was always surrounded by other people! She just had to be patient.
A hand went down to loosen another button on the man’s shirt. But this was already the third down, and it wasn’t calming the awful swelling in the throat. Like taking a bite of steak that was too big and just didn’t want to go down.
Breathing was getting labored, but it had nothing to do with breath.
This was just the fucking tug. Again.
Chandra could go another day without satiating that pull. It was always there in some way just outside the field of vision. But if you get desperate, you make bad calls.
A bad call. That was how this problem had gotten so much worse in the first place.
You wait, and the pull turns into an ache then eventually into something that feels like a charley horse in the mind. Judgment gets clouded, muddled. Then, a bad call.
It seemed like ages now since this man had become the new ride. The emergency ride. A lot of pain in the beginning. Part of that was the adjustment, of course. And it would have been all so much easier if things had gone to the original plan.
All of that screwed up by a drunk with a gun?
Didn’t matter. If there’d been proper planning, that wouldn’t have happened. She’d always been a meticulous planner. But she’d failed, and that led to desperation and a bad call.
I need to focus on now, right now. She’ll be heading to the elevator soon. Time to go up top.
After the button was pushed, the lit numbered floors above the elevator indicated the car was moving downward.
It had taken just two days to get the young reporter’s routine down. In that time, there’d also been the kid who was working some bottom-rung IT job. Working late, tired all the time, some of it from home, where he’d lived alone.
The boy had been an easy target but took a surprisingly long time to die. It was probably better for the boost; who knew. Jan Jorgensen’s hand reached into a pocket and fiddled with the boy’s glasses. He was in the machine now, feeding her.
The elevator doors, all dented and scratched, rumbled as the car approached. The scratching looked like some idiot gang banger had run out of spray paint and resorted to tagging the door with car keys or a busted metal pipe.
Stupid.
The elevator announced its arrival with a bell that had seen better days. It didn’t sound so much like a bell but some tiny, curved iron hammer striking a bent-up tin can. Not aluminum, but tin like back in the seventies.
The doors parted, and the light inside was unnaturally bright. It probably gave those who used it, especially at this time of night, the illusion of safety. There was an emergency phone in the car as well, but its wires had been carefully snipped twenty-four hours earlier.
Dark glass that encased a cheap security camera in the upper corner had been covered up an hour before with even darker electrical tape.
Proper planning. No more bad calls.
The killer pulled a cell phone from a back pocket and checked the display. Just before eleven-thirty.
The pretty journalism grad—who’d just made reporter after moving through the Chicago newsroom from researcher to booker to digital copy editor—would right about now be wrapping up her workout. Heavy on the aerobics. Treadmill, bike, boxing.
The woman inside the man rode the car to the very top floor, the nineteenth, and waited.
* * *
Like clockwork, Brenda Matthews had hit the twenty-four-hour gym as she did every night. She was planning for her future, a TV gig. For now, she was happy with having scored a reporting position at the paper a few months earlier. She wanted Crime or Politics, something with meat. But for now, it was Lifestyle.
A breast-cancer five-k race.
An old couple, she in her nineties, he in his eighties (“Robbing the cradle, huh?”) getting married at the retirement home.
One story about a coffee shop that let customers play with cats.
They never said it directly to female journos anymore, too dangerous, but looks still mattered. It wasn’t fair. But this was the field she’d chosen, and she had known what she was getting into.
She’d always carried a few extra pounds, and despite how unfair it was, she was determined to knock them off. Sure, it was playing by their rules, but those were the rules.
“For now,” she said, smiling, and pushed the button for the elevator.
The killer had caught sight of her days earlier. Watching from the building across the street as he had previously, he saw the reporter on the elliptical machine. The last exercise of the night. Earplugs in, blond hair bopping along to whatever the latest ex-Nickelodeon tweenage, popped-cherry singing star was putting out.
When she headed for the dressing room, it was go time. Quick run four flights down, cross the street, dead this time of night, then into the target building.
Now, Chandra waited in the elevator cab. Top floor.
The doors hadn’t parted at the top—this floor required a passcode. Didn’t matter. No one was getting off.
Then the car began to move, heading down.
The killer pressed a button on the panel, B2, and just waited until the doors opened on the twelfth floor. Sure, the call could have come from another level. Maybe an employee was getting off work instead, but he’d planned for that. Make excuses and take the ride back to the top again and wait.
16.
15.
She’d no doubt be counting on the security guard’s protection. In truth, not much of a guard and light on security capabilities, it seemed. Minimum-wage gig. No permit to carry. Spent most of the night watching YouTube videos on his phone.
Once the young reporter got off the elevator on the bottom floor, lower parking garage, the guard would be right around the corner, about twenty feet away, at a small station that looked more like he should have been parking cars.
Floor B1. There she would be safe.
She would never make it that far.
13.
12.
Ding! The metal rod hit the pop-top seventies Sprite can, and the doors opened.
Jorgensen had headphones on—they were attached to nothing, the lead just tucked down into his jacket—and looked engrossed in a paperback novel.
The reporter waved goodbye to the person at the desk and only gave a half glance at the tall, thin man as she got onto the elevator. Her eyes fell to the chains around his neck, the many rings on his fingers—some holding two or three!—but she was too polite to say anything.
“Working late?”
A forced smile. Barely a look up from his book.
The doors closed, and she dug into her bag, reaching for the elevator panel. Her finger hovered over B1 for a moment before pushing it. The button for the floor just above was glowing. Recently, that level had been closed off.
From inside Jorgensen, Chandra sighed theatrically, eyes still glued to the paperback. “Must’ve been some snot-nosed kids riding the elevator again. It stopped at five different floors before it got to yours.”
The reporter smiled, hit her floor, and leaned up against the wall. A good workout. She would sleep really well. A musky bouquet wafted up to her nose.
After a bath.
With a soft groan, the tall man put his hand behind his back, making circular movements as if rubbing a tight knot.
One floor away from the security guard, the pitiful sound of metal striking metal, Ding!, and the doors opened to a level that had been shuttered for repairs after vandals had come in nights earlier and taken the fire ax to most of the overhead light fixtures.
Dark, exposed conduit and wires hung from the ceiling.
“Creepy,” was the last thing she ever said.
