A Long Way Down Read online

  A few moments later he turned away from the glass, hoping against all odds that she would be looking his way. But she was staring at the far wall—seeing, he knew, all the way through the cement blocks, probably all the way back to the last time they had been in a hospital together, the day her love for him had turned to ash.

  He walked around the foot of the bed, lingered for a few moments at her side. Then leaned down to where her arm lay against her body. He kissed the tape around her wrist, expecting her to pull her arm away. But she didn’t. So he kissed the soft skin on the inside of her elbow. Rose slowly to kiss her cheek, his hand light on the back of her head. He waited for a response, any kind of response, but received none. Then he stood, sniffing, blinking, and turned away.

  “You can call me anytime you want,” he told her, his eyes on the floor. “Anytime.”

  And he walked to the door.

  She said, her voice too soft, and unfamiliar, “Do you remember that time you made the crab-apple wine?”

  He turned. Her head was lowered, her gaze going down toward her knees, her cheeks wet. He said, “I picked that little tree clean, didn’t I? Thousands and thousands of tiny, sour apples.”

  A small smile. “You kept adding sugar and adding sugar. Bag after bag of it.” Her voice was soft and hoarse, the same as his.

  “Until I could taste the juice without puckering up.”

  “And when it was ready, oh boy.” Her smile widened by a few degrees. And then her head turned. And her eyes met his.

  Where had all the blue gone from her eyes? They were gray now, a shimmering smoke. He crossed to the bed. Pulled the chair up close, sat, and took her hand. “I swear it was three hundred percent alcohol. What a kick it had!”

  “It was good, though.”

  “Best wine I ever made.”

  She kept smiling, looking into his eyes. And then her smile faltered, and her gaze slid away, over his shoulder and to the door. “Have you made any since then?”

  He shook his head no. “Lost the urge, I guess. Lost a lot of urges.”

  She gripped his hand. And again met his eyes. “We could move on together.”

  He was startled by that. Startled and stabbed. He said, “We would always remind each other of everything we lost.”

  “I don’t think I can keep going by myself,” she said.

  “Yes you can. You taught a dumb trailer park kid to love Beckett and Camus. You’re a miracle worker.”

  Another small smile. Her fingers loosened their grip. “Did you really see our boy?”

  “Twice. Two nights in a row. Exactly when I needed him most.”

  “Why didn’t he come to me when I did this?” she asked, and lifted her arms, and looked at the tape wrapped from wrist to elbow.

  “Maybe because he knew I would.”

  She nodded. “I just want to be with him.”

  “You are,” he told her. “He’s with both of us.”

  “I wish I could see him again. He was grown?”

  “A good-looking boy. Handsome and quick.”

  “How could that be?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you believe it really happened? That it was real?”

  “It was the realest thing I’ve ever felt.”

  “I want so badly to see him again.”

  “Tell him that,” DeMarco whispered, his voice so hoarse now that he could speak no louder. “Keep asking. I bet he comes.”

  And he held her hand awhile longer, as long as he could, until her tears subsided and the pale light through the window crept into the corner of the room.

  Two

  Going down in the hospital elevator, DeMarco felt the descent in his knees, felt them wanting to bend, so he held to the metal rail and stared at the buttons on the panel and struggled against the urge to hit Stop. He had never been good with relationships. Things were good with Jayme despite his clumsiness, his many bad decisions, but things had been good with Laraine too, until another bad decision, a brief lack of attention.

  Women remained a mystery to him. He understood the criminal mind well, and had a knack for predicting its simple turns and convolutions. But the mind of a woman in love—no law of physics could account for the complexities of such a mind. For every action there was never an equal and opposite reaction. The rate of change was never directly proportional to the amount of force applied. And an object at rest, if that object was a woman in love, seldom remained at rest until acted upon by an external force.

  Still, it was as clear as crystal to DeMarco that without a woman in his life, he had no balance, no center. His mother, then Laraine, and now Jayme. The periods between those three remained dark in his memory. Not dark as in unseeable, for they were all too visible to him even yet, but dark with resentment. Dark with anger. Dark with the grim resolve to feel nothing, let no one in, allow no light into his tight-fisted heart.

  But he had tasted that light, and was hungry for more. The moment the elevator bell dinged and the doors slid open, he stepped out into the lobby, needing to hurry lest he turn and ascend again to the fifth floor. He wanted to return to Jayme as quickly as possible, even though he thought of that desire as a selfish one, whereas staying with Laraine was a duty, an obligation to fix what he himself had broken.

  He had his head down when he stepped into the lobby, and nearly ran into a man waiting to board. “Sorry. Sorry,” DeMarco muttered, then offered a quick glance and apologetic smile as he stepped to the side.

  “S’all right,” the man said, and squeezed past him into the elevator.

  DeMarco continued toward the front entrance, but slower now, because the man’s face had seemed vaguely familiar, someone he should know.

  Behind him, the elevator doors slid open again. “Twenty-seven!” the man said.

  The number on DeMarco’s high school football jersey. He turned. Looked across the fifteen feet of tile at the man holding the door open: a bald, goateed Black man wearing the uniform of law enforcement, the smoke-gray jacket, charcoal epaulets, gold star and buttons. Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office. Ben Brinker.

  DeMarco retraced his steps to the elevator, smiled and held out his hand. “Eighty-six,” he said. “It’s good to see you again, Ben.”

  The sheriff gripped his hand, held it firmly. “Damn, Ryan, you’re getting old.”

  “At least I still have most of my hair.”

  “I do too, around the sides anyway. I just moved it down here on my face where everybody can see it better. Vee started leaving boxes of Uncle Ben’s rice on the bathroom sink. I finally got the hint.”

  “And now you have a kind of Samuel L. Jackson vibe going,” DeMarco told him. “It suits you. And how is Miss Veronica these days?”

  “On cloud nine. We just had our second grandchild. A boy this time.”

  “You buy him a football yet?”

  “You better believe it.”

  “Figured,” said DeMarco. “And how’s business on your side of the border?”

  The sheriff shook his head. “You know the answer to that. Short on manpower, long on crime. Some of our neighborhoods still have the highest crime rates in the country. We shove one demon back into Pandora’s box, and three more jump out the other side.”

  “I hear you,” DeMarco said. “Three at a minimum.”

  The sheriff finally released his hand. “So what are you doing in this place? Not having any health problems, I hope.”

  “My wife, Laraine. Opened up her wrists a few nights ago.”

  “Oh God, man, I’m sorry. But I thought you two got divorced a long time ago.”

  “Separated.”

  “And this is a, uh, reconciliation?”

  DeMarco blew a thin stream of air over his lower lip. “Apparently when they brought her in, she asked for me. Still had my number on her phone.”r />
  “Good thing you were so close.”

  “I was in Kentucky,” DeMarco told him. “With a friend. I’ve been on medical leave the past month.”

  “Medical as in…?”

  DeMarco shrugged. “Needed a mood adjustment. That case last fall. Don’t know if you read about it or not.”

  “Sure I did. The writer. Lost his whole family in one night.”

  DeMarco nodded. “The man was my friend.”

  “That’s rough, partner. It’s good you were able to clear things up for him.”

  DeMarco offered a small smile, but no other response.

  “Listen,” Brinker said. “You have time for a coffee? Maybe a sandwich? It’s on me. There’s a little café right over there.”

  “You were on your way upstairs.”

  “My sister’s boy. Soccer player, of all things. Torn meniscus.”

  “I don’t want to keep you from seeing him.”

  “He won’t miss me. He’s probably entertaining a couple of candy stripers at this very minute.”

  “Takes after his uncle,” DeMarco said.

  The sheriff grinned. “Don’t ever say anything like that around Vee. She’ll tear both of our heads off.”

  “It would be nice to see her again. It’s been a long time.”

  And then he winced to remember it—the funeral for Baby Ryan. He had let a lot of old friendships die after that.

  “Let’s plan on it,” the sheriff said. “Meantime, how about that coffee? I got something I wouldn’t mind running past you.”

  DeMarco groaned. “I hate when people tell me that.”

  Brinker laid a hand on DeMarco’s shoulder, turned him toward the café. As they walked, he said, “I can’t help wondering about meeting you here like this. You ever think that maybe some things happen for a reason?”

  “The question is,” DeMarco said, “is it a good reason or a bad one?”

  “You remember that double homicide the summer we graduated?”

  DeMarco looked back through the fog. It was the summer his life first changed. In late June he’d gotten into another fight, sent the kid to the hospital with a broken nose and fractured jaw. On July 5, a judge gave DeMarco the option of army or jail. Five days later, he heard about the murders while on the bus ride to the New Cumberland Army Depot processing center. And now he said, “That mob guy and his lawyer. Cut into pieces.”

  The sheriff nodded. “We think the guy who did it might be at it again.”

  Three

  Jayme awoke to a thump. She had been dreaming about a huge, vicious dog prowling the backyard, and about trying to find her handgun but not being able to locate it. So when she awoke suddenly in her grandmother’s bedroom, the windows gray with predawn light, she needed a few moments to remember where she was. A sound like distant rain could be heard, and the soft hum of the ceiling fan. Had she dreamed the thump? She listened for another one and tried to quiet her racing heart.

  She sat up, looked to the open window. A pinkish hue to the gray of dawn. Maybe 5:30, she told herself. If rain was falling, it was farther out, had not yet reached her window.

  And then, another thump. Not a dream. Someone rummaging around downstairs?

  She slid quietly out of bed, turned to the bedside stand, laid her left palm atop the holster, and was relieved to find it where she had left it. She slid the .380 free and, with her left hand, felt around for her cell phone but couldn’t locate it. Must have left it in her jeans again, which were now stuffed into the laundry basket.

  She thought for a moment about covering DeMarco’s long T-shirt with a robe, but that would require opening the squeaky closet door, a noise that might alert the intruder. So she went to the door and into the hall, stood with head cocked, goose bumps on her arms and naked legs. When she smelled the scent of fresh coffee brewing in the kitchen, she also recognized where the sound of rain was coming from: in the guest shower twenty feet down the hall.

  She lowered the handgun and raced down the hall and into the bathroom, where she paused only long enough to place the .380 on the toilet seat before throwing open the shower door and plunging inside.

  Four

  The kitchen was warm with a bright Kentucky morning, still fragrant with the scent of bacon and toast and scrambled eggs that had filled their now-empty plates. Jayme took a sip from her coffee mug, then reached out to rub a naked foot over DeMarco’s. “So breakfast is over,” she said. “Where’s this present from Pennsylvania you’ve been saving for me?”

  He said, “I don’t recall using the word present.”

  “Pretty sure you did. So now you owe me one.”

  He pushed his plate out of the way, slid the laptop close, and opened the screen. “If this is a present,” he told her while scrolling through pages, “it’s not a very nice one. Sorry.”

  She stood and crossed to sit sideways on DeMarco’s lap.

  “There,” he said, and leaned back, reached for his coffee cup.

  She read to herself from the digital edition of the Youngstown Vindicator. The article was dated ten days earlier:

  Cottage Grove man third victim of copycat torso killer?

  The body of Cottage Grove resident Jerome Hufford, 51, was discovered early Sunday morning in the parking lot area of the Campbell farm market and swap meet. Hufford, a divorced father of two adult children, was employed as a machinist at Crescent Industries.

  The only detail police have released is that the condition of the body was consistent with those of two earlier victims this month, 20-year-old Canfield resident Samantha Lewis, a student at Heaton-Young College, and the first known victim, 36-year-old Justin Brenner of Smokey Hollow. According to the sheriff’s office, all three victims died by means similar to those recorded in the Cleveland Torso Murders some eighty years ago. This has caused some to speculate that a copycat killer may be responsible for the recent tragedies.

  The official number of victims attributed to the original Cleveland Torso Murderer is twelve, all of whom died between 1935 and 1938. The actual number could be as high as 20, with victims from as far away as New Castle and McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania (1936 and 1940 respectively). All victims were decapitated, some with their arms and legs amputated; male victims were usually castrated.

  The Cleveland Torso Killer might also be responsible for the Murder Swamp deaths; from 1921 through 1939, several dismembered bodies were found in the swamps outside New Castle.

  Famed Untouchable Eliot Ness, best known for his work in sending gangster Al Capone to prison, oversaw the Cleveland Torso Killer investigations from 1935 to 1938 in his capacity as Cleveland’s director of public safety. Although multiple suspects were questioned in regard to those murders, none was ever prosecuted for the crimes.

  More recently, in July 1988, the bodies of Jared Brogan, a lawyer, and Alan Talarico, president of the Youngstown Firemen’s Credit Union, were dismembered and later discovered on a fairway at Fonderlac Country Club. Although the murderer or murderers were never identified, Talarico’s rumored affiliation with organized crime led police at the time to state that those crimes were unrelated to the Cleveland Torso Murders except in regard to the condition of the bodies.

  Police are unwilling to comment upon any possible relationship between those murders and the three most recent ones.

  The Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office, along with the Youngstown Police, are asking for the public’s assistance in identifying the murderer of Hufford, Lewis, and Brenner. Anyone with any information whatsoever is asked to call 911 or the tip hotline established for this investigation: 1-800-255-8888.

  “Whoa,” Jayme said after she finished reading. “That’s a lot of bodies.”

  “Youngstown’s crime rate is almost twice the national average.”

  “And now three in less than a month?”

  “With nothing apparent in com
mon. Brenner was a CPA, Lewis a college student.”

  “Did you know the part about Eliot Ness?”

  DeMarco sipped his coffee, then nodded. “He cleaned up Cleveland back in the thirties. Got rid of a couple hundred crooked cops. Rumor is he spent the rest of his life haunted by his failure to solve the Torso Murder case.”

  “Who wouldn’t?” Jayme said.

  “There’s a photo of him on Biography.com. He looks like a grown-up version of Alfalfa from The Little Rascals.”

  Jayme leaned back against him. “Don’t make fun, babe.”

  “Just saying.”

  “So this is my present?” she asked. “A serial killer working thirty miles from home?”

  “I ran into the Mahoning County sheriff at the hospital. We played high school football together. Name’s Ben. Ben Brinker.”

  She twisted around to face him. “Two cold cases, one thirty years old and one eighty, both tied somehow to this new stuff? How can that be?”

  “That’s mostly the media’s work. But the sheriff thinks there might be a link between the last two. The 1988 murders and the new ones. Lots of similarities, he said. Thought maybe we could provide a fresh look on things.”

  “Hmm. Let’s say the killer was eighteen to thirty in 1988. That would make him…fifty to sixty-two years old now. Okay, I guess it’s feasible. But it doesn’t seem very likely.”

  DeMarco said nothing.

  “So how come the sheriff is looking for outside help? Why not call in the FBI?”

  “They’ve already helped with forensics and database searches. But you know how it is with local police. There’s a lot of pride involved here too.”

  “Ben would rather have a local hero involved?”

  “Hardly a hero. But yes, a local boy.”

  She turned to look at him again. “So we pack up the RV and head north?”

  “I vote no.”

  “Really? And why is that?”

  “Because you couldn’t participate in the case and still go back to your real job. And because eastern Ohio is no sunnier than western Pennsylvania. And because the RV we’re still paying for will sit in the driveway and turn to rust.”