David Ellis - Eye of the Beholder

Mansbury College, welcome to Mansbury, where vision meets opportunity.

McDERMOTT TAKES ANOTHER REPORT from the neighborhood canvass, another report of nobody seeing anything. One neighbor did hear a chain saw earlier today, midday, but that was not terribly out of the ordinary in the summer, near the tree-lined park on the lake.

Midday, on a weekday. Koslenko must have subdued her while she was in the shower, getting ready for work, and then waited for the apartment building to clear before going to work on her. The guy may be crazy, but he isn’t dumb.

The County Attorney Technical Unit and the medical examiner have nearly completed their work. They will run prints but everything was wiped down, and, anyway, they know who the hell it is. They just can’t find him. They’ve had an all-points bulletin out on Koslenko and his car since this morning to no avail.

He takes a call on his cell phone from the squad room, where, apparently, Harland Bentley and his lawyer have had their fill of waiting for McDermott. They were there solely as a courtesy, his lawyer said, so they were free to leave.

“Albany left, too, Mike. We couldn’t very well-”

“That’s fine,” he says. He has his hands full tonight. But he tells them to post a car at both houses, Bentley’s and Albany‘s, and follow them if they go anywhere.

He looks into the living room, where Paul Riley sits on the couch, his face buried in his hands, his toes tapping on the carpet. They tried to get him into a squad car, but he refused. McDermott let him stay when he promised to keep out of the way.

Riley is wearing more than sorrow, more than shock on his face. He is wearing guilt. This is his fault, no matter what anyone tries to tell him. Over time, he’ll work on the same rationalizations. He will tell himself that he did the best he could with Burgos’s prosecution. He will tell himself that it was Leo Koslenko who killed Shelly, not him. But he won’t accept any of that. He will put this squarely on himself.

McDermott knows that better than anyone.

He had the ability, the right, to have his wife institutionalized against her will. With a three-year-old child involved, he had more than that-he had the responsibility. How could he have left Joyce with Grace that day? After seeing her unglued the night before?

How could he do that to little Gracie?

She blames herself, the doctor said.

How could she do that to their daughter? No matter how sick, no matter how consumed by her illness-how could Joyce do that to Grace?

Get the shoe box from the closet.

Open it up.

Give it to Mommy.

He finds himself standing at the threshold of Shelly Trotter’s bathroom. What happened in here was evil, whatever the face you paint on it, no matter that it was the product of mental illness. Death has no exceptions, only victims.

The angle. The crime-scene technician, thinking he was out of McDermott’s earshot. Thinking that McDermott, devastated, clutching his three-year-old daughter, wasn’t listening intently to every word from the next room.

The angle’s unusual for self-infliction.

“Mike.”

She would’ve had to hold the gun a couple feet away from her and aim it back.

“Mike.”

Then that’s how it happened, said Ricki Stoletti, his partner of four months at the time. That’s how it happened.

Stoletti touches his arm. She avoids looking into the bathroom, but the situation is not lost on her. They’ve never discussed it, not even at the time. Back then, after that conversation with the technician, Stoletti had avoided eye contact with McDermott.

It’s closed, was all she’d said to him. Suicide.

“Hey, Mike.”

Thank you, he did not say out loud to her. Not then, not ever.

“The governor’s here,” she says. “Put on your game face.”

I GET TO MY FEET as Governor Trotter walks into Shelly’s apartment, in a suit and olive raincoat, his wife Abigail and a cadre of security detail close behind. He rushes up to me and grabs my hands, his own hands trembling, his eyes red but stoic. He is not crying. He’s already done that.

“How-?” His eyes search mine for answers that I don’t have.

“It’s because of me,” I say. “He killed her because of me.”

He shakes his head, like he doesn’t get it. Nothing about it makes sense. It won’t make sense, maybe ever. Behind him, his wife is trying to get past McDermott to see Shelly.

“Abby, don’t go in there,” I say. “That’s not Shelly any-anymore.”

“How could this happen?” She turns to face me, looking years older than I’ve ever seen her. “What did you do, Paul?”

There’s nothing I can say. McDermott comes over, takes the governor by the arm, and walks him and his wife into the kitchen to talk to them. The governor breaks free and looks into the bathroom, a deep, soulful wail soon following.

McDERMOTT, distracted by the presence of the commander and the governor’s staff, finally breaks away from them as they head to the station. It’s approaching nine o‘clock now. Second night in a row that he didn’t put Grace to sleep. Could be the second night in a row that he won’t sleep at all. He becomes aware of it, for the first time in hours, as his adrenaline finally decelerates. His brain is exhausted. His legs move painfully.

Susan Dobbs, the assistant medical examiner, is one of the few people left in the apartment now. The color has returned to her now; she seemed awed by the crime scene upon her arrival, hours ago, and that’s saying something, working corpses in this city. “The governor needs to sign a DNA authorization,” she says. “To verify identification.”

“Nothing left of her.” McDermott sighs.

She zips up her medical bag. “Just the one left foot.”

“Oh, I forgot.” McDermott snaps his fingers. “God, in all this flurry I-”

“Yes,” she says, “it was there. A postmortem incision at the base of her fourth and fifth toes. He cut everything into pieces but the left foot. He wanted to make sure you saw it.”

“Thanks, Sue.”

She appraises him with sympathetic eyes. “When’s he gonna be done, Mike? You said this was from those lyrics?”

McDermott nods, making a peace sign with his fingers.

“Two more kills,” he says. “Unless I catch him.”

DRIVE THE CAR BACK on the interstate, north toward the city, pass the downtown, a motel would be best, one where he can hide the rental car in the back. No one’s going to be looking for the Camry, but he’ll be careful, be careful, he finds a place off the highway, uses his last fake identification, wears glasses and fake facial hair and a baseball cap, pays in cash, waits around the lobby but nobody’s following, all clear, everything coming together now.

The governor’s daughter is dead, all over the news, he sits on the bed and watches it, then turns it off and goes into the bathroom, empties the bag from the drugstore on the vanity-

He tapes Cassie’s photograph on the bathroom mirror, traces the outline of her face with his fingers, pretty, so beautiful-

He uses the electric razor, shaves the front and top of his skull, no bald head, too obvious, not bald, just a bald spot, a patch of skin shaped like a horseshoe-

You look funny.

I know. But they won’t notice me this way. They might expect me to shave my head, but not to shave a bald spot.

You still look funny.

Hair coloring will change from deep black to dirty blond, different color, different style, he looks at himself in the mirror, sees a middle-aged man with male-pattern baldness, light brown hair on the sides, glasses-