Alex Barclay - The Caller

‘And I don’t any more.’

‘Don’t say that. You do make me laugh. You cheer me up. You remind me that the world is good and pure…’ He stopped, because sometimes she reminded him that the world was a terrible place.

‘Look at your shirt,’ she said.

He looked down. ‘What?’

‘It’s shaking. Is your heart beating really fast?’ She frowned and reached out her hand.

‘No,’ he said, quickly taking hold of it. ‘That’s just the breeze.’ He smiled.

Mary looked at him. ‘Do you get tired of visiting me?’

‘No, no, no,’ said David. ‘Please don’t tell me you think that. It’s you and me, Mary. It always was. And always will be, OK?’

She nodded. ‘Thanks.’ She paused. ‘I’m sorry about the letters.’

Joe and Danny were pulling up at the car wash on Columbus Avenue when Joe’s phone rang. He pulled it out and flipped it open.

‘Joe? It’s Rencher. This Mary Burig broad? She was admitted to Downtown Hospital nine months ago, GSW to the head from…’ he paused, ‘… a twenty-two caliber automatic.’

Julia Embry had been paged to reception in the main clinic by the time Joe and Danny arrived back. She leaned over the desk to the receptionist. ‘Send Magda to the coffee shop when she comes in. Thank you.’

They took a quiet table in the corner and got coffee.

‘I’m sure you know every shooting is reported to the police in the ER,’ said Joe ’so when we ran Mary’s name, it came up.’

Julia nodded. ‘I didn’t know if it was relevant.’

‘I don’t know if you’ve been watching the news or reading the papers, but The Caller is killing his victims with a similar weapon…’

‘Oh my God,’ said Julia.

Joe nodded. ‘It’s looking like Mary could possibly have been a victim.’

‘But weren’t the victims all male?’

‘So far, yes,’ said Joe. ‘But it’s too much of a coincidence that Mary has been sending in these letters, she seems to have some information about the crimes and now she has an injury just like the other victims.’

‘I suppose you need to speak with her again.’

‘Yes,’ said Joe. ‘How was she when we left?’

‘She was down, frustrated that she couldn’t help. And scared. She’s back at her apartment now. I can take you over there.’

‘We don’t want to do anything to upset Mary,’ said Danny. ‘We just think there might be more information there that could be useful. If we can jog her memory in any way…’

‘OK. First, you can speak with Magda. Here she is. I called her when all this happened with Stanley earlier. She said she needed to come in.’

Magda walked towards them with a blue canvas tote bag clutched to her stomach.

‘Hello, detectives. My name is Magda Oleszak, Mary Burig’s support worker.’

She took a seat in front of them and pulled the bag onto her lap.

‘Hi,’ said Joe. ‘How you doing?’

‘Here,’ she said, reaching in, taking out a large brown envelope. ‘These are from Mary.’

‘She asked you to give this to us?’ said Joe, taking the envelope.

Magda shook her head. ‘No. I mail letters for her sometimes. But she writes so many I can’t mail all of them. Like the one she wrote to welcome the new Pope. Or the ones to you. She saw the news conference. Lots of people saw it, but they don’t send you letters. When I came back from Poland, I heard she told you she mailed you fifteen letters. She didn’t. She has problems with her memory. But she did write these other things that I can give you now. She writes sometimes before she has a seizure. Stan will tell you that. He arrived one day after she had a seizure and her papers were on the floor all around her.’

As Joe sliced through the envelope, the contents spilled out: receipts, Post-Its, strips of newspaper margins, toilet paper, magazines, floral notelets, Rolodex pages, greeting cards, the pale cream interiors of cereal boxes. Every surface Mary could have found to write on, was covered with text and stuffed into envelopes.

‘It was distressing for her,’ said Magda. ‘Mary tries to make sense of what she has written and she can’t. Not all of it. I see her crying, I see how I can make that go away and I do it. I take these writings away. For her. Stan did not know this. So he mailed those letters to you. And now…’ She shrugged. ‘You can make no sense of them too.’

‘Have you read through these again?’ said Joe.

‘I never read them the first time,’ said Magda. ‘I still don’t like reading in English.’

‘Does anyone mind if I take a look at her letters?’ said Julia.

Joe handed them to her.

‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘I can see how these could be difficult to understand. Mary’s thought patterns are disassociated – you can tell from how she’s written all this. It probably made sense to her at the time but the order is all out of whack.’

‘There’s a lot there to take in,’ said Joe.

‘Don’t forget Mary’s long-term memory is strong,’ said Julia. ‘It’s very hard for her that, since the attack, she has difficulty forming new memories. She’s aware that she can’t do everything she used to be able to do. I wish I could be of more help, but ultimately, only you know what you’re looking for. The best I can say is to scrutinize these again and see is there anything that means anything to your investigation. To me, Mary talking about her swimming classes in Astoria Park is no big deal, but if you knew the killer swims fifty lengths a day there, then that could be important.’

‘I looked at some of the drawings,’ said Magda, shrugging. ‘But, no. They’re weird.’ She pointed to the cereal box. ‘On there.’

Joe flipped over the box and saw angry black mouths staring back at him, some of them big, some of them small, all of them wide open with ragged teeth. Joe passed it to Danny.

‘Did she talk to you about this one?’

Magda shook her head. ‘This was after a seizure. I found it on her writing desk. I can’t show her that. It’s too creepy.’

Danny shrugged. ‘Thank you for bringing these to our attention. We’ll take a look at all this, it might not mean anything, but we’ve got to check everything out.’

‘Yes. Probably nothing,’ said Magda. ‘But you’re here now, so maybe we could go and see if Mary can help you.’

‘If you don’t mind,’ said Julia. ‘I’ll leave you to it. We’re in the process of setting up a second clinic upstate and I’m under a lot of pressure.’

‘That’s not a problem,’ said Joe.

Mary sat on the corner of her bed with the pages spread out in front of her. Magda sat beside her with a hand on her arm. Joe and Danny stood beside her. She had been this way for fifteen minutes. No-one spoke.

Eventually, Mary looked up. ‘Something to do with mouths, hurting people’s mouths. I don’t think he can help it.’ She pointed to her drawings and the place where the ink was so heavy and black, it had soaked through the card.

The light in the front room was on when Joe got back. Anna walked into the hall as soon as she heard the car. Her face was white.

‘What is going on?’ she said.

Joe walked by her into the kitchen. ‘What? With the case?’

‘I just got a call from Paris. The police came to the house.’

Joe didn’t move. ‘What?’

‘To my parents’ house. Three flics call to the door. My mother was frightened. She thought we’d had an accident or something. They say to her, “is everything OK?” Then they walk all around the garden. And ask can they come in the house to look too. She’s seventy-five years old. She didn’t know what to do. I don’t think she even asked them for ID-’

Joe turned around. ‘I told your parents to always ask for ID if people are calling at the door.’