P. Parrish - Paint It Black

Her brain was racing, trying to think of some way to calm him. What? What could work? Talk? Did he want to talk?

“Who?” she asked. “Who made you?”

He screamed at her. “Him!”

She drew back in the chair. Retreating footsteps. She heard the dragging sound again, a door opening, and felt a waft of fresh air. She pulled at her wrists, but they were bound tight.

Minutes passed. Or was it seconds? She couldn’t tell anymore. But then, she heard the door close and the fresh air was gone. He was back.

He was pacing, muttering. She heard his footsteps come nearer.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I’m. . I’m. .” She could hear her voice. It sounded faint, childlike. “I’m an FBI agent.”

“Why were you there?”

There? Where. . the pub?

“I was there to take a missing person’s report from someone,” she said.

“I didn’t-” He stopped. “Who’s missing?”

Why was he asking this? He knew it was Tyrone Heller. He had just killed him.

“Who?” he demanded.

“A man named Tyrone Heller.”

“Ty Heller.” The voice grew louder, impatient. “ Ty Heller! Who said he was missing? Cap? ”

Cap? Captain Lynch? He knew about Lynch? Had he followed her there? She swallowed dryly. “Yes. . yes, Lynch. He was worried about Heller. He thought he may be in danger.”

“What did he say about him?”

“Him?”

“Ty Heller. What did he say about him?”

She was quiet, her shallow breathing pulling the cloth against her skin. She didn’t know how to answer this.

“Did he say he was smart? A good worker? What did he say?”

Emily searched her memory for the right words. “He said he was a fine young man.”

“Did he say a black man?”

“Yes. . yes. . he did.”

It was quiet for several minutes. She could hear a boat horn, faintly. The quiet seemed to go on forever, but she knew it had to be only a minute or two.

“I have to finish it.”

His voice had gone flat.

The panic began to rise up inside her. She struggled against the ropes at her wrists, her breath coming faster now. She started to cry and screwed her eyes shut, concentrating on staying still and quiet so he wouldn’t hear her. Her nose was running, the cloth over her face becoming wetter with each breath she took.

The footsteps came closer.

She let go. The sobs poured out. “Why? Why?” she pleaded. “I’m not like the others! I’m not black!”

“Do you think about it?”

“What?”

“What it’s like to be black?” he shouted.

“No,” she sobbed.

Quick, heavy footsteps. The air stirred and she instinctively pulled back. “Have you ever fucked a black man?” he demanded.

Dear God. .

“No. .”

“You know what happens when you do?”

“No. . no. Please. .”

“You get freaks. Disgusting little monkeys that should’ve been scraped out of their mothers’ wombs with a spoon.”

For a second, she heard nothing but the pounding of her pulse in her head.

Then, suddenly he was there and she jerked back. The air around her stirred with his breathing and she could smell him. Sweat and dead fish.

She screamed as she felt the blade on her skin.

He stared at their faces.

They stared back, silent images tacked on a bulletin board. Walter Tatum. Anthony Quick. Harold Childers. Roscoe Webb.

Louis walked slowly to the desk, opened the drawer, and pulled out the stack of photos Captain Lynch had given him. He rifled through them until he found a photo of Tyrone Heller. It was blurry, and he was standing behind Woody, but it was all he had.

He walked back to the board and tacked it next to Roscoe Webb’s photo. Now there were eight. Emily Farentino didn’t fit but she was still number nine.

Louis felt himself tighten but he refused to turn away from the board. His eyes moved over the maps, the color-coded cards, the pushpins and faces, his mind straining to find that one piece, that single strand, that might give them a break.

The door opened and Louis turned. Wainwright came in, his face drawn, his eyes vacant. No one had gotten much sleep in the last two days, but Wainwright looked like he had aged ten years overnight.

“I thought you were out there with the rest of them,” Wainwright said. He went to the coffee urn and poured a cup.

“I thought maybe I could do more here.” Louis hesitated. “Anything? Any word?”

Wainwright shook his head. He slumped into a chair at the table.

“We’ll find her, Dan,” Louis said. He said it, but he wasn’t sure he believed it himself.

Wainwright didn’t look up. Louis couldn’t stand seeing the guilt in Wainwright’s eyes. He turned back to the board.

“Tyrone Heller doesn’t fit,” Louis said quietly.

“What do you mean?” Wainwright asked.

“Farentino’s profile. He doesn’t fit.” Louis pointed to one of the cards. “Mayo knows this kid Heller. He worked with him on the same boat for almost a year. Farentino says this guy only kills strangers.”

“It’s Tuesday,” Wainwright said flatly. “Gunther knew their routine, knew they went to dinner at the Dockside. He knew exactly where to find Heller.”

Louis concentrated again on the victims’ photographs. They began to mutate into brown blurs. He rubbed his gritty eyes.

“Dan, you have the photos of the other cases?” Louis asked.

Wainwright sifted through a folder and handed the three photos to Louis. They were color copies of autopsy photos. Louis tacked them up next to the others, in the order of their abductions. He took a step back and looked at them.

Nothing. Nothing was coming.

His eyes moved from the first-Barnegat Light, New Jersey-to the last-Roscoe Webb. His eyes lingered on the blurry snapshot of Tyrone Heller. Heller was. . young, younger than the others. That didn’t fit either.

He went back to the New Jersey and Fort Lauderdale files, snatched them up, and returned to the board. He wrote the victims’ ages on each photo. The man in New Jersey was fifty-five; the two in Fort Lauderdale were fifty and forty-eight. Tatum was forty-five, Quick was forty, Harry Childers was forty-eight, and Tyrone Heller was twenty-five.

They were getting younger.

But there was something else, something right there in front of him that he wasn’t seeing.

Then, suddenly, he saw it.

The skin colors. The Barnegat Light victim’s skin was ink black. The Coral Springs, Florida, man was maybe a shade lighter. The man from Lauderdale Lakes looked mahogany-toned. Tatum’s skin was the color of maple syrup. Quick was cinnamon-skinned. Harold Childers was tawny. Roscoe Webb was a medium tan. And Heller. .

Louis stared at Heller’s picture. He was as light as he himself was.

“They’re getting lighter,” Louis said quietly.

“What?” Wainwright said.

“The victims,” Louis said. “Their skin colors are getting lighter.”

Wainwright eyed the board over the rim of the cup. “So?”

“It means something.”

“What?”

Louis tried to get his brain in gear. He was tired; it was hard.

Wainwright came up behind him. “I don’t see what it could mean,” he said, but he was studying the faces carefully.

“I think I do,” Louis said. “The killer is aware of skin color, of the importance that people put on shades of skin color. The lighter the skin, the more prized it is.”

Wainwright was looking at Louis now. But Louis was staring at the faces on the bulletin board.

“Black people with lighter skin get preferential treatment,” Louis said quietly. “The lighter the skin, the less threatening the person is to the white power structure.”