David Jackson - The Helper

It’s also about helping people to die.

Doesn’t matter how serious they were about it. If they said it, they must have meant it. And the killer sees it as his moral duty to provide them with the assistance they need to fulfill their destinies.

Son of a bitch.

That’s why Tabitha had to be drowned. When the perp found her at Gonzo’s apartment he could have shot her, stabbed her, smothered her or finished her off using any one of countless other methods. But he chose drowning. Or rather, there was no choice to be made. Death by drowning was the fate she had already earmarked for herself.

But what of Repp? Where does he fit into this? What fate did he unknowingly select?

Doyle wishes he knew. But there’s no time left in which to find out.

He consults the dash clock again. It’s after seven-fifty. In a few minutes Doyle will have to enter Repp’s house. In a few minutes more he may have to confront a serial killer.

He feels uneasy. He tells himself it’s only natural, given what may be about to occur. But he knows there’s something more.

He still believes it was too easy, working out that Repp is next. But what else could the clues mean?

The digital recorder is still in Doyle’s pocket. He takes it out and switches it on. He listens again to the music and then the killer’s voice.

‘Certainly raining a lot on you lately, huh, Cal? If it carries on like this, you’ll need to get yourself a hat. Protect that brain. It’s the only thing that’s going to get you out of this mess.

‘I don’t want you making any mistakes on this one, Cal. You don’t have a good record so far. It must be breaking you up inside. How do you cope with that? All those mistakes? It must affect your behavior, your relationships. Maybe I should ask your wife. She of all people must sense something is wrong.

‘What’s the matter, buddy? Nothing you want to say to me? I understand. You must have a lot on your mind right now. As if all these people dying wasn’t enough. You’ve got the distractions too, right? All that small stuff that just gets in the way. The little irritations that you could do without. It’s all raining down on you, right, Cal?’

Those references to the distractions, the small stuff getting in the way. Who else could that be but Repp? And then the music. Definitely by Travis. From the album ‘The Man Who’. Rachel was certain about that.

And yet. .

The earlier stuff. Was that just meaningless preamble? That advice about protecting his brain with a hat was pretty random. And then the next bit about mistakes and his wife. .

Oh fuck.

Fucking hell.

Doyle fires up the engine. Slams the lever into drive. Powers the car away from the curb.

Because it’s not Repp. He got it wrong.

Horribly, horribly wrong.

‘You fucking idiot!’

This from Doyle. Yelling at himself as he drives. Not caring a jot whether anyone sees him yelling at himself as he drives.

‘I told you it was too easy to be Repp. Why would he make it so fucking easy?’

He drives like he has no concept of either danger or courtesy. He squeezes his car through spaces that don’t look big enough, nearly taking the wing mirrors off several vehicles. He spends most of the journey with his hand firmly glued to the car horn.

It should be a drive of only a few minutes, but it seems to be taking him an age to get there. Every time he glances at the clock another minute of his precious time has been eaten away. Doubts keep assaulting his mind. They tell him he’s not going to make it. But he has to make it. Even if he were to put in a call to Central they couldn’t get a car there any faster.

And even if he had oodles of time — and bang, there goes yet another minute on this fucking hyperactive clock — what would he tell the cops? That he’d just figured out what that phone call meant — the one from the killer? Or maybe he could just make up an emergency to get the sector cars to respond and then explain it all later, perhaps while the killer is busy telling the cops all about his special relationship with Doyle, and what he knows about his past deeds. Wouldn’t that be a neat ending?

At the intersection with Second Avenue, the lights go to red. Doyle grits his teeth and floors the gas pedal. He leans into the car horn again as he weaves past a truck and then screeches around the corner. He can’t stop now. He can’t fail. If he does, another life is lost and the killer is once again at large.

That can’t be allowed to happen. Not again.

He flits the car from lane to lane, ignoring the protests of the drivers he cuts up. Powers right onto Ninth Street. Tries to do the same when he gets to Stuyvesant, but overlooks the fact that Stuyvesant is about the only freaking street in this part of the city that doesn’t stick to the standard grid layout, and which therefore has an angle of intersection much less than ninety degrees. Doyle has to fight with the car as it slews to the left, missing a collision with a parked vehicle opposite by a fraction of an inch.

There are no parking spaces left on this short street that are big enough to take his car. At least not lengthways. Doyle drives forward between two sedans, feeling the jolt as his car bumps onto the sidewalk. A man who was about to walk that way jumps back in fear for his life, then starts gesticulating wildly at Doyle.

Doyle ignores him. He’s more interested in his clock, which tells him it’s one minute to eight. He prays that the killer’s watch is slow.

He practically falls out of the car, slamming the door behind him before he races up the steps in front of the house. It all looks so quiet here, so tranquil. A spark of optimism arcs inside him.

But when he tries the door and finds that it’s unlocked, when he steps inside and his nostrils are assailed by the stench, his hopefulness shudders and dies.

The killer is here.

It was Rachel who gave him the vital information. Only he didn’t realize it. It wasn’t the fact that the song was by Travis. It was the name of the album: ‘The Man Who’. Taken from the title of a well-known book.

All that crap the killer said in his call. It wasn’t nonsense at all. It carried every key word he needed.

The stuff about needing a hat. And then his mistakes, and his wife.

Put it all together and you’re back to the book again.

The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat.

And why is that important? Because of who wrote it.

Oliver Sacks.

The next victim is Mrs Olivia Sachs.

Very clever. Ingenious, even. Especially with that leaving open of the trap for the unwary: the fairly obvious link to Repp. A trap which Doyle was careless enough to fall straight into. Hell, he practically dived in there at the first opportunity.

But now he knows better.

Repp hasn’t been the only ‘distraction’ from the murders. Mrs Sachs has been a distraction too. And, of course, she fits the pattern. Only too well.

What was it she said about the time she got the phone call from her daughter in the burning South Tower?

I said to God, let it be me in that building. I’m old, I’ve had a good life, let it be me who has to walk into that wall of fire. Anything to save my baby.

And that was it. That was enough to seal her fate. Perhaps she told that story a thousand times, to a thousand different people. But somehow it reached the ears of the killer. He latched onto it. And now he plans to grant the wish of Mrs Sachs to be reunited with her daughter.

Doyle knows this beyond doubt.

Because what he can smell in this hallway is gasoline.

Some things you can’t prepare for.

You can draw your weapon and you can kick open the door and you can hope for the best.