John Lutz - Serial

“All of it’s my fault.”

She was suddenly hugging Westerley, and his arms were around her.

“You want me to be with you when he gets out?” he asked.

“You suppose he’ll be furious with me?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure how he’s gonna feel. I know this: I’m gonna have a talk with him right off. You won’t have anything to fear.”

“I’ve got me to fear, Wayne. My conscience.”

“I don’t see how you could have done anything different, Beth.”

“I coulda been more sure.”

“It’s so easy to say that after the fact. Knowing what you knew, thinking what you thought, feeling like you did, there wasn’t much else for you to do.”

She looked through a mist of tears up into his eyes. “You really believe that?”

“Damned right I do.”

“I wish I could be as sure as you.”

She dug her forehead into his shoulder, and her body trembled with her sobs. The woods began to trill with the sounds of insects becoming more active in the building heat. A breeze kicked up, stirring the leaves and moving the dust around.

“You want me to stay with you?” he asked.

She hugged him harder. “Yeah, I want you to stay with me.”

I do, and I don’t.

New York, the present

Jock Sanderson finished with the tiled floor of the ladies’ room at the Uptown Diamond Theater, then used the wringer on the bucket to press and roll out the mop head.

He stood leaning on the mop’s wooden handle, surveying his work. The cracked gray tiles gleamed as best they could after so many years. The metal stalls were free of graffiti, if you didn’t look too closely at the remains of a lipstick sketch of a huge male organ on one of the stalls. The things women drew and wrote in public restrooms never ceased to amaze Jock.

He made sure he’d put a new plastic liner in the trash receptacle by the door. After a last look around, he backed out of the restroom, pulling the mop and bucket on rollers behind him, making sure the bucket didn’t tip as it thunkthunk-thunked over the tiles. It was good to get away from the smelly ammonia-based disinfectant he’d used to swab down the old walls and floor. His nasal passages were clear enough now, thank you.

The Uptown had only recently been reopened and used for off-Broadway productions. The repertoire group that acted there was currently doing Hamlet. Not Jock’s kind of thing. Too melancholy. Not that Jock walked around with a silly grin pasted on his face. It was just that he believed people could and should do something in this world, make their own way, create their own wake in the water. Like when he was in prison for that rape he’d had no part in. Behind the walls, he’d made himself a cutting tool out of a piece of broken glass he’d found, diligently filing it to shape on concrete and hiding it in his waistband.

He’d used it to cut the first con who’d had a go at him. Then he’d stomped on the glass weapon, grinding it into bits so it could yield no fingerprints. Nobody ever learned who’d opened the assailant’s gut so that closing it required thirty stitches.

Jock fell under the protection of a gang of skinheads. He’d been safe then from the gangs of black and Hispanic cons. All it took was keeping quiet most of the time and getting a few ballpoint ink tattoos that identified him as somebody not to bother without damned good reason.

Not that his time behind the walls hadn’t been hell. It would be, for a guy like Jock. But he was a fast learner and an operator.

He had to smile as he rolled his bucket along the Uptown’s side aisle, careful so the soapy water wouldn’t slosh out onto the carpet. Figuring angles, keeping quiet, holding your cards close-he’d learned those things in prison. They were also useful on the outside. They helped him to get things done.

Like Judith Blaney.

He dumped the bucket’s contents in the backstage sink, then rolled the bucket and mop toward the lobby. He made his way to the exit. It was six in the morning and already plenty bright and warm outside.

After helping to load the equipment in the Sweep ’Em Up van, he said good-bye to the rest of the cleanup crew and then ambled toward the subway stop that would take him south through Manhattan and home. It was already warm, the time of year when the concrete canyons didn’t completely cool off during the sultry nights. He wouldn’t smell so good on the subway, but he could put up with the sideways glances and people trying to get some space between him and them. It wouldn’t always be that way.

Underground in the subway stop it was cooler. The platform was already crowded. There were working people like Jock, standing back on their heels and tired from their night jobs. There were a few out-and-out alkies who’d fouled themselves and smelled even worse than Jock. Already there were plenty of men and women dressed for the office, some of them toting attache cases or folded newspapers. Getting an early start. Trying to stay employed in the lousy economy.

Everybody became more alert as a breeze moved over the platform. A train was approaching, pushing the air ahead of it through the narrow dark tunnel. A distant set of lights became visible, and the crowd on the platform moved nearer to the edge, preparing to board the train as soon as it lurched to a halt and the doors slid open.

Jock suddenly became aware of a man standing close to him, actually nudging his arm.

He looked over to give the guy a dirty look, and found himself facing the Skinner.

Jock drew in his breath. “What the hell…”

The Skinner smiled grimly and handed him a small cardboard box, the sort of thing a cheap piece of jewelry might come in.

“I thought you should have this,” the Skinner said, “as a reminder that it would be best if we kept our secret just between us.”

He turned and walked away, losing himself in the mass of people eager to board the train.

Jock knew he’d soon have to board and fight his way to a seat. The train had arrived and was already starting to slow.

He raised the lid of the tiny box and at first didn’t know what he was looking at. Some kind of snail, only too large for that. He prodded it with his forefinger and found it cold and pliable. Some sort of seafood? Dead, thank God.

Then he noticed the contour and color of the object and, staring at it, realized it was a human tongue.

Judith Blaney’s tongue!

It must be!

The message was indirect but clear. This is what happens to people who talk against the Skinner. Who can’t keep a secret.

Jock quickly replaced the lid and swallowed hard to keep last night’s doughnuts down. It almost worked. He had to clamp his teeth and lips together and gulp down the sweet and bitter column of bile that rose in his throat.

He slumped on a hard plastic seat molded for the derrieres of extraterrestrials. The train thundered through darkness while he sat holding the tiny white box on his lap with both hands, all the way to his stop.

After he’d climbed the concrete steps to street level, he began walking fast on sidewalks that hadn’t yet become packed with pedestrians. He was aware of the hardness of the concrete through the thin soles of his shoes.

He dropped the box in the first trash receptacle he came to. Casually. Not glancing back.

Only then did he slow his pace.

He was perspiring heavily. The odor of his own stale perspiration nauseated him. Bile rose again in a bitter column at the back of his throat.

Judith Blaney’s tongue. Jesus!

For a second-only a second-he felt sorry for her.

Then he thought about the detective who’d questioned him in his apartment. He couldn’t recall her name. The one with the black hair and eyes, and the big boobs. Despite her femininity, there’d been a kind of toughness about her.