The Helper

THIRTY

‘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.

It doesn’t always pan out as you’d like.

Mrs Sachs stands in the center of her tastefully decorated parlor. She is drenched from head to toe, and there is a massive puddle around her feet. The pungent odor of gasoline is overpowering. Lying on its side on the floor is a gasoline canister.

Mrs Sachs doesn’t move. Her head is bowed, her shoulders slumped. She seems already resigned to her fate. Her frail, bedraggled form is a pitiful sight.

Standing next to her is a man in a gray suit. He ticks all the tall, dark and handsome boxes, like he should be on the cover of a cheap romance novel. Doyle has never seen him before. Has no idea who he is.

What he does know is that, much though he’d like to, he can’t shoot the sonofabitch.

Because the bastard is holding a cigarette lighter in his outstretched hand. And it’s lit.

‘Freeze, motherfucker!’ yells Doyle. Because it’s the kind of thing he’s been trained to do. You don’t ask nicely and you don’t ask twice. You hit ’em fast and hard, and you don’t give them time to think.

Except that Doyle doesn’t know what his next move should be.

He can’t shoot this guy. Can’t hit him. Can’t arrest him.

Can’t even get anywhere near him. That flame is only a couple of feet away from Mrs Sachs. With all the fumes in here, it’s a wonder she hasn’t already gone up like a firework.

The man clearly knows he has the upper hand. There is no fear in his eyes. No indication that he senses the game is up.

Knowing this, the man smiles and reaches under his jacket.

‘I said freeze! Do it, motherfucker, or you’re a dead man.’

But there is no stopping this man. When his hand reappears, it is clutching a gun of his own. A gun which he slowly brings to bear on Doyle.

‘Drop the gun! Drop it or I’ll shoot, goddamnit!’

Doyle hears the way his voice has gone up an octave. He’s starting to panic. His finger is tightening on the trigger of his Glock, but he knows he cannot fire.

The man’s smile broadens. ‘I tell you what,’ he says. ‘Why don’t you drop your gun instead?’

The man’s gun is now level with Doyle’s. It’s a standoff. Or at least it would be if it didn’t seem as though everything was stacked in the killer’s favor. One of them can shoot, the other can’t. Life is unfair like that sometimes.

The man takes a step toward Doyle. ‘Come on, be a good little boy. Put down your weapon and I might think about letting you live.’

Doyle is itching to start blasting away. His pupils are immense, his muscles taut. His every fiber has been dedicated to the task of taking out this sick fuck. He is so close to the release point that what he sees before him now is not a human but a target. His mind has already dehumanized the figure, readying Doyle to send out the bullets.

But all the while there is that little warning light, suspended in the air. A small spike of heat, just waiting for gravity to suck it down into that pool of liquid death.

Doyle feels the need to blurt something out. Anything.

‘She doesn’t need your help.’

The man cocks his head slightly. His lips twitch.

‘What did you say?’

‘Mrs Sachs. She doesn’t need your help. You’ve made a mistake.’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Mrs Sachs doesn’t want to die. All she said was that she wished she could have taken her daughter’s place if it meant saving her life. That’s not the same as her wanting to die now. If you kill her, you won’t be helping her.’

Another twitch, but his smile is fading. ‘Shut up. You’re just trying to stop me. It’s too late for that. It’s decided. The call for help has gone out. I have to. . I have to do what’s necessary.’

‘Sure you do. But this isn’t necessary. You want to help people, don’t you? Well, this isn’t helping. Think about it. Mrs Sachs doesn’t want this, so how are you doing her a favor?’

‘She said she wanted to burn.’

‘Yes, but only if it meant saving her daughter. That doesn’t apply now. Killing Mrs Sachs will serve no purpose. Her daughter is dead.’

As Doyle says this, he is sure he sees a sudden tremor in Mrs Sachs. As though his declaration about her daughter has cut her like a knife. It pains him that he is piling more misery onto her after all she’s been through.

The man turns his head a touch. Looks dispassionately at the sodden bag of bones that is Mrs Sachs.

Come on, thinks Doyle. Dig deep. Find your humanity.

The man returns his gaze to Doyle. It is still the gaze of a madman.

‘Enough talking,’ he says. ‘I have a mission. Drop the gun. I’m giving you five seconds.’

‘Forget it, asshole. You ain’t walking out of here.’

‘Five,’ says the man. ‘Four. .’

‘Don’t make me do this,’ says Doyle, when in truth he doesn’t know what he will do. He is out of options. He either kills the guy and watches Mrs Sachs become a raging inferno, or he puts the gun down and hopes it will buy him some time to think of another approach.

‘Three. .’

The man takes another fractional step toward Doyle, but still he holds the lighter directly above the pool of gasoline.

‘Two. .’

Doyle wants to scream, to run, to shoot, to surrender, all at once. He feels all the different pressures straining him in a thousand directions.

And then it happens. The unexpected. Something he didn’t figure was a part of this equation.

Mrs Sachs moves.

She moves faster than he would have thought possible. A sudden launching from the position she has steadfastly maintained since Doyle arrived.

Seeing the surprise on Doyle’s face, the killer starts to twist his own head toward Mrs Sachs. But he is too late. She flings her arms wide and jumps onto his back like some rabid starving animal. Her hands cross over in front of his neck and her skeletal fingers sink into him for purchase.

The noise is that of a gas hob igniting, but multiplied many times over. A front of hot air punches Doyle in the face. The center of the room is now filled with a huge fireball that starts to spin and dance and scream.

Doyle keeps shifting his aim, searching for a clear shot. But the burning mass moves too fast. Through the dazzling flames he can make out the arms of the killer, clawing at the demon on his back. But still she clings on, and the man’s piercing screams send spears of ice through Doyle’s veins.

In what is perhaps a last-ditch, unthinking attempt to survive, the killer suddenly starts pumping his legs. He runs straight at a glass-fronted cabinet, twisting to his left just before he collides. The whole front of the cabinet implodes, and as the man rebounds in a shower of glass fragments, Mrs Sachs finally becomes detached from him and thuds to the floor. As the man continues to spin and careen off walls and furniture, Doyle holsters his gun and races to the window. With a roar of effort he yanks down one of the heavy drapes.

He knows what his training is urging him to do now. It could almost be a question from a police exam: You have two victims — one almost certainly dead, the other still with a chance of surviving. Which one do you help first?

Doyle heads straight for the body of Mrs Sachs.

He throws the curtain over her and pats it down until he is certain the flames are out, then runs back out into the hallway. Next to a copper umbrella stand, a fire extinguisher is attached to the wall. Doyle rips it away and heads back into the parlor. He sees that the man has dropped to the wooden floor and is just sitting there, blazing away. Doyle is reminded of some newsreel footage he saw once of a Tibetan monk who sat cross-legged and immolated himself in protest at something or other.

Doyle tackles the flaming gasoline puddle in the center of the floor first, blasting it with the extinguisher more times than it needs. Then, slowly, he crosses the room to the remaining pyre. He takes aim with the extinguisher. Waits a few seconds. Waits a few more seconds. Then puts out the fire.

He looks down at the charred, sizzling mass. Wrinkles his nose at the smell of roasting flesh. Wonders why people do what they do.

Stepping back to Mrs Sachs, he chooses to leave her covered. It seems more fitting somehow. He wants to remember her as she was when he first met her. Aged, frail, but still with a spark of life. Still capable of flirting with him.

And then he thinks about what he said just minutes ago. About the emphatic way in which he asserted that her daughter was dead. That was the trigger. That was what made her realize that her life was no longer worth living. And it was what saved his own.

And all the other victims. Dead not because of what they did or what they desired, but because of what they said.

Such is the power of words.