Creepers

53

He stumbled toward her. When a rat appeared on her shoulder, he swung the crowbar, smashing it against a wall. Overcome with emotion, he sank to his knees. The woman wasn't as shrunken as the corpse on the bottom level. Her eyes were gone. Chunks had been chewed from her, but the face was nonetheless impossible not to recognize.

Diane.

Grief cramped his chest. It took away his breath. Tears burned like acid on his cheeks. Wracked with sobs, he raised a hand, caressing her leathery face. Her blond hair hung below her shoulders, longer than she preferred it-because it had continued growing after her death. Her expression was a grimace of terror. Like the corpse on the bottom level, her neck bones were cracked inward from having been strangled. His Diane. His wonderful Diane.

He knelt, worshiping her, mourning her. Diane. Eleven years together. She never gave up on him, never tired of taking care of him after he came back sick from his first time in Iraq. He had tried to make it up to her, tried to make her realize how much he loved her. Kind, selfless Diane. Beautiful Diane with holes chewed in her face.

A gunshot brought him back to the moment. Continuing to sob, he opened her purse, took out her wallet, and put it in his Windbreaker. He kissed her parched forehead, picked up the crowbar and the walkie-talkie, and stalked up the stairs.

Fury made him want to rush, but that would be playing Ronnie's game, letting the son of a bitch manipulate him into making mistakes. I'm coming for you, Ronnie, he inwardly shouted. Ready with the crowbar, he emerged into the sixth-floor passageway and studied the wreckage of Danata's living room. The furniture still barricaded the entrance.

He climbed to the trapdoor. Beyond it, he heard a commotion, hurried footsteps, a gunshot. Frenzied, he knocked twice, three times, once.

No response. What if they think I'm Ronnie? What if they shoot through the trapdoor?

As he knocked again, he heard the lock being freed. The trapdoor was lifted. A headlamp blazed toward his face, stressing the sensor in his goggles, creating a flare that made him temporarily blind. The headlamp jerked away, allowing his night vision to return. He hurried up and locked the trapdoor behind him.

The smell of burnt gunpowder was everywhere. Vinnie stood in the doorway to the surveillance room, aiming toward two jagged holes in the floor. He saw Balenger and retreated to him. "I did what you said. I counted to fifty. Then I turned up the volume on my walkie-talkie and set it on the floor. He blew it apart."

"How many rounds did you fire?" Balenger took the pistol.

"Three. I hope you don't think I wasted-"

"You did your job. You distracted him. Nine rounds left. We'll need to make them last."

"He's been shooting at random through the floors."

"He can't get into Danata's living room and shoot at us from there. We're safe for a moment. Give me your knapsack."

Balenger raised the walkie-talkie to his lips. "Hey, asshole, guess what?"

Static.

"I asked you a question, jerkoff."

"What am I supposed to guess? Are the vulgarities necessary?"

"When it comes to you? Absolutely. I found my wife, you piece of shit."

Static.

"You strangled her. You strangled them all."

Balenger took the knapsack from Vinnie and pulled the police report from the compartment in back. He reached into his pocket for the driver's license from the corpse on the bottom level.

"Candlelight gourmet dinners," Balenger said into the walkie-talkie. "Soothing classical music. Literary reading sessions. Foreign movies with subtitles. All very proper and formal and intellectual. Need to keep it intellectual. Can't let emotions get in the way. Emotions make you weak. Emotions make you lose control-"

He studied the name on the driver's license: Iris McKenzie. When Amanda listed the names of Ronnie's "girlfriends," something had nagged at him. Now he knew what it was. Iris. He flipped through the pages in the police report.

"Found it!" he said to the walkie-talkie. "Iris McKenzie. Age: thirty-three. Residence: Baltimore, Maryland. Occupation: advertising copywriter. Hair: blond. Sound familiar, you bastard? She ought to. If I'm right, she was your first." Balenger scanned the report, which an old man had written with painstaking neatness. "In August of 1968, Iris took a train from Baltimore to New York on business. Coming back, she decided to spend the weekend in Asbury Park at the famous Paragon Hotel. Nobody told her Asbury Park wasn't the jewel it used to be or that the Paragon Hotel was a nightmare. She arrived on Friday. One night in this spooky old pile was enough for her. She checked out the next morning to go to the train station. Nobody saw her again. Except me. I saw her, Ronnie. She's sitting downstairs in a corridor with her purse in her lap, still waiting for her train. It's going to be a long time coming."

His mouth dry, his chest aching, Balenger needed to pause. He felt as if his surging emotions could cause his veins to explode.

He raised the walkie-talkie. "Amanda says you treated her with terrifying politeness. Apart from locking her in the vault, of course. But what the hell, nobody's perfect, right? Then you showed up with a sheer nightgown for her to wear. What happened, Ronnie? Did you decide the courtship was finally over? You fed her. You entertained her. You proved what a prince of a guy you were. Now you wanted something for your efforts. You're a man of the world, after all. You know how the game's played. But all of a sudden you got angry. You called her a whore. Did your sexual needs make you feel weak and resentful? I bet you'd soon have hit her. Then you'd have hated yourself for letting your weakness and needs get the better of you. Maybe you hated yourself for wanting her and hated her for being a woman you wanted. Or here's an opposite possibility. I like this one better. Maybe you hated yourself because you believed you ought to want her but you didn't. Maybe you didn't feel any sexual interest at all, and that really bothered you. You were comfortable cooking gourmet meals, reading Proust, and watching subtitled movies. But when it came to the man-woman stuff, you were numb. 'What's wrong with me?' you wondered. Gotta do something about that. So you made her put on a nightgown. That ought to give you a charge. But it didn't, and now you hated her because she didn't make you feel like a man. You knew where this was going. The same way it went with the others. You couldn't make yourself screw them, so you strangled them to hide your shame and your failure. Maybe the next woman would make you feel like a man. Next time. There was always next time, right?"

Unseen lightning cracked. Amanda and Vinnie watched Balenger, listening in horror.

"So now you're a pop psychologist in addition to being a failed soldier and a mediocre policeman?" the voice asked.

"Detective. I was a detective. And I guess all that research you did about me didn't tell you the crimes I investigated. Or maybe you made yourself ignore that because you didn't want to think about your problem. Sex crimes, Ronnie. I investigated sex crimes. I can see into your head, pal, and it's a sewer."

Ronnie. That name, too, kept nagging at Balenger.

"1968," Balenger said into the walkie-talkie. "There's a photograph of you and Carlisle. It has a date on the back: July 31, 1968. A month later, Iris McKenzie disappeared. By the end of the year, Carlisle closed the hotel, dismissed the staff, and lived here alone. Or maybe he wasn't alone. Ronnie. Ronnie. Why does that name-"

Balenger flipped through the police file, page after page, remembering something, searching for it. Ronnie. Then he found the page, and the name stared up at him. It made him shudder. "Ronald Whitaker."

"What?" the voice asked.