Sleep Tight

Chapter 5

Before concentrating on the profile, Mary had to talk to Gavin Hitchcock. She'd never been one to allow herself to jump to conclusions, always waiting for the evidence to point the way. Now she needed to know if there was any basis for suspecting him of these new murders-or were her emotions skewing her judgment?

The automobile repair shop where Hitchcock worked was on University Avenue in an area of St. Paul known as Midway.

She soon spotted a hand-painted sign that said abes repair. Parking spaces on University Avenue were at a premium, so Mary pulled her rental car into the alley behind the shop. To the left of an open door was a lot with weeds poking between broken-down cars that had been towed and abandoned years ago. Those carcasses were sprinkled with washing machines and mowers, stacks of tires, gas cans, broken beer bottles, and bed frames.

Mary inched the car to the side of the alley, trying to avoid the broken glass while leaving room for another vehicle to squeeze past if necessary. She got out, locking up with the remote. Up four bowed, rotten steps, she hesitated and checked to feel the reassurance of her gun beneath her jacket, irritated and slightly alarmed by the way her hand shook and her heart hammered.

This would be the first time she'd come face-to-face with Hitchcock since the murder trial during which she'd recounted finding her friend's dead body. All the while she was on the witness stand, Hitchcock, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, leg shackles, and handcuffs, had stared emotionlessly at her from his seat next to the state-appointed defense attorney.

Despite that, she was able to speak clearly and effectively, describing her years of close friendship with Fiona, describing exactly how the young girl had looked when she'd tripped over her body that day in the woods. The way the flies had gathered at the corners of her sightless eyes, the way bees buzzed around her mouth and crawled out her nose.

Mary hadn't called the repair shop first. She wanted her visit to take Hitchcock by surprise so he wouldn't have a mental script prepared.

Inside the door stood an L-shaped counter. Along one wall was a row of chairs where two people waited, flipping mindlessly through greasy magazines while a fluorescent light hummed and flickered above them.

"Can I help you?" the man behind the counter asked in a heavily accented voice. His crisply ironed blue shirt said jesus montoya, manager under a motor oil logo. When she told him she needed to speak to Gavin Hitchcock, he opened the office door and stepped out on a wooden landing that overlooked the work bay, yelling to a man under a raised Cadillac. Then he hurried back into the office, where the phone was ringing.

Mary waited on the landing, one hand gripping the wooden rail. She watched as Hitchcock put down his tools and walked toward her, stopping at the bottom of the stairs.

"Yeah?"

He was seventeen when she'd last seen him, which now made him twenty-six or -seven. He'd been thin and wiry, a lanky teenager with stringy brown hair hanging in his empty eyes. Now he was an adult, a man. His hair was still stringy, but much shorter, and his eyes were no longer empty-they were cold and bitter.

As he stood staring up at her, ineffectually trying to wipe the grease from his hands with a red rag, she thought of how those same hands had bludgeoned a young girl to death.

Even though her position at the top of the landing put him at a physical disadvantage and should have lent a subconscious intimidation to the scene, he didn't seem to notice.

"I'm Mary Cantrell," she announced, feeling herself mentally retreating. Her name didn't elicit any response of recognition from him. "Gillian Cantrell's sister."

"So?" He glanced up and behind her, toward the office. Through the glass, the shop manager was still on the phone.

"I want to talk to you."

"I'm busy." His voice was deep and emotionless.

It had been up to the jury to decide whether or not he would be charged with premeditated murder…

"Was it your intention to inflict bodily harm upon Fiona Portman?"

"No."

"Did you meet with Fiona Portman with the specific purpose of killing her?"

"No."

"Can you describe for the jury what happened that afternoon of October twenty-ninth?"

"I'd been drinking."

"That wasn't uncommon for you, was it? To spend the day drinking?"

"Not really."

"Isn't it true that you'd been kicked out of school for fighting?"

"Yeah."

"Isn't it true you'd been in the woods that day?"

"I want to ask you a few questions," Mary now said.

"I can't talk."

"It won't take long."

"Gillian got me this job," he said. "I don't want to lose it."

He turned away, heading toward the car on the lift. His job wasn't the issue here-he was only using it to avoid her. And mentioning her sister was a handy dig, a way of getting to Mary at the same time.

She followed.

"Are you a cop?" he asked, picking up a heavy wrench. "I think I remember Gillian saying you were a cop."

"FBI."

Behind them someone banged on the office window. She turned to see the manager gesturing wildly, his face contorted.

"Get out of here," Hitchcock said. "No customers allowed in the bay area." He stared at her another moment. "The hydraulic could slip. The car could come down and crush you."

"And you don't want that to happen?"

"I don't care if you get killed, I just don't want to lose my job."

Right. She checked her watch. "When do you take a break?"

"I don't."

"What time do you get off work?"

"When I'm done."

Two hours later Mary was sitting in her car, which she'd maneuvered into a better position. From her new vantage point, she could see both the front and back areas of the auto repair shop.

It was getting dark by the time she spotted Hitchcock leaving the building. She pulled up beside him as he made his way along the sidewalk, hands in the pockets of his dirty jeans, walking in the direction of the bus stop.

She reached across the seat and opened the passenger door. "Get in."

He stopped and looked at her.

"Get in the car," she repeated. "I'll give you a ride to wherever you're going."

He opened the door wider and dropped into the passenger seat. She sped away from the curb before he could change his mind.

"Aren't you afraid to have me sitting beside you? When I could just reach over like this-?"

He put his hand to her throat, pressing his fingers against her trachea-just hard enough to make her gasp and pull back, a survival instinct.

She knocked his hand away. Intense, blinding pain knifed through her injured shoulder. She swerved to the right and slammed on the brakes, stopping in a parking space.

He laughed at the loss of control he'd caused. "A lot of women don't want anything to do with a guy who's been in prison. Except for your sister."

The pain in her shoulder didn't subside, and she visualized ripped muscles and nerves. She tried to push her physical discomfort aside to focus on the man next to her. The son of a bitch was baiting her, toying with her. He smelled like grease, and oil, and hot metal. She imagined him behind heavy iron bars painted with layer upon layer of institutional green.

"You've probably heard about the three murders that have recently taken place in the area." A good agent never jumped in with the prime question. A good agent went for the slow build, getting the suspect to relax, gaining confidence-then hit him. She didn't have the luxury of that kind of strategy. Hitchcock could bolt at any second.

He laughed and shifted in his seat, getting more comfortable. "I've wanted to tell you something for a long time. Your friend, Fiona. She liked to portray herself as a goody-goody, somebody as pure as a nun, but let me tell you, she was no nun. But then maybe you knew that. Maybe you were whoring it up, too."

He was trying to throw her off, distract her from the real reason she'd come.

"Are you like your sister?" He reached over and put a hand on her bare knee. His fingers were rough and hot. "Do you get off on guys that've been in prison?"

A drop of sweat trickled down her forehead, catching on an eyebrow. It took an amazing amount of willpower to keep from pulling out her gun.

"Get your hand off me."

He removed it, but not before giving her knee a little caress. "Behavioral Science, right?"

How much had Gillian told him about her?

"That means you hunt down serial killers, right?" When she didn't answer, he repeated his question. "Right?"

"Yes."

"Child molesters? How about child molesters?"

"Those too."

"I have a theory about why people like you go into such disturbing fields," he said. "Want to hear it?"

She shrugged. "Sure."

"Because you're obsessed with death."

She wasn't going to let some killer psychoanalyze her. "If I'm obsessed, it's with finding the people who are causing death."

"No, you're obsessed with death itself. You have to see it, have to be around it."

"Is that the way you feel? Is that how you've come to this theory? Because you've killed?"

"I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about you. How old were you when you found your friend's dead body?"

He was talking about it so calmly, as if it were something he'd read about, not participated in.

She wanted to look away, but she forced herself to keep her eyes on him. "Seventeen."

"An impressionable age, wouldn't you say? A time when everything can turn upside down, when good can suddenly be bad, and bad good."

Not wanting to miss the opportunity to keep him going, she allowed herself to be pulled into the conversation. "Seventeen is the age you were when you killed Fiona Portman," she said.

"I think that once somebody sees death, feels death, sees death's emptiness, they want more. Suddenly life's biggest mystery is an even bigger mystery. And that mystery is something you were a part of and want to be a part of again."

Was this his twisted way of telling her he'd killed the three girls? Was it a sick plea for help? "Are you seeing a psychiatrist?" she asked, hoping she wouldn't lose him by introducing a new topic.

"Not since I got out of prison. I don't need one. Haven't you heard? I'm a new man."

"You should be under psychiatric care."

"I've had enough of shrinks."

"Do you have urges to see dead bodies?" she asked carefully.

"Right now I'm imagining what you'd look like dead."

"Is that a threat?"

"How many dead people have you seen in your life? Other than Fiona Portman? I'll bet you've seen a lot."

"Too many."

"How many?"

"Over a hundred."

"I'll bet you like that, don't you?"

"Of course not."

"Oh, come on. Why don't you admit that when you aren't around death, you aren't whole? You aren't complete?"

His intelligence and the skill with which he manipulated the conversation surprised her.

"Did you have anything to do with the recent murders?" Her stomach knotted at the question.

His attitude suddenly changed. "Fuck you." He was through with the game.

She'd been in a lot of dangerous situations in the course of her career, and had prided herself on remaining unflappable. This was different. After joining the FBI, she'd become tough and hard and fearless. But returning to your past had a way of screwing things up. Had a way of poking holes in that new person until pretty soon you were leaking like a sieve.

The old Mary was sitting on the seat next to Gavin Hitchcock. The old frightened, weak, young, vulnerable Mary.

"I've heard enough of your bullshit." Without another word, he got out and walked away, his shoulders hunched in his saggy, brown corduroy jacket.

Gavin Hitchcock sat down on the bus stop bench. He'd missed the 6:50, thanks to the woman pulling away from the curb and disappearing down University. He usually drove to work, but he'd run out of gas money and had been forced to take public transportation. Everything was fucked.

Mary Cantrell. He remembered her from the trial. Remembered her white face, her big eyes. Sitting there stone-faced, describing everything so graphically that a juror puked and another one fainted. He'd always figured it was the passionless eloquence of her testimony that won the jury over and lost him all sympathy.

He'd been intrigued with her just now because she was Gillian's sister. Otherwise he wouldn't have bothered talking to her, and he certainly wouldn't have gotten in her car.

His bus finally showed up. It pulled to the curb, and he got on.

It wasn't crowded. It was just him, a few homeless people, and the crazy lady who worked the night shift at a nursing home preparing food for the next day. She never quit talking. Now she was engaged in a onesided conversation with the bus driver, who'd driven the route long enough to know not to give her any encouragement by answering.

She finally gave up and moved to another seat, close to a homeless guy who was on his way to nowhere.

She was going on about the road construction, and how the buses were always behind, and how she had to leave home an hour early because yesterday she was late for work. Blah, blah, blah.

"Hey, lady," Gavin said, raising his voice to be heard above the shifting gears.

She looked at him, eyes alert and eager now that she had a participating audience.

"Why don't you shut the fuck up?"

She was instantly defensive. "Why don't you shut the fuck up?"

"Nobody wants to hear the shit that's pourin' from your mouth."

"I ain't got no shit in my mouth," she said, hands at her waist, head bobbing.

"Somebody should put you out of your misery."

She let out a short, one-syllable scream. Kind of like a single beep from a car alarm.

"What the hell's going on?" the driver asked, looking at Gavin in the rearview mirror.

"Oh, come on. Haven't you had the same thought? Listening to her blabbin' on and on and on. Haven't you at least wished she'd trip and hit her fucking head on the curb when she's getting off the bus? How 'bout you?" he asked, motioning to a man sitting huddled in the corner with a stack of old newspapers. "Haven't you wished somebody'd just make the bitch shut up?"

The little man shook his head.

The driver pulled to the side of the street. Gavin noted it wasn't a scheduled stop.

The doors opened. "Get out," the driver said.

"There you go, lady," Gavin said with satisfaction.

"I'm talking to you. Get out before I call the police."

The woman let out a high-pitched laugh and clapped her hands in a frenzy of excitement.

Gavin pushed himself up and lunged out the door.

He shouldn't have opened his mouth.

Another thought hit him: It would never have happened if the Cantrell woman hadn't antagonized him.

Behind him, the bus's hydraulics hissed as it pulled away.

His head was beginning to throb. He put a hand to his temple. He could feel the artery pulsing. With each pulse, his headache got worse.

Had to get home.

He staggered down the sidewalk, feeling the change coming, the darkness that would drag him down and smother him.

Keep going. Only a few more blocks. A few more steps.

He watched his boots slide across the cement, toes scraping, catching on cracks.

He could feel his muscles hardening. His penis became engorged, growing as huge as an arm, throwing him off balance.

Walk. Walk.

When he was little, his grandmother used to talk him out of his fits. She would distract him.

"Look at the pretty flowers. Look at the tree. See how the leaves are whispering? Telling you to breathe gently, telling you to breathe softly. Grandma's here. Grandma's here to catch you. Grandma's here."

His grandmother died when he was ten. Murdered in her own kitchen while two apple pies cooled in the window. Gavin had found her there, on the kitchen floor, her throat slit with a butcher knife. He'd tried to run, tried to turn and scream, but the blackness had come over him with the thickness and weight of a heavy blanket.

See the flowers. See the pretty flowers.

He was found unconscious, with blood on his hands, lying next to his dead grandmother.

Walk, walk.

It was coming. Coming fast.

His muscles began to contract, his penis shrank. He tried to run, but couldn't. There was his house. He could see it, just past the two-story brick apartment building.

Run, run, run.

I can't.

You can. You can do anything.

He moved faster. Crossing the last street, he fumbled in his pocket, pulling out a set of keys.

Keys to the Kingdom. Keys to the Kingdom.

Around back. Past the shed and the flower garden.

To the kitchen.

He unlocked the door and fell inside.

Gavin came awake with a jolt. Disoriented, he finally realized he was lying in the dark on the kitchen floor. He dragged himself to a sitting position. His hair was soaked and plastered to his head, his clothes were drenched. He put a tentative finger to the corner of his mouth. Dried blood. He could feel his tongue, thick and swollen and sore.

In his confusion, his first thought was to call Gillian. But she'd told him not to call her again. When he was in prison, she wrote to him. She even came to see him. And when he got out, she was there waiting for him.

He thought she loved him. He thought she'd been waiting for him all that time. He thought he would go to her place, and they would live together, maybe even get married. But when he told her how much he loved her, she got weird, pushing him away.

"Gavin, no," she'd said as he clung to her, struggling to pull her close, struggling to kiss her. He could see unease in her eyes, and he suddenly felt like crying.

"I thought you loved me," he said.

"I do love you. But not that way. I love you as a friend."

Friend? Oh, shit. Oh, fuck. No, no, NO!

His future, the future he'd dreamed about all the years he'd been in prison, dissolved before his eyes.

A friend.

It was so hard. Hard to keep going. He just wanted it to end. He, didn't want to get cancer or anything; he just wanted it to be like a pulled plug. Over. He just wanted it over.

He shoved himself to his feet and turned on the light. Opening the nearest cupboard, he pulled out a bottle of whiskey, unscrewed the cap, and took a long swallow. He spent the next several minutes drinking and leaning against the counter, waiting to stabilize. He wished to hell he had something better than alcohol, but he hadn't been out of jail long enough to make any drug connections.

He hadn't had any attacks in a long time. It had been so long that he'd quit taking medicine, but now he'd had two attacks in one week.

The visit from Gillian's sister had brought on this second one. That was obvious.

Finally steady enough to walk, he made his way down the hall to the bathroom, where he took a piss.

The house had belonged to an old lady who'd spent the last ten years bedridden. The place had been so run-down and had smelled so bad that nobody wanted to rent it. An ex-con and convicted murderer didn't have much chance of finding a place to live or getting a job, but Gillian knew some people, and she'd helped him.

The place still looked like an old-lady house-with floral wallpaper and shit. Some of her clothes were still hanging in the closet. Jars of canned food lined the basement shelves. He'd originally planned to give the place a coat of paint, but he didn't give a shit anymore. He'd managed to hang some of his black-and-white photos before deep depression had washed over him. He had more photos. Lots more…

He didn't have much furniture-he kept his clothes in cardboard boxes under a bed that was shoved into the corner of the room. Bad feng shui, he sometimes mockingly told himself, but what the hell? The house and everything about it was a reflection of his soul.

In the living room, he pushed around some open boxes until he came to the one with pictures of apples on it. He dug down past phone books and porn magazines until he found the bundle of envelopes-letters from Gillian.

He took them into the kitchen. He pulled out a plastic lighter.

One by one, he held up the envelopes and let the fire lick one corner until' the paper burst into flame. He dropped them in the sink where they curled and burned, continuing until there was nothing left but a pile of ashes.

Love, Gillian.

Gillian. She was the perfect woman. He was afraid he'd never find anyone as perfect as her again.