The Impaler

Chapter 63

Markham awoke around 5:15 in the evening—would’ve kept on sleeping, in fact, had his mother not knocked on his bedroom door and told him supper was ready.

“Well, it’s going to be breakfast for you,” she added. “Steak and eggs, so call it what you want.”

“Steak,” Markham said to himself when she was gone. “Go figure.”

He lay there for a long time staring up at the glow-in-the-dark plastic stars that his father had pasted on the ceiling when he was a child. But rather than think of the Impaler, Markham’s stomach growled in anticipation of the meal waiting for him downstairs.

He was starving. But even more so, he was amazed he’d slept almost the entire day. He remembered waking only a couple of times to pee, but the heaviness behind his eyes always dragged him back to his bedroom. And the fact that his parents had left him alone meant he must’ve been snoring up a storm.

He thought of Michelle; how, in the middle of the night, she used to tap him lightly on his shoulder to make him roll over. But she never complained about his snoring—never once—and only shook her head and smiled at him in the morning as if he’d done something stupid the night before.

God, he missed her.

Indeed, after the execution Markham felt as if he missed her more than ever. He’d planned on traveling to Mystic on Saturday to visit her grave, but decided once he was back in his bedroom that he would do so early Sunday morning before he left for Raleigh. The cemetery was only about twenty minutes from his parents’ house, but curiously, he didn’t want to leave his old bedroom. It seemed to ease his pain, seemed to gas him into a deep and cleansing sleep broken only by glimpses of consciousness in which he swore he was a boy again—the sunlight streaming in around the window shade from a time long before he knew his wife and her killer even existed.

Markham showered and shaved and arrived at the kitchen table dressed in jeans and a faded University of Connecticut sweatshirt that he had found in his dresser drawer. His parents greeted him with looks of both concern and relief, but Markham knew neither of them would mention anything about the execution. It was a mutual understanding among the three of them that went back as long as he could remember. They never asked what was bothering him; seemed to accept that their son, even as a child, would talk to them only if he wanted to. And true to form, Sam Markham rarely did.

“Looks like you’ve been burning the candle at both ends, Sammy,” his father said, holding up his newspaper. “This fella they’re calling Vlad the Impaler—he’s the reason you’re on assignment in Raleigh, I take it?”

A former Navy man and retired real estate investor, Peter Markham had a somewhat gruff, no-nonsense manner that his son had grown to appreciate only after he joined the FBI. Then again, Markham knew that was because his father had grown to appreciate him only after he joined the FBI—de-spite the circumstances surrounding his change of careers.

Peter Markham had never supported his son’s desire to be an English teacher. Of course, he’d never come right out and said anything, but young Sammy had always been able to intuit his father’s opinions by what he didn’t say—like the way he never asked him how he was doing in his classes; like the way he never even asked him if he’d gotten laid yet. “It’s your life,” was all Peter Markham would say, his mind unable to wrap itself around the concept of a former all-star high school athlete like Sammy Markham wanting to teach poetry and shit. Besides, when it came right down to it, how much could a fella make doing that stuff anyway?

“Sammy’s not allowed to talk about his work,” said his mother. “You know better than to ask him, dear.”

“I’m not asking about his work, Lois. I’m just asking if this Vlad boy is his boy.”

Lois Markham rolled her eyes and slipped two eggs onto her son’s plate.

“It’s all right,” Markham said. “I’ve no problem telling you I’m working on this case, Dad. But pretty much all we know is what you guys have read in the paper there.” This was a lie, but he didn’t care; knew this was the best way to get his father off the subject, and added, “But you have to keep all this between us. Don’t go mentioning anything about me to the boys at the gun club. Okay?”

“What the hell do I look like?” said Peter Markham, cutting his steak. “I know better than to shoot my mouth off. You see, Lois? That’s all I wanted to know.”

Lois sighed and sat down at the table with a look of knowing resignation that her son had seen many times over the years. As close as he had been with his father growing up, Markham knew deep down that he was more like his mother—more reserved, more intellectual, and (oh God, don’t fucking say it!) more sensitive.

Lois Markham had worked for a time in real estate with her husband, but for most of her adult life she’d been a stay-at-home mom. She dabbled in painting and poetry before her son was born, and used to take little Sammy with her to the theater and to classical music concerts. Peter Markham would never have been caught dead at the theater—used to say that all that artsy-fartsy stuff was gonna turn his boy into a sissy—but somehow Peter and Lois Markham made it work for over forty years.

“I’ll tell you this, however,” said Peter Markham with a mouthful of food. “The only way you guys’ll catch this nut-bag is if he screws up. I’m not knocking what you do, Sammy, don’t get me wrong. But all them serial killers that I’ve read about, they screw up eventually, am I right?”

“Not all of them,” said Markham. “Some have never been caught—”

“I know, I know,” his father said, waving his fork. “Jack the Ripper was one, sure. But nowadays it’s just a matter of time. I guess you could say that they screw up all along, but it takes a smart guy like you to see the screw-ups that nobody else sees. You understand what I’m saying?”

“All right, Peter,” said his wife. “Let’s talk about something else, shall we?”

“What? I’m just telling my son I’m proud of him. I am proud of you, Sammy. You know that, don’t you?”

Markham nodded but said nothing. He chewed his food slowly as his mind drifted to the Impaler. What the hell was he doing in Connecticut having dinner with his parents when he should be back in Raleigh? He was due to fly out tomorrow afternoon around two o’clock, but the idea of spending another night here, the idea of waiting well into the day tomorrow, suddenly seemed unbearable to him.

The family ate the rest of their meal peppered with small talk—politics, the Yankees, a woman Lois knew who left her husband for a younger man—but Markham’s mind soon turned to Andy Schaap.

Still working on his lists, he thought. Christ, I ’d give anything to trade places with him right now.

After his parents retired to the den to watch a movie on HBO, Markham excused himself and stepped out onto the back porch. He dialed Schaap’s number on his BlackBerry—tried him first at the Resident Agency, then left a voice mail on his cell asking how things were going and to call him back ASAP with an update.

Then he sat for a long time just staring out the screened porch windows to the jagged silhouette of woods behind his house. It was chilly, and he could not see the stars, but he had no urge to go outside to look at them. Instead he closed his eyes and imagined what the sky would look like had he been camping out in the backyard with his father as they so often did when he was a child. Back then, little Sammy Markham didn’t know where to look for Leo, but tonight he saw the lion through the eyes of a little boy—bright and shining above all the other constellations—and began to wonder if the Impaler ever camped out in the backyard with his father, too.