All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Many thanks to my first two readers Bill Larkworthy, author of Doctor Lark: The Benefits of a Medical Education and writer/editor Debby McMichael for taking the time and energy to ferret out typos and other embarrassing mistakes. Any that got through are entirely my doing.
Previously Published as Defective
The woman’s voice reached down to her as if filtered up through deep bracken-green water, reminding her of when she was a little girl and had dived off the diving board at Shadow Lake and the voices above her would sound like that, all thick and gurgly in her ears. She felt herself rising to the surface, pins and needles of hurt prickling every inch of her body. Was she dreaming?
The words grew more distinct: “Melanie? Melanie Snow. Wake up, dear,” said the irritating voice. “Open your eyes.”
Someone was calling to her. Trying to wrench her from this warm, dark womb of sleep. No, leave me alone, please. All she wanted was to sink back down into that soft place again, to just sleep and sleep, away from the hurt.
“Ms. Snow,” the voice said again.
Every inch of her body throbbed with pain. She heard a moan and it took a moment to realize it came from her own parched lips. Why wouldn’t the woman let her be? Let her sink back down into that merciful cradle of sleep. But it was not to be.
“Melanie, open your eyes now. Wake up. The doctor is on his way to see you.” There was a note of excitement in the girl’s voice when she asked, “Mr. Snow, are you sure you saw her eyes open?”
Daddy? Daddy was here?
“Yes, nurse. I’m positive. My little girl was born with those long smoky lashes and I saw them flutter and her eyes open. She looked right at me,” he said, his voice breaking. “And then they closed again.”
Why was her father crying? But like he was happy too. What happened? He had called the woman nurse. She must be in a hospital. Yes, that made sense. Her mouth tasted of chemicals and medicinal smells filled her nasal passages and coated her tongue. She tried to open her eyes, but they felt as if someone had glued them shut. She tried again. Her eyelids parted, mere slits, seeing nothing. Why doesn’t daddy put the nightlight on? He knows I don’t like the dark.
“Daddy...?” The word came out in a croak, a rusted voice, unused, scraping the walls of her throat like sandpaper. “Is Mom here?”
She heard the intake of her father’s sob, felt the comforting weight of his big warm hand on her shoulder. “Your mom’s gone, baby. She died a long time ago. You were just twelve. Don’t you remember?”
“Not to worry, Mr. Snow,” the nurse said gently. “A little memory glitch is all. She’s been in a coma for five days now, it’s to be expected. Could you let me in there for just a minute, Mr. Snow? Thanks.”
There was the faint whisper of fabric brushing against fabric. Then the nurse said, “Melanie, you’ve been in a car accident and you’re at St. Bart’s General Hospital. Do you know what year it is?”
She apparently replied correctly. “Very good,” the woman said. “What city do you live in?
“Evansdale.”
“Excellent. I’m Nurse Evans, Melanie. Lois Evans.”
She got her to make a fist and then wiggle her toes. She ran a hand back and forth past her eyes but only Ted Snow witnessed it.
She took Melanie’s pulse. Her fingers felt light and soothing on her wrist.
“Excellent,” the nurse said. “I’m going to check your eyes now.” Melanie heard a soft click close to her face, felt the slight warmth on her skin, and the milky grey at the outer corner of her right eye grew brighter. Another click and the brightness faded.
“Are you feeling any discomfort? Pain?”
Yes,” she half-whispered. “Like I got beat up.” She’d been in a coma, the nurse had said. A car accident. Melanie blinked her eyes and tried to focus them, but even on opening them wider, she saw nothing, only a blackish-grey, like peering through a wall of dense fog. Her father was in the room. Why couldn’t she see him—or the nurse?
“Would someone turn on a light, please,” she begged.
“Ted, the doctor said the blindness is probably temporary,” Doreen Snow said when they were out in the corridor, out of earshot of Melanie. She had been given something to calm her, but they could still hear her sobbing softly. Ted Snow had never felt so upset or helpless. For a moment back there, he had been elated that his daughter had wakened from the coma, but to have her be blind...
They were heading for the elevator when he broke down crying. He blew his nose and looked at his second wife through his tears. Not a platinum hair out of place, green silk scarf draped like a fashion model’s about her neck, and he felt a jolt of resentment toward her. All those years when Melanie was growing up he was constantly pulled in two directions. His new wife and his daughter were forever at each other’s throats. But it wasn’t all Doreen’s fault, he told himself, and it was unfair and cowardly of him to blame her when he was far more to blame. He had been weak. Knowing that didn’t lessen the resentment against her, however; it sat in his gut like a smoldering fire. Doreen carried the stick and he wielded it against his daughter. Not literally of course, he would never lay a hand on his child in anger, but still...
Ted had lost a wonderful wife in Ellen, his first love, and he had been devastated. But Melanie lost her mother, the real anchor in her life. They were close, best friends as well as mother and daughter. But he had thought only of himself. He met Doreen through a friend. He hadn’t thought he would ever love again, but he fell hard. Ted had been lonely and she took away the loneliness, made his heart beat again. He hadn’t even waited a year to remarry and now...
Oh, God, please let the blindness be temporary. The tears came again.
“Why are you crying, Ted? Is it for Melanie? Or for yourself because you married me?” Her own hazel eyes were swimming in tears, but he wasn’t moved by them.
“Jesus Christ, Doreen,” he lashed out, drawing a quick look from a nurse walking past them in the corridor. “That was twenty years ago. Does everything have to be about you?”
She looked like he had slapped her and he felt like the worse kind of creep. The truth was that she’d nailed it dead on as she usually did.
Detective Matt O’Leary gazed down at the dead woman at his feet with a blend of sadness and anger. Dora Nabers had been a fixture at the corner of Logan and Horsefield Streets, next to Jake’s Hav-a-Snack, for as long as he could remember. Even on the coldest days in winter she would sit in her wheelchair like a big, overgrown baby with that perpetual smile on her round face, playing her accordion with great zest and joy, all the old toe-tapping tunes like Turkey in the Straw and Orange Blossom Special, that made you smile right along with her. Passersby would sometimes drop coins, and occasionally a bill, onto the red felt lining of the accordion case that sat on the sidewalk beside her. Matt himself had dropped in a few bucks from time to time, often stopping to chat. Everyone knew Dora or knew of her. She was even written up in the local rag once. She was local color.
No matter the season, Dora always wore a white knit stocking cap with a Canadian maple leaf on the side, pulled down over her ears. She wore it now as she lay in her metal three-quarter bed in this rented room. Her body was discovered by her landlord who became concerned when she was late with the rent. “She was always very prompt about that,” the short, jowly man told him. “Poor soul,” he muttered, pulling a large white handkerchief from the back pocket of his pants and wiping his eyes. Matt thought the hanky was probably more to smother the putrid odor of human decay than out of any actual grief, since he quickly lowered it to his mouth and nose, and he showed no sign of removing it. Matt didn’t blame him. The body was pretty ripe and he had to swallow back his own gorge. He smeared Vicks under his nostrils to stifle the smell. “You can go back up to your apartment,” he told him. “Stay put. Someone will be up later to take your statement.” The landlord, who had been hovering in the doorway nodded and fled, clearly grateful to be out of the room.
Dora had been here awhile, he thought. He ran a hand through his dark hair with its smattering of grey. Although he was only thirty-eight, he felt older. Sometimes he wondered if he’d chosen the wrong profession. Times like now. It had been expected of him; both his father and grandfather were cops. The thought was fleeting as he went about his work of investigating a murder.
The stocking cap hadn’t even shifted on her head. Was it her habit to wear it to bed? he wondered. Or did her killer put it on her as a kind of parting gesture, for whatever reason. It was clear from the bruising on her neck, the petechiae (blood spots) in the whites of her eyes when forensic expert Harry Deagan lifted her lids, that she had been manually strangled. Harry worked quietly beside him, peering over the tops of his round glasses. Harry was a small man who did the comb over and wore shiny polyester brown suits, but he was ace at his job, had been at it for a good twenty years. Matt liked him.
The coarse grey blanket was drawn up to her shoulders, as if by tender hands. Beneath it she wore a faded blue cotton nightgown. Her eyes were closed. She might have been merely sleeping but for the smell. That and the green discoloration of her skin, the grossly bloated flesh.
“Matt, take a look at this,” Harry said softly, holding up one of Dora’s hands for him to examine. They had been folded over one another as if she was already laid out in her coffin. Like Jodie’s had been. Dora had rather chubby hands, in keeping with the cherubic smile she always wore.
Her killer had cut her fingernails. “She managed to claw him then,” Matt said, as much to himself as to Harry. “He was getting rid of the DNA.” A quick search turned up no fingernail clippings. And no scissors. He apparently took them with him. Did he go out the same way he entered? Matt wondered.
Leaving Deagan to his business, Matt wandered to the window. It was at street level and Matt could see lots of shuffling feet out there; a crowd had gathered and excited chatter reached him. Murder draws curious onlookers like flies to dog crap, he thought.
The window screen was slit three ways, providing easy access into the room. Her killer would have waited until dark to enter, he surmised, otherwise he stood a good chance of being spotted by neighbors. Matt turned away from the window and took in the sparsely furnished room, early Goodwill ambiance. Dora’s accordion sat in its case on the worn brown linoleum in the corner, next to a round table marred with scars and burn marks. Since Dora didn’t smoke, according to the landlord, they had to have been there when she moved in three years ago. Before that, she lived with her mother, who had passed on. She was alone in the world.
The room spoke of a sad life, belying how Dora had actually spent her days. Making music and bringing sunshine into the lives of everyone she met. She didn’t deserve to die like this.
Neither had Jodie Ballard, he reminded himself, the young girl with Down syndrome, murdered two weeks earlier. When Jodie didn’t arrive home at her usual time, her father called 911. After he hung up, something drew him outside. He walked around back of the building where he found her. A neighbor said she had heard his howl from three floors up. The young woman he’d always called his special child lay next to trash bins, hands folded one over the other, in death. Like Dora, she’d been strangled to death. “Just had a bad feeling,” Mr. Ballard told Matt. He was a sickly grey color, Matt remembered, and looked as if all the muscles in his face had collapsed. Later that night Joe Ballard was rushed to the hospital with a heart attack and died on the table while the medical team worked on him, but failed to bring him back. So Jodie’s mom was understandably in pretty rough shape. This bastard was inflicting a mountain of pain on a lot of people. The kind you don’t easily spring back from, if ever.
For a time, a town would grieve for Dora as it had for Jodie. It seemed the whole town had turned out for Jodie Ballard’s funeral. Many to support Rita Ballard whose primal cries had torn at his heart. She looked pale and fragile, and as if she might crumble to the ground at any minute, and which she might have if friends hadn’t been holding her up. She had lost everything. Matt had attended the funeral, along with half a dozen officers, though out of uniform. Often killers like to show up at the funerals of their victims, it gives them a rush. They scanned the faces in the crowd looking for the one that didn’t belong, the one that triggered suspicions, but came up empty. How could they know with so many people in attendance? Killers tended to look like anyone else.
The forensics team had come and gone. They had dusted for prints and taken photos from every conceivable angle. Dora’s body was zipped into a body bag and transported to the morgue. No sirens. No need.
Alone now, Matt tried to get a psychic beam on the killer, gain some sense of him. But nothing came to him. Just a conjured image of a dark figure slithering in through the window like a deadly cobra. Did Dora hear the noise and wake up? Or was she asleep when her killer attacked? The room provided no answers. No special insights.
Out on the street, the crowd was thinning. Nothing more to see. The yellow crime tape was in place and a couple of uniforms were guarding the perimeter of the crime scene. He turned the key in the ignition and the car purred to life. As he buckled himself in, a small voice whispered: serial killer. He reminded himself that two killings did not a serial make. A coincidence? Somehow he didn`t think so. Before pulling away from the curb, he glanced out the side window to see a couple of teenage girls with iPhones snapping pictures of the rundown, green wooden building, aiming their shots around the tall blond kid who Matt recognized as Terry Maroon from the local TV station. He was shooting video for the evening news, presently focusing in on the torn screen in the window.
A female reporter he didn’t recognize, with slick blond hair, eyes made up to put Tammy Faye to shame, rushed over to Matt’s car and shoved a microphone in the open window at him, asked him if they knew who killed her. How would they? Eager, ambitious eyes, glossy coral lips posed more questions. The new face clearly had bigger plans for herself than the local TV station in Evansdale. He gave a few short answers before closing the window, nearly on the mic, and pulling away from the curb. He didn’t enjoy being rude, but some of them gave you no choice.
Dora would be missed. That spot alongside Joe`s Hav-a-Snack would be pretty empty and quiet now.
On the drive back to the station, Matt made mental notes, comparing the two victims and their circumstances. Jodie Ballard had worked at Newton`s Groceries over on the west side. Although born with Down syndrome, she was highly functional, according to her co-workers and family. She smiled easily and was eager to please. Customers loved her, Mr. Newton told Matt. Like Dora, she had made a worthwhile life for herself, despite her challenges. Yet someone had decided these women didn’t deserve to live.
In his office, with the door closed, Matt transferred his thoughts and observations onto sheets of legal paper, and slipped the sheets into the file folder, a pathetically thin folder at the moment, similar to that of Jodie Ballard’s.
They were making no better headway with the hit and run that had blinded Melanie than they were on these killings. Matt heaved a sigh and rose from behind his desk, reached for his brown suede jacket on the wooden clothes tree. His shift finished, he looked forward to home and a long, hot shower. He’d feed his goldfish, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, then head on up to the hospital. He would like to have had some good news to report to Mel, she sure could use some and that was an understatement. But he didn’t have a clue as to who the bastard was that struck her Honda and kept on going. One witness said the vehicle was a dark van, possibly navy or black and that the driver was wearing sunglasses and a peaked cap. That was it. No one got a license number or a good look at the driver. Could be male or female, but Matt would put his money on ‘male’ — just a hunch.
Up until now, Melanie had little recollection of the accident, but maybe with a little more prodding something would click in. It was worth another try. Besides, he liked spending time with her. He just wished the circumstances were different.
The Eraser was riding his bike past the house on the other side of the street when they carried the woman’s corpse on a gurney out of the house and down the steps to the waiting ambulance. He was wearing his blue helmet and looked like any other ordinary young man on a bike, craning his neck, interested in seeing what was going on. No one paid him any attention. A flesh-colored Bandaid concealed the scratch on his cheek.
A small crowd was milling about, silent, watching. He had to go around the white van from the local TV station which was parked helter-skelter at the curb. He noted the length of yellow crime scene tape stretched across the outer front door, the end flapping in the breeze.
Where will you go next? he silently asked, hearing the ambulance doors shut behind him.
He had been on foot when he passed Dora sitting on that same corner where she’d always sat with her accordion. And there she was, staring at him through Dora’s eyes, mocking him. He’d felt the other’s presence even before he looked into Dora Nabers’ eyes, but then he knew for sure. Was it only a week ago?
“It doesn’t matter,” he said aloud, his sneakered feet pumping harder on the pedals now as he turned up Queen Street on his way to work. “I’ll find all your hiding places, and I’ll destroy every last one.”
It was mid-afternoon, overcast, and The East End Mall in Kingsdale was crowded with shoppers. The Eraser, as he liked to think of himself, sat at one of the molded plastic tables by himself, nursing a Pepsi and eating fries from a small cardboard plate, and people watching. It was one of his favorite things to do, especially in nice weather when the girls wore shorts or tight jeans, some with their tanned midriffs bare, skimpy tops that showed off their boobs and skinny jeans that accentuated their tight little butts. Why not? He was a normal guy, he told himself. He avoided looking at the ones with flab hanging over their waistbands. He had a girlfriend once or twice, but it didn’t last. The last one said he was weird and just stopped returning his calls. Well, to hell with her.
His eye strayed momentarily to the big screen monitor advertising Nike sneakers. Then it changed to a rent-a-car commercial and on to something else, but he’d already looked away. Idly dipping a French fry in the small pool of ketchup on his plate, he popped it in his mouth and went back to girl-watching. They did little for him today. His hand moved to cover the scratch that the retard left on his cheek, though it was fading now. That Polysporin ointment was good stuff.
Music played over the sound system, competing with the jabbering of shoppers, nothing he recognized. Probably supposed to keep people shopping, buying junk they didn’t need. His gaze narrowed ever so slightly as a young girl with a silver ring in her lower lip and wearing black eyeliner got up from a table not far from him and limped heavily to the waste bin and dumped in the remainder of her meal, a half-eaten hamburger, fries. She sat the tray on top of the stack. Behind her, someone called out, “Hey, Lana,” and the girl turned in his direction and took a step forward so he could see her full-length; she looked past his shoulder and waved. He felt his heartbeat rev up, his throat go dry.
She had short dark hair, and was wearing a khaki skirt and cream-colored blouse. Her dimpled smile, the gleam of white, even teeth barely registered on him. He didn’t even glance behind him at the woman who had called out to her. He had no interest. As he had no genuine interest in the woman who returned the wave, really.
No. It was her foot in its big brown shoe that drew and held his attention. Not brown exactly, but like tea when you put milk in it. Taupe. Yes, that was what his mother called that color. It was all he could see when he looked at her: that big clunking shoe. So ugly it offended him, as deformities of any kind offended him. Even horrified him. A chill had crept down his back. He had to work extra hard to keep the disgust and pity from his face. She was a mistake. A blight, a tragic spawn. She must be erased. Like when you’re a kid and you draw a picture of something and it doesn’t come out right. You just erase it. Or rip out the page, and start again.
He was the eraser of mistakes. The good Lord had chosen him to do this work. Not that he was blaming God. No, there was no blame to be handed out here. Some small voice told him his reasoning was flawed, that that wasn’t why they had to die. But he wasn’t listening. As people were born of sin, women carried the faulty limbs, twisted features and minds within them. Carriers. As his mother had been a carrier, her womb spewing forth a defective, barely human—thing. Not the defective’s fault either. But since the flaw couldn’t be repaired, the whole issue had to be erased. The burden lifted. The Eraser held that kind of power; he could end suffering, change lives for the better. He remembered well the very moment he had changed his own life— but no time for that now. She was heading for the exit doors. He rose casually from his chair, tossing the remainder of his own fries and drink into the trash, dropped his tray on top of hers, and followed. He was really following the ‘shoe’. His eyes were riveted on the shoe. It filled his vision, his consciousness. That big, ugly shoe that rose and fell, rose and fell, her left hip dipping in sync, the shoe dragging it downward, seeming an entity in itself. When she stepped through the automatic doors into the grey, drizzly day, he was right behind her. Close enough to touch her. He buried his hands deep in his pockets to stifle the urge.
The bus pulled up with a hiss of air brakes and a belch of exhaust, and she hitched herself up onto the step. He followed, paid his fare. His bike was chained and locked in the parking lot; it would be fine. She took a side seat near the driver, and he sat himself two seats behind her and pretended to look out the window.
In the grayness of the day, his reflection in the glass was faint, but almost at once he could see his reflection begin to morph into that of another, as she had once been. A raindrop ran down the window and caught one corner of her mouth like the drool he remembered, couldn’t forget, and he could not tear his eyes away. The small voice in his head spoke to him, sending the familiar chill through him, as if his heart had just received an infusion of ice water. The voice could form words now, where once it was capable only of mindless gibberish. “You know it’s me in there, don’t you. I’m watching you. I’ve come back. I’ll always come back. I’ll never leave you.”
“No! No!”
Fearing he had cried out, he jerked his head around in sudden panic, but no one on the bus was looking at him. One man was reading a newspaper. A woman was talking and smiling at her little boy. Relief swept through him, but he was trembling just the same. A Chinese man seated across from him turned the page in his paperback, paying him no mind.
The girl had put earphones in her ears and her lips were moving to a song only she could hear. Her legs were crossed, the shoe swinging in time, mocking him.
Melanie was sitting up in bed when Matt walked into her hospital room around seven that evening. She recognized his footsteps, purposeful, yet respectful of where he was. She was wearing the blue brushed satin nightgown Francie had brought from the house along with some other things she’d needed. One of the volunteers had washed her hair and she had to admit, it perked her up a bit. She had even put on a little lipstick.
“You look beautiful,” he said. “Practically all the bruising has gone.” Matt telling her she looked beautiful made her smile. But for the fact that she was still blind, they said she was doing well physically. She had suffered a cracked rib and a broken ankle in the accident, but they were both healing nicely, as was the two inch gash she’d sustained on her chin. She traced the C-shaped wound with her fingertip. The doctor said it wouldn’t even leave a scar.
“Wow, you’ve got a flood of get well cards here,” Matt said. “They cover just about every surface in the room.”
“People are thoughtful. The nurse read every message to me. They’re from patients, old friends. Schoolmates I haven’t seen or heard from in years. People are kind, Matt. Most of them, anyway.” Her smile dropped away. “I don’t suppose you have any news on my hit and run.”
“Sorry,” Matt said, drawing the chair up to the side of her bed. The leg scraped on the floor.
“No, I am sorry. That sounded like an accusation, didn’t it. I didn’t mean it to. It’s hardly your fault.”
“It’s okay. And we will find out who hit your car. It’s just taking a while. How are you feeling?”
“Not so bad. Doctor Howell says the blindness could be temporary. They’ve done more tests. If you pray, and I know you do, say one for me, okay?”
He promised he would.
St. Bart’s hospital was always a place of hustle and bustle, and tonight was no exception. Gurneys rattled past the door on squeaky wheels, a nasal voice on the intercom summoned various doctors to different parts of the hospital. One a ‘code blue’ on the geriatric’s unit which was close enough that you could hear running feet.
Melanie was near enough to the elevators to hear the bell ding every few minutes. People coming and going. A hospital was a world onto itself, a microcosm of the outside world complete with all the drama, heightened by the constant battle against illness and death.
She heard the whisper of pen on paper and wondered what Matt was writing.