Hush (27 page)

"No, I think it's just the dark soda. All the
dark soda is Coke."

"Oh." She took a sip from her glass, then
carefully placed it back on the napkin. Behind her, someone dropped
some money in the jukebox and the voice of Billie Holiday took over
the room.

Ivy fiddled with the corner of her napkin.
"What are you doing here?" she finally asked.

"I'm tired," he said without hesitation, his
voice weighted down with the burdens he carried. "I'm tired of this
shit, this ugly, terrible shit invading my life." He laughed
bitterly.

Now that he'd started talking, it seemed he
couldn't stop. Alcohol did that to a person. Made them say and
confess things they would normally keep locked inside.

"What life?" he said, their conversation
blanketed by the music. "I have no life. I can't have a normal
life. How do you talk to someone about their favorite TV show, or a
current movie, when babies are being murdered? And it's not going
to end. If this fucking case is ever solved, there will be another
one to replace it. Because the maniacs are everywhere."

"It just seems that way because you're in the
middle of it."

He shook his head. "Do you know how many
unsolved homicides I have on file? Over five hundred. There's no
escape. I've tried becoming an alcoholic like half the people in
Homicide, but it didn't work out. How do they do it? Getting wasted
every night? I wanted to, but I couldn't function the next
day."

The conversation shifted. "How do you do it?"
he asked. "You almost seem to be thriving on this case. Is it
because you got away from him? Does that give you some kind of
strength? A feeling of power instead of this . . . this stinking
despair? This hopelessness?"

She let him talk. If she said anything, she
doubted he would listen anyway.

"When I got into this, I'll admit I was
idealistic. And also this machismo thing was driving me." He paused
and focused on something that was farther away than the walls of a
tavern in metro Chicago. "I don't suppose anything is what it
really is when you're on the outside looking in. But you"—he shook
a finger at her, emphasizing his point—"you have personal reasons.
A purpose in being here, doing what you're doing. I understand
that. It makes sense. While me—" He brought the spread fingers of
both hands to his chest, suddenly a man of gestures, a man who
talked with his hands, possibly the biggest hint that he was drunk
off his ass. "I—I just invite this crap into my life."

He helped himself to a swallow of her Coke,
putting the glass back down while crunching on an ice cube. "I
should get the hell out of here," he told her with conviction, as
if this were something he'd been thinking about for longer than
just the last few hours. "I should take my son and go someplace far
away. Someplace where this kind of insanity doesn't happen. Oh. I
forgot," he said with the same sarcasm she'd noted yesterday
morning in the park. "There isn't any place like that. I'm
contaminated. And when I go home, I take that contamination with
me. I take it home to my son."

He finished off his beer, drinking from the
bottle instead of using the glass, then turned to Ivy. His blood
alcohol had to be near the legal limit, but he didn't seem that
drunk. There was clarity in his dark eyes, purpose. "I'm thinking
of leaving Homicide when this is over."

"You need to go home and get some sleep," she
said. "I'll get you a cab."

"You think I'll go home and sleep? Sleep.
What the hell's that?" he asked, his thoughts veering off course,
down another tangent. But he quickly remembered his original
trajectory. He grabbed both of her hands, turning them palms up.
With his thumbs, he caressed the ridges on her wrists. Not taking
his eyes from hers, he said, "We'll catch the bastard, won't
we?"

"Yeah." She had to believe it.

He was too sensitive for this business. She
could see it in eyes that were fringed with black lashes. Funny,
she'd never noticed sensitivity there before. But all his defenses
were down. He would hate her tomorrow for seeing him like this.

But if a detective was too hard . . . that
could be bad too, she thought to herself. Because it took a certain
amount of sensitivity to understand another human being. It even
took a certain amount of sensitivity to put yourself in the mind of
a serial killer.

Max gave her hands a squeeze, then dropped
them. "Is it time, Julia?" he asked, swinging around.

The bartender checked the clock above the
cash register. "Fifteen more minutes."

"My son has a hockey game," Max explained.
"And I'm not going to miss it."

Ivy drove him there.

They took his car, and he told her where to
turn, and when to get in this lane or that so she could exit, while
he sat in the passenger seat, shaving with a battery-operated
shaver.

They ended up northwest of Chicago, in
suburbs that looked brand-new.

"Welcome to my world," Max said with a
flourish of one arm.

It wouldn't have gotten him any points with
his son if he'd arrived at the hockey game drunk, so Ivy had first
taken him to a diner where he'd ordered a steak burger and French
fries. Ivy got the special of stuffed acorn squash and chocolate
cream pie because she loved chocolate cream pie. The squash was
simply a way of relieving guilt over the pie. Occasionally, Max
would take a bite of something on her plate without even asking, as
if it were his right.

Ivy leaned forward and told him the idea that
had come to her as she'd read Alex Martin's commentary. "We'll have
the paper print a letter written to the killer from an infant he's
murdered. In the letter, the baby would be talking directly to the
Madonna Murderer, telling him what he'll miss out on now that he's
dead, telling him how sad and lonely he is. We know that the killer
loves these babies in a twisted way, so we use the letter to make
him feel remorse, make him feel guilty. If he's put in a state of
anxiety, then maybe he'll make a mistake."

"The idea's good," Max said, "but it's too
risky. We're dealing with a psychopath here."

"You're the one who said we weren't moving
quickly enough. It's risky, but we have to try, don't you think? So
far, he's the one in control. We tried the candlelight vigil. We
exposed the tattoo. We need something bigger."

"He responded to the tattoo. At this point, a
letter from the baby he killed could send him over the edge."

"I think we need to push him now, while he's
feeling pressured. Sending him over the edge might be the only way
he's going to make a mistake that's big enough for us to catch
him."

"I'll run the idea past Agents Cantrell and
Spence."

She smiled. "Good. In the meantime, I'll put
a letter together."

They fought briefly over the bill, with Ivy
winning. She paid, leaving a nice tip for a waitress who she'd
calculated was a single mom probably working two jobs. Then they
continued on their way to the hockey game, pulling into the arena
parking lot with fifteen minutes to spare.

Having arrived, Max shut off the shaver and
tossed it in the glove compartment. Outside the car, he stood in
front of Ivy and asked, "How do I look?"

He'd put his jacket back on, but had left the
tie in the car. She rebuttoned two buttons of his shirt, then gave
his chest a pat. "There."

"Thanks." He grasped her lightly by both arms
and planted a quick kiss ... on her forehead. Probably because it
was closer than her lips, Ivy reasoned, feeling a twinge of
disappointment. It was the second time in a matter of days that
he'd pulled her near. She decided that, as unusual as it was in a
man, Max was simply demonstrative—and possibly still a little
drunk.

The game was exciting, giving her a hint of
what it was that drove all those sports moms. Ivy screamed and
cheered, then immediately booed loudly when Ethan was put in the
penalty box for high-sticking. She didn't believe in violence in
competition, but the other team was high-sticking like crazy and
the referees just ignored it.

Ethan's team won by one point, a goal scored
after the game went into overtime.

When it was done, she and Max hurried down
the bleachers to congratulate Ethan.

His face was red from exertion, and he loomed
over Ivy in his skates, seeming eight feet tall and four feet wide,
all padded under his green jersey. When he pulled off his helmet,
his blond hair was dark with sweat. She could tell he was glad to
see his father, giving him a look that was tinged with confusion.
That confusion bled over to her. He must be wondering what she was
doing there.

Mothers and fathers filed out, telling him
good game as they passed. Ethan had played well, making three of
his team's four goals. One woman stopped and grabbed Ivy by the
arm, leaned close and said, "That son of yours will be playing pro
hockey."

She was gone before Ivy could correct her.
She looked at Ethan, ready to make some light comment, when he spun
away, heading for the locker rooms.

Before ducking inside, he stopped and said
something to a dark-haired, middle-aged man waiting at the
locker-room entrance. The man turned and waved in their
direction.

That night, Ivy couldn't sleep. She kept
thinking about Ethan, about the way the woman had thought he was
her son.

Sometimes she dreamed that her son was still
alive. But she knew it was just a dream, a mother's fantasy. In her
imaginings, his face was always out of focus. She could never quite
see what he looked like. But now she knew that if her son had lived
he would have looked like Ethan.

She lay in bed thinking about the letter from
the dead baby. It would be hard to write, but she would do it, she
must do it. And while she was doing it, she would think of another
baby, her baby. . . .

She rolled over, disturbing Jinx, who meowed
with faint reproach. What a good cat. He'd taken to the tiny
apartment better than she ever thought he would. Then again, maybe
he was simply biding his time, waiting to go home.

"Here's the letter I want you to run." Ivy
pushed an eight-by-ten sheet of typed paper across the diner table.
On top of it was a diskette.

Alex Martin pulled it closer, avoiding the
puddle of coffee that had spilled when he'd poured too much
cream.

They were sitting in a back booth of a greasy
grill where a bored waitress with big hair brought them coffee in
stained white cups that were probably as old as the building
itself. Definitely not a place Alex would have chosen.

He hadn't been surprised to get Ivy Dunlap's
phone call. He hadn't even been surprised to find that she wanted
to meet with him. He knew the article in the Monday Herald would
have ignited some rage within the police department. That's what it
was supposed to do. But what had surprised him was finding out that
she wanted him to work with them to help catch the Madonna
Murderer.

"It's a good idea," he said after reading the
piece she wanted him to put in the paper.

"It's been okayed by the department and the
FBI. But then I doubt that's something you'd be worried about."

The first dig. That didn't bother him.

She was an attractive woman, although she had
a directness about her that was a little disconcerting, even for
him.

"I suppose you want to know what's in it for
you,” she asked.

He laughed, and said, "You've got me all
wrong."

"Oh, come on. I don't have time for any
diversionary tactics. This isn't a game to me. It has nothing to do
with making any kind of name for myself. But for you . . . that's
what it's all about, isn't it?"

"Not at the expense of the truth. That's all
I'm after. The truth."

He leaned against the back of the booth,
angry now, coffee forgotten. He resented her implications and
accusations. He wasn't a tabloid reporter after some grisly crime
for the sake of shock value. "I think you'd better find another
reporter. Maybe someone from the Sun Times." She didn't even
pretend to be interested in her coffee. "It's pretty much common
knowledge that behind most newspaper reporters is a frustrated
fiction writer."

Ouch. That hurt. But it wasn't really true.
He was the only frustrated fiction writer he knew. Everybody else
at the Herald seemed to like his or her job just fine.

"If you run this, if you help me, I promise
to give you a story. An exclusive story."

He perked up. "About the investigation?"

"About me."

Intrigued once more, he leaned forward.
"About you?"

"I have a story to tell. One I think you'll
be interested in."

After meeting with Ivy Dunlap, Alex caught
the Red Line back to the paper.

"This is great stuff," Maude said after she
had read Dunlap's piece. "I don't mean the writing," she quickly
corrected, catching Alex's frown. "The idea that the paper is going
to be involved—that's great. There's been concern over the growing
conflict between the media and the CPD. We've needed some-thing
like this to soften the hostility."

"So we'll run it?"

"I have to get final approval, but I don't
think I'm getting ahead of myself by telling you this will get you
the attention you deserve—both in-house and out."

Alex almost hugged her, but stopped himself
at the last minute. She was his superior, and he didn't think a hug
or maybe even a twirl would go over that well. But he wasn't
worried about approval. Maude hadn't had a submission turned down
in years.

"Wanna go for coffee?" he asked. "My treat."
He'd never made such a daring offer before, and was surprised when
she said yes.

At a table in the basement cafeteria, she
pulled a flask from the giant canvas bag that never left her side,
and added an ample amount of brown liquid to her coffee. She
offered the flask to Alex. Suddenly they were almost equals. He
shook his head and she stuffed it back in her purse.