Hush (3 page)

When you're young, you keep thinking things
are going to change, things are going to get better. But by the
time you hit forty, you pretty much know this is it.

When Ethan was hardly more than a baby,
they'd lived in the heart of Chicago, but Max had worried that it
wasn't a good place to raise a kid, so they'd moved to the suburbs,
to a brand-new community northwest of the city that had shot up
overnight out of someone's cornfield. It made it a lot harder to
get to and from work, but Max had figured it was worth it.

But the pop-up suburb had an incomplete feel
to it, like something that just wasn't right, wasn't quite real,
almost like a movie set. When people raised families in that
sterile environment, it produced directionless children who became
directionless teenagers, then directionless adults. With no roots,
no past to stand on, you got hollow kids.

The United States was full of rootless, empty
kids who played video games all day. In between, they skateboarded
down immaculate sidewalks past yards that had never known a weed.
And if you looked into their eyes, you didn't see a dream of the
future there, just a weird emptiness. Max didn't know what the
answer was; all he knew was that somewhere along the line, they'd
all taken a wrong turn.

Max had been thinking about moving back to
the old neighborhood, but just days ago he'd driven by only to find
his entire block gone. In its place he found a parking ramp, a
store that rented video games, and a Starbucks. Anytown, U.S.A. Did
people really want that? Who decided on that sameness? How had it
happened? When Thomas Wolfe said you could never go home again, he
hadn't meant because the damn place was gone. Something like this
had never occurred to Wolfe. This cleansing.

Sometimes Max just wanted to stop in one of
those huge hardware stores, buy some color in gallon cans, and
paint his house purple. Not that he was terribly fond of purple,
but someone needed to take a stand.

When Max got home Ethan wasn't there and
hadn't left a note.

Shit.

Max hoped he wasn't in for a replay of last
night's broken curfew.

At 1:30 A.M. the night before, Max had heard
the sound of the front door. He'd gotten out of bed and turned on
the hall light just as Ethan was tiptoeing to his room. Under the
glare of the ceiling light, Max had seen that Ethan's eyes were
bloodshot. Smoking dope again.

"You're grounded," Max had said. It was the
only thing he knew to say, even though he was fairly sure the words
meant nothing, just like Ethan's probation.

Then Ethan had spoken a line that had been
said too often in the last fifty years in houses all across the
country. "You can't tell me what to do. You're not my real father."
It was a cliché that actually hurt. It didn't seem possible, but
there it was.

God knew he loved the kid more than life
itself— but damn, he could be such a pain in the ass.

"I want to find my real father," Ethan had
said.

With this whole Madonna Murder case
resurfacing, Max felt scattered—and he needed to give the case his
full attention.

Max had known the day was coming when Ethan
would want to know about his real father. But why now, when
everything was so crazy? There were things Max hadn't told him,
things he didn't quite know how to tell him—but now wasn't the
time.

It had just happened to him, this fatherhood
thing. A weird cluster of events he'd gotten caught in the middle
of. Max had met Ethan's mother when Ethan was three years old.
They'd gone out a few times.

Okay, maybe ten, twelve times. It was one of
those things where Max was pretty sure they didn't click, but he'd
wanted to give it a little longer. One night he'd decided to tell
her it just wasn't working, when she told him she was dying. And
she was looking for someone to take care of her son.

Max wished he could say he'd jumped right in
and started helping her, supporting her, but the truth was, he ran.
Three weeks later he went back.

He'd seen quite a bit of death, quite a few
dead bodies, by the time he met Cecilia, but nothing he'd seen in
any way prepared him for the slow, cruel death of cancer. And after
you watch someone die of cancer, you're forever changed. Your view
of humanity, of what it means to be a human on this planet Earth,
is forever questioned and never answered. Such intimate knowledge
of death threatened to weaken Max in ways he didn't want to be
weakened.

Cecilia was so brave that he fell in love
with her a little in those last few weeks. He took care of her
until she died, and he adopted Ethan. Adopting Ethan changed Max's
life in ways he'd never imagined, but now the profound love he felt
for his son was mixed with confusion and frustration.

So here they were, two hostile men living in
a glistening suburb on the edge of nowhere, trying not to kill each
other. Now Max had to hone his parenting skills, baby-sit some
novice who wanted to play cop, and find a madman who was killing
women and their baby boys.

Ivy Dunlap's flight was scheduled to arrive
at Chicago O'Hare at 11:48. That knowledge left Abraham sweating
and zipping through heavy Chicago traffic in his ancient BMW with
its cracked leather seats, intent on getting to the airport in time
to see her step from the walkway because he had to know if she
would be recognized. If so, he'd make sure she got back on the next
flight out of there.

God knew Abraham no longer looked the way he
had all those years ago, but some people change a lot over time,
some don't. He'd quit going to high school class reunions because
at his twenty-fifth he couldn't recognize half the people there. It
was like reminiscing with a bunch of strangers. Some looked so
unlike their former selves that fingerprints or dental records
would have been the only way to identify them. It had depressed him
when he wasn't able to recognize his old buddies, but now he hoped
the sixteen years Ivy Dunlap had spent in Canada had drastically
changed her appearance. For her sake he hoped to hell she was fat,
gray, and ugly.

He was running late because he'd stopped to
pick up a birthday present for his granddaughter. He'd ended up
getting her a Tae Kwon Do Barbie, something that wouldn't please
his daughter, Marie, who disapproved of Barbie. But Abraham thought
a Tae Kwon Do Barbie would be a good role model. Every woman should
know how to protect herself. That's what was important here. His
granddaughter. Not Marie's misplaced feminist issues.

There were predators out there. People needed
to educate their children. People needed to be aware. The general
public thought the only serial killers were the ones thrown in
their faces by the media. Not true. And most people thought the
chances of coming into contact with one of the monsters was so
remote that it didn't merit consideration or worry. Not true again.
There were monsters everywhere.

Her flight was on time, a Boeing 747. People
gushed out of the walkway, some in groups, some by themselves, eyes
seeking, then finally finding, the person meeting them.

Abraham recognized her immediately. It wasn't
her size that gave her away—she was smaller than he remembered. And
it wasn't her shape, she'd lost that almost boyish coltishness—or
her hair—which used to be blond but was now red. It wasn't really
anything about her except the calm way in which she spotted him,
the way she looked at him in a manner that was so direct, so
intimate, for lack of a better word, that it jolted him.

Her eyes spoke of a recognition that went
beyond physical appearance, a recognition that was rooted in
Abraham's deep knowledge of her, he was the only living person who
knew the full, true story of Ivy Dunlap. He must not have changed
so much, because she spotted him right away. "Abraham!"

Her voice was deeper, older, and it kind of
snagged on his name. His own rush of emotion took him by surprise
as he welcomed her into his arms, and he briefly felt as if he were
embracing a frail bird with delicate, fragile wings.

"It is so good to see you," she said, pulling
away just far enough to grab him confidently by both hands. They
stared at each other a moment, and he knew they were both thinking
of another time, sixteen years ago, at this very airport. He had
given her a new ID, a new past.

Claudia Reynolds was no more. Now she was Ivy
Dunlap, born in Ottawa, Ontario, the only child of Canadian Thomas
Dunlap and French-Canadian Jennifer Roy. Abraham had handed her the
plane ticket and money, telling her a trusted friend would be
meeting her in Toronto.

"I like the red hair," he said.

"A hundred percent natural," she joked.

Ivy picked up a green canvas backpack she'd
dropped. He took it from her. "Luggage?" he asked.

"Yes." She glanced around uncertainly.

"It'll be downstairs."

She fell into step beside him, unconsciously
letting him lead the way. He asked her about her flight. No
problems. Had she eaten? Yes.

Ivy had expected to find memories crashing
down on her the moment she stepped off the plane. When the pilot
had announced that they'd be landing in Chicago in ten minutes, her
heart had dropped, then began beating rapidly as an overwhelming
sense of panic rushed over her. Since then, she'd managed to calm
herself. The airport was too generic, too full of the energy of
busy travelers, to be any kind of threat.

With slight pressure on her arm, Abraham
indicated that they needed to take the escalators. She turned,
finding her footing and grabbing the moving rubber handrail at the
same time.

Abraham.

The first thing she'd thought when she'd seen
him was, He's old. His hair was turning gray. But then her own hair
had turned gray years ago, almost overnight. He'd put on weight.
But she'd recognized him immediately. His stature. His aura of
confidence. Even though he was dressed in a dark suit and tie
rather than the Chicago Police Department blues, it was easy to see
he was a policeman. A superintendent now, head of the CPD. When
she'd known him, he was Detective Sinclair.

Sixteen years was a long time, but not long
enough to have aged a man as much as Abraham had aged. He was so
worn. Another of the walking wounded.

The Madonna Murders had been hard on him,
he'd confessed to her once. Harder than any other homicide he'd
ever handled. They'd been the beginning of a downward spiral that
had eventually ended in alcoholism and divorce.

She'd been out of the mental institute two
years when the phone had rung in the middle of the night. Phone
calls in the middle of the night tended to be serious stuff. Upon
recognizing his voice, she'd almost dropped the receiver, thinking
the Madonna Murderer had reemerged. But no, Abraham needed to talk
to somebody, somebody who would understand what he was going
through. He needed to talk to somebody whose life had been touched
by a serial killer.

He was drunk. Not sloppy drunk, but sad,
weighted- down-by-life drunk. It was one of the few conversations
they had during her years of exile, but it had taken only a couple
of broken sentences for her to understand just how far-reaching was
the madness and damage of a human predator.

Her flight's luggage wasn't yet on the
carousel. They waited in the crowd of people. They waited along
with a mother and her two tired, whimpering children, businessmen
and -women, cowboys in their tight Levi's, pointed boots, and big
shiny buckles.

Ivy directed her gaze to the chute where the
luggage would soon appear. Deliberately not looking at Abraham, she
said, "I want to be the bait."

She heard his quick intake of breath, felt
his fingers wrap around her arm as he dragged her away from the
crowd. Like loose sand, people quickly tilled in their vacated
spot.

When they were in their own private huddle,
Abraham put his face very close to hers and whispered, "We don't
even know if it is the Madonna Murderer."

"If you use me for bait we'll find out."

"Absolutely not."

"I'm not afraid."

"I know. That's what worries me."

"Use me. That's why I came."

"That's suicidal."

She shrugged and smiled. "Kamikaze."

"You've changed."

She knew he meant that she no longer did
whatever he told her to do, without question. "I've found my
calling, that's all."

"I'm beginning to wish I'd never telephoned
you."

"What choice did you have? You promised."

"I didn't know you had a death wish."

She was close enough to see fine perspiration
collecting at his hairline and steel resolve in his eyes. And she
knew there was no use in arguing. Not at this point anyway.

Gone was her friend. Gone was the sad, lonely
man who'd drunkenly phoned in the middle of the night. This was
Superintendent Abraham Sinclair talking to her, the tough, hard,
won't-take-any-shit cop.

"You're much bolder than I remember. If you
think you're going to be running the show," he said with
conviction, "then you may as well recheck your luggage and get back
on a plane to Canada."

Ignoring his threat, she wrapped her hands
around his arm. "I never used to be bold enough."

He moved past their argument. "I've arranged
for you to stay with someone who used to work for the CPD. Her kids
are in college, she has an extra room, and she won't ask
questions."

"I appreciate it, but I prefer to have a
place to myself. I'm hoping to find something today."

"Are you sure? I thought you might be more
comfortable with people around."

"Thanks, but I really prefer my own
space."

"Okay, but I'll leave her number with you in
case you don't find a place, or you change your mind." He pulled a
portable phone out of his pocket and punched in a number. "Max?
Abraham. I'm heading in your direction and I wanted to make sure
you were going to be around. I've got a meeting with the mayor in
forty-five minutes. On my way downtown, I'm going to drop off Ivy
Dunlap at your office."