Hush (37 page)

He needed more information.

He looked around the room and spotted a
broom. He shouldn't touch the body, not until the crime techs and
coroner were done with it, but Max was waiting. Abraham had to give
his friend an answer, one way or the other.

Using the broom handle as a lever, he shifted
the body, stirring up a fetid wave of odor. The entire mess rolled,
then stopped, exposing a sawdust-covered pubic area where a black X
had been drawn with Magic Marker.

A woman.

The body belonged to a woman.

Max heard Abraham shout his name. Then the
front door flew open and Abraham burst out into the fresh air and
sunlight. Gasping, he grabbed Max by the arms, saying, "It's not
Ethan. The body belongs to a woman. It's not Ethan."

Max's legs went weak and he dropped to the
steps, burying his face in his hands. Thank God. Thank God.

His phone rang.

Automatically, he reached into his pocket and
pulled out the phone, his mind disconnected from a response that
was second nature. "Irving."

"Max."

The breathless, tension-filled voice belonged
to Ivy.

"Max, I'm at my old apartment on Division.
The Madonna Murderer is here. Max? Did you hear me? I've got a
fucking gun pointed at his head right now so you might want to get
somebody over here."

Dial tone.

End of call.

"Here she is," Ruby said, his voice
rising.

It was the voice of Ivy's nightmares, the
voice of her horrors.

"Here she is!"

It took Ivy a moment to realize he wasn't
talking to her. With her heart hammering, her breathing coming in
short gasps, she pulled her gaze from him for a fraction of a
second—long enough to look in the direction he was speaking.

Against one wall of the kitchen was a
refrigerator— probably the same white, rounded refrigerator that
had been there when Ivy had rented the apartment. The door hung
open, light spilling on the floor, cold air seeping out, curling
around her feet. On the center metal rack was a human head.

Her gaze shot back to Ruby, her mind refusing
to believe what she'd seen. Ruby was still there. That's a good
psycho, don't go anywhere. Don't try to move.

A head. A goddamn head in the
refrigerator.

No.

Yes.

Look again. You have to look again. Quickly
now. Be fast. Now! Look now!

The eyeballs were swollen, almost ready to
pop. Straggly, blood-encrusted gray hair framed the face.

Gray hair. Not Ethan. Not Ethan.

Then who?

The mouth was taped into the Madonna
Murderer's hideous signature grin.

"Here she is, Mother. She came. Just like I
said she would." His voice suddenly changed, becoming cheerful and
childlike. "Watch me! Watch me!"

Ivy stared at the head—she couldn't seem to
pull herself away—it was so mesmerizingly horrible.

When you see something you don't understand,
your unconscious forces you to keep looking until you figure it
out. Ivy kept looking, looking. . . .

"Watch me! Watch me!"

She dragged her gaze away from the
decapitated, grinning head to see candlelight reflecting off
something Ruby held in his hand, something he swung at her in a
long, sweeping motion.

It struck her wrist. The gun clattered to the
floor like a toy. Ruby kicked it, and it spun away into the fetid
darkness.

A knife. He had a knife. Where had it come
from? Had he had it all along?

A sensation of heat enveloped her arm, and
she realized she couldn't feel her fingers.

Something splashed down her leg. She thought
she'd wet herself, but then distantly realized it was blood.

Her hand. Had he cut off her hand?

No. It was still there. Covered with blood,
but still there. Blood dripping off the fingertips, falling plop,
plop, plop to the floor.

She looked up in time to see the knife coming
at her again. She sidestepped, the blade just nicking her arm.

It was a reenactment.

Or maybe her life had gotten caught in some
kind of weird time loop. But here she was, reliving the same
nightmare of sixteen years ago.

Her will to survive kicked in. Somehow she
grabbed his arm—but he was strong, so strong, his hands like
talons, his muscles like taut, sinewy rope. As the woman in the
refrigerator watched, never blinking, grinning in pride, the
Madonna Murderer plunged the knife again and again, some thrusts
hitting their mark, some deflected by Ivy's struggles.

They tumbled to the floor, falling near the
bed, Ruby on top.

As Ivy lay there, feeling the stickiness of
her own blood on her hands, she sensed the futility of it all, felt
her strength and will to live draining away. This was her destiny,
and destiny couldn't be changed. She'd tried. Hadn't she tried?

She just wanted it all to stop. Wanted her
life to stop.

Socrates said the perfect society would be
based on a great lie. People would be told that lie from the
cradle, and they would believe it, because human beings need to
make order out of chaos.

Ivy had told herself a great lie, a lie she'd
lived with and believed. She'd thought she could make a difference.
She'd thought if she studied hard enough, if she learned everything
she could learn about men like Ruby, then she could catch him.

But her baby was dead. Nothing would bring
him back.

Her baby was dead.

She had been able to save herself, but not
her baby.

She was alive; her baby was dead.

If only she'd been more careful. If only
she'd been stronger, faster. If only she hadn't gone to the store
that night. If only she'd put her baby up for adoption the way
everyone had begged, suggested, cajoled, he'd still be alive.

She hadn't been able to live with the full
memory of that night, so her mind had grown a protective skin
around that memory and put it away.

Her baby was dead.

Whenever she thought of him, his face was a
blur. But she could see him now, in her mind, blue lips, blue
fingers. Dead. Dead. Dead.

She let out a sob. Let him kill me. Let him
finish. A beginning, a middle, an end.

Ivy turned her face away so she couldn't see
the madman hovering over her.

Across the expanse of hardwood, lying on his
stomach on the floor almost beneath the bed, was Ethan.

Ethan. Oh my God. Ethan
.

Are you alive? Please be alive
.

His mouth was sealed with duct tape. His
hands were taped behind his back, his cheek pressed to the floor,
his pupils large and glassy.

Are you alive? Please be alive
.

He blinked.

Thank God.

His eyes reflected all the horror he'd seen,
and all the fear he felt. And now someone was finally there who
wasn't the Madonna Murderer. With his eyes, he reached out to Ivy,
begging her for help, begging her to make this stop, make it all go
away.

How can I save you, she thought, when I
couldn't save my own child? How can I save you?

She turned in time to see the knife come
down. She twisted away. He missed, the blade becoming embedded in
the floor. With her last bit of strength, she jumped to her feet
and ran for the kitchen, for the refrigerator. While Ruby struggled
to pull the knife from the floor, she grabbed the head by fistfuls
of gray hair, pulling it from the metal rack. Her hands spread over
the cold ears, she held the face away from her, her arms
outstretched, shrieking at Ruby.

"STOP!"

He looked up—the color drained from his face.
His mouth dropped open.

The head was heavy, and her arms were
shaking. A weakness was building in her.

"Put the knife down!" Ivy shouted. "PUT IT
DOWN!"

He looked guilty, as if his mother had caught
him doing something he shouldn't.

Behind her, Ivy heard the layered thud of
heavy footfalls. Help was coming. A lot of help. Outside, sirens
screamed. The door crashed open and she heard Max's voice calling
her name.

Max would never forget the image that met him
when he broke open the apartment door—Ivy holding a human head in
her hands as if it were a cross held up to ward off Dracula. A
man—the Madonna Murderer— stood there, staring at the head in
horror, looking as if he'd just come face-to-face with his own
private version of hell.

And then Ruby moved. He came at Ivy with a
gleaming knife raised high, screaming, "I hate you! I hate
you!"

All of Ruby's hatred for his mother was
directed into that scream, that attack. He would strike a
deathblow.

In his years as a detective, Max had never
shot anybody. But now he pulled the trigger. Once, twice, three
times—because Max had the feeling a single bullet wasn't going to
stop Grant Ruby. Sick animals were the hardest to kill.

Ruby's mask of hatred crumpled, to be
replaced by one of idiotic surprise, total and utter surprise that
his life's work had been cut short in his very moment of
triumph.

He was dead before he hit the floor.

Time became weird the way it always did when
adrenaline flooded your veins. The third bullet had barely left the
chamber when Max thought, What have I done?

Ethan.

Ruby was the only person who knew if Ethan
was alive or dead, the only person who knew where Max would find
him.

In the very second he had that thought, Ivy
spoke his son's name.

He was distantly aware of Abraham and the
other officers behind him, but they were a peripheral blur, not
important.

He slid his revolver back in the shoulder
holster as he ran the few steps through the kitchen into the main
room. He was afraid he'd misunderstood Ivy's communication, but
then he spotted Ethan on the floor, on the other side of the
bed.

He dropped to his knees beside him, his hands
shaking. Ethan's eyes were open and locked with his. Max pulled off
the duct tape. As soon as his mouth was uncovered, Ethan began to
sob.

"Here—"

An officer handed Max a pocketknife, blade
open. Max cut through the bindings on Ethan's wrists and legs, then
he sat on the floor and pulled his son into his arms, hugging him,
kissing his blood-matted hair, rocking him, tears spilling.

Someone must have taken the head from her
hands. Ivy had a vague awareness of Abraham being there, of a
tourniquet being tightened around her arm, of two ambulance
attendants putting her on a gurney.

I'm not dead, she thought she whispered, but
they didn't seem to hear her. Perhaps the words had been
unvocalized thoughts. Would they put her in a body bag? For some
reason, that idea gave her no anxiety.

Outside, cameras flashed and reporters
shouted questions, trying to put microphones in her face. And then
she was rushed away, sirens wailing, the ambulance rocking her to
sleep.

The story of how Claudia Reynolds reemerged
as Ivy Dunlap hit newsstands, and Ivy became an overnight
celebrity. People she didn't even know sent flowers to her hospital
room. Reporters posed as long-lost relatives trying to get a story.
Every national morning show wanted to book her, and two publishers
had already contacted her about writing an autobiography.

She'd almost bled to death. By the time the
ambulance reached Blessings Hospital, her blood pressure was almost
nonexistent. It took four pints of blood to get it back up. One
specialist worked on her wrist and hand while another repaired her
other injuries—three wounds that had miraculously missed all major
organs. There were five less severe cuts to her arms, cuts that had
required a total of twenty-two stitches. If Ivy had been conscious
when they were working on her, she would have insisted on
twenty-three, or twenty-one. Twenty-two allowed the Madonna
Murderer one final statement.

Abraham came to see her, and he had one thing
on his mind: He wanted her to stay and work for the Chicago Police
Department.

"We haven't yet decided what your exact
position would be," Abraham explained. "It would be up to you. You
could join Homicide as our expert in the field of criminal
psychology. Or if that feels too constrictive, you could be a hired
freelancer. We're flexible."

Two minutes earlier, she'd pushed the button
on her morphine pump. Now all she could do was lie there, trying to
absorb his chatter.

"By the way, Max is staying on," Abraham
added.

She wasn't surprised. She hadn't been able to
picture him anywhere else.

"Naturally, he's concerned about Ethan's
safety, so until Ethan's older, Max is going to keep a lower, more
administrative profile while retaining his position as Chief of
Homicide. I think it can be done if we work at it."

"That's good," she said, struggling to keep
her eyes open.

"I'll leave you alone," Abraham said, seeing
that she was having trouble staying awake. "But think about
staying. You'll think about it, won't you?"

She nodded.

On the third day of Ivy's hospitalization,
the needle was taken out of her hand and her supply of morphine cut
off. She was wheeled into a sitting area with a huge window where
she could see a bit of Lake Michigan in the distance, and maybe a
couple of sailboats if she were lucky.

That's where Max found her, in a wheelchair,
staring out the window.

She immediately asked about Ethan.

"Still shaken up, but glad to be alive," Max
said, sitting down in one of the vinyl-covered chairs.

Ivy knew Ethan had spent one night in the
hospital, then had been sent home.

How long would it take for him to recover, to
forget and be able to live again as a teenager?

Sadly, Ivy knew that would never happen. He,
like so many others, had been touched by the hand of a madman, and
that kind of touch left latent prints that would never, ever go
away. Ethan would return home and find that he'd lost the
foolishness it took to hang out with his old friends. They wouldn't
understand, and with the impatience of youth, they wouldn't want to
understand. He was a drag, that's all they would know. And when
somebody's a drag, you don't hang around with them.