The Jake Helman Files Personal Demons (9 page)

He stared at the case. “Homicide was such a choice assignment.”

“I see. You wanted your star to shine.”

“No. I wanted a promotion so we could afford to get a house like you wanted, start a family…”

She leaned over him. “Don’t you dare turn this back on me.”

“I’m not. I’m just trying to explain—”

She snatched the bundled cash from the case. “Explain this! Were you going to use drug money to buy me a house?”

He did not answer.

She hurled the cash at the wall behind him and it thudded on the floor. “I don’t want it. Do you hear me? I don’t want it!”

He focused his eyes on the bag of coke.

“But I can see what you want.” She seized the bag and held it out to him. “Do you need a fix? Do you want me to get high with you?”

He shook his head.

“Because we can both ruin our lives and throw away everything that we’ve worked for.”

He snatched the bag from her and stomped into the bathroom. Standing over the toilet, he tore the bag apart with his hands and dumped the coke into the bowl. The water turned milky and his nostrils opened and closed like fish gills. With trembling fingers, he flushed the toilet, then returned to the living room.

Sheryl stood before him, red faced and teary eyed. “Very good, Jake. Very dramatic. But that doesn’t solve anything.”

“I swear I’ll never touch that stuff again.”

“I want to believe you, but I can’t. You’ve already lied to me. And I understand. Really. You couldn’t help yourself. Because drug addicts say and do whatever it takes to get what they need.”

“I’m no addict.”

“I feel sorry for you, Jake. For both of us. We had something special.”

“Sheryl—”

“I need time to think. And I can’t do that with you here. I want you to pack your bags and leave.”

“Don’t do this to me.”

“You’ve done it to yourself.”

“I
love
you.”

“We must have different definitions of love.”

“I need you, damn it!”

“You need to get your act together.”

“Please …”

She shook her head. “One of us has to be strong.”

He paused, debating what tact to use. “How long do you want me to stay away?”

Despite the tears in her eyes, Sheryl’s expression cooled. “‘Where’s Old Nick?’“

A
fter he had returned to his apartment and had shed Knapsack Johnny’s attire and identity, Marc Gorman’s flesh continued to tingle where Professor Severn had worked his magic on it. Marc wanted to rip the bandage from his chest to admire the intricate artwork, but he reminded himself that the dyes would fade if exposed to light at this early stage. Changing into nylon gym shorts, he pulled his exercise mat from beneath the sofa and arranged his weights around it. He selected a CD from the rack and inserted it into his player. The soothing sounds of Verdi surrounded him.

He spent ninety minutes working out, supplementing his push-ups, sit-ups, and weight training with isometrics and yoga. He performed multiple reps with lighter weights because he desired strength, not bulk; too much mass would limit the number of roles he could play. He worked his muscles, stretching them, tearing them. Sweat beaded on his forehead and his heart raced. Pushing his body to its limits, he recalled how frail he had been as a youth. His own father had told him that he looked more like a girl than a boy.

“You look just like that crazy bitch,” Gary Gorman had said more than once. “You’ll never grow up to be a man. I don’t know why I even bother with you.”

Sara Gorman, Marc’s mother, had been a slender woman with delicate features and pale skin, and she had done her best to draw her only child out of his shell. In stark contrast to her generous demeanor, Marc’s father had been a source of tremendous fear in his life. The burly truck driver with a taste for cheap beer never addressed Marc by his name; instead he called his son “Little Bastard” with the same degree of contempt as when he called Sara “Crazy Bitch.” They lived in a trailer park in Redkill, a rural village in upstate New York, where the sole ambition of young men was to drive shiny pickup trucks. The old-timers who sat watching the traffic on Main Street from the safety of park benches joked that the town should have been called “Roadkill.”

The memory of his parents’ last fight burned within him again. Gary had returned to the double-wide one afternoon after a two-day absence, and Sara had smelled beer on his breath and perfume on his collar. While Marc cowered behind the living room sofa, his mother screamed at his father in their bedroom. Marc heard his mother grunting as she slapped his father, who only laughed at her feeble attempts to hurt him. In the end, his father had strode by him with nothing but his toolbox, left the trailer, climbed into his truck, and drove off without saying good-bye. Marc ran to his parents’ bedroom, where he found his mother crying on the bed. He went to her and she clung to him. In that moment, he realized that she depended on him as much as he depended on her.

Sara sold the trailer and saved enough money to put a down payment on a home in which to raise her son: a dilapidated ranch house at the end of a dead end street. The roof leaked, the faucets dripped, and the fireplace had been filled in with cement. Ashamed of the peeling gray paint on the house’s exterior, Marc walked home from the bus stop with his back turned to the other kids who lived on Hunt Road. He blamed his father for the impoverished lifestyle that he and his mother had been forced to endure, but he felt glad to be free of the Big Bastard.

He had no friends except for his mother. His junior high classmates taunted him with nicknames:
geek, nerd
, and
spaz
. They mocked the secondhand clothes that his mother bought for him at yard sales. His first bloody nose at the hands of a bully had terrified him, but he grew accustomed to them. Following his instincts, he learned to fade into the background of the school corridors to escape humiliation. Hiding became the primary activity in his life.

He knew that his mother sympathized with his plight. She had been ostracized by her father for marrying outside the Jewish faith, only to be rejected by her husband, who had not been worth the trouble. She bought Marc a computer to show him that there was a larger world beyond Redkill, and soon he spent all of his free time online. The used computer had been an extravagant gift, considering their budget: their sole means of income had been disability pay that Sara received from the government each month.

At thirteen, Marc discovered that his mother suffered from “spells,” during which she forgot her name and his. He blamed the Big Bastard for the gradual erosion of her mental faculties. She locked herself in her bedroom for hours at a time, raging at the walls. He kept her deterioration a secret while finishing high school, but her condition worsened. Eventually, she stopped leaving her room altogether, and he had to bathe her and prepare her meals.

She paced her room at all hours, wringing her hands and calling out for her husband and her father. Marc learned to pacify her through role-playing games; sometimes he portrayed the Big Bastard, and sometimes he played the Old Bastard, whom he had never even met. He remembered the Big Bastard’s drunken roar well enough, and he imagined that the Old Bastard had been equally bullheaded. If his acting ability failed to convince Sara, she never let on. He forged her checks and deposited them into her meager bank account, withdrawing funds for their survival. Because he retained more of her memories than she did, it seemed logical to him that he should be the one to preserve her identity. And so Sara joined the canon of roles in his repertoire.

Marc liked to pretend.

Seeking refuge from his tortured existence in cyberspace, he created multiple identities to use in online chat rooms, each with a unique history and personality. He developed a flair for drama, but only within the confines of his isolated world. Outwardly, he craved normalcy and hoped to become an accountant one day. But he had no idea how to pay for his college tuition or achieve that goal. The demands that his mother’s growing insanity placed on his time made it impossible for him to get even a part-time job to supplement their income. He won a full scholarship to a local community college but was unable to accept it. By then Sara had been prone to fits of violence, and he dared not leave her alone, or entrust her care to a paid companion, even if he had been able to afford one. A nurse would have seen that his father had been correct: Sara really was a crazy bitch, and Marc feared she would spend the rest of her life in an institution. He resented her hold on him, but what could he do? She had been his only friend.

He had been unprepared for the effect her death had on him. His grief had been so overpowering he had been unable to function. Free at last to live his life as he saw fit, without the burden of responsibility for someone else, he suffered an emotional breakdown. The doctors at Stonehaven had treated him with the same disdain as they had their other patients, and he had been grateful for his transfer to the Payne Institute. There he met the Widow, who filled the void in his life and inspired him to rejoin the world.

Enough
.

Marc collapsed on the exercise mat, his chest heaving. Climbing to his feet, he staggered into the bathroom and stripped off his clothes. He showered, changed into his evening clothes, and cooked dinner: skinless chicken, asparagus, and salad without dressing. Setting his food on the coffee table, he sat facing the TV and turned on the news. Chewing on his lemon-soaked chicken, he felt giddy with anticipation. He relished hearing the local newscasters describe his exploits with melodramatic flair. On the screen, a female Asian reporter stood outside a familiar-looking apartment building, the wind wrapping her hair across her face.

This is it
, he thought, raising the volume with the remote control. Setting down his fork, he leaned forward with the TV image reflected in his eyes. His pulse quickened when he saw that he had made the lead story. A photograph of Shannon Reynolds filled the screen, and Marc felt grim satisfaction. In his mind, he saw her standing at the bar, drawing his attention to her breasts. If only she’d known that it had been her crucifix that had attracted him to her. His blood turned cold as a drawing took over the screen: a black-and-white sketch of a white male with short hair. The food in his stomach churned as he stared at the police sketch of the Cipher.

Marc rose to his feet and staggered around the coffee table. Unable to concentrate on the reporter’s words, he fell to his knees before the TV. With trembling fingers, he touched the screen, tracing his likeness.

It’s me
, he thought, his lower lip quivering. His picture would soon be on display all over the city. He sank his teeth into the knuckles of his left fist. Choosing a soul from a crowded bar had been a careless mistake, he knew, but Shannon had been too tempting a target for him to resist.

The Widow would be displeased.

He needed to change his appearance immediately, destroy the persona of Byron, and do what he was best at: fade into the background like a chameleon, biding his time.

I want my mother
, he thought.
I never should have killed her
.

T
he ringing shattered his dream like a softball hurtled through a window.
No! I don’t want to wake up! Not yet…

His cell phone dragged Jake back to reality, away from Sheryl. He awakened in darkness, tears in his eyes, alone in a queen-sized bed. His head throbbed, his senses dulled.

Where am I?

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore. He covered his head with a pillow until the ringing stopped, then descended into a half sleep. Sheryl did not return to him, but faces did hover in his mind: Dread and Baldy. He shut them out. Then someone knocked on the door to his left.

Who—
?

Removing the pillow, he propped himself up on his elbows. Gray light outlined the blinds to his right, reflected in the bureau mirror across the room.

Hotel
, he thought.
The Lexington
.

The unseen door swung open, and a column of light sliced through the darkness. The door’s chain lock jerked it back and the light shrank to a narrow blade.

“Sorry,” a woman with a heavy Hispanic accent said.

The maid
. He must have forgotten to hang the
DO NOT DISTURB
sign outside the door. “Not today,” he called out, his voice hoarse. “Come back tomorrow.”

“Ho-kay.”
The woman closed the door.

Darkness again.

He laid back and groaned, the throbbing in his head intensifying into outright pain. Attempting to recall what he had done after checking into the hotel the night before, he drew a blank. Touching denim fabric on his thighs, he wiggled his toes inside sneakers. His sweater reeked of cigarette smoke, and vague impressions of a seedy bar clouded his mind. His insides felt as if they had been coated in black tar. Pressing a button on his watch, he narrowed his eyes at the luminous display: 11:58 a.m. on Tuesday, November 2nd.

Twenty-four hours without cocaine.

Twenty-four hours without Sheryl
.

His body yearned for something stronger than the alcohol flowing through his veins. Rolling out of bed, he opened the blinds and squinted in the dull sunlight. From the sixth floor, Lexington Avenue appeared cold and gray, its sidewalks crowded with people scurrying on their lunch breaks. People with jobs; people with lives. Turning from the window, he sighted his gun case on top of the cherry wood desk on the far side of the television, gleaming beside his cell phone. Swallowing, he staggered into the bathroom, flicked on the lights, and emptied his bladder. Returning to the main room, he spotted his coat lying on the floor at the foot of the bed. Picking it up, he searched its pockets until he found the Marlboro pack. It felt light, and when he shook it, tobacco flakes rattled inside it.

Figures
, he thought, discarding the empty pack. He sat at the desk and stared at the gun case. He slid his hands over its aluminum surface and then thumbed the combination dials. The sound of the tabs popping pierced his brain like a scalpel. Raising the lid, he gazed at the black Glock, his heart beating faster. He reached down and removed the gun, its grip cold. He plucked a fresh magazine from the case, slapped it into the grip, and pulled back the slide, chambering a bullet. Did he have the guts to—