The Bleeding Season Read online

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But even if it isn’t…isn’t it just human beings being…”

  “Themselves?”

  “Yes.”

  “You think I’m one of those do-gooders who believes no one is responsible for the shit they do? Do I strike you as that sort, Alan? You think I went through the torture of my life—and continue to—because I believe everyone’s innocent, everyone’s just a puppet to some grand evil no one can help themselves against? The Devil made me do it, right? The Devil made me do it.”

  I stood up, wiped a single trickle of sweat from my eyebrow with the back of my hand and asked, “Then what are you saying?”

  “If you take the Devil’s hand, it’s still your fault, it’s still your choice, and you’re still to blame for whatever happens, for whatever you do, for whatever that evil causes in you.” Julie moved closer, as if she wanted to be certain I heard what she was going to say next. “But just because you’re to blame doesn’t mean the Devil was never there.”

  “He once told me the Devil spoke to him,” I said.

  “Maybe you should’ve believed him.”

  An odd moaning sound echoed from the hallway. Adrian’s slurred, distant, indecipherable voice seemed to beckon.

  “Is he all right?” I asked.

  Julie nodded. “We all chase away bad dreams in our own way. He’s trying to kick it. I did more than two years ago now. I met Adrian in rehab, ironically enough. We don’t have much, just each other, but that’s more than a lot of people have.”

  “I’m sorry.” The words were out before I had a chance to stop them.

  “Don’t be sorry for us, Alan. Feel sorry for yourself. You’re the one in the dark now. We’re the meek, just waiting on our inheritance. Burn the days and survive the nights.”

  “Honey?” Adrian called, his voice breaking and on the verge of tears.

  “He needs me.”

  Time was short, and I knew it. “I don’t think Bernard killed for several years after he attacked you. He claimed to have joined the Marines, but he admitted before his death that he went to New York City instead.”

  “And you think that’s where he learned to kill?”

  “Yes.” I swallowed. Hard. “Or maybe where he perfected it.”

  “Look for ritual crimes,” she said with a nearly casual air. “Ritual murder, do you understand? Once he embraced evil, rituals would’ve been important—everything he did, every act he committed would have had purpose. His murders wouldn’t be simple killings. They’d be sacrifices. I’ve spent years studying these things, reading everything I can get my hands on, trying to make sense of something that makes no sense, trying to protect myself from something most people will tell you doesn’t even exist.” She nervously nibbled at one of her fingers. “I may be crazy, Alan, but I know what I’m talking about.”

  Adrian called from the bedroom again.

  “What about the time between his coming home from New York City and the last couple of years?” I asked quickly. “Could he have stopped for several years and then started again just before he took his life?”

  “No, I don’t believe he would’ve stopped.”

  “But—”

  “Look, all I know is what happened that day—and I’m sorry if it’s not the answer you want. I didn’t see devils with yellow eyes and red horns prancing, or cheesy monsters or some Hollywood version of evil in the woods that day—I told you—you feel it. You feel them, because they’re everywhere, and nowhere at all. Never there, but always with us.”

  “Who, exactly?” I asked.

  “Demons.”

  “Demons,” I said, tossing the word back at her.

  “You experience evil but…you can’t describe it. Describe wind,” she said defiantly. “Tell me what it looks like.”

  “I understand.”

  “You understand nothing.” An odd smile grew along her face. “But you will.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Once outside I realized late afternoon was bordering on early evening, and though the sun had shifted a bit, darkness was still a few hours off. Just the same, I felt a strong need to get off the street and out of Julie’s neighborhood well before nightfall. I walked to my car quickly, then hesitated and looked around. The group that had been on the corner when I’d arrived was gone, leaving the street empty and jarringly quiet. Yet I felt anything but alone.

  Maybe Julie Henderson was right. Maybe we were never really alone. Maybe demons watched from everywhere, and nowhere at all.

  * * *

  By the time I got back to town and pulled up to Donald’s cottage, the beginnings of dusk had settled in. On the drive back I’d replayed my conversation with Julie at least a dozen times in my mind, but still wasn’t certain I’d be able to relay any of it in anything even approaching a coherent manner. As I sat in the car gathering my thoughts for a moment, I noticed Rick’s Jeep Cherokee parked on the street. I hadn’t expected him to be there but was glad he was.

  Donald answered the door with his usual bleak look. “We were getting worried about you,” he said as I stepped into the living room. “I gave Rick a call, told him you were coming over. I thought it might be a good idea if we were all together for this.”

  Rick was standing in front of the television watching a baseball game with a level of intensity most people reserve for serious news footage. He jerked a thumb at the screen. “Fucking Red Sox. Season’s only a few weeks old and they already suck.”

  Donald flashed me an unexpected grin and held up a glass of vodka. “Drink?”

  “Yeah, definitely.”

  He went to the kitchen and a moment later I heard ice slap glass. He returned with Jack Daniels on the rocks. I thanked him and he slid over to the coffee table, snatched the remote and switched off the television.

  Rick turned from the set. “OK, it’s not like I was watching that or anything.”

  “What are you, a fucking clown?” I said. “Who gives a shit about baseball at a time like this?”

  He leveled a severe look at me. “Who are you talking to, Alan?”

  I sipped my drink. “I’m talking to you.”

  Before he could respond Donald thrust a folded section of newspaper into my free hand. “Have you seen tonight’s paper?” A black and white photograph of a young woman stared back at me, beneath the headline: MURDER VICTIM REMEMBERED.

  “No,” I said quietly, “I knew they’d identified her by name but I—I hadn’t seen this.”

  Before that moment she’d been a single mother from New Bedford, a name, a vague casualty—like anyone you heard or read about but had never met, or even seen—but the photograph transformed her into a real person; a young, vibrant woman smiling from beyond the grave. I looked into her eyes, studied her features and tried to imagine what she had been thinking about when the photo had been snapped. She looked so happy and carefree. I wondered what her voice sounded like, what her laugh was like, if she was a good mother, a nice person. I tried to read the article but couldn’t tear my eyes from the photograph. I tossed it onto the coffee table and this time took a gulp of whiskey.

  “You know Jimmy McCarty,” Rick said suddenly, all apparently forgiven.

  “Yeah,” I said. Jimmy was a cop, a townie we had gone to school with and known since we were kids. While none of us were particularly close to him, he had played high school football with Rick, and over the years they had retained a friendship of sorts, albeit a casual one. “What about him?”

  “I was telling Donny before you got here. I ran into him downtown today, and we got talking. He said the state cops are all over this one and the guys on the local force are pissed, but there isn’t much they can do. They’re in over their heads and they know it. Anyway, we got talking, you know, off the record, and he said there was a lot of shit they weren’t telling the press. Shit only the killer knows.”

  “That’s standard procedure, isn’t it?”

  “I guess.” Rick shrugged. “He couldn’t go into it but he sa
id they found some crazy shit. That chick was tortured bad before whoever did her killed her. He said it’s not your usual homicide, jealous boyfriend or whatever. He said whoever did this was a major league psycho. His exact words were: We got a for real fucking nutcase on our hands.”

  Donald rolled his eyes. “Such the wordsmith, that Jimmy.”

  “Did he say anything about the murder having a religious or spiritual angle?” I asked.

  “We didn’t talk about religion.”

  “That wasn’t the question.”

  Rick held his hands out at his sides in an exaggerated motion. “Jesus, man, what the hell is your problem tonight?”

  “Just answer the question. Did he—”

  “No, he didn’t. I just told you what he fucking said.”

  “Enough. Both of you just calm down.” Donald stepped between us and put a hand on my shoulder. “What happened today?”

  I walked away and sat on the couch. “You first. What’d you find out?”

  Donald disappeared into his bedroom, where his computer was set up, and came back carrying a small manila folder. He sat next to me on the couch and flipped it open to reveal several sheets of paper he’d printed out earlier. “I did some searches for homicides in New York City in 1982, like you suggested. Most of the web sites I was able to find didn’t have information that went back that far. Remember, 1982 is almost twenty years ago now. The ones that still list ’82 provided general statistical information but virtually no specific case-by-case detail.” He slowly ran a finger down the center of one sheet until he found what he was looking for. “For example, in 1982 there were a total of sixteen hundred and sixty-eight murders in New York City. Now, I found a couple sites that list the neighborhoods where they were committed and some other details of no use to us, but that’s about it.”

  “Sixteen hundred murders in one year?” I asked.

  “I know,” he said. “When you see hard numbers like that it’s disturbing, isn’t it?” He shuffled the papers, settled on a new sheet. “OK, so I tried a few more searches and I stumbled across a cold case site, one that showcases particularly nasty or sensational homicides from all over the world that have never been solved. I was able to search New York State specifically, and then by year, all those that had taken place in New York City in 1982. You said to look for anything unusual, so I found a couple that investigators believe were linked. This site had a lot of info, much of it surprisingly specific. They even have a link where you can contact officials if you have any information pertaining to the cases. But just so you know, a lot of what I came across is disturbing. I went through it a couple times before you guys got here. It’s brutal stuff.”

  Rick began pacing near the television but I knew he was listening.

  “Go on,” I said softly.

  “OK, again, this is ’82, so this was only five years after the Son of Sam killings,” Donald said through a sigh. “Whether everyone in the city was still looking for serial killers behind every car or not is impossible to say, but there were two cases—both homicides—that, according to these reports, police believed were committed by the same person. The first took place near the end of January 1982. Bernard left here in late ’81, a few months after we graduated high school, so assuming he told the truth about going to New York rather than joining the Marines, he would’ve been in the city at this time.”

  “He’d have been there for a few months already,” I said.

  Donald looked up from the stack of papers. “In other words, he’d been there long enough to get situated, to come to know the city better, maybe to prepare himself for what he had planned, or to convince himself to actually go through with it.” He returned his attention to the paperwork. “At any rate, the first victim was an eighteen-year-old girl, a prostitute. Her body was found in an alley in the Bronx. According to the reports, she was stabbed more than a hundred times. Her throat was also slit. Police described it as a ‘rage’ killing; one where they initially suspected the killer may have known the victim, because there was clearly such frenzied anger associated with it. Overkill, they call it, where the killer just goes berserk and tries to obliterate the victim. Early on the prime suspect was her pimp, but the fact that the woman had been mutilated as well concerned investigators, apparently. Between the incredible number of stab wounds and the slitting of her throat, the killer had not only purposely bled the victim out, he took the time to…Christ, sorry.” Donald reached for his drink, took a long swallow then returned it to the coffee table. “He took the time to remove certain body parts.”

  Rick stopped his pacing and whispered, “Jesus.”

  “Her tongue had been cut out.” Donald’s voice splintered. “And her eyelids were gone, sliced off and removed entirely from her face. None of what was removed was ever recovered.”

  “What the hell’s the point of that?” Rick asked.

  Julie Henderson had told me to look for ritual crimes, murders that had meaning, purpose. Evil purpose. I remained quiet and listened.

  “I don’t know,” Donald said, “but due to this, and due to the fact that there was a decided lack of blood where the body was found, police believed the killing had happened elsewhere and the girl’s body had later been dumped in the alley. A subsequent autopsy revealed the body had sustained damage consistent with torture and abuse prior to and even after death, which confirmed their beliefs that this had all taken place in some other location.”

  “New York City’s expensive,” Rick said. “Even with the money he saved, how much could Bernard have had? He probably lived in a cramped room in some shitty-ass neighborhood with people all around him. How the hell could he do something like that to a woman without anybody hearing it?”

  “Look what Dahmer got away with in the middle of an apartment building,” I said.

  “At any rate,” Donald continued, “the case remains open to this day. The next killing that investigators say was perpetrated by the same individual took place not quite two full months later, in March. Because the specifics surrounding both killings were identical, the police have no doubt the same person was responsible for them. The second victim was another woman, this one twenty-two-years-old.”

  Rick started pacing again. “Another hooker?”

  “No, an aspiring actress working in retail clothing sales originally from Nebraska. She’d only moved to New York a few weeks before her death. And according to the rundown on the case, the police believe it wasn’t a random or impulse killing, but rather one that was planned. They believe both women were probably targeted, followed and marked, as it were, for death.” Donald focused his grim expression first on Rick, then on me. “And what’s worse is that this murder made the first look like child’s play.”

  More rituals, I thought. More madness.

  “To begin with, the woman’s throat was slashed and she was bled the same as the first. Very little blood was found at the scene itself, and the physical evidence of mutilation and torture prior to death was consistent with the previous murder. Again, the eyelids had been removed and the tongue cut out.” Donald paused for another quick shot of vodka. “But this time, rather than dumping the body in an alley it was left on a bench in Central Park. Several occult symbols were found carved into the body. They believe this was done prior to the woman’s actual death.”

  “Fucking wonderful,” Rick said. “This is nuts, what does any of this have to do—”

  “The body was left sitting up, the head turned completely around to the point where the neck was broken,” Donald went on. “The police felt it was more than likely tied to one of the satanic cults known to be operating in the area at that time. Apparently some were very violent. This was never proved, but no other murders took place with these same specifics. According to the info on the site regarding both cases, police believe the killer was either apprehended for some other crime and was sent to prison, moved elsewhere and continued his killing in another location, or died.”

  “They had two of the
three right,” I said.

  “We have no way of knowing if those murders were committed by Bernard,” Donald said, “but let’s face it: the similarities between those murders and what little we know about the murder here in town is disturbing to say the least. While they’re holding out on some of the specifics, we do know that the woman killed here suffered a very violent death and that her body was bled out in another location, a location where she was probably killed before being dumped in the field. The papers have reported that much. And they don’t end there. There’s another consistent aspect to all three killings that’s absolutely chilling. All three women were single mothers with young male children.”

  Rick froze. “Are you serious?”

  “Just like Bernard and his mother,” I said.

  “Knowing what we know now, and after listening to Bernard’s tape, I don’t know what to think anymore.”

  “Yes you do, Donald. We all do.” I shut out the sudden memory of the woman in the warehouse. Her eyes had begun to bleed after she’d grabbed hold of me and filled me with those hellish hallucinations. They had also seemed unnaturally wide. The way a pair of eyes would if the lids were removed from the face. “Bernard did it. He’s guilty as sin.”

  “You’re talking almost twenty years ago,” Rick reminded me. “Come on, this is crazy. You’re telling me Bernard was killing people for that long and never got caught, never fucked up? Bernard? Yeah, fucking maybe. Even if he was capable of doing some of this stuff, he couldn’t get out of his own way half the time.”

  “He’s got a point.” Donald put the folder aside. “Bernard was hardly criminal mastermind material.”

  “He didn’t even have his shit together enough to be psycho material,” Rick said. “None of this adds up. None of it.”