Seeing Red Read online

  “Where were you last night, Harp? Or this morning when the nanny showed up late?”

  “I slept in the guest house. You are keeping me up all night with your nightmares. It isn’t good for the baby.”

  He is begging me. I can hear the sadness in his voice. He’s holding back his crocodile tears. I’m tired of his manipulations and lies.

  “I know you’re having an affair,” I say.

  I close my eyes and the feeling of sadness takes over, it grows and spreads out around me like a shadow.

  “That’s just not true. Everything I do is for you and Sky.”

  For Harper, his narcissism and hubris often shelter him from seeing the painful truth. He can’t imagine that my unhappiness has anything to do with the state of our marriage. It’s true, our love is fading, but it is a love built on trust that once burned so brightly and so passionately, it could spark a flame. They say time is supposed to heal, but I can see his heart breaking from my pain.

  Neither of us notices the surgeon arrive. He looks uncomfortable as he preps the Novocain.

  “I don’t need that,” I say.

  “That’s silly. Why put up with pain if you don’t have to?” the surgeon says, looking at Harper for guidance.

  “I have an unusually high tolerance for pain,” I say, glaring at Harper.

  Harper just nods to the doctor.

  The look in his eyes says it all: he knows his girl all too well.

  I don’t just tolerate the pain. My body craves it. It has become my addiction.

  On the ceiling hangs a poster: ONE MUST UNLEARN THE CONSTELLATIONS TO FINALLY SEE THE STARS. I look out the window at the stars burning fearlessly, brilliant and beautiful.

  Each stands alone, a burning light of eternal energy and fire.

  As the doctor spreads out his sterile instruments, my mind scratches and claws at the details from my past that stalk me.

  Harper holds my hand. I watch the thread as it goes into the needle. The needle pierces my skin.

  Pain is like Novocain; it soothes my broken heart. The stitches go in, one by one.

  It is inevitable: the hospital reminds me of the violence of the night I was attacked and the fate of my recovery.

  I woke up at Mass General in a hospital room like this one, my head aching, heart palpitating, body wrecked from the trauma, bandaged and bruised.

  In the darkness, time vanishes and hope disappears into the night. I don’t have many reliable memories from that night, just a bunch of fragments, carefully woven into a distorted patchwork of images, thoughts, and disconnected feelings.

  Luckily, the CT scan ruled out a brain hemorrhage. Someone had turned on the television; my crime scene played out on the local news.

  As I watched the images flash across the screen, my eyes were drawn to the beautiful weeping willow above the decaying garbage. I can still smell it rotting. The yellow tape that marked the crime scene wrapped around the base of the tree, draped over the branches like lights on a Christmas tree.

  They had found his body while taking out the trash. The body was slashed with a broken bottle, and the crime scene was a bloody mess.

  The night started just like any other. It was Halloween, a moonless, pitch-black night. I was working late at Johnny’s Bar, serving drinks, when the room started spinning like a top. I walked outside to get some air.

  “Are you all right?” my manager, Mike, asked.

  “I think I’m sick. I’ve gotta go,” I said, the world starting to whip and whirl around me. My whole body was tired, as if I were sleepwalking through sand, detached.

  “Hold on. We close in five. Hang out and I’ll walk you.”

  “I’ll be all right. It’s not far. I think I would rather just go.”

  Sometimes the wrong choices bring us to the right places, but not this time. This one took me straight to hell.

  The flood of the streetlight streaked like the tail of a comet. It lit up the world around me, as if setting it on fire. The costumes and faces seemed to melt together, like wax into a searing, demonic scream.

  I thought my eyes must be playing tricks when the light around me started to bounce and float like a meteor shower. The sparks were rising up from the street, like a firestorm. That’s when I realized I had been drugged.

  I walked quicker now, too far to turn back.

  I cut through Cambridge Square and took the short cut through a dark alley, off Quincy Street. That was when I heard his whisper, exploding in the night.

  My heart beat fast, like the beating of a drum. My breath, shallow with fear, sent a cloud of steam into the night air.

  Snow and ice covered the ground near Harvard Square.

  I turned to see his mask, the black cloak and hood of his costume, the angel of death. Something wooden and heavy cracked my skull. I fell onto the concrete, and that was when I lost consciousness, as if I were frozen in my own body—a witness to my own destruction.

  At that moment, I saw the broken bottle with the jagged edges. I grabbed it and started cutting, slashing wildly, and connecting. The anger flowed through me—and the will to live.

  The police found his body behind a dumpster in the alley. He had been stabbed repeatedly with a broken bottle.

  At first, I felt a deep sense of gratitude that the evil visited upon me that night, the soul that floated up from the depths of hell, had been brutally murdered and I was alive.

  I can still see his eyes in my dreams, and they are cloudy and dark. His eyes haunt me.

  I was never a sweet child, but now I had succumbed to something volatile and dangerous.

  There was too much blood at the crime scene. Even though I was the victim, I was treated like a criminal.

  I can’t remember most of it, and I can’t imagine I could be capable of murder. Was someone else there that night? Could it be the same person who is stalking me now?

  Harper squeezes my hand harder. The memories layer one on top of the other. I had never been hurt like that before. A blow to the ribs. Something sharp, like broken glass, twisted, cut deeper.

  I was suffocating, existing in that space between life and death.

  A week later, the torso of Ashly Barthel washed up in a burlap sack on Deer Island, throat slashed with a similar pattern of cuts on the body as the ones made to the man who attacked me. The killer had used a knife and not a broken bottle. He removed the heart and sent it with a series of taunting letters to the press and investigators.

  The killer included a detailed anatomy drawing in pen and ink on paper, depicting a woman in two superimposed positions with her arms and legs apart, inscribed in a circle and square, the image crudely resembles da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.

  Each cut from the attack was intricately drawn and premeditated. He was an organized killer, and he was still out there. I couldn’t get investigators to listen or reopen the case.

  I was convinced I was just a pawn, the poor dog he used to throw off the scent, and somehow the murder of Ashly Barthel and the night I was attacked were connected. The media gave him the nickname “Renaissance Killer.”

  I know the truth of who committed murder that dark night I was attacked in the alley, a truth that is buried somewhere deep in my unconscious mind. It is a truth that leaks out in sounds and distorted images like brushstrokes on a canvas. I’m stalked by his watery blue eyes and haunted by the sound of his voice and the feeling that someone is always watching me.

  I know he’s still out there, waiting for me to step into the darkness alone again, so he can drag me under.

  Another stitch. Blood-red anger flows through me onto Harper, threatening to drown us both. I can’t run from it. I can’t cut it off, like a limb. I carry it with me like a ticking bomb waiting to explode.

  The Christmas trees and decorations light up the night like a fairytale town. A flurry of snow has started and
already dusts the ground in white satin.

  Harper drives me back to the house in silence. The light from the pool house reflects on the river.

  The koi pond is covered in a layer of ice and snow.

  I watch Harper drive away; not even a car crash will keep him home for the night.

  I blame him for leaving me alone, left running from the thoughts that rattle and shake me.

  I try to remember our life before the suburbs; before the sleepless nights, the drinking, and the arguments. Now I’m feeling lost, alone, and giving up on a love that was once my addiction, his body as essential as the salt in my tears.

  I enter the house quietly.

  “Baby girl’s asleep,” says Birdie, our nanny, never looking up from her prayer book. “Now don’t you go and wake her up again.”

  Tonight, Birdie looks old and frail. I watch her fingers scan the pages; her hair, thin and wispy as the night mist, is coiled high in a bun. Birdie was my shadow mother. She raised me, filling in the holes where a mother’s love should be. Now she loves my daughter with the same grace and quiet strength of autumn rain.

  I walk quietly into Sky’s room. The lavender print of the wallpaper wraps me in warmth. The ceiling is hand-painted, a spring sky with clouds and butterflies in flight.

  I peek into her crib, seeing tiny hands that tug at my heart and a shock of fire-red curls, her eyes wide open.

  “I’m here, baby girl,” I whisper.

  Sky breaks into a toothless grin. There is nothing like this feeling, a love like oxygen. She is such a big miracle for such a small child. Sky won’t take her eyes off me. It’s as if she is afraid to look away.

  Like she knows, in the blink of an eye, her mother may just disappear forever.

  I take Sky in my loving arms and rock her gently back to sleep.

  I start to sing softly: “Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high. And the dreams that you dreamed of, once in a lullaby.”

  Before long, she is fast asleep, and I put her down in her crib on the soft Chenille sheets. I catch my reflection in the mirror over the antique dresser. I run a finger over my jagged new scar. I lean in closer to the glass. No make-up; dark circles.

  My face is cut into pieces, like a Picasso. Red slashes, distorted, disconnected; a river of blood flows through it.

  I close my eyes and remind myself that I am a survivor, even if he is still out there, watching my every move. I will find out the truth, and I will survive for the sake of my child. I breathe deeply, in and out.

  When I open my eyes, I am startled by Birdie standing behind me.

  “Now I told you I’ve got her, but Ms. Sera, who’s got you?” she says, looking at the fresh wound and the stitches.

  “I’m okay. It’s just a few stitches. I saw him today. He was driving, and he kept weaving in and out of the lanes. The police didn’t catch him, but I’m sure of it. We’re in danger, and Harper doesn’t believe me. I’m not crazy. I’m not paranoid. You have to believe me. We have to protect Sky.”

  Birdie says, “All of your ghosts are in the past. Let them rest, Seraphina. Look at the dark circles under your eyes. You need rest. You can’t live like this. You’re going to get sick. It’s time they stop haunting you.” She takes me in her arms.

  “You don’t believe me either, do you, Birdie?”

  “I’ll be going to bed. I left dinner for you downstairs. You need to eat. You have to start taking better care of yourself, Ms. Sera,” she says.

  “Thank you, Birdie. Good night.”

  I make my way down the stairs to the wood paneled library. I open up a bottle of rosé, strikingly pale pink, like the blush of a newborn’s cheek. The rush hits me all at once, savory and crisp.

  It is the taste of my first summer in Montauk with Harper. The lull of the soft waves and the salty air as he slips his fingers underneath my bikini bottom and gently caresses me, until every inch of my flesh aches for him.

  We dance on the dock under the crescent moon as it hangs over the harbor. White ships bob and glide on the water.

  I pour myself another glass, this one more generous, half the bottle gone.

  The snow has stopped, and it is a crisp, cloudless night. As I look out over the sweeping views of Seablades Estates, I turn the business card Harper has given me over and over in my mind.

  That night, I dream of watery blue eyes in the shape of bullets, steel and sharp. I’m running through a labyrinth of hallways, lost and alone, feeling trapped.

  I find a door and push my way out.

  The sky is lit up, as if it is on fire. I look down, and my hands are covered in blood.

  Three

  BROOKE BECK

  Wednesday night, 8:00 p.m. A small shrine of flowers sits on the steps of the brownstone where Brooke Beck had been raped and murdered. Harper knew it was going to be a bad one when he saw Detective Patrick Belle doubled over and holding his stomach, supporting his enormous frame on the hood of a patrol car. Belle is a towering, beefy man with a gentle manner and a Brooklyn accent, and a master of surveillance and studying human behavior. He has the steel-trap mind of a card counter. He was running the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit before Harper ruthlessly poached him.

  Harper gets out of his SUV and walks past the police cars and the crime-scene-unit van.

  “Why are you out here, Belle?” Harper says, sweeping behind him and up the stairs of the townhouse.

  Belle shakes his head. “I needed air. The body is mutilated beyond recognition.”

  Harper ducks behind the black-and-yellow tape that says CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS and steps into the brownstone, heading up to the third floor. He gags from the smell of the decaying body as he enters the apartment, sunlight pounding through the skylight. Harper takes a pair of latex gloves and puts them on. He can hear the sounds of the strobes and noises from the crime scene crew as they do their work.

  “Has the medical examiner been here yet?”

  “A long time ago. Where have you been?” Belle asks.

  “At the hospital. Seraphina got into a car accident. She’ll be fine. What happened here?”

  “No sign of forced entry. She knew him and probably even let him in. No one heard any screaming. She must have been unconscious or drugged when they started cutting.”

  “Security?” Harper asks.

  “Virtual. All cameras disabled. No tape.”

  Harper stops at the top of the stairs and is spellbound by a piece of South African art hanging on the wall. “What college student can afford to rent a townhouse in Harlem?”

  The hallway walls are lined with African masks, and not the kind that look like you could pick them up in the airport gift shop.

  The scene is raw and bloody, and the smell is hard to take. Fingerprint powder generously blankets the area.

  Harper carefully avoids the section of the floor that is spattered with blood, as he moves in closer to examine the victim’s remains. A framed picture on the wall shows Brooke Beck, early twenties, pale skin and beautiful.

  The victim was raped and beaten. She is nude, lying on her back, with multiple stab wounds and her arms and legs apart. The blunt trauma rendered her head and face unrecognizable. She wears a gold chain with a cross on it, draped across her neck. The victim’s heart has been removed.

  Above her bed, Harper sees a drawing of the Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci in pen and ink. His mind goes back to the Boston murders, and he wonders if Brooke Beck’s murder is somehow connected to the Renaissance Killer.

  Belle takes a tub of Vicks VapoRub out of his pocket and puts a little under each nostril, an old cop trick that covers the stench of death. He enters the bedroom. A large flat-screen TV hangs on the wall. Harper notes the two antique mirrored side tables that are open and empty.

  Other than an ornately carved mahogany bed with tall posts covered in white linen curtains fo
r privacy, the place doesn’t look lived in. Brooke Beck didn’t have any of the usual family portraits or graduation pictures.

  The word slut is written on the mirror in blood.

  “She hosted a party here on Tuesday night. She was last seen by her friend Jessa Dante around midnight. When the apartment started to smell, the neighbor called the super, who notified the police; we entered through the ground terrace. He had to have a certain degree of skill to pull off incisions like that. None of the adjacent organs are damaged.”

  “Any family?” Harper asks.

  “Estranged from the mother. Father was never in the picture. The neighbor says her boyfriend had a very possessive streak and that she was trying to break up with him,” Belle says.

  Belle takes out an evidence bag and hands it to Harper. It contains a dark-brown pod, about an inch long, rounded ends, rough but also shiny and polished on top, with a scar along the edges and a hole drilled in the center.

  “Looks like some sort of spice,” Harper says as he watches them place the remains of Brooke Burke into the plastic body bag.

  “Someone really wants us to think this is a ritual killing. It almost feels staged.”

  Outside the brownstone, a crowd has formed, along with the television crew and a few locals posing for the cameras. Belle would deliver the usual vague information and half-truths for the obscene amount of coverage that Brooke Beck’s case would get on the local news the next day, about a white girl brutally slain in Harlem the night before.

  “Let’s set up a candlelight vigil outside with surveillance and a press conference. ID everyone that comes through here, and offer a reward to anyone who can get us information on the boyfriend.” Harper scans the gruesome scene and takes it all in. “Anything else I need to know?”

  “Her Facebook page says she’s bisexual. Sounds like Jessa Dante was her roommate and lover until a few months ago, when she moved out.”

  “Okay. You handle Jessa,” Harper says.

  They head out and back down the stairs.

  “Sure. Say, you wanna grab some pizza real quick?” Belle says.