The Nobody Read online

  "I woke up."

  Resnick was still fumbling around through his desk drawer, not exactly a super-cool move if he was trying to be slick about it. If he had a knife in there shouldn’t it be on top within easy reach? But no, he wasn’t that kind of killer, the guys who planned to be caught. Resnick was average enough to expect his days to plod on in and out without any change except the changes he effected himself.

  "You were supposed to stay out of it," Resnick said. "You should’ve just kept away."

  "I can’t help it. I have an addictive personality."

  Time meant little, but it did mean something, and Cryer’s patience, after a year of purgatory, was finally coming to an end. He snatched the three-inch knife from his pocket, drew his arm back and prepared to stick the blade into Resnick’s heart, nice and deep. The knife began to descend, Resnick letting out a bark of horror, when Cryer decided that, no, no, this isn’t how it should be. This will get the job done but it’s just not sweet enough, there should be something more, even if he had to force it to happen.

  He let his hand fall to his side.

  "What did you say to her?" Cryer asked. "What were you discussing with my daughter right before you cut her belly open? You were talking with her for a while. A half hour? An hour? What did you say to her?"

  "I’ll never tell you."

  "Where’s your knife?"

  "I–I–"

  "You don’t have it here? You’ve got it at home someplace? Don’t worry, I have one for you. Here."

  Holding the blade out to Resnick.

  Handing it forward the way you offer a bit of cash to a homeless, hungry man.

  The psycho almost afraid to take it.

  Backing away from it, even though Cryer held it out hilt first.

  "Yours is like this, isn’t it? Thin, small. Slices through flesh easily. Gets the job done but not too quickly. With a knife like this you got to work on my daughter for a while before she died."

  Resnick, his mouth damn near watering, eyes spinning. "I–"

  "Yeah, you."

  "I–"

  Disappointing all right. The Chatty Kathy unable to speak.

  "Go on, take it."

  Thrusting the hilt of the knife to the killer, an offering, almost a penance for his failures to save his own family.

  His belly on display, waiting.

  Sneaky psycho. Resnick grasped the blade and let loose with a small giggle. Not a crazed laugh, but something like real joy that had been held back for months, years, the ages of all mankind. A lizard’s laughter.

  Resnick knew how to hold the blade. Low and on the edge of his fingertips, so he could slash out and slice. Cryer waited, growing bored.

  "You can’t kill me with that. You tried already."

  "I’ll finish this time."

  "No. I’ll finish it."

  Resnick feinted twice, once to the left and then to the right, so light on his feet that he was cavorting. Frolicking. Cryer stood stone still.

  He waited. It was what he was good at.

  The point of the knife wove forward and back, and then Resnick lunged. The blade caught Cryer across the belly and hardly scratched him. He looked down at himself. Resnick stood back, triumphant.

  "I’m not fat anymore. You would’ve disemboweled me if I had been. You would’ve strewn my guts on the floor like you did with my girl. But I’m not fat anymore."

  "You–you–"

  "Yeah, me, you stammering fuck." He touched the wound and said, "I bleed for this."

  His hands were strong.

  He grabbed Resnick by the throat and tightened his hold, throttling the plain, common killer until Resnick almost passed out. Then he threw him hard against the wall, held him there, his free hand snaking out and finding Resnick’s forearm, latching on, and squeezing, squeezing and twisting. Only a mild resistance from the bones within until Resnick was screaming and his arm snapped.

  Shards of bone jutted through the flesh just beneath the elbow.

  Cryer still felt nothing–no sense of urgency or disgust or even horror, and yet still he thought that this was how it should be.

  The screaming. Now this was something that was easy to become addicted to. He could feel the little man in his head, the man he was, suddenly dancing with joy inside.

  "I’m about to insult you," Cryer said. "It’s going to be severe head trauma."

  Then Cryer brought both his powerful fists down on top of Resnick’s forehead and felt the bone shattered and the brow cave in.

  The corpse fell forward and when it hit, Resnick’s ears and eye sockets gushed.

  "I cry for this," Cryer said although he wasn’t crying.

  Vivian Price, dripping from her own workout in the pool, ran into the office, slipped on Resnick’s blood, and let out an awful gasp.

  Cryer said, "Don’t look."

  "What’s happened?" she breathed. "What have you done?"

  "Don’t let the girls see this. Go get someone. Go get help."

  Vivan draped herself against the wall trying to move again, and then turned and ran. He enjoyed the way the light glinted and played along her legs as her muscles rippled.

  Then Cryer walked down the long hall and out the back of the gymnasium onto the football field, and he started across the well-trimmed grounds. The cops and the keepers and the guys with the big butterfly nets would eventually land him. But they’d find some kind of evidence in Resnick’s home. The journal, the pictures, the trophies, maybe a body in cement under his garage, something to tie him to the murders of Cryer’s family and the deaths of some other girls somewhere. Cryer knew he’d be vindicated but it didn’t matter. He was dead, been dead, and he suspected he’d always be dead no matter how long he lived.

  34

  His legs knew the way to the cemetery.

  It took him six hours to walk there. By the time he arrived it was dark and only a sliver of moonlight bore down.

  The man he was must’ve bought these plots. They were an investment. They were things you put at the back of your mind and didn’t think about often, but never forgot.

  Clouds parted and flowed and covered the moon and then opened up and let it slip through again. When the silver streams washed down, Cryer could read the names on the gravestones, but he still couldn’t remember them from instant to instant. It didn’t matter.

  He was here, he was home with those who mattered. The mouth, no longer failing to respond. The mouth speaking. The mouth giving way to the truth. He began murmuring to his wife and daughter, talking of things he didn’t recall, that he was learning for the first time, like a stranger listening in on a private conversation, and affected by the emotion and honesty and heartbreaking love he heard. The voice that was and wasn’t his own began to move him. He listened more intently there in the darkness, seated on a grave that would one day be his own, and as one hour went by, and then another and another, he thought he could hear the voices of his dead wife and daughter joining in, their laughter and affectionate whispers, someone calling to him with love, Daddy, Daddy, and as he turned over on the earth he noticed in the silver light that the grass was wet, covered with the dew of his own tears.