Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls

  We shake our heads. "Cheryl said it was some guy with pimples, a jerk," Ellie says.

  "They got rid of him," I add.

  "And you don't know who he was?"

  "I'm pretty sure he doesn't live around here," Ellie tells him. "He probably saw us and thought we were having a party or something."

  "What time did the party break up?" the lieutenant asks.

  I look at Ellie. Neither of us wants to say how late we stayed out. Especially not with Mrs. O'Brien sitting between us. We're also worried about the beer. Suppose Charlie or Paul mentions it? Or Ralph? We're sixteen, five years too young for beer.

  "I'm not sure," Ellie says. "I don't have a watch."

  The lieutenant looks at me, and I shrug.

  He glances at Mrs. O'Brien and she says, "Ellie has a midnight curfew."

  The lieutenant turns to Ellie and me. "Did you come home on time?"

  "I'm not sure," Ellie says again. "It might have been a little later."

  The lieutenant raises his eyebrows. "A little later—does that mean one a.m., two a.m., or...?"

  Mrs. O'Brien frowns at Ellie. "I think I heard the front door close around two," she says softly.

  He nods. The sergeant writes it down. "That agrees with what Mrs. Boyd told us. She and her husband were waiting up for Bobbi Jo."

  I turn my water glass in small circles on the table, making a pattern of wet rings. I remember Bobbi Jo's father yelling at her. He was mad at her on the last night of her life. He must feel terrible. I feel terrible. We shouldn't have drunk beer. We should have gone home when we were supposed to. It wouldn't have changed anything, but at least Bobbi Jo's father wouldn't have shouted at her.

  "Where was Buddy all this time?" the lieutenant asks. "Did you see him in the woods or anywhere?"

  "I heard noises, not little noises like an animal makes," I said. "Like somebody was hiding in the woods, watching us. You know how you get that feeling? Like you're being watched?" I feel shivery remembering—it must have been Buddy, hiding, watching us, following us. What if he'd had the gun then? Would he have shot all of us?

  "But you didn't actually see anyone?" the lieutenant asks.

  "Well, no, but I'm sure it was Buddy," I say.

  "He's always watching Cheryl," Ellie says. "She hates it."

  "How about the next morning?"

  We tell him we overslept and when Cheryl and Bobbi Jo showed up we weren't ready to leave, so they went on ahead. And then we both start crying.

  The lieutenant waits until we calm down before he asks more questions. After we tell him what time they left and what time we left, he asks if we saw or heard anything out of the ordinary in the woods. "Think carefully," he says. "This is very important."

  We look at each other and I remember we were talking about Cheryl, saying nasty things about her, and all the while she was lying dead in the woods just a few feet away. What if she wasn't dead yet and she heard us? In my mind I apologize—I tell Cheryl we didn't mean it, we were just jealous. We're sorry, so so sorry.

  Ellie says, "We had a feeling someone was watching us again, but we didn't see anyone and we didn't hear anything." She reaches over and grasps my hand.

  "Nothing that sounded like a gunshot?"

  "We heard a car backfire," Ellie says. "It was so loud, it scared us."

  "Were you in the woods when you heard it?"

  "No," I say. "We were cutting across the ball field, near Eastern Avenue."

  We look at each other, gripping each other's hand so tightly it hurts. "Was it the gun?" Ellie whispers. "Is that what we heard?"

  "It could be," he says. "The time seems right."

  "And then we came to the bridge," Ellie says, "and Buddy was sitting on the railing, smoking."

  "He asked us if we'd seen Cheryl," I say. "He wanted to give her a ride to school. His car was parked at the end of Chester Street. You know, where the path comes out of the woods."

  The lieutenant nods. "How long was this after you heard the car backfire?"

  "Five or ten minutes." Ellie's voice shakes. We keep hold of each other's hand.

  The lieutenant looks at me. "I'm not sure," I say.

  "Then what happened?" the lieutenant asks.

  "He gave us a ride to school," I say.

  "How did Buddy seem to you?" the lieutenant asks. "Was he upset, angry, worried?"

  "He was in a bad mood," Ellie says.

  "He was upset about Cheryl," I say. "He wanted her back."

  "When I said that wouldn't happen," Ellie puts in, "he practically threw us out of the car."

  "He drove away so fast his tires squealed," I add.

  Next the lieutenant asks about our walk home from school. Then he wants to know about the sirens and Mrs. Boyd and the kids running out of the woods screaming and crying. Can we'remember who we saw? We tell him what we can but it's all kind of vague now, the kids running, the news they shouted, Cheryl's little brother's face. I want to forget it all. Every detail. I want to erase it from history.

  "Why did you go all the way to Nora's house?" he asks us. "Why didn't you just come back here?"

  "We didn't want to see Mrs. Boyd," Ellie whispers. "We didn't want to tell her what happened."

  "And then we saw Buddy," I tell him. "At the top of the hill, by the apartments. He said we looked like we'd seen a ghost. And Ellie said—"

  "I said if we saw a ghost, he knew whose it was," she cut in. Her face is red and she's breathing fast. "Because he killed her, I know he did. We both dreamed the same dream last night—Bobbi Jo and Cheryl told us Buddy did it."

  Mrs. O'Brien pats Ellie's shoulder, but she shrugs her mother's hand away. Impatient. Near tears again.

  "It's true." I lean across the table, imploring him to believe us, to lock Buddy up forever. "The dead come back in dreams." I repeat what Mrs. O'Brien told us. "They tell what happened."

  "They tell the truth," Ellie adds. "The dead don't lie."

  Lieutenant McCarthy shakes his head. He looks sad, defeated somehow. I can tell he doesn't believe the dead come back, but maybe he wishes they did. "It's too early to bring charges."

  "But Buddy's in jail," Ellie says, "isn't he?" Her voice rises.

  "He hasn't been officially charged. We're just questioning him." He gets to his feet and picks up his hat. "Thanks. You girls have been very helpful. If you think of anything else, let us know." He hands us each a card with his name and phone number.

  Sergeant Carter closes his notebook with a snap and puts it back into his pocket. Mrs. O'Brien walks to the door with them. I stare at the guns strapped to their belts and wonder if they've ever killed anyone. I picture Buddy escaping from jail and Lieutenant McCarthy shooting him. He should be shot, he should die exactly the way he killed Cheryl and Bobbi Jo.

  Mister Death

  Saturday, June 16

  HE stands at the living room window, watching what's going on in the park. All day long the police have been there. Yesterday too. Two detectives are standing outside Ellie's house, talking. Dumb as mud, he thinks, both of them, the overweight one and the underweight one. What a pair, the Laurel and Hardy of Baltimore County. He amuses himself for a moment imagining them in a bizarre comic routine involving pratfalls, custard pies, and so on, ending in the big one slapping the little one and saying, "Now look what you made me do."

  He wonders what Ellie and her friend told the detectives. What's her name—Nora, the tall one who laughs too loud. She was there the night of the party too. She must have slept at Ellie's that night because they'd walked to school together the next day. He'd watched from his hiding place in the woods. Stupid girls. If they'd been with Cheryl and Bobbi Jo, they'd be dead too.

  He wonders if they know that. He wonders if they're scared. He wonders if they think Mister Death will come after them.

  He swats the venetian blind cord back and forth and watches it swing like a hangman's noose. Ellie and Nora are no better than Cheryl and Bobbi Jo, but he hasn't got anything personal against them.
Let them sweat it.

  Right now the police are draining the lake, looking for the murder weapon. Which is hanging in plain sight on the wall in the basement. Right where it always is.

  Yesterday he watched the police use a bulldozer to clear the underbrush so they could search for the rifle near the bridge. The newspaper calls it the picnic grove death scene. They haven't got a clue.

  He thought he'd be scared when that kid and his dog found the bodies. But he's not. Just watching the cops proves how smart he is. He took an IQ test in sixth grade and scored in the genius category.

  Nobody knows it at Eastern. He keeps to himself and never says a word in class, never does more than enough to get a C. No friends except his brother. At the end of every year, none of his teachers knows his name. One afternoon he bumped into his English teacher at the shopping center, and she looked at him as if he were a stranger. "Excuse me," he said and moved on. Point made. No one notices him. Which is just what he wants. To pass through the world unseen and unremembered.

  Today's Baltimore Sun lies on the coffee table. The murder is on the front page: GIRLS SHOT IN LOCAL PARK. Yearbook pictures of Cheryl and Bobbi Jo stare at him. Pretty little schoolgirl smiles. So sweet, so innocent, so young.

  Bullshit. They got what they deserved.

  He thinks of the sheet of notebook paper he left on Cheryl's face. On it, he'd written a slightly altered quote: "and what i want to know is how do you like your blueeyed girls Mister Death."

  It's from a poem by E. E. Cummings. He knows it by heart:

  Buffalo Bill's

  defunct

  who used to

  ride a watersmooth- silver

  stallion

  and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat

  Jesus

  he was a handsome man

  and what i want to know is

  how do you like your blueeyed boy

  Mister Death

  Buffalo Bill's eyes were actually brown, but in a famous poster the artist painted his eyes blue because blue eyes were thought to be superior to brown eyes. He wonders if E. E. Cummings knew that.

  Now he thinks of himself as Mister Death. He likes the sound of it. A sobriquet, one of his favorite words.

  Turning back to the Sun, he shakes his head at the girls' faces. "Little did you know when you posed for those pictures they'd be on the Sun's front page. And not because you won a beauty contest."

  He's read the article so often, he almost knows it by heart. He's pleased that the reporter called the killer an excellent shot. Hell, he should be. He's been hunting since he was a kid.

  He peers down the street. No sign of the detectives. They must be interviewing Ellie's neighbors.

  No sign of Ellie or Nora either. They're probably scared to come outside.

  Bobbi Jo's little sister is standing at the fence, talking to Mrs. O'Brien. She's crying.

  He smiles a bitter smile, one he's practiced in front of his mirror. Tough break, kid. Might as well learn the truth now: Life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

  Thomas Hobbes wrote that in Leviathan. Hobbes is right. Life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

  He toys with the venetian blind cord again. How many kids have read Leviathan cover to cover? Or have even heard of Thomas Hobbes? Most of his teachers probably don't know any more about Hobbes than they know about him. The father of modern politics, that's who Hobbes was. He lived in the seventeenth century. He knew Francis Bacon. Maybe even Shakespeare. King Lear probably agreed with Hobbes. Hamlet and Macbeth, too.

  It's odd. He'd thought killing Cheryl and Bobbi Jo would be different from killing deer. But it wasn't. They were a little more aware than deer, who know nothing of death, but he saw the same flash of terror in their eyes. As Mister Death, he has the power to take life, and they knew it. Mister Death is merciless. Ask anyone. He hopes they had a second to be sorry for what they'd done.

  But he's digressing from the one detail that bothers him. His brother. He hasn't come out of his room since yesterday morning. He's holed up in there, listening to rock-and-roll on a colored music station. He's terrified they'll be arrested.

  He's told the little coward that all he has to do is act normal and nothing will happen. But the kid's a wreck. He's going to have to keep his eye on him.

  The doorbell rings. It's the two detectives. Dum de dum dum. Like Sergeant Friday and his partner. Just the facts, sir.

  He's very polite to the detectives, he says what's expected. It's so sad, tragic, girls that young and so on. He tells them he didn't know them, didn't go to the party. He didn't hear anything yesterday morning. He doesn't own a gun, doesn't even know how to shoot one. They don't ask to speak to his brother. Or his parents, who are at work.

  They thank him, give him a card with a phone number to call in case he remembers anything later. Yeah, sure, he'll definitely call them.

  He watches the detectives walk down the street, probably heading for the Luccis' house to talk to Paul. Paul won't mention seeing him at the party. No one will. It was dark, the girls were the only ones he spoke to. When they laughed at him, scorned him, mocked him, he left. Quietly. The way he'd come, the way he'd entered the woods yesterday.

  He's a fader. He disappears into shadows. He wears mental camouflage. He's Mister Death, the man you meet on the stairs. The man who isn't there.

  Night Thoughts

  Saturday, June 16

  Nora

  I'M alone in my room. In bed even though it's only nine thirty and not quite dark. I want to sleep but I can't.

  Everyone else is downstairs watching Sid Caesar. I can hear canned laughter. My parents and Billy laugh too. How can they laugh? How can anyone? I wish they'd shut up. It's all I can do not to open my door and scream at them.

  I keep thinking of a poem I read in English class. I don't know why I liked it so much, but I copied the whole thing in my diary so I could read it whenever I wanted to. Maybe I knew someday I'd need that poem.

  It's one of the Lucy poems by William Wordsworth, an English Romantic poet who lived in the Lake District, a place I would very much like to see someday if I live long enough to get there. It's supposed to be very beautiful. You can visit the cottage where he lived with his sister Dorothy, and you can take long hikes on the fells like he used to. Of course he's dead now, but unlike Shelley and Keats, he lived to be old and boring. I know all this because I wrote a report on him in tenth grade.

  He wrote the poem while he was young, before he got boring. I can say it by heart now:

  A slumber did my spirit seal;

  I had no human fears:

  She seem'd a thing that could not feel

  The touch of earthly years.

  No motion has she now, no force;

  She neither hears nor sees;

  Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course,

  With rocks, and stones, and trees.

  That's what it's like to be dead. No motion, no force, you neither speak nor see, you're rolled round, rolled round, you're rolled round and round forever on earth's diurnal course. Not a word about God or heaven, just rocks and stones and trees. Rocks and stones and trees.

  Before I got in bed tonight, I tried to draw a picture of Lucy in her grave, but as usual when I'm drawing, I couldn't get what I saw in my head on paper. I tore it up because I was scared Mom would find it and think I was crazy. What kind of person draws dead girls?

  The worst thing is—what I can't stop thinking about—the blood. Billy told me about it. The police found blood on the path, their blood in the dust and in the grass where Buddy dragged them. It was in the paper, which I still won't read.

  Ellie and I and who knows who else stepped in their blood and never noticed. We walked in it, it was on our shoes, and we didn't know. When I got my sneakers back, I threw them away. Mom found them in the trash and asked why I'd thrown them out, she'd just bought them in May and they were perfectly good. I didn't tell her about the blood, how could I? She'd think I
was crazy. I shoved them in the back of my closet, and I wear my old moccasins even though I've worn holes in their soles, holes in my soul.

  But the blood, it's like Lady Macbeth, all the perfume in the world. See, the thing is, Ellie and I were talking about Cheryl, we were saying how come Ralph likes her so much—first Buddy, then Ralph? She had a big pimple on her chin this morning, Ellie said, did you notice? and we sang the Clearasil song.

  Now I think about the pimple and the bullets and the blood.

  We also said she wasn't all that pretty, her teeth were too big, and then I think of the bullets again, of how he shot her in the face.

  Why did we talk about her like that?

  And why didn't we hear the shots and why didn't we notice the blood and how come Buddy was on the bridge? If he did it, why didn't he hide when he heard us coming? Why didn't he shoot us, too? He could have. If he did it, that is. If he had a gun.

  But I remember him sitting there, smoking that cigarette, he didn't look any different, he didn't look like someone who'd just killed two girls.

  If he didn't do it, who did? What if the real killer is still out there in the woods? With a gun? What if he's outside my house right now, waiting to kill me?

  A mockingbird is singing in the holly tree outside my window. Tomorrow a cat could kill him, tomorrow I could die, I could be shot or hit by a car. I could be struck by lightning, I could fall down the stairs and break my neck or fracture my skull, I could drown at the swimming pool. So many ways to die. Poison, suffocation, choking, bleeding, automobile crashes. So many ways, it's a wonder anybody lives to grow up.

  I remember an essay we read in tenth grade. A newspaper editor wrote it about his daughter, Mary White. She was riding her horse somewhere in Kansas, and she turned to wave at someone. She hit her head on a tree limb and it knocked her off her horse. She probably never knew what happened. There she was, about my age, riding along, happy and smiling and waving to a friend. And then, just like that, she was dead.

  It was the saddest essay in the world. When I read it, I cried and cried because Mary White was a lot like me, a tomboy who didn't want to grow up, and she died on a sunny day in Kansas when Death hid in a tree and took her like he can take anybody anytime, including Cheryl and Bobbi Jo, and why not Ellie and me and whoever else he wants.