Sunday, December 13, 2003
His thick, youthful, sandy-blonde hair had aged, not so gracefully, into a thinning, darker shade of blonde as it waited in anticipation of turning a full-blown mop of silvery whisps atop his head. He wasn't built, but he certainly wasn't the gawky teen he had once been. When he'd left his home on Payton St. to fall into a world he couldn't have thought up in his worst nightmares, he had stopped being that gawky teen and become not so much a man, but a being devoid of extraneous human functions, a being who knew how to shoot and kill people.
He could still see their faces sometimes, though the eyes, more often than not, were the only identification he had of most of his kills. It sounded so callous to say it like that -- his kills. The gun itself had changed, the weight of it unfamiliar now, but the trigger felt identical to its intensity, identical to the way it shook when he fired off a round.
As a cop in Brooklyn, he got his fair share of horrors here as well, had been expecting nothing fluffy and easy about being a Homicide detective in a city.
He'd also appreciated the privilege of watching his little sister join the NYPD as a cop herself, struggling through the menial street beats and lunatics she would bring in on every shift, finding out what she truly wanted was to find missing people.
Missing people.
People...who had lost themselves, who had been lost to society. People, he reflected, who seemed to resemble his sister in more ways than one, and his own life, if he stopped to think long enough about it.
Over drinks at bars, he would catch sometimes the mention of that war people liked to forget about now; he would hear it spoken in hushed whispers as men with severed lives bled into their whiskey over tables marred by cigarettes and angry tears.
On the street, every now and then, he'd walk past a homeless man huddled against a brick wall, away from society, muttering incoherencies about taking that hill, charging forward, never stopping, never stopping men, no matter what. It seemed to be around him no matter what he did.
He had fallen into the bottle once, a few years after he had gotten back from Vietnam, and his future prospects seemed few and far between, he had no love life, no friends really to speak of -- the friends he did have hadn't come back across the ocean with him -- and he felt he had lost his little sister somehow. And maybe he had, maybe he had made that little girl believe he would always take care of her and she had fallen into a trust with him he couldn't keep.
Maybe he deserved what happened if he couldn't keep her safe from him, from Frank Spade.
So all these bitter things combined together into little perfect excuses to give up, to stop trying, to keep the bottles in shelves and cabinets, and cold in the fridge. He had all his preferences. He liked bourbon, not whiskey; he'd take scotch on the rocks, never dry; when he was lazy, he'd open up a pack of beer, when he felt good some days, he'd fall into a fancy bottle of amaretto.
Then one day, when he was 30, and Samantha had turned eighteen -- the age he'd been when he last was free -- she called him, told him about how she had wanted to run away and their mother had found her and she had wanted to go to him, because -- because she really did love you, Matthew, and she wanted to know you again.
That's when it hit him, when he realized what he'd truly become.
His father.
He'd become his father and his sister wanted to be with him, wanted him to be her brother again and he clutched the phone in one hand, his shot glass in the other, lip wrinkling up in disgust at the amber liquid his life had turned into.
You're a bum, Dad...
Oh, God.
...just a lazy bum who drinks all the time
Oh, oh, God.
You destroy everything
He had become the very poison that had sucked him out of that house on Payton St. in the first place. So he had dumped the liquid escape down the drain, trashed all the bottles, and found a rehab. They fixed his alcoholism, the addiction he'd resorted to to stop the images. But they didn't fix the thing -- the thing that was wrong inside his head.
No one had.
So he walked around Brooklyn, the police station, his apartment, carrying this thing in his head, this thing that wouldn't go away.
This war.
You're worthless, you bum...
This...this blood.
...you're...
This death.
worthless...
Death.
He shook the images away for now, pushed them back into his mind as he walked into the police station on 49th, threw his keys onto his desk, throwing himself along with them. He couldn't keep an organized desk, but he had a system for his disarray, he could pick apart the important things from the simple trash he hadn't bothered throwing away.
"Matt?"
Glancing up, he took notice of his partner, Alexis Collins. It's not that she didn't sleep, he knew she did, but no matter, it seemed, she always had this disheveled look of someone who never quite ended a case, who could never be satisfied by simply finding the perpetrator and putting them away. Alex, like Matthew, didn't simply feel a sense of duty towards the victims; instead, the two of them -- they bled into their cases like an ink stain on a white shirt you couldn't ever wash away.
They had this same heart and devotion and they worked well together because of this, because they both understood the level they would go to in bringing justice. They both understood the cost. And since neither had a spouse or children of their own, they could afford this dedication at all times, in all aspects.
"Got another one, Matt, " she spoke, throwing a folder on his desk.
He looked up. "Same MO?"
She nodded in reply. "Second one this week, but this girl was tied up before she was killed."
His chair squeaked as he leaned back, fingered his collar.
"Then how do we know it's the same guy?"
Taking her seat in the desk across from him, she slid three photos, all at various angles to him. He had that feeling again in his gut he always got when he saw the decay a person could become in the choices they made. This girl had made the choice to take a walk one night, on one certain street. Now, she paid for it. Something as simple as they shouldn't have been condemned with the end she had been given.
"The first victim? She had a 'Y' carved on her chest."
"Right, but what does --"
She held up her finger.
"Let me finish, slick. Our latest victim had an 'O' carved on her chest."
He bent forward now, interest piqued.
"Uh-huh. Some random killing? No reason for that. This guy's sending us a message, Matt."
He grabbed his coat abruptly, Alex following suit.
"Well, let's get down to the scene and work our magic, " he spoke, looping his free arm through the sleeve and adjusting his collar.
Alex reached over to fix his tie.
"It's always crooked, partner, didn't your father give you the lesson on proper tie technique?"
He brushed the images of his father away, fixing up his facade for Alex, who would be better off not knowing where he'd come from.
"Must've skipped class that day."
He gave her a cheeky grin and she rolled her eyes in return, elbowing him lightly in the ribs as they walked to his car and he held the door open for her like always.
His keys in the ignition, he paused, hands held still on the wheel.
"Why are we assuming this is a guy, I mean, we don't have any labs back, no indications of sexual assault."
"I'm not saying it's definitely a guy, Matt, but I would say, without hesitation, that 80% of serial killers are men."
"And here we stereotype."
"Bud, I got news for you. Women -- see, we're gentle creatures, we take care of things, love things. Men, on the other hand, they spit and yell and hit."
"I know some women who do those things."
"In the Amazon, maybe, South Bronx even. But who goes to war? Men. Men kill, Matt, men hit and hurt you and kill."
She was using that tone she always used when they bantered like this, teasing and chiding each other in that break of time when they were alone, but there was something beneath that carefully constructed banner of jokes. There were things she didn't know about him, and now, it seemed, things he didn't know about her as well. It bothered him for a second that she hadn't yet shared those hurts with him, until he reminded himself that he had secrets too.
He had that sick feeling in his stomach again, though, the feeling that he'd once been the kind of guy she was talking about in the heat of a jungle he still felt in dreams.
"Well, I'm not like most men, Lex, I have feelings. I share. I cry when I see Steel Magnolias, I watch Disney movies."
"Yeah, well, you're weird, " she answered back, waving her hand at the keys in the ignition, so he turned the key and started the engine.
A minute passed before she spoke again.
"Actually, Matt, " she whispered, "you're one of a kind."
She smiled.
"Fix your tie."
*
Julia Lisardi had been five years old when she left her house on an overcast day, the mid-morning sky looming overhead. She had remained five years old when she disappeared as well, playing on the front lawn while her mother walked down to the gas station at the corner for some eggs to bake cupcakes with.
And she had remained five years old for the span of two and a half days, five years old, that is, until they found her. Yes, they did find her, and you could call it a blessing, a miracle in fact, given the scant clues and cold trails. You could call it all those things, but when Samantha picked that little girl up from that drainage ditch she had wandered into, her clothes soaked through with water from the torrent of rain pummeling the city, she knew in the way you know unwavering truths: little Julia Lisardi wasn't five years old any longer.
They had found her in that drainage ditch, but only because she'd somehow escaped or been set free, or numerous other reasons they figured they shouldn't dwell on because they had found her and she had led them to her kidnapper who lay dead by his own shotgun in an old cellar.
The little hands of Julia Lisardi were still soft and tiny, her body still that small frame of childhood awaiting the growth and maturity age would bring, but she wasn't five years old anymore.
She never would be again, because something had died in her eyes. Something -- that small flame of purity and innocence you wanted to protect always. She had been used up and drained of all that had once been decent in her. And when Samantha knelt down to hug her as her parents led her away one last time, she felt a tug at her heart, a familiar tug.
They had found Julia Lisardi alive, yes.
But...she wasn't alive.
Not anymore.
"That kid's going to be messed up, " Danny spoke behind her bitterly.
"Kids bounce back, " she replied, not believing it. Apparently, neither did he. She listened until she couldn't hear the clipitty-clap of the little girl's black shoes anymore and turned back to Danny where he folded some papers into a folder.
"What're you doing for Christmas?" She asked.
He shrugged. "TV dinner. Plastic Christmas tree."
"No date?"
"I guess she didn't like my cooking the last time."
"Oh, it's her loss, Danny, her loss, " Samantha offered back, a grin tugging at the edge of her lips.
"What, you can do better? You cooking the dinner this year?"
"Not me, my brother."
"Matt? He can cook?"
She folded her arms across her chest, took a seat at her desk, and leaned the chair back against the edge.
"He can cook circles around you, Serpico."
Danny laughed, tossing the folder onto his desk. "All right, I'll be there. You going out tonight?"
"Yeah, Martin's taking me to that little deli over on 62nd."
"Date?"
"Not a date, we're just friends, like you and me -- friends, Danny."
"Did you ever watch When Harry Met Sally, Sam? Men and women can't be friends."
"Are you saying you would want to --"
"Have a nice night, Sam, enjoy your non-date, " he winked at her, grabbing his coat off the back of his chair. She followed him for a few paces.
"Danny."
"Danny."
"I'll call you later, see how it went, " he waved to her and left.
She pivoted, walked back to her desk and gathered up her coat, purse, pulled her keys out, and watched Jack in his office out of her left eye. A year had passed since he had told her it was over, since Barry Mashburn, since he had gone back to Maria. Many times, she'd find him asleep at his desk, not bothering to go home more than once a week.
So he had gone back to his wife.
But had he really?
She brushed it off, not wanting to think about it too much or her evening would be ruined. And anyway, she had a da -- dinner. Dinner. Yes. Dinner with Martin.