The Scribbled Victims Read online

  When she heard them returning she struggled to pull herself up, but the best she could do was tuck her hands under her head like a high school student asleep at his desk. Berthold helped pull Yelena back up to a sitting position.

  “Perhaps this really isn’t a good time,” she said.

  “I’m fine,” Yelena said. “Just under the weather, like he said. Please sit.”

  Sigrid and Berthold resumed their seats.

  “It really is a lovely room. It truly is. Though it would be the decision of the court, I’m afraid I cannot give my recommendation for this adoption. Mind you, I’m thinking of both her and you in this. But if you would consider another child, another little girl even, I’m sure she would be thrilled to have that bedroom.”

  “What about fostering?” Berthold asked. “Would you give your recommendation for that?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Would it be alright if my client broke the news to Orly herself?”

  “Certainly. I understand,” Sigrid said and then turned to Yelena. “This is no reflection on you, Yelena. And I know you love her. It’s just that in my years of experience, I know this is too much to ask of a new parent. But again, I implore you to consider another child. Just meeting another child.”

  Yelena sat motionless. She was using her strength to remain sitting up. Berthold offered Sigrid additional pleasantries, including another cup of coffee, which she politely declined, and then he showed her to the door. When he returned to the dining room, Yelena’s forehead was again on the table.

  “I know that didn’t go well,” he said. “I didn’t want to tell you this before because I wanted you to have every opportunity you could, but I didn’t think this would work. To adopt, you’d have to appear in children’s court. That would be during the day. And to foster you would need to take fostering classes. Maybe we could find those at night, but if she isn’t going to give her recommendation, I don’t know what else we can do, Yelena.”

  Yelena allowed her left cheek to fall on the table so she could see Berthold. Her lips moved. No sound escaped, but she didn’t need her words to be audible to be heard.

  “My coffin,” was all she said.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Yelena came to visit me the next night. I was back in a regular room, but I still didn’t have much strength so I hadn’t been down to the cafeteria since before I went into the ICU. It was about ten o’clock when she appeared in my doorway. I was happy to see her but she didn’t look happy to see me.

  “Can I come in?” she asked.

  I nodded and she entered. She dragged the chair meant for guests close to my bedside and sat down.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Better. My fever’s almost gone.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Are they all dead?”

  Yelena shook her head. “All except Chavez.”

  “You still have the serial killer?” I was surprised.

  “I’ll visit him soon. But I need to talk to you. I met with Sigrid.”

  “What’d she say?”

  “I told her I wanted to adopt you, instead of fostering.”

  “You wanna adopt me?”

  “Yes. Very much.”

  I must have smiled too wide because I remember my cheeks hurt. But maybe it was remnants of my fever. She put her hand on mine. It was cold.

  “She said she wouldn’t give her recommendation.”

  I lost my smile. “Why not?”

  “Because of your illness.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s not your fault. I mean, it’s not because of you. She feels it would be too much for me to handle.”

  “‘Cuz I’m going to die?” That was the first time I told Yelena I was dying, but as you know, she already knew it.

  “That’s part of it. But it’s also your condition right now. She doesn’t think I can take care of you.”

  I began to cry. Yelena wondered if it was because we were openly acknowledging my declining health and impending death. But it wasn’t because of that. It was the other thing she thought of. I really wanted a mother.

  “Can you still foster me?”

  “She won’t give her recommendation for that either. I can take it to court, but it wouldn’t do any good because I couldn’t appear during the daytime. Orly, I’m so sorry.”

  Maybe I never believed in any of it having a chance of coming true. I knew things like this weren’t that easy. But I wanted to wound her because I was hurting.

  “You promised!” I screamed.

  Yelena heard a nurse coming. She rose from the chair and stood in the far corner.

  Sheila, one of the nurses I liked best, entered my room. “Orly, what’s wrong?” Sheila didn’t even see Yelena, but she noticed the chair had been moved bedside. “Who are you talking to?”

  “No one.”

  “You’re crying.”

  “No I’m not.”

  She came to my bedside and placed her hand on my nearly hairless head. “Everything is going to be fine. You’re such a strong little girl.”

  And from the way I felt hearing those words, I knew that’s what I needed. I needed lies. I needed something in my life other than this hospital treating me for leukemia. I thanked her and stared at Yelena standing in the corner as I hugged her. She suggested I get some sleep and I told her I would. Sheila tucked me in and moved the chair back to its regular spot before she left. When she was gone, Yelena approached my bed but didn’t pull the chair out again. She just stood there.

  “Go away,” I said. There were no lies she could tell me right then to make me feel better, and Yelena didn’t try to say anything. She just left, because I said I wanted her to.

  *

  Yelena sped out of the hospital parking lot so fast that she scraped the bottom of her Mercedes. She still remembered the address of Ignacio Chavez from the night when she first took the scribbles home. She got on the freeway and floored it, and headed north to Van Nuys. On the way she contemplated turning around and going home in order to write a note to Hisato before going through with this visit. If she died tonight, her head sawed off, he would avenge her certainly, but he would also grieve her loss. She should have written him a goodbye in case she didn’t come back. But she didn’t know what she could say that would make him feel better. Still, something must be better than nothing, she thought, but kept driving anyway. She thought then of Berthold. He would need more than a goodbye note from her. He would need his immortality. And she felt selfish for leaving him behind as she continued down this path of self-destruction. She only thought of me briefly. She had no words for me. She replayed my kicking her out of my hospital room a few times in her head and it made her feel like she never wanted to come back from anywhere to anywhere. But what made her think most seriously about turning around was Marcel. Her mind flooded with antagonistic things she would write to him. It could take her until morning, if not longer, to write down all that she wanted to say to him for abandoning her. She imagined what it would be like for him to find her words left in an envelope upon his coffin. When she thought of this, the angry words in her letter began to fade, and what remained were expressions of her love. The thought that he might never come back to her to find it saddened her deeply. Finally, at Victory Boulevard she exited the freeway.

  Her sense of self-preservation was instinctive as it was among all the living and the undead, so this wasn’t suicide. She was merely placing herself in harm’s way and awaiting the outcome. She would give Ignacio Chavez every advantage and then see if she would save herself. Could this man, who had already tortured and beheaded more than twenty people, mostly female prostitutes, kill her? In her current state, with my “go away” echoing in her head, intellectually, she cared little either way.

  It was late for a weeknight and most of the traffic lights Yelena encountered were green. Ignacio would be home. He hunted on Sundays. She turned right onto a residential street that was so narrow and lined on both sides wit
h parked cars that a moving car coming the other way had to pull to the side for Yelena to pass. He lived in a one-story house with bars on the window. Yelena considered how suitable this was. All the houses on this street had barred windows to prevent burglaries, but for Ignacio Chavez the bars also served the purpose of keeping the prey he tortured within the house from escaping.

  The lights were out inside. Yelena went to the side of the house and placed her hands on the bars of the window she found cracked open there. She gripped the bars of the cage and pulled on it evenly. Her inhuman strength allowed the bolts that fastened it to the painted planks that framed the window to appear as if they just slipped out of their holes. She set the cage down in the weeds that grew abundantly on the side of the house. She opened the window just wide enough for her to hop up and fit through. Inside, she was in a living room of sorts. It had matching brown sofas, a television, and was tiled in linoleum. Down the hall, also tiled in linoleum, was the open door of a bathroom. Opposite it were two closed doors, conceivably bedrooms. Yelena could hear breathing coming from the room on the right. A sleeper. The doorknob of the door on the left differed from that on the right in that it had a keyhole. Yelena placed her hand on this knob. The door was locked. She continued to grip it until it clicked softly and turned in her hand. The door opened and, with the lights off, she studied the room. There was not much in it, but what was there made it clear this was the killing room. She closed the door, but didn’t pull it all the way into its latch. She stepped back into the hall and listened for the breathing again and heard it, but this time it sounded closer. He was standing behind the door, waiting for her. Yelena turned the doorknob and opened the door. The lights were off but Yelena could see the bed was empty. A large painting of the Blessed Virgin hung on the wall over the bed. This room too was tiled in linoleum. He would take her from behind, once she stepped inside, and she would allow it, and so she went in. The door began to ease its way back into the frame as Yelena was struck on the back of the head by something blunt. She fell forward, onto the linoleum, missing the bed. Her head immediately throbbed. The lights turned on and she shut her eyes, pretending to be out cold.

  She heard his steps and a drawer open. He straddled her and pulled her hands behind her back. He used rope to bind her at the wrists before sliding off her legs and binding her ankles. He stood and walked to the closet. Yelena listened as he put on a t-shirt and a pair of jeans. He pulled on socks and laced up a pair of army boots. When he was dressed, he pulled the door back open and dragged Yelena out into the hall and down the tile floor until they were back in the living room. He released her and went to the kitchen. He took a dirty glass out of the sink and filled it with tap water. He returned and stood over Yelena and poured the water out of the glass onto her face. He was trying to wake her and Yelena went along, feigning grogginess and struggling to open her eyes. He put the glass down and sat on one of the two sofas.

  “¿Tú quién eres?” he asked.

  She contemplated answering in Spanish. She understood it well enough, but knew her pronunciation wasn’t always great and she didn’t want to get laughed at. Plus she knew from his scribble he was bilingual and also spoke English.

  “¿Tú quién eres?” he asked again.

  This time Yelena responded. “I know who you are,” she said, as she wormed her way across the linoleum until she was up against the other sofa. She inched her way up until she was sitting.

  “And who am I?” he asked, switching to English.

  “You’re someone the police haven’t identified yet.”

  Ignacio’s right eye twitched at the mention of the police. Yelena continued. “They probably haven’t even connected all of your murders.”

  “You a hooker?”

  “There are better ways to dump bodies, you know.”

  “You don’t look like a street walker, white girl.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Then what are you?”

  “I’m someone who doesn’t want to see tomorrow. Can you help me with that?”

  “Help you with what?”

  “Help me die.”

  “You wanna die?”

  “Yes.”

  “And why do you want to die?”

  “Because I’m already dying from leukemia.”

  “So you want me to finish you off.”

  “You film your kills. I want you to film me. I want you to watch the film and remember me. And when you get caught, I want the world to see me being killed by you.”

  “How do you know about the films?”

  “It’s in your scribble.”

  “My what?”

  “Your scribble.”

  “What the fuck’s a scribble?”

  “I’ll never tell.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Yes. But are you going to help me or not?”

  “You’re giving yourself up to me willingly?”

  Yelena stared him in the eye and nodded her head.

  He sat thinking of how to reply. “If I say no?”

  “You won’t.”

  He nodded. “You knew I’d kill you anyway, didn’t you? Whether you wanted it or not. The moment you walked in here, you were dead.”

  “Yep. I knew.”

  “So when would you like to die?”

  “Right now.”

  “So soon. Too bad. I think I would’ve liked to get to know you. At least tell me your name.”

  “Yelena.”

  “Pretty. You one of those girls who loves serial killers or something?”

  “You’re the first one I’ve met.”

  Ignacio shook his head, apparently stunned by Yelena’s calm demeanor.

  “You’ll torture me then saw my head off?”

  “You’re starting to creep me out, Yelena.”

  “I know that’s how you finally kill them.”

  “Fuck. You do know too much. You need to tell me how you know and who else you told.”

  “I didn’t tell anyone. And I can’t tell you how, except that it’s in your scribble.”

  “The scribble again. We could go back and forth with this scribble shit forever.”

  Yelena hadn’t thought of that. What if this took so long that daybreak came? “Forever is something people can’t comprehend,” she said at last. “Now is what makes sense.”

  Frustrated with her unwillingness to reveal how she knew who he was, Ignacio stood up and approached Yelena and grabbed the rope binding her ankles and began to walk, pulling her behind him. Her head hit the linoleum. “There’s ways I can make you tell,” he said as he dragged her down the hall and to the door beside his bedroom. He noticed it was ajar. He turned back and looked at her on the floor, “You opened this?”

  Still lying on her back, Yelena nodded.

  Ignacio flipped on the lights and Yelena saw again what she had already seen in the dark. This room had a linoleum floor as well. What windows there were must have been bricked up long ago. The walls were lined with soundproofing foam. A black-finished, eight-drawer tool chest on wheels. A folding chair. Flood lamps. Three video cameras on tripods. And in the room’s center, suspended from a beam in the ceiling, was a larger-than-life wooden cross painted black. Below it was a shallow steel tub. Metal U-bolts were drilled into the cross at the hands and feet. Two large hooks jutted out from under the cross beam, near the armpits, to support the crucified.

  Yelena could smell various cleaning solvents had been used in the room but beneath that, she could smell the blood that a K-9 unit would pass over.

  “Usually I knock them out with chloroform before putting them up. Do I need to do that with you?”

  Yelena shook her head.

  He shut the door. “I’m going to believe you, Yelena,” he said as he crossed the room to the tool chest and opened the second drawer from the top, and he removed a large serrated knife from the drawer and turned to show her.

  Yelena forced herself to smile. She smiled for him, even though she was still wounded i
nside from me expelling her from my room.

  He placed the knife on the rubber mat that lined the top of the tool chest. From another drawer he removed four leather cuffs that had buckles on one side and D-rings on the other. He tossed them on the floor beside Yelena and picked up the knife and knelt beside her. The knife sliced through the ropes easily. Yelena let her arms rest in front of her.

  “You wanna stretch one last time?”

  Yelena shook her head. She rose to her feet. “I’ll undress myself,” she said and removed her sweater and reached behind her and unzipped her dress. She removed everything—shoes, bra, panties, garters, stockings—everything but her jewelry. Once she was nude, he addressed her.

  “This will be easier if you sit,” he said and motioned to the folding chair.

  Yelena went to the chair and sat. “Show me the saw,” she said.

  “In a minute,” he replied and then removed her diamond watch and diamond bracelet. “These real?” he asked.

  Yelena nodded.

  He reached for the necklace.

  “No. Don’t touch that. Please.”

  Ignacio shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said and put a cuff on each wrist and buckled them tightly. As he did the same to her ankles, Yelena held her wrists out in front of her, looking at the cuffs as if admiring new jewelry.

  “You ready?” he asked.

  Yelena looked at him but didn’t answer.

  “It’s too late for second thoughts,” he said and placed his hands under her arms and lifted her off the chair. “Damn, you’re light,” he remarked as he carried her to the center of the room and hoisted her up onto the cross, extending her arms and letting her settle in on the hooks that supported her weight at the armpits. He used carabiners to fasten the U-bolts on the cross to the D-rings on the cuffs. Once she was secured to the cross he spoke again. “You know I’m gonna fuck you after you’re dead, right?”

  “I know,” Yelena said listlessly.

  “You’re one weird girl, Yelena,” he said and went around the room and turned on all the flood lamps and then the cameras, looking through their viewfinders and adjusting their lenses, before returning to her. “Any last words?” he asked.