Stop Me Page 13

  ‘Usually it’s just for guests but as he was waiting on you… Wish I’d known you’d gone up to your room. I could have told him.’

  ‘Sorry. Who?’

  ‘Gentleman that’s been waiting on you. I’ll go tell him. He’s just called a cab…ah…’

  Leo turned in the direction of the old boy’s gaze and found Bookwalter standing in the doorway of the lounge bar.

  CHAPTER 23

  ‘Your friend’s returned,’ the old-timer said jovially to Bookwalter.

  ‘So I see…’ Bookwalter’s matching khaki shorts and shirt were unkempt, his expression unreadable. ‘We all missed you today, Leo.’

  ‘How did you know I was staying here? You followed me from the airport, didn’t you?’

  Bookwalter’s hurt frown looked genuine. ‘Just hit recall when we got back from the restaurant. Spoke to this gentleman and he said I could come here and wait on you.’

  Leo was about to turn in the direction of the old boy but knew his features would confirm this.

  ‘He tells me you’re leaving?’ Bookwalter wiped the edges of his moustache with his thumb and forefinger.

  Leo did turn to the hotelkeeper this time and his wizened features looked uneasy.

  ‘If you had second thoughts about signing you should-d talked to me,’ Bookwalter slurred. He was drunk and Leo wondered how long he had been waiting for him in the private bar while he slept upstairs.

  Leo didn’t look at Bookwalter but sensed him move a step forwards. ‘Nothing else to discuss. My flight is in a few hours. Could I have my case, please?’

  The old boy nodded emphatically, eager to have any unpleasantness over and done with. He disappeared into the small room behind reception and Leo heard Bookwalter taking another faltering shuffle forward. He’d obviously let go of the doorframe.

  ‘Nothing else to discuss? There is the small matter of you break-er-ing and entering.’

  Leo had hoped his trespass wouldn’t be discovered before he left but now it seemed that telling Bookwalter what he’d found would be the perfect way to break off any further dialogue. ‘Twenty dollars an hour and all the TV you can watch – you’ll never be short of Lauras.’

  ‘You had no right to enter my property.’

  ‘I just climbed the wall.’

  ‘No matter. I’m going to have you arrested here and now.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Leo smelt Bookwalter’s parmesan breath as he slopped forward in his flip-flops and picked up the telephone.

  Bookwalter dialled. ‘Set up a fake business meeting so you could ransack my home.’ It was the first time Leo had heard genuine anger in his voice.

  ‘I didn’t ransack your home. I didn’t even go inside it.’

  ‘No. I’ve got a witness who’ll swear to it that you did though. Linnea would do anything for a few extra bucks and I can have the place trashed before the police get there.’

  Leo met Bookwalter’s skewed gaze. He didn’t doubt that a venal teenager prepared to be tied to a chair for hours on end wouldn’t object to earning such easy money. ‘Go home and sleep it off.’

  ‘If they don’t arrest you here they can catch up with you at the airport. Could be a long time before you get home.’ Bookwalter’s squint seemed more pronounced and he narrowed his other eye while he waited for a reply.

  ‘Why are you doing this? This is over.’

  ‘Police. Yes, I want to report a break-in.’

  Leo cut the call with his finger. ‘Enough. Go home to your family.’

  ‘Half an hour of your time.’ Bookwalter didn’t meet his eye and started dialling again.

  Leo sighed. ‘What for?’

  ‘Just half an hour and I’ll drop the charges. Refuse and I’ll finish making this call when you leave.’

  ‘You can’t make any more money from Laura or me. What else is there left to discuss?’

  ‘This isn’t business, this is about me. Half an hour on the way to the airport – I’ll drop the charges and be out of your life.’

  The old boy returned with Leo’s case.

  ‘Cab for Bookwalter,’ a female voice croaked.

  The three of them turned in the direction of the entrance where a harassed woman with messy straw-blonde hair stood.

  The old boy had been relieved that the three of them left together and after their cab driver had insisted on lugging Leo’s case and securing it in the car, Bookwalter climbed into the front.

  ‘Armstrong International via Claiborne Avenue.’ Bookwalter slammed his door.

  Leo hadn’t even closed his before the cab took off and suddenly he had the sensation that he was relinquishing control over events. ‘So, where are we going first?’

  ‘I’ll spring for the cab fare. If this lady wouldn’t mind waiting while we stop off.’

  ‘No problem, hon.’ Her meter accelerated faster than she did so she sounded more than happy with the arrangement.

  The sky was overcast but it was still close and the aircon blew her stale perfume and Bookwalter’s breath into Leo’s face.

  ‘What time is the flight?’ Bookwalter tried to turn in his seat but only got his head halfway round.

  ‘We should have time.’ Why the hell had he agreed to this? He hadn’t really taken Bookwalter’s drunken threat seriously. Perhaps he really did need to satisfy his curiosity before he left. Despite his selective psychosis, Leo couldn’t deny that he was perversely fascinated by Bookwalter and morbidly inquisitive as to what his last desperate manoeuvre would be. Was he now dispensing with the notion that Bookwalter could be dangerous though?

  Nothing he’d seen had persuaded him that he was capable of anything more than cryptic but meaningless internet dialogue and inflated theatrics. However, as they were now heading for an unknown location, which would have set off alarm bells before his discovery of the self-incarcerated Linnea, he wondered if relaxing his guard was exactly what Bookwalter wanted.

  Leo leant forward. ‘What’s in Claiborne Avenue?’

  ‘We’re going just off of it.’ Bookwalter pointed a pudgy finger at the car radio. ‘Mind if I turn that up?’

  The three of them spent the rest of the short journey in the company of some middle-of-the-road rock channel that both Bookwalter and the cab driver seemed to enjoy before the cab slowed down and turned into Claiborne Avenue.

  ‘Just over there.’ Bookwalter stabbed a finger at the open gates of a cemetery.

  The cab driver turned to look at Bookwalter. ‘You sure, hon?’

  ‘It’s still early. We should be OK. You all right to wait?’

  ‘It’s your money. Half hour tops, though.’ She pulled the cab in front of the gates and switched off the engine.

  Bookwalter got out of the car and Leo followed. His host flip-flopped unsteadily to the gates without waiting for him. Leo had heard how the cemeteries in New Orleans were rife with muggers and dealers but said nothing as they walked inside.

  ‘Everybody’s buried above ground here. Katrina caused some minor flooding but the tombs were virtually untouched when the waters soaked away.’

  Leo could see a muddy brown waterline at the same height on the rows of mausoleum-type structures that bordered the pathway. Most of them looked dilapidated; their slated roofs crumbling and sprouting tufts of green grass through gaping cracks.

  ‘Do you like jazz?’ Bookwalter stopped and turned briefly but only, it appeared, to solicit a response so he knew Leo was still with him.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Lot of famous musical artists are buried here. Danny Barker, Ernie K Doe…’ Bookwalter wobbled forward again.

  ‘So…is this a musical pilgrimage?’

  Leo didn’t like Bookwalter’s lack of response and as they turned the corner into another row he looked back at the cab as it disappeared from sight. They continued in silence for a while, the only sound Bookwalter’s flip-flops and the occasional pocket of air getting trapped in his sinuses.

  The gated tombs seemed to have been forgotten, dead ye
llow blooms curling from their pots behind fences bloated with rust. The sky threatened rain and it looked like the hungover city was going to get the cleansing it desperately needed.

  He caught sight of somebody moving between the adjacent rows to his right but the figure was gone before he could glimpse it properly. Somebody whistled way off and the echo of two dogs fighting increased his feeling of unease.

  ‘How much further do we have to go?’

  ‘I’m not really sure,’ Bookwalter drawled blithely.

  He had one more minute and then Leo was turning back in the direction from which they’d come. Bookwalter took a wide arc down another row and headed towards a crossroads of ornate tombs. The largest one had a toppled cross on its roof and in front of them on the path, a stone urn had been smashed. Bookwalter stopped and appeared to be getting his bearings.

  ‘Look…I don’t want to miss this flight.’

  ‘I’ll pay for a later one if… It’s OK, I think we’re here.’ Bookwalter slopped purposefully forward, stepping onto the sepia grass and weaving his way around the back of the tomb with the toppled cross.

  Leo followed tentatively and found Bookwalter breathing hard in a small square patch of dirt formed by the backs of four tombs. The suddenly enclosed space made Bookwalter’s breath bounce from every side. Leo heard his own swallow echo back at him as he waited for an explanation.

  Bookwalter appeared to be gathering himself. To focus, gird or just for effect Leo couldn’t say. ‘Ever get sick of inhabiting yourself?’ The short journey had obviously taken it out of Bookwalter and he breathed in close and heavy behind the words.

  ‘What do you mean?’ But he knew exactly what he meant.

  ‘They say that a high proportion of serial killers are in their thirties because they’ve reached a common crisis point.’ Bookwalter seemed to be concentrating on getting the words out whole. ‘Their lives haven’t panned out and they need to shake things up – to become more significant than they are through any means. Combine that with the sort of mind-numbing job that allows too much time to think – to obsess – and it’s small wonder serial killing’s not a more common pre-cursor to midlife crisis.’

  ‘And that’s why you confessed to being the Vacation Killer.’ Leo looked at his watch but didn’t register the time.

  ‘No, that’s when I came here. Used to be my late-night haunt. Booze and bad company were nev-very-welcome with Jean.’

  Bookwalter’s first reference to what Leo assumed was his ex-wife seemed to hint at something more than another elaborate con and he waited for the smudgy narration to continue.

  Bookwalter breathed in some parched air through his nostrils. ‘I wasted a lot of time here – drunk, stoned, paying for what I never got at home – but I can’t say that I’ve ever really regretted it. I needed-do it before I could get myself straight.’

  Was this just going to be an indulgent outpouring? He supposed that Bookwalter’s Christian sensibility had to have an outlet for guilt but was he really trying to justify himself to Leo in the final few minutes before he left?

  ‘She was face down in that corner when I stabbed her.’

  CHAPTER 24

  Leo looked at Bookwalter’s profile. He was biting his moustache and looking at the area of dirt in the right-hand corner of where they stood. ‘Who?’ He tried to imbue the word with weary scepticism but failed.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Bookwalter shuffled forward and looked at the patch of ground as if it might yield an answer. ‘She told me her name was Candy but that was probably false.’

  More carefully rehearsed histrionics? Leo studied Bookwalter’s reflective expression and told himself that it couldn’t be anything else.

  ‘Picked her up in Tooley’s Bar and Grill. Think she was new to the streets. She was with some older junkie whore who couldn’t wait to palm her off on me.’

  Leo suddenly imagined being at home with Bookwalter’s words rattling across his screen. He seemed to be telling the story in the same style he’d spun his account of kidnapping Laura from Chevalier’s.

  ‘I’d been thinking about killing for months before that but not that evening. Then she’d shown me her switchblade. One of her tricks had given it to her. In lieu of service I guess. She showed it to me with her black chipped nails.’ Bookwalter clenched both his hands a few times and then scratched his knee.

  Leo found himself registering the four possible exits from where they stood but still felt incredulity ballooning in his throat. ‘Why is it so important you tell me this?’

  ‘I want to put myself in context.’

  Leo snorted derision involuntarily. The sound reverberated and Bookwalter looked around as if he didn’t know where the noise came from before fixing Leo with a drunk and blankly ingenuous expression. It was Leo’s turn to look at the patch of earth.

  ‘She actually let me tie her up here. Thought I was kinky. We hadn’t even agreed on a price.’ He swallowed. ‘She had her whole life in front of her but she’d already thrown it away.’

  ‘So you killed her…there.’ Leo pointed and accelerated the story. Whether it was to hasten his exit from the cemetery and being in his narrator’s company or because it was starting to make him feel uneasy he didn’t know.

  ‘No. I don’t think I killed her. I stuck the blade into her five or six times while she lay face down; actually felt the metal scrape against her spine when I pulled it out. Then she did something that genuinely unnerved me.’

  And Leo knew exactly what it was.

  ‘I don’t know whether it was a reflex or if it was her being guileful, but she raised her tied hands as I knifed her and when I tried to push them down she curled her fingers around the tops of mine. She didn’t grab them, she seemed to caress the three fingers of my right hand…stroked them…and I remember how it had taken me out of the moment. It unnerved me and I remember slapping her hand away and stabbing her again.’

  Leo didn’t look up from the dirt. Hearing Bookwalter replicate the specific details that he’d used describing his abduction of Laura made him remember how convincing they’d seemed when he read them over and over on his laptop. It always seemed that they had been cut and pasted from a real experience and it now appeared that Bookwalter had inadvertently revealed their origin. Or was that what he wanted Leo to believe?

  ‘Is this another ploy?’ He still didn’t look up from the dirt.

  ‘I came back here about a week later.’ He appeared not to have heard and it was like his reaction to the other occasions Leo had attempted to interrupt his online reminiscences. ‘There’d been nothing on the TV or in the papers. There was no body here. She’d either crawled away or somebody had found her and taken her…maybe to do something a lot worse than I did. I waited for weeks. After months I gave up on her.’ Bookwalter seemed genuinely crestfallen.

  Leo resisted the urge to believe the story. It seemed such an unexceptional account in comparison to his more egotistic narration that it immediately appeared true, but that was what Bookwalter did best. That was why Leo was standing in a cemetery in New Orleans.

  ‘Then I hooked up with Coker. I met him through a chatroom and we seemed to have a lot of common interests. He and I formed our own discussion group – the Toolbox Forum. Coker was an IT wizard on the side, everything was password protected and open only to a handful of select members.’

  Leo had forgotten his watch and listened. Whether it had been carefully rehearsed or not, Bookwalter definitely seemed to be heading towards something significant.

  ‘It was an ideas exchange. I think the other guys were just getting their rocks off but Coker was earnest. Cocksucker.’

  It was the first time Leo had ever heard Bookwalter resort to obscenity and it shocked him to hear it.

  ‘One time I logged onto the forum and Coker was the only other online. He was always online. Took his laptop wherever he was staying. We started talking about the Interstate Strangler.’ Bookwalter squinted at Leo expecting recognition.

  Le
o pursed his lip and shook his head.

  ‘Edward Sloman. He’d been arrested a couple of days before. He’d murdered eight prostitutes between Waynesboro and Charlottesville after picking them up, giving them spiked alcohol and choking them to death in motels while they were still unconscious.’ Bookwalter reeled off the details like a mantra. ‘Sloman actually wanted to be caught but Coker and I got talking about his method and how it could be expanded on. Coker was a sensationalist, liked the idea of unsolved, high-profile homicide. He came up with the concept of murdering someone in every US state using a unique method, which could only be attributed to him. He travelled around a lot so I could see why the idea excited him. Then I trumped his ace and said wouldn’t it be more effective to murder internationally. That really popped his corn. Cocksucker.’

  Leo watched Bookwalter’s spittle spray onto the dirt and his body stagger slightly sideways before he righted himself.

  ‘I actually came up with the name Vacation Killer during that discussion. And it was me who thought of removing the jawbone, boiling it and posting it to the police wrapped in an item of the victim’s clothing. Coker thought I was just an amateur, a fantasist. Didn’t believe me when I told him what I did here.’

  Leo visualised Bookwalter crouching in the dirt with the girl face down.

  ‘I knew he was a killer for real though. I knew that because he never talked about himself like the others. There was no boast in him. It was like he was gathering data, always pumping everybody, pushing them to open up.’

  Either Bookwalter was telling the truth or it was his best performance yet, but Leo could think of no reason for him to denigrate himself like this. It was a far cry from the claims he’d adhered to during the months of their exchanges, and trying to desperately associate himself with some other online sociopath seemed to be the ultimate illustration that nothing he’d ever said until now was true.

  ‘I even swapped ideas with Coker about the random emails. He liked the idea of sending them to advertise his crimes to unconnected parties before the bodies were found but it was me that suggested spamming organisations with details of potential victims before they’d been murdered.’ Bookwalter’s mortification was apparent. ‘I also had the idea to arrange the internal organs of victims like a clock face and use the arms as minute and hour hands – he never took that up.’