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“How the hell did you find out where I live?” Helen asked.
to hear.
“I happen to have friends in the building,” Dean said.
“Is that . . . ?” David began.
Stevie put her finger to her lips.
“Friends who would somehow know that I know you?” Helen said.
“It’s a small city, really. One mentioned that they had a neighbor named Helen who was a wonderful baker who loved birds,
and I wondered if it was you, Blue.”
“Quit the bullshit. And don’t call me Blue. My name is Helen.”
“You’ll always be Blue to me,” Dean said. “How are you, Blue?”
“Terrible,” she said.
“Sorry to hear it. Mind if I have a seat?”
“You’ll take one anyway.”
On the recording, it was clear he was moving around, maybe to a chair. The recorder must have been with Helen, because her steps were audible, and Murph got louder.
“Lovely bird,” Dean said.
“He bites assholes. I’d stay away from him if I were you.”
“You’ve gotten more assertive with age.”
“I’ve gotten older with age, Dean. I’m not as stupid as I was when I was young.”
“We were all young,” Dean said. “I’m only three years older than you. I have to say, I was so pleased to hear from you. Surprised
as well.”
“I bet you were,” Helen said. “How did you find me, really? Don’t bullshit me.”
“I am telling the truth. I do have friends in the building. I have lots of friends, Blue. And I’ve known you were here in
the city for a long time. I was doing a presentation for Monument at a hotel. When was that? Around 1997. Monument was just
getting started. I saw you in a doorway, examining one of the catering trays before it came out. I could never mistake you,
Blue. I even saw the bird on your hand.”
“So you did see me that day,” Helen said. “I saw you too. I left my job after that. Left everything. Even looking at you . . .”
“Come on now, Blue.”
“I said my name is Helen. So you followed me, is that it?”
“I took an interest.”
“I bet you took an interest,” Helen said.
“So all this time . . . no cell phone, using as much cash as I could, being so careful, and you knew all this time where I was. But I knew about you too. Monument Movement. You wear nicer clothes now, made it all a little fancier. Still the same old bullshit, isn’t it, Dean?
Half-cooked philosophy 101. Doesn’t take much to fool people, does it? ”
“Wisdom is universal.”
“Must be easier to get them to pay you instead of having to pickpocket, though,” Helen said. “Not that you ever did the dirty
work. I used to think we were stupid, but it wasn’t that. We were lonely. That’s what you saw in all of us—kids who wanted
to belong. And you picked us because we were useful. To cook for you. To sleep with you. To steal for you. And when you said
you were giving that money to the poor . . . I knew it sounded fishy, but I wanted to believe, so I did. But Melissa didn’t.
She was smart.”
“Melissa,” he said. “You’ve been thinking about her. You can’t blame yourself. . . .”
“I can,” Helen said. “But mostly I blame you.”
“How’s that? You killed Melissa. You bashed her head in. All we tried to do afterward was protect you.”
Stevie almost reeled backward. Helen killed Melissa.
What would you do if you knew someone was going to commit a murder?
Stevie had looked at the question the wrong way. It wasn’t Helen asking about a suspected murderer, someone outside herself—it
was a killer asking the detective: What if you saw me?
What if you knew what I was going to do?
Could you have stopped me? It was about regret, about years of running, about the horrors of being a murderer.
And that look on her face when she drew the Tower card—she knew it was for her. That’s what Stevie had seen.
“I know what I did,” Helen finally replied. “You think I don’t live with that every second of my life? But I was dosed out
of my mind when it happened.”
“We all took mushrooms, but you were the only one to murder anyone, Blue.”
“I hit her,” Helen said. “I own that I hit her. I have to. I also own that I took the money. But you knew that, right?”
“Later. I worked that out later.”
“I took it and I was going to leave. She wanted to leave too. She was supposed to be gone. But you found her and brought her
back. You dragged her inside and held a knife to her and kept telling her to say where the money was . . .”
“That wasn’t me. Denver did that.”
“That was Denver doing what you wanted her to do. Everyone did what you wanted us to do. I’d been dosed with mushroom tea
and could barely understand what was going on. I was afraid. I thought you were going to cut her to ribbons, and me to ribbons.
I was trying to protect her, and me. I took the pan and hit her to try to make it stop.”
“It worked,” Dean said.
“I thought it would knock her out,” Helen said. “I could shut her up and figure out how to get us both out of there. I wasn’t
trying to hurt her. But Jane shroomed me hard. She was trying to help me. . . .”
“We all tried to help you, Blue.”
“You cut her up and tried to burn her body in the bread oven. And when that didn’t work, you took her out somewhere and dumped her.”
“To save you.”
“No,” Helen said. “To save yourself. It was all so pathetic. You were a two-bit hustler who found a bunch of teenage girls
to pickpocket for you because they had nowhere else to go and you told them they were stealing from the rich to give to the
poor. Do you even know their names? Cat? Sally? Lacey? Sweet Jane? Who were they?”
“Our friends,” he said.
“Our friends,” Helen said, snorting. “My friends, maybe. Your pawns.”
“But you stole all our money, didn’t you?”
“You’re damn right I took that money. I took it and I ran away from you. At least you never got it. That’s the one thing I
feel good about in all of this—you never got your filthy stolen money. I got it and used it. I paid for school. I used it
to get a place to live. You walked away with nothing. Oh, I saw you go, Dean. I saw you with your backpack. But before you
left, I saw what you did. I saw you at the van, Dean. What was it? Did you cut the brake line? Then you told Denver which
road to take—one where they’d pick up speed as they came down.”
“They had an accident. Those roads were treacherous.”
“You can’t go backward once someone’s been beaten to death. What if any one of us couldn’t handle it and confessed? I’d run off. I might talk. What if someone talked? And you didn’t have your money. Is that what pushed you over? Were you mad that one of us got your money?”
“Blue . . .” Dean’s voice had a cardboard kindness to it, fake and stiff. “If you need to talk to someone . . .”
“What you are,” Helen said, “is a little man who fooled a few people for a short time, and then you lost. Little men like you burn it all down when they lose. You killed them because you are scared and you are small.”
Murph started to caw loudly. There was the sound of a shifting chair.
“It’s okay, Murph. It’s okay. Murph’s very protective of me. He’s a good judge of character. Better than I ever was. Little
men like you don’t like it when women talk.”
“Whatever you’re trying to do here,” Dean said, his tone cold, “what do you think it will accomplish? The only person who
could really be hurt is you.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I’ve got no reason to keep secrets any longer. You probably thought nothing would ever connect
you to any of it. But you’re wrong, Dean. There is something, and it’s got DNA all over it. I’ve had it ever since that day.”
There was a minute or so where neither of them spoke. Murph was making what sounded like chuckling noises.
“You’re thinking now, trying to remember what mistake you might have made.
” Stevie could almost hear the smile in Helen’s voice.
“I brought everything I had when I came to the mountain, even a scarf my grandmother gave me. You used it to gag Melissa. You wiped your sweat with it. Sweat and blood, Dean, all mixed together. I couldn’t burn it.
I kept it to remember. I had no idea it would be the thing that brought you down.
How could something so soft destroy you?
Something so soft—and it’s going to rip you apart.
It’s all going to come out, Dean. I’m not afraid anymore. I have no reason to be. But you do.”
“Helen . . .”
“Get the fuck out of my apartment before I tell my bird to go for your eyes. I mean it. Get up. Go. Now.”
There was the sound of a chair scraping on the floor, some heavy breathing, a click. Then:
“. . . apple. Pineapple. Love you, Murph. I love you.”
Stevie hit the button and the playback stopped. The room felt airless. Stevie stared up at David. There was a whistling noise
in her left ear. She looked at the scarf, folded in its plastic bag.
“Helen knew she was dying,” Stevie said. “She was researching wills, and how to help Murph when she was gone. That’s why she
got the recorder. . . .”
She delicately tested the nicks in the button with her fingernail.
“She believed in signs. I turned up, the murder girl who solves cold cases. Then she read my cards and the Tower came up.
The card that means it’s all going down. If you believed in omens and you were in bad shape . . .”
“And if you felt guilty,” David said. “Guilt fucks you up.”
Stevie looked over at him. He did not meet her gaze.
“So she called Dean and confronted him. Then he showed up, which she didn’t expect.
She had no idea he knew where she lived.
She thought fast and grabbed the recorder from Murph’s cage.
The cage door was still open when she died.
After the conversation, I guess she decided she had to preserve her evidence right away.
She grabbed something close at hand, something no one looking for that evidence would pay any attention to: one of her fruitcakes, the ones she said were so good and that she made for spite.
She took a chance and gave the evidence to the murder girl because she must have known what was about to happen.
Maybe she felt it in her chest. She went into her bedroom and got out the calendar and looked at the pictures of her friends, and her heart gave out. She was . . .”
“Free,” David said. “I think it sounds like she was free.”
He was right. While the Senso A874 bird recorder didn’t have the best sound, it could still pick up the tone. The Helen at
the start of the recording was startled, but the Helen at the end was triumphant.
Stevie put her face in her hands. Her head was starting to throb again.
“I think I need to pet a dog,” she said.