Tim Curran
BLOODY FINISH
Moth to flame, Belachek drove 200 miles to see the old woman.
And this in a blizzard. He barely made it, what with all the roads the state cops were closing. A foot of the blowing white stuff already and another foot in the offing. None of it mattered to Belachek: he would’ve crawled naked through broken glass and razor blades for this. This was a good one. And the great part of it was, with the field being so overcrowded and all, nobody had yet to secure the old lady’s story. She was getting on in years. This was probably the last chance anyone would have.
Belachek was a writer. Wrote true crime books. His specialty was serial killers, mass murderers. Rapists, cannibals, vampires, ghouls, stranglers, torso murderers, yeah, grim and ghastly, but it was his bread and butter. Some people cringed from his choice of study, the monsters among us, but Belachek justified it by telling critics that in understanding them, he understood himself all that much better. Man was, by nature, a killer. Modern trends in homicide and sociopathy were only to be expected. And, shit, the money his books pulled in didn’t hurt, either.
Didn’t hurt a damn bit.
That’s why the old woman was so important… at least one of the reasons… her story had not been told. And, really, how many books about Ed Gein, Jeffry Daumer, and Henry Lee Lucas was the public expected to swallow? A fresh killer, a fresh slate of crimes, these were the things publishers lusted after.
Belachek made it to Calumet in one piece.
The snow banks were higher than the cabs of pick-up trucks. Cars had orange Styrofoam balls on the tips of their aerials so you could see them coming around corners. And still the snow came down, blowing, drifting, whipping blankets of white across the roads. A few more hours of this, the place would be snowbound come nightfall.
Belachek decided he’d be long gone by then.
He found the house without much difficulty. A big Victorian. Weathered, slouching, ramshackle. It looked pretty much like the dinosaur it was. Town was full of ancient houses like that. In the old days, when the mines and the railroads were going strong, there was a lot of money in this part of the country. Had been over a 100,000 people here back in the twenties. Barely five-grand now. Much of the town was desolate, vacant, entire neighborhoods empty and boarded-up.
Belachek tucked his notebook and tape recorder in his parka, stepped out into it. The wind-driven snow ripped into him like a storm of needles. He stood before the gate — rusted, collapsing — just looking, looking, absorbing the atmosphere of this malignant little Upper Michigan town.
“Yes,” he said under his breath, “exactly.”
The walks hadn’t been shoveled and he had to fight through the drifts like an arctic explorer, the blowing snow sometimes causing complete whiteouts where you couldn’t see three feet in front of you. He climbed the crumbling, icy steps, pounded heavily on the door. It was opened quickly.
A tall, hatchet-faced woman. Lethal eyes. “Yes?” she said, a microcosm of the town itself: dismal, weather-beaten, hopeless.
“I’ve come to see Ida Swanson,” he told her. “She’s expecting me.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Mister Belachek?”
He nodded.
She let him in. The wind pushed him through the doorway. He slipped out of his parka, stomped his boots on a threadbare oriental rug. “Christ, it’s bad out there…” But he was alone, his host vanished.
All right, then.
He stood there, waiting, watching, soaking it all in like a dry sponge. There was a fan light above the door, stained glass. Dirty, dusty. The light it cast, not brilliant, but dim, clotted. He was in the hall. It was huge, drafty, smelled of mildew. The carpeting was rich, ornate, but scuffed and worn by too many feet. The centerpiece of it all was the stairs climbing to the second floor. Goose-neck balustrade, balusters carved like winding, flowering vines. The oak rail polished smooth by generations of hands.
“Mister Belachek.”
He turned. The tall woman stood there.
“Mister Belachek.” Said it like she’d just bitten into a spider. “Miss Swanson will see you now.”
He followed her down a shadowy corridor. He was pretty certain that old lady Swanson was barely getting by. From the looks of this place, goddamn mausoleum, money wasn’t flowing in. Yet, she had herself a retainer here, a servant. Interesting. Through double doors and into what might have been a conservatory in the quaint old days. Long, thin room, high-ceilinged, damp like an open grave. More stained glass.
“Mister Belachek.”
Ida Swanson was sitting in a rocking chair, her lap covered in a succession of crocheted afghans. She was sparse, frail, more bones than skin. Her eyes were filmed white. Blind as a bat, yet she knew exactly where he was in the room.
“Hello, Miss Swanson,” he said. “Thanks for seeing me.”
She nodded. “Let’s get it done with.” She rang a bell and the tall woman appeared. “Could you bring us some coffee, Lana? Thank you.”
The tall woman vanished again.
Belachek lowered himself into a small, plump sofa.
The old lady kept her hands under the afghan. It had to be hell, Belachek figured, being old in a house like this. So many stairs, so many corridors. Chilly, damp. Not a good place for someone like Ida Swanson.
“You want to know about Andrei, I assume.”
“Yes. As much as you can tell me.” Belachek had his notebook out, his recorder going. His fingers were trembling, his eyes staring. “It needs to be told.”
“Very well. My son Andrei.” The wrinkles on her face seemed to expand, spread out like fingers of frost on a window. The memories were wearing. “Why don’t you tell me what you know, generally, then I’ll tell you what I know.”
Belachek paged through his notebook. “Well. Andrei Swanson. Your son. Admitted killer of four women. Escaped from prison six years ago, but is believed to still be alive. That’s the general info on him. I could go into details -“
She smiled thinly. “Not necessary. Generally, I said.”
The specifics? Andrei raped and murdered four women, dismembered them down in Ann Arbor. He chose college girls as his victims. Abducted them, chained them in his cellar, raped and tortured them before dispatching them with a straight razor, cutting and hacking at them for hours. It was by no means an easy death. And Andrei Swanson was by no means a human being, he was a monster. A sexual sadist. When the police arrested him, he gloated in lurid detail about what he’d done. Only the repeal of the death sentence saved him from execution.
But that was public knowledge.
Belachek had researched and documented all that before making this trip. It wasn’t enough to know the facts, what he wanted (what the readers wanted) was to know what made an animal like Andrei Swanson, what sort of cesspool gave birth to a rabid malignancy like him.
The coffee arrived. Lana gave Belachek a look like maybe she wanted to pull his eyes out through his asshole with salad tongs. Belachek smiled politely. The coffee was tepid, tasteless black fluid, the consistency of drawing ink. He sipped it sparingly.
“First, you should know about my husband. Andrei’s father. My relationship with him was quite brief, though most gruesome.” Her white eyes stared into the distance. “His father, Charles, was a sadist. Though I didn’t know that at the time. We dated several times. He was a perfect gentlemen, a wonderful conversationalist. On what would be our last date at Christmas Ball held annually back then, Charles forced me into the back seat of his car. He raped me repeatedly for several hours. He cut three fingers off my left hand and carved obscene words into my skin.”
Belachek was breathless. “What words, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Her sightless eyes fixed on him. “Oh, but I do mind you asking. I’m not about to tell you any more than I’m going to show you my hand and the stubs of my fingers.”