Small Town

“I’m the super. This building and three others on the block. I’m sort of responsible, you know what I mean?”

“I do,” he said, “and I appreciate it.”

He stood there, gripping the knife, until he heard their footsteps reach the bottom of the stairs.

He was going to have to decide about fingerprints.

To leave them or to wipe them away? There were persuasive arguments on both sides. If they found his fingerprints, and thus knew he’d taken refuge here on Baltic Street, he’d be catapulted back into the headlines. Of late there’d been little about him, some of it speculation that he might have left the city, might be in Mexico or Brazil or seeking refuge in some Arab nation (with his terrorist brothers, one columnist suggested), or that he might even be dead. His fingerprints would end such speculation, and would lead authorities to widen their search from Manhattan to the outer boroughs. The invisibility he’d begun to regain would afford less protection.

On the other hand, he’d be far from Boerum Hill, far from all of Brooklyn, by the time they even saw the need to look for fingerprints. Safety aside, might it not be advantageous to let the city know that the Carpenter was alive and well, and still devoted to his work? Fear was a powerful emotion, and had already served him well.

He could picture Carlos on Live at Five, interviewed by a vacuous reporter on the steps of the Baltic Street house. He hadn’t seen Carlos, hadn’t even tried to look through the peephole at him, but he was sure he knew what he looked like — short, stocky, a full head of curly black hair, pockmarks on his cheeks. “I go and check on her, you know? And he tells me he’s her friend, she went home on account of her aunt died, he’s staying there to feed her cat. And it sounds okay to me, you know?”

Yes, let them find his prints. Let them dread the Carpenter. It wouldn’t make things that much more dangerous for him, and he didn’t have to stay away from them for that much longer.

It was already well into August.

In the morning, he thought, Carlos would start to wonder. Perhaps he should meet Evelyn Crispin’s friend face to face, instead of having to talk with him through a door.

Time to be going.

He undressed, and put all of his clothes in her washing machine, sitting patiently at the window until it was time to switch them to the dryer. When they were dry he laid out the clothes he would put on when he awoke, packed the rest into a navy-blue backpack he’d found in one of the closets.

One of the small drawers in the kitchen held hardware — pliers, regular and Phillips-head screwdrivers, a hammer, a tape measure, a jar full of assorted nails and screws. He took out the hammer, and went through the jar to select the largest nail. It was a formidable thing, three inches long, and thick. He put the hammer and nail on the kitchen counter and closed the drawer.

The freezer had done its work, and the ice cubes had hardened. He collected the cubes in a bucket, refilled the trays, dumped the bucket in the bathtub. He wet a washcloth and gave himself a sponge bath, then got into her bed. The air conditioner, running full blast, had the room like an icebox, and he used both blankets.

He awoke at a quarter after two, dressed in the clothes he’d laid out, moving quietly to avoid disturbing the neighbor a flight below. The cat, whom he’d locked out of the bedroom, was busy rubbing against his ankles, signaling its hunger. He glanced down at the cat, then over at the hammer he’d left handy on the kitchen counter.

He opened a can of cat food, fed the animal, and had a look at the ice cube trays, but the thin skin of ice yielded to his fingertip when he tested a cube.

He watered the plants, except for the one that showed signs of overwatering, and freshened the water in the cat’s bowl. Then he picked up the hammer and the nail and went into the bathroom, where Evelyn Crispin lay faceup in a tub of water in which some ice cubes, still not entirely melted, lay floating. He’d started with bags of ice from a bodega on Nevins Street, supplemented with his own ice cubes as fast as the freezer could make them, and, with both air conditioners running night and day, it had worked well enough. But it was a holding action at best, and he sniffed the air and knew it would have been time to leave whether or not Carlos had come knocking at the door.

There were bruises on Evelyn Crispin’s cheek and temple, where he had struck her, and marks on her neck, where he had strangled her. He gazed down at her and felt something for her, but he couldn’t say exactly what it was. Pity? Perhaps.

He knelt at the side of the tub, and his lip curled in distaste for what he was about to do. He took no joy in the act, but, like everything he did, it was not without purpose.

He pounded the nail into the very center of her forehead.