*
Sandra Riley and her crew and their peers hover around the Municipal Court for hours, like buzzards, until every last scrap is devoured and there’s nothing more to glean. Of Darryl Hiller there is no trace. The only reasonable theory — that somehow he got into the building ductwork from within the bathroom — is invalidated. Darryl Hiller has pulled a Houdini of stupefying proportions.
The day’s best footage is of a man who gives his name as Reggie Blaine — the stocky redheaded fellow who was assaulted in the bathroom after Hiller somehow freed himself and smashed his guard’s face into the porcelain sink. Blaine tells an upsetting tale of being forced to trade clothes with the madman, then submit to the indignity of his handcuffs inside a stall so he couldn’t see where Hiller went next.
That night, Sandra and her crew go for badly-craved drinks at a favored watering hole called Turnstiles. The mellow wood and brass are comforting, but tonight there is no quick wit and cynic’s banter. Tonight there’s only morose reflection.
“Why don’t you let us take you home tonight?” Kevin suggests. His dark face, usually amiable, is pinched with worry.
Sandra shakes her head. “Thanks. But that’s okay.”
“Supposing he shows up again at your place. Sand, you’ve got to be number one on his list.”
She steadies her hands around a margarita. “The police called me at the station this evening. I’ll be safe. They’ll have people all over my building.”
Kevin shrugs. “Still might need someone to talk to. Come on. You got a comfortable couch, I can last it a night there.”
She touches the back of his hand across the table. He’s probably the best friend she has in the world, and all she can professionally aspire to is to give him cause to watch her dust while she heads to New York. Sometimes she has to wonder who the true worm in all of this really is.
“He won’t be back,” she says with certainty. “He won’t.”
“How you know? Sick twistoid like that, you can never tell.”
“He won’t.” The margarita is cold, salty, anesthetizing. “I already gave him what he wanted all along. He got what he wanted.”
“What’s that, Sand?”
She bows her head with the shame of a fool duped by an elaborate con game of heart and soul and wallet. And she sighs.
“A public forum.”
*
Four weeks earlier, May:
Darryl Hiller was as anxious to break the silence of his jail cell as the city was to learn what made him tick. One catch: He would talk only with Sandra Riley. His mentor.
The interview was conducted in a sterile room in the county jail, unfurnished except for a scarred table. Kevin set up two cameras and lights; sound levels were monitored. Darryl Hiller was the last to arrive, manacles on his wrists and ankles, with a pair of Rushmore-faced deputies standing guard a few feet away in case he got frisky.
“I forgive you,” was the first thing he said to her. “I don’t hold it against you that you turned me in. I was disappointed at first, sure. But you played it well. Now I understand it had to be this way.”
“Did you
He shook his head, eyes full of visions no one else in the room could perceive. “No.” A smile. “But it had to be that way. I’d gone as far as I could staying anonymous. I had to go to the next level. Beyond. And now?” He beamed. “Everybody knows Darryl Hiller.”
Sandra thought he still looked so unremarkable in that chair, across that table. Still pale. His hair was trimmed shorter and he looked boyish, his face still plain. Only a small scar marked his forehead to commemorate contact with her camcorder. His hands fidgeted on the table, more out of idleness, she thought, than nerves. She decided it was better to let him ramble and free-associate rather than try to direct him in an orderly flow of Q&A. They had plenty of tape to roll.
He told stories of childhood. What went wrong? Everything. Nothing. He said he’d been a sometimes bedwetter in gradeschool and that his mother used to tape his prepubescent penis to his lower belly every night as punishment, and whip him in the morning if he had freed it. Then he laughed and said he’d made it all up. The truth could’ve been anything.
“Sixteen women raped and suffocated,” Sandra cut in at one point. Properly outraged, under control. Professional. “
He tilted his head back, let his gaze rove over the ceiling. He had a habit of avoiding eye contact when answering.
“The worst crime a man can inflict on himself is anonymity. It eats people alive inside if they go too long with their grubby little lives, not counting for anything, good or bad. They just exist. No one should have to live an anonymous life. Me? I had the courage to become known. That’s all. How else could I do it? I don’t have a cure for cancer or zits. I can’t balance the federal budget. I’m not Tom Cruise in some new movie. So I had to use my imagination. And the tools at my disposal.” Now, finally, eye contact. “And you. You inspired me. Because you’ve got it down to an art. You know what it’s like to be public property.”
“Did you believe you had some sort of moral superiority?”
He looked irritated, as if she’d missed the point entirely. “It doesn’t have anything to do with morality. Or superiority. It’s a question of economics. Supply and demand.”
“Economics,” she repeated.
“Right,” he said. Most natural thing in the world. “When does newspaper circulation rise? When does everyone tune in TV news? Not when the doctor with the cure is on. Not when a budget analyst is on. Not when Tom Cruise is on. No. It’s when there’s a killer on the loose. You know … we’re not so different, you and me. There’s a symbiosis. You need me as much as I need you.”
She was about to formulate a rebuttal, but he broke in: “Do you believe in cancer?”
She flubbed her first try, flustered. Have to edit that out later. “Of course. Everyone knows someone affected in some way by cancer.”
He nodded. “And do you believe in rats?”
She didn’t like this track of inquiry. “Of course I do.”
“So you’ll acknowledge the cause-and-effect relationship between them.”
“Rats cause cancer?” Her voice was incredulous.
“No, that’s backwards. Cancer causes rats.”
“You’ve lost me with this, Darryl.”
He hunched forward, toward Sandra and camera one. “Cancer’s out there. It’s out there. Feeding on people. All these food additives and chemicals and crap in the environment? Cancer has a field day with that stuff. For cancer, it’s like rocket fuel. Now. You got all these labs everywhere, right, scientists looking for new drugs to fight cancer? Places breed all these lab rats just for experiments. That’s all the rats are good for. They wouldn’t even exist if it wasn’t for cancer.” A deep breath, reloading. “That’s the way it is between you and me. All this crap wrong with cities today, and small towns, the world at large? You people are like cancer, feeding on it with your cameras, poking your mikes into it, stirring it. Pretty soon, you just have to expect rats like me popping up to give you more to work with.”
“There’s nothing cancerous about meeting the public’s right to know. You’re making a perversity out of
