The restaurant was on a side street, far from Chicago’s bustling downtown area, in one of the oldest suburbs. I would never have gone alone at night—the area was too dark and happened to be across the street from one of the oldest cemeteries. At night the gravestones and monuments, crooked and broken and decaying, caught only the moonlight and seemed extremely sad. I wasn’t afraid of cemeteries—I liked them! The history to be found on old gravestones was amazing. I was just smart enough to know that while Chicago was an amazing city, it wasn’t without crime.
But that night, of course, was Halloween. And the street was alive. The band playing for the event was up-and-coming and exceptional. The place had been decorated to the nth degree—skeletons, goblins, pumpkins, witches, and more were everywhere. A wooden hearse—bearing a skeleton as the deceased—welcomed guests outside the front door.
The band was as good as they had been advertised as being. People danced on the open floor and sat around at the many tables circling it. We ran into other friends from Northwestern, and we all ran around switching tables to catch up. We danced with partners and in groups. Janice had a great time flirting with the bass player during his breaks. He seemed to be a nice guy when he joined us a few times at our table.
Nan, smiling, whispered to me, “Good-looking dude. Long hair, typical musician. Cool kind of way of moving around!”
He had never been formally introduced to us—it wasn’t until he left the table that Janice sighed and said, “His name is Hank Miller. You’d have thought his parents would have given him a cooler name. Like Wolf, or Saxon, or . . . maybe Liam, or something like that.”
Nan laughed and waved her fairy godmother wand around. “’A rose by any other name . . .’” she quoted.
“Yeah? Well, Shakespeare got to make up his own names!” Janice said.
It was while we were seated at the table with Grant Woodrow, who had graduated the year ahead of us, that we first learned about the man the media had dubbed the Second City Slasher. The killer had apparently received the moniker soon after we’d met up for night. Grant had seen the news on his cell phone. He’d been lamenting the fact we couldn’t meet his girlfriend as she had to work that night—when he looked up and said, “Oh, Geez! Another one.”
“Another . . . what?” I asked. Grant was dressed as a vampire, a rather awkward one. He was a big man with ruddy cheeks. I hadn’t known him that well in college. We’d shared a few classes, but had never been close. He was always polite, and I hoped I’d always been polite and friendly in return.
He frowned, looking at his cell phone.
The rest of us had been talking, and bizarrely enough, not one of us had pulled out our cell phones besides Grant.
“I’m sure everyone heard about the woman who was found dead a few weeks ago—pulled out of the Chicago River. News just out, an hour ago, another body had been pulled out of the river.”
“Murdered?” Janice asked, horrified.
“Oh, yeah. Her throat was slashed,” Grant said.
“And another,” Nan murmured. “How horrible.”
“My God! There was a note written on a wall downtown in blood!” Grant said, looking up at us with his face twisted into a mask of horror.
“And they just found it?” I asked.
“I don’t know when they found it,” he murmured, frowning as he kept reading the newest information on his phone. “I believe the lab just verified what the police believed.” He looked up at us again, shaking his head. “Number three awaits—and then I’m serial!”
“What does that mean?” Janice asked.
“I think the police and the FBI consider a man—or woman—a serial killer after they’ve killed three people,” I told her. I wasn’t sure. I knew what I thought I knew from watching cop and FBI shows on television.
I pulled out my phone then and read as quickly as I could. “Apparently, he stalked both his victims, picking up the first after she was working late and there was no one around, and seizing his second when she went out to buy ice cream alone late at night.”
“So, Halloween isn’t going to be his thing,” Janice murmured. “Thankfully! Way too many people around.”
“Right,” Grant agreed. “So!” He put his phone down and faked a shiver. “Let’s focus on Halloween creepy instead. There’s a fine-looking zombie over there I should talk to. And hey, ladies! Catch the tall mummy with the bright blue eyes. Hm.”
Nan laughed softly. “Maybe I’ll go for the mummy. Kelsey just got engaged, and Janice is after Hank, the bass player. Excuse me, all!”
She went off. Nan was good. Even as a fairy godmother, she was an exceptionally pretty girl. She had enormous dark eyes, generous lips, and perfect cheekbones.
We watched and laughed as she pretended to trip into the mummy.
The mummy appeared happy to help her gain her balance. They were soon dancing.
We switched around tables again, having a nice time catching up with old friends. We seemed to have many old friends there. The old local crowd from Northwestern seemed to be in full swing.
It was about thirty minutes later when Nan stopped by the table where I was sitting and touched me on the shoulder.
“Have you seen Janice?” she asked me.
“Um—no. Not in a bit.”
“I’m getting worried.”
“Ask the bass player—Hank.”
“They’re on break and I can’t find him, either!”
“Well, then . . .”
It seemed evident. Janice was with the bass player.
Nan moved on; I answered something about being a teacher when a friend asked, but I was distracted. I saw Hank moving across the room.
He wasn’t with Janice.
I made a sweep around the room and found Grant.
“Have you seen Janice?” I asked him.
“The door . . . I saw her go out. And that musician is gone again now, too! I don’t think it’s romantic. And maybe . . . well, she was also talking to someone by the old hearse thing with the skeleton in it,” he said.
He was distracted, too. He headed for the door.
I hurried after him, but he was outside, crossing the street, suddenly running, and calling Janice’s name.
What I did wasn’t smart. Retrospect is great, but at that moment, I wasn’t thinking serial killer—I was just thinking my friend had gone off with someone and might be in trouble.
Then I couldn’t help but wonder.
Could the cool musician want to be a serial killer?
I will never mock heroines who behave stupidly in horror movies again.
I leapt the small stone wall and raced into the cemetery, calling Janice’s name, running by broken stones, little dog statues, a Masonic obelisk, and two vaults. Then I stopped.
I was face to face with a large, weeping angel. Her wings were down, her head was low, and her arms were outstretched, as if she welcomed the departed.
I was listening for Grant or for Janice.
But I heard the voice. It was melodic and a bit like a sob.
It was the angel giving me the creeps, I thought. So much like the one at the family plot in Ireland!
“Please, luv, get out—get out, now. Run!”
I know I heard the voice. A banshee’s voice?