Hackett snorted. “You think I haven’t heard the story?”
Eddie bristled, his face growing even redder than it already was. “I think you need to learn some manners.”
Frank placed a hand on Eddie’s arm to calm him.
“I’ve got it, Eddie.”
Hackett snorted again and shook his head. “And you wonder why I don’t visit.”
“We miss you, Tommy,” said Frank. “Your Aunt Carol, Frankie . . . me. But this thing you do.”
“It’s my job, Uncle Frank. We can’t all be cops.”
“That’s not—”
Hackett held up a dismissive hand and changed the subject. “Is the body still inside?”
Frank sighed and stepped in close again. “If I tell, will you come over for dinner?”
“No promises.”
“But you’ll try?” asked Frank. “Soon.”
Hackett rolled his eyes and nodded
Frank stuck out his hand to seal the deal, but when Hackett accepted, he was unexpectedly pulled in for a hug. With his mouth next to his nephew’s ear, Frank whispered, “The body is on the floor inside and the detectives have just arrived. It’s a bloody mess, really terrible, but that’s all we know for now.”
Frank released Hackett and stepped back. In a loud voice, he barked, “Now get yer lazy ass out of here. Eddie and I are busy.”
Instantly, Frank’s attention returned to a rhythmic sweep of the crowd.
Hackett wondered what his uncle was hoping to find in the sea of curious faces, but his TV-schooled imagination was already whispering that perhaps the killer was lingering in the crowd, basking in the mixed rush of anonymity and the frenzied attention being paid to his dark deeds. But if he was, how could anyone tell?
Hackett studied the milling crowd. Most of the faces were male, indistinguishable as a whole. It was the same crowd you would find downtown at lunch hour when the office towers released their wage-slaves for bread, water and occasional exercise.
The only difference was the genuine look of worry on the faces here as they waited to see if the body inside belonged to someone they knew, a charter member of Dorothy’s club. Downtown, they wouldn’t care who was inside unless it meant the opening of a decent parking spot.
It took awhile, but finally Hackett recognized a lone face in the crowd. Time to work.
Chapter 4
An acne-scarred youth huddled with three others on the fringe of the crowd.
At first glance, it appeared the foursome visited the same tailor: custom-cut slacks, soft cotton shirts and thin cable knit sweaters. It was only once you looked closer that the slight variations in cut and style began to reveal themselves — except for the shoes. Each man wore the same brand of black leather shoes with cushioned rubber soles, which made Hackett wonder if they had a friend on the docks.
In Seattle, the best discounts always came from generous friends on the docks.
“Stephen, isn’t it?” Hackett asked.
“What’s it to you?”
The young man’s eyes roamed over Hackett’s face, trying to place him. Tiny tremors made his muscles twitch as if fighting off a bad case of the shakes or the tendril footholds of Parkinson’s.
“It’s Tom,” Hackett said. “We met at Spy Gear downtown. You work there, right?”
Stephen nodded, the face finally registering. “That’s right,” he said. “You bought the new Sony motion cam. Auto focus, optical zoom and motorized base. Didn’t pop for the extended warranty if I remember.”
“Don’t hold it against me. I haven’t trusted insurance since Capone died.” Hackett allowed the smiles to fade before tilting his head in the direction of the public toilet. “Any idea who’s inside?”
Stephen trembled harder as he pulled his shoulders in tight, hugging himself. “It’s too early for the cruisers. Could be anybody.”
“Too early? What do you mean?”
The other three youths snorted as Stephen rolled his eyes with great exaggeration. “You must be straight, Tom.”
“Yeah,” Hackett admitted. “I’m just trying to get a pic”
“You a journo?”
“Freelance.”
Stephen considered for a moment before nodding. “Paparazzi. That’s cool.” He lifted his chin to indicate the crowded area around the washroom. “Here come the other vultures now.”
Hackett turned to see a photojournalist for the Seattle Times and another for the online Post-Intelligencer. Arriving at the edge of the crowd, their Nikons were already in shooting position, giving their cheeks a warm LCD glow.
A short distance behind the newspaper guys, a heavyset man with a salt-and-pepper ZZ Top beard was lugging a video camera on his shoulder, while an attractive Asian woman in a short skirt and silk blouse walked unburdened two steps in front. Hackett recognized her from Channel 7, the local CBS affiliate. She was the type of reporter who could break the news that your entire family had been wiped out in a horrific plane crash and give you a boner at the same time.
“How do you compete with those assholes?” Stephen asked.
Hackett shrugged. “If I’m not faster, I need to be better.” He winked conspiratorially. “Any ideas?”
Stephen grinned, showing two rows of dull, off-white teeth. If the four men were a litter, Stephen was definitely the runt.
“What do you need?” he asked carefully.
“Something they won’t think of,” Hackett said. “They’re here to record the scene. Whether the paper, website or station runs it makes no difference to their paycheck. They’ve done their job simply by snapping a few pixels of the body being transported to the meat wagon. I need a picture the paper can’t turn down. Something they can splash on the front page that says they’re better than the competition — even if they have to buy it freelance.”
Stephen turned the information over.
Hackett added: “Bottom line. I need something that makes them look bad.”
Stephen grinned. “You like to watch?”
Hackett winced. “Not really my scene. No offense.”
“Some people do.” Stephen looked to his friends for encouragement. “It gets their juices going.”
Hackett’s face registered confusion and Stephen laughed. “Some people find cruising too risky,” he continued. “Or they’re not ready to come out of their self-imposed closet, but everyone wants the fantasy. Places like this are geared for all tastes.”
Hackett glanced back at the washroom, deciphering the information, when the realization struck.
“There’s a peephole?” he asked.
Stephen and his buddies grinned. “Give the straighty a hand job.”
“Where?” Hackett hoped they weren’t yanking his chain. He hadn’t had a decent sale in over a week.
Stephen shuffled closer, his breath releasing a strangely sweet scent, like rotting flowers. It reminded Hackett of his grandmother’s funeral.
Stephen coughed, his cupped hand too slow to stop the release of warm, wet mist that coated Hackett’s ear.
He whispered, “Around back, behind the bushes, a brick marked with a heart. You’ll see a path in the grass, it can be a popular place on Friday nights.”
Hackett stuck out his hand, trying to ignore the urge he felt to wipe at his ear. “I appreciate it.”
Stephen shrugged, ignoring the outstretched hand until it fell away.
“Just watch where you step,” he said. “Those aren’t balloons on the ground.”
The laughter of the four men trailed off as Hackett circled the crowd. Once he was out of sight, he wiped his ear on his sleeve and dug out his camera.
Chapter 5
A path of crushed grass, stomped weeds and rain-slicked mud snaked through dense bush and up a small man-made hill behind the washroom. As Hackett pushed his way through, his cellphone rang with the sound of The Police’s Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic.
He answered. “Hey gorgeous, miss me already?”
A woman’s laughter car
ried over the cellular network like sweet elixir. With a mix of East Indian and British blood, Chandra had been blessed with a beauty that made Hackett wonder every time he was with her what she ever saw in him. Unfortunately, her traditional Indian mother wasn’t shy in asking the exact same question.
“Now, Hackboy,” Chandra said cheekily, “you know it is your role in this relationship to miss me madly, while I display cruel indifference.”
“Ahhh, sorry I forgot. You’re the Persian feline to my lowly mongrel. So what can I do for you O’ Mistress of the airwaves?”
“That’s better, but you should add just a touch more grovel.” Chandra paused and Hackett could hear the noise of the KXLY radio newsroom in the background. “So you hear anything about a possible homicide in Volunteer Park?”
“Just got here.”
“Figures. You’re married to that scanner.”
“Jealous?”
“Well, if you think it can replace me . . .”
Hackett laughed. “You know I prefer soft curves to hard edges.”
“Sometimes I wonder.”
“Would you like me to prove it?” Hackett asked. “Say later tonight. My place.”
“We’ll see. I go on-air in a few minutes and could use something juicy to lead with. The chatter on the police band is light on details.”
“Surely, you’re not trying to use me to further your radio career?” Hackett tried to sound as shocked and indignant as possible.
“Of course, why else would I be sleeping with you?”
Hackett sighed heavily in mock depression. “I just talked to Uncle Frank and he informs me the body is, in his words, a bloody mess. I’m actually, right at this moment, trying to see if I can sneak a few photos. Does that help?”
“Well, you may be a talented shooter, Hackboy, but until I crack the TV market, your photos don't help. Do you have anything useful like an I.D. on the vic?”
“Nope, that’s all I have.”
“Damn.” Chandra lowered her voice. “Suzi Q’s been giving off a weird vibe all morning. I’m thinking she may have an exclusive I don’t know about.”
Hackett could imagine Chandra sending poison daggers across the newsroom with her eyes.
“I thought you radio gals were supposed to work together, team spirit and all that.”
Chandra chuffed. “Don’t be silly. She wishes she was half the journalist I am.”
“Maybe she’s just jealous of your boyfriend,” Hackett suggested.
Chandra laughed again and the heartiness of it filled him with glee.
“Dream on,” she said. “All the glory hounds drool over this one. You could use her bra to carry all your lenses.”
“Even the big one?”
“Even the big one.”
“Wow. Tell me more,” Hackett encouraged.
“Another time. I’ve got a city waiting to hear its hourly news.”
“See you tonight?”
“Work on your groveling and we’ll see.”
Chandra blew a kiss into the phone and hung up.
Hackett pocketed his phone as he broke through the last line of thick foliage. He found himself in an open two-foot-wide space of hard ground and scattered stones that ran the length of the washroom’s back wall. It was protected from the rain by a wide overhang just a short distance above.
The brick that Stephen mentioned was easy to find. A pink Valentine heart with a bite mark taken out of one side was painted in bright acrylic on its sandy surface. Hackett hunkered down and tested the edge of the brick with his fingers. It slid out of its broken mortar with barely a whisper. Hackett placed it on the ground and peered inside.
With most of the washroom built into the hillside, the peephole offered a limited top-down vantage of the four side-by-side stalls. The first stall was directly beneath the peephole, making the angle of sight too severe to see much of anything. The last one was too far away — though you would be able to see the top of someone’s head when they stood up. Stall No. 2 was completely open to the peephole voyeurs — making it the exhibitionist’s No. 1 choice — while stall No. 3 offered a waist-up view of any occupant sitting on the toilet.
The body was in stall No. 3.
Hackett aimed the camera through the hole and studied the frame on its rear LCD monitor. Three policemen — two plainclothes, obviously detectives, and one patrol cop in uniform — were gathered around the open doorway to the only occupied stall.
The body had slipped from its porcelain throne, sending its feet sprawling into the narrow corridor that separated the stall from a row of stained urinals. The body’s collapse had dropped the head below Hackett’s line of sight, but the spray of blood that stained the wall clearly showed where the victim had been when the attack took place.
Hackett repositioned slightly so that part of Stall No. 2 lined the bottom of the frame — half its floor was covered in a thick pool of blood.
Hackett slowed his breathing, while he tried to calculate how noisy his camera would sound inside the washroom. Even if he put the camera into silent mode — a switch that locked the tiny mirror inside so it wouldn’t flap up and down with every frame shot — the shutter itself was still noisy. The sound was nothing you would notice in a room full of people or even if you were taking pictures outside, but in a nearly empty room filled with porcelain and ceramic tile, it could make the difference between snapping one shot or three before the officers chased him away.
Hackett studied the scene. It was a good shot: the officers looking at the body, the blood on the floor, the feet of the victim, and best of all, no visible face with its features contorted by a stomach-churning death mask. Rule No. 1 in the news business: People don’t like to see dead faces with their morning oatmeal. Feet, on the other hand, were perfectly acceptable.
The only trouble was it just didn’t have that extra something to make it on the front page. And if it didn’t make front page, it became a harder sell that wasn’t worth nearly as much money.
“They should close these fucking places down,” said the detective in the grey suit.
The detective in the brown suit shrugged. “People need a place to shit.”
“Yeah,” agreed grey suit, “and we get to wipe.”
Hackett kept his eye on the viewfinder and his finger on the shutter release as one of the detectives snapped on a pair of thin plastic gloves and bent to the corpse. When he reappeared, he was holding a thin leather wallet.
“What you got?” asked grey suit.
In reply, the first detective unfolded the wallet and pulled out a driver’s license. A grimace puckered his face.
“Jesus H.” He turned to the uniformed constable. “Is Frank still outside?”
The cop nodded. “You want him?”
“Yeah, bring him in.”
As the constable walked away, the detective showed the license to his partner.
From his peephole near the ceiling, Hackett frowned without removing his eye from the camera’s viewfinder.
When Frank entered the washroom, he automatically adjusted his gun belt, as if that would magically make his bulging gut look a little slimmer in front of the two detectives.
“You wanted to see me?” Frank’s eyes were focused intently on the man holding the wallet.
“Yeah, Frank. You and your partner were first on the scene, right?”
Frank nodded.
“Did you examine the body?”
Frank shook his head. “Haven’t even seen it. Eddie was the first to enter. As soon as he spotted the body, I sealed off the area.”
“Yeah, that was good work,” the detective in the brown suit said automatically as though reciting a training manual. “But I need you to look at this.” He held up the victim’s driver’s license.
Frank leaned forward to study the tiny picture and even smaller type. His face paled visibly.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph. It can’t--”
“Can you look at the body and confirm, Frank?” Although the detect
ive’s voice was calm, he was obviously used to people doing exactly what he told them.
From his perch outside, Hackett braced himself, unsure of exactly what was happening. An increased flow of adrenaline, cracking and popping, skittered through his veins.
FRANK APPROACHED THE cubicle and looked down at the horror: alabaster flesh, dead eyes like fogged mirrors staring back blindly, and a pair of mouths, one on top of the other, flash-frozen in the midst of a curdling scream.
Worst of all, framed in a thick pool of congealing blood, was a face he knew as well as his own.
“Ooohhh . . .” Frank moaned and staggered backwards, the remaining color vanishing from his face. His knees buckled as the muscles and joints lost their ability to hold him upright.
Both detectives ran to hold him steady, their arms straining with the sudden dead weight.
Up above, Hackett snapped away as fast as his camera would allow.
Chapter 6
Cypher watched the photographer burst out of the bushes that guarded the rear of the building and retreat from the area at a panicked pace. He hadn’t expected this turn of events, but the publicity would fit perfectly into his plans.
Leaning against a tree, Cypher pulled a brushed aluminum smartphone from his pocket. The handheld device felt as much a part of him as his own skin. Hell, more so.
Launching its web browser on the tiny color screen, he used fingers and thumbs to easily post an update to the K.A.R.M.A. website.
Satisfied, Cypher pushed his BMX bike away from the crowd, his dark hair tucked inside a baseball cap and his bloodied jacket safe inside his backpack.
He wondered if New York had gone as smoothly.
Chapter 7
“Theresa sent me,” said the brown-skinned boy.
He knew he looked young, no more than ten, but that was mainly due to his height. The bulky, ill-fitting clothes and overly curly hair didn’t help either as they gave him the look of a child’s doll — a plaything.
Reddy Rodriguez stood just four inches above four feet, and to the best of his recollection he had turned twelve just three weeks earlier. He had spent the last two years on the streets, the escape being his tenth birthday present to himself.
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