Skin the Cat

by R Sean McGuirk

  Head tucked low in a dark-navy blue suit, I hovered near the front entrance looking for a way in. Media, secret service agents, roving bands of cops and a swelling crowd of spectators choked the main gate. Every local news channel across the state had rolled in for the event. A dozen media vans parked along the sidewalks, bumper to bumper, wall to wall, engines running, booms hoisted and antennas extended. People wandered around dumbfounded, the excitement unfurling around their feet, a mountain community laying an heiress to rest. A killer at large. Legions of morons stumbling about. Fuck-wits. No, it didn’t get any better than this. A total circus. Cynthia would be so proud. I was too. The way she died. Faith without works is dead.

  Just outside the front gate, I came up to an unoccupied limousine. With the driver window rolled halfway down, I gave a quick look around, reached in and nabbed the driver’s hat from the dashboard, and popped it on. With the kill kit strapped to my shoulder, head down, I strolled right in like I belonged there.

  I recognized Greymore’s black Mercedes Pullman Deluxe Edition right away, parked closest to the mausoleum, the same limo often sitting just outside Chumley’s. A gaggle of armed meat-heads in black suits, shades with sweaty bald heads brushed right by me and my hair stood on end. I looked different than anyone else, just one wrong glance and my cover would be blown. But they were looking for someone who resembled a homicidal maniac. Not a driver in uniform. I crossed the street and knocked on Greymore’s limo. Inside, a heavy Cherokee Indian with a large nose, black pants and a formal, dark-green sport jacket glared at me. Cherokee weren’t uncommon around town, though they mainly stayed on an official reservation about thirty minutes south. The window hummed down.

  “What do you want?” He asked it as if I should know better that to go knocking on limo windows. Especially one that belonged to Charles Greymore. I leaned in. His eyes went wide with recognition. But before he could speak, I came up with my needle. Warm clay. His hand grabbed my wrist, gurgling, his grip softening, the eyes rolling up into the skull. That’s it, nice and easy. He flopped over and I rolled him the rest of the way into a crumpled prayer-position on the floorboard. His breathing stopped. A black trench coat in the backseat, and I tossed it over his head. Then I waited. And waited.

  An hour later, a throng of private security huddled around Greymore, and pushed the bleary-eyed man toward the limo. Along the way, mourners sobbed, television crews rioted for the right angle and camera flashed popped. When he reached the rear passenger door, they shoved him in and slammed the door, putting their asses against the glass window to fight back the crowd. My heart pumped in my chest. The partition window separating the driver’s and passenger area remained shut and I froze in place, facing forward, not moving a pinky, the loaded syringe in my grasp. Finally, the partition hummed all the way down and I saw a glimmer of his silver hair in the rearview mirror.

  “Hello?” Greymore said with mild exasperation, leaning forward. “Get me the fuck out of here already.”

  I hesitated. He hadn’t moved forward enough. I didn’t move. I didn’t speak. My pulse ticked in my throat. Come on you white motherfucker.

  “Did you not hear me?” he lunged toward the front seat, shaking me by the shoulder. In one fluid hook-shot, I yanked his wrist forward and sank the needle deep into his forearm and squeezed. He yelped and snatched his hand back, eyes bulging.

  “What the fuck was that?” he growled, the real power coming on now, his face menacing.

  I turned and shot him a smile. “Surprised?”

  “Oh no- no, no, no…” his voice broke as he clawed at the door and fumbled at the latch.

  “Nope, not going be that simple,” I laughed, watching foam ease from the corners of his mouth, hands pulling at his throat. “No one can save you. That video? I own your ass now, motherfucker.”

  Greymore flailed limply and ever so slowly tipped over into the seat as his arms and legs helpless and sprawled. I shifted the gear into drive and eased away. Sorry folks, Greymore will not be making the Post Ceremonial Remembrance for lovely Cynthia. He has an appointment with the devil.

  “It sucks, does it not?” I said gathering up the scalpel, admiring the shape of the hooked fang. “Being…powerless?” I opened the blue medical folder and smiled. Two face lifts, hundreds of Botox injections. And don’t forget the penile augmentation, adding girth, but never length. I flipped to the front of the chart and scanned back over each page, double-checking all the work that needed to be undone. Greymore stirred, eyes cracking open, dry spittle staining his face, either side of the ball-gag as he came to. I rolled up on the stool and stroked his hair. The gesture of unwanted affection really set him off. I stoked his hair again. A fit of muffled shrieks and violent head wagging.

  “That’s a good boy, get it all out,” I smiled. I raised the blade in the air, reflecting the hard ceiling light in his eyes and he began to sob. “I want to talk to you about blood.”

  34

  A Real Motive

  Blowing Officer White everyday had its benefits. I’d become an entrepreneur in my hotel room, where capitalism took the shape of screwing a cop for money so I could slip out to go score my heroin. It was like the Charles Greymore situation all over again, sex for money for drugs. The drawback obviously that a cop’s wallet is not very deep, which meant less money for me, and less smack. Just two hours after my last score, where I could barely afford a single hit, I was already feeling the faint rumblings of dope sickness branching up from my feet. Out the front curtains, peering out over the parking lot, I spotted her. That half-lip, bucktooth officer, Tawny Miller, standing guard, red bangs in her eyes, picking her teeth, seemingly content to be bored. Droll. Stupid. She caught me staring before I could snap the drapes back into place. The hotel phone rang and I picked it up.

  “Yes, Tawny?”

  “Please refer to me as Officer Miller,” she snapped. “I saw you looking out your window, is everything okay? Do you need anything?”

  “Tawny, I’m locked in a fucking hotel room,” I groaned. “Do you have to call me every time I look out the window? Remember- I’m only a witness here. This is voluntary. I can leave anytime I want. Your job is to protect me, not fucking harass me?”

  I hung up before she could protest. Besides, I didn’t have to deal with dumb bitch. Officer White should be coming on shift any moment. One suck, a two and a half block trip, then the needle in and back home to the land of the free. I crawled on the bed and aimed the remote at the television. Local news. The camera panned over a familiar landscape dotted with horses and zoomed in large on the Greymore Estate. A skinny reporter looking like a high-school boy stepped forward with a microphone and spoke into the camera, trying to hold back the idea of a smile, knowing he was reporting the biggest piece of news Story Mount had ever seen. “Once the darlings of Story Mount, now their name forever mired in horror and tragedy, Charles Greymore was found dead this morning in the basement of an abandoned warehouse by two homeless men. At this time neither has been named a suspect. We are awaiting further details from the Exodus County Police Department.”

  I turned the television off, tossed the remote control on the floor and rubbed my eyes. My emotions flew sideways. A swift sense of justice lifted in my chest like a warm light. Both husband and wife dead, I liked the idea of Story Mount brought to suffering. Just as I had been brought to suffer. My mind flashed back onto that couch, me wondering if the video covered all events. Greymore giving the orders. Ritualistic. The other men taking turns. Ruining me one stroke at a time, chopping my soul down like a tree. On the other hand, Charlie had always been my friend. I even could say I loved him. We shared that bad touch so well. But that he was dead? Yes. I liked it very, very much. My thoughts turned to another. The time had come. I couldn’t protect him forever. To go on withholding information from these detectives might make me seem like some sort of partner in crime. Like conspiracy to murder. Or an accomplice. And I wasn’t.
Not even remotely.

  The crime scene had been brutal. A real slaughter house. The butchering of Charles Greymore had all the same earmarks. There was no way to deny it. A serial killer was on the loose. And according to Stan Gadford, the latest killing had been done with more fervor and zest than ever before. Deeper cuts. Organs removed. The man skinned just like the other women, but this time the flesh was left hanging on a plastic coat hanger for display. When the limo left the cemetery and took its own route, no one even second guessed it. Charles Greymore was Charles Greymore. He could go wherever the fuck he wanted, whenever he wanted, whatever path he wanted to take. That one funeral was beginning before the other could end. The murderer was brazen. Foolhardy. Obsessed. Driven by passion. And very intelligent. The perfect ingredients for a killer cocktail. Worse, we knew who it was. The surgical cuts. Plastic surgeries undone. We knew Svidi Malhotra was the man with technique. The relationships. That he’d been rejected by his peers. Kicked out of a private social club. We’d taken a tip at a state campground, from a concerned family in an RV. We nearly caught the bastard. Nearly. Yet something nagged at me. The guy seemed too easy for it. A white-dominated town. An Indian physician. Maybe so. And maybe not. What really bugged the shit out of me, was lack of real motive. Sure okay, you get kicked out of a private club. Your peers reject you. You move to the city. You don’t hack everyone to pieces. My frustration flared like a flame. I bit my lip as I steered the Taurus over High Ridge Road, a state road the followed the spine of a lesser mountain. Debbie and I were making our way back to the precinct to help Wadsworth with damage control, the first bigger city news teams showing up from Louisville and Lexington. All our fucking jobs were on the line now. The next step was to tell people to hide inside, door locked, gun loaded. None of this shit was good. My phone rang, me reading the incoming number, and drawing a deep sigh. Debbie pulled the toothpick out of her mouth. “What now?”

  “It’s Carlina calling.”

  I grabbed it. “Shade Bardane.”

  Her voice came on low, trembling. “Shade, it’s Carlina. Charles Greymore on the news.” Her voice began to break up. “He’s really dead?”

  I stared at Debbie, my eyebrows rising with some amusement. “Uh, yes.” I paused to make a fast sweeper to the left, a blur of pine trees flying by, and straightened the wheel. “He’s really dead.”

  “Like it’s confirmed?”

  “Carlina,” I paused. “What do you want?”

  “He’s dead for real, this isn’t some PR stunt to catch the killer?”

  Speaker phone and Debbie was catching all of it, eyes growing wider with interest.

  My tone dropped flat. “Carlina, if you have something to say you better start talking.”

  She sucked in a quick breath. “Well, there’s something I left out.”

  My jaw tightened. “I’m listening.”

  “I have something you must see.”

  At the next stop sign we took a left instead of the customary right and sped over to the hotel to find Officer Miller in the front parking lots finishing a box of fried chicken on the hood of her cruiser, dry-rubbing her front teeth with a paper napkin. “Hey, what are you guys doing here?” she asked. “Everything okay?”

  Debbie ignored her, pounded up the stairs, me following right behind, the hip-socket singing a little.

  At the top of the landing, Carlina opened the door before we could knock. Her face was pale. The eyes were pinched with nausea. Dope sick. Curtains closed and no lights on, she retreated into the shadows where she sat on the bed and sobbed quietly.

  I leaned back on the dresser, got into my pocket, ripped open a piece of nicotine gum and began grinding it with my teeth. Debbie sat beside her, the corner of the bed going flat under her weight, hand on her shoulder. “Hey, whatever’s wrong, it can be fixed.” She was even a better liar than me.

  “Oh no,” she tried to smile through the tears, brushing Debbie off with a fast hand. “This can never be fixed.” She pulled out her phone, swiped a few times and hesitated. “Detective,” she looked at me, holding the phone. “Come here.”

  I sat on Carlina’s other side. She tapped the play button, the phone coming alive and going primitive. Gasping moans. Naked bodies. Carlina’s face in the throes of ecstasy. A man moves in behind her moved in, pumping her from behind, his face suddenly in focus. Charles fucking Greymore. I snatched the phone out of her hand.

  “Hey!” she protested weakly, her bleary eyes more dope sick than ever.

  “Carlina,” I came off the bed, grabbed a chair and scooted up into her face. “You better start talking.” Then I paused. “And be very fucking clear what you are about to say.”

  She hesitated, voice stammering, lungs pumping short, hyperventilated breaths. Debbie’s mouth hung open, eyes wide, like suspended animation. Totally dumbfounded.

  “I was fucking Greymore for drugs.”

  I paused, thinking it over. “Was this consensual?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were other men involved?”

  “Yes,” she gave a light sob.

  “Did you guys know you were being recorded?”

  “No,” she said burying her face into her palms, shaking her head wildly.

  “Does any of this have anything to do with Tadpole and the assassinations?”

  “Maybe,” she sobbed. “Shit, I don’t know. Sure. Whatever.” The tears suddenly stopping, her voice hardly audible. “I don’t know anything anymore.”

  “Carlina,” I said slowly, allowing each word carry weight. “If you don’t cooperate fully from this point forward, you could really get your ass in a sling. Like one you won’t be coming back from. A life spent inside a cage wondering what could have been.”

  She wiped her eyes, bringing the emotions down a notch, nodding long and slow.

  I pointed at her phone. “Did your husband seen that?”

  “Someone sent it to our house.” Her eyes dropped away from mine. “A USB drive. He opened it,” she moaned from under her throat. “Plugged it into his laptop.” Her eyes coming back to mine. “Yes. He saw it.”

  “And then?”

  “And then what?” she scowled at me, her face catching some light from a crack in the curtain, eyes encircled with dark rings. “Then he vanished without a trace.”

  The hotel room fell silent, Debbie and I exchanging glances, Carlina staring at her feet. “And I haven’t seen him since.”

  “Well, Debbie.” I gave a light laugh, massaging my temples, eyes closed. “Here’s our missing piece. We had the man. And now we have our motive.”

  Debbie lifted herself off the mattress, snatched the phone from Carlina’s hand and shot her a look of disgust as she opened the door and left. I stepped into the doorway and looked back at the petite woman. The physician ruined. The hopeless junkie. Me understanding far more than I could ever care to. Carlina frowned at me, arms folded over her chest, mascara eyes stained with tears. “Well, aren’t you going to say something shitty to me?” I didn’t answer. I just stared. She clenched her teeth. “Make yourself feel superior. Go ahead. Judge me.”

  “No,” I took a step outside, looking away. “I don’t have the right.”

  35

  The Poetry of Murder

  Debbie sat opposite me, chewing her pen. She’d been on the phone with the Chief earlier, filling him in on the video, sketching out the motive of jealousy and revenge. Meanwhile, we’d named our killer. We had our motive. But the near miss at the state campground, and the guy was still at large. A homicidal maniac running loose in the mountains with Indian special forces military training. A real veteran peeling the faces off of anyone within two degrees of having screwed his wife on that video. The plastic surgeon skinning his former clients. A real small-town clusterfuck. The Chief strolled by with a shadow cast over his face, salt and pepper hair slicked back, the color drained from his cheek
s. “You two,” he grunted. “My office.”

  The tension of the unsolved case had become palpable and the atmosphere inside the precinct felt tight, nerves stretched like bungee cord. Down the hallway and into the office, the Chief slapped the door shut behind us. “Take a seat,” he folded his arms and sat on the front of his desk, towering over us. “Appears my meeting at the Kentucky capitol with the Lieutenant Governor and our very own Mayor Marty Breznik is a bright-red flashing warning for what will mark the end of my career.”

  Debbie chiming in, bringing on an emotional rescue. “Chief, you’ve always been so good…”

  “Debbie,” Wadsworth shut her down with a wave of his hand. “Please. I know you mean well. But, stop.” He paused and cleared his throat. “Some journalist got creative and linked the imagery of the killings to an old Victorian child’s poem. So the larger markets have named the fiasco the Skin the Cat Murders. Nice huh? Sell some advertising. But us? You know when a murder investigation hangs around long enough to be named, you’ve got a fucking problem.”

  I nodded my head. I remembered it from my visits to my grandmother. A long poem. This is that, and that is that, something, something, skin the cat. When she pulled my shirt off to get in the tub, always, skin the cat. Always. Debbie rolled her eyes, mulling it over, square jaw flexed, echoing it. “Skin the cat.”

  “I can see the connection,” I said. “As much as I hate to admit it.”

  The Chief flicked his eyes at me, the pupils constricting like gray ball-bearings.