Stake

by Kevin J. Anderson

  ‘Detective Carrow! I didn’t want to move him until you got here, and I was getting impatient. The techs would have a hard time getting the body to the van while it’s still attached to the mattress.’ She clucked her tongue. ‘It’s a queen-size bed, so I suggest taking them separately. Nothing bigger than a double will fit in the van.’ She looked up at him. ‘Don’t ask how I know that.’

  The coroner often spoke to herself in the morgue and did the same when she was around live people.

  Carrow stepped closer to the bed. Blood had spread across the man’s bare chest, then soaked through the sheets. He regarded the victim’s wide-open eyes, the grimace on his face. ‘Looks like he was surprised.’

  Watson snorted. ‘Wouldn’t you be surprised if someone pounded a stake through your heart?’

  He gave her an annoyed look. ‘I mean it happened fast. No torture. No ligatures. Wasn’t tied up and toyed with, which is what I might expect with this methodology. Somebody prone to this much violence, and probably anger, often likes to stick around and enjoy himself, but …’ Carrow shrugged. ‘Killer slipped into the apartment in broad daylight while the victim was sleeping and hit him fast. Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.’

  Mel, the lead evidence tech, came up and glanced at his notepad. He had kept his porn-star mustache long enough for it to come back into style. ‘This guy worked the night shift, slept during the day. Had all the blinds drawn, curtains closed. Nobody would have seen anything.’

  Carrow saw Stallings’ work shirt draped over the desk chair, a red, short-sleeved uniform from a chain convenience store. The embroidered name patch said: Mark.

  He looked around. ‘Broad daylight. Neighbors would have been awake, kids outside playing. Nobody noticed a stranger lurking around? Parents tend to spot things like that.’

  Officer David Amber, who had found the body, stood just outside the bedroom, shifting uncomfortably. ‘We haven’t finished canvassing all the apartments, Detective. This is an old complex, high turnover of residents. Nobody seems to have known Stallings very well. Kept to himself.’ The officer cleared his throat, clearly shaken at having come upon such a jarring scene. ‘I suppose it’s hard to be a friendly neighbor when you work from dusk to dawn every day.’

  ‘There’s always weekends.’ Carrow looked at the stake through the man’s heart. Dusk to dawn …

  Stallings’ boss had called in to ask for a welfare check, concerned when his employee failed to show up for work two nights in a row and didn’t respond to phone calls. The boss, who seemed more annoyed than worried, reported that Stallings was always reliable. In Carrow’s experience, the explanation was usually nothing more nefarious than an employee going on a bender and sleeping through a hangover. Officer Amber had received no response to his knock on the apartment door, and the manager had let him in. There was always a chance the tenant had suffered a heart attack, fallen in the bathroom, or just skipped town. Amber certainly hadn’t expected what he found.

  In the nine years since Carrow had gotten his detective shield, he had seen a lot of ugly deaths. Gangland mutilations, overdosed junkies, kinky autoerotic sex acts gone wrong, crimes of passion that were as violent as the perpetrators were stupid. A stake pounded through the chest was a first, but not the worst he had seen.

  Before moving to the larger city of Colorado Springs, Carrow had served for five years in Pueblo. It was thirty miles south, a town with the highest crime rate in the state, and was home to one series of horrific torture murders that had ultimately been tracked to an overly territorial meth kingpin. Carrow had been very happy with his transfer to the Springs.

  This city still had enough murders to keep any detective busy – fifteen to twenty-five a year – but most were run-of-the-mill, the killers so painfully obvious that they wouldn’t make an interesting episode of any cop show. This one, though, was just plain bizarre.

  ‘Plenty of ways to kill somebody. Why use a stake?’ he asked aloud. ‘To send a message or a threat? Revenge?’ He scratched the curve of his cheek, feeling the stubble there. ‘The violence certainly makes this one stand out.’

  The coroner lifted her chin like a bird spotting a shiny object. ‘Maybe the killer is implying that this guy’s a vampire.’

  Carrow frowned. ‘Or he likes pounding pointed objects. Need to know more about the victim. Was Stallings involved in gang activities? Did he sell drugs? Was he late making a payment to a dealer or a loan shark, and this was a warning to other customers?’ He breathed slowly, calmly, to mitigate the smell. ‘Saw scenes like this in Pueblo.’

  ‘Chop Chop!’ Watson said with a knowing nod. ‘Wish I could have worked those cases. Seemed really interesting.’

  Carrow’s throat went dry. ‘You have strange interests.’

  He would never forget the four victims of the sadistic drug lord: a rival small-time meth dealer who had infringed on the wrong territory, two customers who had racked up impossible debt, and a young woman who had attempted to turn evidence against the thug who liked to call himself Chop Chop. The killings were graphic and memorable. Chop Chop used a hatchet to cut off the hands and feet of his victims, then turned them loose in the middle of the night, letting them hobble or crawl on their stumps trying to find help before they bled out. Just in case any of them did manage to reach medical attention in time, Chop Chop dosed them with slow poison that would kill them in half a day regardless.

  Carrow supposed a stake through the heart wasn’t all that much different.

  Only a few days earlier, a notorious penny-ante meth dealer had been decapitated in the watershed scrub of a park downtown. His head hadn’t been found. Considering that incident and this staked body, Carrow feared they might now be seeing another round of bloody gang violence.

  Happily fascinated, Watson bent over to inspect the wooden stake that protruded from the corpse’s sternum. ‘Did you ever put butterflies on a mounting board when you were a kid? Stick a pin right through the thorax, then spread their wings, upper and lower, so that when they dry out, they look beautiful, just like in life?’

  Carrow frowned at her. ‘Missed that part of my childhood. My dad always wanted me to collect stamps.’ He turned around, but found little to see in the bedroom. ‘No sign of an incriminating coffin.’

  The coroner heard him. ‘Vamps can also sleep on a bed of dirt, their home soil if possible. I think that’s their preference actually … not that I’m an expert.’

  Carrow frowned at her. ‘Neither am I.’

  She pressed down on the sheets until the frame creaked. ‘However, I can confirm that this is just a regular mattress and box springs.’

  The crime-scene techs finished gathering data and samples, dusting for prints. Carrow was done with staring at the body, the rough wooden stake, the blood spatters, the expression on the victim’s face. The details were indelibly burned into his mind.

  Watson called, ‘Mel, get the gurney and take the body out of here. Time to wrap up.’

  Mel grumbled. ‘Great. It’s an old apartment complex. No elevator. We’ll have to carry it down the stairs.’

  ‘Have fun with that,’ Carrow said. ‘I’ll have a look around.’

  Stallings worked in a convenience store at night, didn’t seem to have any friends. His boss had been the only one who even noticed when he went missing for two days. The man must have had a dark side to his life, something really twisted to warrant a death like this. From someone like Chop Chop?

  It was a small apartment, but Carrow wandered from room to room, searching for anything that looked out of place. The furniture was plain, and the victim had no artwork on the walls. The refrigerator surface was devoid of personality – no magnets, coupons, takeout menus, or photos of kids. The apartment seemed not just empty of possessions, but of a life.

  Carrow worried that his own life would look this empty if he didn’t watch out. He had an ex-wife, and two daughters that he didn’t see often enough, but at least he kept pictures of the girls on his cubicle wall. He looked
around the victim’s place. An empty life …

  ‘No pets?’ he called out. ‘No dog or cat?’

  ‘Not even a goldfish,’ answered one of the techs.

  Carrow nodded. ‘Most places like this don’t allow pets.’ He knew from experience. He wished he could have a dog, even a small one, to keep him company in his townhouse.

  Mel and another tech came through the door after hauling the empty gurney up the exterior stairs. In the bedroom they studied the corpse, forming a plan of action. The body seemed to sag as they lifted it from the red-soaked mattress, careful to leave the stake in the body for more careful analysis. The coroner helped them wrestle Stallings into the body bag.

  Meanwhile, Carrow poked around the small kitchen. The refrigerator had eggs, butter, moldy cheese, yogurt that was past the expiration date, a head of iceberg lettuce more brown than green, and a six pack of India pale ale from a Colorado craft brewery.

  Carrow worked his way through the cupboards. In one he found coffee mugs, plates, glasses, everything neatly arranged. The next held canned soup, dried pasta, tuna, jars of spaghetti sauce. In the third cupboard he found salt, pepper, and miscellaneous seasonings – including two large bulbs of garlic on the bottom shelf.

  Carrow picked up the garlic, sniffed it, and put it back. ‘Pretty sure we can rule out vampires,’ he muttered. Gang violence seemed the most obvious answer, and that meant it probably wasn’t over yet.

  FIVE

  Some people would believe anything, absolutely anything. Lexi saw it every day.

  Other than her work for HideTruth, she freelanced for fraud investigation websites and helped debunk silly conspiracy theories for PRUUF, a competitor to Snopes. She worked for several different services that dealt with internet scams, phony accounts, and fake emails. She erased imposter profiles and helped websites eliminate phishers. When small business sites were hijacked, malware could send out chainmail that spread as swiftly as the Ebola virus. Somebody had to stomp on them.

  Lexi felt embarrassed by how obvious some of the scammers were. Was it possible that any human being on Earth was unaware of the Nigerian prince looking to transfer millions of dollars, but only with a sucker’s help? Or the lost uncle trying to unload ten ounces of diamonds and you were his only hope? How could anyone fall for such things?

  Some people must get duped, though, or the scammers wouldn’t keep doing it. How could people be so gullible? Why didn’t they bother to do any research? Anyone feeble enough to fall for the Nigerian prince scam shouldn’t be allowed to have a social media account.

  Or email.

  Or a toothbrush.

  Even after Lexi purged the scammers, they would pop up on another server within minutes, like a kudzu infestation in the south. It was a hopeless task, but it paid well. She could work as many hours as she liked from the luxury of her own home, which wasn’t all that luxurious.

  Be your own boss! It sounded better than it was. She could take a day off whenever she liked, but she didn’t have a social life. Alexis Tarada was young, pretty, smart and resourceful – and spent her days and many evenings in her room delving into conspiracy theories, debunking nutty myths, and drawing attention to the ideas she felt were most intriguing, secretly hoping to find one that was real.

  One of these days, I’m sure to be right.

  PRUUF was a hotbed of rumors and urban legends, pervasive and titillating stories that occasionally had some basis in fact, though most of them went woefully wrong. In most cases, the explanations weren’t difficult to track down, but some crazy stories had fascinating, unlikely answers.

  She had spent the past two hours compiling a dossier on the persistent and astonishingly stupid theory that the Moon did not exist, but was instead an elaborate hologram projected by aliens to hide their invasion base.

  Another rumor claimed that a vast FEMA death camp was hidden beneath Denver International Airport.

  And that the CERN high-energy particle accelerator in Switzerland was actually designed to reawaken the Egyptian gods.

  Enough people actually believed such theories that people like Lexi had to debunk them – not that the believers would ever look at the evidence, because it was all part of the larger conspiracy.

  Every once in a while, though, Lexi ran into something she couldn’t easily disprove, and that was what she lived for. She wasn’t necessarily convinced by the proffered explanations, but she could accept that the real explanation had not yet been found. Some stories were just damned mysterious. She held on to those and savored the sense of wonder.

  Those were the ones she posted on HideTruth.

  She heard a quick knock on the bedroom door, and her housemate poked his head into her room. ‘Time for a break, Lex. I insist.’

  She had been so engrossed in holographic moons and FEMA death camps that she didn’t realize it was already 8 p.m. ‘Got a better suggestion? I’m all ears.’

  He grinned. ‘Spend time with me. It’s part of my project to socialize you into a human being.’

  Blair September was tall, handsome, erudite, and completely uninterested in her. Nevertheless, he was the ideal housemate. His brown hair was neatly combed, his clothes far too stylish for lounging around the house, but he refused to lower his standards.

  ‘Happy hour has been extended due to popular demand. You need one of these.’ He held up a martini glass filled with a cloudy green concoction. ‘They’re very popular at Olive U.’ He extended it as if it were a magical cure, coaxing her to emerge from her room. ‘Come on, join me in the living room.’

  Lexi dutifully rose from her chair, stretching her legs. ‘I’ll bring my laptop.’

  ‘Absolutely not. You’re going to enjoy this basil martini.’ He backed away from the door, taking the martini with him like bait.

  Lexi followed him into the main room. He set the martini glass on the coffee table next to his identical drink and plopped on the sofa beside her. Playfully resigned, Lexi sipped from the delicate glass, tasted grapefruit, vodka, saw the stem of a floating basil leaf. ‘Why did you say I need one? Do I look like I’ve had a bad day?’

  ‘No, you look beautiful, but I’ve had a bad day, and I don’t like to drink alone.’

  She clinked her glass against his. ‘That’s as good a reason as any.’

  A couple of years ago, Lexi had recruited a housemate to help pay the rent. Blair worked several nights a week at a trendy downtown martini bar, Olive U, and days at a vintage clothing shop.

  For her own part, Lexi was the responsible one in the household. The lease was in her name, she did the paperwork, paid the bills, and kept the accounts. That was a good thing, because ‘Blair September’ didn’t show up on any credit reports – she had used her extensive online resources to check.

  She had raised the question before accepting him as her housemate. ‘That’s not your real name.’

  ‘It is now. It’s my identity. I’m a caterpillar that emerged from a cocoon to become a beautiful butterfly.’

  ‘Moths come from cocoons. Butterflies come from chrysalises.’

  Blair had huffed. ‘Then, switching metaphors, I’m an ugly duckling who has become a swan.’ He gave her a warm, sincere look. ‘Look, I promise I’ll pay my share of expenses, do whatever housework you don’t want to do, including all the cooking, and I’m generally charming, as you can see. Before you know it, you’ll consider me indispensable.’

  Following her instinct, she had taken him in, and had never regretted it. To her surprise, even now that she knew him well, he kept his personal information completely off the radar, saying that he valued his privacy. If Blair had some dark secret in his past, she hadn’t been able to find it. He seemed so casual, easy, relaxed, and he had rapidly become her best friend.

  Lexi spent much of her time as a recluse, but Blair was gregarious. He insisted on talking about his day, his customers, sometimes even his dating dramas, and he elbowed Lexi for not having enough similar stories of her own. He won even more brownie points b
ecause he read the HideTruth site and often commented on the discussion threads.

  Now he sat on the sofa beside her, relishing his drink. ‘So, shall we talk about UFOs and anal probes? Why exactly are aliens so fascinated with the—’

  ‘No, I don’t want to talk about anal probes.’ Lexi took another slow sip. ‘It would ruin a perfectly good frou-frou martini.’

  ‘Glad you like it.’ He took a much bigger sip of his own. ‘Or we could talk about lizard people. They always make for good conversation.’

  ‘Not lizard people either, please.’ She shuddered at the caustic memory of her past stalker. HideTruth did attract more than its share of tinfoil-hat crazies, as well as those genuinely fascinated with possible wonders and mysteries in the world. ‘The people who believe in that nonsense can be intense, maybe even dangerous.’

  Blair swirled the stainless-steel shaker before pouring himself a second (or third) martini and topped off her glass, too. ‘UFOs, then. If aliens are really visiting us, why aren’t we flooded with crystal-clear flying saucer pics now that everyone has a phone camera?’

  ‘We are flooded with UFO shots, but everyone also has super-high-resolution image-manipulation apps, so you can’t tell real from fake. None of it counts as proof. It’s easier for the general public to disbelieve in everything so they don’t get fooled again.’ She sighed. ‘Remember when a blurry shape walking through the woods was proof of Bigfoot? Nowadays anything can be convincingly faked, so how can anybody know what is really true?’

  The world was an entirely different place from the 1990s when The X-Files had turned millions into starry-eyed believers. Before that, countless grainy flying saucer photos had inspired a generation to believe in UFOs and Erich von Däniken led a movement of devotees to ancient astronauts. Today, inundated by a flood of information and misinformation, people had given up trying to sort it all. They believed in what they chose to believe and scoffed at everything else, including settled science.

  Russian bots, alternative facts, foreign governments placing disguised political ads, absurd claims about one candidate or another. With so many rampant conspiracy theories, so much fake news, so many silly but trending memes, people turned a blind eye to it all. How could anyone sort the signal from the noise?