by Blake Banner
“What about Lynda?”
“I fucked her, used her for a day or two, and told her to get lost. It was what she deserved. It was a shame about Hank. He was stupid, but he was a bro. He couldn’t see I was trying to help him.”
“Yeah. You’re a stand-up guy.”
He surprised me by giggling.
“Where did she go?”
“The party broke up on the fourth day. She probably got a ride with somebody. I don’t know, man.”
I looked at the murals on the wall, stared at Crowley’s big, bald head with his bulging eyes. “You’re a devotee of Crowley, huh?”
He smiled. “He’s the man.”
“You practice his rituals?”
He watched me for a bit before answering. “Some.”
It was growing dark outside. The rain had settled into a steady downpour. I stood. “He died in poverty, in a boarding house in Brighton, you know.”
“Yeah, and his followers are some of the richest, most powerful men in the world.”
There was a heavy footfall on the stairs. A large man with long hair and a long beard stepped into the room. It was hard to make out his features in the dusk. He stared at me for a long moment, then turned to Zak. “They’re ready.”
Zak smiled at me. “We’re having a ritual, Detective Stone. We found a virgin, and we’re going to cut out her heart and eat it while it’s still quivering with life. You want to stay and join in?”
“Maybe next time.”
“Drive careful, Stone.”
I stepped back out into the wet dusk and ran to my car. I climbed in and slammed the door. I had a pack of tissues in the glove compartment and used a couple to dry my hair and my face. I switched on the wipers and looked through the windshield at the house. The windows on the third floor were glowing with a flickering, limpid orange light. Candles.
I looked at my watch. Four p.m. I fired up the engine and headed back toward New York. I felt tired, but I knew it would be at least ten before I got home.
Do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
I thought about that as I crawled through the narrow lanes toward Raymond. The orange cones of my headlights made a moving tunnel in the blackness. It was Rabelais, not Crowley, and it was inscribed over the great gate of Theleme. More things crept into my memory.
Sir Francis Dashwood, in the eighteenth century, established several Hellfire Clubs in London and Dublin. Their motto was “Do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law,” borrowed from Rabelais. Ben Franklin had been an occasional visitor to those clubs. The patrons were eminent and powerful.
Then, a hundred years later, Aleister Crowley established the Abbey of Thelema on Cefalù, on the north coast of Sicily, and adopted the motto used by Dashwood for his clubs. He called it the law of Thelema.
Ritual magic. Ritual murder. It was certainly the province of the serial killer. I tried to visualize Zak murdering and dismembering a woman. It wasn’t difficult. Did those arms, then, belong to Lynda?
SIX
In the end I got home at one, had a hot shower, and fell into bed. I’d been driving for over twelve hours, and every part of me ached. I ached in places I didn’t even know I had.
I had dark dreams about dark houses with black doorways that led to even blacker places, down ever darker narrower passages. I surfaced slowly as it dawned on me that the doorbell was buzzing, dragging me out of sleep. I didn’t know if I was grateful or not. It was still dark, I still ached, and I was still tired. I looked at my watch. It was seven. I groaned and leaned out the window.
Dehan was standing in front of my door doing a weird bouncing thing.
“Why are you bouncing?”
She looked up at me. A cold wind was blowing her hair across her face. “Because it’s cold and wet. Let me in. Why are you still in your pajamas?”
I pulled my keys out of my pants on the chair and threw them down to her. “Make some coffee and don’t ask dumb-ass questions.”
I showered cold, hot, cold, dressed, and went downstairs. She’d made a big pot of coffee and also pancakes and bacon.
“If my mother were here, she’d tell me to marry you.”
“If my dad were here, he’d tell me to stay clear of you. ‘Don’t make the same mistake I made. Marry a nice Jewish boy.’”
I sat down and she poured coffee and put bacon on my plate.
“You told me your parents were crazy about each other.”
“They were. He loved annoying her, and she loved being annoyed by him. She’d end up throwing her havayanas at him, and they’d crack up laughing.”
“Cute.”
“It was. How’d you get on?”
“This means you’re itching to tell me how you got on.”
“You first.”
I ran through my conversation with Zak. About halfway through, she stopped eating and just stared at me. By the time I came to the whole Aleister Crowley, Abbey of Thelema bit, she was neglecting her coffee. I told her what I saw when I left and said, “He definitely ticks some of the boxes.”
She drizzled maple syrup on a pancake. “So he’s mad at Lynda. He thinks it’s her fault his best pal walked out on him. He takes her away somewhere. They do some kind of crazy, satanic ritual. He kills her and takes the arms to what he thinks is Hank’s lockup. The arms are a crazy symbol of sorts. Brothers-in-arms. Arms of friendship. Whatever. But he makes a mistake and puts them in the wrong lockup. Not a serial killer, but a crazy.”
“Something like that is a distinct possibility. What about you?”
She grabbed her hair and tied it in a big knot behind her neck. It was a very feminine action that was strangely at odds with the image she usually cultivated.
“I met Dave—David Hansen. He’s the overall sales manager of Global Computer Sales. Twelve years ago, he was what I guess you’d call a shipping clerk. The company operates mainly online selling refurbished computers, hardware, and software. You buy it online from their website, they ship it to you.”
“That’s why they need the lockups—to store the computers.”
She nodded. Thunder rolled in the distance. There was a steady slapping sound from water spilling from a gutter in the garden.
“The guy has an eidetic memory. He remembered the case. He was there that Monday, collecting some computers. He remembered the cops asking him a few questions, but he had nothing to tell them except that he owned the units opposite.”
“So…?”
“So I remembered some details of the general profile you described, of the organized killer. Dave told me he followed the case in the papers and on the news for the next few days and was disappointed when it just fizzled out and no arrests were made. I asked him if he knew who the lockup belonged to. He said he had met him briefly and sold him some computers. The guy has a real problem with interpersonal skills, especially with women. Zero eye contact, speaks real quiet, like he’s talking through clenched teeth, and I get the impression he is pretty OCD. His office and his desk were not just neat. Everything was regimented and organized according to shape, size, and color.”
“It’s not much to go on.”
“I’m not done. I asked him where he was that weekend, the third and fourth. He said he was away at an IT conference in Los Angeles. He’s a computer nerd and attends conferences on a regular basis. He lives with his mother. There’s more…”
“Okay.”
“I decided to do a background check to see if he had any priors.”
“He has?”
“He’s been arrested on three occasions for downloading child pornography. On each occasion he denied it and was released because they couldn’t find the material on any of his computers.”
I slumped back in my chair. “Nero Wolfe had too many clients, and we have too many suspects. Though child pornography does not of itself suggest he’s a serial killer.”
She shook her head. “I know that. But it is a coincidence that he displays a number of the characteristics often displ
ayed by serial killers, and his company owns the units opposite Peter’s.”
“Yes.”
I stood and started clearing the plates while she tipped her mug this way and that, watching the cold coffee stay on a level plane from every angle. I started washing.
“We have Peter. Evidence against him, such as it is, is that he displays misogynistic behavior toward his wife, he owns the lockup where the arms were found, and twelve years ago he had a job that would have enabled him to commit murders in several states. Not a lot, really.”
She stood, grabbed a tea towel, and started drying what I had washed. “Hank had a girlfriend who might fit the description of the owner of the arms. Had the unit next to Peter’s and has a rap sheet including violence against women. His girlfriend may have gone missing at the time the arms showed up.”
I handed her a wet plate. “We need to get on to that. We need to find where Lynda is. That is a job for today.” I continued where she had left off. “Zak. Crazy as a box of frogs knitting wool bikinis. A disciple of Aleister Crowley, a Hell’s Angel, so no stranger to violence, a self-declared misogynist with a possible serious grudge against Lynda.”
I noticed absently that she had put everything away in the right place. As she closed the cupboard where she had placed the plate, she rounded off, “Dave, nerd supreme, OCD, lives with his mother, his company owns all the units opposite Peter’s, he is and was at the time of the murder frequently away at IT conferences. He turned up on the morning the arms were found, followed the case with interest, and was, quote, ‘disappointed that it fizzled out.’”
“We need to check on that conference.”
“I did. It was real, but there was no way to check if he was there.”
We stared at each other for a long moment, holding each other’s eye. It was something we had got into the habit of doing. Finally, she said, “So what now, boss man?”
“Our number one priority right now is to establish whether the arms belong to Lynda, whether Lynda is dead or alive. So I want you on that right away.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to check missing persons for twelve years ago, plus a year either side, girls in their early twenties, pretty, blonde. I’m also going to check for reports of dismembered bodies, coast to coast.”
As it was, I didn’t get very far. We got to the precinct at eight thirty, and at ten fifteen Dehan put down the phone and said, “I found her parents.”
“Already?”
“Holly isn’t a very common name. I used the phone book, just the way you taught me, Sensei.” She stood, slipping her arms into her jacket. “And you know what? That paper…” She inhaled noisily through her nose, closing her eyes and smiling. “Mmmmm… the smell was just intoxicating!” I sat watching her, wanting to laugh. She said, “You coming, or you just going to sit there and smirk all day?”
SEVEN
It was a ten-minute drive through the hiss and spray of the I-278 and then Bruckner Boulevard. And at ten thirty-five, we pulled up in front of a modern red brick on Throgmorton street. It was pretty and leafy, or would have been if there had been any leaves on the trees. I killed the engine, then we climbed out and crossed the wet blacktop to climb the steps to the front door.
Dehan rang the bell and stood looking at me with flushed cheeks from the cold wind. Her hands were plunged in her pockets, and she was bouncing on her toes.
“I love this weather,” she said. I shook my head, and she said, “No, seriously. It’s honest, real.”
“The weather is honest and real?”
She nodded and the door opened. There was a woman in an apron and carpet slippers. She had permed silver hair and a face that said she was broken but coping. We showed her our badges and told her who we were, and she ushered us toward her living room, telling us to come in out of the cold.
She sat us down at a dining table that she had set for tea and went into the kitchen, calling, “Robert! The detectives are here!”
She came in with a kettle and poured scalding water into a teapot, while soft feet came down the stairs. A man with a bracket of soft hair around the back of his head and a sage-green V-neck sweater came in. He was smiling and had reading glasses hung around his neck. He held out his hand, and we rose to shake.
“Sit down, sit down. Marion has made an event out of this. She is hoping you will finally put us out of our misery one way or another.”
Marion returned from the kitchen, and we all sat again.
I smiled at Marion and said, “I’m afraid not. But we may”—I stressed the word—“have found a lead that will help us to find out what happened to your daughter. We are reviewing a number of cold cases, and it seems your daughter’s disappearance may have some connection.”
Marion was holding the teapot halfway to Dehan’s cup. Her expression was eloquent. It said that unendurable anxiety can become endurable when it becomes your everyday experience. She gave a small sigh and poured the tea.
“Is she dead, Detective Stone?”
Honest and real, like the weather. “We don’t know, Mrs. Holly. That is what we need to find out. Right now, I’d like to know what Lynda was like as a person, about her relationship with Hank, and about the days leading up to the bike rally that weekend in Connecticut.”
Robert drummed his fingers on the tabletop, and you could tell he was biting back tears. Dehan, in one of those surprising moments of tenderness she displayed sometimes, put her hand on Marion’s shoulder and said, “I know this hurts, Marion. Don’t give up hope. We are here to help you.”
Marion clung to her hand, and tears welled in her eyes. I turned to Robert. There was nobody there to hold his hand. I am not given to moments of tenderness, but I was moved to lean forward and put my hand on his shoulder. He nodded and we sat in silence for a moment, listening to the interminable rain pattering on the patio, as though we were honoring the dead.
Marion sighed. “Where do I begin? She was a sweet, adorable child. Full of spirit, mischievous, but with a great, kind heart. Then she hit fifteen and, like a lot of kids, she went a bit wild. She started going to parties, coming home late, drinking. I think she smoked pot a few times. We tried talking to her, but she just didn’t want to hear what we were telling her.”
Robert cleared his throat. “We made an appointment with a child psychologist. She told us we were crazy and we should go. She said she was fine and just having a bit of fun. We did go…” He glanced at his wife. “The psychologist told us we should maybe give her a bit more space, not become her enemy but go along with her a bit, then reel her in gently. She said a lot of kids went through this rebellious phase, then settled. We tried that.”
“How did that work?” It was Dehan.
Marion made an uncertain face. “I think it was working. She introduced us to Hank, which was something. Robert didn’t like him to begin with, but they started working out their differences, didn’t you?”
Robert nodded, then gave a small laugh. “Hank liked to appear the tough guy, but it was more an act than anything else. What he really wanted in life was a family.” He looked at me. “He was an orphan, you know? Grew up on the mean streets. I know something about that. He put on a big display to protect himself, but when we opened our arms to him, he began to soften, stopped showing off, was nicer to Lynda. Confessed to me in private that he was thinking of leaving his gang and asking Lynda to marry him. May God forgive me, I advised him to wait.”
Marion shook her head. “No, Robert, you were right. She would have run a mile. As it was, the nicer he became, the more she started getting bored! A marriage proposal right then would have had her running for the hills!”
Dehan was giving me that “well, whaddaya know?” look. I gave her my “I can’t help always being right” look. I asked Marion, “Do you think she was bored enough of Hank to go off with somebody else from the gang?”
It was Robert who answered. “Yes. To be honest, I do. But she would have come back home first.”
Dehan frowned. “How can you be so sure?”
“Because she had just got her bike license, and we were going out that week to get her her first bike, a Yamaha 250. She was out of her mind with excitement. She wanted that bike more than anything in the world.”
Dehan narrowed her eyes. “I hate to be brutal, but these are Hell’s Angels. They’re all about bikes. Is it possible somebody made her a better offer?”
Robert surprised me by smiling. “That’s not brutal, Detective. It’s a smart question. But the answer is, it was the bike she had chosen, partly because she loved it and partly because her friends in the club had advised her on it. She really wanted that bike. Only reason she wouldn’t come back for it is if she couldn’t.”
Honest and real. The rain had stopped, but an icy wind was bowing the evergreens in the back garden. The bare trees, the skeletons with nothing left to lose, they withstood the wind better.
I asked him, “Have you got a photo of Lynda?”
Marion got up and went to a dresser. She came back with an album. Dehan chose a picture and snapped it on her phone, then Whatsapped it to me. She was average height, fair-haired, pretty, cute, and, by the way she was laughing, bubbly and fun. If you looked a little close, she also had “trouble” tattooed in invisible ink over every part of her laughing self.
“One last thing,” I said, still looking at the photo on my phone. “Would you, by any remote chance, have Lynda’s fingerprints? Or a sample of her DNA anywhere?” I looked at them, and I could see the dread in their faces. I shook my head and smiled. “It is purely a routine question.”
They both shook their heads in silence. They knew I was lying.
Outside, Dehan rested her ass on the hood of my car. The wind was dragging her hair across her face again, so she tied it in a knot behind her head and squinted at me.
“Hank is just a nice guy with a small character flaw where he beats up girls?”