There was something about the doctor’s discovery that disturbed me at a visceral level. I created and discarded lines of inquiry quickly, trying to glean a purpose for the attack. It was the idea that something had been intentionally inserted into the man and the victim further degraded by having objects left behind. Like he had been colonized. The disregard for his humanity was total.
While I had been ruminating on the crime, the Baron sat patiently. “Cazimir, is there anything else of note in the article?” I asked, hopeful.
“Most certainly, Ring. I am confident you will find one fact fascinating. You see, she was charged, but she escaped after charming a youthful jailer into an unplanned release.” A mirthless smile curled his lips. “But bureaucracies can be useful at times, and the record of the allegations remains, despite her absence. I’ll email the newspaper, as well as the court documents, but you may begin with the most important fact of all--Sandrine DeStot. Her name.”
And with that, the search for Elizabeth narrowed in our favor.
47
Saturday night arrived ,and the girls began their usual preparations for a special kind of evening out. Dressed in demure attire, they wore little makeup and jewelry. Their hairstyles were modest, and their heels were low.
They were going to evening Mass at St. Maurice’s on Stirling Road, as they did on occasion. The reasons for attending were varied, but, in Wally’s estimation, legitimate. An inveterate sinner, Wally’s Germanic and Latin heritage demanded that she atone for her foul language while driving. Risa, a caring friend, chose to support this decision by attending a Catholic Mass, despite not having a gentile bone in her body. This tradition served a multitude of purposes. Wally was able to experience a religious catharsis fewer than three miles from home, which was both convenient and beneficial to her soul. It was also an opportunity for her, and, by default, Risa, to gain the high ground on me and my unrepentant Protestant spirit. Wally appreciated the fact that Saint Maurice led a Roman legion to honor. Risa found the protection of Saint Maurice given to swordsmiths a fascinating and noble attribute. The fact that the priest was a dashing forty-year-old ex-professional volleyball player from California had little to do with their interest in hearing Father Kevin call the catechism in his robust baritone. Of course, I chose to ignore their base reasoning for such a shameful dalliance with the Holy Spirit, but only to promote harmony in our home.
I also got the house to myself for two hours each week, which I used to the fullest by sleeping on the couch, eating pizza, and other constructive activities. On this night, though, my restlessness got the better of me, and I decided that research was in order. An idea had been percolating in my mind, so nascent that I had not shared it at all, but the quiet house gave me an opportunity to do some internet searching. I knew that vanity was a hallmark of many immortals. Pride and vanity were two sides of the same coin, an Achilles heel to be exploited when dealing with immortals. Surely, I reasoned, Sandrine had left her mark elsewhere. Given her earliest mention, it would most likely be in print. Her career had been decades long when I was born. That type of trail was difficult to mask in full, especially as the digital age brought dim history to the fingertips of the curious.
And my curiosity was intense.
I scrolled through newspaper databases until my eyes were bleary and the screen pulsed with haze. Microfiche news items had been transferred into a grainy torrent of forgotten scandal and crime. The process was cumbersome, as I translated passages from French, Portuguese and Spanish newspapers into small vignettes. The resulting syntax was broken English that I followed to a gradual conclusion.
Sandrine was a French citizen of unknown origin. She presented herself in court as a demure woman of the middle class who was surprised to have been charged with a crime but was too mannerly to ridicule the notion of her guilt, preferring to let the court see the absurdity of her presence in the hall populated by the brutal side of mankind. Marseilles. Lisbon. Earlier, Morocco. All sites of her curious bloodlust and places where she had slipped the leash of justice through murder, wile, and bribery. It seemed that Sandrine was a humanist, free of conscience. I couldn’t wait to meet her. I felt like I needed Risa’s logic or Wally’s intuition, paging through newspaper columns that breathlessly urged public awareness and vigilance in the hunt for a killer. All, of course, in the name of safety. And, incidentally, advertising sales. I thought of Wally and how she would be mooning at the handsome priest, elbowing Risa as he moved through the Mass. It took a joyful soul to treat a religious ceremony as a source of sexual playfulness. It was congruent with Wally’s sunny disposition to find romance in the austere grasp of a celibate priesthood. Finding such pearls was her gift.
And in flash, I knew where to find Sandrine. Why would a woman who harbored a century of arrogant disregard for men go among the chattel to be judged worthy? Nightclubs, bars, the stale air of bookstores and cloistered pretentious shops, these were beneath her. I began to warm to Sandrine’s thoughts, her need to prequalify men as lonely. Free of families. Devoid of serious relationships. Out of their normal element, or uncomfortable in their stations. Perhaps, a bit desperate and willing to be put in a vulnerable position to get something that they needed in order to feel like a man. There was only one type of woman who granted a man the satisfaction of a virile identity far beyond his charms.
I sat back down at the keyboard and typed Escorts. South Florida. French. A single ad came up. With a picture. Her eyes were stone flat above a perfunctory smile. “Hello, Sandrine” I said to the air.
Gotcha.
48
I pinged the Baron with the news and found myself inordinately pleased with his reaction when he signed on and we began speaking.
“Impressive, Ring. You’ve made a logic leap that I would not have contrived in any amount of time. How will you proceed? She is quite dangerous, despite your abilities.” He was understating the case. She was terrifying. There was something deeply offensive about her method of killing. I knew that murder in and of itself should be the supreme violation of a person, but Sandrine brought new elements of fear and disgust with her crimes.
“I’ll have to approach her as a customer. A public meeting is too uncertain. I don’t know how cagey she is, but I’m betting that, after a century or so of predation, she’s hard to corner. So it has to be me, alone, and I have to take her alive, at first.” I needed interrogation rather than instant elimination. It was new territory for me.
“She won’t be held. She cannot be domesticated for the purposes of turning on her own kind. That means you must act quickly, decisively, and with a maximum violence in order to subdue her.” Cazimir’s tone was instructive but urgent. He knew that paralysis of any kind would mean my death, and it could happen at her leisure.
“My last name, Byk? You know the meaning?” he continued. “It is the word for a bull, an animal never known for subtlety.” He smiled at me and put his hands up in an imitation of horns. “Bulls are always charging, they do not submit lightly. They are capable of enormous destruction in a short amount of time, crushing and using bunched muscles to drive them ever forward until they win. Or die. There is little middle ground in the mind of the bull. But, in spite of our name, my family has chosen to live through avoidance, some would even say deception. We had to, in order to survive a vicious political landscape through these centuries. Europe has been at war, Ring. War of unending variety and violence. There have been countless local skirmishes due to petty feudal grievances about succession, lands, money, religion, divorce. The reasons are as varied as the dates that blood was shed in the name of some forgotten lord, born of a cause lost to the depths of time. Only the bones remain, Ring, and they pave the continent with the residue of sorrow, each death piling on the last in a tower of loss that would scratch at the heavens if it were made real. Do you know who pays the price of royal vanity? The rustics. Stoop-backed laborers enslaved to their land, their pittances worried away by men they never see who give them nothing. My fami
ly took only from the forest; we would not bear the shame of a parasitic existence on the shoulders of the poor. So we have hidden our herd, and our family, and our wealth in this life, by folding ourselves fully into the green depths around us. Do you know of the KGB?” he asked.
I said, yes, of course. Who didn’t?
“The KGB is timeless. If one goes far enough back in Soviet history, their name changes, but their sinister purpose and brutality remains unchanged. Before the KGB, there was the NKVD, the OGPU, oh, so many names, Ring, but always called by their original name: the Cheka. How they were feared. We took in ragged refugees often; their flight from the organization in power at the time was that of a terrified animal. The Slavic fetish for paranoia did not begin with the Bolsheviks, though. Even as far in the past as the reign of Tsar Nicholas, there were secret police that walked amidst the populace, ever vigilant for enemies of the state. Real or imagined, Ring, there were always bodies for the hangman. The Cheka used to drive cars know as Black Crows. To see one park in front of a neighbor’s house was a death sentence for the unfortunate subject of their gaze. There are several Black Crows rusting into the moss near my home, along with many other cars, long rows of decrepit boxes rusting through the somber colored paint from the Soviet years. ”
“Who owned the other cars, Cazimir? Surely not all of them were serious threats to your home. Your family. Or your secrets, for that matter.” I was dubious about the guilt of so many; doubtless, their bones were forgotten under the leaves of decades, a secret garden of missing souls under the towering canopy.
“Not all were secret police, true. Many were commonplace thieves masquerading as local officials, their greed too powerful for their fading common sense. Hunters visited our land, too, to be turned away peacefully whenever possible. Unintentional interlopers trod the Bialowicza for all manner of reasons, many coming due to richness of the land in a starved time. Oh, the Soviets and their execrable Five Year Plans. So many victims of the State during those years, just as the Tsars had done to the serfs. A different flag, but the same hunger and pain.”
“We were not unknown, you may surmise. Myths surrounded our private enclave, and we fed them whenever possible. Is it not better to avoid confrontation altogether, even if that means embracing a false, supernatural identity? I think so, although I wish our attempts had been more fruitful. The automobiles dissolving into the earth are a testament to my own personal failures to be less visible. So many, like dying poplars along a rutted track.” His gaze was distant, loaded with the burden of time.
“Do you see why I must stay here, in this lonely, verdant prison? Why I wish Elizabeth to come home? I am no coward, Ring, but I am chilled to the bone by the thought of losing her. That is why it is so bitter for me to have you do vile murder on my behalf, regardless of the greater service you are giving to mankind. “
I knew a great deal more about the man after his call. I wondered if children ever really knew how much their parents loved them. Was that even possible? My resolve hardened after hearing a history that made the forest seem ever more desirable. When the girls got home, I would tell them that time was now of the essence, and I would be making plans with Sandrine as soon as possible.
Tomorrow, if all went well, it would be a brief but memorable date and the last of Sandrine’s poisonous career.
A lover is coming, Sandrine. And I will be most attentive.
49
From Risa’s Files
This Weekend: Elite French companion available for incall only. Ft. Lauderdale Beach. Donations 550 per hour, 900 for two hours. Room visits only, no travel or dinner possible, although moonlit walks on the beach are possible for select gentlemen. Email for appointment. References required. No locals. Picture unimportant. Mature men preferred. This is not an offer of prostitution but merely for time spent together. All other contact is between two adults at their discretion. Please be properly groomed and respectful of my wishes. Kisses, Sandrine.
50
Gyro could sense my tension even if I chose not to display the turmoil I felt. Planning, waiting. He stayed close to me in the yard as I wandered, apart from everyone else. A fat moon began to rise over the canal, adding a buttery line of light to the flickering panels of cobalt water. Suma and Wally were putting a medical kit together in case Sandrine got the better of me; they would ride together, while Risa drove me to the hotel. Wally’s frenetic energy in traffic was too distracting, so I would sit quietly next to Risa and her projection of quiet calm. I was to meet Sandrine at ten, well after dark. Through email, I had baited the hook with a false persona of a lonely, childless technocrat on business. No wife. No family. A faceless, salaried employee on foreign ground without any discernible defenses against his own carnal needs. I was perfect for Sandrine’s dark purpose, and she scheduled a visit without hesitation.
Under a loose-fitting shirt, I tucked my knife, the cool metal resting with a comfortable heft against the small of my back. I didn’t know if she had the same tendencies as Elizabeth, but I could not allow her hands near my face. Her curious biology precluded any kissing. What a shame. Even if I could metabolize her poison, any slowdown would expose me to her other weapon, and I had no intent of being used as a pincushion. That meant I had to disable her quickly and with maximum force. Sandrine was a nail, and I was the hammer. A gentle touch on my shoulder from Risa alerted me that it was time to go. With a final stretch and pat of Gyro, we paired off, Suma and Wally in the other vehicle, and left for the beach.
Risa drove. I sat loosely, as she quizzed me gently about our plan. Her voice was soothing to my nerves, at least until I would feel my fighting instincts take control with a chill at my neck and a leaden calm in my mind.
“When you walk in the lobby, what’s first?” Risa began.
“It’s too nice a hotel for escorts to work without bribing a staff member. I’ll look for a concierge to recognize me. She might even have a Helper, but I doubt it. It’s too obvious, and they tend to be a bit awkward in upscale settings, especially this close to their mistress when she is killing.” We had discussed the possibility of human collaborators earlier. It seemed thin, especially since three was a crowd when the blood started flowing. Helpers and Friends were like drug dealers. They never died old.
“Elevator up to fourth floor. Her room is a suite on the end, like we expected. It will be quiet there. You have the envelope?” Risa asked.
I patted my pants leg. “In my pocket. I’ll put the money on the bathroom counter. She’ll pretend to check it and come out. I can’t let her undress me or get undressed. I don’t know exactly how she kills, but it’s attached to her. No contact with her hands or mouth. I need to hit her quickly and without hesitation. That won’t be a problem. I’ll go for a knockout and text you immediately. She’s at least a century old, I think, so we won’t be able to hold her for long. I’ll start questioning her right away, but I’ll have to get up to open the door unless you break in. That’s a bit loud, I think, so I’ll have to be fast.”
Risa nodded periodically as I spoke. “Wally’s worried; call her on your way up. Suma, too.”
“What about you? Have I got this?” I asked her as we pulled in the parking lot of the hotel. She turned to me and put her hand on my face.
“You’re too fast for her. But if she wounds you, run. Run fast, and come to us. Come to me. And then we’ll take care of it, or her, whatever. And she’ll regret being born.” Her eyes were bright. I knew she meant it, and I knew she was worried. As I opened the door, she squeezed my hand once and turned away, her pride keeping any hint of tears from my view.
My heels were muffled in the sumptuous carpet of the doorway ,only to clop lightly as I crossed into a tiled foyer with Mediterranean décor. I peeled right to the waiting bank of elevators after a discreet glance around the room. It was staffed lightly, and I saw no obvious candidates in league with Sandrine until I met the eyes of an unblinking bellman. He averted his gaze as I punched the four on the controls and waited for th
e soundless elevator doors to slide open. As the doors closed, I noted his brisk walk to the bar area. Maybe two working with Sandrine, one human, one Helper. I filed that thought and turned to the matter at hand, my heart rate rising slightly as the elevator stopped with a minor twitch.
Odd numbers left, even on right, to the end of the left hall. With a final check of my blade and one other surprise I had, I knocked twice, softly, and stepped back. It was date night.
She opened the door and stepped back as I came in. Thin and waiflike, she had an elfin quality to her bordering on androgyny. A black skirt covered her thighs, and a white silk top clung to her frame. A gold chain hung between her small breasts. She was beautiful, with doe-like eyes and a pixie cut that accentuated her apparent fragility.
I knew better.
“Thomas?” She asked, her voice cultured, French, quiet. I had to remain focused as she sat on the edge of the bed and crossed her legs, displaying them for maximum effect. With a start, I remembered my role and cast my eyes down, playing the awkward john. It was exceedingly easy. She had an aura of refinement that was palpable.
“Yes, hi, hi. Sandrine, hi. May I excuse myself to the restroom for a moment?” She smiled and waved me towards the inner door as I made a show of fumbling with the envelope. I went into the separate bathroom, laying the fee on the vanity and quietly checking my knife. So far, so good. I walked back out to find her in the same position on the bed. Her hand patted the mattress soundlessly, once.
“Do come over, please. Would you care for some wine? Or something stronger? The bar is excellent.”
Her manners were impeccable. I sat. There was a mild tension, but she reached out and grasped my hand, softly, and smiled. “Tell me a bit about yourself. And about what you like. You shouldn’t be nervous. I’m here for you, and I’m very experienced. Would you like to kiss me, perhaps? A massage?” Her flirtation was seamlessly woven with her hand steadily moving about my leg, my stomach, a brief caress of my upper arm. I’d been frisked for weapons in the most erotic, disarming way imaginable. I was impressed, even if she did miss my blade. She was a pro. I could respect that.
Box Set: The Fearless 1-3 Page 13