The Death Collectors

by J. A. Kerley

  “What you waiting for?”

  “Answers,” the older man said, taking another pull on the cigarette. “Thirty-five years’ worth.”

  Lydia hung up the phone and walked to the deck doors. She opened the curtains and stared over the Gulf, swaying slightly, as if dancing to music in her head. A flock of gulls tumbled by, white splashes on blue sky.

  I lifted my head, called to her back. “How did you convince someone to take your place in the courtroom? To become the Crying Woman?”

  She stopped swaying. I was at enough of an angle to see her face go oddly slack, followed a few seconds later by a smile rising to her lips. Lydia turned to me, neck flushed, her breathing fast and shallow, as though aroused.

  She crossed the room in four fast steps and jumped on my chest. Air exploded from my lungs. She smiled down as I struggled to breathe.

  “I didn’t have to convince the pathetic little loony, Ryder. She begged me to hand her the veil. I kept saying, ‘No, Cheyenne, it’s a holy moment.’ She wept and wailed. Finally I sighed and said, “All right, Cheyenne; don’t breathe a word to anyone, and you can go to heaven with Marsden instead of me. I’ll show up in a couple weeks.’ She took instructions to the letter, blew her little head into soup. The cops rounded up a few space cadets who confirmed the woman called Calypso was the Crying Woman…ergo Calypso was dead. No one knew enough to put it all together, so no hounds on my trail.”

  She stepped off my chest and I gasped for breath. Lydia fell to the couch beside me, poked my ribs with her toe.

  “Marsden’s ego laid the groundwork, Ryder. Rumors handled the rest. Along with selected pieces of art fed into the system.”

  “The stolen work of Trey Forrier.”

  For a brief and strange moment, Lydia’s eyes glazed over, her jaw slackened. It took another second for her face to re-engage.

  She said, “You found out about Forrier? And doped out who I was? You’re worth the pittance they pay you. Truth be told, a major reason I selected Dauphin Island was to keep an eye on you. I like to keep the major players close, make sure they’re performing correctly. And, of course…” She raised an eyebrow, waiting for me to finish the sentence.

  “To end our participation when it’s no longer needed.”

  “You were good, Ryder. But since I gave you nothing but disconnected moments of art and weirdness, there was no way you’d catch on. Not in time.”

  “Weirdness like the Cozy Cabins? Candles and flowers and rinky-dink jewelry?”

  “Pulled you into the case, didn’t it?”

  “All the way through verification,” I admitted.

  She jumped from the couch and went from window to window, checking outside, talking over her shoulder. “Verification was the big problem. I sold snippets for years, swatches. Major brokers like Walcott would quasi-verify petty mementos, of course, part of the game: ‘Well, it does seem in the reputed Hexcamp style…’ But provenance for an entire collection? For that I needed a potent authority figure to say, ‘Yes, I believe Marsden Hexcamp created this art.’”

  “Nothing less than a member of the Psychopathological and Sociopathological Investigative Team.”

  She turned and winked. “I’d buried Marie two nights before, planning on creating someone to be my expert. But that meant cutting in a confederate, very costly and dangerous. Then I saw your picture with that ridiculous award, read the story. Here was my authority figure - steeled jaw, eyes ablaze with righteousness, a touch of pompous ass. I dug Marie up, washed her off, and built my little motel scene. I put out bait and my expert came sniffing.”

  “And finding Coyle’s prints. Imagine that.”

  “I made Rubin take me there last month. ‘I wanna fuck somewhere sleazy, Rubin, like where whores fuck…’ He had his own special needs, loved the idea. I figured his fingerprints were still on something in that crummy joint, so it fit perfectly into the plan. By the way, the tape you heard was from a deal a couple years back, Florida politicians and developers divvying up a major construction project.” She looked at Coyle’s head with amusement. “And Rubin always talked like that, nervous, like every project was a state secret.”

  “You must have had fun with Harry and me, making up the swatch that came to Coyle, gave you nightmares.”

  “That’s the trick to a good lie, Ryder, detail and images. When I left the motel, it hit me I should have left art with the body…to give you your first Marsden moment.”

  “So you mailed one to the convent the next day.”

  She poked her toe into my ribs again. “It hooked you, right?”

  “Close,” I admitted.

  “I snuck back and stuck the art above Wicky’s rotting head, called that idiot reporter again: ‘Heidi Wicky in Elrain…’”

  “Why did you have to kill them?”

  “I was in Orange Beach a couple months back, a restaurant, and Wicky walked in. Figure the odds. Her eyes about popped out. I’m not sure if she believed what she saw, but I couldn’t take the chance. They might have started talking among themselves; word might have gotten to an old ex-cop named Jacob Willow. He put an end to our arty little experiments years ago, still gets a wild hair up his moldy ass every now and then, pokes around. I should have added him to my collection of final moments decades ago.”

  “What about Nancy Chastain?”

  “I gave her a chance. I pulled up beside the moron, said hi. Unfortunately for her -”

  “She recognized you. Turned and ran.”

  Lydia winked. “Not far.”

  “And Coyle? He wasn’t a collector, right?”

  She grinned. “That shit framed on his wall? Came from a trip to the hardware store and butcher shop: nails, cords. A couple shirts I rubbed with a pork roast. A chunk of dried cow tongue. Took me under a day to set up.”

  “Hamerle didn’t think Coyle was a collector, but I didn’t buy it. Hamerle had nothing to do with this either, I take it?”

  “Warren couldn’t jack off without an instructional video. But he had been Marsden’s lawyer way back when.” She jabbed me with the foot again. Hard. “But you know that, don’t you, Mister Bright Boy?”

  I nodded.

  “You’re so sharp, Ryder. Let’s play Match Wits with Lady Calypso: What was my main reason for working at Hamerle, Melbine and Raus? Hint: It wasn’t Rubin’s negotiating expertise, though his reputation added another wonderful layer of validity.”

  The foot in my side again, toying with me, a cat with a trapped mouse. “Come on, Ryder. Think it through, if you can.”

  I thought of friends who seriously collected baseball cards, firearms, antique clothing - all shared one commonality: they knew the arcana of their field. The answer dawned on me. It was brilliant.

  I said, “You communicated with potential bidders on office stationery. Major collectors recognized Hamerle’s name as the lawyer who’d defended Marsden Hexcamp. Hamerle told us he got calls from collectors trying to coax information from him. You created a golden connection.”

  She mimed applause. “No one knew where the art went after Marsden’s death, but everyone had a theory. Most speculated his lawyer ended up with it, or knew where it was. The letterhead confirmed their suspicions.”

  She stood and looked down on me, triumph in her eyes.

  “They wanted to believe, I handed them art. They wanted a connection, I handed them Hamerle. They wanted verification, I handed them you.”

  Chapter 51

  “Hello, Mrs Blovine? This is Miss Barstow again. How are you today? I know, and I apologize. It’s kind of a fact of life here. Perhaps if you took a hose and sprayed it away? No, I’m not telling you to do it. Is your husband there? I’ll wait, thank you.”

  Lydia covered the phone’s mouthpiece with her palm and turned to me. “That Blovine cunt does nothing but whine - the water tastes funny, the beds are too hard, there’s birdshit on the deck…I’d like to take a can opener and rip out her eyes.”

  “If they’ve seen the verification vide
o, the newspaper article, they know who I am.”

  “They didn’t see it until arriving, after your little contretemps. My bidders were advised you lived in the area; they’re smart enough to realize your validation was real, but you weren’t a sympathizer. It made you even more believable, by the way.”

  She pulled her hand from the phone, the trill back in her voice. “Hello, Mr Blovine, Ms Barstow here. I wanted to advise you I’ll be by shortly to…”

  Lydia strung her web, checked her watch, re-taped my mouth, and went on a collection run. I fought my bonds for several minutes, fruitless. Harry was in Baldwin County, Danbury at the station. When I didn’t call, they’d come looking. But I’d be gone, my truck gone. They’d never look next door - there was no reason.

  Twenty efficient minutes later, Lydia lugged a high-end leather suitcase through the door. I craned my head to her. “You’re killing them, right?”

  She set the case beside the others, looked at it fondly for a moment. “You see the tits on that Blovine bitch, Ryder, the big fake hooters?”

  “Hard to miss.”

  “It was all I could do to keep from taking a knife to those porkers, check out the technology. Unfortunately, it’d fuck my plans.”

  “They’re still alive?”

  Her grin was vulpine. “I tell my tightly tied and very frightened bidders a dead cop will be found in the neighborhood. Then I make them eat a couple pills, a date-rape drug. They hit dreamland, I loosen the bonds a bit. They’ll awaken in six to ten hours with two choices. Slip back beneath their rocks and nothing ever comes of this. Or they can go to the authorities, whereupon all hell breaks loose. Investigations, lawyers, publicity…”

  The Lydia/Calypso entity had again read people perfectly - collectors of serial-killer leavings would be sad and insecure people, pathetic grotesques. They were natural cowards who would accept their losses, lick their wounds, and disappear into the night.

  I dug in my heels, spun a few inches to put her in view. “One question’s been plaguing me, Lydia. How did my picture get on the art you mailed to the convent?”

  She looked at me, brow furrowed. “What?”

  “There was a drawing of someone resembling me on it. Erased, but the lab found it. The Eiffel Tower’s in the background.”

  Once again I saw a facial blankness as sudden as lightning, as utter as death. Her eyes glazed over, her mouth drooped. Breathing ceased. Four or five seconds later, the blankness was replaced with an active face. She stared at me.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She turned away and went to the fridge, poured a glass of OJ.

  I considered the strange moment; Lydia/ Calypso seemed to have processed my question, but, finding the input lacking, dismissed it as irrelevant. Was that how her incredibly focused but damaged psyche dealt with confusion, I wondered; the physical machinery locking up while her mind absorbed and dissected unexpected information - some form of disassociative dysfunction?

  “Where did the art come from?” I asked. “The art that went to Marie.”

  She set the juice on the counter, readying for another call. “Even cut into pricey little filets the stuff wouldn’t last forever, Ryder, a big reason I started planning my last score. A couple years back I returned to the source for a few final scraps, figured they’d come in handy.”

  “Forrier.”

  “Cost me three grand to turn a guard at the crazy house. I told him to grab anything from Forrier that looked like art. My thief slipped out a few snippets from the old days…Trey hanging on to the past, I guess. I sent a scrap to Marie, taped a piece above Heidi’s rotting body, left one in Rubin’s desk. Worth every penny to keep you on task, Ryder.”

  “Turned out a good thing Forrier survived the beating you people gave him in Paris.”

  She tapped her temple in the area where Forrier’s was indented. “Hard head, I guess. And you’re right; I got to use him later, twice, actually.”

  “You had his masks from the old days. And you kept killing, Lydia. Right? You had to.”

  She got up from the counter, moved at me like a cat. I took a deep breath, expecting the jump again. Instead, she dropped to her knees and stared into my eyes.

  “You ever see the final moment, Ryder?” she whispered, her breath in my face. “Really see it? That split second when you can see what we’re made of. The moment spills from the eyes, pours across the floor like mud, all kinds of shit wriggling in it. You can feel heat pouring off. Just amazing. It takes someone special to see it, Ryder.”

  I turned my head away, frightened of how she was looking at me.

  “You left Forrier’s masks at your murder scenes,” I said calmly, wanting to get her back to braggadocio and away from thoughts of final moments.

  Lydia put her hand on my face and pushed herself to standing. She sauntered back to the counter. “Freaky things, those masks. Forrier had been an incredible artist, Ryder. Brilliant, visionary. You’ve seen snatches of his work, what do you think?”

  I could only shake my head. She said, “He lost it; maybe when we busted his head. Those masks were pug-ugly. But they kept me safe.”

  I stared at the ceiling. Her ability to drain every possible use from another human being - Hexcamp, the girl in the courtroom, Trey Forrier - was supranormal. A prime danger of sociopaths is, unlike the rest of us, they’re not burdened by emotion or the myriad tasks of normal life - they focus every cell on their needs and goals.

  I watched her dial the phone, slip it calmly to her face. “Hello, Mr Pawalhi? So nice to hear your voice…”

  Minutes later, she left. I raged against my bonds, shrieked into the tape over my mouth. Kept supine by the broom, I couldn’t roll across the floor. I was a mute lump of warm meat, as vulnerable as a naked quadriplegic housed with wolves.

  Chapter 52

  Jacob Willow exited the truck, his shoes sinking into sand. There was no vehicle in Ryder’s drive or under the house. Willow climbed the dozen steps to the small porch at the door. He knocked and surveyed Ryder’s setting. The street held three houses before abutting a finger of scrubby woods. To the east was a big, fancy structure. Ryder’s place and the house to the west were much more modest. It was the beachfront real estate that made them expensive. The truncated street meant almost no traffic. A nice place to live.

  Willow knocked again. Nothing. He retreated down the steps, crossed beneath the house, skirting the fish-cleaning table, the kayak, the picnic table. He walked into the sun and looked up at the deck. A light was on in what was probably the kitchen window. He walked back under the house, listened for sounds from above, footsteps, radio. Nothing but silence. Willow went to his truck and grabbed the cellphone to give Ryder a call, but remembered the detective’s words: things are breaking…I need the phone.

  He sighed, tossed the phone back in the cab. He was preparing to follow it when he thought, What the hell, maybe Ryder ran to the store for something.

  Willow shut the door of the truck, walked to the steps of the stilted house. He slipped on his sunglasses, pulled down his hat, and sat in the hot South Alabama sun, wishing he had another cigarette.

  I’d heard an engine shut off on the vehicle in my drive, a diesel engine, not Harry or Danbury. Who did I know with such a vehicle?

  Willow. His big Dodge truck was diesel. Speaking to him an hour back, I’d mentioned being home waiting for information. Had he gotten the jitters, jumped on the ferry and come to the Island?

  It sounded like something the old cop would do.

  For a moment, a thrill of hope flashed through me, and just as quickly died. Though Jacob Willow was sixty feet from me, about the length of a tractor-trailer rig, there was no way to let him know I was here. It got worse: Lydia would return in minutes; what would happen if she recognized Willow?

  At my knees, the hard-frozen head of Rubin Coyle stared mockingly.

  Willow stood from the step, stretched. It was time to do something else; Ryder was probably on the mainland. The breez
e nearly snatched his hat before he jammed it down. He shot a look toward the Gulf and paused: churning water fifteen feet out and moving parallel to the shoreline. He crossed quickly beneath the house and out to the strand. He stared past the surf line, the Polarized sunglasses cutting glare.

  Willow spotted the dorsal. As he’d thought, shark. Not a big one, thirty inches maybe. It was hunting in the shallow trough between shore and first sandbar, gorging on schooling baitfish. Eat, regurgitate, eat, leaving a trail of red and silver. Sharks never got full: hardwired to eat from the dawn of life.

  Willow watched for a minute until the shark shot seaward over the bar and disappeared into deeper water. Or maybe hovered between the two, hiding in the depths, feeding in the shallows.

  He pulled his hat low against the wind and walked back toward his truck. Cresting the dune line and almost beneath the deck of Ryder’s house, he heard a vehicle crunching onto the broken shells of the lane. He looked up, hoping to see Ryder. Instead, it was a woman in a blue SUV. She stared as he walked into the shade beneath Ryder’s house, then shot a friendly wave. Willow waved back. He watched the woman pull into the drive next door, climbing the steps with feline grace.

  Lydia’s face was dark when she entered. She glared at me, then strode to the kitchen and rattled through drawers. I heard a drawer flung to the floor, a clattering of silverware. She returned holding a six-inch boning knife and knelt beside me. She ripped the tape from my mouth, and jammed the knife against my neck.

  “Someone’s at your place. I can’t see his face, but he’s in a big black pickup. Older guy. Who is it?”

  Black truck. Verification of Willow. But she hadn’t recognized him.

  “I don’t know.”

  She pressed the knife against my jugular. “Don’t lie to me. Who the hell is it?”

  “Probably…a potential client.”

  “Client? For what?”

  “I do a little guide work on my off days, fishing. Vacationers ask around for a guide, sometimes the locals give my name. Check his truck or in the cab, he’s maybe got rod holders.”