“Man, things are good! Aren’t they, beautiful? Aren’t they? I know you can see how good they are!”
The expanse of eyes on Carvers’ back stared blindly up at him, unanswering.
He nudged her with an oily, newsprint-stained toe, his black nails sharp, scratching the skin.
No response.
He leaned down, slipped his arms through her armpits, and lifted her up in a full nelson. What could be seen of her flesh from behind was pale and lifeless. Her head lolled to one side as he grabbed her by the waist, balancing her weight into a standing position. Her legs were wobbly poles of rubber; her muscles lifeless, weak.
“C’mon, baby. Do the dance for me. The one you did for me before. C’mon, you know I need to see it.”
Her head remained bowed, involuntarily shy.
He reached up, harshly grabbed her chin, and forced her face to look at him, squeezing her temples to make her real eyes bulge out. “I said dance! Do you dare disobey me?”
A gray line of saliva spilled from her purple lower lip.
She’s still alive.
He let go. She sprawled on the newspaper. Angrily, he trampled out of the room and went to the kitchen, leaving the bedroom door open, confident she didn’t have the energy to escape. He yanked open a drawer where silverware should have been, and removed the hypodermic needles and junk he’d taken from the hooker’s purse. The slut—the bitch who was his biggest waste of time because she didn’t get any press for him—his mother of all creation. She did have the goodies in her bag, though. Goodies that came in very handy at times like these…
Kilpatrick carried the drugs back to the bedroom, and eagerly injected Carvers, plunging the sharp syringe into the saggy vein that stood out on her skinny, malnourished neck. The drugs—liquid trip?—were miracle workers.
Carvers’ eyes shot open, robotically, as if a switch had been turned on.
“Awaken,” he said.
She smiled at the sound of his voice—the eyes on her body colored with blood, warming up to him. Like bedroom eyes, they all fluttered, swallowing him seductively.
“Wanna dance for me, honey?”
“Shhh-errr.” She bent over, crawled toward the bed, and slowly worked her way up to a standing position, her bones bending in awkward angles like sticks of rubber.
Kilpatrick jumped into the bed, slipping his soiled underwear down to his ankles. He sat up against the soft, wooden headboard. He placed his chin on his hand and pondered.
“Why don’t you do the belly dance for me again, baby?”
Her eyeballs clocked back and forth beneath the lids. She smiled a gap-toothed smile, revealing blackened gums.
Kilpatrick smiled back. He slid a free hand toward his erect lap.
Slowly, drunkened with drugs, Carvers swirled her bony hips from side to side. She hummed a mucousy tune, the corners of her mouth bubbling with white, foamy spit. The eyes on her breasts gleamed, blaring rays of light at Kilpatrick as they jiggled loosely back and forth like leaky water balloons. The nipples were splotches of purple and white.
He looked down at her pelvis, her sunken abdomen…the only spot on her sickly white skin that was not colored with ink, that was not tattooed.
He thought it was amazing how intricately the muscles of the torso worked to produce such a sexy motion as belly-dancing. He watched the scabby red and exposed area—the patch that had provided a canvas of flesh for the museum piece, the large square that he had replaced with a pane of window glass to keep his full-body mural of eyes from spoiling. The thick square of glass had polished, silicon-lined edges and smooth, rounded corners—perfect for fitting snuggly beneath the uppermost layers of exposed dermis and fat—which prevented slippage from cutting her up inside. Lengthy, fabric-reinforced strands of black vinyl packing tape bordered the wound that encircled her exposed innards, effectively sealing the near-fatal exhibit with a mixture of both glue and hardened scabs. She had bled profusely when he removed the square of skin—but Kilpatrick had the foresight to cut only so deep, in order to leave a thin sheath of membrane to hold her organs in place—and he had cauterized the edge of the cut with a book of matches and a can of lighter fluid. It wasn’t perfect—infection had spread—but this only added interesting color to the artwork. She was Kilpatrick’s private piece of performance art, a dancer fit for a King’s private musings, and he was entranced by her beauty as much as his own craftsmanship.
He hadn’t expected her to survive this long, if at all. But still she danced for him. He did not question why: it could have been the drugs or his magic ink, but Kilpatrick was certain that his demon was ultimately responsible. Her survival was a gift, a reward, for finally going public on TV.
And like television, she would not last forever. He had to spend the time enjoying her while he still could. It was hypnotic watching the white tendons and pink, stringy sinew clenching, undulating, working her hips from side to side, weaving its magic on his groin. It was like watching color television, seeing the foamy blood squishing around inside, entrails pressing against the shiny plate of glass like mutant eels in a red aquarium, squirming to get out.
Looking inside the clear screen on her stomach, the muscles churning inside with no hope of escape, he was reminded of the place he had once been isolated, trapped. But he was now free from those vicious and slick curves and crevices of his brain. Free from his hell, his demon.
Only three unforeseeable pictures remained of the seven in his gallery. The first four were now burned away by the flash of his camera, transformed into the pictures he now had on his bedroom wall. Three more photographs to take. Three more flashes. He intuitively knew that photos of the cat or Carvers would not permit him to purge these final three images from his mind. Besides, he now lived with these transformed creatures—they were his playthings, sketchbooks to keep him occupied as he planned for his future masterpieces. The cat was merely a messenger, a letter written in animal flesh.
His gallery would soon be empty; he would soon be controlled no longer by the unknown scenes that were buried in the walls of his psyche. He would soon be free.
Free. Free to create, unburdened, uninterrupted. To create the ultimate freestyle tattoos. The world had seen nothing yet. His public museum was only beginning to take shape. Soon the world would beg for his needle’s pierce…for the Kings of Inkland’s sacred markings….
For now, though, he would have to settle for a little private celebration with Carvers, his Queen of Vision.
IV.
The van packed up and left. Roberts stayed behind.
Corky couldn’t help but laugh as he washed the makeup from his face in ice cold water. “Your guys sure did a good job of covering up my shiners.” The flesh-colored makeup fell from his eyelids in clumps, revealing the hazy, brick-red bruises that still circled his eyes from the day he put someone in the hospital. Corky stood and looked at the black eyes in the mirror above the aluminum sink. He made a tsk sound with his mouth, then said, “My first time on the tube. Hope it gets me some customers.”
Roberts sat in the leather couch in the front of the shop, smoking a cigarette. He put his feet up on Corky’s magazine table. “Yeah, they’re good artists, too. It’s amazing what those makeup people can do.”
Corky sat down at his desk, still smiling. “Hope I didn’t sound too much like a bookworm. I didn’t, did I? I’d hate to come off like a nerd in front of millions of people.”
“I doubt KOPT is seen by millions of people. And no, you were perfect. They’ll probably edit out some of the bad shit—the curse words and all—but I’m sure you’ll look fine.”
“Ya know what, typewriter man? I think you’re right. I was good!”
Roberts faced him. “Thanks, Corky. I owe you one.”
“No problem, dude. The way I see it, I owe you. To me, that whole interview was no
thing more than free advertising for this joint.”
“Yeah, and with all that ‘free advertising’ the Tattoo Killer’s been getting, I think you did a good job of cutting him down a peg or two.”
Corky chuckled. “Maybe I shook him up, I dunno. If I ever meet this fuckhead, I swear…”
“Well, your threatening him during the interview might not end up on the air. My boss might cut it.”
“Fuck your boss. It had to be said.”
“Agreed.”
Corky looked up at the clock (a beer bottle advertisement with hands and no numbers). “What do you say I close down here, and we go out and celebrate my TV debut?”
Roberts was startled by the offer. He thought about Schoenmacher, alone at his house. He wondered if Lockerman had found any new leads. He thought about Corky—did he consider Roberts a friend now? Regardless, Roberts realized that he didn’t have his car anyway (he cursed himself for being too wimpy to drive this morning—he could barely remember exactly what it was that had got to him), and figured he could hitch a ride from Corky after a few beers.
“Well…if you’re sure that you won’t miss any customers…”
“Thursdays aren’t the only days that suck around here.”
Corky turned off the lights, locked the back door, and put equipment into cabinets, locking up his gear.
He grabbed his leather jacket—it was shiny new and black as a beetle, but covered with dirty patches obviously transplanted from an old jacket. He walked toward the front door, expecting Roberts to follow.
Roberts remained seated. What’s the matter, Roy? Too scared to go out drinking with a biker?
“Shit, I guess,” Roberts said. “I could sure use another beer.” They exited into the red-skied warmth outside. The air felt thin in his lungs. “Where to?”
Corky locked the front door and checked the knob. “My place.”
CHAPTER TEN
I.
Dan Schoenmacher leaned back in Roberts’ shiny black leather recliner. The material squealed against his back, as if it were fresh out of a showroom.
It’s just like Roy to buy an expensive chair and never sit in the thing. Furniture is just like women—they’re meant to be used, the fabric needs to be loosened up.
Andy Griffith was on the television set. Schoenmacher ignored the show—everything but the theme song, which he whistled along with. The current episode was something about how bug-eyed Barney put his girlfriend behind bars for some silly reason. Schoenmacher couldn’t quite follow the story line, but more importantly, he couldn’t understand how such a cute young girl could be attracted to the chicken-necked and gangly deputy.
He lifted a warm beer bottle and scratched his chin with its mouth. His new black whiskers made a bristling noise. He imagined it was like petting a porcupine.
He set the beer on the coffee table, beside an unread copy of Newsweek and three empty brown bottles. He began to vigorously rub his chin, cheeks, and sideburns. The stubbly flesh felt foreign, alien—as if it weren’t his own. It was the first time since college that he’d let his daily routine of shaving go. Even at Metro State he had shaved every morning, but during finals week he grudgingly let it grow. Back then his chin was nothing more than peach fuzz, but now…
Schoenmacher stood, walked across Roberts’ living room, and went to the bathroom. He pissed out the morning’s beer—the urine seemed to be light brown in color—and then looked at himself in the mirror. The reflection was not his own. Some bearded freak with owl-eyes and pink zits stared back at him, parroting his every motion.
His first real beard. He felt like a certified mountain man.
It wasn’t him at all, but he felt no urge to pick up a razor and shave it off. Instead, he went to the kitchen and got another beer to share with the Mayberry gang. Andy was lecturing Barney on the lessons of love. Schoenmacher hated Andy…he was such a damned know-it-all, always so fucking perfect.
He reminded Schoenmacher of Roy.
Schoenmacher looked down at the clock on Roberts’ VCR. Only one more hour till Eyewitness News. Sixty painfully slow minutes until he could see his beautiful Joo-day on the screen, smiling her cute overbite for the entire world to see. An overbite he alone had touched, licked with his tongue. A neck he had caressed, lobes he had nibbled on, perfume he had inhaled, breasts he had barely touched….
A perfect night, destroyed.
What was it she had said? That she didn’t want to see him again? Did she really think she could cut off their relationship, just like that?
She doesn’t know what she wants. Somebody’s gotta show her, and it might as well be me.
He thought about the date, trying to pin down what went wrong. It couldn’t have been him, he knew. It was the cat. The shock of the cat running inside and jumping on her lap. Horribly tattooed.
Tattooed…I was supposed to show her my tattoo. Instead she saw Clive’s.
The image of the cat’s transmuted body flashed in his mind: it looked like a scrawny and naked human body with two jester’s hats cocked sideways on the top of its head. And its face, clownlike and menacing, ferocious and seductive, was no longer Clive’s face at all…but Judy’s.
The cat was Judy.
And in many ways, the cat always had been like Judy. Frigid. Tramping around like a slut in heat every once in a while, whenever it suited her, and not knowing why, not understanding her inner sexuality. Never fulfilled, and always running back home for lack of a better place to go when she was done flirting with the men who flocked around her. Never knowing a good thing when she had it.
He looked down at his Birdy tattoo. She had chewed him up and spit out his feathers. It wasn’t fair.
He rubbed his beard again, pluming it.
The TV whistled, and Schoenmacher realized that Andy and Barney were over. He tweeted along with the theme song, snapping his fingers.
The commercials came on abruptly, and Schoenmacher chugged on his beer. He thought about his beard—he had heard once that men grow more hair on their face during a lifetime than they do on their heads. He wondered how much he had shaved away, how many whiskers he’d gotten rid of.
Clive, too, was shaved. She would grow back her hair, wouldn’t she? Her fur would grow right over those ugly tattoos. Sure, she’d be fine. It would probably be itchy at first—damned itchy—just like the foreign stubble on his chin. Except all over her body.
Nature would take its painful course.
And so would Schoenmacher. He’d show Judy that she could change, too. That he could teach her how to love him. All he needed was a chance. A chance to warm the frigid bitch up…
He took another swig of beer. Only one half hour until that wondrous voice came on, singing a mating call meant only for him.
II.
Lockerman thought about Tina, wondering why in hell he couldn’t remember what she looked like without resorting to the photographs in the police file.
I’ve made love to her, I’ve kissed her deeply, inhaled her scent and looked deep into her eyes…I’ve stared at her as she slept beside me for an entire nighttime…and now I don’t even remember what the hell she even LOOKS like!
Angrily, he leaned forward and reached for the file on his desk. He slipped out the glossy photographs—it was quite a large collection now, a book’s worth of dead bodies,—and quickly rifled to Tina Gonzales’ pictures. The white border of the photo paper had turned yellow with time, fading like his own memories.
He longed for those times again, wishing he could change them. To have a real relationship with her, to yank the girl out of the gutter and make her legitimate, maybe even settle down with her and start a family…then he’d be holding real pictures in his hands, pictures of their wedding perhaps, instead of these.
He couldn’t wait to hold mug shots in his hands, photographs of
the bastard who did this to Tina—and to him—his face battered and bloated from the beating he knew would come once he found him.
Gotta find him first, man.
Lockerman leaned back in the wooden chair, contemplating all the tattooed messages. Could there be a clue hidden within the ugly letters of the coarse, racial slurs in Rodriquez’ earlobe?
He leaned forward, hunching over a pad and paper. He mixed the letters up, tried to form anagrams from the list of symbols. He could find nothing in the crossword puzzle of letters. Just the letters themselves—stupid, senseless letters. As meaningless as the deaths themselves.
The stack of photos on his desk gave him an idea: all of the victims almost fit perfectly with the Killer’s hate list. They were all minorities…except Kuhlman, and the cat (a victim of tattoos, but not exactly dead…just removed of its own identity, which was worse). Why did he kill Kuhlman, then? Was it an accident? How did it fit into the pattern? What was the logic?
There is no logic. I’m dealing with a psychopath.
He looked down at his listing of letters and numbers. They were a jumble of nonsense. He balled up the paper, tossing it in the trash.
Why does he write on his victims, then?
His mind registered an answer, a lesson from history of another psychopath who used a technique similar to the Tattoo Killer’s: Adolph Hitler, using tattooed numbers to identify prisoners of war in concentration camps, like Auschwitz. Tattooing the oppressed people, stealing their identities from them, yanking their culture and personality right out of their souls through torture and pain, replacing them with letters and numbers in ink, their only identity a string of numerals tattooed permanently on their skin. And then, after years of persecution, removing even all that by killing them off. All six million of them.
Grave Markings: 20th Anniversary Edition Page 21