by C R Trolson
“It was on the safety,” he said curtly. “Can’t you see? The three way on the bolt. Before you moved it.”
“One good jolt can fire a Mauser, safety or not.”
Before Radu could argue, she slapped the bolt shut, moved the lever to safe, and put the rifle back, making sure the muzzle was pointed out the back.
Radu made a big deal of taking the rifle out again and inspecting it. He replaced the rifle, stomped his feet, and looked around. He grabbed a flare from under his seat. “I still do not like it. Being here.”
“Think of all that easy money you’re making,” she said and opened her pack, grabbed the large lantern and pry bar. She hung the pry bar from her webbed belt and walked the fifty feet through shallow snow to the top of the stairs.
Radu came up and ceremoniously handed her the flare. “You might need this.” He bowed from the waist and swept his hand toward the stairs. “I’ve done my job.”
The flare was Russian, the body metal with an eye that she snapped on her belt. What was Radu so afraid of? “Why don’t you come with me?” she asked. “You might like the dark. We’ll be all alone, just you and me. Think of that.”
Radu was thinking and being very dramatic about it. He looked around and shivered. He looked at his feet. “I’ll be right here. That is my job.”
“You’re a coward, Radu,” she said, but could not get a rise from him. What was he up to?
She shrugged and started down the narrow, crumbling steps. When her head passed under the ground line, she switched on the lantern. It was true what they said about the walls closing in on you. Syria had not been that long ago. And why was Radu so worried about doing his job?
Twenty steps down, she shined the light on a door of wood planks and iron straps. She pushed the door once, felt it give, rammed it with her shoulder. Three hits and the door opened two feet, grating roughly across the stone. The smell was damp and musty, a field of dead grass, something else, too, like a bag of old coins. At least the air wasn’t freezing.
“Talk please!” Radu yelled. He sounded far away, probably sitting in the jeep, keeping warm and smoking his crummy Turkish cigarettes.
“A door,” she yelled and heard water dripping far off.
She forced the door another foot and poked her light through. Heavy granite blocks glistened from underground springs. She went through the door and turned right. Something cracked underfoot. The spiky teeth of a narrow head smiled up at her. She lit the floor and saw more heads along with the bones and bloody fur of several large rats, freshly killed judging by the wetness of the blood. Wolf? Possibly, but a wolf could not have come though the door. Another entrance? She thought about getting the rifle, but if it were a wolf, her light would scare it off.
She stepped over the carcasses. Wolves were shy. They liked their dens far from the smell of men. They liked their homes dry. The work of a fox? Yes. A fox she could deal with.
She wondered about the possibility of anyone else being down here and just as quickly disregarded it. There had been no footprints in the snow, and, judging by the thick ice on the creek, the road had not been traveled on recently. It bothered her that she’d heard no birds singing from the surrounding forest.
She followed the corridor, stepping lightly, and soon came to a small chamber.
She saw a limestone casket resting on a pedestal of black marble.
Carved into the top, a stone knight slept, his broadsword held close, running the length of his stone body. The cross on his shield was upside down.
The chamber was fifteen feet square. Another corridor trailed off in front of her. Cobwebs and rat droppings glistened. She caught a reflection from the opposite corridor and turned off the bulky lantern. A dim light seeped from the corridor before all was pure black. Had she imagined it?
She stood still, listening and soaking up the blackness and empty dead smell of the place. She took a deep breath and held it but only heard water running in the distance. She was alone.
She ignored her sudden apprehension, putting it off as underground jitters, and turned on the florescent light on the edge of the lantern. The chamber turned ghostly blue.
She touched the smooth limestone face. Depthless, yet familiar, the face reminded her for a moment of Ajax Rasmussen, who, for all his urbane and debonair qualities, had a face from the past, a Renaissance face, like a Borgia or one of the Medici Popes, cruel and munificent at the same time.
It struck her how easy it had been: the job interview, the first-class flight to Paris then Bucharest, finding this crypt on the second day. She was either on a roll or being led by the nose. And hadn’t Radu seemed a little too familiar when talking about Ajax? As if he personally knew the tycoon and wasn’t simply a contract guide who had met her at the airport.
With the point of her Buck knife, a three-inch skinning blade, she traced the line where the lid connected to the coffin. She wondered why the joint was so clean, not mortar filled as it should be. A rifle shot echoed from above.
She backed away from the casket and sheathed the knife. The shot was probably nothing, but she had to check. She’d have Radu’s ass if he was shooting rabbits.
She was down the corridor, halfway to the door, when she heard a heavy grating behind her. Limestone against limestone? No one could be climbing out of the sarcophagus, the lid alone weighed four hundred pounds, but instead of turning to check, she felt herself running for the door, her boots slipping on the fur, the blood, and up the stairs, suddenly very much wanting to see daylight again.
She burst into cold brightness. The orange, rusting Volkswagen. Radu on his back, gasping and throaty. A crown of blood against stark white.
A soldier with dirty red gloves standing stiff legged and mashing the butt of his Kalashnikov into Radu’s face, like a man churning butter. Radu’s arms fluttering slightly. The BRNO in the snow, a good six feet away.
In the background, two soldiers, their Kalishnakovs against a low stone wall, stripped her pack, casually flinging the contents into the snow. There went her box of soap. A hairbrush. Her toothpaste. One pulled royal-blue panties over his head and did a clumsy pirouette.
She slipped the pry-bar from her belt and held it loosely in her right hand.
The crunching from Radu’s face and a possible moan. If she was quick, she could save him. Distract them and go for the deer rifle.
Before she could get close enough to be accurate, Red Gloves saw her. She threw the bar, but he ducked. The bar sang past his head, missing him by a good six inches. Red Gloves waved both arms and yelled at her. The freed Kalashnikov balanced on Radu’s face for an instant before falling into the snow.
The panty-sniffer whipped off his headgear, glared at her, and rubbed the lingerie crotch level. Red Gloves, the leader, pointed at her and yelled at them to stop the horseplay, “Finitzi!”
One pointed at her feet and laughed. She glanced down. Fur and blood covered her boots, dirtied the snow.
All three came for her ducking back and forth, bobbing, weaving, laughing. She saw it in their eyes, why they weren’t shooting her outright. She felt her heart tighten. The closest weapon was the deer rifle.
She unsnapped the Russian flare and twisted the cap to light it.
The laughing stopped.
This was insane, facing them. But she was not going back down those stairs. “Come on, suckers,” she said softly. “Come on, boys.”
Red sparks bounced off her jacket sleeve. Red smoke billowed straight up. The first soldier came in high, leading with his chin. She faked a kick. He dropped his hands. She rammed the metal flare in his mouth, breaking teeth, stopping at the back of his throat.
She stepped back. Left him with the flare. Smoke falling from his nose. His cheeks glowing. He screamed and jerked the flare loose. He spit teeth and burning sulfur. He dropped to his knees and shoved snow into his mouth. The snow hissed. His screaming climbed an octave.
Red Gloves and the big one blocked her way to the rifle. She could not slug it out
with them.
With no choice, she turned for the stairs. The big one moved with surprising speed and picked up a rock. She ran, trying to duck. A sudden white flash. A sickening, far away crack.
She dropped, the snow strangely warm against her face. She heard them but could not move. From the corner of her eye they got bigger and smaller. They laughed and clapped their hands. They jumped up and down. Clear white, then fuzzy. Bright and hazy. She felt them dragging her through the snow, flopping her over, the howling of their buddy over it all.
She saw them clearly and in slow motion. Red Gloves pointed between her legs and picked up the still burning flare, making upward thrusts with the sputtering end. The big soldier shook his head violently. He jerked his hips, made kissing noises, and laughed.
Red Gloves seemed to agree that other possibilities must be explored before cauterization and poked the flare in the snow, upright like a candle. Sparks had caught his coat sleeve on fire and he slapped at the flames with his red gloves.
The big soldier sat on her hips and tried to kiss her. The arm holder, she thought, the leg spreader.
To the side of her new friend, Red Gloves dropped his pants to reveal yellow stained shorts. The sun, now red, balanced on his shoulder. He stopped to scratch himself. He loudly cleared both nostrils in the snow.
Radu was dead. The burned soldier was sobbing. The big one on top of her had freezing, nasty hands inside her jacket, busy with her breasts, his tongue in her ear as he murmured sweet nothings.
Radu was dead but she was alive and the feeling was coming back to her hands.
Red Gloves nonchalantly played with himself, getting ready. He spit on his gloved hand, for lubrication no doubt, mumbled something, and advanced. He tried to pull the big soldier off her. The weight eased from her right arm.
Red Gloves yelled. The big soldier pawed at the Buck knife sticking out of his eye.
She rolled and kept rolling and praying and running, feeling slow and ponderous and stumbling and getting her feet right, finally, heading for the rifle and hoping it was loaded, hearing the heavy steps behind her.
Half expecting to be tackled, she jumped for the rifle, grabbed it, rolled over, checked the safety was off, and pulled the trigger. Nothing. She jacked in a fresh round and stood. Her head felt hot.
Ten feet in front of her, Red Gloves had tripped with his pants around his ankles. He sat in the snow fumbling with the pistol snagged in his jacket. She aimed from the hip and fired.
It looked, for a moment, as if she had missed, and then Red Gloves frowned and dabbed at the new blood on his chest. She reloaded and fired again, this time blowing off the side of his face. She walked around Red Gloves and gut shot the big soldier. He was so preoccupied with the knife sticking from his eye, gently touching the handle, that for a second he did not notice the hollow point hitting his body. The second shot was higher and ripped apart his padded jacket. Chicken feathers, she saw, red and clotting the snow. The big soldier cooed in astonishment, brought his hands down from the knife, and tried to push himself back in.
The third soldier was up and stumbling toward the Kalishnakovs leaning against the wall. She jacked the last shell in the rifle. She walked around the big soldier, who had tucked himself into a ball, softly crying. She reminded herself to retrieve the knife later.
She felt lightheaded and dizzy and hoped she could kill the last one cleanly.
Reese Tarrant dumped Melissa Cunningham’s purse on his desk. He ignored the flurry of detectives surrounding his cubicle. He ignored the atmosphere of sleep debt and caffeine panic: phones barely cradled before ringing again, reports of new killings as suspects in old killings, heavy-voiced, yelled for their phone call, their coffee, something to smoke, something to eat, some respect, a lawyer.
Homicide and its den of womanless men, he thought. Bachelors, mostly divorced, with hooker girlfriends or barmaids or strippers. Who else would want us? Nurses, yes, don’t forget the nurses.
He spread out Melissa Cunningham’s belongings: a package of Marlboro lights, diet pills, tubes and flat ovals of makeup, make-up brushes, a business card from a talent agency, a hastily scribbled number tagged “Mom.” There were pens and rubber bands and paper clips, a red brush with strands of raven hair wrapping the tines. A man’s comb. He found no rubbers, no vaseline, no joints, no rolled up crank or coke or smack, no hitter pipes, no needles, no bent spoons, no knives or ice picks, no tiny automatics. It was a clean purse in that respect. The purse of someone who still had hope.
Lieutenant Steve Carsabi walked up and slipped into the chair opposite him. He was snake thin, a dark face, bloodshot eyes. Reese wondered why he looked so glum. “I hear you caught a big break,” Carsabi said. “Hernandez kept the victim conscious until you finally showed with Bulow.” Carsabi raised his eyebrows to signal he doubted anything Hernandez might say.
“Hernandez?” Reese shook his head. “He carries three pistols. His service automatic, two compacts on each ankle.”
Carsabi bit the bottom of his lip and said, “Hernandez.”
Reese continued, “My big break, as you call it, is a sketch. Nothing at the crime scene, as usual. You read the report.”
Carsabi nodded. “She didn’t know the killer.” Not a question.
“Our boy’s too shy for that, but I asked.” He remembered nearly twisting her ear off. “Had to.”
Carsabi looked at him briefly and began. “The suspect follows the female victim home from a nightclub. When she opens her front door, he comes from behind and clamps a cotton pad soaked with ether over her nose and mouth. This puts her out. He drags her to the kitchen and stitches her mouth shut with baling wire. He pushes short pieces, pre-cut, through her lips and twists them tight with pliers. He removes her clothes with scissors. He inserts a number-eight needle in the jugular vein. The needle is connected with surgical tubing to a two and a half gallon water jug. The kind with the handle on top. The kind you buy at the store.”
“Any store.”
When Carsabi shook his head, tightening lips and eyes, as if sick of thinking about the case, Reese finished for him. “He lets the heart do its work. Then he finds a vein in the groin, inserts another number-eight, hooks it to the kitchen faucet. He’s in no hurry and eats fresh fruit if he finds it. We’ve found apple cores and banana peels but nothing to correspond in the victim’s stomach. He’s very careful and leaves no traceable saliva. Probably brings his own spoon. He once ate a large bowl of bran.”
“He needs the fiber if he’s drinking all that blood,” Carsabi said.
“He puts a rope around the victim’s neck to control her if she comes awake. While the girl is draining, he finds something handy and shoves it inside of her. In Melissa’s case it was a salt shaker. In other bodies he put other things.”
Carsabi said, “The FBI used the term ‘inanimate objects’. Seems an odd way to describe it. Would they consider a dildo an inanimate object?”
“It’s a sex toy. It’s different. Some of them move quite a bit. They have knobs, buttons. Various sizes,” Reese said. He had no idea why he was explaining the functions and mechanical aspects of a dildo.
“Our man was using the salt shaker as a sex toy.” Carsabi scratched his cheek, as if to say that was enough talking about people’s reliance on mechanical contrivances.
“Maybe a sex toy,” Reese said. “Maybe not. He might of been making a statement.”
Carsabi shrugged. “I’ll bet a lot of gals out there consider men inanimate objects.”
“Especially FBI men.” It bothered Reese when Carsabi got philosophical. He didn’t know whether Carsabi was trying to solve the case or appear a deep thinker. He cleared his throat. “When the heart stops he turns on the water to flush the blood. And then he cleans up the kitchen, spotless. He takes her clothes with him. He wipes down the body in case he’s left a strand of hair or a fiber from his own clothes. A very tidy boy.”
“But this time he left Melissa Cunningham alive,” Carsabi said. “So
mething made him run before he was finished draining her.”
“She might have slugged him,” Reese said. “I don’t know. Kicked him. There was nothing under her fingernails, so she didn’t scratch him. She couldn’t scream. Maybe he thought she was dead. Who knows? The fact is he left a live witness, barely alive, and I have a sketch. I’ll take a break anyway I can get it.” Reese pulled the sheet of heavy art paper out of Melissa’s murder book and slid it across to Carsabi. “On the other hand, it may be nothing.”
Carsabi looked at the sketch and whistled softly. “Looks like my neighbor, an insurance salesman, stays up till two in the morning reloading shotgun shells. Belongs to a skeet shooting club is the explanation.” Carsabi kept looking at the sketch and nodding. “Doesn’t look like a killer, but they never do. They always look so damn normal. What’s it say about us when we can’t tell the good from the bad?” He slid the sketch back to Reese. “Unless Bulow is slipping?”
“No,” Reese said and touched the face Bulow had drawn, wanting to ask Carsabi why he was spying on his neighbor at two in the morning. “It’s what Melissa described.”
“The media’s calling him ‘The Anaheim Vampire.’ Since he started in Anaheim and takes all the blood….”
“Catchy.”
Carsabi bit his lower lip, looked away. “The Mayor’s office has been getting pressure from the city supervisors and the people.”
“The voters, you mean.”
“The voters want containment,” Carsabi said. “They don’t know what containment means, probably, but they want it. They didn’t care about the first eleven girls, they were hookers, but now that our boy has switched to more respectable types….”
“Victim twelve managed an IHOP, single mother of one. Melissa Cunningham was a model. Clean record, still, not even a ticket, no hustling. She wanted to be an actress.”
“My grandmother wanted to be an actress,” Carsabi said, almost wistfully. “Anyway, Miss Cunningham wasn’t a prostitute, yet….”
It was a strange way to say it, he thought. Carsabi seemed distracted. “What is it?” he asked the lieutenant.