by Harker Moore
You’d think that he would be sick of it, after so many hours at the club. But the music was like breathing to him. The source, he liked to call it. His usual bullshit that she lapped up like cream.
The air wailed in the pulse of the strobe light he’d installed. Randy Lancaster smiled, admiring his erection caught in the bedroom mirror. The flash from his rings leaving metal tracks on his retina. But even his patient pussycat would be getting anxious now. He imagined beneath the music the note of a single bell.
He walked on bare feet toward the locked closet. “Here, kitty, kitty,” he called.
CHAPTER
4
Dr. Linsky’s neat office was a relief after the long hours in the cutting room. Sakura sat waiting for the medical examiner to join him. The photo of the doctor’s Russian wife smiled up at him from the desk, a contrast to the images from the autopsies that persisted in his brain—a gallery of the stages of human decomposition. He practiced proper breathing and let the pictures come. Better to endure them while the overload was numbing.
The two bodies recovered from the landfill had been badly decayed, but the eventual identification of both victims seemed probable. Dental X rays had been obtained, and skeletal muscle and dental pulp which could provide good DNA. Linsky had even managed to get fingerprints from one of them.
That particular freeze frame slotted in his brain, then ran in animation. The necrotic skin slipping away like a glove. Linsky fitting it onto his own latexed hand, plumping out the prints to get a good pattern. The attendant had been impressed by the ME’s innovation. Linsky as always would go the extra mile. Sakura had instructed himself to be grateful.
The doctor came in looking drained, his fatigue more pronounced in the starched white coat. Sakura, feeling his own exhaustion, made the effort to pull himself straighter.
Linsky got to the point. “I assume you’d like a comparison with the other two victims.”
“Please.”
“The wrapping of the bodies appears identical,” the doctor started speaking as he sat behind his desk. “The plastic was thick and carefully taped, which accounts for the level of preservation.” He settled back. “If he killed them as quickly as the others, the lab should still be able to detect if they were given Rohypnol. And I saw nothing inconsistent with asphyxiation as the cause of death.”
“Could you determine if the organs were reversed?”
“Decomposition was advanced. But it appears that these two bodies were cut and closed like the others. The staples are there, and the presence of the stainless wire in the cavities is certainly suggestive that the organs were also reversed.”
Sakura nodded. This was as clear a declaration as he was likely to get that the killer’s MO had remained consistent with respect to all four victims. His next question was more problematical. “Any idea how long these two had been out there?”
Predictably, Linsky frowned. “There are too many variables to make any kind of accurate determination. If there had been insect activity, we could have based an estimation on the stages of development in the colonies, but the plastic kept everything out. And since obviously there were no egg deposits before the victims were wrapped, it indicates they came from a clean cool environment.”
“Were they out there for weeks? Months?” Sakura persisted.
“Months, for one. Weeks for the other,” the doctor conceded.
“So it’s reasonable to conclude that these victims fall between Helena Grady and Leslie Siebrig.”
“I would say that your assumption is reasonable.”
“Thank you, Doctor.” He stood up. “I guess that’s all for now.”
“For now.” Linsky’s tired expression turned ironic. “Regretfully, I must assume, we will have other occasions to meet.”
Victor Abbot pressed the remote control. At first the cable news program had been a diversion. Now it was his obsession. He stopped at the Fox channel. For his afternoon fix. Waiting for the host to explode across the screen. On his knees. As if before a shrine. And it didn’t matter how many times he’d seen Zoe Kahn, her image always came as a shock. The insane bloom of blond hair, the excessive red lips moving, spitting words out in order to suck him in. He felt a drool of seminal fluid ease from his penis in expectation. And suddenly there she was. He reached and placed his hand over the flattened face on the screen. Flesh behind the barrier. Static electricity zapped-wiggled from his fingertips.
“So, Dr. French, if you were working in Switzerland you could carry on your research?”
Zoe’s pixels spoke. He squeezed his thighs together. Camera moving . . .
“Possibly, Ms. Kahn.”
Camera back on Zoe . . .
“Let me understand . . . and please call me Zoe. What you want to do is give LSD to potential serial killers to reprogram their brains. . . . But Uncle Sam is having none of it.”
“A bit oversimplified. But you are correct in stating that the United States government has not actively supported LSD research in this country since the seventies.”
“So we’ll never know if you could have transformed a potential Ted Bundy into a choirboy.”
Dancing pixels filled his brain. Cams and cogs shifting, making adjustments for his arousal.
“That’s a somewhat colorful metaphor, Ms. Kahn . . . Zoe. But I do think LSD might be one of the tools we could utilize to rewire malfunctioning neural circuits in the limbic brain.”
“Sounds like brainwashing. . . . What was that movie with those bad-assed British boys?”
“A Clockwork Orange,” the guest said.
“Is that what you want to do?”
Now he could smell it—a top note of ozone, the scent of refined petrol beneath. It filled his lungs, greased his gears.
“From the available research we know that serials are products of a constellation of events both genetic and environmental,” the guest was speaking. “The evil that men do often starts early.”
“How early?”
The how pursed Zoe’s lips, so that he instantly focused on the tiny black hole forming in the center of her mouth.
“There is evidence that the progression toward serial murder may begin in childhood. With LSD we would hope to short-circuit the bad programming,” the guest continued.
“To stop serial killers before they start?” Zoe asked.
The to and -fore gave him another chance at the little black holes.
“Before the primary role of fantasy sets in.”
“No robots, then?”
Grind, grinder, grinding . . .
“Self-actualized human beings,” the guest said.
“But you’re having to do the book instead.”
Grinding . . .
“I’m working on a book.”
“Was the Death Angel going to be part of your research?”
He rose from his haunches.
“Yes, he was.”
“Have you spoken to him since he was arrested?” Zoe asked now.
“As far as I know he is still hospitalized.”
“For the viewers who might have been visiting another planet . . .”
Full face. Eyes, metallic-blue pigment rushing to white.
“. . . the Death Angel was the serial killer who tallied up seven bodies last year before he was finally apprehended by the NYPD.”
Zoe’s pixels resettled into profile.
“Dr. French, you were assisting with the case.”
“Yes.”
“What was he like?”
“Intelligent. Convinced that what he was doing was not killing.”
For the first time he allowed himself to consider Zoe’s guest.
“A real psycho,” Zoe said.
“An atypical paranoid psychotic.”
The guest was so organic. Her flesh didn’t want to stay inside the box. He was having trouble holding on to her pixels.
“Your official diagnosis?”
“My unofficial diagnosis.”
“Are the bodi
es found in the Pennsylvania landfill connected to the two previous homicides?”
Zoe’s pixels suddenly grew brighter, sparked . . .
“I really can’t comment on that.”
“Can you even tell us if you’re working with Lieutenant James Sakura on this new investigation? The Visqueen Murders?”
. . . starbursts going off.
“Is that what you’re calling them, Ms. Kahn? . . . And yes, I’m available if Lieutenant Sakura needs my help.”
He listened . . .
“By help you mean profiling.”
. . . with his eyes.
“Profiling is useful in painting a picture of the kind of individual who might commit a particular crime,” the guest said.
“At one time you profiled for the FBI.”
“I taught at Quantico for several years.”
“Are you currently practicing psychiatry?”
“I’m taking on a few patients.”
The tin man . . .
“Well, you heard it here. Dr. Wilhelmina French is open for business in the Big Apple.”
. . . alive.
His thumb hit the off button on the remote. For a moment he stared at the blank screen, imagining that which had only minutes ago been Zoe Kahn and the doctor dissolve into the dark dimensions of the set. Tonight he would dream of Zoe. In full armor, sheathed in metal, jointed and mounted in bolts. Tomorrow he would think about Dr. French.
Hanae had prepared a meal for the four of them, she and Jimmy, Michael and Willie, together again. She had cooked American, something she did not usually do with guests, except on holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. But tonight she had done the unexpected.
They had sat on the tatami floor, on cushions round the table. That much was the same. And they had eaten everything, Jimmy joking that Taiko could not have done better cleaning the plates. The meal had been good, with talk and laughter, like a fire in the night. Like the light inside her mind that tempered her blindness.
She listened to them now, her husband and her friends still laughing as they cleared the table, telling her to sit, that this was their part. Their part. So easily they divided things, as if they might remain separate from the thing they beheld. They had forgotten what even Western science had learned, that the act of observing was indivisible from the thing which was observed. Last year had taught them all that.
She knew they understood this, that the lie of division was an act of will, a screen that portioned their lives between work and not work. But she could not remain where they had placed her. She was one of them now. Her experience with a killer had made it so.
“Where are we going to sit?” Willie’s voice near the sofa. The metallic sound of a zipper, as she opened the case of her laptop.
“Where do you want to sit?” Jimmy had rejoined them from the kitchen.
“Let’s stay here.” Willie had walked back toward the table. “I think my brain works better here than when I’m sitting on the sofa.”
“So that’s what it takes.” Kenjin had come back into the room.
“I heard that, Darius.”
Hanae smiled. It was good to hear the two of them. She had sensed tonight at the table how they leaned into each other, heads close, their voices seeming to emerge toward her from the same point in space. She had wanted Kenjin and Willie together. At least in this thing she had gotten her wish. Michael no longer seemed so sad as her name for him implied.
“I will fix tea.” She rose as the three of them settled again on the cushions. Their discussion had already begun when she returned.
“Talbot and Rozelli have been going over the missing persons reports,” Kenjin was saying, “pulling out women with a similar history.”
“Have we established that Helena Grady went to clubs?” Willie’s question.
“We have,” Jimmy said. “She was out with friends the night she disappeared. Neither of the other women saw who she left with.”
They fell silent as she placed the tray on the table and sat to pour the tea.
“That smells wonderful,” Willie said.
“It is gyokuro. It was Jimmy’s grandmother’s favorite.”
She filled three cups and passed them. Had they noted the fourth? She poured out tea for herself. She could sense their surprise. On these occasions, it was always accepted that she would withdraw. In the seconds of silence, Taiko came and settled at her side. She lifted the tea to her mouth.
“It might take a while,” Willie spoke first, “matching dental records and whatever else to those bodies.”
“There could be more,” Kenjin said. “He could have started killing them a long time ago. There could be bodies in other landfills.”
Silence again. They were looking at Jimmy, as she knew he was looking at her.
“Have you thought any more about the profile?” Her husband had turned away, his question directed at Willie.
She let out her breath. Sipped tea.
“He’s finding them in bars,” Willie answered. “He’s drugging them, then taking them somewhere where he can kill them and hold them till he can dump the bodies.” She paused. “What does that tell us?”
“That he has reliable transportation,” Kenjin said, “and lives somewhere he can move them in and out of without being conspicuous.”
“He’s in his twenties or thirties, and he’s white,” Willie went on. “He’s nocturnal, prowling the clubs, killing and dumping at night. He could have a day job.”
“What kind of job?” Jimmy asked.
“Something dead-end where he’s just marking time. Or he could be self-employed, setting his own schedule. I’m not reading this guy as a loser. He picked up Leslie Siebrig in Le Chat Noir.”
“He drugged her drink,” Kenjin said.
“Yes, but he had to get close enough to do it. Which means he’s got confidence in social situations. He’s probably attractive.”
“Remember that it looks like he’s killing them before they regain consciousness,” Jimmy spoke again. “No bruising on the bodies to indicate that they were ever restrained. No defensive injuries. And that they died fairly quickly is also implied by the fact that the drug could still be found in their systems.”
“So if he’s so damn social, why does he want them unconscious when he rapes and kills them?” Willie was playing against her original argument.
“In other words what’s his fantasy?” Kenjin asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, “but it certainly seems to center on what he’s doing with the organs. Cutting them out. Then, wiring them back in reversed. . . . What did Linsky give you at the autopsies today in terms of age and height?” Willie’s voice was directed toward Jimmy now.
“All the victims were in their twenties,” he answered her. “And tall.”
“Weight?”
“Harder to tell, but probably thin like both Grady and Siebrig.”
“So that’s the type,” Willie said. “He doesn’t seem to care about coloring. Two were blondes, two brunets.”
“Tall, thin, and young,” Jimmy said. “And he wants no interaction postcapture. What’s that add up to?”
“A mannequin,” Willie offered.
“A robot.” It was Kenjin who said that. The tone of his voice chilled her.
The music annihilated space. He arced through the scene to the pulse of the strobes that flashed like razors in the carapace shield of his glasses. Midweek and the party went on. Thousands of bodies flowing and locking. The frenzy of the organic lusting for freedom.
Right-brain loathed the crowd, the sense of confinement. Left-brain didn’t mind. But still he didn’t dance, beyond such simple mechanics. He held the sound inside, feeling his organs dissolving, matter moving out of him in the light that streamed from his fingers. No flesh. No bone. No blood but the music, branching and jumping. Machine soul released from the grubby limits of primate brain.
In the beginning was the beat, and the beat was with God, and the beat was God.
&n
bsp; The dancers seemed far beneath him, white bodies writhing like maggots in the dark of the cave. But for one. Tall, nearly fleshless. A perfect conductor. The music ran through her muscles as visible current in an effortless stop and flow.
For a long time he watched her dance, the wall projections splashing their colors over her body and face. Was still watching when she cut herself from the pack.
He was waiting at the bar before her in the three-deep line to order. She only seemed more perfect closer up, with the water from the misting machines beading like oil on her skin. The lasers swept by and pierced her. The music blew through, refracted. He caught her watching him back, wondering perhaps if she hadn’t seen him before.
“Neat shades,” she said.
He smiled at the opening, touching his glasses. “I saw you dancing,” he said.
“I saw you not dancing.” Her eyes were moving over him, still assessing.
“You don’t know what you saw.”
His answer didn’t dissuade her. “The Vibe’s not here.” Her tone dismissive. Sparks in the toss of her hair.
“Buy you a drink?” he offered.
“I like to buy my own.”
“That’s smart,” he said. “Though I think with me you could make an exception.”
“I don’t think I will.” She smiled. Her upper teeth were crooked. A reinsertion of the imperfect organic that brought the whole thing down.
The man ahead of him left the bar with his drink. He let her go in front of him.
“Thanks.” She waited to order, then turned back. “Look,” she said, favoring him again with the teeth, “the real party is this weekend.” She produced a pen from her satin shorts, and wrote fate on the back of his hand.
Jimmy breathed deeply, glancing at the clock: 2:32 A.M. He turned over onto his side and listened in the darkness for his wife’s regular breathing. He had spent the last two hours trying to get to sleep, blaming the new case for his insomnia. But he knew the falseness of that excuse. It was Hanae who kept him awake.
She had sat quietly, her eyes often closed, listening to the theories he, Willie, and Michael tossed around. The conversation flowed easily, though not for a minute was he unaware of her presence.