A Mourning in Autumn

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A Mourning in Autumn Page 6

by Harker Moore


  It had been a subtle calculation on her part, sitting down with them after the tea had been poured, taking into her hand the fourth cup. The cup she’d reserved for herself. And the consequences of her conduct had not been lost on him. It had been an essential gesture, one he wished he could have preempted. But then, he did not have her wisdom.

  She moved onto her back, her eyes open.

  He bent and kissed her, feeling her smile open against his mouth.

  “Well, Wife, since neither of us are having any luck sleeping, I think it’s a good time for you to tell me what you think.”

  “What I think, Husband?”

  “About my case, Hanae Sakura.”

  Why? The word was bile rising up into his throat. Nothing Left-brain might whisper would make the anger go away. And what excuse had been offered? Crooked teeth. Right-brain would have been satisfied with no teeth. It was the flesh that mattered. The sweet flesh. In layers. Ripe to the core. He pressed against the base of his penis, working the shaft with his other hand in the slow-fast rhythm he preferred.

  Why the fuck had he gone out tonight if he wasn’t going to bring home a little goodie. A doggie bag. Going out had only one purpose. To get the flesh to come home with him. It wasn’t complicated. No convoluted destiny. Its raison d’etre was pure and simple—get the flesh home.

  And he was beginning to run on empty. It didn’t matter that Left-brain had better control. Right-brain was hungry. The eater of souls had an ever-increasing appetite, and this inarticulate slow-fast whipping of his penis could never take him where he needed to go.

  CHAPTER

  5

  His kata practice completed, James Sakura knelt in meditation, but thought intruded, an awareness of the room, of his fellow students. It had been difficult to find a dojo in the city where training with the sword was available. Although O-Sensei, the founder of aikido, had been a master of more than one of the ancient sword traditions, after his death training with the weapon had disappeared from most aikido schools.

  Sakura had been incredibly lucky to find this one, whose headmaster had trained at the fabled Kashima ryu, a school whose sword tradition stretched back for many hundreds of years. Unlike the Kashima ryu, membership in this dojo had not required a blood oath, but he considered his acceptance a privilege, and was worried about the effect of his new investigation on his continued attendance at these early morning sessions. The kata practice required some pairing, and he felt an obligation not only to the headmaster but to the other students as well.

  Nor did he wish to give up the practice for himself. The rigors of the training had helped him greatly in the months that Hanae had been away, serving as an outlet for energy that could find no other. He was proud of his progress. He was already well into the second series of kata performed with the fukuroshinai, a training sword of cloth-covered bamboo. It would take many more levels of training, and probably many years, before he would be allowed to practice with the family sword that had been last year’s gift from his father.

  He had been so preoccupied at the time of Isao’s visit with the pressures of the investigation. Still, he should have known that his father was not well. He had looked more tired last year than he’d ever seen him . . . vulnerable, he realized now. He had let old resentments blind him, when he should have so easily guessed the meaning in the gesture of passing on the sword.

  Lupus, Elizabeth had said, when she’d finally called, defying at last Isao’s wish that his elder son not be told of his illness. The trip to New York, she’d explained, had not been to attend a medical conference, as his father had implied, but rather to confer with a specialist whom he trusted on the best course of treatment for his disease. Their father had been doing well, according to his stepsister. Was now in full remission.

  Remission. An interesting word, one meaning of which was absolution. Which one of them, he wondered, was in need of it most, himself or Isao?

  He made a promise. When this case was successfully behind him, he and Hanae would make the trip out West. His wife would love meeting Elizabeth, who was also an artist, and he would enjoy seeing his sister again. And Paul, his brother; it might be good to see him too. Perhaps even Susan, his stepmother, might have mellowed in the intervening years. Or perhaps he had gained enough wisdom to endure the sugared barbs that dropped so easily from her tongue. In any case, he must make the trip, for himself as well as his father. There was more to healing than the physical.

  The thought brought an image of Hanae last night as they both lay unsleeping in the bed. His eyes adjusted to the dimness, he could see her face as she’d rolled onto her back, her dark eyes open. How he had wanted her in that moment, a need that was too much of possession. He had simply kissed her and asked what she thought of his case.

  The insight which she’d shared had been not about the killer, but him. She approved of the way he worked. He listened well, she said, drawing out the ideas of others.

  But what were her ideas?

  She had none. She too was a good listener.

  He shook his head at the memory, further interrupting even the pretense of meditation. His wife had made him smile, but he knew he was not happy with this desire of hers to involve herself in what he’d always believed should be separate from their life together. He had no will to think about why, or even if, this should change. He did not want to deal with it. But he knew that he must. He sensed that his understanding and approval were, in Hanae’s mind at least, the entry gates to the path that could heal their marriage.

  And heal it, he must. For later in the night when he’d reached for her, he had felt her soft and pliant. But her limbs had trembled still, as if she would tear apart. He had held her, smoothing her hair, until the shaking ceased.

  His wife was back in his bed. Not a dream any longer, but the flesh-and-blood woman whom he loved. His practice of aikido had been excellent for channeling the frustration of what must be endured while she was gone. But he was not a monk. Celibacy had never been a part of any spiritual life he’d envisioned. With Hanae, he must remain patient. The one who perhaps had to be hurried along was himself.

  The room was a crypt, below ground and full of bones. Yet the atmosphere was anything but macabre. Dr. Wilton “Bones” Bailey had managed to create a lab that somehow defied, yet at the same time defined, its utility. A burled-wood chest laden with ancient artifacts—an Egyptian shawabty ogled a bare-chested Minoan snake goddess—stood opposite an old armoire, whose belly brimmed with hundreds of crusty texts. An antique torchère gave off a parchment glow, a yellow bubble inside the room’s cold fluorescence. A Beethoven CD played in the background.

  The center of the laboratory was Bones’s work space. A wooden refectory table, likely a relic from a medieval monastery, ran half the length of the room.

  “Hello, Lieutenant.” The forensic anthropologist, hunched over a specimen, spoke without looking up. “Linsky said you’d be paying me a visit this afternoon.”

  Sakura smiled as the scientist rotated a magnifying glass over the surface of a skull. “So the two of you are communicating.”

  Now Bailey glanced up. His bifocals doubled the size of his blue eyes.

  “Only when necessary. That man has no sense of humor.” He considered the skull, an indulgent old Hamlet. “He sent over two of these.”

  “From the bodies found in the landfill.” Sakura pulled over a stool and sat across from the doctor.

  Bailey wagged his head. “Violence remains a constant, James. Assyrians, Nazis, serial killers.”

  And this was the very thing that kept him in the game, Sakura reminded himself. The need to make it right. “We’ve managed to narrow our list from Missing Persons to seven possibles,” he said.

  “Our killer’s taste does run in a particular direction.” The doctor returned the skull to the table, picked up the other.

  “Tall and thin.” Sakura audibilized one of the case’s few certainties.

  Bailey nodded. “And the bodies are female.
Radiographs of the bony structures confirmed the sexing.”

  From an envelope Sakura pulled photos of the seven women who fit the criteria and who’d gone missing in the last six months. He set each photograph down, facing the anthropologist, in a line across the table. Bailey looked up, then down at the row of pictures. Six were in color, one black-and-white. A couple were candid shots, the rest formal portraits.

  “Very pretty . . .” The doctor’s voice seemed to waver. Then, removing his latex gloves, he selected a photograph. Tenderly, as though the paper, or the girl herself, would crack. His eyes ran over the glossy surface, then returned it to the lineup. He picked up a second, then a third, his thumb seeming to rub something off its surface. He stared at one image after another. Then he unhooked his glasses from around his ears, took a crumpled handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped the lenses.

  “Young.” Bailey cleared his throat on the single word. “Radiological evidence of the extent of cranial and epiphyseal fusions puts the age of the two landfill victims in their late teens or early twenties.”

  The doctor stood, his stool scraping against the tiled floor. “This skull”—he pointed—“has a broader, flatter, outward-sloping face. The orbital configurations are rounder. This is consistent with Asians.” Now he indicated the other skull. “Whereas the orbital configurations of Caucasians are triangular, and the skull itself is generally higher, longer, and narrower.”

  The forensic anthropologist reexamined each of the photographs, finally choosing two from the seven. After a moment he placed the picture of a brunet with almond-shaped eyes under one skull, the photograph of a pale blonde with a wide full mouth under the other. “Of course, I’ll need their dental records to be sure.”

  Victor listened to Philip Glass whenever he masturbated to H. R. Giger. Focusing on the artist’s drawings in a special coffee table edition, he would struggle to maintain the book’s pristine condition. Only once did a small drool of semen hit the spread of glossy pages.

  And if Metropolis was his favorite movie, Species was in second place. Sil, like Hel, another of his dream girls—not her Nordic-flesh Natasha Henstridge form, but clothed in Giger’s vision. He opened his mouth, wishing to place his lips around one of those silvern-capped nipples, to have those segmented articulating tentacles whip him into a frenzy.

  But Gray’s Anatomy was his bible—his road map of the pitiful physiological mask worn by human form, with its molecular swirls and twirls of flesh, its protoplasmic caverns and pockets, its greedy holes and slippery slits, its sluggish evolution in need of his hand, his refinement, till at last the steel-sleek purring core be reached.

  Now he glanced up at the televison screen where his collector’s edition of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas was playing. Sally was working her own kind of magic with needle and thread on her severed arm. Leafing through the magazines, snipping photographs from back issues of Elle and Vogue, he found himself humming Danny Elfman’s score.

  As usual, his imagination worked in two dimensions. Licking his lips, he clipped the photo of the tall thin model bound and tied in Versace, in strips and strings that seemed more of aluminum than leather. Legs, white and seamless, sensible as strong shinny struts. Angling scissors, he sliced the girl off at the tops of her thighs, squinting like a painter at the disembodied pair of legs, balancing on four-inch spikes.

  He placed the legs beneath the other assembled body parts. A striking fit. Opening the jar, he ran the brush loaded with rubber cement across the back of the cutout. Now all that was left was the head. And as always he had the perfect head.

  He stood up from his cross-legged position on the floor and walked to the table where the latest issue of People magazine lay. Her image glistened from the cover, a star amidst images of other talking heads. His girl had made the big time.

  He returned to his little nest on the floor, and ripped off the cover of the magazine. Then he began to excise her from her spot between Katie Couric and Paula Zahn. His scissors snipped, careful to preserve all the wisps of her hair. There. He held her head above the body he’d just constructed. He’d done well. He had a good eye. The head was in perfect scale to the body. But pixels and paper were a poor substitute for flesh. At least flesh morphed into metal.

  He pasted the head onto the column of neck and smiled at his newest creation. Then he rose, carrying his “paper doll,” as he sometimes called his little works of art, and entered his bedroom. He stopped at the foot of his bed, admiring his collection, staring at the same face, glued or stapled or grommeted onto the dozens of bodies he’d resurrected like Dr. Frankenstein from the glossy bits and pieces he salvaged from magazines. Her image repeated over and over. Duplicated, triplicated, quadruplicated. A hundred replicants of Zoe Kahn reclining on the smooth six-hundred-count sheets of Victor Abbot’s bed.

  Sitting in the harshness of the overhead fluorescents, Sakura looked up at the clock to find it was late. The end of week one in this new investigation. The members of his unit had gone home, the squad room beyond the glass window of his office populated by a few stragglers, men detailed from the precincts still pecking out reports, mixed with the regular shifts from Major Case. He knew he should go home too, should take his own advice about the last weekend that any of them was likely to see for a while.

  Four bodies now, and the clock was ticking. Despite today’s long hours spent reading and rereading reports, he could not suppress the interior nagging voice that insisted that just one more round of sifting through the stack of DD-5s on his desk might uncover some small but significant detail they had missed—might provoke some fresh insight that could save a young woman who in this critical moment was still alive, but already stalked by the killer.

  “Hello, Jimmy.”

  The effect of her voice was instant. His eyes jerked upward to see Assistant District Attorney Faith Baldwin standing in the doorway of his office. Her neat wool suit had nearly the same chestnut richness as her hair. The jacket’s severe tailoring had the intended effect of focusing her femininity.

  “It’s been a while.” She was smiling at whatever she read in his face. He watched her cross his office to take a seat in the chair, too conscious of the desk between them.

  “Why are you here, Faith?”

  “Your new case,” she said. “You have to know I’m interested.”

  Faith had a way of attaching herself to any high-profile investigation. His serial case last year had been no exception. “It’s early,” he said. “We haven’t developed any suspects.”

  “Don’t tell that to the press.”

  “I try not to tell them anything.”

  “You look tired,” she said now. “Why don’t you let me take you out for a drink.”

  He shook his head. “Time to go home.”

  “I hear your wife’s back.”

  “She is.”

  “How long has it been, Jimmy?” Her flat clear voice had changed inflection. Her green eyes were watching, daring him to pretend he didn’t understand exactly what she’d meant by the question.

  “Six years.” He didn’t deny that he did.

  “I miss having you in my bed.”

  He shook his head. “Why are we talking about this?”

  “When I want something, I ask for it.”

  “No,” he said. He met her eyes.

  She sat back in the chair, still looking at him with that directness he admired. Faith was the most self-confident person he knew. Highly intelligent, if not introspective. She had an animal grace, with no gentleness.

  “I’ve waited all these months for your wife to get back,” she said. “I wanted to play fair.” She leaned forward, her breasts moving together beneath the silk of her blouse. She reached across the desk, her fingers encircling his wrist. A gesture intended to remind him of things they had done in bed.

  It was pure Faith. He smiled.

  She took the opening. “I don’t want you for a husband. I just want to fuck you again. And you want to fuck me
. Don’t lie and say that’s changed.” She was still watching his eyes. The prosecutor now, more adept at reading the opposition than herself. He couldn’t have named what he felt, but something of his jumbled thoughts had surfaced in his face. He saw her make the jump.

  “Oh, hell.” Her fingers released their hold. “He raped Hanae, didn’t he?”

  There had been nothing in the media to suggest that his wife, unlike the killer’s other victims, had been sexually assaulted. That much had been kept from the press. The implication had always been that Hanae had been kidnapped by a deranged killer purely to taunt him.

  Faith continued to stare. He had said nothing, but his silent affirmation seemed a worse betrayal than if he’d given in.

  Faith stood. “I’m sorry . . . really.” There was something near tender in her voice which didn’t hold. “I still want you,” she said. “No one ever guessed we were together before. No one would know now.”

  “We’d know.”

  “That is the point, isn’t it?”

  He stood too. “I’ll keep the District Attorney’s office informed of any progress.”

  For a moment she seemed poised to come around the desk, but she smiled instead. “Good night, Jimmy. Give us a case that will stick.”

  Solange Mansour glanced nervously at her watch. Nearly ten o’clock. She was glad to see she wasn’t the only kid dressed like she was getting off at the subway stop. A good indication she was in the right place. The directions as usual had been pretty shitty. It was supposed to be part of the true party experience, this whole mystery of where the event would actually take place, but when you were alone this late in a not so good part of the city, the uncertainty was scary.

  But she wasn’t alone, she reminded herself.

  She hurried to catch up with the group of kids she had spotted. They were older than her, but not much. And she was sure she looked eighteen at least, especially now with the new tattoo and piercing. There was something to be said for divorce. Play your parents off against one another, you could get pretty much what you wanted.

 

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