by Harker Moore
For a lifetime. Nothing was for a lifetime. Michael Darius had taught her that lesson. She thought of his most recent visit, and hated the way she allowed him to get to her. Though she maintained her surface cool, he invariably made her feel dissatisfied, as if she were missing some vital piece of information, leaving her with a kind of hollowness in the pit of her stomach. Though she suspected the emptiness lay somewhere deeper. In her soul. Michael had always been able to keep her hungry.
An image came to her. She was standing outside his room in the hospital, in a corridor of drab green. A river of polished linoleum spread out from either side of her, rippling reflections of the overhead light. She had reached for the door, pushing it gently, only a crack, not sure at all yet if she should visit.
Michael lay in the bed. Pale as the sheets. His eyes open, staring ahead at nothing. A dark-haired woman was sitting next to his bed, her hand holding his, her eyes full of concern and something much stronger. She had not gone in. She had called the nurses’ station periodically for updates on Michael’s condition. But she had never called him directly. An act of pure cowardice for which she was now ashamed.
Jason’s laugh caused her to look up. Fate had been doubly cruel. Not with one image of Michael, but with two, did she have to contend. Except for the bright red hair, the twins were perfect mirrors of her former husband, little faces who unknowingly judged her for some crucial lack in herself.
The day was growing late. Sakura felt suspended between the seasons. Summer, like a beast, holding the heat between its teeth. And the hard white sun seeming to steal shadows from underfoot, so that all that remained was but a still and sterile flatness. Autumn came in feisty gusts, but without much will to linger and battle the beast. So that he was left with a longing for the end of it all, and the cold pure snow of winter.
He looked up at the five photographs tacked to the chalkboard by his desk. There was at least some order now, some chronological sense. Grady. Phelps. Laraby. Siebrig. Mansour. And there existed a kind of sick order, inherent in all investigations that involved serial killers. Target. Control. Kill. This particular killer, like so many of his species, had embroidered upon the pattern, tailoring the action to fit the specialized demands of his fantasy. Writing upon each death his unique signature.
He drew the picture in his mind. A predator, not unattractive, was cruising the clubs and underground parties, zeroing in on young women who fit some preconceived archetype, some configuration of feature or behavior that predestined them to become objects in his lethal drama. Rohypnol was his magic potion, used to tighten the net, allowing him to hustle a seemingly inebriated date to a secure base of operations. This required transportation, and that he live alone, or at least function in a situation that precluded interruption or discovery.
And then the central act of the drama.
There was no way to know exactly what this madman did with each victim, but there were some probables. A few certainties. There was likely penile penetration, but no semen. Cause of death was asphyxiation. No signs of struggle, no defensive trauma—one strong indication that death occurred before the Rohypnol wore off, given the absence of other sedative drugs in the serology screens.
The women were found nude, wrapped in Visqueen, and dumped as so much garbage. And as centerpiece of the fantasy—the macabre drama that in serial murder took the place of motive—the opening of the chest in a mimicry of autopsy, the strange inversion of organs.
The basics of the profile were in place. But what was the meaning behind this specific mutilation? What were they missing that they could not make the leap from general to particular?
Darius came in without invitation and took a seat in front of the desk, his attention drawn to the chalkboard gallery of victim faces. Sakura watched his ex-partner’s gaze shift to take in the boxes on the floor, the stacks of reports that were piling up on his desk. He knew what Michael was thinking. That in any serial case the likelihood was that the killer would be someone they had interviewed early on. That the trick was to find that single piece of data in the flood of material that narrowed the field to one.
“He’s not here.” Darius indicated the pile of investigative records. “He’s not here,” he repeated, the words coming out as a certainty.
The clock above the refrigerator showed it was well after eleven as Margot walked into the kitchen with the tray of empty glasses. She had picked them up immediately, letting Reese see David St. Cyr out. She was completely startled to find the time so late.
“I don’t think he’s queer,” Reese said to her as she came back and sat on the sofa. “It’s just the Southern accent.”
“Is that what it is . . . Southern?”
“Not good-ol’-boy Southern,” Reese said. “Well-bred Southern. And I don’t think he’s even particularly weird. Not for an artist, anyway.”
“No . . . I know. I told you today that he sounded fine on the phone. And the renderings for the house are beautiful.”
“You like them, then? Tell the truth.”
“Yes, I do,” she said. “And with all the changes we talked about . . . and the separate rooms for the boys. I’m sure it will be perfect.”
He leaned across the sofa to pull her closer. “You talk to Michael?” he asked her after a while.
“I tried, Reese.” She pulled back to look at his face. “I got the predictable reaction. I’m sorry. . . . ”
“About what? That your ex-husband can be an ass?” He smiled. “Look what you got for your second.”
“I am looking.” She kissed him.
“I want to adopt the boys”—he was glancing at the framed picture of Damon and Jason that stood on the coffee table—“but if Michael says no . . . well, it’s just a piece of paper. As far as I’m concerned the twins are mine.”
Tears burned the back of her eyes. Legalities were important to her husband. “They are yours, Reese,” she said, “in every way that counts.” As I am. She hoped it was there in her voice.
“So you’re saying the house is a go.” He was watching her, gently changing back the subject. “We’ll keep on working to get the plans perfect. But you’re satisfied with St. Cyr?”
Satisfied was not exactly the adjective she would have chosen. But Reese worked hard and deserved the house he wanted. And she hadn’t lied. She liked the renderings all right. Big, but not too big. Clean-lined and functional, like living in a machine. But she’d give it her own touches. She’d make it her own.
“The house is a go.” She smiled.
The pygmies wanted changes. But the pygmies always did, imposing their small minds on genius. Dragging the vision down to their level rather than allowing the design to mold and uplift the dreary routine of their lives. Compromise was the price to be paid to see the vision realized. But always a crippled vision.
David St. Cyr had been walking in the chilly air, working off the energy of his anger. But he stepped off the curb now and hailed a cab, giving the driver an address on West Fourteenth. The neighborhood bar was precisely where he wanted to be at this moment. The whole area appealed to his sense of irony. A charnel house, where a committed vegetarian like Stella McCartney had opened an exclusive boutique, with reeking carcasses hanging in the street next to flower shops. A perfect metaphor for the city.
This mad juxtaposition of opposites was precisely what the Redmonds sought to escape by fleeing to Connecticut. He pictured Reese with his banker’s face. And Margot. What had been on her face tonight? She still didn’t know what to make of him. It was interesting that the seemingly conservative husband was the one who better appreciated his designs.
“I’ll get out here.” He leaned forward as the driver stopped for a light. It wasn’t far and he wanted to walk again. He paid and stepped out of the cab.
Thrusting his hand into the pocket of his coat, he stroked the sharp angles of the small crystal-framed photograph he had taken from a shelf in the Redmonds’ apartment. How long before Margot missed it?
James S
akura sat soaking in a hot water-filled tub, the odor of his favorite soap blending with the steam. He leaned forward, elbows on knees, while Hanae, sitting on the stool behind him, worked with her fingers to soothe the knotted muscles in his shoulders and his back. The ritual familiar. Yet not the same.
It was quiet in the bathroom. Few words had been spoken since he’d come home. Indeed there had been no real conversation between them since last night when he’d told her to keep the doors locked in the car. Hanae had been sleeping when he’d returned in the wee hours, and sleeping still a few hours later when he’d left for the autopsy that had been scheduled for early morning. There had been only the brief afternoon call to let her know that he would be late, and not to worry about supper. Another familiar ritual. Too much the same.
“You are angry with me, Husband?” A question as she reached for more soap.
“No,” he said, but the quickness of the denial was a demonstration of its falseness even to his own ears. “Yes,” he said, reversing the unintended lie. “And I am sorry, because I do not wish to be angry. But it is so.”
“Is it what I have done that angers you? Or what I have not?”
A sigh escaped him. His wife, for all her gentleness, was not without guile. She had sought to link his concern over her actions of last night with the continued lack of intimacy in their bed. If she meant to gain an advantage, she had chosen her tactic well, for surely his frustration was a part of his anger. He felt guilt in pressuring her sexually, and fear that he would push her even farther away.
Her fingers had resumed working their way down his back. He steadied his breathing, letting her hands do their soothing work. If her question had stirred his emotions, it was not done callously, to hurt. He knew her point was a true one. These things that he felt were all of a piece. And all of it had to be faced.
Her hand dipped into the water beside him. He clasped her wrist and lifted her hand to his lips. “I want my wife.” The breath of his words whispered against the tips of her fingers, so she might feel their color, read their texture like braille. His mouth slipped to the cup of her palm. “I want my wife to be safe.” He placed the words for keeping. “These are not two things, but one.” He felt her straighten, and turned to watch her face.
“I am not a child,” he went on speaking, “to demand in an instant a thing that must have time, or to demand a thing that is impossible. And no one is safe in this world. But Wife, there is foolishness and there is wisdom.”
“And I have been foolish?”
“It was not safe to get out of the car.”
“The question remains, was it wise?”
Subtlety. A thing could sometimes be both. He was not insensitive to what path she sought for herself. She had her gifts. She was, in her own way, as intuitive as Michael.
“You are my husband.” She had spoken in his silence. “You are a detective. Is that two things, or one?”
“What do you want of me?” He had not meant the words to be harsh.
She stood to go, her tears making an end of it. “To see that there is no wall.”
In the beginning was the Kingdom of One. The world made two. Water world. Air world. Cope or die.
Specialization, the answer. A division of tasks. Unconscious at first, then conscious. Learn, or die.
It was Left-brain who’d found Father’s book. Right-brain devoured it. Cannibalism in New Guinea. A model of incorporation and survival. Kill or die.
The feeding had started with small things. A June bug, a lizard. Buzzing energy, cold blood pink-beating. Then up the chain to the small mammals. Stray cats. And the dogs that were always appearing, dropped off at the edge of nowhere, on the border of real civilization, according to Mother. Their world, the only world in the big house, with the books and the music, and the contradiction of together and apart.
It was an eternity of small red hearts before the little black girl—a stray herself, wandering over the line from the shotgun shacks in the hollow, attracted by the fire and the novelty of little white-boy nakedness. The fires, another form of energy from death. Dead branches and twigs gathered like offerings with anything else in the woods that would burn. Stripped to the skin, sitting too close, letting the life in the flames sink with the heat inside to penetrate to the heart.
He remembered the night, the excitement at catching sight of her, little brown thing in a big brown night full of jasmine smell and mosquitoes. Catching the reflection of flame in her huge black eyes as she sat with the dark in the ring of trees. Listening to the hot sizzle and pop, the snap and crack of twigs like breaking bones. Smoke rising with the whiff of sacrifice.
He could be patient for an eight-year-old. Physical limitation had its lessons. It was a simple strategy to let the fire draw her out. She came to sit, not far. Hunkered in her dirty rag of a dress, she was not much larger than one of the dogs.
He remembered his excitement, his absolute knowledge that every other creature had been practice. The cats and the dogs subdued with the poison meant for vermin. There was no poison now. Left-brain counseled caution. Right-brain moved. Had her. Heart-pump racing, feeding on its own risk. He held her down, sitting astride her tiny body, in truth no bigger than the dogs. His arms kept rigid, flat boy’s hands blocking her nose and mouth, shutting in her cries and the wasted breath. Her resistance making him stronger. Skinny legs kicking muted thuds in the scrub and the grass. Arms like sticks beating at his shoulders. Then her hands like baby crabs scrabbling uselessly at his chest, scant millimeters above his feasting heart.
It was Left-brain who produced the knife and performed the cool dissection, planted the meat in earth. Not the last to lie there. No going back.
Though the opportunities were few enough—Left-brain would not allow the coincidence of another Negro child “going missing,” only the occasional runaway or vagrant seeking shelter on what should have been recognized as posted land. So many lean years between, the spaces filled with far less satisfying feeds. And the knowledge of something growing in Mother’s eyes, fueling her every vain attempt to storm the Kingdom.
It was the something that resulted in being sent off to the Catholic boys’ school on the Coast, the theory being that the good brothers could beat out of you anything that was bad. But of course, he’d rather liked the beatings. So that blew Mother’s theory to hell.
He laughed. The last laugh. He’d been having it for years.
CHAPTER
9
Friday morning, early. In the dojo. Sakura placed down his fukuroshinai and, closing his eyes, began a series of deep-breathing exercises. He understood that the basis of Kashima aikido was the concept of shinbu, the divine way in which one wins without fighting. To become one with your partner, embracing the negative forces aimed toward you, projecting positive forces outward toward he who attacked. The result was balance.
He opened his eyes, slowly moving into a series of bare-handed positions. Moving “with sword without sword.” Using his mind, his consciousness to tap into his ki, extending his will beyond the flat of his palms, to the tips of his fingers.
Cutting, cutting, cutting. Invisible sword strokes into the air. Arms fluid, spiraling into the dance that forged himself with his intention. That the practice of his aikido was his way to inner peace and spiritual awareness, that it placed his feet upon a path to order and discipline, was not a lie he told himself. But it was only the half-truth. That his practice was also his way to overcome his frustration in failing with his wife was the other half.
Cutting, cutting, cutting. His arm swung to break the wall, the wall that she had said he had created. In reality he saw no barrier of his own making. And that was surely his greatest fault, his powerlessness to see himself clearly. In answer to his question of what she wanted of him, there had been only her words of “the wall.” And her tears.
The tears tore at his heart, yet wore at his resolve to be patient. He hated himself for his selfishness, but there was no help for it. He wanted his wife.
He was at Hiro’s home, poring over forbidden magazines that his friend had taken from his older brother’s room. He remembered feigning excitement as he sat on the floor next to Hiro. He didn’t want to seem ungrateful for this proffered bounty, and more he didn’t want to seem any less than Hiro himself, whose breathing had grown more ragged with each page turned, and whose groin bristled against the confines of his khaki uniform pants.
But the bodies in the pictures seemed artificial and abstracted. Though at ten he was unable to articulate these sentiments, was unable to say exactly why he didn’t find them arousing. Yet he did know the photographs were not the same as the dreams that woke him in the night, leaving him wet and sticky between his sheets. If he could have found the words, he would have said the women in the grainy black-and-white magazine photos seemed more like corpses, their contorted positions the result of some terrible crime. Instead he lied to keep face when he told Hiro, still flush with an erection, that he liked the pictures. It wasn’t until he was leaving that his own erection came.
Hiro’s sister, older by four years, had been coming into the house from the library as he was leaving, and he had accidentally bumped into her, his upper arm brushing against the firm bowl of one of her breasts. Their eyes had met for a moment, but as quickly his eyes fell with the rest of him to the floor to retrieve her fallen books. He willed himself not to look at her slim white ankles, the exquisite curve where ankle gave way to calf. He wanted to dig a hole through the tatami mat upon which he knelt. To hide himself from her watching eyes, to bury the shame of his blooming erection. But his wishes came to nothing; his body betrayed him as his hands scrambled for the scattered texts. Incredibly, he knew she recognized his embarrassment, but acted as if nothing had passed beyond the dropping of books. She smiled, thanking him by name, as he handed her the texts. It was a mystery she even knew his name, but “Akira” came rolling over her tongue and out her mouth, like a flower breaking through snow in early spring.