by Harker Moore
He stopped recording. Set the machine onto its tripod near the table.
New toy. He felt his erection grow stronger, giddy now with the thought of what this gift offering implied. Nearly two weeks since the last kill. Twelve days of useless excuses. Almost over now.
He reveled in his nakedness. Left-brain did not allow fiber in this part of the basement. His trophies burned like ice inside his skin. His hand moved from his swelling penis to touch the latest of his mementos, the silver ring that pierced his nipple. The tape in his head was playing now. Blank eyes. Fish-mouths gasping. Five now since this new phase had started.
His left hand found his cock. Stroking. Faster and faster. The eater of souls would not much longer be denied.
New toy. Fresh meat.
CHAPTER
13
The early morning darkness had a surreal edge, as if hyping the real thing. A hush surrounded, also a bit unreal—a preternatural expectancy that gave no yield to the creeping daylight, or the traffic noises building beyond the muffle of trees. Right-brain was hungry, so Left-brain lurked. In the shadows. In the trees, in this less familiar area of the park. Wolf. Hunter. Procurer of flesh. His breathing became conscious as he stepped onto the track. His pulse beat measuring risk.
A woman, a jogger, appeared as if cued. The casting, like the stage direction, apparently perfect. She moved toward him in the wide curve ahead, fit and endomorphic, her wide thighs filling the legs of her shorts. For Right-brain, a movable feast.
He watched her with polite eyes as she neared. Runners’ etiquette, letting a smile build, a short nod as she passed. Seconds counted in the beat of blood. Five before he turned, hand reaching into his pocket for the drug-soaked pad in the zip-top bag.
At the last moment, hearing his steps, she looked back. But he was already lunging, as realization scored in her eyes. He had her, and held her, locked across his chest, the pad going quickly over her mouth and nostrils.
She was strong, but he had the advantage. And her breath indrawn to mount a scream only increased the effectiveness of the drug. She slumped against him. Not out, but nearly. He let her slip to the ground. He looked around, but the hush appeared undisturbed by the sudden drama, and his own pulse had not increased beyond its slight elevation from the norm. He walked back on the path to retrieve the plastic bag and, replacing the pad, returned it to his pocket.
He went back to where the woman lay moaning, her limbs moving a little now. It was the way he needed her, if this was going to work. He crouched down, and with his arm around her, he hoisted her up. She slouched against him, nearly dead weight, her feet skipping and dragging as he walked her in the direction of the street, the bubble of silence breaking at last with a question.
Insistent. From behind. As surprising as an arrow arcing over the grass. “Sir . . . sir . . . what’s the matter with her?”
The day had started slowly, then sped by in a blur of paperwork. Now it was late, and Sakura was dealing with the uneasy feeling that he had missed the real action. He pushed away files and turned off his desk lamp. With no witnesses or physical evidence, it was all the killer’s game at this stage. Somehow, someway, the investigation had to become less reactive and seize some measure of control. Challenge the killer. Force him off stride. Perhaps he’d make a mistake.
“Jimmy . . .” Michael’s voice penetrated his thoughts.
“What’s up?”
Darius walked over and took a chair. “The taxi drivers were a bust.” He frowned. “None of them remembers picking up any of the victims around the clubs.” His glance drifted to the stack of files on the desk. “You find anything new on that deejay?”
“Lancaster’s got a certain reputation, but no criminal record. And his background is not what you’d think. His father’s a professor at UVA.”
“He’s hiding something.”
“Hell, Michael”—he had to smile—“everybody’s hiding something.”
Darius nodded, tilting back in the chair, so far that the front legs lifted. It was a thing he did, this balancing act when something was on his mind.
“I noticed you came back last night,” Darius finally spoke. “You were here pretty late.”
“And I’ll be here late a lot of nights till we solve this thing.”
“Your blinds were closed.”
“That didn’t stop you just now.”
“It didn’t stop the assistant DA, either.”
“You know Faith.” He kept his voice even.
Michael appeared close to making some crack, but didn’t. The chair legs came down, falling neatly into impressions carved in the carpet. “See you tomorrow,” he said.
He watched Darius leave and reached in the drawer for his Walkman. He wanted a few minutes behind a numbing wall of sound. The first cut of Whitesnake started, but his thoughts didn’t stop. He was remembering that Michael was Michael, and that his friend had been around six years ago. He was thinking what a fool he’d been to let himself believe that what had been going on with Faith back then could have slipped by completely unnoticed.
He had avoided his wife, having returned home very late last night, leaving before she had awakened this morning. But he could not hide forever.
He found her in the kitchen. Took her into his arms. “Is it what I think?”
Hanae nodded against his shoulder. “Lemongrass soup.”
He released her, reaching behind, ladling some of the clear broth, tasting. “Like medicine. Curing whatever ails.”
She shut off the burner, placing a lid on the pot. “And what ails my husband?”
He listened to his own breath, counting seconds in the hanging silence. “I have spoken to Mr. Romero.”
For just a moment she seemed to freeze, a paper doll pasted in place. Then she moved, making busy, reaching for bowls and spoons. “And what did Mr. Romero have to say, Husband?”
“That my wife asked him to take her back to the neighborhood where the body was found in the trunk of the car. To take her to the bin behind the restaurant where the body of another young woman was discovered.”
“I believe you refer to such places as ‘scenes of the crime,’ Husband.”
He laughed. A dry sound. “Yes.”
“I had hoped I would have been able to speak to you of this in my own time.”
“Mr. Romero did not readily volunteer the information, Hanae. Do not hold him at fault.”
“I do not, Husband.”
“I will not ask you why you went. Rather I will ask what you discovered.”
She stopped moving then and turned, her eyes finding his. “Nothing,” she spoke softly. Then she dropped her head. “No, that is not correct.” She looked up again. “Less than nothing. A darkness greater than all the dark I have ever felt. An emptiness beyond empty.”
Most of the time he avoided analyzing it. But from the first body that had become the province upon which to do his duty, to every scene of death he’d witnessed since, he’d felt it. And now he was experiencing it again, its filthy lust, raping him like a whore, as bodies uncoiled from Visqueen like mummies. Laid out, spoiled and drained on morgue slabs, on the sterile cold of Linsky’s cutting tables. His wife had captured the temper if not the complete truth of all serial murder. Evil. The absoluteness of evil.
“You are angry with me.” It was not a question.
“You have felt it. You know what it is. Can you not now understand why you must not become a part of this? A part of anything I do? Have you not learned . . .” His words trailed off.
“I learned much in that cabin, Husband. Learned that I cannot shut myself away from what you do. You are what you do.”
“No!” He shouted the word, a bitterness in the benign kitchen. “No, you cannot help!” He reached out, bringing her against him. His heart racing, his breath tangled inside his lungs. He held her face between his palms, his mouth seeking her mouth, his kiss wild and hungry, trying to wipe away all the anger and fear he felt growing inside him, all the guilt fro
m that other kiss.
Left-brain watched the tape, observing the bubble-bubble breath of the woman beneath the veil of plastic sheeting. Transfixed as the flesh from the park pelvic-thrusted up and up and up, heels digging in to extract the final molecules of trapped oxygen. Seminal fluid oozed from his erection, and he forced himself to save his pleasure for the real thing that lay on the table.
Then a sudden flicker across the screen. A liquid dimming, followed by an intense brightening within the denser atmosphere of backlighting. Right-brain jerked, springing forward, closing in on the screen, mesmerized by the elongating globule of light, beginning to pulsate like a paramecium over the entire length of inert body.
Fuck, and double fuck. His fingers struggling to make contact with the bloated luminescence floating over the outline of flesh inside the screen. He turned, crouched like a feral beast. Soul . . . He dragged out the word, the hiss of a snake.
A derisive laugh in the hollow of his head. An anomaly in the tape, Left-brain spoke.
His tongue touched the screen. Licked the light. Let me believe it, he breathed. Don’t take it away from me.
You’re a smart boy. Left-brain was speaking again. Meat is meat. That’s the alpha and omega of it.
Please . . . he cried out, half in pain, half in anger. What of the mechanism of animation? He grappled at his bare chest. It’s more than blood in the heart.
Left-brain tapped the side of his head. Electrical energy. The brain is soul.
It’s more than thought . . . Right-brain insisted, keening, drawing tight into himself, breathing in and out, a small boy who’d run a long race and almost won. Then he smiled, his face for an instant wholesome. I like to imagine it’s another kind of energy moving the meat. Something secret.
He threw back his head and howled. Oh yes, yes . . . His erection rose to slap the slick of his belly as he swayed in his squat. Hell it is—the reason for soul. The fall into the black. Another smile, again nearly charming. The concept of a soul going to Hell. Now that’s the ticket. A real thought to chew on.
CHAPTER
14
Harlan Kaminsky stood alone on the cobblestone street, stealing chunks of beauty—blessed minutes in the predawn before the rest of the crew came on, and the meat trucks rumbled in to gather with their loads. It was still dark. Velvety shadows ran like water in the alleys. But soon the dawn would come and the sky, backlit by the creeping sun, would glow a rich blue-purple, shading through violet to a whitened rose as it settled between the hulks of neighboring buildings. He would miss this. No matter how much more modern and finer the new plant in Hunts Point, it was still an exile from what had been. Meatpacking plants had dotted the neighborhood since the mid-1800s, over a hundred of them functioning here in the century just past, supplying the city’s restaurants. Now, since the invasion of the developers, how many were left? Maybe a doomed couple dozen.
He sighed. He should be glad about the new plant. He lived in the Bronx. A shorter commute meant a few extra minutes in bed.
He closed his eyes to the dark sky, trying to catch the river smell through the closer scent of blood. He imagined that the blood scent would long remain after the last plants had gone, collected in the skin of buildings, in the creases between the cobblestones. There were organizations which had been set up to preserve the integrity of the original neighborhood, though it must be only a matter of time before many of the warehouses were torn down and the old and inconvenient cobblestones paved over. And with a punch of anger that made him smile, he knew that he hoped for the revenge of blood, its attar weeping for another hundred years through the inevitable cracks in the asphalt.
He turned and walked toward the building. He wanted to get in early and check the temperature in the locker. The compressor had been a bit touchy lately. But it had seemed smart to try and hold out, so close to the move to the new facility. Still, it would not do to let things degenerate into some major problem. Regulations were strict; he could quote them. As soon as it entered the premises, meat intended for cutting had to be placed in a refrigerated accommodation provided for its reception and storage, and there maintained at an internal temperature of not more than 7 degrees Centigrade for carcasses and 3 degrees for offal.
He reached for the keys in his jacket. Even this small motion could trigger his persistent bursitis, a malady picked up from his days on the line. The cold in the locker would not improve the pain. He was starting to think about retirement, considering it seriously for the first time.
He was standing at the metal door and had slipped the key into the large padlock before he noticed that anything was wrong. It fell with a huge dead clunk to the pavement.
He remained rooted where he was, looking down. Grasped, as if seeing it in magnification, where the metal had been cleanly cut. The seconds ticking while he mastered his shock and went into the building. Heading straight for the locker.
He saw her as soon as he entered, hanging with the other meat, in the cruel grip of the hook. Seconds more to register the glazed eyes staring. The naked body. A woman.
There was the smell of death in the air. The smell of human death below the oblique aroma of carcasses, naturally redolent in a meat processing plant. The human scent seemed blood-fresh and more elemental, wafting intermittently as the growling generator kicked on. Yet there was no scent at all. The smell existed only because he expected it. The body had been preserved at 7 degrees Centigrade.
Sakura stood in the steel locker as though in fog, though the moving refrigerated air was no more than a chill against the skin. And for a moment he was assailed with a memory of white wings stretched across tension wires. A child suspended in a church.
This, however, was no child he saw, but a woman who hung midway between sides of prime Black Angus. She had once been handsome, if not pretty, had been athletic before bad luck or bad timing had interceded. She was anchored from one of the metal hooks at the base of her skull, her head twisted at an unnatural angle, her body made heavier by death, giving in to the final forces of gravity, existential evidence of the brief and blunt brutality of life.
“He knew just where to put the hook.” Linsky had come in, wearing tweed with leather patches, a jacket better suited to a college professor. He pointed up. “There’s not much damage to the skull. My guess was she was hooked before being suspended.”
“He knows human anatomy.” He’d unconsciously made it a statement.
“I’d say so. Inserted that hook around the Arch of Atlas up into the occipital bone.”
He ventured the obvious. “A doctor or med student?”
Linsky shrugged his shoulders; as always, he’d leave theorizing up to the police. “I’ve done all I can for now. . . . You’re not ready for the gurney.” It too came out as a statement.
He gazed up again, then at the ME. “No . . . not yet.”
“Whenever you’re ready.” Linsky walked out the locker into a long exterior corridor where some techs were still dusting for prints.
Sakura returned his focus to the nude body. This was the most important time in a murder investigation. These first moments with the dead. A time to listen to the story each body told, to hear as much of its life’s tale as possible, to try to understand its final chapter. And it was as close as any detective could hope to get to the killer. To peer through the window on the madness that drove him. To cross over into the house-of-horror landscape he’d fashioned. To breathe the air he breathed. To see what he saw, what he needed to see. To catch an echo of his beating heart. To take from the crime scene something of the killer himself. Something beyond fiber, or hair, or DNA. To take a piece of the killer’s soul. His tamashii.
“He’s changing.” Willie walked in, Darius behind her.
“The Visqueen’s gone. So is the dumping.” He glanced back, nodded at Darius.
“He’s exposing the body, staging something for us to look at. Or maybe something for himself. Posing.”
“Remind you of anything?” Darius was gazing u
pward, taking in the corpse, which seemed to move fractionally as something heavy toppled over in an adjoining room.
Sakura nodded.
“But there’s no reverence here.” Willie reached up, stopping just short of where the staples made a steel track along the victim’s chest. “He’s still telling us that women are disposable. The others were garbage. This one’s consumable.”
“He’s going through a lot of trouble. Dumping is a hell of a lot easier.” Darius moved in for a closer look. “Taking greater risks, too. Breaking in through an exterior door facing Fourteenth. Came equipped with the right tools. See the size of that padlock?”
“Yes . . . a lot more is going on here.” Now Willie did touch the body, at the edge of the face with the tip of a gloved finger. “This one’s older, maybe in her thirties. Much heavier build.”
“I don’t guess we have an ID yet?” Darius examined the body, with its hard sheen, its empty glass eyes.
Sakura shook his head. “She was almost certainly murdered elsewhere. Personal artifacts kept or disposed of somewhere else. We’re checking the area.”
“I wonder . . .” Willie stopped. “He seemed unconcerned with decay before. But now he’s taking his kill to a refrigerated locker. Beyond his need to display this victim as a carcass, preservation of the body might also hold some significance. . . . God, it’s cold in here.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
Willie smiled. “You wouldn’t, Sakura.”
The eleventh-floor office, like most public spaces in the city, was temperature-controlled. And yet, glancing into space through his floor-to-ceiling window, Sakura could always get a sense of the atmosphere outside. At this moment, sitting with the husband of the killer’s latest victim, he had an impression of wind that pressed against the glass. And a coldness that lurked in the late morning sunshine.