by Harker Moore
They were still screwing when the phone rang. She watched his face sober in the bedside light as he held the receiver close.
She kept silent as he got up and started pulling on his clothes. But her brain was racing with déjà vu, the near certainty of another murder. The whole circumstance of last year repeating itself.
“Johnny . . .” she began, not able to help herself. “It’s another victim, isn’t it.” She raised herself on an elbow.
“Shhh.” He sat next to her, pushing her back into the pillows. “Wish I could stay.” He kissed her breasts.
“Mmmm . . .” She was stretching in pleasure when she heard the click and felt the cold metal closing on her wrist.
“Trick or treat . . .” Johnny was saying, springing out of her reach.
“Rozelli!” She shot straight up, but the handcuffs kept her tethered to the metal headboard. “Rozelli, get these goddamned things off me.”
“Guess you got the trick, baby.” He was so clearly enjoying himself. “But I’ll tell you what I can when I get back.”
No one knew who finally resurrected the canvas tarps from a small storeroom at the rear of the costume shop, but a couple of techs had the remnants from an old paint job hung in a matter of minutes across the window. Sakura stood at the edge of the sidewalk, his back to the wide cordoned-off area, watching the flashing lights from cop cars reflect off the glass onto the hanging dropcloth. He checked his watch. The witching hour had passed. They were almost three hours into the first of November.
“It’s a circus.” Rozelli had come to stand next to him. “Look at ’em. Pushing and shoving to get a better look.”
Sakura didn’t turn, but continued to stare at the shrouded window. A large crowd of civilians had gathered behind the barricades precinct had set up. Night was a good fit for death, slithering under the cover of dark, burrowing its stink in shadow. And the jackals came. The news of a fresh kill traveled fast. Press vans had been gathering for the last half hour. Already he’d been hammered with questions, shouted from behind enemy lines. Though he couldn’t blame the fourth estate. It made for a great story. Murder on All Hallow’s Eve.
“Halloween, Detective,” he said at last.
“Shit, the way I figure, Lieutenant, every night is Halloween in this town.”
“Johnson interviewing the couple?”
“As only the lady can. But the girl’s pretty freaked out.”
Sakura nodded. He hadn’t liked what he’d seen behind the glass either.
“He’s posing. But this is for us.” Willie stood with Darius and Sakura inside the storefront window, looking at the large woman, who was still in the chair. Rigor setting in despite the cold. “He wants the whole world to appreciate his handiwork.”
Darius moved in closer. Touched the bright green boa. “He used this like a rope.” The feathers ruffled, momentarily coming to life. A bizarre effect played against the dead body. “Who is she?”
“Erica Talise. The store owner.” It was Sakura who spoke.
Willie crouched to get a better look at the long, puckered incision running down the victim’s chest. “He’s not breaking with this part of his routine. Opening them up is still important to him.”
“He had to do some maneuvering. First he had to subdue her, and then he had to get her out of the store.” Darius turned to Sakura. “I am assuming she was taken from here and murdered somewhere else.”
“There’s no evidence to the contrary.”
“He must have posed as a customer.” Darius looked back at the woman who’d become victim number seven. “He’s got good transportation, so he takes her where he can comfortably do what he wants. Returns to the shop. Dresses her. Puts her in the window. Leaves. All of this without anybody seeing him. He must be invisible.”
“He’s organized and smart.” Willie stood. “And he’s getting off on the escalating risks he’s taking.”
“Halloween night in New York.” Sakura walked up to the body. “Maybe no one thinks there’s anything strange about a guy fooling around with a mannequin in the store window of a costume shop.”
Willie nodded, staring at the face that seemed to be wearing a mask, one as horrid and fixed as the dozens that filled the store. Red circles stood out on the cheeks like abrasions. The lids were smeared with a heavy coat of green shadow, and thick black liner ringed the half-open dead eyes. Lipstick ran clumsily over the natural lines of the mouth. “He’s not creating his ideal woman. Look at her.”
Sakura followed Willie’s eyes.
“And depersonalizing her like we’d expect,” she went on. “Using her as a prop. She’s just another mannequin.”
“She was made to look like a whore,” Darius finally speaking the words nobody wanted to say.
CHAPTER
19
It was late afternoon, and Chief of Detectives Lincoln McCauley seemed a determined illustration that stereotype was often rooted in fact. His fat Irishman’s face showed especially beefy above his stiffly knotted tie, the smoke that issued from the wedged Don Diego at the side of his mouth only adding to the cartoon impression of a snorting, angry bull. Sakura, as was becoming usual, had found himself at this meeting in the role of the red cape. He watched McCauley take a another huge draw from the stout Robusto, and imagined that at least some of the smoke was venting from the chief’s reddening ears.
“So what’s the deal on this latest victim?” McCauley asked.
“The usual canvassing and interviews with witnesses. The autopsy’s scheduled for later today.”
“And that van connected to the deejay?” McCauley had zeroed in on the latest of his failures.
“Mr. Lancaster is refusing to cooperate. We’re still working on tracking the friend with the van.”
“But bottom line, you don’t think this Shaman guy’s good for the murders.”
“We don’t have any real evidence to suggest that he is.”
“That’s good.” McCauley took equivocation for a yes. “Because I wouldn’t want the public to ever learn that we had the killer in our hands and let him walk out for a little Halloween fun. What’s bad, Lieutenant, is that you don’t have anyone else who even looks like a suspect.”
Seven victims and counting. Sakura offered no defense.
The chief got tired of waiting. “What about the tip line?”
“We’ve had thousands of tips,” Sakura said. “And the daily volume’s increasing. But it’s all the usual thing—people calling to tell us that they’re sure the killer is a husband, or a brother-in-law, or their boss. The task force is following up on every one, but nothing so far has yielded anything credible.”
“Like I said, you’re going nowhere. Unless you have some plan?”
“It’s my judgment we should go proactive.”
“Stir the bastard up?”
“Knock him off stride. He’s probably feeling pretty invulnerable right now.”
“He has empirical data.” McCauley couldn’t resist.
“We can use the media,” Sakura continued. “Send him a message.”
“Which is?”
“That we don’t respect him; he’s not that intelligent. And he’s making mistakes, though they can’t be revealed to the media. He’ll do whatever’s necessary to prove we’re lying. He needs the public to believe what he believes—that he’s smarter than we are.”
“Why would he believe that?”
Sakura ignored the comment. He would play straight man if it meant he would be allowed to do his job. “He’s already expanding beyond his pattern of simply dumping the bodies,” he said, “taking greater and greater risks. Challenging him this way could force a mistake that catches him sooner rather than later.”
The chief leaned forward in his swivel chair. “And we save lives even as we’re provoking him to kill again?”
“He’s going to kill anyway,” Sakura said. “But, yes, that’s the theory.”
“It better fucking be more than theory, or the vultures will hav
e the balls you’re so eager to dangle out there.”
Sakura wasn’t sure if the private parts included the chief’s, but he understood the danger to careers involved with this kind of maneuver. “Do I have your okay?” he asked.
McCauley unplugged the cigar to study its burning tip. In a single peevish motion he stubbed the glow to ashes inside the crystal ashtray. “Make damn sure this works,” he said.
Leaving McCauley’s office, Sakura took the metal staircase down to his own floor. Descending with measured footsteps. Parceling the moments of peace. The reverberation of his passage sounded like a haunting in the empty well.
He was relieved to have gotten McCauley’s agreement to go ahead with his plan. He only wished he were as confident as he had sounded when presenting it. But there was no way to accurately gauge their chances for success. In the end it didn’t matter. With the toll of victims rising, he simply was not willing to remain passive. If his game didn’t work, if more victims died and baiting the killer failed to result in his capture, it would be his balls on the line, as McCauley had so colorfully put it. The chief himself might get some flak from the top, but that could always be handled by a showy decision to replace James Sakura with another lead investigator.
The failure would be his. And it would be fair. He would have had his chance.
Make damn sure this works. McCauley need not have wasted his breath. He had tasted a failure that others did not guess. He had no wish to revisit that dish.
In his office, he made tea and reviewed tapes of the interviews that had been conducted this morning with the employees of Erica Talise’s costume shop. The young man and woman had each expressed regret for not checking on their employer when she failed to meet them as arranged. Gilly Franklin had appeared inconsolable. And Marcus Laine had admitted that, happy to be alone with Franklin, he had been all too willing to accept that Talise had decided not to join them, a decision which would not have been wholly uncharacteristic.
Neither of the two could remember any customers who seemed suspicious. Sure, they got some weirdos from time to time, but yesterday and the week leading up to it had produced no one who stuck in the mind. Each was pretty certain that Talise had locked up after them, and equally sure that she might easily have let someone in late. Their friend would not have been afraid of being alone with a customer. The Erica they had known was afraid of very little. An admirable trait that in the end had not worked to her advantage.
Franklin’s interview had ended in uncontrollable sobbing over the horrible things that had been done to Talise. Apparently she had insisted, partially out of guilt, on being present with Laine for the identification of the body, feeling that she owed at least this much to her friend. Sakura did not envy her the experience, which he was soon to surpass. His unpleasant duty, as he’d mentioned to McCauley, was to attend the autopsy that had been scheduled for late this afternoon.
Margot dusted, the white cloth making frantic swirls on the dark of the dining table. The dust was imaginary. The task ridiculous. She hated housework of any kind, and Ruth, her maid, had just dusted on Tuesday. It was only that she was restless today, and in need of activity. Anything mildly physical and completely mindless would do.
Only it wasn’t doing. And suddenly she remembered that today was All Saints’ Day, and switched to regretting that she hadn’t gone to Mass, though she’d been a comfortably lapsed Catholic since her first semester in college. Perhaps it was not enough that Jason and Damon be presented with a good ethical model. There was a spiritual side to things, represented by the kind of ritual she’d grown up with. It seemed suddenly terribly wrong that she had neglected this aspect of her children’s lives.
Or was she simply being foolish. The twins were not yet four. There was plenty of time before she considered the complication of religion. For were things not already complicated enough? She knew that at least part of the anxiety she felt was a holdover from seeing Michael last week. She hadn’t told Reese about that meeting yet, and the longer she waited, the more likely it seemed that she would appear to have been hiding it from him.
Damn Michael. She had wanted some kind of closure. To offer an apology for past sins. To proffer a promise that she and Reese had no intention of shutting him off from the boys. She had wanted to make their lives simpler. But with Michael nothing was simple. Their meeting had gone . . . too well.
The dusting had stopped, and she stared now at the white cloth stilled in her hand, as if in its soft folds answers might hide. Sunlight streamed through the gap in the curtains. And the dust, not imaginary after all, whirled in its lemon stripes, lively spiraling motes that returned to the table to die.
She had been standing. Now she sat down, as if the force of gravity was all at once too great. She had made things worse. Theoretically perhaps, Reese wanted only what was best for the boys. But how would he really react if Michael began to take a larger part in their lives? The thought had actually crossed her mind that she might call David St. Cyr and have him include a guest house in their plans, someplace Michael could always stay to visit with the boys. Would Reese interpret that idea as the practical solution she had first envisioned? Or would he think, as she did at this moment, that she was utterly mad? She didn’t know the answer. And that was completely frightening. Loss of her judgment was Michael’s continuing gift. Loss of control.
She dropped her head in her hands. Giving in. Remembering his kiss. She prayed she had hidden her response, leaving immediately on what she’d contrived as a friendly, civil note. When what she had wanted was more.
Jason’s scream was piercing as he flew into the room, with Damon in vampire teeth chasing behind him.
“Gonna bite me. . . .” Jason ran into her arms.
“You’re Spider-Man,” she said. “You can take care of any old vampire.” She tugged at the mask. “But I thought you weren’t going to run with this on your face. You shouldn’t be running at all in the house.”
“Damon’s gonna bite me,” Jason repeated.
“No he’s not.”
“Am too.” Damon had to remove the teeth from his mouth, happily contradicting. “He told me to.”
“I know what we need to do,” she said. “I want you to bring me your trick-or-treat buckets. Go get them.”
She waited while they scurried off. Sometimes they could be surprisingly cooperative.
When they returned, she dumped the pumpkin-faced containers out onto the table. She should have done this last night after she’d come back with them from trick-or-treating in the neighborhood. It was a sign of how distracted she had let herself become, that she hadn’t monitored how much candy they were being allowed.
She looked down at what was left. The piles were nearly identical. Jason would be the one to decide what was to be eaten, and Damon would follow. It was a natural tendency for one twin to be dominant, but it was something she wanted to ameliorate. It was the principal reason she wanted them to have their separate rooms.
“Pick out one more piece,” she said to them. “I’m going to put the rest away. You can have another piece after supper.”
Getting them to nap was more difficult than usual, but finally they gave out, crawling together into bed, where they curled together like kittens. Still in partial costume, faces sticky with candy. Nanny would have cleaned them up, but Nanny wasn’t here today, and their little-boy messiness seemed natural and endearing. She stood by the bed for a time watching the miracle of their troubleless sleep.
In just a little while she would wake them up and bathe them. Reese would be home early tonight, and they would all eat together for a change. She walked to a chest to pick out fresh clothes. The twins were beginning to take notice of what they wore, and as with the Halloween costumes, she was encouraging them more and more to select different things. The bottom drawer slid open on untidiness. Jason had discovered he could get into it, and she never knew what pieces of toys or puzzles she would find within the rumpled folds of little shirts and pants. Sh
e sat on the floor to restraighten the contents, removing bright plastic cars and a ball, refolding clothes.
Underneath everything was a wadded black and orange napkin from the Halloween party in the park. Her first thought was the nightmare of stale crumpled cookies, or worse. She was faintly puzzled by the discovery of two tiny sugared skulls, a bit melted and grubby but recognizable still.
KitKat was on her knees, facing him, tits to chest. Her arms wound around him, massaging his back, her fingers tracing his tattoo. An indigo line of tribal glyphs running from the nape of his neck down his spine into the crack of his buttocks. She pinched the lids of her eyes closed, feeling his heart thud against her, the muscles of his buttocks contract and release in rhythm as he thrust himself into the dark arch of her cunt. Slap, slap, slap—sweaty skin against sweaty skin, meter to the gut-rumble of his grunts.
“All of my cock . . . Can . . . you . . . take . . . it?” He tensed in orgasm, pulling her hair hard, so that she arced back, and inside her head fine lines of ecstasy bloomed, and something close to fear. Then the moment broke and he relaxed, locking one hand around her neck in a kind of loose stranglehold. He was coming down, his breath easing off. His heart beginning to mark regular cadence. Then she saw his mouth moving down over hers.
She screamed, a sound filtered through breath and saliva and pain. And then he jerked away, arms flying up into the air, the winner of some kind of match, leaving behind pulp, her lower lip chewed and bloody. And insanely, he was laughing. Wiping the wet red stain of victory from his face with his hand.
She was lying on her back, her fingers cupping the lip. Crying; she was crying. Softly. Weeping. That was the word. Tears mixing with mucus out her nose.
“You son-of-a-bitch . . .” She gurgled the words quietly, uninflected, grabbing the sheet, stuffing it into her mouth. Anything to catch the blood, keep it from sliding back down her throat. She thought she might have raised her arm to strike him, but fingers like fat worms gripped her wrist. Something cautioned her to get up, to make it to the bathroom to throw up. But the thought was lost in the large movement of his body coming down on her, lost in the shoving of his dick back inside her. The last of her mind registering the wink of his silver rings before it turned into a solid wall of black.