by Harker Moore
Lancaster watched her. Sleeping now. When she’d finally come around, she’d thrown up. All over the bed, all over herself. He’d struggled to get her off the bed and into the tub. Then there had been the stink to clean up. She’d sunk like the dead in the warm water, so he’d had to pull her out and dry her off himself. Her face had begun to swell, though he’d managed to stop the lip from bleeding. Although he didn’t know how. The bite had gone clean through. He figured she needed stitches. But that wasn’t going to happen. Not in his lifetime. That was the last thing he needed. Some snoopy bitch nurse asking just how she’d gotten the injury. His ass was already on the line with the cops sniffing around. Asking him questions about Sarah.
God, his head ached. Something was definitely happening. How long since half his brain had turned nasty? Gotten greedy? A little roughing up used to suit him just fine. A good spanking from Shaman satisfied. Bruise a little flesh. But something had split inside him along the way, and the game had gotten real. And he’d developed a taste for blood. And the hurting.
Shit, he had to get it together. Lay low after he patched things up with KitKat. He would have to really sweet-talk the bitch. Hopefully she wouldn’t remember all the crap that had gone down. Who was he kidding? That fat lip of hers told the whole fucking story. Well, almost the whole story. Except for that little part where he’d humped her brains out while she was flat-out dead cold.
If only his goddamn head would stop hurting so he could think. He’d always been good at thinking, figuring things out. And as he saw it, the police were plenty interested in the van. Shit, where was Dustin hiding his ass? He needed to find him before the cops did. Needed to get inside that van and clean it up.
CHAPTER
20
Once, as a small boy, James Sakura had had to sing with his many cousins on the occasion of his grandmother’s birthday. It was a short song of simple rhythms. And though he adored his grandmother, Akira did not enjoy performing in public. The words of the song were beautiful, and they sang inside of him. But the voice that came from his throat was as one of the small green frogs that filled garden ponds in summer.
It had been the next day that Akira had given his true gift to his grandmother. Taking her by the hand, he had brought her to a patch of earth, where he’d helped her to sit among the soft grasses. And then, as fast as his lean boy legs could carry him, he had run. Run with the sea-salted wind, lifting and coaxing his dragon kite into the air, until it soared, its long tail swishing against the sky. Grandmother had laughed at his wild spirit, clapped as his thin arm worked the winds and his dragon kite, tethered by hand and heart, danced among the clouds.
This morning, standing behind the podium, Sakura felt like that frog-throated boy of long-ago Hokkaido, wishing with all his heart to be Akira of the dancing dragon. It was not in his nature to make public pronouncements, in his will to preen power. Sakura, even at his most visible, was a private man.
“Thank you for coming this morning,” he spoke quietly. “There can be no words for the families of the women who have died that will heal their grief. Yet we offer them. We are sorry for your incalculable loss. And with our sympathy, we offer our continuing commitment to apprehend and bring to justice this killer.” He paused, taking in his audience.
“We are utilizing the Department’s full resources to stop this individual. There is much we have done, much we are doing, much we intend to do. We will not allow the voices of the victims to go unheeded.” He looked down at the notes he had not used. “We are very fortunate to have the assistance of forensic psychiatrist Dr. Wilhelmina French. Some of you know Dr. French and her critical role in the Death Angel investigation. Before I take any questions, Dr. French has a few remarks.”
Sakura moved away from the microphone bank and Willie came forward. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Profiling is only a tool. Offering insights that inform good detectives, doing good detective work.” She paused. “This killer is a risk-taker and an opportunist. A man without boundaries or discipline, a man of shallow intellect who acts from the basest of instincts. And he has begun to make serious mistakes.”
Sakura listened as Willie played with the truth. She was tossing the bait. The serial would either answer the challenge with another murder—something in all likelihood they could expect anyway—or contact his detractors in order to mount a defense. They were counting on his ego, and the very thing they had publicly libeled—his considerable intelligence—to work in their favor. It was a chance they had to take. Continuing failure was not something Sakura could live with. And he had failed. The last three victims had died on his watch.
“What kind of mistakes, Dr. French?” Zoe Kahn had jumped the gun.
Sakura intercepted, as Willie stepped aside. “We cannot comment on that, Ms. Kahn.”
“Sorry, Lieutenant Sakura”—Kahn was not giving up—“but it seems to me that, despite Dr. French’s expert analysis, this serial killer appears to be anything but stupid, since he’s managed to outsmart your good detective work, and jacked up the body count to seven.”
It was one of those neighborhood bars that seemed to never close. Day and night meant nothing; the interior of Acey’s was on neon time. Most customers bellied up to the bar, but Rozelli had decided on one of the three scarred tables parked in the rear. Bad choice. Too close to the johns. Urine smells competed with the odor of cigarette smoke and won.
Lammie Pie sat with a hand wrapped around a glass of diet Coke, fingers stripped of the fake nails she used to wear as much for self-defense as anything else. The nails were just one of many changes. In fact nothing about her resembled what she’d been two years ago. Back then her face had been coated in makeup, her lips greased hot pink, and her eyelids shadowed in something resembling colored glitter. She’d worn false eyelashes back then too, so thick and heavy she must have been visually impaired. But that would have been a mistake. Lammie Pie was all-seeing, all-knowing. A goddess of sorts.
Rozelli looked across the table, admiring her transformation. Face scrubbed clean, hair pulled back in a ponytail, and dressed in a pale yellow turtleneck and navy blazer, she could have passed for a Barnard coed. He thought she looked pretty and fresh and her age—two months shy of twenty. Though he had to admit he had liked the miniskirts that had barely covered the finest ass in the business, and that showed off legs incredibly long for someone who was just under five feet four. Of course, the stiletto heels might have had something to do with the illusion. Her short dark hair had been covered in those days with a curly platinum-blond wig, the source of her street name.
He had been the one to finally get her off the streets after her pimp had used her like a punching bag for turning tricks on the sly. Her new occupation brought her into contact with some of the same scum, but with fewer liabilities.
Lammie smiled all the way up to her big blue eyes. “You’re the only man I ever offered freebies, Rozelli.”
“That’s a load of shit, Pie. Besides, I was never good enough for you.”
“That’s a crock, Rozelli. You’re every girl’s dream.”
“You’re making me blush, Lammie.”
“I was hoping to give you a hard-on.”
“You know I’m a man of steel, Pie.”
She dropped the smile, and lifted her leg under the table, her foot going up between his thighs. She laughed, a smoker’s laugh. “Good boy.”
“Okay, Lammie, put your shoes back on. We got other business to transact here.”
She let her foot slide away. “Franks is a real titty baby. Whenever things go sour, he runs home to Mommy in the Bronx. My sources say he’s holed up there now. In an apartment over the garage.”
“What’s he know?”
“That his friend is looking for him.”
Rozelli nodded. “He carrying anything?”
“I doubt it. . . . He killed those women, Rozelli?”
He shrugged, placed a couple of twenties on the table. “Don’t give anything away, Lammie.”
“Saving it all for you, Rozelli.”
The office was quiet. Even the traffic noises seemed entirely subdued by the muffling effects of curtains and central heating. Willie sat at her desk, typing at her keyboard. Her work with the task force had been taking up a lot of her time, and she was using this interval between patients to catch up on writing her book.
She sat back and looked at her watch. Thirty-five minutes past the hour. Victor Abbot was inexcusably late, the second time in as many weeks that he’d been late for an appointment. It was not a good sign.
She saved her work and brought up his file. She wanted to review her notes from their first session together. Abbot had interested her, partly because of her research with psychoactive drugs and their effects on self-perception. Depersonalization disorder, from which Abbot seemed to suffer, could sometimes be triggered by the use of LSD, though the active ingredient in marijuana was a more likely catalyst. As was MDMA. The present epidemic of the disorder among the younger population was thought to be directly correlated with the widespread use of Ecstasy among clubbers and ravers.
Victor had denied such drug use. He claimed that his feelings of being an automaton were long-standing, and that he could remember no particular triggering event. There had been hints that his mother had been cold and demanding. And childhood abuse was one of the more traditional links to the disorder. It had been one avenue she’d wished to explore, but as yet there hadn’t been time.
She suspected that Abbot, for whatever reason, was not really interested in therapy. He had seen her appearance on Zoe Kahn’s show, and this had evidently inspired him to make the first appointment, but with no will for any serious follow-through. She found she was sorry. She was ashamed of the reaction she had had to him in their truncated session last week. It was foolish, letting a private patient weird her out, when in the course of her research she’d sat across from nearly every incarcerated serial killer in the country, having detailed conversations about their crimes.
That Abbot had been “messing with her head” she had no doubt. He might be lying to her on who knew how many levels. Still, she didn’t think he was a fake; she believed that the symptoms he described were real. But he was someone with too much time and money who had mainly wanted to get close to a sensational investigation through some psychiatrist having her own fifteen minutes of fame.
Obviously, she had failed to engage him, doctor to patient. There were probably good reasons why she was more comfortable with research, more comfortable profiling serials who were in effect a substitute for patients. She was helping the police catch them after it was far too late for any effective intervention, when what she really wanted was to find them as children, before their destructive fantasies got the upper hand. It was the reason she was so obsessed with the reprogramming possibilities of drugs like LSD. The reason for writing this book. Maybe she was just . . . Jesus, Willie, stop analyzing yourself.
She glanced again at the time. It looked like Victor Abbot was not going to show at all. She picked up the phone. It might be true that she had never sensed any real honesty from him, much less received the proper commitment; but when she’d agreed to become his doctor, she had assumed a level of responsibility for his welfare. She dialed his number, and when he did not answer, she left him a message to call.
It was a run-down neighborhood in the Bronx, but not half as bad as some Talbot had seen. He figured the curb appeal of the Franks domicile would improve in spring, since there was evidence that Mrs. Franks might have a considerable green thumb. Rows of clay pots lined the steps leading to the front door of the detached residence.
This was the second time he and Rozelli had circled the block. On the first circuit they had spotted a black van parked in the Franks driveway, had observed the garage apartment slumped at the rear of the property.
“Park here,” Rozelli said, a block away. “We’ll hoof it.”
He pulled the car over, parked parallel to the curb.
It was bone-numbing cold, but he knew Rozelli was oblivious to the elements. Trapping rodents like Dustin Franks gave his partner a warm adrenaline rush. He shivered, his skinny Anglo-Saxon instincts responding to the damp 30-degree weather, and a certain level of rational fear that he hoped would keep him and his partner from getting themselves killed.
Rozelli slowed entering the front yard, opposite the driveway. He followed, crouching, moving alongside a row of shrubbery that flanked the house and marked the right boundary of the Franks property. There was an abandoned look about the house, a soundlessness that made him wary. He peered over Rozelli’s shoulder.
“The van doesn’t necessarily mean he’s home,” he spoke.
“Oh, he’s home. In a dark stinking hole.”
“You’re loving this, Rozelli.”
“I wouldn’t exactly say I’m getting an erection.”
Talbot laughed.
“We need to split up. I’ll go around the back to make sure the weasel doesn’t try to give us the slip. You take the front, head up those steps like an encyclopedia salesman.”
“Are you implying I look like a nerd?”
“I’m not implying, Talbot. Although I’d bet my ass Janet Kissit’s got the hots for you.”
“So that means I’m not completely asexual. . . . Okay, I’ll take the front.”
Rozelli stayed low, moving ahead, then out of sight around to the rear of the garage.
He stood, walked back around the house, came up the driveway casually, as though he had nothing but innocent business to transact with Dustin Franks. He took the steps evenly, his hand going to the solid security of his .38 inside his jacket.
At the door, he knocked, stepping aside, his hand moving again to his gun. He waited.
No response.
Another knock.
Then he heard it, the wild scramble of someone in a hurry. A rat in a maze. Then a door opening somewhere, slamming back against itself.
“Police! Halt!”
He flew down the stairs, running around the corner of the house to the rear. He stopped short, looked up. Dustin Franks was spread-eagle, flat on his stomach, on the second landing of a rickety stairway that led from the apartment down into the backyard. Rozelli was standing over him, gun drawn, one foot firmly planted in Franks’s spine. A jumble of small plastic packets, like imperfect snowflakes, spilled down the stairs and off the landing into the tall grass.
“That you, Talbot?” his partner asked, not taking his eyes off Franks.
“Here.”
“Mr. Franks was making his big getaway.” Rozelli grinned down at him. “ With enough shit to get half the Bronx fucked.”
The late afternoon seemed contrived for beauty, a deep and pleasant coolness emerging from the shadows in the wake of a fading sun. Hanae, walking with Taiko in the French Garden, stopped along the stone path to listen to the play of water. She smiled, imagining for herself the Three Dancing Maidens of the central fountain circling joyfully in their surround of nodding chrysanthemums.
As to their actual form, she had only the accounts of others. And she held a momentary wish to wade through the pool and climb to the level of the three dancers frozen in their whirl of delight. To touch and take their measure.
So often had people wondered at her ability to sculpt what her eyes had never seen. They forgot that an object in space was but a set of relationships, which in her experience could be apprehended in the span of a hand or the gentle probing of a fingertip. A collection of information adding to a unity.
She had begun small, duplicating in clay the simplest of shapes. And if, after years, she had become more proficient . . . well, what was a head but a ball deformed by its characteristic hollows and dimples? She was no more nor less than any artist, comprehending and transforming the world to her vision. As a child, she had sometimes sought in earnest to penetrate the mysteries of seeing with the eyes. But all her imaginings and all the explanations that her cousins Sei and Nori had struggled to provide had failed
to bridge that unbridgeable chasm. She had accepted that sight was insight, no matter what organ provided it. Her small success with her sculpture bore testament to that.
And indeed there were many sorts of vision, many ways of coming to knowledge. For the material world was so small a part of the all, and in the truest sense no more than an illusion. Her marriage to Jimmy was not an object to be weighed and measured in the world, but to be comprehended as a complex set of relationships. It could be summed, recognized, even as it changed. Do not make of me a caged bird. Her words. She knew that Jimmy had heard them and understood. Knew that he was struggling to accept her vision of where the pathway led. As she struggled to overcome the feelings which kept them from intimacy.
A cold breeze blew, ruffling her hair. She touched her forehead, where pain had begun to gather even in the beauty of the day. So many kinds of knowledge. So many complexities. Perhaps it was her sightlessness that stripped her of distraction, that let her apprehend things that others did not see. How to measure a sense of darkness? A warning of decay? She could not express these things. But the sum of them she knew, as she knew her own powerlessness.
She reached down to pat Taiko’s neck, as if to feel the life and the strength of him in the warm thickness of his fur. But some danger she perceived drew closer. The threat of it grew.
From the beginning Left-brain had been a fly on the wall. Buzzing busily in the daylight, flitting from one dung heap to another. Gathering and assessing what was to be made of life. And Right-brain, the sewer rat, scurrying in the bowels of Earth, always inside the cavern of night.