“I know that, but that’s not what I asked. Can you handle my expertise helping you kill the monster? Can you take my help if it is the best thing for the job?”
“I don’t know,” he said. At least he was being honest, even reasonable. It was a start.
“The question, Olaf, is which do you love more: the kill or your hatred of women?”
I could feel Edward’s and Bernardo’s stillness. The room held its collective breath waiting for the answer.
“I would rather kill than do anything else,” Olaf said.
I nodded. “Great, and thank you.”
He shook his head. “If I take your help, it does not mean that I consider you my equal.”
“Me either,” I said.
Someone kicked me under the table. I think it was Edward. But Olaf and I nodded at each other, not exactly smiling, but I think we had a truce. If he could control his hatred, and I could control my smart-ass impulses, the truce might last long enough for us to solve the case. I managed to reholster the Firestar without him noticing, which made me think less of him. Edward had noticed, and I think, so had Bernardo. What was Olaf’s specialty? What good was he if he didn’t know where the guns were?
29
AFTER BREAKFAST WE HEADED back into the dining room. Bernardo had volunteered to do the dishes. I think he was looking for any excuse to get out of the paperwork. Though I was beginning to wonder if Bernardo had been as badly spooked by the mutilations as Edward had been. Even the monsters were afraid of this one.
Last night I’d been ready to look at the forensic reports next, but in the clear light of day I could admit that it was cowardice. Reading about it was not as bad as seeing it. I so did not want to look at the photos. I was afraid to see them, and the moment I admitted that to myself, I moved them to the top of the list.
Edward suggested we stick all the pictures on the walls of the dining room.
“And put pin holes in your nice clean walls,” I said.
“Don’t be barbaric,” Edward said. “We’ll use sticky putty.” He held up a small packet of the pliable yellow rectangles. He peeled off some and handed it to Olaf and me.
I squeezed the stuff between my fingers, rolling it into a ball. It made me smile. “I haven’t seen this stuff since elementary school.”
The three of us spent the next hour putting the pictures up on the wall. Just handling the sticky putty made me remember fourth grade and helping Miss Cooper hang Christmas decorations on the walls.
We’d hung cheerful Santas, fat candy canes, and bright balls. Now I was hanging vivisected bodies, close-ups of skinless faces, shots of rooms full of body parts. By the time we had one wall covered I was mildly depressed. Finally, the pictures took up almost all the empty white wall space.
I stood in the center of the room and looked at it all. “Sweet Jesus.”
“Too harsh for you?” Olaf asked.
“Back off, Olaf,” I said.
He started to say something else but Edward said, “Olaf.” It was amazing how much menace he could put into one ordinary word.
Olaf thought about it for a second or two, but in the end he let it go. Either Olaf was getting smarter or he was afraid of Edward, too. Guess which way I was voting.
We’d grouped the photos by crime scene in large clusters. This was my first glimpse of the bodies that had been torn apart.
Doctor Evans had described the bodies being cut by a blade of unknown origin, then disjointed by hand. But that had been a very clean description of what had actually been done.
At first, all my eyes could see was blood and pieces. Even knowing what I was looking at, my mind refused to see it at first. It was like looking at one of those 3-D pictures where at first it’s just colors and dots, then suddenly you see it. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. My mind was trying to protect me from what I was looking at by just simply not allowing me to make sense of it. My mind was protecting me, and it only does that when it’s bad, really, really bad.
If I had just walked out now before my eyes made sense of it, I might escape the full horror of it all. I could turn on my heel and march out of here. I could just refuse to take one more terror into my brain. Probably a good idea for my own sanity, but it wouldn’t help the next family that this thing got hold of. It wouldn’t stop the mutilations, the deaths. So I stood there and made myself stare up at the first picture, waiting to see what was really there.
The blood was brighter than movie blood, a cherry red. They’d gotten to this scene before the blood had started to dry.
I spoke without turning around. “How did the police find the bodies so quickly in this house? The blood is still fresh.”
Edward answered, “The husband’s parents were supposed to meet them for an early breakfast, before work.”
I had to look away from the picture, at the floor. “You mean his parents found him like this?”
“It gets worse,” Edward said.
“How could it possibly get worse?” I asked.
“The wife told her best friend she was pregnant. The breakfast meeting was to tell the husband’s parents they were about to be grandparents for the first time.”
The rug swam in my vision, like looking at it through water. I reached back for a chair and eased my way into it. I put my head between my knees and breathed very carefully.
“You all right?” Edward asked.
I nodded without raising up. I waited for Olaf to make a sarcastic remark, but he didn’t. Either Edward had warned him off or he thought it was horrible, too.
When I was sure I wasn’t going to throw up or faint, I spoke with my head still between my knees. “When did the parents arrive at the house? What time?”
I heard paper rustle. “Six-thirty.”
I rested my cheek against my knee. It felt good. “When did the sun come up?”
“I don’t know,” Edward said.
“Find out,” I said. Gee, the rug on the floor was kind of pretty.
I raised up slowly, still practicing nice even breaths. The room did not swim. Good. “The grandparents-to-be arrived at six-thirty. It takes what, ten minutes, less, for them to recover enough to call the cops. Then uniforms arrive on the scene first. It could take thirty minutes or an hour, more, for a crime scene photographer to arrive, and yet the blood is still fresh. It hasn’t dulled yet, let alone started to brown.”
“The parents nearly walked in on it,” Edward said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“What difference does that make?” Olaf asked.
“If dawn was close to six-thirty, then the critter can be out in daylight, or it went to a hole close to the murder scene. If it wasn’t close to dawn, then it may be limited to darkness.”
Edward was smiling down at me like a proud parent. “Even with your head between your knees, you’re still thinking about the job.”
“But what does it gain us,” Olaf said, “if the creature is limited to darkness or daylight?”
I looked up at him. He was looming over me again, but I kept sitting down. Wouldn’t look very macho if I stood up and fell down. “If it’s limited to darkness, then it may help us figure out what kind of critter it is. There really aren’t that many preternatural creatures that are limited exclusively to darkness. It would help narrow the list.”
“And if it holed up near the first murder scene,” Edward said, “we might find some traces.”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“The police tramped over that area within an inch of its life,” Olaf said. “Are you saying you can find something that they can’t?” His arrogance was showing.
“With the first murder, especially, the police were looking for a human perpetrator. If you’re looking for a human being, you look for different things than if it’s a monster.” I smiled. “Besides, if we didn’t all think we could find things that the police couldn’t, we wouldn’t be here. Edward wouldn’t have called us in, and the police wouldn’t have shared the files with him.”
“More like Frankenstein with his monster,” I said.
Edward thought about it for a second, then nodded and grinned, pleased with himself. “I like that.”
Olaf frowned at both of us. “You did not create her, Edward.”
“No,” I said, “but he helped make me the woman I am today.”
Edward and I looked at each other, and the smiles faded from both our faces, leaving us solemn. “Am I supposed to apologize for that?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Do you feel like apologizing for it?”
“No,” he said.
“Then don’t. I’m alive, Edward, and I’m here.” I stood and didn’t sway at all. Life was good.
“Let’s find out if any of the killings took place after daylight. When I’ve looked at all this shit, let’s go see some murder scenes.” I looked at Edward. “If that’s all right with you. You is the boss.”
He gave a small nod. “That’s fine, but to keep Ted working with the Santa Fe PD, we’ll need to include them at the murder sites.”
“Yeah,” I said, “police don’t like civvies mucking up their murder scenes, makes them testy.”
“Besides, you’re already persona non grata in Albuquerque,” Edward said. “We’ve got to keep some of the cops willing to talk to you.”
“And that’s really bugging me,” I said. “I’m barred from the freshest crime scenes, the newest evidence. I don’t need another handicap on a case like this.”
“You don’t know what it is either, do you?” Edward said.
I shook my head, and sighed. “Not a damn clue.” Bless his chauvinistic heart, but Olaf didn’t say, I told you so.
I went back to staring at the pictures, and suddenly I could see it. I let out a breath, and said, softly, “Wow.” The room seemed hot. Dammit, I was not going to have to sit down again. I put my fingertips on either side of the wall, steadying myself, but it must have looked like I was trying for a closer look. Trust me, I was as close as I ever wanted to get. I finally had to close my eyes for just a few seconds. When I opened them, I was okay or as okay as I was likely to be.
Body parts scattered like flower petals, stirred into a red mess. My eye flicked from one blood-covered lump to another. I was almost sure that was a forearm, and the ball of a knee joint showed whitely amid all the red. I’d never seen so many pieces before. I’d seen bodies torn apart before, but that had been for food or punishment. But there was a terrible completeness to this . . . destruction. I moved on to a shot of the same image but from a slightly different angle. I tried to put the body together in my head, but kept coming up short on parts.
I finally turned around. “There’s no head and no hands.” I pointed at small lumps in the blood. “Unless those are fingers. Was the body completely disjointed even down to the finger bones?”
Edward nodded. “Every victim has been almost completely dismembered down to the joints.”
“Why?” I asked. I looked at Edward. “Where’s the head?”
“They found it down the hill behind the house. The brain was missing.”
“How about the heart?” I asked. “I mean there’s the spine, almost intact, but I don’t see any viscera. Where are all the internal organs?”
“They didn’t find them,” Edward said.
I leaned back, half-sitting on the table. “Why take the internal organs? Did they eat them? Is it part of some magical ritual? Or is it just part of the ritual of the killing itself, a souvenir?”
“There are a lot of organs in the body,” Olaf said. “You put them all in one container and they can be heavy, bulky. They also rot very quickly unless you put them in some form of preservative.”
I looked at him, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the pictures. He hadn’t given a lot of detail, but something in the way he said it made him sound like he knew what he was talking about.
“And how do you know how heavy the internal organs of a human body can be?”
“He could have worked in a morgue,” Edward said.
I shook my head. “But he didn’t, did you, Olaf?”
“No,” he said, and now he was looking at me. His eyes had been turned into two dark caves by the deep set of his face and a trick of light, or would that be darkness. He stared down at me, and without seeing his eyes I could feel the intensity of that stare, as if I were being studied, measured, dissected.
I kept my gaze on Olaf, but asked, “What is his specialty, Edward? Why did you call him in on this particular case?”
“The only person I’ve ever seen do anything close to this, is him,” Edward said.
I glanced at him, and his face was calm. I turned back to Olaf. “I was told you went to jail for rape, not murder.”
He looked right at me and said, “The police arrived too soon.”
A cheerful voice called out from the front of the house. “Ted, it’s us.” It was Donna, and the “us” could only mean the kids.
Edward left at a goodly walk, trying to head her off. I think Olaf and I might have still been staring at each other when she walked in on us, but Bernardo came in, and said, “We’re supposed to hide the pictures.”
“How?” Olaf asked.
I took the candelabrum off the table and said, “Put the tablecloth over the door.” I stood aside and let Bernardo drag it off the table.
Olaf said, “Aren’t you going to help him? You are one of the boys, after all.”
“I’m not tall enough to hold it up over the entire door,” I said.
He gave a small smile, derisive, but he moved up to help Bernardo block the open doorway with the tablecloth.
I was left standing behind them with the black iron candelabra in my hands. I stared at the tall, bald man and was half-regretful that I wasn’t tall enough to smash the heavy iron candelabra into his skull. Just as well. I’d owe Edward another favor if I killed one of his backups just because he’d scared me.
30
I COULD HEAR EDWARD in his best consoling Ted voice, trying to convince her that she didn’t need to say hi to everyone. She argued, polite, but firm, that of course she did. The more he tried to keep her away, the more she wanted to see. Call it a hunch, but I was betting it was me she wanted to see. The house was arranged so that you couldn’t enter the three guest bedrooms without going through the dining room. Donna wanted to make sure where I was, and that I hadn’t been in anyone’s bed but my own. Or at least not in Ted’s. Did she think that I was racing ahead of them to my room to throw clothes over my nakedness? Whatever the motive, she was coming this way. I heard Becca’s voice.
Shit. I ducked under the rug across the door and nearly ran into them. Donna stopped walking with a small oomph of surprise. Her eyes were wide as she looked at me as if I’d scared her. Peter was watching me with cool brown eyes, as if it was all too boring for words, but underneath the perfect teenage boredom was a light, an interest. Everybody wondered why the tablecloth was in front of the doorway.
It was Becca who said it. “Why is the rug in front of the door?” I kept calling it a tablecloth because that’s what Edward was using it for, but it still looked like a rug. Kids stick to the basics.
Donna looked at Edward. “Yes, Ted, why is the tablecloth in front of the door.”
“Because we’re holding it,” Bernardo said from behind the improvised curtain.
She stepped close to the cloth. “And why are you holding it?”
“Ask Ted,” Bernardo and Olaf said together.
Donna turned back to Edward. I usually know what Edward will say, but with Donna I was out of guesses.
“We’ve got the pictures from the case spread all over the room. They aren’t something I want you or the kids to see.” Gee, he went for the truth. It must be true love.
“Oh,” she said. She seemed to think about it for a second or
two, then nodded. “Becca and I will take the goodies through to the kitchen.” She lifted a white, string-wrapped box, took Becca by the hand and went towards the kitchen. Becca was straining backwards, saying, “But, Mommy, I want to see the pictures.”
“No, you don’t, sweetie,” Donna said, and very firmly led the child away.
I thought that Peter would follow but he stood there, looking at the doorway, then glanced at Edward. “What kind of pictures?” he asked.
“Bad ones,” Edward said.
“How bad?”
“Anita,” Edward said.
“Some of the worst I’ve seen, and I’ve seen some awful stuff,” I said.
“I want to see,” Peter said.
I said, “No.”
Edward said nothing, just looked at him.
Peter scowled at us. “You think I’m a baby.”
“I wouldn’t want your mom to see them either,” Edward said.
“She’s a wimp,” he said.
I agreed with him, but not out loud.
“Your mother is who she is,” Edward said. “It doesn’t make her weak. It just makes her Donna.”
I stared at him, trying very hard not to gape, but I wanted to. I’d never heard him cut anyone any slack for anything. Edward was not just judgmental. He was a harsh judge. What chemical alchemy did the woman have to have won him over? I just did not get it.
“I think what . . . Ted is trying to say is that it isn’t your age that makes us not want to show you the pictures.”
“You think I can’t handle it,” Peter said.
“Yeah,” I said, “I think you can’t handle it.”
“I can handle anything that you can handle,” he said, arms crossed over his thin chest.
“Why? Because I’m a girl?”
He actually blushed, as if embarrassed. “I didn’t mean that.” But of course he had. But, hey, he was fourteen. I’d let it slide.
“Anita is one of the toughest people I’ve ever met,” Edward said.
Peter squinted at him, arms still hugging his chest. “Tougher than Bernardo?”
Edward nodded.
“Tougher than Olaf?” And I thought more of the kid that he’d put the two men in that order. He knew instinctively which was the scariest man, or maybe it was just Olaf’s size. No, I think Peter had a feel for the bad guys. It’s something you either have or you don’t. It can’t really be taught.
Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Collection 6-10 Page 158