by phuc
(IV)
CHAPTER TWO
NEEDLE WORK
Deaver's Sharp/Sharp epidermal scissors. You clip open the scrotum, a l inch lateral cut. Through the cut you pop out the raw testicles. There's very little bleeding. It's strange to look at. You expect the colors to be different. The exposed testes are whitish because they are covered by a fibrous sheath called the tunica. The epididymis looks like microscopic angel hair pasta. The remaining subcutaneous tissue looks off yellow, a pale squash color, with tiny dark lines like threads. The entire mass glistens hanging out of the scrotal sac. He's still quite alive. His hips shiver steadily but that's all they can do is shiver. His wrists and ankles are handcuffed to the bedposts. His back, shoulders, and waist are secured by restraints to a field traction board made of fiberglass. And in addition to that you've immobilized his hips with leather Bard Parker pelvic restraints. You're very thorough. The 100mgs of Desoxyn will make sure that he doesn't pass out from the pain. You will make him feel everything. He must feel everything. He must. It's all hanging there right in front of your face. It shivers. You gently squeeze the raw left ball in your fingers. It feels warm, wet. The network of tiny blood vessels make it pulse. Ethicon makes a lot of different kinds of needles. Most of them are small and curved for sewing up incisions. But they also make one called a KS. The KS is long and straight like a hat pin. You have a whole box of them. Make him feel, your mother tells you. Your mother is standing by The Window. Behind her you can see The Cross. "Okay," you say. You methodically push about a dozen of the KS
needles through the left testicle. Each time you plant a needle, he screams. Each scream is like an explosion in his throat that goes nowhere because his lips are sewn shut. You let him lie there smothered in pain, roaring. Then you take all the needles out. You wait 10 minutes and have a glass of wine. You let him think it's over. Then you stick the needles back in all over again. Now there's blood but still very little. You leave the needles in the left testicle. It looks like a weird porcupine. But there are still plenty of nerves left. There are still plenty of things left for his devil to feel. You go on to the right testicle. You clasp it in a pair of Ballenger tonsil forceps. Then, with an Arista #11 scalpel, you begin to dissect it. Very little blood oozes out. The pain sounds like a muffled engine in his throat. The inside of the ball looks grayish like cooked meat.
Suddenly this is dull. You slice many long grooves into the testicle, stick some KS needles into it, then leave it alone. The balls are finished so you go on. Do his devil now, your mother says.
The pain and terror have shrunk the penis to a nub like it's trying to retreat into the groin. "You can't get away from me," you say. You hold it up with forceps, stretch it out straight, and begin sticking needles into the shriveled glans. You stick one all the way down the urethra. Each insertion causes a sound in his throat like a dog barking. This is beautiful, giving his devil so much to feel. It's beautiful! your mother says. You're getting hot now. You want to touch yourself, but not yet. You snip off all the topical skin from the shaft with the little Deaver's snippers, then you stick more needles into the shaft, up under the rim of the glans, anywhere.
You stick needles under his fingernails and toenails. You stick needles into his nipples, and into his navel. He won't last much longer so you straddle his chest. You're sitting on his chest. You stick needles into his eyes through the sealed eyelids, hunting for the optic ingress. You know when you've found it because the needles sink in much deeper and go deep into his brain. A little while later he dies. Then you have some more wine. You walk around in the quiet room, Daddy's Room. Your mother is gone. You look out The Window and you see The Cross. It reminds you of something but you never know what. Later you take all the needles out. You sterilize them in the little autoclave. Then you cut off his cock and balls with your pair of Bruns serrated plaster shears.
She reads it one more time to make sure it's good.
She's sure she got rid of him good.
She thinks her tricks will work so she can go on and on.
She wonders what Kathleen Shade will think when she sees this new chapter.
I hope she likes it, she thinks.
This morning she drove by Kathleen Shade's apartment and she saw a man with long blond hair standing on her balcony.
A little later a cab came by and picked him up.
She followed the cab.
She can't let Kathleen Shade be corrupted.
Now she knows where the blond man lives.
I'm so proud of you, her mother says.
"I'll visit the blond man soon," she says.
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Chapter 13
(I)
Spence's office seemed smaller, and he seemed larger: a well dressed, dispassionate giant. His eyes reminded Kathleen of chips of ice. It's like being in a room with a golem, she thought.
"This is disgraceful," he said.
"Look, you're the one who told me to bring in anything from the killer," Kathleen objected.
"No, I told you to call me. I told you I'd send an evidence technician to pick it up. I told you not to touch anything you think might be from the killer. Not only did you touch it, you opened it, you handled it, you got your fingerprints all over it. This is ruined."
"I have a right to open my own mail," she countered. She had to lie a little, didn't she? "How am I supposed to know if a letter's from a killer or not? I have my column to write. It's my job. I don't have time to call you every time I get correspondence, Lieutenant. I don't have time to wait for some evidence technician."
"When did you get this?"
"Yesterday."
"From your carrier in New York?"
"No," she said.
"What do you mean no?"
"The word denotes a negation, denial, or disagreement," Kathleen told him. "It's an adverb."
Spence's jaw set like a brick. He closed his eyes for a moment. "You're telling me that the killer mailed this to your home address?"
"She didn't mail it. She taped it to my front door."
"My God." Spence tapped his blotter, a Morse code for his thoughts. "You told me your address was unlisted."
"It is," Kathleen said.
"Then how did the killer get it?"
"I don't know. Ask her."
"I should bust you," Spence said. "You've withheld critical investigative data for over 24 hours."
"And let me tell you something," she went on. She knew his threats were idle. He couldn't touch her. "I don't appreciate you harassing my acquaintances."
"Acquaintances? You mean Maxwell Platt? A man you slept with only hours after meeting him?"
"You have no right to invade my privacy and sabotage my romantic life."
"It sounds like a one night stand to me, a cheap pickup."
He always did this. He always went out of his way to rile her up, to offend her, to insult her. Now he was implying she was promiscuous. Don't react, she thought.
"And it's interesting that you chose Jonah and the Whale to take him for drinks. Research, right?"
Spence smiled. "For your book about the killer?"
"I can't believe you had me followed," Kathleen evaded the remark. "They don't even do that in Russia anymore."
"It was for your protection." Spence creaked back in his chair; his white dress shirt stretched across the enormous chest. "You seem to keep forgetting that the chief function of a police department revolves around the protection of citizens. I want you to find someplace else to live for the time being. I'm going to put a female decoy officer in your apartment. What's your dress size? 12? 14?"
Kathleen's teeth ticked together. Withholding her rage felt like trying to reel in a huge fish on high seas. Was there no limit to Spence's insolence? "You're a prick, Lieutenant," she said. "Do you know that? You're an absolute prick."
Spence blinked in confusion. "Did I say something wrong? I need to know your " Then he paused. "Oh. I wasn't implying that you're overweight. Is that what you thought? No, no
. I have to assign a decoy officer who's similarly proportioned to you. That's why I need to know your dress size."
Kathleen's size, incidentally, was 8. "That's crap, Lieutenant. And it doesn't matter anyway because you're not putting anyone in my apartment."
Spence sighed. "Maybe it hasn't occurred to you, but you're in a quite a bit of danger. Read my lips. The killer knows where you live. She could come to your apartment and kill you."
"She won't kill me," Kathleen felt assured. "She needs me, remember?"
"Of course. For the bestseller. And due to that you're convinced she'd never want to harm you?
How intelligent a conclusion is that? She's pathological."
"Forget it. No way. I won't permit it."
Spence shook his head. "Look, I'm going to have an undercover officer in your parking lot anyway. There's going to be someone watching your building round the clock. If you let me put somebody inside your apartment, we have a much greater chance of apprehending the killer."
"No," Kathleen said flatly. "I'm not going to be forced to move out of my home because of a nut.
It's that simple."
Spence smiled again. It was unnerving the way he smiled; the gesture seemed inhuman on the already inhuman, blank face. Kathleen wondered if he had ever smiled in genuine good will in his life, and doubted it. "You don't put on a very good show," he said. "The reason you're not going to cooperate is obvious. You don't want us to catch her, not yet. Not until she's given you enough profile material for your book."
Kathleen thought of landslides, of cliffs falling. Her outrage, her absolute loathe, felt like a high fever. "You're so ignorant I'm not even going to respond to that," she said.
"It's true and you know it." He withdrew a thin cardboard box from his desk and slid it over to her. The box read CRIMINAL RESEARCH PRODUCTS, LTD. Sample Pair, Size Medium. "Do you think you could at least cooperate to the extent of wearing these whenever you open correspondence from the killer? Would that be too much trouble? They're polymer evidence gloves, so you won't get your fingerprints all over the evidence and further disrupt our efforts."
Kathleen put the box in her purse. She wished she could put Spence in her purse, and button him up. "I'm happy to oblige," she mocked.
"Use the gloves, photocopy the material, and bring it to me immediately."
"You should read that material," she suggested, pointing to the Xerox of Initiatory Rites and Childhood Memories. "In all your harping about evidence, you haven't even looked at it."
"You think it will distress me, unsettle me."
"I know it will, Lieutenant."
"I've seen floaters pulled out of the Anacostia. A floater is a water bound corpse. Maggots and putrefactive gas make them buoyant. I've seen crack stools hung upside down and gutted like deer. When I was a cadet, a porno theater on Vermont Avenue burned down with about 40
people inside. The exit door was chained from the outside. The bodies were essentially a single congealed mass. They were cooked together. It was my job to separate them."
"Should I stand up and applaud?" Kathleen asked. "Just read the material, Lieutenant. I'll wait."
Spence's CRT screen blinked amber rap sheets. Behind him a picture of a young man in a police hat hung on the wall. The boy looked youthful, innocent, but Kathleen immediately recognized the stoic stare. It was Spence. She wondered if he had a wife, a family, yet she doubted he had either. Solitude incarnate, she thought. The existential triumphant.
What does he do on Christmas? she wondered, adjusting her hem. What does he do for fun?
Does he go out with friends? She could not picture a man like Spence with friends. He would consider friends a weakness, wouldn't he? His only friend, she guessed, was his job. His function.
"Jesus," Spence whispered.
The golem quails, Kathleen thought.
The whisper had sounded stark, desperate. He read on through the killer's manuscript, blanching.
Every so often he'd wince, though she knew he was making every effort not to. Spence was not a man who felt comfortable revealing his humanity.
"Interesting," he eventually said. He set the sheaf of papers aside.
"That's all? Interesting?"
"It should be very helpful in determining the details of the killer's psychiatric profile," Spence went on. "Our forensic psychiatrist should have a hay day. I'll admit, though. It's probably the most disgusting thing I've ever read. But it's also quite sad."
"Yes, it is," Kathleen agreed. "How is the investigation coming? Any leads?"
"No," Spence said.
Kathleen's nose crinkled as if at a funny smell. She'd been looking right at his face when he'd replied. "Why do I have this odd feeling that you're lying?"
"Because you're a renegade militant feminist," Spence answered. "It is your intractable opinion that all men, uniformly, are liars. That's sad too. Everybody, everybody in the world, has insecurities. It's sad that you've let yours ferment into an unrelenting, distrustful philosophical hostility."
"May I leave now?" Kathleen said. "I mean, is there any reason why I should continue to sit here and be insulted by you?"
"No," Spence said. "There's no reason at all."
Kathleen grabbed her purse and stood up. Her dislike for Spence made her feel clammy. "Have a good day, Lieutenant," she said with no real meaning at all.
"Are you going to mention me in your book?" the policeman asked.
"Oh, you can rest assured I will."
"How are you going to embark?"
"What?" she said, now weary just hearing his voice.
"I mean how are you going to put the book together? What, you're going to publish the killer's writings and then make your own commentary?"
These were surprising inquiries. "I'm going to characterize the killer by a sociological, psychiatric, and subjective analysis, and yes I'll also publish her writings in conjunction. When you catch her of course I'll interview her. My book will show all of her facets. The objectified woman, the innocent abused child, and the demented psychopath."
"And, naturally, the parities," Spence added.
"What?"
"The similarities between yourself and the killer. The book would never be complete without that, right? And it would certainly never be honest."
Kathleen made no reply. She stood in the doorway, her purse dangling looking at him.
Spence looked back at her for an irreducible moment. Then he picked up a pen and proceeded with his paperwork as if Kathleen weren't there at all.
«« »»
She left in a haze of feelings, none of which were positive, a drone in her head. No, there were no limits to Spence's concerted efforts to injure her. Why? she wondered all the way out of the huge building. It's not logical. Spence was trying to catch a killer; he was not maintaining a constructive relationship with Kathleen. And why had he lied earlier? The reason eluded her, yet Kathleen felt certain he'd lied in response to her question about leads. Men frequently lied open faced Kathleen's romantic past provided an indisputable testament. Thinking further back, all of Uncle Sammy's promises had been made with an identical expression. Spence's arcane strategy irked her. Did he think that subtle harassment would make her more eager to cooperate with him? Oh, he'll be in the book all right, she vowed to herself. You can bet on that, Lieutenant.
Traffic jammed Indiana Avenue; it would take forever to get out. Spence, Spence, her thoughts continued to tap at her. Parity, she thought. The steering wheel baked in her hands, nearly too hot to hold. A great swordblade of sun glared across the windshield. What had Spence said? And, naturally, the parities... The similarities between yourself and the killer. Spence obsessed over reminding her of the part of her past that she needed to forget in order to remain whole. He felt driven, for some reason, to sufficiently hurt her, to rub her face in the facts that both she and the killer were sexually abused as children.
Was she beginning to see his psychology? Spence steeped insults and accusations on her,
and then pitted her against them. A good example was his implication that her book would not be honest without her own admission of being sexually abused herself. Spence's cruelty was diabolical. Suddenly she realized, He's going out of his way to accuse me of being a phony because he knows the accusation will keep me involved.
Was it that simple?
Crossing 6th and C Street, a quick glance showed her the District Courthouse. Uncle Sammy, in a cheap brown suit, loped down the stone steps until Kathleen blinked at the wheel. There he was again, walking into a toy shop. Down the next block a brunette with snow white teeth smiled on a poster ad for Salem Lights, plastered inside a bus portico. A person sitting on the bench lowered a Washingtonian: Uncle Sammy. The heat stuck his thin brown hair to his forehead. He stared at her...