The jibe fell flat, and Rae got the full impact of Kunati’s thinking, that she’d come on a lark, so why not have a lark while here, all at taxpayer expense. “I’ll do that, Detective!” she shouted as the door slammed to. Now she sat in the rear seat with Orvison again acting as chauffeur. It made her feel foolish as they pulled away from the curb and the crowd, some snapping photos.
She at first had the thought ‘small town paparazzi’ until she saw the camera crews with the clear markings of CNN, Fox, CBS, NBC, ABC and others. This small town series of killings had gone national, due most likely to the sensational nature of the killer’s brutality and the weapon of choice along with the idea of his being a sleepwalking monster. A knifing, murder by gunshot wound, strangulation, poisoning, domestic dispute turned murder, none of these horrendous acts were quite enough nowadays for a public that insatiably fed on graphic violence. But this Hammerhead guy, now this was something network news could run with.
“Maybe I shoulda hid you out at the Brass Monkey,” Orvison commented to the rearview, watching for her reaction. When he saw her features scrunch up like one big question mark, he added, “It’s a bed and breakfast downtown. A good deal more private than the Embassy.”
“I’m sure I can manage. I’ve dealt with the press before.”
“I just mean…well at the Embassy, they can take your picture right through the elevator door.”
“Really?”
“While you’re ascending or descending.” “Really?”
“It’s entirely glass.”
“So…ahhh throw no stones?”
“I’d appreciate your not talking to the press if you can avoid it.”
“I’ll tiptoe around them as much as possible,” Rae promised.
“That’s all I ask.”
The city of Charleston had two major centers in its downtown, the capitol complex with its recently refurbished and polished golden dome overlooking a number of crumbling at the foundations buildings, a water fountain, and several statues erected to war veterans and coal miners—and secondly, the major shopping district where the Town Center Mall acted as a fulcrum to orbiting major hotel chains such as the Marriot, the Embassy Suites, the Ramada Inn, and others along with a huge civic center. This was also restaurant row, and it teemed with more people than Rae’d thought to see in one place here.
A number of tall buildings graced the downtown area as well, buildings topped by giant metal letters reading CHASE, BB&T, BRICKSTREET, and others, primarily banks and insurance firms, below which squatted small coffee shops, sandwich shops, bookstores, a walkabout park, and jewelry establishments up one street and down the other in quaint colors. A number of downtown buildings, such as the library and the defunct Pioneer Hotel, looked to be standing since the turn of the century,. A movie theater that’d become a stage for the local university and the local Subway Sandwich shop flanked this area on each side. There were no rail subways here, only the occasional bus.
Finally, they’d reached their destination, the Embassy Suites downtown. Rae leapt from the rear seat and as soon as the trunk was popped, she pulled her bag from the cruiser before Orvison could get around the car. He’d opened the lid from inside. A gangly bellhop stood statuesquely by, smoking a cigarette, indicating with its burning embers that he was on break and unassailable. For this reason, Orvison insisted on taking her suitcase in through the doors where a second bellhop took charge of it. By now it was nearing 6PM.
“We’ll pick things up tomorrow where we left off,” suggested Orvison.
“I’d like to meet and talk with the last victim’s daughter.”
“Can be arranged.” “And your medical examiner, get a firsthand assessment of the crimes from him.”
“Hatfield, of course. I’ll arrange it; let you know.”
They parted at the desk, and Rae located her accommodations. They were indeed swank. Someone in Charleston definitely wanted her comfy and feeling wanted. She wondered if the mayor had anything to do with it; wondered if he were into occult things and held a strong faith in the paranormal. Else this was West Virginia hospitality.
# # #
She closed the door on her room, and once alone, she smelled the odors of the crime scene clinging to her clothing, clutching at her nostrils and skin. She quickly undressed to her panties and bra, started a warm bath in the Jacuzzi that Kunati would have surely denied her, and did a little perfunctory unpacking, hanging out her outer garments—a couple of business suits, an array of blouses that could change each suit daily, and a pair of skirts. She then located a place for her under things, T-shirts, pj’s and jeans.
While doing these chores, she was pleasantly surprised to find a his-and-her matching pair of white terrycloth robes, and while she didn’t need both, she enjoyed the loan, pulling the hers from its hanger and wrapping herself in it.
She next raided the wet bar for a glass of wine, the best in stock being the Berringer’s Zinfandel, which must do. She poured herself the entire mini-bottle into a wine glass and after a sip, she placed it on the arm of the Jacuzzi.
Her hot bubbling water ready, Rae stripped away the robe and the remainder of her clothes, and one toe at a time gingerly slipped into the ‘cauldron’.
She let out a long sigh as the warm water pounded her body with a gentle tsunami from all sides. The hotel had spared no expense on the hot tub, and it was located not in the bathroom but before a fireplace in the living room. “It’d be damn romantic if I only had someone to share it with,” she said aloud, fingering the controls on the Jacuzzi and striking a red button, assuming it was the highest level for the jets. Instead, the fireplace came alive with a rainbow of flames. This she could not have anticipated, no matter how psychic, not here in Charleston.
“Still,” she muttered to the posh room, “this is living.” She felt this way primarily because for the first time in twenty-four hours, she’d gotten both the awful murder case and concerns about Nia back in home off her mind. A rare moment, indeed.
She luxuriated in the moment. What was it Dr. Polkabla always encouraged? Live in the moment, the now with a capital N.
The water pulsated on all sides of her, soothing tired muscles.
She had lowered to the point only her head remained above water. She then managed to find a jet to hit the back of her sore neck.
The warm glow of the fireplace was her only light as darkness descended over Charleston outside.
No phone calls.
She felt heaven had descended with nightfall, and she half-kiddingly wondered if Gene had anything to do with it. She knew her father and mother would just call it an extravagant indulgence, both being somewhat ascetic in their beliefs and lifestyles. There was more in common between Buddhism and Wiccanism than people realized. Come to think of it, she knew that neither her father nor her mother had ever used a Jacuzzi.
As it is, this Jacuzzi is getting too crowded. Why is it I can’t just veg out and enjoy. Why all the guilt tripping? You’d think I was Catholic or Jewish.
She missed being able to drive ten minutes to the Tavern on the Green to talk it over with Joannie Childs. At this rate, she’d even settle for her shrink, Dr. Polkabla to get some answer to the question. What’d I ever do to deserve so much guilt heaped on me by none other than me, myself, and I? Just what gives?
Wellnow, wellnow… came her mother’s familiar phrase in her head. Why don’t we explore that just a bit, shall we, Aurelia?
Mother always called her Aurelia when displeased, Rae when happy with her and her actions.
Rae had closed her eyes, but now she opened them to find her mother’s insubstantial yet substantial spirit at the other end of her Jacuzzi, a slight frown and look of disappointment furrowing her brow there in the rising hot mist between them.
“And hello to you, Mother,” she said and raised her wine glass as if in toast, but her mother had no glass, no wine, just a word of advice.
Nia needs you now more than ever, and—
“Damn it,
Mother! Stop butting in with—”
—and traipsing off after some maniac in order to save the world—
“Charleston, West Virginia is hardly the world, Mother.”
—is… is not doing my little granddaughter any good.
“Sheeze, Mother, you’re still telling me how to live my life?”
I’m a concerned grandmother is all.
“You’re telling me!”
Don’t take that tone with me, young woman.
“But Ma, it’s not fair.”
What’s not fair?
“You, that from the grave, you’re still telling me how to raise my kid!”
You will lower your tone, young lady.
“Oh please, I’m doing my best with Nia and this world, so if you don’t mind, unless you have a kind word to say, or something leaning toward encouragement, get out of my bath and my business.”
Maureen Murphy Hiyakwa telepathically said to Rae, And a fine way to speak of your mother…and the dead!
Then she was gone as suddenly as she’d appeared, wafting off in the rising steam of the Jacuzzi.
“Don’t go away mad! I love you, too, Mom! Know your heart’s in the right place!” Rae called to the ceiling while thinking, even though it ticks me off, and then she wondered if her mother and father in the beyond could read her thoughts. Then she wondered if Gene Kiley could read her thoughts from beyond. If so, she knew that he knew that she missed him enormously, right along with her parents.
Another thought filled her now, one of a double-edged nature. Even when alone, I’m never truly alone, now am I?
TWELVE
Early the next day, Rae met with the greater Charleston area medical examiner, a Dr. Roland Thomas Hatfield, a rail thin man whose emaciated, yellowed skin and sharply angular, rugged face—the face of pioneer stock—begged for a beard and a stovetop hat to complete the image of Abraham Lincoln. Who could argue with such a cadaverous looking man who worked on cadavers? Who might question him where he stood with scalpel in one hand, bone saw gripped in second skeletal hand? Indeed his hands were like an Edward Gorey depiction, eight fingers as long as decorator matchsticks, thumbs a pair of bottlenecks.
Dr. Hatfield appeared old enough to have retired twice over, his snow white brows, and what was left of his wispy white-to-gray hair, the picture of Santa with AIDS, a Santa who’d long ago forgotten how to smile, much less erupt with the occasional ho-ho-ho.
Instead, Rae was given a perfunctory glance, no welcome aboard on the case, not the slightest professional courtesy, but then Rae’s credentials were at odds with his own, he being a pure medico-legal, scientific investigator, she being a psychic sensory investigator. Rae had come to expect such an attitude. She’d normally swallow hard and push on. This time, she scrunched up her nose as the good doctor went back to work dissecting the dead grandma-san that Rae had held hands with at the murder scene.
Orvison had arranged for her to be on hand for the autopsy, and she’d accepted, primarily to learn more about the notes left in the victim’s throat and those that’d come before, something the copycat killer, failing to know about, had left out of his repertoire when he’d had his wife bludgeoned to death in this horrid fashion. It’d been a wise move on the part of Orvison’s department to keep news of the handwritten notes stuffed into the mouths of each victim under wraps.
Dr. Hatfield had his own agenda this morning; he meant to completely disgust and make ill the intruder on his case—Dr. Hiyakawa. It was a right of passage that many an ME presented to a newcomer, no matter who she might be, to determine at what point the medico-legal person could make the lay person throw up her breakfast. This was done by unnecessarily placing all the contents of the victim’s insides, what was commonly called the ‘rack’ of organs in the face; in this case, in Rae’s face.
The rack consisted of the viscera array of organs that made up the inner torso and intestines. It came out with the bone cutting around the ribs, and if an ME or an assistant lifting it out were the least bit careless, one or more of the organs, thanks to gravity, might fall off and slither about the floor in a show of mock life. She knew it the moment one the deceased’s large intestine came chasing after her ankles that Hatfield had allowed it to happen. At the same time, he pushed the dead woman’s left lung at her and said, “Take a good whiff of this! What’s it smell like? Huh?”
She’d smelled smokers’ lungs before in far more controlled situations. “Like the bottom of a bottomless ashtray,” she calmly replied, bent, and lifted the runaway intestines in her gloved hands. Presenting it to Hatfield, she added, “I think you misplaced these?”
He gave her a closer, longer look than before, a glint of respect in his jaundiced eye. She thought his coloration not only bad but a condition of liver damage; she guessed him a heavy, heavy drinker indeed, and that his condition was this self-inflicted addiction. “They tell me, Dr. Hiyakawa,” he began as he continued to work, “that you’re one of these mentalists who helps the police out in baffling cases where there’re no clues and where all else fails.” Including forensics, she heard his thought. “Is that so?”
“I’m no magician, Dr. Hatfield, simply a person who relies strongly on inner monologue, intuition, and P-SI.”
“PS-what?”
“Psychic Sensory Investigation.”
“Ahhh…I see, like holding hands with the dead?”
He’d been told this by whom, she wondered. She guessed Kunati. She wondered what in Kunati’s past had so dead set him against anything of a paranormal or psychic nature. She would’ve imagined that if he were of African heritage, that it’d be just the opposite. No race on the planet had more invested in “magic” in all its permutations than did the African, unless it was the Asians or the lucky Irish.
“Yes, I hold hands with the dead, and I touch their craniums, eyes, heart, the chakas to determine if there are any messages they wish to convey,” she said to Dr. Hatfield.
“There’re enough people in these Appalachian mountains who already believe in spirits and hobgoblins,” he retorted. “We really don’t need adding to the ‘haint’ population by importing people who talk to ghosts.”
“I wouldn’t know about that.”
“People in the mountains here’re about as advanced as their ancestors from Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. Many of ‘em work in the mines here like their forefathers did in Wales. Their practical about all matters save the spirit, so far as I can see.”
“So you feel it was a mistake asking me in on the Dream Killer murders?”
“It’ll only fuel the newspaper and TV accounts of just how ‘supernatural’ this killer is.”
“Supernatural?” she asked.
He went to a nearby table where the morning Gazette lay and he tossed it into her gloved hands. “That’s what they’re saying now, yeah.”
She glanced over the headlines. Hatfield was right. The press had painted Hammerhead now as some kind of phantom, unseeable…untouchable.”
Hatfieled grumbled, “A ‘haint’ who comes and goes through walls, invisible till he strikes, superhuman. All bull crap, if you know what I mean. Meanwhile making folks all over the county and state terrified to go to sleep at night.”
“I should think every reasonable person must know the killer is human and not some sort of banshee creature that slips in through a chimney,” she countered, replacing the newspaper on his desk. “Forced entry tells us that much. Phantoms don’t pick locks.”
“You ever argue with a mountain person about spirits?”
“Well…no, not really.” “My point is that they believe in spirits as much as they do angels and the bible stories and Satan, and they believe in evil spirits, and evil spirits do things like this monster roaming among us, and if it picks locks, its just to throw us foolish scientific and educated types off.”
“I don’t know what to tell you.” Rae did not know any words to help here.
Hatfield frowned at her. “Thought you government types had all
the answers. Look, so long as they believe he’s more supernatural than natural, that he’s some sort of avenging angel of death, or something out of a Hollywood B-movie, the more terror he strikes in their hearts.”
The cadaverous old man made a lot of sense.
“So let’s work together to unmask this fiend,” Rae suggested, including Orvison in her gaze now. “Show everyone exactly how petty and little and mean and human he really is.”
“That’s a goal worth going for,” replied Dr. Halstead. “How do you propose we go about it, Dr. Hiyakawa?”
“We start by putting it out there exactly what we believe about him.”
“Run it in the papers, on TV broadcasts?” asked Orvison.
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