by Rawlyns, Nya
The fact that my DNA was exhibit A should have bothered me. It didn’t.
My flat was stifling and rank. I’d forgotten to take out the trash again. After opening windows to let in the thick sultry air of late afternoon fumes, I paced the small space, knocking aside bits of detritus littering the floor.
Apparently the cleaning lady had taken the year off.
Annie was going to kill me.
But that was a tongue lashing for later. Right now I needed to try on a few terms and see how well they fit.
Settling at the computer, I googled Vampyre, Council of Gotham, Haven, Goth Culture and a host of other search terms for the millionth time in a row. Nothing new popped.
Nothing except what was now in my head, clear as the light of day.
Staring at the wavering screen did nothing for my peace of mind. That nineteen-year-old, clueless kid had had big, bold brass ones, never asking why, just living in the moment. The thirty-five year old man knew a thing about loss and consequences, even if he never gave a rat’s ass about any of that.
The closet door yawned open, and for no good reason I pushed away from the desk and padded over to reach for the shoebox on the upper shelf. It weighed next to nothing.
Mattress sagging under my weight, I laid the lid and the box in a precise line, lid to the left, box to the right. Then I spread the photographs out: one, two, three, four, down a row… repeat. Obsessive compulsive. It was the only thing I did, the only tell I had, that gave insight into my hidden fears. Eleven in all. Not having a twelfth often gnawed at my innards, but I’d put on big boy loafers in my twenties and gotten past that.
The third from the right beckoned. I fingered it, considering, then tapped two others, working down the grid. Avoiding the last one for as long as possible.
New Orleans. Trina. That was taken the day before she disappeared. Some tourist wandered past. Trina gave her the camera. Dear God, I'd forgotten the particulars.
Nice lady, down to visit relations as she called them. We chatted… well, Trina chatted, her English haltingly beautiful but flawed. It made the warrior less imposing, more… human? Trina never smiled but her eyes would crinkle, her lips might cock or twitch with silent mirth, concealing the fake fangs I always thought were an affectation.
I wasn’t so sure about that now.
Not about the affectation but about them being fake.
Why I pulled that box out of the closet, I'll never know. So many memories were flooding back, and I asked the question that had had no answer for sixteen long years: I wonder if I will ever see her again?
My belly gurgled, reminding me that I was down a few calories in the energy department. Never being a big eater had kept me lean. Unfinished business kept me mean.
I flipped the cell open and hit speed dial.
She picked up on the fourth ring.
“Annie?” I listened to the garbled Spanglish on the other end.
I explained about the trip. That I was out of town meant little to her, but getting a retainer and all expenses… that had her attention. She asked if I’d eaten, I said no, not bothering to keep the hope out of my voice.
She signed off, giving me just enough time for a shower.
The tee-shirt was a total loss. Avoiding the mirror, I grabbed the bottle of Betadine and liberally squirted the rust-colored acid wash over my shoulder—right, then left. The memory of her body pressed into mine, the deep pulls at my neck… it was almost like the blonde girl had been transparent, invisible. All I felt was her.
Annie keyed herself in, a small concession just in case. If I was lying dead or severely injured on the floor, she’d be able to get in and see to the few personal items I cared about.
My family had been too poor to trust banks; it was a lesson I’d learned well and nothing over the years had dissuaded me from that opinion.
“You look like sheeet, Micah.”
“Jose agrees with you.”
“He smart man, Jose.” She held up a cloth bag bulging with covered dishes. “You no eat, you sick.”
I am sick… you just don’t know how badly.
Annie, Anna Maria Theresa Rodriguez, was all of five feet nothing—rounded, matronly, in her mid-forties with most of the kids gone except for Juan who kept showing up like a bad penny after every stint in juvie. Now he was fresh off a five-to-ten but out on good behavior. The penal system’s definition of ‘good behavior’ and mine had a serious disconnect.
She set the containers on the table and rustled around in a kitchen drawer for clean silverware, but finally gave up and pulled out a box of plastic ware instead.
That’s my girl.
“Is not warm. I’ll nuke it.”
The smells were so mouth-wateringly delicious, I said, “Don’t bother,” and stood by the sink eating out of the Tupperware. Through a full mouth, I muttered, “Jesus Christ, this is good.”
“Micah,” she warned, but didn’t bother to hide the glow of pleasure.
While I stuffed my face, I read over Talon’s new info, trying to organize the ‘what I know’ and ‘things I wish I knew’ into the appropriate columns.
No props for guessing which one had more items in the ledger. When I finished, I rinsed the containers, surprised that I had scoured them clean.
There weren’t many people I was comfortable being around, and fewer still I let into my personal space, so it was with regret that I bid Annie goodbye.
She tried to make excuses. “It’s Juan. You understand.”
I didn’t. He was an abusive bastard, just like his father. Waiting for the day when I had a good excuse to wipe the streets with his ass gave me warm fuzzies. I wanted Annie to kick him out, once and for all, but that wasn’t my call.
She came over and reached up on tiptoes to palm my cheeks, squeezing gently.
“You good boy, Micah. You take care.” She grimaced and thought about her words, weighing them carefully. “I no like you go to this place. Is not lucky for you.”
“I know sweetheart, bad juju. But you know me…”
“Sí, that’s the trouble. I do know you.” She shook her head and opened the door, leaving with a whispered, “Vaya con Dios.”
The night yawned empty and evil, the divide between real and imagined closer, not nearly the maw it had been before last night.
I needed to decide what to believe. I had choices and it had nothing to do with free will.
I wanted Catrina back in my life. I ached for her feral, razor-sharp emotions and the whiplash seesaw of pleasure and pain. I wanted to feel strong, alive… worthy.
Mostly I wanted back into that world. She was the only ticket I had.
CHAPTER FOUR
By the Numbers
Annie’s refried black beans and rice sat heavy in my belly, parallel parked next to a feeling of dread and salsa’d up with spicy ain’t doing right. The text swam in murky waters… words, definitions, explanations—none of it shedding light in those dark places my brain inhabited.
Pawing through Talon’s notes for the bazillionth time did nothing for instilling clarity. He’d supplied all his peoples’ research jottings, file photos, newspaper clippings, and some cross-over links to similar deaths in areas served by the parent company. Obits. Next of kin.
That’s where New Orleans had popped, and the reason I was flying down on an all-expenses budget jaunt to look into a similar set of ‘circumstances’. Unsolved and unresolved. Four hookers, over a period of six weeks, all united by occupation but not necessarily by body type, or even location. All drained dry.
It was the tail-end of hurricane season. One of the Goth Fests was in full swing when it, the incidents, started—Fall… nearly a year ago. The first body barely made a ripple, nor did the second. By the third, conspiracy theorists and those favoring serial killer stats had the forums abuzz. One, two, three: bam, bam, bam. Like clockwork. The fourth hadn’t been found until much later, and it was only through TV quality CSI-work that links to the other three ‘ritual murders’ could be established.
Tabitha was first on the list, short and stocky, skin the color of milk chocolate and on the far end of her use-by date judging from the fuzzy file pic. A Detective Rochon and his new partner had gotten a heads-up, strangely enough from the whore’s pimp. Time of death was put at too far out to be useful and, as with my city’s body count, hardly worth the fuss. Plenty more where she came from.
Det. Rochon also pulled number two, same pimp making the call. More brown sugar, tall, skeletal lean. No pic, just the description. Documentation didn’t seem to be a strong suit down there.
Their pimp had shot to the top of the leader board, name of Baptiste, whether that was first, last or only name wasn’t noted. His alibi on number two was solid, and the man was rattled to his shiny wingtips. He pulled all his girls and rabbited before his right to remain silent ink dried.
Number three was the freshest, discovered next to a dumpster just hours after being drained. She was the only white girl, relatively young, in her mid-to-late teens. No identification and no one to claim her. Likely an independent contractor, aka runaway.
A few enterprising newshounds with math skills added up the bodies and came to enough speculation and sensationalism to jack the murders to page three. The force got put on mild alert in the red-light district, but beyond that no one in an official capacity seemed to care. The pimps reportedly hired muscle to patrol their allotted turf for a while. It didn’t take a genius to see they were doing that to show the city fathers some good faith efforts to clean up their own shit without unduly taxing official coffers. It worked to some extent.
Number four was an afterthought, too decomposed to be of use, but they had a name from dental records and some next of kin in a northern parish with roots in Superstitionville. When the candles and charms failed to pony up the perp, law enforcement lost interest.
It didn’t help that inclement weather wreaked last-gasp havoc on both the law-abiding, and not so law-abiding, citizens. Whoever, whatever, had chowed down on the ladies of the night slipped away with the last of the storms.
I did the notes in chronological order, cross-checked some missing persons, traipsed through homeless person reports, and even missing teens, trying to trace some vector aiming toward my town. Nothing popped.
What did pop was another beer tab, looking to hydrate after Annie’s excellent, but fire-breathing repast. Sometimes osmosis worked just fine for me. Shuffle the papers, move stuff around, pile A here, list of whatevers there, letting my subconscious have at it.
I’d already had the ‘aha’ moment the night before. What I needed was backstory… and a why. There’d been a tail, I was sure of it. Was it the Goth—Vamp—chick from Haven? If the mythology was true, then the answer to that was… unlikely. It’d still been light outside when I left the dormitory in Brighton Beach. However, that didn’t preclude a helper bee from the novitiate ranks doing surveillance.
She, they, knew I’d be at the club, knew what I was looking for. I’d been targeted. I’d bet my sorry ass life on it. And in my tequila-addled state of lust, it never occurred to me that one half of that carnal sandwich had been a set-up. Hindsight being twenty-twenty didn’t alter the fact I’d been cocky and stupid.
Tall, dark and toothy had given me answers, ones that even now left me with cravings nice boys only fantasized about. I was no longer a nice boy, hadn’t been since I walked away from hearth and home into the arms of a porcelain-skinned, silver-haired dreadlocked freak with fangs and skills that still set my blood boiling.
The Haven Vamp chick had taken me to all the places my head and body remembered, putting me right on that fast track to Hell. Then she’d done a Vulcan mind meld on me, because no way was I conjuring up the passage of time between the mother of all orgasms and coming to, peering down into the East River at the crack of dawn.
Why the girl and not me?
Something other than ego insisted that Vampira was getting off on sucking my vein, though how I could tell with my cock buried to the hilt in a blonde cushion I’ll never know. Fangs, lips, tongue. Hands. What were her hands doing? I couldn’t remember.
I was gripping Blondie’s hips, whaling on her, in her. Disconnected from her. Until the blunt force trauma slicing my neck wide open. Then and only then did I dump my life force, my seed and my hot blood, into two very different vessels. Together.
There was a familiarity to it I couldn’t shake, whether it was the muscle memory from when Trina violated and corrupted my youth, or simply from an over-heated imagination.
Yes, I now had an answer.
The question remained... was it a warning or an invitation?
When I turn mellow and moody, it’s best to call it a night. Glancing at the clock, I was surprised it was only ten thirty. The ambient noise had wound down, the building populated with mostly blue-hairs already zoned out on Nyquil and boredom. And my stunning view of another filthy brick wall carried the extra benes of cutting out traffic noise, along with providing the laughable fire escape with the fifteen foot drop to the ground. Not exactly code but it kept the peeping tom situation under control. And it gave me an out if and when I needed it.
The knock on the door came as a surprise.
My visitor even more so.
I set the Sig Sauer and the shoulder holster on an end table and opened the door to a sometime friend and ally.
“Tom. A bit late for a visit, even from you, isn’t it?”
Detective O’Hearn grimaced and said, “Not exactly a visit, Micah.” Since I was barring his path he asked, “Mind if I come in?”
I was going to smart mouth him but he didn’t look like he was in a mood for banter. In fact he looked a bit like I felt: wound too tight. And clearly he had something on his mind.
The hairs on the back of my neck prickled.
“You got anything to drink?” He was pacing around the kitchen counter, eyes sweeping the documents and pictures arranged in orderly stacks, missing nothing.
“Beer. Bourbon.” I opened the fridge to check on supplies. “Make that bourbon.”
“Double. Ice if you have it.” He lifted a newspaper clipping and examined it carefully.
In an effort to distract him, I said, “I take it you’re not on duty.”
He shrugged. And continued reading. Apparently he saw the same connections I had, but with a fresh set of eyes.
“Where’d you get this?”
He knew I wasn’t the brightest bulb when it came to research or computer stuff, but Annie was ace so that seemed a logical answer. I had no idea if he or anyone else at the precinct had cottoned onto the Managing Editor of the Post hiring me on as added value in their relentless pursuit of truth-for-profit.
That seemed to satisfy him for the moment. He took the glass and sat in the ancient wingback, right leg crossed over the left, right arm dangling. A picture of worn out and ground down.
Debating beer or bourbon, I solved that little dilemma by chugging the dregs in the can and then pouring a generous dollop into the only other clean glass I owned. I liked it neat but with the temps still hovering in the too hot to sleep region, ice cubes seemed like a good deal.
Dropping onto the couch, I leaned back, propped my legs on the coffee table and waited for the shoe to drop.
If DNA could squirm, mine was doing a rhumba right down at the cellular level.
Sipping quietly, my sometime friend stared at the ancient plaster, as if the lines and cracks had a message of hope and salvation writ small. Or a clue.
My money was on a clue. A sure bet would make that me. He had to know I’d been there. At Haven. The night the underage girl’d been sippy-cupped dry. The one keeping me company at the bar.
I tensed as he prepared to speak, but he surprised me with, “I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
That got my attention. And it pulled a little Hail Mary from the better-safe-than-sorry closet. Tom and the missus had been doing the temporary separation tango. Bad for him. Good for me.
I said, “I’m sor
ry,” and meant it. “You can crash here if you want. Couch is crap but it’s better than the floor.” That was as far as I was willing to go.
“I, uh, don’t want to put you out…”
“Da nada.”
I went to scoot off the couch and see to some bedding, but he held up his right hand and stopped me in my tracks.
“It’s more than just a visit, Micah. I need to ask you some questions. About Saturday night.”
What happened in the alley beside Haven was clearly out of his precinct, but the other three incidents weren’t. I’d guess someone higher in the food chain was looking to departmental co-operation for the investigation. O’Hearn wasn’t senior… but he was the best. He had instincts and they’d led him to my doorstep.
There was no point in playing games with him. We went back a long way, growing up in the same neighborhood, butting heads, drinking each other under a table. He taught me to fight and then to fight back. When he’d had enough of his old man, he’d left, taking his mother with him. I didn’t have that option, never even considered it. That hole in my life got filled with Catrina, to the point where nothing and nobody mattered.
Except for Tom. He was one of the reasons I cleaned up and went straight after mustering out of the army.
O’Hearn was an older brother, not by blood, but in all the ways that counted. And most of the time he was on my side.
He ran the same hand that stopped me cold through graying brown hair long overdue for a trim. He was pushing forty going on fifty, his middle showing signs of paunch and with nose and complexion testaments to his Irish genes. Pouchy, sad eyes surveyed the living room, seeking answers that would satisfy his bosses yet leave us with our relationship intact.
I decided to get the ball rolling because I needed control over the questioning. I owed him answers. Just… not the truth. At least, not the kind of truth twisting my gut in a knot.
“It’s the case I’m working on.” I pointed to the pile of papers on the counter. “I was following a hunch. It took me to Brighton Beach.” That wouldn’t require much explanation. If you were looking for answers, you started where the working girls parked their stiletto heels and re-tooled for another round.