The Devil in Gray

by Graham Masterton

  He was sketching out a floor plan of George Drewry’s house when Cab came in. “Where are we at?” he wanted to know. “I’ve got this goddamn media conference in ten minutes.”

  Decker scratched his ear with his pencil. “We’re at square zilch, that’s where we’re at. But I guess you could tell the media that we’re actively pursuing several promising leads and we’re confident of an early arrest.”

  “We are? What promising leads?”

  “You’re the captain, you tell me.”

  Cab suddenly lifted up a crumpled sheet of paper he was clutching in his hand. “By the way, what the Sam Hill is this? I thought I made it clear that we weren’t going to release this drawing. They’re all over the building. They’re even pinned up on the notice boards. This guy is a figment of a mentally retarded girl’s imagination and we are officially not looking for him.”

  “I just thought the team ought to know who it is we’re not officially looking for. You know—in case they see him, and officially try to arrest him.”

  “You and myrtle. You both make my nose run.”

  “You’ll be out on the lake tomorrow.”

  “I wish. Weekend leave is canceled, because of this.”

  Decker said, “Oh?” Then, “Oh.” No dessert, then. Not this weekend, anyhow.

  CHAPTER TEN

  He was on his way to the men’s room when Mayzie came strutting along the corridor toward him.

  “Don’t be late?” she demanded. “Don’t be late? It’s nearly four and you were supposed to meet me at twelve.”

  “Mayzie, for Christ’s sake, I’m dealing with two very complicated homicides here.”

  “I know. I know you’re busy. But all I’m asking for is five minutes. This is my life we’re talking about here. This is your baby’s life.”

  “Mayzie … I know I’ve let you down but I really don’t have time for this.”

  “Well, make time for it.”

  “Do you mind if I freshen up first?”

  He pushed open the door of the men’s room but Mayzie followed him.

  “Hey, this is the men’s room.”

  “Don’t be sexist. I just want to know where I stand with you, how serious you are.”

  “How serious I am? About what?”

  “About us. About you and me. Come on, Decker, we’ve been seeing each other for three and a half months now. I could be carrying your child. I think I deserve to know where I stand, don’t you?”

  Decker raised both hands in surrender. “Mayzie, I can’t tell a lie. I like you, I think you’re a gorgeous girl. But you know what I’m like. I’ve got a very short span of attention when it comes to emotional relationships. I’m not looking for anything long-term. And I’m certainly not looking for fatherhood.”

  Mayzie wrapped her arms around his neck, and pushed him back against the door of one of the stalls. “That’s your defense mechanism talking, that’s all. You lost Cathy, you’re scared to commit to anybody else in case you lose them, too. Well, let me tell you, Decker, I love you and you won’t lose me, ever. I promise.”

  Decker tried to pry himself free, but Mayzie forced him right back into the stall, so that he stumbled and sat down on the toilet seat. “Come on, Mayzie, for Christ’s sake.”

  She gripped his shoulders and stared intently into his eyes. “Tell me you don’t love me, go on. Tell me you don’t think I’m the sexiest girl you ever went out with. Remember that afternoon at the Brandermill Inn? Remember what I did for you then?”

  “Mayzie—”

  She kissed his forehead. Then she kissed his nose and his cheeks and his eyes and his lips. He tried to stand up but she pushed him back down, kissing his ears and his neck and pulling at the buttons of his shirt.

  “Mayzie—”

  But at that moment, they heard the men’s room door open, and voices. Mayzie pushed the door shut behind her and shot the catch. Decker tried to stand up again, but she pressed her finger over her lips and said, “Shh!”

  Decker was about to protest when he heard Major Bruscow say, “I’m sorry, I can’t agree with that operational study at all. We just don’t have the manpower to have all of those locations under surveillance at one time.”

  “Okay … I’ll talk to the chief about it. But I have to warn you that she’s pretty set on making changes.” That was Acting Deputy Chief Prescott.

  Shit, Decker thought. With two senior officers standing at the urinals with their zippers open, there was no way that he could come barging out of the toilet stall with Mayzie Shifflett in tow.

  Mayzie kissed him again and again and he tried to push her away, but her hands seemed to be everywhere. She took hold of his zipper and tugged it open in three sharp tugs, and then wriggled her hand inside his pants.

  “No,” he whispered. “I’ll meet you later, I promise. We’ll talk. We’ll go to bed. We’ll make love.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she whispered back.

  She levered his penis out of his shorts and in spite of his annoyance it began to stiffen. She rubbed it slowly up and down, digging her square-tipped artificial fingernails into it, and kept on kissing his nose and his eyes and his lips.

  “You cannot do this,” he hissed, but she wouldn’t stop.

  Acting Deputy Chief Prescott let out a grunting noise, as if he were shaking himself. “The real problem we’re facing is recruitment. We’re still getting plenty of applications but sixty-five percent of them we can’t accept. They can hardly read, some of them, and they have no idea of public service. I saw one application last week that said ‘I want to be a cop because I can’t afford my own car.’”

  Decker heard the faucets running. Mayzie slowly went down on her knees, even though he struggled to stop her. She took the plum-colored head of his penis into her mouth, and licked it around and around. Then she lowered her head and took it deep down into her throat. He gripped her shoulders and it took all his self-control not to groan.

  Mayzie sucked and sucked, and as she did so she reached around with one hand and unclipped the tortoiseshell barrette that held her French pleat in place. She gave a quick shake of her head and her blond hair tumbled free. She started to suck even more forcefully, and to bite him with every suck.

  “Mayzie—” he hissed, but she was determined to prove that he wanted her. Determined.

  Major Bruscow started washing his hands, too. “I need to go over our vacation arrangements. It looks as if we’re going to have to do some juggling, what with these latest two homicides.”

  “Who have you got on those?”

  “Martin.”

  “Too many hunches and not enough homework, that’s what I always think about him.”

  “I don’t know … he’s a lateral thinker, and that’s what we need on cases like these.”

  “Lateral, huh! More like prone.”

  Mayzie struggled one hand into Decker’s pants and started to tug at his scrotum. Once or twice she made him wince, and he was forced to bite his lip. How much longer were Bruscow and Prescott going to spend preening themselves? Mayzie was probing the opening in his penis with the stiffened tip of her tongue and he wasn’t far away from a climax.

  “Mayzie, please—”

  Mayzie lifted her head up and swept the hair away from her face.

  Only it wasn’t Mayzie. It was Cathy, with her eyes closed.

  Decker jerked back in shock, so that he was jabbed in the shoulder blade by the cistern handle.

  Cathy opened her eyes and gave him a wide, slow smile, the same languid smile that she always used to give him when she opened her eyes in the morning. She continued to massage his glistening penis, but it was diminishing already. Decker opened and closed his mouth, unable to say anything coherent, and his heart was banging so hard that it hurt.

  “You’re not—no, no—tell me you’re not.”

  Cathy kept on smiling and kept on massaging him. She looked the same as she always had, but her skin was the color of a clouded sky, and her irises wer
e pale yellow, like a snake. Her fingers felt as cold as ice, which made his penis shrink even more.

  “Listen, I have to—” Decker blurted, and made a clumsy attempt to struggle to his feet.

  “Hey, everything all right in there?” Major Bruscow called out.

  Decker took hold of Cathy’s chilly wrists, trying to force her to stand up, so that he could stand up too, but as he did so the top of her head exploded and the stall was plastered in brains and blood and fragments of bone. Immediately, there was a second explosion, which made her bloody blond hair flap up, and blew away her left eye and half of her cheek. Decker screamed out, “No! No!” and twisted around on the toilet seat. His shirtfront was drenched in blood and a jellyish lump of Cathy’s brain was sliding down the lens of his glasses.

  “Cathy! For Christ’s sake! We’ve got to—”

  But Cathy fiercely gripped his hands and wouldn’t let go. And even though most of the top of her head was missing, she kept on smiling, and her yellow right eye kept on staring at him, unblinking, as if she still trusted him to save her.

  There was a third explosion and the whole of her head burst apart. A blizzard of bone and flesh flew into Decker’s face, knocking off his spectacles and blinding him. He wrenched his hands free from her and threw himself sideways off the toilet seat onto the floor.

  Major Bruscow shouted, “Okay! Okay! I’m going to kick the door down! Stand clear!”

  Mayzie shouted back, “No! It’s all right! I can open it! Everything’s all right!”

  Decker picked up his glasses and put them back on. When he looked up, he saw that it was Mayzie, not Cathy, and that there was no blood anywhere, nor lumps of flesh. He grabbed hold of the toilet-roll holder and heaved himself onto his feet, while Mayzie drew back the bolt and opened the door. Major Bruscow and Acting Deputy Chief Prescott were standing outside, both of them looking baffled and angry.

  “What the hell is all this yelling about, Martin? And what are you doing in here, Officer Shifflett? This is the men’s facility.”

  Mayzie tossed back her hair and shot Decker a look of total exasperation. Decker said, “I, ah—I wasn’t feeling too good. Something I ate. Officer Shifflett saw me out in the corridor and she—ah—offered to give me a hand.”

  Major Bruscow looked down at Decker’s open zipper. “She gave you a hand, huh? I hope you realize this is a serious disciplinary matter.”

  “I ate sashimi at Yamamoto. I guess the tuna must’ve been off.”

  “Very well. But I don’t want anything like this happening again, and you, Shifflett, stay out of the men’s room in the future.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mayzie said, and left.

  Decker went to the washbasin and splashed his face with cold water. Then he combed his hair and straightened his bright red necktie. He felt as shocked as if Mayzie really had turned into Cathy, and her head really had exploded.

  Acting Deputy Chief Prescott left the men’s room, but Major Bruscow stayed. “You okay, Martin? You’re not having another of those stress-related things you went through last year?”

  “I’m fine. Really.”

  “All right. I’ll go along with that. But we can’t afford to have a single detective in this division who can’t give me 110 percent.”

  “I know that, Major. I’m okay. I shouldn’t eat sashimi, that’s all.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Hicks came back just after five o’clock. His forehead was beaded in sweat, his coat was slung over his shoulder, and he was carrying a can of Diet 7-Up.

  “Anything?” Decker asked.

  “Nobody saw nothing. Nobody heard nothing. Nobody knows nothing.” Hicks popped open the soda and took four thirsty swallows, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  Decker swung his feet off the desk. “Can’t blame people for seeing nothing if there was nothing there to see.”

  “I don’t know, Lieutenant. I just can’t figure it. It’s the lack of footprints and fingerprints and fiber evidence that bugs me the most.”

  “The perpetrator is a human being, Hicks. No human being can walk through life without leaving some kind of a trail behind him. We’ll get him, believe me.”

  Hicks looked at his watch. “I need to be going.”

  “How’s that list of military memorabilia stores?”

  “Seven, so far, and seventeen online, although only one of the Internet stores is in the Richmond area.”

  “Right! No point in sitting on our asses. Let’s start doing the rounds.”

  Hicks looked uncomfortable. “I was kind of hoping to call it a day. It’s my little girl’s birthday party this afternoon.”

  “Oh yeah? How old is she?”

  “Three.”

  “That’s okay, then. She’ll never remember that you didn’t show.”

  They parked outside the Rebel Yell on West Cary Street and climbed out of the car. An old-fashioned red-painted frontage was hung with Confederate battle flags. The windows were crowded with sepia photographs of whiskery Confederate officers and tarnished military buttons and replica Colt revolvers and cavalry swords.

  A bell jangled as they opened the door. Inside, there was a scrubbed oak floor and rows of glass display cabinets containing rifles and musketoons and cutlasses and all the paraphernalia of war, from dented cooking pots to inkstands to cartridge-rolling papers. The store smelled of wood, and musty old clothes, and wax.

  Billy Joe Bennett was standing behind the counter—a huge, big-bellied man, with a gingery gray beard and circular glasses, dressed in a gray artillery coat with epaulets and original eagle buttons on it. He was talking to a round-shouldered middle-aged customer in one of those floppy Woody Allen hats that looks like a wilted cabbage. Billy Joe suddenly picked up a heavy saber and slashed it crisscross in the air, so that it whistled, and the customer said, “Wow,” and backed away.

  “Know what they used to call this?” Billy Joe said, in a voice as rich as fruitcake. “The wrist breaker. But it could whop a fellow’s head off with one blow.”

  “Real neat sword,” the customer said. “How much do you want for it?”

  “Couldn’t take less than 3,500.”

  “Mind if I have a try?”

  “Okay … but be careful. Wouldn’t want you to do yourself a mischief.”

  The customer took the saber and jabbed it in the air a few times. Then he lifted it high over his head and whirled it about like a helicopter rotor. He let out a whoop and a “yee-haaa!” and promptly dropped it with a clatter onto the floor.

  “Jee-zus! What are you trying to do, cut your damn feet off?” Billy Joe came bustling around the counter and picked up the saber as tenderly as if it were an infant.

  The customer rubbed his wrist and said, goofily, “Guess I misjudged how heavy it is.”

  “Let me tell you something, this saber was carried at First Manassas by Captain Tom Hartley of the First Virginia Cavalry, one of the bravest Southern officers as was. He had his left arm blown off below the elbow by a minié ball but he never dropped it, not once.”

  “Really? That really gives it some provenance, doesn’t it? It’s going to look terrific hanging over my fireplace back in Madison. Do you take MasterCard?”

  Billy Joe carefully laid the saber back down on the counter, polishing its blade with a soft yellow duster. He thought for a while, and then he said, “MasterCard? Uh-huh.”

  “How about American Express?”

  “I can’t exactly tell you that we take that either. Besides, this saber ain’t for sale no more.”

  The customer blinked. “What do you mean it’s not for sale anymore?”

  “Exactly that.”

  “Well, how about that sword over there?”

  “That’s not for sale, neither.”

  “It doesn’t have a ‘sold’ ticket on it.”

  “I know. But nothing is for sale. In fact, I’ve suddenly remembered that we’re closed. Good-bye.”

  The customer hesitated for a moment, but when Billy Joe
resolutely turned his back on him and noisily started counting out boxes full of military buttons, he looked around at Decker and Hicks and said, “Craziest store I ever heard of, won’t sell you anything.”

  He hesitated a little longer and then he left. Billy Joe carried on counting buttons, but after a while, with his back still turned, he said, “What can I do for you today, Lieutenant?”

  “I don’t know. You’re closed, aren’t you?”

  Billy Joe turned to face them, and picked up the saber again. “This isn’t just a saber, Lieutenant. This is the glory of the South. And I’m damned if I’m going to sell it to some pigeon-chested nitwit who can’t handle it with due respect.”

  “Pretty selective way to do business.”

  “Well, maybe it was just that particular guy. I hated his hat.”

  Decker peered into one of the display cabinets. “What I’m interested in is bayonets and bowie knives.”

  “Bayonets? I don’t have too many of those. I have a good Kentucky bowie knife, though, with an ivory handle, dated 1863.”

  “I don’t want to buy anything. I want to know if you’ve sold any bayonets and bowie knives recently, and to whom.”

  Billy Joe scratched his bearded chin. “Last bayonet I sold was a socket bayonet made by Cook and Brother, New Orleans, 1861 or 1862. Very good condition, double-edged, twenty-one inches long. Last bowie knife … I couldn’t tell you.”

  Hicks took out a photograph of Jerry Maitland. “Ever see this guy before? Ever sold him a bayonet?”

  Billy Joe lifted his glasses so that he could focus. “No … sorry.”

  Hicks handed him a copy of Sandra’s drawing of the So-Scary Man. “How about this character? Ever see him?”

  Billy Joe studied the drawing carefully, and then he said, “When was this drawing made?”