Peel Back the Skin

by Anthony Rivera

  “Why do we go through this every time?”

  “I don’t need it,” I told her.

  “I do. Goddamn it, Monk, I can’t work with you screaming in my ear. Take the fucking strap.”

  I sighed. “Okay. Give me the fucking strap.”

  She slapped it into my palm, and I put it between my teeth. She got out a clean needle and set the bottle of ink close at hand. She didn’t ask me what I wanted her to draw. She knew.

  I didn’t start screaming right away. Not until she began putting the features on the little girl’s face.

  We were both glad I had the fucking strap.

  -5-

  It took her an hour to get it right, and I could feel when it was right. We both could.

  I spat the strap onto my lap and sat there, gasping, out of breath, fucked up. I could see the pity in Patty’s eyes. She was crying a little, like she always does. The light in the room had changed. Become brighter, and the edges of everything were so sharp I could cut myself on their reality. All the colors bled away. Except for red, white, black and all those shades of gray. That’s what I saw. It’s all I’d see until I was done with what I had to do.

  Sometimes it was like that for days. Other times it was fast. Depends on how good a look the girl got and what I’d be able to tell from that look.

  Patty helped me up, grunting with the effort. I was two-fifty and change. None of it blubber. A lot of it was scar tissue. The room did an Irish céilí dance around me, and my brain kept trying to flip the circuit breakers off.

  “If you’re going to throw up, use the bathroom.”

  “Not this time,” I managed to wheeze, then I grabbed my stuff, clumsied my way into my shirt and jacket and stumbled out into the night, mumbling something to her that was supposed to be thanks but might have been fuck you.

  Patty wouldn’t take offense. She understood.

  Like I said, one of my people.

  The night was hung wrong. The buildings leaned like drunks and the moon hid a guilty smile behind torn streamers of cloud. It took me half an hour to find my way back to where the girl was killed. My eyes weren’t seeing where my feet were walking and sometimes I crashed into things, tripped over lines in the pavement, tried to walk down an alley that wasn’t there. It’s like that for a bit, but it settles down.

  Once I was on that street, it settled down a lot.

  I stood by the step where I’d found her blood.

  This is where it gets difficult for me. Victims don’t usually know enough to really help, not even when I can see what they saw when they died. Like I was doing now. Half the time they didn’t see it coming. A drive-by, or a hazy image of a tire iron. The feel of hands grabbing them from behind.

  It was kind of like that with the girl.

  Olivia.

  I realized I knew her name now.

  Olivia Searcy.

  Fifteen. Even younger than I thought, but I was right about the clothes. They were her sister’s. Shoes and push-up bra, too. She wanted to look older. No, she wanted to be older. But that was as old as she’d ever get.

  I knew why she was there, and it was a bad episode of a teen romance flick. She was a sophomore in high school, he was a senior. Good looking, smart, from a family with some bucks. Good grades. A real find, and maybe in time he’d grow up and be a good man. But he was eighteen and all he wanted was pussy, and a lot of guys know that young pussy is often dumb pussy, which makes it easy pussy. So they come onto them, making them feel cool, feel special, feel loved. And they get some ass, maybe pop a cherry, and move on the instant the girl gets clingy. Fifteen year olds always get clingy, but there are always more of them. The boy, Drake, hadn’t yet plundered Olivia. It was part of the plan for tonight.

  They went to a party at some other guy’s house a long way from here, in a part of town where stuff like this isn’t supposed to happen, which is a stupid thought because stuff like this happens everywhere. The party was fun and it was loud. They got high. Got smashed. He got grabby and she freaked. Maybe a moment of clarity, maybe she saw the satyr’s face behind the nice boy mask. Whatever. She bolted and ran.

  She didn’t know if Drake tried to find her because she tried real hard not to be found.

  She was found, though.

  Just not by Drake.

  For a little bit there I thought I was going to have to break some parents’ hearts by fucking up their pretty boy son, but that wasn’t in tonight’s playbook. Drake hadn’t done anything worse than be a high school dickhead. He got her drunk, but he hadn’t forced her, hadn’t slipped her a roofie. And, who knows, maybe if he’d found her in time he’d have become Galahad and fought for her honor. Might have saved her life.

  Probably would have died with her.

  Or, maybe the killer would have opted out and gone looking for someone else. A lot of serial killers and opportunistic killers are like that. They’re not Hannibal Lecter. They’re not tough, smart and dangerous. Most of them are cowards. They feel totally disempowered by whatever’s happened to them—abusive parents, bad genes, who the fuck cares? They hurt and terrify and mutilate and kill because it makes them feel powerful, but it’s a lie. It’s no more real than feeling powerful by wearing a Batman costume at Halloween. You may look the part, but you’re a long way from saving Gotham City.

  All of that flooded through my brain while I stood there and looked at the street through the eyes of a dead girl. Seeing it the way Olivia saw it right as hands grabbed her from behind. Right as someone pulled her back against his body so she could feel his size, his strength, the hard press of his cock against her back. Right as he destroyed her. Right as the cold edge of the knife was pressed into the soft flesh under her left ear.

  I felt all of that. Everything. Her nerve endings were mine. Her pain exploded through me. The desperate flutter of her heart changed the rhythm of mine into a panic, like the beating of a hummingbird’s wings against a closed window. I felt her break inside as he ruined her. I heard the prayers she prayed, and they echoed in my head like they’d echoed in hers. She hadn’t been able to scream them aloud because first there was a hand over her mouth, and then there was the knife against her throat and those threats in her ear.

  And when he was done, I felt the burn.

  That line, like someone moving an acetylene torch along a bead of lead. Moving from under my left ear to under my right.

  I felt her die because I died, too. Olivia drowned in her own blood.

  Then there was a strange time, an oddly quiet time, because I was with her when she was dead, too. When he wrapped her in a plastic tarp and put her in the trunk. It was so weird because while he did that he was almost gentle. As if afraid of hurting her.

  Fucking psychopath.

  While the car drove from where she’d died to where he’d dumped her, Olivia slipped into that special part of the universe where the dead see each other. Certain kinds of dead. The dead who were part of a family. Victims of the same knife.

  His people.

  Olivia discovered that she was not the only one. Not the first, not the tenth.

  She wasn’t sure how many because he moved around so much. Had moved around. Not so much anymore. Not since he moved to this town. The victims she met were the ones who’d died here.

  Twenty-six of them.

  The youngest was eight.

  I met those victims, too, because I was inside the memory. Like I’d actually been there. That’s how it worked. I talked to them, and most of them already knew who and what I was. The first time I’d encountered that it shocked the shit out of me. But now I understood. Not to say I’m used to it, because I’d have to be a special kind of fucked up to be used to something like that. No, it was more like I knew how to deal. How to use it.

  Some of them had died just like Olivia. An attack from behind. Everything from behind. No chance of an identification. He varied it a little. One of those nearly patternless killers that the FBI have no idea how to profile. A knife across the throat, a
n icepick between the right ribs, a garrote made from a guitar string, a broken neck.

  Most were like that.

  Most. Not all.

  There was one who fought. She’d had a little judo and some tae kwon do. Not enough, but enough to make him work for it. It was one of the early ones, after he’d moved here. The one that made him want to never bring them home again. She’d gotten out and he’d chased her into the front yard and caught her before she could wake the neighbors. Single homes, lots of yard on all sides. Cul-de-sac. When he caught up to her she spun around and tried to make a fight of it.

  I saw every second of it.

  The yard. The house.

  Him.

  I saw him.

  I saw him block her punch, and then a big fist floated toward her face and she was gone. He was a big guy and he knew how to hit. The punch broke the girl’s neck, which made it easier on her, if easy is a word that even applies.

  I stood there and watched all of it play out inside my head. No idea how long I was there. Time doesn’t matter much when I’m in that space. I was there for every second of every minute of every attack. Beginning to end. All the way to when he dumped them, or buried them, or dropped them off a bridge.

  Stack it all up and it was days.

  Days.

  Shotgunned into my head.

  I wish I’d had the leather strap. Instead, I had to bite down on nothing, clamp my jaws, ball my fists, clench my gut and eat the fucking pain.

  It wouldn’t save any of those girls. Not one. And maybe it wouldn’t matter that I felt it all but didn’t have to live it. Or die from it. I know that.

  I couldn’t help a single one of them. I couldn’t help Olivia.

  But as my skin screamed from the phantom touches and the blades and everything else, I swore that I’d help the next girl.

  Goddamn son of a bitch, I’d help the next girl.

  Because, you see, I saw the house.

  I saw the number beside the door.

  I saw the tags on the car parked in the drive.

  And I saw the motherfucker’s face.

  I went and sat down on the step next to the blood. Waited. I knew she’d be there eventually. It was how it worked.

  Still surprised me when I looked up and there she was. Pale, thin, young, her face as bright as a candle. Eyes filled with forever.

  “You can still opt out,” I told her. “I can turn this over to the cops. Let them handle it.”

  She said nothing, but she gave me a look. We both knew that this guy was too careful. There would be no evidence of any kind. He’d been doing this for years and he knew his tradecraft. No semen, no hairs, nothing left for them to trace. The knife was gone where no one would ever find it. And he wasn’t a souvenir collector. The smarter ones aren’t. They could turn his house inside out and the only things they’d find would be jack and shit.

  Even if they watched him, he’d turn it off for a while. For long enough. Police can’t afford to run surveillance for very long. They lose interest, even if they thought the guy was good for Olivia’s murder.

  I sighed. Actually, I wanted to cry. What she was asking was big and ugly and it was going to hurt both of us.

  She stood there with a necklace of bright red and those bottomless eyes.

  She didn’t say a word. She didn’t have to.

  The price was the price. She was willing to pay it because she was a decent kid who would probably have grown up to be someone of note. Someone with power. Someone who cared. Those eyes told me that this wasn’t about her.

  It was all about the next girl.

  And the one after that.

  And the one after that.

  I buried my face in my hands and wept.

  -6-

  It took me two days to run it all down. The girl misremembered the license number, so that killed half a day.

  Then I put the pieces together. Bang, bang, bang.

  Once that happens, everything moves quickly.

  I ran the guy through the databases we PIs use, and after an hour I knew everything about him. I had his school records and his service record—one tour in Afghanistan, one in Iraq. Made me hate him even more. He was divorced, no kids. Parents dead, his only living relative was a brother in Des Moines. I figured there were bodies buried in Des Moines, too, but I’d never know about them. He owned three Jack in the Box franchise stores and had half-interest in a fourth. Drove a hybrid, recycled and had solar panels on his house. I almost found that funny.

  I was in his Netflix and Hulu accounts, his bank account and everything else he had. If there was a pattern there, or a clue as to what he was, it wasn’t there. He was very smart and very careful.

  No cops were ever going to catch him.

  I parked my car on the route he took to work and waited until I saw him drive past on his way home. Gave him an hour while I watched the sun go down. Twilight dragged some clouds across the sky, and the news guy said it was going to rain again. Fine. Rain was good. It was loud and it chased people off the streets.

  Lightning forked the sky and thunder was right behind it. Big, booming. The rains started as a deluge. No pussy light drizzle first. One second nothing, then it was raining alley cats and junkyard dogs.

  I got out of my car and opened an umbrella. I really don’t give a shit about getting wet, but umbrellas block line-of-sight. They make you invisible. I walked through the rain to his yard, went in through the gate, up along the flagstone path and knocked on the door.

  Had to knock twice.

  He had half a confused smile on his face when he opened the door, the way people do when they aren’t expecting anyone. Especially during a storm.

  Big guy, an inch taller than me, maybe only ten pounds lighter. His debit card record says that he keeps his gym membership up to date. I knew from my research that he’d boxed in college. Wrestled, too. And he had Army training.

  Whatever.

  I said, “Mr. Gardner?”

  “What do you want?”

  I hit him.

  Real fucking hard.

  A two-knuckle punch to the face, right beside the nose. Cracks the infraorbital foramen. Mashes the sinus. Feels a lot like getting shot in the face, except you don’t die.

  He went back and down, falling inside his house, and I swarmed in after him, letting the umbrella go. The wind whipped it away and took it somewhere. Maybe Oz for all I know. I never saw it again.

  Gardner fell hard, but he fell the right way, like he knew what he was doing. Twisting to take the fall on his palms, letting his arm muscles soak up the shock. His head had to be ringing like Quasimodo’s bells, but he wasn’t going out easy.

  He kicked at me as I came for him. Tricky bastard. A good kick, too, flat of the heel going for the front of my knee. If he’d connected, I’d have gone down with a busted leg, and he’d have had all the time in the world to do whatever he wanted.

  If he’d connected.

  I was born at night, but it wasn’t last night. I bent my knee into the kick and bent over to punch the side of his foot. I knew some tricks, too.

  In the movies there’s a brawl. A long fight with all sorts of fancy moves, deadly holds, exciting escapes, a real gladiatorial match.

  That’s the movies.

  In the real world, fights are, to paraphrase Hobbs, nasty, brutal and short.

  He had that one kick, that one chance. I didn’t give him a second one. I gave him nothing.

  I took everything.

  When I was done I was covered in blood, my chest heaving, staring at what was left of him there in the living room. I’d closed the door. The curtains were closed over drawn shades. The TV was on. Some kind of CSI show with the volume cranked up. Outside the storm was shaking the world.

  He wasn’t dead.

  Mostly, but not entirely.

  That would come a little later.

  He wasn’t going anywhere, though. That would have been structurally impossible.

  I went into the kitchen a
nd found a basting brush. Slapped it back and forth over his face to get it wet, then I wrote on the wall. It took a while. I made sure he was watching. I wrote the names of every girl he had killed.

  Every one that I’d met there in the darkness of Olivia’s hell.

  Gardner was whimpering. Crying. Begging.

  When I was done I unzipped my pants, pulled out my dick and pissed on him.

  He was sobbing now. Maybe he was that broken or that scared. Maybe it was his last play, trying to hold a match to the candle of my compassion.

  Maybe.

  But he was praying in the wrong church.

  While I worked, I kept praying that Olivia wouldn’t show up to see this. Most of them do. None of them should. I didn’t want her here.

  I looked around for her.

  She didn’t come.

  It helped a little, but not a lot. I knew I’d see her again.

  Gardner managed to force one word out. It took a lot of effort because I’d ruined him.

  “P-please…,” he said.

  He wanted me to end it. By then, I think that’s what he wanted.

  I smiled.

  “Fuck you,” I said.

  The storm was raging, and I stood there for nearly an hour. Watching Gardner suffer. Watching him die.

  Judge me if you want. If so, feel free to go fuck yourself.

  When I left I stole one of his umbrellas.

  I’d worn gloves and a ski mask. Everything I had on was disposable. It all got burned. I’m smart about that shit, too.

  -7-

  That night I got drunk. Because it’s the only reasonable thing to do.

  Me and Patty, Lefty Wright, and a couple of the others. Ten of us huddled around a couple of tables in a black-as-pockets corner of Pornstash. Me and my people. No one had to ask what happened. Patty knew, some of the others maybe. Mostly not. But they all knew something had happened. We were those kinds of people, and this was that kind of town.

  We drank and told lies, and if the laughter sounded fake at times and forced at others, then so what?

  -8-

  It was nearly dawn when I stumbled up the stairs, showered for the third time that day, and fell into bed.