by E. Z. Rinsky
Time to push it.
“Well, we spoke to him on the phone last night,” I say. “He’s definitely not dead.”
She locks eyes with me for a moment, as if trying to discern whether I’m telling the truth or not. And, if I’m reading this right, once she decides that wasn’t a lie, she crumples. Her elbows fall away. She drops flat onto the carpet and screams into the filthy shag. The muffled cry of anguish makes me shudder. Courtney can’t take it anymore—goes to the door and rushes out.
I stand up, trying to ignore how sticky the ass of my pants is. Before following him out, I write down our cell phone number on a piece of my notepad and leave it for her on her glass table. She’s sobbing and pounding her fists against the floor. It’s difficult to watch.
“Call if you want to talk,” I say.
I duck outside, but keep the door propped open with my boot. Courtney is a little white around the mouth, and the sweat on his brow has nothing to do with the heat.
“We can’t just leave her like that, can we?” he asks me softly.
“What choice do we have?” I ask.
Courtney looks like he’s about to say something, but then closes his mouth, stares at me, his entire face seeming to quiver. I close the door gently behind me.
“Man,” I say.
Courtney just nods and then wordlessly lopes down the stairs. He sits down cross legged on the curb next to the Honda. I squat beside him.
“I’m fine,” he says. “Just give me a second.”
“Take your time,” I say. “When you’re ready you need to call Mindy and ask her some questions.”
Courtney looks at me, shielding his eyes from the afternoon sun with a pale hand.
“Why?” he asks.
“I just started thinking in there, when she was talking about her brother, that we might have been thinking about these books wrong the whole time. We assumed that, like most books, what’s written on the pages is the most important part. And the bindings are just there to protect the pages.”
Courtney raises an eyebrow.
“What do you mean . . . ?” he says.
“What if, I mean, look if you’re an architect, what’s more important, the interior layout of the house or the way it looks from the outside?”
Courtney’s eyes go wide and the faintest smile escapes his lips.
“Neither. They go hand in hand. They’re one and the same.”
“Right.” I nod. “And the same could be said for a human body. Which is more important, all the stuff inside, the organs—or the exterior? The skin?”
Courtney nods as he stands up.
“So, if that’s the case, then it’s not as if Oliver is just binding these haphazardly, with whoever he happens to feel like killing,” Courtney says. “The first book was meant to be bound with her brother—”
“And the most recent was meant for Rico,” I say. “Why wouldn’t he be as patient and deliberate with these victims as he is with everything else?”
Courtney scratches at his neck like he has fleas. He’s excited.
“Why Rico?”
“No idea. Why Becky’s brother? Why any of these people? That’s why we have to talk to Mindy.”
Courtney shakes his head.
“Don’t follow.”
“There were twenty-four drawers in the file cabinet in the red house,” I say. “Rico’s picture was in the twenty-second. He was meant for the twenty-second book. Which means there’s two left. And if Mindy knows what’s written in those last two books—maybe she has some photocopies or something she can read—maybe she can figure out who he has planned for them.”
Courtney chews on his thumbnail.
“Maybe Rico knew who Oliver was planning to kill. And that’s where Rico thinks the books belong? With them?”
I shake my head.
“That’s a stretch. I was just thinking, if we know who he’s planning to kill next, maybe we can find him, turn him in, and get the money back. Which may not be a bad idea, because I’m not super optimistic about us finding those books in the next two days.”
“That’s good Frank,” he says. “Real good. I knew it was worth getting you from Budapest.”
I snort.
“Yeah, thanks for that.”
“Just to be clear, we’re not telling Mindy anything, right?” I say. Courtney’s got his penlight out in the passenger seat, examining the heretic’s fork collar from the red house, probing with a pair of tweezers and his lock picks, carefully avoiding the razor-sharp prongs on the front of the device. Mindy refused to talk shop over the phone. Insisted that if we wanted any info to come talk to her in her hotel in Denver. Honestly, I probably would have done the same in her position.
I let my sneaker sink down on the gas. The highways between Denver, Colorado Springs and Pueblo are remarkably straight. I’m so tired that part of me feels like I could just fall asleep on the steering wheel and have Courtney nudge me awake in a half hour.
“Mmhmm,” he murmurs.
“Not that we have all this figured out. We’re still clearly missing some basic facts . . .” I say. “Still don’t understand why anyone would want to go to prison for sixteen years. If he just wanted money from Sampson, is this really the most efficient way to do it?”
“Well,” Courtney says, as he toys with the device, “I think we’re pretty sure at this point that the books are more than just a lure for Sampson’s money. Man, how the hell do you open this thing?”
Something snaps. Courtney yelps and I jump in my seat.
“What the hell was that?”
Courtney shows me the thin line of blood in his palm. Two previously retracted blades have shot out into the interior of the collar. I don’t even want to think about what someone’s neck would look like after this thing activated. Porous.
“Are you okay?” I say.
“I’m fine,” Courtney replies, wrapping his palm with a bandage from his red bag. “This device is astoundingly complex.”
“Yeah? Seems pretty simple to me.”
“No I mean, the lock mechanism. There are two kinda weirdly shaped circular holes on either side of it. Each one has about thirty pins in it at varying depths . . . some are meant to be depressed, some aren’t. To unlock this you need two very precise tubular keys to be entered simultaneously. Otherwise—”
“You’re having a new ventilation system installed.”
“Yes,” Courtney says, and nods. “The metalwork is pretty staggering. I know locks, Frank. I’ve never seen anything like this. He made this himself. These must take him a month apiece to make. And there were at least seven of them just in that one room.”
We’re both silent for a moment, contemplating who we’re dealing with. Someone manipulative enough to talk his way out of a prison, and compulsive enough to handcraft instruments of torture.
“Here’s the million-dollar question,” I say, struggling to keep my eyes open. “These people he manipulates: Sampson, Becky, all the followers he allegedly had in prison, sure seems like they believe his hogwash. But does he? Or is it all just a ruse to get whatever it is he wants?”
Courtney is quiet for a moment. Just when I think maybe he’s nodded off he says:
“Are we sure it’s hogwash?”
I grit my teeth. I know where this is going. The same place it did five years ago, our last job together.
“What are you suggesting, Courtney?” I ask, knowing exactly what he’s suggesting.
“Well just . . .” He strokes his cheek. “The way he somehow knew Sampson’s dream, the way he knew he’d get out of prison sixteen years in advance, the way he’s apparently appearing in Becky’s dreams—”
“Becky is a heroin addict.”
“I’m just saying. As you pointed out, it also seems possible that he had his string of twenty-four victims planned out decades in advance. There was what Heald said about knowing every moment of his life, past and future. What if he really has some sort of actual methodology to, I don’t know,
do something?”
I don’t respond.
“You know,” Courtney continues. “Like manipulate things. The universe or God, or whatever you want to call it.”
I chew on my lip.
“I didn’t know you believed in God,” I say.
“Well, I still haven’t ruled it out,” he says. I can tell he’s picking his words carefully. “Still in information-gathering mode, you know. Waiting to make an informed decision.” He clears his throat. “What about you, Frank?”
I stay silent, focus on the taillights of the sixteen-wheeler in the distance. I know what he’s getting at. I’ve been expecting this since we met in the Ritz in Budapest.
“Frank,” he says softly. “I know you have the tape.”
I inhale sharply.
“What do you mean?” I ask, maybe accelerating a little out of anxiety.
“You brought it with you up to that hotel room, killed Greta, and then left. The tape wasn’t found at the crime scene—it took me forever to confirm that, but I did. Which means you have it. I hope it’s somewhere safe. There are people who would pay a pretty penny for that thing.”
My first instinct is to lie. Tell Courtney he’s wrong. But he wouldn’t believe me, and at the moment I just don’t have the mental energy to think of a plausible lie.
“It’s somewhere safe,” I say.
“And what it says . . . Did you listen?”
“I heard a bit, in the hotel room. Didn’t listen since then though. Haven’t heard it all.”
Courtney is trying not to sound too eager. He’s like a little kid pretending he could live without a bag of candy.
“And what . . . ?” Courtney says.
“I do believe that there are things we can’t see,” I say. “I’m not saying God, and I’m not convinced there’s life after death, but there are things going on. I don’t claim to understand them, but . . .” I clear my throat. “Let’s just leave it at that.”
“When we get out of this,” Courtney says delicately, “Maybe you could take me to where you’ve stashed the tape?”
I look over at him. His fingers are interlocked, shoulders tense, eyes trained on me. Bandage on his hand looks to have done the job—cut wasn’t too deep.
“You know, I probably trust you more than I trust myself,” I say. “But you’ll just have to believe me when I say I’m doing you a major favor by not letting you ever see or listen to that tape.”
“That’s a no?” he asks.
“That’s a no,” I confirm.
Courtney goes quiet, probably mulling whether it’s worth it or not to keep prodding me. Seems to decide against it.
I watch miles of identical road melt in front of us and think about the tape, tucked into a tiny deposit box in a bank in Paris. I paid the fees for them to keep the box for me, sixty years, up front. In cash. Long ago decided that if I don’t go back for it myself, I don’t want anybody to. Best case, sixty years from now, some French bank manager opens the box, sees that thing, and tosses it in the trash.
It’s only ten at night by the time we pull into the parking garage beside Mindy’s hotel, but it feels like five in the morning. I keep seeing dark things flitting at the edge of my vision, little laughing faces that disappear as soon as I focus on them. I’m tired.
Mindy is staying at a very nice hotel. I’m shocked this kind of class exists in Denver, but apparently there’s quite a big tourism industry here. The lobby is all crystal, black and white marble floors, bellboys in humiliating outfits. But the lobby is nothing compared to the hotel proper: All thirty stories are visible from the ground floor atrium. It’s like they hollowed out the core of the whole building. Every floor has a balcony, from which you can see all the way down to the café on the ground floor. All four elevators are encased in transparent shafts, and you can see the guests inside ascending dizzyingly up to their rooms.
It reminds me a bit of Sampson’s house, but way less creepy. In fact, the openness—total lack of shadow, unbelievable illumination that’s filling what’s essentially one massive room—is very peaceful somehow.
Nobody hassles us in the lobby. Hotels are some of the easiest places to snoop around, because you’re just assumed to be a guest, and if you just act the part, most of the staff are too scared to incorrectly accost you.
We take the elevator up to the seventeenth floor. In the compact space, I get a real strong whiff of Courtney. He—like me—hasn’t bathed since leaving Sampson’s. Hopefully Mindy won’t object to us using her shower.
We knock on 1719. See the peephole go dark for a second, and then Mindy lets us in. Slams the door behind us and bolts it.
“Don’t touch anything,” she says before we can even sit down.
She’s wearing flannel pajamas and wrinkled white tank top. Her hair is out of control and her glasses are so dusty that they’re almost cloudy. Her mousey cheeks are bright pink, as if with fever.
The room is nice. Or, it was nice. Mindy has done a real number on it. I’m not sure I could soil a hotel room this much in twenty-four hours if I tried. She’s been ashing her joints directly onto the carpet. The surface of the only table in the room is buried beneath a mountain of papers, many stained with peanut butter. The room smells rank enough that I lose any self-consciousness I may have had about my current hygienic state.
She and Becky should hang out.
She sees me staring at the ash in the carpet. “It’s on Sampson’s card,” she says. “I figured since he’s already out forty-eight million, he won’t notice the cleaning fee.”
“So,” Courtney says, sitting on the edge of one of two twin beds. I pull a chair from the desk and sit down myself. “We had some questions for you.”
Mindy guffaws. Lights up a joint and doesn’t bother to open the window to the balcony.
“You two must be at wit’s end if you’re coming to old Mindy for help. For some reason, Sampson seems to think you have the books. But if you did, I’m quite sure you wouldn’t be here.”
I lean forward in my chair to read one of the papers on top of the heap and Mindy instantly jumps to snatch it away.
“That’s private research,” she snaps, and then realizes that her laptop is open on her bed and rushes to close it, but not before I recognize the Expedia logo on the screen.
“Looks like you’re at wit’s end yourself,” I say, “if you’re planning on flying. Where are you going? London? Along with your hand-copied pages?”
She glares at me, seems to consider lying for a moment, then shrugs.
“What else am I going to do?” she says. “I’ll never see the books again, and Sampson certainly isn’t going to let me continue staying in his guesthouse after the aquarium incident.”
“We might be able to find them,” Courtney says. “We have some information.”
I stare at him: Don’t tell her anything!
He lowers his chin and shoots me a serious look: Let me handle this.
“What kind of information?” Mindy says.
“A text from Rico,” Courtney says. “He stashed the books somewhere before he died. Sophnot killed him.”
I feel blood rush to my cheeks. I shake my head at him: What are you doing?
“Patience, Frank,” he says out loud, as if that ever made anybody more patient.
“What do you mean, Sophnot killed Rico?” she asks.
Courtney removes his camera from his acrylic satchel and shows her pictures of the crime scene. She slaps a hand over her mouth.
“Oh my god,” she gasps, and looks away. “I never . . . I thought he took the skin from the morgue or something.”
“C’mon,” I say. “He was in prison for murder. You never put two and two together?”
“It crossed my mind that he was killing other prisoners for this,” she admits, looking quite ill. “But . . . I knew Rico . . . We saw him yesterday.”
She takes a long draw, as though to medicate away the grisly image.
“So what was the text?”
“Done mourning already?” I ask.
She makes a face like she’s sucking on a lemon.
“Just show me the goddamn phone, yeah?”
Courtney looks ready to just hand her the iPhone.
“Hold on,” I say. “Let’s talk more about these bindings.”
Mindy folds her arms over her chest.
“What do you want to know?”
“What . . . I mean, what does it mean? Why do you think Oliver cares about binding them like this?”
Mindy throws her nearly finished joint to the carpet and grinds it out under her sock.
“I have a contact at Stanford, who has a lot of experience with this kind of thing. I spoke to her a few times about the bindings.”
“Wait,” I say. “How is this a common enough thing that there’s an expert in this field at Stanford?”
Mindy sighs, like she’s just now recalling how tedious it is to explain things to a slug like me.
“It’s not common anymore, obviously. I mean, it was never common. But there are a few dozen examples of this throughout history. The most recent documented binding of this sort was more than two hundred years ago. A doctor, for reasons I’m not entirely clear on, decided to bind a book he wrote on illnesses with the skin of a patient who died on his operating table. There was also one story of a guy who requested that a book be bound in his own skin after he died, and given to one of his pals. Anyways, it’s not like this is the only thing this woman studies, but there are a few such books in the Stanford library, and she’s familiar with them.”
“The other examples . . .” Courtney asks. “When else has this technique been used?”
Mindy nods, the topic obviously exciting her, the way I’ve seen gambler’s eyes light up at just the mention of poker. The books are the only thing I’ve ever heard her talk about at length.
“So, the thing I found most interesting was—well, it’s not confirmed exactly, but there’s a theory that several manuscripts from ancient Egypt—papyruses—were bound in human skin. They’ve mostly disintegrated—the leather wasn’t well preserved—but that’s one thing the woman at Stanford is looking into now.”