The Closer

by Donn Cortez

“Wh—what?”

  No. They didn’t. The school league for seven-yearolds in Vancouver names their teams after the schools. There are no Wolves.

  “I’m mistaken. What I meant—”

  There is no Roberto. There is no Luis. There is only a stolen station wagon, a plausible cover story, and a Baby on Board sticker bought at a dollar store for color.

  “No, no please, I swear to you—”

  I know you now.

  There is only one thing you will learn about me: I will not stop. When it gets bad, when it becomes so terrible that you pray for death, remember that one, simple fact: I will never, ever stop.

  Until I know everything…

  It took three days.

  VANCOUVER POLICE TRANSCRIPT

  #332179,

  “Roberto Luis Chavez,” Tape 7.

  The other voice on the tape

  is identified simply as “Unknown.”

  CHAVEZ: She was my sixth. I did her about halfway through February, it was my birthday and I was feeling all mixed-up, I thought I deserved something special—

  UNKNOWN: Slow down. We’re very close now.

  CHAVEZ: I know, I know, I just—okay, okay.

  UNKNOWN: Just breathe.

  CHAVEZ: Her name was Bonnie. I picked her up on Seymour Street on a Friday. She was wearing a red leather miniskirt. I drove her down to the trailer and had sex with her before I killed her. I strangled her with an extension cord.

  UNKNOWN: And the body?

  CHAVEZ: I dumped it with the last two, that’s where it is, I swear.

  UNKNOWN: Yes. I checked it out. She’s still there.

  CHAVEZ: Oh, good. Good.

  —pause—

  UNKNOWN: What were her last words?

  CHAVEZ: She—she said, “Michael.”

  UNKNOWN: Michael?

  CHAVEZ: Yes. Oh God, oh God, please. Now?

  UNKNOWN: Yes. Now.

  —unidentifiable sound—

  Tape ends.

  They dumped the body at the same site Luis had left his kills, in the woods off the Sea-to-Sky highway. Jack duct-taped a Tupperware container holding seven ninety-minute tapes to his chest.

  Nikki made the anonymous call to the police. Five minutes later they were on their way out of town.

  They hit Des Moines next, where it took them just under a year to catch Duncan Shields. Jack stripped away his secrets in just under forty-eight hours; Shields gave up the location of nine bodies.

  Back into Canada. In Calgary, Alberta, a cowboy-and-oil city that reminded Jack of Dallas, they snared Helmut Lansgaarden, a German immigrant with a taste for redheads and meat cleavers. They nailed him in seven months and Jack broke him in a day; they were getting better. For the first time, the Canadian and American authorities compared notes and realized what was going on. Someone found the story too good to keep to themselves, and the media got involved. By the time Nikki and Jack set up shop in Seattle, he had been officially christened.

  The Closer was born.

  INTERLUDE

  Dear Electra:

  This is too good not to write down. Today Uncle Rick took me shopping—clothes shopping. Whoohoo!

  Okay, okay, not really clothes—more like stuff to make clothes—but still, in the ballpark, right?

  We went to this fabric store in Little India, and looked at material to make me a costume. Most of my friends are all like, “No way I’m dressing up for Halloween, that’s for kids,” but I don’t care what they say. Dressing up was always the best part, way better than free candy. You got to be someone else for a night, you know? Someone with superpowers, or magic friends, or just somebody everyone loves. You put on a costume and you don’t have to worry about homework or Anna Johnson calling you fatface or your mom showing up at the PTA meeting drunk.

  So, anyway, we looked at about a thousand different kinds of material. Indian women (from India, not First Nations—you should know better, Electra) use them to make these long dresses called saris, and they’re beautiful! Blue and gold and crimson and silver and green and turqoise and pink! Every pattern you can think of, all swirly and intricate, on fabric as wispy as silk or heavy and smooth as leather. And you wouldn’t believe what some of them cost, either.

  So, what, you may ask, is my costume going to be this year? Well, let’s take a look at some of our previous entries—what’s that, Electra? A Top Ten List? Sure, why the heck not?

  Fiona’s Top Ten Halloween Costumes (Worn by Her)

  10. Luke Skywalker. It was a cheap store-bought costume, but I got to run around and whack people with a lightsaber.

  9. A Horse. This one beats out Luke because I made it myself—okay, I had a lot of help from my teacher, but still—and because it was pathetic. I was going through my Ohmigawd-I-LOVE-Horses phase, and I somehow thought I could capture all the beauty and grace of Black Beauty in a costume. It looked ridiculous, I could hardly see, and all my friends laughed at me. So I kicked them.

  8. The Terminator. I didn’t really pick this one and I was only two at the time, but I’ve seen pictures. My parents put me in this little leather jacket and shades and gave me a really butch haircut. I looked dangerous. According to my dad, it was also a pretty good description of what I was like at that age.

  7. Calvin. I got a Calvin and Hobbes book when I was six, and I was hooked. I was so angry when I found out the newspaper strip was going to end that year. Calvin was the same age I was, and he was my hero. Uncle Rick made a full-size Hobbes for me to drag around, too.

  6. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I was eight years old, and Buffy was the coolest girl alive. Also, I just wanted to dress like her.

  5. American Maid. Uncle Rick told me about this cartoon called The Tick, which I thought was the funniest thing I’d ever seen—even though all my friends thought it was dumb. American Maid is a superhero who throws high-heels at bad guys. I beaned a lot of people that year.

  4. Arwen. Lord of the Rings was my favorite movie at the time, and Liv Tyler was so gorgeous as the Elf Princess. I got my hair done the same way and made the dress myself. Uncle Rick said I looked beautiful.

  3. Dead Elvis. Okay, I thought it was funny. I got to be a rock star (kind of) and a zombie at the same time. Plus, I could say things like, “Can I eat your brains? Thank you. Thank you verra much.”

  2. The Bunny Princess. My first real costume, which I made when I was four. All I can really remember is that I was convinced that rabbits had magical powers, and I wanted to be a princess because everybody did what they said. The costume itself was some kind of tutu and a hat with bunny ears on it. There was also a magic carrot, which eventually transformed itself into a shriveled, rubbery stick with mold growing on it when I slept with it under my pillow for two months.

  1. And Fiona’s number one costume of all time (so far): Joan of Arc. Which I did last year and most of my friends thought was lame, mainly because they didn’t know who she was. Well, she was an amazing woman who led whole armies and defied the church and was burned alive for her beliefs.

  And Uncle Rick helped me make the costume.

  It was great, Electra. It was knight’s armor made out of actual metal, and then we charred half of it and made little cellophane flames sticking up from the edges. My sword looked like it was on fire, too. Way better than a lightsaber.

  This year, though, is going to be different. This year, instead of just copying someone else, I’m going to try and make something original. Something that says something about me. It’s not just going to be a costume, it’s going to be art. Well, maybe not ART, or even “Art,” but at least art.

  Uncle Rick says art should reveal something about the artist. “Art is an outer surface showing an inner truth,” is the way he put it. If that’s true, then Uncle Rick is a pretty complicated guy.

  What’s that, Electra? I’ve stalled long enough? All right, all right.

  I’m going to be a moon goddess.

  Oh, quit laughing. A moon goddess is mysterious, beautiful and enchanting
. She’s feminine and powerful. And I found this terrific material to make it from, all black and gauzy with little stars and moons on it like the night sky. And this year, Uncle Rick is going to take me to the Parade of Lost Souls, the big Day of the Dead festival that happens down on Commercial Drive. There’s lanterns and shrines and drum circles and fire performers on stilts—I’m so excited! I can’t believe Mom and Dad are actually letting me go—they’re a little afraid of me going to “that part of town,” like I’m going to get mugged or something. It’s okay, though—Uncle Rick convinced them I’m old enough, and he won’t let me out of his sight. Like I’d even want to be…

  He wouldn’t tell me what costume he was going to wear, though. Poophead.

  PART TWO:

  Execution

  Impaling worms to torture fish.

  —George Colman the Younger,

  Lady of the Wreck

  CHAPTER SIX

  Now.

  “The Patron killed my family,” Jack said.

  Nikki stared at him. Jack sat in the living room of the crappy little bungalow they’d rented, on a thrift-store couch that had come with the place; Nikki sat cross-legged on the floor. She’d just woken up and was dressed only in a T-shirt. An upended cardboard box between them served as a coffee table, the only light in the room coming from the screen of the laptop it held.

  “You sure?” Nikki asked. From the tone of Jack’s voice, he could have been discussing something he saw on television.

  “Yes. He kills those close to artists, and he likes to strike on holidays. He even made reference to me as one of his failures.”

  Nikki shook her head. She still wasn’t fully awake, and this was a lot to absorb. “Jack—that’s great, isn’t it? I mean, this is the guy you really want, right? This is the guy you’ve been hunting for—”

  “He doesn’t kill prostitutes,” Jack said.

  “What? Hey, I don’t give a shit about that, I’ll still help you get him—”

  “That’s not what I mean. I mean, until now we’ve been hunting prostitute-killers because those are the ones we can catch. The monster who killed my family…I never thought we could get him. I thought he was beyond my reach.” Jack stared at the screen of the laptop without blinking.

  Nikki looked around, grabbed her cigarettes from the arm of the couch. “You still want to go after him, right?”

  He turned his head to look at her. She met his eyes, then quickly looked away.

  “I have to be very careful,” Jack said. “I have to be perfect.”

  “You can do it,” she said softly. “We can do it.”

  “I have to plan. We can’t just go after him first,” Jack said. “I’ll have to gain his trust—not as a new member of The Pack, but as their leader. I’ll have to convince him I’m Djinn-X.”

  She shook out a smoke, put it in her mouth. Lit it, took a long drag and exhaled slowly. “Think you can pull it off?”

  “Yes,” Jack said. “I’ve broken him. Passwords, encryption codes—Djinn-X gave it all up. He wants to help me—I’m the last person on earth he’s going to talk to, and he knows it.

  “The Stalking Ground belongs to me now….”

  Djinn-X Rant One Million and Twenty-Three: Irony? Yeah, sure.

  Irony has ruined everything. And if I hear that fucking Alanis Morrisette song one more time, I’m going to hunt the bitch down and kill her with a curling iron. Wouldn’t that be fucking ironic.

  There’s nothing pure anymore, nothing that’s just itself. Everything is just a riff on something that’s already been done. Every goddamn sitcom, pop song, buddy-cop movie video-game action-figure Saturday-morning cartoon spinoff is just a clone of an idea that’s been recycled a hundred times before. And we’re all so hip and cool and bored that the only way to make this stuff palatable is to mock it right out of the gate. Put out crap with “Crap!” stamped on it. Wink at the world— hey, everybody’s in on the joke, we all know what’s going on. We get all those in-jokes, all those little digs and pop-culture references. My Spanky-sense is tingling! Luke, I am your father-figure! Scotty, beat me up!

  It’s all shit. Literally. The baby boomer culture ate all this stuff, digested it, and then crapped it all out again. We’re wallowing in the excrement of the last generation, and none of us cares.

  And then there’s what I call the New Irony. Take an idea so bad, so tasteless, so kitschy, that it gets on the air through the shock value alone. Right off the bat the intelligentsia love it, because it’s so over-the-top it’s brilliant satire. It’s parody, it pokes fun at sacred cows through extreme exaggeration.

  Problem is, half of fucking America doesn’t get the joke.

  Oh sure, they laugh along with everyone else—but for completely different reasons. All in the Family wasn’t a huge hit because people hated Archie Bunker’s racism—it was because they loved him for it. He said all those things everyone was thinking, but listen—there’s a laugh track! It’s okay that he’s a bigot, because it’s funny!

  Liberals patted themselves on the back. Conservatives just grinned. It’s all just a joke. We’re just kidding. Laughter’s always a good thing, right?

  Hogan’s Heroes taught us that Nazis are bumbling clowns. M*A*S*H gave us that wonderful combination of surgery, promiscuity, alcoholism and war. Women are emotional airheads, men are sex-obsessed pigs, everyone in power is a corrupt imbecile—media shoves those ideas down people’s throats twenty-four-seven, and it doesn’t matter if you laugh at it or with it because it’s always there. From the time your parents plunked you down in front of Sesame Street to when you fell asleep watching Saturday Night Live, it was always there.

  When I was in school, there was a kid named Darryl. Darryl’s idea of a good time was to make fun of my sister, who was born mentally handicapped and with epilepsy. She died when she was six.

  At the height of his wit, Darryl would suggest an incestuous relationship between us. But that’s okay, because everyone laughed.

  Right?

  Jack’s quest had led him to the ultimate answer. Not just who had killed his family, but why.

  Transformation.

  The Patron had done it to change him, mold him into something more than he had been. He had plunged Jack’s soul into fire, burning away all that he loved, then hammered what was left into something harder, sharper, stronger.

  No. Jack himself had done the last part—and what had emerged was not the artist the Patron had hoped for. Jack was a weapon now. A tool of destruction, not creation.

  One that would destroy its own creator.

  He explored the website carefully, deactivating all the hidden erase codes Djinn-X had warned him about. When he was done, he had full access to all Djinn-X’s data—but just as his prisoner had said, the webmaster knew no more about the rest of the Pack than what they had posted themselves. Even among themselves they were careful… but still, they were willing to reveal much to their own.

  The identity of Deathkiss might still be useful, but the creator of The Pack would have more influence— and it had to be utterly convincing.

  He would have to become Djinn-X.

  In art school Jack had always been an excellent mimic, able to reproduce another artist’s style with ease—not just duplicating technique, but the artist’s approach to his subject. It was closer to acting than drawing, being able to dive into somebody else’s point of view and see through their eyes—but Jack had never dove into waters quite this deep.

  Or this dark.

  WHY I KILL

  An Essay by Djinn-X

  Okay, all you profilers and serial-killer groupies— assuming you’re reading this after I’m long dead or in prison—here it is: the One Big Question that always gets asked and never seems to produce a decent response. Well, I don’t know about anybody else’s answer, but here’s mine:

  Physics.

  Everybody gets angry. Anger gets compared to fire a lot, but it behaves more like water. It flows from person to person, and it always
moves downhill. Owner to manager to employee to temp. It’s like a big drainage system, and the lower you are on the chart the more anger flows down to you. And it works that way right across the board, from the financial to the political to the personal. The lower you are, the more anger you get dumped on your head—and just like water, it accumulates. Once the vessel’s full, it starts to pressurize.

  You apply enough pressure to a liquid—any liquid—it’ll transform. Become a solid. When that happens to anger, it becomes something else: hate. Hate is slower, colder, denser. Hate is geologic. When I hear about ethnic feuds going back centuries, it doesn’t surprise me at all. Hate’s the emotional equivalent of fucking bedrock.

  So what happens when you get a demographic like the baby boomers? Well, let’s break it down. Millions of soldiers come home after fighting WW II. After four years they’re considerably horny, and start fucking their brains out. Umpteen million kids are born as a result. They grow up as happy little youngsters in the fifties, and then POW! they hit puberty in the sixties. They spend the next decade having sex, listening to bad music and taking drugs. This fries their brains so badly they spend the seventies doing harder drugs and listening to worse music. In the eighties they decide to settle down, sell out, and become yuppies. By the nineties they’re all having midlife crises and whining about how great the sixties were. It makes them bitter, because they know how badly they fucked up. They didn’t change the world, and they know it.

  Funny thing about self-loathing. It’s the most deceptive of emotions, one that deliberately disguises itself. Someone who hates himself can rarely admit it because that leaves him with only two choices: self-destruction or change.

  If there’s a monster in your mirror, you can’t look him in the eye and stay sane.

  So the self-hater lies to himself. Every disillusioned, pissed-off baby boomer out there is looking for someone else to blame for how fucked-up the world is—anybody but themselves, of course. Is it any wonder we’re a nation of lawyers?