Karl shrugged. "Numbers, for one thing. Although the census data is bullshit, it's still clear that humans outnumber supernaturals – ten to one, twenty to one, who knows? But it's a big difference."
"I would agree with that," Castle said, "even though I don't know the exact proportion myself. Anything else?"
"Supernaturals have weaknesses – some of them do, anyway."
Karl had said "some of them", not "some of us".
"Vampires are stronger and faster than humans," Karl went on, "and they have other advantages, like using Influence. But during daylight hours, a vampire is as helpless as a corpse – because that's what he is."
"And werewolves are just like humans, most of the time," I said. "They can only transform in moonlight, and then if they run into a silver bullet, they're toast."
Castle nodded, as if we were the two brightest pupils in class. "And what about magic practitioners?"
I looked at Karl, who said, "Some witches and wizards are real powerful – but nobody's all-powerful. Magic is limited by time and space and a bunch of other stuff I don't really understand."
"And practitioners aren't invulnerable, either," I said. "Especially if they're taken by surprise. What's happened to those poor witches is proof of that."
"Right on both counts, unfortunately," Castle said.
"I'm pretty sure we'd win, but the supes, uh, supernaturals would do a lot of damage first," I said. "Humans would survive, but I'm not positive that human society would."
Castle nodded. "A costly victory, to be sure."
"So the bottom line," I said, "is that in a war between humans and supernaturals, there'd be no real winner."
"Yes, Sergeant," Castle said. "That conclusion is both true, and irrelevant."
I stared at him. "Where do you get 'irrelevant'?"
"I mean, it doesn't matter whether a race war would be a good idea. The important thing is whether someone thinks it's a good idea."
"OK, now I'm confused," Karl said.
I waited for Castle to explain, although I was pretty sure that I'd grasped his meaning.
"It's like invading Russia," Castle said, "which military experts have said for centuries is a truly bad idea. The country is simply too vast for an invading army to subdue quickly, and the Russian winter makes an extended campaign impossible."
"Makes sense to me," Karl said with a shrug, and I just nodded.
"And yet that obvious fact didn't stop Napoleon from trying it in 1812, or Hitler in 1940. And each time, it cost the lives of a great many people – on both sides."
Karl nodded slowly. "It really doesn't matter if a race war is a bad idea, as long as some dumb-ass somewhere thinks it's a good idea."
"Exactly," Castle said. "Which brings me back to the original question: Cui bono? Or maybe I should rephrase it as: Cui cogitat bono?"
"Who thinks to benefit?" I said. I'd had four years of Latin in high school, and when the nuns teach you something, it tends to stay with you a long time. Terror and pain will do that.
Karl just shook his head. "So what you two professors are getting at is – what nut, or group of nuts, is crazy enough to try starting Helter Skelter here in Scranton?"
"Admirably put, Detective," Castle said.
There was silence in the car until I said, "I don't know how much weight I want to put on this, but the Catholic Church comes to mind. After all, they've declared all supernaturals to be 'anathema'."
"I know," Castle said. "Such nonsense."
"Nonsense?" Karl said. "Then why can't I go to church anymore, huh? How come the sight of a cross makes me want to puke my guts out?"
"I have given much thought to that question over the years," Castle said, "and have concluded that vampires' aversion to religious symbols is psychological, more than anything else. Popular culture has told you, over and over, that vampires fear the cross. Therefore, once you became a vampire, you felt fear and revulsion when in the presence of a cross, or other religious symbol. You believed you were supposed to, therefore you did."
"That's what you think?" Karl said angrily. "Well, I think you ought to–"
"Nine Alpha Six, this is Dispatch. Come in, please."
I don't usually consider radio calls a blessing, but this one sure was. I grabbed the radio.
"Dispatch, this is Markowski. Go ahead."
"We have a report of a 666-Bravo at the Radisson hotel. Lieutenant McGuire says it's all yours. Over."
666-Bravo was a homicide involving a supernatural. Was this stuff never going to stop? And I know McGuire's a fair boss – if he was giving this call to us, it meant the other teams on shift were busy elsewhere.
Helter Skelter, baby. Helter Skelter.
"Roger that, Dispatch. You got a room number for us, or should we knock on all the doors until somebody dead answers?"
Come to think of it, having a corpse answering the door at that place might not be such a big deal.
Ignoring my feeble attempt at sarcasm, the dispatcher said, "Affirmative, Markowski. Room number is four three one. I repeat, four three one. Do you copy?"
"Roger that, Dispatch. We're on our way. Markowski out."
I wished I'd let Karl take the radio call – he likes saying stuff like that. It might've cheered him up a little, too.
Karl turned to me. "Four thirty-one at the Radisson? Isn't that–"
"Mister Milo and his pet ghouls," I said. "It sure is."
I turned to look at Castle. "I guess you heard. We'll have to continue this conversation later."
Castle nodded. "Of course, Sergeant. I look forward to it." And then he was just – gone. A fucking show-off, in more ways than one.
"Siren and lights?" Karl asked me.
At this hour of night traffic wasn't heavy, but I know Karl loves using our "get out of the way" equipment.
"Sure," I said. "What the hell."
Karl pulled the portable revolving light from the glove compartment, turned it on, and stuck it on the dash between us. I started the siren screaming, checked the mirror for traffic, and got us moving.
Five police cars – three black-and-whites and two unmarked, like ours – were parked haphazardly in front of the Radisson, the light from their red and blue flashers bouncing off the elegant façade like special effects at a Plasma-matics concert. I hoped nobody on that side of the building was trying to get some sleep.
I figured that at least one of the unmarked cars belonged to Homicide, so there was a good chance that Scanlon was already upstairs. Maybe he'd have it solved by the time we got there.
As Karl and I strode toward the elevators, I noticed a lot of people milling around the lobby – too many for this time of night. Maybe they were waiting to see something exciting. As for me, I hoped the excitement was already over.
Upstairs, the usual crime scene tape blocked off the hallway on both sides of room 431, but one of the uniforms who was standing around lifted it to let Karl and me through and into a suite that was already pretty crowded. Scanlon was there, all right, along with a couple of homicide dicks, Homer Jordan, and some guy in a suit who was taking pictures. He had a lot to photograph.
Milo Milo was sprawled across the couch. He wore gray slacks and a white dress shirt covered in blood that I assumed had come from the gaping wound under his jaw. The only way to kill somebody that way is to force the blade through the lower jaw, into the facial cavity and up into the brain. Doing that took skill, strength, and one hell of a big knife.
But the killer had saved most of his ingenuity for the two ghouls who'd served Milo as drivers, gofers, and, I suppose, bodyguards. Some bodyguards.
"You remember their names – the ghouls?" I said quietly to Karl.
"Nikolai and Winthrop." Under some circumstances, saying those two fancy-ass names out loud might have brought a smile to Karl's face. But not this time.
The ghouls were posed – I can't think of a better word to describe it – in the living room's two armchairs. Each one was showing the same wound under h
is jaw that Mister Milo had suffered, but that's where the similarity in mayhem ended. Both ghouls were disemboweled, the slick intestines gleaming wetly in the light from the room's lamps, which were all turned on. I wondered if Milo had liked a bright room, or the killer had just wanted to light up his little exhibition.
I thought I could see something on one of the ghouls' mouths that was too big to be a tongue. I went over to the body and bent down for a closer look. Just as I thought – it was his penis.
I didn't bother to check the other ghoul. I knew it would be the same. He was thorough, our killer was.
On the carpet near one of the chairs lay an open switchblade. The handle was smeared with blood, and nearby lay two pale severed fingers. I figured one of the ghouls had tried to knife-fight the killer, and come out second best.
"Forensics been in yet?" I asked Scanlon.
"Nah. One unit is tied up over near the university. Some werewolf mauled one of the students, from what I hear."
"He still alive?" I asked.
"He's a she," Scanlon said, "and, no, she's dead. Hard to keep breathing with your throat's been torn out."
"They got anybody in custody?" Karl asked.
"Not as far as I know."
Helter Skelter.
"Isn't it kind of weird," Karl said, "for the boss, here, to die quick, but the thugs get to suffer? I mean, you take out a hit on somebody, it's usually the boss you're pissed off at. If anybody's gonna get butchered, it'd be him."
"You think it was a hit?" Scanlon said.
"Wasn't no bunch of Girl Scouts that did this," Karl said.
"You got a point there," Scanlon said, then turned to me. "You must know who the guy on the couch is, if you know the names of his hired help."
"Yeah, we do. His name, and I shit you not, was Milo Milo."
Scanlon's expression didn't change. "Is that right?" One of the homicide detectives that had come with Scanlon gave a little chuckle. Scanlon turned his head toward the guy slowly, like a tank turret taking aim.
"Something on your mind, Smalley?"
The detective's face reddened. "No, boss. Not a thing."
Scanlon looked at him for a moment longer. "That's not surprising." To me he said, "OK, that's who the guy was. Now what was he?"
"He said he was a lawyer representing the porn industry – or what he insisted on calling 'adult entertainment'."
"What the fuck was he doing in Scranton?" Scanlon said. "I don't work Vice, but if there's a porn operation in the Wyoming Valley, nobody's ever said anything to me about it. I thought all that crap was based in Southern California."
"Most of it is," I said. "But there's a branch that's stayed below the radar until recently, and it seems to have a Scranton connection. That's what Milo Milo over there was concerned about."
"I'm not gonna stand here and pretend that makes sense, Stan," Scanlon said.
"I know it doesn't – yet," I said. "Any part of this happen in the bedroom, far as you can tell?"
"No, it looks clean."
I made a small gesture that took in the other people in the room. "Why don't we talk in there, and stay out of everybody's hair."
"I dunno," Scanlon said. "I mean, I like you, Stan – just not that way."
Fucking homicide guys aren't exactly known for their sensitivity. They'd probably make jokes during a guided tour of Auschwitz.
"Come on," I said, and headed toward the suite's bedroom. Scanlon and Karl followed me inside, and Karl closed the door.
"This is supposed to be a big secret, and the FBI wants it kept that way. I think I oughta tell you, but I'd rather those other guys in there not hear about it. OK?"
"Oh, damn," Scanlon said, deadpan. "And here I was planning to post it on my blog."
"Yeah, all right," I said. "Here's what's going on."
Karl and I took turns telling him all about the snuff films, but I didn't share my theory about Helter Skelter – not just yet.
"So, Mister Milo out there was in town trying to find the sick bastards who're making these snuff films," Scanlon said, "before they hurt the reputation of the porn industry. If you ask me, that's kind of like a Mafia family worrying about its public image, but OK."
"Even the Mafia does PR these days," Karl said.
"Whatever," Scanlon said. "So, who hit him?"
"The logical answer is – whoever's making the snuff films," I said. "Only problem with that is, Milo didn't know anything worth killing him over. Or if he did, the oily bastard didn't share it with me."
"Hard to imagine, isn't it?" Scanlon said.
"Maybe he shared it with Sharkey, instead," Karl said.
Scanlon looked at him quickly. "Sharkey's dead."
"Be nice to think so," I said. "But there's a rumor going around that he's back in town, and the pupils of Milo's eyes gave him away when I mentioned Sharkey's name."
"Sharkey," Scanlon said. "Jesus."
"The fact that Milo got hit must mean that he stumbled onto something useful, even if he didn't tell us about it," I said.
"Not necessarily," Karl said. "Maybe whoever's making these fucking snuff films is just real thorough, that's all. The Columbian drug lords operate the same way, I hear. The slightest threat to their operation appears, they don't worry about how important it is – they just wipe it out."
"That still doesn't explain why the killer, or killers, went to work on the ghouls and not Milo," Scanlon said.
"No, it doesn't," I said. "Maybe we don't have enough information to answer that yet."
"We don't have enough information to blow our fucking noses," Scanlon said.
"Fuckin' A," Karl said.
"Speaking of information, you'll send us a copy of the case file?"
"Yeah, sure. It'll help me fool myself that I'm actually accomplishing something on this case."
"I'll be sending you a file, too," I said. "We've got a murder that looked at first like a supernatural case, but now I'm not so sure."
"I can hardly wait," Scanlon said.
In the car, Karl said, "There's something about the way Milo was knifed that's been nagging at me."
"It's pretty unusual, all right," I said.
"That's not what I mean – it reminds me of something I heard about once, but I can't remember the details."
"Stop thinking about it, you'll drive yourself nuts," I said. "Your subconscious will come up with the answer when it's good and ready."
"Hope it's ready before Helter Skelter gets here."
"Well, with any luck – what did you say?"
Karl was looking at me strangely. "I said, 'I hope I remember before–'"
"Helter Skelter. Damn!"
"You can start making sense any time now, Stan."
"That's why the killer back there mutilated the two ghouls, but not Milo. He was going for a twofer."
"Stan–"
"He cut up the ghouls because, once word got out, it would piss off the supe community. And somebody's been working pretty damn hard lately to rile up the supe community – and the humans, too, if that fake vampire kill we saw tonight is any indication."
"Wait – I thought Milo was killed by the snuff film people," Karl said.
"He was – because they're the same people."
Back at the squad, I asked Louise where the two Feebies were.
"No idea, Stan. They haven't been in all night."
"Did they leave you contact info?"
"No, nothing. I asked, but…" She made a "What can you do?" gesture.
"Yeah, I know," I said. "The pricks think they're too good for us – as usual. Where's McGuire? He's not in his office."
"Went home an hour ago. Says he's maybe got that twenty-four-hour bug that's going around."
"Great, just great. I guess I'll have to tell everybody about my brilliant deduction tomorrow night."
"If you really need to tell somebody, you can tell me," she said with a smile. "I don't mind listening."
Louise is pretty sweet, most of the time. I
t's hard to believe that she's Civil Service.
"That's all right, Louise," I said. "It would take me an hour to give you the background, and I'm not sure if the payoff would be worth it for you. But thanks."
She gave a toss of her head that sent the blonde curls bouncing. "That's OK."
"When you see the Feebies again, ask them to do something for me, will you?"
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