Styx

by Bavo Dhooge

  With the remnants of mental clarity he still had, he considered the current state of affairs:

  The Stuffer had shot him.

  The Stuffer thought he was dead.

  Therefore, although he wasn’t sure exactly how it might work, he had an advantage, a trump card he might find a way to play.

  But what about Isabelle? And Victor? They need to know I’m not dead.

  “You are dead,” the voice in his head reminded him. “That’s the problem.”

  But I can’t hide from the world forever.

  “For now, though, it makes sense to keep a low profile.”

  Why? Because of the fucking Stuffer?

  “Exactly. The bastard killed me.”

  And your point is?

  “He must know by now I’m missing, and that’s got to piss him off. Serial killers hate being a step behind the learning curve. They want to be a mystery, not solve one.”

  Where are your brains, you moron? Look at yourself! You need help.

  “No one can help me. It’s too late for that.”

  You stink, man! And so does your plan to go into hiding.

  “What else can I do? It’s the only way I can think of for us to trick the Stuffer out of his nest.”

  Us? Who else is there? You’re on your own, Styx, there’s no “us.” If you’re really dead, then there’s nobody left on your side, not even that nitwit Delacroix.

  Styx listened to the voice of his other self. The human Styx, the rational Styx, the old Styx who shunned his fellow man, who had been nothing more than a doom-and-gloom hypochondriacal misogynist.

  Well, this wasn’t a rational situation. It was a situation, but there was no rational way to deal with it.

  So what’s your plan, if you don’t mind my asking? Prowl around Ostend like a werewolf until you find him?

  “I’m not the Stuffer,” he told himself, “and I can’t beat him at his own game. No, I’ll have to wait him out, wait till he shows himself.”

  Without further thought, Styx turned into the Adolf Buylstraat, a pedestrian shopping zone lined with expensive, exclusive stores. In Leopold II’s time, he would have been surrounded by wealthy ladies in long dresses. Today, though, it was early enough that the shops were only just opening and the street was still relatively empty.

  He slipped into Kruidvat, one of the chain drugstores that carried a little bit of everything and was big enough for him to lose himself in its maze of displays. Better that than the ICI Paris XL, a compact boutique where his face would have given the coquettish salesclerks a heart attack. He hurried up and down the aisles as quickly as his condition allowed, grabbing a few cans of deodorant—Garnier Men’s, “don’t sweat the small stuff!”—a bottle of aftershave, and the largest jar of foundation he could find in the makeup department.

  He held his bank card at the ready to speed up his passage through the checkout line. The cashier barely looked at him as she scanned his items. He swiped his card, tapped in his PIN—and felt the nail at the end of his index finger break halfway free.

  Back on the street, he was proud of himself for getting in and out without attracting unwanted attention. If the airhead at the register had been awake, she probably would have called the cops on him.

  But then he asked himself: Why? He hadn’t done anything wrong. Maybe he looked like a disaster, but he was just doing a little innocent shopping. There was nothing the police could do to him. He hadn’t even disturbed the peace.

  A few doors down, he slunk into an H&M. He realized by now that he could probably get away with his appearance for another day or two. Sure, his clothes were in tatters and his face was a minefield of dried blood and hollow eyes, plastered with drool, but he hadn’t gone into all-out zombie mode, not yet.

  Not too long ago he’d come in late one night to find Victor in the living room, watching some silly horror movie when he was supposed to be in bed. Lumbering zombies, missing arms and legs. Writhing, spastic, vomiting blood. But that wasn’t him.

  Not yet.

  In a dressing room at the back of the H&M he saw that, except for the three gunshot wounds, there were no other indications of violence on his body. And he hadn’t really begun to decay. No, examining himself now in the mirror, he saw a man in a nice linen suit (tan jacket and matching trousers that he’d grabbed from a nearby rack) and an immaculate white dress shirt. He looked like a guy who’d had a rough night—but a guy, not a character in a splatter film.

  He took a can of Garnier from his Kruidvat bag and sprayed it all over himself, misting his new clothes, his hair, his face. He doused all visible skin—face, hands, wrists—with aftershave, and rinsed out his mouth with the vile brew.

  Now for the last part of the makeover. For the first time in his life he unscrewed a jar of foundation. No, actually, wrong: he’d opened one three weeks ago. Not for Isabelle, who had a natural beauty, with creamy skin that didn’t need any help from Estée Lauder. Nope, that jar had been for Victor, who’d awakened that morning with a giant zit on his nose and refused to go to school until it had been camouflaged.

  He should see what I look like, Styx thought sadly.

  He eyed himself in the mirror and began to rub the cream gently into the worst places: the black rings around his eyes, the burst blood vessels on and to the sides of his nose, the blackened lips.

  But that barely made a difference, he saw, so he started over, smearing a thick layer of makeup over his whole face. He felt like an artist who, too poor to afford a fresh canvas, bought a cheap old portrait at the flea market and simply painted over it.

  He replaced his deathly pallor with what might just pass for a normal complexion.

  It took the entire jar of foundation to do it.

  Styx wiped his hands clean on his bloody old clothes and hid them in his shopping bag. He took one last look at himself in the mirror.

  He would pass.

  Maybe Raphael Styx was a zombie, but he looked like the man of the hour.

  He nodded to himself and tried to laugh, but the sound echoed hollow and dead in the little cubicle.

  Isabelle Gerard held out until five AM before calling Commissioner John Crevits and hauling him out of bed for a change. She sat on the sofa with Shelley beside her. The pit bull had awakened her in the middle of the night, howling like a banshee outside the front door. Victor, bless him, had slept right through the commotion. He had another exam in the morning, so he needed the rest.

  “Styx?”

  “No, it’s Isabelle.”

  “Isabelle?”

  “I’m sorry to call so early, John,” she said, not really sorry at all. Crevits had been a friend of the family, once, but Isabelle thought of him now as the man whose big mouth had driven the last nail into the coffin of her marriage.

  “What’s up? I thought it must be your husband.”

  “He’s not here, John. That’s why I’m calling.”

  She could hear Crevits come fully awake.

  “This isn’t the first time he’s stayed out all night, Isabelle, we both know that.”

  “This isn’t just one of his . . . exploits.”

  “How do you know? He’ll turn up—he always does. Remember that time last year when you went to work and found him about three-quarters crocked in the ER?”

  Isabelle remembered it perfectly: the shame of it, the humiliation. That time had been the last straw: Styx dragged into the hospital by some scrawny hooker he’d found in the gutter. Barely coherent, he’d tried to tell Isabelle the bitch was an informant, but she knew better. She’d needed half a Valium to calm herself down.

  “I’m telling you, this is different,” she insisted. “He took Shelley out for a walk, sometime around nine or ten last night, and he never came home.”

  “He’s probably sleeping it off in—”

  “Shelley showed up around one in the morning, John.”

  “Ah, well, that’s good.”

  “Alone.”

  “Yeah, that’s not so good.”
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  While Crevits considered the situation, Isabelle sat there petting the stupid dog. She couldn’t stand the mangy creature. It reminded her more and more of her husband: an obstinate beast, with an emphasis on the “beast,” and an animalistic temper.

  “Have you tried calling him?”

  “He didn’t take his phone. It’s sitting right here. You know he doesn’t want to be bothered when the two of them are out walking.”

  “And he hasn’t called you?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t like the sound of this,” Crevits sighed.

  “I don’t know what to do, John.”

  “Listen, I know you don’t want to hear this, but there’s another possibility.”

  “You’re right: I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Have you called her?”

  “Called who?”

  “You know who. Amanda.”

  “No, I haven’t called her, and I’m not going to call her.”

  “He might be there, Isabelle. I know he broke it off with her, and I don’t want to rake up old coals, but maybe . . .”

  No, no maybes. She would rather die than call that whore. Amanda had been one of her husband’s many conquests, but she’d also been the girlfriend of Gino Tersago, the young thug who ran three nightclubs and more than a dozen cathouses in and around the Ostend harbor. Styx had run across her during a stakeout and had interrogated her.

  In, as Isabelle later learned, the backseat of his car.

  One thing led to another, and Styx eventually reported that she was working for him, helping to make a case against Tersago and his criminal associates. Amanda was apparently sick of Tersago, but pretty much everyone on the detective squad—pretty much everyone in Ostend except Isabelle—knew she was giving Raphael Styx more than information. There was station-house gossip about them, but there was also talk of hush money being thrown Styx’s way. Since Styx and Amanda had gotten involved, Tersago seemed to be getting away with more than ever.

  “I don’t mind calling her for you,” said Crevits.

  “You do and I will kill you.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve been embarrassed enough, John.”

  “Okay, I understand. We don’t know anything’s happened to him. My advice is don’t panic, try to stay calm. I’ll make a few calls and put a couple of men on it. Ten to one we’ll find him in some—”

  She heard the commissioner stop himself, just in time.

  “I hope so. I’ve had it, John. I want to tell him to his face it’s over.”

  “Isabelle—”

  “Don’t Isabelle me. I can’t take it anymore. He’s humiliated me for the last time. If he does come home, I’ll kick him right out the door.”

  “And Victor?”

  “He’s old enough to know the truth.”

  There was a long silence between them.

  “You know the man loves you, Iz. He doesn’t mean to be such a shit. . . . It’s just the way he is. You have no idea what it’s like for a cop. The stress you have to deal with, every goddamn day. The misery you’re surrounded by. And you know the statistics: every couple goes through a rough patch after fifteen years.”

  She could tell that Crevits was only saying what he thought was expected of him. Underneath the bullshit, she knew he was rooting for them to finally divorce. She’d long suspected John had a secret thing for her.

  “What about the stress a cop’s wife has to deal with every goddamn day?” she said fiercely. “Don’t try to defend him. If anybody needs a little consideration here, it’s me. I work forty hours every week surrounded by misery, and then I’m supposed to cook and clean for that son of a bitch, do his ironing and sit up waiting for him to come home and pass out on the couch? No way, I’m done. He can find himself another sucker.”

  “You don’t mean all that, Isabelle.”

  “Fuck him, John. And fuck you, too.”

  While they talked, John Crevits had struggled out of bed and powered up his laptop. When he saw another call coming in on his phone—the squad room—he let it roll over to voice mail rather than asking Isabelle to let him put her on hold. There were two e-mails in his inbox—both from the squad—but before he checked them he clicked quickly to the Ostend police’s Facebook page. These days it seemed like everybody over the age of eight was on Facebook.

  “Look,” he said to Isabelle, the phone nestled uneasily between his ear and shoulder and both hands on his keyboard, “if I can find him and get him home before you have to leave for the hospital, will you at least talk with him?”

  “Sure, John, I’ll talk with him. I’ll tell him to pack a suitcase and call a lawyer.”

  The Facebook page loaded. Near the bottom of the window, someone had posted a photograph to their page; the top inch peeked up over the bottom of the frame so he’d have to scroll down to see it in its entirety.

  When he saw the name of the poster—all capital letters, separated by periods—he got a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  S.T.U.F.F.E.R.

  “Oh, shit.”

  “No shit,” said Isabelle. “He’s not getting away with it again, no matter what he—”

  “Give me a second here.”

  “I mean it, John!”

  “One second.”

  Ever since the media had given him the nickname, the Stuffer had posted half a dozen times to the police department’s Facebook page, each time creating a different account, each account using a slightly different variant of the name. Mostly he’d put up long self-satisfied screeds, boasting of his “accomplishments” and offering his twisted thoughts on the meaning of art in contemporary society—but he’d also contributed photos of his first two victims.

  Was Madeleine Bohy’s headless, limbless, lifeless torso now also on display, not just for the city, but for the world at large?

  Crevits clicked on the scroll bar at the right of the window and dragged it down, revealing the newly posted image.

  He gasped.

  “John?”

  “Oh, Jesus God!”

  Raphael Styx, the man he’d known for all these years, whose career he had nurtured, who he’d pulled out of more ditches more times than he could count, the man with whom he’d shared so many memorable moments, was dead.

  “Isabelle,” he croaked, his voice broken, “it’s not what you think.”

  “What’s the matter, John? Tell me.”

  But he could find no words for her, not even a sigh. He sat there on the side of his bed, his computer resting on his lap, the phone to his ear, staring at the dead face and lifeless body of Chief Inspector Raphael Styx, his old friend.

  “Isabelle, I’m sorry. He’s—”

  After informing Styx’s wife that she was now a widow, Crevits sat there for at least another half hour, staring at the screen. As he watched, new postings appeared on the Facebook page, like mushrooms springing up from a forest floor. One in particular summed up all the rest:

  “The Stuffer’s got another one.”

  By the time he arrived at the station at nine AM everyone knew about it. The mood was bizarre, surreal. Crevits called them all together in the canteen, and they stared at him as if they too were dead. They sat there, as motionless as the Stuffer’s sand sculptures, waiting for him to address them.

  Crevits didn’t feel up to giving a speech. What could he say? The usual pep talk: “We all have to go on with our work and continue the search for the Stuffer.” That wasn’t his style. He wanted to be alone.

  He turned around without a word and went back to his office.

  An hour later he buzzed his secretary Carla and told her to find Joachim Delacroix and send him in.

  “Commissioner?” Delacroix said.

  “How far have you gotten with the serial case?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, you.”

  “But I’m—I mean, I’m just a detective.”

  “You’re a cop, aren’t you? An inspector?”

  “Yes, sir.
But it was Styx’s case. God, it’s terrible, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, terrible. There are no words for how bad it is. But life goes on, Inspector, and so does the Stuffer. I want you to take over for Styx. Congratulations on your promotion. Leave the paperwork to me. From now on, it’s your case.”

  Delacroix looked like a safe had fallen on his head.

  “But I’ve only been here for—”

  “Did I ask you a question, Delacroix? This is my division, and I make the assignments. Styx had a lot of enemies. He’s stepped on a shitload of toes over the years, and I don’t want somebody doing a half-assed job because—well, because it was Styx, you get me?”

  “I—don’t I have to wait for authorization from Brussels?”

  “I don’t see why. I just told you: I’m in charge here. You’re the guy who wanted to get out of Brussels. So let’s get cracking, okay? Whatever happened with our original suspect, that guy we picked up after the first murder, what was his name?”

  Delacroix realized he was being tested and answered immediately: “Karel Rotiers. He knew the victim, went out with her a couple of times. And then we linked him to the second victim, they were Facebook friends. But we haven’t found any connection between Rotiers and Madeleine Bohy.”

  “Yet. That doesn’t mean there isn’t one.”

  “You may be right, sir. But with all due respect, why me?”

  “Why you?” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his desk and examined the young man closely. “Styx didn’t like you, Inspector. He told me that more than once. He never told me you’re a good cop, but he didn’t have to. He knew it, and he knew I knew it.”

  Delacroix stood up, but Crevits waved him back to his seat.

  “Tell me about Rotiers’s alibi.”

  “He hasn’t got one for the first two murders. At least, not one that checks out. He’s a bit of a Don Juan. Handsome, well-known around the nightclubs. According to our sources, he scores more often than not. They say he’s made it with half the women under thirty in Ostend and is hard at work on the second half.”

  “We’re trying to find a serial killer, not a sexoholic. Casanova doesn’t really fit the profile.”

  “I know, but he’s pretty heavy into the kinky stuff. Orgies, S&M, bondage, like that. He’ll try anything once.”