by Harker Moore
This time Dominick’s hand did feel like an animal’s. Hard and angry, it drove into his jaw until he tasted blood. He reeled backward from the blow, but he caught himself before he could fall. Through what seemed like smoke, he watched his brother-in-law turn and move up the stairs, back into the church hall.
For a moment he stared at the black blank expanse of closed doors. Then his vision cleared and he looked to his feet. He kicked a small rock across the wet pavement, waiting for the sound of its landing. He loosened his hold on his camera’s leather strap around his neck and stroked his jawline. It was sore, but there was also a slight fleshiness that had not been there six months ago. He was getting soft. He needed to start hitting the weights harder. Tighten up. Ease some of the tension.
He took out a handkerchief and spat, rubbing away a small drool of blood from his chin. Raking his hand through his hair, he straightened himself. Barbara would become suspicious, think that something was wrong if he didn’t get back in there with her and his kids, at least for a little while longer. Whatever the cost, he needed to keep Barbara happy.
The West Side bistro was as bright and artificial as a hothouse, a jewel box that glittered on the wet uptown sidewalk. The man sat inside, alone at a window table. Ghosts from his coffee shivered in the black wall of glass as he drank from his cup, staring past his reflection to the apartment building on the other side of the street. The building’s glassed-in foyer was another lighted box. Behind its double doors Geoffrey Westlake stood, backlit by the yellow glow from the lobby.
A taxi pulled to the curb. The man watched the figure push out into the night and walk down the few steps to the pavement. For a moment before Westlake ducked into the cab, he was completely visible in his own amazing light, which poured out from him like a beacon.
The taxi drove away, and the man set down his cup. He was acutely aware of the pressure of the leather straps, the feel of what they held against his back. Once thawed, ligament, skin, and muscle had begun the inevitable process of decay. With his heightened senses he could smell the soft beginnings of rot that seeped above the collar of his jacket.
Droplets of rain had gathered on the window. They crawled past his face in black centipede tracks. He picked up the cup again, wishing instead for the cigarettes he’d given up since the accident. He acknowledged the human craving before he banished it. Eyes closed, he willed himself to relax. There was risk involved in the plan tonight, but no special need to hurry. He’d been watching Westlake long enough to guess where he would go.
He threw a couple bills on the table and left, walking the blocks to where he’d found a space for the bike. The Harley from day one had been a good investment. In the rain-soaked streets, it gave him an added maneuverability.
When he arrived, Marlowe’s was relatively uncrowded, despite that it was Halloween, and he stood exposed for a moment inside the door. Geoffrey Westlake was here as he’d expected. Normally, the model chose a conspicuous table, but tonight, for the first time, he sat drinking alone at the shadowed side of the bar, the light from him burning into the dimness.
In the instant he’d made the decision to remain, Westlake turned toward him, watching his approach, as if, despite the months of careful invisibility, they were suddenly working some mutual radar.
“Hi,” Westlake said as he slid onto the stool next to him. “Haven’t seen you around.”
“I haven’t been around.” The lie came easily. “But I recognize you from your commercials. You do nice work.”
Westlake’s eyes went down to the camera bag he’d set on the floor. “You a photographer?” He looked up. “I could use some new publicity stills.”
“Anytime.” He made the word an obvious invitation.
Geoffrey Westlake smiled back and killed the remainder of his drink.
“Gad-ri-el.” He spoke the syllables separately and distinctly, gathering his focus. It still amazed him how vibrations made in air could so nearly capture essence. But his name had been the first thing to come back to him that night, when the world had cracked like an egg. And he had remembered.
“Gadriel.” For a moment the grief and the loneliness he had felt that night returned, and he was there again, trapped within the blackness of the tunnel. He pushed away the despair. “Gadriel.” His name three times spoken, transforming him, grounding him in the present reality of black ceramic tile and gleaming fixtures.
He looked around the bathroom. The sublet was as posh as Westlake had bragged, the bath as large as some entire city apartments. He sat down on the sleek toilet and took off his cap and shoes. Grabbed a towel from the warming rack and spread it out over the floor. Standing in its center, he removed the rest of his clothes, rolling them into tight tubes that he stuffed into the camera bag along with his other things.
He turned toward his image in the mirrored wall, the reflection of his human shell at once alien and familiar. Tall and naturally thin, he would appear ectomorphic to anyone seeing him with clothes. Actually, he was well muscled and fit again after the long months of rehabilitation. Before going out tonight, he had once again shaved his armpits, chest, and pubis. And standing completely still, his nude body in its leather harness seemed as perfect and white as marble against the backdrop of black tile.
He walked closer to the glass, running his hands over the hair he had lacquered against his skull. Light streamed through his pores, nearly obscuring his features.
“Trick or treat.” Westlake’s amused voice came from the other side of the door. “I’ve got your drink out here.”
He said nothing. But stepped aside, and carefully picking up the towel like an inverted tent, he shook out over the bowl any fibers that might have come from his clothes. He flushed, watching the water spiral down.
He had been careful to touch nothing in the room, and now he put on the latex gloves. Much later, with his shoes on again, he would wipe the tile floor of any footprints. He stooped down to the camera bag, unzipping another compartment. When he rose, the gas mask was on his face. Even to his own eyes, he looked like a monster in the mirror.
CHAPTER
3
Avoiding the elevators, which were always slow and crowded, Sakura walked down the hallway from the chief of detectives’ office to the stairwell. Let the door suck closed behind him like an air lock.
His meeting this morning with Lincoln McCauley had gone as well as could be expected, given the atmosphere of official panic that always developed around this kind of case. This morning’s Post story had not helped with its lurid speculation that a new serial killer might be preying on the city’s gay population. Worse, it was obvious that the leaks had begun. He had to expect that the press would put two and two together, but the Post article had gone way beyond what could be gleaned from public record. Witnesses, such as Greenberg and Lambert, had apparently begun to talk. Or his own people. When the precinct detectives working the Carrera and Milne murders had been subsumed under the Special Homicide Unit, he had given them all the usual speech about leaks. But it was nearly impossible with the number of people involved to keep a case with this sort of media appeal completely under wraps.
Serial murder, even in this city, became a tribal thing, a public airing of primitive emotion. What he feared was the kind of media circus that had surrounded “Son of Sam.” Even when there was nothing happening in the case, the New York media had hyped the story for ratings, virtually assuring that the killer would strike again. The papers had generated a kind of mass hysteria that had fed on itself, affecting everyone’s judgment, including that of the police.
If Carrera and Milne were simply the beginning, if bodies continued to turn up, then sooner or later the most sensational details would leak. And then no rational explanation of the difficulties involved would suffice to explain a lack of progress. For the moment at least, he could count on the chief of detectives. But if a scapegoat became necessary, McCauley would not have the slightest hesitation in cutting him loose. They would prosper together, or Sakura would sink
alone.
Not that he had any intention to sink. Pressure from the top was part of the job. He could handle it. What he hated was failure, and having to face that the odds of his failing were high. His training had prepared him to understand how difficult it was to solve a case where the victims were chosen at random and the murders motiveless in any ordinary sense. With little physical evidence and no witnesses, he had almost nothing that could lead him to the killer. The ritual element of these deaths was the strongest thing he had to go on—a window on the landscape of the killer’s obsession.
This killer’s ritual struck him as something … personal was the only word he had for it. But a serial almost never murdered people he knew. His victims were not subjects but faceless objects to be slotted anonymously into the fantasy that was driving him. The fantasy was what substituted for motive. So it was the fantasy that he must try to understand. He had to feel his way into the killer’s brain.
His people, meanwhile, were going through the mechanics of canvasses and interviews. They would check out all the religious cults and hate groups that targeted gays, along with the recent releases from mental institutions. A waste of time and manpower in his estimation. This killer was a loner, not the member of any group. And too organized to be crazy—at least in a legal sense.
What he would have to consider was going proactive, especially when they’d worked up a profile. There was no doubt that many serials monitored their cases in the media and often liked to insinuate themselves into the investigation. The outrage that was already building in the gay community might be used to construct a trap, a series of police meetings with various interest groups where the killer might show up. A signature on a petition list might ultimately be cross-linked with other information that developed.
On the landing below him, a door opened. Footsteps went clambering down the metal stairs. He waited for a moment, then followed them downward. At the eleventh floor he stopped, passing through the door to the brick-lined hallway that led to the Special Investigation Division and the controlled chaos that waited inside Major Case. In the squad room he signed out, picking up the keys to his department car. There was time to check in quickly with his unit before heading out to his appointment at the university.
Zoe Kahn hailed from an unfortunate section of Queens. A fact that she took no pains to hide. Humble beginnings looked great when you made it big. And Zoe intended to make it. She owed it to God for the heavy dose of good looks and brains with which he’d seen fit to endow her. And she was not afraid of hard work. Zoe feared nothing.
A handy trait given her current position as police beat reporter for the Post. And her intention to climb. Cable news contributor was the next logical step, and she’d been looking for a story that could get her an invite to the talking-head circuit. She figured she might have found it.
Two fairly prominent homosexuals murdered in the city in the space of three days, and some sort of psycho ritual performed on the bodies. Homosexual thrill killings à la Cunanan, or a serial’s opening gambit. Either way it was juicy, though the serial angle had the better potential long term. Her headline this morning had screamed: SERIAL KILLER STALKING CITY’S GAYS? The question mark thrown in to cover her ass.
Her cell phone rang, sounding eerily in the basement garage.
“Here,” she spoke into the unit.
“He’s on his way down,” the voice said.
“Thanks.” She flipped the phone closed and nestled back into the shadow of a concrete pillar, going over the moves in her head, the questions she wanted to ask. Not that she really expected Sakura to give her any real answers at this stage. She’d been through this dance with him before. A former deputy commissioner’s daughter murdered with plenty of mayhem and sex in suitably high places—a Special Homicide Unit case that had made her reputation on the police beat. So in a way, she supposed, she owed Sakura. He had played the case close but straight. He never lied, or even stretched the truth over-much. He just didn’t tell you a goddamn thing until he was good and ready.
She knew his reputation with his men. Respected, if not beloved, for a harsh but scrupulous fairness, and a competence that made everyone around him look good. Her own appraisal was a cold man, but not without his passions. His eyes betrayed him with an intensity that could burn like dry ice. She’d felt their sting more than once. It was the same look he no doubt used to intimidate police witnesses into silence with the press, with that spiel of his about obstruction of justice.
The elevator opened, disgorging passengers. She watched Sakura separate from the pack. His figure distinct. Ridiculously tall for an Asian.
His height always surprised her, as if mentally she’d been trying to cut him down. Truth was, she found him attractive. Something in that deliciously cruel mouth and the way he never seemed to notice that she was an extraordinarily beautiful woman. That was the hook, the thing that got under her skin. She and Sakura were colleagues of a sort, both with their little tricks of intimidation. Except that hers never seemed to work on him. She had a fantasy of interviewing him entirely in the nude. See if he could ignore her obvious attributes then.
“Lieutenant Sakura.” She stepped out in front of him. “The Carrera-Milne murders. Is it your belief we’re dealing with a serial?”
To his credit, his reaction to her presence here was cool. He walked past her, shaking his head, as if her question itself were foolish. “Your article this morning was premature, Ms. Kahn. We have two deaths. It’s simply your assumption they’re related.”
“My article stated that the condition of both bodies suggested a ritualized murder of some kind.” She managed to match her stride to his, despite the confines of her skirt. “Are you denying a ritual aspect to these deaths?”
He had reached his car, and now he stopped and faced her. “I don’t know where you’re getting your information.”
She smiled. “But you’re not denying it’s accurate?”
His key was in his hand. He fitted it in the lock.
“What about the gay community?” she said to his back. “Don’t people have a right to be warned of the danger?”
“I feel certain, Ms. Kahn, that you’ll continue to take care of that.” He had spoken as he opened the door. He climbed in while she continued to pepper him with questions.
“I’m not ready to say anything about this case.” He spoke mildly. “You can contact the Public Information Section. I’m sure they’ll have a statement.”
He started the engine and backed out. She stood watching, as his car moved away and disappeared up the ramp. Her little ambush had accomplished its purpose. News out of no news to feed tomorrow’s cycle. She ran the lead in her head: In an interview yesterday Lieutenant James Sakura of the Special Homicide Unit did not deny a bizarre ritual aspect to the recent murders of Metropolitan Ballet danseur Luis Carrera and David Milne, co-owner of a popular Alphabet City art gallery. Sakura, however, refused comment on widespread speculation that his budding investigation may be dealing with a serial killer targeting members of the city’s prominent gay community.
She smiled her satisfaction, tossing back her signature blond mane and tugging her short skirt into alignment. Whether he liked it or not, Sakura was set to play the star in the little morality tale she was about to spin for the city’s hungry readers. The problem for the lieutenant was that, this time out, he might prove to be no more than a shooting star, or the kind that finally collapsed on its own brilliance. That crack of his about the department’s Public Information Section was a symptom of his contempt not only for the press but for the way the game was played in general. An impressive clearance rate had so far protected Sakura from the jealousy of his betters, but goodness and light could get you only so far when you operated in a shark tank. And she, for one, was betting on the sharks.
James Sakura thought Dr. Simon Whelan looked like a gnome. The linguist was an aging scholar, sitting at an ancient desk behind a disorganized accumulation of books and papers. His shock of
white hair was startling above almost transparent blue-gray eyes. The single incongruity, tacked to the wall behind the professor’s desk, was an outof-date calendar displaying a smiling Vargas-like beauty advertising Jose’s Cantina, El Paso, Texas. Sakura watched as the linguist’s untidy head bobbed against the backdrop of the señorita’s ample breasts.
Whelan spoke directly to the black-and-white photographs of the crime scene walls. “No spaces between the letters.” He rotated the shots toward Sakura, tapping a finger against one of the series of ash-drawn letters. “They’re words, freestanding words.”
“Not just random strings of letters?” Sakura looked at the photographs he’d examined a dozen times before.
“No, the letters follow graphotactic rules.” The professor leaned back into his chair. “Permitted sequences of letters. Vowels occurring in appropriate places. Some fairly standard consonant patterns…. Say them, Lieutenant Sakura.”
Sakura read off the words that had been written over the victims’ beds.
Whelan’s laugh was electric. “They’re a mouthful but still pronounceable within the context of certain rules of the English language.”
“What do they mean, Doctor?”
“Linguists are not magicians, Lieutenant Sakura.” Whelan shook his white head in a parody of modesty. “But I think we may reasonably assume that the killer is an English speaker and that these foreign-sounding words are Anglicized versions of words from another language, probably Indo-European or Semitic. The k and the q sounds, which we see here, frequently occur in both those language groups.” He paused, stopping the flutter of his birdlike hands. “There is something else you might consider, Lieutenant. These words may have significance beyond their denotative meaning. ‘Kasyade. Jeqon.’” Whelan literally sang the words.
Sakura waited.
“The sound of the words, Lieutenant. Perhaps it is the sound and not the meaning that is important. Especially if the words are attached to some ritual.”