by Harker Moore
He rose from his chair and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, which was the dominating feature in the tiny eleventh-floor office. Beyond the plaza the Municipal Building loomed over Chambers Street, its collocated towers topped by the statue Civic Fame. Bracing his hands against the black glass, he dropped his head and breathed deeply, as if he could inhale the night. Then closing his eyes, he let his head fall back on his shoulders. His next breath held a single soft sound. Hanae. His wife’s name. His mantra.
This time of evening in lower Manhattan, the streets were mostly empty. The Fulton Street Market not set to stir for hours. The canyons of Wall Street deserted. The man had little trouble finding a space for his cycle near the rental garage to which he’d trailed his quarry. Plenty of time to get himself in place.
He held his breath now, bracing his arm for the shot. The infrared image that was Lieutenant James Sakura shimmered like heat waves in the scope, the mounted lamps on either side of the Nocta triggering with a soft electronic pop that was hidden in the traffic noise drifting from the Brooklyn Bridge. The flash itself was intense, if invisible to human eyes. The detective, pausing on the pavement, had no awareness of the camera not twenty yards away.
Still irradiated by the scope’s built-in searchlight, Sakura walked the remaining steps to the entranceway of a nearby building. With his key in the lock, he turned back to the street, as if for the first time sensing something not quite right in the dark. The lamps flashed again in a whisper, catching the tired smile that mocked his apprehension. Caught him again as he disappeared through the door.
The man breathed out slowly, resting for a moment against the cold brick at the mouth of the alley. The effects of the drug he had taken last night had long since worn away, and the desire of his human shell for food and rest tugged at the edges of his consciousness. He had not eaten for more than twenty-four hours, had not slept.
He had, of course, been aware that the dead bodies would draw police and press attention. There was no way to avoid that. And though he might resent the unavoidable human dimensions of the mission he had set for himself, he could not afford to ignore them. He had waited since before dawn in the streets outside Westlake’s building. Had been drinking coffee in the bistro across the street when the first police vehicles had arrived. He’d already paid the bill and stepped outside as Sakura had emerged from his unmarked car.
It was an opportunity to learn what he could of his adversary, and he’d followed the detective as he’d left the crime scene and gone back to Police Plaza. It had been a matter of parking the Harley in sight of the ramp from which Sakura would have to exit the underground lot … and waiting. A very long wait as it had turned out. But he had kept the vigil through the afternoon and evening, till the detective’s car did at last emerge onto the street, then trailed him here to the apartment building where he apparently lived.
For a moment hunger nearly overcame him, and he considered giving in. But there might be more he could learn tonight. He closed his eyes, denying the flesh, repeating the syllables of his name till exhaustion vanished. A car went past. A tug sounded from the river. Then with the Nocta safe in the bag, he went looking for a suitable building.
For a long moment, Sakura stood without moving inside the genkan. The small entryway, with Hanae’s marriage kimono suspended over the low tansu, was for him both an ending and a beginning—the curtain that fell each night, closing off the outer world and opening the private world that was his and Hanae’s alone. But tonight the outside world would not be stilled. Even before he’d removed his coat, the cell phone was ringing inside his pocket.
“Lieutenant Sakura.” Simon Whelan’s voice on the line. “They told me I’d just missed you at your office. I hope you don’t mind my calling.”
“No, Dr. Whelan, that’s why I left this number with you.” He was surprised to hear from the language professor so soon. “Murder investigations don’t follow nine-to-five schedules.”
“I’m sure they don’t, Lieutenant.”
“Unfortunately, we do indeed have a third victim.”
“And a new word on the wall?”
He spelled out the letters written in Westlake’s bedroom. “So what have you found out, Dr. Whelan?”
“Not me, Lieutenant Sakura. My good friend, Dr. Haim Isaacs at Yeshiva. Remember when I said this morning that your killer was making angels? Well, he’s also naming them. Kasyade and Jeqon are names of angels found in an Apocryphal text called The Book of Enoch.”
“The wings seemed obvious. But this confirms it. You said Apocryphal text?”
“Material excluded from authorized translations of the Bible.”
“So whatever the killer is doing,” Sakura asked, “might have something to do with religion?”
“Possibly.”
“What about the markings on the chests?”
“I haven’t found anything yet, and Haim said he didn’t see any connection with Enoch.”
“I’d like to see this book.”
“I’m sure Dr. Isaacs would loan you his copy.”
“Thank you, Dr. Whelan.” He got out his notebook and was jotting down the Yeshiva professor’s number.
“Lieutenant Sakura!”
“Yes, Doctor?”
“But how could I be so forgetful,” the man was saying. “Haim said these are not just the names of any angels. He wanted me to make it clear that the names on the walls are the names of fallen angels.”
The man had scaled the last section of the building up to the roof like an experienced mountain climber. In truth, he didn’t like heights. Although, it wasn’t heights so much he feared but falling. He forced himself to look down now. A dull darkness gave way to a denser blackness.
He swallowed a hard knot of saliva and inched backward from the edge. From beneath his foot a stone unsettled itself. He breathed the cold air and stretched his arms wide. The thick skin of his leather jacket glinted weakly in the moonlight, and he imagined himself a large bat unplugging itself from its nighttime roost.
Behind and above him the bridge soared. A line of cars winking into Brooklyn. He bent and, unzipping his bag, retrieved his camera. This rooftop would give him the vantage he needed. He circled around some air venting to the other side of the building. From here it seemed he could see the entire universe.
He looked out. The aura surrounding the silhouetted figure came as a shock, and he caught himself before he could fall. He held his breath, hearing the roar of blood inside his head. His fingers trembled as he brought the Nocta up to his face. Even with the scope he was having trouble focusing, but he knew what he was seeing. He clicked the lens once before the light exploded.
The warmth of the bedroom seemed an indulgence to Hanae, so long accustomed to a house that was cold in winter. She dropped to kneel beside Jimmy and began the process of centering herself in hara, drawing her mind to the point below her navel that was the exact physical center of her body.
Her husband, fresh from his bath, lay facedown, his head resting on folded arms, his back draped with the traditional cloth that would veil his skin from her touch.
The cloth was white, a fact she could sense in its steady surface vibration, so different from an object that was a buzzing red, or cooling blue beneath her fingers. But the visual aspect of color remained an impenetrable mystery. She could not even begin to imagine what it must be to sense color with the eyes. This was her small regret for having been born blind. The greater loss was that, despite the intimacy of her fingers with its contours, she would never actually see her husband’s face.
She emptied her mind. Her heart already open, she began with his head and neck tonight, rubbing and pressing where worry and fatigue had disturbed the natural flow of ki through the channels.
“Feels good.” He spoke once as her hands flowed to his shoulders. Then, “Uhhh, that one is sensitive, Hanae,” when she had moved to his back. “Where are you?” he said in another moment. Jimmy liked to have her name the tsubos, the fixed po
ints on the channels where ki could be taken in or released.
“You should not speak,” she said. “Empty mind is important for the receiver as well as for the giver of healing.”
“I want to know,” he insisted.
“Mei-mon,” she answered. “The gate of life.”
“Because …?”
“Because it is so near jin-yu, the seat of inborn energy.” Her fingers flowed to the place. “Mei-mon and jin-yu are each connected with the life force inherited from the parents. In only a few hours, you will return to work. Restoring the proper flow of ki here builds stamina.”
Now, at last, she could feel him smile. “I thought it was shi-shitsu that did that.”
“That tsubo is also near jin-yu,” she answered. “But its name implies another kind of stamina.”
“If I remember correctly,” he said, “‘shi-shitsu’ translates roughly as … sperm room.” He rolled over beneath her fingers.
“I am not finished.”
“I feel much better. I want to hold my wife.”
She lay down beside him, naked again beneath her kimono as no proper Japanese wife. He held her, stomach to back, his chin resting in her hair. Not speaking at first, which was always the way of his unburdening.
“There was another body today.” He broke the silence.
It explained the blockage of ki. She turned toward him, her hand cradling his face. She could sense his eyes searching, blinder than she was in the dark. “Have you spoken yet to Kenjin?”
“No.”
“You must ask him to return.”
“I don’t know,” he said softly.
She felt his tension increasing again, building in the muscles of his jaw. “He is your friend,” she said. “He wears on with no offense.” The concept had no real English equivalent. The closest translation was debt of gratitude.
“And I wear mine with none,” he said.
“Then, my dear husband, perhaps it will be a calm sea you cross.”
She had thought him long asleep when he reached for her. She turned toward him, slipping from her kimono. She was eager as always for their lovemaking. It was a joy to see Jimmy, not just with the tips of her fingers on his face, but with the full feel of him, body to body. In these moments he was completely hers, wholly apprehended.
He began tonight with gentleness, kissing her deeply. But soon he was like raging water carrying her to that place of peace. She moved with his thrusts, the light behind her lids a growing pressure. At the moment of her climax, she was the light, consumed in the grace of their union.
The solution ran off like thin blood. The excess dripping into the steel pan as the man hung the photographs to dry. His fingers appeared detached from his hands, moving like small white worms in the brothel red light of the developing room.
But that was only an illusion, for his flesh pressed against him with increased vigor. No matter how often he bathed, he could smell himself. The odor of decaying fruit. And the feel of it. That, too, was more acute than ever. Arms. Legs. The sack of skin attached to muscle. The connection of tendon to bone. The flush of blood. He had an absolute consciousness of every cell in his body. Every molecule. Every atom. Every nucleus of every atom.
That the level of communion with his physical self had grown these last months did not surprise him. Nor that he had plunged to the very edge of sensation. It was an expected consequence of awakening.
What was still a mystery to him was if there were others of his kind who had awakened. Or was he the only one on the physical plane fully conscious of what he was? It made the burden greater. But no matter, he knew what must be done.
He looked down at the last of the prints floating in the pan. A blowup. A tight profile. It was unquestionably the best shot taken from the roof. His single perfect happiness in so many months.
“Zavebe,” he whispered to the photograph.
CHAPTER
4
The men’s room in the basement morgue had the feeling of a crypt and smelled like fake maraschino cherries. Sakura splashed his face with water from the tap and wondered who had decided that a germicidal disinfectant should cloy your throat with the sweetness of sugared fruit. There were no paper towels in the dispenser. He pulled the handkerchief out of his pocket and dried his face, observing himself in the mirror. He looked hollow-eyed in the greenish light that brought out the sallowness of his skin.
The autopsy on Westlake, which he had just witnessed, had proceeded identically to those of the first two victims. Dr. Linsky had insisted on delaying any discussion of the case to a meeting that was to follow in his office. Folding and replacing the handkerchief in his pocket, Sakura headed there now.
The medical examiner was already waiting for him in the small but miraculously neat space. He sat behind his desk, its surface clean except for a stack of current cases and a framed portrait of a young and pretty wife—mail order from Moscow according to department rumor. Sakura took the chair offered him, plunged in. “What did the lab come up with?”
Linsky looked at him. “Nothing that could be the mechanism of death.”
The overpreciseness of language was interesting. The medical examiner was making a careful distinction between the mechanism, or agent, and the cause of death, the actual physical effect of that agent within the body. Obliqueness was not Linsky’s style. He was enjoying this. The case had risen to the level of his interest.
The M.E. surprised him by asking, “Have you found any evidence that the victims knew each other?”
“No,” Sakura admitted. “And so far, there’s no indication that any of the victims were into weird sex.”
“I see.” Linsky settled back in his chair. “Death is always a messy business,” he began again. “The body releases its fluids. Lividity indicates that these victims died in their beds, and yet the bedclothes are pristine except for the small amount of blood leaking from the incisions he made to insert the wings. There’s no doubt the killer cleaned up, including washing the bodies. We found traces of alcohol and cotton fibers.”
Sakura nodded. “Part of his ritual,” he said. “Or a concern with eliminating physical evidence.”
“He wasn’t totally effective. There were still some traces of adhesive on the skin.”
“Semen?” Sakura asked.
Linsky shook his head. “I doubt there ever was any. The reports were all negative, including the oral and anal swabs.”
Sakura was only marginally surprised. Serial murder was usually a sex crime, but it was not all that rare for the killer to fail to ejaculate at the scene. “You said the lab didn’t find anything that could be the mechanism of death,” he said. “But I believe you know what killed them.”
Linsky actually smiled. “Know is too strong a word,” he said, “but there is virtually no substance that can remain undetectable to a complete battery of tests. By process of elimination, the killer must have injected something that is too detectable. A substance that can hide in plain sight.”
“What kind of substance?”
“A potassium compound. Most probably potassium chloride.”
“You said it could hide—”
“There’s potassium in every cell of the body, Lieutenant. The moment that death occurs, the cells begin to break down and potassium is released in massive quantities. Whatever amount the killer injected is going to be masked by that.”
“And the cause of death?”
“Heart failure. Potassium is vitally necessary for cell functioning, but only within a certain range. Too little or too much and the result is the same, arrhythmia and cardiac arrest. There is no physiological damage to the heart. The muscle simply stops pumping.”
“It seems a strange way to kill, especially if you’re not trying to hide the fact that your victims were murdered,” Sakura said.
Linsky shrugged. The gesture was oddly elegant in the starched coat. “Potassium chloride, as you probably know, is one of the drugs used in lethal injection. Perhaps there’s some si
gnificance in that.”
“There were two needle marks,” Sakura remembered. “Was the second injection also potassium chloride?”
“Very unlikely. One injection would be quite sufficient.”
“Then what?”
“Lysergic acid diethylamide.”
“LSD?”
“Yes. We found high levels of the drug in the first two victims.”
“It could be coincidence,” Sakura thought aloud. “There’s a lot of LSD use…. But injected by the killer?”
“It would logically have to be injected first. Potassium chloride kills very rapidly.”
“But why would the killer give them LSD?” Sakura asked.
“I only work on bodies, Lieutenant. It’s not my job to know what the murderer is thinking when he kills them.”
Sakura nodded. That job description was very precisely his. “How soon can we get the blood work on Westlake?” He looked at the medical examiner.
“It’s top priority, Detective Sakura.” Linsky managed to sound collegial. “I’ll call you as soon as I know something.”
Sakura left the morgue and headed back to police headquarters for yet one more unpleasant task. Since yesterday’s discovery of the third homosexual victim, the serial-killer story had spread to every media outlet in the city. Pressure on City Hall from the gay community was increasing by the hour. A press conference had been scheduled for later this morning, at which he would have to speak. It was a duty he accepted with any high-profile case, but he didn’t have to enjoy it.