by Harker Moore
“The shooting thing … yes. Jimmy told me about that back at Quantico. I got the idea he felt he’d deserted Michael.”
“I believe that is how Jimmy felt. And then it was worse after what happened with Margot.”
“Who is Margot?”
Hanae’s hand moved on the dog’s harness, and the three of them resumed walking. “Margot was Kenjin’s wife,” Hanae said. “They met in law school. I do not think she was happy when he decided to become a policeman.”
“Are you saying his wife left him because he didn’t become a lawyer?” Willie asked.
“There were other things.” The smooth brow furrowed, fine line crazing in porcelain. “Kenjin can be difficult. But it was very cruel, her moving out so suddenly without telling him she was pregnant.”
“Michael has a child?”
“He has sons … twins.” Hanae answered. “I do not know how often Kenjin sees them.”
“Why do you call him Kenjin?”
“It is difficult to translate … old sad wise one.”
“It fits,” she said. “I’m not sure why, but it fits.”
Hanae nodded. “Do you have time to go somewhere else?”
“Sure.”
The sidewalks, when they left the park, were thick with early Christmas shoppers. The crowd parted for Taiko, efficient more than polite. Willie had to slow her normal breakneck pace, matching it consciously to the dog’s, as he matched his to Hanae’s. It was Hanae who actually led.
The library was a small private one with an extensive collection in braille. The building that housed it was early twentieth century, the typical Beaux Arts town house of the district. Willie registered the interior as modern, not as cold as some. She walked behind Hanae through the security posts, past the checkout desk to the stairs.
“Second floor?” She turned to Hanae, wondering if there were an elevator.
“No. It’s this staircase I wanted you to see.”
She turned back, really looked at what was in front of her. In this city you forgot to do that. There was too much, so you saw nothing.
Illuminated by a skylight, the staircase glowed, curving and sinuous. Simple, but magnificent, it made you think of a snake. Except it was a snake you wanted to touch.
“It’s beautiful.” She reached out, stroking the warm wood.
Hanae’s hand moved next to hers. “It is his soul you feel inside.” The soft voice spoke at her shoulder. “It was Kenjin who made this.”
Dr. Isaacs’s office was a small and crowded sanctuary. Haim Isaacs himself was a big man, bearded, balding, and jolly. More like a secular Santa Claus than a Hebrew scholar.
“Please sit, Lieutenant Sakura.” The professor’s beefy hand indicated a well-loved chair.
“Thank you for seeing me.”
His eyes went just short of twinkling. “My pleasure. I have no sense of shame. I am what you call a show-off. I enjoy talking about what I know.”
Sakura laughed.
“So, you want to know about angels.”
“Yes,” he said. “Understanding angels may be critical to apprehending this killer.”
The professor nodded.
“A serial killer is not like other murderers,” Sakura said. “Most killers murder people they know and at least have superficially rational motives for what they do.”
“Jealousy, greed, hatred.” Isaacs enumerated emotions, which in another context might have been labeled sins.
“Yes. But serial murder is different. The killer murders to satisfy a well-rehearsed script inside his head. This particular killer’s fantasy seems to be about transformation.” He removed the crime scene photos from a folder and spread them across the desk.
Isaacs sat, looking at them for a moment, then stood and moved to the window, examining the remnants of a cold and dreary afternoon. “Dr. Whelan seems to believe your killer is making human beings into angels,” he said. His words settled against the glass in a fine mist.
“But why fallen angels?” Sakura asked.
“Your victims were all homosexuals. Let’s start there.” Dr. Isaacs walked back to his chair. “Angels are androgynes, beings that are neither male nor female. Your killer may believe that homosexuality, which is the union of like to like, is closer to the androgynous state of angels.”
“So you’re saying that in the killer’s mind, homosexuals are more like angels than heterosexuals.”
“Yes,” he answered.
“And through ritual murder, he’s transforming homosexuals into angels?” Sakura said.
“Exactly. The wings are symbolic of his success.”
“But why fallen angels?” he asked again.
“According to Enoch, the fallen angels were punished because they took on human bodies to sleep with the daughters of men. They were anything but homosexual. It seems something of a contradiction.”
Sakura frowned. “So where does that leave us?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the names are not attached to the bodies and are simply the killer’s statement against heterosexuality. Those names, Lieutenant Sakura”—he smiled—“may be no more than the graffiti of a very angry man.”
Sakura maneuvered through tight traffic, recalling the spread of prints he’d just moments ago reviewed with Dr. Isaacs. Black-and-white stills from some godless universe inhabited by a madman. And with the images of the hellish photographs came the odor of incense used by the killer. Strange, until today the scent had never evoked that other incense that precisely demarcated his life.
It had been three years and his California home was still alien to him. As were his stepmother, Susan, and his half brother, Paul, and his half sister, Elizabeth. From the very first day when his stepmother had given him her too-quick smile, he understood he was an outsider. With his father so involved with his practice, it was Susan who cataloged his days; it was Susan who had finally decided that he was to be called James, believing that Akira was too cumbersome for teachers and friends. He was certain she had also declared that his father was to be Ike instead of Isao.
Nine-year-old Paul was more difficult to read. Moody and intense, his father’s second son was like a desert mirage. There and not there. But seven-year-old Elizabeth was as bright and open as the sparklers he had once lit on festival days in Japan. She had almost made his life bearable.
He had fought the irony. For so long he had wanted to live with his father, but when his wish had finally been granted, he’d despised his new life.
Sakura pulled into his space in the underground garage. For a moment he sat and watched the keys dangle from the ignition. He reached for the crime scene photographs. The ancient incense came to him fresh, along with the face of his father.
He had returned from school to find Isao slumped on the edge of his bed, seemingly trapped in his American doctor’s suit. When his father spoke, the words slapped like an open palm. His grandmother was dead.
The trip back home was a dream, flying in over the ocean. He’d descended through the blue labyrinth of sky, weaving blindly in and out of clouds. Mountains pierced the cold mist. Snow like fresh cream shrouded hills and rooftops. But home could not be the same. His greatest happiness was gone. And he’d come to pick through her ashes for her bones, to bury her inside the dark, cold earth of a Buddhist cemetery.
Chrysanthemums, the color of pale sunlight, stood in stark contrast to the black dresses of his aunts. For a moment he stared at the single pearl, like a milky tear, hanging in the hollow of his aunt Otoko’s throat. Unlike the other female relatives, his grandmother lay dressed in a white kimono, folded right over left, a mirror of life, marking her passage from this world. But the flesh of her face seemed luminescent and smooth, her hair, pulled back into a tight knot, as black as in younger days. Her lips moistened, she appeared almost alive.
He watched her taken away to have her flesh transformed to soft ash, her death-breath turned to pale smoke. He sat with his family to eat the first meal, but each morsel was a stone falling thr
ough the hollow of his chest. Then at the close of the ritual feast, his grandmother’s ashes were presented to the family, and with clean chopsticks each relative passed the remnants of bone one to another. He made his arm iron so that he would not tremble as he passed a fragment of bone to his uncle Ikenobo.
Then yellow-robed monks chanted and prayed as his grandmother’s remains were placed inside an urn. Incense burned, filling the air so thickly he thought he would vomit.
Sakura gagged now, dry heaving into his handkerchief, wiping a rivulet of saliva from the corner of his mouth. He counted breaths, his head leaden against the seat rest. “Nakamura.” He spoke his grand-father’s name inside the cavern of the squad car. After the funeral he had begged to stay behind with his grandfather. But Isao had refused.
Back in California he had overheard one of the few arguments between his father and Susan. She couldn’t understand why her husband had not allowed his son to remain in Japan. Certainly, this arrangement would have been better for everyone concerned. His father’s voice had been low but angry when he answered that California, not Japan, was Akira’s home now.
In the days that had followed, he had grown more sullen and quiet. He lost weight and his grades fell. In desperation, his father sent him to a therapist. And although he had hated his sessions with Dr. Ambrose, the psychologist became his savior in the end. He recommended that James be sent away for a time.
The boy from Hokkaido had been lost the day his grandmother died. A veil had fallen between Akira and the child who would grow to be the man.
Michael Darius fit the key into the lock of Luis Carrera’s apartment, still uncertain if he really wanted to become a part of what had happened behind this door. Early this morning when Sakura had first slid the key across his desk, he could only stare at it. Finally he’d picked it up, put it into his pocket, got up, and walked out without saying another word. He’d had no choice. His very presence at Police Plaza had betrayed him. He was infected with the old disease—his allegiance to Jimmy, and his need to drive evil back into its hole.
He stepped under the yellow crime scene tape and moved inside. He reached back and closed the door, conscious of the dull thud of wood meeting wood. The blinds were closed against the watery late-afternoon light, but even in the semidarkness it was easy to make out the sooty leavings of the Crime Scene Unit.
He closed his eyes, willing himself to forget what he had seen in those photographs, what he’d heard Willie French say the other night at Jimmy’s. He had to come into this naked, free of the weight of facts and opinions already laid out.
He opened his eyes and examined what had once been Carrera’s home. The living room was spare, except for the walls. Ballet posters and photographs covered most of the space. Most photos showed Carrera himself in publicity stills or candid shots with other dancers.
But the back injury in Linsky’s autopsy report had probably meant that Carrera would have never again achieved star status. And he wondered if this had anything to do with what had happened. Had Carrera wanted to die?
He thought of the photograph he’d seen of Carrera lying dead in his own bed. Ironically, death seemed to have bestowed on the dancer something he’d never been able to achieve in life. The white wings appeared natural rather than abstracted, sprouting from his shoulders rather than affixed by some mad killer’s hand. Even the unforgiving photography had been unable to hide the waxy translucency of Carrera’s flesh. With his long fingers chastely folded over his groin, he seemed poised to fly, transform into some purer, rarer entity. Now I begin, the image in the photograph had seemed to say.
He shook his head to dispel his thoughts and moved toward the bedroom. The air grew notably denser, so that he seemed to be breathing through layers of gauze. The smell was distinctively Roman Catholic. He’d served for only two years as an altar boy, but the scent that had flaunted pagan harems in the face of Christianity’s God was something he’d never forgotten. He raked his tongue against his hard palate, scratching the tickle of spicy staleness.
He supposed it was that faint odor of the incense that drew him first. Then it was the metallic stink of blood. But what had Jimmy said? That he’d never worked a homicide with less blood. In the end, however, when he stood in the bedroom, he was able to determine with absolute certainty that what had drawn him in was the murderer’s own scent.
He thought peaches. Furry, fleshy peaches left in the hot summer sun too long. Allowed to linger in a bowl, forgotten until their odor refused to be ignored. It was a scent that evoked waste. Terrible tragic waste. Yet it was a scent with which he’d grown familiar. A scent he’d smelled a thousand times. An odor so intimate that at first he’d failed to notice, failed to recognize as the odor of his own flesh.
CHAPTER
8
Geoffrey Westlake’s bedroom was a showplace, a bigger, more expensive version of David Milne’s room above the gallery. But no longer much to look at, as far as Willie was concerned. No body. No blood at all in the stripped-down bed. Only the ash writing and fingerprint powder in random black smudges remained.
Willie watched as Darius disappeared into the vastness of a walk-in closet and hoped he was getting more out of these murder scenes than she was. Antagonism remained in the air, a natural rivalry, professional as well as personal, with the additional complication of Jimmy’s expectation that they actually like each other. It was the demand inherent in the blind-date refrain: He’s got such a good personality. Well, Michael Darius wasn’t a blind date, thank God, and his personality left a lot to be desired. But that she would have expected. Jimmy’s confidences about his former partner had prepared her for the moroseness that seemed to be his essential characteristic. But Jimmy had also said that Darius had the best investigative instincts he’d ever seen. Jimmy wanted him on the case. That was what was important.
Darius emerged from the closet, stood next to the bed, appearing to study the letters that spelled out Barakel on the wall. From the doorway she studied his back. Its blank tenseness was a message clearer than words. Any small impression of agreement reached at Jimmy’s place the other night had been pure illusion.
She walked back into the living room, leaving him alone to do whatever it was that he did. On a chrome console table a framed photograph of Geoffrey Westlake held place of honor against a mirrored wall. Model’s ego, she thought, displaying his own portrait. But crossing the room to get a better look, she noted the dedication scrawled across the bottom: Rob, Love always, Geoff.
Rob would be Robert Lindel, the apartment’s actual owner. She had read about him in Jimmy’s background files. Lindel was a wealthy businessman in his sixties who spent his winters in Palm Springs, a self-described patron of the arts who’d taken a friendly interest in Geoffrey Westlake’s career. The sublet he’d offered at such a nominal fee, he’d explained as a business transaction. A fair exchange to have someone he trusted watching over his things.
It was obvious from the photo what Lindel’s real interest in Westlake had been. Love always. No … probably not that. But maybe what he’d called it. A fair exchange. Value for value.
The door to the hallway was open. A man walked in, small and rigidly poised in a heavy black suit that made him look like a butler. His gaze went over her sternly, made a quick inventory of the room.
“I’m with the police,” she explained. “Is there some problem, Mr….?”
“Babcock. I’m the manager of this building. Lieutenant Sakura promised to inform me whenever anyone was to enter Mr. Lindel’s apartment.”
She put on a smile. Better than making trouble for Jimmy. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I’m sure you can understand—”
“What I want to know is when that bedroom can be repainted,” Babcock cut her short. “Mr. Lindel’s been upset enough by … what’s happened.” The officious little eyes slid past her. Darius had entered the room.
“How long had Geoffrey Westlake lived in this apartment?” he asked the manager.
“Mr
. Lindel left for the Coast at the end of the summer,” Babcock answered readily enough, dropping the posturing. “But Mr. Westlake had been staying here for a couple months by then, living here for all practical purposes.”
Darius nodded. His eyes were an intense shade of blue. They made him look Black Irish rather than Greek. “Have you any idea where Mr. Westlake lived before that?” he asked the manager.
Babcock frowned, having to admit that he hadn’t.
“Thank you,” Darius said. A clear dismissal.
She watched the manager leave, then turned to Darius. His own gaze was inward, and she wondered what he was thinking. One thing was clear. He didn’t just not want to be here with her. He plain didn’t want to be here. And he wouldn’t be, except for this noble macho pissing contest he was having with Sakura. And yet the case engaged him in spite of himself. His intensity betrayed him.
The blue eyes focused, catching her stare. She didn’t blink. She could piss with the best of them. And it was Jimmy, not she, who had suggested they view some of the crime scenes together.
“You find anything?” she said.
“No.”
“What took you so long then?”
He didn’t answer.
“You don’t like me very much, do you, Mr. Darius?”
He surprised her by smiling. It changed his whole face. “I don’t like psychiatrists.”
“Afraid of what we’ll see?”
He laughed.
She took it for a yes.
“Pinot’s next,” he said.
She looked at her watch. “Sorry. Can’t go. I’m supposed to meet with Jimmy. You want to come?”
He shook his head but made no move to leave.
She left him, closing the door behind him. She could admit he was attractive, as Hanae had said, but fucked up in her clinical diagnosis. She had been with men who’d had a certain edge. Michael Darius was bristling with spikes. The kind on which you could impale yourself.
Hanae walked out of Janice Nguyen’s studio into the cold. She felt somewhat like an unfinished butterfly in the cocoon of her red coat. Her knit cap, pulled over her ears, muted the steady whir of the wind. She settled one gloved hand into the shelter of a pocket, the other fixed on Taiko’s lead. She breathed in the chilled air. What she loved most about the cold was the retreat into warmth. Opposite sensations tucked one into another like an old letter secreted inside an envelope.