The Pressure of Darkness

by Harry Shannon

  He marched to the house phone, dialed a room number. After a long pause he barked something into the mouthpiece. He kept looking at his watch, clearly impatient and irritated at being kept waiting. A porter walking by heard him muttering something about having "brought the fucking contracts for counter-execution." This, however, was such mundane verbiage for Hollywood that it was immediately forgotten.

  The man slammed the phone down, sailed briskly to the bank of elevators, stepped into the first one going up from the lobby and disappeared.

  On the 11th floor, Burke stepped out with the same sense of purpose and surveyed the hall. He had already called 1124, the suite rented by an elderly couple named Farnsworth on the night of the murder, and no one had answered. He had insulted a dead phone. The next step in his plan would be the trickiest. He stopped at the corner of the hallway and carefully peered around the edge.

  As expected, a bored uniformed deputy was seated in front of the door to 1123, where Peter Stryker's body had been found. He was reading a newspaper, sipping coffee, had a room service tray near his feet. A yellow, plastic card hung angled from the doorknob. Burke knew it would state CRIME SCENE, SEALED BY LACSD. The uniformed cop was there to keep the morbidly curious from disturbing things before the Coroner's office had finished its work.

  Burke did not know the officer. He removed a small object from his briefcase, a high-tech metal wand designed to rapidly read and open magnetic locks. Stepping away from the corner, he listened intently at one of the doors. Hearing nothing, he inserted the slender tongue of the silver wand and armed it. After a few seconds there came a slight hum and then a clear, metallic click. The device had narrowed the various combinations likely for this floor down to a few hundred, and it could process the rest of those within seconds. Head down, Burke turned the corner and walked briskly toward the deputy, who straightened up and lowered the newspaper. Burke passed him without looking and stopped at the empty suite next door. His back to the patrolman, he coughed and fiddled with his pockets as if looking for the plastic room key. He inserted the tongue in the lock and three seconds later it popped open. Burke hurried inside, closed the door behind him.

  The cop went back to his paper.

  A quick check with his flashlight indicated that the room was unoccupied. It had already been cleaned and prepared for the next guest and at this time of night, it was unlikely to be rented out again any time soon. Burke opened the door again briefly, without showing his face, and placed a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the knob. He made a loud show of locking it, just a busy businessman going to bed unhappy about something.

  Burke would not sit on the bed, touch anything, or risk leaving any sign of his presence. He moved to the door that led into the room formerly occupied by Peter Stryker. Standing carefully over the briefcase, he applied baby powder to his hands and put on surgical gloves. After a moment of reflection, Burke reversed his steps and placed the briefcase on the floor in the bathroom, knowing that the cleaning staff would be most thorough there. They'd use bleach and cleansers immediately upon entering in the morning.

  He returned to the dark suite and eyed the ceiling panels. He knew it was theoretically possible to climb up into the ducting and over into the crime scene, but he had something bolder in mind. 1124, where the elderly Mr. Farnsworth and his wife stayed, had been described by Detective Scotty Bowden as adjoining the murder suite.

  Burke knelt before the lock. It was keyed the old-fashioned way, and the staff doubtless opened or closed it according to specific instructions given by the front desk. He bent low and ran a gloved finger along the bottom of the door and the carpet. There was a reasonable amount of space. Satisfied, he inserted a small locksmith tool and proceeded to pick the lock without scratching or damaging it. After several frustrating moments he reversed the minute teeth on the tool and tried again. Suddenly the lock clicked into place. Burke shoved with a gloved finger and the door hissed open, gliding along the nappy surface of the carpet.

  Before going any further Burke soaked up the feel of the place. He danced the crisp beam of the flashlight around the crime scene. While remaining standing in the adjoining suite, he could now imagine how a killer might have stepped into the room undetected. Perhaps if his feet, as well as his hands, were carefully gloved? And if he were a smaller person, light on his feet?

  Burke moved into the room.

  The crime scene was still tagged and taped. The glare of his flashlight rapidly banned a few ominous, crouching demons lurking in the shadows. Burke efficiently took photographs with a small, high-speed, specially altered infrared camera.

  The work rapidly revealed the surreal, horrific spoor left behind by the grotesque death of Peter Stryker: the couch, a plush white piece probably once valued in the thousands of dollars, now had two perfectly placed burgundy circles, one at each end. Stryker's dried blood was splattered up the wall near the reading lamp as if he'd severed a digit there and then momentarily lost bodily control before successfully, no doubt agonizingly, managing to cauterize the wound.

  But is that what really happened?

  Burke knew that what he wanted was likely in the bathroom. He was reluctant to enter that delicate a part of the crime scene and risk leaving a trace behind. He eyed the ceiling again, and considered slithering up into the air conditioning ducts and peering down from above, but rejected the idea. He was now satisfied that if anyone else entered Stryker's suite the night of the murder, he or she did it from the adjoining room.

  And probably the one on the opposite side, because this one, the suite he now occupied, was supposedly rented to the Farnsworths. The other had been listed as standing empty.

  After a long moment, Burke sighed and slipped off his shoes. He went back into the bathroom and wrapped his feet in ordinary clear plastic kitchen wrap, as he imagined a killer might have done. He returned to the door, flashed the beam around to orient himself, and moved carefully into the crime scene.

  There were small blood splatters on and around the ornate coffee table as well; one trash can had been bled into and then kicked over. Burke imagined a man insane enough to systematically cut himself to pieces, all the while prolonging his own agony as much as humanly possible with the help of drugs. Everything he was looking at would seem to fit that bizarre scenario, however unlikely that seemed.

  He worked quietly and stayed close to the walls and the edges of furniture, as far away from the marked and tagged areas as he could. He moved through the room on his toes, and approached the darkened bathroom.

  Wait!

  Someone jiggled the lock. Burke was fully exposed, too far from the adjoining suite to escape. He was close enough to the bathroom to hide there, but had not had an opportunity to scrutinize the interior. If he bolted through that door he felt certain he'd accidentally disturb evidence. He swallowed his anxiety and waited. A weird sense of déjà vu overtook him; twice in one night, he and someone else apparently on the same trail had nearly collided.

  But where was the deputy sheriff who was guarding the entrance? Or was he in on it somehow?

  Time passed, lugubrious and cloying. The air conditioning whooshed on overhead and Burke felt the chill ripple down his back. Nothing but silence followed the initial racket. The guard must have elected to check the lock, perhaps just as a nervous habit, when he'd gotten up to stretch.

  Burke edged closer the bathroom, nostrils wrinkling at an unpleasant odor that was all too familiar. He was careful to shield the flashlight beam so that it did not spill out into the darkened room, even though the constant light out in the hallway would likely diffuse it. He memorized the placement of tape and markers, the chalk lines around forensic evidence and the massive blood splatters. He noted one bloody palm print on the wooden frame of the doorway, about as high as it would have been for a man of Peter Stryker's size and build. He stepped across the threshold.

  The bathroom was appalling. So was the stench. Burke had been around death all of his adult life and still gagged. He held his breath. G
reat gouts of blood and fecal matter darkened the porcelain tub where Peter Stryker had reportedly opened his abdomen. The little duck decals Doc had joked about were still there, but now they were pink instead of yellow. The mirror had a fan of splatter from what may have been one of the last attempts at self-mutilation. The toilet was also marked because the trash can beside it still held quite a bit of semi-dried blood. The outline of Stryker's buttocks, filthy and splashed with crimson, was still visible on the seat.

  The small vanity mirror Stryker apparently used to view his own disembowelment was still propped up on the golden plumbing fixtures. Burke moved carefully around the grotesquely splattered throw rug and some evidence markers and shined his light on the small mirror. It was perfectly positioned. Burke shuddered at the image it brought to mind.

  Burke backed out of the bathroom before drawing another breath.

  What connection could papers marked with mathematical formulas have with such horrifically masochistic behavior? Could Stryker have gone mad while dabbling in arcane nonsense like witchcraft or voodoo? Perhaps the horror author finally succumbed to some kind of a psychosis generated from researching his own macabre fiction.

  Or could someone unspeakably sadistic have done this to him?

  Burke moved away carefully, stepping as closely as possible to where he'd passed before. He took one last look around the crime scene. One could almost picture the nightmarish events as they took place over several hours. It seemed likely that Stryker passed out from time to time; the pain alone would have done that, not to mention the stress and the repeated injections of various drugs. In those moments he'd probably have dropped his hand or foot over or into a trash can, thus producing the smaller pools of blood. The pain had gone on and on for hours.

  And finally, the stumbling flight into the pristine bathroom, resulting in the one bloody palm print on the frame of the doorway.

  But why hadn't Stryker regurgitated? There was no mention of that in the lab report, and there should have been. There was no trace of vomit by the toilet bowl. That fact seemed odd. Burke couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. Yet for the scenario to be self-mutilation, the crime scene was flawlessly presented. Perhaps that was the problem. It seemed a bit too perfect to be real.

  At the entrance to the adjoining suite, Burke paused again to absorb subliminally. He closed his eyes and allowed the vibes of the room to wash over him. His mind replayed everything he had just seen, sensed, thought, or heard. And that's when he cursed himself. He eased backward, well clear of the doorway. He crouched down close to the floor. He shined his light, peered carefully at strands of carpet.

  Damn it, what's that?

  He took two small baggies from his pocket and with tweezers removed samples of carpet fibers and dirt from the adjoining suite. This was something he felt reasonably certain the sheriff's office had failed to do. First, they would have had no particular reason to consider doing it, and second there was no mention of fibers in the lab report.

  Burke decided to messenger these samples to Doc, just to be on the safe side.

  He whispered the door closed, eased the lock into place, and collected his things; tiptoed into the bathroom, leaned over the sink to remove the surgical gloves. Burke unwrapped his bare feet, replaced his shoes and washed his hands. He very carefully cleaned the sink and wiped it down with toilet paper. When he had replaced everything in the briefcase, including the Saran Wrap and gloves, Burke took the calculated risk of flushing the toilet with his shirt-covered elbow.

  He exited the hotel suite with his head down and his voice pitched high, mumbling angrily into his dead cell phone. This time he gave himself a slight southern accent.

  "Give me a fucking break. It's late."

  He pretended to listen intently. "I'm tired, Parker," he said. From the corner of his eye, Burke was pleased to see that the deputy guarding the crime seen barely looked up from his newspaper. "I'll meet you for one drink, and that's it."

  He walked down the hall as if listening to someone ramble, turned the corner toward the elevators and was gone for good.

  FOURTEEN

  THURSDAY

  "Nobody made me."

  "You think."

  "I know."

  The funky Valley breakfast joint was half full. They fell silent when the waitress, a portly gray-haired woman with "Midge" on her stained name tag served their waffles and poured watery coffee in two chipped ceramic cups. Gina drummed her fingers impatiently, rattling the silverware.

  "Who the fuck besides us cares what happened to some whacko like Stryker?" Gina whispered, although the place was noisy. "That's the big question. Do you think it was somebody private, or government?"

  "Could be either one." Burke leaned back against the side window of the coffee shop. Gina was righteously pissed and sensed something nasty coming on. For some reason it amused Burke to pretend to be clueless. "Or maybe it's all a coincidence and you're being paranoid."

  "Oh, sure."

  "It wouldn't be the first time."

  Her face turned pink. Gina moved her plate to one side, eased closer to him. She didn't notice as the sleeve of her white blouse sank into a small, stray puddle of syrup. "Something shifty is going down here, cowboy. Don't step on your dick."

  Burke softened. "Actually, I'm with you, Gina. And I've stepped in something, all right. The question is what."

  Gina tilted her head. "I can't believe it. You're going ahead with this."

  "Look, the fees are good, and we both need the money." Burke had already decided to keep Indira Pal to himself for the time being. "Besides, now I'm getting curious."

  "You get any sleep last night?" The motherly concern.

  "I caught four hours. I'll be fine." It was a mutually acceptable lie. Burke reached into his briefcase and removed the baggie containing hotel carpet samples. He passed it under the table. "Give this stuff to Doc and ask him to tell me what he finds."

  "What are you looking for?"

  "Anything and everything he can turn up. I'm hoping to get lucky. And please tell him to hustle."

  The coffee shop was beginning to fill with people rushing off to work. That made it difficult to keep track of who might be watching. Burke threw some crumpled bills on the messy table and slid out of the booth. He bent over and pinched Gina's cheek, an affectionate 'boyfriend' gesture. "Keep your eyes peeled and if anyone leaves right after me, make a note of who they are and what they look like. Leave the information on my cell. Now smile and say goodbye."

  Gina smiled broadly, but her voice was thin and reedy when she spoke. "Shit. You're starting to scare me, Red."

  Burke exited the coffee shop, whistling. He shaded his eyes against the morning sunshine. Out in the parking lot, he dawdled like a man delaying the inevitable freeway commute. A pregnant woman followed a moment later. She was black, with straightened hair in short braids. She carried a large, woven handbag. The woman marched to a Honda Accord at the end of the lot and seemed to be looking for her keys. Burke watched from his car then started the engine. He drove out of the lot and around the corner. He paused on a surface street, got out and went around to the trunk as if about to open it.

  The black woman drove past without looking.

  He followed her. He stayed four cars back, risked a change to the right lane along the way. They passed under the freeway at Victory and she continued east, chain smoking. Burke was patient and stayed quite a ways behind. Several long blocks later she pulled into the parking lot of a Target store, grabbed a shopping cart and bumped along the cement until inside. Burke drove on, still undecided. If he was being tailed he'd just signaled that he was aware of it. If the lady was a civilian, no harm done, because only a pro could have spotted his moves.

  Burke doubled back on Victory and returned to his office. He took the stairs two at a time and let himself in. The morning sunshine was painfully bright. He closed the blinds, swung his feet up on the desk and opened the Stryker file for another look. He had been to the c
rime scene now—smelled it, stepped it off, soaked it up; that fact altered how he experienced the photographs the third time around. They were still stomach-churning.

  Looking them over, Burke could almost hear muffled howls of pain, reverberations of the cries Stryker would have emitted through the chewed piece of cloth used as a gag. He could smell the stench of scorched, cauterized flesh and the explosive reek of fecal matter, dried blood, and intestinal fluids that finally poured out into that hideously stained bathtub.

  Burke closed his eyes, remembered the suite again, and then arranged the photographs in order.

  FIFTEEN

  Burke imagined himself as Peter Stryker. He stumbled from the couch to the bathroom. In his mind he placed the small mirror on the tub fixture. He got into the tub with ruined hands, sat on those silly duck decals, and then with those burned and bleeding fingers somehow managed to open his stomach and watch as his own intestines flowed out. The light faded out and he died, one deluded mind shrieking in incomprehensible agony . . .

  Burke opened his eyes again. He shuffled through the file to the text section Doc had printed out. He flipped back through the pages and read them from the top once, then all the way through again, then backwards. He blinked his eyes, lowered the rest of the blinds and sat cross-legged on the floor. He slowed his heartbeat and concentrated on one point of color within his eyelids. He brought it closer, moved it further away, all the while breathing deeply. He relaxed his conscious mind so that his unconscious could better communicate. Something had been nagging at him. He wanted it to surface.

  The floor fell away, and that small area of the brain known to separate 'self' from 'other' dimmed. Jack Burke was soon sitting in empty space and felt he was nothing but empty space. His breathing continued unabated, untended; the mind emptied itself and there was only white noise over endless silence. Burke was vaguely aware of footsteps in the hallway outside his office door, moving down the hall, but nothing else. The footsteps faded.